Da and Owen stared into the dying fire; Tessie was crying; Neddy had his head in his hands; Granny’s eyes were closed; Mam’s arm was around Hughie’s shoulder; Katie wept, holding her baby, James, close; Joseph sat with his knees under his chin; the Mulloy boys looked up at Patrick; Mary Ryan watched Hughie; Paddy moved over beside Michael and me and stared up at his uncle; the rest of the children slept on.
No one spoke.
I leaned toward Michael, who took my hand and looked up at Patrick from where we sat on the floor.
“And what are we to do, Patrick?” Michael said.
“Stop the shipments of food out of Ireland.”
“How?”
It was as if they were the only two in the room.
“Attack the wagons,” Patrick said. “A few armed men could do it, put such fear into the likes of Billy Dubh that no man will drive a wagon, no docker will load cargo into a ship. There are some ready to act now”—he looked at Michael—“who aren’t afraid—brave men.”
I felt Michael start to stand—I held on to his arm.
“Courage won’t help men known to the drivers. They’d be betrayed and arrested before they got home,” I said.
“Sooner,” said Owen Mulloy. “Soldiers are escorting the cargo wagons—I saw them. They’d shoot any raiders down.”
All the men were shaking their heads.
“I remember what happened when the British put down the Rebellion of 1798,” Da said. “The bodies of our people were hanging from trees in every townland from here to Mayo, two of them brothers of mine. Daniel O’Connell remembers, too. It’s why he’s so against violence.”
“It wouldn’t work, Patrick,” said Michael.
Mam started talking, very softly. “I remember the time the Claddagh people . . .”
Something in her voice made us all listen.
“I was selling fish with the Claddagh women, and we went against merchants giving short weights—caused a big ruckus, we did, marching through the market, shouting. The soldiers came out, but we threw stones at them. The city council made the traders lower their price. Could we do something like that, Patrick?”
“A demonstration, you mean?” said Patrick.
“Our own monster meeting,” I said. “That’s a very good idea, Mam. We could get the whole parish together and march through Galway City to the harbor, to the courthouse.”
The heads were coming up. . . . Could we really act without bringing total disaster on ourselves?
“There would have to be discipline,” said Da. “No incidents—no violence.”
“A peaceful meeting,” said Owen, “with permission and priests attending. Father Roche is a decent man. He’d stand with us.”
“It would be a start,” Patrick said. “Better than nothing.”
“Will you march with us, Patrick?” Michael asked him.
“I will,” he said. “The time for hiding is over. We have to act before the hunger makes people so weak that”—Patrick looked from one face to the next—“they can only lay down and die.”
But at the end of the day, it wasn’t Patrick who rallied the people of the townlands to march on the port. It was Michael.
“He frightens them,” I told Michael after no one in Rusheen would open their doors to Patrick and him. “Go on your own or with Owen Mulloy. You’re known and liked.”
And no one suspected the piper going from cottage to cottage, playing for a few pratties, was carrying another message: Join together on St. Martin’s Day, November 11. Shut the port. And the people said they would.
“Michael makes them want to be brave,” Owen told me.
Patrick had gone off. Owen assumed Patrick was recruiting Ribbonmen and outlaws and worried if these hard men would stay peaceful.
“Can’t give the soldiers any excuse to arrest us,” he said to Michael.
“Patrick knows what he’s about,” Michael said. Only to me did he confide Patrick’s true mission. He’d gone to get the great treasure of the Kelly tribe, their battle standard, the bachall, their cathach—the crozier St. Grellan carried when he and St. Patrick came as missionaries to the Kellys. Michael told me how the two Christian priests found the pagan Kelly queen mourning her stillborn son. St. Patrick prayed for the child’s soul. Grellan brought the baby back to life. The Kellys converted and chose Grellan as their guardian saint. His crozier—a hazel rod covered in pure gold—was the emblem that rallied them in times of trouble, and it was also an instrument for discerning the truth: Hold the crozier and lie and the gold staff would grow hot and sear the liar’s hand. There was awe in Michael’s voice when he told me the story. Patrick had gone to Ahascragh, where a man called Cronelly had the keeping of the crozier. Patrick would bring the battle standard back in time for our march. “Powerful altogether,” Michael said.
