The Year of the French (64 page)

A cart rolling towards Ballintra stopped to offer him a ride, and he climbed up beside the driver. A twisted old man, the bad bone of his back curved forward, shoulders crowding his ears. They jogged along, beside the reed-fringed lake.

“If it is work at the harvest you want, you will find yourself late.”

“ ’Tis not.”

“Sure men were being hired from all over, from Godforsaken bogs and wherever. ’Tis a fine harvest, thanks be to God.”

“I can see that it is.”

“But it is a labourer you are, surely.”

“I am not. I am a schoolmaster.”

“A schoolmaster indeed, with shoulders like those and arms like an African ape. ’Tis a labourer you must be.”

“I have no responsibility for my appearance,” MacCarthy said. “There is no statute says a schoolmaster must be a dwarf.”

“Then you are a peculiar damned schoolmaster, if you will allow me to say so.”

“I have no quarrel with you there.”

“If it is a school you are looking for, you are on a fool’s errand. They have no school in Ballintra and they want none, and there is already a fine school in Drumshanbo.”

“I am looking for no school. I am going home. To Kerry.”

“To Kerry!” The farmer dropped his reins and turned to look at him. “With the roads around Carrick choked with English soldiers out of their minds with vengeance and oppression? And if you cross the Shannon to go south by the Drumshanbo road you will fall into worse madness. Longford and Granard have gone mad with pikes and trees of liberty and such foolishness.”

“I am not crossing the Shannon,” MacCarthy said. “Under no circumstances. I am not going to Drumshanbo.”

“You would have done better to bide where you were until this foolishness was ended.” He picked up his reins.

MacCarthy looked across the water. The surface held its secrets. Simple and straight, the reeds ran down to their tangled roots.

“Have you come from Mayo? ’Tis common knowledge that Mayo has fallen into the hands of cowherds and blasphemous Frenchmen.”

“That is it,” MacCarthy said. “ ’Twas no place for a man of education and piety.”

“Indeed not. There is a madness fallen upon the land, ’tis far worse than the Whiteboys. Nothing will settle this but the redcoat soldiers rampaging forwards and back, shooting and hanging. God’s curse upon the wild fellows who brought all this down upon us.”

“In Mayo they were sorely provoked,” MacCarthy said. “Cabins burned down, and the yeomen making free with the lash and the triangle.”

“Ach,” the farmer said. “They will get their fill of the triangle before this is ended, and those mad fellows in Longford as well.”

“What is this fine school they have in Drumshanbo?” MacCarthy said.

“ ’Tis a well-known academy. It has attracted scholars from as far off as Mohill. There is a master in that school could out-Latin a priest. Mind you, he is not the most reputable of men.”

“What name has he?”

“His name is Martin Laverty. It would not surprise me if you had heard it.”

MacCarthy turned from the lake and stared at him. “By God, I do indeed know a master named Martin Laverty. Is he a tall man, with a bend in his back like your own?”

“He is a blind man.”

MacCarthy shook his head. “The Martin Laverty I know is no more blind than I am.”

“Well, this one is. He trains up lads for the seminary is all I know, and he used have a tinker woman, but she ran off. He was in great difficulty with the priest until that tinker woman ran off.”

“A tall, broken-backed man,” MacCarthy said, “and well known throughout Munster for his poetry. There is a poem of his that I would pay gold sovereigns to have made. By Christ, that is a fine poem. Ach, sure what would the man who wrote that poem be doing in the County Leitrim.”

“I have heard nothing of that,” the farmer said. “I have not heard him spoken of in regard to poetry. But he is a bad one for the drink, I can tell you. ’Twould sicken you to see him grope his way home after the tavern has closed, and as drunk as his tinker. How can a blind man teach school, will you tell me, but he is choked with Latin.”

“Merciful God, what a fate,” MacCarthy said. “Blind in Drumshanbo.”

“There is no finer town in Leitrim. Sure you are talking of a place you have never visited. ’Tis grateful that a blind drunkard of a schoolmaster like Martin Laverty should be that he has found a living in Drumshanbo.”

“The Martin Laverty I know is a poet, and keeps a school in Ballyvourney, in West Cork. And he has made one fine poem, an aisling. If it was dark night, I would smash up your cart and set fire to it that I might read that poem. And if I could not read by the flames from your rotten wood I would burn Drumshanbo.”

