Flight of the Earls Read online

  He dug trembling fingers into the cold, moist Irish soil of the farm where his family drew sustenance for generations. His hands emerged from the earth, and even with faint illumination it was clear to see the blackened root of a dying potato crop in his palms. Emptying the contents of his grasp slowly, Da’s shoulders slumped and his browned fingers retreated to his face.

  Clare could tell he was trying to hide his grief, and as her nose filled with the smell of rot, she listened helplessly to the dull sobbing of her proud father. Her life would never be the same.

  “What’s wrong with Da?” Caitlin massaged a soapy blue dress against the rusted iron ribs of a washing board.

  Clare plopped a wicker basket of dirty clothing at her sister’s feet and eyed her father who was slouched on a wooden fence rail off in the distance with his back to them. He hadn’t moved much since sunrise.

  “Your father has much weight he’s carrying. It’s not yours to be concerned.”

  “It’s just, I’ve never seen him . . . you know . . . not work.” Caitlin started scrubbing again.

  Clare reached in the water. “It’s getting cold. I set a kettle to boil inside.”

  On the way back to the house, she noticed the boys were pushing a cart full of manure from the barn toward the field. She wondered whether to assign them another chore, but let them be. There was no need to spread muck on a dead crop, but Clare wasn’t prepared to tell them the family was angling toward ruin. Even though she was writhing inside with anxiety.

  She entered the door and heard the hissing sound of water splattering on red peat coals. She grabbed a cloth for her hands, then reached in and pulled the large black kettle off its hook above the flames as steam rose in anger. The heaviness caused her to stumble, and Clare shrieked as the boiling water just missed splashing on her legs. After catching her balance, she set the kettle down on the floor.

  The noise must have woke Ma from her slumber in her chair. “Clare? Is that tea you’re making? Tea sounds lovely, dear.”

  Clare snatched up the kettle and stomped toward the door, but then paused and exhaled. She composed herself and then faced her mother with all the gaiety she could muster. “Yes, Mam. I’ll make you a cup. Did you nap well?”

  “Sleep? No. Not these days.”

  Clare lifted the lid to the clay teapot on the table. The tea leaves inside were pale and flavorless, but it was all the family had left. She poured some of the venting fluid into her mother’s empty teacup on the small table by the rocking chair. When it was full, Clare looked up to see Ma had already fallen back to sleep.

  Clare’s shoulders slumped, but then she smiled and kissed her ma on her forehead. “Enjoy your tea.”

  With the cast-iron kettle in tote, she went back outside. “Stand aside, Cait.” She spouted the boiling water into the cleaning tub. Laughter rang out in the distance and Clare looked to the field. The two boys were throwing dung at each other. Ronan limped after Davin, losing ground before throwing wildly at his younger brother.

  “Mercy.” Clare plopped the kettle down and let out a deep sigh.

  Caitlin laughed but then covered her mouth when Clare glared.

  “You think it’s humorous, do ya?” Clare struggled to fight back a smile herself. “Well, then. After you finish up these garments there, you can put this water and soap to work on scrubbing your brothers.”

  “What? Why me? Just for laughing?” She looked at Clare with her choreographed sad eyes. “What crime is joy?”

  Caitlin always had a way of disarming Clare, who had to restrain herself from surrendering her authoritative stance.

  “Caitlin Mae. Neither you nor your brothers will set one toe into our home smelling like the wrong end of the cow. Are we clear?”

  “We are.”

  Despite Cait’s assurance, Clare figured she would probably end up washing the boys herself. But the sullen figure of her father ambushed her thoughts. A flush of compassion swept over Clare and she desired to console him.

  “Shouldn’t you leave Da be?” Caitlin’s concerned voice trailed behind her, but Clare’s determination grew with each step.

  “Father.”

  He barely acknowledged her, continuing to seek wisdom from something far and unseen on the horizon. His body was knotted in tension and Clare wanted to embrace away the hurt. But he was not a man who cared to be touched.

  “Da. We’ll be all right.” Clare approached as one would a wounded animal.

  He made a grunting noise, as if laughing to himself. Without facing her, he spoke with an unusual tenderness. “My Clare. Always there to salve our bleeding wounds. Well, I’m afraid I’ve done too much damage and for the last time.”

  “No. We’ll be fine, you’ll see. We’ll just plant again and next time will bring us a rich harvest.” Clare sensed his discomfort rising.

