The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) (29 page)

 

 

She had recoiled at
the sight of the
children, and no one could find Emer lacking now when they
learned the truth,
as they were bound to thanks to the Bishop, that Madeleine had
been just a poor
orphan herself. Most likely illegitimate, if she had been
abandoned on the
church steps as a babe as the Bishop had told her.

 

 

Then there was the
shocking
information that Adrian had revealed to her about Madeleine's
lack of virtue.
It spoke volumes for Dalton's character that he had never
availed himself of
what had obviously been so freely given to so many.

 

 

Frederick had
clearly let their
steamships dazzle him so much that he had not thought to look
her over with the
appropriate due diligence.

 

 

So as Emer waged
her war against the
fever, her heart waged a war with her head, and her heart
began to win. If she
ever got out of this prison in one piece, she was going to
find Dalton again,
and together
they would decide on
their future, no matter what his father said.

 

 

But first she had
to get out of
prison, and back to Canada, and then she would have to find
her son…

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 

 

At the end of her
first fortnight at
Clonmel prison, Emer was just starting to serve the midday
meal in the wooden
bowls the prison had proved her with, when she saw a tall
figure in a blue coat
and light plaid trousers towering over her in the open doorway
to the
infirmary.

 

 

With a sinking
heart Emer’s eyes met
the steel-grey ones of the new inmate, and then she knew that
now there was
truly no hope left for Young Ireland. William Smith O’Brien had been
captured.

 

 

“You’re the woman
from the cabbage
patch,” he exclaimed, as recognition finally came to him.

 

 

“Well, Kilbracken,
County Meath,
actually, by way of Quebec, Canada, but yes, it’s me. I’ll tell
Terence when I see him that
you’re here.”

 

 

“Yes, thank you.”
O’Brien nodded
gravely, and was led away to his cell on the other side of the
corridor.

 

 

She sighed, and
turned back to her
work. The futile rebellion had truly ended now. The only
question now was, how
many of them would be made to suffer for it.

 

 

Emer’s life inside
the prison was
always hectically busy, but at least it kept her from brooding
over what might
happen to her. She hoped that her letters might eventually
reach Dalton and her
friends in Quebec, and that one of them might come to see her,
and perhaps try
to get Frederick Randall’s false conviction of her for arson
overturned.

 

 

As for being
accused of treason,
surely the British government couldn’t be so unreasonable as
to wish to convict
a woman who was only trying to help the defenceless men who
had been shot?

 

 

But she had to wait
until their
trial to find out the answer to that question, and their court
date wasn’t
until the tenth of October.

 

 

August and
September therefore seemed
to plod along at an unusually slow pace, but at the same time
as she stared
death in the face, Emer had never felt so alive, to new ideas,
possibilities,
and hope for the future in Ireland despite all the suffering
and despair she
had witnessed within the past eighteen months of her life.

 

 

Her intellectual
stimulation while
she laboured was provided by Terence and O’Brien, who talked
to her and read
the papers aloud as she cooked, and also lent a hand with some
of her more
difficult chores.

 

 

Being all three of
them political
prisoners, they were accorded a relative degree of freedom
compared to the
ordinary felons, who remained locked in their putrid cells
most of the time
apart from their one hour of exercise each day.

 

 

The men would
frequently talk about
politics, and where they believed they had gone wrong, and
then Emer was
content to listen.

 

 

But sometimes she
initiated
conversations about prison and workhouse reforms, thinking
about her own model
orphanage in Quebec, which she longed to see up and running
again one day.

 

 

One night Terence
sighed, “It was a
disaster right from the start.
All
the help we were promised, the numbers quoted in the papers
saying how much
support we had, that false newspaper account in the
Times
saying we had
burnt Thurles railway
station and taken several towns, it was all one huge series of
ludicrous
errors.”

 

 

“Don’t mention
Thurles railway
station to me, please,” O’Brien groaned, with a wry smile on
his face. “It
was certainly standing when last I
was there, on the day they captured me and dragged me away to
prison.

 

 

"I suppose I have
only myself
to blame. I
should have known
better. But the irony is, I only came down here to the south
to determine the
level of support for a rising, not to cause one. I think most of the
poor devils only
came to the meetings in
the first place because they thought I would feed them all. I may
have helped a
few of the
miserable wretches with a couple of crusts of bread, but if
there had ever been
any serious fighting, it would have been like leading lambs to
the slaughter.”
O’Brien shook his head.

 

 

“It may have all
gone wrong in the
end, but at least you were sincere," Emer said mildly. "You weren’t
trying
to gain power
for yourselves, you were trying to show that the state of
things in Ireland
can’t go on like this for much longer.

 

 

"I know that lives
were lost,
and it certainly looks to me as though the government is going
to make you
forfeit your own lives for what you did. Yet faced with the
despair we see
around us here, what other choice did you have? It was either be
arrested anyway, and go
to prison with
nothing accomplished, or try to go out in a blaze of glory
that would kindle
the Irish spirit again out of the ashes of our country.”

 

 

Terence grinned.
“That's a generous
assessment of the whole fiasco, my dear, for which I thank you
from the bottom
of my heart.”

 

 

“And there was that
traitor Dobbyns
as well, who must have told them everything. Lord Clarendon must
have known about the
rumours of
rebellion, and waited until I was out of Dublin, to declare
that the writ of
Habeus corpus had been revoked,” O’Brien accused angrily.

 

 

“Once myself and
all of our other
Young Ireland supporters and council members were separated,
they were able to
try to arrest us one at a time, with no need to state the
charges against us.”

 

 

“Believe me,
gentleman, I do
sympathise,” Emer declared earnestly.

