The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  ‘No way should you do that,’ she said with force.

  ‘Well, then.’

  The battle of Lord Sligo’s wall was not repeated. More militiamen were recruited from Claremorris and accompanied the convoys of wagons out of Westport and through Castlebar. Three more consignments of corn arrived in Kilduff, and they were all stored under guard. But then one brought a shock to Luke and Gaffney.

  ‘That’s the last one you’ll be getting,’ the militia captain said, as the convoy started to pull out towards Ballaghaderreen.

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘The last. They’re reckoning the harvest is looking good. There’s no need for hunger now.’

  They went back into the office.

  ‘What now? Luke asked.

  ‘Only one thing I can think of,’ Gaffney said. ‘We’ll go over to Castlebar and see Andy Irvine.’

  Next morning, he and Gaffney were riding towards Castlebar.

  ‘Damn it to hell, – no need for hunger! Are they all mad?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gaffney said. ‘Maybe they want to believe good news.’

  ‘Good news is right. Sure, the crop is better, no arguing that. But can’t they see the amount that’s been planted. How much is it? Half a normal year? A quarter? What do you think?’

  Gaffney reined in his horse, looking at the fields around him.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ he said at length. ‘A quarter, no more. I wonder why? No seed potatoes? Or maybe they don’t believe in it anymore. They reckon they’ll have enough with oats. But there won’t be enough.’

  ‘Damned right, there won’t.’

  An hour later, they were sitting in Irvine’s office in Castlebar.

  ‘There’s no point in thumping the table,’ Irvine said. ‘You’ve had your way long enough, George. But there’s damned little coming into Westport. I can’t sign requisitions for what I don’t have, and that’s an end to it.’

  They left. When they arrived back in Gaffney’s office, Luke started to tear up the requisition forms.

  ‘For God’s sake, calm down,’ Gaffney said.

  ‘But what are we going to tell them?’

  ‘I told you, I’ll do the telling. Then they can’t blame you.’

  ‘Oh, can’t they?’

  A few days later, he was accompanying a final consignment of carts up the Mountain. In spite of two donkeys on each, they were creaking slowly, urged on by the men. Luke noticed another man walking behind, and pulled the cart over to let him go. It was Father Reilly.

  ‘What way are you going?’ Luke asked him.

  ‘Up towards Baile a’ Cnoic.’

  ‘Someone dying?’

  ‘Everyone is dying. I don’t bother waiting anymore. I just do my rounds every day, call in everywhere at least once a week.’

  ‘And what about the church?’

  ‘Oh, I let Father Flynn take care of that. He’s good with buildings.’

  Luke pulled the donkey forward again. ‘You’ll be busy so.’

  ‘I will. But it’s not just that today. I’d heard ye were taking the corn up. I’m supposed to be looking after the Kitchens on the Mountain.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No? I’ve been doing it this long time. The Union has been demanding it, they’ve had enough problems with Nangle and the like with their conversions, so they prefer using priests now.’

  ‘I see,’ Luke said. ‘But you know this is the last load?’

  ‘Yes, I do know. And I’m the one who’s going to have to tell them.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Flynn would have the guts to do that.’

  ‘No,’ Father Reilly said. ‘Not his line of country.’

  They went through what was left of Gort na Móna. Blackened ground, gaunt gables still standing.

  ‘You know they still blame me for this,’ the priest said.

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘They reckon I shouldn’t have stopped them fighting the militia.’

  ‘It’s easy saying that now. I wonder what they would have said after the militia sabering them.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just I don’t like taking the side of the militia either. It’s an evil thing, an eviction.’

  ‘It is.’

  They walked out of the village, leading the donkeys up towards Baile a’ Cnoic. He was depressed and frightened, remembering that day at Gort na Móna. The woman and her family too. The priest had entrusted them to him, and he had brought them to Knockanure. He had never expected that her relatives would have brought her to the Workhouse. Or maybe he had, maybe he was just trying to hide it from himself. He felt the need to tell the priest about it, almost as if seeking absolution for his sins.

  ‘You’ll remember Ellen Morrisroe? You asked us to take her and her children.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘She’s dead. Died in the Workhouse.’

  ‘Dead?’ the priest exclaimed. ‘What about her children?’

  He thought back to the pit in Knockanure and the faces of dead children. ‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘Her children. What happened to them?’ the priest asked again. He was staring at Luke, slightly puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know,’ Luke said.

  When they reached Baile a’ Cnoic, the priest went from house to house giving the Last Rites to the dying and the dead. Luke thought back to Brockagh. Long days riding around the mountains with another priest.

  Lisnadee. Benstreeva. Teenashilla. Burrenabawn. And Croghancoe.

  Another place. No different to here though.

  Some of the women helped the priest to prepare the food for the Soup Kitchen. A crowd was gathering already. To Luke, there seemed to be less than before. He thought of what his father had told him at the rath. Long days of famine and fever?

  The Workhouse? England? America?

