The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  “All of them,” John said. “They don’t matter. I know what this country needs.”

  “So does Cooper,” Moore said. “I envy such knowledge.”

  By the time the fruit was served, they had managed to change the subject. John watched his brother’s long, deft fingers separate an apple from its skin, the sharp silver knife twisting an even curl of red peel.

  “Later this week,” he said, “I may ride out to Ballycastle to visit the Treacys.”

  “An excellent idea,” Moore said. “She is a splendid, sharp, saucy girl. She is exactly what you need.”

  “Thomas Treacy is not a wealthy man,” John said. “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “That is no concern of mine. I am pleased that it doesn’t bother you. But I recommend you venture no political views to Thomas Treacy. There is the old Catholic stock for you with a vengeance. He is still waiting for the Stuarts, poor fellow.”

  “Ellen is not,” John said. “She shares my sympathies.”

  “Then she is in love with you,” Moore said. “Women have no politics, thank God. You should have more sense than to discuss politics with a woman. I did so once in London, and we had the devil of a row. Making up was most pleasant, though. I believe that she knew it would be, and thus caused the quarrel. They are very clever.”

  “And Judith Elliott,” John said. “She is most patriotic.”

  “That is different,” Moore said. “Mrs. Elliott is English, and they often become Irish patriots if they settle here. It has something to do with the weather. Mrs. Elliott is a romantic; it is part of her charm. She and Ellen Treacy are not at all alike, and of the two I think I prefer Ellen. Such is my own patriotism.”

  “But you do think Mrs. Elliott lovely. You have said so.”

  “Lovely indeed, and of a most loving disposition, I have no doubt. But a steady diet of high sentiments would not be to my taste. Still, Elliott thrives. I may be mistaken.”

  As they talked, John was remembering being a very small boy in Alicante, the air heavy with odours, the roofs below them turning purple in the evening light, their father elaborate in his Spanish clothes. He was talking of home, an unimaginable place called Mayo, thick green, warm with the memories of family. Now they were here, two brothers, restless in different ways.

  Killala, June 20

  MacCarthy watched the dancers.

  He was standing beside the fiddler, his long, ungainly body propped against the wall of Donal Hennessey’s farmhouse, one of the largest in Killala, two wide, deep rooms with a true fireplace in one of them. Nothing in the world was more tormenting to him than an image which had not yet become an image. He was like a woman giving birth to a cauled child. The moon and the surface which held its light were clotted together in his imagination, rain-shrouded.

  The fiddle fought against the room’s other noises, the feet upon the floor, the voices and laughter of the men and women standing against the wall, too old for dancing or too tired. The fiddle spoke to the thudding bare feet of dancers upon the mud floor, and was answered by them. There is a fine girl, he thought, watching one of the dancers. What girl is that, Maire Spellacy? A great, strapping girl, beef to the heels, as they said in Mayo, their minds always upon cattle. He watched her, prodded to a faint sensuality, but the image nagged at him. For an hour it had given him no rest. He drank half of his glass of whiskey, and raised it in salute to the fiddler, who smiled with his lips, but his eyes were turned inwards towards his music. Terrible people, musicians, wedded to their wood and their catgut, caressing them like lovers. Someone filled his glass. Drinking was expected of him.

  Soon it would be Saint John’s Eve. Wood for the bonfire had already been piled high upon Steeple Hill, and when the night came there would be bonfires on every hill from there to Downpatrick Head. There would be dancing and games in the open air, and young men would try their bravery leaping through the flames. There would even be young girls leaping through, for it was helpful in the search for a husband to leap through a Saint John’s Eve fire, the fires of midsummer. The sun was at its highest then, and the fires spoke to it, calling it down upon the crops. It was the turning point of the year, and the air was vibrant with spirits. When the fires had died down, the cattle would be driven through the embers, and hazel wands lighted from the embers would singe their backs. Ashes from the fire would be set aside to mix with next year’s seed corn.

