Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  “Look, I got him!”

  As she turned around to show the catch to Jim, an older man faced her at the other end of the clearing with a shotgun raised. The Cavendish estate game warden. He, of course, immediately recognized her and lowered his weapon, embarrassed. He wore two pistols in his belt, from which also hung a pair of shackles. He approached her and spoke through a thick moustache.

  “Oh, Miss Johannah! I’m so sorry. I thought you was a poacher.”

  “Poacher! Goodness, Ernest. Nothing on earth much lower than a poacher, is there? Lowest of the low!”

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone, miss.”

  “Oh, just myself. I chatter away all the time.”

  Jim was concealed in the high grass near her feet.

  “Glad to see you’re doing such a fine job protecting our fish, Ernest.”

  “Yes, miss. There are plenty of fish thieves these days. We even get the women poaching out here. But that looks like a good one.”

  The fish was struggling and as the warden watched, Johannah chose a smooth river stone the size of her fist, laid the writhing salmon out in the deep grass a foot from Jim’s head and clubbed the fish twice between the eyes until it lay still. Amused, Jim met her eyes for a moment.

  “Your father ordered us if we see a poacher to shoot first. Have you seen any?”

  “You know, I did hear quiet voices upstream not long ago. I might have scared them off.”

  The warden’s interest was aroused.

  “Those rascals. I best be after them, then.”

  “Good day, Ernest.”

  The warden headed quickly upstream and Jim extended his hand for a lift up.

  “Thank you. You might have had me arrested.”

  “Hate to see you go off in shackles.”

  “Ernest didn’t have much of a sense of humour.”

  “No. That’s true. A man should have a sense of humour.” She looked into his eyes for a moment. “I…I have to go now. I’m late for dinner. You can keep our fish for your family, then.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  She mounted Cuchulain and smiled down at Jim Donnelly.

  “Good evening, James. Nice to see you.”

  He stepped forward, reached up to take her hand in his and kissed it like a gentleman.

  “Good evening yourself, m’lady,” he said with his sad smile.

  She laughed and guided Cuchulain’s head around and rode off for the big house.

  On the way home, and then alone inside the stable, Johannah’s thoughts were all about Jim Donnelly. He was not bad to look at and had the wit to make her laugh. As she lit the lantern and loosened Cuchulain’s cinch, she remembered she had once seen him shirtless, sweating, reaping barley in the fields. She definitely wanted to see him again.

  She was sliding the halter over Cuch’s ears when she heard her father’s voice behind her.

  “This is late for you to be out. I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How was the ride?”

  She had felt her father’s attention on her in the last few weeks. He would make small talk and watch her and listen to her as he had never done before. She was happy and made curious by his new interest.

  “Good.” She continued, enthused, “Cuchulain and I always take a path along the ridge when we go to Lucy’s. It’s beautiful up there when the sun is low. You should come with us, Da. Take Prince and see if you can keep up.”

  She surprised herself by making this invitation. He had not ridden with her in years, but she would enjoy it if he started doing so again. He moved closer to her, into the glow of the lantern. She could tell by the soft slur of his words he had been drinking whiskey, which could either soften his mood or make him angry.

  “I hear you jump the stone fences at the bottom of the ridge. Bad girl.” He said this with a smile and brought his face close to Johannah’s.

  “Just at the broken-down spots. We’re always very careful.”

  “You ride that beast too fast.”

  “No faster than you ride.”

  “That’s true. There’s more of me in you than your mother.”

  He put the palm of his hand against her cheek. She moved her cheek against his hand, but then he smiled in a strange way and the intensity of his gaze did not feel to her like fatherly love.

  “I would never want anything to happen to you. You’re growing up. Becoming quite the lady. Quite the beauty.”

  He was more intoxicated than she had thought, the whiskey heavy on his breath. He drew his thumb slowly along the line of her mouth in a manner that made her feel ashamed and when Johannah went to back away, he took her arm firmly in his other hand to hold her close. For the first time in her life, she felt fearful of him.

