The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  When Father O’Brien concluded his sermon with the traditional Christmas blessing, as if this were a year no different from any other, Ellen could contain herself no longer.

  Father O’Brien, his back now to the people, had begun to recite the opening words of the Nicene Creed, ‘Credo in Unum Deum …’ when he sensed a commotion behind him. Casting a quick glance over his left shoulder, he saw Ellen Rua O’Malley – shawl clutched tightly in one hand and her three children trailing from the other – storming for the door, her wild red hair streaming out behind her.

  He faltered in the Creed, the Latin words of belief somehow ringing hollow against the sight of this woman leaving the church in anger. A murmur rose from the crowd. Abandoning the service, he turned to face them. Ellen had by now reached the back of the church, whereupon she turned and looked straight at him. He held her stare, though the fire flowing from her eyes ignited the space between them with its intensity. The O’Malley woman was enraged – and with him!

  He expected a tirade. What he got was two words – not much above a whisper, but spoken with a vehemence which cut the air – ‘Pontius Pilate!’

  Then she was gone into the mountains. Into the silent night of Christmas.

  Ellen knew he would come. Even before Biddy rushed into her cabin to tell her, ‘Ellen, the priest is coming! The priest is coming down the valley!’

  Her actions on Christmas Eve had caused quite a stir in the locality. It was unheard of for anyone, let alone a woman, to walk out of the Mass, and at Christmas too! And then to insult the holy priest, and him on the altar of God.

  Michael, who had followed her out, supported her actions. ‘We can’t depend on the Church. The bishops will always line up with the Crown to get more money for Maynooth, and more power for themselves. And come the day when we’re all lying stretched with the hunger, and no one to give us a decent burial, the Church and the Crown will still be saying, “What can we do? It’s the will of God.’”

  She nodded. ‘We have to leave Ireland, Michael – get to America before it’s too late.’

  ‘We will, Ellen. I promise you, we will.’

  But now, the priest was coming to see her.

  The village would see this as a sign of shame on it, that the priest had to ride out from Clonbur to talk sense to Ellen Rua. But the way Ellen saw it, the priest had more to answer for than she did.

  ‘I’ll speak to him alone,’ she said to Michael, who wanted to stay. ‘Please. You take the children to the Tom Bawns’.’

  Michael reluctantly left her, and she could hear him rounding up the children outside as they made a fuss of the horse that had carried her visitor. Then the light from the doorway darkened, signalling the approach of her visitor. She got up from where she tended the fire, and wiped her hands.

  ‘God bless all here,’ the figure in the doorway said.

  ‘God bless all who enter,’ Ellen responded. ‘You’re welcome, Father.’

  At her invitation he sat across from her at the fire. ‘I think we might have a fall of snow yet – the sky has that colour to it,’ he began.

  She nodded, allowing him to ease into the conversation in this way if he chose. ‘Yes, Father, pray that we will. A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard, a white Christmas a green harvest,’ she said, quoting one of the many sean-fhocails she had learned from the Máistir. The priest, she could see, was uncomfortable at the choice of her words.

  He straightened himself, tore his gaze from the fire, and looked directly at her. ‘The Midnight Mass – it was a wrong thing to do, walking out like that. You caused scandal among the people, and scandal to your children.’

  Ellen was prepared for this, but was not prepared to sit meekly through it. ‘Well, Father,’ she said, ‘the Church is always great with condemning people for causing scandal. Sure, isn’t it their way of keeping the people down?’

  She saw him tense at this.

  ‘Is it not a scandal that the people are going hungry?’ she put to him. ‘Yet food is being exported to line the pockets of the merchants. Is it not a scandal that there is no work for our menfolk, when the whole country is a disgrace with lack of roads and bridges? Yet Ireland is a part of the great British Empire – the richest power there is?’

  Father O’Brien was taken aback by this attack.

  ‘Well?’ she challenged him.

