The Year of the French (20 page)

The Acres, Killala, August 5

“You have made me a disgrace in my own parish,” Judy Conlon said.

“Well, Judy,” MacCarthy said, “I think we have worked together at that.”

He was leaning against the doorpost, looking outwards towards the bay.

“There was never a one to speak a word against me while my husband was alive to defend and to praise me.”

“No man could go to your bed without rising up to praise your beauty and your accomplishments. I have praised you often in my heart, and in lines of verse.”

“I was a married woman then, and could be married now.”

“Ach, Judy, it is a chancy life a schoolmaster has, and the more so if he is a poet.”

She was standing behind him in her shift, her dark hair falling about her shoulders.

“ ’Tis said that you are a good poet, Owen—”

“It is the truth. By God it is.”

“But you are as good a master, and there will always be need of a school in Killala.”

“Not for me, Judy. I am going away onto the road. I have no stomach for what is happening here and for what will happen.”

“And all because Sam Pryor got his ears clipped? Sure he looks far handsomer now, the mean old leech.”

MacCarthy laughed. “You will take after me with the shears one day, you fierce woman. And pray God you will settle for my ears. No, there will be more mischief in Killala, and poets have a way of getting hurt at such times. I declare to God, I would be in Ballina gaol tonight if it had not been for Mr. Falkiner and the little Protestant minister. Cooper did his best.”

“Cooper had best watch out,” she said, “from all the talk that I have heard. Cooper and that Paudge Nally, swearing men’s liberty away from them.”

“My God, Judy, what help is that to poor Gerry O’Donnell, who has never lifted his hand against any man save for the time that Pryor came with the bailiff to take two of Ferdy’s cows? By now I don’t know who is a Whiteboy and who is not, but I know that Ferdy is not and I will take my oath on that.”

“There are those who say that a schoolmaster should stand with the people, as masters in other places have done.”

“That is wonderful talk you hear.”

“It is little enough that a woman knows, but only what she hears them all saying.”

“Then it is little call she has to be talking about such matters. I declare to God that I did not rise up this morning to be preached at and worried by a slip of a girl.”

“But you will not be leaving, will you, Owen? You said that because you were cross with me.”

“No, Judy,” he said, turning away from the bay to face her. “I meant that. It would be plain folly to stay here, a man like me. I would be less fortunate the next time. Do you want to see me in a cart, trussed up like a turkey? And no comfort but mad Murphy shoving a cross at me.”

“O God, Owen. What would I do without you?”

“I would never leave you with an empty purse. Mr. Treacy is paying me to write out my poems for him on fine parchment, to go beside the poems of O’Rahilly and O’Sullivan. As is only proper.” Not true: he had never written a poem could rival O’Rahilly.

“What good will your poetry be when you are an old man with no one to stand by you?”

“If I stay in this barony I may not live to be an old man. God, when I think of the way I have been made to drift across this island, a harmless inoffensive creature. There are vagabonds and sturdy beggars who have a more settled life.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, standing on tiptoe. “You will do what you think is best.”

“ ’Tis little enough I know about what is best for me, or for anyone else. I sometimes look at the poor children whose parents pay me for their instruction, and I wonder what am I about, flogging knowledge into their heads.”

“Sure the lads have need of knowledge. You do work as honest as that of any tailor.”

“Small knowledge they require to harm cattle or to ride off to Ballina in a cart.”

“That is the way of it,” she said.

“The army of the Gael rose up in Wexford, and there are tall-masted ships sailing from France to my own Munster. And in Mayo men fight over cows and half-acres of scrubby land that would not give grass to a goat. A sorry, mean place this is.”

“I have never seen those other places where you have been. Would you not give thought to taking me with you?”

He shook his head. “Five guineas I will have from Mr. Treacy for the poems, and I will leave three with you. The two is more than I will need.”

“Is it because I would not be a proper wife for a schoolmaster?”

He drew his fingers along the side of her head, touching the thick, coarse hair, the cheek.

