“Ma’am, I’m afraid slavery is far too important an issue to waste time hearing what women have to say!”
And Lucretia Mott was forcibly escorted off the stage.
This experience, and others like it, turned the efforts of Mott and Stanton toward increasing the rights of women—equal treatment under the law, equal education, equal property rights and most important, the right to vote. Inspired by their work, Johannah joined a small women’s rights organization and skipped classes at Devoncroft to pass out pamphlets on the street that demanded the vote for women. She was insulted by many men and some women and called all sorts of names, all of which only served to invigorate her. Increasingly, the privileged and arrogant upper-class men of London she met, with their nasal accent, droll manner and dismissal of women’s equality, did not attract her and the matchmaking efforts of her parents and aunt came to nothing.
Throughout this time, Johannah continued to exchange letters with Lucy, sharing the joys and tribulations of London life and hearing news from the estate. She often asked about Jim Donnelly, hopeful that Lucy was reading her letters to him. Her thoughts went to Jim more and more, given the selection of men she was encountering. She wondered if he had forgiven her. But Lucy reported Jim had left Borrisokane for Manchester and that was the last she had heard of him. It occurred to Johannah that Manchester was closer to London than Borrisokane and a flame of hope burned: Was he on his way to find her? But with time, the flame dimmed and then was all but extinguished.
Eviction
More than four years after Johannah left for England, Jim Donnelly was given permission to come onto the estate again, but it was not out of any magnanimous feelings of generosity or forgiveness by George Magee. The tenants were being evicted from their lands—all the families. Jim was allowed to help his mother and sister pack up their belongings. His mother cried for much of the week they had been given to prepare. They had no bags or cases, as they had never moved before, and Jim found some rough sacks and borrowed an old beaten trunk in which to lay the utensils, the pots and pans, the few china dishes and the little crystal horse said to have belonged to the patriarch Peter, well padded in blankets and towels and clothing. Jim had found a wagon for the furniture, a table and cupboard, chairs and beds and a cabinet built and carved by his father. His mother and sister would share the tiny shed where Jim lived behind the grocer’s on Clyde Street in town.
“It’ll be fine, Ma. ’Tis a little tight, but it’ll do until we find something better.”
It was not his mother’s sorrow Jim felt, but a heated anger as he surveyed the meagre possessions his family had accumulated over generations. This was everything they owned, a reminder of how they had been slowly sucked dry by the estate. And now this final outrage, to be thrown off their land for good. None of the other families were faring better.
George Magee had gathered the tenants together and explained to them they were only “tenants-at-will,” meaning they had no rights to their houses or land and he could evict them at any time, which up until now, he assured them, he had been reluctant to do. He had four soldiers with him. As he spoke, there was the sound of hammers nailing eviction notices on the front doors of the tenant houses.
“The English armies must be supported and supplied in the years to come. They need salt beef, and the Cavendish estate plans to provide it to them. For the good of the empire, I am clearing the estate to make pastureland for cattle. You must all leave your homes by a week Saturday.”
The tenants had listened to Magee in stunned silence. They had lived on the Cavendish lands for generations. Once, these lands had belonged to them, before the English army came. And now to support that same army, they were being sacrificed again.
Lucy O’Toole’s father had shouted out, “Where are we supposed to live? What are we supposed to eat?”
The soldiers turned their menacing attention toward him.
“You have to make your own arrangements. You may take any personal crops, animals and tools that belong to you, but you must be out by Saturday. I urge you to do so peacefully. Any resistance will be met with force. God save the queen!”
It was a week of bitterness and tears. O’Toole spoke quietly of resistance and Daniel Murphy and Patrick O’Day went to the local magistrate, but there was nothing he could offer. They were legally tenants-at-will. And the laws—the English laws that went back to the days of Cromwell—were clear.
On Saturday morning, Magee brought in twenty well-armed soldiers to enforce the evictions. Jim Donnelly and his mother and sister sat outside their cottage with bags of clothing and mattress bales, the cart with furniture and the battered trunk. Jim had found a man with a second cart to take them into Borrisokane later that day. Most of the other families were out in front of the cottages with their possessions and a few animals. The families barely spoke to each other, their eyes cast down in mutual shame. Jim and his family watched as Magee arrived and inspected the O’Day house, two down from them, with four soldiers at his side.
Then the unexpected happened. One soldier lit a torch and applied it to the thatch of the O’Day house. It caught and spread quickly and everyone stared in shock. Any hope the tenants might have harboured that one day they’d be allowed to return to their homes was destroyed in the inferno that followed.
The soldier with the torch led the way, followed by Magee and his bodyguards. The Murphy cottage was next and then the Donnellys’. Jim and his family stared as the flames consumed their world. Jim approached George Magee and watched his impassive face. The soldiers became aware of Jim and stood defensively with rifles raised.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself, Magee. What d’you suppose Johannah would say?”
Magee studied him for a moment, then turned away without a word.
Patrick Ryan was away in town bringing a borrowed wagon back when the soldier with the torch approached the Ryan house. Patrick’s teenaged twins, Devon and Michael, stepped forward from the cottage.
“Stay back!” young Devon shouted at the soldier. “You’ll not burn our house!”
