Dark Rosaleen (21 page)

They should have been asleep in the ditch, huddled together for warmth, man, woman, friend and stranger, body by body. The ditch ran along the wall of the city's workhouse and the homeless and the hungry slept there, waiting for the gates to open at dawn. Then they would count the dead in the carts coming out and know, with some certainty, how much longer they would have to wait until it was their turn to be admitted. But tonight the moon kept them awake. Two women sat on the edge of the ditch, cuddling each other for warmth and a little conversation. In the bright light they saw a figure coming slowly down the road towards them.

‘It's a cripple,' said the first woman. ‘See how it walks.'

‘But out on the roads at this time of the night?' said the other.

‘Maybe she's come to join us.'

‘Then tell her she'll be dead before she's head of the queue.'

‘Look how bent she is. She'll not squeeze into this ditch.'

‘She's got a hump. D'you see? She's a hunchback and that's queer. Did you ever see one hereabouts? I never did.'

‘Have you ever seen half the bodies in this ditch?'

‘No. But I'd remember a hunchback.'

Their talk roused the others who sat up, curious, and watched the bent figure come closer. The deformity on her shoulder seemed to make her weary. She was almost level with them and about to turn onto the track that led up the hills and the sea beyond, when someone shouted. ‘Hunchback, is it? That's no cripple. That's Mary McMahon. And there's blood on her.'

It was just as she had feared. The moon had waited for this moment of treachery. How much brighter it suddenly seemed and she was too well known to hide herself under her shawl or disguise herself with the sack of flour beneath it. And O'Rourke's blood was still wet and glistening.

‘Hey, Mary,' they shouted. ‘What's that you have on your back? Is it another baby or a bag of gold? Or is it food you have? Christ alive! I do believe it's food she has there.'

They ran towards her, fifteen or more of them, baying like hounds. She stood upright and faced them. She had killed for her prize and she was ready to kill again to keep it.

She snarled at them. ‘I've a knife and I'll cut him apart, the first who touches me. I've done O'Rourke already tonight. Try and harm me and I'll mix his blood with yours.'

But they did not stop. Mary McMahon was as brave as the bravest and as fierce as a fighting lion. They all said so afterwards.

It was quickly over. She was too weak to fight them off and she had no knife. When they had finished with her they took the sack of flour and fought among themselves for the biggest share. When they were full, they sank back into the chilled earth and slept.

It was an hour or more before Mary opened her eyes. She crawled a little way from them, her body torn and smeared with her own blood. She had fought and she had lost. She had killed and still her babes were waiting. Were they crying for her now? Was it them she could hear in the wind?

For an hour or more she crawled and stumbled her way along the track towards her pit, all the time listening for her children's cries. She would hear them better if only the sea would stop its noise, if only the pebbles on the beach would be still.

As she wandered she spoke out loud.

‘I must walk faster to be home sooner, the poor dears, waiting for their supper. Haven't I left them snug and warm by the peat fire and wouldn't they be longing for their supper of potato broth and buttermilk?'

She pictured their little faces, playing their games among the ferns, splashing at the stream in the summer's sun as she sat and suckled her baby boy, her full breasts making him big and strong.

She walked many miles over the hills that night in the bright light of the treacherous moon but she was not walking home. How could she know which way to go?

Exhausted, she sat by the cliff's edge and watched the soft salmon glow of another dawn. She heard nothing now but the roar of the surf and the breaking of the waves on the rocks below. She did not hear the dogs. They circled around her like hyenas at their prey, snarling at each other, waiting for the first to leap on her. A hound took her by the neck and shook her until she was limp. Then they devoured her.

Patch McMahon came carefully, a few steps at a time, stopping, listening, and then a few steps more. His feet crushed the wild mint, heather scratched his bare legs. How good the moon had been to him. There could be no tricks: no ambush with such a light, no man could hide, no peelers could spring a trap in it. He looked up and nodded his thanks to the bright moon. He stopped to listen. He heard only the sea breeze stirring the grass like the incessant whisper of hidden men. He waited, like a hare on alert.

He came closer. He whispered, ‘Mary, Mary, it's me come home, do you hear? It's me, your Patch come to fetch you.'

Where was his dog? No one in the old days could come into Patch's pit without a warning from his scruffy mongrel sentinel.

He saw the cottage below and the white-feathered ferns and the black hole where he had kept his secret store of poteen. The stream was running as fast and clean as ever.

He called again. ‘Mary! For Jesus' sake, wake up and get yourself ready. I've come for you and the babes.'

He came to the front door. He pushed aside the small boulder and opened it a little. It was too black for him to see but he knew the smell. He kicked the door wide open and stood back to let in the moonlight. It shone directly onto the bed. There was no movement under the blanket.

‘Mary,' he whispered. ‘Is that you? Are my babies here?'

He knelt and drew back the blanket and the dead eyes of his children stared back at him.

It did not take him long. He wrapped their little bodies in rags and pushed them into a wide crevice in the rock. Then he heaped stones into it until they were safely wedged together in their grave. No fox, no rats, nothing would ever touch them again. He sat down and rested his head against their gravestones. He took off his cap. Inside the rim were five yellow tickets with the name ‘S.S. SARA JANE' printed in large letters. The sailing time was noon in ten days' time. He dropped them between his feet and ground them into the earth with his heels until they were gone. Then he looked up at the moon and howled, a long and tortured primaeval howl.

By his side were the scattered bits and pieces of his whiskey still and fragments of the bottles O'Rourke had smashed the night he brought the excise men. He leant forward and picked up a long, thin shard of green glass. He held it up, sharp and sparkling. How beautiful it was. A precious, lethal emerald.

