Dark Rosaleen

by Michael Nicholson, OBE

  A police inspector came with an order from the magistrates signed and stamped for them to see. Twice he called out Robin’s name, and went as close to the tent as he dared. But the only sound was the shuffle of the harness on his horse and the rooks cawing in the trees.

  The canvas was brittle and dry with age and it needed only one torch. It exploded. The heat lifted it into the air like a balloon, twisting and snapping as the flames took it higher and through the smoke they saw the lines of the blackened dead, curling and twisting in the heat. Una and Keegan turned their backs and prayed as the brown, cremating smoke spiralled up behind them.

  As Kate grew stronger, so did her resolve. The life that was now ahead of her was her own and only she would decide its direction. During her convalescence, Una had written to her every day. Describing every detail of Robin’s tent hospital and the work she and Keegan had been doing to help. She wrote of her growing affection for him and the plans they were now making.

  They came to her on the day of Robin’s death. She listened to them, the room shrouded in the faint light of that winter afternoon, three shadows at a proxy funeral. She did not cry. She had read somewhere that it is not a man’s death that causes the greatest grief, but the manner of his dying and Robin had died nobly. There had been purpose to his living and a reason for his dying and he would want them to celebrate both equally.

  Una sat on the rug by the hearth, holding her hands to the fire. Keegan stared out of the window.

  ‘What else is there to tell me, Una?’ Kate said. ‘There is something, isn’t there?’ She waited for Una to speak.

  ‘We didn’t want to tell you today, Kate, not today.’

  ‘I’ve heard the worst. What else is there?’

  Una sat and took her hand.

  ‘Keegan and I have decided to leave Ireland. We’re going to America. There’s a sailing soon from Limerick. Don’t be angry with us, Kate. We are not running, we are not cowards. But there is nothing to hold us here. Ireland is dying, and we will not stay to be among the dead.’

  ‘We have run out of hope,’ Keegan said. ‘We stay and we die. We could die in the coffin ships. Either way it is a risk.’

  Una kissed Kate’s hands. ‘Come with us, Kate. It’s a new world where there’s no famine and no fever and no hatred. Come with us.’

  ‘We’ll not be alone, Kate,’ Keegan said. ‘The docks are crowded with people on their way. Ships are leaving almost every week.’

  ‘There is another reason,’ Una said. She turned to Keegan. ‘Will you tell, or shall I?’

  ‘He was your brother.’

  She was trembling and spoke fast in her excitement.

  ‘Kate, we have found something wonderful. It was tucked away with Robin’s papers, along with his microscope and things. He must have been working on it all summer. He was so thorough and it is so detailed. It made no sense to us at first, just a jumble of dates and Latin names. It was his research, Kate. He’s been researching the black fever.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Una,’ Kate said. ‘Why should this make you want to leave?’

  ‘It’s in his writing. On the last pages before he died. He even made drawings and there are jars full of them.’

  ‘Una, drawings of what? Jars of what?’

  ‘Lice,’ said Keegan. ‘Robin believed it is lice that cause the fever. Not hunger, not the rats. But the tiny lice.’

  Kate leaned back in her chair. ‘His little breadcrumbs.’

  ‘We are taking his work to America with us,’ Una said. ‘Father says it is the only way. There are doctors there who can prove Robin right. Kate, do you understand how much this means to Father and me? To know that Robin died for something?’

  ‘Yes, Una. I understand. He died nobly, the way he lived. But why America? Why not England?’

  ‘We don’t think Robin would have wanted that,’ Keegan said. ‘He never condemned anyone for the blight, but he did blame England for doing so little about it. Doctors in America are bound to be concerned. We will talk to the Irish there.’

  ‘Say yes!’ Una pleaded. ‘Kate, say you will come with us.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I was beginning to hope that my home was here with you and Keegan and Robin. But without you, what is there for me here? I shall be alone again.’

  ‘Then you will come,’ said Keegan. ‘I will buy three tickets tomorrow and we’ll have a carriage to take us to Limerick.’

