The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael said. ‘We’ll be damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.’

  ‘I think we’ll have to,’ Winnie said. ‘There’ll have to be houses arranged for them to go to. The sooner the better for that.’

  ‘You’re right, but we’ll still be blamed for any trouble.’

  ‘It’ll wait till the morning,’ Eleanor said. ‘We’ll do it at sunrise.’

  Before dawn, they went in different directions to raise the alarm, and to see which houses might be willing to take in evicted families. Eleanor walked down to Kilduff to notify Father Reilly and Doctor Stone. As she passed the RIC barracks, she noticed the activity inside, many men in rough civilian clothes eating an early breakfast. Sergeant Kavanagh was supervising, as his own men seated the others and brought out the food. There were military uniforms too. And sabres. Now she knew for certain.

  Luke and Winnie had been up before dawn and cut across directly to Gort na Móna without taking the main road to Kilduff. Their arrival caused panic. Within twenty minutes, the whole district was awake.

  ‘How do we know it’s true?’ asked one woman.

  ‘We don’t,’ Winnie said. ‘We only have it on what we were told. It could be wrong.’

  ‘It’s as well to be prepared,’ one said. ‘Bad news has an awful habit of being true.’

  ‘We’ll fight the bastards,’ one of the younger men said.

  ‘Have care,’ another said. ‘Eviction is bad, but transportation is worse. No one comes back from Van Diemen’s Land.’

  Father Reilly arrived.

  ‘How many of you here are behind with your rent?’ he asked.

  ‘Most all of us, Father,’ one of the men replied. ‘And those of us that aren’t are only tenants at his lordship’s pleasure.’

  ‘But even tenants-at-will, they wouldn’t take their growing crops,’ another said.

  ‘Clanowen would,’ an old woman said. ‘He’s done it before, he’ll do it again.

  By now, a crowd of fifty men had formed at the front.

  ‘We’re going to fight them, Father.’

  ‘I would advise you against that. They’ve got military with them.’

  ‘But we can’t just let them walk in and destroy our houses.’

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do. Fight to win – perhaps. Fight to die – why would you want to do that?’

  ‘You’re a coward,’ a voice shouted from the back. The priest turned in the direction from which the shout had come. No one spoke. ‘If there’s killing to be done here today, I will put my own neck forward first. Will that make you happy?’

  Still, no one spoke. Then a man at the front broke the silence. ‘We must try, Father. Perhaps we do not fight, but why make it easy? If we stand in their way without moving, they’re the ones that must attack, not us.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, I can’t stop you.’

  A young woman came over to the priest, and clutched his sleeve. ‘If they evict us, what will happen to us?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ asked an older woman. ‘Where will we sleep tonight.’

  ‘I’m hoping tonight will be alright. We’re sending messages to whoever might be willing to take you, and of course the church remains open.’

  ‘And after that, Father?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Father Reilly said. ‘I just don’t know.’

  They waited another hour. The crowd of men at the front had grown to nearly a hundred, and the tension mounted. Luke reckoned few were fit enough to fight anyone, armed or otherwise. If there was to be a battle, it would be a massacre.

  There was a shout from one of the men on the corner. Ten cavalry men appeared, followed by a gang of twenty or thirty men, with four carts carrying battering rams and crowbars. On the flanks there were eight constables, including four from the Kilduff RIC barracks. They came closer, a steady tramp of hooves and boots, bridles rattling.

  Many of the younger men at the front were armed with pitchforks. The six cavalrymen came right up to them, and halted. The officer, a pitchfork at his horse and another at his chest, took a piece of paper from his pocket.

  ‘SILENCE,’ he roared.

  The noise subsided. He started to read from the paper.

  ‘Our Sovereign Lady the Queen, charges and commands that all persons being assembled immediately do disperse themselves, and peaceably do depart to their habitations or their lawful business upon the pains contained in the Act made in the first year of King George the First for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the Queen.’

  For a few seconds, nobody moved. Then a stone came from the back of the crowd, and hit one of the cavalrymen in the face, drawing blood. The officer looked to all the soldiers, their hands on the hilts of their sabres, and shouted an order. The sabres were drawn.

  ‘Stop,’ shouted Father Reilly. He walked down between the sabres and the pitchforks. Both sides shuffled a few steps back to let him pass. He addressed the crowd. ‘We have no chance. What you have heard is the Riot Act. If there’s a battle now, they’ll call it a riot, and all involved will be transported. And if anyone is killed, men here will be hung.’

  He stopped for a few seconds. No one spoke.

  ‘It’s the work of the Devil,’ he went on, ‘but this time we must turn our cheeks. Start getting your things together, and we’ll arrange where everyone will sleep tonight.’

  The crowd started to disperse. But it was not finished yet.

  ‘I want the man who threw that stone found and arrested,’ the officer shouted.

  The priest turned back and walked up to the horse. He looked the officer straight in the eyes. ‘You’ve had your way,’ he whispered in English. ‘It could have been worse. Just let things be.’

  The officer dropped his eyes.