  Good reason had Hussey to stand in his pulpit and give out against the bonfires, for they had little enough to do with Saint John. They were older than Christ, older than the Druids who had been driven out by Patrick. In MacCarthy’s Kerry, on Saint John’s Eve, the oldest woman in the townland would crawl three times around the fire, praying for the crops. And to bring home a burning stick was to have good luck all year. Saint John’s Eve frightened MacCarthy by suggesting the antiquity of human life, the remote past casting its shadow outwards from the fires, darkening the flame-reddened faces. Still, it did no harm, and this could be one of the biggest harvests in the memory of Mayo, the weather fine with soft rains and bright sunlight, the corn growing plump. It did no harm at all to keep the sun with you. O’Sullivan had a poem about Saint John’s Eve, a poem too soft and easy in its construction, but not a bad poem at all. He was no man to try a contest with; at his laziest, he was better than most.

  When the dance had ended, Ferdy O’Donnell, who was one of the dancers, joined MacCarthy against the wall, a jug in one hand.

  “Well, Owen, it is about time we gave another try to Virgil, one of these nights. Come early, and we will have something to eat and then set to work.” He had been briefly a seminarian, and had now this plan to work through six books of the Aeneid with MacCarthy’s help.

  “We will, Ferdy. I was in Kilcummin a few nights ago, and thought that soon I must call in on yourself and Maire.”

  “You had other business in Kilcummin, I am told,” O’Donnell said, dropping his voice. He nodded towards the other room.

  “I had a fool’s business. Acting as secretary to a quartet of blackguards.”

  “It is no quartet now. There are more than forty Whiteboys now in the barony, sworn Whiteboys. They are acting under Duggan in Kilcummin, and Hennessey here in Killala.”

  “But not you?”

  “Ach, ’tis not my style either, Owen. What have beings like the two of us to do with Whiteboys? Sure I wouldn’t walk down the road to see even a faction fight. Mind you, I’m not saying they are wrong. There may be less talk now about evictions.”

  “If you will not be sworn, Duggan will not weep,” MacCarthy said. “You are a well-respected man in Kilcummin, and you did not earn that respect with a cudgel.” It was not flattery. A quiet, clear-headed young man and a good farmer. They respected his learning, and they remembered that he was one of the old O’Donnells.

  But their talk moved then to the Aeneid. O’Donnell had a decent seminarian’s knowledge of Latin, but not the faintest notion of what the Aeneid was like as a poem. Translate thirty lines a day, and stop at the thirtieth, wherever you might find yourself. What was it that men like O’Donnell found to love in the Latin? Perhaps the sentences built like good fences, every word solidly in place, and each one giving strength to all the others. A marvellous language. Language of mystery and miracle, it brought Christ to earth, placed His body upon man’s tongue.

  When Hennessey came to summon him to the west room he was loath to go. What had bleeding cattle to do with the far moon, or the notes of a violin, or Aeneas cast up on Dido’s shore, a kingdom burned behind him and a kingdom yet to be built, but now a queen amorous and pious. Troy flaming like the bonfires of Saint John’s Eve.

  “You are one of us now, Owen boy,” Hennessey said, clapping him on the shoulder. “That letter had a blade to it like a knife.”

  “I am like hell,” MacCarthy said. “I told you that I was not.”

  “Sure Duggan only wants you to have a drink with us. You would be wise to keep in with Malachi. He will rule the barony.”r />
  “The magistrates rule the barony,” MacCarthy said. “The magistrates and the yeomen.”

  “Cooper has spent the last two days riding up and riding down to the other landlords,” Hennessey said. “He will have them frightened out of their wits. He even went to the Papist landlords.”

  “Landlords have their own religion,” MacCarthy said.

  In the west room they were gathered around Duggan, all of them standing, Quigley and O’Carroll and nine or ten men, a few in their thirties, but most of them far younger. Some were farmers, and some were labourers. What business had spalpeens in a quarrel between farmers and landlords? The room was heavy with their smell. O’Carroll handed him a large tumbler of whiskey, and Duggan greeted him, unsmiling.

  “You are a man of your word,” MacCarthy said. “You have begun a Whiteboy war in this quiet corner of Mayo.”

  “The Whiteboys of Killala,” Duggan said. The pompous title stuffed his mouth. “We will protect the people of this barony against Protestant landlords.”

  “A religious war, is it? You have grown more ambitious.” Fine whiskey, the colour of a pearl, with fire buried within.

