Brendan Graham
THE WHITEST FLOWER

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

The News Building

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 1998

This edition 2016

Copyright © Brendan Graham 1998

Lyrics by Brendan Graham

© Brendan Graham © peermusic UK, Ltd

Reproduced by permission

Brendan Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008148133

Version: 2016-01-04

Ellen’s Country

........... Areas showing ground above 360 ft

An Trá Ban | lit. The White Strand, known locally as The Silver Strand
Béal a tSnámha | The mouth of the swimming place – now called the Ferry Bridge
Bóithrín a tSléibhe | The little road over the mountain
Crucán na bPáiste | Burial place of the children
Leac | Ellen’s ‘rock’

Note: Maamtrasna in 1845 was in County Galway. The County boundaries were redrawn in 1896. Maamtrasna now resides in County Mayo.

Ellen’s Journey.

see detail opposite

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Maps

An introduction to the 2016 edition

Book One: IRELAND

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Book Two: AUSTRALIA

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Book Three: GROSSE ILE

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Book Four: BOSTON

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Book Five: IRELAND

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Glossary

Quotations

Author’s Note

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

An introduction to the 2016 edition

When, almost twenty years ago, I walked into the boardroom of HarperCollins Publishers and told a roomful of executives the outline of what was to become this story, little did I realise the journey that particular morning would take me on.

Three years previously in the summer of ’93, I had been made redundant. A manager in a clothing manufacturing company, at 48-years-old I wasn’t re-employable in what was then a shrinking industry in Ireland. Life as I had known it had stopped and I thought the world would cave in, but it didn’t. By default I became a full-time songwriter − what was once my hobby would now, I hoped, become my bread ’n’ butter!

My ‘office’ became the poet, Patrick (Paddy) Kavanagh’s bench along the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal, with the statue of the poet sitting to one side, offering room for any wandering soul needing respite from a weary world. Whether it was a statement of intent or whether I was hoping for Paddy’s inspiration and blessing, I am still unsure.

The following year a bittersweet song about the changing nature of life and love became the unlikely winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. With Rock ’n’ Roll Kids, I began to earn a living again. Two years later, in 1996 another quite different song, The Voice, repeated the winning experience. A song of the elements … of the connectedness of all things, past, present and future, it was leading me in a particular direction − history.

With time on my hands and lots of it, I began writing not one-off songs, but a series of connected songs set in the time of An Gorta Mór, Ireland’s Great Famine of the mid 1800’s. Why, I don’t know. I guess some things are preserved in a kind of national consciousness – even though at that time there was never much written in school text-books about the Great Famine. An even stranger thing was happening in these songs − a female character began to emerge, one who was the connecting force between them. She was edging me towards what was then the somewhat out-of-date notion of the ‘concept album’.

At a meeting in London in 1996, with music publishers, Warner Chappell, they seemed fascinated by both the story and in Ireland’s Great Famine, of which they knew little more than I did, though I had already begun my research. Back in Dublin the following morning, the phone rang − it was Stuart Newton the A&R man at Warner Chappell.

‘Could you be back in London for a 9.00am meeting on Friday at HarperCollins? Oh, and could you send over that story you told us about the woman and the potato famine?’

With nothing to send to anyone, I made some ungracious songwriter remark about publishers in general and said, ‘I’ll bring it with me!’

For the next three days and nights, I scarcely darkened the bedroom door. Somehow I scratched out fifteen pages of a stream-of-consciousness story, which had no title but did have a beginning, a middle and an end. Most of all, it had Ellen Rua O’Malley, my mysterious ‘song-woman’, who now had a name.

Arriving at the imposing headquarters of HarperCollins on Friday, I wondered what in God’s name I was doing there? Still only a fledgling songwriter trying to scrape out a living, here I was going in with a cobbled together story to read to these moguls of the publishing world. The foyer was even less becalming than the size of the building. There were books everywhere, No.1 bestsellers, famous authors; names I admired − books, books and more books. The boardroom didn’t help much either. Around a massive ‘table of doom’ sat seven people with seven sets of eyes all directed towards me.

And so I began to tell them the story of Ellen, and one of the many strange occurrences that have been with me throughout this journey happened. A peaceful calm descended, all anxiety and nervousness held at bay. It was like I was watching a slow-motion scene from a movie − one with me in it.

Ellen’s story had moved the people in that room and I was offered a book deal on the spot. In that moment I had gone from manufacturing to full-time songwriter and now a novelist, and I had learned to be grateful for what is sometimes taken away, as much as for what is sometimes given.

The writing of The Whitest Flower took two years and brought me from the mountains of Mayo to the Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia’s Coorong, to the ‘Irish Cemetery’ at Canada’s quarantine island of Grosse Ile and then to Boston. People everywhere were extraordinarily generous in their assistance and in sharing their history and I have thanked them in detail in the previous 1990 editions. However, there are a few people requiring special thanks. The late George Trevorrow, wise man and elder of the Ngarrindjeri people, unasked, gifted me with a dictionary of his people’s language and then gave me his people’s blessing. In Quebec, the late Marianna O’ Gallagher, who was involved in the creation of Grosse Ile as a National Historic Site, painstakingly guided me through the Irish story in Canada and corrected my errors of fact in Ellen’s story. In Boston, Eileen Moore Quinn, now professor of Anthropology at the College of Charleston, opened up the whole vista of women during the famine times and similarly read my manuscript, while Vincent Comerford, now retired Professor of Irish History at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth also kindly proof-read my manuscript for historical accuracy.

My daughter, Niamh not only put all of my original handwritten text onto a word processor but all the re-drafts too! This was between organising trips, meetings, and generally co-ordinating all my efforts over the two years the novel took to write. Without her work, this book would never have come together.

My editor at HarperCollins was the wonderful and legendary, Patricia Parkin, now sadly deceased and to whom I dedicate this new edition. Her obituary in the Guardian referred to her as ‘an endangered species’ and indeed she was of the ‘old school’ of publishing. Patricia came to Ireland, visiting all the places in ‘Ellen’s country’ about which I was writing. She had patience beyond the human and needed it with a first time novelist floundering under a 500-page novel. Only once did she snap. On the third and final book in the series, I had real difficulty getting off the blocks − not even a title for a long period. When I did get my title, The Brightest Day, the Darkest Night, I shot it over to Patricia in an email, hoping to stave off a publisher’s ire. I received back one of her succinct one-liners, ‘we all love the title − now where’s the book?’

But there was as always a ‘good’ reason.

During the publication of The Element of Fire, the second of the trilogy, I received a phone call. Norwegian composer, Rolf Lovland, one half of the successful group, Secret Garden, was working on the group’s second album. He had composed an instrumental melody called Silent Story for inclusion on this album. However, it seemed that this particular melody was not going to make the final cut, so Rolf decided to look for a lyric to his melody. That Christmas (2000), Irish violinist, Fionnuala Sherry, the other half of Secret Garden, had given him a present − The Whitest Flower. As the composer later described it, ‘the depth of that story moved me so much, I was so fascinated by it … I thought that if anybody could hear the story I was trying to tell in the melody … it was Brendan’.

I had temporarily put aside writing songs to concentrate on my books when I got “the phone call”. It was one of those split second decisions − they were in Dublin. I went to hear Rolf’s Silent Story melody and it immediately captured my imagination.

I came up with the title and wrote the chorus and bones of the song that very same day, then phoned them to come over later that night and in my cramped little garden study, I ‘sang’ for them the very first performance of You Raise Me Up. Did any of us that night have any inkling of the journey that song would take; from Super Bowl to Olympic Games, from Nobel Peace Prize to 9/11 Commemorations at Ground Zero and everywhere in between, crossing boundaries of culture, creed and country?

And so, in the whirlwind of that song, books suffered and I let down many people by long-missed deadlines − my steadfast publishers and my loyal readers.

Somehow Ellen Rua sustained on her own − so much so that, to my great surprise, HarperCollins decided to re-issue her story, seventeen years onwards. It is yet another twist to the story and in editor Kate Bradley, Ellen has found a new and enthusiastic champion, while Anne O’Brien, who worked on the original edition of The Whitest Flower, thankfully agreed to further tighten it up.

Without my agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor − who always believes − none of this would have come to pass and I express my deep gratitude to her for her calmness and stoic support.

My wife and family have previously lived through the ‘Ellen years’. Without their patience, understanding, fortitude and forbearance none of this journey would have happened … and be continuing.

Buíochas óm’ chroí

Co. Mayo,

November 2015.

The story of Ellen Rua O’Malley is just that − a story, but what she and her family experienced is largely based on actual recorded events of what happened to the poor in Ireland during the Famine years. I have tried as accurately as I could, to portray the Ireland of the times in which Ellen lived − the places, the political, religious, social and cultural background. Similarly for Australia, Grosse Île and Boston.

For omissions, mistakes of fact, and novelist’s licence, I am totally responsible. This should not in any way reflect on the very many diligent people who helped me with research material and whose work and suggestions were invaluable in creating the historical backdrop to The Whitest Flower. To them all I am deeply grateful.

In memoriam – John McDougall, HarperCollinsPublishers, June 1998

This edition – In memoriam Patricia Parkin. HarperCollinsPublishers, March 2009

DO

MHÁIRE, DONNA, GRÁINNE,

NIAMH, DEIRDRE agus ALANA

Book One
IRELAND

1

Ellen Rua O’Malley woke and immediately made the sign of the cross on herself. At the ‘Amen’ she pressed the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to her lips, then gently laid the hand in turn on the heads of her husband and three children. Unaware of her blessing, they continued to sleep – Michael, her husband, nearest the wall as was the custom; the children on the other side of the still-warm space she had occupied.

Her benedictions complete, Ellen moved quietly to the door of the small cabin and stepped out into the dawn light of the Maamtrasna Valley.

Roberteen Bawn, from his vantage point at the window of his parents’ cabin, watched Ellen appear. His mouth slowly widened in anticipation. This was the fifth morning in a row that she was up and about while all others in the mountainside village slept. All, that is, except for Roberteen.

From that first time he saw the red-haired woman slip away to the lake five days ago, he’d known instinctively that she would repeat the ritual – rising each day with the sun as it appeared over the top of the mountain, brightening the dark waters of Lough Mask – and he would be ready, in his position by the window.

Roberteen pressed closer to the cold stone of the window ledge, trying to keep his breathing under control. If his father – or, worse still, his mother – woke and caught him spying on the wife of Michael O’Malley, he’d be dragged by the ear-lug down the mountain to the priest in Finny. A chilling image of Father O’Brien denouncing him from the pulpit entered the boy’s mind. Still he could not drag himself away from the window and the sight of the red-haired woman.

He followed her every move as she straightened to full height on leaving her cabin. Good – he tensed with delight – she wasn’t wearing the shawl. When her bare arms reached out to the sun it was as though the sun came to her, its light playing on the dark red hair that earned her the name Ellen Rua – red-haired Ellen. As she reached back with both hands to loose the tangled mass of hair, she turned her face in Roberteen’s direction. He drew back sharply, and waited a few moments before inching his face to the window again. She was standing with her back to him, looking down the valley towards Lough Mask. He could see the white nape of her neck where she had pulled the hair forward over her shoulders. She mustn’t have spotted me, he thought, rubbing his hands together.

At nineteen, Roberteen Bawn was ripe for marrying. His mother, Biddy, was forever telling him so. ‘Oh! Roberteen,’ she would say, ‘if only you could get a girl like Michael O’Malley’s wife – she’d knock some spark o’ sense into you.’ If only she knew!

Ah, with such a fine woman for a wife wouldn’t he be the talk of the valley – and of Finny and Tourmakeady too – just like Michael O’Malley was.

Intent now on what the red-haired woman was doing, Roberteen’s thoughts broke off from his mother’s intentions for him. Ellen had not moved for some time now. She stood very still, gazing at the lake or perhaps at Tourmakeady far down along its western shore. Planning and scheming, most like; the red-haired women were notorious for it, and this one’s head was full of ideas she’d got from her father, the Máistir.

He turned again to check on his parents. Still sleeping. Good, he was all right. When he turned to look at Ellen again, she had moved slightly. Suddenly it struck him. Sure, he should have known right away by the way she was standing so still, her hands joined. She was praying, that’s what she was at!

This deflected him momentarily. It wasn’t a right thing to be looking at her that way, and she praying. But, then again, maybe she wasn’t praying, just looking at the lake and dreaming … dreaming of songs and poems and stories and all them things the Máistir had put into her head as a child.

His conscience thus salved, Roberteen remained where he was, watching.

Ellen felt the sun move down her body, searching her out, nourishing her with the warmth of its rays. It was difficult to pray this morning. It was always difficult on the mornings after the nights when she had turned to Michael, and, from deep in her throat, drawn out the soft, low words he loved to hear. It had been thus these past five mornings – ever since 15 August, Our Lady’s Day. It was almost as if the two strands of her love – her deep spiritual love of God and her deep physical love for Michael – should be kept apart, should not touch each other.

She put all other thoughts from her mind, giving herself up instead to this wild place on the mountain. Before her the Mask spread out, its myriad islands sparkling like emeralds in the August morn. Though her village lay on an arm of the Mask which extended just inside Galway’s northern border, Ellen nevertheless regarded herself as a Mayo woman – both her parents being of that county. The other arm of the Mask embraced the far side of the mountain, reaching back towards America Beag. Nothing there now but a few fields and empty cabins. The first one to go left back after the famine times of the 1820s, the Máistir had told her. Then the dollars from America came, and the next one left. One by one they followed like links in a chain, until they were all beyond in Boston or New York. So they called the home-place America Beag – ‘Little America’. Strange, she thought, only the odd one had left from anywhere else about the place.

From across the lake she could hear the dogs of Derrypark yelping for their morning scraps, their hunger echoing over the still waters of the Mask. Her eye wandered on along the far shore towards Tourmakeady, where Pakenham the landlord lived.

She had seen him once at the fair in Leenane. He had smiled and nodded at her, struck by the way she stood out from the crowd. She, without acknowledging him, had moved on, but not before she had heard him bellow at one of his lackeys, ‘That girl, who is she? No, not her, you fool – that one over there with the red hair.’ She was gone from earshot before the lackey had time to reply.

Not wishing to darken this fine morning with thoughts of Sir Richard Pakenham, or any other landlord, she redirected her attention to the valley. The garden of paradise could not have been more beautiful than her valley of the lake, framed by the towering Partry Mountains. Her eyes took it all in, just as they had taken in the sudden movement in Roberteen’s cabin. The thought of young Roberteen brought a smile to her blue-green eyes. The next time she came across him, she’d look him straight in the eye – let him know that she knew, the little whelp! And he not even the height of her shoulder. Some hard work drawing turf up the mountain would temper the rising sap in him. If Michael suspected Roberteen of spying on her, he would give the lad a thrashing and a half. But she wasn’t about to tell Michael. She would deal with it in her own way, and in her own time.

She let her eyes rest upon the patch of land between the staggered row of cabins and the lake shore. She always saved this scene, the most important of all, until last. There, just below the bóithrín, were the lazy beds. Underneath these long raised mounds of earth grew the villagers’ sole means of existence: the lumper potato. The growth was luxuriant – the best she’d seen in years. Down below the green stalks and the little white flowers bobbing this way and that, the tubers themselves were ripening and fattening, getting ready to be lifted.

This would be a good year. They would work hard and, maybe, with God’s help, they would be able to put a little by after the rent had been paid.

She looked back at the cabin and thought of her sleeping family: Michael, one arm unconsciously reaching for her; the twins, her darling cúplaín Ellen beag – ‘a pair of little Ellens’, as the villagers called them. Katie, a six-year-old bundle of fun and mischief, and next to her, or rather intertwined with her in a jumble of arms and legs, Mary. Quiet Mary, so different from Katie, but the two of them lying there as if they wanted to be one again. Patrick, two years older than Mary and Katie, slept a little ways off, as was proper for male children. If the girls were the reincarnation of Ellen, then Patrick was a young Michael in the making: dark of hair and feature, typical of the ‘Black Irish’ found along Ireland’s western shores – a living testament to the Spanish Armada’s visit to Galway in 1588.

‘Our children are our hope,’ the Máistir used to say. Would her children be allowed to realize the hopes of their parents – the hope of release from the tyranny of landlords, the hope of freedom from English rule?

Aware that her thoughts had strayed, Ellen returned to her prayers. Then, satisfied at having reconciled herself with her God, she strode happily alongside the mountain stream to the point where it entered the elbow of the Mask.

As she bent to splash some lake water on her face and neck, her thoughts once again turned to last night. How she loved the strength of Michael’s arms when he pulled her to him; the smell of the turf and the heather in his hair after he had been a day at the mountain; his eyes, shining out through the dark at her, riveting her very soul.

At thirty, he was four years older than she. Was it ever nine years since they first met? She had just turned seventeen and the Máistir had brought her to the Pattern Day Fair at Leenane. She’d seen Michael watching her – unlike Roberteen, he’d done it openly, like a man should – and she had known at once he would come for her. Before the week was out he called to see her father. Ellen remembered the way the feelings stirred inside her on seeing him again. In no time they were married. She was scarcely over her eighteenth birthday when Patrick was born. Then came the double joy of Katie and Mary. And then nothing.

Though they still loved each other passionately, God had not blessed them with any more children. At first, this hadn’t worried her unduly, but after a few years she began to wonder if she was barren; if it was a sign from God that she and Michael had loved too much.

She longed for a big family. As an only child, she had grown up wishing she’d been surrounded by brothers and sisters, like the other children in the village. At twenty-six she was still young enough – not like Biddy, who was too old to have any more after Roberteen was born. Children were a blessing from God and Ellen Rua wanted to be blessed again.

Eventually, somewhat against her better judgement, and without telling Michael, she had crossed the mountain to the hut of Sheela-na-Sheeoga. Sheela had delivered Ellen’s first three children, but the valley women rarely went to her now. It was rumoured that she consorted with the fairy folk and changelings, hence the name Sheela-na-Sheeoga – Sheela who is of the fairies.

What Ellen learned from that secret visit had served only to trouble her further. The old cailleach had asked some questions of a personal nature, laid her hands on Ellen’s forehead and stomach, and then shuffled off into the darkest corner of her cabin. It sounded as though the old woman was mixing something, all the time a-muttering away in words which Ellen did not recognize. When Sheela-na-Sheeoga finally emerged from the darkness, she anointed Ellen on the forehead, on the tip of her tongue, and over her womb, with a strong-smelling herbal brew.

‘Nothing ails you, craythur,’ she said. ‘You are young and you are strong. When the whitest flower blooms, so too will you bloom.’ She had paused then and moved closer to whisper: ‘But the whitest flower will become the blackest flower and you, red-haired Ellen, must crush its petals in your hand.’

Before Ellen could respond, the woman made a gesture of dismissal and said, ‘Now, go home to your husband, Ellen Rua!’ And with that she had ushered Ellen out of the cabin.

Once out of sight of Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s hut, Ellen had spat out the vile-tasting mixture and, with a handful of grass, cleansed the places where it stained her body. But the riddle the old cailleach had set her proved harder to get rid of; it had preyed on her mind ever since.

And now it seemed that the old woman’s doings with herbs and spells was all nonsense. Ellen’s prayers remained unanswered. There was still no sign of a younger brother or sister for Patrick and the twins.

As she sat looking for answers in the deep waters of the Mask, Ellen caught sight of her own reflection. Something about her face seemed different. She bent down closer, peering into the mirror of the lake’s surface, trying to find an explanation for the sense of trepidation and excitement she was feeling. This was more than the exhilaration of a fine August morning, the effects of the sun, the shimmering lake. Kneeling in the shallow water, she lowered her head until her hair draped over the Mask’s surface. The breeze rose. The water flicked at her face and tendrils of hair floated about her, red-eeled, seeking release. Then the breeze died and the waters settled to their previous calm. Still Ellen waited and watched, face to her face’s image. Seeing into herself.

First, it was a slow realization, sweeping silently over her body as the early dawn swept in over the valley – unnoticed until it was there. Then, with growing excitement, she knew – the face in the water knew – that this morning, after six long years, Michael’s seed had at last taken within her.

She was carrying his child.

‘Moladh le Dia,’ she whispered to the radiant face in the water. ‘Moladh le Dia,’ she repeated before lifting her face and her wet hair heavenwards.

She remained thus, silent in thanksgiving, for a few moments. Not daring to be too overjoyed, she resolved not to tell Michael yet. She’d keep it to herself until the month was out.

Roberteen Bawn watched transfixed as Ellen turned to make her way back up from the lake. Drops of water glistened in the sun as they fell from her hair. The loose-fitting shift she wore now clung to the contours of her body, accentuating each movement. Yet she seemed not to notice as she paused by the side of the stream, silently raising her head to heaven.

While his mouth and throat were dry with excitement, the unruly mop of blond hair which framed Roberteen’s face and forehead was ringed by beads of perspiration. ‘A curse on the woman!’ he muttered under his breath as he wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘She’s the very divil!’ Gripping the outside of the window ledge, the boy hauled himself up until his legs dangled above the cabin floor. Now he would be able to see her better.

Too late, he heard the swish behind him as his mother’s broomstick whacked squarely against his backside.

‘Get down outta there, you dirty little blackguard!’ Biddy yelled, while laying into her son with the broom. ‘I’ll give you spyin’ on that poor woman! ’Tis at your prayers you should be’ – she landed another whack on him – ‘droolin’ over another man’s wife!’ Again the broom found its mark, harder now. ‘Go on, get out o’ the sight o’ me, or I’ll not be responsible for you!’ she threatened, making one last lunge at Roberteen, who was already half out the door and headed for the mountain.

David Moore, curator of Dublin’s Botanic Gardens, marvelled as the sunlight fell upon the vibrant reds and yellows of the rose gardens, then shimmered across the lily pond. His daily rounds, notebook in hand, were a constant source of delight. What better position in life could one aspire to? Working under God’s airy light, bounty and beauty on every side, entrusted with the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the furtherance of God’s work in creating new hybrids of plant life. Fine gentlemen and their ladies, out taking the air in his gardens, nodded to him, acknowledging his handiwork, and his treatises on matters botanical had won plaudits – even from Kew.

This morning he had every reason to be pleased: his roses were abundant in their growth and in the full bloom of health. He made a note for McArdle, his outdoor foreman, to prune them back harder next year. Turning the page, he scribbled a reminder to write to Pakenham at Tourmakeady in response to a letter he had received from that quarter. Pakenham wanted to know how to deal with blemishes afflicting the pride of his extensive rose gardens, a Rosa chinensis – the Jenkinstown Rose, forever immortalized by the poet Thomas Moore in his song, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’. The curator thought it likely that Pakenham’s problem was a product of the poor soil in the West, but he would consult his reference books and consider it further before replying. Moore’s own specimen was flourishing and showed neither spot nor blemish of any description.

Satisfied with the condition of the rose gardens, Moore moved on to the vegetable patch. Every kind of vegetable known to be capable of cultivation in the Irish climate was grown here. As curator, he carefully monitored growth under varying weather and tillage conditions, and conducted experiments with sulphides and phosphates to ward off diseases.

‘God’s day, Mr Moore,’ he heard, and turned.

‘Ah, yes a good morning, indeed it is, Canon,’ he replied to the sprightly old rector who frequented the gardens on a daily basis.

‘My most important appointment, as I always say. A good constitutional, in the company of the Lord, combined with a visit to my faithful congregation botanicus … That’s the thing, eh, Moore?’

‘Yes, Canon,’ the curator replied unenthusiastically.

The good Canon Prufrock, having delivered himself of his prescription for a healthy life, began to saunter away, muttering to himself in Latin. But his ruminations were interrupted by an anguished cry behind him. Alarmed, he turned to see the curator bent as if in pain.

‘What is it, man, what’s the matter?’ he asked, hurrying back to Moore’s side.

‘It’s here! It’s here!’ The curator gesticulated, unable to find words to describe what he had seen.

‘Why, I see nothing there except the makings of fine healthy potatoes glistening with God’s morning dew!’ said the cleric, in a tone that suggested he thought Moore had taken leave of his senses.

‘That is no dew! Look at it – feel it. That, Canon, is the blight. Have you not read of it in the journals? Introduced from America, it has wiped out the potato crop from the Low Countries to Northern France. Now it is here in Ireland – and may God have mercy on us all!’

‘Will it be of … of such a consequence?’

‘Consequence! If it takes root here in Ireland, this murrain will wipe out the entire potato crop in a matter of months. With two million acres – one third of all tilled land – given over to its cultivation, well over half the population is heavily dependent on the crop. Of those, some three million souls rely on it totally. This could be the biggest disaster Ireland, or the Empire itself, has ever experienced.’

‘But what is to be done? Is there nothing you …?’

