Song of the Silent Harp Page 9

  Well, then, it would seem we are now eligible for relief, she thought, nearly choking on her own bitterness.

  The question was, would they live long enough to apply for it?

  7

  A Gaunt Crowd on the Highway

  When tyranny’s pampered and purple-clad minions

  Drive forth the lone widow and orphan to die,

  Shall no angel of vengeance unfurl his red pinions,

  And grasping sharp thunderbolts, rush from on high?

  RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS (1822-1862)

  Morgan spent the weekend at Frank Grehan’s place near Ballina, working on a piece they were writing for The Nation, the journal of the Young Ireland movement. He had hoped a day or two away from the village might be just the tonic for his troubled thoughts about Nora and his own family. Instead, he spent an altogether dismal two days, wishing he had never come at all.

  Why had he ever agreed to collaborate with the blustering, irascible Grehan anyhow? The man was more trying than ever, to the point that Morgan could scarcely wait to get away from him.

  Grehan was an embittered man in his forties who lived alone in a gloomy, drafty old farmhouse. A loyal Young Irelander who fancied himself a radical and a revolutionary, he unfailingly turned a visit from an acquaintance into a political forum. Unfortunately, his acquaintance with the bottle went deeper than his knowledge of politics.

  He had spent most of the weekend attempting to badger Morgan into assuming a more active leadership role in the movement, accompanying each argument with the statement that Morgan could “make a real difference.”

  Even as he ushered Morgan out the heavy front door, instead of sending him off with a friendly farewell, Grehan blasted him with still more rhetoric. “You think on it, Fitzgerald; you’re ripe to lead. The movement is made up of mostly Protestants as yet, but your golden tongue and gift of reason can make the Catholic voice heard within the ranks at last.”

  Morgan ground his teeth as he reminded Frank that he was merely an out-of-work schoolmaster and a dilettante writer, not a politician. “And I have no ‘Catholic voice,’ as I have pointed out to you before. Why, neither Catholic nor Protestant would want to claim the likes of me, man. I’m a heathen in the eyes of both.”

  His attempt at levity went unnoticed. Grehan accompanied him out the door and into the yard, waist high with weeds. “The people are going to rise, Fitzgerald. It’s in the wind, even now. Aye, there will be a rising, that’s sure, and you should be one of its leaders.”

  With a great deal of firmness mixed with laughter, Morgan finally managed to free himself from his host’s cloying grasp and take his leave. Hoisting his harp a bit higher, he whipped his cloak around his shoulders and started down the road.

  The weather seemed grimly appropriate to his mood. Within moments he found himself in the midst of a savage storm of wind-driven, freezing rain and snow. Drawing his cloak a bit tighter around his throat, he ducked his head and turned his face toward Killala.

  Despite the weather, he was glad to have escaped when he did. Had Grehan continued to press him, he might have lost his temper and revealed more of his personal displeasure with the “movement” than Firebrand Frank would care to hear.

  An entire host of objections to the antics of Grehan and his bunch swarmed in his head like angry bees. He was particularly disgruntled about the new militant organization being formed out of the Young Ireland movement—the “Irish Confederation,” they were calling themselves. He knew the plan. They intended to spread their influence by forming clubs in every city and town, whereby more and more pressure might be brought to bear on the British government. Repeal of the union between England and Ireland was one of their primary objectives, arguing as always that only absolute freedom could save their country from total destruction.

  It sounded fine in theory, but in reality it had as many holes as a sieve. Oh, he knew well enough who Frank and his wild-eyed rebels had been listening to, all right: Fintan Lalor, a dark-natured, brooding recluse who had isolated himself on a farm in Queens County to agonize over Ireland’s tragedy.

  Lalor argued for a “moral insurrection,” his premise being that only the rising up of tenants against their landlords would eventually free the Irish from England’s chains. He used his considerable facility with words to incite farmers to withhold their rent payments until they were granted coequal ownership of the land.