  “You’re hurting me, Da.”

  “George. What are you doing?” It was her mother’s voice. She was standing in the dark doorway of the stable and Johannah could not see her face. Her father immediately released his grip on her. Johannah backed away until she stood against Cuchulain. Her father calmed himself and turned toward his wife.

  “Having a word with my daughter.”

  “Dinner is ready.”

  In cold silence, her father walked briskly past his wife and out of the stable. Johannah looked to her mother, who must have seen how close he had stood to her, his hand gripping her arm. She was badly shaken and so thankful for her mother’s intervention that she wanted almost to go to her, to hug her in relief. But her mother remained in the dark doorway, stone still.

  “Come inside and clean yourself up,” was all that she said before turning her back to Johannah and leaving the stable.

  The Ponies

  Jim Donnelly made his way home with the heavy salmon wrapped in his old jacket. They would have fillets tonight and good soup from the head tomorrow. He knew the route through the willows and around the peat patch where the warden would not spot him. However, his thoughts were neither on the fish nor the warden, but on Johannah Magee. The daughter of that son of a bastard estate manager, an arrogant horse girl riding around like a princess. They had lived near each other for all their lives but today he had the lovely creature all to himself, beside the stream, to listen to her voice and her laughter and feel the warmth of her body, inhale the sweetness of her sweat. He could have put his hands around her pale throat and choked the life out of her if he had wanted. Maybe even got away with the murder, sweet revenge against the man who had killed his father, destroyed his family. Lord knew he had for years harboured such dreams of revenge against George Magee. A life for a life.

  Jim had been only nine years old. His father, Matthew Donnelly, was a proud man, the great-great-great-grandson of the famous chieftain Peter Donnelly, who was killed in battle by Cromwell himself, though Jim’s family’s small patch of earth and menial life was a shame to their noble bloodline. His father shared his conviction that they were not peasants, but rather poor noblemen who would one day be recognized and regain their lands and social standing from the foreign occupiers. Besides the family bible, Matthew Donnelly owned several books on history and philosophy and encouraged his children to read to develop their minds, gain a better comprehension of the world and prepare to reclaim their rightful place when the time came.

  An old friend of Jim’s father who had done well in horse trading had two sickly newborn Shetland ponies. They could not even stand. The mare had died and their chances of survival were slim. Being more pets than working animals, no one wanted them, but knowing Matthew Donnelly’s affection for anything of an equestrian nature, the friend brought them both in a cart to Matthew’s tenant house on the Cavendish estate and Matthew took them in right away. He turned them over to Jim with instructions. Every evening after a full day’s work in the fields, young Jim would care for them. He nursed them for weeks with cow’s milk, working their
muscles until they could stand, walking them in a circle on a lead, brushing down their coats until they glistened. They graduated to a slop of oats and finally grass and hay. They were the prettiest little black and white ponies—Jim named them Salt and Pepper—and they became a great source of pride to the Donnelly family. Jim loved them as if they were his siblings. Then one day George Magee came to call at the cottage.

  “Those are beautiful ponies, Donnelly. You’ve done a fine job with them.”

  “’Twas my son James’s work, sir,” his father told the estate manager with pride, but Jim could see his father was nervous.

  “Fine. Well, I would like them for my daughter. I’m willing to make a good offer. I’ll pay you ten pounds each. You should be pleased with that.”

  “They’re not for sale, sir.”

  “Oh come now, Donnelly, that’s a lot of money for you. It’s my daughter’s sixth birthday next week and I want them for her.”

  “Sorry, sir. They are not for sale.”

  “All right. Twenty each. Forty pounds, Donnelly! A fortune for you. Here’s my hand. Let’s make the deal before I change my mind.”

  Jim knew this was a lot of money but his father did not take the offered hand.

  “I am so sorry, Mr. Magee. They’re ours and we’re keeping them.”

