Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  “Sure God’s going to send a bolt of lightning for making fun of his angel.”

  “I’m quick.”

  “So is He.”

  “Come for a stroll.”

  There was a spot where the cemetery wall was broken down and they could find good footing to climb up on top of it.

  “It’s pretty high. Do you think you can do it?”

  They made their way with care along the top of the cemetery wall, the mortar around the flat stones crumbling, Jim in his bare feet, Johannah behind in her fine leather boots, arms outstretched for balance like tightrope walkers, placing one foot in front of the other.

  The countryside beyond the cemetery was the rich dark green of the potato plots set aside for the tenants to use. Other rough walls framed pastures that extended high up the far hills where cattle and sheep grazed. They were approaching a spot where an extension of the wall formed a paddock and beneath them on their left stood an impressively large black Angus bull, eyeing their progress. Johannah really did not want to be this close to the bull but she was determined not to flinch. She told herself she’d be past the creature in a minute but halfway along the paddock, Jim stopped and turned back to her.

  “Whatever you do, Johannah, don’t fall in there or that’s you done for,” he teased. “He’ll be on you in a heartbeat, tossing your bloody broken little body from horn to horn.”

  Johannah was not to be intimidated. She looked down and studied the seemingly docile bull. She had certainly been warned away from them and maintained a healthy respect, but she would never show fear in front of Jim Donnelly. She told him with a worldly nonchalance, “It’s just a bull.”

  The animal watched them watching him. His big black eyes could have been those of a contented, uninterested bovine or of a committed killer about to strike.

  “I believe he’s killed three or four. Seems to like to do in the girl children best. The cailíní.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she told him.

  As he looked back at her with that sad smile of his, he stumbled on some crumbling mortar, lost his balance, tried to right himself and then fell straight down into the muddy pen on his knees before the beast. The animal raised his head with a snort and pawed the earth. Jim got slowly up on his feet to face the enormous creature.

  “Don’t move, Jimmy,” Johannah whispered.

  The instruction was unnecessary, for the boy was frozen. Jim and the bull stared at one another. The creature pawed the earth again, his eyes awakening to this confrontation, a rage slowly building at this invasion of his pen. He snorted, lowered his enormous head and shook it at Jim. Johannah searched around for something to help and a few feet further along past the paddock, where the wall had broken down, someone had placed a long, rough board across the gap. She hurried to it, dragged it back to the paddock and dropped one end down beside Jim.

  “Climb up, Jim!”

  Jim’s reverie was broken. He turned and scrambled up the rough plank just as the bull charged. His hands were on the top of the wall when Johannah reached down, grabbed the seat of his trousers and helped haul his back end and legs out of harm’s way. The bull’s head snapped the board and butted into the stone and mortar structure where a split second before Jim had been standing, the horns crashing and damaging the stones of the wall on which the children were now perched. The two of them stood up, balanced on top of the narrow wall, holding on to each other, calming their pounding hearts.

  “That was quite clever,” Jim said and Johannah felt blood rush to her face. “You saved my skin.” He extended his finger, touched the end of her nose and said, “Imagine that.”

  They laughed and she rubbed some splattered mud off his cheek, his face close to hers. With their arms around each other for balance, she felt the warmth of his slender body. She noticed the blue flecks in his brown eyes and the lines around his mouth and she felt a sudden impulse to kiss him on those perfect lips of his. It was an impulse he apparently shared as he leaned in toward her. And then, as one, they stopped just short of contact, both sensing they were being watched. They turned their heads to see her parents, the priest and the bishop in the churchyard, all watching them on the wall. Had they planned it, Johannah could not have staged a more perfect act of defiance against her parents. For Jim it was the opportunity to very publicly stake his claim to Magee’s daughter. Johannah turned from the audience, leaned in and without shame kissed Jim on those perfect lips, and Jim kissed her back just as hard. For a moment they were both lost in the new joy of their soft, warm mouths. And for an instant the kiss was no longer for Johannah’s defiance or Jim’s revenge but the beginning of something else.

  “Johannah!” The moment was severed by the fury of her father’s voice. She and Jim reluctantly pulled away from each other and turned toward the churchyard to see her father coming fast toward them. Jim helped her down on the cemetery side of the wall and got down himself. He stood his ground as her father marched up to him.

  “You filthy bastard!”

  Her father swung his fist against the side of Jim’s head and knocked him down onto the ground, then began to kick him with all his strength. Johannah had never seen her father so enraged, and it terrified her.

  “Stop it, Da! It was not his fault!”

  But her father kept kicking Jim until Johannah threw herself against him and he finally turned away from Jim to her, his chest heaving, face red. He grabbed her arm, pulled her toward him and slapped her face once, but as he raised his hand for the second blow, Jim was on him, his arm around his neck, pulling him away from Johannah. Her father let go of her, turned back toward Jim and again knocked him down with his fist. Jim got to his feet, ready to continue the fight, but her father had withdrawn a small pistol from his jacket and now aimed the weapon intently at Jim’s heart. Raffy’s voice cut through the melee: “NO!”

