Bridie's Fire (7 page)

As the afternoon wore on, a low mist settled over the road. Up ahead, dark animal shapes moved mysteriously in a bank of fog. The carter moved the reins across to one hand and reached beneath the seat to draw out a big, thick stick with a hard knobbly end on it.

‘What's the matter?' asked Bridie.

‘Wild dogs,' said the carter, his face set hard.

He climbed down with his staff and took the horse's halter, leading her into the fog. The dogs began to howl.

‘They won't harm us, will they, Bridie?' asked Brandon. ‘We're Ó
Conchobhairs
and they're our friends. Dad always said that's what our name meant – friend of the wolves.'

Bridie ignored him and kept a firm grip on the reins. The driver called back to them. ‘You two keep jawing, they don't like the sound of us talking – make as much noise as you can.'

‘Should we sing?' asked Bridie.

‘That's a grand idea, girl,' said the driver.

Bridie began to hum one of the songs her mother had taught her. Then she sang of the beautiful girl whose true love was stolen by the fairy queen and who then had to search all of Ireland for him. Brandon sang too. Their voices sounded eerie, muted by the heavy fog. Every now and then they could hear a low growl from the wild dogs circling the cart. In the short silence that followed the end of the song, the first dog took its chance and leapt out at the carter. He was ready for it; the knobbly end of his stick met the dog's skull with a sickening crack. Then other dogs came out of the fog, leaping at the horse and snapping at her throat. The carter was swinging his stick wildly now, standing in the middle of the roadway and knocking the rangy hounds to the ground. Nellie whinnied frantically and shied away. Bridie pulled hard on the reins and gave the horse no head, but it was straining to break free. Suddenly, Brandon scrambled past Bridie and jumped lightly onto the horse's back, murmuring into her ear and stroking her head. When the carter had beaten the last dog away and two lay dead by the roadside, he turned and looked at Brandon with astonishment.

‘Well, if you two haven't turned out to be a bit of luck for me,' he said cheerfully, lifting Brandon off Nellie's back and hoisting him onto the bench.

Brandon looked at Bridie, aglow with pride, and for the first time since they'd left Dunquin Bridie laughed out loud.

9

Pilgrim souls

Bridie saw it from a distance: a long, tall building, four storeys high, with tiny windows all along its length. She tried to make herself feel glad that they were at last going to find shelter, that their fortunes were changing.

There was a crowd of people gathered around the gate of this workhouse too, though not so many as at Tralee. As the cart drew closer, Bridie saw a tall, thin man in a black coat, followed by two helpers, crossing the workhouse yard to the gate where the people were waiting. A chain bound the gates shut. The black-coated man turned a big key in the lock and opened the gates.

‘There you go,' said the carter. ‘Just in time, they're taking some in.'

Bridie jumped off the cart, but Brandon didn't follow. ‘Climb down, then,' she said. Brandon didn't move. He stared ahead with a hunted expression.

‘Can't I keep with you a while longer?' he asked, turning to the carter. ‘I could help you with Nellie. I wouldn't be much trouble.'

The carter's face suddenly closed over. He gave Brandon a little shove.

‘You'll have to get off here, boy,' he said, looking away.

‘Brandon,' Bridie said crossly. ‘This is what our mam wanted, for us find a safe place, and now we've found it. Get down.'

‘But what if they won't take us and we die in the ditch?' asked Brandon.

The carter sighed and leapt down from his vehicle. Grabbing each of the children by the wrist, he pushed his way through the crowd to the front of the gate.

The man in black was shouting at everyone, gesturing for some to come in and others to wait, but the carter pushed Brandon and Bridie ahead of him and shouted at the workhouse porter to get his attention. They stood arguing with each other fiercely.

Bridie couldn't understand what they were saying. It seemed the whole world spoke this ugly language. She looked from one face to the next as the carter angrily pointed at the porter and then at the children. In the confusion, a tall, fair-haired girl sidled up and smiled at Bridie, resting one hand on her shoulder. She felt too bewildered to shrug the girl off. Suddenly, the carter was pushing them towards the porter and mumbling a hurried goodbye. The big gates of the workhouse started to swing shut again and Bridie and Brandon and the fair-haired girl were swept down the path towards the workhouse.

