Galway Bay (5 page)

“Tomorrow,” I said, “and all the days after.”

Chapter 4

O
H, DA, YOU’D
never force me into the convent like evil fathers did in medieval Spain and France,” I said to him.

Da was still being very severe with me as the last bit of the short night edged into dawn. Michael would be here in a few hours, and Da kept repeating, “You’ll go to the Holy Sisters as arranged.”

Standing up now, discussion over. He needed his sleep, he said. Exhausting enough to marry off one daughter without the other one going at him about medieval this and that.

Then Mam told me very sharplike to remember the lovely parlor in the convent. Think of living surrounded by beautiful things. Hadn’t she herself found great joy in polishing the wooden tables and glass cases in Barna House and dusting Miss Lynch’s books, all the time wishing she could read the English words in them? I’d have books galore at my fingertips and be able to fill myself with knowledge. The Presentation nuns even had their own wee chapel, with Mass every single day, and I’d live under the same roof with Our Lord in my own little room with a real bed, not a pallet of straw on the floor, and I wouldn’t work digging for bait and sprats and mending nets or selling fish and being insulted by gentlemen in the market. I’d be teaching children to read and write and do better for themselves. And all the peace and quiet I’d have. Time to think and to pray, dressed in a lovely habit and wearing shoes, and . . . The words cascaded out of my usually quiet mother.

“Mary. Mary,” Da said. Puzzled.

She looked at him and stopped talking.

Then he said, “Your mother wants what’s best for you,” and went on, asking how could I shame my family by losing the run of myself over a gypsy? I could not. Would not. Not his daughter Honora, who’d never given them a moment’s worry.

I panicked. I’d never, ever defied my parents in the littlest thing, and now to go against them so completely . . . Shaming the family? Me?

Granny saved me. “Best Honora not go to the convent. They mightn’t keep her.”

She said I wouldn’t be able to obey, that I was a rebel. I said I wasn’t a rebel, Máire was the rebel. Then Mam spoke up for me, saying I’d always been a good daughter, that’s why she knew I’d see sense, but Granny interrupted her and said she didn’t mean I wasn’t kind and helpful, but I was a Keeley woman with the blood of Queen Maeve in me and brains besides, and now with learning added to that, well . . . I’d never be able to keep my gob shut and do what I was told. What with giving my opinions and needing to be right, I’d not last the week. The nuns would send me home. And that would be a greater disgrace to the whole family than me changing my mind now.

“But, Granny,” I said, “I don’t think I’m always right, but if I know the answer, why shouldn’t I tell it? Like Máire says, ‘Some have bosoms and some have brains,’ and I—”

That woke Da up. “What?” he said.

Then Granny looked directly at me: “Ní tha gann call ríomh aois. Sense does not come before age.”

And I realized while she was arguing me out of the convent, I was arguing myself back in. So I said no more while Granny went on about my willfulness and added more sayings in Irish until Da said, “All right, all right, Honora won’t go to the convent,” though he thought I was letting Daniel O’Connell down. Granny said the Liberator had survived worse. Mam said, Well, if I was sure . . . And I said I wanted to marry Michael with all my heart and mind and soul and strength, but Da interrupted me and said not becoming a nun was one thing, but marrying a wandering gypsy piper was quite another, and he was going to sleep now and we’d finish this later.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Granny.

“There is truth in what I said,” she told me. “Don’t be too smart for your own good, Honora.”

That afternoon, Da sat stern and stiff on his stool by the hearth. Michael stood in front of him, shoulders back.

Máire and Johnny had left their marriage bed for this interview. Máire knew I needed her. And she didn’t want to miss anything. My brothers were outside minding Champion, letting their friends pat the finest horse ever brought to Bearna. Granny, at her spinning wheel, fingered the empty spindle—no flax or wool for ages. Mam sat on the other rush stool. Dim—only the barest brush of light could come through the small windows of our cottage. Enlarge them and the rent’d go up.

“Robert Emmet in the dock,” Máire said.

“Don’t be joking about our patriots, Máire,” Da said.

“I wouldn’t, Da. I wonder would you ever recite Emmet’s famous words for us, Da? I’m sure Michael Kelly here would appreciate hearing . . .”

Distracting Da with Ireland’s heroes had shortened many a scolding for Máire, but Da wasn’t having it today.

“Now, young man,” he began.

