Dark Rosaleen (2 page)

He sat upright at his desk and, as was his practice, made no effort to acknowledge the presence of the man he had summoned. He made no gesture towards the chair opposite him, so Sir William stood to attention, as he had done all his military life in the presence of superiors.

Trevelyan spoke, as ever, to the point.

‘I waste no time on courtesies, Sir William. I am familiar with your record of public service and know you are more than capable of the employment I am about to charge you with. I break no confidences when I tell you that Prime Minister Peel is alarmed by events in Ireland. It would appear that this year's potato crop has failed there as it has in England, Scotland and almost every country in Northern Europe. We understand the disease comes from America but it cannot be identified. What we do know is that it is more thoroughly destructive than anything before. You may have read of this?'

‘Yes, Sir Charles. I have read much about it. It is a serious matter.'

‘Serious indeed. Unlike the peasantry in England, the Irish are entirely dependent on their potatoes. It is their entire diet. Monday to Sunday, January to December, they eat nothing else. Without potatoes they starve.'

‘So it appears, sir.'

‘Yes Sir William, it is exactly as it appears. For that reason and with commendably swift decision, the Prime Minister has authorised a Commission to oversee relief and the distribution of food in the affected provinces. You, Sir William, will head it. There is to be no delay. He expects you to sail to Ireland within the week. Your headquarters will be in Cork.'

‘Must it be so soon, sir? A week is no time at all for me to settle my own affairs. To be away for so long without preparation— '

‘You assume too much. It need not be long. The Prime Minister believes the worst will be over by the summer. It may or may not be. God alone will decide. But be assured of this. We will do what is necessary but no more than that. The Irish peasants are perverse and prefer to beg than borrow; they would rather eat free English food than labour for their own. It would be unjust and unwise to pamper them when our own people are pleading for assistance and I do not intend to transfer famine from one country to another. You understand?'

‘I fully understand, sir. It makes very practical sense.'

‘And one last thing, Sir William, before you go. As I understand it, you no longer have a wife but you have a daughter?'

‘I do, sir. Her name is Kathryn.'

‘Then the Prime Minister would have you take her too. She will need to accompany you on the official functions that, as the Queen's representative, you will be expected to attend.'

Kate counted the twelve slow chimes of the clock on the landing outside her bedroom door. The house was silent. The wind had dropped. The last of the servants had gone to their attic beds and, in his bedroom, her father had stopped the soft coughing that always ended his day. She looked down at the remains of the fire. The image of the child had been consumed and all that was left was a wedge of paper ash. She watched as bit by bit it was drawn up the chimney to be broken into tiny flakes and scattered across the rooftops on that white winter's night.

She was exhausted. Her tantrums had won her nothing. On the rug at her feet were the few remaining pages of the
Illustrated London News
. Her father had slid it under her door, hoping she might be tempted to read something of the land she was about to sail to and the tragedy she was about to witness. In her fury she had stamped on it, ripped it apart, thrown its pages into the flames and stirred the coals to make it burn faster. But she could not touch the drawing of the boy, thin and almost naked, standing defiantly by the bodies of his mother and sisters. His face held her until the fire had finally devoured him.

The room was cold. She shivered but it was not from the chill. Again she felt the same sensation, a surging fear that, despite herself and her shrill threats of defiance, she too was about to become a casualty of Ireland's Great Hunger.

Sky and earth were one black sprawling mess. It was raining the first day when they landed in Ireland and it had been raining ever since. Kate had now been in Cork for a month and seven days and she had not yet seen a blue sky or the tip of a mountain or an expanse of sea. It was like living under a vast, dripping shadow, everything saturated by clouds that hung low, still and moody. People told her it might stay that way all winter. They said it cheerily, as if that was how they preferred it to be, curtained off, captive.

She felt so captured. What a perfect prison this Ireland was to her and she was condemned to live in it for as long as its people were hungry. Or perhaps longer. However absurd it seemed to her, the notion kept repeating itself, the fearful conviction that she was about to become entangled in the misery of this land, that its suffering would make her its prisoner.

For those first five weeks, she had stayed within the house and, for most of the time, within her own rooms. To venture out into the gardens, to inspect the stables and yards would be to admit an interest and she was determined to show none. She ignored the daily respectful formalities from the staff and the curtsies of the chambermaids. She kept silent but, to her outrage, her father was too busily involved in his new task to notice. It was the arrival of the mare he had promised that finally ended her stubborn resistance.

She rode her most afternoons but she could not go far. Her father had pencilled a perimeter on a map of the countryside surrounding Cork and warned her that if she crossed it, he would have her ride with an armed escort. Drenched in Ireland's autumn, she longed for a dry breeze and a clear horizon. On every ride she searched for higher ground, thinking that if she could climb the tracks that wound up through the mists, she would break through and find blue sky and a little warmth. But the paths were too narrow or strewn with too many boulders and the mare stumbled too often. The sun was always beyond her.