  But Lalor’s ideals would never be realized except by revolution: armed insurrection, not moral. And while he shared, with reservations, Lalor’s contention that Ireland’s only future lay in reclaiming her own lands from the British, Morgan knew beyond a doubt that these angry, “courageous” peasants were more figments of Lalor’s imagination than fact. In reality, Ireland’s farmers were dying in the ditches—frozen, starved, and decimated by disease. He found it incomprehensible that these raving visionaries could entertain the notion of an armed uprising by a starving, defeated people. Even a fool could see that the Irish peasantry were too enfeebled, too demoralized, and too broken to think of anything at all beyond survival. Moreover, it was commonly agreed that the famine had not yet reached its full horror. Morgan knew in his soul that a cataclysm of unimaginable proportions was yet to come.

  With a failed potato crop for the second year in a row, the half-naked, poverty-stricken men and women who had managed to survive on the outdoor public works now had no employment at all. The public works were at an end; the workhouses were full and running over; thousands upon thousands of peasants were severely in arrears on their rents. To fall behind meant certain eviction, and to be homeless during this, the most severe winter in Ireland’s memory, meant certain death.

  Revolution, indeed! When a man had no food and no work, no health and no strength, no home and no hope—was such a man equipped for rebellion?

  Morgan was convinced that before insurrection could even be considered, the people must be fed—fed and healed. Education, too, was vital. The Lord knew the Irish loved all manner of learning, but with years of their own Gaelic language forbidden and their schoolmasters and clergy in hiding, any traditional form of real education had gone by the wayside. In addition, there was the desperate need to end the hatred between Protestant and Catholic, which played a very real part in dividing the country.

  We are forever fighting one another, Morgan mused bitterly, the Irish against the Irish. He could not help but wonder who, themselves or the British, had harmed the island most.

  It was midafternoon before Morgan reached the edge of Killala. In spite of his heavy cloak, he was drenched and thoroughly chilled. So absorbed had he been in some lines for a new poem that he was jolted harshly back to reality by a sound like approaching thunder.

  He whirled around. Cotter, the land agent, came bearing down on him from the west fork in the road, astride a foaming, wild-eyed stallion. Throwing a wall of mud and ice in Morgan’s path, the agent wielded his riding crop like a lunatic. His heavy-jowled, bloated face was raw and wind-whipped. Below his hat, sparse, wet strands of red hair capped his ears.

  The agent’s small round eyes betrayed a meanness, an expression of bestial excitement that chilled Fitzgerald’s blood. The man looked for all the world like a demon turned loose from hell’s pit. Following him, also mounted, were the bailiff and two ruffians known to be Cotter’s personal bodyguards. Running behind and struggling to keep up came a raggedy bunch of housewreckers, all brandishing crowbars.

  Morgan leaped out of the way, twisting his ankle as he hurled himself into the slush-filled ditch to avoid being run down. Watching them charge by, fury slammed at his ribcage, and he raised a fist to their backs, wanting nothing so much as to hurl the lot of them into the bay. Instead, he could only stand unmoving in the ditch, stunned and impotent in his rage, watching as the mob came to a halt in front of Aine Quigley’s cottage.

  Anger gave way to sick horror as Morgan realized what was happening. Mass eviction. He had seen it before in Galway and Sligo, still carried the
nightmare scenes in his mind. His stomach knotted and his breathing grew labored as he stood watching.

  The Quigley place, sorely rundown and neglected, had not always been in such a sad state. Once the dwelling of Michael Burke’s family, the large two-story house with its slate roof and tall, narrow windows had been one of the finest homes in the village. But according to Thomas, poor Aine had been at her wits’ end for months now, trying to keep food in the bellies of her three small children after her husband died of pneumonia. The house had steadily gone to ruin.

  There were three homes there at the turn in the road: Aine Quigley’s, Sean O’Malley’s, and, directly across from these two, the Gaffneys’, all looking forlorn and uncared-for in the icy winter rain hammering down on them. Within the hour, Morgan knew with a terrible certainty, three families—two of them with children—would face death in a ditch.

  For a long time he stood watching the scene unfold in front of the Quigley’s, anger and outrage hitting him like waves. Finally he stirred. His feet were half frozen in his boots, his hands stiff from cold in spite of wool gloves. He lurched out of the ditch, starting in the direction of the wrecking crew.

