‘The more the better,’ he agreed, re-reading the article avidly and scratching out notes in the small leather notebook he always carried.
Dan pored over Soyer’s recipe assiduously.
‘If this is made in the quantities Mr Soyer suggests, it would have little nutritional value,’ he insisted, and was delighted when, not long after, an article in The Lancet concurred with his findings, declaring Soyer’s soup ‘quackery’.
Dan’s sentiments were further vindicated when Sir Henry Marsh, the Queen’s own physician, came out and declared that the soup would pass through the human system too quickly to assuage hunger and nourish the body.
CHAPTER 66
A STRANGE STILLNESS HAD DESCENDED ON THE TOWN OF SKIBBEREEN. The sick and starved sat listlessly on the ground and in doorways, the streets otherwise quiet.
Honora Barry barely spoke to Mary when she delivered her work. The dressmaker looked ill, with a sickly yellow pallor to her skin.
‘I should have moved away, Mary, while I could,’ she pronounced as she paid her. ‘Death stalks this town, and no lock or key can stop him from entering every door.’
Mary felt a fear rise in her.
‘Don’t dawdle here,’ Miss Barry warned, as she gave her the lengths of calico and linen she needed. ‘Away home to your family.’
Mary had intended to take the soup but, seeing so many in such a bad state, decided to ignore her hunger pains. Instead, she made her purchases quickly and decided to call briefly to her sister before returning home.
Her nose wrinkled at the putrid odours that dominated the lanes of Bridgetown. As she neared Kathleen’s cottage, she was surprised to see little Sarah and Jude, both sitting on the step.
‘Is your mammy gone out?’
‘She’s inside,’ Sarah replied quietly, her head down, barely looking at her aunt.
‘She’s as cold as stone,’ sniffed Jude.
Alarmed that Kathleen had fallen ill, Mary pushed in the door. The room was gloomy and she wondered how Kathleen could be so foolish as to let the turf fire go out. In the poor light, she could make out the form of her sister, lying curled up on the settle bed.
‘Kathleen, are you sick?’ she asked, trying to keep the fear from her voice.
Kathleen said nothing. Perhaps she was asleep or too ill to talk.
A noise reached Mary’s ears and she saw some movement under her sister’s filthy blanket.
‘Kathleen.’
She bent forward to rouse her, but was greeted with a flash of squirming and screeching. With horror, she saw the eyes and hunched backs and tails of three – no, four – rats that ran over her sister’s body, their sharp teeth busy gnawing at her flesh.
‘Get off!’ she screamed in the near darkness. ‘Get out of it!’
Grabbing the nearby broom, she frantically beat the teeming rats away from her sister.
‘Get off her!’ she cried over and over, belting and chasing them as they scurried and jumped all around her.
‘Kitty!’ she yelled, agonized. ‘For God’s sake, Kitty, wake up!’
But Kathleen did not stir or move.
‘Wake up!’ she sobbed again, stretching out her hand to touch her sister, whose skin was ice cold.
She levelled one last whack at a furtive rat that had burrowed under her sister’s skirt. As she gently turned Kathleen over, she discovered little Lizzie, curled up and hidden protectively in her mother’s arms. Both dead … Both gone from the world.
Shock overcame her as she took in the damaged face and left eye of her beautiful sister, and the myriad bites that covered her neck, torso and left arm.
Bile cascaded from her mouth as she retched on to the earth floor again and again, despite her empty stomach. The only mercy was that Kathleen had been dead when the rats had attacked her.
Wiping her mouth with her handkerchief, she stood, shocked and shaking, as she considered what to do. As she battled to regain her composure, she pushed out the door to the waiting children.
‘Is Mammy really sick, Auntie Mary?’
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak for a minute.
‘Your mammy is gone to heaven,’ she said eventually, hunkering down beside them, ‘along with little Lizzie.’
