Read Online Flight of the Earls by Michael K. Reynolds - Free Book Online

themselves.”
    â€œThere’s not much to entertain you, I’m afraid.” Clare decided the boys were as justified as she was to hear Madame O’Riley’s words. “She told me once in New York I was to give this pendant to some man named Patrick Feagles.”
    They both looked at her as if to say: Is that all?
    â€œI told you both there wasn’t much to it. Other than she said this Patrick Feagles would be most generous once it was returned.”
    â€œGenerous?” Seamus raised a brow. “Now that makes it more tempting. How big a town is New York, do we know?”
    Just then, there was a neighing of horses, and the wagon slowed, and then angled to the side of the road before coming to a complete stop. In a few moments, a gray-stubbled face peered over the edge of the wagon at them.
    Finn, the pig farmer, cleared his throat and spat before speaking, and when he did, Clare could see there wasn’t a tooth visible in his whole mouth.
    â€œWe’re losing our light soon,” the old man said. “Are you hungry at all?”
    They exchanged looks of agreement.
    He cleaned out his ear with his finger. “Me cousin and her husband. Friendly folks they are and she’s handy with a kettle. They live just a way off the main road.”
    Without a genuine protest, they rolled again and passed through peasant farmland, speckled with houses more like rock shanties.
    Clare leaned back and rested her arms on the walls of the wagon and observed Seamus’s exchanges with his boyhood friend. Her brother seemed relaxed and happy, something he usually only feigned within the shadows of his father.
    The clopping of the horses brought Clare back to the day Ronan, who was just beginning to walk at the time, had his leg crushed by the family’s milk cow. The damage caused the bone to protrude from the skin above his ankle. When Breandan Collins arrived, he promptly assessed the injury to be beyond his talents.
    â€œBut sir,” Clare’s father said, as Ronan screamed in the background, “you’re the only healer in Branlow.”
    â€œAye, with horses and chickens, this is true.” Breandan stroked his beard as sweat beaded on his forehead. “But your child needs a doctor. I’ll take care of the boy’s pain, but you need to head to Roscommon proper and fetch someone properly trained.”
    Her father blanched. The city was thirty miles outside of town, and it was raining in windy sheets.
    â€œYou can take my mare,” Breandan said. “She’s out front. Go on. Get going. The sooner we can get his leg set, the better chance your son will have of ever walking again.”
    â€œShall I go with you, Da?” Seamus looked up to his father with an expression of deep pleading. “I want to help Ronan.”
    Clare would never forget the silent exchange. Her father had dismissed Seamus with a poisoned look of disgust, and then her brother’s confidence drained, his shoulders slumped, and his head went down.
    Da jacketed himself and headed out into the tempestuous night and Ma hollered at him to hasten.
    Less than thirty minutes later, their da returned sporting a bloody gash on his forehead and with his clothing soaked and covered in mud. He was too proud to admit that he had never ridden a horse before, and it was no night for learning.
    With no other choice, the animal doctor labored through the crude surgery, managing to save the leg but leaving Ronan with a permanent hitch.
    That night, when the downpour relented, Seamus had been taken out by his father and given the reed in the field. When her brother climbed into the straw mattress next to Clare, the pains on his back caused him to whimper in muffled groans.
    â€œWhat did you do?” Clare whispered in his ear.
    â€œDa said I looked at him with blame.” Then Seamus sobbed until he fell asleep.
    A whistle from the pig farmer snapped Clare out of her musings, and up ahead she