But Máire stopped Da again. Could she thank Michael for playing his pipes and asking not a penny? “A generous spirit! Da,” she said. “Like your own. You’re so openhanded and giving—flaithiúlacht, as Granny would say—a princely wedding . . .”

“The best of poitín,” Johnny said. “No harshness in it.”

“Because Connemara water’s used in the brewing,” Da said.

“And you wouldn’t have seen anything like the meitheal that built our cottage last week, Michael,” Máire said. “So many of the neighbors working together that they finished in three days, all come to show their regard for our da. They would do the same for any daughter of John Keeley. Am I right, Da?”

“You are, Máire,” Da said. “The meitheal was mighty, surely. Never were walls raised faster or straw thatched tighter. Whatever our differences, we’re a grand people for helping each other.” Da relaxed, stuck his legs out.

Good on you, Máire.

But then he looked over at me and straightened up. “Enough of this. We’re not here to talk about your cottage, Máire, but to inquire into this young man’s line and lineage,” Da said. “Now, Michael . . . the horse. I want to know where and how and in what way you obtained that animal. Because as you must know, a lone man on a horse . . . Now, I hold nothing against the traveling people, but a girl from a settled family wouldn’t—”

“Da, Michael is not a gypsy! I keep telling you,” I said. “His grand-father was a blacksmith in Gallagh.”

“Gallagh?” Da said. “Near Aughrim?”

“It is, sir.”

“A great battle fought at Aughrim.”

“Indeed there was. Not a good day for our side.”

“Few enough of those, though I believe it was the French general let us down there,” Da said.

If Da starts naming towns remembered for some sad slaughter, he’ll put himself in bad humor.

“Da,” I said, “Michael was about to tell you about his grandfather, the blacksmith, and the forge he
owned
.”

“Owned it?” Da asked Michael.

“He did,” Michael said, “though not the land under it, of course.”

“Must have been well in with the landlord,” Da said.

“Colonel Blakeney was a hard man from a hard family, but he wanted the Bianconi cars to come through our village and a blacksmith was required, so he needed my grandfather.”

In Galway City I’d seen the big Bianconi wagons, pulled by six Irish draft horses, that this Italian fellow was sending all over Ireland. Each transport, which we called Bianys, carried twelve passengers as well as cargoes of porter and stout. Bianconi, being of the Faith and great with Daniel O’Connell, hired Catholics as drivers, and they’d sometimes pick up the stray countryman or -woman walking on the road and not charge them. Michael’s village had become a stop on one of the Biany routes, he said.

“Colonel Blakeney’s agent knocked three cottages into a pub to serve the passengers as they waited while we took care of the horses. Now, Blakeney’s agent took most of the Bianconi money meant for my grandfather, but what could we do? Still, we earned our rent. We had grain and oats for the horses, and Grandda had custom from the farmers—always a group of them around the forge.

“A fellow called Jimmy Joe Donnelly was the most horse-mad of all of them. He’d been the Blakeneys’ stableman, but now the family lived in London year-round and only came back for the odd week’s hunting and used borrowed horses. A horse dealer called by one day and bought the lot, except he didn’t want the old stallion, the Red Rogue.

“‘He’s past it,’ the dealer said. ‘The last five mares he’s covered have produced nothing. Send him to the knackers.’

“But Jimmy Joe said he’d buy the horse himself. The men around the forge laughed, saying Jimmy Joe would be financing the Red Rogue’s love life and nothing to show for it.

“But Jimmy Joe bought the horse. If you could have seen him, Mr. Keeley, magnificent: fifteen hands tall, some mix of draft horse and hunter, a bright chestnut color. The Red Rogue held his head high, and was most impressively endowed. Jimmy Joe kept him in the field behind the forge, and the two of us would stand in the evening at the stone wall, watching the old stallion,” Michael said.

Da nodded.

Able to tell a tale is Michael Kelly, my hero from the sea, wooing my family with his stories as he had me.

Michael went on, “‘We were great men once,’ Jimmy Joe would say to me, ‘and horses like this were our due. Didn’t my great-great-grandfather have the care of the O’Kelly stables? Hundreds of horses: mares, foals, and stallions. I believe Red Rogue is descended from that stock. How could I let him be put down?’”

“He was right there,” Da said. “We
were
great men once. The O’Cadhlas had horses, too.”

“And so did the Leahys,” said Johnny. “Herds of them, cattle, too.”