‘They’ve been sick these past few days.’ Sarah sobbed quietly. ‘Mam told us yesterday that we were to stay outside so we wouldn’t get sick too.’
‘Your mammy loves you both very much and always wanted the best for you,’ she explained. ‘She is at peace now.’
The children looked miserable, dirty and half-starved. And now they were motherless.
‘Where is your da?’
‘He never came home these past five days,’ whispered Sarah. ‘Mam was fierce worried for him. She searched the town and kept asking for him, but no one has seen him.’
‘Maybe Da went looking for work,’ argued Jude defensively.
‘I must go to the dispensary straight away,’ Mary said gently, ‘and tell them about your mam and sister’s deaths.’
Sarah’s scrawny body was racked with crying and Mary took her niece protectively in her arms.
‘Hush, pet … Hush,’ she soothed, realizing that the children were in no state to be left alone. ‘We’ll go together.’
Mary went as fast as she could to the dispensary, where a kind man dutifully took down Kathleen and Lizzie’s names and their address, and details of how they had been sick with fever.
‘The cart will collect them in an hour or two,’ he told her. ‘There are a few stops to be made in Bridgetown before they go to Abbeystrewery for burial.’
‘It is better you two stay outside,’ she told her niece and nephew on their return to the cottage, for she did not want them to see their mother the way she was.
‘That’s what Mammy told us to do,’ acknowledged Jude, wiping his tears with his raggedy sleeve as he sat back down on the stone step.
Mary swept the room noisily to rid it of any bold vermin that might have returned in her absence, before taking some linen from her pack. Carefully, she wrapped a length of it around Kathleen and Lizzie’s bodies, before taking her needle and thread to stitch the shroud, so that they would be buried together.
Finding a little turf, she blew the ashes in the grate and relit the fire. She set the pot to boil before bringing the children inside. She would make a little gruel for them with some of her oats.
‘What will happen to us, Auntie Mary?’ asked Sarah nervously.
‘Will we have to go back to the workhouse again?’
‘Jude, what do you mean?’ Mary countered.
‘Mammy took us there on Sunday to look for my da,’ Sarah explained. ‘She told them that she and Lizzie were both sick, but they said that the workhouse was full.’
‘Mam got angry with them, told them that our da helped build the workhouse, and said they must have space for us,’ Jude continued.
‘They could see Mam was sick,’ Sarah finished bitterly, ‘but they told her to go home.’
‘There will be no workhouse,’ promised Mary.
She made up her mind there and then that somehow she would take on minding her niece and young nephew. It was what Kathleen would have wanted – for her children to be raised with their own.
It was midday by the time the death cart came to collect the bodies. Two men with cloths wrapped around their noses and mouths lifted Kathleen and Lizzie with little gentleness on to the mounting pile. A few neighbours looked on from their doorways and Mary told them that she was taking the children with her, in case Joe reappeared, looking for them.
Along with a few other Bridgetown residents, Mary and the children followed the cart slowly across the river to the nearby graveyard where the large pit lay open to receive the dead. It was hard to believe that it was where her beloved sister would be laid to rest – a crowded grave with other poor souls from the town. Kathleen, with her green eyes that would crinkle with laughter, her red-gold hair and a smile that could charm the hardest heart, bur
ied like a pauper.
They watched from a little way back as the men unloaded the bodies, one at a time, into the hinged coffin, which was carried to the pit and lowered before being lifted up to be used again. She made the children close their eyes, for she did not want them to witness such a terrible thing.
‘Your mam and Lizzie’s souls have gone straight to heaven,’ Mary assured Sarah and Jude once the men had left.
Her niece broke down in sobs while Jude stood silent and red-eyed, staring at his mother and young sister’s last resting place. There had been no priest to say a few words so she wrapped her arms around both children and said a few prayers herself.
The breeze blew in from the water and across the Ilen as she did so, and the reeds whispered a lonely song.
