Not until the early gloom of a November evening began to settle over the room did Liam reluctantly announce that he would have to leave. He had an unfamiliar road to travel from Inch House and wished to be closer to Kilmar by the time darkness fell.
‘Of course. I should not have kept you talking for so long … but it has been such a long time since I had someone interesting with whom to talk. Before you go I would like to give you something for Eugene Brennan’s fund. Wait here. I will not be a moment.’
Lady Caroline left the room and returned with a handful of dully gleaming coins.
‘Here are twenty guineas. Use them as you will. You may decide to spend them upon the immediate needs of the cottiers around Kilmar. That is for you to decide.’
Liam began to thank her, but she cut his words short.
‘It will take more than twenty guineas to see the cottiers through this famine. I will be leaving for London later this week and I will raise what money I can for them among my friends.’
She held out her hand to Liam. ‘Perhaps I will see you there. In fact, I insist. You must stay at my London house during your fund-raising. I will ask Eugene Brennan to arrange everything.’
Liam released her soft hand and turned to go, not sure what he should say to her generous offer.
‘Liam?’
He turned to see Lady Caroline taking a book from the shelves.
‘Here, this is the book you were reading earlier. Take it with you. Bunyan wrote it to be read, not to gather dust on a bookshelf.’
Not until he was well on his way home to Kilmar village did Liam make an interesting discovery. Whenever he thought about Lady Caroline Dudley there was something he had seen in her eyes that bothered him, something that did not accord with the luxury surrounding her. Even when she had smiled it had been there.
Now he realised it was unhappiness. Lady Caroline was a desperately unhappy woman.
Chapter Nine
‘Oh Liam! You are so lucky to be going to London. I wish I could come with you. They say it is such a huge city that all the people in Ireland could live there.’
Kathie gave Liam an envious sideways glance.
‘So I have heard.’
Liam was doing his best to appear nonchalant, although his stomach muscles contracted uncontrollably every time London was mentioned. He, Kathie and Nathan Brock were riding on his can, returning from one of the remote cottier settlements. They had delivered food while Kathie attended to the needs of some seriously undernourished women and children.
The previous evening a message had been received from Eugene Brennan. The MP wanted Liam to travel to England the following week and begin the campaign to raise money for the victims of the potato famine.
‘Don’t be believing all you’ve heard about London,’ said Nathan Brock in his soft voice. ‘Sure, it’s big enough for a countryman to have trouble breathing there, and it is easy to become lost in its streets, but it is just another place where people live and earn a living.’
‘Have you been there, too, Nathan?’
Kathie was on the seat between the two men and she looked up at Nathan Brock in surprise.
‘Yes, I’ve been there.’ The big man grinned at his memories and flexed the remaining fingers of his left hand. ‘I lost a good purse at Hampstead Heath in 1838, and won a better one at London Fields a year later.’
‘Yet here you are with no money at all and your wife and children in a poor-house. What happened to all your winnings?’
The animation left the ex-prizefighter’s face and his shoulders drooped as he thought of his family. He had become increasingly concerned about them of late. He had tried to get word to them without success. Very soon he would have to take a chance on being arrested and go to the Rathconard poor-house in County Wicklow to reassure his wife that he was still alive. Hopefully, he would be able to bring them here to County Wexford. In the meantime, there was much to be done for the cottiers.
He spread his hands wide in a hopeless gesture in answer to Kathie’s question.
‘What happens to the rain in a puddle when the sun comes out? The money just went. I had many friends and we enjoyed a fine time drinking together. Once I put some money into a business with one of them, but it came to nothing. I was a fighter, not a merchant. I never used to worry overmuch. There were many more years of fighting left in me. I could always earn more money. Then I did this.’
He held out his disfigured hand.
‘How did it happen?’ Liam flicked the reins casually at the slow-plodding horse. It was the first time the subject of Nathan Brock’s missing fingers had come up in conversation.