But as the day approached, Patrick had not returned.
“Saint Martin’s Day—we can’t change it,” Owen said.
We went forward without Patrick. And we did it. We shut the port. Thousands from every townland, men and women, marched to the harbor, chanting and shouting: “Save our food! Keep the crop! Shut the port!” We women came first to show the soldiers we intended no violence. Michael, Da, Owen, and my brothers urged the lines of marchers forward from within the crowd.
When the dockers saw themselves surrounded by thousands, they put down the bags of grain, sides of beef, and tubs of butter, stopped herding the pigs and sheep onto the decks. The ships that would carry away the harvest were not loaded. “It’s shut!” the dockers shouted at us.
And the people cheered them, standing together.
But when we moved to the courthouse to confront the officials waiting to hear our demands, a regiment of soldiers carrying muskets surrounded us. Surely these men, the Connaught Rangers, Catholics from Galway, most of them, wouldn’t attack their aunts and cousins without cause, I thought. But then I saw their mounted officers spur their big horses into the midst of the crowd. These wouldn’t hesitate to order the soldiers to shoot.
Father Roche, the young curate, spoke for us to the high sheriff. “Cease export of all food!” he said. We cheered. “The government must enforce fair prices for food, landlords should suspend rent payments, public works must be opened so money can be earned.”
The sheriff raised both hands. A committee would be appointed, he said to us, to consider the demands.
Then a shout from the front interrupted him: “No committee— action!” It was Patrick at last, running at the sheriff, urging all to chant: “Action! Action!”
The sheriff pushed a stout, red-faced man forward.
“Quiet now. Listen. Here’s a high official from London,” Father Roche shouted, “come to help us.” He looked at Patrick. “Please.”
Patrick waved the crowd silent.
The man told us the government had found a way to save the diseased potatoes. Seventy thousand circulars had been printed with instructions. The soldiers would pass them out to us.
I took one—English. Few people would be able to read it.
The official began to read out the instructions: “Take a diseased potato, grate it, then strain the gratings through linen cloth, lay them out in the sun or bake them in an oven at one hundred eighty degrees.”
Mad entirely. Grate muck? Linen cloths? Ovens? Who had such things?
Howls from the crowd.
Patrick shouted into the official’s face: “We’d rather die now, fighting to keep our food, than die later of starvation and fever!”
The crowd took up the cry: “Die fighting! Die fighting! Die fighting!”
I could see that some who’d joined us wore ribbons on their jackets—the hard men, come with Patrick.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” they chanted.
An officer called out a command. The soldiers lifted their muskets.
“Go home!” Father Roche shouted in Irish. “Go home before there’s trouble!” He ran over to the officer, pleading with him to let the people disperse.
But Patrick yelled, “Don’t go! Stand against them! Don’t go!” He stepped in front of the priest and lifted a long staff into the air—gold, catching the sun, shining. He’d gotten it—Grellan’s crozier.
“This holy relic is from the time of Saint Patrick!” He waved it above his head. “A battle standard, full of power! We can’t retreat before them. Be defeated by their lies!”
Waving the crozier back and forth, Patrick led the crowd’s chant: “Give us our crops! Give us our crops!”
The soldiers took a step forward, and Father Roche shouted, “Listen to the sheriff! He
will
speak for you!”
“You have my word!” the sheriff shouted. “Go home! Go home!”
But Patrick was next to the sheriff. “Take the crozier and swear an oath that you’ll present our case,” Patrick said. “But if you promise falsely, Grellan’s staff will burn your hand.”
The sheriff looked at the crozier, then out at the crowd. “I am an officer of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria! I would not lower myself. Arrest this man!” he shouted at the approaching soldiers.
They had Patrick trapped.
Suddenly the skirl of pipes cut through the noise, the first notes of “A Nation Once Again.”
Shouts from the crowd: “Look up!”
Michael sat on the city wall at the side of the courthouse, high above us—the piper drawing all eyes, distracting even the soldiers.
And the crowd began to sing as Michael played:
When the fire of youth was in my blood . . .
I heard the sheriff shouting, “Arrest them all!” but the soldiers stopped, confused, as a thousand voices sang:
And Ireland, long a province, be
A Nation Once Again!
