Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  Rice snarled and strode towards the kitchen, brushing past Felim, who glanced anxiously at Owen.

  ‘You call this finished?’ he heard Rice bellow.

  He took a despairing breath and returned to his work. But Rice didn’t bother him again. At least not that night.

  Morning bell sounded even earlier on Christmas Day so that the staff could take turns to attend mass. A choir of female inmates sang hymns and the walls of the workhouse resounded to the rare melodies of the human voice raised in joy. Thanks were offered for the birth of Christ and the Master, although a Protestant, made a brief appearance at each service to offer a prayer of gratitude for the gift of their lives.

  The priests and ministers having supplied spiritual sustenance, the kitchen staff laboured tirelessly from dawn to provide nutritional sustenance for the two thousand inmates. In recognition of their efforts, two measures of spirits were to be granted them at the day’s end, courtesy of the board of management. It was a pitiful inducement.

  By late afternoon the last vat of mutton stew was finally wheeled away and the staff were allowed to enjoy their own meal, including two bottles of sherry, taken at the bakery table. Normally the women would have been required to eat separately and were denied alcohol, but as Rice was attending the senior staff’s meal they simply ignored the rule and had a brief flirtation with the pleasures of half-decent food and one another’s company. It was the only occasion that Owen heard communal laughter in the workhouse.

  Their enjoyment was curtailed with the return of the vats, which had to be scrubbed before they retired to their beds. The oven fires still blazed thanks to the increased demand for bread and Owen had to linger alone to ensure they were quenched before he could leave. He closed the first damper and in his tiredness pressed his hand against the oven door, yelped and scurried to soothe the glowing flesh under the tap. Yet it still throbbed with a dull pain. He breathed deeply and exhaled, his every muscle weary from the day’s labours, then walked to the flour sacks at the rear of the room and sat, intending to rest there until the ovens cooled.

  Already soporific from his efforts, the sherry had added to his drowsiness and he found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. At some point he succumbed, lolled over on to the welcome comfort of the sacks, and fell into a fathomless sleep.

  He was conscious of warm, alcohol-laden breath against his cheek as he struggled to return to wakefulness and had the sudden repulsive awareness that a hand was working at his pants beneath his apron. His eyes shot open and he saw Rice’s face not an inch away.

  ‘Hello, Joyce darling,’ he whispered in a lascivious, breathy voice.

  ‘Get away from me!’ Owen gasped in revulsion and made to push him away.

  Rice drew back a few inches and with a primitive animal reflex swung a razor-edged kitchen blade up to Owen’s throat. Owen allowed his head to fall back as Rice pressed the blade’s tip against the soft flesh where the underside of his chin curved against his windpipe. Rice grinned gleefully as he twisted the handle ever so slightly and Owen felt a pinprick-like sensation of the skin breaking.

  ‘Oh dear, look what I’ve done, I’ve gone and cut ye,’ he whispered with mock sympathy.

  ‘Let me go.’

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Can’t do that. Ye see, ye’re so pretty. And young. Just the way I like them.’

  He began to slide his left hand beneath the apron again. Owen felt nauseous and powerless. He had to think fast, for what was about to befall him was beyond contemplation.

  ‘Is that why you killed Mooney? He wouldn’t go along?’

  Rice paused, a little taken aback, and shook his head. ‘Oh he did play along, but he never, eh, joined in the spirit of things. Stupid bastard. I didn’t kill him. He found my little apothecary store. Swallowed half my stock. Cost me nearly ten shillings in earnings.’

  ‘Stop now, Rice, or I swear I’ll report what you’ve done and about you thieving supplies. You’ll go to gaol.’

  Rice laughed and pressed the knife deeper into Owen’s neck as a hand slipped inside his pants.

  ‘Ye’ll tell nobody, Joyce darling. Ye’ll do precisely what I want, just like the others before ye. Or, my sweet young friend, it will be you who ends in gaol. Or in the graveyard. Doesn’t matter te me. See how much blood just a little cut brings. Now imagine how much there’d be if I was to drag this knife from one ear te the other.’

