The Music Makers

by E. V. Thompson

  ‘But he’s living in a dream world! He speaks as though he is a modern Moses, with the whole of Ireland waiting for him to come down from the mountains and lead them to the Promised Land.’

  Kathie took Liam’s hand. ‘Come for a walk with me, Liam.’

  Aware that only half of the Kilmar men were singing, the remainder listening to what was being said, Liam allowed himself to be led away from the firelight. Sure-footed in the darkness, Kathie took him to the ridge of broken rock that towered above the camp, picking her way between rocks as high as a man. She stopped when they stood on a solid granite platform, with a huge boulder at their backs. Far away in the distance Liam saw a faint flicker of yellow light from the window of a remote farm-house, and all about them the sky was peppered with the dust of a million stars. The camp-fire could not be seen from here, but he could hear the faint sound of the fiddle.

  ‘I often come up here at night,’ said Kathie. ‘Sometimes I stay here for hours when the others are asleep.’

  ‘Alone – or with Dermot?’

  ‘You are the first person I have ever brought up here, Liam.’

  There was a long awkward pause, and then Kathie said, ‘Dermot is a sick man, Liam. His dreams are all he has. He can’t go with the others when they are hunting, or set out to waylay a militiaman. He is left behind to curse his weakness – and dream up plans for the future.’

  ‘But these dreams are possessing him, Kathie. You would think, from the way he speaks, that the whole of Ireland knew about the raid on the wagons and are just waiting for the call to follow him. It is not true. Only a few cottiers knew about it in the first place – and they have plenty of other things to think about now. Fever as well as the hunger. No one else either knows or cares. The soldiers have not forgotten yet, but the only ones who have taken an interest will be leaving Ireland soon. You can all be home in Kilmar again by the end of the summer.’

  Kathie sighed in the darkness. ‘You don’t know how many times I have sat in this very spot and wished myself back in Kilmar, Liam. I was happy there and your mother was very kind to me.’

  ‘Then come back – now. I never understand why you left in the first place.’

  ‘I couldn’t let Dermot go off without someone to look after him. He would have died in the first few days.’

  ‘What is Dermot to you, Kathie?’

  ‘I am very fond of him, Liam. During the time we have been in the mountains we have grown very close. He is just like a brother to me.’

  ‘A … brother?’

  Liam saw her pale face turned toward him. ‘I feel responsible for getting him into this mess, Liam. You have said yourself that he lives in a dream world. He has always been a dreamer. After he. took me to that first Association meeting he began dreaming of doing something to impress me – something bold and worthwhile. They would never have been anything more than mere dreams had I not urged him on. Had it not been for me he would still be in Kilmar, fishing with you, grumbling about the Association and happily dreaming about things he would never do. Instead, he is here in the mountains, hunted and far from home, and a sick man.’

  Kathie’s voice broke, and Liam put out a hand to comfort her, feeling her shoulder shake violently beneath his hand as she fought to control her unhappiness.

  ‘Don’t, Kathie … don’t….’

  The next moment Kathie was clinging to him and sobbing helplessly against his chest.

  Liam felt desperately sorry for her, and her crying cut into him like a knife. He held her to him, stroking her hair as though she were a child and promising her that everything would be all right if only she would stop crying.

  Then, suddenly, she reached up for him, her lips pressed hard on his with all the passion that her unhappiness had released, her firm body pressing against his.

  Eventually, gasping for breath, her mouth released his and she leaned against his chest, only an occasional sob disturbing the peace that had come to her.

  ‘I feel so safe here with you like this, Liam,’ Kathie whispered, and her arms tightened about him as she hugged him to her.

  He kissed the top of her head tenderly. ‘Then don’t move. We will stay up here all night and you can return to Kilmar with us tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t, Liam. You have seen Dermot. I can’t leave him in his present state.’

  ‘Then I’ll take him with us, too – by force if I have to.’

  ‘No, Liam. You couldn’t do that to him. He would die of shame.’