‘I couldn’t tell you exactly how – only when. I tried to stop a runaway horse and carriage in Dublin a couple of years back. I managed to get a grip on the reins of the horse but he dragged me along the street with him until the reins broke. I fell under the horse and was knocked silly between the wheels of the carriage. When I sat up the horse and carriage had gone – and so had two of my fingers. Taken off so cleanly a surgeon might have done the job himself. Naturally enough, no one was fool enough to back a one-fisted fighter and that was the end of my prizefighting days.’
Kathie shuddered at the thought of the accident, and Liam became very quiet. Suddenly, a dirty and ragged boy ran out from the tangled hedgerow and stood waving his arms on the road in front of them.
‘Hey, mister!’ He addressed himself to Liam. ‘Will you come and help my mother? She’s awfully sick.’
‘Where is she – and what is wrong with her?’
The boy pointed to an overgrown track leading away at a right-angle from the road. As he moved, Kathie could see the finger-thin ribs protruding from his skin beneath the tattered shirt.
‘She’s along there. The hunger’s upon us.’
It was an expression that Liam and the others had heard many times during the last weeks. The cry of a starving nation. ‘The hunger is upon us.’
‘All right, jump up on the cart. We’ll have a look at her.’
‘No, I’ll go on to tell her you’re coming. You can’t miss us if you follow the track.’
With that the ragged boy turned away and ran along the track as though there was a devil at his heels.
Liam turned the reluctant horse from the road and goaded it into a bone-rattling jog along the rough-surfaced track. They had not gone more than two hundred yards when Nathan Brock pointed to a lightning-blackened tree standing conspicuously alone in the hedgerow ahead of them.
‘I thought I remembered this lane,’ he said quietly. ‘There is no hut to be found along here and no reason for anyone to build one. The track ends in a peat bog a little way farther on.’
Liam pulled the horse to a halt.
‘You think the boy was lying? Why?’
Nathan Brock shook his head, but his eyes were searching every possible place of concealment ahead of them. ‘I don’t know. But we are wearing good clothes and have pockets that might hold money. There are many with neither.’
‘But what if you are wrong and there really is a sick woman along there?’ asked Kathie. ‘We can’t go away without finding out.’
‘You are quite right,’ agreed Liam. ‘But it might be safer if I turn the cart around and leave you here. Nathan and I will go along the path a way on foot.’
They had no need to go anywhere for Nathan Brock’s suspicions to be confirmed. The ex-prizefighter was right. There was no cottage along the track. Only half a dozen ruffians who had sent the boy out as a decoy while they waited in hiding not fifty yards farther along. When they saw Liam begin to turn the cart in a field gateway they let out a concerted howl of frustration and ran at the trio, each ruffian armed with a heavy cudgel.
There was no opportunity to escape. The track was too narrow for Liam to turn the cart in a hurry. Even had he done so, the horse would not have been able to outpace the men on the rough surface.
Liam kept a stout wooden bar in the cart to push between the spokes of the whe
els when he had to leave the cart on a slope. Ordering Kathie to stay on the high seat, Liam took up the bar and jumped down to join Nathan Brock, who was already preparing to meet the first of the ruffians.
The encounter was brief but decisive. Ducking beneath a raised club, Nathan Brock gripped the man’s right wrist with his own mutilated left hand and brought his right fist up in a short uppercut that landed flush on the other man’s chin.
Without a sound, the attacker slipped face-down to the ground, unconscious.
The ex-prizefighter turned to meet the next of the robbers, but Liam had already taken his legs from under him with a mighty sweep of the brake-pole.
Then the fighting became confused as Nathan Brock used his fists to great effect and Liam jabbed and swung at the attackers with his heavy wooden pole.
At the height of the battle, Kathie could remain inactive no longer. Jumping to the ground she picked up the cudgel dropped by a fallen robber and wildly swinging it about her head advanced into the fray.
