by Ann Moore
“Above, I think. There’s blood on the wall by the stairs.” Nolan grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to get her out of there.”
Abban nodded. “Courage, boy. Here’s what to do.” He glanced toward the open kitchen door. “Quiet as a ghost, you must take the cart to the barn and get a fresh horse. Then bring it back here. Quiet now. And quick as you can.”
“Where will you go?”
“Does she have people in these parts?”
“Aye.” Nolan’s eyes widened. “On the other side of the great wood.”
“That’s where, then. Now, hurry. And not a sound.”
Abban jumped off the cart and slipped into the kitchen. As he crept into the entry, he could hear Bram’s snores from the drawing room. He picked up a candle from the side table and moved to the staircase, one careful footstep at a time. Lifting the candle, he made his way slowly up, pausing to cross himself when he saw the splotch of blood on the wall. Grace was not in the first bedroom, her own, nor in the second or third, nor the nursery at the end of the hall. It was not until he heard a moan from above that he spied the small staircase to the side of the nursery. There was blood and hair on the first step and his heart pounded in his ears as he climbed the short flight. He tried the knob—locked.
“Missus?” he whispered through the door. “Are you in there?”
The only sound was that of the house creaking, but he felt sure she was in this room. The Squire probably had the key in his pocket, and Abban did not relish the thought of searching him for it. He could just shoot the bastard in the head and be done with it, he thought. Burn the house down. End the whole thing. He shook himself. She’d be blamed. And hung. The English were hanging Irish with pleasure these days, and they’d love to slip the noose on one that rose above her station. No. He’d have to get her out of here and leave her, husband to die another day. It wasn’t much of a lock, he thought, turning the candle to it. Then he saw the nail holes around the door frame and knew the Squire had a more permanent restraint in mind. Bracing himself against the far wall, he kicked the door as hard as he could. It loosened but did not open, and Abban held his breath, listening for any sound from down below. He stood back and kicked again; this time the door swung open.
“Missus?”
He held the candle in front of him and stepped into the room. The windows were boarded. He played the light over the walls until it fell upon her crumpled form in the corner.
“Dear God in Heaven,” he gasped and went to her.
The light showed up a face badly swollen and bleeding from a deep cut above the eye, a split lip and snarled hair, ripped out in bloody patches. Her hands were cut and fingernails torn off. He set the candle on the floor and gathered her into his arms. She moaned and tried to push him away.
“Hush, now, Missus,” he soothed. “It’s Abban come to take you home. You must be very quiet now.”
He lifted her awkwardly, careful of her large belly, trying to manage the candle as well. She opened her eyes only once and looked into his without seeing him, then closed them again. Suddenly he was afraid, and moved swiftly down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the freezing cold. He placed her gently in the back of the cart, where the dying men had lain not so long ago, then went back in for all the blankets he could carry. These he wrapped under and around her to cushion the ride and keep her warm.
“She’s alive, then,” Nolan said with relief.
“Not for long,” Abban answered, tossing him a blanket. “Climb up, now, and show me the way.”
The O’Malleys were not yet up when Abban stopped in front of their cottage. It had taken what was left of the night to bring her this far; twice he’d had to stop to clear away snowdrifts, and twice they’d turned down a wrong lane, the snow having altered the landscape. Exhausted though he was, he jumped down from the cart and pounded on the door until it was opened.
“We’ve not much to spare, brother,” Patrick said, yawning. “But if you wait till the fire is going, we can give you a cup of tea and some porridge.”
“I’ve brought your daughter,” Abban said quickly. “She’s bad hurt. Help me get her out of the cart.”
“Ryan!” Patrick was instantly awake, calling over his shoulder. “Sean! It’s Grace.” He followed Abban to the cart and looked in. “Sweet Jesus above, what’s happened?”
