Creagh
BY THE TIME SHE AND THE CHILDREN ARRIVED HOME, MARY WAS HEARTSORE and weary. Never had she been so glad to see their cottage, as she led an exhausted Sarah and Jude inside.
Her own children were full of questions at the arrival of their two cousins, but a stern look from her ensured they said little. John, as if reading her mind, assured Kathleen’s children that they were family and welcome to stay with them.
Straight away she busied herself tending to their immediate needs. She made the two siblings strip out of their filthy rags and washed their dirty bodies all over with warm water. Despite their protests, she tended to their hair with the lice comb before putting Sarah into a clean shift, while Jude had to make do with a patched pair of Con’s britches and a shirt.
‘Let’s get you both something to eat and then you need to sleep, for you are all done in and need to rest.’
They managed a few oatcakes but their eyes were heavy with sleep. Con had fixed some fresh straw and a blanket on the side of the room where his sisters normally slept and the exhausted children lay down together, safe and warm.
‘They have suffered terribly,’ Mary explained to her family, ‘and are in need of kindness. They have lost their mother and sister, and their father is nowhere to be found. What little we have we will share with them.’
‘Poor things,’ said Nora. ‘Sarah can share with me.’
Once the rest of the children were asleep, Mary told John of the terrible circumstances in which she had found her sister and her youngest child. His eyes filled with anger.
‘Poor Kathleen,’ he said, shocked. ‘What a terrible way for her to die!’
‘I know that taking in the children means we now have two more mouths to feed,’ she admitted despairingly, ‘but I could not bear to see them end in the workhouse.’
‘We will manage,’ he vowed, taking her hand in his. ‘Like we always have.’
Mary worried for the young Casey children. Sarah often sobbed herself to sleep, while Jude said little of his family and roamed the nearby fields on his own. She did her best to eke out the little food that they had, but Con complained constantly that he was hungrier than ever, as did little Annie.
John had worries of his own, for there was talk of evictions across the district. George Hogan was said to be giving the tenants of Sir William Wrixon Becher orders to leave their holdings.
‘There is a new law that has come in,’ he told her one day. ‘I am going to go over to meet Michael Hayes and a few of the men to find out what it means, but I fear it is not good for the likes of us.’
In the still of the night Mary sat quietly, sewing the linen shrouds and watching the low flames flicker in the grate, wishing that these bad times would soon come to an end.