One day, ignoring her father's orders for the first time, she rode along the banks of Lough Mahon, past Monkstown and Ringaskiddy, searching for a horizon, to see the land fade into nothingness the way it did in the Lincolnshire Fens as the dykes ran the length of the sea. But here, as she stood by the mare's side, the air was so heavy and the light so grey that she could not see the river's mouth at Roche's Point, which they said was only a mile across the water.

High in her saddle, how safely distanced she felt from those who passed below her on the tracks. How poised and perfect she felt herself to be in her trim riding habit as she cantered through their villages. Men dropped their heads in respect, women were careful not to catch her eye and dirty, half-naked children hid behind their mothers' skirts. And always they were silent, as if to be heard speaking within earshot of her was an insolence. How she loathed the smell of them, the dirt of their bodies, the decay of their lives, their squat mud-and-branch hovels humped together, littered with the rotting debris of human waste.

‘It's natural Kate, hungry or not, it's what they prefer. Cuddling their pigs comes as naturally as hugging their wives. Not that they do that often. They show such little love that I wonder they have so many children. Such filthy hags too. God knows what gives them the passion.'

Kate laughed. She had not laughed since she had left England and had been ready to believe she might not again until she returned there. The wind had turned abruptly, it was a warm and sunny winter's day and she had company. Edward Ogilvie was with her, with her father's permission. They had ridden all morning, crossing the river at Inishannon, following its meandering course until it met the sea.

She kicked her mare, reined hard and followed him down the steep side of a hill with the sea on either side of them. He pointed to a lighthouse, far off in the distance, painted in red and white stripes, which he said stood on the Old Head of Kinsale. They dismounted, he unfurled a horse blanket and they sat and picnicked on poached salmon and cold beef. She watched a distant rain cloud scudding across the water like a rippling cloth. The breeze was fresh, bringing with it the smell of salt and seaweed. She breathed it in and was happy and thanked her new companion for it.

Edward Ogilvie was young and heavy limbed, a powerfully built young man. The seams of his jacket and breeches were stretched, barely able to contain the muscles within. Long, unkempt ginger hair touched his collar and matched the sideburns he had trimmed to hide the red blotches on his cheeks, birthmarks that were his greatest aggravation.

He was known by his tenants as a ‘Half-Sir,' he being the son of the landowner, Lord Kinley, whose estate began at Cork and stretched more than fifty miles west towards Bantry Bay. Lord Kinley was an Irish Protestant who had left Ireland on his twenty-sixth birthday and, forty years on, had yet to return, preferring to lavish his income on the splendid, if expensive, aristocratic rituals England alone provided. The estate had since been run by a succession of managers, men whose ability was rated by the amount of rent they collected. But none matched the young Edward, who, in the ten years of his management, had multiplied his father's income twice over and, as such, was respected by those of his own rank, who did their best to copy him.

They knew him as a great horseman, hunter and renowned boxer. In Dublin on his twenty-first birthday, he had won a hundred guineas in one fight and that same night, for a wager of half as much again, drank three bottles of whiskey without seeming to take a breath. When things went well for him and he was among his own peers, he was considered a likeable fellow. But among the ranks below, among the thousands of tenants and labourers on the estate, he was feared and loathed. He was a bully with a vicious and barely controllable temper. Anger was always his first refuge.

On his father's land he had no time for rules that were not of his own making, nor any law that did not place the landlord's interests paramount. Nor would he countenance any discussion about a tenant's rights, as they were considered to have none. Those who disagreed suffered his own justice at the end of a bullwhip, which he used often, accurately and with terrible effect. From its stock to its tip, it was eight feet long and tied to its end were six small chamois leather pouches loaded with buckshot. Edward Ogilvie's bullwhip was law and there were many men, women and even children whose bodies were scarred defying it.

Following the customary exchange of letters of introduction, he had presented himself to Sir William offering to act as Kate's riding escort. She readily accepted, relieved to listen to another's conversation after months of her own company. She found him no more or less dull than the dozens of his kind she had known in Lincolnshire and London. She had heard nothing of his cruelty because there was no one to tell her of it except those who had suffered, and they were ever silent.

He had tempted her with a thimbleful of whiskey. It was new to her and she could feel it swirling and rising through her body. She was content to lay back on the thick horse blanket and listen to the surf breaking on the beach below. His chin shone with beef fat.

‘You'll discover, Kate, that there are three Ps to the Irish problem: population, priests and potatoes. If we could rid ourselves of them all, and empty this cursed land, we could make it worth a living. Leave it to them and it will remain a stinking bog and a hive of Popish mischief.'

‘Edward, why are they so dependent on the potato? Father says they are hungry because of the blight but the crops have been ruined in England and Scotland and France too, I'm told. Why is it so bad here?'

He bit into his beef and wiped the grease from his lips.

‘The Irish are always hungry. They're always screaming that there's a famine here, a famine there, just so they can scramble for free handouts. It comes natural to them because they are scoundrels and wasters and always after something for nothing. Let me tell you, Kate, it's not our food they need but a little order, not more English corn but a few more English Fusiliers.'