Ryan hurried out, fumbling with his pants, his shirt unbuttoned and flapping in the wind. Standing across from his father, they worked together to lift the blanketed bundle out of the cart. Grace moaned and the cut on her lip opened, sending a fresh trickle of blood down her crusted chin. They carried her in and laid her in front of the hearth, where Sean was blowing on embers to start the fire. Gran rushed to them, tying a shawl around her shoulders. Abban and Nolan followed as far as the doorway, then stood, anxious and watchful.
“Come.” Patrick motioned them in. “Close that door. Who are you, then?”
“This is Mister Alroy, helped up at the big house,” Nolan told them.
Abban nodded and stepped into the small cabin room, which reminded him so much of his own; his heart turned over with yearning for the family he’d had less than a month ago.
“Sean,” Gran directed, “get my kit and set a kettle to boiling.” She turned to Abban. “He beat her, did he?”
“Aye.” Abban knelt down beside Grace, picking up her hand. “She angered him by feeding the starving what come by her door. I was one of them, and stayed on to help. He was gone, you see, on business. And when they come, the folk, in this bitter cold, she couldn’t turn them away.”
“No,” Gran said softly, smoothing the hair back from Grace’s pale face.
“He turned up out of the blue and she had soup kettles boiling, dying folk inside the house, and Father Brown there to bury them.” He paused and looked at Patrick. “He shot the Father in the foot, killed two men outright for trespassing.”
Patrick’s face went hard. “And then he beat her?”
Abban shook his head. “’Twas later, after he’d been drinking and brooding upon it. He sent me away, but I come back to find her like this, locked in a room upstairs, and him passed out on the floor below.”
“Where’s Mary Kate?” Sean handed Gran her kit of herbs and salves, then limped to the door, looking out at the wagon.
Abban and Nolan looked at one another, then slumped. How could they have forgotten the child?
“She’s safe,” Nolan offered wearily. “Mam took her to our cabin.”
“I’ll go back for her.” Abban stood and moved toward the door, stumbling.
“Sit down,” Patrick said firmly. “You’re in no state to go back out in this weather. Besides, he’ll be waking up now and sorting through it. Will your mam bring the child to us?” he asked Nolan.
“I don’t know.” The boy looked downcast. “She was terrible scared when she come back up to the house and found the baby screaming in the corner and blood all over the walls. She told me to wait in the kitchen door for Mister Alroy and tell him what happened.”
Aghna was up now, too, holding Thomas tightly in her arms. “Will she lose the baby, Gran?” she asked softly.
Gran ran her hand over Grace’s belly, stopping in one place, then another. She frowned. “I cannot tell,” she said. “I think the child moves a bit, but it’s hard to know. Both have suffered.” She looked up at the worry on Abban’s face and the fatigue on the boy’s. “Fix them something to eat, Aghna,” she said. “They’ve had a long night.”
While the men sat down at the table, Gran threaded a needle and sewed up the cut above Grace’s eye. She rubbed salve along the girl’s lips and into the torn places on her scalp. With scissors, she trimmed the broken nails and bandaged the fingers where the nails had been torn off. Then she directed Ryan and Patrick to carry Grace to the stuffed mattress in her old room, where they settled her as gently as they could.
In privacy, Gran unbuttoned the torn dress, blinking away tears that rose with each revealed bruise. She called
Aghna to help bathe and clean the cuts, and get the battered body into a nightgown. Twice Grace opened her eyes, but did not appear to recognize where she was or with whom. Each time she seemed to close them gratefully and sink back into the deep sleep of the battle weary.
At the table, the men discussed their options. Patrick was insisting that it should be he who avenged his daughter and rescued his granddaughter, but Abban calmed him down and made him see the foolishness of this. Patrick didn’t know the lay of the land around the house, and would be easily seen against the brilliance of the snow, nor was he familiar with the dogs that roamed the property when their master was home; and if the Squire was shooting off his pistols … well, they didn’t need another body to bury and that was all there was to it. The same went for Ryan, and Abban noted the relief in Aghna’s eyes. After much talk and argument, it was finally decided that Abban and Nolan—no threat to the dogs—would return together, but not until they’d eaten and slept, and had the promise of darkness by the time they got there.