 

 

Both of the men
looked at her
sharply, recalling all she had told them of her suffering at
the hands of
Frederick Randall, which she had confided to them as they sat
week after week
awaiting trial.

 

 

O’Brien had been
kind enough to
purchase her a pen and some paper, and she had written several
relatively
cheerful-sounding letters to Canada telling her friends where
she was, and what
had befallen her.

 

 

She had glossed
over the grimmer
details, and omitted all mention of the fact that she was on
trial for
treason. She had
simply asked
desperately for news of William, and how much she missed him.
Every time she
posted one of them, she wondered if Dalton would come for her,
and whether or
not he might be on a fool’s errand even if he did.

 

 

She tried to remain
positive that
all would be well, and drew many sketches and lists of items
for her utopian
communities which she and Terence and O’Brien debated at
length on the long,
darkening nights as September turned to October, and Quebec
became one distant
dream for Emer when no letters were forthcoming from anyone
there.

 

 

“But why not teach
the prisoners
skills?" she
argued one
night. "Let’s
face it, most
of these boys only ever knew the potato, and when it
disappeared, so did
everything they had.

 

 

"Why not teach them
carpentry,
blacksmithing, and animal husbandry, plus essential farming
skills, so that
when they do eventually leave prison, they can have a better
life, and be much
less likely to return to crime?
If
we could do that here in Ireland, there would be no point in
going to such vast
expense to transport them.
Most of
these boys are only in here because they would have starved
otherwise. They're
not hardened criminals.
The governor has admitted it himself.”

 

 

“Yes, Emer, we
know, but who would
pay for it all, even assuming that the authorities agreed with
you? That sort
of set-up cost money for
teachers and raw materials and so on,” O’Brien pointed out.

 

 

“People with money,
like your good
self, sir, should all take their responsibilities to the poor
more
seriously. It’s
no good them
paying money for Parish relief that does little more than fill
the belly for a
day. People
want
to work. It keeps them occupied during the
day,
and gives them a
purpose in life.

 

 

"Instead of paying
a pound a
week per person to feed thousands of people a tiny amount of
oats, as the
relief committees have been doing, why not take those
thousands of pounds, and
buy farming implements and seed, and let them raise food for
themselves?”

 

 

“And who would own
the land?”
O’Brien queried.

 

 

“Perhaps in time
they could all buy
their own land, say within ten years? The ones who worked hard would
thrive, so long as they
didn’t depend
exclusively on the potato,” Emer suggested.

 

 

“You're forgetting
that the policy
of subdividing land is what got us into trouble in the first
place in this
country,” O’Brien reminded her.

 

 

“In that case then,
there could be
collective ownership, instead of everyone just struggling with
their own tiny
plots. The land could be leased to the tenants in perpetuity
provided they all
cooperated to produce what was needed. Carrots, turnips, livestock,
dairy cattle, pigs, varied
crops, not just
the potato, and in that way the entire estate would be
self-sufficient, and
even if one failed, some other crops would succeed.

 

 

"My orphanage would
have been
self sufficient and a model of what could be accomplished if
the wretched
building hadn’t been burnt down by my enemy,” Emer said with a
sigh.

 

 

“I’m not saying it
wasn’t a
wonderful success, my dear girl,” Terence said, “but it nearly
cost you your
life. Though you
are getting
better every day, you could have ended up a permanent
cripple.”

 

 

Emer looked at Terence angrily, and
argued, “It
was
a success. It
burning down had
nothing to do with the children or staff. It had everything to do
with that horrible woman I told
you about who
was trying to get rid of me.

 

 

"If I tried
something like that
here in Ireland, or attempted to start a new farm prison, I'm
sure it would
work. O’Brien,
Terence, you’re
both merchants. Look
over these
figures I’ve drawn up, please.
Then if you seriously think I’m wrong, I shall forget
about the whole
idea. But if I’m
right, I'll bet
you that in six months, I could make such places going
concerns.”

 

 

Terence grinned
lazily. “Well,
my dear, we have nothing better
to do with our time stuck in here. So what do you say we
humour this
revolutionary, O’Brien, and have a look at her ideas?”

 

 

O’Brien shrugged,
and said, “Why
not? It could be
diverting.”

 

 

Emer smiled
sweetly. “I’ve got an
even better idea, gentleman, if you're so bored. I need some
firewood, and the privies
are just about to
overflow.”

 

 

Terence and O’Brien
looked at each
other warily. O’Brien
just missed
grabbing the axe off the block by a split second.

 

 

“I say, Emer,
that’s the third time
this week I’ve been stuck with the privies. If I didn’t know better,
I’d say you
were playing
favourites,” O’Brien complained in a hurt tone.

 

 

“I am, O’Brien, and
I’m not ashamed
to admit it. A
Member of
Parliament you may be, but I still have to share a room with
Terence,” Emer
laughed, "so I have a vested interest in keeping him in the
best
odor."

 

 

O’Brien smiled
good-naturedly.
“Point taken. But just for that, when I finally do read your
plans, I shall be
ruthlessly critical.”

 

 

“I don’t mind, so
long as you both
look at them seriously.”

 

 

In the end, they
admitted that Emer
did seem to have worked things out, so well in fact that
O’Brien encouraged
Emer to submit the prison farming proposal to the governor,
and even helped her
copy it all out neatly in a professional manner just like an
estate
ledger.

 

 

“And before you
give it to him, I
know several people in England concerned with prison reform
who would be most
interested to see these ideas. So I shall make a second copy,
and send it to
them, though with your name on it, of course,” O’Brien
offered.