Six months had now passed since Kate had come to Ireland and the events of every day had been written into her diary, each new page more despairing than the last. Her father had promised they would return to England in the New Year, by summer, he said, at the very latest. Trevelyan had told him so and he wanted to believe it. But the calamity that was now beginning to engulf him told him otherwise. He now lived, week by week, in fear of the future.
The roads began to fill with the wretched, the hungry, the evicted. From the bogs of Erin to the mud cabins of Mayo, they tramped from village to village, from town to town and back again, searching for food and charity. Both were scarce. The lanes and tracks were crowded with searching, scavenging bands of hostile wanderers. They squatted in ditches or built shelters in shallow trenches roofed over with sticks and turf, to brave the winter’s rain and cold. And they waited.
As the lush fields of summer green turned brown and the trees and hedgerows became their naked winter selves, she remembered the early days when villagers would step aside as she rode past and men would bring a forefinger to their foreheads in a salute of respect. Now they shook their fists and women shrieked their curses.
Soon she stopped her riding excursions and used the cold winds as an excuse to stay indoors. Her mare remained in the stable, unseen by her, cared for only by the yard boy. Why should she ride? There was no adventure now in the lanes and mountain paths, no excitement at the sight of the sea. How foreign it was again and how foreign it promised to remain. That thought tormented her. There were times, alone in her room, when she felt as if her hands were tied to some shackle on the floor, times sitting by candlelight when the walls crept closer, tighter, threatening to envelop and crush her.
There were nights when she could not sleep and nights when she would not. In her dreams images tormented her like a spinning carousel in her mind. Often she saw the ink drawing of the ragged boy, his eyes direct and as resolute as she first remembered him in the burning grate of her Lincolnshire home. She would reach out to save him and when their fingers were almost touching, the flames would burn her and she would wake trembling, holding her hand as if it was on fire. In another, she was surrounded by the shrieking women, grabbing at her, pulling her from her horse and stamping her into mud. She relived the night of the tumbling, marching with the gang, swinging her flaming peat into that neat and whitewashed home as the pig danced on fire and the pregnant mother clung to the man who had no anger in his face. And she would wake up almost retching with the stench of baked blood.
She told no one of her nightmares nor the guilt that drenched her. There was no one she could talk to. Who was there to listen? All within her father’s house appeared to accept the inevitability of the tragedy that was unfolding, as if nothing could be changed by interfering. Yet she did interfere. It was unexpected, unprepared, and it came at the most unlikely time and place.
Christmas was ten days away and Sir William’s house was full of holly, tinsel and festive bustle. The kitchen was busy with new sounds and smells. There were never-ending visits at the tradesmen’s doors and the cook had been allowed to employ two extra girls to help. The under-gardener was digging out the root vegetables and the head gardener brought up the orchard’s fruit, stored since the autumn in the darkest, coldest corner of the cellar. Having washed and polished them, he displayed them in pyramids on the sideboards in the dining room. The tree in the hall stood ten feet tall, so tall the silver angel’s wand grazed the ceiling. Messengers delivered party invitations embossed in gold leaf and the Mayor of Cork, a butcher himself, sent Sir William his largest turkey with a note pinned to its breast, reminding the cook that it weighed twenty-five pounds gutted and would need at least twelve hours turning.
Christmas in England had always been the season of indulgences, of endless nights partying, of crowded, glamorous balls, of dancing and parading in the arms of admiring young suitors. Christmas here was so crudely out of place. It was as if the clock had stopped and the house was in limbo and nothing happening inside its walls bore any relevance to what was happening beyond its front door. Never had a Christmas seemed so unnecessary, even vulgar. Perhaps it was this feeling that unsettled her that particular evening and gave her the spirit to do what she did.
