Galway Bay (9 page)

“God bless all mothers,” said Granny.

Friends. Good.

“Come, Honora. Champion would enjoy a slow walk uphill with you on her back,” Michael said.

Michael had given most of the children of Bearna a ride on Champion, leading them back and forth in front of the cottages while they waved like squireens, the parents saying, “We were great people once, with horses beyond counting. See how the little ones take to the riding? No fear at all. Horses in their blood!”

But I hadn’t had a go yet. Now Michael lifted me. With one motion of those strong arms, he had me in the leather saddle he prized so much—a gift from Jimmy Joe Donnelly, he’d told me. I held on to Champion’s mane as Michael led the horse from the pasture. Now I understood why gentlemen and ladies liked to ride—I could see all around me. We came to the top of the hill in no time.

There it was: Galway Bay spread out below us. Mounted on Champion, neither bush nor branch blocked my view of the blue hills of Clare fringed in green across the Bay or the Silver Strand stretching into the waves below us with the wide water leading out to the sea.

I leaned down to touch Michael’s hand, closed around Champion’s reins. “So beautiful,” I said. “I’ve never seen it like this before.”

But he wasn’t looking down at the Bay. Not at all. He was measuring the ups and downs of poor, pitiful Askeeboy—water-soaked and abandoned. “It could be drained,” he said. “Patrick would know how to save these fields. Look, Honora, at their situation,” he said, imitating Owen Mulloy’s “sit-u-a-tion.” “The fields are in shadow now with the sun going down, but in the morning they’d be first to take the light. Great yields from this farm if it was cared for.”

Michael lifted me down from Champion’s back, led me up the hill. He stepped into a field. I heard a squelch and saw his foot sink in the mud.

“Patrick would make channels to take the water away. Look, Honora, there’s an oak in the middle of the field, a fairy tree.”

“Lucky,” I said.

“And here, this lane—only a boreen now, but the base for a good road. Mulloy said roads are promised.”

“Roads are always promised,” I said.

“What do you think, Honora?”

“Think about what?”

“Renting this land when we win the Galway Races.”

“I’m no judge of land, Michael, but this seems, well, difficult. I wouldn’t want to have the Scoundrel Pykes as landlords.”

“I’d lease it from Mulloy, be his subtenant. The Pykes would never know. And these fields are abandoned. We wouldn’t benefit from another’s hardship. When the road comes, I could set up the forge. This bit of pasture would do for Champion and her foals. I need Patrick, though. . . . Don’t know if I could plant these fields without him.”

Something in Michael’s voice every time he said “Patrick” had kept me from asking straight out about his brother. I looked down and saw Granny and Owen Mulloy sitting on a wall, Granny talking away. A good time to unravel this secret.

“Michael, where is Patrick?”

He didn’t answer me for a moment and then finally spoke in a low voice. “I don’t know, Honora. You see, Patrick is the kindest and gentlest of men and great with the land, but he can’t abide injustice, won’t look the other way. It’s quite a tale.”

A raft of clouds held the last of the sun’s fire. We’d be slip-sliding down the steep road to Bearna in the dark if Michael’s story was a long one, but this was my chance to hear about the mysterious Patrick, and I wasn’t going to let it go.

“Michael, tell me.” I sat down on an old wall with Michael beside me, Champion pulling blades of grass from the puddly ground.

“Now, where should I start?” Michael said. “Patrick was accustomed to traveling. At harvesttime he sometimes went as far away as Scotland. Always the hardest-working of all the laborers, despite being the youngest of the spailpins. My mother and father had hoped he’d live with them, but he couldn’t settle. Never a boy, really, a man always. My mother said it was the news of my birth that brought him home. March seventeenth it was, his own name day, planting time. He was twelve. I was two months old. My mother says Patrick came straight to me. I turned my face to him. Patrick said to her that I had our father’s blue eyes. He smiled at me. I reached out my hand and grabbed Patrick’s finger. He touched my cheek and I laughed. ‘I always wanted a brother,’ Patrick said to my mother.”

“Lonely,” I said. I took Michael’s hand. “Hard to have no home.”

“It is,” said Michael.

I’ll make a home for you, Michael. I will. Up here, or wherever.

