by Ann Moore
“Plenty are.” He ripped a piece of dried jerkey with his teeth and worked it into his cheek. “Any man with a coin in his hand has gone off for a better life. More than a million gone to Canada and America. Half again as many to England, some to Australia.”
Grace looked at him, shocked. She had not realized so many were gone. It was the rare Irishman who left Ireland and then only to the mournful keening of his friends and family. But this was the end of the world, as Morgan had said, and now, it seemed, they were running to get away.
“It only makes good sense,” he went on, tearing off a piece of bread. “If you don’t starve to death or go mad, then there’s the typhus, or renegades shooting at anything that moves. In another year, there’ll be nothing left here but graves and rotting fields.” He swallowed his bread, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Certainly, you should not stay,” he advised. “Being a woman of means, surely you could make a better life for yourself in Canada.”
“Woman of means?”
“You were married to Squire Donnelly, weren’t you?” He brushed the crumbs off his lap onto the grass and Grace resisted the urge to pick them out and eat them. “The Donnellys are an old and well-respected family in London, always in the papers about this charity or that one.”
“I am not one of their charities,” she said shortly.
He blushed. “Begging your pardon, Missus Donnelly. I didn’t mean that. I meant that the Donnellys have money, and with the annuity your husband left you, surely you could live anywhere you wanted.”
Grace frowned. “I want to live in Ireland. In an old cabin on a lovely little lane outside Macroom.” She studied the private, not much older than herself. “As for my husband leaving me anything … he suffered his own misfortunes years ago, and what I have in this cart is all I have left. I am Irish. That makes me nothing to the Donnellys of London.”
Private Adams stopped chewing and stared in disbelief. “Bloody hell,” he exclaimed. “That’s terrible!”
Grace nodded, then covered her stomach quickly as it started to rumble.
He heard it and squinted at her. “Aren’t you having anything to eat, Missus Donnelly?”
“I had a large breakfast,” Grace said, unwilling to admit her position.
The private tipped his head and saw for the first time past her social position to the shabby dress that hung on her bony frame, the lank hair, gaunt face, and bruised eyes.
“You must have a bite to eat,” he insisted tactfully. “I know it’s rough food, but a little bread and cheese will see you well. We’ve a long trip still ahead.”
Grace had no resistance left. “Thank you,” she said quietly, taking from him the generous piece of bread and hunk of pale cheese he offered. “You are very kind to share your meal.”
She held it in her hand, bowing her head to pray before taking the first bite. The relief of food in her mouth brought tears to her eyes and she was forced to chew slowly until her throat opened enough to swallow.
Seeing this, Private Adams stopped eating and wrapped up the remainder of his meal in a cloth, which he quietly slipped into her basket when she wasn’t looking.
When she had finished the food, Grace turned away from him and licked her fingers, then closed her eyes again and gave thanks to God. She took his pail and brought water from the spring to drink, then feeling much refreshed, they started off again in the warm May sunshine, a fresh breeze blowing across the land bringing with it the scent of lavender and wild thyme.
“Excuse me for asking, Missus Donnelly,” he said as they bumped along the road. “But if he’s left you nothing to live on … well, isn’t that all the more reason to leave this place? If not for yourself, then for the future of your children. Surely, you could sell what you’ve got here and buy passage for all of you?”
Grace wanted to repay his kindness with trust, but knew she could not afford this; Captain Wynne was a man of calculation and Private Adams, however unwittingly, had been sent on this errand for a reason. She weighed her answer.
“My son is already in England, adopted by my husband’s brother, and I’ll not see him again,” she said evenly. “My daughter has been left to me, and I have done the best I could to secure a future for her, but it is here, in Ireland.” She paused. “I’ve other family, as well, to look out for. There’s my father, who will never come away from Ireland, and my granny, who’s too old. My older brother, Ryan, is married now with a wife and young son, and he’s just as stubborn a man as my father.”
Private Adams shifted in his seat. “And what of your brother Sean? The crippled one?”
Grace bit her lip, then straightened her back and shoulders. “Sean’s on his own right now. I expect you know that already.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was one of the guards on his cell. Listened to a steady stream of cursing for three bloody nights!” He shook his head, then laughed good-naturedly. “Tried to argue his way out of jail, cheeky bastard, then damned our eyes to hell when we wouldn’t come round to his point of view!”
“Doesn’t sound like our Sean,” she said, trying to swallow her smile. “He’s a Christian man, you know, educated and well-read, he is.”
“That’s for sure,” he agreed. “Bloody man never ran out of things to quote.”
Grace laughed, despite herself.
“I shouldn’t say it, but I was half glad when he got away. Not just to give my ears a rest.” He smiled at her. “He never shot your husband, not with his shoulder so crippled like it is. I’m sure he’s guilty of other things, but murder’s not one of them.”
“Then why was he arrested?”
