The Star of the Sea (42 page)

November the elivith 1844 Martlemas
Lord David Merridith
sun of THE MURDERER
we men ar sertin of yr Fathers tenants in the distrits of
kilekierin carna glinsk and ailencally this past sixmounth he
has bien raesing the rents by dubbal an more al around

anyman belaytd with his rent by wan weak is afterbien told he is to be evictd no mather his sircumstans or Fambly

he is after sellin some lands alriddy

a third porshion of we his tenants ar now orderd to pay rent to that bastard Blake at Tully a grater meazel who never livd and he is after evicting many by now

five hunderred are put out on the roadsied many is starvd hier with no Relief espectd

theyr is NOTHIN espectd hier only an imediat starvasion

yr Father is afterbien warnd but has not quit so i do heirby warn yrself to advis him most surtinly to put back the rents the way they war an help the poeple in thise desprit timse or if he does not he an yr Fambly will fiel the displaeshuor of me an my bretherin

i am my men will bare it no longer WE AR NOT DOGS

y wil mayke him to quit it or els-be lybill

we are men who wuld rather to work than to fiet but by Christ we will fiet when we have to

shuld he contineu to grind us we wil be under the nisissity of shooting any member of yr Fambly in the open dayliet for we may as wel loose our lifes as to loose our suport

nobody wil get no merci not yrself nor yr Wife nor yr Suns nor any othr whiel or own wifes an childerin get only starvasion an coldnes

i am as wel die on a Rope as by hunger

it puts no plaeshour on us to writ this words but we mean it we swaeyr to Jaesis Chriyst Crucifiyd an vow it solem with our bloud so help us

thier is yr doom David Merridith

so if you liyk it

let yr Father contineu in his tirany

an you wil right sune be held lybill for it

y may see from this letter that we nowhere is yr nous

Be warnd – London is not so far from connemara

YAR WATCHD & MAYBE GOT ANNY TIME

i am

yr humbl an lyill srvnt (no more)

Cptn Moonliet of the Relybill Hibernian Defenders

Jaesis rest her but yr late Mother wuld be ASHAMD this day of the ROTTIN name of Merridith

The smile of the foxman flamed through his mind: the picture of him walking away down the street.

He held the letter lightly, as though the paper were burning.

‘How did you know?’ Laura asked him tearfully.

Her husband answered quietly that it was a matter of intuition.

He wrote to his father immediately but the letter came back unopened. He sent it again but there was no response. Laura said he should go to Galway without further delay, but Merridith felt that might be to make things worse. Almost eight years had passed in silence between son and father. The Earl had never even responded to the news of the births of his grandchildren; had ignored Merridith’s periodic attempts at reconciliation. You couldn’t just amble up to the house without warning.

‘Then write and say you’re coming whether he likes it or no,’ Laura said.

But the spurned son had not been able to do that.

Instead he wrote to the Rector of Drumcliffe, Richard Pollexfen, revealing nothing about the note he had received from the tenants, but merely asking for news of the estate. A long letter came back the following week. Merridith was thanked for the
generous donation he had sent and assured that the Rector would put it to good use among the local poor. Things at Kingscourt were not at all happy lately. The north wing had been closed up; the roof had collapsed. The storms of last November, which had damaged the manor, had also torn down the piers in the bay. The fishermen had nowhere to land a catch. Many were begging. Some were in the almshouse. Since the last of the servants had resigned from his father’s employment, the manor had gone to rack and ruin. Only the groom, one Burke, remained on the property, and was living in the ruins of the burnt-down gate lodge. The Earl rarely left the house any more.

The tenants’ rents had been raised by a third in February and then doubled at the start of the summer. Every one of the three thousand families had received a visit from a hired agent, saying rents would have to be paid promptly from now on, or evictions would follow within a matter of weeks. Many observers had found what had happened inexplicable. Lord Kingscourt, if doing things in his own certain style, had always been regarded as fair to the tenants. But that had now changed. Some of his actions were quite beyond understanding. He, the Rector, had tried to intervene, but His Lordship had refused to meet him or even to respond to his letters.

It was true that about a third of the estate appeared to have been sold to Blake of Tully. Immediately the Commander had evicted seven hundred families for non-payment of arrears. The situation was becoming critical. A gang of agitators calling itself ‘The Hibernian Defenders’ or ‘Else-be Liables’ – you did as they ordered, or else you were liable – had been attacking the outlying fields of Connemara’s estates, maiming cattle and burning crops. They ran around the country in hoods and cloaks. Their marque was an H enclosed by a heart. If a man were denounced as a collaborator by one of his neighbours he would soon receive a visit from these miscreant savages. Seven Connaught landlords had been assaulted this year. It was only a matter of time before one of them was murdered. ‘Old obeisances are eroding with frightening suddenness, as the banks of the bay after November’s storms.’ Clichés were beginning to acquire fresh power, for it might now be said with a bitter accuracy that Connemara was edging close to the precipice. Where it all might end was anyone’s guess, but open revolution must
be counted a possibility. ‘If Your Lordship can think of any means by which your father might be converted from his recent policies, that would be to do him and the people a very great service.’