  ‘But you can’t stay here. Not when it is making you so unhappy.’

  ‘I can stay here … now. I was not so sure before. Things will be better soon. The warmer months are coming, and Dermot is growing stronger. By the end of the summer he will be strong enough for me to leave him. I might even persuade him to come with me. But, either way, I will return to Kilmar then, Liam.’

  She kissed him again and, even as he responded to her, Liam remembered another time, another place – and Caroline.

  Kathie slipped from his arms. ‘We had better get back to the others before Father comes looking for you and demands that you make an honest woman of me.’

  ‘Then let’s stay here until he does. That would settle the question of whether or not you returned to Kilmar with us.’

  ‘No, Liam. We must go back now. It is going to be hard enough staying up in the mountains without you to lean on. Don’t give me more problems than I already have.’

  ‘What problems? Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing I can’t deal with.’

  Kathie took his hand and tried to lead him away, but he did not move and held her hand fast.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Kathie tried to pull free, but he held her hand fast and repeated, ‘Tell me.’

  Kathie shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is nothing, really. Nothing serious, anyway. I am alone up here with a crowd of young men – and the Kilmar fishermen are no different from young men from anywhere else. They tease, give my words double meanings, make suggestive remarks and try to involve me in horse-play. It is no more than would happen if I were back in Kilmar, but up here they have no mothers to take them by the ear and give them a shake. It does get difficult at times, but I can get by as long as they don’t realise that I, too, have emotions and desires. That is why I don’t want you and I to stay away long enough for them to imagine what we might be doing.’

  Liam went cold at the thought of what could happen to a lone girl up here in these mountains.

  ‘Is there anyone in particular who is giving you trouble?’

  Kathie hesitated too long before finding an answer, and Liam asked, ‘Who?’

  She tried to laugh the matter away. ‘Oh, you know what Eoin Feehan is like. He believes that no woman can be near him for long without falling madly in love with him. But it is nothing to worry about. He is easy enough to slap down when the occasion arises.’

  ‘Eoin Feehan! I might have guessed….’

  Liam told Kathie how, of all the Kilmar men who had been on the raid, only the name of Eoin Feehan was missing from the notice proclaiming the men from whom the protection of the law had been removed. He reminded her that only the Feehan boat had been untouched.

  ‘But the soldiers captured Sean,’ said Kathie. ‘He must have talked before he died. The soldiers would have made him talk, but he would have kept back the name of his brother.’

  ‘Sean would not have talked. He was the one member of that family I would have trusted with my life. I would not say the same for Eoin. We will probably never know the truth of what happened that night, but put no trust in Eoin Feehan. Watch his every movement and question his every word. If he did betray his friends once, he could do it again.’

  When they returned to the camp it was Eoin Feehan’s hot eyes that followed their progress to the side of Tommy Donaghue. Then Eoin saw that Liam watched him in his turn and, standing up abruptly, he strode wordlessly away from the light.

  Dermot had also seen them return, but he said nothing until the
following day when Liam and Tommy Donaghue left the camp and the Kilmar fugitives were waving them on their way.

  ‘You spent some time alone with Liam last night.’ He put it to Kathie as though it were an accusation.

  ‘Yes.’

  When no further explanation followed, Dermot asked, ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Lots of things. You … me … Kilmar.’

  ‘Did he ask you to return to Kilmar with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I am still here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Are you staying here because of me?’

  Tommy Donaghue and Liam dropped from view behind the gorse farther down the slope, and Kathie turned away without replying to Dermot’s last question. He stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  ‘What else did Liam say, Kathie? Did he ask you to marry him?’

  Looking at Dermot, Kathie saw the torture on his face. ‘Of course he didn’t!’

  ‘What would your reply have been if he had?’

  ‘Liam has never mentioned marriage to me and I haven’t even thought about it.’ This was a lie, but Dermot would never know that. ‘Come on now. There is a lot of tidying up to be done in camp—’

  ‘No.’

