And then after all that, Owen and Michael had gotten onto the gang only by giving the last jug of Patrick’s poitín to the foreman.
Michael had sat a long time, staring into the fire.
“Come to bed, a stór.”
He’d get only two or three hours of sleep before he’d have to walk the five miles back to Galway City, barefoot in the cold rain, to join the work gang.
How sad and defeated Michael had seemed that night. I’d wanted so to comfort him, kiss him, make love. But when he’d pulled me close to him, I’d held myself stiff and tight.
“We can’t,” I’d told him. “We can’t risk another now.”
“I know,” he’d said, and turned away.
But now, hope. Seeing the potatoes planted and growing will strengthen us all. And not a moment too soon. Bad weather had stopped the fishing again. Both the food Owen and Michael had bought in the fall and the meal Mam and I got in February were gone. We relied on what the pennies Michael earned on the roadworks could buy—Peel’s brimstone, the cheapest food sold in the market.
“Bridget’s hungry, Mam,” Jamesy said, the guardian now of his little sister—a year old next month, but she couldn’t pull herself up and stand as the others had at her age and hadn’t said a word beyond “Mama.” Jamesy crawled with her, worried when she’d collapse after a short distance.
“Nearly cooked,” I said to Jamesy.
He only nodded.
I was making a stirabout from the Indian corn. A slow process. I couldn’t eat it. The look and smell of the stuff always brought back the awful night I’d lost baby Grellan. Paddy hated it, too, shuddering now as he ate, while Jamesy dug into the pot with a flat stick and I fed Bridget.
“After we dig the pratties, you’ll never have to eat this again,” I said to the boys.
“Will they be ready by my birthday, Mam?” Paddy asked.
“They’ll take a longer time.” I took his fingers, named the five months until the harvest. “And by Jamesy’s birthday at Samhain, the pit will be full to the top with lovely white potatoes,” I said. “But we must get back to work, Paddy. We have to have the eyes ready for your da tonight.”
The moon would be near full for the next few days, so Michael could set the beds out at night after he came home from the roads.
“Now, aren’t you glad we didn’t eat the seed potatoes?” I said to the boys as the pile of eyes grew. “Every eye is a plant, and every plant will be twenty beautiful white potatoes. A generous plant.”
Michael came home two hours after nightfall.
“Look what I did, Da!” Paddy pulled him over to see the pot full of eyes.
“Wonderful! Impressive!” Michael said.
“Mam helped, too,” Paddy said.
“A good team,” Michael said. He set down a sack.
“You got more meal,” I said.
“Something better. Seeds for turnips and wheat. The seed merchants came around giving credit. They’ll collect the money directly from the foreman before we’re paid, with interest put on. What choice? We have to get the seeds and the potatoes in the ground now.” He sat down near the fire. “I’ll miss Patrick’s help.”
“Any word?” I said.
“Nothing. If he’d been taken, we’d know,” he said.
“Are you talking about Uncle Patrick, Da?” Paddy said.
“Don’t worry about your uncle Patrick. You’re the man to help me set the potatoes this year.”
“Come over to Bridget, Da,” Jamesy said, pulling on Michael’s hand.
“She’s asleep, Jamesy.”
“She’s not, Mam.”
I’m glad now there’d been no buyers for the cradle Michael had made. Jamesy got such pleasure from rocking her in it. Now he helped her sit up and look at Michael. “Go on, Bridget,” Jamesy said. “Go on.”
“Da,” said Bridget. “Da, Da.”
“Talking!” Michael said. “Talking!” He lifted Bridget from the cradle. “Bridget, my princess,” he said, holding her up in the air. He winced then and set her back down; the strain of holding her up was too much, his back that bad.
“Good lad, Jamesy,” I said. “Rest a bit before we start, Michael.”
“Too much to do.”
We were not the only family planting by moonlight. I saw dark shapes scattered across the hillside—the Mulloys, the Dwyers, the McGuires, the Ryans—all the fathers taking their only free hours to put in their potatoes. No time to sleep.
Michael turned the ground with the spade, and Paddy and I followed, dropping in the eyes, while Jamesy minded Bridget in the cottage.
In five nights, we had the potatoes planted, the seeds for the turnips and wheat sown.
Two days later, Michael came home at midday. “No work,” he said. “We’re let off to do our duty days for the landlord, plant their crops. A week without pay.”
