‘My father has disowned me,’ she said. ‘If I’m caught, he’ll put me on a ship for England. Have you heard what happened in Dublin?’
‘Kate, who hasn’t? What shenanigans. You’re a feisty girl.’
‘I must get to Moran.’
‘And where would you find him? Provided he’s still alive and the odds are against it.’
‘He’s riding with Coburn. With the Young Irelanders.’
‘I know of them and they’re dangerous people. They’re not for you.’
‘I have no one else.’
‘You are determined?’
‘I am.’
‘There’d be no going back.’
‘I’ll never go back.’
‘Never is a long time.’
Sir Robert poured more tea. He took the cover from a dish of oatcakes. Then he said, ‘I think I know a way, probably the only way. He’ll not thank me for it but I’ll send you to a friend of mine, a Protestant and a landlord too. His name is William O’Brien. Good stock. Descendant of King Boru, King of all Ireland. How’s that, Kate? It’s a great start to your adventures in the family of kings.’ He laughed.
Kate did not smile. ‘You tell me this is dangerous. Now you say it’s an adventure.’
‘So it is, Kate. An adventure while it lasts. A hanging when it ends. This is no game of make-believe. It is bound to go that way. Do you want a rope around that pretty neck of yours?’
‘Would you have me go to England?’
‘I just want you to know what it is you are doing, Kate. These rebels are violent, their heads full of wild dreams and many will not see their next birthday. They can fight for Ireland but you’ll not show me a man who can win for Ireland. They will turn the English against us at a time when we need them most.’
‘I have nothing to lose.’
‘Except yourself.’
‘That doesn’t seem so important now.’
‘You are important, Kate. There is only one of you and this life is not a rehearsal. The real world is beyond our shores and that world is yours.’
‘Will you help me, Sir Robert? Yes or no?’
‘Well if you won’t sail to England, Kate, then we must find a way to keep you safe in Ireland. You will go to O’Brien and stay there until you make up your mind where you go next. But promise me, Kate, you will not get into this rebel thing any deeper.’
‘I can’t promise you that, Sir Robert. I’ve taken sides. I am my mother’s child.’
They supped more tea and ate the cakes and she told him her father’s story, word for word, as best she could remember. When at last she was done, Sir Robert leant and kissed her on both cheeks.
‘You are your mother’s child indeed. And Ireland’s too perhaps. Jesus! This God of ours moves in the most cussed way but there’s no mistaking it. This is His plan.’
He went to the door and called out to his yardman to fetch her horse.
‘Now ready yourself, Kate. We’ve no time to dawdle. I’ll scribble a note to O’Brien and then you must go. My man will go with you. Trust him. And remember, Kate, you are with friends. We’ll not fail you.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The tide of human distress was now in full flood. Ireland was emptying. The Irish were leaving their doomed land in droves, like refugees escaping war. Thousands filled the roads to the ports of Dublin, Limerick and Cork and the smaller harbours of Baltimore, Ballina and Tralee. Those who could walk no further watched the procession of the stronger move on without them and waited to die. There was no pity.
The landlords accelerated the mass evacuation. It was the quickest, cheapest way for them to clear their estates of unwanted, unproductive human weight. They hired the ships and paid the fares on vessels already condemned as unfit for the Atlantic crossing. Timbers were rotten, seams uncaulked, sails shredded and their masters lied about the ration of food and water aboard. They were called the ‘coffin ships’. The port inspectors took their bribes and said nothing. There was much money to be made from misery.
The first ship to sail from Westport in County Mayo was grossly overloaded. Over four hundred emigrants were crowded into the hold. Despite a calm sea, the ship foundered on rocks and sank within sight of the land it had just left. All aboard were drowned, watched by those onshore who, only an hour before, had bid them farewell.