In Devon’s hands, Jim could see the old blunderbuss that had been hanging above the hearth. The boy held it pointed toward the soldiers. One of them shouted out, “He’s got a gun!”
As the soldiers raised their weapons to Devon and Ryan, Jim ran at them.
“Don’t shoot! It’s broken! It’s harmless!”
Jim was able to knock aside the two closest rifles, but two more fired and Devon fell. One soldier hit Jim in the stomach with the butt of his weapon and Jim dropped to his knees, winded. Michael went to where his brother lay still and picked up the old broken weapon. Still down on his knees, Jim called out to him.
“No, Michael! Don’t!” but his warning came out barely a croak. Two more shots rang out and the Ryan twins lay dead beside each other in front of the cottage.
With a shriek that sounded clearly over the roar of the flaming huts, their mother ran to them, throwing herself over the bodies of her dead boys, grasping them to her. Jim stared at Magee’s stony face.
Jim heard another cry from the O’Toole house, sixty yards away. The little structure where the children had so often gathered was engulfed in flames. A face could be seen in the tiny window of the attic. It was Lucy.
“You said the houses were cleared,” Magee growled at the officer.
“They were, sir.”
Jim stumbled to his feet as Lucy’s father made a run for the door. Two soldiers blocked O’Toole’s way and held him back from entering the inferno. He struggled and shouted and they had to wrestle him to the ground to stop him. Lucy cried out again and then there was silence as the flames consumed everything. Mr. O’Toole sobbed in grief.
Jim caught Magee’s eye. “God forgive you, Magee. But I never will,” he told him. Then a soldier’s quick rifle butt to the head sent him into unconsciousness.
The Whiteboys
Jim Donnelly spent two days in the Borrisokane lock-up for threatening George Magee and passed them thinking up ways to make Magee suffer for his sins. Murder was too easy. It was here he met a colourful young man named Mick Tooney—in for vagrancy—who had grown up in Dublin and moved to Tipperary. He was a handsome young man with long lashes and an ironic smile, almost pretty, and wore a tattered waistcoat and ancient top hat. He had attended classes at Trinity and spoke like an educated man, and he had some interesting political ideas Jim had never heard before about the struggle of the classes and the reform of politics.
“One man alone can’t do anything, Jimmy. We must be organized to fight the oppressors.”
When the charges against each of them were dropped, Mick and Jim were released together. Mick took Jim across town and introduced him to his collected assortment of mates with empty bellies, who shared his interests. They called themselves the Whiteboys and their home base, as it were, was the Unicorn Tavern. Jim joined them with enthusiasm and in the following months he would quickly rise up to become Mick’s second-in-command.
The Unicorn was a rough little pub in the darkest, most crowded part of Borrisokane, near the filthy canal off the Ballyfinboy River. With its cheap ale, it catered to farmers, common labourers and various ne’er-do-wells of the region such as themselves. Ryan, the bartender, wore a wild and particular hairpiece that looked as if it might come alive at any moment. He often cleaned his fingernails with an enormous bowie knife, a “bear-killer” he called it, imported all the way from America. A young boy swept the floor with strokes as slow and studied as those of a fine artist. Paddy, an aging patron almost permanently installed at the bar, spoke the same eulogy after each pint he finished: “There’s another the English won’t get.”
The Unicorn could be quiet, as customers communed with their drinks and dreamed of bad ends for their enemies, but Mick and Jim and friends livened up the place. They knew they had no authority or right beyond their own minds, but once they’d had a few, their credentials and worldview expanded. Quoting his father, Jim would tell them that they must see themselves as the impoverished knights of the Irish realm who opposed not just the English Protestant land holders who had stolen most of Ireland in the time of Cromwell and ever since, but the “Blacklegs,” any Irish Catholics who were friendly to or did business with them.
They had adopted Mick’s looks, shabby but flamboyant, with waistcoats, high boots, scarves and canes. When they entered the Unicorn, they smiled and called out greetings to several of the patrons, patted the backs and shoulders of some and generally behaved as if they owned the place.
“Hello, Paddy! Ryan! James! God bless this house,” Mick offered. “Are the constables about?”
“No, you’re fine.”
“Andy, watch the front,” Jim ordered and the sweeping boy took his place at the window as lookout for snitches, traitors and Blacklegs, for some of the Whiteboys had a price on their heads.
“Ryan, a round for the boys and one for the house,” Jim demanded.
“You still owe me for the last two.”
“Ah, be a grand lad now, Ryan,” Jim told him. “We’re good for it. We’ve got a fine business deal coming up.”
Ryan began to pour small portions of beer for them.
“You mean a fine tip on a horse.”
The Whiteboys went to their table near the bar. Mouths watering, they trimmed the mold off a fair chunk of corned beef Ryan donated to them, divided the good meat and tore up a loaf of rye one lad had stolen from the baker, sharing it equally, a silent savouring, to keep them going another day.
Paddy turned toward their table. “Boys, did you see? They’ve started loading the barges.”
Jim offered Paddy a crust but he refused. He seemed to survive on ale alone. Ryan served them quarter-full mugs of beer from a tray as Paddy continued.