Inside the big doors, another man in a black coat was asking questions of the people and scribbling things down in a big ledger. Bridie listened carefully, trying to guess what the questions were by listening to the answers that the people ahead of her gave.

‘Name?'

‘
Br
í
de
Ó
Conchobhair, agus dearth
á
ir Bhr
é
anainn
Ó
Conchobhair
,' said Bridie, drawing Brandon beside her and pulling herself up to her full height.

The man looked up from his ledger and sighed.

‘Speak English, girl,' he said.

Bridie didn't answer. She wasn't sure how to answer. She'd heard so little English that she couldn't think
how
her own name would sound in that strange tongue. Suddenly, the tall pale girl stepped up behind Bridie. She said something that Bridie recognised as her own and Brandon's names. Bridie realised the girl must have understood the argument between the carter and the porter and joined her because of it.

Bridie looked up at the girl, bewildered. She looked to be a couple of years older, perhaps thirteen, and she wore her hair in a long golden plait down to her waist. She was so fair that even her eyebrows and eyelashes were a pale silvery-gold colour that merged with the whiteness of her skin. Her bones showed through the worn fabric of her clothes, and her fragile hands and feet were suffused with blue. Bridie listened carefully to the girl's answers and understood her name was Caitlin Moriarty.

When the questions were over, Bridie tried to thank the girl for her help, but she simply shrugged.

‘You made it easier for me to slip through the gate, so I'm paying my debt. You'll have to learn English. The Irish won't serve you well in here.'

Bridie couldn't imagine making sense of the new language. Caitlin saw her distress. ‘You will learn,' she said, repeating her reassurance in both English and Irish. Bridie mouthed the new words, trying to fix them in her mind.

‘You've been here before?'

‘Not this workhouse, but others. First with my family, and now, I'm on my own,' said the older girl grimly.

They passed through the big, dark entrance hall of the workhouse. The flagstones were cold beneath their bare feet. Another tall man in a black coat stood watching the new arrivals with a stern expression.

‘Who's that?' asked Bridie.

‘The Master of the workhouse,' whispered Caitlin.

‘There'll be no talking,' snapped a thin woman in an apron. ‘You, with the lads,' she ordered, shoving Brandon towards a group of dishevelled boys. ‘You girls, with the lasses.' She pointed Bridie in the opposite direction.

‘I have to keep with my brother,' said Bridie, following her.

‘Out of my way, girl. Get in line,' snapped the woman.

Caitlin put out a hand to draw her back. ‘You must mind what they tell you and do as I do, or there'll be nothing but misery for you here,' she said.

Bridie watched Brandon as he followed the other boys up a flight of stairs. At the top, he looked back at her. Their eyes met and that moment was like a thorn in Bridie's heart. She took a fold of Caitlin's ragged skirt in her hand and hung onto it as the girls walked in single file to a long, open courtyard, where they were made to strip off their clothes and scrub at open troughs of cold water in the fading afternoon light. Then they were given the workhouse uniform. Bridie tried to keep her spoon, the last remnant of her old life, but it was swept away with her clothes. An angry-looking woman led them from one part of the workhouse to another, explaining the rules in shouted English. The words washed over Bridie in an incomprehensible tide.

Towards the end of the afternoon, they were marched into a room with a long table and given a bowl of stirabout, a thin porridge full of yellow meal, and a piece of dry bread. Some of the girls ate like wolves, but Bridie tried to savour every mouthful and ate the bread slowly, dipping it in the porridge so her gums wouldn't bleed when she ate it.

The girls climbed another flight of stairs that led to the top floor of the workhouse. Inside the main room was a long walkway, almost like a trough, with raised wooden platforms running along either side. The platforms were covered with a scattering of straw and hundreds of women were already crammed onto them. The room was full of coughing and whimpering as the women tossed and turned. Bridie and the other new girls were herded to the end of the room, where a small area of fresh straw lay waiting for them. Every second girl was handed a thin blanket to share. Bridie stayed close to Caitlin so they got to share a blanket. As they lay beside each other in the straw, Bridie stared up into the rafters and wished she had the open sky above her still. Even though it was good to be warm, the air here was close and thick with noise and rank smells.