The trio walked back to Creagh almost in silence, all lost in their own thoughts. Mary had no idea how John would take the news that there would be two more hungry mouths to feed, but she would not see Jude and Sarah put in the workhouse. As far as she was concerned, they were in her care now until their father returned.
CHAPTER 67
Creagh
BY THE TIME SHE AND THE CHILDREN ARRIVED HOME, MARY WAS HEARTSORE and weary. Never had she been so glad to see their cottage, as she led an exhausted Sarah and Jude inside.
Her own children were full of questions at the arrival of their two cousins, but a stern look from her ensured they said little. John, as if reading her mind, assured Kathleen’s children that they were family and welcome to stay with them.
Straight away she busied herself tending to their immediate needs. She made the two siblings strip out of their filthy rags and washed their dirty bodies all over with warm water. Despite their protests, she tended to their hair with the lice comb before putting Sarah into a clean shift, while Jude had to make do with a patched pair of Con’s britches and a shirt.
‘Let’s get you both something to eat and then you need to sleep, for you are all done in and need to rest.’
They managed a few oatcakes but their eyes were heavy with sleep. Con had fixed some fresh straw and a blanket on the side of the room where his sisters normally slept and the exhausted children lay down together, safe and warm.
‘They have suffered terribly,’ Mary explained to her family, ‘and are in need of kindness. They have lost their mother and sister, and their father is nowhere to be found. What little we have we will share with them.’
‘Poor things,’ said Nora. ‘Sarah can share with me.’
Once the rest of the children were asleep, Mary told John of the terrible circumstances in which she had found her sister and her youngest child. His eyes filled with anger.
‘Poor Kathleen,’ he said, shocked. ‘What a terrible way for her to die!’
‘I know that taking in the children means we now have two more mouths to feed,’ she admitted despairingly, ‘but I could not bear to see them end in the workhouse.’
‘We will manage,’ he vowed, taking her hand in his. ‘Like we always have.’
Mary worried for the young Casey children. Sarah often sobbed herself to sleep, while Jude said little of his family and roamed the nearby fields on his own. She did her best to eke out the little food that they had, but Con complained constantly that he was hungrier than ever, as did little Annie.
John had worries of his own, for there was talk of evictions across the district. George Hogan was said to be giving the tenants of Sir William Wrixon Becher orders to leave their holdings.
‘There is a new law that has come in,’ he told her one day. ‘I am going to go over to meet Michael Hayes and a few of the men to find out what it means, but I fear it is not good for the likes of us.’
In the still of the night Mary sat quietly, sewing the linen shrouds and watching the low flames flicker in the grate, wishing that these bad times would soon come to an end.
CHAPTER 68
Skibbereen
May 1847
‘IS IT TRUE, FATHER?’ BRIDEY ASKED, RUSHING INTO THE ROOM. ‘IS IT true that he is dead?’
Father John nodded solemnly, deeply saddened by the news of Daniel O’Connell’s death. He found it hard to believe that Ireland’s mighty champion would no longer rise up to defend his people. The great Liberator, who had won Catholic emancipation, fought for repeal of the Act of Union and, only a few short months ago, pleaded to Parliament on behalf of his starving people, had died in Genoa, far from his native land. It was the worst of news.
‘They say that he was going to see the Pope, Father?’
‘It would appear that he intended to travel from Genoa to the Vatican to appeal to Pope Pius for assistance.’
‘Oh, God be good to him!’ Bridey broke down. ‘To think that he stayed here under this roof and I cooked him his breakfast.’
Although he was well used to death, Father John, like Bridey, felt overcome by a great sense of loss as he thought of the man himself, sitting by his fire and chatting with him less than four years ago.
The great Daniel O’Connell was, at last, reunited in death with his wife, Mary, and much-loved young grandson. It was a sad day for Ireland and her people, for all hope was destroyed. Who would champion their cause now?
Father John resolved that he would arrange to say a special mass in the morning for the remarkable leader.