Every week on a Friday, her father held a dinner in the long, narrow, beech-panelled dining room. It was his favourite room. From the window of his house in Montenotte, he could see the lights of lower Cork, Blackrock Castle and below it the ships busy in the harbour. It gave the impression of contented, orderly prosperity and it pleased him. He invited his senior staff to wine and dine, to end the week’s work and plan the next. At the lower end of the table sat his own locally recruited agents who were organising the distribution of the British Government’s relief supplies. Next to them were the civil servants from Whitehall who kept a tally of the cost of it. At the top table, either side of Sir William, sat the Protestant clergymen who did their best to dictate who should get aid and who should not, men of the cloth notorious for their hatred of the Catholic peasantry. The Reverend Doctor Greville Martineau, of Huguenot stock, was their senior and most uncompromising leader.
Dr Martineau blamed the Irish Catholic poor for their own wretchedness. As he considered their poverty and starvation were self-inflicted, he saw no Christian reason to help. Nor did he believe that what he was witnessing was simply an agricultural accident. For him it was a visitation of God, divine intervention, and therefore irreversible. He preached that the peasant’s decline from starvation to death was of God’s making, severe and complete and it had a single purpose: to cleanse the land of its papist evil and reduce its population of wrongdoers. He would quote passages of the Bible to endorse all he said and it comforted those who listened.
Kate was obliged to attend her father’s Friday dinners to provide attraction and light conversation. For those few hours she was expected to distract these men from the labours of their working week and entertain them by being frivolous, witty and amusing until the cigars and brandies were brought to the table. That was the signal for her to rise, for her hand to be kissed a dozen times by as many lips and for her to depart the company so that government business and merry chit-chat could commence.
That evening was the last of the weekly dinners before Christmas and was more convivial than usual, aided by Sir William’s many helpings of Yuletide Amontillado. He was in good humour, pleased with the team of helpers and advisers he had so quickly put together. They had an immense task ahead, supervising the import of grain, establishing the depots to store it, making them secure and sending it out to where it was most needed. Whenever he felt harassed by bureaucratic bungling he would console himself that such things were inevitable because nothing on this scale had ever been attempted before. There simply was not the means to cope with the rapid spread of the distress and if food was not reaching the starving quickly enough it was simply because Ireland’s roads were not fit for wagons to travel on.
He had written his first progress report to Sir Charles Trevelyan, stating that he expected the worst would be over by the summer. He did not believe it himself, nor did any of his staff, but that was what Sir Charles wanted to hear.
Midway through dinner, as they were feasting on roast leg of lamb, ham hock and every variety of winter vegetable and before Moran the butler arrived with the decanter of port and the cigar box, the conversation unexpectedly and to the dismay of many turned too soon to the famine. It had never been Kate’s intention to speak her thoughts so publicly and certainly never in the company of these men. Had it not been for Dr Martineau, she might never have done so.
She was listening to the youngest and newest of her father’s relief agents, the slim and fair-haired Captain John Shelley. He had taken voluntary leave of his regiment purposely to help in the relief effort and had sailed from Liverpool on the same ship as Kate and her father.
To the older men who would prefer not to hear he said, ‘Is it not possible to persuade the landlords to postpone payment of the gale until people can harvest next year’s potato crop? They might then be able to buy a little food to tide them over.’
Primed with claret, his listeners jeered and thumped the table.
‘Without rents,’ they shouted, ‘where is the landlord’s income? If the tenants fall another year in arrears how could they ever expect to catch up on their debt? Why should landowners, and especially the Church, forfeit even a penny of their income for what is after all a natural, even a divine, catastrophe?’
Captain Shelley said, ‘But surely more can be done to alleviate the effects of the famine. People are dying from hunger, yet there is food in the markets. I’ve seen it. The Church is doing so little when there is so much it could do. Let us provide at least some ration of Exchequer money to see them through the winter.’
In the babble of protest, Dr Martineau held up his hand, clearly angry that someone so young, so English and knowing so little of the situation had dared question both Church and government policy.
‘We will excuse your young nonsense, Captain,’ he said. ‘You still have much to learn about our country and its people. But you must believe that all that can be done is being done. Do more and we will destroy what little spirit remains in these people to cope for themselves. Remember that God rewards the industrious and never forget that these Catholics are the architects of their misery. They are getting no less punishment than they deserve and far more charity than they have a right to. If food is scarce it must be made to last a longer time. It is the only criteria by which consumption can be controlled. I recommend, young man, that you take the time to read a few chapters of that great economist Malthus and his dictum that if the land cannot support the people then the people must perish. So leave well alone and let matters take their course. As Malthus so wisely observed, life and death must balance. A problem such as this is best solved nature’s way.’
