In the Time of Famine

by Michael Grant

  Michael, standing over him, waved the handle at him menacingly. “If I ever find out you’ve hurt this animal—” Michael raised the axe handle over his head and came down with all his might. Kincaid saw the handle coming, but he was too paralyzed with fear to move. He closed his eyes and felt the handle whistle past his ear and shatter against a tree stump next to his head. Michael leaned down and whispered in his ear. “The next time it’ll be your useless skull that breaks.”

  Kincaid scrambled to his feet, trembling. “That horse is mad—”

  “That horse is a good judge of character.”

  Kincaid backed away from Michael and the horse. They were both quite mad. For a moment he considered not buying the animal, but his gombeen mind overruled him. The horse was worth far more than the pittance he’d paid for it and there would be a handsome profit to be made. “Bring him along with the others,” he growled at Michael. “And be quick about it.”

  Outside, Lord Somerville and Emily watched Dermot and Da tie the set of Chestnuts to Kincaid’s wagon.

  Kincaid hurried out of the barn and climbed up onto his wagon. Michael came behind, leading Shannon. “Hurry up, man,” Kincaid said, “I haven’t all day.”

  Michael tied Shannon to the back of the wagon.

  The gombeen man studied Michael with small black eyes, glistening with hatred. “You’re a Ranahan, aren’t you?”

  “Michael Ranahan.”

  “I’ll remember you, Michael Ranahan.”

  Kincaid turned to Somerville and gave him a syrupy smile. “That’s the lot your lordship. If I can be of any further service?”

  Somerville waved him away dismissively.

  As the gombeen man’s wagon rolled down the road with yet another wagonload of the Somerville estate’s property, Emily, fighting back tears, rushed into the barn. She stood in front of Shannon’s empty stall, lost in melancholy thoughts, recalling all the wonderful, glorious rides the two had shared.

  “He was a cranky old horse,” Michael said from the doorway.

  Emily whirled, about to erupt in anger. Then, she saw his sad smile and she smiled through her tears.

  “He was a cranky old horse.”

  The two stood looking at each other. They were no more than ten feet apart, but she was the landlord’s daughter and he was the tenant farmer’s son. Those ten feet might as well have been the width of a great ocean.

  Emily studied Michael. His clothing was in tatters, his black, wavy hair was a wild mess, and he was alarmingly thin. But there was something about him. She sensed an inner strength, a man who would not be bowed. She thought of the dreadful way he and the other tenant farmers lived.

  “How do you survive?” she asked.

  “You do,” Michael said. “You just do.”

  Chapter Twenty One

  It was after dawn and the three Ranahan men were just finishing up a breakfast of a small pitcher of buttermilk and a gruel of watery corn meal.

  Dermot shoved his empty bowl aside in disgust. “Tis not enough. Sure the worksite’s a good five-mile walk. I’ll die of the hunger before I even lift a spade.”

  “Here, son. Take mine. I’m not hungry.”

  Mam tried to give Dermot her bowl, but Da pushed it away. “He’s had as much as the rest of us. Come on,” he said, reaching for his coat. “We’ll all die of the hunger if we don’t collect our wages from the public works and that’s a fact.”

  Michael tossed Dermot his coat. “Save your strength. We’ve a long walk.”

  Suddenly, there was an urgent pounding on the door. Michael opened it and Barry Scanlon’s eldest son was standing there with tears streaming down his cheeks. “My Da says come quick. They’re tumblin’ our cottage.”

  By the time Michael, Da, and Dermot arrived, a crowd had gathered outside Barry Scanlon’s cottage. An impatient Major Wicker, standing with a bailiff and three constables, watched Scanlon and his wife carry the last of what few possessions they owned out of the cottage.

  Scanlon, the man who had bought the last loaf of bread in O’Mally’s bakery, looked about in fright, his eyes bulging more than ever. His four children, too terrified to even cry, crouched under a nearby bush. Standing to the side, a group of sullen farmers muttered among themselves.

