Galway Bay (7 page)

“I’m going to win.”

“Mr. Lynch might sponsor you, Michael,” Mam said. “We could ask.”

Miss Lynch had been suspiciously understanding about my change of heart. I wondered, had her father really wanted to pay my convent dowry? A two-minute conversation at the door of Barna House and she’d sent me on my way. And now here was Mam offering to arrange for Michael to see Mr. Lynch himself. She understands, after all.

“Please, Mam,” I said.

Now Michael looked at Da. “I would never ask for Honora’s hand unless I had something to offer her, sir.”

“You have everything to offer,” I started.

“Whist, Honora. Michael knows how a decent man behaves,” Da said. Then to Michael, “If you couldn’t support her, I’d have to look elsewhere for Honora’s husband.”

“Da!”

“I accept that,” Michael said.

I don’t.

“Isn’t the carpet lovely?” said Mam as she and Michael and Máire and I waited in the little room off the kitchen where the Honorable Mr. Lynch transacted business. “He meets here with his agent and the merchants from town,” Mam explained to Michael.

Papers lay piled every which way on the dark wood desk. A long row of leather-bound ledgers filled a shelf. The rent rolls—hundreds of tenants’ names listed, with rent paid and rent owed written next to each. Here’s where Mr. Lynch sits turning the pages and telling his agent: Give him another few months, but evict him, and him. Send for the bailiffs to serve the notice, get the drivers to sell off any stock. Then he closes the book. Puts it away.

The Lynches were better landlords than most, but I remembered when they put the family of Mary Doyle, a farming girl in our class, off their land. Miss Lynch explained to Mary that it wouldn’t be fair to the tenants who worked hard to pay the rent to allow those who didn’t pay to stay on forever. Landlords have debts, too, she’d said. Mary Doyle kept her eyes down, said nothing, and we never saw her again.

“That carpet came from the land of the Turks,” Mam was saying, “sent by one of the Lynches’ cousins in France.”

“Probably smuggled in by the Keeley cousins in Connemara,” Máire said.

“Please don’t be cheeky with Miss Lynch,” I said to Máire.

“She doesn’t mind. Gives her a bit of a laugh. She likes me. She’s my godmother, after all,” Máire said.

“Only because you were born first. I don’t see—”

“Girls, please,” said Mam. “Molly Counihan can hear you.”

“The housekeeper,” I said to Michael.

Michael had left Champion with Dennis and Joseph to find fresh water for her and a bit of grass.

“She’ll need a proper pasture soon,” Michael had said.

Miss Lynch greeted us, her brown hair pulled back as always, her lips tight together in her smooth, plump face. Mam’s age, but not a patch on Mam for good looks—what with Mam’s blond waves and blue eyes—work-worn though she may be.

“Miss Lynch, will I introduce you to Michael Kelly?” Mam said.

“Good morning,” Miss Lynch said.

“Very nice to meet you, Miss Lynch. Honora says you are a fine teacher,” Michael said. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Miss Lynch nodded. “I’ve known Honora and Máire since they were born.”

“And you’re my godmother,” Máire said.

“I am,” Miss Lynch said. “You see, Michael, Mrs. Keeley was a Walsh when she worked for us. And Walsh was probably originally ‘Welsh’—there were retainers from Wales with my family when we Normans came to Ireland with Richard de Clare—Strongbow. Does he know our history, Honora?”

“I’ve told him some,” I said.

“Honora has the dates and doings of your ancestors off by heart, Miss Lynch,” Mam said.

Oh, I knew the Lynch annals well, saw how their family wound their way through the history of Ireland, starting from when the Norman king of England, Henry II, invaded us in 1171 sent by the only English pope ever to sit in St. Peter’s chair, Pope Adrian IV, who had the nerve to say that the people of Ireland—the land of saints and scholars—had gotten too easygoing and needed reform. His Norman kinsmen reformed us right out of our country. Where before the land was held by the tribe, the tuath, everyone with a share, now one Norman lord claimed tens of thousands of acres, with the Irish only tenants to him.

Miss Lynch thought it wonderful that the Normans built stone castles and grand churches, though Granny said, “Who asked them to clutter the place? We had our holy mountains to pray on, high hills for our ceremonies, fairs, and gatherings. We raised plenty of food, hunted in the great forests, had herds of cattle. Much better before they came.”

Still the Normans married Irishwomen as the Vikings had done, called themselves Irish and suffered with us when Cromwell came.

