Red Sky in Morning

by Paul Lynch

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A tense, thrilling debut novel that spans two continents, from "a writer to watch out for" (Colum McCann).

It's 1832 and Coll Coyle has killed the wrong man. The dead man's father is an expert tracker and ruthless killer with a single-minded focus on vengeance. The hunt leads from the windswept bogs of County Donegal, across the Atlantic to the choleric work camps of the Pennsylvania railroad, where both men will find their fates in the hardship and rough country of the fledgling United States.

Language and landscape combine powerfully in this tense exploration of life and death, parts of which are based on historical events. With lyrical prose balancing the stark realities of the hunter and the hunted, RED SKY IN MORNING is a visceral and meditative novel that marks the debut of a stunning new talent.

Release date: October 21, 2014

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 288

Sample

NIGHT SKY WAS BLACK AND THEN THERE WAS BLOOD, morning crack of light on the edge of the earth. The crimson spill sent the bright stars to fade, hills stepping out of shadow and clouds finding flesh. First rain of day from a soundless sky and music it made of the land. The trees let slip the mantle of darkness, stretched themselves, fingers of leaves shivering in the breeze, red then goldening rays of light catching. The rain stopped and he heard the birds wake. They blinked and shook their heads and scattered song upon the sky. The land, old and tremulous, turned slowly towards the rising sun.


Coll Coyle was tight with rage and could not admit he was afraid. For hours he watched with dread the creeping birth of morning. Wobbled glass bending the Carnarvan dawn in rivulets of shifting purple, the slow retreat of numb shadow from the walls. He could not speak for a great bank of sorrow.

He lay awake most of the night, dreams snaking shallow and tormented so that for a moment he would find relief in waking, but soon the dread would pool about him in the darkness and a weight spreading heavy would pitch on top of him. He turned among the limb-sprawl of heated bodies, his daughter snug in his elbow and the press of his wife’s chest. He reached a hand to her swollen belly and listened to the suck tide of her breathing. The surf at Clochan Strand.

He rose so as not to stir them, slithered and then scooped his daughter with feathered fingers and placed her by her mother’s arms. The child awoke anyway, blinked at him with eyes confused and crusted, and he cooed her and rubbed his thumb on her cheek and the lids of her eyes weighted and shut. He looked to the darkness that held silent the shape of his mother sleeping. The hearth glowing red with sleepy eyes and he reached for his breeches and put them on and took his wyliecoat off the chair, sleeved it and buttoned it and set towards the door leaving his boots by the bed. The door sounding a gentle keening and he put it back on the latch and stood outside. The smell of Carnarvan like soaking earth. Salt faintly on the air and he sucked it in, looked towards the light that flaked silver on the dark waters of Trawbega Bay.

He stamped his feet and walked about the yard and opened the door to the stone outhouse, letting out the pig with a kick. Go on ye. The cow staring at him thickly. He yawned and rubbed his eyes and sat on the stone wall and ran his fingers over the rocks that sat jagged as if they had fought violently before being ripped out of the earth. The lime white of the house indigo in the light and he saw himself as a child among gragging geese and his father plastering dripping upon the blue clay.

Bones in the land. The bones of those before me. I will not so I will.

He looked at the house and remembered when they came—men from all over, from Carrow, from Evish, two men from Tanderagee who came all the way as a favor to his father. Towering, so they were, faces coppered and sun-cracked. The old man sparking his hands like shards of flint. Hardly ever smiled so he did though his body done all the laughing. They set to work, building with stones gleaming from the earth washed fresh. They stood the house, then cut sod and upturned it making flesh for the roof’s bones. The men drank and cursed and sang songs till their slurring was feverish and they stumbled home to their townlands by dawn light and the family lay down on straw in front of the open fire too eager to sleep.

He sat and listened to the morning. The murmuring wind and the sound from the stone wall of a fierce droning fury. He stood and walked over to the sound of it and bent till he could see a hollow woven with web, dew-spittled and argent-shining, and his eyes alighted on a fly fighting the entangled clasp of a spider. The buzzing of its wings frantic and it became more furious still and its body twitched in trapped frenzy as the spider grappled from above until the life of the fly was spent but for its palps softly twitching and then it was still. Coyle bent closer and leaned into it and nudged gently the insect with the tip of his finger but the life was gone out of it.

He walked about the yard and saw the sky sheeted gray and stood thinking of the two riders that came. An idle saunter towards the top of the hill and then they had stopped near the end of the track. The loud call of John Faller. He walked towards them and took off his cap when he saw the other rider was Hamilton. Faller’s smiling eyes. The height of him bearing down on that horse. His words plunging like a knife. Hamilton leering red-eyed. Like that was anything new.