  ‘Mrs O’Malley, please—’

  ‘Is it not a scandal that my husband journeyed all the way to Clonbur to tell you how, in the face of Famine, we are being further ground down by Pakenham, for you to say, or do, nothing about it?’

  ‘You’re wrong, Mrs O’Malley,’ he countered. ‘I went to Tuam. I spoke with the archbishop.’

  ‘Then why is the Church silent on this? Why will the Catholic Church not lead us out of our poverty and misery? That is the scandal, Father.’

  ‘Ellen Rua!’ The priest raised his voice, demanding her attention. ‘Now, you listen to me for a moment. When Michael visited me, I was horrified to hear of Pakenham’s doings. Shortly thereafter, I set out for Tuam. Archbishop MacHale, in his wisdom – and he is experienced in these matters – advised that I should neither say nor do anything which might inflame the situation. I am bound by my vow of obedience to obey his Grace in all things.’

  ‘But is nothing to be done, then?’ she demanded.

  ‘The archbishop is doing something: he will consult with the other bishops in General Assembly at Maynooth. They will assess how the Crown is dealing with the present crisis, and if necessary, a deputation will go to Rome to petition the Pope to intercede with Queen Victoria. In the meantime, there should be no disturbances, no riotous behaviour, which might prejudice the position of the Holy Father.’

  ‘This is an old story, Father,’ Ellen replied, unappeased. ‘Nothing has been done by the bishops to improve the position of the poor since we were joined with England in the Union. And neither Queen Victoria nor her Government will recognize the Church of Rome. All that will happen is that more monies will be sent to Maynooth, and the bishops will fall silent again.’

  ‘It is not right for you to speak this way about Holy Mother Church, who always cares for her flock as Christ did.’

  ‘The Church cares only when it comes to the collection of dues,’ she rejoined. ‘It is no longer the Church of Christ. It is the Church of businessmen and traders, the Church of towns and cities, not the Church of the hills and valleys. When did the archbishop ever set foot out of Tuam to see how like animals we live, scavenging the bogs and bare rocks for what we can get to keep body and soul together?’

  ‘This is blasphemy you are speaking, Ellen Rua,’ the priest retorted, thinking what a mistake he had made in coming here.

  ‘Well, if it is itself then God will strike me down, Father!’

  ‘God forgive you for that, Ellen Rua, for I cannot,’ he said, making the Sign of the Cross on himself.

  She looked at him across the hearth. ‘You are, I believe, a good man,’ she said. ‘But you have been too long at Maynooth, among the men of power – the priest-politicians.’

  Father O’Brien studied her now. How did she know these things? Her father, the fallen priest, must have turned her against the Church, the Church that had turned on him, turned him out. That was it.

  ‘The Church that I, and these villagers, belong to is the Church of no voice, but it is the real Church of Christ. And you and the bishops have forgotten that, Father.’

  There, she had said what she meant to say, she would say no more to him. It was not against him she spoke. He had to follow the rules. It was against the system itself that she raged. Layer upon layer of privileged, educated men laying down the law for the uneducated and underprivileged.

  She rose as he made to leave. ‘God go with you on the road, Father,’ she bade him, no trace in her voice of the anger she had displayed towards his Church.

  As he nudged the big grey mare on to the mountain track which would carry him back towards Finny, the young priest’s mi
nd was filled with the woman’s fierce condemnation of the Church he served.

  Ellen Rua was a devout woman, but also a strong woman who dared to speak her mind. He had no doubt she wasn’t alone in her feelings about the Church. He had sensed for some time that the people felt let down by him, but most of all by the Church. A Church that had gone astray.

  When he came to the ford at Beal a tSnámha, the priest’s thoughts turned to Ellen Rua’s husband. He remembered how he had ridden out to this point to deliver Michael back across the water, the day he had come to talk about Pakenham. As the water swept up around his feet, he wondered what it must be like to be the husband of such a woman. Soon he would return to the warmth of his parish house in Clonbur. He would change his wet clothes for dry ones. Yet, back there in the cabin, just himself and the woman across from each other, he had been conscious of something being present. Something that his priest’s house in Clonbur, with all its comforts, didn’t have. Even while under attack from this woman – her eyes and hair all ablaze in the firelight – he had felt alive, invigorated, unshackled.

