Michael’s arm still round her, they turned for home, leaving the night and its thousand wonders above and behind them.
The children hung on every word as Michael recounted the details of his journey to Clonbur.
‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘The people are all fearful of the grave times ahead, thinking that God has sent a great calamity to punish them for their sinfulness.’
Ellen had heard such talk before. Some of it from certain of the Catholic bishops claimed the blight was God’s warning to the lazy, ever-breeding, Irish to observe the laws of the Church and not engage in the old pagan practices, as they did at Halloween, and at wakes and Pattern Days. London too was quick to see the Hand of Providence at work, as if this absolved the Government’s failure to act. Ellen wondered whether the Government would have stood idly by if the blight had struck with the same severity in England.
Nothing had changed since Ireland had become one with England in the Union of 1800. England, that great all-conquering country, master of the seas, master of distant lands, had left its nearest colony to wither away like a diseased stalk. There had been no reform of land ownership; no schemes to develop an alternative source of food; no laws to hold in check greedy landlords.
Ultimately, Pakenham and his kind would blame the poor, as if they had willingly brought Famine down on themselves. Tenants who could not pay their rents would be evicted to die on the ditches and roadsides.
‘I can see it all now, Michael – I can see it all! They’re going to blame us for this Famine – they’re all going to blame us!’ she cried out.
‘Who, a Mhamaí? said Patrick, fear in his voice.
‘All of them – the Bishops, the landlords, the Government. I see it now. Oh, God, I see it! They’re all saying it’s the Hand of God moving against us, moving against the poor Irish peasants to punish us for our sins.’ She paced up and down the cabin, shaking her head. ‘But isn’t it the greatest sin of all to be saying that thing? Isn’t it a blasphemy to be blaming the Almighty?
‘We are the ones going to die – back here in the valleys, with our children – not the Bishops, not the landlords, or the Government safe beyond in London. We’re going to be the victims – and they’re blaming us already. It’s a wicked plan. If they all keep saying it now, it becomes true – it means they don’t have to do anything to save us!’ she said, anger rising in her voice. ‘Oh, I see it all now: the poor, the Irish Catholic poor – England’s everlasting problem – wiped off the face of the earth by the Hand of God.’
‘Ellen! Ellen!’ Michael’s arms were cradling her, stopping her.
The children looked at her in disbelief, stunned into shock and silence by what they had heard.
Ellen, seeing them, was overcome with remorse at her outburst. ‘Oh, my darlings! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you so!’ she cried, gathering them in her arms. They said nothing, only allowed the comfort of her touch to soothe their silent fears.
Michael had not yet told them what the priest had advised the villagers to do, but Ellen decided he could tell her later, once she had settled the children down for the night.
Then they prayed. Each one, child and adult alike, trying to find a solution to the frightening world outside their small cabin. A world that seemed to be waiting to swallow them up until they were no more.
Ellen looked with tenderness on the bowed heads of her loved ones as they mouthed the Hail Marys in a dying language, seeking relief in the hypnotic chant of prayer.
For her, this knowing what lay ahead was the worst thing of all. As if she were a helpless spectator to their own doom.
‘Thy will be done … on earth as it is in Heaven …’ Ellen wrestled with the words as she led her decade of the Rosary. Were blight, famine and eviction the will of God? Were poverty and hopelessness the only road to salvation?
Together they recited the Beatitudes:
Happy are the poor in spirit;
For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven …
Happy are the hungry;
For they shall be satisfied.
At least there was hope beyond the world outside their door, she thought.
When they had finished, Ellen ushered the children to bed. She lay down with them, caressing their foreheads, stroking away the cares her earlier outburst had brought on them.
Tonight, even Patrick did not resist ‘being coddled’ as he disparagingly called it when Katie and Mary availed of this settling down from their mother of a night.
Gradually, each of them in turn fell away from the world, into a deep and restful sleep. In a final benediction for the night, Ellen placed her hand over the fourth of her children – the child within. Then, with her thumb, she inscribed four tiny crosses on the ever-stretching skin of her stomach, anointing the growing life-force inside her.
Salvation in the next life or not, she, Ellen Rua O’Malley, would be her children’s salvation in this life. The will of God, would, she decided, become one with her own will. Somehow …
She nestled in behind Michael, sliding her right hand up over the white nape of his neck, beneath the thick black tangle of his hair, letting it rest there. He was asleep.
Now, she had seen to all of them.
She and Michael would talk again in the morning about the Famine and going to America. Now, she needed time to work things out in her own head – to devise her salvation plan for them.
If, as she foresaw, things were only going to get worse in Ireland, should they just wait here, accepting whatever Providence – and Pakenham – doled out to them? Much depended on whether the blight returned. If it did, then their fate, along with that of half the population of the country, would be sealed.
Of course, it was possible that Her Majesty’s ministers in London had drawn up plans to deal with such a disaster … But instinct and the lessons of history told her that Ireland and its problems were low on the list of priorities where Queen Victoria and her Government were concerned.
To survive they would have to scrimp and scrape. They must save whatever pennies they could. She was glad they had not gone to Castlebar. Instead, she would go there after the Christmas to sell her silver hairbrush, the one the Máistir had given her. It was no sin, given the circumstances, and her dear mother Cáit in heaven above would forgive her. Anyhow, wasn’t it only vanity for herself and her red-haired daughters to be having such fine, silky-brushed hair, and people hungry.
Michael, too, could sell his fiddle, although she would hate to see it go. She loved it when he played for her.
Its music lifted her, mellowed her heart when she was troubled. Music was the people’s freedom. To sell the fiddle, she decided, would be like selling a birthright.
It would be more than the act itself. It would be an admission of defeat.
She