  He had some of the women bring small bowls of soup into the fever shed. As he had half expected, few of the patients took any of the food. He went out again and stood beside the pot where the soup was being ladled out. The priest was talking to the crowd.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you – this is the end of the food.’

  No one said anything.

  ‘We’ve no more left in Kilduff. The Kitchens are closing everywhere.’

  Still no one responded. Grey faces watched them. Grey clothes, frayed shifts and trousers, broken boots. Thin, gaunt, dying people. Broken men and women, staring in silence at a priest who could not stop an eviction nor feed his people. And what was he? Luke Ryan – a Government man. By rights he should not be here. Gaffney had said he was not required to be at the Kitchens. But he wasn’t working the pots, he was only delivering supplies. They were still watching him though – another man who could not feed them, a man who was holding the food back from them. Guilty. Guilty as charged.

  He went over to the carts and waited there with the cart men. After a few minutes, the priest came and joined them, and they drove the donkeys back towards Kilduff.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Telegraph or Connaught Ranger, June 1847:

  This town and the country westward to the Killeries is one charnel emporium of disease, and the number of deaths in the villages along the sea coast is incredible.

  He lay awake past midnight, watching the flickering shadows from the fire playing on the rafters. Every time he tried to sleep, nightmare images came back to him. The man in the battle outside Westport, the look on his face as the rock smashed his head in. Sorcha, the look on her face too as he turned and left her in the Workhouse. Ellen Morrisroe, dead of fever; surely he had known her cousin would not keep them.

  Her children too, what happened to them? And the pit, the stench of gangrene, the children with the fox faces. He tried to think. There was no point in feel
ing guilty. He had done what he had to do. But still it gnawed at him. Deliberate or otherwise, he was a killer.

  Was it any wonder people hated him? Refusing work tickets to desperate men. Closing the Works in Brockagh. Closing the Kitchens around Kilduff. Yes, Gaffney had kept his promise. He had not had to be present when the people were told the Kitchens were closing, except at Baile a’ Cnoic, and that hardly counted. But still they blamed him for it. Every time he had refused a ticket on the Works, every time a Kitchen closed, he was seen as responsible for the deaths that would follow.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Winnie whispered.

  ‘I just can’t sleep. I’m sorry. You go back to sleep.’

  ‘But tell me. Tell me. What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s no hope now. We’ll have to go, and soon.’

  ‘I know. I’m trying not to think about it, but we’ll have to do something.’

  ‘I think Danny was right all along. There’s no future in farming in Mayo. We’ll never be able to depend on the potato again.’

  ‘But what will your mother and father do?’

  ‘There’s only one chance for them. We’ll have to send money. Pat will too. At least they’d buy corn.’

  ‘And what about us then?’ she asked.

  ‘America is best. It might have been better if I’d stayed in England anyhow.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I know, I know. But I’d never have killed anyone either.’

  ‘You’d never have…what?’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘But what…Who?’ He could hear the shock in her voice. He waited, while she understood the full meaning of what he had said. Then he went on.

  ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘my life is in your hands. I can tell you what happened, and I think you’ll understand. But other people mightn’t, or might not want to. And if any of this gets out, they’ll hang me for it.’

  She said nothing, waiting.

  ‘Remember about the attack…’

  ‘At Lord Sligo’s wall?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the Battle of Lord Sligo’s Wall, as they all call it. But I’ll tell you this, it was nothing to be proud of. Fighting starving women. Great fellows, weren’t we?’

  ‘Is that why you never talked about it.’

  ‘That, and other reasons. Remember about the fellow who was just about to kill Father with the rock?’

  ‘But you hit him first.’

  ‘I did. But I didn’t just hit him. The stone smashed his head in. I killed him.’

  ‘Killed…you…you killed him.’

  ‘Killed him. Dead.’

  ‘But no-one ever said…’

  ‘No-one ever knew.’

  ‘Then how…?’

  ‘I felt for his heart. Listened for his breathing. No-one else saw. But he was dead alright. I’ve seen enough dead men to know.’

  ‘But it could have been anyone. How would they know it was you? Weren’t there hundreds of stones thrown.’

  ‘There were. I don’t think anyone will ever be able to point the finger at me. At least I hope not, but I can never be sure. I know I killed a man, though. Now you do too. And you know the kind of man you married.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said.

  ‘It’s up to you now. I’ll have to go to America, it’s safer for me there, safer even than England, I don’t want to hang. You can follow me. But only if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course it’s what I want. This changes nothing. I’d follow you anywhere.’

  ‘I know you would. It’s just you and me now, a ghrá. Wherever we go, we go together.’

  He slept. For a long time she lay thinking. Hanging. Why had he said that? Perhaps someone had seen him. Perhaps someone knew who he was. Even one of their own people might have seen him and known that the man had died. Would such a man be able to keep his mouth shut, or would he see it as a great thing, and tell everyone when he had enough beer inside him.

  Hanging? Once in Ballina her father had pointed out a beggar woman whose husband had been hung for murder. Now she thought of herself, avoided by everyone, a widow reduced to begging. No. Still, she would not rest unless Luke went to America. Their last and only chance.