The storm had abated, the wind was but a gentle gust now and again, and the sky was free of clouds. The sun on the snow was dazzling; water dripped from the ice on the windows. They all stared out at the sight, so rare, and so beautiful, too, despite the fury that had brought it.
“It’s like Fairyland,” Nolan whispered drowsily.
Ryan brought out pallets and Granna bedded them down in a corner near the fire. The hot porridge and warmth of the room lulled their weary bodies into immediate sleep.
It was late in the afternoon when they awoke. Granna fed them bowls of thin soup with bits of hard bread to dip in it, then tied hats over their heads and wrapped torn bedding around their hands. The whole family walked them to the cart and stood until Abban insisted they go back in. He didn’t wish to carry the weight of their worry any further than he had to. When he looked up, only the brother remained.
“Why did you not kill him, then?” Sean asked quietly, when Nolan had climbed into the back and gotten under the blankets.
Abban measured the small man with the withered arm and gimpy leg who looked so much like his sister around the eyes.
“I should have,” he said. “I had it in me. But I wasn’t thinking clear, what with trying to get herself out of there. I was afraid the English would hang her for the murder and be glad of it.”
“Aye.” Sean narrowed his eyes. “It’s not safe to be Irish in Ireland anymore. If we’re not starving to death, or dying of the fever, they’re throwing us in prison for conspiracy.”
“As long as there are young ones like this, we’ll survive.” Abban looked back at Nolan, asleep again under the blankets.
“The young ones are dying faster than the old,” Sean said harshly. “And those that survive wander the roads and haunt the towns.”
“The nuns are caring for them at Sisters of the Rose in Cork City,” Abban said. “I’ve heard tell they take in any orphan comes to their door.”
Sean put his hand on Abban’s shoulder. “We’ve never needed orphanages in Ireland before. Ever. We’ve always taken care of our own. But they’ve taken that from us, as well. We don’t need more orphanages,” he said directly. “We need fewer English.”
“I’ve heard talk of that, as well.”
“And?”
“’Tis true enough that the English soldiers have become bloodthirsty.”
“And have the Irish not become so parched that they have a thirst now, as well?”
Abban weighed this exchange, pausing before he answered. “I am a simple man. A farmer all my life. My grandfather wore the ribbon, but in his old age he swore that more lives were lost than won, and Ireland suffered more greatly because of it. He told me to follow the law, and live straight, and so I have.”
Sean examined his face carefully. “All right, then.” He nodded, and turned to go back in.
Suddenly Abban grabbed his arm, halting him, and it was Sean’s face that bore scrutiny.
“But that was before,” Abban added. “In another life.”
“I understand.”
Abban let go of his arm. “I am not a young man anymore.”
“Nor are you old.”
“I’ve been turned out of the only home I’ve ever known by soldiers who knocked it to the ground and laughed while they did it.”
“Happens every day,” Sean said.
“I watched my family die of fever beside the road and buried them with my bare hands in the wood so that the animals would not eat them, or the soldiers desecrate their bodies. I have buried more people than I can count in the last few weeks and seen more children die for want of oats in their bellies.”
“Aye.” Sean held still.
“I’ve seen English horse soldiers trample bodies still alive, and throw healthy children into infested workhouses, where they die terrible deaths.” He paused and looked in the open doorway, lowering his voice. “And I’ve seen a fine, Godly woman beaten to within an inch of her life by her husband, an English landlord, who will never be held accountable for his crime under the law.”
“We must change laws that give us no power over our own destinies.”
“How?” There was anguish in Abban’s voice. “O’Connell is dead, a broken man. Peel himself has given up.”
“Does that mean that we must give up?”
“I was a Repeal warden in my parish, but I left it with all the backbiting. They were doing nothing about the suffering—it was all politics over the pulling away of those Young Irelanders.”