‘The best of men taken from us.’ Bridey continued to sob. ‘For without him we are lost!’
The reaction to the devastating news was the same everywhere. In every street, lane and cottage in Skibbereen, the people were shocked to hear of the Liberator’s death.
The following morning the townspeople crowded into St Patrick’s Cathedral and prayed fervently for Daniel O’Connell. They mourned the loss of Ireland’s great leader, giving thanks for his long life and his deep love of his country and its people.
‘We’ll not see his like again,’ murmured Tim McCarthy Downing as they gazed across the river and up towards Curragh Hill where the great man had spoken to them all.
A week later, Father John heard that O’Connell’s last wish had been for his soul to go to God, his body to be returned to his beloved Ireland for burial, but that his heart be removed and sent in an urn to the Pope in Rome.
He smiled, thinking of O’Connell’s huge funeral, one last great massive Monster Meeting to be held in Dublin to welcome their great hero home to his native land.
CHAPTER 69
SINCE KATHLEEN’S DEATH, MARY HAD SPENT MUCH OF HER TIME CARing for her sister’s broken-hearted children.
‘You two are my kin,’ she assured young Sarah and Jude. ‘You are my blood, and I promise you that John and I will take care of you. You have a home here with us.’
John had gone to town in search of Joe Casey twice. He had made enquiries everywhere, but no one had seen sight nor sound of Kathleen’s husband. Her brother-in-law seemed to have vanished, unaware of the death of his wife and child.
‘Perhaps he’s gone away to Dublin or Liverpool for work?’ John suggested to Mary.
‘Joe would have told Kathleen if he had found work. He would know how happy that would have made her.’
Mary had written a simple letter to Kathleen’s eldest boy, Michael, who was still employed in the big house in Clonakilty, telling him of his poor mother and Lizzie’s deaths. She assured him that she was caring for his sister and brother.
Her own children found it strange at first to have their two cousins now living with them, but had pity for them and did their best to be kind.
Mary had finished making the shrouds for Honora Barry, but worried that the dressmaker would be annoyed with her. She should have returned them nearly two weeks ago and had used some of the material for Kathleen and Lizzie. Truth to tell, she had not been able to face visiting town since finding her sister dead, but she could no longer put off returning her work, for she needed the payment badly.
She rang the shop bell but there was no sign of the dressmaker. She peered through the window and rapped loudly at the door, calling her
name. When there was still no answer, Mary decided she would try the back door, and was just about to knock on it when a maid came out of the next-door building with a bucket of ashes for the bin.
‘If you are looking for Miss Barry she’s not there,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Took sick a few days back. All on her own, she was, when they found her and took her to the fever sheds. Poor woman, she died there the next day.’
Mary stood rooted to the ground, shocked by the news of Honora Barry’s death and the loss not just of her employer but of her friend, who had been both generous and supportive to her since she had first started working for her.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ Mary said, dismayed. ‘She was a good woman, and always kind to me.’
‘Sad, no husband or child or relation to mourn her by all accounts!’
The maid turned her back on Mary and disappeared inside.
A strange instinct made Mary check beneath the loose stone near the back step where the dressmaker used to keep a key. She couldn’t believe that it was still there. Taking it, she let herself in to the empty shop.
She walked through the workroom that housed the cutting table and sewing table where she used to work. The wooden shelves that once were laden with bales of satin, silk, velvet, lace and sprigged cotton were now bare. Two or three unfinished garments hung forlornly and forgotten from the work rail.
Miss Barry had been telling her the truth about her business drying up. She thought back to how busy the shop used to be, with plenty of customers. The needle and thread, and measuring tape and scissors were on the go constantly. Poor woman, Mary thought, to have to watch her business all but disappear. She must have struggled to stay open these past awful two years.
Mary put down her packet on one of the tables and wondered what she was meant to do with the shrouds now. It was likely there was no money to pay her for her work.
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