by Colin Murphy
He sometimes wondered if armed revolt was actually the only way. The Land League disapproved of acts of violence, which was ironic in Owen’s eyes, as one of the reasons he’d attended local meetings had been in the hope of running into the extremist Fenian Donal Doherty, whom he’d encountered in Irishtown. Not that he was keen to embark on a life of terrorism; whatever about an armed uprising, he wasn’t in the habit of assassinating landlords, despite the violent notions he often nurtured about Boycott. But something about Doherty had fascinated him. The man obviously had courage and was utterly ruthless. He also had the will and the means, albeit violent, to rid them of Boycott. Perhaps Owen held the dark, guilty hope that he might encourage Doherty to direct his attention towards the land agent, leaving Owen without blood on his hands and with a relatively clear conscience.
But there was something else about Doherty. That day in Irishtown he’d had a strong suspicion that Doherty recognised him, although the man never admitted as much. He’d unsuccessfully racked his brain to recall when he might have encountered the rebel Fenian. The mystery still nagged at him.
He’d demurred when offered the opportunity to join their band of assassins that day. Out of his sense of responsibility to his family? Conscience? Cowardice? The latter notion troubled him. Perhaps he was a coward. As far back as his youth, Thomas had always hinted that he was chicken-hearted, without ever calling him a coward outright. Yet there had been times in his life when he’d acted with courage, though out of necessity rather than choice. But given the opportunity, would he really be prepared to risk his life in the fight against landlordism, or to fire a bullet into another man’s head, for that matter? One way or another, did he have the guts? Maybe he would never know.
Doherty had let him go about his business that day, but not before suggesting they might call on him in the future. But the knock on his door had never come, which in many ways was a relief, as he would have incurred Síomha’s wrath at its fiercest for consorting with such men.
‘I’ve brought the cart around.’ His son’s voice startled him to reality. Tadhg was already working at the soil with a potato hook.
‘Grand,’ he replied, looking towards the cottage. Síomha was ushering Niamh towards the gate and school, and his daughter waved at him before scampering up the track with her satchel in one hand and a warm potato in the other. Síomha began to walk to the field to begin her day’s labour alongside him.
He was suddenly struck by the terrible vision of his family cast from their home at the onset of winter, wandering the roads freezing and starving, perhaps forced to seek sanctuary in the workhouse. It brought a shudder of revulsion. Would Niamh survive such ordeals? And despite her strength, would Síomha? And what of Tadhg with his future wiped away? Owen was suddenly aware that his choices were dwindling, his hand being forced. Captain Charles Boycott was like a splinter of glass moving ever closer to their hearts, and he, Owen, had to find a solution to the problem of the land agent very, very soon.
If only Donal Doherty had turned up, done the necessary, and rid them of Boycott. But you could never find a decent Fenian killer when you needed one.
Captain Boycott tapped his heels into the gelding and leaned forward over her flowing grey mane, gripping the reins tightly. He could feel Iron Duke’s tremendous haunches rippling beneath him as they hurled him towards the ditch, hooves throwing up sods at the pursuing riders. Duke launched himself into the air and sailed over the furrow, his forelegs touching down a good yard clear, before his hind quarters followed and propelled Boycott into the field. He grinned to himself, patting the snorting horse on the neck as the constable and Asheton Weekes followed suit. The fourth rider, a hired bodyguard, lost his nerve and brought his horse up short with a skidding little dance to the edge of the ditch.
Asheton pulled up alongside him as the constable rode past and stopped ten yards away, granting them due deference, not assuming he could be party to their conversation.
‘That’s a shilling you owe me.’
‘I’m a dashed fool to accept these wagers, Charles. You’re the finest horseman in Mayo,’ Asheton said, panting from the effort of the race from Lough Mask House.
Boycott turned his attention to his temporary bodyguard, hired at Annie’s insistence. He’d had to fork out three shillings daily to find an Irishman who was mercenary enough to accept the job.
‘Get off up the field and cross there and be quick about it. I’m not paying you to have a day in the countryside.’
