Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  ‘Couldn’t let you boys have all the fun,’ Feeney snickered.

  After a hastily applied binding to Thomas’s wound, the three mounted their animals and began to ride directly west towards the hills. Thomas thought it appropriate that they were moving into the region known as Joyce’s Country, another part of Ireland blessed with breathtaking natural beauty and cursed with poverty in equal measure. Roads were few and far between, but that tallied with their intent to vanish into the night. The pale moonlight lit their way sufficiently across the barren landscape, albeit at a frustratingly slow trot.

  They skirted the northern slopes of Benlevy Hill, whose dark shape rose thirteen hundred feet before them, and followed a barely distinct track around Coolin Lough, a small body of water that had been cut into the hillside in eons past. When they deemed themselves safe in the heart of the wilds, they rested under the cliff face that guarded the lough’s southern shore.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you shoot the horse, Feeney?’ Thomas asked.

  Feeney shrugged. ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Because it’ll have run straight back to Ebor Hall. By now the place will be crawling with police.’

  ‘Talking of crawlin’,’ Feeney laughed, ‘did you see the fucker trying to crawl away?’

  The others eyed each other in bewilderment. The man seemed utterly oblivious to what had just been said.

  ‘Wait until I tell Micko.’

  ‘Who the fuck is Micko?’ Doherty asked.

  ‘A friend of mine from Cong. Good man. Sympathiser.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him about tonight? Or us?’

  ‘D’ye think I’m fuckin’ stupid?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Doherty nodded at Thomas as Feeney took a swallow from a hip flask.

  ‘Feeney, take the horses down and water them,’ Doherty said.

  ‘Why me? Why can’t he do it? Anyway, it’ll make them sick if–’

  ‘That’s an order, Feeney!’

  Feeney groaned and stood, sulking as he led the animals down the slope. At the water’s edge, he was startled when Thomas appeared from nowhere and took the reins.

  ‘Let me give you a hand.’

  ‘Where did you com–’

  A muffled shot echoed off the cliff as Feeney collapsed like an empty sack, half-in, half-out of the water, blood pouring from the hole in the back of his head. The horses reared a little in fright, but Thomas held the reins firm and soothed them.

  ‘That fool would have told half the county inside a week,’ Doherty said, unwrapping the gun from the folds of his jacket.

  ‘Better get rid of him.’

  They tied a couple of rocks to Feeney’s body, then waded out into the shallows, pushing Feeney in front of them, Thomas holding the rocks aloft.

  ‘Jesus, it’s freezing.’ Doherty shivered as the water lapped at his waist.

  Thomas snickered. ‘My brother used to be able to swim in water like this for ten minutes.’

  ‘You serious? I thought ye said he was as weak as a spring fuckin’ lamb?’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that once,’ Thomas replied, his voice contemplative.

  ‘Still too shallow,’ Doherty said. He took hold of the tails of Feeney’s greatcoat, and flicked it as though spreading a blanket, trapping a pocket of air. ‘Now!’

  Thomas lowered the rocks onto Feeney’s buttocks and between his shoulder blades and they pushed. The dead man floated out ten yards before one of the rocks toppled and the body sank amid a flurry of bubbles.

  ‘Nice trick. Ye done this before?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s all right, he was English.’

  They both laughed and waded back to the idling horses.

  ‘Where to?’ Thomas asked as they climbed into the saddles, the spare horse tied to Doherty’s mount.

  ‘We have to stay low for a while. When word about Mountmorres gets out, the gentlemen of the British government will be choking on their quail’s eggs. I know a safe house, under Ben Beg, middle of nowhere. Good man there, Bull Walsh, can be trusted to keep his mouth shut.’

  A lone bubble breached the lough’s surface and made them turn their heads, the final physical manifestation of Feeney’s existence.

  ‘Besides that little hitch, it was a good night’s work,’ Doherty observed.

