Galway Bay (26 page)

Jamesy watched, afraid. “Why won’t she eat, Mam?”

“She’s trying, Jamesy. She’ll eat it. You eat yours, a stór, very slowly.”

“Eat, Bridget,” Paddy said, “or your stomach will blow up like Thaddy Ryan.”

“Thaddy? Thaddy?” Bridget had been asking for him, and for Mary, too. “Mary? Sing?”

Mary had a sweet voice and had often sung “The Singing Bird” to Bridget.

But now Jamesy tried: “
I have heard the blackbird pipe its tune
”—a clear lovely voice.

Bridget smiled.

Jamesy’s round little face was thin now, skin pulled tight around those soft hazel eyes. Paddy’s, too, all sharp cheekbones, his blue eyes hard pebbles. And Bridget’s blond hair was limp, her eyes sometimes vague and staring.

They need to eat. With hardly enough meal here for one person, I’m trying to feed five. Michael’s spent twelve hours breaking stones on the road—he can’t survive on this muck.

Paddy put his stick into the pot and took out a bit of meal. “I can hardly feel it in my stomach,” he said.

“There was talk on the roads today,” said Michael. “A sheep stealing up in the mountains.”

“Talk of men arrested and hanged, too, I would think.”

Michael nodded, putting his stick into the mixture. He pulled a little out and sucked the mush from the stick.

I settled the children down, and they finally slept. Michael and I sat on the floor near the fire.

“Another troop of soldiers has come to town. Forty or fifty guard every meal wagon that goes out. But people are so desperate they still attack the wagons. The soldiers killed a woman today for cutting a corner of a meal sack, trying to catch some in her hands to bring home. Nothing seems to move them,” he said.

“You wouldn’t believe what it’s like in town, Honora. Crowds of starving people are wandering the streets. Why are they not beating down the doors of the Great Southern Hotel?”

“Because they’re afraid of the soldiers,” I said.

“Today I saw a woman and her four children in front of the hotel’s windows, looking into the dining room, watching travelers eat enormous meals, standing there silent. Finally the little boy threw a pebble at the window, not to break it, but to get a traveler’s attention. The manager of the hotel came out and shouted, ‘Get away from here, get away!’ and the next thing a troop of soldiers rode up. ‘Croppies lie down!’ That’s what they shouted, Honora. ‘Croppies lie down!’ We’re dying. They know, Honora, and they don’t care.”

I held him to me.

“We won’t be paid for two weeks because there’s no small silver coins,” he said. “Some men come to the works too weak to stand. Widows, Honora, are allowed on the crew now because they are head of their family. They can’t lift the hammers to break rocks. The foreman says now we’ll be paid according to the number of rocks broken, not by the day. If your pile’s not high enough, no pay at all. While we were breaking the last of the rocks in the dark freezing cold, who comes riding by but the Galway Blazers on their way to a hunt. To see them laughing and calling to each other . . . they didn’t even look at us.”

“I wonder how the Ryans are managing in the workhouse.”

“Owen Mulloy saw Neddy breaking stones in the yard, and spoke to him. Neddy said he was very lucky to get in. Long lines of people, hundreds, maybe thousands, are clamoring to get into that hell and being turned away.”

“Food in hell,” I said. “Michael, should I go to Máire? She might find some way to give us something.”

“Don’t, Honora. Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Mulloy said that Jackson’s waiting for any excuse to evict us all. Any. You go to Máire, she gives you a piece of bread, he’ll call it stealing and you’ll both be arrested.” He leaned close and whispered to me, “There are dead bodies in the streets, Honora.”

I pulled him closer.

“And you, a stór, the baby? I’m so worried,” Michael said.

“This fellow’s a fighter. How could he not be, conceived in the Pirate Queen’s castle?” I said.

“I wish I hadn’t . . . Not fair to you,” he started.

“Whist, Michael. Lie down, a ghrá.”

We fell asleep holding on to each other.

Chapter 15

T
HE WEEK
before Christmas brought snow. Hardly a flake most winters, and now this steady fall for three days. A veil of white over the window blocked out the weak winter sun. At least the darkness inside the cottage, day and night, keeps the children sleeping longer—until the hunger wakes them.

Jamesy whimpered. I knelt next to him. He’s shivering. I touched his forehead. Not hot, not fever.

