“And who better for the position?” He led the way, with many stops, to the area where the horses were being led in circles by riders or trainers.
“But Colum, they’re magnificent. What are horses like that doing in a pokey little town’s race?”
He explained that the race was neither little nor “pokey.” It had a purse of fifty pounds for the winner, more than many a shopowner or farmer earned in a year. Also, the jumps were a real test. A winner at Trim could hold his own against the field in the more famous races at Punchestown or Galway, or even Dublin. “Or win by ten lengths any race at all in America,” he added with a grin. “Irish horses are the best in the world, it’s accepted knowledge everywhere.”
“Just like Irish whiskey, I suppose,” said Gerald O’Hara’s daughter. She’d heard both claims all her life. The hurdles looked impossibly high to her; maybe Colum was right. It should be an exciting race meet. And even before the races, there’d be Trim Market Day. Truly, no one could wish for a better vacation.
A sort of undercurrent rumble ran through the talking, laughing, shouting crowd. “Fight! Fight!” Colum climbed up on the rail to see. A big grin spread across his face, and his fisted right hand smacked into his cupped left palm.
“Will you be wanting to place a small wager, then, Colum?” invited the man next to him on the rail.
“That I will. Five shillings on the O’Haras.”
Scarlett nearly toppled Colum when she grabbed his ankle. “What’s happening?”
The crowd was flowing away from the oval toward the disturbance. Colum jumped down, took Scarlett by the wrist, and ran.
Three or four dozen men, young and old, were grunting and yelling in a melee of fists and boots and elbows. The crowd made a broad uneven circle around them, shouting encouragement. Two piles of coats to one side were testimony to the sudden eruption of the fight; many of the coats had been stripped off so quickly that their sleeves were inside out. Within the ring shirts were getting red with spilled blood, from the shirt’s owner or the man he was hitting. There was no pattern, no order. Each man hit whoever was closest to him, then looked around for his next target. Anyone knocked down was pulled up roughly by the person nearest him and shoved back into the fray.
Scarlett had never seen men fighting with their fists. The sounds of blows landing and the spurting blood from mouths and noses horrified her. All four of Daniel’s sons were there, and she begged Colum to make them stop.
“And lose my five shillings? Don’t be daft, woman.”
“You’re awful, Colum O’Hara, just awful.”
She repeated the words later, to Colum and to Daniel’s sons and to Michael and Joseph, two of Colum’s brothers she hadn’t met before. They were all in the kitchen at Daniel’s house. Kathleen and Brigid were calmly washing the wounds, ignoring the yelps of pain and accusations of rough handling. Colum was passing around glasses of whiskey.
I don’t think it’s funny at all, no matter what they claim, Scarlett said to herself. She couldn’t believe that faction fights were part of the fun of fairs and public events for the O’Haras and their friends. “Just high spirits,” indeed! And the girls were worse, if anything, the way they were tormenting Timothy because he had nothing worse than a black eye.
53
The next day Colum surprised her by showing up before breakfast riding a horse and leading a second. “You said you liked to ride,” he reminded her. “I borrowed us some mounts. But they’re to go back by noon Angelus, so grab us what’s left of last night’s bread and come along before the house fills with visitors.”
“There’s no saddle, Colum.”
“Whist, are you a rider or not? Get the bread, Scarlett darling, and Bridie’ll make a hand for you to step on.”
She hadn’t ridden bareback and astride since she was a child. She’d forgotten the feeling of being one creature with the horse. It all came back, as if she’d never stopped riding this way, and soon she barely needed the reins at all; the pressure of her knees told the horse what they were going to do.
“Where are we going?” They were in a boreen she’d never walked.
“To the Boyne. I’ve something to show you.”
The river. Scarlett’s pulse quickened. There was something there that drew her and repelled her at the same time.
It began to rain, and she was glad Bridie had made her bring a shawl. She covered her head, then rode silently behind Colum, hearing the rain on the leaves of the hedge and the slow, walking clopping of the horses’ hooves. So peaceful. She felt no surprise when the rain stopped. Now the birds in the hedges could come out again.