The moon moved slowly across the pit and the last of its light shone bright and glistening on the blood oozing from the suicide's wrists.

The old priest was drunk. He crossed himself a dozen times and swore by the name of his favourite saint. He had already sent a letter to his bishop, and would he do that if he was lying? Mr Hughes, the Inspecting Officer for the Relief Commission, had also seen it. He urged Dr Robin to go with him and verify it himself.

‘The baby has stigmata, doctor. I would not believe it if I hadn't touched the child and seen the marks. It is the most extraordinary thing.'

Kate went with Robin to the church, which was two hours' ride away from Cork. But trifles of gossip and rumour travelled fast across the counties and they expected to find nothing.

The priest led them through the maze of derelict tumbled cottages to a small church on a rise. Where a crowd of thirty or more people were gathered in the graveyard. They held wooden crosses and fell on their knees as the priest approached. He ignored them and pushed his way past into the church. Kate and Robin followed.

Altar candles had been placed on the floor and they shone onto a makeshift crib tucked into the corner under a plaster cast of the Virgin Mary. A man and a woman were crouched by it.

‘Bring him out, Maggie,' the priest ordered sharply. ‘Be hasty, and show him to the gentle people here.'

The woman reached into the crib and brought out a baby boy, wrapped in a dirty, ragged shawl. She put him on her knee and pulled the cloth away so that he was naked. Robin looked closer. On the baby's hands and feet were small red marks where the skin was broken and the blood had congealed. At the sight of them, the man and woman crossed themselves twice over and began a prayer.

‘It is the divine favour, the marks of Jesus,' the old priest said. He went down on his knees by the child's parents. ‘It is a miracle, a blessed sign from God that he has forgiven us. Now he will save the potatoes.'

Robin turned the child to the candlelight. Its eyes were glazed and its legs and arms hung limp. He snapped his fingers in its face. The child did not flinch. He examined the stigmata, smoothing the skin around the tiny wounds, gently touching the soft scabs that were beginning to form over them. He leant closer, opened the baby's mouth and sniffed its breath. Then he pinched its arm. The baby did not move or cry.

‘For God's sake!' said the priest, ‘What are you doing? This is a holy child.'

Robin stood up. ‘This child feels nothing and it is certainly not holy. It is unconscious and someone has been feeding it poteen. Smell it. Go on, old priest, you'll recognise it if anyone can. This poor thing has been drugged so that it won't cry. Drugged, so they could burn it and make the marks. That's what they are, priest. Burn marks.'

The woman pulled the child to her and covered it again with her shawl. She began rocking on her knees, wailing and pleading to the effigy of Mary above her. Her husband ran from the church. Robin held the priest with both hands and shook him hard.

‘This infant has been tortured. If you had anything to do with the making of it, old man, then you too are damned.'

The priest did not reply. He stood up, slowly shaking his head, gaping at the woman crying at his feet as she rocked the drunken child in her arms. Robin pushed the priest aside and left the church with Kate, walking past the hushed crowd waiting outside.

‘The father put the marks on the baby with a burning ember and poured liquor down its throat to hide the pain and keep it from screaming.'

Robin sat with Kate in the front parlour of the Inspecting Officer's house.

‘How could they do that to their own baby?' Kate asked.

‘Hunger gives cruelty a different look,' Robin answered. ‘It was a desperate act of survival, and hunger is the master. I suppose they thought they might get something from it – money, food, clothes – especially if the bishop had come.'

‘Do you think the old priest knew?' she asked.

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not,' he answered.

‘Surely it wouldn't have fooled the bishop. He would have seen it for what it was?'

‘Maybe. But like the priest, he would want to believe. Fakery is the core of all religions, and most especially theirs.'

‘What will people do to them?'

‘The old priest will probably say nothing. He'll keep it a secret and let them go on believing. Such is priest-craft.'

But Robin was wrong. The revelation shook the drink out of the priest. In his rage, he took the burning altar candle and beat the mother with it, then chased her out of the church, screaming his curses. The crowd joined in. They chased after her and when they caught her they beat her and her infant with their wooden crosses and left them to bleed. Then they searched for the husband who had held the stick of burning peat to the child and when they found him, hiding in a hole by his wrecked cottage, they punished him the same way they had punished the gombeen man who had sold them human flesh. The next day, the Inspecting Officer came again to Robin. He said the woman and her baby had died from the beatings and their bodies had been carried away by the dogs. He had searched for the husband and found him nailed to the gibbet on Maundy Hill.

When Robin and the Inspecting Officer arrived there, they saw that the killers had stripped the body of its clothes. Crows had already taken the eyes. It would remain nailed there until only the skeleton remained.

‘His body has turned black, doctor. He wasn't like that yesterday.'

‘Stay back, Hughes, stay well back. We must leave him where he is. We can't afford to touch him now.'

‘What's happened to him, doctor?'

‘The worst, Mr Hughes. For this village and for everyone who nailed him there. It's the fever, the black fever. It's come at last. God help us, Hughes, God help Ireland. For now the real dying will begin.'

Robin did not delay long. That afternoon he and Kate rode directly to Kinsale. The snow had drifted high in places, hiding the road and disguising the ditches, so the going was slow. They rode side by side and trod their horses carefully. Robin was anxious. He knew how rapidly the fever would travel.

‘The children must be kept inside the schoolroom. They must sleep inside, eat inside, no one must touch them until we know which way it's moving.'