  He was panting more rapidly now, the dark thrill of his crude violation arousing a brutish excitement. Spittle ran from his mouth, his eyes widened, his face moved closer as he went to plant his lips on Owen’s.

  But Owen could take no more. He seized Rice’s hand, tearing it free from his pants. ‘You’ll have to kill me first, you fucking animal,’ he snarled and spat in Rice’s face.

  Rice drew back as though slapped and ran the back of his free hand across his cheek to wipe away the spit, then slowly drew his lips back revealing a row of chipped, yellowing teeth. ‘Have it your way ye little fuc–’

  A rolling pin came down against the side of his head and he cried out in pain and outrage as he toppled onto the stone floor, a hand clutching at the bloody wound on his temple. Owen sprang up to see Francis Flynn throw himself on Rice. The two rocked on the floor in a violent embrace, Rice screaming obscenities. Startled, Owen watched as they rolled towards the centre of the kitchen, Flynn’s thrashings eerily silent, then strode across to the grappling figures, each trying desperately to stand and gain an advantage. Owen planted the tip of his shoe in Rice’s back and the man howled, but it seemed only to enrage and stimulate him, and he wrenched his arm free of the tangle and swung his knife with deadly intent. The long blade sank deep into Flynn’s left side, just beneath his armpit, faltering only briefly against his rib cage before cutting into the wall of his heart.

  Flynn went rigid, eyes wide, and he collapsed, open-mouthed on to his back, a hand clawing at the knife buried in his side.

  Rice came fully upright and swayed on his feet, his breath coming in heaving gasps. The trauma of the violence had frozen Owen and he stood rigidly, surveying the bloody tableau, mind gripped by paralysis. As Rice swung unsteadily around and their eyes met, Owen’s rage was uncorked and he sprang at Rice in a frenzy, his outstretched hands seeking solace in the grip of Rice’s throat. He met the man at full tilt, his younger frame easily propelling Rice backwards in a grotesque dance across the floor towards the oven doors. They hit hard and Rice yelled out at the impact. He began to claw first at Owen’s tightening grip, then dig his fingernails into his face, but Owen barely noticed the pain. He saw where they were, pressed against the black metal doors of the ovens and with a depraved pleasure, realised he’d left one of the damping doors ajar. The fire still blazed within. He released his right hand and grasped Rice’s face.

  ‘You evil bastard,’ he hissed, then slammed his head back against the oven. Rice screamed as the heat seared through the thin layer of greasy hair and melted the skin on the back of his skull. Owen pressed harder and Rice screeched, kicking and thrashing wildly. Finally his eyes rolled up in their sockets and his entire body went limp. Owen released him and he crumpled like an empty suit of clothes, lying there moaning and twitching.

  But the god of his loathing had not been satiated. The man still lived. He whirled and seized the rolling pin. He fell to his knees over Rice’s spasmodic form and raised the pin above his head. At that moment he thought nothing of the noose around his neck, the trapdoor’s pitiless creak as it opened and condemned him to a choking death. No consideration entered his head of man’s rules of law and no dread of eternal punishment in hell’s fires stayed his hand. All of these things were utterly remote to him.

  Yet he desisted. He rose slowly and dropped the pin to the floor, watching as it rolled against the brickwork beneath the oven, his breaths quivering like one afflicted by fever. He stared down at Rice and tried to collect himself, then remembered Flynn and turned to see him lying in a great expanding pool of blood,
which sought the cracks and furrows in the stone floor, a delta of deep red. He rushed across and fell to his knees beside the man.

  ‘Flynn! Flynn!’ he called in desperation, lowering his ear to the man’s lips. He needed Flynn alive. Lunatic or not, he was the only witness to what had happened this Christmas night of 1848. ‘Francis! Francis!’

  The man’s eyes flicked open and met Owen’s. The merest trace of a smile touched his lips and then was gone, stolen away on his last breath. Owen uttered a terse, miserable cry and closed his eyes against the world. When he opened them again he reached up and drew his hand over Flynn’s eyelids.

  ‘You got your wish,’ he whispered.