He drew the horse about, the tomfoolery over, his mind re-focused on the business in hand. A small flock of sheep scattered across the field at their approach. The constable trailed behind as they rode, watchful for any threat. All four of the men were armed with revolving pistols, and Boycott rather theatrically with an infantry officer’s sword. Asheton had grinned inwardly upon seeing it, a weapon with which he was familiar: royal cypher on the guard, brass back-strap and pommel, indicating a sword granted only to officers of high rank in the field. Captain Boycott had never seen a weapon drawn in anger during his brief spell in the army. Still, Asheton was happy to overlook Charles’s small contrivance. Perhaps it granted him the illusion of an officer leading a battle against the Fenian hordes.
The bodyguard rejoined them, riding alongside the constable as they followed a muddy track along the line of Lough Mask’s shore.
‘Who first?’ Boycott asked.
‘I’ve a schedule,’ replied Asheton. ‘If you wish to visit all thirty-eight tenants by tomorrow we’ll need to keep up a brisk pace, fifteen minutes a sortie – though, I mean to say, do you really need to do this? It’s not rent day until the twentieth.’
‘Asheton, old chap, I’m sure you were a fine soldier, but I’m a businessman. It does no harm, believe me, to remind these peasants of their rent obligations.’
Asheton shook his head in mild befuddlement. ‘You know, Charles, they have had a rotten time of it these past couple of years, with the weather and all of that. I doubt they need further inducement to maximize their yields.’
Boycott turned his head and stared at Asheton, his eyes narrowing. He drew Duke to a gentle stop. ‘Asheton. I do believe your heart has grown soft. Either that or the peasants have been pulling that hat of yours over your eyes. Trust me, the Irish peasant will perform precisely the minimum measure of work he deems necessary to survive and not a scintilla more.’
‘Very well, old boy, if you insist,’ Asheton muttered, evidently chastened.
Boycott grunted, his irritation with Asheton evident. He knew the man wasn’t a hardened businessman, but his expression of sympathy for the tenants’ ‘plight’ had left Boycott cold. There was no room for sentimentality in commerce. He could barely believe that his companion was mimicking the very lies that the Land League spouted weekly.
Asheton nodded towards a field of unharvested oats. ‘This one belongs to McGurk, forty-six acres. Then we pass up by Ballinchalla church, visit several holdings along the way – Higgins, McHale, O’Toole and then Joyce.’
‘Joyce? Don’t recall him.’
‘Older man, married, several children. Owen Joyce.’
Boycott snorted. ‘That’s the trouble with the damned Irish peasant. They all look and sound exactly the same.’
Owen Joyce washed his face in the trough outside his cottage, then looked back at the field where his son still toiled. He smiled at Tadhg’s industry, as many a lad his age would seize any opportunity to shirk hard labour. What a shame, Owen thought, that his son had never had the chance to devote his energies to a higher calling. But such was the lot of the peasant.
He and Síomha had both been unfaltering in their insistence on the children receiving a good and extensive education, having been denied the opportunity in their own youth, at least beyond the learning they had provided for themselves through book reading. Tadhg had disappointed them in that respect, his obvious intelligence never translating itself into scholastic achievement. But they suspected his academic failings
were more a result of his stargazing nature and his inability to concentrate. In that respect, Tadhg reminded Owen of himself, and in many ways also of Thomas, with his fiery temperament.
His son approached now, brushing dirt from his hands. ‘Going to the upper field to check the sheep.’
‘The food’s almost ready,’ Owen said.
‘Won’t be long,’ Tadhg said and disappeared behind the cottage.
Owen shook his head in bafflement, then walked around to grant himself a view of the field above, where he spotted a pretty girl of about sixteen loitering on the track by the fence. Check the sheep, my arse, he thought, and chuckled.
