by Ann Moore
“True enough,” Bram mumbled and burned the letter.
His mood darkened daily, and he passed the time by shooting at stragglers who turned up the avenue from the road. He made Nolan sleep in the barn to protect the animals, but he’d allowed the dogs to roam at night and now only two were left. There was an eerie absence of living animals in the countryside; no dogs or cats should have meant an abundance of mice and rats, but these too were killed and eaten. The wood was empty of rabbit and fox, the lakes fished out, the shores picked clean of shellfish, seaweed, and kelp. The men he saw wore the wasted stamp of starvation, faces still and eyes gone blank. The children, whittled down to bone and little else, looked like old women with small bodies, their faces creased with anxiety and pain. And the women, the mothers, simply looked numb. He could not go out among them anymore, even as he despised them for their plight.
When Grace returned with Brigid, he stayed out of her way for a few days, spending hours in the barn with Nolan. Only Brigid and Nolan came to the house now, working for their daily food and the guarantee of their cabin. Grace had gone straight to Mary Kathleen, who had not cried, but climbed wearily into her mother’s arms and fallen into a deep sleep. Grace had held her throughout the night and now did not go anywhere without her. Bram ordered them to stay indoors, away from the windows, and so they did.
She had seen Moira and the baby boy, who was called Phillip, after Bram’s father. She did not acknowledge the deception in any way, except to hold the baby now and then so that he might be used to her touch. Moira was alternately aggressive and apologetic, depending on Bram’s mood and Brigid’s presence. Grace did not talk to her, spending much time in the nursery with Mary Kate, where she’d set up a cot for herself. She had gone into her bedroom only to remove her things, and after that had never so much as looked at it again.
When Bram decided she’d had enough time to settle herself in, he quit the barn, reentering the life of his house with bravado and good humor, determined to ignore the immediate horror of the countryside and his own devastating actions. He never mentioned the miscarriage of their second son, chattering on instead about the cattle he would buy and how rich he would be after Donnelly House became his. Grace did nothing to challenge his mood, wanting only Lord Donnelly’s arrival so that the charade might be played out and she might at last take her daughter home.
But Lord Donnelly did not come, and the strain began to take its toll. Bram took up the bottle again, joined more and more frequently by Moira. Grace could hear them laughing behind the closed study door, but she did not put her hands over her ears. She did not care what they did.
And when yet another letter arrived, she expected Bram to sink even further into his true state, but was surprised instead to hear him laughing with glee.
“He’s not coming ever!” He burst into the kitchen, where Grace sat at the big table giving Mary Kathleen her lunch. “But he’s agreed to send the title anyway.” He waved an official-looking piece of parchment in Grace’s face. “Here it is, little wife,” he laughed again. “The end of my troubles.”
“And mine,” Grace added quietly.
“Yes, yes,” he said good-naturedly. “And yours, of course.”
“Then I may leave?” she asked.
He frowned slightly. “I wouldn’t be in such a hurry, if I were you,” he clipped, his mood changed. “There’s nothing out there but hard work and slow death.”
“There is my home,” she said. “The one you promised my family if I returned to you.”
“Well, as it turns out, I didn’t need you after all,” he countered.
“Are you saying you won’t keep your word?”
“I’ve always been a man of my word,” he barked. He paused and looked into her face, moved suddenly by the lack of fear he saw there, the way she held his gaze unflinchingly. He’d beaten her nearly to death and stolen away her child, and yet, he knew, she wasn’t afraid of him. He took her chin in his fingers.
“You have been a disappointment to me, Grace,” he said softly. “We could have accomplished a great deal together had you obeyed me and become the wife I wanted you to be. We could have had a wonderful life together had it not been for your pride and stubbornness …”
“Or your cruelty,” she added calmly.
His eyes narrowed briefly and Grace felt the pressure of his fingers on her jaw, but did not flinch.