Moore had not registered until then the awful burden which now rested upon his shoulders. As curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens it was natural that he should be looked to for a solution to this calamity. Sounding more composed than he felt, he began to outline a plan of action: ‘Firstly, I must alert the Lord Lieutenant. He, no doubt, will inform London with utmost expedition so that the Government can mobilize its resources to avert a catastrophe. Here, in the gardens, we must immediately find a cure. We must prevent this blight from taking root in Ireland, whatever the effort, whatever the cost.’

‘God will provide,’ Canon Prufrock said tremulously. ‘God will provide,’ he repeated. And then, almost sotto voce, he added: ‘If it be His will.’

Slowly and deliberately, David Moore opened his notebook and recorded the first occurrence in Ireland of a blight which would leave a trail of death and desolation, and forever change the lives of Ellen O’Malley and her little family:

Late Blight – Lumper Potatoes Royal Botanic Gardens, Dublin.

Twentieth day of August, 1845.

As Ellen walked back up towards the village, an unseasonably cold chill swept in from the lake, catching her about the neck and shoulders. She shivered, and for a fleeting moment the old cailleach’s strange prophecy echoed through her mind. But Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s words were drowned out by the rí-rá coming from her neighbours’ cabin. When young Roberteen emerged, scurrying up the mountainside like a scalded cat, she laughed and relaxed. Then smiled, thinking all the more of her new condition.

2

As Ellen re-entered the cabin, Michael was rising. He watched her incline slightly to negotiate the door and the fall of her breasts brought back to him all the urgency of last night. Framed in the doorway, the sparkling August morning behind her, she seemed to glow with light and life.

Silently Michael gave thanks for this woman, the most beautiful he had ever seen. Tall, she carried herself like the warrior queens of old, her bare feet clenching the ground, knowing it was of her and she of it.

In her face intelligence as well as beauty was held. And those eyes – it was like looking into the waters of the Mask: a mixture of green and blue, forever drawing you in, deeper and deeper. Her lips were wide and generous, not thin-lipped from whispering about the place like some of the other women. Sometimes she gave a little laugh when he kissed those lips. He never knew whether this was encouragement or shyness at his advances. Whatever it was, it made him all the more fervent in his desire for her. And when she laughed fully and threw back her head, then he was completely lost to this woman – his red-haired Ellen.

She caught his look, and, knowing what he was thinking, cast her gaze to where the children were still sleeping.

‘Dia dhuit,’ he said.

‘Dia’s Muire dhuit, a stór,’ she whispered, returning the blessing.

‘It’s time to wake the little ones, Ellen,’ he said softly. At her gentle touch, the still-intertwined twins were up in an instant, tumbling into her waiting arms.

‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí, what will we do this morning?’ they insisted simultaneously.

‘Wait a minute now,’ Mamaí prompted, ‘the first thing we do every morning is …?’

‘The prayers, a Mhamaí. But what then?’ they clamoured, undeflected.

‘Sshh now, and kneel down. Patrick, are you ready?’ Patrick rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his knuckles. He did not go to her as his sisters did, but she reached over and put one arm around him, drawing him towards her. He was growing, she thought. He gave her a quick look and a sleepy smile, and she nodded back understandingly. They didn’t need to say much between them. It was the same with Michael – more the silence than the spoken.

Together they all knelt down and, for the second time that day, Ellen crossed herself. Then she led them in the first of the morning prayers while the children joined in sleepily behind her. Katie, as always, elbowed Mary at every mention of the name of the Mother of God. This drew a similar elbowed response from Mary, coupled with, ‘Sure, you’re only jealous ’cos there’s no prayers for Katies.’ Ellen, fixing them with her most baleful glare, ordered Katie to lead the Hail Mary. This Katie did reluctantly, annoyed at having to give praise to her twin sister’s name. ‘Now, Mary,’ Ellen said when Katie had finished, ‘you will say the Act of Contrition.’ Mary considered that the Act of Contrition applied more to Katie than to her, and in consequence gave it plenty of emphasis for her sister’s benefit.

Some semblance of prayerfulness was restored when it came to Patrick’s turn. He was getting to the age where ‘O Angel of God, my guardian dear …’ seemed childish. Katie and Mary might still need guardian angels, but he was big enough to go to the top of the mountain by himself. Nevertheless for a quiet life he fell in with the part required of him.

Finally Michael concluded the morning prayers with the petition: ‘Keep us from all sickness and harm this day for ever, and ever, Amen.’ Then, having started the day off properly, he went outside – ‘To see what class of a day is in it.’

The others, meanwhile, had their own rituals to attend to.

Patrick cleared the night ashes from over the glowing turf and fetched fresh sods for Ellen to show him how to build up a new fire. Now he watched as she took the longer, narrower pieces of turf and stood them on end, balancing the top edges against each other for support, so that they encircled the smouldering embers of yesterday’s fire.

‘Always leave plenty of space between them for the breeze to get in and fan the flame,’ she advised. ‘Fire means life – never let the fire go out. When the fire is gone, so too are those who tended it.’

Patrick was too young to fully understand, but he knew from the way she held her face close to his and fixed him with those eyes that these were the Máistir’s teachings and therefore to be respected.

Mary and Katie, meanwhile, were up at the spring. For protection of both spring and playful water-carriers, Michael had laid two flat slabs of stone over the rock where the spring emerged. Forgetting the task at hand, Mary and Katie now lay on those slabs studying their reflections, fascinated by their sameness, and trying to find some feature in one that was not replicated in the other. Eventually a shout from the cabin below reminded them what they were there for: to bring back a pot of water. So they scampered back down – the lift in the land now being in their favour – pulling the pot this way and that between them, and spilling half the water in the process.

Thus began their day, like most every other day in the valley.

Then it was time for ‘the Lessons’.

Ellen’s love of learning came from her father. Forced to leave the priesthood when he fell in love with her mother, Cáit – a great scandal, and still whispered about in the valley – he had become a hedge-school teacher or ‘Máistir’. At his knee Ellen had learned to read not only in Gaelic but also in English. She had picked up a smattering of Latin, too. And he had taught her the history of Ireland, and England, and told her of the far-off places in the world where the people spoke strange languages and followed strange customs.

In the evenings they would sit across the hearth from each other and he would pass down to her the old sean-nós songs, stories and poems from Bardic times.

‘Come what may,’ he would tell her, ‘tradition and education will always stand to a person. It’s tradition that keeps the people strong and true to themselves, and it’s the education that will free them in the end. Never forget that, Ellen, a stór.’

But her father’s greatest gift to her was love. She remembered how he would reach out his hand to her across the hearth’s space between them. How he would softly murmur into her hair, ‘Ellen, mo stóirín, mo stóirín rua, mo Ellen rua.’

Now it was time for the education of her own children.

‘Tell us again about Cromwell and the Roundheads,’ said Patrick, showing signs of following his father’s nationalistic tendencies.

‘No! Do the lesson about our cousin “Granuaile”,’ Katie piped up. Her choice – Grace O’Malley, the chieftain’s daughter who, three hundred years earlier, had ruled the Connacht coastline from Clew Bay, dispensing with her enemies as quickly as her husbands – suggested a liking for the idea of independent womanhood. Katie particularly enjoyed hearing how, when summoned to meet with Queen Elizabeth I of England, Granuaile had considered it to be a meeting of equals.

‘And what about you, Mary – what would you like?’ prompted Ellen, knowing that the quieter twin would never put forward what she wanted, being content to let Katie make the running.

‘I like the story of the children who were turned into swans,’ Mary said.

How like Mary it was to pick ‘The Children of Lir’, the most childlike and the saddest of all the great legends of Ireland.

‘All right, then. Patrick, fetch me the traithneens,’ Ellen instructed.

Patrick darted outside and was back almost immediately with the three blades of grass he had plucked. He handed these to his mother, who put them behind her back, rearranging the stalks in her hand as she did so.

‘Patrick, you first – draw a traithneen,’ she said, presenting the three blades of grass to him.

Patrick made his choice. Next it was Mary’s turn, and then all eyes were on Katie as she whisked the remaining blade of grass from Ellen’s hand.

‘Who has it? Who has the shortest traithneen?’ cried Katie, wanting to know immediately if it was she who would get to choose the subject for this morning’s lesson.

‘I have it!’ Patrick shouted excitedly.

Cromwell had drawn the shortest straw.

Ellen waited for the children to settle, then began her story: ‘Before Cromwell’s time, two hundred years ago, the Catholics who lived in Ireland owned three-quarters of the land. But the King of England, who was a Protestant, wanted to take all the good land away and give it to the landed gentry. They were the descendants of people who had invaded Ireland and settled here, and they were Protestants too. When they were good and did what the King asked, he gave them big castles and lands in Ireland’ – Ellen could see Patrick bristling with questions, but she continued – ‘and took it away from the Catholics who didn’t want to obey him.’

‘But why didn’t they fight him?’ Patrick couldn’t hold back any more.

‘Well, they did. And there were a lot of Catholics – more than there were Protestants. Then, over from England came a big army …’ She paused before posing the question: ‘Led by whom?’

‘Cromwell!’ shouted Katie.

‘Yes, that’s right, Katie. Now, Oliver Cromwell was a bad and wicked man and he hated the Catholics. He beheaded King Charles first, and then came to Ireland to kill the King’s supporters here, the Royalists. They were mostly Catholics. But Protestants, too.’ Ellen interrupted herself for another question: ‘What were Cromwell’s soldiers called?’

‘Roundheads.’ This time Patrick asserted his pre-eminence in matters military.

‘Yes, Patrick, good. They were called Roundheads because of the big round helmets they wore on their heads to protect them from the swords of the Irish. So, Cromwell and his army of Roundheads marched through Ireland, and they went into the villages and murdered all the men and the women, and even little boys and girls. Everyone was killed.’

Ellen could hear the intake of breath, as three sets of eyes widened at this terrible telling.

‘That was a very bad thing to do to all the little children,’ Mary ventured, horrified at the thought. ‘And them not doing any harm at all – being only small like me and Katie.’

‘Yes it was, a stóirín,’’ Ellen said gently, ‘and the reason Cromwell did that was because he was afraid that if he killed just the big people, then the children, when they grew up, would remember this and make a big army to kill him back. Also Cromwell wanted to get the land, so he had to clear out all the people who held the land. That’s why the Roundheads knocked down the poor people’s houses and burnt their crops – so that nothing was left, no trace of them at all. It was as if they had never been there. Then Cromwell sent word that this would be the fate of any Catholics who stayed on their lands. He wanted to drive them over here to the mountains and the sea, over to the poor lands of the West. “To hell or to Connacht” he said he’d send the people – and he did just that, the devil.’

‘That’s why we’re here on this mountain, with only a little bitteen of land and bog to keep us,’ said Patrick, repeating a favourite phrase of his father’s.

‘That’s right, Patrick,’ Ellen replied. ‘That’s quite right. The old people – seanathair mo sheanathair, “my grandfather’s grandfather” – were driven back to this valley, to the rocks and the stones, by Cromwell. So always remember this …’

Three heads craned forward.

‘It’s all to do with the land – everything goes back to the land.’

‘And he hung all the priests too!’ Patrick was warming to the subject now.

‘He did,’ said Ellen. ‘He put a price on their heads and the “Shawn a Saggarts” would hunt them down for money. Then Cromwell would hang them in front of their own people. One of his generals once said of a place that there was “neither water enough to drown a man, nor a tree to hang him from, nor soil enough to bury him in.” Now, wasn’t that an awful thing to be thinking? They say Cromwell was the most hated man ever to set foot in Ireland, and the people haven’t forgotten – he still is.’

While Patrick would have listened for hours to stories of hangings and the like, Katie and Mary were beginning to tire of the foul deeds of Oliver Cromwell. Their tiredness coincided with the sound of Michael returning, so Ellen cut short the lesson with a promise that tomorrow they would draw the traithneen for Granuaile or the Children of Lir.

As she ushered the children outside, she wondered to herself whether she and Michael might now have been ‘strong farmers’ on the fine rolling plains of County Meath, had Oliver Cromwell not driven their forefathers to plough the rocks and bogland of Connacht.

She wondered how their lives might have been if the Roundhead leader had never installed Pakenham’s forefathers at Tourmakeady Lodge.

When the children were out of earshot she muttered to herself, ‘Cromwell – a curse on his name.’

Ellen had decided that she would tell Michael she was carrying his child on the homeward journey from the Sunday Mass. She always felt uplifted after partaking of the Eucharist, but this Sunday would be extra special because the God of all creation would be within her, side by side with her unborn child.

A month had gone by since that morning at the edge of the Mask when she had discovered she was pregnant. Everything had gone well with her since then, and more and more she felt the surge of new life strong in her. For some reason she had fallen into the habit of thinking about the new baby as ‘she’. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted a girl; another pair of labourer’s hands to look after them in later years would be equally welcome. Only God could decide, she told herself – but still, she just knew the baby was a girl.

There was no breakfast to be prepared – they would not break the fast before receiving Holy Communion – so Ellen was able to spend longer than usual getting the girls ready. She started with Katie and Mary, giving their hair one hundred strokes each with the silver and bone brush that the Máistir had given Cáit as a wedding gift. After her mother’s death, the brush had passed to Ellen. She never used it without recalling her father, reminiscing with that faraway look in his eyes:

‘I would sit there of an evening while the shadows moved across the lake and the meannán aerach would swoop down through the sky, his wings making the noise of a young goat, and I would watch your mother as she stroked her hair one hundred times with that brush, drawing it through the strands till they were like gold-red silk of the finest ever seen. And she all the while a-crooning in the old style, a soft suantraí. She never counted the strokes at all, but she was never one more nor less, because many’s the time I counted them myself,’ he would recall, longing for those days to be back.

Now, as she stroked Katie’s hair with her mother’s brush, Ellen was conscious of her role in carrying on and affirming the simple beauty of the lives of those who had gone before.

Patrick had dressed himself, and was now lacing up a pair of old boots which Michael had worn as a boy. Ellen smiled at this handing down between father and son. Yet another connection between then and now; crossings and linkings, always there, always reminding.

When she had finished with the children, Ellen took down her good red petticoat and dusted it off. Not a bright red – more the colour of autumn leaves. Surprisingly, it did not clash with her hair but merely added to the radiation of colour which seemed to encircle her. She had already brushed her wild dos of hair into some semblance of order and it now cascaded, loosely bound, at the back of her neck. Finally she draped her shawl – dark green, as her eyes – over her shoulders. This would cover her head on the journey to Finny and for the duration of Mass.

Michael, his Sunday cap perched jauntily over his black curls, watched approvingly as his family emerged from the cabin. Some of their older neighbours had already begun the trek, and they could see them in twos and threes negotiating the steep path that ran alongside Crucán na bPáiste – the burial place of the children.

To their right lay the dark beauty of Lough Nafooey, and above it the mountains, like steps in the September sky running all the way back to Connemara. Ahead of them, Bóithrín a tSléibhe wound its way over the crest of the mountain to Finny – the village on the banks of the river which connected the Mask and Lough Nafooey. Everything bound together, thought Ellen, fitting so well. Just like a family.

‘Katie, come back here!’

Ellen’s reverie was broken by Michael’s warning shout as the child careered dangerously close to the side of the mountain. For a moment, Katie looked hurt. Then, breaking into a big smile, she raced back to her mother.

‘I just wanted to get these for you,’ she said, gifting to Ellen some purple and yellow wildflowers she had snatched from the edge of the mountain.

‘Thank you, a stóirín!’ Ellen smiled at Katie’s burst of generosity. ‘Now, take my hand. You, too, Mary. Hurry up now, we mustn’t be late for Mass.’

* * *

As they made their descent, Father O’Brien emerged from the church. He looked up at the mountain track, seeing his people gathering in to hear the Word of God.

Among the black-clad figures of the old men and women, the sun seemed to pick out the tall figure of Ellen Rua O’Malley as, hand in hand with her twin daughters, she hastened down towards the church. Father O’Brien wondered what fate awaited them, given the news he must shortly break.

Deep in thought, the priest went back inside to make his final preparations for the Mass. Since Archbishop MacHale had stationed him at Clonbur, he had come to look forward to the one Sunday in a month when he said Mass here at the little church-of-ease in Finny. He loved this place and its people. Here in the midst of the mountains and the lakes, he heard the voice of God much more clearly than in the suffocating cloisters of Maynooth. And the French professors of theology there had taught him little compared to the peasants hereabouts with their humility, their gratitude for the precious few gifts bestowed on them, and their forbearance and dignity in the face of an unrelenting struggle for survival. On the Mass Sunday they flocked to the little Finny church. Some walked the near distance from Kilbride, but others faced more difficult journeys: skirting the edge of Lough Mask round from Glentrague, or climbing Bóithrín a tSléibhe up and over the mountain from Maamtrasna.

This would be his biggest test so far, and he did not want to fail them. But how was he to tell the peasants and mountainside cottiers who made up his flock of the news he had learned on his recent visit to the Archbishop in Tuam? What hope had he to offer them, what alternatives? None, he thought, except faith in the goodness of an all-providing God. Or, failing that, hope in ‘thy kingdom come’.

At least he could advise them to dig early rather than waiting until October to lift the potatoes.

Even so, maybe he was already too late.

When they reached the church there was still fifteen minutes to go till Mass. As was customary, Ellen, the two girls and Patrick – the latter with some resistance – went and knelt on the right-hand side of the aisle, while Michael, having doffed his cap, joined the men on the left-hand side.

Ellen thought that Father O’Brien looked a bit on edge as he took his place in the pulpit. He was nice, this new young priest. He had time for everyone, and he wasn’t all fire and brimstone as some of the clergy were. He had a holy face which shone with an inner light throughout the Mass and particularly at the Consecration. His hair was dark brown and neatly kept, in the way of clerics, but his eyebrows were the darkest she ever saw, darker even than Michael’s. She was tempted to look across the church to where Michael was, but knew she mustn’t – the old ones would be watching her, and she mustn’t give scandal by looking across the aisle.

‘Gloria in excelsis Deo,’ Father O’Brien intoned. Ellen liked the way he said the Latin. It was as if his Western brogue left him when he spoke the chosen language of the Church.

The Máistir had studied Latin in the seminary at Maynooth and had taught her enough that she could follow most of the Mass. But she thought it a cold language. Latin didn’t have the life, the earthiness of the Gaelic tongue and was only slightly ahead of ‘the narrow language of the Sasanach’ – as the valley people referred to spoken English – which had neither poetry nor music to it.

The sermon had started. She had better listen instead of wandering in her mind. Father O’Brien had a habit of picking out a member of his congregation and fixing his eye on them when he spoke.

In fact, Ellen needn’t have worried. Father O’Brien had come to the conclusion that eye-contact might work in the cities, but the people here were generally so shy and in awe of him that it just served to embarrass them. During last month’s Sunday Mass in Finny, while preaching on the Sixth Commandment – ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ – he had happened to catch the eye of Roberteen Bawn. The boy had looked as if he would bolt from the church. And he just a harmless enough young fellow, unlikely to be up to anything much under his mother’s hawk-like eye. Yet Father O’Brien was in no doubt that his sermon had seriously unsettled young Roberteen. Today he would be more circumspect in the use of his eyes.

He spoke to them in Irish: ‘Today, my dear people, instead of the usual sermon, I have something to read to you.’

Ellen began to feel uneasy as the priest began. Then, as the sermon continued, all the feelings of warmth, life and light which had filled her that morning seemed to ebb away.

‘The Archbishop has, in his wisdom, decreed that all priests in the Archdiocese should today lay the following information before the faithful. The Archbishop cautions against panic, but because of the dependence of so many of the people upon the potato crop he considers it prudent to advise you of the information to hand.’

At these words, there was much shuffling of nervous feet in the church. Father O’Brien pressed on in the same emotionless voice, careful not to betray the unease he felt inside:

‘While there is no conclusive proof of the arrival of the potato blight in Ireland, the advice the Archbishop gives, having consulted with some experts in this area, is that it would be wise not to delay the digging of the crop until October but to lift the potatoes immediately.’

He paused to let the message sink in.

‘I would therefore suggest to you that when you return home from this Mass, you should immediately commence digging your crops. The Archbishop hereby grants you all a special dispensation so that this work can be done today.’

This was serious, thought Ellen, as frightened whisperings filled the church. To work on a Sunday was to bring seven years’ bad luck; it went against the strict code of the Catholic Church regarding the observance of the Sabbath. She drew the children closer to her. The rest of the congregation looked as fearful as she felt: wives and children turned in their seats, seeking reassurance from husbands and fathers across the church.

Father O’Brien raised his voice to make it heard above the commotion as he read from the copied extract given to him by the Archbishop: ‘The Dublin Evening Post of ninth September reports that: “There can be no question at all of the very remarkable failure in the United States, and with regard to Holland, Flanders, and France, we have already abundant evidence of the wide spread of what we cannot help calling a calamity.”’

The priest read on, translating into Irish as he went: ‘“It is in the densely packed communities of Europe that the failure would be alarming and in no country more, or so much, than our own.”’ A deathly silence descended on the church. Father O’Brien wet his lips with his tongue before continuing: ‘“But happily there is no ground for any apprehension of the kind in Ireland.”’ Ellen, along with the rest of the congregation, exhaled a sigh of relief. ‘“We believe that there was never a more abundant potato crop in Ireland than there is at present, and none which it will be more likely to secure.”

‘So you see,’ Father O’Brien concluded, ‘the picture is not yet clear. On the one hand, if you lift the lumpers now, they will not be fully grown. On the other hand, if you do not lift them for another month, they may be diseased.

‘Considering everything, the Archbishop’s advice is as follows: when Mass has ended, you should go immediately and dig your potatoes with all haste. Now, we ask the all-knowing God for His guidance and, if it be His Divine will, that the crops might be saved. May God bless the work.’

With these words Father O’Brien returned to the liturgy of the Mass.

As the people filed silently out of the church, Ellen paused to cross herself with holy water. A figure in black stood waiting within the corner of the porch. Waiting for her. With a start she realized it was Sheela-na-Sheeoga.

‘The blessings of God and His Holy Mother and the Infant Jesus, be on you, Ellen Rua. I see you are in bloom,’ she said in a half-whisper.

Ellen made to move on. She did not want Michael and the children – or the priest for that matter – to see her talking to the old cailleach. But Sheela caught her by the arm.

‘Be not hastening away from me now, Ellen Rua. Wasn’t it yourself who was quick to hasten to me over the mountain, not a woman’s time ago?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Remember the words I spoke to you then: “When the whitest flower blooms, so too will you bloom.” Go now with your husband, and lift the fruit of the whitest flower.’

Of course, thought Ellen, how could she not have seen it? The whitest flower was the flower that blossomed on the lazy beds. It was so obvious, she had missed it.

‘But the whitest flower will be the blackest flower,’ Sheela-na-Sheeoga continued. ‘And you, red-haired Ellen, must crush its petals in your hand.’ She paused, gauging the effect of her words. ‘Remember and heed it well, Ellen Rua.’

Ellen instinctively drew her hands about her body where her unborn child was. She could read nothing from Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s face; the old woman’s eyes stared back at her, ashen and grey, like a dead fire. Ellen was about to ask what the riddle meant, and if it had something to do with the news they had just heard, when she heard footsteps approaching. She turned her head for a moment and when she looked back again Sheela-na-Sheeoga had vanished. In her place stood Father O’Brien.

‘Was it waiting to speak with me you were, Mrs O’Malley?’

‘No, Father, thank you. Just wondering what’s to become of us all.’

‘I don’t know …’ Father O’Brien said. ‘We must pray and put our faith in the hands of the Lord, He will provide.’ Then, echoing the words of the old cailleach, he advised her: ‘Best go home now, Ellen, and take up the potatoes with your husband.’

Michael was waiting outside. He knew by the way she pulled the shawl closer about herself that something troubled her, but he waited for her to break the silence.

‘Do you think that the priest is right about the potatoes – that they’ll be bad, that the bad times are surely coming?’

‘Well if they are itself, I still don’t think it’s a right thing the priest said, to lift them today, on a Sunday.’

Ellen looked at him, understanding his reservations about ‘Sunday work’ – a taboo that went back generations.

‘Well, if it troubles you, Michael, then we’ll wait. The children and myself will gather for you in the morning,’ she said.

They were approaching the crest of the hill. It was there, with their valley opening out before them, that Ellen had planned to tell Michael about the child. But now the time seemed all wrong. The bad news from the priest, the meeting with Sheela-na-Sheeoga, had created a sense of foreboding that was somehow bound up with her being pregnant. To talk about her pregnancy under these circumstances would, she felt, be harmful to the baby in some way. By her silence, therefore, she was protecting her child.