  Dermot gripped Kathie’s arm so tightly she winced in pain. Dermot immediately slackened his grip but went on talking.

  ‘What would your answer be if I asked you to marry me, Kathie?’

  ‘I would tell you that your wound must be more serious than we thought and that it was affecting your mind.’

  Kathie did her best to laugh away Dermot’s question but she was not successful.

  ‘Don’t make a joke of it, Kathie. If Liam has not asked you to marry him, then he’s a fool. One fool is enough in any family. I am asking you to marry me.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t, Dermot. Not now … or here.’

  ‘Well, I have asked you – and I won’t take “no” for an answer, so you had best say nothing right now. Think about it, Kathie. Think about it seriously.’

  Tommy Donaghue was a happy man on the way back to Kilmar. He had seen his daughter, she was well and he had no doubt that she would be home again very soon. Why shouldn’t she be? The Scots soldiers were leaving Ireland, the Kilmar boys would return home – and Kathie would be with them.

  Liam was not so sure. More than once he wished he had insisted that Kathie come back to Kilmar with them. He would have liked to bring his brother out of the mountains, too; Dermot was a cause for great concern. He was a sick man and had a sick man’s preoccupation with himself. Dermot needed to live among people in more normal surroundings for a while, but Liam was not sure how to set about persuading his brother of the need for a change in his surroundings.

  He would have liked to discuss the matter with the man who had taken the Kilmar outlaws to the mountains. Nathan Brock was a very resourceful man and might have thought of something.

  That brought Liam to his final problem. Where was Nathan Brock – and where could he begin to look for him?

  Chapter Twenty

  Nathan Brock searched County Wexford from the Wicklow mountains to Hook Head and from Cahore Point to Mount Leinster without success. There were too many homeless cottiers on the roads of the county. They flowed like a hungry tide from one end of the land to the other, and back again. Few of them had a destination; they knew only that to stop was to die. On the road there was always the hope that something better was around the next bend; but they had long since stopped asking the names of strangers, and Nathan Brock faced a hopeless task.

  Jeremy searched as diligently as did Nathan, and more than once they found someone who thought they might have seen Shelagh Brock and her two boys. But as winter passed and yellow flowers brightened the grass beneath the hedgerows Nathan Brock was still no nearer finding his family. It seemed they had vanished from the face of Ireland. Slowly, reluctantly, as though accepting defeat, Nathan Brock retraced his steps, heading once more for the Wicklow mountains.

  During their months of searching, Jeremy received tuition in the art of prizefighting – and he learned something more. He was able to sample something of the flavour of actual organised fights.

  In order to obtain money to continue the search for his family, Nathan Brock took to the ring again. The opposition in this corner of Ireland was not great and he had only two fights, one in Wexford Town, the other in Enniscorthy, winning them both by decisive knock-downs, using his clubbing right hand to devastating advantage.

  The purses he fought for were not huge – they were not even large – but they were sufficient to keep the two searchers fed for many weeks.

  Jeremy worked in Nathan Brock’s corner during the brief intervals between short knock-downs but, unknown to the prizefighter, he indulged in a more profitable activity while attention was fixed on the exciting fight.

  Wagers were freely made on the outcome of the fight and keen sporting men thrust their money pouches carelessly in easily accessible pockets during the excitement of the occasion. For someone as skilful and daring as Jeremy it was a simple matter to relieve the rightful owner of his money and transfer it to his own pocket. Even when the thefts were discovered no one suspected that anyone in the corner of the highly respected Nathan Brock was involved.

  But now, with the fights behind him, it was a bitter and desperate man who made his way northward. The only village in County Wexford Nathan Brock had not searched was Kilmar. He did not go there because the people of the fishing village were his friends. They would have given him genuine sympathy – and sympathy was the last thing the fighter wanted at this time. He felt he would have broken down and wept openly.

