Chapter Eleven

 

 

Happy to be away from Lady Attwood and those dreadful women, Emily snapped the whip over the horse’s head and the little trap jumped forward. As the horse settled into a comfortable trot, she glanced uneasily at the blankets on the seat next to her, wondering what in the world she was going to do with them.

The trap came over a rise and she saw a man walking toward her. This time she recognized Michael. Since that day when Shannon had run wild, she’d been feeling guilty about not thanking him properly. At first she’d thought of inviting him to the house, but she quickly dismissed that idea. One did not invite a tenant farmer to one’s home—even if he did save one’s life. Then she thought of bringing something to his cottage. A small gift perhaps. But what? She had no idea what they could use or what they needed. And so she had done nothing. Now, here was a chance to remedy that.

She reined in the horse. “Good day, Michael.”

Michael felt a chill course through his body when she said his name. He stopped and took his hat off. “Good day.”

There was an awkward silence. Emily bit her lip. What is the matter with me? I’ve lived in London for God’s sake. I’ve attended salons and conversed comfortably with intellectuals, poets, and artists. So why am I acting like a flustered schoolgirl in the presence of this tenant farmer?

Emily avoided looking into his dark blue eyes and handed Michael the blankets. “We ladies made these blankets for the needy. Perhaps you would be good enough to see that they are distributed to the appropriate recipients.”

Michael fingered the blankets carefully and his smile faded. “You ladies made these did you? All five of them? It must have taken a fearful amount of time.” His tone shifted from mocking to bitter. “Tell me, is it a miracle you expect from me? Like the loaves and the fishes? Do you think I might turn these five blankets into five hundred overnight? Because that’s what’s needed. Maybe five thousand for all I know. Look around you, woman. People are starvin’. They’ve no roofs over their heads. They’re freezin’ in makeshift bog homes, dyin’ of the fever. And you give me five blankets!”

With each sarcastic jab, Emily literally jumped in her seat. Every time she was about to counter his wild, unfair accusations, he went right on as though she weren’t there. Oh, the impertinence of the man!

Finally, she found her voice. “You are an… ingrate!” she screeched.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, looking baffled.

“You have no gratitude.”

“Oh, but I do. I’m grateful to anyone who wants to help. But five blankets doesn’t count for much, does it?”

Emily fought to catch her breath. She had never been spoken to like this in her entire life.

“At least I’m doing something!” Her voice was at least a half an octave higher than normal. Dear God, what is going on here?

Michael shook his head. “You, and your ladies, are doin’ somethin’ for yourselves. No one else.”

“You are—so wrong.”

“Do you remember what you said to me the day that man passed out on the road?”

“Why would I remember anything I said to you?” Emily asked imperiously.

“Oh…” Michael was momentarily stopped by her icy retort, but he quickly regained his momentum. “Well, anyway, you called me a cowerin’ sheep in a ditch. I didn’t want to admit it to myself at the time, but you were right. Well, I will not be a cowerin’ sheep any longer. I will do whatever it takes to save my family, myself, and my people. I suggest you take your own advice. Stop bein’ a cowerin’ sheep in a ditch and do somethin’ useful.”

Michael tossed the blankets back in her lap and stomped away.

Emily stood up in the trap, gasping for breath. “You are”—she searched for the proper adjective, a word that would cut him to the quick, and had to settle for—“impertinent!” As she spoke the last word, the horse took a step forward, flinging her back into her seat and ruining the full effect of her denunciation.

Michael continued down the road, arms stuffed in his pockets, back stiff with indignation. When he was out of sight of the carriage, he yanked his hat off, threw it to the ground, and kicked it into a ditch. “Eejit!” he shouted to the surrounding trees.

He climbed down into the ditch, retrieved the hat from a mud puddle, and flopped on the ground completely disgusted with himself. “What’s the matter with me?” he muttered aloud. “When I’m around her I either talk like a born eejit or I take off insultin’ her. ‘Do you remember what you said to me the day the man passed out?’ says I to her. ‘Why would I remember anythin’ I said to you?’ says she to me. Of course she would not. Who’d remember the rantin’ of an eejit?” He flung his hat back into the mud. “Jasus!”

 

Emily trotted down the road in her trap muttering to herself. “That man is nothing, A lowly peasant. A tenant farmer. I will not let him upset me.”

Ahead, she saw a gaunt man pushing a wheelbarrow. He was stumbling from the load and weaving all over the road. At first she thought he might be drunk but, as she drew closer, she saw what was in the wheelbarrow: It was a young boy no more than ten and he couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds. His pathetically thin arms and legs hung out of the wheelbarrow like broken sticks, and his lifeless eyes, half open, stared up at the sky.