Suddenly, as if coming face to face with a force beyond which they could not pass, they both stopped walking, stunned at the sight below them in the valley.

There in the fields were the men, women and children who had left the church before them. All furiously digging for the lumpers, pulling them up by the stalks, shaking them free of the earth, twisting and turning them – until as one they joined in a great mad shout that rose up to greet Ellen and Michael where they stood:

‘They’re safe! They’re safe! Praise be to God, the potatoes are safe!’

3

Next morning Ellen was up early, as usual, only to find that Michael was ahead of her. Quickly she tended to the children. The Lessons would have to wait. There was more important work to be done.

It was a bright September morn, with just the hint of autumn chill in it – a good day for the fields. Together they set out for the dig. Michael carried his slane – a kind of half-spade used for digging out potatoes. If you were skilful enough in its use you could lift the tubers without damaging the next cluster along the lazy bed. Ellen and the three children each carried a sciathóg – a basket made of interlaced sally rods. The lumpers would be placed in this rough sieve and shaken to remove any excess clay.

They weren’t the only ones out in the fields. Obviously, despite the Archbishop’s dispensation, some in the village had decided to respect the old ways and not work on the day of rest. But they were in the minority: in the fields adjacent to their own, Ellen and Michael could see where the lazy beds had been dug the previous day.

They were fortunate, she thought, having the two acres. Most of their neighbours had only the ‘bare acre’. An acre, even with a good crop of potatoes, could not keep a family of five for a year. May, June and July – the ‘meal months’ – would be especially hard. The previous year’s crop would have been eaten, and it was too soon for the new harvest. Families who had no savings and couldn’t find alternative work to see them through were forced to get credit to buy meal or potatoes. She would have hated that. The credit came from ‘strong farmers’ who had saved money, and who then charged a pretty penny in interest to borrowers. These scullogues would not lend money to those who were most in need of it, for the very poor would never have the means by which loans could be made good. The destitute had to rely instead on the support of their neighbours, or go begging.

Michael was already at the first lazy bed and had sunk the slane down into the earth under the potatoes. He carefully levered up a slaneful of potatoes and clay. Nervously Ellen watched him bend and tug the plant from the loosened earth. He shook it vigorously and then wiped away the remaining clods of clay from the tubers, examining them intently. Then he turned the plant in his hand, studying the three or four potatoes which dangled from it. He turned to her as she approached.

‘Buíochas le Dia – they’re sound.’ He held the plant out to her. ‘Here, look for yourself.’

Ellen examined it carefully. There was no sign of disease anywhere to be seen. She looked at him, the smile creasing her face. He caught her by the shoulders, the laughter of relief wild in him, and brought her to her knees with him. Together, there on the earth amongst the lazy beds, their food for the year to come now safe, they thanked God for His bounty.

Michael dug while Ellen, Patrick, Katie and Mary gathered and inspected. The lumpers were smaller than usual because of being lifted earlier. This was not unexpected, and therefore no cause for alarm. At one point, Katie raised a scare when she yelled out, ‘a Mhamaí, this one has black on it!’ But it turned out to be just an exceptionally large ‘eye’ on the potato.

What an ugly plant the lumper was, Ellen thought to herself. Squat and uneven in shape with what looked like smaller versions of itself stuck on here and there like little misshapen heads. The lumper wasn’t sweet like the cup and the apple variety of potatoes the Máistir had once brought back from Castlebar. But it was floury when boiled well, and, most important of all, it was hardy and grew in abundance.

While she waited for the children to return from emptying their baskets, Ellen plucked one of the tiny flowers from an upturned potato stalk. She had never before taken much notice of the ‘whitest flower’. Like the grass in the field, it was just there from year to year. Now, however, it had assumed a new significance in her life. She twirled the stem slowly between her thumb and forefinger. It was quite beautiful. Fresh and frail, its tiny petals, white as snow, formed a perfect ring around the yellow centre. Strange, she thought, the stark contrast between the beauty of the flower and its ugly fruit.

What secret did this blossom hold for her and her unborn baby? What harm could lie in this tiny flower? In keeping with the old woman’s riddle, she crushed one of the petals between her fingers and brought it to her nose. Ugh – its smell was not at all sweet; nothing like the smell of a flower. It had no perfume, but smelt dank and unclean, like an uncooked potato. She dropped it to the ground and rubbed her fingers in the earth to cleanse them of its stickiness.

‘The whitest flower will be the blackest flower,’ Ellen said to herself, wondering.

All day they toiled in the field until twilight fell over the valley, hushing the sounds of the day. Michael did most of the digging, with Patrick being given an occasional turn at ‘man’s work’. Gathering, inspecting and ferrying the baskets full of potatoes to the cabin was woman’s work, in Patrick’s eyes. But he understood the urgency of what they were at and pitched in willingly, doing whatever was required.

On one of the trips to the cabin, cradling the heavy sciathóg between her hip and the crook of her arm, Ellen caught sight of the fair head of their neighbour’s son coming towards her. A mischievousness took hold of her. She set her basket on the ground and waited for Roberteen Bawn to draw near.

‘Dia dhuit,’ she bade him, friendly-like.

‘Dia’s Muire dhuit,’ he returned, happy to see her.

He was about to continue walking past her, abashed at finding himself so close to the object of his desires, when she said, ‘Wait a minute, Roberteen.’

He turned towards her, his fair skin pinking at the cheekbones. Was the woman going to shame him here in front of the whole village?

‘Roberteen, I wouldn’t be stopping you from your work,’ she continued, an air of earnestness about her, ‘but it’s long the day has been, and the cradle of lumpers here getting heavier with each passing hour. Would you go by Michael and tell him I need his help – these lumpers are the weight of rocks?’

Roberteen looked at Ellen warily. The basket wasn’t that heavy, especially for a fine strong woman like her. Sure, weren’t the children carrying them up all the time. What was it she was up to? She must have told her husband about him watching her and now she was after sending him to Michael for a thrashing. She had that smile on her – full of divilment, she was. He looked at the creel of potatoes on the ground. It dawned on him then – a way out.

‘Sure, Ellen, isn’t Michael busy lifting the lumpers from that fine field you have? What would he be thinking of a man to be running messages to him, bothering him, if I didn’t lift a hand to help you – me being a neighbour? I’ll bear them up to the cabin meself for you, Ellen, with a heart and a half,’ he said, delighted with himself. The red-haired woman wouldn’t catch him out like that! Emboldened, he didn’t wait for her assent but picked up the basket and set off for the O’Malleys’ cabin. He had got out of that one well. Now he could walk with Ellen Rua, and no one to say a word to him, only thinking what a fine good-natured fellow he was. Why, with all her schooling the Máistir’s daughter still couldn’t outwit Roberteen Bawn.

Had he glanced back over his shoulder, he would have seen the mischief sparkling in those eyes.

As they walked she chatted amicably with him, showing interest in his prattle and being grateful to him for his kindness. He found it hard to look straight at her, but was conscious of her nearness and the power she seemed to have over him. He couldn’t wait to tell her about all the work he was doing with the turf, and how he would soon live up to his father’s reputation for doing the work of a man and a half. But somehow the words all came out in a tumble and he wondered if he was making any sense at all to her. However, she didn’t seem to notice and, the times he did look at her, she smiled at him, which set him off talking ten to the dozen again.

When they reached her cabin she asked him to put the creel over in the corner next to the hearth. He did as she asked, but when he turned to leave he found that she was leaning against the cabin door, having closed it behind her.

‘Now, Roberteen Bawn, my fair-haired boy, I’m very grateful to you, very grateful indeed, for sparing me the task of carrying that heavy load. Will you not wait a while and take something with me?’ she coaxed seductively.

‘No, no thanks,’ blurted out an alarmed Roberteen.

‘Sure, it’s in no hurry you are, Roberteen, and himself won’t be home yet a while to thank you for your kindness to me.’

The thought of Michael arriving to find the door of his cabin closed against him, and he, Roberteen, alone in the house with Ellen, sent the fear of God through the youth.

‘I have to go now … the work … my father.’

‘Faith, Roberteen, I’ll be thinking you have no regard for me,’ she teased with mock hurt in her voice.

Dar Dia, he thought, if anyone hears her, I’ll be ruined. Then involuntarily he heard himself say, ‘No, no, Ellen. It’s not that, it’s not that at all.’

‘Well?’ Ellen drew the word out slowly. ‘Sure, that would be a terrible thing for a woman to hear, and she walking to the lake every morning, and throwing her head to the sun for a man to be looking at her, and he not having any regard at all for her. Wouldn’t it now, Roberteen?’

Why was she doing this? She was trouble, all right. He’d never bother with her likes again, as long as he lived. A red-haired woman was nothing but trouble to a man, nothing but trouble, and this one was the very divil.

‘I have to go now … I have to …’ he spluttered in panic, thinking that not only Michael but the whole village would soon know he was in here, alone with her.

‘Well, I’ll not be the woman to stand in the way of a man and his work,’ said Ellen, feeling some sympathy for the state he was in – and he, after all, only a simple gasúr, for all his nineteen summers. ‘But it’s a queer thing, all the same, you running off that way, and me offering you the hand of friendship only to have it dashed back at me again.’

She stood away from the door and he bolted for it. But she was quicker, and again he found his way out blocked by her.

‘Now, one piece of advice to you, me fine buachaill …’ she said, her face now close to his.

The smell of her womanliness, her talking to him this way – she was confusing him. Doing it on purpose. His plan had gone all wrong.

Sensing she might have gone too hard on him, Ellen changed her tone. ‘There are plenty of fine young single girls out there, waiting to be taken off their fathers’ hands, for you to be watching a woman that’s married and with children nearly as old as you are. Isn’t that so, Roberteen?’ She was not scolding him now, just stating this in a gentle, matter-of-fact way.

The boy looked at her, his light blue eyes filled with a mixture of infatuation and sheepishness, and she regretted having taken it so far with him.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

‘I know you are, Roberteen,’ she said, reaching out and touching his arm. ‘You’re young – there’ll be someone for you, you’ll see.’

He did not respond. Wondering whether she had underestimated the depth of the feelings he carried for her, she decided not to prolong his agony.

‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘We won’t say another word about this, or the other thing – the mornings – to anybody. It will just be between the two of us.’

The boy didn’t lift his head as he went out past her. She waited a while and then called after him, so others would hear, ‘Roberteen! Thank you for carrying up the sciathóg – it was getting too heavy for me.’

As the door of his own cabin swallowed him into its safe haven, Roberteen Bawn was grateful for that.

After the Rosary had been said and the children were asleep, Michael spoke to her.

‘I saw our neighbour’s son carry the sciathóg for you today. I’m thinking he has a longing for you, Ellen,’ he teased.

‘Ah, sure, he’s only a gasúr, it’s just the summer madness that’s troubling him. The long cold nights of winter coming in will knock that spark out of him!’ She laughed, and drew closer to Michael. Then more seriously, she asked: ‘But what of the potatoes, and this blight?’

‘Well …’ Michael paused. ‘We didn’t find any blackened ones at all today. We’ll dig again tomorrow. I’m thinking maybe we should lift them all out.’

Ellen considered this. If they dug up all the potatoes now, they would be small. There wasn’t enough room to store them all, so they’d have to sell the excess immediately, but the price they’d get would be low on account of their size. After the rent was paid, there’d be nothing left. If they left the crop in the ground until the later dig in November – ‘the people’s crop’, as it was called – the lumpers would be full size. There wouldn’t be the storage problems, and they wouldn’t have to sell them below price. But were the blight to strike, the second harvest might be ruined. And so would they. It was too big a risk.

She turned to Michael and put her hand to his cheek. ‘You are right, a stór,’ she said, full of love for him. ‘We should lift them all now. Somehow we’ll find space for them.’

‘You know,’ he said, his dark eyes aglow for her, his hands reaching for her hair, ‘it was a joyful sight for me today to see you and the children beside me in the fields. The two small ones sporting and playing, and Patrick, wanting to do me out of a job of work. But most of all,’ her husband softened his tone, ‘’twas yourself, Ellen, singing your old songs on the breeze, tending to the children, bending and picking all day – without ever a want or a word of complaint. You were like the sun itself come down to earth all fiery and bright. Happy any man would be, Ellen Rua, with you next to him in the fields.’

Ellen went to her knees in front of him. She took his two arms in hers.

‘Michael, my love, I’ve something to tell you. The Lord and His Holy Mother have blessed us again.’ She got it all out in one mouthful.

‘You don’t mean …?’ Michael’s face lit up.

‘Yes, I do – I am with your child a month now.’ She said it like a girl, her face shining up into his. He looked back at her, the pride and love bursting out of him. He had always wanted more children with Ellen, but had almost given up hope. After all, it was six years now since Mary and Katie were born. Not that the whisperings in the village worried him – three being a small number of children. No, he wanted more children for their own sake, and now his prayers were answered. Never mind what times lay ahead, he, Michael O’Malley, would provide for all his children, and any more that the good Lord would send. He caught hold of her.

‘Rise up, Ellen Rua, rise up! It’s not for you to be on your knees to me, or to any man. I knew it was a sign from above – you with a song on your lips and the sun dancing around you all day like you were the very centre of its world,’ he declared, holding her to him. ‘I just knew it!’

In the days that followed, they continued to work in the fields: lifting the potato harvest; inspecting the tubers for signs of blight, of which there were none. Late into the night they were cleaning and drying the potatoes, then storing them in their cabin for the winter ahead.

In other years Michael had stored half of each harvest in a pit near the cabin, and the other half, which was for more immediate use, in the cabin itself. This year he decided not to take the chance on outside storage because of the danger that the murrain might attack the potatoes in the pit.

This posed a problem, for the amount of potatoes requiring storage was almost double that of a normal year. Even though the lumpers were smaller than usual, it was going to take some ingenuity to fit them all into the two loft areas which ran either side of the cabin from hearth to door. The potatoes had to be laid out on beds of straw to keep them dry and well ventilated. So Michael and Ellen devised a way of stacking the lumpers to roof-height, taking care not to bruise them, and interleaving each level with straw.

Then it was time to bury the seed potatoes for next year’s crop. These tiny tubers had to be kept in the earth because it was the only way to preserve them until it was time for planting; thus Michael had no choice but to place them in the outside storage pit.

All in all it was a good week’s work for the O’Malleys and most of their neighbours. Some of the villagers had decided to take a gamble and leave a portion of their crop in the ground for the later harvest. Debate raged in Maamtrasna as to the merits and demerits of each course of action, both sides convinced that theirs was the right way. The general mood, though, was one of optimism for the year ahead, and thanksgiving that everyone in the valley had some sufficiency of food for the long winter months to come.

So it was that the much-relieved villagers decided to hold a céilí celebrating the harvest the following Sunday night at the place where the roads to Maamtrasna, Derrypark and Finny met.

At eventide people drew in from all over to the céilí. Father O’Brien turned up; not so much to keep an eye on proceedings, as his predecessor might have done, but to see his people enjoy themselves. Before he had gone to the seminary at Maynooth, the young priest had been well able to step it out with the best of them in a set or half-set of jigs or reels. Mattie an Cheoil – ‘Mattie Music’, as he was known – brought his squeeze-box accordion over the road from Leenane, and Michael took down his fiddle and bow. They were all there: the O’Malleys, the Joyces, the Tom Bawns. Even Sheela-na-Sheeoga crept down the mountainside to be at the ‘spraoi agus ceol’.

When Ellen and the children arrived the céilí was in full swing. Michael had gone on ahead to ‘tune up’. Ellen well knew that part of the ‘tuning up’ applied not so much to the fiddle as to Michael himself, and involved a sup or two from Mike Bhríd Mike’s poteen still. Well, he deserved it, she thought.

Laughter and merriment mixed with the music, ringing around the mountainside and down to the Mask, floating over the lake’s surface and then fading into each corner of the valley. Ellen’s head was swirling with it all and the loveliness of the mid-autumn evening. Meán Fómhair – middle harvest. How apt, how poetic it was, the Gaelic name for September.

‘To think our language and music were driven underground by the Sasanach – the harpers hung high for playing the old songs,’ said Father O’Brien, his words echoing her thoughts. ‘And why are you not dancing, Ellen Rua?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘with Michael making the music, and the young ones to mind …’

‘Oh, come now!’ He caught her hand. ‘Step out a jig with me – I’m a bit out of practice, but …’

‘No, Father, I …’

He looked at her. Such an outstanding beauty; even in her peasant’s clothing, she could have turned many a berretted clerical head in the cloisters of Maynooth. That rare combination of strength and engaging humility. He had seen her at Mass – you couldn’t help but notice her – kneeling upright, intent and attentive throughout, except now and again to throw an eye on one of those errant twins. When she received Holy Communion, she closed those dark-green eyes and you just knew she truly believed she was receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. He had seen many holy and pious men, but none so transfigured as she was in the presence of God. He had heard tell that her mother, Cáit, had also been renowned for her piety and beauty. She had died in childbirth. The infant, a young sister for Ellen, had also been lost. It had almost broken the Máistir’s heart. And what grief it must have been for the young Ellen to lose the mother she loved.

‘Is there something troubling you?’ he asked. ‘Last Sunday at the church … Sheela-na-Sheeoga?’

‘No, Father, there’s nothing troubling me, nothing at all, that isn’t a good thing.’

There – she had given him a clue. The young priest pressed her no further. Though his priestly studies had been of death and rebirth rather than birth itself, his upbringing in rural Ireland had given him a finely tuned ear for the half-said and the unsaid.

‘Well then, Ellen,’ he said gently, understanding her circumstances, ‘if you won’t dance, at least you can’t refuse to sing. It’s time we had a song.’

When she didn’t refuse, the priest approached the two musicians and spoke with Michael. They cut short ‘The Siege Of Ennis’, much to the dismay of those re-enacting the famous siege through dance. The mutterings of discontent quickly subsided, however, when Father O’Brien shouted, ‘Quiet now, please, for a song from Ellen Rua.’

A few calls came for different songs, but she would sing Michael’s favourite: ‘The Fair-Haired Boy’, an old song of love lost through emigration. Ellen sang, unaccompanied, in the sean-nós style. This primitive style allowed the singer great flexibility – using notes around the melody line other than those which were correctly of the melody. Some sean-nós singers favoured much ornamentation, which displayed their vocal skills. Others, like Ellen, preferred to remain faithful to the original melody, letting the beauty of the song speak for itself.

Father O’Brien was glad that these old songs survived in the West. Like storytelling, they formed an important part of the oral tradition of Ireland. Not that the Church had much time for the old ways, many of which were considered to be leftovers from the pagan days. But these songs were neither Christian nor pagan: they were songs of the lives and times of the people.

The priest’s thoughts were interrupted by the first notes of Ellen’s song, cutting through the absolute stillness the crowd had accorded her.

Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I’ll see You walk the meadows green …

As always, when she sang, Ellen would close her eyes, and go deep within herself, particularly when singing a goltraí – a sad song – like this one was. She would think of Cáit, her mother, from whom she had learned the songs and the art. She would think of Ireland and the great misfortune of its people, and she would think of Michael, her great love.

‘Hope with the sadness of no hope – love with the lament of lost love,’ was how Mattie an Cheoil described her singing.

So the story and air of the fair-haired boy, loved and then lost, became merely a vehicle for Ellen’s own feelings. She revealed herself most when she sang. This somehow connected the singing with those same deep places of the heart in her audience. Every so often between verses, she opened her eyes and looked at Michael. His gaze remained transfixed on her throughout, as he struggled to understand the turmoil of emotions which her singing raised in him.

The young priest too stood marvelling at how true she was to the melody, not needing to embellish it just to show she could. Being true – that was the quality she had, this red-haired woman.

Ellen opened her eyes and looked at the crowd. In the background she caught sight of Roberteen – fair-haired Roberteen – hanging on her every word, the sorrow of unattainable love etched on his young face. For the briefest of moments their eyes met and she gave him the flicker of a smile. Then she closed her eyes again and continued to sing, drifting away into the depths of her song.

Your ship waits on the western shore,

To bear you o’er from me,

But wait I will e’en to heaven’s door,

My fair-haired boy to see.

She had scarcely let go of the last note before the crowd began to cry for more.

But the magic of the moment was short-lived.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ The belligerent voice of Sir Richard Pakenham cut through the applause. Accompanied by Beecham, his agent, and three constables, he rode into the centre of the crowd.

‘Lazy swine!’ he shouted at the revellers. ‘More interested in merrymaking and drinking than tending to my land. Blight is forecast – you should be on your knees praying!’

Mike Bhríd Mike tried to take advantage of the commotion to slip away with his jugs of poteen, but Pakenham spotted him. ‘Constables – seize that man!’ he ordered the Peelers. ‘I won’t have him selling that devil’s juice they call poteen to my tenants!’

Mike Bhríd Mike, his progress hampered by the two large jugs of illegal brew he was carrying, was no match for men on horseback. The constables quickly apprehended him.

Then Pakenham turned on the priest: ‘And you, Father, a man of the cloth, encouraging this wildness, this lawbreaking – what have you to say?’

Father O’Brien stepped forward. ‘These people have done no wrong. Nor are they savages to be ridden down and rounded up. They are people of God who have worked hard all week saving their crops from the blight so that they can pay the extortionate rents you exact from them. This is their innocent enjoyment – can you not leave them even that?’ Having been well capable of matching the most fearsome of the French professors in Maynooth, the young priest would not now be faced down by a Protestant landlord.

‘Popery and Pope-speak, that’s all you priests ever have so as to keep the people enslaved to a Church which takes their last few pennies after paying their lawful rents. Did not your own people rise up against the high tithes demanded by your Church to baptize, marry and bury them? Shame on you and your kind, Priest! Cromwell was right: “Hang them high, and hang them plenty!”’

At the name of Cromwell, a muttering arose from the crowd. Pakenham jerked his horse round. ‘Silence! And you there – music makers!’ he sneered at Michael and Mattie an Cheoil. ‘You call this caterwauling music? Neither form nor grace to it. I know you, O’Malley. Fine time to be fiddling! Mark me, if the rent’s not on time, I’ll have you and that fiddle of yours out on the road, and you can diddley-i-di-diddle-i to the moon and the stars all you like, then, with no roof over your head.

‘Now, Beecham, let’s see what else we’ve got here in this happy little gathering, besides a priest, a lawbreaker, and a pair of tuneless musicians. And, of course, the singer,’ he said, pulling his horse around in front of Ellen. ‘Beecham, is this the sweet thrush we heard, whose notes floated across the Mask to greet us as we rode here?’

Beecham’s reply was drowned out by the landlord’s command to Ellen: ‘Step forward, woman, till we see you.’ Ellen moved forward. The children gathered into her, afraid.

‘Ah, a thrush with fledglings,’ Pakenham continued, leaning forward in the saddle. ‘Methinks I know this red-crested thrush. What is your name, woman?’

‘Ellen O’Malley,’ she said, not proffering the usual ‘your Lordship’. This was not missed by Pakenham.

‘Ah! I see!’ he exclaimed, looking back to Michael and then turning once more to Beecham. ‘A fine little nest of songmakers we’re raising here, Beecham – don’t you think?’

Beecham muttered again, but this time a ‘yes, M’Lord’ could be distinguished.

‘Well, we’ll see what sort of music you lot make on empty bellies, and what jigs and reels you hop to when you present yourself to me over the next few months.

‘And you, Priest, stick to your popish spells and incantations, and don’t meddle in my affairs.’

The priest did not respond to the taunt as Pakenham kicked the stirrup into the flank of his mount, emphasizing the threat. The mare responded with a high whinny until he jerked her around again to face Ellen.

That one’s trouble, Pakenham thought to himself. There was a defiance about her and that husband of hers not found in the other wretches – except for the priest.

Ellen stood, never flinching before the horse which, goaded by Pakenham’s rough use of the bit, bridled in front of her. She could see Michael tensing himself, ready to jump in if insult or hand was laid on her.

Pakenham addressed her again: ‘You’ll sing for your supper yet, my red-haired songbird – mark my words!’

Ellen’s eyes never fell from his for a second. But for now she would keep her peace.

Eventually Pakenham broke the moment, calling over his shoulder: ‘Come, Beecham, let us away from here and back to Tourmakeady, to whatever modicum of civilization is to be found in this damned country. For now we will leave these scoundrels to their dancing, but they’ll dance all right: any riotous behaviour on my lands, and dance they will – at the end of a rope!’

Ellen watched as they rode off towards Tourmakeady. Mary and Katie were in tears at either side of her, frightened by the menacing attitude of both horse and rider. Patrick meanwhile had moved slightly in front of her, instinctively stepping into the role of protector.

Suddenly, a shout rang out from the retreating landlord. ‘The devil! I’ve been struck. There he is – up there! After him! I’ll have his hands off,’ they heard Pakenham order his escort, all the while holding a hand to the back of his head where the well-aimed missile had caught him.

