The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  The Sir seemed to say drink this! But Thomas knew that the impression was more of the nightshirt-in-a-Bianconi feeling and so he kept his lips tight. Then the Sir let out an unmistakable, ‘Go on!’ and pushed a pewter noggin brimming with whiskey towards him. After that Thomas stopped travelling in his nightshirt in a Bianconi. He started floating. He forgot to hold his lips together. Outside they opened involuntarily at the sight of the gossamer web that spread over the bank where the horse had drifted to graze. From grass to twig it spread and from twig to thistle, the shimmering threads woven by innumerable spiders, down the other side of the bank and across the field. ‘The winding sheet of Our Lady!’ he cried. His inflamed imagination linked the shimmering wraith on the grass from field to field across thousands of miles. ‘A land covered by a shroud!’ His master recognised the legend of Our Lady’s shroud that fell to earth as She was assumed to Heaven but Roderick was just a little drunk and more than a little panicky. He put his boot through the cobweb and turned back towards the stable. He decided to ride home. The house sported a sign proclaiming it as a mail coach halt. It was bound to have horses. He helped himself to a horse as he had to the whiskey. As he harnessed it he wondered somewhat drunkenly should he pay for it in the same manner by dropping coins in the manger? He strode to the empty kitchen and dropped his card on the table; then, bidding Thomas continue with the brougham, he set the horse for the short cut across the fields and boreens. He must have action; must gallop away from sight or talk of shrouds whether they were woven by spiders or humans.

  By the time Thomas drove the brougham down the main street of Templetown, he was far more lathered than his horse; but then, he reflected, the wise animal had drunk nothing stronger than water. Thomas’s stiff hat was making a ridge in his forehead and his tight livery held him in a clammy grip. He stripped off his jacket and took off his hat. There was no one to watch him. The street was deserted except for a few policemen guarding Wright’s bakery. Young Thomas wondered if he should speak to them about the sheep that were disappearing from the Sir’s pasture. Just the other day they had tried to trap the thief, he and the Sir, lying in wait by the stream. Once they thought they saw a shadow of a man, but before the Sir could raise his gun, a great heron had risen in flight and the man whose hidden presence had disturbed it disappeared from view.

  A play-bill caught Thomas’s eye. He could never resist a play-bill; palm trees, minarets, dashing horsemen in colourful uniforms. Pah, a recruiting poster. The picture of the military horsemen recalled something he had been trying to remember. Yes, Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith. Miss Sterrin had said he was to go see him. He turned the horse’s head towards the military barracks.

  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith was leaving his apartment, followed by a batman laden with books. ‘Ah, thought you weren’t coming,’ the Lieutenant said. ‘I was just going to dump these.’ Thomas was gazing fascinated at a party of Tenth Hussars who were defiling before them. They were resplendent, both horses and men; all that gold in the officers’ uniforms was real; so were the leopard skins across their saddles, and the cloth in the uniform jacket cost two whole pounds a yard! ‘Not thinking of joining, are you?’ said the lieutenant. ‘You’d make a fine hussar.’

  Thomas tried to shake his head but the effort was too painful. ‘I’d never be able to afford the uniform,’ he said hoarsely. The lieutenant gave an amused smile and extended his hand. ‘You don’t have to start there,’ he said, nodding towards the glittering Hussar captain. ‘You could start at the other end.’ Where he pressed the boy’s hand there was a gold piece.

  Thomas was weaving from side to side in his seat in the brougham. The unshuttered window of a jeweller’s shop shed a wanton bizarrerie amid the street’s blind and halted commerce. A finger of green light seemed to beckon Thomas. Obediently he dismounted and walked solemnly into the shop. ‘How much is that?’ he asked, nodding towards the window where the finger of light waved from the green stones of a ring.

  ‘Seven and six.’ The jeweller had it out from the window in a flash. Why not? The Blight hadn’t extended to rings. Hungry people could purchase all the jewels they wanted. Then an emerald ring in a glass case caught his glance. ‘How much is that one?’

