The unexpected turn of the evening's events was difficult to grasp. He could scarce believe his good fortune...by contrast to his life just two years ago. The Captain's Crusaders! The honor of the distinction did not escape him --- the opposing fluxes of pride and humble gratitude nigh overwhelmed him. Aye! Whatever unforetold trials awaited him in this promotion, he was resolved to prove himself worthy of the Captain's faith in him.
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He had been on his own for as long as he could remember. mother...father...family...home: had he ever possessed any, he remembered them not. The only things he ken were his name --- Declan --- and hunger and cold. For years he wandered, ever seeking food and shelter, pleading for work to earn his keep.
In towns and villages, he took any work he could find --- if any could be found...if anyone was sympathetic enough to give work to a ragged urchin. When naught but a wee lad, his various employments had included chimney sweep, mucking stalls at livery stables and inns, crawling through tunnels in a copper mine, and washing blood and offal from the floor in a butcher shop.
As he grew older and stronger, he loaded and unloaded guests' trunks at inns, carried bricks and wood for builders, hauled barrels and crates at distilleries and taverns, worked as a blacksmith's assistant, and toiled on road construction crews.
Best was when he was given food and a bed in exchange for his labors. When paid in coin, 'twas usually insufficient to satisfy both needs, in which case he spent the money on sustenance. True, the "bed" he was given was usually simply being allowed to sleep upon a floor in a kitchen or stable, but the alternative was worse: the street.
Met with this fate, Declan would trudge through the streets and alleys, the stench of piss and shite rising from the wet cobblestones, whilst he scanned the rooftops for a smoking chimney. He would then search for a corresponding exterior fireplace wall against which to curl --- hoping for a spot with overhanging eaves to deflect the rain, and one not under a window out of which a chamber pot might be emptied.
But all too often, no work was forthcoming, or he was shooed away with varying invectives about his character and parentage --- then Declan resorted to digging in rubbish heaps for scraps of food or begging for coins.
In the larger towns, he was but one of dozens of similarly desperate souls...other children, often even younger than himself...women, men...all cold, hungry, dirty, and many sick. Their shared plight offered few advantages: they all were competing for work, food, sheltered doorways, and coins from passers-by. Suspicion and antagonism were rampant among them. Rare it was indeed that Declan found a friend, and never did it last...a lad or lass with whom he shared a crust of bread one day, would the next day have vanished, never to be met with again.
The gilding upon the lily of this life was the ever-present threat of the town watchman arresting them for vagrancy and sending them to work-houses or orphan homes. In some towns, the sheer number of indigent people tempered the watchman's diligence to detaining only those who had committed a crime more sinister than sleeping on the street. In other towns, no such leniency was shown. Declan had learnt to evade these patrol men --- had learnt their routes through the town, recognized the sound of their footsteps, knew which nooks and crannies were out of their line of sight.
But to Declan's shame, there had been two terrible winters during which desperation had driven him to deliberately let a watchman apprehend him. When he had heard the approaching clopping of the man's heavy boots, Declan's numb fingers scraped in the snow, pried a stone from the street, and hurled it through a shop window. Being yet a wee lad, he had been sent to orphan homes on both occasions. With bread and hot --- albeit watery --- soup in his belly and under a blanket, he felt that he had made a shrewd bargain, well worth the daily chores, scoldings, and spankings.
As soon as the weather warmed, he had escaped the homes to return to his roving life.
In the spring and fall, he made his way to the countryside and found work on farms --- usually those with children too young or too few in number for the chores. In exchange for meals and a pallet upon the floor, he tilled soil, planted tubers, hoed, cut turf, repaired stone walls, sheared sheep, and, in the fall, dug the praties.
Declan loved the times in the country best. He could eat his fill of praties and buttermilk. There was always a nearby stream in which he could bathe regularly. The air smelled good of soil, peat fires, animals, and flowers. Sometimes, depending on the farm, he even felt like he belonged to a family. For a few months twice a year, his belly was thus full, and he was free of worry. Inevitably though, he was turned loose after the planting and harvest seasons, and he was obliged to make his way back to a town.
Admist the fundamental needs of food and shelter, two other primal impulses began to assert themselves as he grew.
