Dark Rosaleen (5 page)

It snowed hard that night, and all the following day and night too. No one, whatever their age or fondness for exaggeration, could ever remember such a fall. On the fourth night the river froze and ships' crews had to hack their way through ice in the Mahon to reach the deeper water of the outer harbour. People said it was coming straight from Russia and predicted a ferocious January. For the first two weeks of the new year, 1846, it snowed without pause.

Kate had been confined to the house by the weather and, since the embarrassment of the dinner, by her father. He had called the doctor, who was pleased to confirm Sir William's suspicion that she was over-tired and stressed, which helped explain her quite out-of-character behaviour. If she could not sleep, the doctor would prescribe a draught and if she continued to be depressed, he suggested company. He had a daughter of her age who would be delighted to come in the afternoons and play cards.

Kate sat by the window of the drawing room that overlooked the long sweep of the south garden. Its delicately cultured divisions, the herbaceous borders, the box hedges, the manicured lawns and the gravelled drive had all become one, the gardener's long summer labours now submerged in a prairie of white.

She might once have thought it beautiful. Now she could only look at the fine line of oaks and firs that marked the edge of the estate and think of the misery beyond it.

‘They will die out there, like sheep trapped in a wintry ditch.'

Kate turned to the voice behind her. She was not alarmed. It was not strange to her. It belonged to her new and only ally, the young Captain John Shelley. From the night of the dinner's commotion, over three weeks before, they had become secret friends and since she had been forbidden to leave the house, he was now her only source of comfort and information. They had been careful not to show their bond in her father's presence and met only at times when the house was empty of all but the servants. They were sure that no one knew of their alliance but they were wrong. The Reverend Martineau had them watched. The young captain had shown himself to be emotional and provocative. His sympathies were in doubt and the Reverend had made it a priority to establish the young Englishman's allegiances, one way or the other.

Captain Shelley said, ‘Yes, Kate, they are already dying out there, more and more every day. Three cartloads of them were brought into the city yesterday. I was called to register them. Their homes had been tumbled and many were decent properties. They were barely clothed and so weak they could not walk.'

‘Where are they now?'

‘In the workhouse. But I doubt they will last the week.' He sat by her and took her hand. He was pale and his eyes were red-rimmed.

‘Kate. You must be the first to know this. I am about to resign my position. I cannot do what I have to do any longer. I see the reality and I write my reports on what I see without exaggeration. My God! There's no need to embellish what's happening here. The truth is harsh enough. But the truth is not reaching England. What I write is being rewritten, my reports are being reworked so completely it is impossible for the government to know the extent of this tragedy. It is being hidden and I do not know why. On Monday a priest came to me. He had been called to give comfort to an old woman whose cottage was to be tumbled. She was dying inside. He appealed to the gang to wait until he could administer the last rites. But they ignored him and he had to drag her out even as they set the place on fire. She died in his arms, watching her home reduced to rubble. As she closed her eyes, the last she heard of this life was their bawling laughter. I reported it to the Commission but they refused to list a complaint against the landlord.'

‘What will you do?' she asked. ‘Return to England?'

‘No! I cannot go back. Not yet. I think maybe there are other things I can do here, Kate, other ways to help. I am not a godly man, nor am I a sentimentalist but I cannot do nothing now that I know so much.'

He let go her hand and stood. ‘I'm sorry, Kate. We have known each other for such a short time but we were allies and with your help I thought for a while that I might have the will to fight them and turn them our way. But they are too many and too strong and their minds are set against the very people they have been sent here to help.'

He paused. ‘I do believe we English know more about the furthest corners of our Empire than we do about Ireland? I'm sorry. I cannot expect you to understand.'

But she understood. How she longed now to burn her skirts and do what only men could do. How she had begun to despise her pretty lace and perfumed shackles and all the niceties of her privileged life.

She stood. ‘When will you leave?'

‘I am obliged to serve this month out but on the first day of February I will deliver my notice. Tomorrow I must ride south beyond Kinsale to a place called Skibbereen. The hunger is especially bad there and until now we have sent them nothing. I am taking eight wagons of corn and if the snow stops, we might be there in time to save them.'

‘Let me come with you!' she pleaded, already knowing his answer.

‘Kate. Do you really want to help?'

‘Of course. Do you think it suits me to sit by a drawing-room fire, tinkering with embroidery and sipping tea from bone china?'

‘Then let us be real allies, you and me. You cannot come to Skibbereen but you can be more help to me by staying. I can expect to see the worst down south and I shall report what I see. But I know for certain that it will never be read by your father. It will never reach his desk. So let me send you a copy by another route. I will tell you everything I see. Make sure it is known in England. I don't know how you can do it but let them know a little of this horror.'

So the pact was made. As he left he went to take her hand but instead she took his and pressed it to her cheek and then kissed the palm of it. She had never done such a thing to anyone before but in this cold and captive country she had finally found someone warm and open and she was grateful. He smiled, leant forward and put his lips gently to her forehead.