  The jeweller took in the shirt-sleeved figure and smiled indulgently. Still! One couldn’t be sure about people these days! The lad spoke well; a fine appearance too! He might easily be a son of one of the gentry who were doing their own carting and hauling since they could no longer feed servants.

  ‘Seventy-five guineas,’ he said. ‘Shall I wrap this?’

  Thomas tore his eyes from the lovely emerald. The little ring in the jeweller’s hand had gone dim and tawdry. ‘N-no,’ he answered slowly. His eyes strayed back to the emerald. ‘No, I’ll wait.’

  As the jeweller replaced the ring in the window he recognised the Kilsheelin brougham. A servant boy from the castle! ‘You’ll wait indeed!’ He snorted at the shirtsleeved figure who was studying the Army recruiting posters outside his shop. He watched Thomas climb into the driver’s seat. ‘You’ll wait a long time, my lad!’

  As he shook out the reins, Thomas became aware of his shirt-clad arms and knew for certain that he was dreaming. To drive a carriage in one’s shirt sleeves was more of fantasy than to travel in a public vehicle in one’s nightshirt! He fingered the hat on the seat beside him. It felt real and he put it on. He’d better put on the coat too. But he fell asleep instead.

  An overhead whirring awakened him. He looked up wildly. The evening sun outlined the wide and placid wings of a heron. A heron! The sight of the bird spurred him to a sense of urgency about the stolen sheep. He must find that thief. He jumped to the ground. The reins went trailing amongst the horse’s feet. He looped them through the whip ring. ‘Go home yourself,’ Thomas said, and walked off.

  He walked in the wake of the heron’s flight until a boulder stopped him and he lay where he fell. When he got up he had forgotten about the heron. But he trudged on. There was something that he must do. He heard the sound of running water. It was the Lissnastreenagh, the little stream where he had cooked the picnic trout for Miss Sterrin.

  When he stopped to scoop a handful of water, the pain in his head made him stagger, but a firm arm kept him from falling.

  ‘Is it the way that the hunger is on you?’ asked the voice of George Lucas.

  It hurt Thomas to shake his head. By right he should answer in words but that was strangely difficult. There was genuine concern in the man’s face now as he offered to help Thomas back to the castle. Again Thomas shook his head. He must remember not to do that. It let hell loose up there! ‘There is something I must do,’ he said. Lucas nodded understandingly. ‘Them that serve must obey,’ he said. ‘But the like of you should have no hunger upon you an’ you workin’ where there is full and plenty.’

  ‘There is something I must do,’ Thomas insisted.

  He said it again later to a man with wild hair and clothing; and a face that was not in keeping. For instead of the clay colour of hunger it had the ruddy glow of health, and the blue of his eyes penetrated the clouds of Thomas’s brain.

  ‘Who are you?’ cried Thomas. ‘You are too well fed.’ No one had the right to look so vigorous and yet so wild. ‘You are the one who is stealing the sheep!’

  The man—who could he be?—listened to Thomas’s babblings about the Sir who fed the multitude and the thief who hid in the haunt of the heron. ‘The heron!’ he repeated. ‘There is sense in your ravings, child! The heron laid twice this season. I guessed that something more than weather had disturbed the clutch it laid in February. No, I’m no sheep thief. I’ve never tasted meat in my life, nor the potatoes that men are dying for need of. I’ve bees and goats and a cave that belongs to God. But I’ll watch the heron for you—and the thief. Let you rest, for the fever is on you.’

  But Thomas wouldn’t rest. He bade good day to the hermit and pressed on. He felt as if his body had stepped out from its own skin; out from that tyrannical force t
hat had driven him relentlessly. He wafted on, disembodied until, suddenly weightless, he toppled into masses of fragrance.

  His groping hands found blossoms and more blossoms. His eyes strained up through a carnival of latticed branches to the sky. The Scout’s face swam towards him, peering as it had done from the quarry outside the fever hospital. But this was no quarry. This was the fairy rath of Lissnastreenagh. This was better than the quarry. A little wind fanned his forehead and gently shook down a few fragrant petals to dab his moist forehead. His timeless journey was over. No more searching for—a sheep? A heron? Not these. No more searching for—companionship, for human affection.

