The House (Armstrong House Series Book 1)

by A. O'Connor

Anna gazed into the fire. “He was desperate. We can do anything – if we’re desperate enough.”

  Seán sat in the corner of the stable in darkness all night. He remembered Anna holding out the locket to him, bribing him to take it to leave the estate.

  He now knew she had set about framing him.

  The doors of the stable suddenly opened and in came Sinclair with his men.

  “You’re a lucky man, Hegarty,” he said. “Lord Armstrong has a soft heart and a softer wife.”

  “What’s happening?” demanded Seán.

  “You’re being evicted from the estate. If it was my decision you would be thrown out of the country to the penal colonies. Come on!”

  The men grabbed Seán and placed him on a horse. He was allowed back to his cottage to grab some possessions and then they rode quickly to the edge of the estate where Seán was dumped on the side of the road.

  “As you know my men are constantly patrolling the estate, so if I ever catch you around here again, you won’t be so lucky the next time!” Sinclair warned, before he and his men rode off.

  As Seán looked at his little money and possessions and looked around the forbidding countryside, he didn’t feel lucky at all as he made his way to Castlewest.

  Anna felt relief wash over her after that. She was free from Seán and exposure. Seán was evicted from the estate and would never be allowed near her or her baby again.

  As the summer months passed by everybody anxiously and hopefully waited for the potato crop. When the crop failed even worse than the previous year, despair and panic set in.

  35

  The doors into the library were open and Anna could clearly hear Edward and Sinclair talk as she came into the hall from the dining room where she had been having a light luncheon. She stood and listened.

  “People are beginning to die in their hundreds,” said Sinclair. “Many were just hanging on till this crop, but now that it’s failed again they can’t survive any longer.”

  “What can we do?” Edward sounded desperate.

  “We are in a terrible position. We are running into a second year of non-payment of rents. We risk financial ruin. We are liable for the rates on the farms of less than four acres. I say we clear the land of these farmers and their families, amalgamate the farm holdings to make them bigger. We’ll no longer be responsible for their rates payments and we can diversify into more cattle breeding, which is what I’ve been trying to do here anyway.”

  “And what do you suggest we do with all the evicted farmers and their families?” Edward’s voice was raised.

  “That’ll no longer be our problem once they are off the estate. They may emigrate, or go the workhouse –”

  “Or starve to death!” Edward nearly shouted. “And while we throw them out on the roadside why don’t we have a ball here in the house! A feast, a banquet to entertain ourselves while the poor die!”

  Sinclair ignored his sarcasm. “What do you suggest we do then, dear cousin?”

  Edward sat down at his desk. “I suggest we cope as best we can. I’ll write to the banks and tell them we need an extension on mortgage repayments. Even without eviction our tenants will need food provision to get them through this winter which we need to organise.”

  “On a practical note, Edward, I strongly suggest we put armed men at the entrances of the estate.”

  “Is that necessary?” Edward was shocked.

  “Riding through here this morning, I found a few wretched creatures wandering around the place scouring for food. With the amount of people being displaced and desperate we have to protect ourselves from being overrun.”

  “I don’t want to live in a fortress!” objected Edward.

  Sinclair slammed both his hands on the desk in front of Edward and shouted, “For pity’s sake, see sense, man! Do you want a couple of hundred starving peasants storming the front door here? If you have no regard for your wife and child, then have regard for the rest for us! Provide protection for your servants and the rest of us from a desperate starving mob!”

  Edward was taken aback. “Very well.”

  “Thank you!” spat Sinclair, before turning and walking out.

  Anna waited until she heard the front door slam before she went to Edward who was seated with his face buried in his hands. She put her arms around his shoulders and comforted him.

  “Is it as bad as it seems?”

  “I’m afraid it very much is. Can you write to your father again and tell him how desperate the situation is here? How we need Parliament’s help. Tell him to go to Westminster and beg for help if he has to.”

  “Of course I will. But I think he’s already aware how things are. I received a letter from him yesterday saying Dublin was being flooded by migrants fleeing the famine in the countryside . . . yes, he called it a famine. He said the streets are full of hungry beggars. He asked if the aid was getting through here.”

  “Tell him it’s not nearly enough. Write to him straight away.”

  “Of course I will.”

  That night Anna stood at the nursery window cradling Lawrence close to her while looking out at the lake. She tried not to think of the despair outside the haven of the house and estate.

  “You’re safe here, darling. Nothing can hurt you here,” she whispered to him.