Cromwell. The devil let loose among us to butcher our bodies and devour our souls. He massacred women and children and called it God’s work. Numbers beyond counting perished. The rest were driven west, no Irishman or -woman allowed east of the River Shannon on pain of death. Thirty thousand were sold into slavery in the West Indies. But even Cromwell couldn’t destroy us all.

Two centuries of the Sassenach trying to kill off the Irish papists one way or another, yet we had survived somehow. Miss Lynch said Ireland had near nine million people now. Overpopulation, she called it, and a problem to the British government. But Granny said, “Our victory and thank God for the potato. They’ll never beat us as long as we have the pratties.” And the Lynches had brought back power.

Now Mam and Miss Lynch were waiting for me to perform. Miss Lynch guesses Michael and I want to marry and knows we need some help from the landlord, but we can’t ask her directly as if we’re equal to her. Must sing for her favor.

“Why not quiz Honora,” Máire said to Miss Lynch, “as you did in class?” Máire turned to Michael. “Always quick with the answer.”

“All right,” Miss Lynch said. “An exercise. Let’s see . . . What date did my ancestors build Saint Nicholas’ Church?”

“Thirteen twenty,” I said.

“Correct. Explicate.”

“It was constructed on the foundations of an earlier church operated by the Knights Templar—connections of the Lynches during the Crusades.”

“The Crusades,” said Mam. “Imagine.”

“Name one very important visitor to the church.” Miss Lynch turned to Michael. “This may surprise you.”

“Christopher Columbus,” I said. “Brought by his Irish navigator, Patrick Maguire, to Galway to consult old maps that chronicled the voyage of Saint Brendan in the sixth century. Some say Brendan discovered Amerikay.”

“Never heard that,” Michael said.

“How many Lynch mayors of Galway City?”

“Eighty-four.”

“Name them.”

Máire rolled her eyes at me.

“Pierce Lynch,” I began, but stopped when the door of the office opened.

Miss Lynch was all aflutter as the Honorable Marcus Lynch entered.

The landlord. We all stood.

“The Keeley sisters, all grown up now,” he said. “Not those little girls sneaking up to the attic. Sit, sit.”

How short he seems next to Michael. Very old-looking—he must be near seventy. White beard, his fine coat strained by his stomach and his own importance.

Miss Lynch never tired of telling us how lucky we were to be the tenants of such a man. Ninety percent of the land of Ireland was owned by Protestants, she said, and many of them lived in England. “Absentees. Heartless. High rents. Evictions. Some have never even seen their Irish estates,” she’d say. “We Lynches stay right here. We travel to London only when Parliament is in session.”

So. Marcus Lynch was a member of Parliament, only because Daniel O’Connell fought to get Catholics admitted. The Honorable.

“What is it you want?” he said to us. “I gave you half a crown for your wedding only last week, Máire. And you, Honora. Henrietta told me you’ve changed your mind. No dowry for the convent after all. Well done.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “But now I . . . Well, this is Michael Kelly, and—”

“Never heard of him. Kellys are in East Galway,” Mr. Lynch said.

“That’s right, sir. I’m from Gallagh, or Castle Blakeney,” Michael said.

“And did you have some trouble, young man? We won’t have any disturbances on this estate. I’m a fair landlord, I let my daughter teach peasant girls in my own house. Not many would do that. But no treason tolerated here, no Ribbonmen. ‘Ribbonmen’—such a gentle name for such a rebellious group. Do they really pin ribbons on their jackets when they blacken their faces and go out to maim a landlord’s cattle or terrorize his agent?”

We said nothing.

“Now, I’m a Repealer. I want an end to the Union. Our own Parliament. But I’m a loyal subject of Queen Victoria, and so is Daniel O’Connell. He’s completely against violence.”

“I’m not a violent man, sir,” Michael said.

Mr. Lynch turned to Mam. “Tell me, Mary. Do you know this lad’s family?”

Mam, please, for once in your life, lie.

“I could tell you many things about his people, sir. Very hardworking. A widowed mother caring for her father and—”

“So, I won’t have to call out the sheriff to arrest this fellow, then?” Mr. Lynch laughed. A great joke.

We stayed silent.

