The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) (27 page)

 

 

“Go, Mr. O’Brien! Leave now, before
they come out of the
farmhouse and rout your forces. There are some police horses
over in that
field, do you see? Take
one, and
ride like the wind.”

 

 

O’Brien crouched
low and declared,
“Farewell, and thank you.”

 

 

Emer raised one
hand in salute, and
had the odd feeling as she watched him make his way over the
wall that she
would one day see William Smith O’Brien again.

 

 

Emer now had to
decide what to do
with herself and Terence, for through the open window she
could hear the police
inspector giving orders for them to reload and fire at will.

 

 

Emer grabbed the
window ledge and
hauled herself up, and shouted, “You can’t fire on them. They're
virtually
unarmed and
helpless!”

 

 

“Get out of the
line of fire, boy,
before you get shot yourself.”

 

 

“You can’t do this! They’re nothing but
a bunch of ragged
scarecrows, desperate to do anything that will give them some
hope, can’t you
see that! They
haven’t any extra
ammunition, otherwise they would have reloaded by now. They
certainly
wouldn’t be throwing
rocks at you if they had bullets!”

 

 

“They are rebels,
no matter if they
are armed with guns or stones,” the police inspector replied
sourly, and
repeated his order to fire.

 

 

Emer remembered her
conversation
with Father Darcy, and declared angrily, “Fine, then, do them
all a favour and
shoot them in cold blood.
It will
be better for them to end it cleanly with a bullet through the
head, than
months and months of suffering from cold, hunger, and fever.”

 

 

The policeman
blinked, and when a
few more shots rang out, Emer said nastily, “You can go and
chase them down the
road, and shoot them like dogs. 
Look, they’re leaving already, and won’t put up much of
a struggle! You
might even get a promotion for your
brave deed in putting down these dangerous rebels.”

 

 

The police
inspector suddenly turned
away from the window and growled, “Hold your fire! They’re gone
now.”

 

 

“Thank you, sir,”
Emer called.

 

 

Then, as a few more
shots flew into
the farmyard, Emer crawled over to where the injured had
fallen, and did what
she could for them, tying her bandage from her sore jaw which
she had tugged
down her neck so she could speak around her wrist now like a
white flag to show
she was a noncombatant.

 

 

True to Emer’s
word, most of the
crowd of spectators, a ragged band of women and children, had
already vanished
as if into thin air. The few men armed with pikes and
pitchforks were running
way over the fields and back to their houses as fast as their
legs could carry
them.

 

 

The police
inspector then gave
orders for his men to survey the area to make sure there were
no more rebels
lurking in order to ambush them. Then Terence and Emer and the
other four
wounded who were still alive were hauled to their feet.

 

 

“Jesus, you Irish
must be
fanatics. Look
at what I’ve got
here, two boys, not much older than twenty, and one of them a
nearly mute
cripple at that,” he snorted, when he saw Emer was having
difficulty walking in
addition to her jaw which had been bandaged.

 

 

“I just came down
the road, on my
way from Cork to County Meath, Lord Devlin’s estate at
Kilbracken. I’m not a
rebel,” Emer argued, as the police dragged her to a waiting
horse, and then
forced her to try to mount.

 

 

“She ain’t a man
neither, sir,” one
of the constable said in embarrassment as he struggled with
her, and came into
close contact with her anatomy through her thin shirt.

 

 

“Good God, you must
be mad, woman,”
the inspector grumbled.

 

 

Terence looked at
Emer with a new
admiration lighting his eyes, and was pushed forward by the
constable so hard
that he fell on his bad leg, and keeled over cursing in agony.

 

 

“He’s been shot,
can’t you see that! I’ll
walk, he can ride,” Emer offered,
about to swing back down from the animal’s back.

 

 

“Don’t be stupid,
you’re even more
of a cripple than your young friend from Liverpool here,” the
inspector
barked.

 

 

Then in a more
kindly tone, he
ordered, “Go on, lad, mount up behind her,” and helped Terence
up into the
saddle.

 

 

The horse was then
tied to the
sergeant’s, and the small convoy of rebels was led away from
the partly ruined
farm-house.

 

 

“Where are you
taking us?” Emer
asked, pleased to at least be riding for a change, even though
she feared being
sent to prison if the misunderstanding about her presence at
the rebellion in
Ballingarry couldn’t be cleared up.

 

 

“You are to be
taken to Clonmel
prison to await trial,” the police sergeant informed her
flatly.

 

 

“But all I wanted
to do was help the
wounded. I would
have even tried
to assist your men had they sustained any casualties,” Emer
replied
indignantly.

 

 

“That’s as may be,
miss, but you
were caught with this man here, and must go to trial for
crimes against the
state.” The sergeant shrugged, and rode on, leading their
horse north.

 

 

Emer felt a sinking
sense of
hopeless despair, as once again she faced the prospect of
transportation, if
not worse, for committing an act of treason.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

 

 

After a journey of
about twenty-five
miles, which took Emer and Terence through the historic town
of Cahir, with its
imposing mediaeval castle situated near a magnificent bridge
crossing the Suir
river, they finally arrived at the small town of Clonmel the
following day.

 

 

Despite Emer’s
worries, she noted
appreciatively that it was a charming settlement on the banks
of the Suir
river, with many paths stretching along the banks, and a large
variety of
warehouses.

 

 

Again, she could
see times had been
hard in the once glorious town, for the warehouses looked
abandoned, and the
streets were thronged with beggars of every description, as
well as people
literally falling down dead of exhaustion, hunger or fever.

 

 

Emer was appalled
at the contrast
between the wealthy residents, promenading along the city
walls in their
finery, and the half-naked paupers barely able to stand.

