The Element of Fire. Brendan Graham
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Element of Fire - Brendan Graham страница 3

Название: The Element of Fire

Автор: Brendan Graham

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Историческая литература

Серия:

isbn: 9780007401109

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ down her dress, wiping the earth from her feet, readying to go. She was tall, for a woman. His eye, practised for horse flesh, put her at seventeen hands, maybe even the seventeen and a half. A hand or two above his own five feet four inches. A fine ainnir of a woman. She wouldn’t wait a widow long, Faherty thought. He crossed himself, slid on his cap again, fell in behind the silent girl as they descended the burial place, the same as they’d come up, in single file, the boy leading. Next, the living twin, followed by the mother, then the girl and himself.

      It was a strange thing the way, when they had set out on the journey here … the way she had carried the child, not letting on at first that she was dead at all, just bad with the fever. He supposed the woman had her reasons. In case they’d take the girl from her, throw her into the lime pit, maybe. Faherty didn’t know what in God’s name she wanted to be hauling all the way out here for, to this wild place, making a thing of it. Sure, weren’t people dying like flies on every side, on account of the Famine, half of them getting no right burial at all. Faherty was well used to death by now. When you were dead, you were dead. She could have buried the child back in Westport, in the Rocky, and saved them all this trouble. The Rocky, if it was a quarry, was consecrated to take the fevered dead. Sure, wasn’t half the countryside already flung into it!

      He picked his way down the Crucán, the sweep of the Maamtrasna valley unnoticed before him.

      Nell had strayed from where he’d left her, snaffling the sweet grass of the long acre which bordered the mountain pass road. The horse was tired from all the travelling. He patted her neck, relieved she hadn’t wandered too far. Back here, in the valleys, a wandering horse wouldn’t last long.

      ‘I’m sorry, Nell …’ he whispered into the animal’s ear, so the woman wouldn’t hear him, ‘… dragging you all the way out here where they’d eat you, quick as look at you.’

      As they rounded the bend, skirting the edge of the lake, Ellen held the three of them into her: Patrick crooked in her right arm, Mary in the near reach of her left, half-lying across her, half-smothered in the lap of her dress. The girl then beyond Mary, but within the circle of what remained of the family. Ellen watched the back of Faherty’s head, rolling from side to side as it did when he spoke. Now, he was saying nothing, unless talking to himself.

      She looked out at the Mask, probably seeing the lake for the last time, not caring if she never saw it again. Nor the valley, hanging there around it, so green, so empty, so full of death, the sun spilling over it as if nothing in the world was wrong. As if it were the Plains of Heaven.

      Faherty’s head stopped lolling for a moment. She watched it half-turn towards her.

      ‘It was a grand day …’

      She hardly heard him, her attention drawn to his jumping eyelid. It must be a nervous thing. He was probably nervous as a child, she thought.

      ‘… a grand day for a funeral, ma’am!’ he said, meaning it.

       2

      For the rest of the journey around the lake she never spoke. Faherty too was silent.

      He never heard her even weep. It was all too much for her, he thought. Sorrow and guilt – a bad mixture. If she keened it out of herself, got shut of the grief, it would be better for her. But after this, it would be easier. Beyond in America with only the two to care for – and the silent one, if she took her with them? At least they had a chance, somewhere to go to, out of this God-forsaken place. Not like the poor devils here, wandering the roads scouring for scraps, arms and legs stuck out of them like scarecrows. Eyes burned into the sockets with fever. No sound. Only the bit of a breeze rattling through bared ribs. Wherever they were headed it didn’t matter, they’d get nothing, neither food nor sympathy. It was the same all over – a land full of nothing. The only hope a quick leaving of this life and Paradise in the next, if they were lucky.

      Faherty wondered about Paradise, the Garden of Eden. Was it like the big houses once were? Hanging gardens; carpets of flowers; servants at every turn; fruit on every tree. And long rows of lazy beds, the fat lumper potatoes tumbling out of them, begging to be eaten. He wanted to ask her was America like that.

      Mairteen Tom Anthony, a big bodalach of a fellow from the foot of the Reek, once told him how the buildings were so tall in New York, that when he first went out there the roof of his mouth got sunburnt from standing all of a gám looking up at them. Faherty wasn’t sure if Mairteen was tricking him or not. America turned people into tricksters – even an amadán like Mairteen Tom.

      Leave her be, he decided.

      It was still light when Nell edged them past the conical-shaped reek of Croagh Patrick, so she made Faherty bring them straight to Westport Quay. As they passed the workhouse gates hundreds clamoured, seeking admittance. Hundreds more, near naked and starving, sought to clamber over the top of these, calling for ‘relief tickets’ that would grant them soup; sole sustenance for one more day.

      ‘There must be three thousand inside, if there’s a soul,’ Faherty opined, ‘and as many more outside wanting in.’

      They sloped down Boffin Street, past the boatmen’s houses and the gaunt Custom House still, in the reign of Victoria, designated the ‘King’s Stores’. Here, fuelled by hunger, six hundred in rags milled in desperate hope, battened back by militiamen. Nearby, cart-followers, employed to protect the grain when being transported to the town’s merchants, waited, slinking on the margins of the famished until called to their cold duty.

      Another angry crowd sent up cries of dismay as a ship from Marseille discharged its cargo of wheat, beans and chestnuts, while behind a clipper of Constantinople lay by, bursting with corn from New Orleans, and flanked by Her Majesty’s revenue cruisers. Behind the ships were the island drumlins of Clew Bay – giant hump-backed whales, silhouetted against the purple and crimson of the dying day. Ellen leapt from Faherty’s carriage. One of the ships must be Atlantic-bound.

      Westport Quay throbbed with all the mixed ingredients of quay life. Pampered gentry and a starving commonality jostled equally with tidewaiters and landwaiters, while elbow to shoulder with the herring- and oystermen of Clew Bay, shipping agents of indifferent character plied their raucous trade.

      ‘Passage to Amerikay!’ they called, thrusting beckoning circulars into the hands of all who would snatch them from the surrounding chaos. She took one.

       At WESTPORT For PHILADELPHIA To sail about 10th October The splendid first-class Copper-fastened, British-built ship GREAT BRITAIN.

      She pushed it back against the agent’s hand. ‘Today … these ships … America?’ she shouted above the din. The agent, a puffy little fellow in an important hat, gave her the once-over.

      ‘Yes ma’am, to the exotic city of New Orleans,’ – as if he’d ever been there – face creasing into a red-veined smile. A well-heeled mark, this one – a bit soiled about the hem, but had the wherewithal for passage, he’d wager, unlike most of them here.

      ‘No … Boston, I want Boston!’ she impressed on him, impatient that he didn’t already know.

      ‘Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia – it’s all America!’ he expounded – what did the woman care? ‘Four to a berth, splendid provisions and a quart o’ water a day. Is it just yourself, ma’am?’

      She СКАЧАТЬ