  Wicker looked at his pocket watch. “All right,” he shouted. “Tumble it and be quick about it.”

  Michael looked around, puzzled. Who was he talking to? Surely there was no man here who would do the black work of the crowbar brigade against one of their own?

  A tall, hulking figure pushed through the crowd. Michael saw a flash of red hair and Pat Doyle, carrying a crowbar, stepped into the clearing. Before Michael could utter a word, Padric Leahy and Tim Finney, their eyes downcast, came behind him.

  Michael shoved his way through the crowd. “Pat… Padric… Tim… for the love of God, you can’t tumble Barry’s home.”

  Wicker pointed his riding crop at Michael. “Remove this man,” he said to the constables.

  A constable started moving toward Michael. Ignoring him, Michael jumped in front of Doyle. The big redheaded man refused to make eye contact. Michael grabbed his frayed coat. “Pat, will you listen to me?”

  Doyle stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused. “Stay out of this,” he snarled. “I have mouths to feed.”

  “So does Barry—”

  The constable cracked Michael over the head with his truncheon. Suddenly, the landscape tilted and went blurry. A loud buzzing erupted in his ears, blocking out the shouting around him. Michael stumbled and fell to the ground. He tried to get to his feet, but the constable hit him again. He dropped to his knees and the buzzing grew louder. Warm, sticky blood flowed into his eyes. Through a red haze he saw a blur pass him and heard a curse as the constable went down under the weight of Dermot’s charge.

  In a flash, the other two constables were on Dermot, clubs flailing. Then, Da was there, pulling at a constable’s arm. The man spun around and jammed his club into Da’s stomach. As Da sunk to the ground, the constable delivered a savage blow to the top of Da’s head.

  Michael tried to rise, but the ground was tilting at a crazy angle and he couldn’t get his feet under him. He wiped the blood from his eyes with his sleeve, but it kept coming, obscuring his vision. He had to get up. He had to help Da and Dermot…

  Then another blow to the back of his head and he fell face down in the soil.

  Darkness. From a great distance he heard a voice. The voice grew louder, shouting in his ear. He finally understood what the voice was saying. “Stay down for the love of God or they’ll kill you for sure...” Michael blinked the blood out of his eyes. Through his blurred vision he saw the frightened face of Father Rafferty, inches from his. “Stay down, Michael. Will you stay down.”

  Pat Doyle stood frozen, watching the Ranahans being beaten, uncertain of what he should do next. Then he heard a great swooshing sound and a roar. He turned and saw the thatched roof engulfed in flames. Then a short man with a big head was standing in front of him, jabbing him with his riding crop. “I’m not paying you to stand idle, man,” Wicker shouted over the roar of the fire. “Get to it.”

  Doyle stared at the crowbar in his huge hands. For a moment he couldn’t remember why he was here. Then, slowly, the reasons came back to him. Reasons he’d used to convince himself that he was doing the right thing. I’ve six mouths to feed… When that didn’t fully allay his feeling of shame, he added, If I don’t do it, someone else will…

  With a primal grunt he turned and attacked the walls of Scanlon’s cottage. With each swing of the crowbar he repeated to himself over and over again: I’ve six mouths to feed…

  Michael, sprawled in the dirt and surrounded by wary constables with their truncheons at the ready, watched Doyle and the others bash at the walls with their crowbars in disbelief and sadness. It didn’t take much effort to bring the cottage down. It was nothing more than a windowless hut with cracked walls and a roof badly in need of new thatch.

  Finally, it
was done. Doyle and the others stepped back, panting from their exertions, as the walls fell in on themselves in one final, sad sigh.

  Then silence. The men looked at the rubble of Scanlon’s cottage and thought of their own homes. Pat Doyle dropped his crowbar, tears flowing down the big man’s cheeks.

  “Give the warning,” Wicker said to the bailiff.