  Thomas nodded. ‘Parnell and Davitt make a hundred speeches and no one hears a word. But pull a trigger out here in the wilds of Connaught and those bastards in London hear it loud and clear.’

  Lough Mask, September 25th 1880

  To The Right Honourable Earl of Erne

  May it please your Lordship

  We, the tenantry on your Lough Mask Estate most respectfully beg to intimate to you that we have no intention of paying your rent to Captain Boycott. But at the same time we have not the slightest objection to paying a just rent to any other person whom your Lordship’s better judgment may recommend.

  Several other landlords in the south Mayo area have recently granted their tenants abatements of up to thirty percent in light of the appalling harvests. But Captain Boycott refuses to afford us the same measure of fairness. What is more, the Captain has hurted our feelings and caused great offence to his tenants in recent years. He has denied us the right to take windfall to heat our homes, he won’t let us cross the estate thus causing great inconvenience and time lost in our work, he has imposed fines on us for all manner of petty offences like knocking a single stone off a wall, and is impudent and rude to us. For instance, he never spoke of us in better terms than Irish swine; and for these manifold reasons we hold him in utter detestation and will have no further dealings with him. We further add that in support of our grievances his workers have abandoned him and the people of Ballinrobe and Neale will conduct no trade with him.

  As previously stated, your humble and grateful tenants would be more than willing to pay a just rent and we respectfully ask that your Lordship would consider all of the above and remove Captain Boycott from your service.

  Yours sincerely,

  The tenantry.

  P.S. An early reply sent to Mr Owen Joyce (but not to Captain Boycott) is respectfully requested.

  ‘What do you think?’ Redpath asked as he finished reading the letter back to Fr O’Malley and Owen in the rectory living room. It was eight-thirty, the precise moment Thomas and Doherty were firing the fatal shots into Mountmorres’s body.

  ‘“Hurted” is good,’ Owen smiled.

  ‘I agree. The letter has to give the impression we’re a bunch of poor, uneducated peasants who’ve been mistreated. It has to gain his sympathy,’ the priest added.

  ‘We have been mistreated,’ Owen pointed out.

  ‘Nobody’s disagreeing, Owen,’ Redpath said as he made a few changes, using blotting paper and a rubber eraser, deliberately giving it an unprofessional appearance.

  ‘The letter’s worth a try, I suppose, but the old coot is very old-school. Set in his ways of thinking about tenants knowing their place,’ Owen mused.

  ‘Well, it can’t do any harm,’ said the priest. ‘And the sooner we can end this the better. I’m concerned about the possibility of violence.’

  ‘From Fenians?’ Redpath asked.

  ‘Closer to home. Someone hung an effigy of Boycott from a tree near the entrance of the estate. Someone else opened a gate and let his cattle wander into the crops. And I’ve had to reprimand the schoolteacher.’

  ‘Old McQuaid?’ Owen asked incredulously. The man was seventy.

  ‘He allowed the children off early so they could jeer at anyone going through the gates. Sergeant Murtagh told me one of the boys bared his behind at Annie Boycott.’

  Redpath and Owen snickered, earning them both a frown.

  ‘Gentlemen, it’s not a matter of levity. It starts like this, little things at first, and then escalates until someone gets hurt.’

  ‘Sorry, Father, you’re right, it’s just…I can imagine her face,’ Owen said, grinning.

  The priest grunt
ed. ‘Well, that lad won’t be baring his behind again, considering the number of stripes McQuaid gave it when he found out.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Just keep reiterating that we don’t condone any threats or acts of violence. Or vandalism. Anyone who does that will have to answer to me and I’ll have no hesitation handing them over to Sergeant Murtagh. I’ll remind everyone at mass tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll spread the word and keep our eyes peeled, Father,’ said Owen.

  ‘Good, the next week is vital. Just one bit of bloodshed and this whole thing could fall apart.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Mayo landlord, Lord Mountmorres (5th Viscount Mountmorres) was murdered on Saturday evening Sept. 25, 1880 on the road between Clonbur and Ebor Hall as he was driving from a magistrates meeting in Clonbur. He was shot six times at close range. The perpetrators presumably escaped over the hills. When the horse and empty carriage arrived at Ebor Hall the servants went searching for Mountmorres. The incident was believed to be associated with Land League activities.

