Dark Rosaleen (3 page)

‘They seem to expect charity as if it was a right,' she said.

‘And we farmers have none. Nor should we. We own the land and these peasants must pay us to live on it. That's the rub, Kate. They will always find excuses not to. They'll blame their favourite saint or not enough rain for their barley or too much rain for their oats. Then they plead poverty. But I make them pay their gale even if it's with a pike up their backsides.'

‘What is a gale, Edward?'

‘It's what we call the rent they owe us. They're supposed to pay it every six months but few of them can ever make it. The trick is to leave it hanging, let them owe it, leave it in arrears. That way they are in continual debt. It's called the hanging gale and it means I can throw them out whenever I like and there's not a magistrate who can defy me. That's the law. Pay the gale or get out. That's the landlord's right, a sacred right to deal with our property as we choose.'

Kate turned onto her stomach and looked out to the sweep of country across the bay. The clouds made a sudden opening for the sun. The sky was brightening and in the clean sharp light she could see how neat and tidy the land was, the slowly rising hills, their smooth humps dipping into gentle valleys and, here and there, sprawling bundles of woodland. The slopes had been crafted into terraces by labouring hands over many centuries, line upon line of them, like a vast regiment of graves, the potato mounds, now putrefied by the blight. Yet the land looked lovely in its every shade of green and brown, with rocks scattered across it, bleached by the sun and salt air. It was all so rich and lush, so properly tied together.

Ogilvie took another swig of whiskey.

‘You ask why the peasant loves his potato. It's because it gives him so much spare time. That's why it is called the lazy crop. He banks them up in spring and then has all summer to drink and sire another child or two. What he needs is more labour to tire him and send him back to his cabin panting. Then we might see more industry and fewer babies.'

He laughed loudly at his wit again. Saliva dribbled from his lips, glistened on his chin, fell and settled on his waistcoat. He pulled himself across the blanket, closer to Kate. She could smell the drink and the meat on his breath and she turned her head away towards the sea. In the curve of the bay she could see a small boat, a fisherman standing at its centre, so stiff and still he might have been a mast. She waited for him to move, to throw a net or pull an anchor but he stood as if he had been frozen rigid.

She did not speak and hoped the silence would create space between them. She felt uneasy. She was not used to such familiarity. He touched her arm.

‘You have wondrous hair, Kate. In this light it's the colour of this autumn. And eyes so blue, I wonder if you haven't a little bit of Irish yourself. But it's a determined chin you have and I'll wager you've a touch of English arrogance when it's called for. You're damned pretty with it.'

She did not reply. He took her hand. His was wet and warm with sweat and grease.

‘I reckon the man who marries you, Kate, will spend half his time in heaven and the other in hell and it would be a damned fool who didn't find that more than a fair division.'

The whiskey was draining from her. The ease and contentment had gone and she was angry that he had put an end to it so abruptly, so crudely. She was suddenly aware of the lighthouse and its lamp glinting pale orange behind its glass.

‘We must go,' she said. ‘It'll be dark very soon.'

He hesitated for a moment, then stood and, still holding her hand, pulled her to her feet.

‘You have a man's grip, Kate. And a man's head too I think.'

She moved away from him. ‘But a woman's heart,' she replied. ‘And I think that makes a powerful mix.'

He cleared his throat and spat out the phlegm. ‘And a dangerous one too, Kate.'

He rolled up the blanket and followed her to the horses. He touched her again, resting his hand on her shoulder.

‘I know very little of you yet but it's comforting to have you on our side. You'll make a fine ally. Mind you, you'd make a damned desperate enemy.'

They mounted and trotted back the way they came, the sea either side of them. She undid the ribbon that tied her hair and let it fall to the wind. She had not met a man like him, whose sheer size was so oppressive and threatening and who spoke with so little sympathy.

‘Why do you talk of enemies and allies, Edward?'

‘Because that's how it is becoming. Your father is here to feed them with corn but that's only the start. Trouble will follow.'

‘Does my father know this?'

‘Your father may not know it yet. Relief Commissioners do not ask questions of men like me, men who know this land and the scum who scrounge off it. But tell your father …' He paused as if he was uncertain to continue. Then, ‘Tell him he will need more than a few padlocks on his warehouses to keep his corn safe. Soon he will be asking for a battalion of Redcoats.'

For the next hour they cantered easily, retracing their tracks along the river bank, staying with the fields until they came upon a stream that bypassed the little town of Bandon. There Ogilvie turned north towards a neighbouring landlord's lodge perched on the top of Coughlin Peak. There he had arranged a surprise dinner party for his new friend, the most attractive daughter of Ireland's Relief Commissioner. He had a plan and this was his set piece.

He reasoned that as Sir William was a stranger to Ireland and its many problems, he would need advice and guidance. Discretely offered, the Commissioner would be grateful and there was advantage to be had in such an exchange of favours. He knew, as all the landlords did, that if the hunger lasted through the winter, as it most certainly would, all but a few tenants would be unable to pay their gale. Those that could not would be forced to abandon their farms and soon their holdings would be overgrown with gorse and bramble. Yet without their rents, the estate's income would suffer and that could not be allowed to happen. It would be a poor manager who let a potato blight reduce the value of his land. Men might die but men could be replaced. But let ten shillings drop on the price of an acre though and it might take ten years to raise it back again. A landowner had a duty to protect the integrity of his land by whatever means; that was the law of property.

So another source of revenue had to be found and Ogilvie knew what that was. Those like him, who had seen famines come and go, knew that whenever cheap or free grain was on offer, there was always a profit in it for someone. And no one would be nearer to that profit than the man who had the ear of the Relief Commissioner. There was much to be gained in this new association. A profit and perhaps a marriage too. His father had been wise to send his letter of introduction to Sir William. It was a clever manoeuvre and he would make the most of it.

They saw the torches long before they saw the men carrying them. The procession of flames was a giant snake winding its way, dipping and weaving, through the lanes. Then Kate saw the riders at the front. Ogilvie was suddenly excited, shouting at her, ‘It's a tumbling gang. I didn't know they were already evicting here. What luck, Kate, what luck.'

She stood in her stirrups to see better. ‘Who are they, Edward? What are they doing? Who are they evicting?'

‘We are tumbling their homes, Kate, pulling them down. It's our day of reckoning. Remember what I said? They pay their rent or they get out.'

‘They are your men with the torches?'

‘No, not mine. My bailiff employs them. Ruffians mostly, with plenty of muscle and not afraid to hurt or get hurt. We sometimes have convicts sent from your own English prisons and good hard men they are too. Come Kate, we'll follow them. It'll be good sport. You'll not have witnessed this before.'

Never had she seen anything more frightening. The torches of oiled peat gave those who carried them the look of men gone mad, wild men, their faces distorted by drink and the pleasant prospect of violence, so sinister they could have been the Devil's own army. Shillelaghs of hardened thorn tree were stuck in their belts. Some carried slings and pouches full of pebbles, others held pikes of pointed steel. Behind them came two huge grey horses already harnessed, as if they had just that moment been taken from the plough.

Then in the dip she saw why they had come and she was afraid.

‘Edward, let us go now,' she whispered to him. She turned but he grabbed her reins.

‘No, Kate, not yet. You'll never forgive me if I let you miss this. You'll see it on your father's behalf so you can tell him how we administer justice on our land.'

The man and his wife were together at the door of a low cottage made of mud bricks and straw thatch. He had his arm around her and Kate could see the curve of a child in her belly. Their home had been whitewashed clean. There were plants still flowering by the door and more below the single, shuttered window. At the side was an apple tree stunted by age, festooned by washing still drying. It was the neatest little home she had yet seen.

The leading horseman dismounted and with two ruffians by his side went and spoke to the couple. Kate could not hear but she saw the horseman raise his arm and the man shake his head in reply. The woman then fell sobbing at her husband's feet.

It did not take long. Iron hooks tethered to ropes were thrown over the thatch, the harnesses hitched and the horses whipped. They reared as men struck their hind legs with sticks to make them move. As they strained forward, the roof collapsed and the cottage seemed to explode. Men came running forward, towing parcels of flaming peat, which they swung onto the straw. Then everything was ablaze. An old sow came running out, squealing, smothered in fire. The horses reared again.

