ANNIE: Then can you tell us if you’ve seen our father, Mister Patrick O’Brien?
LIL’ LUKE: When, missy?
ANNIE: Oh, about a year ago.
LIL’ LUKE: Well if he were here that long ago, he sure ain’t likely to be here now. If he got any sense he’ll be long gone.
SEAN: Yes. Out West.
LIL’ LUKE: Well that’s where they all head for in the end.
ANNIE: How did you get so black, Mister?
SEAN: Annie!
LIL’ LUKE: (Chuckling.) Well, I puts it on every morning before sun-up and I takes it off every night. You rub me hard enough and it’ll come off just like the brown off a hen’s egg. You wanna try?
He offers her his face – and she rubs it, but of course nothing happens.
(Mock shock-horror.) Well, bless my soul, looks as if I put it on once too often! Now I’m stuck with it for life.
He smiles. ANNIE realises he’s been teasing her.
ANNIE: Are you telling me you were born like that?
LIL’ LUKE: That’s what my Mammy said. You mean you ain’t never seen no black man before?
ANNIE: In Ireland everyone’s white. Well, dirty white.
LIL’ LUKE: And there was me thinking that you were all little green folk in Ireland!
ANNIE: Really?
LIL’ LUKE raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘what do you think?’
LIL’ LUKE: We got all sorts here in ’Merica, folks from all over: England, Ireland, Dutchland, Swedenland. Hundreds of ’em comin’ in every day. ’Cos this is a mighty big country an’ there’s room for everyone who’s a mind to come. (To SEAN.) You play that fiddle of yours?
SEAN: (Clutching the fiddle case tightly to him.) A bit.
LIL’ LUKE: Yes you keep a tight hold of it. But if you play, you may be able to earn yourself a crust. So long. I must get back to my ladies. Take care now, d’you hear?
He leaves. Snow falls. The chill wind whines.
ANNIE: What did he mean, his ‘ladies’? What did he mean, ‘earn ourselves a crust’?
SEAN: I guess he means that we could play for money. I could play. You could dance.
ANNIE: (Affronted.) I won’t beg!
SEAN: ’Tis not exactly begging. And we’ll need the money to get us to Father.
ANNIE: You think he’s still…
She means ‘alive’; SEAN knows what she means.
SEAN: Yes, Annie. And we must deliver him the torc. It’s our talisman. Our family charm. And that’s why we’re going to stand on this street corner and I’m going to play the fiddle and they’ll throw money into the fiddle case as they pass by, enough to keep us in food, and enough to pay the rent on some little room somewhere, enough to keep us going until we can find out where Father’s gone. Now that’s not begging, is it Annie? That’s working for a living.
ANNIE: S’pose.
SEAN: And you’re going to dance, Annie. You’re going to dance as you’ve never danced before.
SEAN plays; ANNIE dances; PASSERSBY throw money into the fiddle case. The snow snows. The freezing wind blows. They play and dance on, determined. Eventually it is too much and ANNIE collapses. A CROWD gathers. A LADY IN BLUE pushes forward.
LADY IN BLUE: Stand aside! Stand aside!
She looks down at a distraught SEAN cradling an unconscious ANNIE in his arms.
We should be ashamed to see such a sight on our city streets. Christmas Eve is it not? And was there not another child somewhere else who could find no shelter on just such an evening? Are we nothing but innkeepers that we stand gaping and do nothing? Little Luke! Pick up that child and bring her with us this instant.
LIL’ LUKE: Yes, Ma’am.
LIL’ LUKE steps forward and takes ANNIE from SEAN.
BYSTANDER: But Ma’am, the child could be dying of the plague!
LADY IN BLUE: Tell me, Sir, are you a doctor?
BYSTANDER: No, Ma’am.
LADY IN BLUE: Then, Sir, you have no right to make a medical judgement on the matter, have you?
BYSTANDER: No, Ma’am.
LADY IN BLUE: Quite so. And even if the child had been touched by the plague, every member of my family has lived out their three-score years and ten, and I shall do the same, plague or no plague.
BYSTANDER: Three-score years and ten is quite sufficient for anyone, Ma’am.
LADY IN BLUE: (Looking daggers at him.) One must not be greedy, Sir.
BYSTANDER: No, Ma’am.
LADY IN BLUE: And Luke, you’d better bring that wretched boy too. (To her SISTER.) I have never liked boys, Martha, as you know.