  Anna’s covered carriage left the main entrance of the estate and headed towards Castlewest. Edward had advised not going out of the estate as he had warned she would see things that would upset her. But she needed to get materials to be made into clothes for Lawrence. And she was hearing such horrible stories that she needed to see for herself what was going on. As she looked out the carriage window she saw people walking aimlessly down the road. She was struck by their emaciated bodies, dressed in rags, their eyes sunk into their gaunt faces, barely managing to hold out their hands as the carriage drove by in some desperate appeal for help. As she approached the town, she saw a woman lying beside the ditch cradling a baby to her, both wasting away from hunger. And lying in the ditch there were some bodies that she wasn’t sure were dead or alive.

  The town’s streets were surprisingly empty – the town almost looked deserted. It was not the usual bustling market town it was normally, filled with produce and abundance. There was a police presence throughout the town, and a few fragile people stumbling around. The carriage pulled up outside the draper’s. Anna stepped down and looked up and down the street and got an eerie feeling. She went up to the draper’s door and went to open it, but it was locked, even though there was a sign saying it was open. She knocked loudly on the glass of the door, and a few seconds later the store’s owner, Mrs O’Hara, came to the door and unlocked it.

  “Oh, Lady Armstrong, it’s so good to see you, please come in,” said Mrs O’Hara, beckoning her in, and she quickly closed the door and locked it again.

  Mrs O’Hara was a large usually jovial woman who owned and ran the large draper’s store with efficiency and politeness. But as Anna looked at her that day, Mrs O’Hara looked distressed and anxious, holding a handkerchief to her face.

  Mrs O’Hara looked out the window. “They didn’t see you come in. But they’ll spot the carriage quick enough and be out soon.”

  “Who, Mrs O’Hara?”

  “The people of course.”

  “Where is everybody?” Anna asked pleadingly.

  “In their houses, if they still have houses. They have no energy to even walk any more. I’ve never seen anything like it. None of the business people in town have. At least I sell only linen and cotton, they can’t eat that. But the food stores can’t even stock anything, because they would be rushed and looted by the starving poor.”

  Mrs O’Hara went behind the large counter which was stacked with materials.

  “How are you coping at the Big House?” asked Mrs O’Hara.

  “As best we can.”

  “I heard there were to be no evictions there.”

  Anna noted that Mrs O’Hara’s usual overly respectful manner of ad
dress was gone. Clearly, in her stress and panic, Queen Victoria herself could be standing in her draper’s shop and she wouldn’t care, she was so distracted with what was going on.

  “No, Lord Armstrong insists there should be no evictions.”

  “Well, that’s something. I don’t think the town could cope with another influx of people with nowhere to go. The Foxes have started evicting.”

  “The Foxes!” Anna thought of kindly Mr and Mrs Foxe. “I can hardly believe it.”

  “Believe it, because it’s true! I’ve heard them saying they need to clear the land of the cottiers to make the estate profitable again as they can’t rely on the potato any more. Potato! And I’ve heard from Mr Byrne in the fishmonger’s they are still ordering in salmon and caviar. Caviar! While their tenants starve and we have to suffer it all in the town.” Mrs O’Hara took her handkerchief and started dabbing her eyes. “They say there will be a breakout of cholera or typhus if it goes on much longer. Typhus! I’ll have to go to my sister in Dublin to stay. There’s a field behind the town and they are just dumping dead bodies there into a mass grave. I’ve never seen anything like it.” The tears began to spill down the woman’s face and she wiped them away with her handkerchief.

  Anna quickly pointed out some cotton and paid for it. Mrs O’Hara wrapped it up and gave it to her.

  “Oh no, here they are! I told you they would see the carriage and come out!” said Mrs O’Hara.

  At the doors and windows of the shop were gathered a gang of people, dressed in rags. Mrs O’Hara opened the front door and let Anna out before quickly closing the door and bolting it again. Anna saw the ravenous faces in front of her pleading for food. Hands reaching out, they looked as if they barely had energy to stand. She quickly opened her purse, took all the money out and handed it out quickly before hurrying to her carriage.

  “Take me home, quickly!” she told the driver.

  “Edward! We must do more!” Anna pleaded when she got home.

  “What else can we do? The workhouses are already being paid for by the landlords – it’s our duty to pay for them. We just don’t have enough money to feed everyone.”

  Anna made her way to the nursery and rocked Lawrence’s cradle slowly. As she looked down at him all she could think about was Seán. How she had thrown him from the security and protection of the estate, and cast him out to the catastrophe that was taking over the land. She had never realised it would be so bad. She hadn’t realised she was putting Seán out to that. It broke her heart thinking of him out there alone and hungry like all those people she had seen today. She felt crippled with guilt at the thought that she would probably be the cause of his death.

  “I’ll find him,” she whispered to Lawrence. “I’ll bring him home to safety.”

  36

  Anna discreetly enquired from the servants had they heard anything of Seán since he had been put off the estate. Nobody seemed to have heard anything. She asked some trusted servants to enquire in Castlewest if they knew anything of him.

