The Music Makers

by E. V. Thompson

  ‘Liam… Liam, promise me something.’

  At this moment he would have promised her anything and he told her so.

  ‘Liam, whatever happens, don’t stop seeing me, or loving me. I will be there whenever you want me and I will come to you anywhere. You can love me in a field if there is nowhere else, but never stop wanting me, Liara. Never … never … never….’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kathie was pregnant. She had tried to ignore the symptoms for some time, but now she was certain. Yet she managed to keep her secret from Dermot in spite of constant nausea and fierce bouts of sickness. Her husband had enough problems without having fatherhood thrust upon him.

  Men were drifting away from Ireland’s great new army in ever increasing numbers, disillusioned with the life they were leading and with Dermot’s leadership. There had been a couple of indecisive skirmishes with the militia, but then Dermot had struck at a small outlying military post. Too late he discovered it was defended by regular troops. It was a costly mistake, and the Irishmen returned to the mountains having suffered a heavy defeat.

  Now only about thirty men remained with him, and Dermot knew that when it was time to lift the new potato crop he would be left with only the Kilmar fishermen.

  Yet, even with such reduced numbers, finding enough food was becoming increasingly difficult. They had lost the goodwill of the upland farmers by constant raids on their crops, and there were few animals left to hunt about the camp. The outlaws were forced to forage much farther afield – and often the men did not return from such forays.

  The news of Peel’s fall from power had reached those who remained and filled them with a sense of vague excitement. For weeks they waited for something to happen. What that ‘something’ would be, nobody knew, but they did not doubt it would be to their advantage.

  For a while men who had been living only for the day began to talk openly of the future. They believed a Whig government would prove more sympathetic to their cause than the Tories. They anticipated more freedom for Ireland to manage her own affairs. A few even spoke of a general amnesty for the outlaws of the Wicklow mountains.

  Dermot did not share their optimism. Aware of his waning authority within the group, he growled at the men and snapped irritably at Kathie. Pregnant as she was, she tried to make allowances for his moods, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Dermot no longer shared his thoughts with her. He left her alone for long periods, and sometimes she saw him watching her as she worked about the camp. The looks made her feel uncomfortable without knowing the reason why.

  Then, early one morning, when Kathie thought Dermot and the others in the camp were still asleep, she made her way out of the camp to the stream that ran nearby and there she was violently sick. This morning was worse than usual and the retching left her kneeling, moaning and gasping, by the water’s edge. When a shadow fell across the water in front of her. Kathie looked up in alarm and saw Dermot standing over her.

  ‘You are pregnant?’ It was more of an accusation than a question.

  Kathie nodded unhappily. She would have preferred to give him the news at a time and place of her choosing. Now, when she hardly possessed the strength to rise to her feet, was not the right occasion.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Scarcely more than a week.’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t known for some months?’

  Kathie looked up at him, not understanding.

  ‘How could it be? We’ve only been married a couple of months—’

  She stopped. The expression she had seen on his face so often of late was there now.

  ‘I think you already knew about the baby when you married me. Am I right?’

  The blood drained from Kathie’s already pale face and her dark eyes widened. ‘What are you saying, Dermot? Do you believe—?’

  He ignored her anguish. ‘Whose child is it?’

  ‘It is yours, Dermot.’

  She tried to drive away all thoughts of the soldiers who had taken her by force, but suddenly the sheer horror of that night returned to her and for a few seconds she trembled uncontrollably.

  ‘Is it Liam’s child?’

  The trembling suddenly ceased and colour rushed back into Kathie’s face. She looked at her husband in disbelief. ‘You believe I would marry you when I was carrying your own brother’s child?’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Kathie. I knew you never loved me when you married me. It has always been Liam for you, from the first time you saw him on Kilmar quay. Ever since the night you came to me and told me you would marry me, I have wondered why. I have been waiting for you to tell me you were carrying a baby. I knew it would have to be that.’