Shoulda said something then. Shoulda looked him in the eye. Shoulda dragged him down off that horse. What are ye on about? What do you mean we are being evicted? You know we done you no harm. And the woman with child. Pure wrong so it is. Wouldna have listened anyway.

His fists tensed and something roiled in him like the white fever of river until his anger was foaming and he walked to the yard and pulled an axe grinning from the wood and started walking. He marched down the track from the house, shoulders huge and hunching. The earth dew-kissed and the coldness of it was numb to his feet and he wanted to hurl a mountain, to tear at the sky, to rip the earth open with his hands, and he turned sharp and strode to a spot where trees stood huddling. The axe swung in vicious arcs till a fir splintered and fell newly ragged upon the needled floor and he sat spent, his head wagging, and he had no power to hold back the tears.

  

HE WIPED HIS FACE with his sleeve and walked back up the hill to the house. The shape of his mother crossing the yard and the cow giving up her milk. He went inside and sat on a stool between the fire and the bed and looked at his wife Sarah. Eyes sloping off low cheekbones. A face built for sadness.


You were keeping me awake all night with your turning, she said.

Ye were sleeping.

I was awake. Where’d you get to just now?

I was out cuttin.

What was the use of that?

He rose towards the hearth. The fire alive in the rakings and he blew gently. Ash skittered the surface of fizzing embers and he raked it and kindled it with moss which popped and sizzled till flame lapped hungrily. He took flitches of turf and put them on top and watched the smoke sidle up the gable wall to lie sleepily about the low rafters and then he put his hand over the flame.

The child awoke and climbed out of the bed and went to him. He scooped her into his lap and tidied tangles of hair with his fingers. The child fidgeted and he put her down again and leaned forward on his elbows with his hands worrying his cheeks. Sarah watched him. His face a forest of dark stubble and the way shadows pooled his eyes like he was quailing from the light. He saw her and shook his head.

The door opened and his mother placed a pail beside the table and she fixed her shawl and went out again.

They ate brachán in wooden bowls to the spit of the fire, silence filling up the room. They each watched him in turn, his eyes upon the floor, and then he lifted his head and spoke quietly. I’m sick of yous looking at me like I’m supposed to do something. Fuck it then I will.

Sarah put down her bowl on the table. Coyle stood up. Is Jim’s suit down at the house?

His mother looked at him. Naw. It’s up here. Why do you want it?

I’m gonna go and speak a few words. Ask Hamilton to let us be.

Sarah looked up. No you are not, she said.

Alarm now in her voice, ceding control to his voice low and steady.

Aye I am. I’m gonna go and talk sense to that man.

Sarah got up and stood in front of him. You will not. You know he’s not the kind for it. There’s no sense in him. You’ll only make things worse off.

He looked at her unblinking. Huppidy hah, he said.

She placed her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes. He stared at her, his hands balling white-knuckled, and then he turned and yanked open the door and stood there for air. They watched him, the child climbing crying upon her mother’s lap, and they listened to his low cursing.

He came back in and stood with his hands on his hips staring at his wife and she refused to look at him. The old woman came from the other room with the suit on her arm and handed it to him and Sarah snapped up from the table with the child. Fool, she said.

His mother’s mouth curled and her eyes narrowed like a cat. That young Hamilton, she said. A curse on the bodach’s head.

  

HE SET OUT ON FOOT under sky sullen and uncertain. A back-sheared anvil rolled from the west and the faraway haze of rain upon the hills. He wore the suit tattered about the cuff and he wore his boots though he preferred to walk on bare feet and underneath his castor hat he was auditioning ideas of talk man to man that would settle things. Listen here now. Naw. I’m just saying.


He took Toland’s pass where the world thickened in green and he came to a river spanning the length of him. He forded across a spine of stones and pushed up the hill in big strides through rushes parting and he found the track, walking with the power of a man of single determination, and when the sky opened up he did not stop, the track weak to the rain and his boots soiling in the softening beneath him.

The sky had more to give. The rain fell heavier and he stopped under a tree and hunched on his heels. His hat plastered to his head and rain dripping on his face. The suit was stained dark and cold to the skin. He listened to the tinkling canopy and a magpie’s rolling rattle and he caught sight of the bird above, watched it flit the tree with its turquoise belt shining. Beside him the faceless yellow discs of hawksbeard were courted by a bumblebee as fat as his thumb.

The rain softened to a drizzle and he rolled his sleeves and set off again. He met the whitewashed boundary wall of the Moss Road estate where the light was thin and scattered through the trees. Beyond he saw the sprawl of the country house. The land opened to vastness and he walked towards it, the grass a glistening green and garden beds of bloom. Stables lined before him alongside outhouses and the broad back of the house looking down superior upon the yard.

Coyle pulled his cap lower over his eyes and went towards the stables, silence save for the snorting of a horse, and then he saw his brother in a field with a gelding. The man’s long face narrowed when he saw him. He clamped his jaw and looked over his shoulder and began towards Coyle with an angry whisper.