Emily reined in the horse. “Where are you going, sir?” she asked softly.

The man stopped and looked in her direction, his eyes feverish, unfocused. He hadn’t even noticed her until she’d spoken.

“It’s to the Fever Hospital... my boy is sick... I must get him help….”

It was clear to Emily that the man himself had the fever. And it was also clear to her that the boy was dead. The man could barely stand, but with superhuman strength, he got the wheelbarrow going again and continued down the road muttering to himself.

Emily watched until the man and his pathetic cargo was out of sight. She picked up the reins, paused, then dropped them in her lap and began to cry uncontrollably.

After a time, she knew not how long, she regained her composure. But now she was puzzled and confused. She felt like an alien in her own land. Something was going on in this country, but she didn’t know what. Emily, like most young women of her class, had led a typically sheltered life. She sewed, read poetry, the classics, but not the newspaper—there was nothing in it except politics anyway. She didn’t know how the food got onto her table or at what cost. She didn’t know how Nora and the house staff were paid or, for that matter, what they were paid.

Of course she knew there was a famine, but it was something remote, something that had nothing to do with her; like those endless and tiresome European wars. She’d taken her father and his fellow landlords to task for her own amusement, not out of any deep concern for the plight of the poor. Exactly what impact this famine had on them she had no idea. Certainly the servants who worked in her father’s house were well taken care of. They had clothes to wear, food to eat. They looked healthy enough.

It suddenly occurred to her that she had been deluding herself all this time. The truth was, she didn’t want to know what was going on. She had gone out of her way to avoid coming into contact with the misery around her. Shocked the first time she’d seen a family of poor wretches on the road, she’d taken to riding only in the fields so she wouldn’t have to encounter such sights again. She never rode past the tenant’s cottages anymore or stopped to talk to them—something she’d always done as a child. She’d even stopped going into the village because it made her uneasy to see the hordes of displaced people—sometimes whole families—streaming through the village streets, begging for food and shelter.

But the encounter with that man and his dead child had stripped away her self-deluding innocence and she was forced to face the stark reality. People were dying all around her. She must do something. But what? Then she thought of her father. Hadn’t he told her to get involved? She thought of Michael. Even that impudent man had thrown her own words back at her. Well, by God, she would get involved.

With a newfound resolve she turned the horse toward the village—and within the hour descended into a circle of hell that even Dante had never dreamed of. On the road she passed men, women, and children, apparitions with eyes sunken in their sockets and rags for clothing, mouths stained green from eating grass and nettles. It was a macabre parade of the dead, the dying, and the disenfranchised. She forced herself to look at them, really look at them, for the very first time.

Some had lost their homes, some were carrying their dead, and others were trying to reach the Fever Hospital before they themselves died. She didn’t know how it was possible for these people, some of whom were nothing more than flesh hanging from bone, to have the strength to move.

Not all did. She counted a dozen dead bodies lining the sides of the road. She tried not to look, but how could she not? They were everywhere. It was as though God in his Heaven had decided that Ireland, and all who inhabited it, must die. And in his fury he was casting down thunderbolt after thunderbolt to kill all who walked the face of the land.

 

Emily rode into the village and steered her trap around throngs of specter-like men, women, and pitifully emaciated children aimlessly clogging the roads in search of food and shelter. She reined the horse in and stopped in front of an imposing and forbidding structure with thick gray walls and narrow-slit windows. Six months earlier, it had been her father’s granary. But now, he had donated its use to the Public Guardians and it had been turned into a makeshift fever hospital. Even from where Emily sat, more than forty yards from the front door, she could hear the pitiful moans and cries of its wretched inhabitants.

Steeling herself against what she imagined must be behind those imposing iron doors, she marched through them—and stepped into yet another uncharted circle of hell. The sights and smells—as palpable as a slap in the face—overwhelmed her and she had to grab onto a nearby wall to steady herself. The sick and dying were everywhere—on beds, on the floors. The smell of offal, disease, and death assaulted her nostrils. Weakened voices cried out for water; others in pain. Some called out, asking God to let them live; others to let them die. The individual cries, weak and pitiful, joined with others in a dissonant chorus that rose to a shrieking climax, sounding for all the world like souls dammed to eternal hell.

With a determination that threatened to desert her at any moment, Emily slowly moved through the cacophonous nightmare. A door to a side room opened and Dr. McDonald, the head of the Fever Hospital, came out. His white apron was covered with blood and body fluids.

The doctor’s bushy eyebrows rose in astonishment at seeing a lady here. “Can I help you, madam?”