  “Sure what else has it ever been?” one of the spalpeens asked. Eighteen or nineteen, and shaped like MacCarthy himself, long arms and heavy sloping shoulders. We are a tribe of our own, MacCarthy thought, bodies shaped for the spade. He began to speak, but changed his mind.

  “Well can he tell us,” Duggan said, nodding to the spalpeen. “He is one of the poor people driven out of Ulster last year by the Orange Protestants. Himself and all his people, with their cabin burned behind them.”

  “I am sorry,” MacCarthy said to the lad. “You have had a hard time of it.”

  “It could happen here,” Duggan said. “We all know that.” He rolled his bullock’s eyes towards the others, and they nodded.

  “Worse could happen,” MacCarthy said.

  “Or better,” Hennessey said. “Drink up, lads.” He moved his jug towards them. “These lads are just after taking the oath, Owen. You would do well to take it yourself. The schoolmaster should be with the people.”

  MacCarthy drained his tumbler, so that it would be empty and waiting when the jug came to him.

  Quigley craned forwards his bald moon of a head. “The schoolmaster in Kilcummin has taken the oath.”

  MacCarthy watched the whiskey fill his glass. “The Kilcummin schoolmaster is an ignorant dirty man who is a disgrace to learning. He was driven out of Ballintubber because of his ignorance, and every schoolmaster in Mayo knows that. They are not fools in Ballintubber. They are decent men with a respect for learning, but sure he is good enough for Kilcummin. They deserve no better.”

  “He is a man with books in his house,” Quigley said hotly, “and a tremendous knowledge of the history of the Gaels from the time of Noah.”

  “Noah my arse,” MacCarthy said. “ ’Tis a wonder you did not have this prodigy write your letter for you.”

  “ ’Tis more than a schoolmaster you are, Owen. You are a poet and the writer of acclaimed verses.”

  “And you would break my pen to your coarse plough,” MacCarthy said. He felt the whiskey; his head danced.

  “It makes no sense,” Duggan said, “to have a fellow like this wander about without taking the oath, and him with our names in his head. He would shop us for the price of a jug.”

  “I am no informer,” MacCarthy said. “I want no part of you.”

  “It would be no harm done for you to take the oath, Owen,” Hennessey said. “There are good men in Kilcummin and in Killala who have taken the oath, and others will. These men here are as fine as you could wish, and they are men with friends.”

  “What you did the other night,” MacCarthy said, “was to put the fear of God into a mean, shameless little bastard. Let it rest there.”

  Duggan shook his head. “If you will not take the oath, we have no need for your advice. We have our plans made.”

  “By God, we do,” one of the farmers said. “We will rule the barony.”

  “You will not rule the gaolcart and the gallows,” MacCarthy said. “And that is how it will end, with your black tongues lolling out and your breeches soiled.”

  The music began again, and the sound of feet on the floor of close-packed clay. I should be there, MacCarthy thought. Let my head be filled with music and whiskey, not argument. He drank again.

  “By God, Owen MacCarthy,” one of the farmers said, “you should make us a poem about the raid upon Cooper by the Whiteboys of Killala.”

  “I will not,” MacCarthy said, furious. “My poems are not about churls crawling across fields to cut the legs of cattle. My art is noble in subject and language.”

  “You are too good for us, perhaps,” Duggan said. “You should be spending your days and nights with Treacy at Bridge-end House, with your poems about the glory of the Gael.”

  The army of the Gael. In Wexford they confronted armies, seized towns, banners marched before them, and their beacon fires blazed upon the hills. In far-distant France, great ships were making ready. Not here, not in this wet, muddy land beneath sullen hills.

  “There is always a welcome set before me at Bridge-end House,” he said, “and brandy at my hand and silver coins. Thomas Treacy knows the honour due to a poet who has mastered his craft.”

  “ ’Tis no great honour to keep a school in Killala,” Duggan said contemptuously. “You live as we do. More meanly than some of us.”