“Patrick was glad to be with us,” Michael went on. “He found plenty of work on the farms in the parish. At the end of each day, he came to the forge to see me. One evening my mother was in the forge doing the accounts and I was tucked in a corner away from the drafts that came through the door of the shed. I was seven or eight months old. Above me were shelves holding collars and bridles and bits and long bars of iron. In came Patrick, and right over to me. My mother said he usually stopped to wash his hands, but this day he picked me up straight away. No sooner had he taken me in his arms than a Biany wagon hit a rut in the road outside. The barrels of porter fell to the ground and rolled up against the walls of the forge—a hard bang. The walls shook. The age of the wood and the weight of all that clabber hanging on the wall conspired. Everything fell—bits, bridles, iron bars—all crashing down on the pallet where I’d been lying just seconds before.”

“You would have been killed!”

“Killed! Killed wouldn’t have been the half of it!” he said.

“True, true. Think of your poor mother! Think of me with no you.”

“And if I weren’t dead at that moment, I would have been maimed or my senses knocked into a cocked hat,” Michael said. “Add to that the disgrace of being done in by barrels of porter.”

“Don’t joke, Michael,” I said. “He saved you. Patrick saved you.”

“He did—a twelve-year-old hero,” Michael said. “When Patrick told me the story himself, he said, ‘I was headed to the pump to wash the dirt off my hands and then something made me turn toward the forge. I almost didn’t. Almost.’”

Now I took Michael’s other hand and held it. “But he did. Patrick did. He came. He saved your life. Michael, when can I meet him? When can I thank him?”

Michael smiled but looked off toward the Bay. “There’s more to the story,” he said. “So. Patrick stayed with us, working for the farmers in the area, watching me grow. When I was, what, maybe five, he took me with him up to a bit of gravelly ground. We picked the stones out and put manure from the Biany horses on it. Then he taught me to cut the eyes from the seed potatoes and plant them deep into the turned soil. That harvest we had loads and loads of potatoes and never again had to buy them from Jimmy Joe and the others.

“‘He’s trying to turn Michael into a farmer,’ my grandfather said to my mother. ‘Land will break your heart,’ he told me. ‘It’s not yours, ever. You hold it at the landlord’s whim.’ But Patrick said, ‘Every inch of Irish ground belongs to us. What difference does it make if the Sassenach register a deed somewhere? The land belongs to those who work it. The day will come when we take it back, and Michael should learn to tend it rightly until then.’”

“Something of a rebel,” I said. “Well, that’s no harm. My da’s always talking insurrection, too. And he was only, what, seventeen?”

“There’s many who talk, but Patrick’s a man of action.”

“Don’t say too much.” With not a soul in sight, I whispered.

“The landlords in our part of the country are ruthless, cruel men. The Cnocnacrochádon, the Hill of the Hangman, stands above the crossroads as a reminder of the fathers executed there for stealing to feed their children. Enough to take the heart out of any man, but not Patrick. When I was about nine, and Patrick with us, the wheat crop failed and some of the Blakeney tenants fell behind in their rent. They would be evicted unless they paid up immediately. Patrick got the money for them.”

“How?” Softly again.

“He robbed Colonel Blakeney himself, pulled him off his horse on a lonely stretch of road. Held him down and took his purse. Didn’t even use a weapon, the story goes. The Colonel couldn’t be sure it was Patrick—the man had a scarf tied around his face. Colonel Blakeney needed a blacksmith and Patrick had left. So, our family wasn’t punished. But Patrick could never come back. We heard Patrick was hiding in the mountains, a highwayman, it was said. I’m sure he missed bringing the land to life. I’ve never seen him since. I think my da met Patrick now and then in his wanderings, because sometimes he’d return with more money than he could have made piping for dances at the crossroads.” Michael looked down. “Da died about three years after Patrick left, and I thought sure he’d come. He didn’t, but we found three big kegs of whiskey at our door and had a wake that’s still talked about at Gallagh. The last great wake, they called it. Throngs of Kellys came from Callow and from Ahascragh. We buried my father in Clontuskert Abbey. . . .”

“With Saint Michael and the mermaid,” I said.

He smiled. “And all the Kelly graves. A clatter of pipers played a lament for my da while Mam and Grandda stood stiff and sad. . . . I looked across the fields while they piped and saw a figure on the hillside.”

“Patrick,” I whispered.

“I believe it was. That was six years ago. Not a word from him since. Rumors,” he said, “but nothing more.”

“So he doesn’t know your grandda and mam died, or about Champion or anything?”

“I think he has ways of getting the news from Gallagh, but now that I’ve left . . .”

“For all you know, Patrick could be in Amerikay.”

“He’d never leave Ireland,” Michael said. “Honora, I think I have to tell your da about Patrick. He might not want you to marry a man with such a brother.”