America was the dreamt-of destination, but only the fit and healthy were allowed to disembark there. Congress quickly passed emergency laws to bar the sick and diseased. Boston even refused entry into its harbour to all ships from Ireland and the New York harbour authorities demanded a bond of one thousand dollars from captains for every sick passenger aboard their ships. Ship owners refused to pay, and, after the suffering of the Atlantic crossing, shiploads of sick and starving immigrants were forced to sail north to Canada and the St Lawrence River. Grosse Island at the mouth of the river became their landing station and for many, many thousands, their burial ground.
Lord Palmerston, the future British Prime Minister, paid the entire costs of nine ships to sail from Sligo carrying two thousand of his tenants. Those who boarded the Aeolus, bound for Canada, were packed like herrings in a barrel. Over one hundred died during the crossing from typhus fever and dysentery. The survivors were put into the quarantined sheds on Grosse Island off Quebec as soon they landed. Many were too weak to walk off the ship.
For the first time, emigration across the Atlantic continued throughout the winter and this was the most severe in living memory. When another of Palmerston’s ships, the Richard Watson, arrived, the master reported that nearly half of his passengers had died en route and were thrown overboard. The survivors disembarked near-naked in a snow blizzard and there was ice on the St Lawrence River. Palmerston’s agents had promised every family money and an acre of land to help them resettle. The immigrants discovered there was no money and no land and Palmerston denied all knowledge of it.
Trevelyan appeared unmoved by the reports he read. But then, emigration was saving him money. The more Irish who left at the landlords’ expense, the fewer there were to gorge on English aid, and fewer still to fill the workhouses. He was also reassured by a letter sent to him by Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies.
The desire to reach America is so exceedingly strong among the Irish emigrants that they are content to submit to very great hardships during the voyage.
How many thousands sailed with new hope to the New World only to perish in the coffin ships will never be known. But it was written at the time that a road of drowned skeletons drifted back and forth with the tide, from the shores of Ireland to the coasts on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean.
There was a quicker, cheaper, less hazardous way to escape Ireland. Many more thousands went east across the Irish Sea to England, Scotland and Wales. A crossing that would take not months but hours.
The steamer Faugh a Ballagh was packed on its twice-weekly journey from Drogheda to Liverpool, a journey that cost only five shillings. Other shipping companies on the Mersey joined the lucrative business and emigrants were soon arriving at the rate of a thousand a day. By midsummer 1847, over three hundred thousand Irish had settled in Liverpool, a city with a population only a little over half that number. There were not enough police to cope and twenty thousand civilians had to be rapidly sworn in as special constables. A battalion of infantry was hurriedly garrisoned at the docks.
Ships sailing from Cardiff and Swansea, carrying coal from the Welsh valleys to Cork and Dublin, no longer returned to their home port empty. Their owners filled the coal dust holds with paupers at two shillings each for the one-way crossing. Some were given free passage as human ballast. There was a regular ferry service from Belfast and Londonderry to Glasgow and there were sometimes queues of people half a mile long waiting for a space.
Once they had landed, the Irish poor knew they would no longer be hungry. Britain’s Poor Laws would provide for them. In return, they brought with them the diseases of famine and within months, as th
ey spread out across the country, they carried typhus and dysentery with them. The British people would now pay in kind for their government’s indifference.
William Smith O’Brien was a handsome man who lived on his brother’s estate at Dromoland Castle in County Clare. He was a Protestant, a member of the Westminster Parliament and an active participant in the Catholic Association, dedicated to the repeal of the Union with England. Whatever the political contradictions, he was first and foremost an Irishman.
He was known as a benign and benevolent landlord and was serious in his politics. He passionately believed that only by political negotiation could peace and Irish independence ever be achieved. Violence would hinder change rather than hastening it. He believed that whatever new freedoms the Irish might enjoy, they were only England’s to give.
He changed his mind one day in his ancestral town of Cashel. The square was packed. It was a political meeting, the first for many years. Such meetings were prohibited but there was not a Redcoat nor a peeler to be seen. Two men stood astride a statue of a saint. One was a tall, well-built young man with auburn hair that all but touched his shoulders. The second man was a priest. Draped around the statue was a string of green flags.
