A Girl Called Eilinora (2 page)

Ignoring him, Owen pushed the wooden door further open and looked inside. He could see four people, maybe more. They were dead, lying on pallets made of straw. One, who had obviously gone first, had shining white bones escaping through the papery, rotting skin. Others, in a lesser state of decay, had departed since. The cottage was filled with a swarm of midges, feeding off the fleshy leftovers of death.

Owen heard the horses’ hooves behind him. Shevlin stood a distance away, holding both horses by the reins.

‘You would see the same in every cottage you looked in along this road. There are no villagers here to care for each other’s dead, just the empty cottages to house them.’

Shevlin’s horse now began to back away, refusing to step any nearer. Owen moved forward to hold his own horse. In truth, he needed the warm neck of his trusty Aghy, for support. His legs felt weak and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand. He had been rocked to his very core by what he had seen since returning to Ireland.

How could he ever put this ruin, this sight that had just met his eyes into sensible words for the prime minister at home?

Owen walked back to the girl on the edge of the road and fell to his knees next to her. The smell of her clothes and the rags in which she was wrapped repelled him. They were stiff with the caked dirt, and damp. Even his scarf could not filter out the acrid aroma of stale urine and of flesh on the very edge of decomposition. Her body would be eating itself by now, in its own struggle to survive. He saw the lice move in her hair and the smell from her breath made him heave. Underlying all of this was the aroma of peat smoke and fire. Every peasant smelt the same. Living, as they did, in one room, the smoke impregnated the skin and lived in their pores. But her bright blue eyes were open, shining bright with what little life was left within and their desperate gaze pinned him to the spot, willing him not to leave. Owen knew that if he rode away and left her, she would be dead before the morning.

‘Here,’ he shouted to Shevlin. ‘Help me lift her onto my horse. She is coming back to Ballyford with us.’

He saw the look of horror in his agent’s eyes and detected his reluctance to move closer.

‘I’m not riding away and leaving her here, Shevlin.’ Shevlin moved the horses closer.

‘She smells to high heaven,’ he said, his face contorted in distaste. ‘If her skin is hot, I’m leaving. You can stay here with her if you wish, but I will have no truck with the fever and nor should you. When did you last see someone like this, eh? You don’t know what you’re doing.’ Shevlin’s face was shrouded with fear. It ran through his voice and was picked up by his own horse who began to strain against the reins, impatient to ride on down the road.

‘Can you not feel it?’ he hissed. ‘There is something come in the air here, ’tis not right, I’m telling you. The horses are spooked and the hair on my neck is prickled with a notion of something bad. Let’s leave her and be away from here, now.’

Owen could not disagree. The atmosphere was charged, the horses’ ears were pinned back. He thought he could hear the haunting sound of deathly whispers on the edge of the wind. Mayo was steeped in folklore and legend. He had known the stories since boyhood and had snuck down to the tenants’ cottages with the stable lads and listened to eerie tales told by the storytellers. The peasants lived close to the earth and closer still to the spirits.

The girl encased in rags moved suddenly on the floor and as she did so, he made a decision. He put his arm under her shoulders and lifted her head.

‘She isn’t hot, there is no fever, she’s just nearly starved to death. We will sit her in front of me and ride back to Ballyford, now. There’s a water bottle, an oatcake and some bread in one of the saddle-bags.’

Shevlin realized he might have gone too far with his master. Fear had driven his speech beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable even given the nature of Owen, who had an unusual relationship with his staff. Not for him the falseness either of subservience or adoration.

‘Here, here, take this water,’ he whispered to the girl in his arms. She made a great effort and raised her head; Owen saw the strain cross her face as she forced herself to drink.

Shevlin held out some food.

‘Here, I’ve taken an oatcake and broken it up, although I’m not sure that someone in her state should eat too much at all for the first time. Cook says there have been some who have died in the poor house once they have eaten their first meal. I’ve crumbled the biscuit; you add some water.’

Owen dribbled water onto the crumbs and mixed them into a grey and unappetizing dough, then fed her a little at a time. It took her five whole minutes to swallow the first crumbs. It seemed as though she had almost forgotten how to swallow. Most of the water ran down her neck when he tried to get her to drink.