 

 

“And those are the
people you wanted
to fight to the death, Terence,” Emer indicated, pointing to
one of the
wretched urchins. "Can’t
you
see, they’ve been fighting to the death for their very
survival since 1845?
Their loss has been far heavier than yours yesterday."

 

 

“We’ve had many
Irish immigrants in
Liverpool since the famine struck, but I had no idea it was
like this,” Terence
admitted shamefacedly.

 

 

“I know how you
feel, Terence,
really, I do. I didn’t know the extent of the disaster either.
Not until I was
forced to emigrate last year from Meath, and saw a mass of
suffering humanity
just like this crammed into a cargo hold, and treated worse
than cattle,” Emer
sighed. She patted Terence’s arm comfortingly as it rested around
her waist to help
her sit astride their
shared horse.

 

 

The sergeant led
them down the main
street, past the ancient mediaeval West gate, and towards the
Treasury building
at the eastern end of the town.
Also known as the Main Guard, it was an imposing
seventeenth-century
structure, on the other side of which was situated the bleak
jail.

 

 

Though the hold of
the
Pegasus,
the slums of
Toronto, and Grosse
Ile had all been dreadful, the prison at Clonmel was one of
the worst places
Emer had ever seen in her life.
The jail was packed with over three thousand souls,
though normally it
could only accommodate two hundred.

 

 

Emer and Terence
were put in
separate cells at first, wherever they could be squeezed in. Emer
noticed that
just before she had
been shoved into a small space which reminded her of a chicken
coop, a corpse
had been taken out of it to make room for her. She sat on the floor
by the door to
avoid the horrible stench
from the far wall, which the inmates had done their best to
set aside for use
as a privy, and to avoid stumbling over the many legs which
stuck out at every
conceivable angle as the prisoners tried to sit comfortably on
the damp stone
floor in the confined space.

 

 

Emer sat on her now
empty bag of
provisions which she had been carrying over her shoulder, and
offered around
her water bottle, which she had just filled at the pump
outside. Many of
the men looked as though they
hadn’t had water for days, and some were quite obviously in
the throes of a
severe fever, yellow fever Emer assessed with her expert eyes.

 

 

To pass the time,
Emer listened to
the inmates talk of their plight. She noticed curiously that
for the most part
they were all young boys, some of them not much older than her
brother Cathan.
They all looked thin, pale, and defeated.

 

 

“Hell, we
deliberately committed
crimes to get ourselves in here,” one of them admitted. “I only hope
they
send me to Botany Bay
really soon.”

 

 

“But why would you
want to got to
prison, and be transported?” Emer gasped, astonished.

 

 

“Because the food
in here is far
better than what we get in the workhouses, and we don’t have
to do
back-breaking work smashing stones to build roads eight hours
a day, six days a
week for it,” another youth replied in a dejected tone.

 

 

“My God, I had no
idea,” Emer
gasped.

 

 

They all nodded.

 

 

“The authorities
are willing to give
us food though we all sit around doing nothing in this cell,
and yet people who
wish to do a decent day’s work are unemployed and allowed to
starve. The only
help the authorities are
willing to give is to make them build roads that lead nowhere,
all for eight
pence a day, or a free bowl of gruel,” complained another lad
bitterly.

 

 

Emer listened all
day, and as she
did so, a plan began to form in the back of her mind.

 

 

Towards the
evening, Emer could no
longer stand sitting about doing nothing in the cramped
quarters, and so she
asked if she could see Terence, whose leg was injured, and
offered to use her
nursing skills on behalf of the prisoners if the governor was
willing to grant
permission.

 

 

The jailer raised
his eyebrows, but
he let Emer out of the cell, and led her to the tiny single
cell where Terence
was being kept as an avowed leader of the rebellion.

 

 

Emer was given some
water and
bandages, and left alone with Terence.

 

 

“What was your
other cell,
like?  Pretty
horrible, or is
it that you just couldn’t wait to see me again, my dear,”
Terence teased.

 

 

Emer told him all
she had learnt
from the young lads waiting to be transported, and also
revealed the appalling
state of their health.

 

 

“You're a far
better revolutionary
than I could ever be, Emer,” Terence remarked cryptically.

 

 

“How so?” Emer
asked, gazing up into
Terence’s sparkling blue eyes, which had suddenly grown quite
serious.

 

 

“Because you're
willing to help
anyone who needs it, rich or poor, and without ever once
expecting to be paid
back for it.”

 

 

Emer blushed at the
unexpected
compliment, and turned back to nursing Terence’s leg.

 

 

While she worked,
she asked him to
tell her a bit more about himself. Emer was astonished to
learn that he was a
prosperous merchant from Liverpool who earned thousands every
year, and yet he
had dropped everything to join an insignificant rebellion out
in wilds of Tipperary.

 

 

“At least the other
leaders, James
Stephens, and O’Brien managed to get away. With any luck they can
escape to the
Continent, and raise
French support for our cause,” Terence predicted
optimistically.

 

 

Emer shook her
head. “From what I
hear these days, the French are having a hard enough time
governing themselves
without interfering with the British, upon whose support they
rely for trade
and commerce,” Emer said grimly.

 

 

“You’re no ordinary
farm girl, are
you?” Terence said in surprise.

 

 

“No, I was a
governess, and then a
nurse, and now I’m a prisoner,” Emer said with a sigh.

 

 

“I'm sorry, it was
all my fault,”
Terence apologised, with his most charming smile.

 

 

She shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t
not really. You
see, I escaped
from the ship bringing me from Canada to Ireland to be transported
to Botany Bay anyway, so
I’m a fugitive
from justice no matter what way you look at it,” Emer declared
with a shrug.