The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) (26 page)

 

 

The starving men
and women recounted
how they had all been evicted by a landlord nearby who had
emigrated to Canada,
and how even the more prosperous farmers in Ireland were all
leaving for
foreign shores rather than run the risk of enduring another
winter of
deprivation.

 

 

The caves had
afforded them a
modicum of protection from the harsh elements of that
unusually inclement
spring and summer, but they knew that sooner or later, when
the food ran out,
or they grew too weak to range far enough afield to find more,
they would
surely die.

 

 

Emer slept badly in
the gloomy
limestone cave, and awoke stiff and sore in the morning. Though Emer
longed
to stay and rest for
a time, she had little to eat herself, and knew that as much
as she wanted to,
she couldn’t share her paltry wealth with the cave dwellers if
she wished to
survive the long journey north to Kilbracken to get help to
return to Canada to
find her son and Dalton.

 

 

After a mouthful of
porridge from
the oats she had brought, she donated the last of her food to
one of the women,
who was nursing a babe who reminded her painfully of William.

 

 

Then she once more
took up her
crutch and set off while there was a slight lull in the almost
unrelenting
rain.

 

 

After several more
days and nights
of alternately walking and resting, about three weeks after she had
started her long trek, Emer
came to small town
called Ballingarry, in County Tipperary.

 

 

Emer hoped to find
some food and a
dry barn to settle down in out of the teeming rain.

 

 

As she limped up
the small main
street, Emer suddenly noticed a barricade put up at the far
end of the town,
manned by about thirty men, only four of whom had firearms of
any
description.

 

 

She hobbled warily
towards the
barricade, and was pulled to the ground by a very tall,
dashing young man with
an odd accent, which she guessed to be Irish tinged with a
hint of Liverpudlian
influence.

 

 

“Glad to have
another recruit, lad,”
he said with a grin. “I
was
beginning to give up hope of any one else being willing to
support our glorious
cause.”

 

 

“Recruit for what
cause?” Emer
managed to mumble in confusion, as she struggled to rise from
the ground.

 

 

“Why, for our
uprising, of course!”
the young man declared boldly.
“The time is ripe for victory. We are going to have a magnificent
revolution, just as
they did in
France this year, and drive the British out of Ireland once
and for all.”

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 

 

The tall young man
who had mistaken
Emer for a revolutionary supporter helped her up off the
ground and introduced
himself as Terence McManus from Liverpool.

 

 

He outlined for her
how he had come
especially all the way from England to take part in this
splendid endeavour,
which he was convinced would make himself and his comrades
immortal in the
annals of Irish history.

 

 

Emer listened
patiently to Terence’s
patriotic rhetoric, and when she finally managed to get a word
in, she tried to
explain his error.

 

 

“I’m not here to
volunteer, Terence.
I’m trying to get back home from Cork to County Meath,” Emer
insisted.

 

 

Now someone
shouted, and another
declared in an awed whisper that about four dozen policemen
were coming up the
road to storm the barricade.

 

 

“Now we’re really
going to see some
action,” Terence gloated.

 

 

Emer looked away
from his
fanatically gleaming eyes, and noticed another extremely tall
man, very quiet
and reserved, standing at the barricades, and priming his pistols
with a resigned air of
finality.

 

 

When the man turned
around to ask if
they were ready, Emer found herself looking straight into the
eyes of none
other than William Smith O’Brien, one of the greatest leaders
of the Young
Ireland movement.

 

 

Tall, full of
energy and
intelligence, with a dignified bearing, Emer was astonished to
see him leading
such a motley band of rebels.

 

 

O’Brien was from
one of the most
powerful of all Irish families, a Protestant, and a serving
Member of
Parliament for the constituency of Limerick for over fifteen
years. To
realise he had decided to resort to
open hostility against the might of the English government he
had once been a
part of took Emer aback.

 

 

She suddenly
realised the gravity of
their seemingly hopeless situation. With four guns, three pistols, a
few pikes and
pitchforks, and a pile of
stones, they were planning to take on a greater force, on
armed with rifles and
a full magazine of ammunition.

 

 

But Emer had no time to pause to consider
this bizarre turn
of affairs which had brought her into the fray completely
unexpectedly, for
O’Brien called upon them all to get ready to defend the
barricade with their
lives.

 

 

Emer looked through
a chink in the
wood planking which blocked the street as the police began to
march steadily
forward up the long, straight road.

 

 

They came to within
a mile of the
small town, and then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason,
the police began
haring to their right, and charged into the only farmhouse for
miles around, a
small two-storey structure on a hill to the left of the
rebels.

 

 

“After ‘em boys,” someone shouted loudly.

 

 

Before Emer knew
what was happening,
she saw the men abandon their barricades, and go charging up
the hill.

 

 

“Come on, lad, we
might as well join
the fun,” Terence said, a bit less confidently than before,
but spoiling for
some action all the same.

 

 

Terence tugged Emer
up onto her feet
by her shirt, and then moved on at a trot to catch up with the
others.

 

 

Now Emer was
certainly not keen to
be caught up in an armed rebellion, but she estimated that
there were about fifty
well-armed police holed up in the farm house, which excited
voices told her
belonged to the Widow McCormack.

 

 

She was afraid that with the present mood
of the crowd, they
might foolishly try to rush the house and all be picked off
like so many sitting
ducks. There
would be casualties
if the mob didn’t remain in control of themselves, and Emer
was not about to
leave the scene if she were needed to help the wounded.