‘The sky is getting darker,’ Shevlin said. ‘That rain is surely heading this way. It’s straight above Bangor Erris now. If we want to ride her back to Ballyford, we had best do it right away.’

The girl grasped at Owen’s hand and, in a whisper clearly audible to both Owen and Shevlin, she said, ‘You came, you came.’

‘She is delirious,’ said Owen. ‘I doubt she has long.’

He looked up at the gathering clouds. Shevlin was right; the wind was blowing the rain across much quicker than either of them had anticipated.

He tried once more to encourage the girl to swallow. Thinking that the water bottle was about to be taken away from her, she tried frantically to grab it.

‘Steady, steady,’ said Owen. ‘Don’t worry, we aren’t going to leave you here. We’re taking you on the horse with us. Let’s lift her up now,’ he said to Shevlin.

Owen mounted his horse first and Shevlin lifted the girl up. Owen felt her flop against him, as he circled her waist with his arm. It was the last time she moved, but he clearly heard her say again, ‘You came.’

‘The ride back to Ballyford will take us at least two hours,’ said Shevlin, mounting his own horse. ‘She will very likely be dead by the time we reach the castle. I’ve no idea what you think we’re going to do with the body if she dies on the way home. If we pass the county constabulary or even the soldiers on the way, may I suggest we hand her over? Although God knows, they won’t be interested. There are hundreds of poor people like her to be found on the road outside of Belmullet.’

Owen was slightly irritated, afraid that the girl might have heard Shevlin’s words and he glanced down to check. Her head was flopping from side to side in time with the rolling gait of the horse. The skin on her face looked like parchment.

He lowered his head to her ear, to check that she was still breathing and so that she could hear him.

‘Hold on young miss, just a couple more hours and we can get you out of the damp. I have an excellent cook and she will feed some nourishing soup into you. You’ll be back to good health in no time.’ He saw a light in her blue eyes flash back at him gratefully. She had heard and he was sure she understood him.

The return journey was more difficult than their ride out had been earlier that morning. Word had got out. As they reached Geesala, a small gang of men and boys, almost too exhausted to stand, tried to intercept them. Owen thought he recognized one of the boys as one who had left Ballyford, to travel to Liverpool.

‘Is that Liam Toohey?’

‘Aye, it is, but for God’s sake, show no sign of knowing him. There are at least ten of them.’

The men had chosen their spot with care. The road was narrow, a bottleneck, just wide enough for the horses to ride two abreast. The hills rose steeply away on either side of the road which was bordered by deep, water-filled ditches. The houses in the village they had just passed through had been largely uninhabited and the farm cottages which straggled along the road, tumbled to the ground. The men, dispossessed by their landlord, had nowhere to go. Homeless, wet, and starving, their homes destroyed, they began to form a straggling line across the road. Some of them swayed as they stood, as though their legs struggled to support the weight of their bodies.

At the sound of Owen’s voice, Liam began to stagger towards him.

‘Help, m’lord, have ye food? Can ye get me to Dublin?’

Owen did not hesitate, even for a second. He had never before seen anyone he knew in as desperate a state as Liam. He now unstrapped his saddle-bag and threw it down in front of the boy.

‘There are oatcakes and bread in there and a water bottle,’ he said. ‘I will send two of the stable boys back for you tonight. Don’t move from here, I will tell them where you are.’

Owen remembered Liam well. He was a bright boy. Owen had understood why he had needed to move out of Ballyford to create an independent life for himself. Shevlin had provided a good testimonial and given a shilling to the boy as a parting gift.

But now, two of the men seized Liam from behind. One grabbed the saddle-bag from his hands and the other dragged him down and began to beat his skull into the road. Liam, having been kicked away from the others, lay helpless on the ground while a fight over the saddle-bag broke out between the stronger men. Father against son, neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend. In these days of starvation and despair, it was each man for himself.

‘Canter on!’ Shevlin shouted, as the remaining men realized there was a second saddle-bag and lunged towards them in an attempt to rip it from Shevlin’s horse. Some were brandishing the farm tools they had rescued from their cottages before they were tumbled by the landlord’s men.

Owen’s gaze was fixed on the face of the boy he had tried to save and he momentarily considered dismounting to take him up on to his saddle. Liam’s face was grey, his eyes were glazed and blood ran down the side of his face.