‘Goodbye, Kate. You are like a sister to me. Be my conspirator too. It will be worthwhile if we can find a way. You will be my secret agent.'

From the window she watched him go down the steps to his carriage. He looked up at her to wave his goodbye, his dark cloak already turning white, his face speckled with flakes. She wanted to run to the door to stop him, to make him stay longer, to speak more to him. It was as if she never expected to see him again.

The winds that came from Russia blew colder by the day and more of the hungry began to freeze to death. A month before, Sir William had reported to Sir Charles Trevelyan that thousands were affected by the famine. Now, had he the courage, he would have reported them in their hundreds of thousands. At the Cork workhouse, there were queues a mile long of people, half-naked, young and old, waiting in the snow for someone to die inside the walls so that they might take their place. It was reported from Leitrim that two wagonloads of boy orphans had been turned away from the workhouse gates. They had been found the next morning abandoned and frozen to death. The magistrate reported he had counted thirty-two bodies and ordered they should be buried together in lime.

Captain Shelley had been gone a fortnight and still Kate had not received his promised letter. She asked after him as often as she dared and as discretely as she could but no one could or would tell more than she knew already. February the first, the day of his resignation, passed without any further news and she became more and more anxious. Her father mistakenly interpreted this as her impatience at being housebound and promised that just as soon as the weather broke and the thaw began, he would ask Edward Ogilvie to call again. He would have liked to involve her more in the Commission's work, but the Reverend Martineau reminded him of his daughter's emotional lapses and pointed out how much concern it would cause in London should her sympathies and opinions ever become public. Sir William agreed.

His work was at a critical stage. His relief programme was now into its eighth month and he still wanted to believe that it would be finished by late summer. But Trevelyan was, as ever, introducing further complications. He was insisting that it was not the government's intention to freely give food to any but the truly destitute. It was his opinion that the Irish peasant was not so poor as to be unable to buy food if it was cheaply available. With that in mind he had persuaded Prime Minister Peel to authorise the buying of shiploads of maize from America to sell on the Irish markets.

This enraged the Irish grain merchants and their bankers, all disciples of free trade, who feared cheap imports would undercut the market with a consequent loss of profit.

They had no need to worry. The Corn Law and a British government brimming with contradictions ensured the market stalls in Dublin, Cork and Waterford would still be heavy with oats and wheat and the butchers would continue to hang out their hooks of beef and lamb and pork and every sort of wild fowl, so that a stranger with a full purse might wonder who it was who was hungry. But those with empty pockets and empty stomachs knew well enough. Everything they owned had been pawned to the gombeen man, the wandering pawnbroker who went about the countryside with his donkey and cart, swindling the last penny from a hungry man and taking the shawl off a suckling child for less.

There were times, especially in this cold weather, when Sir William, who was not by nature a hard man, wondered whether his government might not be more generous. In one moment of rare courage he had even suggested it in a letter to Trevelyan, but was brusquely told that the government had set a ceiling on the amount of money allocated to Irish relief and it was already over budget. What was being provided was considered enough for the poor to survive one famished winter. The devout Sir Charles reminded his Commissioner that conscience was not always the best guide and that God and market forces were on the same side. To interfere was tantamount to economic blasphemy. Sir William was careful not to mention his concerns again.

Kate had made a pact with Captain Shelley and already he seemed to have abandoned it. She had waited for his letters and the waiting had meant so much. Imprisoned by snow, their alliance promised liberation, his message would revive her spirit. He would tell her what she must do to become part of what was happening. But he had left over a month ago and there had been silence since.

The thaw began in the third week of February. The wind turned around from the east and, for the first time in this new year, the snow clouds split apart and there was blue in the sky and the promise of sun. Everything began to drip, snow turned to slush, roads became rivers and the fields slow-moving lakes of brown water.

It was evening and she was eating alone at the dinner table. Taking advantage of the milder weather and the forecast of still better to come, her father, with Dr Martineau and his retinue, had ridden to Dublin for a meeting with Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant.

She had snuffed out all but a single candle, preferring in her mood to eat by the light of the fire. She remembered the night at this same table when she had so brazenly declared herself and she thought yet again of the young man who had sat opposite, the captain who had braved the anger of his superiors and exposed his humanity. Where was he now? Why had he forgotten her?

‘Miss Kathryn.' She turned as Moran the butler came into the room.

‘I didn't call,' she said. ‘And I shall need nothing more tonight.'

‘Thank you, Miss Kathryn. There's a fire in your room. But I've come to give you something. It came by special messenger two days ago but I thought it would be unwise to bring it until your father had left. I hope you will forgive my caution but this may help you understand.'

He placed a small parcel on the table, bowed his head and left the room. It was wrapped in moleskin and for a moment she thought it was the present Edward Ogilvie had so frequently promised her. It was sewn together and with the cheese knife she carefully cut the threads apart. There was no writing on the envelope but even as she unfolded it she knew who it was from and why he had sent it so disguised, so secretively. She went to the fireplace, knelt and held it to the light of the flames.