The private shrugged. “He knows plenty, Missus Donnelly. And a mind like his remembers everything. There’s no doubt he’s part of John Mitchel’s group, and Captain Wynne wants to shut down that bloody rag of a newspaper before full-scale war breaks out.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “And, of course, they’re after his friend McDonagh, for ambushing Her Majesty’s special guard outside Cork last spring and inciting riot at the docks in October. He’s been a slippery one. The man that brings him in will get a medal for it and a ticket home.”
Grace looked down at the wedding band on her finger, then covered it with her right hand.
“It’s generally known that McDonagh and your brother work together—brawn and brain, so to speak. We think it was your brother planned the October riot, and McDonagh that carried it out.” He paused. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Grace met his gaze and shook her head.
“Didn’t think so.” He turned back to the horse and slapped the reins along its backside. “Anyway, we’re sure it’s McDonagh that broke him out. Along with one other.”
A silence settled between them until finally he asked, with an effort at appearing casual, “Been a long time since you’ve seen your brother?”
Grace chose her words carefully. “Aye,” she said. “Not since the end of last summer.”
“And McDonagh?”
She pretended to consider. “Longer still.”
“Know him well, do you?” he asked lightly.
She nodded, Morgan’s face suddenly rising before her, head thrown back in laughter, the morning sun on his face. “Didn’t we grow up together, the three of us? Our mothers, best friends. When ours died and Sean was left a cripple, it was Morgan come down the mountain to cheer us. They’re like brothers, the two of them.” She bit her lip. “Sean could not survive without Morgan, so I pray they are together and not lying in a ditch somewhere, dead.”
Private Adams hooted. “Not bloody likely! The one talks too much to ever give up his last breath, and the other has the lives of a cat. Besides, we’d know if McDonagh was dead—with a reward like that on his head, someone is bound to bring in his body.”
Grace’s heart stopped. “Is the reward not for bringing him in alive?”
He shook his head. “Dead or alive, now that Mitchel published Fintan Lalor’s idiot cal
l for peasant revolution. That’s just the fuel the Young Irelanders have been waiting for. And, you know, of course, this new Irish Confederation—bunch of bloody militants—is led by McDonagh and some Englishman turned bleeding traitor. Certainly, your brother is mixed in with that lot now, as well.”
“Maybe they’ve gone off Ireland,” she said, then bit her tongue.
“That’s what the captain thinks,” he said casually. “He’d be glad to see them gone and ready to drop the manhunt … especially if he had the name of that Englishman in return.”
Grace looked out over the farmland, most of it unplanted and wild, cabins seemingly abandoned, animals dead. The countryside was strangely quiet, absent of noise but for the few birds still scavenging for seed. She thought of Lord Evans and the song he’d played for her on his guitar the night they’d met. The guitar was long sold, she knew, and the hands too battered to play anymore; the fine clothes had worn to rags and the handsome face was weary and lined. He could have gone away years ago to live an easy life in Spain, but he had not; he remained in Ireland, devoted to winning freedom for men like her husband and brothers.
“I don’t know who it is you’re talking about,” she said at last, turning to face the young man beside her. “But even if I did, do you really think I’d give you his name?”
He shook his head, accepting the truth of this, and they rode along in silence until suddenly the horse became nervous and threw its head.
“Whoa, steady on,” Private Adams soothed, reining in the horse until the cart stood still. He put his face into the wind, then recoiled, gasping.
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“The smell,” he said, tying his bandana over his nose and mouth. “Black fever. Cabin over there must have people dead or dying of it.” He pointed to the first of several cabins built on a rise above the road. “Can’t you smell it?”
And now she could, the stench so overpowering, she wondered how she’d missed it. She held her skirt up over the lower part of her face.
“It’s a mile or more of cabins along the road here,” she said, her voice muffled by the cloth. “But there’s a lane goes up behind the hill with no cabins upon it. We’ll have to go that way.”
He backed the cart up and took the lane she pointed out, its entrance half hidden by overgrown bushes.
“Who tends to them up here, takes them to the fever sheds?” he asked when they’d gone behind the hill and the smell had faded behind them.
“No one,” Grace said, lowering her skirt. “Even if the parish priest is still alive, all he can offer is water and last rites. They’ll not go to the sheds.”
“Then they’ll die!”
“They know that those who go to hospital never come home again,” Grace said. “So best to die in your own bed if die you must.”
“What about the healthy ones?” he asked.
“Most likely none of those,” she said quietly. “But if so, they’ll bury the dead under the floorboards, collapse the roof over them, and set off for somewhere else, hoping to send a priest back later to pray over the bones.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“The Irish fear fever like nothing else,” she explained. “’Tis the only thing that will send parents away from their children and children away from their parents. It’s an awful death and they cannot bear it. But, of course, they almost always fall one after the other and die together anyway.”
“So, no one will come to help?”
Grace looked at him. “There is no food to bring, and no medicine that will keep them alive. To go near them is to give up your own life.”
He was silent, his young face troubled. “Why do these Irish rebels keep fighting for a country that is nearly dead?” he asked.