“Who in the name of God are you?” the farmer cried, appalled. “To use mad abusive language to me on my own cart. A vagabone that I lifted up from a ditch in the kindness of my heart.”

“I am Owen MacCarthy of Tralee, you wizened little turd, and I have not sunk so deep into misfortune that I must sit atop a heap of stinking onions and hear poets vilified. You can stop your cart and let me down from it.”

“I can indeed. It is some class of madman you are. Poor repayment you have given me for my kindness to you.”

“Is it for courtesy itself that you would be repayed, you mean begrudger?” MacCarthy climbed down and stood facing him. “The finest town in Leitrim. By Jesus, there is a boast for you. If the dogs and cats of Kerry knew about Leitrim, they would come here to piss.”

It was five mortal hours before he reached Ballintra, and there, as Falvey had told him, was the crossroads—the road south, and the road over the bridge, into Drumshanbo. He stood upon the steep hump of the bridge, and looked down. Greatest of all rivers, wreathed in legend, it flowed towards Limerick and the open sea, moving through unknown counties, opening upon lakes he had never seen, plunging southwards past villages whose names he had never heard spoken. But in a week, with luck, he would be in Patrick Tubridy’s tavern in Athlone, where the river flowed beneath a handsome five-spanned bridge. Safe there from all harm, the air filled with friendly voices, the jug of gold-fired whiskey within easy reach of his hand. A clear road then, south to Rathkeale, and then south again to Newcastle West. His legs had never been stronger, and he had shillings and two sovereigns in his pocket. He would be shut of it forever, the thin, hysterical beat of the French drums, the clumsy scythes and murderous pikes, the blood-soaked grasses. Beneath his feet, a twig floated southwards, towards Athlone.

But it was no journey to set out upon with a dry mouth. Nor was there need for that, not if Martin Laverty indeed dwelled in Drumshanbo, blind, shunned even by tinker wenches. He turned his head and looked back towards the south road, as though to make certain that it was still there, ready for him, and he made a guess as to how many hours of sun he had left. Then, pulled like the twig by casual currents, he crossed over the bridge into Drumshanbo.

It was a pleasant town, the farmer had been right about that, at least, neat and well tended, with both church and chapel, its green protected by a low fence, huckster’s shop, two taverns, a market house. He went into the nearer tavern, cut his thirst, and then bought a jug and asked the way to the schoolmaster’s house.

A long, low-roofed cabin at the far end of the village, its walls streaked a dark, dirty yellow beneath the thatch. He pushed open the door, and called out, “Martin. Martin Laverty.” Forms had been drawn close to the dead fire. A case of books stood against one wall. “Martin Laverty!” he called again, and waited.

Laverty came at last from the other room, a broken-backed man, holding one hand against the rough frame of the doorway. His eyes, pale blue and wide, stared past MacCarthy.

“ ’Tis Owen MacCarthy, Martin. Owen MacCarthy of Tralee.”

A long pause before he answered with a short bark of a laugh. “ ’Tis not. Indeed ’tis not. What would Owen MacCarthy be doing in Drumshanbo? Who gave you Owen MacCarthy’s name, you blackguard?”

“What is Martin Laverty doing here? By God, a man taking a cart to Ballintra told me that you were master here, and I did not believe him.”

“You believe him now. Did he tell you I was blind? Come here, and let me put my two arms around you.”

MacCarthy put the jug on one of the forms and crossed the room to Laverty. He put his arms around him and embraced him. Laverty ran MacCarthy’s hand roughly across his face, and then held it there for a moment.

“Oh, by God, ’tis you,” Laverty said. “ ’Tis either Owen MacCarthy or some great cowherd playing pranks upon me.”

MacCarthy stood back, and with his hands on Laverty’s shoulders recited the first lines of the aisling. He stared into Laverty’s eyes, blue but with something finer than film upon them.

“Owen, Owen. ’Tis welcome you are in this house. Wait now, and I will bring us out a sup.”

“Sure you cannot believe that I came to you with empty hands. I have a full jug with me. All that we need now is a pair of glasses.”

They sat drinking on two of the forms, facing each other, the jug beside MacCarthy.