MISS MARTHA: No, Henry.
LADY IN BLUE/MISS HENRY: Such unnecessary creatures, boys. But if we take the one then I suppose we shall have to take the other.
MISS MARTHA: Yes, Henry.
SEAN: (Through his tears to LIL’ LUKE.) My sister: is she dead?
LIL’ LUKE: Hard to tell, Sean O’Brien, hard to tell.
MISS HENRY: As soon as we get some warm food into her, and tuck her up in a nice warm bed, she’ll be living and breathing again.
SEAN: Thank you, Ma’am!
They set off, LIL’ LUKE carrying ANNIE in his arms.
MISS HENRY: Don’t thank me. Thank Little Luke. Thank my sister, Martha.
MISS MARTHA: Oh, you’re being too modest, Henry. Since we first saw those poor wretches from Ireland pouring off the ships, you said we should try to help them if we could.
MISS HENRY: But there are too many of them. The problem is too big.
MISS MARTHA: Which is why we are helping those that we can, Henry.
SEAN: Why does your sister call you Henry? You’re not a man, you’re a lady.
MISS HENRY: Well, young man, I am a lady, always have been. But our mother found it difficult to tell us apart, so she cut off all my hair and called me Henry, and let Martha’s grow long and called her…Martha. Ah, home.
They stop in front of a gabled, red-brick mansion, bristling with smoking chimneys.
ANNIE: So many chimneys!
SEAN: (Overwhelmed that ANNIE has revived.) Annie!
ANNIE: Why do you need more than one?
MISS HENRY: Well, one would be lonely.
ANNIE: Father built the tallest chimney in Ireland – and he’s going to build the tallest in ’Merica too.
MISS MARTHA: You have a father, then? Here in America?
ANNIE: To be sure we have. But we don’t know where in ’Merica.
SEAN: Out West, maybe.
MISS MARTHA: And your mother?
ANNIE looks at SEAN.
SEAN: She’s dead, Miss Martha.
ANNIE: Yes. She’s dead.
Their eyes fill with tears.
MISS HENRY: Well come along now. Up to the bathroom with you. There’s enough dirt on your neck young man to grow a whole field of potatoes!
They run off, LIL’ LUKE following. MISS MARTHA and MISS HENRY watch them go.
MISS MARTHA: Poor sweet children. We are their refuge, Henry.
MISS HENRY: And we shall keep them as long as they need us.
MISS MARTHA: You’ve a heart of gold under all that bluster.
MISS HENRY: Hm. Now we have them here we shall educate them. Can you imagine what kind of life they must have had, Martha? And they’ll no longer need to go busking in the streets.
MISS MARTHA: Their violin is precious to them – that young man clutches it to him as if it were a part of him.
MISS HENRY: It is. It is in his blood. Without it they would have perished in the streets of Boston, like so many others.
MISS MARTHA: We shall give them a Christmas they will never forget.
* * *
We segue into SEAN and ANNIE delighting the assembled COMPANY with their spirited Christmas playing and dancing – SEAN spruced up in waistcoat, ANNIE in a clean white dress, wearing the golden torc, and stomping in her boots. Christmas decorations festooned throughout.
LIL’ LUKE: (To MISS MARTHA.) There’s something about those lil’ children. They bring happin
ess wherever they go. Why just look at Miss Henry: have you ever seen her dancin’ before?
She is dancing.
MISS MARTHA: Not since we were children ourselves.
LIL’ LUKE: An’ she’s laughin’ too! Don’t she usually sit by the fire at Christmas glowerin’ and wishin’ everyone’d go home? Jus’ look at her now!
MISS HENRY: (Dancing, to SEAN.) Faster, young man! Faster!
ANNIE: Miss Henry: this is the best day of my life!
MISS HENRY: And you look so pretty. Your necklace is beautiful.
SEAN stops his playing.
SEAN: I told you not to wear it, Annie.
MISS HENRY: Why, child?
SEAN: It is the torc of the O’Briens. One thousand years old. From when we owned great lands and forests all of our own. Wherever we O’Briens go, this torc goes with us. It protects us from danger. It is the O’Brien soul we carry with us. It has preserved us – and destroys all those who steal it. So long as we keep the torc, then the O’Briens will never die out. It is our secret. And now you share our secret.
MISS HENRY: To be trusted with such a secret is an honour, young man.
ANNIE: You are the nicest, kindest, goodest people we know.
MISS HENRY: Goodest?