  –Supplement of The Illustrated London News, 27 September 1880

  Lady Mountmorres has received from Balmoral a letter written by command of the Queen, expressing her Majesty’s sympathy with her ladyship in her affliction, and inquiring kindly regarding her condition.

  –The Nationalist, 16 October 1880

  London, Sept. 27. – A tenant farmer named Sweeney has been arrested in connection with the murder of Lord Mountmorres, and has been remanded for trial. The murder has caused the greatest sensation. It is expected that the affair will induce the Government to take decisive steps to control the utterances of land agitators. The meeting of magistrates, which was attended by Lord Mountmorres just previous to his death, had passed a resolution calling on the Government to adopt coercive measures in Ireland.

  –The New York Times, 28 September 1880

  17 OCTOBER 1880

  ‘This is precisely what we didn’t want,’ Owen said and covered his eyes with his hand, as though to banish the scenarios that might stem from Mountmorres’s brutal killing.

  ‘Not ten miles away. They’ll think this place is a haven for Fenian killers,’ Fr O’Malley replied from the other side of the wall that surrounded one of Owen’s fields. ‘And whatever sympathies we might have been earning for our plight with the more moderate British will be forgotten.’

  ‘And we can forget any sympathy from Lord Erne. Extremists have just murdered one of his fellow peers. What are we going to do?’

  The priest leaned on the wall and bent his head low, appearing to study the mossy stone surface with deep interest. After some time he stood erect, his expression resolute.

  ‘We continue to do what we’ve been doing. We condemn the killing and get everyone to do the same, whether it’s in the pub or in town or to the RIC. Or if the press come snooping around. We continue the boycott. We see this through. Especially now, because I suspect this wasn’t just meant to make a statement to the British. This was meant to undermine the Land League. The extremists have always hated the New Departure. They’re trying to destroy everything we’ve built up and start a war.’

  Owen heaved a sigh. ‘Where’s James, by the way?’

  ‘Typical newspaperman. The moment he heard he took off for Ballinrobe to telegraph New York. You know what they say. Bad news travels fastest.’

  The laundress, a Miss Lucy McDonald, was a short, irascible woman of sixty with a pockmarked and shiny red face. She would normally call on a Wednesday, wheeling a large hand-cart, to collect the soiled laundry from Lough Mask House, and then return to her cottage two miles away, where she would scrub the clothing spotless, employing the plentiful waters of Lough Mask, flaked lye and a bar of Hudson’s Dry Soap. The ironed clothes would then be returned by Friday. Ironically, the woman’s language was anything but clean, and normally Annie Boycott dreaded contact with her. But today she craved her arrival. Almost all of the ladies’ underwear had been used and the men’s were in a worse condition as a result of their sweaty labouring. Annie had just one clean dress remaining, which she was saving for Sunday. The rest of her and Madeleine’s clothes had been soiled with porridge, pea soup, grease, blood, manure and perspiration, rendering their appearance more like common beggars than ladies of polite society.

  A constable, one of twelve now residing in the grounds, had agreed to go and inquire why Miss McDonald hadn’t called. Annie had a vague hope that the woman might be excluded from their ostracism (she refused to accept the term ‘boycott’), as Miss McDonald was a Protestant. But when the constable returned grim-faced, she had to bite her bottom lip to prevent herself from crying in the man’s presence. Closing the door, she leaned back against it and sobbed into the silence of the hallway. Cleanliness had always been of paramount importance to her and by now she was beginning to feel not just dirty, but defiled.

  Since they’d learned of the Mountmorres assassination she’d also had to add a genuine dread to her general discomfort. She feared greatly for her husband’s life and the constabulary’s presence did little to soothe her worries, especially as Charles still insisted on going openly to work in the fields and riding the roads around the estate. She spent most of her days performing the household tasks while carrying a grim anticipation that every knock on the door would bring news of her husband’s murder.