“I have my weaknesses,” he conceded. “Made worse by this damn country and the ignorant, lazy wretches who occupy it. A man can only take so much.”
Grace said nothing and finally he released his grip.
“You may go after I’ve returned from the city. I’ll be two days gone, and when I get back with the money borrowed against the deed …” He walked to the doorway, then stopped and looked at her with a yearning she couldn’t understand. “I remember the first night I saw you standing in the light of the bonfire in the middle of town,” he said. “Young and beautiful, and strong. And the first night I held you in my arms in Dublin, I was so sure that you were the answer to my loneliness, that you were the answer to my miserable life. I did love you, Grace,” he said, and in the hard light of the morning, he looked suddenly old.
Grace watched him leave, heard his heavy tread going up the stairs. And, to her surprise, she felt a faint tug on the edge of her heart. She, too, had been so full of hope. But she did not allow herself to feel more than that; he might love her now, in this moment, but only because she was no longer fully his. If he thought there was a chance, he would try to steal her soul, and she could not allow that to happen ever again.
“Soon we will go away from here,” Grace said softly to her daughter. “And then we’ll have a new life.”
But when Bram returned three days later, Grace knew there was little hope of leaving Donnelly House. He was not drunk. He had not touched a drop, and that was perhaps more frightening than if he’d come home reeling. His face was white with strain and anger, and the hope in his eyes replaced with flat, cold calculation.
He stormed into the house and went straight up to his study, dogs at his heel. Grace waited ten minutes, then followed.
“Is it bad news, then?” She closed the door behind her.
“We cannot borrow against the deed,” he said flatly. “My father has already borrowed the full amount. We are mortgaged to the hilt!” He laughed bitterly. “He has not given me an estate! He has merely unloaded a debt!”
“Will you lose it?” She sat down across from him.
He nodded. Then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, staring at the wall. “The London banks will press for payment. They want more than my father ever did!” He reached for the whiskey decanter but didn’t unstop it. “He’s played the trump card, and now I am expected to fold and return to England with my tail firmly between my legs. And my son ready to begin training as the next Donnelly heir.”
“The only Donnelly you have is Mary Kathleen,” she said quietly. “There is no heir. Unless you take Moira and Phillip back with you.”
“That’s out of the question.” Now he did pour himself a drink, downing it in one smooth motion.
“You could sell the other mills. Even at a loss, you’d have cash to put against the debt,” she suggested.
“I thought of that myself. They’re already on the market. But it will take time.” He paused. “I carry insurance on two of them against fire.”
Grace was still.
“If there were to be an accident …”
“What of the workers inside?”
Bram banged his fist on the table. “Damn it, Grace! Will you quit thinking about other people and think about your own family for once?”
“All right, then,” she said. “Let me go back to my family and I’ll trouble you no longer.”
“No.” He was firm. “I need you here. At least for now. Colonel Jones and Captain Wynne from the Board of Works are riding up next week to see how things are here. If I can get my tenants tickets for employment, t
hey’ll pay the wage to me and I can pay what I like, or apply it to their rent.”
“They hardly make a shilling as it is.” She looked out the window at the bleak, dripping landscape. “They’ll be working for nothing.”
“At least they’ll have a roof over their heads,” he barked. “And if they don’t like it, they can get out. I’ll call in the guards to knock down their cabins and that will be the end of their burden on me.”
“No,” Grace said quickly. “You’re right. They’ll be willing to work.”
“I need you to set up the house for visitors and come up with some decent meals,” he said. “I want them to think I’m doing well and am only interested in helping my laborers. Don’t overdo it,” he added.