  Kathie was on the verge of telling Dermot of her rape by the soldiers, but she held back. Dermot would not believe her; he would think she was saying it to protect Liam.

  ‘Why did you marry me, Dermot?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘You love me – yet you think this of me?’

  When Dermot made no answer, Kathie said, ‘Would you believe me if I swore before God that Liam and I have never been lovers?’

  ‘No!’ Dermot stood over her, his anger held tightly in clenched fists. ‘I saw the way you looked at him when he last came to the camp. It sickened me.’

  ‘Dermot, I am carrying a child and it will be your child. It will be a son, Dermot McCabe. Will you acknowledge it as your own?’

  ‘No, by God, I’ll not. I’ve given it my name so it won’t grow up being called the Donaghue bastard. I’ll give it nothing else.’

  Dermot choked on his words and turned away to stumble blindly through the undergrowth toward the camp.

  ‘Dermot … Dermot, please!’

  He did not come back to her. Did not even turn.

  The other outlaws realised that Dermot and Kathie had quarrelled and they made no comment when she did not appear at breakfast-time. They maintained their silence when she did not cook a noonday meal for them, but when she was still missing in the late evening the Kilmar men could keep silent no longer. By this time Dermot, too, was alarmed. Admitting there had been words between them, he set out with the others to scour the forest for his missing wife. They searched until the darkness drove them back to the camp, every man hoping that some of the others might have found her. But Kathie had gone.

  Liam was out fishing with the two young men who would work the boat in his absence when Tommy Donaghue came down from the hill to break the news to Norah McCabe that Kathie had returned to Kilmar.

  ‘Why, that’s wonderful news,’ exclaimed Norah in delight. Untying her heavy salting-apron, she said, I’ll away up the hill to see her right away. Does she look well? I hope she’s home to stay now and that her husband will soon be following her.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be knowing about that,’ confessed Tommy Donaghue. ‘She’s said little to me. I would be obliged if you would speak to her, Norah. There’s a strangeness in her that I don’t understand. I ask her something but I’m not sure she is hearing me. Then she looks at me, yet through me, as though I am not there. Go up the hill to her, Norah. She may be better for you.’

  When Norah McCabe entered the cabin on the hill and saw her daughter-in-law she was shocked beyond belief. Kathie was wild-eyed and tangled-haired, her dress tattered and dirty. She returned the older woman’s kiss without warmth and there was a stiffness in her embrace far removed from the loving girl who had left Kilmar to go to the mountains and tend Norah McCabe’s younger son. The change alarmed her.

  ‘What is the matter, Kathie? Will Dermot be coming home soon – or has something happened to him? Is that why you are here?’

  ‘Dermot is well.’ Kathie spoke like a woman unused to talking. ‘He has his own things to do in the mountains, but he is all right.’

  The sudden tight fear left Norah McCabe. But there was undoubtedly something wrong. Kathie was as taut as one of her father’s fiddle strings. Norah McCabe began to talk of other things, unimpor
tant happenings in the village.

  Gradually, Kathie relaxed, until quite suddenly, as though she had at that moment made up her mind, she said, ‘I’ve come back to Kilmar because I’m having a baby.’

  Norah McCabe’s natural urge was to hug her son’s wife, to congratulate Kathie and say how delighted she was, but she held back. Kathie had thrown the news out almost as a challenge. Something was wrong, but only Kathie knew what it was, and she would say nothing until the time was right.

  ‘That is wonderful news, Kathie. How did Dermot take it when you told him?’

  ‘He wasn’t pleased – but he will be when I present him with a son who looks just like him’

  ‘Of course he’ll be pleased – and I’m sure he will be just as happy if it is a daughter. By then I hope he will be out of those mountains and back here, where he belongs.’