The boreen ended, and the river was there. The banks were so low that the water all but lapped over them. “This is the ford when Bridie does her washing,” said Colum. “Would you fancy a bath?”
Scarlett shivered dramatically. “I’m not that brave. The water must be freezing.”
“You’ll find out, but only a bit of splashing. We’re going across. Get your reins steady.” His horse stepped cautiously into the water. Scarlett gathered up her skirts and tucked them under her thighs, then followed.
On the opposite bank, Colum dismounted. “Come down and have breakfast,” he said. “I’ll tie the horses to a tree.” Trees grew close to the river here; Colum’s face was dappled by their shade. Scarlett slid to the ground and handed him her reins. She found a sunny patch to sit in, her back sloped against a tree trunk. Small yellow flowers with heart-shaped leaves carpeted the bank. She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet voice of the river, the sibilant rustle of the leaves above her head, the songs of birds. Colum sat beside her, and she opened her eyes slowly. He broke the half loaf of soda bread in two pieces, gave her the larger.
“I’ve a story to tell you while we eat,” he said. “This land we’re on is called Ballyhara. Two hundred years ago, less a few, it was home to your people, our people. This is O’Hara land.”
Scarlett sat up, suddenly wide awake. This? This was O’Hara land? And “Ballyhara”—wasn’t that the name of the deserted village they had driven through so fast? She turned eagerly towards Colum.
“Quiet, now, and eat your good bread, Katie Scarlett. It’s a longish story,” he said. Colum’s smile silenced the questions on her lips. “Two thousand years ago, plus a few, the first O’Haras settled here and made the land their own. One thousand years ago—you see how close we’re coming—the Vikings, Norsemen we’d call them now, discovered the green richness of Ireland and tried to take it for their own. Irish—like the O’Haras—watched the rivers where the dragon-headed longboats might invade and built strong protections against the enemy.” Colum tore a corner of bread and put it in his mouth. Scarlett waited impatiently as he chewed. So many years . . . her mind couldn’t grasp so many years. What came after a thousand years ago?
“The Vikings were driven away,” said Colum, “and the O’Haras tilled their land and fattened their cattle for two hundred years and more. They built a strong castle with room for themselves and their servants, because the Irish have long memories and just as the Vikings had come before, invasion could come again. And so it did. Not Vikings but English who had once been French. More than half of Ireland was lost to them, but the O’Haras prevailed behind their strong walls, and tended their land for another five hundred years.
“Until the Battle of the Boyne, which piteous story you know. After two thousand years of O’Hara care, the land became English. The O’Haras were driven across the ford, those that were left, the widows and babes. One of those children grew up a tenant farmer for the English across the river. His grandson, farmer of the same fields, married our grandmother, Katie Scarlett. At his father’s side he looked across the brown waters of the Boyne and saw the castle of the O’Haras torn down, saw an English house rise in its place. But the name remained. Ballyhara.”
And Pa saw the house, knew this land was O’Hara land. Scarlett wept for her father, understood the rage and sorrow she’d seen in his face and
heard in his voice when he roared about the Battle of the Boyne. Colum went to the river and drank from his hands. He washed them, then cupped them again and brought water to Scarlett. After she drank, he wiped the tears from her cheeks with his gentle wet fingers.
“I wanted not to tell you this, Katie Scarlett—”
Scarlett interrupted angrily. “I have a right to know.”
“And so I believe also.”
“Tell me the rest. I know there’s more. I can tell by your face.”
Colum was pale, as a man in pain beyond bearing. “Yes, there’s more. The English Ballyhara was built for a young lord. He was as fair and handsome as Apollo, they say, and he thought himself a god, as well. He determined to make Ballyhara the finest estate in all Ireland. His village—for he possessed Ballyhara to the last stone and leaf—must be more grand than any other, more grand than Dublin herself. And so it was, though not so grand as Dublin, save for the single street of it, which was wider than the capital’s widest street. His stables were like a cathedral, his windows as clear as diamonds, his gardens a soft carpet to the Boyne. Peacocks spread their jewelled fans on his lawns and beauteous ladies decked in jewels graced his entertainments. He was lord of Ballyhara.