  With every step, the fire of his rage increased. A moan of physical pain escaped his lips as he stumbled, then lunged ahead. Nearly mindless now with fury, he charged through the icy slush on the road, as intent on his prey as a mad bull.

  Nora stood in the middle of the road outside her cottage, tented beneath Old Dan’s bawneen and wearing his boots as she searched the surroundings for a glimpse of Daniel. This was the third day straight the boy had gone looking for the missing Sadie. In spite of Nora’s insistence that the cow was surely lost to them, he simply refused to give up; he had been out almost all morning in this terrible, freezing rain.

  A noise made her turn back to look toward the opposite end of town. The sound came rolling up the road, an advancing roar of angry voices.

  With the gloom of the day and the pouring rain, it was difficult to see much of anything, but she could look down the road and make out the Quigley house and one side of the O’Malley place. A crowd seemed to be gathered in front of Aine Quigley’s—some on horseback, but most on foot. Nora stared for another moment. Then, dropping the old man’s work coat down to her shoulders, she quickly slipped it on and began walking.

  She was over halfway down the road when Cotter, the land agent, came into view. He was sitting astride his big, dirty gray stallion, shouting orders to a group of men nearby. A sickening wave of foreboding engulfed her as she recalled a conversation she’d had with Aine Quigley only days before. Apparently Cotter had been threatening them with eviction for weeks. They had fallen behind with the rent some months before, and, according to Aine, only the fact that the agent had his unholy eye on Padraic’s younger brother had kept him from turning them out before now.

  The sick-minded land agent’s attraction to young boys had been rumored in the village for years. Speculation had turned to outrage just last summer, however, when Dr. Browne’s son let it slip to some of the lads that his father had treated young Fursey Lynch for “wounds” inflicted by Cotter.

  An orphan boy from Kilcummin, Fursey Lynch had been given a place in the agent’s barn, as well as his meals, in exchange for doing odd jobs around the property. Although the doctor’s son had been vague about Fursey’s “wounds,” he let it be known that the lad’s injuries were severe enough to keep him at Browne’s house for nearly two weeks before his return to Kilcummin.

  Aine Quigley, convinced that Cotter’s leniency with their back rent hinged on his fascination for Padraic’s brother, told Nora in hushed tones it was “the end for them,” since the lad had left the village to live with an aunt in Ballina. “Cotter will turn us out without mercy now,” she whispered to Nora, her eyes wide with fear. “And what will become of my babes, then? They won’t last a day on the road!” Nora had done her best to reassure the distraught widow, but at the same time she feared that Aine was justified in expecting the worst.

  A terrible dread welled up in her as she approached the Quigley house. She nodded a greeting to Mary Larkin, whose grim shake of the head indicated that the worst was about to happen. A silence had fallen over the group as she drew near, a strange, oppressive stillness, as if the entire assembly was waiting for someone to die. The faces of the people, both men and women, were lined with a mixture of fear and sympathy, disbelief and hostility.

  Her gaze went from the bailiff, mounted on a scrawny brown horse, to Cotter, who sat scowling down at the crowd from his snorting gray stallion. It took her a moment to comprehend the significance of several raggedy-looking men standing near the horses, but when she did she nearly gasped aloud.

  “Destructives,” murmured a man nearby, as if voicing her dismay. Nora shuddered. These were the despised housewreckers, those who, after being evicted from their own homes, managed to survive by tearing down the houses of their neighbors for food or pay.

  God have mercy, are they going to tumble Aine’s house as well as turn her out? Nora wondered.

  One of the local constables was reading off a list in a loud, imperious voice. Nora heard the names of the O’Malleys and the Quigleys called, then the Gaffneys. When no one appeared from any of the three cottages, Cotter spurred his horse forward, prodding the constable with his riding crop. Startled, the short, rotund man jumped, then took off running to the front door of the Quigley house, giving it three hard raps with his fist.

  Nora’s breath quickened with dismay when Aine appeared at the door. In her arms she held her youngest babe, a thin, fine-boned boy with hair the color of old ivory; two wee girls stood on either side of their mother. Every face, with the exception of the babe in his mother’s arms, was pale with fright.