 

 

So Emer hobbled on
purposefully up
the hill behind the others.
By the
time she had struggled to the farm house, she saw that the
jaunty Terence
McManus, having failed to persuade his less than courageous
comrades to follow
his orders, had taken to single-handedly moving some bales of
hay to the back
door, and then setting them afire.

 

 

“If we can’t shoot
them out, we’ll
burn them out,” Terence boasted arrogantly to O’Brien, while
Emer stared at the
dozens of rifles trained on the rebels through the casement
windows.

 

 

Emer held her
breath, waiting to see
if Terence’s ploy would work, when all of a sudden she heard a
loud shriek
behind her.

 

 

She turned to see a
woman, obviously
the Widow McCormack, just coming back from town with her
shopping.

 

 

The widow stormed
up the path
towards O’Brien to demand that her children be allowed to come
out before they
were all burnt alive.

 

 

After a heated
exchange between the
two parties, O’Brien turned away from the woman, and looked at
the cabbage
patch bleakly.

 

 

“Put the fire out,
McManus,” O’Brien
ordered flatly.

 

 

He then used the
widow’s hysteria
over the fates of her six children to call a halt to the
hostilities, and give
the police time to surrender.

 

 

Terence put the
fire out, and while
Mrs. McCormack’s children were allowed to leave the building
unharmed, O’Brien
stood up on one of the window ledges, and talked to the policemen
about terms for surrender.

 

 

But rather than
agreeing to submit,
the only reply O’Brien received from the police could be heard
loudly through
the open window by all in the farmyard: “We would forfeit our lives,
rather than give up our
arms.”

 

 

“I’ll give you five
minutes to
decide amongst yourselves whether you wish to fight and die,
or give in
peacefully,” O’Brien offered generously, and climbed down from
the
windowsill.

 

 

Emer hoped that
since O’Brien
couldn’t make good his threat to fight the well-armed force,
that the rebels
would realise their absurd position, and disperse.

 

 

But as O’Brien
descended to the
ground, suddenly there was a shout of, “Slash away, boys, and
slaughter the
whole of them!” from one member of the crowd, and several
rocks were thrown.
One gun discharged in the air.

 

 

Emer gasped and
flattened herself to
the ground as bullets began to fly, as round after round was
now fired upon the
defenceless crowd.

 

 

O’Brien continued
to stand in front
of one of the windows, almost as though rooted to the spot. One of
the men
nearest him begged him
to retreat, but O’Brien merely blinked at him owlishly, and
declared in a
commanding voice, “I refuse to turn my back on the enemy and
retreat.”

 

 

But Emer, having seen three men fall right
next to O’Brien
already, including the flamboyantly irrepressible Terence,
grabbed him around
the knees and pulled him down to safety.

 

 

“Get down! Terence has already been wounded, and
this man is dead. Do
you want to be killed yourself
because of your own stupid pride!” she asked impatiently.

 

 

“You’re a woman!”
O’Brien
exclaimed. He
stopped struggling
to stand up again.

 

 

“Don’t worry, I’m
here to help the
wounded, not get involved in your armed rebellion. These men are
going to be cut to pieces
if they stand around
waiting to get shot much longer. Do something! Order a retreat,” she
insisted through
her sore jaw.

 

 

“An O’Brien never
turns and runs!”

 

 

“Fine, then, stand
up again and get
yourself killed! But if you do die, you’ll never see all the
things you wanted
to do for Ireland come to fruition,” Emer argued, her aqua
eyes blazing. “All
this will have been for nothing,
as will have all your work in the Repeal Association, and for
Young Ireland.”

 

 

O’Brien studied the
young woman’s
lovely face intently, sensing that her passionate sincerity
and sympathy for
his motives, rather than cowardice, motivated her request. He might
not have
understood every word
she said, since she seemed to have some sort of speech
impediment, but her look
said it all. Today was not the day to fight and die.

 

 

He stopped
struggling then, and
admitted, “I tried every constitutional means at my disposal
to rid this
country of the British imperialist yoke, and now look at where
the road to
reform has brought me. A
backwater
town in the middle of nowhere, with only a pile of stones to
throw. What a
way to end it all, not in
glorious victory, but ignominious defeat.”

 

 

“It doesn’t have to
end here, Mr.
O’Brien. The
dream doesn’t have to
die, it just has to lie dormant for a few more years. Look at them
all." She gestured
impatiently.

 

 

"These people are
starving. The
time of rebellion is
not yet ripe. But
you can stop
this before it goes too far. Go over to them, and tell them to
stop throwing
stones and disperse. Then
get out of
here yourself, before they catch you.”

 

 

“I can’t leave the
wounded here at
the mercy of the British!” O’Brien exclaimed, like a true army
general.

 

 

“Do you want to
rely on the mercy of
the British yourself, who will no doubt be delighted to try
you for treason and
hang you from the nearest tree?” Emer shot back, as she turned
over the first
man lying nearby, and saw that half of his head had been blown
away by a
shot.

 

 

Her stomach lurched
at the waste of
it all. She turned to the second man, who had a very severe
stomach wound, and
saw that he would be dead within minutes no matter what she
did to try to save
him.

 

 

Crawling nearer to
Terence as the
shots continued to hail down, she tore off a strip from the
dead man’s shirt,
and then began to examine his bleeding leg.

 

 

“The bullet didn’t
go through your
thigh. It’s just
a flesh wound.”

 

 

“It bounced off the
stone wall,”
Terence muttered through gritted teeth as Emer probed the
wound gently with a
clean finger, before washing the wound with the rest of the
water from her
small flask and then binding it tightly with a strip of cloth.

 

 

Emer looked up from her task, and saw
O’Brien staring at her
with inscrutable grey eyes.