On the courthouse steps, Father Roche was pleading with the sheriff. As the song ended, he shouted, “Go home and you won’t be arrested! Go home now! Now!”
And we went.
“I saw him,” I said to Michael when I found him at the city gate. “I saw Patrick. He got away.”
It started to rain as the soldiers herded us onto the coast road and the crowd straggled away up to the townlands in the hills.
“We stood up to them,” Michael said. “The battle standard has been raised. We won’t give up.”
“We won’t,” I said, and Michael and I climbed the muddy path to Knocnacuradh.
P
ADDY, JAMESY,
lie down, pretend you’re asleep,” I said.
��Mam, it’s midday!” said Paddy.
“Do as I tell you. Now.”
Through the window, I’d seen the squad of ten soldiers turn up the boreen, Billy Dubh leading them. Two weeks since the demonstration, a cold, dull, end of November day. They were not out marching for their health.
“Open up!” said Billy Dubh, pounding and shouting.
I opened the door, holding Bridget on my hip. “Good morning,” I said in Irish.
They’re looking for Patrick.
“Where is your husband?” Billy Dubh asked in Irish.
“In Galway City,” I said, “trying to get work as a blacksmith. But every forge has too many already—”
“Stop speaking that gibberish!” said a tall officer, a thin-shouldered fellow with a heavy muffler wrapped around his neck.
Dubh spoke up. “She’s saying her husband’s not here,” he translated to the officer.
“Lying,” the officer said. “You peasants lie as easily as you breathe. Ask her where the pipes are. Tell her we’ll tear this hovel apart if she doesn’t produce them.”
Dear God, it’s Michael they want.
“They’re arresting all the pipers in the area,” Billy Dubh said to me. “And taking the pipes.”
All pipers. But did they know Michael was
the
piper who recruited the people, then played at the demonstration?
“Pawned,” I said. “He pawned the pipes ages ago.”
“She says they’re pawned,” he told the officers. “Probably true. These people are pawning everything to get food. Now, I wouldn’t have given a shilling for Irish pipes. Who could I sell them to? Not like the bagpipes you fellows use—Scottish, as they should be.”
This must be the new regiment replacing the Connaught Rangers, who were too soft with us at the demonstration—Protestants all, probably.
“We do like a good marching tune, don’t we, lads?” the officer said to the soldiers. He looked straight at me and started to sing:
Scarlet Church of all uncleanness
Sink thou to the deep abyss
He watched me, looking to see if I’d give away that I understood this English.
“You papists are Satan’s spawn, you know,” the officer said in an even tone. “You prove it with your devilish magic and charms and golden wands.”
He meant the crozier. Bridget started to cry.
“Here’s a lively one to cheer the wee-un,” said a soldier standing behind the officer. He and the others sang:
Oh, Orangemen, remember King William
And your fathers who with him did join
And fought for our glorious deliverance
On the green, grassy slopes of the Boyne!
Bridget clapped.
“There’s a bonny wee girl,” a young soldier said. “She’ll grow up beautiful and marry an Ulsterman.”
The officer kept his eyes on me. “Some good-looking women in this place. Too bad they’re so dirty,” he said.
“Very clean girls at Bride’s Hotel,” said Billy Dubh. “One or two fit for an officer like yourself. I could arrange a good price, sir, and have your men looked after, too.”
“Enough of this,” said the officer. “Search the place.”
“Mam, Mam!” Paddy called out. “I’m burning up! Bring me water! And Jamesy, too!”
In English!
“So, at least your children know more than gibberish,” the officer said.
“The fever,” I said in English. “My children have the fever.”
Billy Dubh and the soldiers had heard Paddy call out for water and were repeating “fever” to one another.
“Your honor,” said Billy Dubh, “I wouldn’t want to risk your lordship’s good health. I mind now that some pipes were pawned last year, and now I remember it being said they came from this townland, so—”
“Shut you up! We will go for now.”
They went off singing:
And soon the bright Orange
Put down the Green Rag
Down, down, croppies, lie down!
Paddy and Jamesy came beside me. “Weren’t we great, Mam?” said Paddy. “It was Uncle Patrick told us, if ever soldiers came to the door, we should play as if we were dying of the fever!”