A cheer went up from the crowd, but Ellen was concentrating on the drama unfolding on the road below them. A movement caught her eye and for a moment she had a clear view of Pakenham’s assailant. There, in the murky shadow of the mountain, was a figure clambering up where no horse could go. The figure stopped and turned to look once, not at its pursuers, but back towards the villagers. Back towards her.

Ellen saw a young face exhilarated by the chase, and by the revenge exacted for the insult to the red-haired woman. Then the face was gone, and Ellen knew that the fair-haired boy would escape his pursuers.

The following day Michael came running to her, down from Bóithrín a tSléibhe. ‘Ellen, the Church – Lord Leitrim has torched the thatch of it again! A curse on him, I’ll wager Pakenham put him up to it this time!’ he cried out.

‘You’d think he’d leave the House of God alone,’ Ellen replied. ‘That’s a few times he’s tried to burn it since Father O’Brien refused the keys to him.’

‘Well, the priest is right,’ Michael said. ‘Even if Leitrim owns the church, no man is God’s landlord. He can torch it now, but one day himself will feel the torch of hell for it. We’ll see how he’ll landlord it below there!’ And he laughed.

It was true, Ellen thought, the landlords owned everything, even your religion. And they tried to own the people, not only their little bit of land and the botháns and whatever they produced, but their bodies and minds, too.

4

Ellen was in the middle of the morning lesson with the children when first they heard it. The shout seemed to come from faraway, and Ellen, thinking it was the men in the fields calling to one another, paid no heed but carried on with her story. She was busy explaining to a very attentive trio of pupils how the potato first came to Ireland, why it seemed to have overrun the whole land, and as a result why this blight was so serious. It had been Mary who had raised the question. Indeed, the topic for today’s lesson was hardly surprising, given that so much talk recently, from church to crossroads, was about the blight.

The children listened enthralled as Ellen told them about the jungles of South America and the great river ‘longer than all of Ireland’. She told them of the Indian tribes who first grew the potato in the mountains, ‘long before the time of the infant Jesus’. Then she told them of the men who sailed across the world in great ships from Spain – sailed for a whole year to reach the lands of the Indian tribes, and how those men took the mountains and the great river from the Indians, and put their own names on them.

‘But it was not the Spaniards who first brought the potato to Ireland,’ she told them. ‘It was an Englishman called Sir Walter Raleigh. He would sail to all the far-off countries and bring back gifts for the Queen of England, and it was he who brought the potato to County Cork almost two hundred years ago.

‘At first there were many different kinds of potato grown in Ireland, not just the “lumper”. But you remember I told you about Cromwell driving the people to the poor land out here in the West?’ They nodded.

‘Well, when the people had only a little land on which to live, and the land was poor, they had to find a potato which would grow where other types of potato wouldn’t. That was where the lumper came in. Even up in the boggy lands on the top of the mountain, where nothing much but turf and heather grows, your father has the lumpers growing.’

‘Why didn’t we pick those ones?’ piped up Katie.

‘Because they’re our little secret, and we want to leave them another few weeks. Anyway, we haven’t room to turn in here, with potatoes on every side of us.’

The shouting outside had grown nearer, and now there seemed to be more voices added to the clamour.

‘Sit still here for a few minutes until I see what all this rí-rá is about,’ Ellen told them. Then she ran outside.

What she saw sent a chill through her. Coming up the bóithrín from the direction of Glenbeg was a group of men and women, all of them clearly distraught.

‘Tis here, ’tis here!’ they shouted. ‘Tis back behind in the Glen. The blight, God’s curse on it, has come down on us at last.’

As they drew nearer, Ellen recognized Johnny Jack Johnny to their fore. She ran down the bóithrín towards him. All around her the cabins of Maamtrasna emptied of people as the villagers rushed to hear the news they had dreaded.

‘Johnny, what is it?’ she demanded.

‘Oh, woman,’ he answered, his voice broken with the news he bore, ‘’tis a terrible sight indeed. Last night the fields were green with fine healthy stalks. This morning they’re as black as the pit of hell.’

‘Overnight?’ she said, reaching out for his arm in disbelief.

‘Yes, Ellen Rua, one night and every last one of them was gone – black and sticky with the smell of death on them.’

Johnny Jack Johnny held up his hands: they were coated with a stinking black substance – the likes of which Ellen had never seen.

‘But didn’t you lift them like the priest told you?’ she asked.

‘Some did, but most didn’t. Sure, we kept watchin’ them day and night, and there wasn’t a sign on them. They were the best crop ever – ’til now,’ the man said, shaking his head.

‘And are they all gone?’ Ellen wasn’t going to let up. There must be some hope – there had to be.

‘Every last one of them that was left in the ground is gone – like we never put them down at all,’ Johnny Jack Johnny said disconsolately, the murmurs of despair from those around him rising in a chorus of lament for their lost crops, and for themselves.

‘God’s pity on us all. What are we to do with the long winter bearing down on us?’ Johnny Jack Johnny asked of no one in particular, knowing no one could answer him.

By now the villagers had heard the worst. Those who had not lifted all their potatoes rushed to the fields. Without waiting for loy or slane, they tore into the lazy beds with their bare hands, hoping against forlorn hope that this blight hadn’t reached here, hadn’t come the extra five or six miles up the valley to Maamtrasna.

Ellen watched as one by one the frenzied diggers recoiled from the lazy beds, nothing in their hands save a mass of putrid black matter. The people remained where they were, immobilized by despair – fields of dead men, kneeling.

Like the contagion itself, grief spread among the stricken people. Some threw themselves upon the source of their grief, the diseased lazy beds, in desperate supplication, digging their fingers deep into the cruel, unresponsive earth.

Ellen, too, was seized by panic. She couldn’t think straight. Her first instinct, as always, was for the children. Somehow she got her unwilling legs to move, slowly at first, then running to the cabin, taking what seemed an eternity. She drew them to her. All three were sobbing, terrified of what was outside their cabin door without being fully sure why, but caught in the hysteria that swept on every side of them.

‘Shssh now. Where’s your father?’ she asked.

‘There he is!’ Patrick punched his finger urgently towards the mountain, glad to speak, glad to break through the tears.

Ellen followed the line of Patrick’s finger. A number of shapes were hurtling down the mountain at a dangerous rate of descent. Ellen could just about distinguish Michael, Roberteen and Martin Tom Bawn, half running, half sliding, knocking stones and shale before them, as they careered down to the village and the awaiting calamity. By now the cries of despair had dissolved into sobbing and the keening normally reserved for the wakes of the dead.

Michael ran straight to the cabin. Through the dust and sweat, Ellen could see the fear on his face. Neither of them spoke, only bundled their small family closer in to them.

In the fields, husbands, wives and children did the same, until everywhere were hapless little bundles of people cut loose from life. Hopelessly hanging together. Each thinking the same thought. Wondering when death would claim them.

Fear driving his body onwards, Michael O’Malley for the second time that morning climbed the mountain. This time the ascent which normally took him a leisurely forty-five minutes was completed in twenty-five. He was the first to reach the ridge. Behind him was young Roberteen and, a ways further back, Roberteen’s father.

Michael ran across the soft peaty ground, avoiding the swallow holes. His eyes were fixed on a small dip to the far side of the marshy area, where a few years ago it had occurred to him to try out some seedlings from the lazy beds below. The hardy lumper had grown well here and he had gradually extended the area of this mountain crop of potatoes. The natural fall of the land conspired with the planters to keep what was planted hidden from view, safe from the landlord’s prying eyes. Only his next-door neighbours, with their own crop growing alongside Michael’s, knew of this place. Each harvest-time the three of them would spirit away their secret crop, under cover of dusk, to their cabins below.

Michael found it hard to understand why more villagers hadn’t followed their example in reclaiming some of the wasteland to provide a little extra food for themselves and their families. Perhaps they had been deterred by what had happened over in Partry. There Pakenham had discovered his tenants’ secret potato patches, and had rewarded their enterprise by levying extra rent. ‘This extra ground which I have allowed you to cultivate in justice demands extra rent,’ he had told them. ‘How could I be seen to act even-handedly towards all of my tenants, as any good landlord should, if I were to grant additional acreage to some, and not to others, and all paying the same rent?’ So those who had worked harder, and made good land out of bad, were even worse off than before.

Here, on the far side of the lake from Tourmakeady, they were well away from Pakenham and the prying eyes of his toady, Beecham. The crop should be safe from the landlord, at least.

Michael slowed down just before he reached the dip where the potato patch was. Roberteen, still running, came up behind him. Together they stood on a lip of ground overhanging the dozen or so lazy beds, waiting for the older man to catch up with them. When he did, the three of them continued to gaze down on the stalks blowing hither and thither, gusted this way and that by the mountain breeze. Each was reluctant to make the first move, holding back the moment when they must discover that which they most feared.

Roberteen was the first to say it. ‘Look, Michael – look there, on the leaves.’

But the keen eyes of Michael and the older, silent watcher had already taken in the white substance which lay fleecelike on the green leaves. It was almost beautiful, glistening in the half-light of the October sun. Like mountain fog – a will-o’-the-wisp that hadn’t lifted.

Michael had never seen its like before. He looked first at the others, then slowly stepped down on to the patch. He went to his knees beside the nearest lazy bed and gingerly reached over to touch the mysterious mist. It felt as it looked – soft and dewy, yet sticky too. He tried to brush it from the leaf, but unlike the dew it did not melt with the heat of his hand. He took a closer look. This furry down was growing out of the green veins of the leaf. As he made to examine it, the smell that accompanied the rot assailed his nostrils. Panic setting in, he plunged both hands into the mound of earth, frantically searching for the hard uneven roundness that would tell him the lumpers were safe.

But there were no lumpers, just a stinking mass of putrefaction. He withdrew his hands in disgust, staring in dismay at the foulness dripping from his fingers.

‘They’re lost!’ he shouted.

The watchers, still and silent until now, jumped down beside him.

‘God save us, Michael – what is it?’ Martin Tom Bawn asked.

‘I’ve never seen the likes of it before today … It looks and smells like the very melt of hell,’ Michael whispered.

‘’Tis an evil thing, surely,’ young Roberteen added. ‘A fearful evil thing,’ the boy repeated in hushed tones.

‘And is there nothing at all down there, Michael?’ the older man asked.

Michael did not answer. Instead he said, ‘We have to be quick. What we’ll do is this: Martin, you start on the beds at the far side, and turn every bit of them – maybe there’s some can be saved. Roberteen, you start there in the middle and work towards your father, and I’ll start here and work in towards you.’

The three men set to their task without any great heart, but knowing that they must do it. If a few potatoes could be saved, it might carry their families just that bit further through the winter.

What was most frightening, thought Michael, was the speed with which the blight had struck, and then spread, destroying all before it. He noticed, as he worked along the lazy beds on his hands and knees, that the white fleece on the leaves was already rotting, turning each leaf into sodden decay before his eyes. He worked more furiously, trying to outpace the run of the rot. But the result was the same. No matter where he dug, the blight had been there before him, waiting for him, waiting to cover his hands with its black clinging cloyingness.

The more diseased potatoes he uncovered, the more the stench of them filled the air about him, until his body recoiled from carrying on. But carry on he did, as did the others, desperation driving them to turn every last handful of earth, to uproot every last stalk.

Time after time they were defeated, but still they persisted in the heartbreaking task. It was as if even one good potato would be a sign of hope. A sign that all was not irretrievably lost.

Fate, however, did not afford the three diggers even that slender thread of comfort. When they finally finished, they remained on their knees, aching and blackened, united in despair.

‘It can only be the work of the devil himself,’ Michael finally said.

The others nodded. Then all three silently raised their heads in grim prayer to the glowering heavens.

It did not seem to them that the heavens listened.

Ellen and the children waited for Michael at the foot of the mountain. The wait seemed to go on forever. Black rain clouds gathered over the top of the mountain, throwing dark shadows down its side. Feeling Katie and Mary shivering against her, Ellen had just decided it was time to bring the children inside when Patrick shouted, ‘No, wait – there they are!’

She strained her eyes to the place where the three men should have been, but whether they had stepped into shadow or one of the many little crevices, she could not make them out until minutes later they breasted a rocky ridge.

They were making slow progress. At first Ellen thought that they must be dead weary, the way they weren’t looking up at all, trudging head-down, keeping close together.

When he caught sight of her, Roberteen ran on ahead, anxious to be first with the important news. ‘It’s the same above as below,’ he said.

Then she saw the look on the faces of the other two men.

‘Every last one of them is gone … gone into a stinking mess of pulp. Not even a beast could eat them,’ Martin Tom Bawn said to her as he approached.

She looked at Michael.

‘It’s not good, Ellen – not good at all,’ was all he could say.

5

‘Damn his impudence!’ Sir Richard Pakenham slapped the letter he had been holding. ‘It is impossible to get an honest answer out of this new breed of scientists without also getting a lecture.’

The master of Tourmakeady Lodge threw the letter from Dublin’s Botanic Gardens on to the walnut-topped writing desk at which he was sitting. That dashed Scotsman, Moore, should never have been made curator. What were the Royal Dublin Society thinking of – appointing someone who took two months to reply to a simple question about roses? And when he did deign to reply, it was to pronounce the soil at Tourmakeady possibly ‘unfit for roses in any event’.

And Tourmakeady Lodge with a garden full of roses, the finest this side of Victoria’s palace.

He tugged at the bell-rope. Where was that serving girl? It was long past tea-time. Didn’t anything work in this accursed country?

While he waited, the landlord picked up the Mayo Telegraph.

‘More tirades against landlords, I expect,’ he mumbled to himself, knowing by now the editorial stance of that newspaper on such matters. Wearily he put it down again without reading a word, and picked up the Mayo Constitution instead. At least the Constitution would give him a non-papist view of local events. An account of Daniel O’Connell’s recent visit to Castlebar caught his eye. ‘The Liberator, indeed! The last thing we need here is him and his damned Repeal movement exciting the populace.’

He was pleased, however, to read that Lord Lucan and some of the other magistrates of Castlebar had succeeded in having the Liberator’s public platform removed on the grounds that it would ‘obstruct the public passage’. ‘Good for Lucan!’ he laughed, ‘and too good for O’Connell – “obstruct the public passage” – there’s a rub!’

In much better fettle, he returned to the Mayo Telegraph. The spirit which a few moments prior had buoyed him up soon evaporated as he read the front page.

The disease which now so formally threatens our own country last year destroyed three-fourths of the potato crop of the United States of America, as well as a large proportion of those of France, Germany, Belgium and Holland; and whatever be the mysterious origin of the disease, whether it is to be found in fly or fungus, it is but too plain that no effectual remedy against it has thus far been devised in any of the countries which it has afflicted.

‘There it is!’ he said aloud, in such a manner as to cause an already nervous Bridget Lynch, arriving with His Lordship’s tea, to jump back in alarm.

Bridget waited, silver salver at the ready.

‘That’s what that scoundrel in the Botanic Gardens should be about. Instead of writing impudent letters, he should set to finding a remedy for this blight.’

‘Sir, your tea …’

‘Get out, get out – I don’t want tea now!’ Pakenham bellowed, waving the girl away.

As she hurriedly closed the door behind her, she heard the sound of a newspaper being torn, and Pakenham shouting, ‘Where’s my pen? Damned botanist. He’ll not have the last word with me!’

Mrs Bottomley, the housekeeper at Tourmakeady Lodge, had heard the commotion from the kitchen. As soon as Bridget arrived below stairs she rounded on her: ‘Did you spill the tea, girl?’

‘No, ma’am, I did not,’ Bridget replied, a hint of defiance in her voice. ‘It was some letter he got. He chased me out of the room, not wanting his tea, after all.’

Mrs Bottomley’s hard stare remained fixed on the girl, forcing her to explain further.

‘He was in one of those “thundering rages”, ma’am.’

‘Well then, you better tidy yourself up and fix your hair. You know how he gets after he’s been in a temper. He’ll need you to take his port up to him. Shame such a fine nobleman as him never got married. Get along now, Bridget, see to, and be ready when he sends for you.’ It was the housekeeper’s duty to see that His Lordship’s needs were met, and not to pass any judgements. That’s the way things were. Sir Richard had kept all of them in their positions, not least herself, despite mutterings she had heard about large debts mounting on the estate. Where would they be without him? If those lazy tenants of his stirred themselves and produced more, and paid the rents on time, maybe then His Lordship might not be in such dire financial straits.

Sir Richard, having exhausted the newspapers, turned to the two unopened letters before him. Which to read first? It mattered not a curse, he thought. He knew the contents: the gentlemanly yet patronizing tone employed by both Coutts, his bankers, and Crockford’s, his club. Knew that the language, however carefully couched, led unerringly to the bottom line: his debts.

He first flicked through the letter from Coutts: Beg to advise you … Your Lordship may have overlooked … most earnestly … long outstanding … early remittance of same … sum of twenty-three thousand pounds.

Pakenham crushed the letter in his fist and tossed it away. He was not too concerned about the bank; such demands were not unusual these days. Why, most of Ireland’s land-owners were in a state of indebtedness to London banks and living at a level of credit well beyond any viable income-to-debt ratio. Repayment of the loans was therefore impossible – unless, of course, one sold up, or succeeded in extracting further rents from those lazy wretches of tenants.

Like the rest of Ireland’s landed gentry, Sir Richard Pakenham was asset-rich but cash-poor, starved of sufficient funds to meet all the demands his lifestyle exacted. ‘A temporary liquidity problem,’ he had blithely assured Courts on the one occasion he had bothered to reply to them.

For one brief moment he wondered whether it had been unwise to extend himself so far on the gardens. But the view from his window dismissed all such thoughts from his mind. The croquet lawns; the new sunken gardens with stone-hewn circular seating to accommodate his guests during summer-evening recitals; the bower; the sun-dials set in imported Italian marble; and – his pride and joy – the finest rose gardens in the West of Ireland.

Reluctantly he tore himself away from the window and gave his attention to the second letter. A demand from Crockford’s was a serious worry. His losses had mounted in recent years, forcing him to retreat to Tourmakeady for long periods. But he had no wish to become a permanent exile from London, as some of Crockford’s members were forced to, being so thoroughly ruined by their gambling debts.

He liked to gamble. It was a passion with him. He loved it as much for the style, the wit surrounding the tables, and the flamboyant characters who frequented Crockford’s, as for the vicarious thrill of watching a thousand-pound wager ride or fall on the turn of a nine or an eight of spades. Then one day, instead of watching others he was watching himself bet one thousand pounds against the table at blackjack.

Now, his note to the club had risen to seven thousand pounds. If he were not to pay it soon, his name would appear in the scandal sheets. He might even, God forbid, be caricatured in the Illustrated London News or Punch – delineated with the simian features so beloved of London cartoonists when they depicted the inhabitants of John Bull’s Other Island. His body would be grotesque, distorted, largely made up of two hideously exaggerated riding boots, one sinking into a bog-hole, the other atop a heap of pig manure, squeezing the life out of some hapless tenant whose neck lay between the landlord’s heel and the excrement of swine.

If that were to happen – and it could – he would be the laughing stock of London. Eventually the news would travel back here, and those wretched people, those bog-savages who through indolence and idleness were the architects of all his misfortunes would laugh at him in their shifty-eyed way. The very thought of it!

Where was Beecham? It was time that miserable excuse for an agent offered some solution as to how his rents might be increased and the growing list of arrears collected.

Crockford’s could not be put off any longer.

The drawing-room call-bell rang in the pantry. God, he’s impatient today, Bridget thought, getting slightly flustered as she resettled the starched white bonnet on her raven locks.

Bridget had come to the Lodge six months previously from her home near Partry, the other side of the Mask from Tourmakeady. At twenty-two years of age she was the eldest of eight children, and so had a responsibility to help support the family. Her bright, perky disposition and ready smile endeared her to all with whom she had dealings. Mrs Bottomley had found Bridget to be an able and willing learner, brisk and businesslike in her doings. ‘You’ll do well in service,’ she told the girl.

The one aspect of ‘service’ which Bridget Lynch did not take to so readily was the service Mrs Bottomley kept intimating she should provide to help soothe Sir Richard after his rages. Despite her Catholic upbringing, Bridget was as healthy as any young girl her age, and had no lack of admirers amongst the young men of Partry. Indeed, she had on occasion slipped her mother’s guard for an hour or two to keep a tryst in one of the many sheltered coves by the lake shore. Meeting with a lusty young fellow whom she had taken a shine to was one thing, but being a landlord’s ‘tallywoman’ was another matter entirely. It was a tricky situation for a young girl to be in. Pakenham was notorious for wenching, and Bridget had once heard him remark that it was a damn shame the right of primae noctis had been done away with. This entitled the landlord, in return for granting permission to his tenants to wed, to enjoy the privilege of ‘first night’ with the new bride.

Bridget thought it must have caused terrible upset, with young husbands, seeing their brides of not yet a day being carried off to the landlord’s bed. Any baby born within the first nine months would then have to be scrutinized for fear it was a ‘landlord’s bastard’.

Pakenham’s bell rang again, Bridget crossed herself, wondering how much longer she could walk the line between humouring him and angering him. If she angered him, he would cast her out on the roadside. And if she gave in to his advances … she would still go the way of the road, like previous servant girls. A mixture of loss of interest tinged with port-induced remorse on Pakenham’s part would send her packing. So she was coquettish with him, stringing him along.

Once in a while she would allow him to plant his eager lips on her neck, before dancing away from him. He would pursue her for a while, until, out of breath, he would collapse on the chaise-longue. Then she would mop his brow and cosset him awhile.

‘Wait until the next time, you little biddy – you can’t escape forever, you know!’ he would say between bouts of wheezing.

Bridget knew she couldn’t escape forever. But as she entered the drawing room she resolved that today would not be the day.

‘M’Lord, you called?’

‘Ah, Bridget – tea for myself and Beecham, here,’ Pakenham said brusquely.

She left, surprised and relieved to find the agent present, but not at all pleased to see him. Pakenham she could handle – so far – but Beecham was dangerous and cunning – a right slieveen. He was always eyeing her when Pakenham’s back was turned. It was just like him to slip into the house unnoticed.

‘Well, Beecham,’ Pakenham resumed the conversation Bridget’s entrance had interrupted. ‘It seems we have a situation here, if the papers are to be believed. A worrying situation for a landlord whose land will offer up no produce but blighted potatoes, giving yet a further excuse to his tenants to withhold their lawful rents. What are we to do, Beecham?’

Beecham moved to within a few feet of where Pakenham stood looking out at the rose gardens. He clasped his hands in front of him, and paused to check that he had Pakenham’s attention.

‘It would seem that the blight is uneven in its distribution, and there is no certainty that it will be as melancholy on the potatoes as some reports suggest. Of course, the experts differ, as always.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Pakenham cut in, ‘but what of our own tenantry?’

‘Well, Sir Dick – I mean, Sir Richard … my apology, Your Lordship,’ Beecham said slyly.

Pakenham let that go, maintaining his silence.

‘It appears the Catholic Church has done us some favour: the bishops have instructed their flocks to make an early harvest of the potatoes. Most of the peasantry obeyed, and even broke the holy Sabbath to do so. The greater portion of the crop has thus been saved. However—’

‘What now?’ Pakenham was losing patience. God, Beecham could be so longwinded.

‘If Your Lordship will permit …?’ Beecham gave an impertinent half-bow.

Pakenham nodded him on.

‘I would suggest that, when we summon the tenantry for renewal of their tenure, we make it clear to them that there will be no abatement of rents. Furthermore, we stipulate that arrears of rent will be dealt with by summary eviction, while at the same time impressing on them the need for good husbandry in the coming year.’

Observing that Pakenham was about to interrupt again, the agent pressed on: ‘You will remember, sir, the spectacle of the tenantry at Maamtrasna, hooleying and drinking when they should have been tending to their fields. We must outlaw all such folderriderry.’

At the mention of Maamtrasna, Pakenham’s hand involuntarily reached for the still-tender spot at the back of his head where the peasant’s stone had hit him.

‘Indeed we must, Beecham. Call them in and tell them what’s what. Damned lucky they’ll be if I don’t clear the lot of them!’

‘Well, sir,’ offered Beecham, ‘this blight might present you with an opportunity to commence the consolidation of your land into larger, more manageable, holdings.’

Pakenham turned and looked the agent squarely in the eye.

‘You know, Beecham, it’s a damnable pity that you can be such a disagreeable fellow at times…’

The crooked smile on Beecham’s face froze as he waited, not sure what was to follow.

‘You have a good understanding of affairs and a damned good nose for an opportunity to improve your employer’s lot.’

