Father O’Kirwin lit his pipe and blew a few puffs of smoke toward the roof. “I understand your objections, Brian, but think of the people. They deserve our help. We must ‘do unto others.’ ”
“If I could help I would, but the food and the house aren’t mine to give. Why did they come to us anyway—because we’ve so far escaped the famine?”
The poet shook his pipe at Brian. “I know you’re a better man than that. You’ve helped me on many a desperate day in my life.” His eyes clouded to the point that Briana thought he might cry. “Why, I might not have lived through my lonely times if it hadn’t been for your kindness.” He sucked on the pipe stem, and his mercurial mood shifted. “By the way, have you a drink?”
Brian glared at him. “I’ve some expensive French brandy that was given to me by a sea captain, but you’ll touch none of it.” He leaned forward in his chair and thrust his hands toward the glowing turf. “Besides, saving your poor body is a far cry from saving who knows how many others. If I feed them all, I’ll have nothing left for my family.”
Briana raised her head and spoke. “Sir Thomas isn’t here. How would he know if we fed the people?”
Her father’s eyes narrowed, looking at her as if she were a petulant child. “That’s not the point and you know it.”
“We can make do,” Briana answered quickly. “I have a plan.”
Father O’Kirwin’s face lit up. “Please tell us. We are beyond prayers.”
Briana told them of her idea to make soup in the two large cast-iron cauldrons. “We’ll put them on the grounds—in back near the kitchen—and serve those we can. We have bowls. As people eat, we’ll wash them and reuse them.” She studied her father, who looked on stoically. When she was a child, she’d been able to melt his heart with a shy grin or a pouty smile and get him to do most anything she desired. But in these times, the realities of the famine had lessened her powers of persuasion. “It’s the least we can do—help our countrymen.”
“Agreed,” Father O’Kirwin added. The poet nodded.
Brian leaned back in his chair. “I’m not convinced. We barely have enough to eat ourselves.”
“We’ll use what we have,” Briana said. “If we run out, we’ll find more food.” She flinched at her words because finding food would not be easy.
Quinn stood. “You must see what you’re dealing with, Brian. Come look at those you’re turning away.”
“I must see to their needs,” Father O’Kirwin said. “Who will join me?”
“Yes, Da,” Briana said. “Some tenants plan to feed the starving from what they have stored, and offer them shelter.”
Briana and the priest stood next to Quinn, and the three looked down upon Brian.
Her father squeezed the armrests of his chair until his knuckles blanched. Finally, he rose. “All right . . . all right, I’ll at least take a look, but I warn you, when the food is gone—it’s gone.”
They donned coats and hats and walked into the rain, leaving Lucinda behind to finish her letter. Despite the damp weather, a hint of spring hung in the air as if the sun longed to break through the low clouds. Briana could feel it in her bones, the yearning for warmth, a happy thought that disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared in a flurry of cold drops that set her shivering.
The poet led the way up the lane as Briana, her father, and the priest followed.
My God, the earth is full of life. The vastness of the land from the hills to the sea never failed to thrill her. The sloping land surrounding the manor with its sod homes and potato ridges was green, verdant in spring splendor, a yellow dandelion in bloom here and there, the hawthorn resplendent with white flowers standing thorny guard along the lane. It was bad luck to cut the bush, for fairies lived among its branches. She would never tempt fate no matter how pretty the blooms. And above her, in the headlands, the yellow tormentil dotted the earth like a small rose as it climbed the slope to the sea cliffs.
At the first of the sceilps, a man, woman, and child sheltered inside the hole, shivering in the rain. The man shielded his family from the elements with his body. The damp molded around them like a watery coffin. The scrub branches protected them somewhat from the dripping rain, but it wasn’t enough to keep them dry. Briana’s heart ached for them because they had nowhere to go. The people had dug into the heath with their bare hands—or with a crude spade if they were lucky enough to have one—taking the branches from the few bushes. There were no trees to sit under for shelter.
The priest stopped before them—three pairs of sad eyes gazed at him like those of animals trapped in a cage. They could have been the family she had seen on the way to Westport—drained of life, devoid of spirit—but these weren’t the same people. All around her, the faces peering from the hovels had the same downtrodden look.
They were dressed in dirty rags spotted with holes, caked with mud, leggings and dresses shredded along the ankles. A few wore shoes cracked or split at the seams. The staring faces were thin as parchment, skin stretched so tight across the bone that their flesh looked as if it might split. She wondered if they felt the horrifying sense of death that she suffered from looking at them.
Father O’Kirwin knelt before the first sceilp and prayed in a low murmur as the rain pelted his coat. Briana had rarely seen him without vestments, and never ministering to unfortunate outsiders. Most village Masses were held at the “Mass Rock,” a gathering place by the cliffs at Benwee Head. The priest extended his arm to bless the man.
“Wait,” Brian said. “What if they have the fever?”
The priest stopped in mid-reach after the warning. Brian’s face flushed red from the admonishment. The man in the hole stared pathetically at those peering down at him.
“Forgive me, Father,” Brian said. “I shouldn’t interrupt your business.”