‘Things are getting worse,' said Caitlin. ‘They gave us each a mattress and a blanket last time I came to the workhouse. I lay with my sister then.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Dead of the fever,' said Caitlin brusquely, turning her back on Bridie and hiking the blanket up to her chin.

‘And your mam and dad?'

‘Dead. I told you. They're all dead.'

‘Do you miss your mam most or your dad or is it your sister?'

‘Do you have to ask so many questions?' said Caitlin.

Bridie curled into a ball with her fists clenched and her eyes shut tight, and wished sleep would come, but her body was trembling and her mind whirling with thoughts of Brandon. Was he lying in the dark afraid? Who would watch out for him among all those other boys? Would she lose even him, as Caitlin had lost everyone?

‘Can you stop your quivering, girl?' said Caitlin, sighing and sitting up to look at Bridie.

‘I'm thinking of my little brother, God help him.'

Caitlin reached out and rested one hand on Bridie's shoulder until the warmth of her touch stilled Bridie's shivering. ‘God direct you,' she said softly. ‘The boy's not lost to you yet. There's nothing for it now but to put the thought of this evil day on the long finger.'

10

Riot

Morning sun streamed in through the tiny window panes, catching motes of dust and fragments of straw. Bridie was pushed along by a crowd of girls to the end of the dormitory. Women with brooms swept fetid straw into the long troughs and then another woman unlatched a door so the straw could be swept out into the yard below. Bridie watched it float down through the wintry air, and wished she was falling with it. She sneezed and shuffled after the other girls to start the working day.

Bridie had lost track of the number of days since she had arrived at the workhouse. The weeks had stretched into months, and she'd only glimpsed Brandon at a distance. She hadn't been able to talk with him once. Boys and girls were kept completely separate from each other.

The first days had passed in a blur of confusion as she struggled to learn all the rules of the workhouse. New girls were set to tasks each morning, scrubbing first the big flagstones in the hallway and then the long flights of wooden stairs, black with trodden muck. Bridie's hands grew red and raw from being constantly in water. The only compensation was that she worked alongside Caitlin. Caitlin insisted she learn more English but sometimes Bridie would beg her to speak in Irish for a while so she could hear the warm rhythms of their mother tongue. Mostly Caitlin refused. ‘I'm doing you a grand favour, girl. The sooner you learn the English, the better,' she would say.

As much as she resented it, Bridie knew Caitlin was right. Slowly, the orders of the Matron stopped sounding like a babble of sound and began to have meaning, though sometimes knowing what was being said was worse than wandering in a fog of ignorance. There was never any kindness in the Matron's remarks.

One day, Bridie was working on the stairs that led to the Master's rooms when she heard shouts. The door to the dining hall downstairs was forced open and a stream of shouting men and boys poured out into the forecourt. Behind them came dozens of policemen and warders beating the men across the shoulders with batons, herding them into the yard. Bridie leaned over the balustrade and stared down in amazement at the tumult beneath.

Suddenly, among the crowd of crazed men and boys she saw Brandon's flame-red, tousled hair as he was thrown against the wall directly beneath her. He had one arm raised to shield himself from the fierce blows of a policeman.

‘Brandon! Brandon!' called Bridie, but her voice was lost in the roar of the rioting men. Frantically, she reached for the bucket behind her and heaved it over the balustrade, drenching a policeman with filthy, grey water. She was about to fling the bucket down on the policeman's head as well when an iron hand caught her wrist.

‘No you don't,' said the Master, dragging her up the last few steps to the landing.

That night, Bridie lay in the darkness weeping with rage and despair. Her hands and back ached from the beating Matron had inflicted on her, but the pain in her heart was worse. She couldn't drive away the image of Brandon cowering beneath the policeman's baton.

As if she could read Bridie's thoughts, Caitlin shifted and put her arm gently around Bridie, whispering, ‘There's hope from a prison, but none from the grave.'