  But Una already knew the answer. She saw it in Kate’s eyes and felt it in the firm hold of her hand. She kissed Kate on her forehead, and again on her cheek and whispered to her, ‘But you will come to see us go, won’t you? You will wish us well as we sail to the New World?’

  And Kate nodded.

  Keegan did not have to pay to hire his carriage. Sir William Macaulay provided it himself. He was relieved to see them go, convinced that with their sailing, Kate would resign herself to returning to England with him. Sometimes he could not help but marvel at fate’s happy coincidences.

  They came to Limerick in the early afternoon. The sun was warm. The walls of King John’s Castle were reflected in the waters of the Shannon and on the far side of the bridge they could see St Mary’s Cathedral. Every street in the town was blocked with people, a dense swarm moving slowly towards the piers. Men searched for lost wives, children ran in and out of legs, screaming for lost mothers. Some pushed their belongings in carts, others humped them on their backs, a bewildered, frightened, swirling current of people. English soldiers in their blue and red tunics were posted along the quayside, their rifles at the ready. More lined the gangplanks, guarding the dockers as they loaded the cargo ships bound for Liverpool.

  ‘Irish bacon and Irish wheat,’ said Keegan bitterly. ‘Off to make English bellies even fatter.’ He pointed to the ships on the far side of the harbour. ‘And those over there are waiting to take our people to America. Do you know that second only to food, we Irish are the chief export from our own country?’

  He left them to collect the tickets. They sat in the carriage and watched him go.

  ‘Will you marry him?’ Kate asked.

  ‘He hasn’t asked me yet,’ she said. ‘But he will. I wonder if he would have done if we’d stayed? He might have been frightened off.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Yes! He may well have been. How different we were once.’

  ‘Father says America is a big melting pot,’ Una said, ‘filling up with people from everywhere in the world and all coming for the same reason. To get away from the old and begin again. He says we will all cling together. All be the same.’

  ‘You will always be Irish, Una.’

  ‘Then I’ll be American-Irish. Or Irish-American. Do you think that will be allowed?’

  Kate looked out of the carriage window at the commotion around her. Close by, a man in black top hat was standing on a box holding up tickets and shouting out the prices for the passage on all the ships moored there.

  ‘We have just returned from the shores of North America and we leave again in ten days. So buy your ticket now and be sure of a good space aboard the Alice of Galway for we’re off again soon to the flourishing city of New York where demand for labour is more than double hitherto. The Alice is the finest ship in the harbour, five hundred tons under its master John McKay. You will get a pound of meal or bread a day and as much water as you want. But only the sound and healthy can come aboard. Come along … Come along. Five pounds on deck, two pounds below.’

  ‘Una, I have one last thing to ask.’

  ‘I think I know what it might be, Kate. And the answer is no.’

  ‘You can guess?’

  ‘You want to find the rebel. He’s told you it is none of your business and he’s right. You are English, and always will be, just as you said I will always be Irish. We cannot change what we are. You cannot change what is.’

  ‘But you have, Una. You have changed what is.’

  ‘But I have had to go away to do it.’

  ‘And so ha
ve I. Don’t you see? This is my America. It’s here that I’ve discovered my freedom, just as you’re off to find yours.’

  ‘But not with them, Kate. Not the rebels. It can’t be right to be with them.’

  ‘Una, I don’t know what is right or wrong. I only know I cannot go back to England with my father. I will not be able to resist him unless …’

  ‘Unless you leave him?’

  ‘Unless I leave him.’

  ‘Do you want to stay with my father?’

  ‘That won’t help me. They will come after me. My father will send men and take me back the same day, I know he will.’

  ‘Then what can I do?’

  ‘You must help me find Moran. He went with the rebels. He will find me somewhere I can hide until I know what I am supposed to do and who I am supposed to be. I know he will help me.’

  ‘Then you must go to my father, Kate, you must. Tell him what you’ve told me. He knows somebody, a Protestant like us and a landowner too. He’s a young man with a head full of dreams and I think he’s a friend of Coburn. Father will help you.’