  “Wish that it be so.” Da lowered his head. “Hope is for another family. The Hanley curse is your only dowry, I fear.”

  “Don’t say this.” On impulse, Clare wrapped her arm around her father and rested her head on his shoulder. She anticipated he would flinch, but he didn’t, and she longed for him to return her embrace. It had been years since her father allowed her to be this close.

  His smell returned memories of being in his arms when she was a little girl. Those sweet days when her da was still able to laugh and dream. She reveled in the intimacy of silence.

  Then Da lifted her head from his shoulder and swung his legs down from the fence. The moment was gone, and with it the warmth of her feelings retreated to those lonely corners of her memory.

  “I made a decision, I have.” Da angled his chin. “I’ll need you to prepare yourself.”

  “Prepare for what?” Clare’s knees started to shake.

  “I’ll need you to go the way of Margaret,” he said sternly.

  “What?”

  “Your sister Maggie.”

  “What are you saying? To America?”

  “Yes. America. You need to finish what Margaret began. If she had only made it there, we wouldn’t be facing such hardship.”

  “But you can’t mean this?” She took a step backward. How could her father risk the life of another daughter? She was glaring into the eyes of a madman.

  “You and Seamus. Both of you.” He fumed, but then his disposition melted. “Clare. It’s the only way. The field is dead. There’s no life in her. We’ll surely starve. You. Cait. The boys. Your mam. All of us.” He raised his eyebrows as if to punctuate the point. “Hmm?” He patted her on the shoulder and started to walk away.

  Her lips trembled, then her face drew taut. Clare chased after her father and yanked his arm. “I won’t go.”

  He scowled at her hand clasping his arm and she loosened her grip. Clare’s nerve was slipping. “You want me to leave for America? Haven’t you lost . . . enough?”

  His gray eyebrows hooded cold eyes and she could sense the venom growing. “I wanted you to go with Tomas instead of Maggie. I wanted her to stay back with us. But he wouldn’t take you.”

  The words pierced through her anger like shards of glass, and Clare’s stomach roiled. On the edge of defeat, all that remained was her concern for her siblings. She pointed toward the house. “I can’t leave the little ones. Look at them. What would they do?”

  “Caitlin will manage fine.”

  “Cait? She’s just a wee girl.”

  Da reached out and cupped the balls of her shoulders, and the pain traveled through her arms. “You will go. And you will take that worthless brother with you across the sea. And if Seamus drowns on the way, then at least he’ll be food for the fish.”

  He spun and tromped toward the house, halting only to dare Caitlin to speak. She cowered from his path and he disappeared into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Tears blur
red Clare’s vision, the vibrant green of the farm around her abstracting. When she saw the form of her younger sister running toward her, Clare dabbed away the moisture.

  “What did he say?” Concern swallowed Cait’s demeanor.

  In her mind, Clare saw her sister as a child, never appearing as innocent and vulnerable as she did now. The idea of passing on this heavy burden to the little girl before her was cruelty.

  She embraced Caitlin, who reached back with arms of desperation, somehow aware of the unspoken significance. Clare drew back her sister’s hair and whispered into her ear.

  “Remember how this feels. You will always be in my embrace, Cait. Though gone for a season, I will never leave you. Never.”

  She felt arms wrapping around her waist and saw her brothers had joined them, each with dread in his eyes. Clare tried not to let them hear her crying, and after a while she stepped back and knelt before them, summoning all reserves of confidence.

  “Seamus and I are going to a faraway place where there is money enough to buy food for everyone. A place where people are never hungry. We’re going to send all of our spare earnings back here. And while I’m away, I will think of you every day and I’ll say a prayer for each of you.”

  “But we don’t want you to go,” Davin said. “We’d rather be hungry.”

  Clare caressed his cheek. “Nor do I want to leave you. But leave I must. And soon, you’ll look up from your chores and off in the horizon, with the sun rising behind it, you’ll see Clare and Seamus walking toward you, with smiles on their faces and gifts in their arms. And we’ll be home forever. This I promise.”

  They clutched as one family and cried together without restraint. After a long while, Clare’s gaze drifted toward the road leading away from their farm. She repeated the words again, this time for her own benefit.

  “We’ll be home forever.”