He was so grateful to have Tadhg still at his side, unlike Lorcan, their first-born, who was twenty-one now and whom Owen and Síomha hadn’t seen in almost three years. Lorcan had fallen for and married a girl called Deirdre Conway from Neale. They’d initially been pleased, then Lorcan announced a few weeks before the wedding that he couldn’t contemplate a life under Boycott’s terms. He didn’t intend to waste his life’s energies struggling to pay high rents and gratuitous fines. He and his young bride would take the ship to America in search of a new life. There had been a certain inevitability about it; half the youth of the parish had already fled abroad. Youth offered a landscape of possibilities if one was prepared to pursue them across the horizon. Farming was all Lorcan knew but the plains of Montana and Nebraska held the promise of a life of bountiful harvests. So in January of ’78 Owen and his family had found themselves in tears on the pier side in Galway as they watched their eldest son’s ship fade into a winter mist. The scene had stirred long-buried memories for Owen of another age when he’d witnessed yet harsher dramas on another quayside. A part of him envied his son, yet he knew in his heart that he could never leave his homeland, come what may.
He turned at the rhythmic thumping of hooves, realised it was Boycott, and was initially struck with cold dread. But it quickly dawned that while their financial status might be dire, the rent had not yet fallen due and Boycott had no legal power to serve him a writ, at least not yet. The four riders pulled up about ten yards from his threshold as Síomha appeared from within, concern etched on her face. Boycott sat on the horse with shoulders back, chin in the air, the bearing of a man constantly staring at the world down his nose. Asheton Weekes he knew also, and didn’t dislike. He considered Weekes a strange bedfellow for the land agent. He didn’t, for one, think it beneath him to engage in conversation with peasants. He was a man in his thirties, handsome, dark-haired and tall, and like Boycott had served in the army, yet he had a way about him that Owen could only define as mellow, effeminate even. The other two were a constable and a rougher looking, heavyset individual, probably a hired thug.
‘What do you want?’
The agent glared at Owen with disdain. ‘Your rent falls due in two weeks. Twelve pounds, nine shillings and four pence,’ he added, glancing at the paper in Weekes’s hand.
‘We know what rent is due.’ Síomha’s irritation was palpable.
‘What do you want, Boycott?’
The land agent’s face darkened. He jolted the horse forward until he was towering over Owen and leaned down towards his face. ‘It’s Captain Boycott to the likes of you.’
Owen met his remark with grim silence. The very air felt taut as the threat of conflict hung unresolved for a few moments before Weekes moved forward and spoke.
‘Charles, we’re here to assess the property, don’t forget.’
Boycott glared at him for a second before sitting upright again and slowly sweeping his eyes about. ‘This land and buildings are the property of Lord Erne and I hold the right to ensure no abuse is being done; the misuse of tillage land, digging of wells without permission and so on, and to impose penalties if necessary. Also to make sure no undesirables are resident, to wit, Land League agitators or Fenian reactionaries.’
Owen looked at him incredulously. ‘What?’
Boycott glanced over his shoulder at the constable and bodyguard. ‘Scout about.’
Owen looked at Síomha. The ‘inspection’ was a ruse. He’d never heard such nonsense and he realised that Boycott’s visit was for the sole purpose of intimidation. The two men behind jostled their horses and began to move towards the side of the house. Tadhg chose that moment to reveal himself, a spading fork clutched in his hands, upraised as though to defend himself, fury in his eyes.
‘You’ve no right to hound us like this! Get the hell awa–’
He never finished his sentence. The bodyguard instinctively drew his weapon and levelled it. Owen’s heart stopped at the sight and Síomha screamed as the constable struck him in the side as a shot rang out. The bullet flew wildly away and ricocheted off a wall.
Owen and Síomha darted across and seized their son, tossing the fork to the ground. He was unhurt but trembling, yet rage still creased his face. Owen turned to Boycott and Weekes, both of whom seemed startled themselves.
‘If he’d died, Boycott…’ Owen spat through clenched teeth, leaving the unspoken consequences to the agent’s imagination.
Boycott recovered his composure and resumed his overbearing tone.
‘You should discipline your offspring to behave like civilized men.’