  As he looked back in the direction of Maamtrasna, he promised himself that – for the Church’s sake – he would not let the red-haired woman down.

  14

  The snow did come – big soft, downy flakes, dancing earthwards, decorating the valley in white. The children were delighted. Mary and Katie ambushed Patrick and some of the other village boys, who then pelted them with hard, hand-packed snow, sending the young warriors home to Ellen in tears. The tears soon passed, but the snow didn’t. It hung on to usher in a white New Year.

  Ellen loved the stillness the snow brought. When the first new moon of the New Year came, she went to her place by the lake. She stood and watched the moon’s yellow light splash down on to the Mask. Unmoving, she listened to the rhythm of the land, the usual night sounds stifled by the blanket of snow. She had been thus occupied for some time when a scratching sound disturbed the tranquillity. It seemed to be coming from the far side of a nearby clump of bushes. Ellen crept up to the bush, expecting to see a fox or some other wild animal. Instead she found Roberteen Bawn.

  The boy was bent over the snow-covered ground, apparently burying something. Intent on what he was doing, he had not heard her approach. That rascaleen’s up to some mischief again, thought Ellen. Out scratching around in the night, like that. Quietly she plucked a handful of berries from a hollybush, then cast them over the bushes at the crouching boy.

  Roberteen Bawn leapt up swearing: ‘The divil! God’s curse on you – whoever’s there!’

  He turned this way and that but could see no one. Then he heard her laughter. He knew it instantly: the red-haired woman, making a laugh at him again. All the same, when Ellen stepped out from the bushes, he was flushed with the gladness of seeing her.

  ‘Well, Roberteen, it’s only me,’ she greeted him as she approached. ‘What was it you were doing?’

  ‘Ah, nothing – nothing at all,’ he said, and put his hands behind his back.

  ‘Was it burying something you were – a secret trinket, a message from someone special – burying it under the new moon?’ she teased.

  ‘No, not that!’ He didn’t want her thinking there was someone else, that he had cast off his affections for her now that she was full with the child.

  She walked round behind him. He kept turning with her. He had something in his hands. Something he was hiding from her. Something he hadn’t yet buried in the hole in the earth … Then she knew.

  ‘It’s the “Mayo moon” you’re doing, isn’t it, Roberteen?’ she asked, her eyes twinkling in its light. ‘Well, well … it is.’

  Sheepishly the youth looked down at the ground. Then, slowly, he brought his hands to the front and held them out for Ellen to see. They were full of the earth he had taken from the hole in the ground. Only then did he look up at her.

  ‘’Tis an old custom,’ he began. ‘My mother told me … for the young men in Mayo and the West … the night of the first new moon in the New Year … to go and lift the clay out of the ground …’ he continued haltingly, embarrassed to be telling this to her.

  ‘I know, Roberteen,’ she said, helping him out. ‘And then, when you say the special words over the handful of earth, you will see your bride-to-be in a dream tonight.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ he said shyly. ‘My mother said I should be thinking now of finding a girl for myself and getting married before the year is out.’

  ‘And you will, Roberteen, you will.’ Ellen reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. ‘She’ll be a fine girl, and a lucky girl too, to get a spirited young fellow like yourself.’

  ‘Well, I hope she’ll be half the woman you are, Ellen Rua,’ he blurted.

  Now it was Ellen who flushed at the passion in his voice.

  ‘C’mon now, I’ll say the words with you,’ she said breezily, wanting to break off this conversation.

  ‘Does it matter, Ellen Rua, that we’re standing here in Galway, when it’s under a Mayo moon we’re supposed to be?’ he enquired with that childlike innocence he sometimes had.

  ‘Not at all, Roberteen,’ she assured him. ‘Sure, isn’t it all the one – Mayo/Galway, Galway/Mayo? The same moon is up over the lot of us. Let’s say the words.’