“Why? You haven’t spoken to Patrick since you were nine. With all the tens of thousands of Kellys, who’s to connect you with him?”

“Still.”

“Have you ever heard of Martin O’Malley?” I asked Michael. “He’s a famous smuggler in the Connemara mountains. Now, there’s a real outlaw. He’s got an army out there. Martin O’Malley’s a cousin of my granny’s. Most of her family still lives far out in Connemara. Her nephews were the huge big men at Máire’s wedding. They bring cargoes of turf to the pier. Stuck inside are bottles of Spanish wine and jugs of Connemara poitín. Granny calls it ‘doing a few favors for Martin O’Malley.’ So you see, Michael, the Keeleys aren’t as timid and law-abiding as they might appear. Though we’ll not tell Da about Patrick Kelly.”

We met Granny and Owen Mulloy on the road.

“I’ve just told Owen the story of Macha,” she said. “Do you know about her, Michael, the fairy woman who married the Ulsterman? Macha was such a fast runner, her husband bragged that she could beat any horse. The king ordered her to race at the fair, even though she was pregnant. She won, all right, but delivered twins on the course. Macha cursed the Ulstermen so they would experience the pain of childbirth going into battle, except for Cuchulain, who—”

“Ah, Granny,” I said. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

“A tale for another time,” she said.

Michael lifted Granny into the saddle and me behind her. He led us slowly down the path toward the Bay.

“I never realized the hardships the farmers face till Oweny told me,” Granny said. “Too much rain, too little rain, the frost comes too soon or not soon enough, and the thaw is too late or too early. This summer was too cool, the last one was too hot. Bugs and hares do damage. And weeds. I thought fishing was a difficult business.”

“As to that,” Michael said, “Owen Mulloy will never be swept off his boat by the wind or see it capsize in a sudden storm. Or throw up.”

“True enough,” said Granny. “Still, all that work for crops that have to be sold for rent, with the farmer paying to take them to market!”

“Thank God for the pratties,” Michael said.

The flowers of the potato plants shone white in the moonlight as we passed the fields. Bright enough to see our way down to the Bay where the moon lit the water.

Mam and Da came to the door to watch Michael lift Granny and me from Champion’s back. Mam half curtsied to Granny. “Riding to the hounds, missus?” she said.

Da nodded to Michael. “Come in for a smoke.”

“I’d best get back up the road.”

Da asked three times, as was polite, but was relieved when Michael refused. Da wanted to get to his bed. So did I. I’d never kept anything from Da and Mam, but Patrick was a secret to be locked away.

“Good night,” we said to Michael.

“Slán abhaile, safe home,” said Mam.

Home. Would that be my home up there in the hills?

I heard Granny going on to Da about farming taking more intelligence than meets the eye.

Askeeboy . . . Well, we’d need a better name for our piece of it.

Chapter 7

S
UCH A SLEW OF PEOPLE,
” Michael said to me as we approached the racecourse. “Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter, all out for the races.”

“The love of horses could unite this country!” Owen Mulloy said as we made our way through the crowd, searching for Mr. Lynch. “The chance of a good wager. A warm afternoon, fiddlers, and poitín—all differences forgotten.”

“There’s Mr. Lynch,” I said. “At the registry booth.”

As we got closer, we could hear Mr. Lynch arguing with a race official.

“My good man, I am the Honorable Marcus Lynch, a member of Parliament, and my word is my bond.”

“Cash in advance, sir. The stewards require cash.”

“And you will get cash from the horse’s winnings or his sale price.”

“The clerk knows the Lynches owe money for generations,” I whispered to Michael.

After a bit, another man came over.

“The chief steward,” Owen said.

He shook the Honorable Mr. Marcus Lynch’s hand and gave off to the “fool of a clerk,” who then filled out a paper.

Mr. Lynch saw us and shouted, “Bring on the horse!”

Not a bother on Champion, calmer than I felt with thousands of men making an unholy racket around us. They pushed and shoved to place bets with the fellows shouting out odds. Very few women—not respectable—but Da hadn’t the heart to forbid me coming. He, Dennis and Joseph, Johnny Leahy, and half the fishermen in Bearna were in the crowd somewhere, ready to back Champion with the pennies collected from every family in the townland—three shillings on Champion’s nose at thirty to one. A long shot. A lot of money to lose. I’d stopped asking Michael did he really think she’d win after he told me it was bad luck to keep questioning.