‘Is he dead? Is he? Have I just killed him?’ Owen screamed at Shevlin. As he kicked his horse on to take a closer look at the boy on the road, the girl slipped in his saddle. Steadying her, he realized Shevlin was right, they were in real danger. Shevlin grabbed Owen’s reins.

‘Move, for pity’s sake! Do ye think we can pick up every poor peasant and take him home? You are a liability to both of us. I will not stand by while you take risks with our lives to pick up the boy. Kick on! Now!’

Owen was almost too dazed by what he had witnessed to take offence, and he obeyed Shevlin who shouted, ‘Now! Ride hard now!’ Owen could hear his own heart as the adrenaline pumped through his veins, making the blood pound in his ears. They rode like the wind, charging through the men who still stood upright and were intent on forcing them both out of their saddles. Once clear of danger, Shevlin tried to explain.

‘A horse is food. These men are so hungry they are beyond reason. They would rather be alive in jail with a full belly than dead in a ditch, and some of them would even prefer deportation to a penal colony to staying here in Ireland. At least after a few years they would be free men in a country with food. Ireland, ’tis a stinking rotten, half dead country, growing nothing but stinking rotten potatoes. There is nothing here for anyone. Ireland is dead.’

Owen was silent for the remainder of the ride home. He felt foolish, but he would honour his promise to Liam. ‘I will send the stable boys back tonight, armed, and Liam can come back to Ballyford, alive or dead.’

‘I have no argument with that,’ conceded Shevlin, ‘none at all. So long as he doesn’t have the fever.’

A diversion across the bog added an extra half hour to their journey and by the time they turned down the drive to Ballyford, it was pitch black. The only sounds were those of the Atlantic waves crashing against the rocks along the shore and the clip clopping of the two sets of tired hooves.

The girl had not stirred once. Not even when Owen had to kick his horse on through a crowd and jump over a ditch into a field. He was no longer sure if she was still alive. He felt foolish as the walls of Ballyford rose in front of him and guilty that he had put the lives of all three of them at risk by wanting to bring Liam back too. By the look on his face, it was more than likely that he had the fever.

Owen called out to one of the stable boys, who now came out to take the horses. ‘Run in and tell cook I have a half dead girl with me. She will need a mattress near the fire, a bath ready and soup. Here take her.’

The boy hung back, looking terrified.

‘Don’t worry, she is only starved, she doesn’t have the fever. There is no heat in her. I will need at least two of you ready to ride back to Geesala and collect Liam Toohey. We have left him on the road. I don’t know if he will be alive or dead.’

Owen let the girl slip from his saddle into the boy’s arms and watched as the boy ran in through the kitchen doors, shouting for the cook, as though the stables were on fire.

Owen handed his horse over to one of the other boys and entered the castle through the main hall. Shevlin was just behind him.

When the stable boy returned, he said, ‘Cook wants to know, do you want the girl to stay in the kitchen or shall she be cared for in one of the cottages?’

‘No,’ Owen almost shouted. ‘Keep her in the kitchen. She may be sickening, we don’t know for sure.’

Shevlin snorted. ‘Oh, I see. So we all catch it and die, instead. You will catch the fever and die, it has no notion that you are the Lord of Ballyford. What happens to everyone in the cottages and farms then? Who provides for them? Your brother in London, who doesn’t know one end of a pig from the other?’

The air was tense, and the men exchanged a long hard look before Owen answered. ‘She can stay in the kitchen. She can sleep in there too. If she does have the fever, we can contain the risk. Tell cook I will be down when I have washed and eaten, and send two of the lads back for Liam. Make sure they have bayonets and good fast horses. They know the roads and should be safer in the dark. Can you remember where we left him?’

Shevlin nodded. ‘Aye, I can, by the second tumbled cottage, if he’s still there that is. If he’s dead, they will have hidden him in a field ditch.’

Shevlin was astounded by what had happened since they rode out that morning. For a start, he could not remember ever seeing Lord Owen in the kitchen. In the hall the paintings on the gallery were staring down at him. The portraits of Lord Owen and his brother, Henry had newly arrived from London. In them both men were smiling. Shevlin sighed and the thought crossed his mind, It will be a long time before anyone around here smiles again.