The priest looked up at her father and nodded. “It’s my duty to give the blessings of God when I can.” He turned back to the man, making the sign of the Cross over his skeletal frame. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” Father O’Kirwin asked.
The man attempted to speak, but only a dry hiss came from his dark, parched lips. The child, a small boy, moaned next to his mother.
Brian whispered an oath and turned to Briana. “Are they all like this?”
Quinn answered. “Nearly all. I grab a beggar’s bite when I can by offering a song, but these people don’t even have a poet’s luck.”
“If only we’d been able to get the Indian corn,” Briana said.
“I wish it was that easy,” the poet said. “I’ve seen what the imported meal does to them. Our women don’t know how to cook it, our children can’t digest it. It takes days to make it fit to eat and tastes nothing like a potato. I’ve seen people devouring berries, twigs, and leaves in the bog. They’re lucky if they can catch a fish, or have a bit of meat from a dead farm animal. If they can find nothing else, they eat putrid potatoes. Many are sick to their stomachs and bowels—so sick they can’t walk. Then the fever attacks; people turn black and die. It’s a hideous sight, and sickening smell when death takes them—”
“Enough!” Brian wheeled and turned his back to the family.
“Da!” Briana rushed to her father. “This is why we have to try . . . even Rory says so. He wants to feed those he can.”
Brian shook at her words.
She lifted his chin with a gentle touch of her fingers. His eyes brimmed red with tears. He swiped them from his cheeks, pulled his daughter close, and said, “The hell of my dreams seems like heaven compared to this. I’ve prayed to God, to all the Saints, that this famine wouldn’t touch my family. I can’t understand how a loving God would visit this upon his people. We’ve prayed, we’ve been obedient, and now we’re dying.” He squeezed Briana. “I love you and your sister so much—I’m trying the best I can to hold the family together.”
The priest rose and put his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “I have no answer for your questions. The Lord doesn’t speak to me, other than throug
h his works. Often I don’t understand His ways. I try to look at the good in life, to have faith in God.”
“God will do no good unless we act,” Briana said. She looked down the lane and saw two naked children standing near a fire beside Rory’s cabin. He dropped their clothes in a steaming vat and then stirred the water with a stick. Their parents were nowhere in sight. They were probably in his cabin drying off and getting dressed.
“I’m going back to Lear House,” Brian said, stiffening in the rain. “I’ll take stock of our supplies and see how much we can give to these people.” He grasped Briana’s hands and said to Father O’Kirwin and Daniel Quinn, “I’ll need help building the fires around the pots.”
“Thank you, Da,” Briana said, and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d like to go on with Father O’Kirwin, I won’t be long.”
Brian left them and walked down the muddy lane toward the manor. Lear House stood solemn in the drab daylight, blankly staring back at her with its silvery gray windows and weathered slate, somber and soulless, nestled between the cliffs and the bay.
As she watched her father, her skin prickled, on edge from the task in front of her. She had never thought much about her future, because it had never been threatened, with never a consideration that it might end. Now, everything she had known was crumbling.
The priest left the first family and moved on to the next. There were many sceilps to visit down the road. Those who could walk could come later to eat. Perhaps Father O’Kirwin and Daniel Quinn could carry food to those who couldn’t come to the house.
She counted her blessings, many that she had and many that she had taken for granted, as they visited each of the starving families. No more would she look complacently upon life. She waved to Rory as she, along with the priest and the poet, walked on the lane above his home. He was so consumed with the family that he didn’t see her. Rory was a good man, one not afraid of work or giving his best in any situation. Lucinda might be enamored of Sir Thomas, but in no way could a gentrified Englishman compare to the man she loved. She chastised herself. How could she think of love when death had spread its dark arms around Lear House?
She made up her mind. After she fed the people, she would ask Rory the most important question of her life.
CHAPTER 7
Lear House sat at the end of the lane. The cliffs and the turbulent Atlantic lay to the west, beyond the slope on which the house stood. The starving had come to the manor, driven from villages to the east or the mountains to the south by rumors of food.
The people in front of her were as real as she, yet they could have been foxes burrowing in a den. She blinked away tears as she stared at the man, woman, and children huddled together for warmth. This kind of pain and suffering was unknown to her—in fact, unknown to anyone living on the grounds of Lear House. Everyone had witnessed death before, but it had been quiet, as silent and stealthy as a cat stalking a bird. And those deaths had been followed by holy ritual and, eventually, rejoicing that the departed had taken their place in the arms of the Lord. But now it seemed God had deserted the families in front of her as well as the whole of Ireland.
Even Daniel Quinn, who had remained with her, stood back from the sceilp shaking his head, and now and then averting his gaze from the family. He turned, clutched his head, and folded his arms against his chest. Even he, as a poor man, was affected by their plight.
She wondered why she had come, why she had followed the priest and not turned back with her father. It would have been easy to return to Lear House and leave the starving behind. But fear had made her a stronger woman. She decided to stare death in its face, to look past its hideous image, and focus instead on the future—to comfort who she might save.
Briana stepped forward to offer what solace she could.