She was still swinging when the last of the attackers fled from the scene and only then did Liam realise that her eyes were tightly closed.
‘Kathie! Kathie! It’s all right. They’ve gone. It’s all over.’
Kathie stopped her wild gyrating and opened her eyes, lowering her ineffective cudgel. She was madly giddy and, as she staggered, Liam caught her and she collapsed into his arms both crying and laughing at the same time.
It was a minute or two before the excitement died away and Kathie regained her composure. Not until then did either of them realise how close Liam was holding her to him. Reluctantly he released his hold and she slowly pushed herself away. They were each searching the other’s face hoping to read something of their thoughts when Nathan Brock broke the spell.
‘Look what I’ve Just found hiding behind a bush. What do you think we ought to do with him?’
He had the young decoy’s ear held fast in a painful grip, and the boy’s head twisted to one side as he sought to lessen the agony.
‘By the look of him I would say he could do with a bit of fattening up,’ commented Kathie. There was no denying that the boy was painfully thin.
‘I doubt if he would stay around for long enough to put on any fat,’ said Liam. ‘The moment you turned your back he’d be away – taking everything he could lay his hands on away with him, no doubt.’
‘So what do we do – turn him over to a constable?’
Kathie did not see the wink that passed between the boy’s captor and Liam. She looked at the two men in alarm.
‘We can’t do that. He’d be hanged, or at the very least transported.’
The boy was in wide-eyed but silent agreement.
‘What else can we do – release him to go straight back to his thieving ways?’
‘No, I’ll take him back to Kilmar with me and feed him up a little. He’ll be no trouble in our house: we have nothing worth stealing.’
‘It’s hardly worth the trouble,’ said Nathan Brock. ‘I agree with Liam. You won’t keep him for a day. At the first opportunity he’ll run off to rejoin his friends.’
‘I won’t try to stop him from such foolishness,’ said Kathie, looking into the boy’s rebellious brown eyes. ‘But he’ll leave with a full belly and will have seen how decent folks live.’
Nathan Brock gave the boy’s ear a final tweak before releasing his grip.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jeremy.’
‘Jeremy what?’
‘Jeremy nothing. I’m just Jeremy, that’s all.’
‘Where is your family, Jeremy?’
‘I’ve got no family.’ The boy rubbed his ear vigorously with the palm of his hand in a vain attempt to drive away the pain.
‘You have no family … or you don’t know where they are?’
Jeremy shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘I’ve got none. I don’t think I’ve ever had any.’
Nathan Brock estimated the boy’s age to be about ten. He alone of those watching the youngster knew exactly how the boy was feeling. He understood and sympathised with every resentful thought in Jeremy’s head. This dirty, lying, thieving child could have been himself thirty years ago. He knew what it was to fight a lone battle against a hostile world. By the time he reached the age of ten an orphan in Ireland knew he could trust no one and must rely upon his own resourcefulness. If he wanted anything, he would either have to steal it, or fight for it with both hands – and win. Nathan Brock had been big and determined. He had learned to fight. This young man could only steal. To him it was neither wrong, nor a good way of life. He knew no other way.
‘Get in the cart,’ said Liam to Jeremy. ‘It’s time we were on our way.’
‘You’re not going to hand me over to a constable?’
‘No,’ replied Kathie. ‘You are coming to stay with me and my father. You are far too young to be running with a band of cut-throats. If you behave yourself, perhaps Liam will take you out in his boat and teach you how to fish.’
Jeremy jerked a thumb at Nathan Brock. ‘Will he teach me to fight as good as he does?’
Kathie smiled. ‘I’m sure he will – once you have some strength in your body.’
‘All right, then, I’ll come with you.’
Jeremy clambered into the back of the cart, and the others took their places on the seat and resumed their interrupted journey to Kilmar.
‘I recognised one of those men back there,’ said Liam. ‘He was with the wreckers up on Kilmar hill.’