The Scoundrel Pykes sometimes claimed as many as a hundred duty days a year, Katie Mulloy had told me, and never would feed the workers, let alone pay them.
Because we were subtenants and paid Owen Mulloy, Michael had been spared during the last six years. But the foreman on the roadworks listened to no such explanations.
I was worried. I didn’t like to think of Michael near Jackson and the old Major. But he assured me he and Mulloy would be in the fields far away from the house, two more bent backs, sowing the seed like the other tenants.
I hadn’t been up to see Máire since that fall day before the failure. She’d sent down a note at Christmas with Thaddy Quinn, telling me to stay away. She’d let me know when it was safe to come back—give Thaddy the old Major’s medicine. Nothing since then.
“Did you see Máire?” I asked Michael late that night, the children long asleep.
“I did,” he said.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing? What do you mean?”
“Thaddy Quinn came out to us in the fields. Jackson caught Máire giving food to the cottier women—only bits and pieces left over from the Major’s dinner, but Jackson accused Máire of stealing and wanted her arrested. Captain Pyke stopped him, but now she can’t leave the house. We were to hide in the stables and Máire would try to come out to us. We waited until long after dark. Finally Máire slipped out the door and started toward the stables. Then, out of nowhere, there’s Jackson. He grabbed Máire and pushed her down. I started out to help her, but Owen and Thaddy pulled me back. ‘Don’t go out there,’ Thaddy said. And I didn’t. I hid in the stable while Máire lay on the ground. Your sister, Honora—who sacrificed herself for you, for us—there at Jackson’s feet, and him cursing at her. I wanted to knock Jackson down and kick the life out of him. But I didn’t move, Honora. What manner of a man have I become?” He slumped down, his head in his hands.
“A really brave man knows when to show some sense,” I said, stroking his head. “Do you think Máire would want you arrested? She understood. She got up, went inside, and tended to her children. And it was our children you were thinking of when you didn’t move, Michael. I’m thankful Jackson didn’t discover you together. He’d say you were plotting some outrage and get you both hanged.”
He knew I was right. More troops in Galway City. The government saw each desperate attempt to get food, whether it was stealing a sheep, stopping a meal wagon, or poaching a salmon from the landlord’s river, as an act of treason. Rebels one and all, no matter how weak, and in league with the outlaw Ribbonmen in the mountains. The Sassenach still feared the fury of the O’Flahertys.
S
PRING BROUGHT
field greens to eat. I mixed in birds’ eggs with the corn mush. We survived, watched the green shoots of the potato plants rise, and prayed the harvest of 1846 would take away our hunger.
Summer came. The boats went out. So much herring we couldn’t sell it all. We gave the fish to all our neighbors. Mam could buy a few sacks of meal and still put money away toward the rent. Michael said our wheat crop would bring enough for our rent. After all, we won’t have to worry about food—we’d have the pratties. A terrible winter, the worst in memory, and the blight the fiercest enemy ever sent against the Irish, but we had survived.
And now, Granny told the family, we will fulfill our vow and join the pilgrimage to St. Mac Dara’s Island, to thank him as we promised. We’ll go on his feast day, July 16—the bad times surely over.
At first, Michael said he couldn’t come with us. I asked why. The new Whig government had closed the roadworks. Mulloy told us these fellows got elected by promising to stop helping the rebellious Irish. Peel had been too soft.
“You’ll not miss any pay,” I’d said to Michael.
But he’d said the land needed attention and so did Champion, in foal again. Two months since she’d gone to Barrier. Sir William Gregory had let Owen and Michael put off the payment of Barrier’s fee. Champion wouldn’t deliver until March, but it was well to keep an eye on her in the early stages.
“Is it the boat trip?” I’d asked him. “No one ever died of seasickness yet. The Bay’s meant to be calm, and it’s not like we’re headed for Amerikay. We’ll leave at first light and be at Ard by midday, and then it’s only three miles to the island.
“You have to go,” I’d said. “It’s you I want to thank Mac Dara for, Michael. Working so hard for us, pushing your body. You could have ridden away that first morning, gone off adventuring on Champion, but instead you married me. Brought life to the land, fathered three children, and saved us this winter.”
He kissed me and said he’d come with us, surely.
We were a grand proud family sailing down the center of Galway Bay in Da’s púcán. We had a beautiful summer morning and a following wind for our trip to Mac Dara’s Island.