  So, in the bright darkness of the Mayo moon, the lake behind them and the white fields before them, they recited the lovers’ prayer. He – young, bursting with manhood, holding out his handful of earth, in thrall to her. She, shining in the moonlight before him, all that his young heart desired.

  New moon, new moon, new moon high Show to me my true love nigh Show her face, her skin so fair Show the colour of her hair

  Light my dreams this night so she May in your light appear to me New moon, new moon, let me see If one day we will married be

  As they said the last two lines, the young man looked at Ellen, and in his eyes she saw the misty look of lost love. The look she had seen there before – the night she had sung at the céilí. She felt that the boy wanted to kiss her, but that he would not do so, unless she gave him some indication that it was all right. A tenderness for him swept over her, and for a moment she was tempted to let him. But she mustn’t. It would be wrong, and he would interpret it for something else. Instead, she tightened her hold on his arm for a moment and then let go of it.

  ‘There! Now it’s done, Roberteen, and tonight you will have sweet dreams of your true love,’ she said, trying to dispel the awkwardness. But he didn’t answer. ‘Promise you’ll tell me who she is, Roberteen … won’t you?’ she said then.

  At this, he shook himself away from her, and the intensity of his reply startled Ellen: ‘I’ll not be dreaming tonight, or any night, of some young slip of a girl for me to marry. There’s only the one I dream of every night, and the way it is, I’m thinking I never will marry at all.’

  He flung the fistful of earth down at her feet, and then he was gone, hurrying, back up towards the village and away from her.

  As the new year moved through January, Ellen stuck religiously to her old year resolution of teaching the children English. Each day, excepting Sunday of course, she saw to it that the Lessons, whatever else they covered, contained a large dose of the English language. The children had a good ear for the strange-sounding, narrow language, and so, with a mixture of both pride and regret, Ellen watched them progress.

  Michael had decided that they should wait to see what the bishops would do about the landlords before taking action. He had never seemed better in himself, healthy and happy, and things were much as always between them: a mixture of tenderness and caring, her condition not dampening their desire for one another’s bodies.

  All of this gave Ellen a growing reassurance that maybe the events of Samhain had been nothing more than an illusion, a product of the changes taking place in her body, the night itself, and her own fertile imagination.

  When the weather permitted, Michael, along with Martin Tom Bawn, had taken to going up the mountain in search
of new places where lumpers might be cultivated in secret. This they did under cover of dusk, to avoid the ever-watchful eyes of Pakenham’s spies.

  In the course of one of these expeditions, the two men came upon a spot overlooking Glenbeg which was inaccessible from the valley below and protected from above by a big overhang of rock.

  They stumbled on it by accident after they had startled a hare. The hare, in its flight, seemed to disappear right over the side of the mountain. Turning to Michael, Martin Tom Bawn said, ‘Where the hare goes, grass grows, and where grass grows, praties will grow.’ So they followed the hare’s route to a large outcropping of rock, beyond which they couldn’t see. Edging their way along a precariously narrow ledge, they rounded the overhang to find that the mountainside seemed to cut away back into itself, revealing a patch of ground about thirty feet wide and sixty feet long, filled with marshland grasses and boulders and stones of all shapes and sizes.

  The two men looked at each other, excited at their find.

  ‘This will do the job rightly!’ Martin Tom Bawn exclaimed, bending down to test the soil. ‘The lumper will grow well here, Michael.’

  ‘You were right about the hare, Martin,’ Michael replied.

  ‘Faith I was! Them’s clever fellows. They know every inch of the mountain and it’s not too often you see them caught, either. They’re even too glic for the fox himself!’

  With that, the two began the task of clearing their find. Day by day, they started with the small stones, then the bigger rocks, stacking them up around the sides of the Hare’s Garden, as they called their secret place. It was backbreaking toil, but if they were to be ready for spring planting, then the work had to be done, and neither man complained. Martin Tom Bawn quoted the old saying: