by Clare Daly
‘He’s still alive.’
‘We came for Corcoran.’
Michael looked at his dead body and back to Foyle.
‘We can’t let him live,’ he said his fist raised. ‘He’ll tell.’
‘Tell them what – that a dead girl killed his friend or that he staged her death to cover up a murder when she was alive all along? C’mon, we need to go. The sun is coming up. We’ve done enough.’
‘But…’
‘I won’t take a man from his family. He has children. They’ll starve without him. Check his pockets and look for any food we can take with us.’
Michael did as he was told. She opened the pantry door and looked in amazement at its contents. The long narrow room was packed floor to ceiling with food. Bags of flour. Jars of preserves. Sugar. Oats. Tea. Bread. Cured meats. Even a few rabbits hanging on hooks from the ceiling. He was of course allowed to hunt on Melmoth land. She took a small sack and filled it like a pirate taking their share of buried treasure.
‘Jaysus.’
Michael stood at the door, his mouth open. Evelyn threw the sack to him to fill. She went back to the kitchen and searched through the drawers in an old dresser. Corcoran was not tidy. The drawers were a mess of odds and ends. At the very back of one she found a small sewing box, wooden with painted flowers, a feminine possession lost in a heap of manly disorder. A keepsake of his wife’s perhaps? She stuffed it into her pocket and ran upstairs. She was still wearing Corcoran’s coat and hoping she was right and that he had no mind for the clearing of old belongings, she looked in every room for signs of feminine occupation. At the end of the landing in the smallest room, a few trunks lay gathering dust. They surrounded a child’s cot – just an empty wooden frame without bedding, never slept in. It looked handmade. Had he made it himself? In the first trunk, she found the bedding, carefully folded away. In the second, women’s clothes. They smelled musty but Corcoran’s wife had a petite frame and she chose a high-necked dress that would cover her bruising, some underclothes and a pair of boots which were a little big. No matter. She pulled the laces tight and charged back down the stairs.
Michael had relieved Foyle of two silver coins in his pocket, payment no doubt for his part in all this and she pocketed what money she found on Corcoran. It wasn’t much and he probably had more hidden away but unfortunately, they didn’t have the luxury of time to find it.
‘Take what we can carry and let’s move,’ she said taking a sack from him with a thankful smile.
Foyle let out a low moan and as he passed him, Michael gave him a kick, silencing him again. He eyed Corcoran’s body on the table, his shirt covered in blood, his skin gleaming with sweat.
‘I don’t know how you did it,’ he said.
‘The rake was sharp and he was in such shock – I got a good strike at him. I guess I was lucky. Besides you injured him to begin with. You gave me the advantage.’
She ushered him outside. Further scrutiny of Corcoran’s body would only bring more questions. All the same, he was staring at her in disbelief. Maybe he thought she wasn’t capable of it. A day ago, she wouldn’t have thought so herself. They ran for the stables. Corcoran’s horse was still saddled and Michael climbed up, pulling her up behind him. Foyle was awake again. He was howling – the sound of someone demented by drink and the horror that now dawned. As they galloped away, Evelyn watched the house grow smaller, the faint sound of male laughter echoing in her mind.
11
Twing – Shook.
Twing – Shook.
In the pit, the two men kept a steady pace, their shovels biting into the earth. Muck flicked up on their faces and spattered their clothes. One of them, the younger, stopped for a moment to adjust the cloth over his mouth.
‘Don’t lose the rhythm, Charlie,’ said the other man. ‘We need to get this done before the sun comes up and every child in town is here staring at us.’
He hadn’t yet noticed her and Michael. They had slowed to a trot as they approached the workhouse, hoping to cut across the lands of the nearby Castletown estate. A shrine to poverty and disease, the workhouse seemed to kill more people than it helped.
‘I think it’s big enough,’ Charlie said.
‘God help us, it will never be big enough,’ he said. He slammed his shovel down hard into the soil, picking up a full load and throwing it out to the surface, careful not to disturb the fifteen souls waiting at the trench’s opening. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters lay in wait for their burial. The older man patted the younger on the back.
‘Nearly done.’
Michael kept his eyes on the road but Evelyn was transfixed. She’d never seen so many people, like that, together. She caught the older man’s eye and he cocked his head sideways to tell her to keep moving.
‘I wonder what Foyle will say about us,’ Michael said, as they made their way into Castletown. ‘Maybe he won’t remember anything at all when he sobers up.’
‘That’s the best we can hope for. Other than that, it’s just the mad ramblings of a drunkard. That cut doesn’t look good.’
‘Yeah, he got me good alright.’
‘I’d better fix it up, before it gets infected. Stop over there.’
He drew the horse into a small clearing in the trees. Signs of an old campfire lay strewn about, the rocks and grey ash a reminder that they weren’t the first to cross these lands uninvited, and they wouldn’t be the last. The migration of people on the roads, was growing to such numbers as to lead more through the less travelled forests, where they may have a hope of catching a squirrel or stumbling upon a bird’s nest. A roast pigeon was a fine feast indeed. They dismounted and she took out the little sewing box, her hands trembling as she tried to thread the needle.