A tall sailing ship moved through the channel ahead of us. The passengers were tenants from the Gore estate, going to Canada. Da told us they’d given up their land for the price of their passage rather than being evicted with nothing—a stark enough choice.
The people being sent away stood at the ship’s rails, staring at the green hillsides along the Bay.
Da said that the sorry-looking vessel, its sails patched and riding low in the water, was an old slaver that hauled timber from Canada now. Stones had always been used as the ballast needed for the return voyage, but now Irish exiles provided the weight, Da explained. Lots of these old slave ships were back in service now, Dennis said, cramming passengers into the cargo space. A good few sank in the middle of the ocean.
How thin my brothers were. Dennis, at twenty-one, had an old man’s sunken face. Josie held their wee girls, both so frail. Joseph was nineteen, but he had a young boy’s slight body. Hughie, almost thirteen, seemed all bones. Had lack of food stunted them for good and all?
The hillsides bordering the Bay were bright with green and the white flower of potato plants. Surely the pratties will put us right—not long now.
The hungry winter had marked the Keeley cousins at Ard. The huge big men who’d come to Máire’s wedding were gaunt now but determined to make the annual pilgrimage to the island as was done for a thousand years. We’d come from Bearna to join them a good few times. Always great fun. There’d be dancing and curragh races after the devotions. Máire and I had shocked them all by winning the girls’ race twice—powerful rowers when we pulled together.
I prayed for Máire as we climbed up to the ancient chapel on the island—only small, but lovely—built of gold-colored rocks and set between the sea and sky. Michael had recovered himself after the boat trip, breathing in the sweet, fresh air, carrying Bridget as we followed our boys, who ran ahead, delighted with all these new cousins.
I’d explained to Michael that Mac Dara, the patron of fishermen, was never called by his given name, Sionnach—Fox—because the animal was so unlucky for the fishermen, it couldn’t even be referred to. “Always Mac Dara—Son of Dara.”
And now on the summit we knelt near his chapel and thanked our saint for helping us survive. “Please bless every family. Bring Máire home. Let the pratties be healthy and abundant,” I prayed.
I showed Michael how to make the sacred pátrún, walking around the fallen stone huts where Mac Dara’s monks had lived: three times in the direction of the sun, two hundred people circling and praying.
The Ard Keeleys provided the feast—a dizzying amount of food—lobsters, oysters and mussels, wild strawberries, dulsk.
“Easy now,” Granny cautioned Paddy and Jamesy. “If you eat too fast or too much you’ll get sick.” The boys took a good long time, chewing and swallowing, grinning at me as they ate. Thank you, God.
We sat together on the strand to watch crews race their curraghs in the Atlantic waters around the island. Still strong rowers in Ard/Carna despite the hard winter.
And then the dancing began. Four of the Ard Keeleys were great lilters. They made such powerful music, we hardly missed the fiddle and pipes—pawned, of course, but, “Sure we’ll get them back when the pratties are dug.” Jamesy and Paddy got a great laugh at Michael whirling me around in the reel.
Michael and I collapsed next to one of the turf fires, all of them bright flares against the night sky and the dark sea.
“Come with me,” Granny said. She was standing above us.
She led Michael and me to the far shore of the island, where slabs of stones met the water.
A white-haired man with a long beard stood with two younger fellows.
“Martin O’Malley,” Granny said. “With a message for you, Michael.”
The famous smuggler. Here. What . . . ?
“Someone’s waiting to meet you,” Martin O’Malley told Michael. “He’s at Ballynahinch.” Then to me he said, “There’ll be a curragh waiting for you here at first light. Take it and follow me. Now, go back to the dancing.” Not another word from him.
“The family will take your children to Ard,” Granny said. “We’ll wait for you there.”
The last reel finished. The dancers slept. As the sky lightened, Michael and I walked with quick, quiet steps to the shore. Martin O’Malley had launched his curragh. It bounced in the waves, held steady by the two young men—his sons?—at the oars. We pushed the second boat to the water’s edge, then jumped in.
Michael wedged himself in the bottom of the boat as I gripped the oars: thumbs on the edge, right wrist over left. It was years since I’d rowed, but my muscles remembered. A thrust out, oars above the water, then the quick plunge down and we were launched into the glistening tide, rushing over the sea, following the other curragh.