  She quickly mopped her tears at the sound of footsteps, as Charles had insisted they must maintain a dignified, unflinching front. William appeared and saw her by the door, her eyes red. She forced a smile.

  ‘Are you all right, Aunt Annie?’ he asked with the concern of a boy on the first edge of manhood.

  ‘I’m fine, dear. Dust in my eye.’

  William, in his naivety, accepted her explanation without further ado.

  ‘Auntie, em…I came to tell you…’ His drooping features suggested something was amiss.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I heard Mr Weekes talking to the sergeant and they said that the postboy refuses to handle our mail or deliver our telegraph messages.’

  ‘Dear God, we’re completely cut off.’

  At the sound of her despair, William straightened his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I’ll walk to Ballinrobe with our letters, Auntie.’

  Annie smiled through her tears, wrapped her arms around William’s head and pressed it to her breast, holding him so for several minutes.

  When Madeleine Boycott’s mother, Isabella, had died earlier that year, the extended Boycott family had convened to discuss her future and that of her brother. And as the family was the product of several generations of rectors, and therefore of a deeply religious nature, among the considerations for Madeleine’s future life had been to ensure that she be raised in an environment that would keep her from ‘temptation’s path’.

  And so it had, Madeleine thought, for there were no remotely suitable young men in the vicinity of Lough Mask House, and her uncle’s bad manners generally discouraged visitors. The only man of class around was Asheton Weekes, and although she liked him, he hadn’t, as least as yet, displayed any great interest in her. Perhaps he felt their age difference was too great. Or maybe he simply didn’t find her physically attractive, which was a notion that troubled her somewhat. Worse still, their current predicament meant she was denied the occasional excitement of a trip to Galway or Dublin, making her isolation all the more oppressive. And she never in her wildest flights of fantasy had envisaged spending her days pulling at the teats of cows and forking hay in the stables, her fine clothes reduced almost to rags.

  These thoughts were swirling in her mind when the head of her pitchfork came free and shot over her shoulder. Her exasperation got the better of her and she beat at the stable door with the shaft, causing the horse inside to rear away in fright. She stopped and rested her shoulder against a wall until she could soothe her nerves. Presently, she picked up the three-pronged head and tried to reinsert the shaft, but without success. She
wandered from the yard in search of assistance and walked towards the castle ruin, near which the constabulary had erected their huts. A tree stump offered her the prospect of a rest and she sat there, idly looking about.

  It was a bright September afternoon, a month which always made her melancholic, for though she was past her schooling the sense of gloom remained that the long months ahead held no promise of summer walks with young men along the Waveney River or glances from the chaps after church on Sunday morning. These glances she stored away like secret treasure, for she considered herself pretty and shaped to the right proportions.

  A loud male chuckle from beyond the constables’ huts drew her attention, where a separate wooden partition had been erected, and in front of it she saw two of the constables sawing at a long plank of wood suspended across two upended crates. They each sported heavy moustaches and wore white shirts with the sleeves folded to their elbows. They obviously would not have been deemed suitable company for a lady of her class, but they were both young and handsome in a rugged way and an admiring glance was an admiring glance, whoever cast it. She smoothed her dress about her hips, picked up the parts of the fork and sauntered across with her best impersonation of innocence.

  On seeing her approach, they halted their work and turned to face her, tipping their foreheads and bowing slightly.

  ‘Miss,’ they said in unison.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb your work but would you mind awfully helping me to repair this?’

  ‘Certainly, miss, my pleasure,’ the nearest of the two said and took the fork. He lodged the end of the shaft on a rock, forced the head down over it and then hammered it up and down until it had slipped snugly all the way on to the pole.

  ‘I’ll put a nail through the hole here, miss, stop it coming off again.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s most considerate,’ Madeleine said with a coy smile.