What the fuck are ye doing?

Coyle did not meet the man’s whisper but spoke instead in his low steady tone. I’m sorting this out like I should have.

Coyle looked at his brother’s shaking head, the expanse of jaw set before him like an obstacle. A flash in the man’s eyes and the way his mouth tightened and Coyle saw in him his father’s face.

Is that young bastard about? he said.

I saddled him up. He’s out with the dog—hold on now you, he said.

Jim put his hands into the air as if that would stop him.

Hold on nowhere. I’ll talk to the auld fella so.

You will not.

I’ve made up my mind. It’s pure wrong.

You’re right. Evicting yous is pure wrong. But if Faller sees ye lumping about—there’s fuck all you can do.

I’ve been taking this lying down ever since that day I was too afraid to speak.

Faller and his boys will be over to yous later. Ye know how it is.

We’ll see.

Go home.

Coyle smiled. Huppidy hah.

He left his brother standing mute in the field and climbed a fence that wobbled uncertain under his weight and he came upon the gravel of the driveway. Stones in their wetness gleaming and their crunch underfoot and then the front door rising before him in red. He pulled the bell and took off his cap and pulled a leaf of climbing ivy off the wall, rolled it until it stained his thumb. The door swung heavily. A domestic servant stood before him, her hair skulled tight and her blue eyes striking him with a look like she could read him pure.

Please, I need to speak with the master.

Nothing from her but the full length of a look.

Tell him it’s Coll Coyle, son of Seamus Coyle.

Mounted heads of deer with marbled eyes watched behind the woman. He stared at her and thought he saw movement in her eyes but then she spoke, I canny help you, and she leaned her body upon the door and closed it. Coyle waited a moment and he rang the bell again but the door remained shut. He banged on a panel with his fist and he ripped a string of ivy. He turned and walked around the house, met the watchful eyes of a maid by the scullery door and he found his brother at the stables.

Where did that bastard go this morning?

I told ye to go home.

Tell me where he is.

The brother sighed then pointed. Gortagore. He usually circles back by Wee Joe’s path.

Jim watched the broad shape of his brother’s back as he left the field and he scratched his jaw and turned back to the horse.

  

HAMILTON AMBLED HIS HORSE on a hay track winding narrow while his dog bounded ahead. He looked towards the sky and the sun coffined in cloud and saw it tense with rain and he called to his dog but there was no sight nor sound of it. He followed the blackthorn-bundled path to the bend and beyond where he saw the hound and the shape of a man kneeling.


Coyle turned when he saw the man on the horse and he stood in the centre of the path. He took off his cap and raised his hand and when the horseman did not stop he walked alongside and took hold of the mare by the ring of the bridle and brought the horse to park.

Master, he said.

The rider heeled the mare to advance but Coyle held the animal firm. Hamilton looked down and glared. Blackshine of boot and corduroy breeches buttoned in gilt and the tails spun out behind him but his eyes were shot unsteady with red. Hamilton took hold of his composure and looked down at his boots and swatted at dirt with the back of his gloved hand. Coyle looked up at him, caught the reach of last night’s drink from the man’s breath.

Sir this isn’t right what you’re doing.

The hound giddied about the horse’s front legs.

You listening sir?

Light rain began to encircle the men and Hamilton shifted in his saddle. His eyes sought out the sky and they sought out the dog and they sought out the track beyond where the man was standing. He leaned back and drove his heels into the horse but Coyle held it as it was, whispering to the animal soft words for confusion he saw quicken its eyes and then the animal was still.

Let go of my horse, Hamilton said. I’ll not ask you again.

Not till you talk to me sir.

Hamilton looked at him and his hand sought in his pocket for a watch and he looked at the time and put it back and then the gleam of a smile.

If you fancy your brother working for me again you’d best leave off.

Coyle swallowed and looked at the hound which had taken seat to watch and then the sky fully opened. Each of them stood as if they were indifferent to the rain and though that may have been, Hamilton finally snapped. He swung a leg over the horse and dismounted with force and with the reins in his hand he made to go past. Coyle swung away in the other direction taking a second hold of the bridle, the horse nervous and the two standing opposite.

I’m asking you to just listen to me, Coyle said. My father worked for your father all his life—died working so he did. We’ve done nothing but good for your family. My brother too.

Your father died of his own stupidity. And your brother? Well, he’s finished here.

What’s that?

I said he’s finished. The lot of ye.

Coyle stared into the man’s red eyes and the words came up hot and furious out of him. Damn your soul, he said, and he spat at the man’s feet.

Hamilton looked at him wide-eyed and then a sneer on his lips.