  Winnie and Eleanor were out feeding the hens with left-over potato skins. They threw the mashed skins on the ground, and the hens came, pecking at the food and pecking at each other.

  ‘Poor fellows,’ Eleanor said. ‘They’re getting scrawnier and scrawnier.’

  ‘Aren’t they just’ Winnie said. ‘The peelings are getting thinner and thinner, and they know it.’

  ‘One thing’s for certain,’ Eleanor said. ‘When the time comes for strangling them, there’ll be little enough meat left.’ A hen pecked at her leg. ‘Get down, you devil,’ she said, flicking her hand at it.

  They walked back towards the house.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to say to you, Mother’ Winnie said.

  ‘What’s that, child.’

  ‘It’s going to have to be America. There’s no other way.’

  Eleanor stopped dead. ‘Ye’ve decided so.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘But why? What decided ye?’

  Winnie thought of what Luke had told her, but she knew she could not say anything of this to Eleanor.

  ‘At least we’d be able to earn money,’ she said at last. ‘Send it back to you here.’

  ‘You’ll have to send money to your family too,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But the ticket money? We’d never spare that. Not now.’

  ‘Sabina will lend it to us.’

  ‘Sabina!’

  ‘She promised it to Luke. Reckons it’s best for all the family.’

  ‘But she never said…’

  ‘She’s still waiting for our answer.’

  Eleanor was thinking, but hardly knew what to say.

  ‘And what about the farm here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. One thing is certain, we can’t depend on potatoes now. They’ll feed you one year, and kill you the next.’

  ‘You have the right of it,’ Eleanor said. ‘And it’s not worth farming without potatoes. The grain will only pay the rent, and we can’t live on anything else we’d grow.’

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it.’

  ‘But leaving the farm? I don’t know. Michael’s getting too old for farming, even if he won’t say it. And what about me – I’m young yet. Pat’s always wanted the farm. But he’s doing well in Knockanure, he might stay on. Why would he come back here?’

  ‘I don’t know that he would.’

  ‘I wonder what he’d do if he thought ye might go to America, though. What do you think? Would he stay, or come home?’

  ‘That might be different,’ Winnie said. ‘If he knew for certain the farm was his, he might come home. Who knows? A lot depends on Sarah Cronin.’

  Michael and Luke were working in the bog, throwing sods of turf from the small ricks up onto the cart. Then Luke led the horse out along the narrow boreen, and stopped.

  ‘Fordes,’ he said. ‘I never knew they had a cart.’ He tied the horse to a blackthorn bush, and he and his father walked over.

  ‘Good morning to you, Eileen,’ Michael called out. ‘Are you going far?’

  ‘Far enough.’ There were three packs on the cart. She walked into the house and brought out another, her two children following.

  ‘There’s little enough for us here,’ she said. ‘Ever since Mark caught the fever, we’ve had no way of working the farm. So we’re going to America – Westport, Liverpool and America.’

  ‘It’s a long way to be going on your own.’

  ‘I won’t be going on my own. There’s twenty of us going.’

  ‘Twen
ty!’ Luke exclaimed. ‘Surely not from Carrigard?’

  ‘Some from Carrigard. More from Cnoc rua.’

  ‘But who?’

  ‘John Carney with his two sons and the wife of the oldest. Bernie Murtagh’s son with his wife and children. Matt and Mary Grogan.’

  ‘Matt? But hasn’t he a good lease. Why would he have to go?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to go. He just reckons there’s better chances in America.’

  ‘But their farm?

  ‘O’Brien’s are taking it, the bastards.’

  Luke had seen another cart coming down from the boreen across from them. There were two men and a woman in it. One of the men jumped down, and walked up to them. It was John Carney.

  ‘Johnny! What’s this I hear?’ Michael asked.

  ‘We’re going to America. There’s nothing for us here.’

  Carney helped Eileen Forde out with two more packs and then carefully locked the door with an old rusty key. He helped the widow up into the cart and jumped up beside her. He whipped the animals, and the carts started to move. No one spoke to Luke.

  A hundred yards away, on the Knockanure road, Luke could see four other carts waiting for them. The convoy started to move towards Kilduff.

  Over the next few days, they saw many convoys. Some were the familiar ones coming from Knockanure Workhouse, broken people fleeing hunger and fever. Paid to go by the Union, clearing out the Workhouse and indirectly clearing out the Mountain. The barony of Clanowen was sending its people to America.

  But what Luke also found disturbing were the other lines of carts, less in numbers, but carrying people who were not starving. Families who no longer believed in Ireland or Mayo.

  Through all this time, Michael had said nothing. But then one morning when they were working in the haggard, he brought the subject up, taking Luke by surprise.

  ‘So you’ll go, will you? Join Farrelly in America?’

  Luke was quick with his response. ‘Let me ask you one thing first, Father. What would you do if you were me?’

  Michael thought back to the years when he was little older than Luke. The bitter years waiting for his father, a man he no longer respected, to die. Wasted years. And the blight. Would it come back? Were they all fooling themselves that they could farm in Mayo?