‘Then the cottiers were not involved,’ said Nathan Brock. ‘These men are footpads who roam the countryside in good times or bad.’
He turned back to the boy. ‘Where will your friends go when they stop running?’
The boy remained silent and, putting on a ferocious expression, Nathan Brock growled, ‘Tell me, boy. If you don’t, I’ll screw your ears from your head,’
‘The Wicklow mountains.’
‘Then we have little hope of finding them. You could hide an army in those mountains.’
They rode in silence for a while, then Nathan Brock gave Liam a cheerful lop-sided grin. ‘I thought you handled your shillelagh well today. Some of those rogues will be hobbling long after they reach the Wicklow mountains.’
‘They will be spitting teeth, too. You swing a mighty punch, Nathan.’ Liam’s answering grin widened. ‘But we must not forget Kathie. She fought as well as either of us – and with her eyes tight closed!’ They laughed, and the girl on the seat beside Liam remembered the feel of his arms about her. She thought that the attack by the six footpads had turned out to be a very satisfying experience.
Before they reached Kilmar, Liam tried to persuade Nathan Brock to come to England with him. Liam had grown to like the big man and he enjoyed his company. Nathan Brock knew London and was known to many of the sporting gentlemen there. He could attract a great many additional guineas to the cottiers’ relief fund.
But Nathan Brock had other ideas. He felt he was doing more good travelling around the countryside locating cottiers before they were beyond any help. He also intended returning to County Wicklow for his wife and children very soon and he wanted nothing to interfere with that.
Kathie wished that Liam would try to persuade her to accompany him to London. It was not only that she wished to see the great country on the far side of the Irish Sea. Kathie felt that a new warmth had come into their relationship and she was frightened that if Liam went away from her now it would be lost for ever.
Without trying to analyse her feelings for him, Kathie admitted that Liam had come to mean a great deal to her.
Chapter Ten
Jeremy ran away from the Donaghue cottage two days before Liam left Kilmar for London. One of the fishermen said he had seen some men resembling the footpads close to the village on the day the boy disappeared but, although a number of the villagers helped Liam and Nathan Brock to search the surrounding countryside, no trace was found of Jeremy or his former companions.
&nb
sp; Then the boy’s not entirely unexpected escape was quickly forgotten as the time for Liam’s departure drew near. It was an event in which the whole village took an interest. It was rare indeed for anyone from Kilmar to travel so far abroad, and when Eugene Brennan’s carriage entered the village, sent from Dublin for Liam, there was not a man, woman or child remaining indoors.
They witnessed the kisses Liam exchanged with Kathie and with Norah McCabe, and then anyone who could push close enough shook his hand before he climbed into the carriage and set off, waving to them all in the manner of departing royalty.
The journey to Dublin was without incident, the carriage conveying Liam to the dockside and the paddlesteamer that would carry him to the port of Liverpool. The crossing itself turned out to be a twenty-four-hour nightmare. The weather was stormy, the sea rough, and the boat hopelessly overcrowded.
There were many cottiers among the passengers on board. Irish landlords were quickly learning that it was cheaper to ship their unwanted tenants to England with a couple of shillings in their pockets than to contribute to their indefinite stay in a poor-house. The cottiers were bad sailors and as they fell victim to sea-sickness they became convinced they were dying. Soon conditions between decks became so appalling that Liam found himself a nook on the leeward side of one of the deckhouses and spent most of the journey huddled in the cold, but fresh, air.
When Eugene Brennan met Liam on the dock at Liverpool, the fisherman pointed out the cottiers who stood on the quay in bewildered shivering groups. Their thin cheap clothes were as unsuited to the weather as they themselves were to a new life in this strange foreign land. Most of them were from the remote estates in the west of Ireland and few of them spoke or understood English.
Eugene Brennan talked to the new arrivals before directing them to a part of the city where they would find other Irish immigrants to help them begin their new and bewildering life.
The Music Makers Page 8