  Where was that hand that had reached to shake his and, instead, had shot about his shoulders and held him against a strangely soft body, in an excess of tenderness. It had waved from a ship and vanished. It waved again through the branches, smaller and smaller, a little hand that could never shoot out about him to enclose him like that other, never bridge the chasm that lay between.

  He dozed and a sound awakened him. He dozed again only to awaken to the same sound. It was the low musical note of the wind stirring the overhanging branches, bidding them release their blossoms to blanket his shivering fever. It touched with fairy fingers the pine needles in the fir belt so that they vibrated like the tiny strings of a harp and played him a lullaby.

  When he awakened it was dawn. The hills were re-echoing with the bleating of lambs that was answered by the deep baaing of their soft-voiced mothers. The sound brought him struggling up. Sheep! They were being stolen. But it was only his thoughts that struggled. His body lay prostrate. His eyes gazed helplessly at the remote and tender sky. It was as blue as—as the eyes of the man who had promised to watch for the thief. Thomas closed his own eyes and let his body slip out from the grasp of the tyrant that drove it. ‘I’m staying here—for ever.’ The hermit with the blue eyes would not let the Sir be robbed.

  *

  When the horse trailed its driverless carriage into the castle yard there was consternation. What accident had befallen Young Thomas? Suddenly everyone realised that he had been driven too hard. He had moved amongst them tirelessly; quiet but all pervading, like the sound of a stream unnoticed until it ceases. Everyone was aware of the cessation, the staff, even the Sir himself. Everyone except Lady O’Carroll, lying on her chaise-longue remote and brooding.

  They searched in relays through the night. They retraced the road to Templetown and beyond to the point on the Queen’s County road, where Sir Roderick had left Thomas soliloquising about a land covered completely by a shroud. Roderick’s conscience reproached him for having left the lad alone with his morbid whimsy.

  In the morning there was still no sign. No one dreamed of lonely, haunted Lissnastreenagh. Then the late afternoon brought news that jolted their concern. Constable Humphreys had seen the lad scrutinising the recruiting posters and heard him say that he must go to the barracks; and on the day of his disappearance he had glimpsed him reading the East India recruiting notices beside the jewellers; in his shirtsleeves!

  It appeared that the knife boy had run off and ‘listed’. The searchers felt foolish. The reference to shirtsleeves explained the livery coat lying on the driver’s seat of the brougham. It also showed a deliberateness of plan that hurt Sterrin and angered her father. The fellow was taking no chances of being referred back to his employer! He had taken the precaution of discarding his livery before presenting himself for enlistment.

  Margaret’s brooding strengthened to resolve. Somehow she must get to Belgium alone. There was no other way out. Roderick had denounced her before half the county; had insulted and derided her.

  Nurse Hogan, coming into the room, showed no surprise at the open valise on her mistress’s bed. The Nurse’s eyes were blurred with tears. ‘Fancy, your Ladyship,’ she sobbed. ‘Who’d think it of him? To run away at a time like this.’

  Roderick came to the door to tell Margaret that he was going to Templetown with the subscriptions from yesterday’s post. This was a task that he had gradually come to deputise to young Thomas. And here was the nurse keening about the fellow.

  ‘Stop distressing yourself,’ he admonished her. ‘Anyone who would run away at a time like this is not worth crying about.’

  Margaret sat on her bed beside her valise. The rage that shook her for her husband’s flaunting contempt extended to the whole hateful castle, even to the brat of a knife boy whose puling flight had turned the drama of her own departure into farce.

  Sterrin, in spite of her hurt, continued to search for him. She wandered down to the stream to the lovely spot where they had had their picnic. No one must know the lonely grief that lay behind the still façade of that small white face. She walked about aimlessly, trying to keep back the tears. And then she found his hat!

  Reverently she picked it up from the clump of mosses and speedwells that grew on the spot where Thomas had cooked the tickled trout. ‘He’s drowned,’ she mourned.