O’Brien was curious. He was not in town for politics. Wheat and its weekly price were his business that day. It was the voice that held him. A gentle coaxing voice that made men move closer and cup their ears to hear it better. A voice with sudden strength that rose loud with such venom and anger that men clenched their fists and tightened their jaws. They had not heard its like since Daniel O’Connell, the Great Liberator himself. The crowd pushed nearer. They cheered loudly as the man paused and were silent again as he spoke. But these were not O’Connell’s words. The young man with the bright eyes had a different manifesto. His was a call to arms.
‘We have been conquered not once but many times. Our lands confiscated, our churches razed, our people brought to the very verge of extinction. We were once beautiful people, our men famous for their strength, our women for their beauty. Our land was a beacon of learning, our poets, bards and music known and loved here and beyond. Our monasteries were the hubs of learning, full of light and culture. Look at us now. Our earth and our people exist for English profit. Only when they rid this land of us will they be content. The English sent fifty thousand pounds to help the starving Irish. They’ve sent twenty million pounds for the Negro slaves in the West Indies. Such are our masters’ priorities.
‘I defy anyone to exaggerate the misery of our people. Look at yourselves. You are like famished sheep. Will you let your Ireland perish like a lamb? Or will she turn as a baited lion turns? Let us unmuzzle the wolf dogs! They are here throughout the land fit to be untied and they become more savage every day they are kept caged. Let us together push the English back into the sea. Curse the tyrants that suck our blood. Fight! Fight for Ireland. Let our blood flow. Fight for liberty!’
That day, an Irishman was preaching rebellion, insurrection and revolution for all to hear in the streets of Cashel. It fired a passion in O’Brien, descendant of the king who had defeated the Vikings. The eight-hundred-year-old bloodline was suddenly rekindled. He resolved that hour to seek out the tall man with the auburn hair, the one called Daniel Coburn.
‘He does not ride with women, Miss Kathryn. He is very selective. He has to be. I think you are a very doubtful recruit.’
They sat facing each other at the end of a long oak table in the hall of O’Brien’s castle at Dromoland. He had placed a tall candelabrum midway along it and a platform of light walled off the far end of the room. Kate had not seen a servant or any person since she had arrived. O’Brien provided bread and a round of cheese and filled two mugs from a jug of porter. He passed one to her.
‘Mind you,’ he said. ‘We could make splendid capital out of it. Just think. The daughter of a knight of the realm, the former Relief Commissioner himself, creating havoc and gallivanting around the country with a ragged band of Irish revolutionaries. What wonderful propaganda!’
‘Why do you mock me?’ Kate said. ‘I am already disgraced and my father is no longer anyone’s favourite except his enemies’. I’ve come to you for help. I cannot go to anyone else. If they find me I shall be sent to England. I don’t think I could bear that.’
‘So you want to help Ireland?’
‘I want to help the Irish who are suffering.’
‘There are good Irish ladies already doing that. Why don’t you join them? Anna Parnell of the Ladies’ Land League will find you a place, I’ve no doubt.’
‘My father will drag me from them. I can only bring them harm.’
‘Then what help can you be to us?’ O’Brien asked.
‘Whatever help you need.’
‘To cook and sew? Woman’s work?’
‘Whatever you want me to do, I will do.’
‘Are you fit to do it?’
‘I am fit.’
‘This is men’s work.’
‘And I am a woman.’
‘Yes, and you are untried in what we do.’
‘Then you will teach me.’
‘You are very cocksure of yourself, sitting here comfortably, eating my cheese. But life would be very different once you rode with us, very different indeed.’
‘I’ll bear that difference. That’s why I am here.’
There was the sudden sound of a chair scraping the floor and movement at the far end of the room. A voice said, ‘Would you steal? Would you kill?’