“It is not,” he said. “ ’Tis that I am not a marrying sort of fellow, love. And well you know it.”

“I know that,” she said, and stepped backward, away from him.

He looked again towards the dull, distant bay. She was as good-hearted as any girl he had known, a fine, generous girl. But there was little else to keep him in Mayo. He had made few close friends here, for women were never friends. There was a mystery in the centre of their being, a distance that was never closed, not even in the blackness of night. For friends he had only Ferdy O’Donnell up the mountain, and Sean MacKenna, the schoolmaster below in Castlebar. There was little to keep him here. The children’s classes were over, and in two weeks’ time he would have earned Treacy’s five guineas.

Let them find a new master, some young foolish lad up from Kerry who knew no better.

Ballina, August 7

Malcolm Elliott and Randall MacDonnell met with Malachi Duggan in Ryan’s alehouse, a mile outside Ballina. MacDonnell ordered a bowl of punch, but he and Elliott had it to themselves, for Duggan drank nothing. He sat facing them, stolid but alert, his large, mild eyes looking at neither of them, but straight ahead, or, head bent, at a crack in the rough table. A gentleman, a squireen, and a peasant, they were an ill-assorted group, and, of the three, only Duggan felt no embarrassment.

“Before God, sir,” he said to Elliott, “I know nothing whatever of what wild and furious rapparees do in the darkness of the night. Why, they have fired shots at Mr. Gibson, who is my own landlord and has never given me a cross word.”

“Of course not,” Elliott said. “But you are a man to whom the people look up, whether they are Whiteboys or not.”

“Ach, sir. ’Tis only because I had a way of being first and foremost in the faction fights. But I am growing old for that now.” He slapped his heavy belly. “Faction fights are frolics for young lads. There is no harm to them at all, and they bring honour to the barony.” His English, although the pronunciation was thick and unpredictable, was more than serviceable.

“Jesus but you are the great one for the factions,” MacDonnell said. “Three years ago I saw you swing your holly against the men of Ballycastle. Thick-headed bastards they are.”

“These are bad days for the barony,” Elliott said, “with the gaol in this town filling up with Killala men and Kilcummin men.”

“Bad days for the entire country, sir. Every Sunday Mr. Hussey tells us of our dangers. Frenchmen on the sea who go neither to church nor to chapel. Men below in Wexford rising up against the King. And men right here about us doing evil things.”

“You are a most law-abiding sort of fellow,” MacDonnell said drily.

“That is the way of it,” Duggan said.

“Seven men of the barony in Ballina gaol,” Elliott said. “And there will be more than seven before Cooper and the other magistrates have finished.”

The massive head nodded. “That was a dreadful thing to have done. Those young lads are no more Whiteboys than I am.”

“I know one at least who is not,” MacDonnell said, “and that is Gerry O’Donnell. When I heard that he had been seized up I could not believe it. A decent, quiet lad. By God, when I heard that, I rode over to Sam Cooper and pledged my word for Gerry. I should have saved my breath to cool my porridge. He had given me a glass of whiskey, and I was that angry, I smashed the glass in the fireplace and turned my back on him and left.”

“That is no fellow I would want to turn my back on,” Duggan said. “Meaning no disrespect to the gentry.”

“Gentry!” MacDonnell said. “Gentry, is it? That fellow is no more gentry than a tinker is. Cromwellian plunderers, the Coopers were.”

“So were the Elliotts,” Malcolm Elliott said.

“There is good and bad in everything,” MacDonnell said quickly. “Many is the drink that Sam Cooper and I had together in the old days. And now he stood looking at me with a vain smile on his face. Poor Gerry O’Donnell has as much claim to be called gentry. The O’Donnells are the old stock.”

“One thing is certain,” Elliott said. “Cooper and his friends will not rest here.”

“Nor those Whiteboys either,” Duggan said. “They are bold, determined lads, would you not say?”