  Slowly she moved along to where small boulders lashed up the twelve inches of water into a miniature waterfall. There was nothing bigger than a pinkeen in sight. But for Sterrin the translucent streamlet held tragedy. It held the being who was her whole world—outside of her parents, of course—and that was a different feeling. Slowly she lifted her gaze to the distant turrets of the castle that would never be the same without Young Thomas. Behind her the little pony paced with her, step for step. When she threw her arms about its neck it stood very still and its silky mane guarded the secret of the tears it had dried.

  When Roderick saw the hat he wondered for a moment if the boy had sought escape beneath the gossamer shroud of his imaginings. But he turned from his trip to Templetown. He even forgot the sight of the terrible anger that had shocked him on Margaret’s face this morning. He rode through every nook and spinney on the estate, seeking to retrieve the trust that he had lost in this boy who had made such unwarranted trespass into his master’s affections. Suddenly, he heard a groan. It seemed to come from behind the great circle of blossoming hawthorn trees.

  Roderick dismounted stiffly and parted the branches. He saw what looked like a decapitated head, dark and curly, amid the blossoms that covered the slopes and floor of the hollow. It made a faint upward movement that displayed a face with petals clinging to its glistening skin. The effect was comical. Like the violet petals that Margaret used to paste on to her complexion with thick cream.

  But there was nothing comical about the spots that interspersed the petals. Roderick had become too familiar with the livid spots that were the sinister blossoms of the plague.

  ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘you believe in having your fever under idyllic conditions.’ He kicked at the blossoms for a footing and landed gently on his back beside his knife boy.

  Thomas ejected his swollen tongue a few times. ‘The sheep,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll get the thief when I get water. There’s water—under the heron.’

  Roderick thought he caught the gist of the lad’s wanderings. Water. He would get him water; and himself too. But first he must rest. His body beseeched him for rest. And now he was conscious of an unaccountable sense of gladness that seemed to make rest possible.

  After an easeful silence his hands groped as though drawing up bedclothes. Blossoms and petals stirred upwards then wafted to rest upon his face and shoulders. ‘The babes in the wood,’ he murmured, ‘bloomin’ little robins covering us up with blossoms like the “Babes in the Wood”.’

  Through clouds of sleep he heard a whispered ‘Your Honour’s Sir!’

  ‘Huh?’ Turning his head towards the sound made him wince. The bloated, petal-spattered face was turned towards him.

  ‘They weren’t blossoms, your Honour.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘’Twas leaves the robins brought. In their beaks—to cover the babes.’

  Roderick digested the information. ‘Thank you,’ he said solemnly. ‘The blossoms must have been carried in the fairies’ beaks. Goodnight!’
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  But it was still early forenoon. Late that afternoon the riderless Thuckeen was sighted by Sterrin. Another great search began. This time without Big John who chafed aloft on the carriage that waited to take her Ladyship on some unspecified journey. All afternoon Margaret had wavered, dreading to take the final step towards flight. At last she appeared at the door. Before she reached the carriage she saw the men carrying Roderick on a hurdle. Big John caught her as she swayed. She gripped herself. Roderick had begun to despise these swayings. As they carried him past she saw the plague spots on his face. Behind him they brought Young Thomas. She dismissed the carriage.

  When Roderick and the knife boy had been put to bed the nurse came to Margaret for the recipe for the cure for cholera that Miss Sarah O’Carroll had sent to Sir Roderick. It was not in her Ladyship’s herb book. Margaret hurried to the library to see if he had entered it in his record book. She knew that he had entered some other of Miss Sarah’s cures there. As she turned the page she saw his entry of how pretty she had looked at that first Moonlight Ball at the Assembly Rooms. ‘Bewitching,’ he had written. The tears she had restrained in his presence gushed out. They splashed on the pages as she turned them frantically, looking for last year’s records. Her glance was held at a page of entries written in Sir Dominic’s hand long before she came here. Something to do with Black Pat Ryan’s holding. But in between two lines of her father-in-law’s heavy script was an entry in green ink in Roderick’s own writing. ‘Nonie—Oenone Mansfield—Saint Patrick’s Eve, 16th March 1845.’ It was where Roderick had filled in the gap left for Nonie’s name by his father, and on an impulse had added the date in green ink. It danced out at Margaret, vivid and provocative from the sombre background. Like the owner of the name.