“ ’Tis the queerest damned thing that has ever been, Owen. Four years it has been, five almost. Mind you, there has been blindness in my family. My father went blind, and my sister when she was but a wee girl. I don’t know. These things go in families, they say. But at first I thought little of it. It was a cloudiness at first, and it came and it went. But what it is now—do you know, Owen, we think that a blind man lives in an eternal night, but it is not like that at all. It is as though someone flung a pan of milk into your face. I can tell the daylight from the dark, and in the daylight I can make out forms and shapes. They hover before me. There is a thin curtain between themselves and me, and for a year or more I wanted to lay hold of that curtain and tear it down.”

“ ’Tis surely not because of the blindness that you left Ballyvourney? No man there was held in greater respect or affection.”

“Ach, ’twas not. When I knew that the curtain would be with me always, I took leave of my senses and set out upon the road. For a year I was in Buttevant and after that in Kanturk. Do you know Kanturk?”

“I do indeed. There is a great ruined castle of the MacCarthys there. Sure you were in good hands there.”

“Ach, but that was it. It was neither in good nor in bad hands that I would be, and I wanted no man’s pity. By God, I was the best poet in Cork, and that is no small boast. Don’t be a miser with the jug, Owen.”

Dust choked the air. The room had not been swept out in a month, nor the window opened.

“Sure ’twas in a far corner that I ended up myself, Martin. In a village on the wild Mayo coast.”

It was as though he had not spoken. The mild eyes were turned inwards.

“Until a month ago I had a tinker to look after me and attend to my wants. One of the Coffeys. But you know yourself what they are like. ’Tis a fool as well as blind she must have thought me. I waited behind the door until she came in one night, and I gave her the thumping of her life. O by God, I almost broke the stick on her ribs, and she squealing like a pig. I have been on my own since then. The lads will not be here until the harvest has been saved. No man knows what trouble is who has not opened his bed to a tinker.”

“ ’Twas a fine quiet girl that I had above in Mayo,” MacCarthy said. “A young widow, but you could encircle her waist with your two hands.”

Laverty held out his glass again. MacCarthy filled it and his own.

“Weren’t we great lads, Owen? Myself and yourself and MacDermott and the rest of them. There was a brightness in the air and it put a shine upon our words. Mind you, you were the man for melancholy. Not two months ago I was remembering that poem of yours upon your father’s death. That poem would drain the light from the sun.”

MacCarthy shook his head. “I cannot believe that I have found you here. Martin Laverty keeping a hedge school in Leitrim.”

“ ’Tis no hedge school. ’Tis a classical academy, and I have most of the lads who are going on for the seminary. ’Tis a quiet life, and I have accepted quietness with this.” He held his hand to his eyes. “On fine evenings I go down to the bridge, and stand listening to the Shannon. I stand there for an hour, sometimes, and then walk back to Dunphy’s alehouse. I am all on my own now.”

“Do the people here know at all who you are?”

“Ach, they are simple poor people. Michael O’Tuoma was here with me for a week last year, and said all of his new poems for me. By God, he is an industrious man.”

“He always was,” MacCarthy said. “Industrious is the word for it.” He looked around the dusty room. Filled at times with the noise of boys, voices stumbling over words of Latin big as boulders, the fireplace glowing with red rods of turf. It was a blind man’s room now, shrunken and cheerless. “You would do well to stay clear of that bridge for the next day or two, Martin,” he said. “The rebels and the Frenchmen will be coming this way, and after them the redcoat soldiers.”

Laverty smacked his lips to taste the whiskey. “How is it that you know that, Owen?”

“Because I was with them. I was with them from Killala out, but I cut loose. I think their luck has run out.”

“May God grant them victory,” Laverty said, in the flat, smooth tone of a man saying his beads, the words hollow and rattling. “May this be the year of the Gael, and may the stranger be driven from Ireland at the point of the sword.”

“Not this year,” MacCarthy said.

“You were always a bold man, Owen. When you were dwelling in Macroom, it was said that you knew more than it was good to know about Paddy Lynch the Whiteboy.”

“What I know about Paddy Lynch is that he was hanged in Macroom. And these fellows will be hanged, or blown apart by cannon.”

“Any night that you go into Dunphy’s you will hear talk about pikes and such. And they have made up songs about it, such songs as you would not believe, they are dreadful stuff, and cowherds and spalpeens bawling them out at the top of their lungs. The year of liberty, they call it.”

“The year is almost over,” MacCarthy said. He filled their glasses again, and then shook the jug. Half empty.