  They had kissed and hugged and had dried their eyes by the time Keegan returned. He held up the tickets.

  ‘We’re on the largest ship in port and the master tells me it is the fastest and most reliable of all the ships here. Five pounds each, water is free. We can carry our own food or buy it on board at sixpence each sailing day. We leave in an hour’s time, bound for Quebec.’

  ‘Why Quebec?’ asked Kate. ‘Isn’t that in Canada?’

  ‘It is,’ said Keegan. ‘But there are no ships sailing to America this week. One has already left for Philadelphia and there’s another in ten days but we can’t wait that long. Quebec is where most of them are going now, to a river called the St Lawrence. We must wait there on an island before they will let us land. They say the border with America is less than a hundred miles from there. Most of the Irish are making for a place called Boston.’

  ‘I was born only twenty miles from Boston in Lincolnshire,’ Kate said.

  Una squeezed her arm. ‘Then that’s a fine omen if ever I needed one.’

  ‘Do you want to go to Boston?’ Kate asked.

  ‘We want to go to America,’ Keegan answered. ‘And wherever Boston is, I’m assured it is in America, and that will do us fine.’

  ‘Do you know how long it will take?’

  ‘The master said it could take six weeks or longer if the sea is bad. He said some ships have been, blown hundreds of miles south before the winds turned and brought them north again.’

  They pushed their way through the crowds towards a tall ship with a black tarred hull and the figure of a stout lady on her bow. On both sides of her, the name SS Sarah Jane was painted in large gold letters. There was not a spare inch of space on deck. Some of the passengers were dressed in top hats and heavy coats, their wives in woollen shawls. The poor and the ragged were ushered below.

  A bell rang and there was shouting.

  ‘Aboard! All aboard the Sarah Jane. We’re on the tide and have a wind. The last of you aboard now and be quick with it!’

  Crew scurried up the rope ladders and stepped out onto the yardarms a hundred feet up to unfurl the great canvas sails. They loosened the lines to the pier and the gangplank. The master, high up by the wheel at the stern, shouted to Keegan, ‘If you’re coming aboard, young man, you’d better do it now, or find yourself some lodgings ashore!’

  Kate hugged Una for the last time. Then she held Keegan tight.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered to him. ‘Thank you for bringing me into your life. Thank you for sharing it and for giving me all the things I could never have had without you. Thank you for the children, and Eugene and your father and all the happy times we’ve had in the valley. You’ve lost hope here, but I’ve found it. God bless you.’

  ‘Why did it have to happen this way, Kate? Promise me that one day you will write us a letter and tell us why Ireland is so badly treated. How did the world forget us? Are we like the ancient Jews, wandering the earth, looking for a place to rest?’

  ‘No, Keegan,’ she answered. ‘You will stop your wandering soon. You will find your new home in America and you will marry Una and have fine children. One day we will meet again, always believe that. And on that day we will look back with no regrets, because then we shall know that this was just the beginning.’

  He kissed her again and, without looking back, ran with Una up the gangplank. They dropped down onto the deck and out of sight behind the gunwales. Kate did not wait for the sails to fill. She could not watch them go. She ran to the waiting carriage and closed the curtains tight. She shouted an order to the coachman, heard the crack of his whip and his call to the team. Soon the bustle of Limerick was behind her.

  Now she was abandoned. One by one they had all left her, all those who had been so precious. How soon would she forget their voices and their faces? How quickly would she have nothing to remember them by? Alive or dead, it did not matter. They were gone.

  She had been in Ireland for such a short time but she had experienced more happiness, grief and misery than she could ever have dreamt existed in one world. She had faced it, braved it and suffered a little of it herself. She had survived because she had been among those she loved and who had loved her back, Irish people who knew well enough who she was, people who had cause enough to despise and reject her. Yet it had all been for a purpose, and now she must find out what it was. She could not span her two worlds any longer. She must choose which one to live in and, having chosen, become immersed and prosper in the middle of it. It was the day of her turning.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It cheered him as nothing had done since he had first stepped foot in Ireland. Was this a reprieve? Were the odds reversing themselves? Could he really believe this was the beginning of the end, the final chapter in a lengthy tale of horrors?