  The bailiff took a sheet of paper from inside his coat and read. “All here be advised that one Barry Scanlon, tenant, having failed to pay rent and being in arrears, is evicted this day. He, and his family, will remove themselves from the land forthwith under penalty of criminal trespass—”

  “That’s a sentence of death!” Michael shouted.

  The bailiff glanced at Michael and stopped reading, uncertain.

  “Go on, man,” Wicker said. “Read the rest.”

  The bailiff cleared his throat. “Anyone giving refuge and shelter to this family will themselves be subject to immediate eviction.”

  And it was over. What had been Barry Scanlon’s home—such as it was—for three generations had been reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble. One by one the farmers turned and silently went back to their homes.

  A constable jabbed Michael with his club. “On your feet the lot of you. You’re under arrest.”

  Father Rafferty pulled the sergeant constable aside. “Sure you can be merciful and let them go. They caused you no harm and haven’t they been punished enough?”

  The constable looked down at the three bleeding men. Perhaps the old priest was right. Taking this lot into custody would only create more paperwork. Besides, a cracked head served as a better warning not to interfere with the work of the constabulary than a day or two in jail ever would.

  He poked Michael with the tip of his truncheon. Michael recognized him. He was the same sergeant who’d smoked his pipe outside the barracks while he’d clung to the roof twenty feet above.

  “You’ve come to my attention and now I know who you are, bucko. Stay out of trouble or you’ll answer to me. And the next time I won’t let you off so easy.”

  Scanlon and his family gathered their belongings—an old mattress, a cooking pot, and a worn horse blanket—and started down the road. Michael ran to catch up with them.

  “Where will you go, Barry?”

  “The Workhouse.”

  “Ah, you can’t go there, man.”

  “Where else then? The family is without sup or home.”

  Michael saw the anguish in Barry’s eyes. “Aye, you’re right. Where else can you go?”

  Mary Scanlon, Barry’s ten-year-old daughter, threw her arms around Michael’s legs. “Michael, I’m afraid… I hear tell people die in the Workhouse.”

  He picked her up, shocked by the feel of bones under her rags. He wiped the tears from her dirty face. He had often told his Granda’s scary stories to the young ones and it was always Mary, squealing the loudest in self-induced terror, who could never get enough of them.

  “Sure that’s just rumor, Mary.”

  “It’s not. Didn’t your own grandmam die there?”

  “She was dyin’ anyway. She went there for the coffin.”

  “Will you come to the Workhouse with us, Michael? Will you tell me scary stories there?”

  “I can’t, Mary.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “But, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll walk to the Workhouse with you. Would that be all right?”

  She buried her face in his chest. “Aye.”

  As Michael and the Scanlon family started down the road toward the Workhouse, he saw Emily standing by a grove of trees. She looked at him for a moment, her lovely face ashen, her eyes glistening, and then she turned and disappeared into the trees.

  The Workhouse was just as intimidating as it had been when Michael brought his grandmam there. Only this time, now that famine conditions were worsening, there was a long line of forlorn souls queued alongside the gray walls, waiting for their turn to get in.

  Michael shook hands with Barry and kissed his wife. He hugged Mary. “You’ll be all right here. They’ll feed you and give you a nice place to sleep. And then, when the bad times are over, you’ll come home and everythin’ will be grand again.”

  “But we’ve no cottage to come to, Michael. They tumbled it down.”

  “Your Da and I will build another. Bigger and better. You’ll see.”

  Michael waited with them in line until it was time for the family to enter through the massive oaken doors. As they disappeared into that terrible place, Michael knew that in spite of what he’d told Mary, he would never see them again.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  October 1847

  Ballyross, Ireland

  Despite Emily’s brave promise to Dr. McDonald, she almost didn’t make it through her first week in the Fever Hospital. Every morning, without fail, she became physically ill as soon as she walked into the building and was assaulted by the stomach-turning stench of offal and death. At the end of the day, she’d rush home, soak in a hot tub, and scrub herself until her skin was rubbed raw. But no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t get the smell out of her skin. It was as though the stench of death had permeated the very cells of her body. But, somehow, she made it through that first week. And then a second week. And then, one day—as Dr. McDonald had predicted—she no longer noticed the smell.