  The constable started to speak, but Cotter went charging up the yard on his mount, his gruff voice drowning out the policeman. “Where’s the man of this house?”

  Nora could just barely hear Aine’s reply.

  “Why, my husband is dead, sir. More than four months past now.” The woman’s voice trembled almost as violently as the thin hand clinging to the door frame.

  Cotter turned to the bailiff, who was dismounting. “What have they got? Any animals?”

  “A goat and a horse,” the other man replied carelessly, handing over the reins of his horse to one of the housewreckers standing nearby. “They had a cow, but it seems it died on them in December—”

  “The horse and the goat are dead, too, sir,” Aine quickly interrupted. “We have no animals now, none at all.”

  “Well, your rent is in arrears, and since you’ve no way of paying it, you’ll have to leave,” Cotter ordered. “Get what you want from inside and get out. Now!”

  Aine flinched as if the agent had struck her in the face with his riding crop. Wincing from the plight of her friend’s pain, Nora instinctively took a step forward. She stopped when Cotter whirled around to eye the crowd that had gradually begun to close in.

  “Stay back, the lot of you!” he bellowed. “You’d be wise to take heed of what is happening here. Any one of you behind in his rent—you’ll be next if it’s not paid in full when you’re told!”

  From somewhere in the crowd a woman cried out, and soon others began to weep with her. Aine Quigley, however, seemed resolved to fight. “Sure, and you can’t mean what you say, sir! I’ve three small babes and not a coat among us. We’ve no food and no health! You’ll be sending us to our deaths if you turn us out.”

  “Then apply for admission to the workhouse!” snapped Cotter, turning to glare down at the bailiff. “Get those men started at once!

  And you”—he wagged a finger at the bald-headed constable still in the yard—“see to the other tenant across the road.”

  A red-faced Sean O’Malley had come out of his cottage and now stood, his wife pressed behind him, halfway between his own place and Aine Quigley’s. “There’s no room in the workhouse, and well you know it!” O’Malley shouted at Cotter. “Would you have the
woman and her babes die in the ditch before sundown?”

  By now the crowd had again started to close their ranks and were gathering in around Cotter. Some of the women were still weeping, but the men’s voices rose in an angry buzz that burst into a roar of fury when the destructives swung out and, dividing, began to swarm on all three houses.

  “God have mercy on us!” wailed a silver-haired woman to Nora’s left. “They mean to see us all dead.”

  Nora watched in horror as one of the housewreckers yanked Aine and the children away from the door and shoved them roughly out into the yard. Aine Quigley sent up the keening cry of the mourner as she watched her meager possessions being tossed out of the house into the mud and sleet. Pushing the babe in her arms at a woman nearby, she ran back inside, screaming.

  The distressed murmurs of the watching crowd had swelled to a rumble of mounting fury when a roar rose up from somewhere behind them. Nora spun around with the others at the sound. Stunned, she watched Morgan Fitzgerald charging his way through their midst, his face livid, his eyes blazing.

  Two of the housewreckers had just come out the front door, their arms filled with kettles and dishes. They froze at the sight of the fiery-haired giant tearing his way through the crowd, which was now parting to give him room.

  One of the destructives shot a glance of alarm at Cotter, then scurried back inside the house. The other dropped the contents in his arms where he stood and took off running around the side of the yard.

  They needn’t have feared, for Morgan’s objective was plainly Cotter. Stunned, Nora watched him charge the agent, who still sat astride his horse, his bloated red face a mask of incredulity. The wild-eyed stallion snorted, then reared with a force that sent Cotter flying. His riding crop sailed out of his hand and landed in the mud as he fell.

  Morgan went for the agent, now lying on his back, feet up, in a pool of icy slush. Cotter was paunchy and awkward, no match at all for the frenzied giant towering over him. Grasping him roughly beneath his arms, Morgan jerked him upright and spun him around. The terrified agent squawked and let fly a string of oaths. Undaunted, Morgan lifted him into the air as if he were no more than a lumpy sack of potatoes. He held him there, feet dangling above the ground, arms flailing wildly as he faced the crowd.