  Sir William looked from his window towards Cork Harbour. Sailing ships were rafted there side by side, their hulls lined so tight together there was barely sight of water in between. How wonderful they looked in the sunset, like an armada, a fleet of hope and charity. He had spent the day watching them arrive as they manoeuvred their way up the river Lee to their moorings, their vast sails shivering as helmsmen brought their bows into the wind, the capstans spinning, the tangle of lines thrown from deck to deck, the running of the chains as the anchors dropped to steady them.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Sir William said to himself, tapping the window pane with his whiskey glass. It was indeed a splendid sight.

  Thirty thousand tons of Indian corn were now waiting to be unloaded, ready to be stored in the warehouses, corn that would turn Ireland around, corn that would feed the destitute and put an end to their hunger. Had Trevelyan been right after all? He had insisted that the free market, his laissez-faire approach, would repair what the blight had undone. Imports of American maize, diverted from pigs in Cincinnati to feed the Irish poor, would end the famine. Soon it would be for sale on the open market and at a price even the poor could afford.

  What had Trevelyan so often reminded him in his terse communiqués?

  Private enterprise is sacrosanct. There must be as little disturbance of private trade as possible. Indiscreet tampering with trade is dangerous. The laws of commerce are the laws of nature and are consequently God’s laws. Interfering with them risked God’s displeasure.

  Sir William sat at his desk and drafted a letter of congratulations to his master confirming the ships’ safe arrival and his assurance that at last the worst must surely be over. Soon he was to discover it was not. The tonnage of maize the government allowed to be imported into Ireland did not and would never match the tonnage of potatoes lost. The deficit was irretrievable. The maize would be sold by the corn merchants at such a profit that few would be able to afford it. It was also a foreign grain, a stranger to Ireland. How was it to be eaten?

  The resourceful Trevelyan announced he had personally tested various recipes in his own k
itchen and having decided on one he ordered pamphlets to be distributed with instructions on how it should be cooked.

  The grain may be crushed between two good-size stones. Soaked all night in warm water, then boiled with a little fat, if at hand. It can then be eaten with milk, with salt, or plain. Ten pounds of the corn so prepared is ample food for a labouring man for seven days.

  Very few among the hungry Irish had heat to boil water, or milk or salt. Fewer still could read English.

  The maize was hard as flint and had to be crushed. In America, they knew it as ‘hominy’ and gave it to the steel mills to chop into tiny cookable fragments. No miller in Ireland could do that. So Trevelyan proposed that the poor should mill it themselves and promptly ordered the manufacture of hand-grinders. A few prototypes were made at a price of fifteen shillings each and a shilling was a stranger in the pockets of the poor. Losing patience, Trevelyan finally told the hungry to eat it unmilled and uncooked. But eaten raw, it could not be digested. It pierced the intestines of the hungry and weak and their stomachs twisted with convulsions. Eating it to stay alive, they died agonising deaths.

  The starving thousands along the west coast, from Donegal through Connaught to Galway, knew nothing of this new foreign food because it never reached them. The Admiralty had sent two steamers from Cork loaded with the grain, only to discover there were no harbours big enough to take them.

  Only the corn merchants of Cork did well from the ships moored in their harbour. All made great profit. One boasted a gain of over forty thousand pounds from rising prices in three months of trading.

  If Kate knew any of this, she did not seem to care. Very little now seemed to matter at all. Her life had become a vacuum. It was already the third month of spring, the days were warming, some trees were already in bud. In the garden below her bedroom window, daffodils were sprouting a foot high and purple wild anemones were scattered below the oaks but it no longer thrilled her. She was in limbo, the place of the lost, the forgotten, the abandoned. When they had all left her she had felt resolute, preparing for the journey ahead, ready for that critical moment of decision. Now she felt sapped of ambition, lacking the courage to make a decision. It was Queen Victoria who made it for her.