  “Why do you want to make trouble for yourself, Donnelly?” Matthew Donnelly remained silent. “All right. I want you to think hard about it. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Jim tried to talk to his father that night. He loved the ponies, sure, but he didn’t want his father to get in trouble. It would be all right. Maybe they could visit the ponies sometimes at Ballymore. But his father wouldn’t hear a word about giving them up. The next day, Magee came and asked Matthew Donnelly if he had considered the offer.

  “The ponies are not for sale.”

  “All right then. Fifty pounds each, Donnelly. One hundred pounds, man! My final offer. More money than you could save in ten years. You can move off the tenancy. Buy land. Build a house. You’d be a fool to turn me down. I want the ponies.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Magee.”

  Magee’s eyes had blazed and he moved toward Matthew Donnelly as if he might strike him.

  “I will not let you do this to yourself, Donnelly. I am coming early tomorrow morning for the ponies. I will give you one hundred pounds, which makes me a fool. You will be a rich man”—he looked around the yard—“by these standards.”

  That night, Jim brushed down the ponies’ coats, fed them extra oats and talked to them about their new life at Ballymore. “You’ll be spoiled rotten and a pretty little girl named Johannah will ride you both and you can learn tricks for her and maybe I can come and visit you.”

  Then Jim did what he would never do again. Making sure no one saw, he allowed himself to cry for the ponies until his face and hands were wet. That night, Jim listened as his mother tried to convince his father that the money would be a wonderful thing.

  “We could have land of our own, Matthew. Have a cow—five cows! And pigs, too. We could even open a little shop in the village if we’re careful.”

  His father spoke slowly. “For hundreds of years, that man and his kind have taken everything of value we have, anything and everything they want. We can’t go on living like that, without honour or dignity. I have decided he will not have the ponies.”

  And Jim was proud of his father’s stand. They would keep the ponies. But he knew his mother was the more practical one and her opinion was ignored at their peril. At midnight that night, Jim’s father started drinking from a bottle of whiskey at the kitchen table. His mother put Jim and his sister, Theresa, to bed and closed the curtains. Jim had never seen his father drink like this and he could tell his mother was scared. She tried to get their father to bed but he refused. He stayed at the kitchen table with the lamp burning low, staring into darkness.

  It was sometime in the night when Jim heard the outside door close and he was suddenly wide awake. He slipped out of bed carefully so as not to wake Theresa and made his way to the door. The bottle was empty on the kitchen table. Jim opened the door to a bright moon and saw his father walking unsteadily toward the little corral that held the ponies. There was something in his hand. Jim could make out the heavy sledge he used to drive in the fence posts and a small sound escaped him, more a moan than a shout.

  “No.”

  Then he ran through the open door and he screamed “NO, DA!” and ran toward his father, who was now inside the gate with the sleepy ponies, which were oblivious to any threat. And Jim saw his father raise the heavy implement above his head.

  “DA! DON’T!”

  Matthew brought the sledge down on Pepper’s head with a dull crack and the pony collapsed flat.

  “NO!” Jim was almost to the gate. His father brought the thing down again, on the second pony’s skull. Matthew was strong and precise with the stroke and Salt collapsed beside his sister. Jim threw his arms around his father and Matthew, possessed of some madness, threw him back against the fence and raised the sledge once more, this time over Jim. It wavered there in the air above his head in the moonlight and Jim saw his father’s face turn to horror. His father let out a cry as the sledge was lowered and fell harmlessly into the dirt, then he turned and ran from his son into the night. A moment later, Theresa was at the ponies, crying hysterically, for she loved them as much as Jim. She was wild, trying to wake them up, pulling Salt’s head up from the dirt and screaming until their mother took her up in her arms and carried her back into the house. As Theresa’s cries became distant, Jim sat down beside the ponies and caressed the thick fur on Pepper’s head and soft ears. Leaning back against the fence, he kept the dead ponies company until well after dawn as a slow, dangerous rage took hold inside him.