In the light of the flames Kate saw children in a ditch nearby. Only their heads showed, their faces smeared in tears and soot and twisted in fear. Above them, coloured orange by the fire, their mother now lay still, her arms curled around the legs of their father. The pig on fire ran in circles and the father moved to save it but there was a shot and it fell dead. The man with the gun laughed, danced around it and from the smoke came the sickly sweet smell of burning blood.

It was over quickly. The men mounted their horses, the plough horses were led away and the tumbling gang stood still, warming themselves by the fires. Great bundles of flaming thatch soared into the black sky as the last of the mud walls collapsed in a heap of suffocating smoke. An order was shouted, the men turned and shuffled away back down the lane the way they had come.

Ogilvie let go of Kate's bridle. He was grinning. ‘It's all over and a more efficient tumbling you're not likely to see, Kate. And don't look so glum. They'll survive. They always do. They'll be off on the road come morning, begging, stealing, selling their children for sixpence. They'll manage to live or they'll manage to die and there's not a lot of negotiation in between. This is justice as we know it, Kate. The way it's always been. We win or they do. To prosper we have to put down those who wish to defy us.'

He saw her face in the firelight and did not wait for a reply. Instead he turned his horse and trotted off towards the column of men. Reluctantly, she pulled her reins to follow. She looked back. The man, husband of the woman, father of the children, was now on his own, standing as straight as a ramrod, shrouded in blue and brown smoke, the pig smouldering at his feet. He looked back at her. There was defiance in his face but no fear, no fear at all, not even anger. And she could not understand why.

She hesitated, wondering if there was something to be said, some gesture to be made, some little charity to be offered. There was money in her purse, a silk scarf around her neck, rings on her fingers. She waited, not knowing what to expect from him. Then she kicked hard into the mare's belly and rode as fast as she could towards the high dark shadow that was Coughlin Peak.

Six months had now passed since Kate had come to Ireland and the events of every day had been written into her diary, each new page more despairing than the last. Her father had promised they would return to England in the New Year, by summer, he said, at the very latest. Trevelyan had told him so and he wanted to believe it. But the calamity that was now beginning to engulf him told him otherwise. He now lived, week by week, in fear of the future.

The roads began to fill with the wretched, the hungry, the evicted. From the bogs of Erin to the mud cabins of Mayo, they tramped from village to village, from town to town and back again, searching for food and charity. Both were scarce. The lanes and tracks were crowded with searching, scavenging bands of hostile wanderers. They squatted in ditches or built shelters in shallow trenches roofed over with sticks and turf, to brave the winter's rain and cold. And they waited.

As the lush fields of summer green turned brown and the trees and hedgerows became their naked winter selves, she remembered the early days when villagers would step aside as she rode past and men would bring a forefinger to their foreheads in a salute of respect. Now they shook their fists and women shrieked their curses.

Soon she stopped her riding excursions and used the cold winds as an excuse to stay indoors. Her mare remained in the stable, unseen by her, cared for only by the yard boy. Why should she ride? There was no adventure now in the lanes and mountain paths, no excitement at the sight of the sea. How foreign it was again and how foreign it promised to remain. That thought tormented her. There were times, alone in her room, when she felt as if her hands were tied to some shackle on the floor, times sitting by candlelight when the walls crept closer, tighter, threatening to envelop and crush her.

There were nights when she could not sleep and nights when she would not. In her dreams images tormented her like a spinning carousel in her mind. Often she saw the ink drawing of the ragged boy, his eyes direct and as resolute as she first remembered him in the burning grate of her Lincolnshire home. She would reach out to save him and when their fingers were almost touching, the flames would burn her and she would wake trembling, holding her hand as if it was on fire. In another, she was surrounded by the shrieking women, grabbing at her, pulling her from her horse and stamping her into mud. She relived the night of the tumbling, marching with the gang, swinging her flaming peat into that neat and whitewashed home as the pig danced on fire and the pregnant mother clung to the man who had no anger in his face. And she would wake up almost retching with the stench of baked blood.