“You might ask your countrymen the same question,” she replied. “And you might ask yourself why the people of Ireland have been allowed to starve while boatloads of Irish grain were sent to England. Why British landlords who have never set foot in this country are allowed to demand rent from families who have lived here for thousands of years. Why we have not been allowed to educate ourselves, own our own land, or make laws that better an Irishman. Why have our forests been stripped to build your cities, and our people turned off the land so that you might have more beef and wheat? Can you give me any answer at all, Private Adams?”
He shook his head.
“You have robbed us of our land and our right to live here with dignity. You have worked us as slaves, starved us to death, and left us to cope with terrible sickness. This is what we have come to under British rule.” Her eyes flashed. “Ireland has provided you with an endless cradle of our best young men to be fodder for your enemy’s cannons. We fight against you now, because we have little left to lose.”
“Except your lives,” he said.
“And soon we will not even have those. The Irish will have disappeared from Ireland and your country will finally have what it wants.”
“That’s not true,” he insisted. “We don’t bloody well want the Irish to die out! We’re here to help you survive!”
“And do you think it’s enough to just survive?” she asked. “Well, it’s not. We want more than that. We want to live. What is your Christian name, Private?”
“Henry,” he answered. “Henry James Adams.”
“Henry,” she repeated. “And where is your home?”
He thought of the clean, orderly farm high on the cliffs above the sea. “Cornwall,” he said. “My father is a horse breeder.”
“Will you go there when your time is up?”
“Yes,” he said definitely. “My father is old and my mother has died, so I will take over the stable.”
“Will you marry?”
“The rector’s daughter,” he said shyly. “Isabel Benton.”
Grace nodded, then thought a moment.
“And what if I said to you, Private Adams, that when you return home, I shall come and live in your house and run your farm, although you will do all the work and pay me rent, as well? I will take the best of your harvest, the best livestock, and all your money. You may marry, but you must ask my permission and pay me a tax. You may not have any say in the running of the farm your father has worked all his life, and he may not deed you any title to it. If, in another year or so, I decide to grow wheat over all the land and turn you out, it is my right and the law stands with me.”
His eyes opened wide.
“That is my father’s life,” she said quietly. “He has worked every day on that land and pays the rent four times a year, but will never own it, can never own a bit of it, or pass it on to his sons. They can work it with him if he divides it, but their future is not secure.” She paused. “Can that be right?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not right.”
“We are a happy people, never minding what we don’t have. We look to God for our fortune and are thankful for our daily bread. But now God is telling us to stop throwing our pearls to swine. It is not just the Irish people who are dying, but the Irish way of life. Only there will be no Oisin come back from Tir na nog.”
He squinted into the sun, puzzled.
“Land of the Young,” she explained. “Oisin was a poet who disappeared into Tir na nog, but returned hundreds of years later to argue the old ways and beliefs with Patrick the Crooked Crozier. Only this time we’ll all be dead or gone away, and there will be no old ways to pass on.” She looked earnestly upon him. “In another life, you and I might have been friends, but you are my enemy as long as you try to rip the heart from my body.”
“I understand,” he said quietly.
“Good. Then there is hope for us all.”
The afternoon light had begun to soften and great bands of pink and purple filled the sky around the mountains. The effort of her argument, along with the food in her belly and the rocking of the cart, lulled Grace into a light sleep and she drooped against the private’s shoulder. Driving with one hand, he carefully eased her i
nto a more comfortable position, holding her against him with the other hand. His mother had been a woman of opinion like this Missus Donnelly, and he realized with a start that they would have liked one another very much.
When at last she came awake, the sun was lower in the sky and her neck terribly stiff. She lifted her head immediately, and he removed his arm so that she might move away from him and not feel embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I fell asleep.”
He smiled. “Quite all right. You left me with a great deal to think over.”
Grace smoothed her hair and drew her shawl up over her shoulders. “You must be tired, Private,” she said. “Will you let me drive the rest of the way?”
“No,” he said. “For then I’d be completely at your mercy, and I see now that you are a woman to be reckoned with. Much like your brother in speech, all that passion for what you believe. Your family must be very interesting people.”
“Aye, and you must meet them,” Grace answered. “We’re nearly to my lane.” She sat up, suddenly excited to be home and in the warmth of her family’s love, with her dear daughter sitting on her knee.
“I don’t dare!” he laughed. “If they’re at all like you and your brother, I’ll be recruited to the Young Irelanders by morning!” He turned up the lane and started down, his smile fading as he silently noted the lack of light in any cabin windows. “My orders are to take the horse on to Macroom and billet there.”
“You’ll reach it by midnight. Stay on this lane to the road and follow the signs to Macroom. Be careful, Private,” she added.
“I will,” he nodded. “Thanks.”
Half a mile down the lane and there stood the cabin, a bit of smoke drifting out the chimney, lantern light in the front window. The windows of the cabins both right and left were dark. She sat on the edge of her seat eagerly, hands clapped together in her lap. And then her smile slipped away and she felt the private’s hand grip her own.
“Smell it?” he whispered in alarm.
She nodded, unable to speak.
“I can’t leave you here,” he said, but the horses had already drawn up in front of her cabin and she had jumped down.