MISS MARTHA: Let it pass, Henry. Now children, you must go to bed.
ANNIE: I could stay here for ever.
MISS MARTHA: And so you shall, Annie dear, if you care to.
SEAN: But we can’t. Or we’ll never see Father again.
MISS HENRY: Of course. And that you must do. We will help you find him.
* * *
It’s night time – and the house is still and silent: the breathing and gentle snoring of SLEEPERS. SEAN and ANNIE tiptoe along the corridor.
ANNIE: (Whispering.) But it’s so ungrateful!
SEAN: (Whispering.) If we’re going, then it’s best to go now while everyone’s asleep. We can’t look them in the face and say we’re going, not after all their kindnesses. I couldn’t bear to see the hurt in their eyes.
They carry on creeping along the corridor – and bump into LIL’ LUKE.
LIL’ LUKE: (Whispering.) Miss Martha and Miss Henry said you might be goin’. They told me you weren’t to go without havin’ breakfast first. They’s waitin’ for you in the parlour.
They walk sheepishly into the dimly lit parlour where MISS MARTHA and MISS HENRY await.
MISS HENRY: Headin’ West?
SEAN nods.
The wagon trains roll further West each year, but there’s a lot of plain and prairie and desert to cross before you reach that other ocean all that way from ours. Takes a year or more to get there.
SEAN: A year?
MISS HENRY: It is three thousand miles across a wild continent peopled with wild and wicked men and marauding savages. Your father may well have made it. But many a thing can happen to a man between Boston and California.
SEAN: But we have to try.
MISS MARTHA: We know you do, Sean. But you will need a wagon and provisions, and someone to take you as far as the big river.
ANNIE: The big river?
MISS MARTHA: Yes. There you will find our brother, the Colonel.
ANNIE: We didn’t know you had a brother.
MISS HENRY: No. Well, Miss Martha and I prefer to forget. Our father left us a great fortune, from his furniture business here in Boston. Miss Martha and I invested our share wisely; but our brother had other ideas. He was a soldier of fortune, fought the English, the Mexicans, the Red Indians…well, now he has a ship of iniquity on the Ohio River.
ANNIE: What’s the O-hi-o-high-river? What is a ship of ink-willity?
MISS HENRY: Never you mind. Little Luke: you know you are a free man – have been since the day you escaped from slavery in the Deep South, all those years ago. So you do not have to do what I’m about to ask you –
LITTLE LUKE: No need to ask, Miss Henry; it’s the best an’ only way for these children to find their Papa. I’s already on my way.
MISS HENRY: The Colonel will be moored at Wheeling, Ohio. Hand them over into his safe-keeping. He’ll then sail them up the Missouri river to St Louis.
LIL’ LUKE: I surely will, Miss Henry. And I’ll return here by the Fall.
MISS MARTHA: And you can return here one day too children. This will always be your home.
SEAN: Thank you, Miss Martha.
MISS HENRY: Now get along. I’ve packed blankets and clothes and enough provisions to keep you going for a month or so.
ANNIE: Thank you, Miss Henry. (She gives MISS HENRY a big hug.)
MISS HENRY: (Tearful.) Now you’ve set me going. Be off!
MISS MARTHA: But take this – (She presents them with a gleaming black revolver.) – it was our father’s. Just in case you should ever need it. It would only rust back here in Boston.
MISS HENRY: And here’s a letter to my despicable brother: I have never asked anything of him, and it appeals to his better nature – if he’s still got one.
ANNIE: Thank you Miss Henry, Miss Martha. We shall never forget you.
MISS HENRY: Oh you’ll meet other kind people on your way and if…and when you make it to California, Miss Martha and I will be long gone.
MISS HENRY and MISS MARTHA leave.
ANNIE: Lil’ Luke: is it far to Wheeling, O-hi-o-high-o?
LIL’ LUKE: I don’ know ’cos I ain’t never bin there.
SEAN: But you do know where you’re going?
LIL’ LUKE: All the way down through Pennsylvania. Close to a thousand miles I reckon.
SEAN: A thousand miles!
LIL’ LUKE: So we’d better get goin’.
* * *
They set off in the wagon.
ANNIE: We won’t see them again, Sean, will we?
SEAN doesn’t answer.
Why did Miss Martha give us her father’s gun?
LIL’ LUKE: If you goes on askin’ questions all the way, you’ll talk yo’self dumb before you git there.