“His only sorrow was that he had but one son, and he the only child. But he lived to see his grandson born, before he went to Hell. And that grandson, too, had neither brother nor sister. But he was handsome and fair, and he became lord of Ballyhara and its cathedral stable and grand village. As did his son after him.
“I remember him, the young lord of Ballyhara. I was but a child and I thought him all things wondrous and fine. He rode a tall roan horse, and when the gentry trampled our corn under the hooves of their horses as they hunted the fox, he always threw coins to us children. He sat so tall and slim in his pink coat and white breeches and high, shining boots. I couldn’t understand why my father took the coins away from us and broke them and cursed the lord for the giving of them.”
Colum stood and began to pace the riverbank. When he confined his story, his voice was thin from the strain of controlling it. “The Famine came, and with it the starvation and death. ‘I cannot stand to see my tenants under such suffering,’ said the lord of Ballyhara. ‘I will buy two strong ships and give them free and safe passage to America, where there is food in abundance. I care not that my cows lament because there is no one to milk them and my fields fill with nettles because there is no one to cultivate them. I care more for the people of Ballyhara than for the cattle or the corn.’
“The farmers and villagers kissed his hand for his goodness, and many of them prepared for their voyage. But not all could bear the pain of leaving Ireland. ‘We will stay, though we starve,’ they told the young lord. He sent word, then, through the countryside that any man or woman had but to ask, and the untaken berth would be given free, with gladness.
“My father cursed him again. He raged at his two brothers, Matthew and Brian, for accepting the Englishman’s gift. But they were firm to go . . . They drowned, with all the rest, when the rotten ships sank in the first heavy sea. They gained the bitter name ‘coffin ships.’
“A man of Ballyhara lay in wait in the stables, not caring that they were as beautiful as a cathedral. And when the young lord came to mount his tall roan horse, he seized him and he hanged the golden-haired lord of Ballyhara in the tower by the Boyne where once O’Haras watched for dragon ships.”
Scarlett’s hand flew to her mouth. Colum was so pale, pacing and talking in that voice that wasn’t his voice. The tower! It must be the same. Her hand closed tight across her lips. She mustn’t speak.
“No one knows,” Colum was saying, “the name of the man in the stable. Some say one name, some say another. When the English soldiers came, the men left at Ballyhara would not point to him. The English hanged them all, in payment for the death of the young lord.” Colum’s face was white in the sun-spattered shade of the trees. A cry burst from his throat. Wordless and inhuman.
He turned to Scarlett, and she shrank away from his wild eyes and tormented face. “A VIEW?” he shouted; it was like a cannon firing. He sank to his knees on the yellow bank of flowers and bent forward to hide his face. His body shuddered.
Scarlett’s hands reached toward him, then fell limply in her lap. She didn’t know what to do.
“Forgive me, Scarlett darling,” said the Colum she knew, and he raised his head. “Me sister Molly is the eejit of the Western world for saying such a thing. She always did have a talent for enraging me.” He smiled, and the smile was almost convincing. “We have time to ride across Ballyhara if you want to see it. It’s been deserted for near thirty years, but there’s been no vandalism. No one will go near it.”
He held out his hand, and the smile in his ashen face was real. “Come. The horses are just here.”
Colum’s horse broke a path through the brambles and tangled growth, and soon Scarlett could see the mammoth stone walls of the tower ahead of them. He held up his hand to alert her, then he reined in. He cupped his hands in a funnel around his mouth. “Seachain,” he shouted, “seachain.” The strange syllables echoed from the stones.
He turned his head, and his eyes were merry. There was color in his cheeks. “That’s Gaelic, Scarlett darling, the Old Irish. There’s a cailleach, a wise woman, lives in a hut somewhere nearby. She’s a witch as old as Tara, some say, and the wife that ran off from Paddy O’Brien of Trim twenty years back, if you listen to others. I called out to warn her we’re passing. She might not like being surprised. I don’t say I believe in witches, mind, but it never does any harm to be respectful.”