The colonel arrived before the weekend, and over a dinner of scrawny chicken and a pie made from dried winter apples, he and Bram came to an agreement. The London banks would not foreclose on Donnelly House until after the crisis passed. The Board of Works would base another project on Donnelly land, digging ditches to drain water off the fields, which would then be cultivated, allowing the Squire to plant to full capacity. Tickets for employment would be given to tenants who displayed need and who were able-bodied field hands. Bram would do the hiring. Spring was approaching and Ireland faced another disaster in that there were few farmers left to plant what seed could be found. Incentives were needed to get people back on the land, and to put seed in their hands. The suspension of Bram’s debt would be arranged in accordance with his agreement to oversee the farming project. The two men shook hands and smoked cigars with a glass of the best whiskey in the house.
Again, Bram’s mood was high and he left early in the morning on Warrior, two dogs following behind. He intended to cover the villages to the east of his land and hire workers for the rate of one penny a day plus suspended rent. He was not prepared for the sight that met him in the first village.
He had been to Skibbereen and ridden down the slop-filled, muddy alleys, where people lay in rat-infested cabins, dying of starvation even when the potato crops were good. These were the diseased, unemployed beggars and widows, the retarded, the orphans, the hard core of destitution that swamped Ireland every year; part of the two million, more or less, who starved to death no matter if there was famine or bounty. That was the hard fact of it. Most of them died in their cabins, undetected for days.
But what he was not prepared for was the sight of this miserable dying even in the more prosperous villages of Bantry, Crookhaven, and Skull. Everywhere he rode, he rarely saw a face in the window or a man sitting outside his cabin. And when he got off his horse to enter one, the smell nearly knocked him over. At the end of one lane he found a house with two children sitting, stunned, in the lap of their wide-eyed mother, who had clearly died a day or two before. They were naked and the body of their brother or sister lay not a dozen feet away, half buried under a pile of stones. They made no sound as he passed by, only their eyes followed him. They would be dead by nightfall. He got on his horse and rode to the next village. It was not much better there, but he did find two households surviving, on what he did not ask. The men and women were eager to come right away and asked if there would be food. He could not bring himself to say no, but answered instead that perhaps the Quakers would set up a soup kitchen nearby as they had in the West. He promised that for their work, they would not be evicted. Some clung to that promise, others turned away in disappointment.
When he returned home at the end of the day, he went straight into his study and closed the door. He did not come out for two days.
In less than a month, the Board of Works was declared a failure by the House of Commons. They cited the complete ruination of Her Majesty’s highways by the building of roads that began and went nowhere, canals that never held water, and piers that washed out to sea with the first storm. The many accidents and delays, the corruption of officials, and the sheer amount of money paid out had all contributed to its doom. In their wisdom, the House of Commons put into effect The Temporary Relief Destitute Persons (Ireland) Act, known locally as the Soup Kitchen Act. As the distribution of soup became general, the Public Works, and their embarrassing mismanagement, would at last be closed. With drainage ditches partially dug and no more money coming in, Bram wrote the Board of Works and was told to apply for an immediate loan from the treasury. Fifty thousand pounds was to be lent to landlords, enabling them to buy seed for distribution to their tenants. Bram applied with little intention of distributing beyond what he needed to plant his own fields for surplus sale to the warehouses in Macroom and Cork City. Grace petitioned for, and received from him, enough seed to enable her own family to plant again; this in exchange for her continued presence at Donnelly House.
The winter snow melted, only to be replaced by sweeping spring showers. The earth, heavy with water, was hard to turn and work progressed slowly. She had seen the laborers hired by Bram slip seed potatoes in their pockets, or crouch low over the dirt to gnaw quickly, and she knew their hunger was great. She had heard that Father Brown was running a soup kitchen in Cork City, and that Reverend Birdwell was feeding them in Skibereen, but that the numbers were far greater than any had imagined, and not all could be fed in a single day. She was frustrated with her inability to do more for those around her, and roamed the house, going room to room, scrubbing and cleaning so that her fatigue at the end of the day might offer a dreamless sleep.
Even though Moira and Phillip rarely came up with Brigid, the house had become claustrophobic; when the rains eased, and the air began to soften with sunshine, she took Mary Kate to the edge of the wood to pick flowers and listen to birdsongs. She mourned the strange childhood of her daughter, but accepted it as better than no childhood at all.
