Chapter 25
Here you have an Irish hut or cabin, such as millions of the people of Ireland live in. And some live in worse than these. Men and women, married and single, old and young, lie down together, in much the same degradation as the American slaves. I see much here to remind me of my former condition.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but inquiries along the road told us we were ten miles from Ennis.
Aoife was dead. So were Nancy, Martha, and Patrick.
The doctor in Kildysert couldn’t do much, and the reprieve Da’s shoes had won us wore out quickly.
We left Kildysert the day after the incident with the cobbler, shuffling along, now barely able to travel a quarter mile a day, weakened as we were.
The workhouse became a dream, one I now longed for as the nights stretched on. I never dreamt of food, but of heat. Of a roof over our heads.
Michael’s nose had started dripping some time hence, Da’s too. Even Mam’s. But I remained untouched—I suspected due to the good nutrition offered during my eight-month stint in Dublin.
But that didn’t make it any easier.
The gnaw of hunger had eased—as it does when one goes without food for quite some time. But the cold? My bones frosted with ice now that my body had started to waste away.
I feared freezing in my sleep, but in the end, the cold took Mam, not me.
And we’d long since lost the strength to bury our losses.
Da, Michael, and I moved her body into the tall grass, then returned to the road to rest, needing respite after the exertion.
We were once twelve, and now we were three.
Three souls who hadn’t strength to speak.
Three souls gasping in shallow pants.
“Hello?”
The voice registered, but I couldn’t even move to acknowledge it.
“Dad, they’re in a terrible state.”
“Quick, load them in there.”
Arms hoisted me up, and I was laid in a rough-hewn cart.
I’m not dead, I wanted to say, fear niggling at the back of my numb mind that I was being carted off to a mass grave, the kind we’d heard about on our journey. Pits dug where bodies were piled atop another, without grace or dignity in death, for all eternity.
Rumbling.
Cart.
Time … pointless.
Wet, my lips.
I parted them, and water dribbled down my throat.
Sleep.
“She’s waking.”
A woman’s voice greeted my opening eyes as something warm trickled into my mouth.
“Hush now,” said the woman. “Swallow for me.”
My throat had long-since forgotten how to swallow, but I tried, awakening muscles my body had forgotten how to use.
“What’s her name?” the woman asked.
“M-Maggie,” a hoarse voice responded.
“There ye are, Maggie. Swallow now. Yer da and brother are here, and yer safe.”
Safe?
“Another sup,” said the woman, as a wooden utensil touched my lips. “That’s it, get it in ye now. Ye’ll need all yer strength.”
The woman fed me a spoonful of broth every two hours until I had strength enough to manage a bowlful by myself.
She’d done the same for Da, and Michael, and when my wits returned, I finally got a good look at where we were.
It was a small, one-roomed house, with a blazing fire roaring at one end, and a man and woman seated at a rough-hewn table before it. Da, Michael, and I were propped against the wall closest to the fire, covered with blankets, bowls in our laps.
“From Kilrush?” the man asked, swiping a hand over his face as he gaped at Da. “Ye came all this way without any aid?”
Da nodded, and the man shook his head as the door to the house opened, sucking a cool rush of air into the warm cavern.
“My son,” said the man, as his son quickly shut the door. “I’m Conor, and my wife here, Kitty. We’re O’Deas, ourselves. If not for Cormac’s sharp eyes, I wouldn’t have seen ye hidden in the grass.”
“Ye have my thanks.” Da’s voice croaked, but if I had any propensity for feeling, I’d be glad to hear his returning strength.
“We fared a bit better here. The local landlord, Mr. O’Reilly, opened his own food stores to the tenants.
It’s not much, but it’s keeping most from the workhouse, though the rent is still due.
We’re lucky too to have fewer mouths to feed.
My son there is our one and only. God took the rest as babes.
Hard in times past when doing the work for Mr. O’Reilly, but we’re grateful for it now.
Aren’t we, Kitty?” said Conor, gesturing toward his wife.
“That glad,” said Kitty, offering a wan smile to her son. “My sisters and brothers have children enough for us to dote on.”
“Ye’re all local?” Da asked. “We weren’t, and neither is—was—my wife. She had a lot of family in Tipperary, but my own was small, and we had none around.”
“North and East Clare,” Kitty replied, her smile wavering. “We dote from afar, I’m afraid.”
Da nodded, and Conor turned toward Da. “Can ye stand a bit to come outside? Kitty and I would like to hear yer story so we can best know how to help ye, if ye’ll tell it. But I’d like to keep the memory of it all from yer own children, to save their feelings.”