  A groan startled him to action for Rice had passed into insensibility but might come to any moment. He rose and drew his bloodstained hands down across his apron, his mind racing, trying to force it to reason, to direct his escape from this calamity. Had anyone heard Rice’s agonised scream? Surely they would have come by now? He tore off the apron and moved towards the door, bloody footprints following him across the room. He nudged the door open and peered through. The kitchen area was dark and silent and he proceeded across the floor to the main entrance. Owen looked out into an empty corridor, lit only by the half-moon that hung in the December sky. In a sense he’d been fortunate, as the kitchens were remote from the dormitories and offices. He gently closed the door and hurried back into the bakery.

  Rice had not stirred, although his head twitched and an occasional groan escaped his lips. He had to move quickly. He ran to the storeroom and pushed aside bags of salt to reveal a wooden panel set flush against the wall. A small hole allowed a finger to prise it free. Inside the space he saw bottles of whiskey, small sacks of oats, four loaves of bread and even a cloth bag of sugar. There were also bottles of medicine he recognised from the infirmary. He looked about, spotted Rice’s canvas satchel flung into a corner and seized it and began to fill it with the spoils of the man’s corruption. He took all the bread, a bag of oats, the sugar and a bottle of whiskey. As an afterthought he also grasped the bottle marked quinine. He left the panel open in the hope that whoever discovered the scene would also discover Rice’s thievery, producing some small measure of justice.

  He returned to Rice’s twitching form, bent and found the key to the yard entrance strung about his neck. He tore it free and Rice’s entire body shuddered, his head lolling over and revealing the blistering and bleeding mess that was the back of his skull. Owen felt not a morsel of pity.

  He was about to rise when he remembered he was wearing a workhouse uniform, identifiable a mile off. Rice on the other hand had a jacket of heavy winter fabric – as one of the senior staff he was entitled to wear his own clothing. Owen began to divest him of the garment and soon had it free. He pondered taking the man’s pants, but given what had occurred he found the notion repulsed him. He donned the jacket and put the satchel straps about his shoulders so that the bag rested against his back, leaving his hands free.

  He took one look around, blessed himself at the sight of Flynn, walked to the door with the oil lamp and then quenched its flame. He moved out into the cold night air and trotted across the yard, pushed the key in the lock and twisted four times in rising panic before he heard the mechanism’s parts click and turn. He pulled the door inwards and stepped outside, locking it behind him, the walls of the workhouse forever at his back.

  CHAPTER 14

  We are threatened, every man of us, with eviction – which the Prime Minister has called a sentence of death – not because we are unwilling to pay our rents, but because we will not pay them to a man who had made it the business of his life to torment us with the worst forms of feudalism.

  –Fr John O’Malley, PP, notice posted in Ballinrobe in 1880

  21 SEPTEMBER 1880

  Despite having the company of a constable riding at either side, Charles Boycott exchanged barely ten words with his protectors during his early morning seven-mile ride to Ballinrobe’s Market Street. Not even the pleasant chorus of birdsong penetrated his thoughts, and the occasional grunt he uttered to steer his favourite mount, Duke, was spoken instinctively, for his conscious mind was focused purely on the day’s proceedings: securing eviction notices against a substantial number of Lough Mask Estate’s tenants.

  Although a magistrate himself, his position was compromised as the legal code prevented him enforcing laws upon his own tenants, which infuriated him. But the law was the law, so he’d been forced to make the journey to Ballinrobe, and he found himself loudly pounding on the office door of the local resident magistrate, a Mr McSheehy, at nine-thirty on this grey Tuesday morning.

  A stout woman admitted him, angrily demanding to know if he’d been trying to break the door down, and having introduced himself brusquely, he was shown to the magistrate’s office. From the room at the rear of the house he had a clear view of the placid waters of the River Robe just yards away, and beyond that the large ordnance ground that separated the infantry barracks from the cavalry barracks at either end of the town. About a hundred men were distributed about, engaged in marching drills or firing at targets. Playing games, Boycott thought, when the country was half-overrun by murderous Fenians.