Damn my soul? You’ve just damned yours. Your bones I’m going to break and your neck I’ll have snapped on a rope. And I’ll take your wife and cut the child out of her and fill her with my own seed and I’ll take that other snotty scrag you call a child and bag it from a bridge and you can all go to hell.

Coyle’s head clouded and his world interior closed to darkness and his hand bouldered. He fell to the man in front of him, his fist catching the other’s jaw with the weight of his body behind it. The horse bucked on two legs and the man went staggering back till he fell upon the rocks of a wall. There was a pop softly as his head broke on the stone and the bone caved in, blood gorging out of him and his eyes rolling back as if trying to alight his vision on this breach flooding daylight into his world turned to darkness. There came a wheezing rattle from his throat and blood threaded out of his nose in little streams and it made confluent with a spume of spittle about his mouth. Coyle’s legs went limp at the sight and he staggered drunkenly. The dog whining and he looked at the head holed before him like rotten fruit, the head lolling sideways onto the shoulder and he went to the man on his knees scratching the dirt with his hands outstretched and caught the other man’s brain matter, viscous spilling from breached bone, and he tried to push it back in with his hands whimpering softly to himself oh Jesus.

  

SOFT RAIN FROM QUICKSILVER SKY and the land silent as stone. The water fell bathing gently all in its domain, the trees and the fields and the stone sill and the still seeping blood, rivulets running crimson towards the maw of the welcoming earth.


The land crooked and Coyle stood to his feet and steadied and he noticed the whinnying of the horse and saw that it had begun to leave. He looked around him to the fields and the path and went slowly towards it, the animal wild-eyed and he whispered to it, soothing then stroking its flesh, his hands sticky and staining with bloodied streaks the snow white of its fuzz until it stood calm and then he led it back down the path.

That’s a girl. Good girl.

No place to secure the horse so he wrapped the reins about a stone and then he bent towards the fallen man. His eyes narrowed and then his gaze turned to the ground for fear of alighting upon the corpse’s eyes, sightless bulbs glassy upon the sky, and he grabbed the booted ankles and pulled the body, its hatless head lolling from side to side, until the body lay cruciform upon the track. He stood catching his breath and looked out across the land, through haze the faded gray of quartzite hills and the bogland beneath spread golden-brown, centuries harbored and hushed within its grasp.

He squatted down and locked his arms under the pits of the corpse and heaved up the dead weight to his chest, the head slumping across to rest on his shoulder, and he kicked at its dragging heels. Ghoulish dancers they could have been, stiff-limbed to the melody of a whispering wind, and backwards he lost his balance. The horse skittered nervously and he tumbled to the floor still locked in embrace and the holed head leaning into him and he turned away and his stomach voided. Jesus. He got up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve and began again, squatting down and heaving till the dead man stood yanked to attention and then he bent again and put the body over his shoulder and carried it to the horse. He laid the corpse over the seat of the saddle and looked at the shining boots of the dead man then bent to the brush and tore at a clump of dock leaves and rubbed his hands on them. He turned and what he saw was the black dog watching.

Hamilton’s hound stood at a distance alertly leaning forward, its tail standing and its eyes fixed narrow and unblinking. Coyle stamped his foot at it but the dog’s gaze was fixed. He looked about his feet and leaned to the wall where he picked up a jag of stone. He threw it weakly, the stone caroming into the brush, and the dog held its ground. He picked up another shaped like a large fanged tooth that bounced dangerous before the animal and it fled.

Coyle went to the horse and took the reins and turned the animal and when he looked again over his shoulder the dog had returned. Go to hell. Coyle led the horse back through the gate from which Hamilton had come and closed it and eyed the dog watching from behind it.

The rain stopped and he steered a path towards the cover of trees and stood a minute and listened. Oh please be. The jolly whistle of a blackbird and everything else as it should be. He made a line towards the hills under shade of tree, this lumbering procession hushed with a slumping corpse coffined in nothing but the furtive air and it bathed for burial in ichor from its opened veins and no mourners but for this black dog visible. The trees parted and the land leaned down to Drumlish where they came to a brook, the water susurrous on the rocks like watching whisperers. He tied the horse and took off the jacket. The old tweed worn and fraying about the edges now stewed in darkened blood. He saw it and he cursed and he hit himself with his fist on the jaw. Stupid man ye. He bathed the jacket in the water and the stain weakened but remained and he wrung it and carried it in his hand and then he put it in the horse’s girth. He bent again to the stream and scooped handfuls of water cool and mineral in his mouth and he led the horse and let it drink, the dog watching from the trees, the body of the dead man dangling on the horse’s flanks.

They left the river and came upon a track and Coyle nosed out of the shade and as he did so the roll of wheels reached his ears and he caught the sight of some shape forming slowly about the left turn. His breath caught sharp and he turned and backed the horse into the trees. He watched from the foliage a man he kn. . .