Black fever—typhus—had hit Cappagh, only four miles distant. Three families had been struck and every single one of them dead in two weeks, God rest their souls. A terrible, painful death, Granny says. At the end you were out of your head, your limbs swollen and black, and the neighbors were terrified to come near, pushing food and water through the door and praying the fever wouldn’t spread.

Granny’s remedies didn’t help the sick. Starving bodies can’t fight off scurvy or dysentery let alone typhus or yellow fever or, God forbid, cholera. Cases had been reported out near Moycullen.

“Mam,” Paddy said, “I have to go.” Half-asleep.

“Here, a stór.” I helped him to the bucket in the corner, held him as he squatted.

“It burns, Mam.”

Loose and watery, but no clots of blood. Good. I wiped him with a piece of newsprint. “Try to go back to sleep.”

I settled Paddy next to Jamesy on the straw pallet by the fire and covered them with empty meal sacks. The woven blanket was gone, traded for a few pounds of Peel’s brimstone. Bridget’s cradle will be next. She coughed—a dry, harsh sound. They’re getting weaker every day. So many children are sick throughout the parish.

We’d all been so healthy growing up. Even the English visitors who’d come to our classroom remarked how hale and hearty Irish children looked. Surprised, they said to Miss Lynch right in front of us, “When they only eat potatoes,” as though they were annoyed at us.

There was great strength in the potato, but little nourishment in corn mush. And now that last sack of meal’s near finished.

Plenty of food filled the market, for those with money. The servants from the Big Houses were buying the Christmas goose right now.

“Mam.” Paddy again. “I’m too hungry to sleep.”

“I’ve Granny’s tea made.” Granny’s recipe was bark and melted snow boiled together—bitter tasting, but soothing on the stomach.

I put more turf on the fire, filled our tin cup with the tea, and handed it to Paddy. Jamesy awake now, and Bridget was coughing again.

I picked her up from the cradle and sat the two boys down on each side of me, close to the fire. I took the tea from Paddy and tipped a bit of it into Bridget’s mouth and gave the cup to Jamesy.

“Is it near time for Da to come home?” Paddy asked.

“A while yet, Paddy.”

“Best get on with the story, Mam,” Jamesy said, passing the cup back to Paddy.

“Do you remember where we stopped?” I asked them.

“Queen Maeve was leading her army off to capture the Big Brown Bull,” Paddy said.

“Driving her chariot,” Jamesy added. “You forgot that, Paddy.”

“Who cares about the chariot?”

“It’s important, isn’t it, Mam?”

“It is, Jamesy.”

Bridget took some more tea, smiling at me. My brave wee girl.

“Whist, you two. Now, fadó,” I started. Thanks be to God, “Maeve’s Cattle Raid” is a long tale and has plenty of fighting.

“Five pounds of cornmeal, Honora,” Michael said as he came in covered with snow, his feet frozen. Those strips of sacking wrapped around them do no good.

Paddy and Jamesy pulled him over to the fire.

I poured a measure of meal into the pot. “You’ll have to be patient. You know it has to cook a good long time. Here, let’s get to work on your da’s poor feet,” I said to them.

Bridget and I started on Michael’s right foot, the boys on the left, trying to rub life into his stiff blue toes.

“Do they hurt very much, Da?” Jamesy asked.

“A bit of pain’s good, Jamesy. Means the feeling’s coming back.”

“A miracle frostbite hasn’t taken them,” I said.

“I stamp my feet as I work.” He winked at the boys. “The foreman thinks I’m dancing. Makes him very angry.”

“Show us, Da,” Paddy said.

And didn’t Michael get up as soon as his feet were any way warm and start shuffling around the place, the boys leaping in front of him, distracted until the stirabout was ready.

“Eat slowly. Very slowly,” I said.

“Surely there’ll be no work on the roads today,” I said to Michael the next morning. The storm was worse.

“I have to appear or I’ll lose my place. We’ll move rocks around until the overseer is sure no progress can be made. He’ll send us away, but I might get a penny or two.”

“Please don’t go, Michael.”

But he bent his head down and stepped out into the wind-driven snow.

I pushed the door closed and went back to the fire, staring at the flames, grateful for my sleeping children’s even breathing, some food in their stomachs. I felt the baby in my womb move, still alive. Thank God.

A blast of wind as the door opened. Michael was back, showing some sense, staying home. He said nothing to me but picked up the spade and started out again.

“Wait, Michael, what is it?”

He only shook his head, his lips tight.

“Michael, tell me.”

“Something terrible, Honora.” He turned to leave.

“I’m going with you.”