SEAN: I’ve never ever fired a gun.
LIL’ LUKE: Well let’s hope you never have to. I’m gonna teach you how to lasso, and how to trap a rattlesnake safely, how to light a fire with damp twigs –
ANNIE: I know how to do that already – I’m from Ireland, remember.
LIL’ LUKE: Now I’m feelin’ kinda sad myself, leaving Miss Martha and Miss Henry behind, so why don’t you git out your fiddle Master Sean and we can sing sumpin’ to cheer our spirits. ’Sgonna be a long, hard road.
And they sing a Spiritual, and play the fiddle, and tap their feet, as they travel on their way as Winter turns to Spring, and…
Interval.
PART II
America. Spring 1848.
LIL’ LUKE, SEAN and ANNIE set up camp. Music dies away…
ANNIE: Why can’t we come hunting with you?
LIL’ LUKE: One person’s got jus’ two feet; two persons’ got four; and three’s –
ANNIE: Got six!
LIL’ LUKE: Three persons always smell thrice as bad to a critter. You get the fire goin’.
He goes off. The cicadas chirr. The flies buzz.
SEAN: We should get the fire going like Lil’ Luke says. These flies’ll eat us alive if we don’t smoke ’em out.
ANNIE: Sure they’re not as bad as the midges back home.
SEAN: Maybe they’s all partial to Irish blood the world over? There’s not a bit of me they haven’t eaten.
ANNIE is looking off into the trees, worried.
Is something the matter, Annie?
ANNIE: The trees: they moved.
SEAN: Don’t be daft. ’Tis just the wind.
ANNIE: (Whispering.) But I think someone’s looking at us.
He goes towards the trees and peers into them.
SEAN: No. No one. It’s the wind and the noises it makes. Sounds will carry along a valley, you know. ’Tis nothing, Annie.
LIL’ LUKE returns with a rabbit.
And here is Lil’ Luke. It was him all along. br />
LIL’ LUKE: What was me? And why haven’t you got the fire goin’?
SEAN: Annie thought she heard things in the trees.
ANNIE: And saw them moving too.
LIL’ LUKE: There’s nobody here but ourselves.
ANNIE sees something move again.
ANNIE: There!
They all look in that direction – and as they do so, a BOUNTY HUNTER dressed in shredded leather jerkin and wide-brimmed hat enters behind them, rifle at the ready.
BOUNTY HUNTER: Nice an’ easy.
They freeze.
I don’t want to hurt no one. Not ’less I have to.
LIL’ LUKE: Miss Annie, Sean, you stay right by me. This man won’t hurt us none. He just wanna take our things. That’s all. And things ain’t that important, not ’nough to git killed for anyhow. Anyways, he won’t find nothin’ in that ole wagon ’cos we ain’t got nothin’, ’cept a few blankets.
BOUNTY HUNTER: That’s where you’re wrong – now I’m gonna have a little look through your wagon, ’case there’s somethin’ worth havin’ in there. And I sure as hell could do with a-eatin’ of your rabbit there. But it’s you I’m after. (To LIL’ LUKE.) I trade in men like you. Bounty Hunter they calls me. I comes up north every spring, catches me a fine crop of runaway slaves and I sells them down south. All I gotta do is git you down into Kentucky and there’s folk there’ll pay me more’n fifty dollars apiece for runaways. Better trade than horse thievin’ – ’cos it’s legal an’ you don’t git hung for it. They got cotton down there an’ they ain’t ’nough people to pick it, so I’s takin’ you back home.
LIL’ LUKE: I’m a free man – bin free for thirty years or more.
BOUNTY HUNTER: You’s a slave, you all are, don’t you know that yet? You born a slave, you die a slave. Now you kin die right here if you’ve a mind to, or you kin ride out with me nice and easy.
ANNIE: Don’t go, Little Luke, don’t go!
LIL’ LUKE: Miss Annie, the man’s got a rife. There ain’t nothin’ I kin do; and, what’s more, there ain’t nothin’ you kin do.
SEAN: (To BOUNTY HUNTER.) Mister: if we were to have something maybe worth fifty dollars or more, would you take that instead of Little Luke?
BOUNTY HUNTER: ’Pends on what you got, son.
LIL’ LUKE: (To SEAN.) Don’t bargain with the devil, Master Sean; don’t do it.
SEAN: (Ignoring him.) ’Tis gold, mister. If I let you have it, will you let Little Luke go and leave us alone?