“Aye,” said Da, rising with great effort.
I reached out a hand to him, and he squeezed my fingers. “Be back soon, love. Rest up.”
I glanced at Michael as Da left with Conor and Kitty, our saviors. He slept, chest rising and falling, and I could swear his color was better.
“Ye’ll be fine,” said a voice. The son. Right. What did they say his name was? I turned toward him and nodded. He was seated now at the table, spoon poised over a bowl of the same broth Kitty had fed us all.
He was clean, and lean, but definitely far healthier than we.
“Thank ye,” I said, closing my eyes as I rested my head against the wall.
“Yer welcome. Had it too rough, ye did,” he said, before the clashing clang of a wooden spoon against teeth echoed through the room. “Ow. Feck.”
“Slowly,” I said with a sigh, eyes still closed. “Careful.”
“What’s yer name?” he asked.
“Maggie.”
“Good to meet ye. Ye look like one of my cousins from up in North Clare, one we only ever get to see in miniatures, so I hope ye stay a while. Mam likely sees it in ye too, so she’ll be offering a place to stay and food to eat.
She and Da are good folk, so it’s best to take what they offer,” he said.
I opened my eyes and glanced at him. “We couldn’t do that. We’re workhouse-bound anyway.”
“Ennis?”
“Aye.”
“Well, the offer will come, and I hope ye’ll stay.
” He went back to his broth, and I mulled over his words.
“I’m heading away off up to North Clare myself, so there’ll be one less mouth to feed, if it makes ye feel a bit better about it.
I’ll be sending money home too, for the rent. Me aunt has work for me.”
“Did ye say ‘miniatures’?” I asked, brows drawing together. Small paintings sent to family meant money—lots of it.
The son nodded and glanced at me. “Aye. The aunt I mentioned married very well. Too well, if ye ask my mam.” He smiled as I cocked my head. “Don’t worry, none of it will come my way, so ye needn’t scheme a way to marry me.”
And for the first time in weeks, in months, a laugh worked its way up my throat.
It burst forth, a cathartic release of every damned thing I’d been through in the last year, of every loss, of every tear … and I couldn’t stop.
Scheme a way to marry? For money? Never, ever, ever again would I entertain the idea, or a union with anyone.
“Jesus, it wasn’t that funny,” he said, glancing at his clothes as I doubled over, laughter turning to the flood of tears I’d kept at bay all this time. Tears for my siblings, my mam, myself, my life, my babe, my love.
“I’ll have ye know I’m the handsomest man in the parish,” he mumbled, turning his attention back to his broth as my tears transformed into sobs.
He scraped back the stool and rushed to my side.
“Are ye crying? Why are ye crying? Arra! Ye can’t be doing that!
All the good of the broth will pour out through yer eyes. Maggie? Maggie?”
But I couldn’t speak.
For I was lost, and had lost.
And this moment brought naught but a brief reprieve.
We didn’t stay. After regaling the O’Dea family of everything we’d gone through—every detail, so the family would know exactly how dangerous it was to have us in their home (Da was a wanted man, after all)—Da, Michael, and I recouped some of our strength and were on our way to Ennis two days later.
Mrs. O’Dea, Kitty, packed as much as she could give—which wasn’t a lot. There was no flour for bread or milk for cheese, and no way to transport her vegetable stews and broths.
But she conjured up a batch of oat cakes and three small carrots.
It was enough to feed the three of us for one meal, but I figured if we made good time, we could abstain from eating for a few days, then have this feast and rally for the final leg of the journey.
We were going to make it. I knew we would.
Michael was still very weak, and it pained my heart to see my strong brother so desolate.
But Da had rejected the O’Dea’s offer to have their son drive us in the cart to Ennis—sure, wouldn’t he be on his way to North Clare soon?
Still, Da said he feared for the O’Deas’ safety if their assistance was ever discovered.
So, we walked, Michael supported between Da and me.
Rain fell and wind whipped as we trudged along the first three miles, before Da decided we needed to stop and seek shelter in the trees. Michael was one fever away from death’s door, so I willingly complied.
But the rain didn’t pass. It stayed that night, the next day, and the next.
“He needs his strength,” Da whispered to me on that third night. “He won’t make it otherwise.”
I nodded and automatically reached for the package of food Mrs. O’Dea had given to us, but Da placed a gentle hand on my arm.
“D’ye understand what awaits us at the workhouse?”
“Separation,” I said with a sigh. They’d split up the family, and we’d be lucky to see each other at mealtimes.