“You’re against them, then?”
Abban shook his head. “Not if they face the famine. Not if they stand up as the men of action they claim to be. But that Smith O’Brien, the man in charge, he’s not much older than you are and a Protestant, in the bargain. A bloody intellectual, and what does he know of the common man, sitting all those years in Parliament?”
“He sat there begging the cause of Ireland, day in and day out,” Sean stated. “There’s Duffy stands with him, as well, son of a grocer. And ‘Meagher of the Sword,’ whose father was Catholic Mayor of Waterford. And young John Mitchel raised by a Presbyterian minister. All of them ready to speak for us.”
“And what if I want to speak for myself?” Abban folded his arms across his chest.
“A single voice is easily drowned out,” Sean said. “Add it to ours and they’ll be forced to listen.”
The sun broke through the gathered clouds just then, and a beam of light shone down on the two men, warming them briefly. Abban’s face changed in that moment; despair left his eyes and determination took its place.
“I can shoot better than most, though I don’t have a gun,” he said quietly. “I can ride and I know these mountains better than anyone else. I’ve read Duffy’s speeches in the Nation, so I know where you stand.”
“If you’re caught, you’ll be tried for treason. Hanged, drawn and quartered.”
“Then I won’t get caught.” He smiled grimly. “Where will I go now?”
“Back to Donnelly House for Mary Kate,” Sean said. “If you cannot get her, then make your way up the valley to the Black Hill. Ask on the road for one called McDonagh. Give my name. When you get there, speak only to him and only in private.”
“Have I not heard tell of this McDonagh?”
“Aye.” Sean held his eye. “And he could use someone like you in his current line of work. We’re not all saints, you know, and he needs a man he can trust.”
Abban glanced through the open door one more time. “I am that,” he said. “If nothing else.”
Eighteen
JULIA Martin paced the long living room, pausing at the end of each trip to look out the windows. She worried the rings on her fingers, fussed with the flowers, took books from the shelf and rifled their pages, only to shove them back into place or drop them on a side table. Finally, she flung herself into a chair and let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Dear God in Heaven, Julia, what on earth is the matter with you tonight?” Her fathe
r sat in his customary chair near the fire, papers folded neatly in a pile beside him. “Can a man not read the news of the day without fear of a book being dropped on his head?”
Julia picked at her fingernail, frowning. “You’ll get no accurate news of the day from that rag,” she said disdainfully. “Anything worth reading is in the Nation, Father, as well you know.”
“Bunch of radical scalawag writers over there, I hear,” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “Nothing but overeducated baffoons with romantic ideals.”
She laughed and threw a pillow at him.
“Speaking of which, tell me how you are currently rousing the common man.” He tucked the pillow under his arm, pulled out his pipe, and filled it from a silver box on the table beside his chair. “What are you writing about in fiery prose this week?”
“Revolution, of course.” She straightened herself up and leaned forward. “John wants us to throw all our support behind the Young Irelanders. They’ve got nothing but opposition from O’Connell’s group, the priests are against them, and there’s little money from the gentry to arm an uprising.”
“Armed uprising?” Her father sucked in the flame until the pipe smoldered steadily on its own. “Have we come as far as that?”
“Your head’s been buried in the pacifist press!” She jumped up and strode across the room to the fire, flopping down again in the chair opposite his. “What do you think’s been going on out there these past months?”
“I think we’re in the midst of the most terrible famine Ireland has ever known,” he said quietly. “I think the streets here in Dublin are impassable with dying beggars, that the workhouses are full, and that the hospitals can offer no relief. I think that ships full of grain leave our harbors every day, and that London refuses to send aid because it costs too much and will hurt agricultural prices. I think that all of England has turned a deaf ear to the screams of torture rising up out of our streets, and that they’re wiping their hands as frantically as Pontius Pilate. That’s what I think is going on.”
“‘Wiping their hands like Pilate,’” she repeated. “That’s good. I’ll use that in my next piece.”