  McSheehy’s entry into the room disturbed his musings. He was a tall, thin, middle-aged man, with grey hair and a moustache, and wore the stern expression that he reserved for meetings with Boycott. Their dislike of one another was common knowledge. With cold formalities observed, Boycott proceeded to put his case for the eviction of thirteen of his thirty-eight tenants. Of this number the rent had fallen due for fifteen the previous day, yet only two had paid up. The remaining twenty-three were not due to meet their rent obligations for a further month.

  After several hours of heated argument and debate, McSheehy granted him eleven Civil Bill Ejectment notices for the non-payment of rent. The magistrate, much to Boycott’s fury, insisted on allowing more time for the remaining two tenants as both families had recently suffered bereavements. Pounding the table, Boycott thundered that the date of payment or otherwise of rent could not be determined by acts of divine providence; it was incumbent upon the tenants to anticipate unfortunate events and make allowances for such. But the magistrate held firm and used language unbefitting his position as he escorted the land agent to the front door and slammed it behind him.

  He hastened then to the home of Mr David Sears, an officially appointed process-server. As he wished to begin proceedings early the following day, he suggested Sears accompany him home that evening, where he could remain until the business had concluded. Despite the inconvenience, the public servant relented at the land agent’s strident insistence.

  Two hours later Captain Boycott rode back through the gates of Lough Mask Estate in the company of Sears and the two police constables. All were armed and even as they rode through the sublime calm of the estate, they remained vigilant, eyes peering into the shadows of the woodland, twitching at the sound of birds taking flight. Such had it been all the way to and from Ballinrobe; Boycott was convinced that an attempt on his life was imminent, particularly as many had known the nature of his business in the town that morning.

  An evidently relieved Asheton Weekes greeted him as they trotted into the stable yard to the rear of the house.

  ‘Thank heavens you’re safe, Charles.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I need to show you. Down by the boathouse.’

  ‘This is Sears. I’ll need to let Annie know he’ll be staying the night. You go ahead, Weekes, I’ll follow.’

  ‘Very well, Charles, but it’s important.’

  Asheton Weekes stood watching a piece of driftwood as it tapped against a stone by the water’s edge. A chilly breeze from the north, a sure sign of winter’s approach, troubled the waters of the lough. He was troubled himself by recent events – Charles’ intimidation of his tenants, the threats and the imminence of the evictions, abruptly brought into focus by the arrival of the process-server. He feared greatly t
hat violence might ensue in the coming days, his worry heightened by the message left for them during the night.

  He turned and looked towards the house and ruins of the castle beyond. The house had stood here for just forty years. The castle, he’d learned, had been there since the fifteenth century, home of the de Burgo or Burke family of nobles. Indeed, the remnants of the fireplace still bore the inscription ‘Thomas Burke 1618’. He pondered the transience of man, of families, even of dynasties, as he stared at the ivy-covered ruin. The castle had endured for centuries until it finally had fallen victim to new ways and new rulers, and he wondered how long the power that the Captain currently enjoyed might prevail. As the door to the house opened and Boycott approached, he had a disturbing vision of Lough Mask House similarly covered in clawing wild ivy, an empty shell within. He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter against the wind.

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ Weekes said. He’d been waiting fifteen minutes.

  ‘Annie kicked up a fuss because I hadn’t informed her I was bringing a house guest for the night. Honestly, women. As if I haven’t sufficient to trouble me. So, what is it that demands my attention?’

  ‘Over here. I found it this morning just after you’d left.’

  They walked towards the large wooden boathouse that housed a couple of boats used primarily for leisure. As they rounded it Weekes pointed to a mound of freshly dug earth, crafted to resemble a grave, at the head of which stood a crudely assembled cross bearing the name ‘Boycott’.

  ‘They must have done it during the night,’ Weekes said grimly.

  Boycott poked at the earth with his cane. ‘Huh. I’ve seen this type of thing before. Remember, they dug a hole in the ground last year and sent me drawings of coffins. If the ruffians put as much labour into their farms they’d have no trouble paying their rent.’