  “There’s so many people dead or dying, my lady, it’s hard to enquire after one man and get a direct answer,” Barton informed Anna, after his enquiries had been unfruitful.

  “I realise that, Barton, but I do need to make sure all our estate workers are safe during this terrible time.”

  “Even a thief like Seán?”

  “Christian duty, Barton.”

  Barton’s enquiries continued and he finally came back with news. “Seemingly after Seán was evicted he stayed at the inn in Castlewest for a short time.”

  At the first opportunity Anna made her way to the innkeeper.

  “Yes, I remember he slept here a few nights. He didn’t say he had any plans or where he was going. Then one night he just didn’t come back.”

  “Didn’t come back? And what of his things?”

  “He didn’t bother collecting them. They weren’t worth anything, so I threw them out.”

  “I see.” She looked down at the floor.

  “Did you try the workhouse, ma’am? He probably ran out of money here and went there.”

  “Yes – yes. I’ll check there, thank you.”

  “We’re very honoured to have you visit, Lady Armstrong,” said Doctor Cantwell when she visited the workhouse. The local landlord was obliged under the Poor Act to pay for the local workhouse, but that’s where most of their interest began and ended, the doctor knew. This interest from Lady Armstrong was very welcome, and he hoped would result in more funds. She looked up at the gloomy formidable stone building. She looked at the famished people gathered outside.

  “Why are they not yet admitted?” she asked.

  “We have no room to admit them, Lady Armstrong.”

  “No room?”

  “We’re completely overcrowded as it is.”

  He showed her through the front door. She looked around the dark interiors and became depressed at the sight of it and the strong odours circulating.

  “Doctor Cantwell, I’m looking for somebody. A man from our estate who we can’t find. Seán Hegarty. Have you any record of him here?”

  “I’ll see,” he said, scratching his head, and led her into his small office where he started taking out the books and going through them.

  “No – no Seán Hegarty admitted.”

  Her heart sank. “Could I take a look around?”

  He looked amazed. “If you want.”

  He led her through dark corridors. “We separate the men from the women, and the children up to fifteen from the adults.”

  “So the families are not together?” She was shocked.

  “It the most efficient way to run things,” answered the doctor.

  He stood at a door and looked at her for a moment before opening it and waving her in. She walked in. She didn’t know what was worse, the famished people outside or the looks on the faces of the people inside. The room was large and long and packed with men. She started to walk through but stopped, unable to go any further.

  “Seán! Seán Hegarty – are you here?” she shouted.

  Nobody said anything. She turned without saying a word and rushed from the building to her awaiting carriage where she broke down in tears.

  37

  As she walked through the gardens at the house, alone with her thoughts and reliving the things she had seen outside the estate, she resolved not to give up looking for Seán. She would do whatever it took to find him. She felt weighed down by a horrendous sense of guilt and shame. How could she have done such a thing? Fear had driven her to do it but that was not enough for her to merit forgiveness.

  She had to put it right. There were other towns with other workhouses and she would keep looking until she found Seán.

  She would bring him home.

  As the months went by she travelled from town to town searching, always bringing money or food from the house and giving it to people as she enquired about Seán. She walked through the towns, looking at each emaciated face to see if it was his. She visited the Hamilton estate where she knew Seán had been born and visited his family. Luckily they were being well cared for by the new landlord there, but they had heard nothing from Seán and were very distressed to hear he had gone missing. As she conversed with his family, she was amazed at the fact that she would be connected to them for ever through Lawrence and they would never know.

  She travelled to Dublin and visited all the ship companies to see if there was any record of Seán leaving for Britain. She couldn’t find any. She remembered him talking about going to America, so she travelled to Cork to check the records of the ship companies there going to America. But she could find no record. She was haunted by the sights she saw of the people suffering along the way, and wrote tirelessly to her father and his politician friends, giving accounts of what she had witnessed. And when she got back to the house she would sit in the nursery cradling her son close to her.

  “I’ll find him. I’ll bring him home. It doesn’t matter how long it takes,” she would
whisper over and over before setting off on her journeys again.

  She was eating breakfast in the dining room alone when Edward came in holding a copy of The Times.

  “They’ve printed another letter from you,” he said, handing her the newspaper. She took it up and quickly read her letter, describing some pitiful sight she had seen and urging the government for more help.

  “That should shame them into giving more!” she said, putting down the paper and continuing to eat breakfast.

  “Where are you going today?” he asked.

  “There’s a workhouse down in Galway I’ve arranged to visit. I’ve got Cook to prepare food for us to give. And I’ve raised money from our friends to provide the passage to America for some of the inmates there. I’ll be back before dark.”

  She got up to go and he grabbed her hand. “Anna! You can’t go.”