Emily returned from her travels in Tuscany. Natasha left Cambridge where she had been studying privately in the hope of somehow gaining admission to take a degree. Both went to Galway at Easter ’45 and stayed. Emily’s letters to London were frightened and confused. The poverty of the people was shocking, she wrote; it seemed far worse than anything she could remember. She had been reading newspaper reports of a strange new potato murrain which had appeared in Europe; if it made its way to Ireland something dreadful would happen. Her father was refusing to discuss whatever he had done. It was nobody’s business how he ran his own lands. His health was deteriorating with a speed that was appalling. He could hardly sit up and had to be helped to do everything. A woman in Clifden market had spat at Natasha’s feet. A little boy had shouted: ‘Landlord’s bitch’. One day, while out walking, she had been followed across the fields by a trio of men in hoods and cloaks.

By September it was clear that the strange blight had come. The smell of the rotting tubers tainted the air of Connemara: a choking sickly-sweetness, like cheap perfume. The poor had nothing. Many were already starving. Lady Emily wrote to her brother and pleaded with him to help. He sent a donation of two hundred pounds.

And then his father had died. And everything had changed. He remembered the words of Emily’s telegram. ‘Papa’s sufferings almost ended. He asks for you, Davey.’

He and Laura had travelled to Dublin that night. His father had died the following evening in the arms of the heir he had driven away. Under his pillow was a note he had left, in a spidery and almost illegible scrawl. According to its date, it had been written more than a year ago, and Merridith did not know which possibility was the more terrible: that his father had lost his understanding of time, or had indeed written it a year ago, knowing he was about to slip into the void. ‘Forgive me, David. Bury me beside Mama. Do your best for the tenants, always.’

The Union colours flown on his last battleship were draped across the casket by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Atop was placed a pair of buckskin gloves which the deceased had been gifted by
Nelson at Copenhagen. On the advice of the Sergeant of the local constabulary, ‘driver-men’ with shotguns were hired to accompany the coffin, in case the Liables came to attack it. A riderless horse clopped ahead of the procession to Clifden; a slightly ludicrous touch, Merridith thought, and he wondered who had insisted on it.

The roads were heavy with that saccharine stench, the once green meadows now swamps of turbid grime. A cabin was burning on a stone-strewn hillside. Small clumps of clothing were lying in the fields.

Most of the resident landlords of the county were waiting in the dim and draughty chapel. Amelia Blake and her husband, the Baron of Leinster. Tommy Martin of Ballynahinch. Hyacinth D’Arcy of Clifden. The catafalque by the altar had been covered with a banner that was emerald green with a large gold harp. The late Earl’s instruction, the Rector explained; the standard had been draped over his own father’s casket. Not one of Kingscourt’s tenants or former tenants came. Many in the streets of Clifden turned their backs as the cortège passed. One man who had been evicted was seen to spit on the ground. Another called out: ‘May the bastard rot.’ But the mourners pretended they did not notice.

There was a brave attempt at singing, and even at harmony, but the nineteen voices comprising the entire congregation were not quite loud enough to be heard above the organ.

Jesus, Saviour; pilot me,

Over life’s tempestuous sea.

Unknown waves before me roll,

Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal.

Chart and compass come from thee,

Jesus, Saviour; pilot me.

The Lord-Lieutenant dropped the first clod of earth in the grave. He gave a salute as the Last Post was sounded but there was no oration and no volley of gunfire, the Earl having made clear that he wanted neither. The Rector read the verses from the opening of Genesis: the creation of the world, the naming of the animals. Captain Helpman of the Coastguard laid a wreath of white lilies. The instant the Prayers of Farewell were finished, Merridith said he needed a few
moments to be alone. Everyone understood. He was told to take his time. Hard to be the mourner who disappointed the deceased.

He walked around the rear of the black stone church, opened his cuff, tugged up his sleeve. Improvised a tourniquet from his New College necktie. Took what he needed from the pocket of his overcoat.

The spike pierced his skin with a small, clean burn. A bright bead of blood appeared from the puncture and he soaked it dry with a monogrammed handkerchief of his father’s. Dullness flooded him: a soporific heaviness. He turned to leave.

And that was when he saw her.

Standing in the rusted gateway with a baby in her arms.

She was wearing a black bodice and a dark green skirt; laced black boots that came up to her ankles; and it came into his mind for no good reason that he could not remember seeing her wearing anything on her feet.

A ribbon was tied around her frost-white neck; a twist of dried rushes around her fragile wrist. She was humming a ballad of broken love: quietly, coldly, with graven stillness. Crows rose up from the scrubland behind her like fragments of charred paper borne on the breeze. Her eyes had a defeated, closed-down look, but otherwise she had not changed in any way he could see. It shocked him how very little she had changed. A little thinner, that was all. A little more pale. But her hair was still beautiful: lustrous and black.

He tried to smile. She did not smile back. Unbuttoning her bodice, she put the infant to her right breast and continued lilting it the ancient tune. He knew the song. He had heard it often. It was said that if you sang it to an enemy, he died.

‘Mary?’

She took a sharp step back from him but never stopped humming. He watched the tiny child as it suckled, as her fingertips stroked its downy head around the fontanelle. The child gave a stir and wearily puked. Weakness trembled the watcher’s legs. He wanted to sit. He wanted to run. A hot, strong thirst was salting his mouth.