‘You okay?’ he said. ‘You’ve been through a lot.’
‘And you haven’t?’
‘Yeah well, you know, you’re a …’
‘If you say girl, I’m going to hit you.’
‘I was going to say – you’re not cold hearted like me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’ll never happen Ev,’ he sighed. ‘No matter what happened with Corcoran, you’re one of the good ones.’
Was she? He had such belief in her. Even still after she brought this down on them. Would a good person burn another to death? She knelt beside him and surveyed the damage to his face. The cut was severe. A crooked line ran from below his left ear across his jaw. It had stopped bleeding but congealed blood oozed from the open wound. Wiping it as best she could, she drew the needle in. A tiny wave of heat sterilised it, and she was grateful for its help even though it seemed to come of its own accord. Carefully she worked stitch after stitch, to pull the cut closed. When she finished the eighth one, she tied it with a knot that she bit with her teeth.
‘There – you won’t be pretty – but then you never were.’
‘Funny.’
‘Makes you look rugged.’
He smiled, his cheek stinging and settled for serious again, his fingers lightly touching the stitches.
‘We should eat.’
They devoured the salty ham and half the bread washed down with a flask of milk. Remorse for how they’d come by such a feast, would have to wait. If she would ever feel it at all. She wasn’t the good person he thought her to be. A truth he’d hopefully never discover. She should never have brought him into this. She should have gone straight for Corcoran, before returning home. Then he would be safely out of it. But what would she have done after? Go back home like nothing had happened? And besides she was no mastermind when it came to covering up murder and how would she explain how she had overpowered him? No. She would always have had to leave. To have her brother with her and not think her dead, was a favour to both of them. Perhaps their destinies lay elsewhere, beyond Cularne, after all.
As they rode on through the trees, Castletow
n House blinked into view. Larger than Melmoth Hall, its main house was set back from the wings by curved sweeping colonnades. Such beauty and grandeur. A glimpse of a dream she would never realise – for grand houses and wealth don’t befall a murderous peasant girl with a gift for fire. She was suddenly conscious of her hands around Michael’s waist. What if she burned him by accident – the fire uncontrollable? The smell of smoke still clung to his shirt, a reminder of what they’d lost and she drew closed her fists, resting her head on his shoulder as they left Castletown behind.
They followed the River Liffey that ran through its lands until they reached a pretty stretch deep in the valley. She’d heard her father talk of it before, calling it the Strawberry Beds. They would take them into Dublin, Michael said, and so they joined the road, already busy with wagons and carts. While the time for strawberries had passed, the riverbank was full of industry, shepherding people and trade along its waters. Alongside them, trailed a pilgrimage of the starving and downtrodden. Withered by famine, they moved slowly, seeming to drag themselves along, their gait heavy and laboured. What belongings they had were tied to their backs, their clothes no more than rags, torn asunder by hardship and life on the road. Mud caked their bare feet; dried in splashes on their legs. Their dirty hair, matted and polluted from sleeping outdoors, gave them the appearance of lunacy, as if a local asylum had emptied its wards onto the streets, but it was their complexion that shocked Evelyn the most. Famine had struck a cruel hand in Cularne, but wherever these people had come from, it had all but laid them to rest. Their skin, stretched over the bones of their faces, was grey and almost translucent as if the dead walked among them. They were beaten down, heads hanging low.
As they journeyed downhill into the tiny village of Chapelizod, the situation worsened. In other circumstances, you would think it a market day, for the narrow streets were thronged but these people sought survival not commerce. A boy, no more than five or six, held his mother’s hand, watching them from the roadside. His black hair hung low over one eye, the other rimmed in dirt, starkly green and staring. He had no expression to his face, no downturn to his mouth, just pursed lips and an emptiness – a lifeless thing. As they passed Evelyn looked back at the boy, his head turning to follow them.
‘We have to give them something,’ she said to Michael who was already handing her the bread from the bag. As she took it, he grabbed her elbow.
‘We can’t stop,’ he said.
She nodded, breaking the bread into chunks. She gestured to the little boy to come to her. His speed shocked her as he darted through the people, his little hands outstretched as others saw her charity and came to them. She gave some down to his desperate hands and to the others now raised in the hope of a tiny morsel.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this. What has this famine done to us?’ she said.
‘Broken us,’ he said. ‘And there’s no one stepping in to fix it.’
***
As they reached the outskirts of the capital, a patch of blue peeped out behind the dark clouds, as if a secret, brighter world lay beyond. The city itself was divided north and south by the river. Under its many bridges, the Liffey flowed, brown smeared with green, the tide high against the stone walls. Gulls screeched as they circled above. On the quayside, the sound of clopping hooves and clattering carriages filled the air, as Evelyn and Michael marvelled at the city around them. Bewigged barristers and officers of the court scurried under the giant Corinthian columns of The Four Courts, upon which sat a green copper dome, a giant judicial eye presiding over the city. On the opposite bank, at the top of a sweeping green slope stood Christchurch Cathedral, a chorus of bells ringing from its gothic belfry.