“Go on, Michael, go on,” Da said.

I smiled at Michael: Well done, keep talking!

“Now the Rogue took no notice of the Biany horses—they were geldings, beneath his notice. And there were no mares nearby to incite the Rogue.”

Da nodded. “Not good to have a mare around a stallion,” he said, as if he’d been riding and breeding horses himself for years instead of never having been on the back of one.

“A good stallion needs a willing mare,” said Johnny Leahy, and touched Máire’s knee. She giggled.

I chanced a quick look at Granny. She winked at me. Michael had Da and Johnny imagining themselves as men mounted and mighty, part of an army that could fight back. Victory to the Irish! They’re driving the Normans away! King James is beating King Billy! Here we are, battering Cromwell! The land would still be held by the clans, still shared equally, if every Irishman rode a great stallion like the Red Rogue.

“It happened that I formed a bit of a bond with the Rogue, quite by accident. I’d taken the pipes up to the high field to try out a tune,” Michael said.

“Hold there a moment, Michael,” Da said. (“Michael”—not “young man”—good!) “I want to hear about this piper father of yours.”

“All in good time,” Mam said, caught up now. “Get on with your story, Michael.”

“I was playing that evening when didn’t the Rogue come pounding toward me, ears pricked up, and then he stopped dead, lowered his head to listen. Jimmy Joe came out. ‘So the old rascal likes a bit of entertainment,’ he said. I asked Jimmy Joe if there was any chance I could take him out for a gallop.”

“You’re a rider, then, Michael,” said Johnny Leahy.

“I am. And yourself?”

“I had to give it up, with the fishing and all.”

“True enough,” said Da. “Takes away the sea legs. But go on.”

“Well, Jimmy Joe said to me, ‘The Red Rogue? You must be joking! He’d throw you and stomp you. I don’t mind giving the Rogue some comfort in the last years of his life, but I don’t want to be responsible for murder.’”

“But you defied him, didn’t you!” said Da. “You jumped up on the back of that great horse and—”

Michael shook his head. “I didn’t, sir.”

“Oh,” said Da. “Ah, well . . .”

“One day a team pulled in with a mare in the lead spot. ‘What’s this?’ I asked the driver, because I was worried about stabling a mare near the Rogue. ‘That’s old Bess, the virgin queen,’ the driver said. ‘The company bought her to breed, but she’s barren. A good strong puller, so we’ve put her in harness. No stallion will bother with her.’

“Bess had a look of patient endurance that touched me,” Michael said, “and I wondered, how many times had she been covered by a stallion with nothing to show for it? And now they’d work her until she dropped and send her off to the knackers. I told Jimmy Joe about Bess. Would he buy her? I hated the thought of Bess dead from dragging some publican’s barrels of porter. ‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ Jimmy Joe told me. ‘Hard enough to feed the Red Rogue.’”

“Poor Bess,” said Granny.

“And it got worse,” Michael went on. “Bess picked up a stone. Grandda removed it, but she was too lame to go on. Blakeney’s agent held his gun to her head. ‘A bullet to the brain,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll have plenty of horsemeat to sell to the man takes care of the hounds for the foxhunters.’”

We all gasped. Da hit his fist on his knee.

“Is there no hope of justice for anyone in our poor bedeviled country?” Da said. “Is the whole place to be butchered to supply the Sassenach?”

“A disgrace,” said Granny. “Never happen in Queen Maeve’s time, I can tell you that.”

“Oh, Michael,” Mam said. “You surely did not let the agent kill her.”

“I did not. ‘I’ll buy her,’” I told the driver. “‘I’ll give you what the knackers would, here and now, cash.’ The words jumped out of my mouth. I expected an argument from my grandfather. He was not a man for grand gestures where money was concerned. But he took a pile of shillings from his iron box and gave them to me. And Bess was mine.”

“Fair play to you, Michael,” Máire said.

“Aye,” said we all. “Aye, fair play to Michael.”

“I made a stall for Bess near the forge. Her quiet ways kept the other horses in order. She ignored the stallion in the next field.

“Now, by this time I was nearly sixteen and my mother began to say, ‘If you don’t spend some time courting the girls instead of worrying about Bess and the Red Rogue, I’ll never be a grandmother.’

“‘And where would I find a woman compares with you?’ I’d say.”

“What age are you now?” Da asked.

“Eighteen, sir,” Michael said.