“The finest meat and meal all bound for England and to line Cavendish’s pockets.”
“Good Catholics starving and the priest giving his blessing to it all.”
“And that son of a bitch Magee.”
“The worst of the Blacklegs.”
Andy at the window alerted them.
“Jimmy?”
A moment later, Stephen Feehley entered, a skinny man with small eyes and the look of a travelling rat. “Speaking of Blacklegs.” They gave him the once-over from the table.
Feehley went to the bar and gazed around with a smile as innocent as a kitten and shone this benevolent countenance on the bartender.
“Ryan, old love. Give me a pint, sir.”
“We just ran out, Feehley.”
Feehley’s smile wavered. “You have no call to be like that, Ryan. I’ve got money.”
“We know you do. And where it came from.”
Feehley looked around at the others. “I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
Paddy raised a glass.
“Here’s to England…and the day she sinks beneath the waves and takes all the filthy Protestants and their lackeys with her.”
Everyone with glasses in their hands drank with enthusiasm. It was then Feehley saw Mick and Jim and the Whiteboys, who had now turned toward him, watching him from their table. Feehley’s smile left him and his face went pale. He called out, his voice unsure.
“Hello, Mick…Jimmy. Didn’t see you there.”
Two of the Whiteboys stood and walked past Feehley to the door, effectively blocking any exit. Among all the patrons, Feehley could see only accusing eyes. Mick and Jim rose and moved toward him.
“Now what kind of fool would come in here after what you’ve been up to?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
Mick picked up Ryan’s bear-killer and began to clean his fingernails in the manner of its owner. He studied Feehley. The Blackleg backed away from him, and then suddenly turned and made an attempt to run but as he tried to push past the two boys at the door, they grabbed him and held him firmly.
Out in the dark alley behind the Unicorn Tavern, one of the boys had an armful of wilted, long-stem rose briars, their thorns prominent, with which he was lining the inside of a large beer barrel. With the “rose barrel” prepared, the two Whiteboys brought out their captive. Feehley was gagged, shirtless, his hands tied behind his back.
“So Feehley, you were warned now, were you not?” Mick told him.
“You don’t go selling your cow to Magee,” Jim explained, as if the man did not know. “And this was the second time.”
Feehley stared at them, whimpering through his gag. Three Whiteboys lifted him and placed him into the barrel feet first, but he didn’t go easy and so even turning him head down, it was all they could do to gather and force down his resisting arms and kicking legs, stuffing them below the rim.
“No. Nooooooo!” Feehley grimaced, muffled by the gag. He tried to call out to bystanders. “Help! Help me!”
When the Whiteboys had secured the barrel top, they turned it on its side and two of them started rolling it out and around the square in a widening circle. As the speed of the barrel increased, Feehley’s muffled screams could be heard inside, his body speared a thousand times by the thorns. Some curious onlookers came out to watch “a Blackleg getting his due,” as it was explained to them, and this was met with general acceptance.
“I think the lesson’s over,” Mick told Jim quietly after the second roll by.
“Truly?” Jim was surprised. As the barrel came back around the square, Mick stepped out onto the road, put his foot out and stopped it.
“That’s all? Two rounds?”
Muffled moans came from inside.
“’Twas only a cow.”
Jim studied him for a moment. “You’re not going soft on us, Mick?”
“Don’t be a shite. I just don’t see this as a majo
r help to the cause.”
“Fair enough,” Jim said, still looking pointedly at Mick. “Let him out, lads. Today’s lesson will be one of compassion.”
The Whiteboys righted the barrel and took the lid off. Feehley fell out among the blood and roses on the muddy cobblestones.
With this good work done, Jim and Mick turned to go back inside to finish their drinks. Mick held the door for Jim, glancing left and right outside for enemies before entering. When they were back at the table, Mick shared some news.
“Speaking of Magee, Jim, did you hear his wife passed away?”
Jim almost spilled the small amount of ale in his mug. “Magee’s wife, Mary?”
“Did he have more than one?”
“Don’t be an arse.” He was anxious for answers. “She’s dead, then? When?”
“Just a couple of days ago. It was sudden.”
“Did they bury her yet?”
“No. Don’t think so. They’re waiting for family to come. It’ll be private though. Magee has too many enemies for a public funeral.”
That’s for sure, thought Jim, but his mind was not on Magee or his poor wife. His thoughts were on Johannah. She would be coming back for sure, he realized. Imagine that. All of these years. How would she look? Would she even remember him? Of course she would. She better.
Johannah’s Return
Johannah stood beside her father over her mother’s grave in the cemetery at St. Patrick’s and threw wild roses down on top of the casket as it was slowly lowered on ropes by four men from the village. Johannah had been wearing black since she heard of her mother’s death, throughout the four-day journey from London by carriage, ship and stagecoach, and would remain cloistered in black for another day of formal grieving.
“God our Father, Your power brings us to birth, Your providence guides our lives, and by Your command we return to dust.”
Her mother’s final descent into the cold ground brought Johannah a sudden panic. She glanced over at her father’s face beside her, hardened, his jaw clenched tight. He did not look at her.
Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys Page 5