“They well may be,” Elliott said. “But they are also foolish men. Perhaps they can keep the barony in turmoil for a long time, but they cannot win, because they have no clear sense of what they want. Is it to prevent evictions, or get lower rent, or to pay off old scores? Perhaps they only want violence itself.”

“Ignorant men, you say,” Duggan said. “Perhaps you know men of learning who would advise them, Mr. Elliott.”

Elliott nodded. “Advise, that is the word. Not lead them, they have their leaders.”

“And what advice would they give?”

“In Wexford,” Elliott said, “the rising was made because the people there joined with the United Irishmen.”

“And were they not the foolish men, those people in Wexford? When they looked around for the United Men who were to give them arms, they were nowhere to be found. I think, sir, that if a fellow was so wicked as to be a Whiteboy, he would do best to trust to himself and to darkness, and not be relying on the fine promises of gentlemen.”

“The rising in Wexford was led by a gentleman,” Elliott said. “It was led by Bagenal Harvey.”

Poor Harvey, Elliott thought. Dragged out of Bagenal Castle by a mob of pikemen and placed, reluctant, at their head, marched bewildered up and down Wexford, half general and half prisoner, bargaining and cajoling for the lives of prisoners, quarrelling with drunken and boastful peasants. It was in peasant dress that he tried at last to escape. Now his head was skewered above Wexford gaol.

“There was a travelling man who told us about that gentleman,” Duggan said. “He isn’t much of a recommendation.” For the first time, Duggan smiled, showing broken and discoloured teeth.

“Look here, Malachi,” MacDonnell said suddenly. “I did not bring you together with Mr. Elliott so that you could play the fool with him.”

“I have been wondering about that,” Duggan said. “Not that it is not pleasant to spend the morning with two gentlemen of the barony.”

“Nor with me, either. John Moore vouches for Elliott, and I will vouch for John Moore. You know very well why we are talking with you.”

“Even so,” Duggan said. “You tell me why, Randall.”

His manner towards MacDonnell, Elliott saw, was far easier and more familiar. It went well beyond his unexpected use of a Christian name. MacDonnell was poised between the two worlds, half gentleman, half prosperous peasant. It did not bother MacDonnell, blunt, affable man, ready for a drink with anyone. But between Elliott and the sly, brutish-seeming Duggan lay a deep, unbridgeable gulf. Bagenal Harvey must have felt the same, as he wandered the Wexford roads with his pikemen.

“You are a Whiteboy,” MacDonnell said. “One of the Whiteboys of Killala, you call yourself. If the magistrates were less foolish than they are, they would have sent you off to Ballina gaol. And Malcolm Elliott and I are United Irishmen. We have taken their oath. Now there is plain speaking for you.”

“It is indeed,” Duggan said. “It is indeed, Randall. You were ever a plainspoken man.” He picked up the third, unused tumbler, and filled it with punch. “I used to be the devil for this stuff, when I was a young man. I have not tasted it in ten years.” He held it to the small window’s watery light. “When I got my tongue around a belt of it, there was no stopping me.”

“I remember that,” MacDonnell said. “You had a strong head for the spirits. Sure, used you not help my own father unload the brandy from the French ships at Kilcummin strand, and there was always a cask or two the less at the final count.”

“And well your father knew it. He was a generous man without making a show of it as some do.”

“There will be other ships coming below in Munster,” Elliott said. “But not with brandy.”

Duggan took a long swallow, and then smacked his lips. “By God, it tastes the same. I had forgotten the taste of it.” He emptied the tumbler on the dirt floor, and replaced it on the table.

“And when the French land,” Elliott said, “Munster will rise up.”

“It may,” Duggan said. “But Munster is a long way from Mayo. As far as Wexford.”

“In the south and in the midlands the United Irish are strong,” Elliott said. “And in Galway and Sligo there are United Men. Not as many, but they are growing. If the whole of the island rises up we can win.”

“Win what, Mr. Elliott? That is what puzzles me. You are a gentleman and a landlord. What more is it that you want?”