The diners were pleased with that. They nodded and murmured their assent and raised their glasses to toast the Reverend’s wise words. The shy Captain Shelley, seeming to regret his impetuosity, bowed his head and said nothing more.
Kate then heard herself speak, her words echoing as if she was at the end of a very long and narrow corridor, words almost stifled by the rage inside her.
‘And by natural means we must assume, Dr Martineau, that you are advocating death by starvation, death by disease. Entire families evicted from their homes and left to freeze to death in the ditches.’
Sir William choked on his wine. ‘Kathryn, you will please remember who you are and whose company you are in.’
But Martineau held up his hand once more and spoke to the wall above Sir William’s head as if he was addressing a congregation.
‘No! Sir William. Forgive me but we are among the young and impressionable and it would be entirely wrong and even dangerous for Miss Kathryn to be encouraged by Captain’s Shelley’s false illusions. We have a duty to enlighten them both.’
He turned his chair to Kate so that her father might not see the menace in his eyes. Already he knew of her riding excursions alone into the countryside and what she was witnessing on the roads and in the villages. His Church was a network of spies and informants, ministers and vergers and all those who could be relied on to listen and watch for any suspicion of treason to God or government and report it directly to him. He lowered his voice as if he wanted only her to hear.
‘The greater evil we have to contend with, young lady, is not the physical evil of the famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent nature of the Irish themselves. We are not God but the servants of God. We cannot divine a solution. Only He, in his mercy, can do that. But the law is man-made and the law demands that rents are paid and the landlords quite properly, within that law, must use whatever force is necessary to evict those who will not or cannot pay.’
He leant nearer. She could smell eau de cologne and saw he had dabbed face powder on his cheeks to hide the mass of blue veins. A gold crucifix swung like a pendulum across his purple vest. It was hypnotic. His nearness suffocated her. She asked him in almost a whisper, ‘Even if it means they must live in holes in the ground and eat rats?’
Martineau smiled. His voice now was soft and comforting, almost seductive. ‘Kathryn, it is possible to hear this tale of sorrow too often. Nothing changes in Ireland, nor will it in our lifetime. It is the old habitual mass of want, the fixed tide of distress that never ebbs. The Catholic peasant is always hungry, whether the potato fails or not, and the rogues are famous for offering a multitude of reasons why. What is important, my dear, is that they should not be deprived of knowing that they are suffering from an application of God’s providence and I trust their priests are making that very clear to them.’
Then, so abruptly it startled her, he turned and, raising his voice, addressed the table guests again.
‘We must not exaggerate the number of evictions. There are mischief-makers enough who will have you believe what they want you to believe and they will happily add a dozen noughts to any number you care to mention. The Irish knave is the best practised liar in Christendom. Rest assured, gentlemen, and I have it on good authority, that there are no more and no less evictions than is normal at this time of the year.’
‘You lie,’ Kate said loudly.
Sir William rose from his chair. ‘Kathryn, your behaviour is abominable. You will leave us now, at once.’
She did not move. ‘It’s a lie, Father, and you know it is. I saw the report on your desk this morning. I know what it says. Tell them what it says.’
‘Go, Kathryn. I order you to leave this instant.’
‘I saw it, Father,’ she shouted. ‘From your own men in Moyarta and Carrigholt. They said that so many tenants are being evicted it is a disaster. They said that over a hundred homes have been tumbled this week alone – this week, Father, the week before Christmas! Dozens of families have been thrown onto the road to live like wild animals without food and shelter, while we sit pigging ourselves. And here in our pantry we have the largest turkey in Ireland.’