They rode on to the clearing around the tower. Up close Scarlett could see that the stones had no mortar between them and yet they had not shifted even an inch from their places. How old did Colum say it was? A thousand years? Two thousand? No matter. She wasn’t afraid of it, the way she’d been when Colum was talking in that unnatural way. The tower was only a building, the finest work she’d ever seen. It’s not scary at all. In fact, it kind of invites me over. She rode closer, ran her fingers over the joins.
“You’re very brave, Scarlett darling. I warned you, there are those who say the tower’s haunted by a hanging man.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee! There’s no such thing as ghosts. Besides, the horse wouldn’t come close if it was here. Everybody knows that animals can sense those things.”
Colum chuckled.
Scarlett laid her hand against the stone. It was smooth from aeons of weathering. She could feel the warmth of the sun in it and the cold of the rain and the wind. An unaccustomed peacefulness entered her heart. “You can tell it’s old,” she said, knowing that her words were inadequate, knowing that it didn’t matter.
“It survived,” Colum said. “Like a mighty tree with roots that go deep to the center of the earth.”
“Roots that go deep.” Where had she heard that before? Of course. Rhett said that about Charleston. Scarlett smiled, stroking the ancient stones. She could tell him a thing or two about roots going deep. Just wait till the next time he started bragging about how old Charleston was.
The house at Ballyhara was built of stone as well, but its stone was dressed granite, each block a perfect rectangle. It looked strong, enduring; the broken windowpanes and paint-lost windowframes were a jarring incongruity in the untouched permanence of the stone. It was a big house, with flanking wings that were themselves bigger than almost any house Scarlett knew. Built to last, she said to herself. It was really a shame nobody lived in it, a waste. “Didn’t the Ballyhara lord have any children?” she asked Colum.
“No.” He sounded satisfied. “There was a wife, I believe, who went back to her own people. Or to an asylum. Some say she went mad.”
Scarlett sensed she’d better not admire the house to Colum. “Let’s look at the village,” she said. It was a town, too large to be a village, and there was not a whole window anywhere, or an unbroken door. It was derelict and despised, and it made Scarlett’s flesh
crawl. Hatred had done this. “What’s the best way home?” she asked Colum.
54
“The Old One’s birthday is tomorrow,” Colum said when he left Scarlett at Daniel’s house. “A man with any judgment would be called away until then, and I like to pretend I am one of those men. Tell the family I’ll be back on the morning.”
Why was he so skittish? Scarlett wondered. There couldn’t be all that much to do for one old woman’s birthday. A cake, of course, but what else was there? She’d already decided to give her grandmother the lovely lace collar she’d bought in Galway. There’d be plenty of time to buy another on the way home. Good heavens, that’s the end of this week!
Scarlett discovered as soon as she was through the door that what she was going to have was a lot of hard manual labor. Everything in Old Katie Scarlett’s house had to be scrubbed and polished, even if it was already clean, and in Daniel’s house as well. Then the farmyard outside the old cottage had to be weeded and swept clean, ready for the benches and chairs and stools to hold everyone who couldn’t squeeze into the cottage itself. And the barn cleaned and scrubbed and fresh straw put down for all who would sleep the night. It was going to be a very big party; not many made it to a hundred years.
“Eat and be gone,” Kathleen told the men when they came in for dinner. She put a pitcher of buttermilk and four loaves of soda bread and a bowl of butter on the table. They were as meek as lambs, ate more quickly than Scarlett had known a person could eat, and left, bending to go through the low door, without a word.
“Now we start,” Kathleen announced when they were gone. “Scarlett, I’ll need lots of water from the well. The buckets are there by the door.” Scarlett, like the O’Hara men, never thought of arguing.
After dinner all the village women came to the house, with their children, to help with the work. Everything was noisy, the work was sweaty, Scarlett got blisters on the ridge of soft flesh at the base of her fingers. And she enjoyed herself more than she could credit. Barefoot like the others, with her skirts tucked up, a big apron around her waist, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, she felt as if she were a child again, playing in the kitchen yard, infuriating Mammy because she was dirtying her pinafore and had taken off her shoes and stockings. Only now she had playmates who were fun, instead of whiny Suellen and baby Carreen who was too young to enter in.
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