  Over the next hour, the eviction proceeded without violence. From time to time, curses were shouted at the tumblers, and at the soldiers and police protecting them. The soldiers were from the Claremorris barracks, far enough away to know no one. But a few of the RIC men from Kilduff looked unhappy.

  Carts had arrived in from the surrounding area, and household goods and possessions were being loaded up, and taken away. Luke and Winnie both helped in emptying the houses and loading the carts. He saw his father’s horse and cart half way down the line, waiting to be loaded.

  ‘Hold on a moment, Winnie,’ he said, and walked down towards his father. Just as he got to the cart, the priest came. ‘I was wondering if you could manage four tonight.’

  ‘Of course, Father,’ Michael answered him.

  ‘Ellen Morrisroe and her three children. She’s a widow.’

  The priest led them to one of the cabins that had not yet been tumbled. There was a woman inside with three children around her, all under ten.

  ‘Luke Ryan,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘You killed my man.’

  No one moved. ‘Their father,’ she said, pointing at the children. ‘You killed him. You wouldn’t let him on the Works.’

  ‘Leave this to me,’ Winnie said, her hand on his shoulder. He hesitated. The priest took his arm. ‘Come on.’ The two men walked out.

  He went to where his father was waiting with the cart, and the two men led it back to the widow’s house. Already other carts were moving down the rough road towards Kilduff. Soldiers stood in groups, sometimes talking among themselves, mostly saying nothing. At the back of the village, the tumblers had already started their work and were prising stones from the apex of a roof. One of the cross-beams collapsed, bringing the roof down at one end. A minute later, the other end collapsed too, and the roof disintegrated into a heap of thatch.

  Tumbling cabins. He thought of bringing Sorcha to the Workhouse. Tumbling her cabin, burning the thatch. The work of the Devil? No, not possible. Not us.

  A few minutes later, Winnie came out aga
in with the widow and her children. The woman was crying. Luke and his father started to load her possessions onto the cart. The tumblers had started on the house across from them. Again the roof collapsed at one gable. Luke passed his father a hessian sack of turnips, and they unloaded it into the cart before he went back for more. Three sackfuls of turnips, a small flitch of beef and buttermilk.

  The cabin beside them was proving more difficult. Every time the tumblers knocked stones or mud from its crossbeam, it fell down to the next level, but would not collapse. Two of the tumblers were working with a crowbar and a heavy hammer. They were sweating heavily, even though it was not yet warm.

  ‘Not used to heavy work, those fellows,’ Luke said.

  ‘Or maybe just frightened,’ his father answered. ‘God knows, they’ve enough to be frightened about, soldiers or not.’

  They continued the loading. The roof across from them was now on the ground, but it would not flatten. It formed a long tent, from the ground at one end to half way up the gable at the other. The two tumblers were jumping up and down on it, but making little impression. One of the others came over.

  ‘Can you not do better than that?’ he shouted at them.

  ‘We’re trying, sir.’

  ‘Well, try harder. They’ll come back, and live in that.’

  ‘We’ll strip it, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. That’ll take all day, and they’ll re-thatch it anyhow.’

  ‘What else can we do sir?’

  ‘Burn the damned thing.’ He took a box of lucifer matches from his pocket, and threw it to the two men.

  One tried to ignite the thatch. It sputtered, and the flame died. He tried another. This time, it took.

  Luke and his father had finished loading a rough table and four chairs on the cart. He knew Ellen Morrisroe had no use for them where she was going, but he did as she asked. By now the fire in the thatch had taken well and was roaring up towards the remaining apex of the roof. Luke still stood in the street, watching the flames and smoke.

  ‘What are you looking at, you bastard,’ shouted one of the men.

  He did not reply. He stared through the soaring flames towards the Mountain, thinking of Croghancoe. Then he turned away.

  His father walked to the cart, helping the widow and her children into it. Luke went over and grasped the bridle. He walked in front, leading the horse.

  High over the Mountain, black smoke scarred a blue and white sky.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Telegraph or Connaught Ranger, May 1847:

  In the Westport Union, the test of outdoor relief has be put in operation were no less than 30,000 human beings are now receiving gratuitous relief at a weekly outlay of £1,200! Thus, while the poor of Westport are fed and cared for, those in and around Castlebar are left to die, and after death to be buried without coffins. What a curse hangs over our town and its poor mendicants.

  That night, Ellen Morrisroe had their bed, and shared it with her three children. Luke and Winnie slept on straw, both wrapped in blankets beside the fire.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ he asked.

  ‘I only spoke to her as woman to woman. I told her I understood her sorrow and her anger. I told her to direct her anger at those who never tried and never cared, and to see you and Father Reilly as the men you are.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She heard what I said. She accepted it because I’m a woman, and you’re my man. But deep down, the anger is still there.’

  ‘It’s what I told you before, Winnie. I’m a stranger here now. I wish to God I’d stayed in England.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I know, I know. If I’d stayed in England, I’d never have met you. But still we’ll have to do something, and if it’s not England it’s going to have to be America. And how we can get to America without going to England first, I just do not know. Isn’t that it?’

  ‘We said we’d wait and see.’

  ‘Fine so,’ Luke said.