  And Jim froze, the pistol an arm’s length away. Johannah took a step toward her father.

  “No, Da. Please—”

  The bishop called out, “George! For the love of God.”

  Johannah’s father spoke quietly to Jim. “Do you think if I shot you anyone would really care?”

  Jim stared back at him in defiant silence.

  Johannah’s mother and Raffy swooped in on them then, the priest and bishop right behind them. Jim took a step back, holding his ribs, his fine mouth bloody and torn. Johannah’s father loosened his grip on the pistol, then stood up straight, put the piece away and addressed Jim.

  “Pack up your things and be off the estate by nightfall or I’ll have you arrested. Do you understand?”

  “I want to speak to your daughter.”

  “No. Never again.”

  Jim looked at Johannah for a moment, his pain apparent, then turned and began a limping walk back to his family cottage. As he left, it occurred to Johannah she truly might never see him again and it would serve her right. She had brought this on the boy with a kiss, to get back at her father. Who could blame him if he hated her for it. There was nothing to do but lock herself in her room for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  A week later, Johannah’s father made an announcement at breakfast.

  “Arrangements have been made, Johannah. You’ll be going to Devoncroft Ladies’ College in London. I do not trust the schools in Dublin, and in any case, you should spend time among the English. It will do you good to know something about the most powerful empire on earth.”

  “I won’t go.” Johannah turned to her mother. “Tell him I won’t go.” But her mother sat there in silence.

  “Yes, you will,” he assured her. The battle was lost even before she became aware of her fate. Whether she liked it or not, she was going off to London.

  Johannah went for days without speaking to either of her parents as the date of departure approached. Raffy and Lucy were her confidants as ever and were as distressed as she w
as at the prospect of her leaving the estate, but opposed to fanning the flames of Johannah’s rebellion, Raffy offered good advice.

  “You must look upon this as your first adventure. Remember all the stories we made up? This is real. You will travel and see a part of the world as it is in the books you’ve read. It’s what you always wanted, miss. Make the best of it.”

  On the day of her departure they were all there outside Ballymore House to say goodbye. The dancers Martin and Brid O’Day were kneeling in the grass by the drive and the twins Michael and Devon Ryan stood on the swinging gate, their glum expressions identical. Johannah’s mother was to accompany her on her journey to London and they were ready in matching capes and bonnets. The servants loaded their cases into the open carriage. Little Donald Murphy sang “Molly Malone” for the occasion, in harmony with his blind sister, Maive, and Lucy stood beside Johannah, staring at her as if at any moment she might burst.

  “What will I tell them at the enchanted woodlot?”

  “Tell them I’ll be back.”

  Even after her father’s threats, Johannah held a sliver of hope that she might see Jim Donnelly one last time, that somehow he might find a way to say goodbye to her. But then, why would he risk violence at the hands of her father again? She had ruined his life, had him banished from his home and brought sorrow to his family.

  When they were ready to leave, Johannah went around to say goodbye to each of her friends, ending with Lucy—who, like her, was losing her battle against tears. As her wide blue eyes were filling, she gave instructions.

  “You must write to me every day and twice on Sundays.”

  They hugged each other breathless. Then she and her father faced each other for a moment and she relented enough to give him a short, cold kiss. Then last, Raffy hugged her hard and fired out her list of commands.

  “You must keep yourself very clean and say your prayers morning and night and avoid ne’er-do-wells and always lock your doors! And don’t start arguments but stick up for yourself. Don’t eat uncooked vegetables or undercooked meat. Wear a scarf and don’t let your socks get wet.” Her diatribe went on, then ended in a bit of a sob. With a last powerful hug, Johannah left her and climbed up into the coach behind her mother.

  Johannah took a final look out the coach window at the house and the estate that had been her world. She looked around one last time to the outbuildings and trees and bushes, but he was not there. The hope of seeing Jim was now extinguished and she left home with the conviction that wherever he was, he felt well rid of her. The carriage departed from the house with her father standing on the driveway, Raffy beside him. As they passed the gate, Johannah leaned out the window and for the last time waved sadly back at Lucy and the other children of the estate. She would take Raffy’s advice and embrace this new and unexpected future as an adventure.

  * * *

  On that dark day, Jim Donnelly hid in the bushes near the barn, fearful of arrest, and watched Johannah Magee leave him. So much for his plan of revenge against her father, which had taken an unexpected turn. He had developed true feelings for this headstrong girl. They were young, it was true, he only fifteen and she younger still. But he had played his part too well. Did she know? She knew everything else to know in the world, or so she’d tell you, so she surely must have known his true feelings. And there was the kiss! What more needed explaining? That was the deal done.