The man and woman, their bones poking through their ragged clothes, sat shivering in the mud. An older boy and girl sat stupefied on either side of them, but sometimes they shook, as if someone had wound them up like a clockwork toy, before they returned to their catatonic state. The woman held a small boy in her lap. His face reminded Briana of a dead sheep she had seen once, teeth and blackened gums drawing down past shriveled lips. His skull showed under the taut skin; his eyes were sunken and hollow. His little chest heaved, struggling for contorted breaths that escaped in shallow gasps.
The skies opened as the priest knelt in front of the family. Briana came closer, but Father O’Kirwin waved her back. “There’s nothing you can do here. I fear it’s too late for the little one.” The priest returned to his duties, asking the name of the child. The man mumbled a name Briana couldn’t hear.
Despite the downpour, Father O’Kirwin’s words rose like a song rushing with the deluge. The sky turned from gray to black, and the rain rushed from burrow to burrow down the side of the lane, inundating the families who had found the slightest of shelters. The priest placed his hand on the child’s forehead as Briana braced her feet in the mud.
Daniel Quinn leaned toward her, his long hair curling in damp strands on his neck. “Such terrible times for our people. God has cursed us.”
“If you believe that, we have nothing to live for,” Briana said.
The poet’s voice bordered on a song. “Bring back the features that joy used to wear. Long, long be my heart . . .”
Briana had never heard the verse and studied him quizzically.
“The words of our own Thomas Moore, Ireland’s most celebrated poet. I, too, long for better days.” He looked at the priest and shivered in the rain. “Father is saying the Last Rites.”
Briana knelt next to the priest, listening to the Latin he muttered.
Daniel cocked an ear in the priest’s direction and repeated the rite. “. . . may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up . . .”
Father O’Kirwin, rain dripping from his cap, squinted at them. “I have no oil for anointing, no Body of Christ to give. This child shall go to God as he is, an innocent lamb.” He turned back to the family.
Briana lowered her head and recited the Lord’s Prayer. When she had finished, the woman’s eyes caught hers. Life flickered in them, but a tear mixed with the raindrops on her cheeks. The woman uttered words as soft as an invocation, and Briana heard “Help us” through the parched lips. Briana nodded, her eyes tearing as well.
She wished the nightmare in front of her would evaporate like waking from a bad dream, but the cold drops on her shoulders reminded her that what was happening was real. She was awake, fully aware of Death’s hand upon the child.
The priest crossed himself, and then the boy. The child gasped several times, a grating, raspy breath, his eyes open. He rattled against his mother’s stomach and then lay still in her lap.
“Is there wood for a coffin?” the priest asked her.
A numbing pain filled her. The priest’s mouth moved, but she heard no words. She stared at the mother and the dead child, thinking of the terrible loss.
The poet touched her shoulder with shaking fingers. “Briana, Father asked you if there’s wood for a coffin.”
The child was so young, so innocent; his life ended because there wasn’t a scrap to eat. Her tears broke in a torrent like the rain.
The mother thrust her head back with outstretched neck, and the low wail that Briana had recognized from deaths long ago poured from her throat. The keening rose to a shriek that she could never have imagined coming from a starving, sick woman—like the death throes of a mortally wounded beast. Soon the other women picked up the keening until the cry filled her ears and spread across the land. She wondered if Lucinda heard it, if the terrible sound penetrated the cottage, cut through the walls of Lear House and echoed across the vast bay. Would it reach Sir Thomas Blakely ensconced safely in his Manchester home?
The keening continued until it reverberated into a gentle thrum with the faltering rain.
She rose without answering the priest and lurched
down the lane to Rory’s cabin. He was inside with the family. They stood, most half naked, their clothes drying around the turf fire. Briana called him outside, leaving the others to their privacy.
“I heard the keen,” Rory said as he closed the door.
Briana nodded, unable to speak about the child’s death. Her lips opened but no words came out.
“It’s all right,” Rory said, and pulled her to his chest. “You don’t have to talk. Cry if you want.”
Sobbing, she melted against him. If only she had the courage to ask the question, to talk about what she desired more than anything in the world. The dead child, the starving families surrounding Lear House, reinforced her conviction. If not now, when? If she waited, life might make her desire impossible.
Don’t be selfish, fool. He’s helping a family and all you can think about is what you want. She pulled away and wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve. Everything was somber, a picture of black and white: Rory’s cabin, Lear House, the starving people. There was no color in the world. How she longed for a sunny day, for the bright colors of the spotted orchid upon the somber heath, or a walk on the beach, her feet warmed by the sand.
“Do we have wood for a coffin?” she finally asked.
Rory’s brow lifted.
She lifted herself from his chest. “For a child.”
His eyes dimmed. “So that’s what it was about. A child. . . .” He scuffed his boot in the muddy earth. “Everything was quiet and then the wailing started.” He shook his head as if to fling the thought from his mind. “Jarlath may have some bog-oak planks. That may be the best we can do. If more die, we’ll have precious little.”
“Please, no more deaths,” she said as if she were invoking a prayer. “There are birch logs behind the cottage Sir Thomas imported for the fireplaces, but I need those to heat the cauldrons.”
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