“I would like to offer my services.”

McDonald took one look at the dainty, well-dressed dilettante before him and scowled. She was young, beautiful, and clearly had never done an honest day’s work in her life. More to the point, she certainly had never done the kind of soul-deadening work required in this hospital.

“This is not a fit place for a woman of your sensibilities, madam,” he said dismissively. In another time he would have been more solicitous in recognition of her class and standing, but he’d been going nonstop for over twenty hours and he was long since past the stage of politeness and concern for the feelings of her class.

He pushed past her. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Emily would not be put off that easily. “Dr. McDonald,” she said, grabbing his arm firmly. “I want to help. I can do what’s required.”

McDonald looked into her determined green eyes, then at a patient lying in a nearby bed; an advanced typhoid case. “Tend to that patient,” he said.

Emily looked at the sick man and swallowed hard. He was bleeding from his mouth and ears. His eyes, an opaque yellow, stared up at the ceiling, unseeing. Without hesitation she knelt down beside him, rinsed a cloth in a bucket by the bed, and began sponging away the blood.

McDonald looked on with grim satisfaction—and gratification. He needed all the help he could get. If she could deal with this patient, she could probably deal with the others. But only time would tell.
He snapped his fingers at a passing attendant. “Get this woman a clean pail of water,” he said.

 

January 1847

London, England

 

A reluctant Trevelyan hurried down the corridor for his meeting with the Scientific Commissioners. As usual, he expected to be harangued by those tiresome men who, every day, pleaded with him to do more and more. Before the second crop failure, he’d been adamant about not sending food to Ireland. But conditions had become so appalling by the fall of 1846 that he was forced to reconsider. Playfair and his two colleagues had taken great pains to paint a gruesome picture of starving people subsisting on blackberries and nettles, and hordes of desperate women and children competing with field mice for scraps of overlooked cabbage leaves. But, he had other sources in Ireland who concurred with the Scientific Commission. Their assessment, he was told, was not exaggerated. With nothing to eat, the people, especially the children, were beginning to die in alarming numbers and he was getting pressured by certain members of Parliament to do something. And so he had. He agreed to send Indian corn to Ireland, taking solace in the fact that Indian corn was the cheapest food on the open market and hence not a bone of contention with the ever-watchful merchant class.

Trevelyan came into the conference room and, looking impatiently at his pocket watch, took his usual place across the desk from Playfair, Kane, and Lindley.

“I understand you have a complaint about the Indian corn?” he asked with a pained expression.

“The introduction of corn into the Irish diet has created some difficulties,” Kane said.

Trevelyan glanced at his pocket watch again. “What difficulties?”

“The corn is rock-hard. In America, where it’s used extensively in the south, it’s milled two, sometimes three times. The Irish peasants don’t have milling devices at their disposal. They’ve tried eating it unmilled, but it creates great intestinal discomfort in some, and even death by internal bleeding in others. It’s especially hard on the children.”

“I have read your reports, your many reports,” Trevelyan emphasized the word “many” with a raised eyebrow. It was his way of letting them know that he wasn’t pleased with their almost daily reports, all of which implored him and the government to do more.

“I have just the solution,” he said with the type of satisfied smile that the three men had come to regard with great suspicion. He only smiled—if, indeed, that grimace could be labeled a smile—when he’d found a solution that cost the government nothing. He went to a cabinet, took out an ancient hand-mill, and placed it on the conference table. “I borrowed this from the India House museum for demonstration purposes. It’s really quite simple to operate.”

As Trevelyan carefully poured a quantity of Indian corn into the mill, Playfair and his colleagues exchanged questioning glances. Trevelyan tried to crank the handle, but the corn was too hard and it jammed the mechanism. He shook it, turned the handle again. Nothing. Trevelyan was not one to display anger, but clearly he was becoming frustrated. He picked up the mill, held it to his chest, and cranked the handle hard. Corn shot out the top of the mill and the broken handle came off in his hand. Playfair stifled a chuckle into a cough when Trevelyan glared at him.

Trevelyan put the mill down. “In any event, you get the idea.” He scooped up the spilled corn from his desk.

Playfair stroked his beard, perplexed. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The solution to grinding the corn, man. I propose to manufacture hand-mills and sell them in Ireland. Of course the new mills will work better than this antique.”

Lindley studied the broken mill. “And the cost of these mills will be?”

“I’m told they can be made for only fifteen shillings a piece.”

The three men looked at each other in astonishment. To the Irish peasant fifteen shillings was a king’s ransom. Trevelyan was busy scooping random bits of corn kernels from his waistcoat and didn’t see their incredulous expressions.