  Jim suddenly ducked down. Had they seen him? The manager had looked in his direction, but no, he was safe. Cowardly but safe. What to do about the plan, now that her father had sent her away? Jim was the great-great-great-grandson of Chieftain Peter Donnelly and the last male of that line. What would Peter do? Kidnap the girl? Slay her evil father? He could still feel Magee’s fist pounding his head, boot connecting with his face, the barrel of the gun pointed at him. Jim had no horse. He had no weapons. He had no money or prospects. All he could do was to crouch down out of sight, hiding in the bushes like a thief, and peer out at her like a helpless fool. On that day, when the object of his sweet revenge left him for England, it felt like no less than the abrupt end of his short, disappointing life.

  Exile

  The early months at Devoncroft Ladies’ College in London were not easy for Johannah. She deeply missed Raffy and Lucy and Cuchulain, although her little horse would have found the trails of Hyde Park an extreme disappointment. She pleaded in her short letters to her mother to be allowed to come home at Christmas and again in the summertime, but her father was adamant that she needed more time in England to break free from the base provincial life in Ireland and absorb a superior culture. As usual, her mother agreed. It was almost despite herself that Johannah’s circle of friends grew at the school and in the city, and she became quite fond of her aunt Lydia, a relative on her mother’s side who lived in Chelsea. She continued reading a great deal; in her letters to Lucy she compared her life to that of the literary characters in Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin or Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and in the subject of philosophy, read and declared herself skeptical of Kant’s transcendental perception of life. She did very well in history, geography and poetry and by the end of second year, her anxious yearnings for Ballymore began to ease. Except for the one persistent image that always made her a little heartsick, of a certain boy with a broken smile.

  Johannah’s mother visited her twice each year for a fortnight, once in late fall and again during the spring social season. Together they went to the theatre, strolled the museums and attended dances in London. With each visit, her mother’s demeanour warmed toward Johannah, and Johannah could not help but warm to her as well. They were delighted each time a stranger mistook them for sisters. They joked about London men, with their blustery self-importance.

  “How did you first meet Father?”

  “He did cattle business with my brother in Galway. My brother arranged that we should meet at a friend’s dinner party there.”

  “What was he like then?”

  “Oh, well dressed. On his best behaviour. Dashing even. Of course, he had all his hair then and no belly to speak of. I was only eighteen. I was quite swept away, poor thing.”

  Johannah’s mother had never spoken to her like this, as a woman to a woman. She stayed silent and let her mother continue her bittersweet story.

  “I had mistakenly believed he was capable of loving me and the truth became clear not in any one moment or hour or day, but slowly, incrementally, as things do happen, and the years went by as the years will. And you came along and any vestiges of his love went to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told her mother, startled by the admission of what she had suspected. But her mother smiled.

  “No, no. Don’t be. You were a lovely child, the only joy in my life.”

  “But…you didn’t kiss me or hug me. I never really felt you even liked me.”

  “Your grandfather was Scots,” she said, as if this explained everything. “But maybe…I could start to show you now.”

  In these times together, there began to grow between them a true and loving bond. In the quiet moments when they talked of the past, she heard in her mother’s voice a distant note of apology for her behaviour.

  Once Johannah turned seventeen, she began to receive invitations to teas and luncheons, small gatherings where she inevitably found herself in the company of single young men. After some discreet questions, she was shocked to realize that her parents, with the help of her aunt, were arranging these subtle liaisons. They were trying to marry her off! She was young and free and after seeing what marriage offered to her mother, spending the rest of her life with any of the men she had met was the last thing that interested her. The world was far too interesting a place to become indentured to an English husband.

  In her fourth year away, Johannah came upon the pamphlets of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, whose intent was to abolish slavery. Johannah had seen a black family of slave
s for the first time on a London street, with the father in chains, and was astonished that human beings could be treated this way in a civilized society. She became a supporter of the cause and gathered with the crowd outside an anti-slavery meeting in London, which Mott and Stanton had helped organize, to hear her heroes speak.

  What Stanton and Mott found was that they had been denied chairs on the stage. Their names had been taken off the speakers’ list they had written and the moderator of their choice had been replaced. When one speaker, an Anglican minister with a melodramatic tremor in his voice, finished a sermon-like diatribe, Mott took the stage, holding papers up high.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of this assembly…my colleague and friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I have drafted an amendment to the bill to abolish slavery within the United Kingdom in three stages. The first will be to create a foundation to guide, protect, house and give medical care to freed slaves and their children…”

  “Next speaker!” A male voice called out. The new moderator turned to Lucretia.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have time for this, ma’am.”

  “Once the foundation is established,” she continued, “and ready to receive newly freed men and women, then the abolition laws can be properly enforced so the transition is safe and organized…”

  “Please, Miss Mott, we have men waiting to speak.”

  “Then let them wait! If you pass and enforce the anti-slavery laws without a plan, you will have chaos!”

  “Next speaker!” another voice called out.