Beecham gave as near a full smile as his features would allow. ‘My Lord, you are too kind, I—’

‘However,’ his employer interrupted, ‘if you don’t desist from baiting me, and leering at my personal wench, then I shall have your balls for breakfast – after I have keelhauled you from one end of the Mask to t’other. Do you have me, sir?’ Pakenham snarled, pushing his face towards Beecham’s, relishing the sight of the agent squirming away from him.

Before Beecham could reply, if indeed he had a reply to the prospect of being keel-hauled and castrated, Bridget Lynch re-entered the room.

‘Bridget,’ Pakenham greeted her jovially, ‘Mr Beecham will be without tea today. Methinks the Mask air disagrees with him, and he must leave.’

Bridget made to put down the tray so as to see Beecham to the door.

‘Oh, Bridget’ – Pakenham was enjoying this – ‘Mr Beecham is not so poorly that he is in need of your assist.’ He turned to the agent then, and in honeyed tones enquired: ‘Pray, Beecham, do you require Bridget’s assist, or will you escort yourself out? In any event, Bridget must serve my tea before it turns tepid. You know how I abhor tepidity in anything.’

Bridget had a sense that she was caught in the middle of this rather one-sided exchange. Her unease was not assuaged one whit when Beecham, without speaking, pushed past her and stormed out of the room.

Chuckling at Beecham’s ignominious exit, the landlord turned to Bridget. ‘If that bounder causes you any concern, you must inform me at once.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir. But Mr Beecham never bothered me none,’ she lied. ‘He’s always been proper and gentlemanly towards me, sir.’ Even as she spoke she was vividly recalling how, only a week previously, Beecham had come up behind her and rumbustled her into the storage pantry, pushing himself against her so that she was ‘caught between the ram and the hams’, as she put it to one of the kitchen maids later. Though she had managed to joke about it, she was sure Beecham would have undone her had it not been for Mrs Bottomley’s footsteps sounding in the corridor outside.

Sir Richard was mightily pleased with himself. He had exposed Beecham in front of the girl, and taught the little upstart a lesson. The girl’s obvious alarm when she walked in on their conversation, and the way her cheeks had flushed when she had lied to him, excited him further. Did she think he didn’t know? Pah! Mrs Bottomley missed nothing. Who did she think she was, this Irish peasant girl holding him, Sir Richard Pakenham, on the leash of a promise? Teasing him, and probably Beecham too, with those long black eyelashes and sideways looks? It was time she learned who was master around here.

And there she stood before him – waiting, flushed and unsure, her dark eyes set on him. The blood coursed in him from all the excitement of the hour. Gone were thoughts of the blight, tenants, the rents. All he saw before him was all he desired just then.

‘Bridget, now that Mr Beecham has so ungraciously left us, we are one tea too many … Would you do me the honour of joining me?’ His manner was so uncommonly courteous that all her womanly instincts were alerted. As she walked towards him, balancing the tray with the silver tea service and fine bone-china settings, she prayed she would not reveal her uncertainty to him. But before Bridget Lynch could control it, the tremor in her soul reached her hands and the cups rattled ever so slightly on their saucers. Though she immediately clenched her hands against the silver tray to silence the rattle, she wasn’t quick enough. Pakenham had heard it.

He cocked one eyebrow as her eyes darted to him. Heart thumping now, she was only two steps from where he stood. He reached forward. ‘Allow me, Bridget,’ he said, all helpfulness.

His eyes never left hers. She wanted to dash it all – tray, china, silver, tea, milk – at him and run. But how could she run out of a position which put food into the mouths of her younger siblings through the winter months while her father worked in Lancashire? After all, nothing had happened … yet.

Sir Richard Pakenham saw the turmoil in Bridget’s face, but he felt no pity for her predicament, only exultation. This servant girl had dared to challenge him. But now, as she released the tray into his hands, he knew, as she did, that this would be his day.

6

It was the time of Samhain – the start of the Celtic new year. Patrick and the twins were beside themselves with excitement. Tonight, Halloween, the spirits of the dead would come back to the valley. There would be a bonfire, merriment, singing and dancing.

Ellen, Michael and the children walked up through the straggling line of cabins. The whole village, save the very old and infirm, had come out into the gathering dusk to make the annual pilgrimage to the bonfire place – a hillock on the high ground, close to the site of the recent céilí. Back down the valley in Glenbeg, Ellen could see figures gathering, heading towards the lakeshore where their bonfire would be kindled. From across the lake in Derrypark, unseen, bodiless voices echoed in the night.

The Halloween half-moon was high in the sky, partly shrouded by puffs of mist. Stars sprinkled the heavens above Maamtrasna – one for every soul of the dead, thought Ellen. She imagined the Máistir and Cáit up there, perched on the handle of the great Plough, guiding, lighting, working together in the heavens as they had on earth. Ellen wondered where her own place in the vault of heaven would be. Would Michael be there beside her, her love-star? Would the children know where to look for them on Halloweens to come? And would they, too, claim their place in the firmament – Patrick the dark, strong star; Katie and Mary, the heavenly twins, set close together. Bright flame-stars.

And what of this new star she carried within her?

Where would this miracle-star, not yet of this world, be? Where would it fly across the heavens?

They reached the Crucán. Ellen felt a shiver run through her, and crossed herself. Now, at the place of the bonfire, the children’s shrieks of delight drove everything from Ellen’s mind save the ceremony of fire about to begin.

Earlier in the day, the village children had scoured the lakeshore for firewood. The men had dragged down from the mountain great pieces of blackened bogwood, the remains of mighty oaks that, thousands of years ago, had stood where today there was only bogland. Now the villagers heaped these pieces of broken wood, along with old rags and bones and straw, on to the misshapen monster that was growing topsy-turvy-like on the hillock above the village. Through the gaps in the wood, Ellen could see shafts of bleak, early winter light, providing an eerie backdrop to this pagan festival.

Then, to a chorus of yells, the great pyramid of wood was kindled. At first the kindling took slowly, with little spurts whenever a lick of flame caught the quick-to-burn straw or rags. Gradually, tongues of flame began to reach up from the lower regions of the pile. The children were mesmerized by the fiery serpents which, every now and then, darted out towards them, to the accompaniment of squeals of excitement and fear. At first they would retreat from the flames, but then, daring the fire-devils, they would edge back to their previous positions, their little faces red and white in the night, the fire dancing in their eyes. The bonfire rapidly grew in intensity and ferocity, sweeping up to the sky. Sparks driven off by the wind illuminating the pale marking stones on the children’s burial mound.

Ellen looked out across the Maamtrasna Valley. Everywhere fires roared in the night, ringing the lakeside in a circle of flame, framing the wild gesticulations of the revellers, transforming them into grotesque spectres of shadow and light, more spirit than human. Further back towards Tourmakeady, the great pagan celebration lit up the sky, lifting a downtrodden people into risen people for this night. Ellen knew that Pakenham would see the flames and understand that they were a symbol of a culture as old as the bogwood, waiting its turn to be ignited – to crackle and hiss and flame and spark into glorious life again.

Just as the old black wood was liberated by fire, so too this night of celebration freed the people of the valley. A people not yet suffocated by hundreds of years of an alien culture seeking to dominate, to drive out the old ways of this land. A people not yet made joyless by the starched, imposed strictures of the Catholic Church.

‘Fire is life.’

Ellen looked for the bright stars that formed the handle of the Plough and smiled, knowing the Máistir was there, wise as ever.

She felt a tug at her elbow. It was Mary, all bright and rosy from the heat of the bonfire.

‘Come on, a Mhamaí, give me your hand and we’ll do the circle round the fire.’

Ellen, surprised by Mary’s initiative – normally Katie was the one doing all the pulling and tugging – bent down and gave her quiet child a hug. Perhaps Mary was at last, getting out of being so backward about coming forward, as Michael put it. It wasn’t easy to be the outgoing one, when you had a twin sister who ran at life, day after day, fit for anything – and everything.

‘Of course, a stóirín,’ she whispered.

Mary grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her towards the ring of people forming around the fire. Someone took Ellen’s other hand as it trailed behind her, but she took little notice of this in the general melee.

Ellen spotted Katie on the far side of the bonfire, pulling Michael into the ring as Mary had done with her. She could imagine her twins plotting and scheming, the whispered argument: ‘I’ll get Mammy and you get Daddy.’ ‘No, I’ll get Mammy and you get Daddy.’

Slowly, the ring of fire-dancers, their hands joined, began to move to the right around the fire. Ellen, feeling a cold grip on her left hand, turned to see who it was. With a start she saw Sheela-na-Sheeoga grinning at her, flickers of light darting across her face, giving it a wild look.

‘Dance easy round the fire, Ellen Rua. Dance easy tonight.’ The old woman’s voice rattled out to her through the crackling sound of the bonfire. ‘For it’s no harm you want to be bringing on yourself this night when the evil ones fly in the air.’

Ellen hoped that Sheela would not notice the unsettling effect her presence was having. Why had the old one to be always on her shoulder, appearing out of nowhere with some ominous-sounding message? It was as if Sheela had appointed herself both midwife and guardian for this child. Ellen rued the day she had gone over the mountain to see the old cailleach.

‘Everything is fine, Sheela,’ she heard herself saying.

Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s eyes glinted back at her, the flickering of the fire adding a demonic intensity to them.

‘Let you pick up the burning ember and pass it round yourself to purify your body. Let the fire protect you from the evil ones.’

This advice seemed to Ellen to bring a chilling dimension to the old custom of casting the embers. Glad of the excuse to break off physical contact with the woman, she grasped an ember. Contrary to the old one’s admonitions, she did not pass it around her body, but slowly and deliberately made a fiery sign of the cross before casting the ember high into the Halloween night. It turned and twisted as it rose, sizzling and crackling as it cut a path through the air. Starwards it climbed, hanging in the heavens, until at its zenith it flared brightly. Then, like a fallen soul, it dropped. Only a dark, dull redness remained, in stark contrast to its previous showering, sparking glory. Now, thought Ellen, it will burn out alone, hidden in the blackness beyond the Crucán, dying in its own ashes as they returned to the earth.

‘Ellen, are you all right?’ Michael appeared at her side looking worried. He had noticed that she seemed preoccupied of late, as if she had drifted into a place that was beyond his reach. At such times she seemed to him like a spirit-woman. Her body was there – you could touch it, feel it, taste it – but her elusive spirit slipped between your fingers.

‘Ah, I’m fine, Michael. It’s just the night that’s in it, and thinking of those who are gone. Nothing ails me. Sure, isn’t it the same with everyone else here?’

Katie rushed over to them, her face all alight.

‘Did you see that?’ she burst out. ‘I hit one of them – I hit an evil spirit.’

‘Ah! Hush that talk now, Katie,’ said Patrick, a little unnerved by the Halloween ceremonies.

‘No, but I did – I swear! I threw my lighted stick up in the air, and it went up above the smoke, and then I saw it hit this black thing in the sky, and I heard a sound like a screech. I did! I did! I’m telling you!’ Katie stamped her foot in exasperation.

‘I believe you, Katie.’ Mary’s quiet voice penetrated the commotion.

‘See!’ said Katie, throwing her arms around her sister.

‘Twins know these things because they’re special. They just know!’

The big bonfire died down, its timbers, weakened by the flames, crumbling and sliding into the pit of glowing ash-whitened wood. Eddies of wind swept in, picking up the ash and floating it into the hills and the valleys in busy flurries of fire-snow. The demons that lurked in the flames continued hissing and spitting, inviting the onlooker in even after their long, ever-beckoning fingers of flame had departed, quenched for another year.

Around the valley, the fires which had roared into the night were now just a row of red, angry eyes dotted along the hillsides. Eyes which by morning would be closed.

The O’Malleys returned to their cabin. Michael took his knife and scooped out a turnip that Roberteen had got somewhere, then carved eyes, a nose and a mouth to make a púca. Finally, he took a small piece of lighted turf from the fire and placed it inside the turnip. Patrick, who had been clamouring to be allowed to help, positioned the turnip in the window opening. The Halloween púca sent out an eerie yellow glow. Its gashed face smiled evilly, the burning innards sending out a sickly wet smell.

The next night – the eve of All Souls – the O’Malleys’ cabin was filled with a strange mixture of fear and excitement. The prayers took longer than usual as the family recited the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, offering up a decade each for the Máistir, Cáit, Michael’s mother and father, and all dead relatives. The dead of the village and all the souls in purgatory, waiting to be released through the prayers of the faithful on earth, were also included.

The Rosary finished without any of the usual ‘trimmings’, except for the prayer to Mary: ‘… to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping’ – or ‘morning and evening’ as Katie put it, referring to all the praying that took place at this time of year.

Next came the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which Ellen gave out in a toneless chant, and the others answered:

‘Pray for us!’

‘Have mercy on us!’

‘Pray for us!’

‘Have mercy on us!’

The continuous chanted responses induced a trance-like state in the younger members of the group, providing much-needed release from the pain of kneeling at prolonged prayer.

Afterwards, as the children settled down to sleep, Ellen laid out five settings for food, although they themselves had already eaten. Katie and Mary watched with great interest, but Patrick, showing his disdain for pisreoga – superstitions – had turned his face away and gone to sleep. As she set each place, Ellen whispered an explanation to the twins: ‘This place is for the Máistir.’ They nodded their assent, agog with the mystery of it all. ‘And this one is for my mother, Cáit. And this for your other grandfather, Stephen, and beside him Sarah.’

Before Ellen could explain further, Mary, in hushed tones, half-afraid the spirits of the dead would not come if they heard the noise of children, asked: ‘And who is the last place for, a Mhamaí?’

‘Well, a stóirín,’ Ellen whispered back, ‘that place is for any poor wandering soul who has no home to go to, and who would be left beyond on the mountainside, wailing bitterly in the wind and the cold.’

This captured the imagination of the twins, and for a moment there was silence. Then it was Mary again who spoke: ‘A Mhamaí, I’m glad we’ve set the extra place. It’s a kind thing to do for a poor, lonely soul who has no one to welcome it in.’

Now that the place-setting had finished, the twins switched their attention to Michael. Having gathered up some of the almost burnt-out wood from last night’s bonfire, he was building a fine welcoming fire in the hearth. Their little minds were alive with hordes of wandering souls filling the night sky over the valley, picking out the welcoming cabins below. Cabins like their own, with glowing fires, doors left unlatched and tables set for the midnight feast.

Finally, Katie and Mary fell into sleep, comforted by the image of the unknown soul slipping in quietly to take its place among their grandparents; having a family, for this night at least.

Ellen lay on her back watching the flames of the fire shadow-dance along the walls and up towards the ceiling. They darted in and out of the loft, burnishing the gold-coloured straw which held their food supply for the year to come. Now and again, the shadow of a flame would seem to pick out the lumpers stored there, casting up grotesque images of stunted men, no arms and legs, only small squat heads set on larger squat bodies.

Ellen wondered whether their little loft would be groaning under the weight of lumpers in the Samhain of the following year. She couldn’t quite harness all the feelings of impending catastrophe which seemed to be pressing on her recently – her baby and Sheela-na-Sheeoga; the potato disease; Pakenham singling her out at the céilí; Halloween and her thoughts on the stars of the dead. Something was happening. Some force was putting her at the centre of things. But why her?

When, eventually, she did succumb to sleep, her dreams were filled with dark and troubling visitations.

She was hurrying down a long, winding road. On every side were people weeping and wailing – calling out to her. She had the children with her – all three of them – and she was carrying a baby.

Way off in the distance, at the end of the road, was a … ship. That’s where she was running to. She had to reach that ship. She had to get there fast, before the evil following behind caught up with her.

Mary could not keep up. Ellen ran back and grabbed her. She was losing time – the ship, the tall ship, it would leave without them. She didn’t seem to be making any ground at all. The road twisted on, and on, and on, lined with poor, piteous souls calling out to her. She couldn’t stop. Their skeleton-like fingers clawed the air, trying to hold her back, to smother her and the children.

Now she couldn’t see the ship. Had it sailed already? She hadn’t seen it leave. Ahead was a gaping darkness, waiting to swallow them. The thing that had pursued them was now in front of them, blocking their escape. The blackness seemed to be moving towards them. If they did not move, it would crush them. But the child in her arms was crying; it was heavy, too heavy for her to be carrying.

‘Mary, keep up, for God’s sake!’ She yanked the child’s arm, pulling her along.

Then the whole countryside shook as a tremendous booming noise resounded from the road ahead. The vibrations travelled from the ground into her feet, and then up through her whole body, until the sound rang inside her head: boom! boom! boom! The faster she ran the louder it grew. Terrified, she realized she was running towards the booming.

And still no ship to be seen, only a black, black void. The noise was coming from immediately in front of her, advancing on her. She could hardly keep her feet, it shook the ground so.

‘Patrick, Katie, not too far ahead now! Wait for us!’ she screamed, but the children seemed not to hear her, seemed not to hear the noise of the anvil of hell, booming, threatening, welcoming them into what dark abyss she knew not.

Now heat – gusts of hot steam – enveloped them, drenching them, suffocating them with its stench. The putrid stench of decay that seemed somehow familiar.

And still the white hands clawed at her, shredding her garments. When they reached her skin she knew she would be ripped to pieces. And then who would save the children? She looked for Michael, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Ahead, Katie and Patrick had stopped – their hands thrown up in front of them. They were backing away from something. She tried to close the distance between herself and them. The wailing from the skeletons grew louder, reaching a fearsome crescendo against the booming which was now threatening to explode inside her head. And all the while the vile steam surrounded them, sticking to them, melting their skin.

Without warning, out of the belly of the abyss, a giant horse came charging. A beast so black it shone in the darkness of the pit. Forelegs rippling, it towered over them, pawing the night above their heads. From its nostrils – two great cauldrons – the vapour came beating down on them. From over its fipple there oozed a white froth, threatening to envelop them.

Ellen’s eyes followed the run of the reins, trying to identify the rider of this mount from hell. It must be the devil himself, she thought, as she looked up at the hollow red rims of his eyes. He was laughing at her, the laughter burning into her heart. It was Pakenham! But he was not alone. In the air above him floated Sheela-na-Sheeoga, pointing at her, singling her out. ‘Ellen … Ellen Rua, deliver the child to me,’ she wailed.

Ellen clutched the baby to her. ‘Michael!’ she screamed. ‘Michael! Michael! Where are you?’

‘Ellen Rua! Ellen Rua!’ Sheela-na-Sheeoga mock-echoed Ellen’s cry for Michael. ‘Hand me back the child I gave you.’

Ellen felt the claws of the multitude grab her, lacerating her skin, drawing blood. She watched, paralysed with fear, as the old woman’s arm distended and reached out for her baby. Ellen tried in vain to wrench herself free of the soulless ones, but they pinned her on every side while the arm of the wraith prised the baby from her terrified embrace. ‘No! No!’ she cried, watching helplessly as her baby was taken back through the veil of steam, back to the evil womb of Sheela-na-Sheeoga.

Ellen bolted upright, panic-stricken, her heart pounding in her brain. She was drenched in perspiration. Frantically she reached out in the dark for Michael, exhaling with relief when her hand found his arm. Michael was there, he was all right – sleeping contentedly. She withdrew her shaking hand for fear of waking him.

And Katie – Mary – Patrick? All safe. All asleep. All here.

She blessed herself thrice and felt for the baby with both hands – gingerly, tenderly, afraid. She felt the inner pulse stroking and caressing this unknown life within her. Finally, she covered her wildly beating heart with both hands, willing them to calm it.

And then she cried. She cried for Michael. She cried for her children. The tears flooded down her face, over the brave, quivering lips, rolling down on to her breasts and over the womb which held her unborn baby. Down along her thighs, it flowed, into the straw of her simple bed, cleansing her body, washing away her fear, releasing her from it.

‘Mother of Sorrows, have mercy on me.’ Ellen breathed the Litany of Our Lady through her tears. And still the tears came as she sat alone, her knees drawn up, her arms binding them to her, gently rocking herself while all around her slept.

When her tears had subsided, Ellen sat drained, looking into the dying embers of the fire. She dared not risk sleep lest the nightmare, still vivid in her mind, should return. So she stoked the fire and threw on a few more sods of the black mountain turf. Gradually the heat dried her damp body and restored her. And the smell of the burning turf – the safe world she knew relaxed her.

She recognized the elements of her dream as grotesque enlargements of her own thoughts and fears. What bothered her most was Michael’s absence. Everybody else was there with her: Patrick, Katie, Mary, even the new baby. But where was Michael?

The dream had taken its toll on Ellen. Despite her best efforts to remain awake, exhaustion combined with the warmth of the fire to send her into a fitful slumber.

Once again, nightmarish images began to fill her mind. But before the dream could take hold, Ellen was startled into wakefulness by a high-pitched wailing.

But the wailing did not stop with the dream. This time the keening was real – she was sure of it. She listened, alert, by the fire. There it was again: a single, solitary voice. For a moment she thought it was the high-pitched cry of the fox, but this was longer, more drawn out. The sound had come from down towards the lake. She moved stealthily to the window and removed the burnt-out shell of the plica.

The night of All Souls was bright, with a waxing moon riding high across the clouds, seeking openings through which to aim its beams down onto the waters of the Mask. There, they would splash out across the lake’s surface – ripples of pale yellow, reflecting back up to the moon its own watery light.

As she listened, Ellen could hear the sounds of the valley, the ever-yelping dogs of Derrypark, the lap of the lake-water. And between these sounds she heard the stillnesses of the night, those silken moments she loved, woven with silence, snatched out of wonder.

For a moment, the moon lost its hide-and-seek game with the clouds, and the lake, deprived of its light, was lost to Ellen’s view. But when the Samhain moon reappeared, the sight which met Ellen’s eyes chilled her to the very core of her being.

There, hovering over the lake, two or three feet above it, was the outline of a woman, all in white, moving slowly towards her. The woman was not walking, nor was she in flight, nor borne up by anything visible. Instead she glided slowly over the water through the veil of the moonlight, her long white hair tinged by the moon’s yellow hue.

Ellen’s hand shot to her mouth to stifle the cry. Oh, God – would it never end, this eve of All Souls?

She looked back into the cabin, identifying the sleeping forms of her family. She was, indeed, awake. And if she was awake, then this was a portent more terrible than any dream could bring. She had no doubt as to the identity of her apparition. Hadn’t she heard her own father tell how the Banshee – the supernatural death messenger – had appeared to him on the three nights before her mother died.

Ellen was seized by an icy coldness. Whose house was the Banshee visiting this night of souls? She watched the airy figure glide in from the centre of the lake towards the shoreline, her white dress unruffled by the movement, until she reached the place where Ellen had studied her own reflection in the water the day she discovered she was pregnant. Invisible claws tightened on Ellen, cutting off her breathing, constricting the movement of her heart. Then the Banshee floated over the land, the trail of her hemline caressing the stalks above the potato patches. Ellen closed the door, knowing that it went against all the tradition of the night. She would welcome the souls of the dead, but not she who came to call the living. Not the Banshee.

And still the death messenger moved inexorably towards the village. Who did she come for? Ellen racked her brain for households where there was someone old or infirm – these were the houses the Banshee usually visited. Perhaps it was Ann Paddy Andy – she’d been failing with that croupy cough since St Swithin’s Day. Or Mary an Táilliúra, the Tailor’s wife. Or Peadar Bacach, Old Lame Peter, with that stump of a leg. The long, damp winters were hard on him. It could be any of them. The death messenger, she knew, followed the old Irish families, those whose names began with ‘Mac’ or ‘O’, as if she belonged to them.

Then the knowledge hit her as if the whole weight of the world had crashed down on her. She slumped against the window, as if to block the power of the Banshee’s death-call from entering the cabin and finding her little family. The old ones said you should never look the death messenger in the face, or she would take you, sucking the soul out of your body through your eyes. But Ellen didn’t care. Rather herself than one of the children. Rather herself than Michael.

The Banshee stopped about thirty feet from the cabin. Now Ellen could see her face, beautiful and sad. She saw the tears that welled up and ran down her cheeks – lamenting the one she was about to call.

Then the wraith opened her mouth and emitted a low-pitched, throaty sound that ran through the ground and up into the walls and door of the O’Malleys’ cabin. Ellen stood shaking uncontrollably, as the sound raised in pitch and intensity.

It was the death keen, like the noise the old women made at wakes: high, and sorrowful, and lonesome. Yet it surpassed any sound that could ever be made by a human being. The keening of the Banshee found its way into the marrow of Ellen’s bones as if her whole body was soaking up the sound, it living in her.

Then, slowly and deliberately, the woman in white drew from her raiment a transparent silver brush. The brush glided effortlessly through her hair, the long strands offering no resistance. As if they required no brushing at all. Again and again, the woman stroked the long tresses, as lovingly as Cáit had stroked Ellen’s own fine tresses, and Ellen in turn had stroked Katie’s and Mary’s.