  Norah McCabe repeated her words to Liam when he returned that evening. He nodded his head in agreement, but said nothing. Too much had happened this summer to hold out any hope of Dermot’s return. Every killing, every robbery and unsolved theft within fifty miles of the Wicklow mountains had been blamed upon Dermot and his diminishing army. The time was coming when none of the band would dare set foot outside the mountains.

  ‘I’ll go up to see Kathie before it gets too dark,’ he said, finishing his meal. ‘I won’t stay long; I expect she’s tired.’

  Liam wondered what had happened to force Kathie from the mountains this early in her pregnancy. Although no mention had been made of her name on any ‘wanted’ posters, she had become more notorious than any of the other outlaws. There was not an Irishman who had not heard of the woman who supposedly led the outlaw band in the Wicklow mountains, killing soldiers and militiamen on sight. It was rumoured that she had personally killed at least a hundred men. Such was the stuff of Irish legend.

  Passing the ale-house, Liam could hear Tommy Donaghue’s fiddle leading the boisterous singing. He was celebrating his daughter’s return in the only way he knew.

  The Donaghue cabin was in darkness and, believing that Kathie might be sleeping, he pushed the door open quietly. He could not see her immediately and began closing the door again, thinking to call again the next day. Then Kathie’s voice called, ‘Come in, Liam. I’ve been expecting you.’

  Pushing the door open wide, Liam saw her slumped in a chair beside the small window.

  ‘Why are you sitting here alone in the dark? What sort of a homecoming is this? Here, let me put a light to these candles—’

  ‘No, Liam!’

  Her cry stopped him as he was reaching down a candle from the shelf by the door.

  ‘There’s still enough light from outside. Leave it for now.’

  The fact that her face was no more than a pale smudge in the room belied her words, but Liam pulled up a stool from the table and sat down to face her in the near-darkness.

  ‘I’ve heard about the baby. Congratulations!’

  ‘It has given me no reason for celebration so far. It caused a quarrel between me and Dermot; that’s why I left the mountains.’

  ‘Quarrels are soon forgotten, but you’ll be better off having a baby here in the village with women to look after you. We’ll get a message to Dermot and everything will be all right between you soon enough, you’ll see.’

  ‘It is far more serious than that, Liam. Dermot thinks you are the father of the child I am carrying.’

  The shock of her words brought Liam to his feet.

  ‘He thinks what …? Holy Mother! You didn’t leave him before you’d put that right? He doesn’t still believe it?’

  Liam’s concern was for his brother. Dermot was a reckless man, inclined to do things without sufficient thought. With such an evil belief tormenting his mind he was likely to do something stupid enough to get himself killed.

  ‘I told him he was the father of the baby. I could not do more. He said many things to me that would have been better left unsaid, Liam.’

  ‘Kathie, does Dermot know what the soldiers did to you?!

  There was a long silence in the cabin broken only by Kathie’s laboured breathing as she fought to regain control of herself.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘From Jeremy. He learned that the soldiers had raped a girl. From what was said he realised it must have been you. Does Dermot know?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone.’

  The next question hung between them, unspoken. Then Kathie said, ‘The baby is Dermot’s, Liam.’ Her voice trembled as she added, ‘If I thought otherwise, I would kill myself. Who else knows what the soldiers did to me?’

  ‘Only Nathan. He will say nothing.’

  Kathie nodded, grateful for the darkness that hid the tears flowing silently down her face.

  ‘When you came to the forest you asked me what had happened to change me, Liam. Now you know.

  ‘But you married Dermot without telling him?’

  ‘I didn’t need to tell him, Liam, You can see that, surely? There was never anything between us until … until after that night with the soldiers. I went to Dermot and he took me as I was. I couldn’t have told him about … about anything. Had you been there it might have been different. I think I would have been able to say something to you. I wish you had been there, Liam.’

  Her voice broke and a sob racked her body.

  ‘The soldiers should have killed me afterwards, Liam. At the time I wished to God they had.’

  In the darkness Liam dropped to his knees before her and held her to him.