  Jim did not get up from the ground when Magee arrived that morning. There were loud words spoken to Jim’s mother. His father had not returned. Jim heard Magee’s angry tone and his eyes went to the sledge where his father had dropped it. Magee only came close enough to assure himself the ponies were in fact dead, then mumbled “Bloody eejits!” and left in disgust. Jim remained with them all day until the flies began to swarm and Mr. O’Toole and Mr. Ryan came to drag them away for burial. They promised Jim they would be gentle with them and they were. And Jim did not go to see them put in the ground.

  That afternoon, a search was organized and Matthew Donnelly was found floating face down in a slough near the peat bog a mile from his cottage.

  The memory of it all came flowing back to Jim as he made his way home from his encounter with Johannah Magee, the girl for whom the ponies and his father had died. His father had killed the things he loved and then himself.

  Yes, maybe he should have drowned Johannah in the stream—for a dark moment when they were together it had in fact crossed his mind, a dangerous voice deep inside calling out for vengeance, a life for a life. But he doubted that Johannah even knew about the ponies. And, anyway, he now had a new and better plan for revenge against George Magee. A sweeter revenge than simply murder. He would make Johannah Magee his own.

  Confirmation

  Lucy and Johannah were to have their confirmation together and the next Sunday they found themselves side by side at St. Patrick’s Church, kneeling in their white robes at the rail with four other children all about to become, as they were told, soldiers of Christ in God’s army. Saint Pat’s was a fine old church with three stained glass windows and a high-vaulted ceiling. In past weeks, the statues and pictures in the sanctuary had been draped for the period of Lent, the priest and altar boys dressed in purple and the lower windows covered to keep the inside dark, but now since Easter everything was light and bright, the drapes gone, the vestments white, generous bouquets of bluebells and lilies around the altar. Little Donald Murphy sang the Gloria.

  But on the day of her confirmation, when she should have been occupied wi
th holy thoughts, Johannah was focused instead on altar boy Jim Donnelly. Her heart beat a little faster just to lay eyes on him again.

  The old bishop moved down the line, offering each of them a Latin prayer, a blessing and a gentle slap with three fingers on the cheek, hardly more than a caress really, to symbolize Christ’s suffering on the cross. Johannah’s father sat halfway back in his stiff-necked shirt, beside her mother in a high-waisted lace and velvet gown with her favourite pearl necklace. Raffy sat behind them. After the incident in the stable, George Magee had spent the week in Dublin and Johannah had avoided her mother. She felt betrayed by both parents: her father for his behaviour, which made her feel sick, and her mother for pretending it hadn’t happened. It made her want to hurt them both, make them sorry.

  When she looked up, Jim Donnelly was smiling at her. For Johannah’s entertainment, he pretended to be falling asleep, his eyelids heavy, his head dipping. She stifled a laugh. Beside her, Lucy was aware of this silent interchange and gave Johannah a look and a playful nudge with her hip. Then the bishop hovered before Lucy and spoke the Latin prayer. Lucy said her “Amen” and he touched her cheek with his three fingers and told her to go in peace. Then he stood before Johannah, whose attention he could see was clearly wandering. The bishop turned and glanced over his shoulder, but Jim stood looking away as solemn and serious as a carved saint. The bishop’s disapproving attention returned to Johannah and he spoke the prayer, adding his “Amen,” which she repeated. He put his hand to her cheek and gave her the ceremonial slap—she could have sworn it was much harder than slaps he gave the others—then he wished her peace and moved on.

  After the service, when her father drew the bishop into one of his pointed conversations at the doors about how the estate should take over management of the common lands, or how the mandatory schooling of the tenant children represented a loss in productivity, Johannah saw her chance.

  “Go on,” Lucy told her. “He’s probably outside waiting for you. Go!”

  Once outside, Johannah looked up and down the road and scouted the horses and wagons, the bushes near the church and finally the cemetery, and that’s where she found him. He was leaning against a large granite headstone with a kneeling angel on top, which was gazing heavenward in prayer. Out of his altar boy surplice, Jim was now in his patched, worn clothes. When he saw her, he assumed the devout position of the seraph on the headstone, his palms together in prayer, raising his eyes to heaven.