The horses, a little unnerved by the gunshot, were dancing to and fro and Boycott was endeavouring to steady the animal.
‘I remind you, if your rent is a farthing short I’ll see you off this land.’
Owen met Boycott’s eyes. ‘I suggest you leave.’ He glanced at Weekes who, shamefaced, averted his gaze. And with that the four pulled about and made off.
Síomha was at his side then and Tadhg ran a little of the way after the intruders, hurling an ineffectual rock that fell harmlessly in the mud.
‘Tadhg!’ Síomha called out in admonition. She looked at Owen, his face set hard and bitter, staring after Boycott.
‘I swear I’m going to kill that man.’
The three of them stood there silently for a few moments, then Síomha walked across to Tadhg, drew her hand back, and slapped him fiercely across the face. He took a startled step back and clutched his reddening cheek, eyes wide in disbelief.
‘What in the name of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are you up to? Do you want to get yourself killed, you amadán!’ Síomha’s voice was clamorous in the still air.
‘Jesus M–’
‘Don’t take the Lord’s name on top of it all. What good will it do if you get yourself killed? Did you think about your sister?’
‘At least we can say we stood up for ourselves. That we didn’t let that bastard trample on us!’ Tadhg protested, confused and enraged, near to crying.
‘Get out of my sight with your foul language and get back to work!’ She picked up the potato fork and thrust it into his hands, giving her son a shove to get him moving.
Síomha turned towards Owen with an expression of disgust.
‘You’re going to kill Boycott are ye? Bíodh ciall agat!’ she yelled, telling him not to talk nonsense. She habitually drifted into Irish when her blood was up. ‘You and your tough man’s talk will be the end of us.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You. I’m talking about you and your Fenians who are going to save Ireland from the English. How? By murder and butchery?’
Owen swung away and strode into the house with Síomha at his heels. The room was awash with steam and the smell of burning potatoes. ‘The pot’s boiled away,’ he said and went to lift it from above the fire. Síomha overtook him and kicked the blackened tureen from its perch, spilling half its contents on the floor, the rest into the flames.
‘Christ almighty, what are you doing? We have little enough as it is!’ Owen leapt to rescue the food from the flames and his wife stepped back and watched him, hands on hips, breathing slowly and deeply.
‘Well, we won’t need so much food if one of us is dead, will we?’
Owen absently tossed the potatoes back into the uprighted pot.
�
��Nobody’s going to be dead.’
‘No? I’ve heard the talk of the men after mass. I’ve listened to you when you’ve too much whiskey taken. Patriots the lot of ye. The saviours of Ireland, my arse!’
‘Are you saying you’re happy to live like this? As long as the English are in this country we’ll always be treated like dirt.’ His pride piqued, Owen’s voice was near to shrill as he watched his wife stride towards a cupboard that housed their few precious books and a myriad other odds and ends. She rummaged and pulled free some newspapers, slamming them down on the table. She slapped an open palm on The Ballinrobe Chronicle.
‘So this is your answer? To join the savages who murdered David Feerick not ten miles from here?’
‘Who?’ he muttered unconvincingly, looking away through the window.
‘Don’t play the ignoramus with me, Owen Joyce!’ She held the newspaper up to his face. ‘Feerick. David Feerick. You remember? Your so-called patriots hadn’t even the guts to look the man in the eye. Shot him in the back. Shot him ten times! So these are the men who are going to lead Ireland to freedom, are they?’
He pushed the paper from his face.
‘And last week they killed a land agent’s driver in Kerry! An innocent boy of just eighteen, from a poor family like ours in Castlegregory.’
Owen turned sharply away to the window again. But Síomha strode over to him and took his arm, swinging him around to face her and nodding towards Tadhg in the field below. ‘And now you’re beginning to fill your son’s head with this dangerous rubbish.’
‘I haven’t–’
‘Why in the name of God do you think he was ready to bludgeon Boycott? That boy will follow his father to hell and back, he’ll happily step into your shoes with the first beckoning.’ She turned her back on him. ‘Just like you’re willing to step into your father’s.’