Sir William rose unsteadily to his feet, kicking his chair aside. But Kate had already run to the door, pushing past Moran and his silver tray before her tears began. She slammed it shut on a shocked and silent room of men who knew well enough the truth of what she had said. And, with one young exception, were committed to keeping it a secret.
It snowed hard that night, and all the following day and night too. No one, whatever their age or fondness for exaggeration, could ever remember such a fall. On the fourth night the river froze and ships’ crews had to hack their way through ice in the Mahon to reach the deeper water of the outer harbour. People said it was coming straight from Russia and predicted a ferocious January. For the first two weeks of the new year, 1846, it snowed without pause.
Kate had been confined to the house by the weather and, since the embarrassment of the dinner, by her father. He had called the doctor, who was pleased to confirm Sir William’s suspicion that she was over-tired and stressed, which helped explain her quite out-of-character behaviour. If she could not sleep, the doctor would prescribe a draught and if she continued to be depressed, he suggested company. He had a daughter of her age who would be delighted to come in the afternoons and play cards.
Kate sat by the window of the drawing room that overlooked the long sweep of the south garden. Its delicately cultured divisions, the herbaceous borders, the box hedges, the manicured lawns and the gravelled drive had all become one, the gardener’s long summer labours now submerged in a prairie of white.
She might once have thought it beautiful. Now she could only look at the fine line of oaks and firs that marked the edge of the estate and think of the misery beyond it.
‘They will die out there, like sheep trapped in a wintry ditch.’
Kate turned to the voice behind her. She was not alarmed. It was not strange to her. It belonged to her new and only ally, the young Captain John Shelley. From the night of the dinner’s commotion, over three weeks before, they had become secret friends and since she had been forbidden to leave the house, he was now her only source of comfort and information. They had been careful not to show their bond in her father’s presence and met only at times when the house was empty of all but the servants. They were sure that no one knew of their alliance but they were wrong. The Reverend Martineau had them watched. The young captain had shown himself to be emotional and provocative. His sympathies were in doubt and the Reverend had made it a priority to establish the young Englishman’s allegiances, one way or the other.
Captain Shelley said, ‘Yes, Kate, they are already dying out there, more and more every day. Three cartloads of them were brought into the city yesterday. I was called to register them. Their homes had been tumbled and many were decent properties. They were barely clothed and so weak they could not walk.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘In the workhouse. But I doubt they will last the week.’ He sat by her and took her hand. He was pale and his eyes were red-rimmed.
‘Kate. You must be the first to know this. I am about to resign my position. I cannot do what I have to do any longer. I see the reality and I write my reports on what I see without exaggeration. My God! There’s no need to embellish what’s happening here. The truth is harsh enough. But the truth is not reaching England. What I write is being rewritten, my reports are being reworked so completely it is impossible for the government to know the extent of this tragedy. It is being hidden and I do not know why. On Monday a priest came to me. He had been called to give comfort to an old woman whose cottage was to be tumbled. She was dying inside. He appealed to the gang to wait until he could administer the last rites. But they ignored him and he had to drag her out even as they set the place on fire. She died in his arms, watching her home reduced to rubble. As she closed her eyes, the last she heard of this life was their bawling laughter. I reported it to the Commission but they refused to list a complaint against the landlord.’
‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘Return to England?’
‘No! I cannot go back. Not yet. I think maybe there are other things I can do here, Kate, other ways to help. I am not a godly man, nor am I a sentimentalist but I cannot do nothing now that I know so much.’
He let go her hand and stood. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. We have known each other for such a short time but we were allies and with your help I thought for a while that I might have the will to fight them and turn them our way. But they are too many and too strong and their minds are set against the very people they have been sent here to help.’
He paused. ‘I do believe we English know more about the furthest corners of our Empire than we do about Ireland? I’m sorry. I cannot expect you to understand.’
But she understood. How she longed now to burn her skirts and do what only men could do. How she had begun to despise her pretty lace and perfumed shackles and all the niceties of her privileged life.
She stood. ‘When will you leave?’
‘I am obliged to serve this month out but on the first day of February I will deliver my notice. Tomorrow I must ride south beyond Kinsale to a place called Skibbereen. The hunger is especially bad there and until now we have sent them nothing. I am taking eight wagons of corn and if the snow stops, we might be there in time to save them.’