Ellen stifled another cry – she must not think of any of her children, nor Michael. She must not be part of whatever death the Banshee would foretell. Ellen tried to will herself into the mind of the apparition, forcing the harbinger of death to choose her instead of them. This she did, but with the sure, sickening knowledge that she was not the one called.

The first pale glow of dawn began to creep in over the mountains, suffusing the wraith with light. As the brightness intensified, the Banshee began to fade away, disappearing again into whatever half-world from whence she came. The keening, too, grew weaker, melting away into the sound of the rising north-easterlies.

Ellen’s whole being collapsed. No longer able to support herself, she turned, looking for her small family, afraid for them. As she sank into an unconscious heap below the window, the last act of her conscious mind was to register the two dark heads of Michael and Patrick where they lay sleeping. And the two red heads of Katie and Mary, side by side, arms and legs entangled – trying to be one again.

7

When Michael awoke a few hours later, his first act, as always, was to reach for Ellen. He was unconcerned at finding an empty space beside him, for Ellen was often the first one to be up and about. But when he heard Mary call, ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí, what’s wrong?’ he leapt up from where he lay immediately.

Ellen was in a crumpled heap beneath the window, her shawl partly covering her. She was deathly pale. He shook her by the shoulders as the children gathered round, sensing that something was amiss.

‘Ellen, a stór, wake up,’ he said, fear in his heart for her and the child she was carrying.

Ellen opened her eyes dazedly, struggling to focus on Michael’s face.

‘What is it, what ails you?’ he asked. ‘Why are you here with the shawl over you?’

Ellen made a great effort to see the faces crowding around her – trying to pick them out one by one. When she saw they were all there, she smiled faintly at them.

‘See, she’s all right!’ said Katie.

Now Ellen could see Michael’s face. It was strained with worry and the confusion of not knowing what was wrong with his wife. Weakly she reached out one hand to him. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. A drink of water from the rock, and I’ll be fine,’ she said wanly.

Patrick was first up to fetch his mother a cup of spring water. As she sipped it, Ellen felt the cold strength of the water bring her round and fortify her. She put her hand to her stomach, afraid the fall might have done damage, but to her relief everything seemed to be all right.

‘The baby is grand – thank God – and so am I,’ she said, more strongly now. ‘Now, don’t be worrying all of you, and making an old woman of me before my time.’

‘Did you see something last night, a Mhamaí?’ It was Mary, perceptive as ever. ‘Did the wandering soul come into the house?’

‘No, of course not, Mary. I just got up a while and I must have dozed off,’ Ellen replied, smiling at her child.

Mary was far from satisfied with this response. She looked over at the table settings. Nothing had been moved since last night. Nothing had moved, yet something had come into the house, or tried to come in. It must have been a bad thing. Mary knew her mother didn’t frighten easily.

As the day went on, Ellen tried to gather herself back together. Gradually, her physical strength returned. Michael and the children were very attentive, but every time one of them approached or touched her she couldn’t help but think: Is this the one marked out by last night’s visitor? She studied them anxiously, looking for any sign – a weakness, a dizziness, the start of a fever. But nothing could she discover, no tell-tale sign, no flaw or failing that might prove fatal.

At last, unable to bear it any longer, she went to the lake, declining the children’s company when they offered to walk with her.

The late afternoon was crisp and bright, and the Mask calm and peaceful in the sunlight. Ellen wondered whether the Banshee’s visit had been nothing more than a dream. Perhaps she had dozed off by the fire and had dreamed the whole thing, and while in her sleep had been drawn to the window. But surely a dream that terrible would have awoken her, as the earlier nightmare had done?

And what was the connection between the nightmare and the apparition of the keening death messenger? Ellen set about unravelling the dream: Pakenham, she had recognized, and Sheela-na-Sheeoga. The road could be any road, but it must be leading to the sea because of the tall ship at the end of it. But why was getting to the ship so important? She and the children had been fleeing from something, but their escape had been blocked … all those ghouls trying to stop them – why weren’t they, too, trying to get away to the ship? And where was Michael?

She had been carrying the baby – a baby too small to walk. Her baby was not due until May, so the dream must be set after May, but sometime within the year …

Ellen looked around at the mountain-valley world she lived in. Nothing in this wild and beautiful place was remotely connected to the world she had inhabited in her dream. Yet it was over these waters that the death messenger had floated …

She shuddered, recalling her terrifying ordeal. She needed Michael’s comforting arms, but how could she tell him what troubled her?

Slowly it dawned on her where her thoughts were leading: the visit of the Banshee; Michael’s absence … It was Michael the night visitor was crying for, Michael’s death she was keening. Michael – her love, her dark-haired boy – was to be taken, and taken before this baby could walk. Oh, God, no – not Michael!

Ellen buried her face in her hands, her grief and tears spilling out into the silent Mask.

Michael could be taken at any time – today, tonight, tomorrow, next week, Christmas … It took all the willpower she had to resist the urge to run back to the cabin and throw herself upon Michael and weep into his strong shoulder.

‘Heaven guide me,’ she prayed. ‘I, who should be not seeking consolation but giving it. I should be his shield from whatever dark forces lie in wait. And he such a good man, not deserving of being taken so early, so soon deprived of the love of his children.’

Ellen threw back her head, facing the heavens, storming them with her prayers and grief: ‘Oh, God, who sent your only Beloved Son to die on the Cross for us, I implore You, take this cross from us now.’ Even as she said the words, she knew in her heart it was wrong to challenge the will of God. Still she could not stop herself.

‘Lord, it’s little I have in this place, but what little I have is enough if I have him. I ask not that You spare us the time to grow old together, but that even You grant us a few summers more – to walk the valley, to see the dawn rise, to taste the morning dew …

‘Oh, Blessed Mother, intercede with your Son, I beg you. Protect Michael, just till the children grow. Let him wait a while here with us, and he not yet the age your beloved Son was!’

Yet deep within her she knew there was no hope. God gives life. God takes it away again. She heard again her father’s words as he tried to reconcile himself to Cáit’s early death: ‘Whom the Gods love, die young. They take them back to another place where they are more needed than here.’

But no one could possibly need Michael more than she did.

‘Death is ever a moment too soon for those who love.’ The Máistir’s voice continued to speak to her until at last she was calmed. She asked the Lord to forgive her her sin and give her the strength to do what she must do.

But how was she going to look at Michael? How could she be with him in the night, joined as one with him, concealing her awful secret, knowing that each time they loved could be their last? Somehow she must. She must make these days, however few, the fullest days of their lives. There would be times, she knew, when it would break her very heart; times when she would watch him fall asleep, then lie there warding over him in the dark, fearing lest he be stolen from her in the night. There would be times, too, when he would go with the men to the mountain, leaving her to wait and worry until his safe return.

And she must bear this burden alone. She could not tell the children – their little hearts set on doing things with him at Christmas – that they might never again see their father. She would have to be strong, to bear silently the dashed dreams and bitter tears that soon would be theirs.

She turned from the lake and walked back up to the cabin, and Michael – her darling, lost Michael – keeping all these things in her heart.

As the days shortened into Advent and Christmas, Ellen learned to put the events of All Souls behind her.

Their store of potatoes held fast, as did those of their neighbours. The valley seemed removed from the general fears that stalked the land. Ellen remembered the previous crop failures within her own lifetime. It seemed as if some failing of the harvest was inevitable – a fixed part of living here in the West.

She felt the child within her grow. Untroubled by sickness, or even tiredness, soon she began to feel the kick inside.

The Lessons continued, but now more and more Ellen taught the children in English. If they were going to leave here, then they would be badly served knowing only Irish and a smattering of English. She would see to it that her children were prepared for as many eventualities as she could foresee.

She had managed, somehow, to keep her dark secret from Michael, though it had been difficult. The first nights after All Souls, she could not bear to make love with him; could not bear to have those searching dark eyes so close to hers. So she had him turn to her, burying his head in her breasts. That way he could not see the tears well up in her eyes. Then she would pray over him as he slept – his guardian angel – until sleep claimed her as well.

After those first nights, however, despite the edicts of the Church regarding continence during pregnancy, they made deep and satisfying love that seared her soul and released the great burden of sorrow she was carrying within her.

To wake of a morning and see him there beside her, still alive, was a gift from God. Thankful for this blessing, she embraced life with a spirit and energy that brought joy to all their lives. The month leading up to Christmas, though outwardly not much different from that of previous Advents, had this year developed a spiritual intensity she had never before experienced. Day after day, Ellen lived out every moment for Michael and her small family. Mother; wife; teacher; lover; spiritual well; guardian angel.

She loved the long dark wintry nights. Michael was around the house more, the children were out less. To her the short winter days were days of rest and prayer, days of gathering spirit-strength for the miracle of Christmas; days of gathering body-strength for the work of the year ahead.

Often in the dark she would slip away to her place by the lake shore, setting her face to the frothy wind rising off the face of the Mask. She loved how its waters could be. Whipped hither and thither by the wind which came whirling and swirling in from Tourmakeady and Glenbeg before sweeping on down to the unsuspecting Lough Nafooey – the Lake of Hate.

The Mask, too, could be a lake of hate. As it was tonight, seething and spitting at her, trying to beat her away from its shore. The spray stung her face, the winter wind flailing her long mane. Ellen, swept up in the moment, let it take her. She stood, first swaying with the wind then turning and turning like a frenzied dervish spinning between two worlds, the earth elements holding her, the air elements trying to suck her into a whirlwind which would carry her over the land beyond the mountain. If her body did not soar, then her spirit did, deliriously free of mortal toils and worries.

Now she was earth mother, sky dancer, fertile ever-lover – Danu, Mother Goddess of the Celts.

Her hair, sodden with lake-spray, streaked down her face. Slowly she drew both hands through the tangled curls, first combing it with her fingers, then pressing it to her, matting the soaked hair to her neck, shoulders and breasts, feeling its chill sensuality reach for her.

Calmer now, but still breathless, she felt regenerated, at one with the source of wind and rain, mountain and lake, sky and earth. World and otherworld.

Her hands continued their downward journey – seeking assurance that her body was still there, still with her – passing over the swell of her belly to her thighs. Yes, her baby was there, safe within her. And, in this moment, she, Ellen Rua O’Malley was the source of all things. Even life itself.

The wind lifted. The Mask quelled its fury and stillness came on her. Then the shock of her abandonment to the elements struck Ellen Rua. Now filled with remorse at giving way to her sin, she fell to her knees, her hand diving to her pocket, frantically searching out her rosary beads – and forgiveness.

From where he watched behind the hawthorn bush, Roberteen Bawn was terrified at the transformation he saw in his neighbour, Ellen Rua.

Hurriedly he crossed himself and muttered a frantic prayer: ‘God between us and all harm, Holy Mother of God between us and all harm.’

Then he tore away into the safety of the deep winter’s night.

8

The two acres of land farmed by the O’Malleys were held on a year-to-year basis. They were ‘tenants at will’ of Pakenham, with no security of tenure. There purely at the will – or whim – of the landlord.

It was Pakenham’s practice, before Christmas each year, to issue a notice-to-quit to each of his tenants. The tenant would then be called to account for his stewardship before the landlord or his agent. Provided there were no arrears, the tenant would be granted another year’s tenure – at an increased rent. For those unfortunate enough to have fallen into arrears for one reason or another, there was only one outcome: eviction. Most tenants had no choice but to accept the conditions imposed on them by the landlord.

Michael was called to attend Tourmakeady Lodge for a review of his tenantship on 8 December, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception.

A month had passed since the death messenger had manifested herself near their cabin, and yet no one had been taken. This was most unusual. Tradition had it that the Banshee called a night or two before the death would occur. Her visit was a signal for friends and relatives to gather and make their peace with the person whose death was foretold, and then pray over the departing soul. Ellen had never heard tell of an occasion where the death messenger had come and no one had died. The further the days stretched away, the more Ellen’s relief grew. Nevertheless, she was always watchful, always on guard.

This trip to Tourmakeady Lodge was Michael’s first journey of any length since Samhain. Despite her condition, she resolved to leave the children with Biddy and accompany him, just in case his time would come while he was away from her.

Ellen and Michael walked up the long approach to Tourmakeady Lodge. The verges of the driveway were lined with rhododendron bushes, which must have been a sight in full bloom.

This was Ellen’s first visit and she found it hard to understand how so many areas of good land could have been turned over to useless growth like flowers and shrubs, when it could have been used to grow food for the hungry. How could there be such plenty for one man in the midst of want and scarcity for so many? And why couldn’t she and Michael own their pitifully small two-acre patch? God knows, Pakenham didn’t need it, and with all the rent down the years they had paid its value many times over. It was wrong, so wrong.

They paused by the gates of a beautiful walled garden. Along its sides, thorny creepers grew; along its pathways were neatly trimmed bushes. Everything was laid out in perfect symmetry. Just like the lazy beds, only here there were no rows of potatoes – no need for that at Tourmakeady Lodge! These were the rose gardens, Pakenham’s pride and joy.

‘They say Pakenham has a score of men working here – a dozen for the rose gardens alone.’ Ellen shook her head in disbelief.

‘Aye, and if he does itself he’ll have no luck for it,’ Michael responded. ‘One fine day these fine rose bushes will make a bed of thorns for him.’

‘’Tis said he guards it as if ’twere the Crown Jewels themselves within.’

‘Just as well he does!’ Michael laughed. ‘It wouldn’t take me and Martin Tom Bawn long to make a fine potato patch out of it.’

The image of Pakenham’s rose gardens being replaced with lazy beds full of lumpers appealed to Ellen, and she laughed with him.

Bridget Lynch, pretty as a picture, opened the tradesmen’s entrance to Ellen and Michael. Ellen was taken by the young girl’s beauty and the radiance of her smile.

Bridget leaned towards the visitors and gave the customary Gaelic greeting, but not too loudly. Pakenham would have her flogged if he heard her speaking ‘that bog language of the papists’, as he called it. It was expressly forbidden to speak Irish in the house or grounds of Tourmakeady Lodge. Ellen, sensing the risk the girl took, laid a hand on Bridget’s arm and whispered, ‘Dia’s Muire dhuit.’

Bridget took in the woman before her. So this was Ellen Rua O’Malley, the woman whose beauty was spoken of in the four corners of Connacht. It felt strange to be so close to the red-haired woman. It was as if some energy, some spirit-force enveloped her. Yet Bridget was not afraid of it. This woman was not dangerous or evil, like some of the old ones back in the mountains. No, Ellen Rua’s spirit was good – and Bridget Lynch liked it.

A whiff of a breeze brushed a strand of Ellen’s hair across Bridget’s cheek. She felt it fall against her skin – strongly textured, yet fine; the essence of the woman herself. And in the eyes of the red-haired woman, Bridget Lynch saw not only her own reflection, but also the wildness of the green mountain fields, the wide blue of the sky, and the dark brooding of the Mask. Ellen Rua had more than beauty. She was of the land, of history – she was of Ireland. She would never be a landlord’s tallywoman. That would be a betrayal not only of body but of soul and country. So Bridget did not fear for Ellen Rua O’Malley. Sir Richard Pakenham would be no match for her. Of that, Bridget Lynch was sure.

The moment between the two women was broken by the arrival of an irate Mrs Bottomley.

‘Girl, are you whispering about the place in that foreign tongue again?’ she accused Bridget – ignoring Ellen and Michael, as if they weren’t there. ‘His Lordship will have something to say to you about that.’

Ellen noticed the sadness come into the girl’s eyes at the mention of Pakenham.

‘Have the peasants cleaned their feet, girl?’ Mrs Bottomley harried Bridget, still ignoring them. ‘Bring them in, bring them in – the kitchen, mind, no further. And stay with them,’ she instructed Bridget, without any hint of subtlety.

‘Begging your pardon, ma’am.’

The housekeeper heard herself being addressed. It was with some surprise she registered that it was the tall red-haired woman. Mrs Bottomley turned, displaying obvious distaste that a peasant should have the audacity to speak to her.

‘Begging your pardon, ma’am,’ Ellen repeated in as polite but as firm a Queen’s English as Mrs Bottomley would have wished to hear in His Lordship’s lodge. ‘Peasants we may be, but thieves we are not.’

A reply to this insolence was on the tip of Mrs Bottomley’s tongue, but something in the manner of the woman affirmed the truth of what she had said. The housekeeper, lost for a response, executed an about-turn and shouted to an as yet invisible figure, ‘Mr Beecham! Mr Beecham! The peasants – those people from Maamtrasna are here.’

Bridget, meanwhile, could scarce contain her glee at the routing of Mrs Bottomley by Ellen – something she wouldn’t have deemed possible had she not witnessed it with her own eyes. What a story she would have for them back in Partry next time she was home.

She hurried to conceal her merriment as Beecham strode into the kitchen.

‘Well now, and what do we have here?’ the agent asked. ‘Ah, a delegation of the tenantry! What have you to say, O’Malley?’ Beecham ignored Ellen and directed the question at Michael.

‘His Lordship requested my attendance,’ Michael said quietly.

‘Yes, O’Malley, precisely – your attendance. Albeit a day of religion in the papist Church, it is not a day of family worship here,’ Beecham said, looking askance at Ellen. ‘Can you not conduct your own business, like a man, without bringing your wife to plead for you?’

‘I plead for nothing, Mr Beecham,’ Michael said staring down Pakenham’s middleman. ‘And we have other business in Castlebar.’

‘Pah, what business in Castlebar for the likes of you two?’ snorted Beecham. ‘Business my foot! I know the business you’re about: going to “buy the Christmas” – is that what you peasants call it? I knew it! I’ve told His Lordship time and again, the rent is set too low for you scheming beggars. His Lordship is far too generous, while you filthy idlers spend your time lazing about your lazy beds and begetting children.’

Ellen could feel Michael clench his fists as Beecham continued: ‘Well, my Christmas beauties, listen now, and listen well – the rent is to be raised one-twentieth for every child in a house above two children. This will put a halt to your lechery, and overpopulating His Lordship’s land. It’s time there was an end to the incessant subdividing when these offspring grow up, leaving the land never developed – only with potatoes, potatoes, and more damned potatoes.’

Ellen and Michael listened aghast as the agent outlined the scheme he had hatched with Pakenham.

‘Furthermore,’ Beecham went on, ‘any arrears in rent – any arrears at all, so-called Famine or not – will result in immediate eviction from both dwelling-place and land. There will be no abatements of rent, despite rumours to the contrary being put about by O’Connell and his agitators. Is that quite clear?’

‘It is clear that these new rents are unjust and an affront to God for the families he has blessed with children,’ Michael began, anger clouding his face. ‘It is clear that the potato crop has already failed many people. An increase in rents, facing into a year of shortage, can only drive more of the people to hunger and to the roadside. Is that what His Lordship wants?’

‘Yes, that is exactly what His Lordship wants!’ barked Pakenham. The landlord had entered the room unnoticed. Now he strode across the room to join Beecham, displeasure written all over his face.

‘What is all this noise? I won’t have the tenantry raising their voices in my household. Oh, it’s you, O’Malley!’ Pakenham said, feigning surprise. ‘And the pretty red-crested mountain thrush, too.’ He paused and looked quizzically at Beecham. ‘Is there to be a céilí here at the Lodge?’ he asked mockingly. Then he rounded on Michael and Ellen: ‘Does the law of the Lord not provide for each man to do what he wills with that which is his? And does the Lord not command the servant to increase the profit of his master or be banished forever from his master’s sight? Is this not writ in the Holy Books – even of your own papish Church?’

He spoke like a preacher, Ellen thought, laying out their sins before them.

‘It is! It is! It is!’ the landlord answered his own question, clapping the fist of one hand into the open palm of the other.

Then he turned on Bridget, who had obviously been as unsettled as they were by his surprise entrance. Ellen was aware of a slight flush on the girl’s cheeks, and the nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands.

‘Don’t fidget, girl! Make yourself useful for once,’ Pakenham said gruffly. ‘Go bring my port for when I’ve finished here.’

At this, Ellen noticed that the slight flush on Bridget’s face had darkened, becoming a ridge of deep scarlet along each of the girl’s cheekbones. She felt sorry for the young servant; Pakenham had obviously set out to demean her in front of them.

‘Your Lordship,’ said Michael, ‘we Máilleachs pay our just dues on time, as we have done since my father’s day.’

Ellen could see that he was measuring out the words, holding himself back.

‘We have used the land well, reclaiming even the marshy land by the lakeshore – to Your Lordship’s profit.’

Michael stopped there and Ellen breathed a sigh of relief. He had said it well.

‘Show me the book, Beecham!’ Pakenham thrust an imperious hand out towards his agent.

Beecham passed over the well-worn rent book, and Pakenham ran his finger down the quill-crafted entries.

‘Let me see … Yes, O’Malley, Michael. Wife and three children. Maamtrasna. That’s you, isn’t it?’ Pakenham never looked up, never waited for an answer. ‘Yes, well everything appears to be in order here, O’Malley.’

The landlord closed the book, ambled to the window, looked out, and then returned across the room to stand directly in front of Ellen and Michael.

‘You know, O’Malley,’ he said conversationally, ‘I’ll wager my garden of roses that the marshland which you speak of is not the only land on my property reclaimed by you. What say you to that?’

Pakenham pushed his face closer to Michael’s.

Michael, unflinching, stared the landlord straight in the eye. How could Pakenham have known about the lazy beds on top of the mountain? He had his spies about, to be sure, those that would sell out their fellow Irishmen for a shilling. But Michael was certain Pakenham couldn’t have known, was only baiting him. He said nothing.

‘You see, Beecham? He doesn’t answer – I was right! I know these peasant dogs and the way they think. Declare a portion of improved land, pay the extra rent for a quiet life and then rob me blind. Thinking, “Sure, Pakenham will never know, and him beyond in London enjoying hisself,”’ Pakenham mimicked the local accent. ‘And you – silent woman’ – he turned on Ellen – ‘You sing, but you can’t speak – is that it?’ he taunted. ‘Speak up, woman! What should I do about fraudsters and tricksters who use my land without fair payment?’

Like Michael, Ellen never flinched from the landlord’s onslaught. She waited a beat before replying, ‘It’s little I know about fraudsters, Your Lordship.’

Was this it? Was this all the songbird was going to sing? Pakenham was angry. She had a nerve, this peasant wench. Well-spoken, too, not like the rest of them. He looked at her intently. She seemed very sure of herself, not attempting to appease him, like many of them did, with their clumsy curtseying.

She was a one, this beauty, with her fine head of hair, fine face, fine … Good Lord, the woman was pregnant!

‘See here, Beecham – our singing bird will shortly be taking to the nest and we shall have another new tenant! Mark that down in your book, Beecham – mark it down, man. Aye! – this is rum indeed,’ Pakenham laughed, enjoying himself. ‘Were it not for your visit here, Mrs O’Malley, we would never have known of this happy event … and a twentieth on the rent to boot!’

Ellen felt Michael start to move on Pakenham. She reached out, caught his arm, squeezed it.

‘A child is a gift from God – as we all are,’ she measured out, with not a tinge of irony. ‘Now that we have fulfilled our duties, my husband and I must be on our way, and not take up any more of Your Lordship’s time.’

She let it rest there. Now was not the time, she thought. But she knew that, before too long a time had passed, they would once again cross paths with the landlord.

Pakenham was intrigued by the redhead’s refusal to be goaded into openly insulting him. She had chided him with dignity, adroitly extricating herself, and that husband of hers, from a fraught situation. What features she had! Why, with a decent set of clothes on her, you could parade her up and down Pall Mall all day and every head in London would turn to behold her. She would be a worthy adversary for him, much more so than that flighty, fidgety Bridget, who had just returned with his port. Although the girl had led him a merry dance for quite some time, he had had his way with her in the end. Bridget responded to his look by casting her eyes to the floor. Pakenham could imagine her, running to the priest, looking for forgiveness after sinning against the Sixth Commandment – and with the landlord too! No doubt she’d been given treble the normal penance, for she was thrice-damned, him being also Protestant and still perceived as ‘English’ by those sagarts, even after being here two hundred years!

He would let the O’Malley woman’s impudence go for now – wait and see what the lean winter months would bring. This Famine would be of assist to him with this one. Of that he had no doubt.

He turned to Beecham. He had other matters to attend to.

‘Yes, well, that’s enough for today, Beecham. Mark a further year’s holding for O’Malley here, decide on the new rent and …’ he paused, as if the idea had just come to him, ‘I want you yourself to check the extent of land reclamation carried out in the Maamtrasna Valley and report any under-declarations to me.’

‘Yes, Your Lordship,’ Beecham replied, his lips curling into a smirk.