  The smells were one thing. Tending the pitiful victims was another. When she’d first arrived, they were trickling into the hospital five or six a day. Now, the trickle had become a torrent of sick and dying, threatening to overwhelm the hospital and staff. The beds quickly filled. Blankets were spread on the floor and the floor became beds. When the rooms were full, patients were put in the corridors. As soon as one died, another was put in the bed. Even if there had been bed linens available, there would have been no time to change them. The hospital had become a hopeless, sad assembly line of death.

  The patients were already emaciated by starvation. But once the fever took hold, the inexorable, downward spiral of death began in earnest. At first Emily had been stunned and outraged by Dr. McDonald’s callous form of triage. Every morning he would walk up and down a narrow aisle between beds that held the new patients. He would give them a cursory examination—sometimes nothing more than a mere glance—and consign the patient to either a treatment bed or the dying room.

  Emily protested. “You are not God, Dr. McDonald. How can you say this one will live or that one will die without giving them a proper examination?”

  The doctor wiped his hands on his bloodstained apron, too weary to take offense at having his authority challenged by a mere girl. “When you’ve seen as many fever victims as I have, you don’t need to examine them.”

  She was offended by his God-like arrogance, but she soon discovered he was right. After a week, even she was able to predict with just a glance who would live and who would die. It wasn’t hard. Almost all who came to the hospital died eventually.

  Emily put a spoonful of water to a little boy’s parched lips. “Here, Thomas, try to drink just a little.”

  The father had brought the six-year-old in two days earlier. He, himself, died that night, but Emily was determined to keep his son alive. In spite of the telltale signs—he’d begun to develop rose-colored spots on his chest—Emily refused to accept the fact that this child was dying. He had become a personal crusade. This child will live. If she could keep just one child alive, she reasoned, it would ease the pain of watching so many others die.

  The water dribbled out of the side of his mouth. Emily patiently dipped the spoon in a bucket of water and tried again. “Come on, Thomas, I know you can do it.”

  She looked into his yellow-hued eyes. They looked back at her, but there was no spark of life in them.

  Two attendants rushed into the room carrying a man on a stretcher. As soon as they placed him on a bed, he started to convulse.

  Dr. McDonald appeared. “Emily, give a hand here.”

  Emily and the two attendants held the
man down while the doctor jammed a wooden stick into the patient’s mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. In a matter of minutes the convulsion passed. The man’s ruddy skin turned the color of yellowed parchment. Emily wasn’t surprised when Dr. McDonald told the attendants to take the man to the dying room.

  Emily returned to her patient. The youngster’s eyes were closed. “Please, Thomas. You really must drink something.” She forced the spoon into his mouth. The water trickled down his chin. She tried again. “’All right. One more time.”

  “He’s gone, Emily.”

  Emily stiffened. “No, Dr. McDonald. He just needs to get some fluids in him. As soon as he gets some—”

  Dr. McDonald gently took the spoon out of Emily’s hand and held her by the shoulders. “Emily, listen to me,” he said quietly. “The boy is dead.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “He can’t be dead. I promised him he wouldn’t die.”

  “Never promise such foolishness. Not here.”

  “He’s too young to die…”

  “Go home, Emily. You’ve had enough for one day.”

  Emily looked around her and it was as though she were seeing the hospital for the first time. And in a sense she was. From the beginning, she had not permitted herself to register the misery and devastation around her. At some level, she knew that she would not be able to function if she allowed herself to grasp the true horror of what was happening. But now, the little boy was dead. She could no longer maintain that pretense.

  And it suddenly occurred to her what her true role was in this living hell. It was not to make these poor creatures well, it was to simply make their last hours as comfortable as possible.

  “They’re all going to die…” she sobbed. “They’re all going to die…”

  Dr. McDonald led her outside and sat her down on the steps.

  “Will you be all right?”