‘Let me come with you!’ she pleaded, already knowing his answer.
‘Kate. Do you really want to help?’
‘Of course. Do you think it suits me to sit by a drawing-room fire, tinkering with embroidery and sipping tea from bone china?’
‘Then let us be real allies, you and me. You cannot come to Skibbereen but you can be more help to me by staying. I can expect to see the worst down south and I shall report what I see. But I know for certain that it will never be read by your father. It will never reach his desk. So let me send you a copy by another route. I will tell you everything I see. Make sure it is known in England. I don’t know how you can do it but let them know a little of this horror.’
So the pact was made. As he left he went to take her hand but instead she took his and pressed it to her cheek and then kissed the palm of it. She had never done such a thing to anyone before but in this cold and captive country she had finally found someone warm and open and she was grateful. He smiled, leant forward and put his lips gently to her forehead.
‘Goodbye, Kate. You are like a sister to me. Be my conspirator too. It will be worthwhile if we can find a way. You will be my secret agent.’
From the window she watched him go down the steps to his carriage. He looked up at her to wave his goodbye, his dark cloak already turning white, his face speckled with flakes. She wanted to run to the door to stop him, to make him stay longer, to speak more to him. It was as if she never expected to see him again.
The winds that came from Russia blew colder by the day and more of the hungry began to freeze to death. A month before, Sir William had reported to Sir Charles Trevelyan that thousands were affected by the famine. Now, had he the courage, he would have reported them in their hundreds of thousands. At the Cork workhouse, there were queues a mile long of people, half-naked, young and old, waiting in the snow for someone to die inside the walls so that they might take their place. It was reported from Leitrim that two wagonloads of boy orphans had been turned away from the workhouse gates. They had been found the next morning abandoned and frozen to death. The magistrate reported he had counted thirty-two bodies and ordered they should be buried together in lime.
Captain Shelley had been gone a fortnight and still Kate had not received his promised letter. She asked after him as often as she dared and as discretely as she could but no one could or would tell more than she knew already. February the first, the day of his resignation, passed without any further news and she became more and more anxious. Her father mistakenly interpreted this as her impatience at being housebound and promised that just as soon as the weather broke and the thaw began, he would ask Edward Ogilvie to call again. He would have liked to involve her more in the Commission’s work, but the Reverend Martineau reminded him of his daughter’s emotional lapses and pointed out how much concern it would cause in London should her sympathies and opinions ever become public. Sir William agreed.
His work was at a critical stage. His relief programme was now into its eighth month and he still wanted to believe that it would be finished by late summer. But Trevelyan was, as ever, introducing further complications. He was insisting that it was not the government’s intention to freely give food to any but the truly destitute. It was his opinion that the Irish peasant was not so poor as to be unable to buy food if it was cheaply available. With that in mind he had persuaded Prime Minister Peel to authorise the buying of shiploads of maize from America to sell on the Irish markets.
This enraged the Irish grain merchants and their bankers, all disciples of free trade, who feared cheap imports would undercut the market with a consequent loss of profit.
They had no need to worry. The Corn Law and a British government brimming with contradictions ensured the market stalls in Dublin, Cork and Waterford would still be heavy with oats and wheat and the butchers would continue to hang out their hooks of beef and lamb and pork and every sort of wild fowl, so that a stranger with a full purse might wonder who it was who was hungry. But those with empty pockets and empty stomachs knew well enough. Everything they owned had been pawned to the gombeen man, the wandering pawnbroker who went about the countryside with his donkey and cart, swindling the last penny from a hungry man and taking the shawl off a suckling child for less.
There were times, especially in this cold weather, when Sir William, who was not by nature a hard man, wondered whether his government might not be more generous. In one moment of rare courage he had even suggested it in a letter to Trevelyan, but was brusquely told that the government had set a ceiling on the amount of money allocated to Irish relief and it was already over budget. What was being provided was considered enough for the poor to survive one famished winter. The devout Sir Charles reminded his Commissioner that conscience was not always the best guide and that God and market forces were on the same side. To interfere was tantamount to economic blasphemy. Sir William was careful not to mention his concerns again.