‘O’Malley, ma’am – I bid you the compliments of the season.’ Pakenham fixed Ellen with a rather wan smile and then, without looking away from her, commanded: ‘Bridget, my port. Fetch it to my study, and wait for me within. I shall be there momentarily, as both Mr Beecham and our other guests are leaving.’

Pakenham knew that the inference would not be lost on Ellen. For the first time, he saw the redhead’s eyes flicker as she glanced towards Bridget – now flushed with the humiliation of being publicly shamed.

Bridget nodded and, almost inaudibly, replied, ‘Yes, sir,’ before hurriedly leaving the room.

Ellen felt much sympathy for the girl. Again Pakenham had used the young servant as a pawn in his game with them. He had made a point in demonstrating to them – and to Ellen in particular – his power over others. Shown how, had he chosen to, he could have used his power to make them suffer by denying them another year’s tenancy.

Pakenham, too, had invaded her intimacy. Let her know what was about to happen to the young servant. Let her know that it was she, Ellen Rua, he would be thinking of. She, and not Bridget Lynch. Ellen felt sick. She wanted to get as far away as possible from him.

As if it were not her speaking, she heard herself say, ‘Thank you, M’Lord, and may the Christ-Child and His Holy Mother, Mary, Virgin most pure, bless you and keep you free from all sin.’

At this very pointed reference to his intentions towards Bridget, Pakenham gave the merest hint of a smile, but said nothing. Ellen and Michael then left the kitchen, and the landlord’s odious presence.

No sooner had they gone than Pakenham, white with rage, picked up the nearest object to him, which happened to be the bone-china teapot, and dashed it against the floor of the kitchen. Bridget rushed back in steadying the glass of port on the silver salver she carried.

Pakenham made a lunge at the girl. Apoplexy contorting his face, he raged: ‘Damn them! Damn them to high heaven, these Irish bitches!’ That red-haired she-devil had blessed him – her landlord! The gall of her! And not only that, she’d cautioned him not to sin! Not to sin, and she nothing but a whore’s melt – born of an unholy union with a disgraced priest. The whole countryside knew of her. How dare she speak to him of sin!

‘Damn her!’ he roared at Bridget. ‘And damn you, too, you little she-witch. You’re all hewn from the same tree – sniggering, whispering bog-bitches!’

He made another lunge at Bridget, but succeeded only in grabbing the intaglio-cut Venetian glass, filled to the brim with fine port wine.

‘Damn the whole conniving lot of you! Get out of my sight, girl! Go on, get out of here! Go home to that breastthumping holy mother of yours – or I’ll not be responsible for you!’

As Bridget dropped the silver salver and ran, Pakenham hurled the glass past her. Its ruby-red contents, symbol of her downfall, hung for a moment in the air above her before emptying down on her head and shoulders, baptizing her, anointing her with its unholy chrism.

Ellen and Michael heard the crash of the silver and, then, as Pakenham’s shouting followed them down the path, the sound of glass smashing into the door. At the rose gardens they stopped, hearing Pakenham’s final outburst, followed by the door banging closed and the sound of footsteps running from the house.

Ellen looked at Michael. ‘The girl will be all right now – for the Christmas at least!’

As they left Tourmakeady Lodge behind them, Michael was angry. ‘Pakenham and his likes should be run out of the country once and for all. O’Connell is wrong: peaceful means will never do it. We have to take back what is rightfully ours – they’ll never just hand it over,’ he said. ‘I think Pakenham would wish the blight to hit us again. If the crop failed and we had no rent for him, he’d have us on the roadside quicker than you could cross yourself. It would suit him to clear the land, and have bigger holdings, with sheep and cattle on them, instead of humans. The people should rise up – it’s the only way.’

They decided not to go on to Castlebar. No matter how bad things had been in other years, they had always managed to buy the Christmas. But now, with a rent increase looming over them, they were forced for the first time to break years of tradition.

So they turned and headed back along the road that skirted the western boundary of Lough Mask. It was a December day to the core: bright and frosty and fresh. Along the way they stopped here and there to exchange news and greetings with any they chanced upon. Otherwise, they walked briskly, eager to be back with the children before nightfall, but their hearts heavy that it was disappointment only they brought home with them this year and not the Christmas.

9

They came at first light, Beecham and a trio of the constabulary. Mountain and marshland alike they combed, Beecham writing it all down in his book and drawing lines on some map he had. Roberteen followed them and saw it all.

As they rode off again through the village, Beecham shouted, ‘Tell O’Malley that Sir Richard thanks him.’

That evening, after dark, three men called to speak to Michael.

Ellen recognized Johnny Jack Johnny’s son from Glenbeg, but the Shanafaraghaun man, as he was referred to, was a stranger to her. She was surprised that Roberteen made up the three.

She put the children to bed, although Patrick wanted to sit up with the men. ‘Are they Young Irelanders?’ he whispered. She wondered that herself.

They sat with Michael at the hearth for a while, then all four went outside. She noticed that the unnamed Shanafaraghaun man did most of the talking. ‘He was in Dublin with O’Connell,’ Roberteen had said when he introduced the man to Michael, ‘but he broke from O’Connell again.’

An hour or so later, Michael came back alone.

‘O’Connell is for repealing the Union with Britain without violence – “Not a single drop of blood,” he says – but the Young Irelanders are for the sword, and the Shanafaraghaun man is for the Young Irelanders. He says the sword is a sacred weapon,’ Michael told her, his face animated in the firelight, ‘and that moral force should be backed by musket force!’

Then he handed her a piece of paper which the Shanafaraghaun man had given him.

When Grattan rose, none dared oppose;

The claim he made for freedom;

They knew our swords to back his words;

Were ready, did he need them.

‘What do you think, Michael?’

‘This is not the moment for hasty decisions. We should think – work out a plan. Without a plan, Pakenham will split us, then pick us off, one by one, with the backing of the Crown. The Shanafaraghaun man’s headed back for Dublin again. He said the priests and bishops were against any rebellion, but I think Father O’Brien’s a good man – he’ll stand behind us against Pakenham. I’ll go to Clonbur tomorrow and let him know what’s happening.’

She read the four lines of the poem again. Swords to back words – it would have to come to that, she knew.

10

The next morning Michael set off to see the priest. It was a good eight-mile walk to Clonbur, but with luck he’d meet a horse or cart travelling his way. When he reached Beal a tSnámha he would have no choice but to wait for a horse to ford the swirling waters of the Mask. There the lake formed a narrow channel, dividing the road before it opened out again towards America Beag on the Cloughbrack side.

It made him conscious of how cut off by water, how isolated Maamtrasna was from the rest of the Galway-Mayo townlands. Still he wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else. Surrounded by mountain and water – sure wasn’t that the beauty of it?

Somehow he would get across the Mask, make it to Clonbur, and put it to the priest that something must be done about Pakenham.

He would be home to Ellen and the children by dusk.

Ellen, having seen Michael on his way, sat down with the children for the Lessons. Katie managed to contain herself as they said the customary learning prayer, but leapt in at ‘Amen’ with that day’s burning topic.

‘Amenarealllandlordsbad, a Mhamaí …?’ she blurted.

Even Ellen had to draw breath after that. How like Katie it was to get straight to the crux of the matter. She couldn’t help but laugh.

Katie sat poised, ready to strike again if Ellen’s answer was not to her liking. But before Ellen had time to reply, Patrick cut in: ‘Of course they are. Every last single one of them is bad. They say “’tis harder to find a good landlord than it is to find a white blackbird.”’

Ellen was taken aback by Patrick’s fervour. She wondered who it was her son had been listening to of late. Deciding to let it pass – for now – she got the lesson under way.

‘All right, bad landlords it is to be this morning. Now, what do we know about good and bad?’

Katie’s hand shot up. ‘Well, there’s good people and there’s bad people, and we’re the good people … And that’s what I asked you: Are the landlords all bad people?’ Katie sighed with exasperation. Why couldn’t mothers give you a straight answer?

Ellen ignored Katie’s impatience. ‘And what do you have to say about this, Mary?’ she asked her third child.

‘Well, I think that nobody is good all the time and nobody is bad all the time …’

Ellen nodded at her to go on.

‘It’s like when Katie does a bold thing …’

Katie was up on her knees, ready to defend herself.

‘Sit down, Katie!’ Ellen paused until she did. ‘Continue, Mary.’

‘Well, that doesn’t mean Katie’s a bad person – she’s only a little bit bad, and the other times she’s good,’ Mary explained in her quiet, unerring way.

Katie grimaced and then relaxed. She wasn’t sure how to take this, but, on balance, she thought she came out of it all right, so she stayed quiet.

‘That’s a good answer, Mary,’ affirmed Ellen. ‘You remember Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?’

They nodded.

‘When they committed the original sin – the first sin, against God – what did God do?’

‘He punished them.’ Katie liked this idea. ‘And will he punish the landlords too?’ she persisted.

‘We’ll get to that in a minute, Katie. Just be patient,’ Ellen admonished. ‘The way that God punished Adam and Eve was very wise. He said to them, “Adam and Eve, in spite of all I have given you, you have disappointed Me. You have done the first bad thing, but I will give you another chance. From now on, you will have to choose between good and evil, between right and wrong. When you die, I will judge you. I will add up all the good things and all the bad things you have done. If you have done a lot of good things, you can come back into heaven with Me. If you have done a lot of bad things, then I will send you away from here to hell.”’

She paused for a moment to let this sink in. Katie and Mary were agog at the image of God sorting out good and bad sins the way they sorted out good and bad potatoes – the good ones going in the basket, the bad ones thrown away. Even Patrick’s attention was caught.

‘So, what that tells us is that people themselves are not good or bad, but we can do good or bad things. Now, Katie, to go back to your question, “Are all landlords bad?” The answer is no, but’, Ellen moved on quickly, sensing that both Katie and Patrick were itching to put more questions to her, ‘some of them do a lot of bad things.’

‘Mr Pakenham is one of those, isn’t he?’ Mary surprised them all by getting the jump on the other two. ‘And Lord Leitrim for burning the church?’

‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ said Ellen. ‘And they say Lord Lucan beyond in Castlebar is most cruel to his tenants as well. Then again, the landlord at Moore Hall, over beyond Partry, is said to be a very good landlord, what they call an “improving landlord”. Instead of wasting money on fancy gardens and going to London parties, he improves the land and the conditions of his tenants.’

‘Pakenham isn’t like that – he’s a bad man, isn’t he?’ Patrick cut in, wanting her to say it.

‘True, Patrick. But one day he’ll have to answer to God for the bad things he does.’

‘He’ll be lucky if the Young Irelanders don’t get him first!’

Ellen was alarmed at this kind of talk from Patrick. He must have heard the men talking last night, or maybe young Roberteen had been saying things to impress the boy.

‘Now, Patrick, hold your tongue with talk like that,’ she remonstrated.

The boy fell silent.

‘What about our new baby – will we have to pay extra to the landlord for him too?’ Katie was back on target again.

‘Well, we don’t know if it’s a him or a her, yet – do we?’ Mary echoed aloud Ellen’s thought.

‘And it doesn’t matter,’ Ellen emphasized, ‘as long as the baby is healthy and well. Sure, whatever rent Pakenham puts on the baby – the gift of life itself is beyond all price. Somehow your father, with God’s help, will manage to provide for the new baby, and the rest of us.’

Ellen, glad that the children’s worries and concerns had been given a good airing, wanted to wrap up the lesson on this positive note. But it was not to be.

‘When God does the adding up for Mr Pakenham – will He send him to hell?’

As always, Katie had the last word.

Towards dusk Ellen went out of her door many times and looked up towards the Crucán to see if there was any sign of Michael.

With Beecham and his men going about the valleys on the bad business they were on, who knows what might happen if Michael fell amongst them. They would bait and jibe him until he struck one of them.

Or, if the water at Beal a tSnámha was wild and Michael had no horse to take him over, then he could be swept away to drown in the cold and the blackness of the Mask, alone. Without a sinner to say a prayer over him.

It could be at just such a time as this that the Banshee’s warning would be fulfilled.

With all these thoughts pressing in on her, Ellen Rua threw her shawl round her shoulders, bade the children to stay indoors until she returned, and set off up the village. She would follow the high road until she came to the crest of the mountain. From there she would be able to look down on the Finny road, watching for a familiar figure winding his way homeward between lake shore and mountain.

The evening was cold, but no matter. Wasn’t she better off out here than sitting at home, not being able to settle her mind for thinking about Michael and what might befall him? Anyways, she liked being out under the sky, feeling the cut of the air, having the freedom to go between mountain and valley and lake. Sure, a thousand walled gardens of roses, built by an army of ten thousand gardeners, could never match what was here around her. Unbuilt since time began.

As she passed the Crucán and turned left to ascend the high, mountain path, she remembered her father bringing her to this high place under the stars. Once there, he would say to her, ‘Now, find me the North Star.’ And she would look up with her little-girl eyes at the vastness of the sky twinkling above her.

‘Wonder is a gift,’ he’d whisper into her ear. ‘Wonder is not lack of knowledge, wonder is not ignorance. No, wonder is a gift – the gift of knowing there are things we cannot know.’

Then the sound of his voice would swirl around inside her head, and she would understand without knowing she understood.

‘Never lose wonder,’ he used to say, before she even knew she had found it.

‘What is it – where does it come from?’ she would ask, looking into his wise Máistir’s eyes, seeing something there that she now knew was the answer – wonder. A smile would come over his face and he would say, ‘Wonder is here now, a stóirín. Wonder is here now.’ And then he would say nothing for a while, just letting the wonder flow between them, dance in the air around them, binding them forever.

She never realized – until it was too late, until he was gone – that she was his wonder. Just as Katie, with her wild, generous impetuosity was to her; and Mary, with her quiet ways; and Patrick – dear, concerned, Patrick – struggling to find his feet, caught between boyhood and manhood. They were her three wonders. They wouldn’t realize it yet; maybe not until she herself was gone. And the kick inside, slowing her down – that too was her wonder. And Michael, her great love, who she watched for.

She followed the faint line of the Plough to the place where the Plough-maker made a giant leap across the heavens. There, where he landed, high above the mountains of ice, he had cut and chiselled the highest point, shaping it on his star-anvil. Then he blew it aloft, with a puff of his cold breath, to be the brightest, highest star of all – the North Star.

Underneath the North Star sat the North Pole. There, at the far edge of the world, the Máistir had told her, the stars sizzled and flashed, whizzing across the sky, caught in eternal conflict between night and day. The ‘Aurora Borealis’ was what he called this storm-tossed day-star. The very name rang with wonder: ‘Aurora, Aurora Borealis.’

From under that far place, he told her, ‘the Northmen came down in their long boats. Fierce warriors they were, coming out of the mists to raid our cattle and our women.’

Nothing much had changed, she thought. Now the invaders came from nearer home, in their fine clothes, speaking the narrow language of the Sasanach, still plundering and raiding our lands, and – she thought of Bridget Lynch – our women. Only now they moved not under stealth of mist, but by stealth of laws made in an English Parliament.

And now the language, too, was being stolen. Language that set the Irish apart, that was the expression of their spirit. English, the tongue of the invader, was now the official language, a barrier to keep out the poor, the peasant, the uneducated. English was the language of politics, of the Established Church; the language of opportunity, and emigration. It was the language of those who held the land. The language of power.

The old language was now a badge of ignorance and backwardness, the language of the potato people and the landless. It was the voice of the dispossessed.

Now, she too must contribute to the extinction of the language she loved. She must teach her children English. For them English represented escape to a better world somewhere out there under the stars. English was a chance of survival. Without it, they would remain forever impoverished in a landlord-ridden Ireland.

She and Michael still spoke the old language to each other, but to the children they had begun to speak in English. Michael did not like this, she knew. He saw it as a denial of their Irishness. But he accepted that they had no choice. If things got worse they would have to leave – if they could.

When the people left, the language would go with them, and with the language would go the songs, the stories, the sean-fhocails – the ‘old sayings’ – the prayers. Maybe on the far-off shores of North America and Australia, the exiles would, for a while, speak the old language amongst themselves. But Ellen knew it would be only a matter of time before Gaelic was cast aside as the language of paupers, the language of failure. In time, too, the culture and the spirituality of the people which lived through the old language would be weakened, dispersed to the four corners of the world. Those who stayed behind would also have to adapt to the language and ways of the ruling class – else perish.

The Irish would become English.

A great sadness came on her, and she raised her head to the heavens and prayed.

“Ellen! Ellen, a stór!’

Michael’s voice cut through her prayer. She jumped up, all vestiges of sorrow lifted from her; no thought save that he was here. He was safe.

And there he was, his silhouetted figure hurrying up the hill towards her.

How could she be so foolish as not to be watching – and that the very reason she was there in the first place! She climbed down from the rock and made her way towards him, not knowing whether the tightness in her stomach was the baby or the love-knot, ever-present when she and Michael were reunited after a separation, however brief.

In a moment she was in his embrace.

‘Ellen! Ellen!’ he kept saying, as if, having lost her, he had now found her again. ‘Ellen, you shouldn’t be out here.’

‘I came for you,’ she said.

‘Oh, Ellen, my bright love of the dark night, it is not a time for you to be on the mountain, and you as you are,’ he whispered into her hair.

Overflowing with relief at seeing him, she buried her face in his neck. The taste of the sweet salt of his sweat put all else out of her mind. She gathered some on her tongue and swallowed. Then she found his mouth.

‘You’re home,’ she breathed. ‘Buíochas le Dia.’

With Michael’s arm still round her, they turned for home, leaving the night and its thousand wonders above and behind them.

The children hung on every word as Michael recounted the details of his journey to Clonbur.

‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘The people are all fearful of the grave times ahead, thinking that God has sent a great calamity to punish them for their sinfulness.’

Ellen had heard such talk before. Some of it from certain of the Catholic bishops claimed the blight was God’s warning to the lazy, ever-breeding, Irish to observe the laws of the Church and not engage in the old pagan practices, as they did at Halloween, and at wakes and Pattern Days. London too was quick to see the Hand of Providence at work, as if this absolved the Government’s failure to act. Ellen wondered whether the Government would have stood idly by if the blight had struck with the same severity in England.

Nothing had changed since Ireland had become one with England in the Union of 1800. England, that great all-conquering country, master of the seas, master of distant lands, had left its nearest colony to wither away like a diseased stalk. There had been no reform of land ownership; no schemes to develop an alternative source of food; no laws to hold in check greedy landlords.

Ultimately, Pakenham and his kind would blame the poor, as if they had willingly brought Famine down on themselves. Tenants who could not pay their rents would be evicted to die on the ditches and roadsides.

‘I can see it all now, Michael – I can see it all! They’re going to blame us for this Famine – they’re all going to blame us!’ she cried out.

‘Who, a Mhamaí? said Patrick, fear in his voice.

‘All of them – the Bishops, the landlords, the Government. I see it now. Oh, God, I see it! They’re all saying it’s the Hand of God moving against us, moving against the poor Irish peasants to punish us for our sins.’ She paced up and down the cabin, shaking her head. ‘But isn’t it the greatest sin of all to be saying that thing? Isn’t it a blasphemy to be blaming the Almighty?

‘We are the ones going to die – back here in the valleys, with our children – not the Bishops, not the landlords, or the Government safe beyond in London. We’re going to be the victims – and they’re blaming us already. It’s a wicked plan. If they all keep saying it now, it becomes true – it means they don’t have to do anything to save us!’ she said, anger rising in her voice. ‘Oh, I see it all now: the poor, the Irish Catholic poor – England’s everlasting problem – wiped off the face of the earth by the Hand of God.’

‘Ellen! Ellen!’ Michael’s arms were cradling her, stopping her.

The children looked at her in disbelief, stunned into shock and silence by what they had heard.

Ellen, seeing them, was overcome with remorse at her outburst. ‘Oh, my darlings! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you so!’ she cried, gathering them in her arms. They said nothing, only allowed the comfort of her touch to soothe their silent fears.

Michael had not yet told them what the priest had advised the villagers to do, but Ellen decided he could tell her later, once she had settled the children down for the night.

Then they prayed. Each one, child and adult alike, trying to find a solution to the frightening world outside their small cabin. A world that seemed to be waiting to swallow them up until they were no more.

Ellen looked with tenderness on the bowed heads of her loved ones as they mouthed the Hail Marys in a dying language, seeking relief in the hypnotic chant of prayer.

For her, this knowing what lay ahead was the worst thing of all. As if she were a helpless spectator to their own doom.

‘Thy will be done … on earth as it is in Heaven …’ Ellen wrestled with the words as she led her decade of the Rosary. Were blight, famine and eviction the will of God? Were poverty and hopelessness the only road to salvation?

Together they recited the Beatitudes:

Happy are the poor in spirit;

For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven …

Happy are the hungry;

For they shall be satisfied.

At least there was hope beyond the world outside their door, she thought.

When they had finished, Ellen ushered the children to bed. She lay down with them, caressing their foreheads, stroking away the cares her earlier outburst had brought on them.

Tonight, even Patrick did not resist ‘being coddled’ as he disparagingly called it when Katie and Mary availed of this settling down from their mother of a night.

Gradually, each of them in turn fell away from the world, into a deep and restful sleep. In a final benediction for the night, Ellen placed her hand over the fourth of her children – the child within. Then, with her thumb, she inscribed four tiny crosses on the ever-stretching skin of her stomach, anointing the growing life-force inside her.

Salvation in the next life or not, she, Ellen Rua O’Malley, would be her children’s salvation in this life. The will of God, would, she decided, become one with her own will. Somehow …

11

She nestled in behind Michael, sliding her right hand up over the white nape of his neck, beneath the thick black tangle of his hair, letting it rest there. He was asleep.

Now, she had seen to all of them.

She and Michael would talk again in the morning about the Famine and going to America. Now, she needed time to work things out in her own head – to devise her salvation plan for them.

If, as she foresaw, things were only going to get worse in Ireland, should they just wait here, accepting whatever Providence – and Pakenham – doled out to them? Much depended on whether the blight returned. If it did, then their fate, along with that of half the population of the country, would be sealed.

Of course, it was possible that Her Majesty’s ministers in London had drawn up plans to deal with such a disaster … But instinct and the lessons of history told her that Ireland and its problems were low on the list of priorities where Queen Victoria and her Government were concerned.

To survive they would have to scrimp and scrape. They must save whatever pennies they could. She was glad they had not gone to Castlebar. Instead, she would go there after the Christmas to sell her silver hairbrush, the one the Máistir had given her. It was no sin, given the circumstances, and her dear mother Cáit in heaven above would forgive her. Anyhow, wasn’t it only vanity for herself and her red-haired daughters to be having such fine, silky-brushed hair, and people hungry.

Michael, too, could sell his fiddle, although she would hate to see it go. She loved it when he played for her.

Its music lifted her, mellowed her heart when she was troubled. Music was the people’s freedom. To sell the fiddle, she decided, would be like selling a birthright.

It would be more than the act itself. It would be an admission of defeat.

She returned to her plan.

Once the baby was born and a bit hardy, she would find work, even if it meant walking all the way to Westport or Castlebar. She’d have to find one of the younger women to take the baby and nurse it for her.

Michael, she thought, would have to find some other place on the mountain, as well as the one discovered by Beecham, on which to plant potatoes. If luck was with them, and the potato harvest was good, they could sell some of the excess by this time next year.

Before Christmas twelve-months, all going well, they should be ready.

There, in the dark of her cabin, as the turf fire slowly died down to a dull glow, Ellen Rua O’Malley resolved that she, Michael, and their family, would not see out another Christmas in Ireland.

It saddened her greatly to think that their fire would be forever gone from the valley. Knowing that once they left, they too would be extinguished from the land not only of their own birth but of their fathers’ fathers’ birth – and even back beyond then.

Emigration was a death. A double death. It was a death to the one who left, and a death to the ones who stayed behind. Small wonder that the people held wakes for those leaving – the American Wakes, they called them – to keen departing loved ones, to mourn their being torn away from life as they knew it, unlikely ever to return.

In the still of the night the tears welled up in her eyes. She withdrew her hand from Michael’s head and wiped them away. She must not weaken now. She had been given gifts to overcome all that lay ahead of them. Gifts of knowledge;

of dream; of visitations; of wonder. She must be strong, use her gifts. Else she might lose them.

Somehow the fire in their cabin would be kept alight – she would see to that.

But go they would.

Go they must.

Rachaidís go Meiriceá They would go to America.

12

The completed first section of the new curvilinear glasshouses sparkled majestically in the December sunlight, the brightest jewel of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Apart from the Kew glasshouse being built in England, no other gardens in Europe could boast anything to equal Glasnevin. Hopefully the coming year would see the construction of two more glasshouses, the Central Pavilion and the West Wing, which would stand alongside the first in a commanding position near the tree-lined banks of the gurgling River Tolka.