“Don’t,” he said.

“I am.” Paddy woke up. “Watch the others,” I said to him.

I wrapped an empty sack around me and followed Michael into the storm. Hard to move. I sank into the soft snow, my legs and feet going numb. I held Michael’s arm.

He helped me over the gap in our stone wall. We followed our lane toward the crossroads.

He pointed to a mound of snow in the ditch. I saw a hand and arm sticking out of the drift. Michael used the spade to carefully clear away the snow. A man’s body. He turned it over—Neddy Ryan!

I knelt down. Under Neddy I saw Tessie’s body, covering the three children. Alive?

“Mary, Henry, Albert?” I shouted.

Michael lifted up Tessie. The two boys were curled around Mary like kittens around a mother cat—stiff with death.

“No. No,” I said. I crouched down close to Mary. Snow fell onto her closed eyes, onto her cheek. I brushed the flakes away. Some kind of a growth on her face. Hair. Clumps of it across her chin. A rusty color. Michael was kneeling beside me. “Look. What is it?”

“Oh, God. A fellow on the roadworks was talking about this. I didn’t want to believe him.”

“What?”

The wind had died down, so I could hear every word Michael said in a low, flat voice. “In the final stages of starvation, this hair grows on children’s faces. The fellow had seen it. ‘Like fur,’ he said. It comes as the body starts digesting its own organs, trying to stay alive.”

No. No. I saw the same hair on Albert’s and Henry’s faces. I turned my head into Michael’s shoulder. I can’t take this in.

Michael held me to him for a moment, but then he pulled back. “Listen.”

Sharp barks. Howling. The wild dogs were foraging—a pack of them in the hills beyond the old glen, so vicious they’d fought off all efforts to hunt them down.

“We have to bury the bodies,” Michael said. “The dogs.”

I nodded.

Michael stood up and helped me to my feet.

“But how can we? The ground’s frozen,” I said.

“We can cover them with rocks from their cottage.”

I followed Michael the short distance to where the Ryans’ cottage had been. Michael knocked the snow away from a heap of stones, all that was left of the tumbled walls. He pulled out five big rocks and started back. I managed to carry two smaller stones.

We went back and forth, building a cairn over their bodies. Michael carefully fit stone upon stone, leaving no spaces. I filled in any cracks with pebbles.

We stood up, and Michael took my hand. “God rest their souls,” he said.

Tessie and Neddy, the raggedy Ryans, foolish and feckless. I imagined Tessie in the workhouse, trying to use gossip and chat to wheedle food for Albert and Henry, urging Mary to “sing a song for Matron.” Poor sweet Mary singing, “I have seen the lark at break of day.” The workhouse officials probably considered them nothing but whingeing beggars.

“Trying to get home,” Michael said. “Not being fed in the workhouse, so coming to us and the Mulloys. Caught by the storm, sheltering in the ditch, not knowing where they were. Fell asleep and never woke up.”

“Fools. They were always fools,” I said.

“Honora, that’s a wild cruel thing to say.”

“We’re not like them, Michael. We won’t let our children die. We’ll find some way.”

“We will, a stór,” he said. “But Neddy tried. He—”

“Brought it on themselves. The two of them. They—” My voice was getting higher, shriller.

“Hold on, Honora. You sound like the foreman on the roadworks. He says the Irish are to blame for their own suffering. Lazy beggars with our hands out, not grateful to the British government.”

Michael’s right. I’m seeing the Ryans as the British see us. We’re scum to them—to the officials, the landlords, the townspeople. They look at the fur on children’s faces and say, “See? Animals. Little monkeys.”

“We are doomed,” I said.

“Honora.” Michael reached for me.

“Don’t touch me! They’re dead! And soon we will be, too. Dead! All of us. Paddy and Jamesy and Bridget and I will be curled up under your dead body.” I was pounding on his chest. “Do something! Do something!”

“Stop it, Honora! We will not die! Champion. I’ll kill Champion. I’ll do it right now! I’ll hack her leg off! The meat will feed us! Our children will not starve.”

He pushed me away, picked up a rock from the cairn, and started toward Champion’s shed.

I stood for a moment and then ran after him. “Kill her!” I shouted. “Kill her! I’ll roast her legs! I’ll slice up her tongue! We’ll eat, eat, eat! Do it, Michael! Do it!”

I caught up with him in the mud-walled shed. The smell of Champion—sweat and manure. Manure that once fertilized our fields.