Kate had made a pact with Captain Shelley and already he seemed to have abandoned it. She had waited for his letters and the waiting had meant so much. Imprisoned by snow, their alliance promised liberation, his message would revive her spirit. He would tell her what she must do to become part of what was happening. But he had left over a month ago and there had been silence since.
The thaw began in the third week of February. The wind turned around from the east and, for the first time in this new year, the snow clouds split apart and there was blue in the sky and the promise of sun. Everything began to drip, snow turned to slush, roads became rivers and the fields slow-moving lakes of brown water.
It was evening and she was eating alone at the dinner table. Taking advantage of the milder weather and the forecast of still better to come, her father, with Dr Martineau and his retinue, had ridden to Dublin for a meeting with Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant.
She had snuffed out all but a single candle, preferring in her mood to eat by the light of the fire. She remembered the night at this same table when she had so brazenly declared herself and she thought yet again of the young man who had sat opposite, the captain who had braved the anger of his superiors and exposed his humanity. Where was he now? Why had he forgotten her?
‘Miss Kathryn.’ She turned as Moran the butler came into the room.
‘I didn’t call,’ she said. ‘And I shall need nothing more tonight.’
‘Thank you, Miss Kathryn. There’s a fire in your room. But I’ve come to give you something. It came by special messenger two days ago but I thought it would be unwise to bring it until your father had left. I hope you will forgive my caution but this may help you understand.’
He placed a small parcel on the table, bowed his head and left the room. It was wrapped in moleskin and for a moment she thought it was the present Edward Ogilvie had so frequently promised her. It was sewn together and with the cheese knife she carefully cut the threads apart. There was no writing on the envelope but even as she unfolded it she knew who it was from and why he had sent it so disguised, so secretively. She went to the fireplace, knelt and held it to the light of the flames.
My dearest Kate, sister, conspirator. You must have despaired of me. Perhaps you thought I was playing a game with you. Forgive me but once you have read this you will see how difficult it has been not only to conclude my business here but to arrange that this letter reach you and no one else.
These are evil times and I have discovered that people are not always what they seem to be. But you must trust whoever passes this letter to you. He is part of what I want to be and maybe you too one day.
When you have read this, find ways to dispatch it to as many people in England as you think will act on it. A Member of Parliament, a newspaper editor, whoever can create a flood of disgust at what is happening here. I have witnessed such scenes as I cannot relive.
I am at Schull. Once it was a thriving centre of farming but no longer. Would you believe that the market has food for sale and I hear that ships all along the coast are sailing away laden with Irish grain and Irish livestock, yet starvation is worse here than at any place I have yet seen? Yes! There is food here but people are starving. They are stripping the beaches of seaweed, and many I have seen on the roads have green saliva running from their mouths from eating nettles and any number of weeds.
Women and their children climb the sheer face of the cliffs searching for seagull’s eggs. Yesterday, I heard that three children and their mother had fallen to their deaths and no one cares. Today an old man, little more than a skeleton, came crawling towards me on all fours along the beach with his dead son tied to his back. At the tide’s edge he scooped out a shallow ditch, lay the boy in it and covered him in sand. The surf soon showed him again and the tide then took him away. That was his burial. It is for hundreds here.
To buy food the fishermen have sold their boats and everything to the gombeen men, who tramp the countryside in their carts, preying on them like vultures that soar over the battlefield of the dead. Today I saw fisherfolk on the beach. They were sucking the wool of their jerseys, looking at a shoal of herring only a few hundred yards to sea and they could do nothing. I even saw them breaking up sea shells to eat.
I cannot believe what I saw, even now, all these days on. I can smell their diseased bodies, I can hear their babies croaking like wizened old women. The dying wander among the dead. These people have not eaten properly in five months. I stood and prayed for them as I pray now.
God help them and do not blame us for all that is happening.
And pray for me dear Kate.
John