If the island of Ireland was shrivelling beneath a blanket of death, Dublin was the only place left it seemed, where the pumping heart of humanity still survived. People thronged the pavements, men in long overcoats and tall hats, their shoes finely polished, buckles gleaming. Women with large hats atop a bundle of coiffed hair and tailored dress coats, glided by. Even the street urchins and peasants looked nourished if hardened by the city’s streets. Following the river, Michael pulled the horse to a stop at Carlisle Bridge. From here the road widened to their left, revealing the expansive thoroughfare of Sackville Street. It was double the width if not more of all the roads around it, on each side a uniform line of five storey buildings, their elegance only interrupted by the majesty of the General Post Office, it’s imposing portico jutting out into the street. Opposite, Nelson’s Pillar stood victoriously in the centre, the horse-drawn traffic weaving around its foundations.
‘How much money do we have?’ Michael said. ‘I took two crowns from Foyle.’
She dug into her pocket. ‘I’ve got a guinea and three shillings.’
He took the guinea from her, putting it with his for safekeeping. A large black carriage, its roof laden with luggage, thundered by them in a hurry and Evelyn watched it plough on down the quayside, to the waiting ships. Where were its occupants headed? Her eyes followed it until it disappeared among so many others – a mass exodus towards the sea. A gull cried out overhead and her attention was taken to the sky, as it circled back to the water and down to the towering masts. She lost sight of it and she yearned suddenly to have their freedom of flight, to venture anywhere, unhindered. Michael was talking to her, but she wasn’t listening. She couldn’t take her eyes off those ships. They called to her and the city faded around them.
‘We’d need to sell the horse,’ he said. He was smiling. ‘If that’s what you want?’
It was. It was all she wanted. To feel the wooden deck under her feet, to taste the salty air as they sailed out into the ocean. It pulled on her very soul. There were no other options now.
‘This city will make paupers of us by nightfall anyway,’ he said.
She drew her gaze away, her eyes meeting his. They were filled with excitement – his own yearning for adventure.
‘Well, then we sail,’ she said, ‘...for America.’
It came to her only the moment her lips said it. Yes, America. It had to be.
‘The land of opportunity,’ he said. Isn’t that what they call it? Well then, America it is.’
12
Michael dismounted in the hope of finding the nearest market. The sooner they could get the fare, the quicker their new lives could begin. But he wasn’t getting very far. Though the pavement on Sackville Street was crowded, no-one would stop to hear his request, their eyes flickering to the blood on his shirt, and the cut to his cheek. Evelyn looked at the passing faces, wishing for her mysterious stranger among them – standing there as he had on the bridge – tall and silent, his eyes on her. Was he here? Watching her? The more people passed by Michael, the more frustrated he became. The cut did make him look rugged but also dangerous, especially with the intensity in which he asked for their help, like theirs lives depended on it. She supposed they did. She slid down to help him as they made their way up the street.
Half way, under the portico of the post office, a crowd had gathered, a mix of morning patrons awaiting the opening of the doors, and those who saw the stationary crowd as a captive audience to their protest. They held placards high above their thin arms, strong in their will if not in health.
SENTENCED
TO
DEATH
DON’T
STARVE
US!
The words adorned them in large ugly letters, and Evelyn resisted the urge to join them as they raised their voices. A man lay in a doorway close by, a sign around his neck that read LEFT TO DIE and she couldn’t be sure if he was still living, until he let out a cough. It wouldn’t be long. She didn’t know what was more horrifying, the fact that the man lay there or that he was being ignored by everyone who passed him. One woman, her gloved hands holding tightly to her purse as she waited for the post office to open, shouted at them.
‘Don’t bring
your disease here. God inflicted the blight and you must pray for his mercy. Constable!’ she cried. ‘Constable, here....’, pointing now to the fallen man. ‘Can’t you move these people on?’
A young policeman, no more than twenty puffed out his chest.
‘Yes Madam?’
‘Take these wretched people away!’ she said.
‘Have you no heart Missus?’ someone shouted. It was a woman’s voice, loud and shrill, her inner-city accent used to being heard on the busy streets. An old woman, her face corrugated with wrinkles and framed by a black bonnet, poked a finger at the woman. From her tiny frame again came that big voice.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself. Jaysus, would you not help them, God love them.’
She fished into the pocket of her long overcoat and produced a ha’penny, which she gave to the youngest of the protesters.
‘I don’t have much, love, but you need it more than me,’ she said. The young man took it gratefully as the constable looked on.
‘Come on, May, get that cart out of here.’
‘Ah hold your horses, copper. I’m going’ she said scowling at him.
She moved back to her cart, a sea of colourful flowers peeking out beneath the cloth and pushed it out into the street in front of Evelyn.
‘Sorry love,’ she said. ‘Have to move on or the copper will have me in irons,’ she chuckled.
‘Do you know where we’d find a market or horse trader?’ Michael asked.
The old woman eyed him suspiciously.
‘What happened to your face?’ she said.
‘I met the wrong side of a bottle,’ he said truthfully and the woman smiled.
‘Jaysus he gotcha good, didn’t he? Wouldn’t like to see the other fella. Don’t let the constable see you like that or he’ll have you before a magistrate before you can say bloody murder.’
She beckoned for them to follow her as she wove her cart left into the adjoining street.