  The next few days were tense ones for Luke. Every morning, he left the house early so as to avoid meeting Ellen Morrisroe. Eleanor was resentful of having to share the limited food with another family, even though the arrangement was to be temporary. In the end, the woman herself decided that enough was enough, and suggested she would go to a cousin in Knockanure.

  Luke loaded her furniture on the cart and drove the family to Knockanure. No one said a word. As they entered the town, they could see two crowds. As always, there was a large one outside the Workhouse, clamouring for admission. He recognised families he knew from the Mountain, the pitiful results of the Clanowen evictions.

  The second crowd was around the Soup Kitchen pots. There had been fighting, and the men and women who had come down from the Mountain stood apart, waiting to be fed if there was anything left over.

  Luke found the house. A man came to the door, and responded angrily to Luke’s explanation.

  ‘This is nothing to do with me. I don’t have to take them.’

  ‘Neither do we,’ Luke said. ‘They’re your family.’ He began to unload the furniture.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the man shouted at him. ‘What do you expect me to do with that?’

  ‘Do what you like. I’m going home.’

  One morning, Winnie went down to the well on her own. Over the weeks she had discovered which of the women were well disposed towards the Ryans, and which were not.

  On this morning, she exchanged a few words with some of the younger women as she filled her two pails. As she started back up the path towards the road, she saw another young woman coming towards her. She stood aside to let Winnie pass.

  ‘Nice morning,’ Winnie said.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ the other said.

  Winnie was at the gate when she heard the women greet the stranger. Kitty! She stopped to open the gate, thinking. Kitty was a common enough name. But she was curious, very curious.

  She hefted the pails out, and closed the gate. Then she carried them a few yards down, and stopped beside a blackthorn bush, where she could not be seen from the well. The women were talkative, and it was ten minutes before the other came out.

  Winnie waited until she drew level. For a moment she thought she was mistaken. From all she had known of Kitty, she had expected more than this thin, haggard woman. Her cheeks were sunken, one scarred red, the other marked by a bruised puffiness beneath the eye. Her shift was ragged and torn.

  ‘Kitty?’ Winnie whispered. ‘Kitty Brennan?’

  The other woman looked at her, surprised. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got a message for you from Brigid.’

  ‘Brigid who?’

  ‘Brigid Ryan, you eejit.’

  ‘Brigid…?

  ‘She says she’s missing you. She wants to know when she’ll be seeing you again?’

  Kitty stared at her. ‘Brigid? So you…you’re…?’

  ‘Winnie, Kitty. Winnie Ryan. Brigid’s new aunty. Among other things.’

  She held out her hand. Kitty stared at her, holding her own hand out, before Winnie grasped it, and squeezed it tightly.

  That night, when they were in bed and the house was silent, she told him about the meeting. He seemed quite unperturbed about it all.

  ‘Well, ye had to meet some time. Sure, I suppose there’s no harm in it, so long as ye weren’t tearing each other’s hair out.’

  ‘Haven’t you the right opinion of yourself, Luke Ryan, to think we’d be fighting over the likes of you.’

  ‘So you’re going to tell me you’re the best of friends. Is that it?’

  ‘Maybe we are.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Well, you’d better believe it. In fact, I even told her what an amadán she was staying away from little Brigid.’

  ‘You didn’t!’
<
br />   ‘I did. So there.’

  A few days later, Kitty joined the other women in Carrigard. Brigid ran across the room, her arms held high. ‘Kitty,’ she cried.

  Kitty took the child, and rocked her in her arms. ‘I’ve been missing you, alanna.’

  Now the tension in the house lessened. The women resumed their old friendship. Once again though, Eleanor could see though that Aileen had fallen into her old depression. Carrigard School was coming to an end, and she knew it.

  The relationship between Winnie and Kitty was a strange one. Winnie felt she should have disliked her, but she could not. In many ways, she admired Kitty. She had a spirit that would not be beaten. They could all see that the bruises on her face had resumed, but in spite of the beatings and the hunger, her wit always came through.

  It was more than a matter of wit though. When the women talked about the Gort na Móna evictions, Kitty became angry, denouncing not only Clanowen and the evictors, but Father Reilly too. The other women said nothing in reply. Winnie felt that she should have defended the priest, but she too said nothing. She thought it was better not to provoke an argument with Kitty, especially because of Luke’s previous relationship with her.

  But it was Kitty’s feelings for Brigid that surprised Winnie more than anything else. She suspected that Kitty herself would not have children. Brigid was now over a year old, and well able to play up to the affections of all her mothers. As Luke had anticipated, Winnie too had been drawn in by her charm. She too wanted the best for Brigid.

  When the other women told her of their ambitions for Brigid, she found it hard to believe at first. But she became accustomed to the idea, though she never mentioned it to Luke. She knew the other women were determined about it, and she was surprised to see that Kitty’s determination was perhaps the strongest of all. In this way too, she came to respect Kitty, and even develop an affection and a sympathy for her.

  But still she knew how hard it would be for Luke to meet with Kitty. Often she sat at the end of the table, looking through the window for the men returning so that Kitty could get out in time. At times she thought this was childish, but she could think of no better way, and like Eleanor, she did not want Kitty to stop coming.