First, there was the fighting. He knew not why he ever found himself brawling with other lads and even grown men --- to his mind he did not seek out or instigate conflict. Years upon the streets taught him that Shillelagh law was his only recourse in defending himself...and the threats abounded.
Countless times he had awoken to find a fellow vagrant searching his pockets, or even trying to pull off his shoes or coat --- ragged and worn though they were. Food had to be consumed on the sly lest someone wrest it from his hands --- the same for any coin that might be tossed at him by a passing gentleman. All too often there would be another urchin who wished to dispute with him his possession of a particularly desirable cranny along a row of houses. And then there were the lads of the towns --- lads with homes and families and money --- who found sport in tormenting the poor wretches huddled along the streets.
Declan's heart would thump as he faced off against his antagonist. When his clenched fists connected with flesh, he was a boy possessed --- his fists lashed out in a blur, his heart roaring with rage as noses and cheekbones crunched under his blows and bodies doubled over to a fist driven into the gut. Only when his opponent lay whimpering and bleeding upon the ground was his fury quenched.
No lad had ever been foolhardy enough to challenge him twice. Rarely indeed did it happen that he was the one put to the cobblestones. Although most of these fights occurred in towns, he was not entirely spared in the country. He had defended himself against lads from neighboring farms, and even the sons upon the farms where he worked, who had taken exception to the presence of this interloper. Then there had been the times when a farmer in one instance, and a farmer's son in the other, had taken him to task with their fists for kissing his daughter or sister.
The second development was the baffling change in his mind and body with respect to the lasses.
Declan's existing impression of females as simply a weaker version of the human creature...who, for their own protection, might benefit from his greater strength, was replaced by an inexplicable fascination. Even as he was marking the changes in his own body, he had started to notice the different...most appealing...shape of lasses. How had he never before appreciated the comeliness of a pink mouth and a curved figure? How lovely 'twould be to put his arms round a maiden and kiss her! In concert with these thoughts, he experienced with wonder the sensations elicited in his body.
Endeavoring not to shame himself, he struggled to contain his burgeoning attraction to the fairer sex. Then the dreams started...and to his bewilderment and chagrin, he could not control his body. On the subject of this disconcerting mystery, he was eventually enlightened by the other lads of the streets, and with that revelation, coupled with his observations of animals upon the farms, Declan now understood for what he was longing. Nigh every hour of the day and night he was beset with amorous imaginings, and to his daily pursuit of sustenance and shelter was added his agitated hunt for a moment's solitude in which to indulge in his musings.
His romantic adventures so far had been limited to a few kisses --- the sweet memories of which he cherished. But in his quest to fully experience the pleasures of the flesh, he was as yet unfulfilled.
Declan was daydreaming about the lassies when he arrived in Kilmaedan town in County Wicklow one fine October day in 1795. 'Twas his first time in this town and he made a survey of the salient points as he walked along the main street: indicators of prosperity, possibilities of work, number of other street urchins. He was at present penniless and had recently escaped a trying ordeal.
The past winter, once more being famished and frozen, he had allowed a watchman to capture him. Alas, this time the gambit failed: when he was brought before the magistrate, he was deemed too old to go an orphan home, and he was thrown into prison instead.
Prison had proved to be an unfortunate price to pay for some bread and a roof over his head. The conditions were even more miserable than in the orphan homes --- confined he was in a small, damp cellar with dozens of other prisoners, with a few filthy pieces of straw for a pallet. His fellow inmates were a mix of beggars like himself, petty criminals, debtors, madmen, drunkards, and murderers...all of whom were subject to the whims of the corrupt guards and warden, who profited from their charges in whatever manner they could.
Worse, unlike the homes, he was unable to slip away in the night when the winter was over. His sentence for breaking a pane of glass had been four months, but the warden ignored the court's recommendation and consulted his own judgement on the matter: he made Declan's release contingent upon the payment of a bribe. Having no money naturally, Declan's imprisonment continued infuriatingly, unjustly on. No degree of pleading or raging elicited mercy.
The subsequent weeks of smoldering fury were marked by two failed attempts to escape. After five more months, perhaps the warden came to realize that no money would ever be forthcoming...perhaps he was bored...perhaps the cells were growing too crowded with more serious criminals...whatever be the cause, Declan was at last granted an opportunity to gain his freedom.