  ‘Hush, Kathie. Don’t think about it any more. It’s all over and done with now.’

  ‘If only it was.’ Kathie clung to him. ‘I killed one of them, Liam. I saw his face on the mountain after the soldiers attacked us. He’d been wounded, but he pushed himself up to look at me and I recognised him. I shot him, Liam. As he looked at me, I shot him.’

  She shuddered, and Liam gripped her more tightly.

  ‘I see that face often, Liam. I have nightmares. I wake up screaming at him to go away and leave me alone. I’m frightened, Liam. Frightened of nights … of having the baby … of what is to come.’

  Kathie took Liam’s hand and held it to her face.

  ‘Help me, Liam. Please help me.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Eugene Brennan returned to Kilmar in August full of energy and enthusiasm. A by-election had been called in County Kerry in south-west Ireland, one of the poorest parts of the land, and Liam’s name had been put forward as a candidate. It was, Eugene assured Liam, a fishing area and in Liam the people would see a man able to recognise many of their problems.

  ‘When is this election to be?’ asked Liam. He was flabbergasted when Eugene Brennan informed him that voting day was only a week ahead. Before then Liam would have to go to Kerry, carry out his campaigning and – hopefully – be elected. It was a daunting thought, but Eugene Brennan brushed the problems aside in a characteristic manner.

  ‘The All-Ireland Association is particularly strong there,’ he assured Liam, ‘They will be doing most of your campaigning for you and telling the voters whom they should elect. All you need do is show your face here and there and let the people have a look at you. Then in a week’s time you’ll go round thanking them all before you leave to take your place in the House of Commons.’

  The day passed in a fever of activity. Norah McCabe was going to use Liam’s departure as an excuse to persuade Kathie to come to live in the McCabe house, to ‘keep her company’. Kathie was better than she had been when she first returned to Kilmar, but it would be a very long time before she was able to lay the ghosts that haunted her.

  On the way to County Kerry, Eugene Brennan insisted upon calling at Inch House to visit Lady Caroline. Liam had been there more than once since their return from England, but his heart still beat faster at the thought of seeing her again. He felt sure the astute old politician would see his agitation.

  If he did, Eugene Brennan said nothi
ng of it and he beamed happily when Caroline greeted him as a very dear friend.

  ‘I am sure Liam will be a credit to you in the House,’ she said when Eugene Brennan told her where he and Liam were going. ‘But your need for support will not be as great now Lord John Russell is Prime Minister?’

  Eugene Brennan’s face lost much of its humour.

  ‘You would think so,’ he said, with much bitterness in his voice. ‘Had it not been for the help of the Irish MPs, Peel would still be Prime Minister and John Russell no more than the Duke of Bedford’s political brother, but now he will do nothing to help us – or anyone else. Lord John Russell is afraid of being thought controversial before he calls an election next year. We must hope he is returned with a small majority and needs the support of the Irish MPs. If he has no need of us, I fear we might as well have Peel back in office.’

  ‘I am afraid Ireland will have need of Lord John Russell’s support long before then,’ said Caroline. ‘Nathan tells me there are definite signs that the blight is in the potato again this year. If it is serious, the Government will have to move quickly. Another potato famine would be disastrous for the cottiers.’

  ‘Heaven forbid it should happen,’ said Eugene Brennan fervently. ‘If there is another famine, Archbishop MacHale should ask the Almighty why such a devout nation as ours should also be the most accursed.’

  Soon afterwards, Eugene Brennan announced he was taking a walk to look at the house being built for Lady Caroline, before he resumed his journey, but he declined her offer to accompany him.

  When he had gone, Caroline came to Liam and kissed him passionately.

  ‘It is most obliging of Eugene to leave us alone. Do you think he has accepted our situation?’

  Liam shook his head. ‘I am afraid not. Eugene has left us together because he expects me to tell you we must stop seeing each other now.’