Yet despite the splendour all around him, David Moore looked troubled, his thoughts preoccupied with what lay beyond the grey wall dividing the gardens from its nearest neighbour: the cemetery at Glasnevin.

Would the coming year see the cemetery filled as a result of the disease afflicting Solanum tuberosum? Would the victims of the blighted potatoes which had first come out of the earth on this side of the wall be placed in the cold earth on the far side?

Seeing her husband deep in his musings, Isabella Moore fondly encircled her husband’s arm with her own and rested her head against his shoulder.

‘What troubles you, husband?’ she asked, concerned.

‘This cursed blight. The desolation of the crop now extends to every corner of the country, leaving the poor nothing to live upon but grass and nettles. Yet still there is no action from the Government.’

‘I hear there is talk of repealing the Corn Laws to alleviate the suffering.’

Moore shook is head impatiently. ‘That is nothing but expediency on the part of the Government to suit their own ends. It will help the starving populace of Ireland not one whit.’

‘Then what should London do?’ Isabella asked.

‘A National Calamity Plan needs to be set in motion. But it is my fear that politics will stay the hand of mercy and compassion for its own sinister ends.’

‘And what of the Irish themselves? Can they not do something?’ she pressed.

‘I fear that, even here, O’Connell and the Irish leadership will become usurers of the situation to press for further gains to repeal the Union.’

‘But surely they are right. Little has been done in half a century to develop Ireland’s economy,’ she said.

‘Yes, the Nationalists have a point, I’ll grant. The Union has not served Ireland well. But would that they would forgo the making of it at this fearful time.

‘Oh, goodness,’ Moore exclaimed, withdrawing his pocket-watch from its fob. ‘I am afraid I must hasten from you, my dear – I promised Mr McCallum a tour of the new glasshouse.’

As he hurried to keep his appointment with the student botanist, Moore’s thoughts turned from the failings of politicians to his own failure in the face of the blight. By the time McCallum came into view he had reached a decision: the promised tour of the new glasshouse would have to wait. There were far more pressing matters to deal with.

‘Is the cause of the Calamity yet established?’ Stuart Duncan McCallum asked.

‘We are divided amongst ourselves,’ David Moore replied. ‘There is the “fungalist” school, who believe the blight is caused by a mould whose growth is promoted by excessive wet. And then there are the “atmospherists”, led by Professor Lindley of the University of London, who argue that the blight is caused by atmospheric conditions. They admit to the presence of the parasite fungus, but only as a result of the murrain, not its cause. They are in the majority.’

‘And you yourself, sir?’ enquired the student. ‘What is your view?’

‘I am with Lindley … at the moment. Dampness certainly seems to be conducive to the spread of the disease, whereas dryness retreats it. I have found that potatoes lifted early, before the atmosphere attacks a particular area, are less likely to succumb, provided the harvest is carefully stored in dry, airy conditions.’

‘And what of a cure?’ the young man asked in his Scottish brogue.

‘Our experiments continue,’ Moore replied. ‘At the moment we are observing the effect of submerging tubers in copper sulphate – a solution known as “bluestone steep”. But it is difficult to proceed to a remedy when we have yet to identify the cause.’ The curator paused. ‘And identify it we must.’

Isabella watched from her window as her husband and his young student made their way through the gardens, deep in conversation. As the sun emerged from behind the clouds, her gaze was drawn to the new state-of-the-art glasshouse. How many thousands of pounds must be found for these, she thought, and at this time?

Isabella Moore, nee Morgan, late of Cookstown, County Tyrone, and now of the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, wondered about it all.

In her small dark cabin in Maamtrasna, Ellen Rua O’Malley huddled the three children to her body, giving them the warmth their fire could not provide. She surveyed the bare walls of the cabin, and she wondered about it all.

Her eyes strayed to the loft. Earlier she had inspected the lumpers lying there. They were cold but dry to the touch, with no sign of disease.

She wondered if somebody somewhere searched for a cure to this blight? What if it struck again next year?

As always in times of worry, she turned to God. To the three children pressed in against her, she said quietly, ‘Say with me now, for a very special intention, one Hail Mary in English.’ Not knowing for whom it was she prayed; knowing only that it was the right thing to do.

Their teeth still a-chattering from the cold, the children, in an act of faith in the mother who warmed them, prayed with her for this unknown person, and the unknown intention in their mother’s heart.

13

Christmas was upon them in no time at all. But unlike any Christmas they had ever experienced. A gloom of foreboding hung over the little cabins of Maamtrasna. Word was filtering through that the effects of the blight were beginning to bite, and bite deeply.

Biddy, Martin Tom Bawn’s wife, had dropped by to see how Ellen was keeping, and had told her, ‘’Tis said, beyond in Westport, that there won’t be a potato left in the country for people to eat by the time Saint Brigid’s Day comes.’

‘How are your own lasting out?’ Ellen had asked.

‘Faith, we’re all right for the moment – making do, sparing them out every day … thankful to have them at all,’ Biddy replied, before dashing off to see what that blackguardeen Roberteen was up to.

Ellen had seen to it that the rationing in their own household was exact and consistent. At times, it was hard for her not to give way and throw some extra potatoes in the pot. But she resisted that temptation, reminding herself of the hard times to come. What she did do, though, was to forgo one potato a day from her own ration, and share it between the rest of the family.

Yet despite the pervading air of gloom in the community at large, she felt good in herself this Christmas. The baby was carrying well – not too lively, just enough to let her know it was there – and growing. The children didn’t appear to be too put out about the lack of extras; as their mother suggested, they offered it up as penance for their venial sins and the souls in purgatory. But most of all, Ellen was so happy, as the days shortened into the winter solstice, that no misfortune seemed to be befalling Michael. His time was not yet come. There had been no further supernatural manifestations – no sightings of the Banshee combing her tresses; no prophetic dreams.

All in all, this Christmas promised to be a good one for the O’Malleys.

On Christmas Eve the night was crisp and clear, and the sky above their cabin was filled with thousands of stars lighting up the valley and the dark surface of Lough Mask.

Before they set out for Finny and the Midnight Mass, the children watched while Ellen lit the candle she had placed in the cabin window. She’d kept it since it had been blessed on Candlemas Day. Even in these inhospitable days, it was still a symbol of welcome for the Holy Family journeying to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus. It was a sign, too, of hospitality for any poor stranger wandering the roads this Christmas.

As they climbed Bóithrín a tSléibhe, Katie was at them to: ‘Hurry up, so we can get near the front to see Baby Jesus!’ All three children were excited at the prospect of seeing the Christmas crib with the statues of Mary and Joseph, and the donkey, and the cow. The manger, empty at first of the Baby Jesus, would receive the tiny statue of the new-born Christ-Child at exactly midnight, as Mass began. The twins chattered happily about how, in a few short months, they would ‘get a baby of our own’, as Mary so maternally put it.

The atmosphere as they approached the little Finny church was one of great joy and mounting expectation at the coming of the Saviour. Neighbours exchanged the traditional Christmas blessings, ‘Beannachtaí na Féile’ and Father O’Brien stood at the entrance of the church to welcome his flock.

‘Michael, Ellen, and the gasúrs – welcome, and may the blessings of the Holy Season be upon all of you,’ he greeted them. Then, lowering his voice, he asked Michael, ‘Has there been any trouble back in the valley of late?’

‘No, Father, nothing at all,’ Michael replied. ‘Everything’s gone quiet. I heard tell Pakenham has gone beyond to London until the Christmas is out.’

‘C’mon, a Dhaidí!’ Katie tugged impatiently at Michael’s sleeve, dragging him away from the priest so that they could claim seats at the top of the church where they would better see the proceedings.

A hush fell over the church as Father O’Brien began his Christmas sermon: ‘My dear people, we are gathered here tonight on this joyous occasion to celebrate the birth of a baby …’

Ellen was disappointed in the young curate at this opening. Everyone had been hoping that he would denounce Pakenham from the pulpit, but this sounded like the standard ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to all men’.

The homily went on in the same vein, Ellen growing more impatient with each sentence. She could not believe it: he was going to say nothing. She had thought him to be an independent spirit who would not stand meekly by and toe the Church’s line on ‘not inciting the people to riotous behaviour’, but here he was – ignoring their plight completely. She was growing more angry with him by the minute.

Throughout the sermon she tried to catch his eye, to register her annoyance, but instead he looked at a point in the far corner of the church, above the heads of his congregation.

Pilate! Ellen fumed. ‘Pontius Pilate!’ she whispered to Patrick beside her. The boy did not understand what his mother meant, but he could tell that she was cross, very cross.

So much for Michael going all the way to Clonbur – and the priest telling him that he would take up their plight with Archbishop MacHale in Tuam. The archbishop had obviously told him to keep the people quiet; the Church wanted no trouble in the West.

But who would defend them, if not the Church? Who would prevent mass starvation or save them from dying on the roadside, their little cabins tumbled down behind them? There was nobody else. Not the shopkeepers, the traders, the scullogues with their money-lending, nor the middle-class Catholics in the towns. Not the constabulary, who would be too busy protecting the grain stores of the rich. Not a Government beyond in London. Would nobody lift a finger?

When Father O’Brien concluded his sermon with the traditional Christmas blessing, as if this were a year no different from any other, Ellen could contain herself no longer.

Father O’Brien, his back now to the people, had begun to recite the opening words of the Nicene Creed, ‘Credo in Unum Deum …’ when he sensed a commotion behind him. Casting a quick glance over his left shoulder, he saw Ellen Rua O’Malley – shawl clutched tightly in one hand and her three children trailing from the other – storming for the door, her wild red hair streaming out behind her.

He faltered in the Creed, the Latin words of belief somehow ringing hollow against the sight of this woman leaving the church in anger. A murmur rose from the crowd. Abandoning the service, he turned to face them. Ellen had by now reached the back of the church, whereupon she turned and looked straight at him. He held her stare, though the fire flowing from her eyes ignited the space between them with its intensity. The O’Malley woman was enraged – and with him!

He expected a tirade. What he got was two words – not much above a whisper, but spoken with a vehemence which cut the air – ‘Pontius Pilate!’

Then she was gone into the mountains. Into the silent night of Christmas.

Ellen knew he would come. Even before Biddy rushed into her cabin to tell her, ‘Ellen, the priest is coming! The priest is coming down the valley!’

Her actions on Christmas Eve had caused quite a stir in the locality. It was unheard of for anyone, let alone a woman, to walk out of the Mass, and at Christmas too! And then to insult the holy priest, and him on the altar of God.

Michael, who had followed her out, supported her actions. ‘We can’t depend on the Church. The bishops will always line up with the Crown to get more money for Maynooth, and more power for themselves. And come the day when we’re all lying stretched with the hunger, and no one to give us a decent burial, the Church and the Crown will still be saying, “What can we do? It’s the will of God.’”

She nodded. ‘We have to leave Ireland, Michael – get to America before it’s too late.’

‘We will, Ellen. I promise you, we will.’

But now, the priest was coming to see her.

The village would see this as a sign of shame on it, that the priest had to ride out from Clonbur to talk sense to Ellen Rua. But the way Ellen saw it, the priest had more to answer for than she did.

‘I’ll speak to him alone,’ she said to Michael, who wanted to stay. ‘Please. You take the children to the Tom Bawns’.’

Michael reluctantly left her, and she could hear him rounding up the children outside as they made a fuss of the horse that had carried her visitor. Then the light from the doorway darkened, signalling the approach of her visitor. She got up from where she tended the fire, and wiped her hands.

‘God bless all here,’ the figure in the doorway said.

‘God bless all who enter,’ Ellen responded. ‘You’re welcome, Father.’

At her invitation he sat across from her at the fire. ‘I think we might have a fall of snow yet – the sky has that colour to it,’ he began.

She nodded, allowing him to ease into the conversation in this way if he chose. ‘Yes, Father, pray that we will. A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard, a white Christmas a green harvest,’ she said, quoting one of the many sean-fhocails she had learned from the Máistir. The priest, she could see, was uncomfortable at the choice of her words.

He straightened himself, tore his gaze from the fire, and looked directly at her. ‘The Midnight Mass – it was a wrong thing to do, walking out like that. You caused scandal among the people, and scandal to your children.’

Ellen was prepared for this, but was not prepared to sit meekly through it. ‘Well, Father,’ she said, ‘the Church is always great with condemning people for causing scandal. Sure, isn’t it their way of keeping the people down?’

She saw him tense at this.

‘Is it not a scandal that the people are going hungry?’ she put to him. ‘Yet food is being exported to line the pockets of the merchants. Is it not a scandal that there is no work for our menfolk, when the whole country is a disgrace with lack of roads and bridges? Yet Ireland is a part of the great British Empire – the richest power there is?’

Father O’Brien was taken aback by this attack.

‘Well?’ she challenged him.

‘Mrs O’Malley, please—’

‘Is it not a scandal that my husband journeyed all the way to Clonbur to tell you how, in the face of Famine, we are being further ground down by Pakenham, for you to say, or do, nothing about it?’

‘You’re wrong, Mrs O’Malley,’ he countered. ‘I went to Tuam. I spoke with the archbishop.’

‘Then why is the Church silent on this? Why will the Catholic Church not lead us out of our poverty and misery? That is the scandal, Father.’

‘Ellen Rua!’ The priest raised his voice, demanding her attention. ‘Now, you listen to me for a moment. When Michael visited me, I was horrified to hear of Pakenham’s doings. Shortly thereafter, I set out for Tuam. Archbishop MacHale, in his wisdom – and he is experienced in these matters – advised that I should neither say nor do anything which might inflame the situation. I am bound by my vow of obedience to obey his Grace in all things.’

‘But is nothing to be done, then?’ she demanded.

‘The archbishop is doing something: he will consult with the other bishops in General Assembly at Maynooth. They will assess how the Crown is dealing with the present crisis, and if necessary, a deputation will go to Rome to petition the Pope to intercede with Queen Victoria. In the meantime, there should be no disturbances, no riotous behaviour, which might prejudice the position of the Holy Father.’

‘This is an old story, Father,’ Ellen replied, unappeased. ‘Nothing has been done by the bishops to improve the position of the poor since we were joined with England in the Union. And neither Queen Victoria nor her Government will recognize the Church of Rome. All that will happen is that more monies will be sent to Maynooth, and the bishops will fall silent again.’

‘It is not right for you to speak this way about Holy Mother Church, who always cares for her flock as Christ did.’

‘The Church cares only when it comes to the collection of dues,’ she rejoined. ‘It is no longer the Church of Christ. It is the Church of businessmen and traders, the Church of towns and cities, not the Church of the hills and valleys. When did the archbishop ever set foot out of Tuam to see how like animals we live, scavenging the bogs and bare rocks for what we can get to keep body and soul together?’

‘This is blasphemy you are speaking, Ellen Rua,’ the priest retorted, thinking what a mistake he had made in coming here.

‘Well, if it is itself then God will strike me down, Father!’

‘God forgive you for that, Ellen Rua, for I cannot,’ he said, making the Sign of the Cross on himself.

She looked at him across the hearth. ‘You are, I believe, a good man,’ she said. ‘But you have been too long at Maynooth, among the men of power – the priest-politicians.’

Father O’Brien studied her now. How did she know these things? Her father, the fallen priest, must have turned her against the Church, the Church that had turned on him, turned him out. That was it.

‘The Church that I, and these villagers, belong to is the Church of no voice, but it is the real Church of Christ. And you and the bishops have forgotten that, Father.’

There, she had said what she meant to say, she would say no more to him. It was not against him she spoke. He had to follow the rules. It was against the system itself that she raged. Layer upon layer of privileged, educated men laying down the law for the uneducated and underprivileged.

She rose as he made to leave. ‘God go with you on the road, Father,’ she bade him, no trace in her voice of the anger she had displayed towards his Church.

As he nudged the big grey mare on to the mountain track which would carry him back towards Finny, the young priest’s mind was filled with the woman’s fierce condemnation of the Church he served.

Ellen Rua was a devout woman, but also a strong woman who dared to speak her mind. He had no doubt she wasn’t alone in her feelings about the Church. He had sensed for some time that the people felt let down by him, but most of all by the Church. A Church that had gone astray.

When he came to the ford at Beal a tSnámha, the priest’s thoughts turned to Ellen Rua’s husband. He remembered how he had ridden out to this point to deliver Michael back across the water, the day he had come to talk about Pakenham. As the water swept up around his feet, he wondered what it must be like to be the husband of such a woman. Soon he would return to the warmth of his parish house in Clonbur. He would change his wet clothes for dry ones. Yet, back there in the cabin, just himself and the woman across from each other, he had been conscious of something being present. Something that his priest’s house in Clonbur, with all its comforts, didn’t have. Even while under attack from this woman – her eyes and hair all ablaze in the firelight – he had felt alive, invigorated, unshackled.

As he looked back in the direction of Maamtrasna, he promised himself that – for the Church’s sake – he would not let the red-haired woman down.

14

The snow did come – big soft, downy flakes, dancing earthwards, decorating the valley in white. The children were delighted. Mary and Katie ambushed Patrick and some of the other village boys, who then pelted them with hard, hand-packed snow, sending the young warriors home to Ellen in tears. The tears soon passed, but the snow didn’t. It hung on to usher in a white New Year.

Ellen loved the stillness the snow brought. When the first new moon of the New Year came, she went to her place by the lake. She stood and watched the moon’s yellow light splash down on to the Mask. Unmoving, she listened to the rhythm of the land, the usual night sounds stifled by the blanket of snow. She had been thus occupied for some time when a scratching sound disturbed the tranquillity. It seemed to be coming from the far side of a nearby clump of bushes. Ellen crept up to the bush, expecting to see a fox or some other wild animal. Instead she found Roberteen Bawn.

The boy was bent over the snow-covered ground, apparently burying something. Intent on what he was doing, he had not heard her approach. That rascaleen’s up to some mischief again, thought Ellen. Out scratching around in the night, like that. Quietly she plucked a handful of berries from a hollybush, then cast them over the bushes at the crouching boy.

Roberteen Bawn leapt up swearing: ‘The divil! God’s curse on you – whoever’s there!’

He turned this way and that but could see no one. Then he heard her laughter. He knew it instantly: the red-haired woman, making a laugh at him again. All the same, when Ellen stepped out from the bushes, he was flushed with the gladness of seeing her.

‘Well, Roberteen, it’s only me,’ she greeted him as she approached. ‘What was it you were doing?’

‘Ah, nothing – nothing at all,’ he said, and put his hands behind his back.

‘Was it burying something you were – a secret trinket, a message from someone special – burying it under the new moon?’ she teased.

‘No, not that!’ He didn’t want her thinking there was someone else, that he had cast off his affections for her now that she was full with the child.

She walked round behind him. He kept turning with her. He had something in his hands. Something he was hiding from her. Something he hadn’t yet buried in the hole in the earth … Then she knew.

‘It’s the “Mayo moon” you’re doing, isn’t it, Roberteen?’ she asked, her eyes twinkling in its light. ‘Well, well … it is.’

Sheepishly the youth looked down at the ground. Then, slowly, he brought his hands to the front and held them out for Ellen to see. They were full of the earth he had taken from the hole in the ground. Only then did he look up at her.

‘’Tis an old custom,’ he began. ‘My mother told me … for the young men in Mayo and the West … the night of the first new moon in the New Year … to go and lift the clay out of the ground …’ he continued haltingly, embarrassed to be telling this to her.

‘I know, Roberteen,’ she said, helping him out. ‘And then, when you say the special words over the handful of earth, you will see your bride-to-be in a dream tonight.’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ he said shyly. ‘My mother said I should be thinking now of finding a girl for myself and getting married before the year is out.’

‘And you will, Roberteen, you will.’ Ellen reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. ‘She’ll be a fine girl, and a lucky girl too, to get a spirited young fellow like yourself.’

‘Well, I hope she’ll be half the woman you are, Ellen Rua,’ he blurted.

Now it was Ellen who flushed at the passion in his voice.

‘C’mon now, I’ll say the words with you,’ she said breezily, wanting to break off this conversation.

‘Does it matter, Ellen Rua, that we’re standing here in Galway, when it’s under a Mayo moon we’re supposed to be?’ he enquired with that childlike innocence he sometimes had.

‘Not at all, Roberteen,’ she assured him. ‘Sure, isn’t it all the one – Mayo/Galway, Galway/Mayo? The same moon is up over the lot of us. Let’s say the words.’

So, in the bright darkness of the Mayo moon, the lake behind them and the white fields before them, they recited the lovers’ prayer. He – young, bursting with manhood, holding out his handful of earth, in thrall to her. She, shining in the moonlight before him, all that his young heart desired.

New moon, new moon, new moon high Show to me my true love nigh Show her face, her skin so fair Show the colour of her hair

Light my dreams this night so she May in your light appear to me New moon, new moon, let me see If one day we will married be

As they said the last two lines, the young man looked at Ellen, and in his eyes she saw the misty look of lost love. The look she had seen there before – the night she had sung at the céilí. She felt that the boy wanted to kiss her, but that he would not do so, unless she gave him some indication that it was all right. A tenderness for him swept over her, and for a moment she was tempted to let him. But she mustn’t. It would be wrong, and he would interpret it for something else. Instead, she tightened her hold on his arm for a moment and then let go of it.

‘There! Now it’s done, Roberteen, and tonight you will have sweet dreams of your true love,’ she said, trying to dispel the awkwardness. But he didn’t answer. ‘Promise you’ll tell me who she is, Roberteen … won’t you?’ she said then.

At this, he shook himself away from her, and the intensity of his reply startled Ellen: ‘I’ll not be dreaming tonight, or any night, of some young slip of a girl for me to marry. There’s only the one I dream of every night, and the way it is, I’m thinking I never will marry at all.’

He flung the fistful of earth down at her feet, and then he was gone, hurrying, back up towards the village and away from her.

As the new year moved through January, Ellen stuck religiously to her old year resolution of teaching the children English. Each day, excepting Sunday of course, she saw to it that the Lessons, whatever else they covered, contained a large dose of the English language. The children had a good ear for the strange-sounding, narrow language, and so, with a mixture of both pride and regret, Ellen watched them progress.

Michael had decided that they should wait to see what the bishops would do about the landlords before taking action. He had never seemed better in himself, healthy and happy, and things were much as always between them: a mixture of tenderness and caring, her condition not dampening their desire for one another’s bodies.

All of this gave Ellen a growing reassurance that maybe the events of Samhain had been nothing more than an illusion, a product of the changes taking place in her body, the night itself, and her own fertile imagination.

When the weather permitted, Michael, along with Martin Tom Bawn, had taken to going up the mountain in search of new places where lumpers might be cultivated in secret. This they did under cover of dusk, to avoid the ever-watchful eyes of Pakenham’s spies.

In the course of one of these expeditions, the two men came upon a spot overlooking Glenbeg which was inaccessible from the valley below and protected from above by a big overhang of rock.

They stumbled on it by accident after they had startled a hare. The hare, in its flight, seemed to disappear right over the side of the mountain. Turning to Michael, Martin Tom Bawn said, ‘Where the hare goes, grass grows, and where grass grows, praties will grow.’ So they followed the hare’s route to a large outcropping of rock, beyond which they couldn’t see. Edging their way along a precariously narrow ledge, they rounded the overhang to find that the mountainside seemed to cut away back into itself, revealing a patch of ground about thirty feet wide and sixty feet long, filled with marshland grasses and boulders and stones of all shapes and sizes.

The two men looked at each other, excited at their find.

‘This will do the job rightly!’ Martin Tom Bawn exclaimed, bending down to test the soil. ‘The lumper will grow well here, Michael.’

‘You were right about the hare, Martin,’ Michael replied.

‘Faith I was! Them’s clever fellows. They know every inch of the mountain and it’s not too often you see them caught, either. They’re even too glic for the fox himself!’

With that, the two began the task of clearing their find. Day by day, they started with the small stones, then the bigger rocks, stacking them up around the sides of the Hare’s Garden, as they called their secret place. It was backbreaking toil, but if they were to be ready for spring planting, then the work had to be done, and neither man complained. Martin Tom Bawn quoted the old saying:

No bread without sweat,

No soil without toil,

No love without longing.

And together they sweated and toiled to make this soil their own.

‘Will we get the dozen beds out of it, Martin?’ Michael asked when it was almost cleared, except for three or four of the largest boulders.

The older man straightened up, pushing the cap back off his forehead and, in the same movement, wiping the soologues of sweat that had gathered there. He squinted and pondered, and squinted again at the perimeters of the Hare’s Garden before he answered: ‘Faith, Michael, we’ll be doing well if we get the half-score out of it – maybe the one or two extra rows for luck. But I don’t think she’ll take the dozen, though I could be wrong, mind.’

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