“I suppose you want to marry Honora. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir,” Michael said. “I—”

Mr. Lynch interrupted him. “Well, I hope you’re not looking to become a tenant on any of my estates. Impossible. Tens of thousands of acres and every inch is occupied. Not my fault you people multiply like rabbits, dividing and subdividing the land until there’s not a decent piece on the whole place. And now the Poor Laws! I’m accessed a tax on every tenant who pays less than four pounds rent a year. Half the estate! Impossible! I tell them in Parliament that their laws are ridiculous. ‘Let Irish property pay for Irish poverty,’ they say, as if we Irish landlords were made of money! Made of debt, more likely. I’m a Tory, and proud of it. The best chance for Ireland is to remove all doubts about our loyalty. Irish agitation makes Parliament uneasy. I’m trying to bring some order to my estates. Fewer tenants, not more.”

Bigger plots, so you won’t have to pay poor rates.

“And I’m not allowed to sell a single acre until I pay off my mortgages and creditors. Pity. Business fellow told me he could make Barna another Brighton—all that coastline, the pier, the strand. Build bathing lodges and villas. A real seaside resort.”

What was he talking about? Thirty fisher cottages on that strand—our homes. But Mr. Lynch was waving his hand.

“Told him I couldn’t do it. Land’s encumbered. Debts, debts, debts.”

Then Michael stood up, tall and broad-shouldered, dwarfing Mr. Lynch. “Sir,” he said.

Mr. Lynch stepped back.

“I have a horse,” Michael said.

“I’m not in the market for a horse,” Mr. Lynch said.

“I don’t want to sell her. I plan to run her in the Galway Races.”

Mr. Lynch laughed. “Racing’s for gentlemen, boy.”

“But I understand that if a gentleman enters a horse, he can use anyone as rider,” said Michael.

“It’s true the Pykes have used tenants as jockeys, though I understand the son will be riding this year. Cousins of ours, but turned Church of Ireland. Wouldn’t mind taking them down a few notches. Is this horse any good?”

“Very good,” Michael said.

“Might be amusing,” Mr. Lynch said.

Please God, let him agree.

“If I sponsor you, and run your horse as my horse, we will split the winnings in half. That’s fair.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you lose, I get the horse.”

“But, sir—”

“That’s the proposition, young man. Take it or leave it. I’m taking a chance, sight unseen.”

“But I can show you the horse, sir.”

“Not necessary, not necessary. And though I’ve never been a gambler . . .”

“No, you haven’t, Father,” Miss Lynch said. Her first words since her father had come into the room. “I don’t think—”

“You’re too prim, Henrietta,” he said to her. “Why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun?”

And risk nothing, I thought. What does it cost to enter, a few pounds? If Champion wins, you get that back plus half the prize money. If Champion loses, you get a good horse. No wonder the Lynches are rich.

“If I win, sir, you’ll rent me a bit of land?” Michael said.

“If you win and can pay in advance, who knows?”

“You made a bad bargain, Michael,” I said as we walked. Ahead of us, Máire talked away to Mam. “Mr. Lynch is taking advantage of you,” I said.

“He is.”

“You’re risking Champion for me.”

“For us.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t ask an educated woman like you to marry a man without money or land.”

“I don’t care, Michael. We could wander the roads together.”

“That’s not a life for you, Honora.”

“But if you lose her, we’ll have nothing. Why not sell Champion and—”

Michael touched my lips with one finger. “Whist, Honora. I’ve ridden thousands of imaginary races on the Gallagh course, and I always won. Champion and I can make what I imagined real. We will win.” He bent down to me, those blue eyes gazing into mine.

Don’t parse. Don’t think.

“You will, Michael. You will, of course.”

“We’ll take the money to buy a lease on the tidiest farm in the county of Galway,” he said. “There’s empty land somewhere, no matter what Lynch says.”

“Will it be near the Bay?”

“It will. I’ll put a big window in our cottage so you’ll always see Galway Bay, Honora.”

“A window? Wonderful.”

Michael took my hand. “And there will be books,” he said.

“Books,” I repeated.

Mam and Máire were far ahead.

“The Irish surely are overdue a victory,” I said.

I thought of the words the Norman conquerors had carved on the medieval walls of Galway City: “From the fury of the O’Flahertys, O Lord, deliver us.” The chieftains, the wild Irish, might return at any moment. And win.

We walked faster and faster, swinging our joined hands.

“We will win,” he said.

“We will.”

Chapter 6

T
HE KNOCK CAME
as we were eating our dinner, the whole family listening to Michael tell us how relieved he was to have finally found good pasture for Champion. A week since Mr. Lynch agreed to sponsor Champion, and the horse had been growing scrawny, worrying Michael. Little enough grazing around, and farmers charged cash money for the use of it.