Daniel Coburn entered the pool of light and sat on the edge of the table close to her. How often, despite herself, had she conjured up a face to match the eyes she remembered from that evening by the river at Fivemilebridge, when he had ridden away with Moran? How often had she dreamt of it since he had fired his pistol and saved her from the hands of the mob on that day riding with Una? Now he was so close she could feel his breath on her forehead. His nearness was suffocating. It frightened her. It intoxicated her. She trembled as he spoke.
‘Tell me, Miss Kathryn, if you came with us, would you select the role you’d want to play? Pick and choose according to the time of day? Whether the sun was out or not, whether it was warm or cold? Would you wear gloves to protect your dainty English hands so that guilt did not stain them?’
‘I would not wear gloves,’ she said. ‘You mock me too.’
Coburn laughed as another man moved from out of the dark. A priest stepped forward.
‘Don’t, Daniel. We know who she is and what she has done.’
He held out his hand to Kate. ‘I’m Father Kenyon from Tipperary. Silly people call me the Patriot Priest.’
He turned to Coburn. ‘She has done much for our people, we know that well enough. If we cannot enlist her, the least we can do is show her some gratitude and good manners.’
He reached over the table and drank porter from O’Brien’s jug.
‘Miss Macaulay…’ Coburn said.
‘I am Kate,’ she interrupted. ‘I have no other name.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘Indeed I do. I have read Sir Robert’s letter and it makes sad reading. But then Ireland is brimming with sad stories, enough I think to sink her. Yours is just one of a million.’
‘How much did Sir Robert tell?’
‘That you have mongrel blood.’
‘Enough of that,’ said Father Kenyon. ‘Stop your blather, Daniel. It wouldn’t do for any one of us to inspect our pedigree too closely. Now stop it!’
‘Sorry, Father,’ said Coburn. He was still smiling. ‘And sorry to you too, Kate. I’m not used to company of your sort nowadays. But I do seem to remember that it was you who was prickly the last time we met.’
‘It was a very frightening time. You must forgive me.’
‘I forgive you. I do, really. In his letter, Sir Robert says you have crossed sides.’
‘I had no choice. I am my mother’s child.’
‘But I think you turned long before your father put you out.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Can I guess when it was? And where?’
She waited. She did not answer.
‘Was it Limerick?’ he asked. ‘When you said goodbye to the Keegans?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I was there. Only yards from you.’
‘You followed me?’
‘Not exactly. I had other business there that day. But I knew you’d be coming. You have become a friend of our people and I wanted to see you again. I think we owe you something, Kate. You have your story. One day I will tell you mine. All of us here have things to tell. Our stories explain everything. What we are and why we are here. They are our credentials.’
‘Will you take me?’ she asked.
‘What are your credentials, Kate?’
‘Only my story and you know it now.’
‘We mean to change things, Kate. Change Ireland. Kick the English out. Your own people. You will join us in that. Fight with us against the English?
‘They are not my people. How many times must I say that to convince you? My people are not the English nor the Irish. They are the people who are suffering so dreadfully.’
‘What you have seen restores your pity?’
‘I am not wanting in pity. I ask you again. Will you take me?’
For some minutes Coburn said nothing. The priest emptied O’Brien’s jug of porter, refilled it and cut himself a slice of cheese.
Coburn came and sat beside her. He did not look at O’Brien or Father Kenyon. He looked directly into her eyes. Then he took her right hand and shook it.
‘Yes! You can ride with us. All the way to the gallows. Ride with us, Kate, and you and I will hang together.’
‘Do not tempt the Lord,’ said the Patriot Priest. ‘He is aggravated enough already. But may luck ride with you both.’
He kissed his fingers, crossed himself and touched their heads. It was his blessing.
She rode with them as hard and as long as any man among them. She asked no favours. None were offered. If two of the more prominent Young Irelanders were suspicious of her, it did not last. In the months that followed her introduction, Thomas Meagher, son of the Mayor of Waterford, and Gavan Duffy, a grocer’s son from Monaghan, tried many times in many ways to test her. She did not fail.
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