It was on a day with the air swept clean and a breeze heavy with blossom scent that she left Mary Kathleen happily banging a pot on the kitchen floor near Brigid, and impulsively headed for the wood on her own. In her pockets were hard rolls of oatmeal and water; these she slipped to the workers as she walked past, pretending to chide them on their laziness in case Bram watched from the upstairs study window.
As she approached the trees, many in bloom, she heard a whistle unlike any birdsong she knew. She peered into the sun-dappled forest, scanning the shadows for Sean’s face. Again, the whistle, now more purposeful; she followed it through a thicket of saplings and bushes toward an overgrown glen. Puzzled, she stopped and looked around, then gasped as a hand closed over her mouth and pulled her down behind a tree. She kicked and elbowed, then bit the hand so hard that her assailant let go, cursing. It was a voice she knew and she spun to face him.
“Morgan, you eejit! You scared the living right out of me!” She shoved him angrily against the tree, and he grunted in pain as his head smacked a low limb.
He rubbed his head, then shook the hand she’d bitten, looking at her in wonder. “Did you have a better plan, then?” he asked, laughter in his voice. “I’ve been coming here for days, but you always had Mary Kate along!”
Still glaring, but abashed, she took the hand she’d wounded and examined the bite mark.
“Always such a fighter,” he teased. “The great pirate queen.”
“Arrah,” she scolded. “What would you be knowing about that, anyway, skulking about like a mountain man?” She peered more closely at him. “You’re even growing a beard like an old bachelor!”
He leaned in and whispered conspiratorily, “It’s my disguise, you see. I’m a wanted man in these parts, I am.” He rolled his eyes as if looking for spies.
She put her hands on her hips. “I’ll not laugh at that, Morgan McDonagh, as it’s God’s own truth,” she chided. “You ought not to be out here.”
“Ah, now, are you going to scold away the morning, or will we try to enjoy ourselves a bit?” His eyes danced with merriment.
Grace relented. “You caught me by surprise, is all. It’s not every day I get hauled off into the woods by a bearded marauder, you know. I am happy to see you,” she
allowed. “But have you come alone?”
“Your old friend Alroy is covering my backside.”
“Abban?” She looked over his shoulder into the woods.
“Aye. Good man that he is. Sean put him up to it. They got the seed you sent, by the way, and he took some to Mam and the girls. We all thank you.”
Grace waved that aside. “How are they? How’s Gran?”
“Well enough.” He frowned. “Ryan had a ticket on the works, but that’s all over and done with now. Aghna’s been sick, and little Thomas. Not the fever,” he added quickly, seeing her alarm. “She was working, as well, walking all that way in the cold. She passed it on to the babe, is all. Gran’s taking good care of them. You know.”
“I wish I were there to help.”
“That’s why I’ve come.” He took her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him. “You know what I’m doing, then, don’t you? What your brother and me have got up to?”
“Aye.” She nodded. “I’ve heard about the ambushes on Her Majesty’s guard and the riots at the shipyards. And I know that landlords are being murdered and their houses burned to the ground.”
He put his hand on her knee and looked into her face. “Your husband’s name is on that list,” he said. “It’s true he’s put a few men to work in the field, but he’s evicted hundreds and he’s planning to evíct the rest the next time the guards ride through.”
Shame filled her heart. “I didn’t think he’d actually do it.”
“He’s done many a thing he ought not,” Morgan said grimly. “And to speak true, Grace, I could not believe you’d go back to him. It made no sense.”
“I don’t recall asking for your blessing.”
Her curtness surprised him. “All right, then,” he amended. “But Still, I must say it—he’s a hated man. They’ll see him dead, and I cannot stop them.”
“Why would you want to?”
“Because he’s your husband,” he said simply. “Because you’ve come back. But you must tell him to give it up and get out of here, now, or he’s a dead man.”