  “What can you know of such matters,” MacCarthy said, “huddled away in a corner of Mayo? I have seen the entire world, I am a travelled man, and I have been received with honour. I have seen the great waterwheel in Clonmel, and Dunboy Castle on the Cork coast where Murtough O’Sullivan held off the soldiers of the English King, and Dunluce Castle in Antrim amidst the black Presbyterians.” Hollow, the hollow words rattled like shells in his skull. I am drunk, he thought indifferently. Notes of music cut the shells.

  “You may have seen these things,” Quigley said. “But you will not see them again. It is said that you would not be welcome in some of the places you have been.” Moon head nodded. “Mind you, I say no word against your poetry. But Malachi has the right of it. ’Tis a queer sort of place for a man with the airs you give yourself.”

  “A poet always has his welcome,” MacCarthy said, “in the halls of the old gentry and in the beds of the young women. Without poets, we would be a people without a voice, and who would cut out his own tongue?”

  “ ’Tis a wonder you waste your days teaching sums to children.”

  “That is my trade,” MacCarthy said. “A poet has his trade and he has his craft.” And a moon which music itself could not reach. “I am a poet and a MacCarthy. Before we were driven into Kerry my people were lords of Clancarty.”

  “And how were you driven there?” Quigley asked. “In a carriage of fine wood with the arms of the MacCarthys painted on its side in greens and gold, like the Protestant gentry?”

  Duggan laughed. Rocks tumbling down a hillside. Two of the spalpeens looked at him and then at each other, then joined his laughter. Louts born of louts. MacCarthy turned upon them.

  “Why should lads like you follow this man?” he asked them, pointing to Duggan. “If his land is made safe, will life be easier for you? At the hiring fair, who sets the low price upon you, the gentry or the farmers?” Lined up like cattle or niggers while the bucks of the county rode by, pointing with their whips.

  “Perhaps we will not always be selling ourselves at the fair,” the lad from Ulster said.

  “You will,” MacCarthy said. “You were slaves on this land before Christ was crucified.”

  “A fine one you are to be talking about Christ,” Duggan said, “when the Christians of this barony are in need of help.”

  MacCarthy finished off his glass. He detested the room and those in it. Music pulled at him, proclaimed his distant identity.

  “Look at him,” Quigley said. “Much help that one could be to anyone.
He cannot even help himself to stand upright.”

  MacCarthy made a sudden lunge for him, missed his footing, and seized him by the jacket. The room danced.

  “Pull them apart,” Duggan said scornfully.

  When they were standing apart, Quigley was holding his hand to a scraped lip. MacCarthy stared at it stupidly.

  “Go back to your woman,” Duggan said. “Much good you will be to her.”

  “ ’Tis a disgrace to Killala,” O’Carroll said. “The schoolmaster living in open sin. Half of the women will not so much as talk to Judy Conlon, and she was a decent woman once. Before your time.”

  “ ’Tis a happy man that you would be to take my place one night a year,” MacCarthy said. “No man is ever more virtuous than the envious man.”

  “Now, now,” O’Carroll said, and took a step backward.

  “Go back to your woman,” Duggan said again.

  “I will,” MacCarthy said. “I will leave this mean, dispirited place.”

  “You are welcome to this jug, Owen,” Hennessey said. “Go home now and sleep.”

  “Well said. You are a better man than the company you are in, Donal Hennessey. That handsome, long-legged wife keeps you in good spirits.”

  Hennessey put a hand on his shoulder. “It is an honour to have a man like yourself in the parish.”

  “I will put into a satire the mean, ungrateful people of Killala. Excepting only yourself, Donal. Oh Christ, I am sorry for the people of Killala that they have earned Owen MacCarthy’s wrath.”

  “Get him out of here,” Duggan said.

  In the other, crowded room, MacCarthy held the jug aloft and shouted, “What woman goes home with Owen MacCarthy the poet?”

  He heard their giggling, hands held decorously to mouths. One girl, more reckless than the others, called out, “That girl would have the trouble of a lifetime when she walked into Judy Conlon’s house.”

  He felt a hand on his arm. Ferdy O’Donnell.

  “Would you like me to walk a bit of the way with you, Owen?”

  “And why should you wish to do that?” MacCarthy asked, drawing his arm free. “I know the way. We will construe Virgil these long summer evenings, Ferdy. I am a very fine scholar.”