  Secretly, Nathan Brock believed his family must now be dead. The famine was so bad that the hungry cottiers were eating anything that grew – even grass. A woman with two children to support had little chance of survival in the Ireland of 1846.

  Nathan Brock and Jeremy trudged wearily back to County Wicklow, with the young boy looking over his shoulder nervously as they passed the farm from where he had stolen the ducks only a few short months before.

  They arrived at the mountains safely and found Kathie in the camp alone. As she had predicted to Liam, the warm weather had helped Dermot as no amount of nursing could and he had gone off with the others to cut turf for their cooking-fires.

  Kathie was delighted to see the big man again and surprised that Jeremy was with him. Not until Nathan Brock had described how he had met up with the boy and started to talk about some of their experiences together did she realise that he knew nothing about his wife and boys being at Kilmar.

  When she told him Nathan Brock suffered an agony of self-recrimination. He cursed himself for his stupidity in not calling at Kilmar. There was nothing for it but to turn round and hurry to Kilmar as fast as he was able, although the news was now more than a month old and he dreaded what he might learn there.

  So eager was he to be away that he declined Kathie’s offer of a meal.

  ‘I couldn’t eat a single mouthful,’ he declared. ‘Until I learn something about Shelagh and the boys food would choke me.’

  ‘Then I will walk as far as the road with you,’ said Kathie. ‘There are a few things I would like to discuss with you.’

  On the way she told Nathan Brock of what Liam had said about Eoin Feehan.

  ‘And has there been anything more to arouse your suspicions?’

  ‘Yes. Eoin has taken to going off by himself in the evenings and coming back to the camp the worse for drink.’

  ‘Has no one said anything to him about it?’

  ‘Dermot tried, but Eoin replied that he is sick of the mountains and, since he is not a wanted man, there is nothing to prevent him from going to Rathconard and enjoying a drink or two.’

  They discussed Eoin Feehan’s recent behaviour until they came within sight of Rathconard and then, to Nathan Brock’s surprise, Jeremy announced that he would be coming no farther with him.

  ‘Bu
t why?’ asked Nathan Brock. ‘We have travelled all these miles together. Why leave now when we are within a matter of hours of my family?’

  ‘Because you don’t need me no more, Nathan. If your family are well, you will want to stay at Kilmar and build a new life for them. If all isn’t well, you won’t want to share your grief with anyone. Here, take these. You’ll probably have need of them.’

  Jeremy handed over five gold sovereigns, and the big man looked from the coins to the boy in consternation.

  ‘Where did you get these?’

  ‘I was given them by gentlemen who won a lot of money on your fights. I should have given them to you before, I suppose.’

  ‘You are a young rogue, Jeremy – but we must share these.’

  ‘We have,’ grinned the boy. ‘That’s your half. I’ve got mine hidden in my sock.’

  Jeremy was relieved that Nathan Brock accepted his story so readily. He was sure the ex-prizefighter would not have accepted the gold had he known the gentlemen of whom he spoke had not knowingly parted with their winnings.

  ‘What will you do now? You could probably stay here with Kathie and the others if you wanted to.’

  ‘No,’ Jeremy shook his head. ‘I don’t need them any more than they need me. I’ll go north to Dublin. I might even find another fighter to teach me how to use my fists. Don’t you worry none about me, Nathan. I’ll make out well enough.’

  But an idea had come to Nathan Brock and he was so deep in his own thoughts that he missed the tell-tale trembling of Jeremy’s lower lip as he finished talking.

  ‘Jeremy, before you go to Dublin will you do a favour for Kathie … and me?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘I would like you to stay hereabouts for a while. Find out what Eoin Feehan gets up to in Rathconard. You know him?’

  ‘I’ve seen him. But I doubt if he will remember me. Yes, I’ll do that.’

  ‘Good boy!’

  Nathan Brock clapped a big hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Tell Kathie if you learn anything. If it is something you feel I should know, then come and find me … at Kilmar.’