  Chapter 3

  American Wake

  Cormac Brodie, a tall, slender man dressed in a worn tweed vest, white shirt, brown frieze pants, and a faded, black stovepipe hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead. He turned his reddened face, framed by bushy, gray sideburns and nodded to the other two men in his band, who met his gaze with military seriousness. He lifted his fiddle to his shoulders and, with a sharp pull, began to dance his bow across the strings, and a song of unbridled merriment arose.

  Soon his son, Aedan, a young, brown-haired lad, joined on the wooden flute and added beautifully high and clear syncopated notes. Then on cue, Cormac’s cousin Bartley, who was renowned through many villages for his musical talents, pressed his elbow against a bag of air, and the pipes protruding chimed in with low, echoing tones.

  As if unable to do anything else, puppets on the strings of their masters, dozens began to join in the hearty dance—boys, girls, young and old, without reservation and bearing a cheery disposition far removed from their underlying poverty.

  Clare watched from a distance and marveled at the ability of her townspeople to dance in the face of gloom. With the green grass, unseasonably warm weather, and festive atmosphere abounding, she imagined a stray visitor would never know that here on her family’s field, death’s shadow was seeping through the soil.

  The potato plague had not yet reached all, but plenty of farms were crippled with more succumbing weekly. As they would say amongst themselves, if the feet of darkness had not yet tread on their soil, the steps could be heard approaching.

  Clare shared a large makeshift table with several women. In between town gossip and commentary about the dancers, they were cutting potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, and parsnips. These vegetables, along with barley and an assortment of lamb neck bones and shanks, were being put into two large black cooking pots, hoisted above pits of fiery peat.

  The warm smells of the lamb stew, lively music, children’s laughter, and the vibrant chatter of the ladies near her were muted by Clare’s disguised angst. She chopped away at a stack of vegetables and wrestled tomorrow’s fears.

  In the morning, she would be leaving Branlow, perhaps never to see it again. There was a reason why they called these traditional Irish farewells an “American Wake.” Few ever returned.

  A soft and nurturing voice fluttered above the chattering of celebration. “Are you okay, dear?”

  “Pardon?” Clare turned to see Fiona MacBrennan beside her.

  “Is everything all right with you, Clare?” The woman who had become her surrogate mother since Ma’s illness peered at her with lively and caring brown eyes, framed in a deep wrinkled face.

  “Oh yes, mam. It’s a lovely day. A lovely day.” Clare reached to grab another potato to cut.

  “You lie poorly.”

  “Do I?” Clare laughed. Fiona had eight grown children and twenty-four grandchildren, yet she always made time for Clare.

  “Aren’t you going to miss us at all?”

  “Of course, Mrs. MacBrennan. Certainly I will.”

  “Well, then, shouldn’t we be getting a tad more attention than those taters?”

  Clare looked down at the large pile of potatoes she had stacked and grinned. “I suppose.”

  “Liam spent dearly on all of this, you know.”

  The mention of her father’s extravagance raised Clare’s ire. There he was perched on a tree stump, blowing smoke rings from his pipe. He was soaking in the stories and laughter of the parish’s men, who were taking a rare Sunday off from their heavy labors. As host and supplier of the music, food, and libation, her father found himself in an uncommon position of honor today, a role he was relishing.

  “I was fond of that cow,” Clare said. “There’s a big risk in selling her to buy our passages . . . and for all of this . . . merriment . . . don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter how he paid for all of this, it’s that he did.”

  “Well, it’s troubling to think of how little we’ll be leaving behind, what with the winter approaching.” Clare enjoyed being able to confide with the woman.

  Fiona clasped Clare’s arm and pointed. “I see Seamus, at least, is making good on your father’s investment.” There, off a ways, was Clare’s brother, entertaining three young girls.

  Clare sighed. Oh, to live a life so free of worry.

  “Why don’t you leave this drudgery to old women.” Fiona took a half-chopped potato and the knife from Clare’s hand. “That way, we can gossip without fear of corrupting a young one.”

  A large cheer broke out from the dancers. There was Pierce Brady, grandstanding with a solo jig, his curly red hair bouncing, kicking up his legs and waving his arms with a lusty expression of youth. The crowd encircled Pierce, encouraging him with applause and whistles.

  An elbow poked at Clare’s arm.

  “There’s your boy, eh?” Fiona had a taunting smile.

  Clare’s face warmed. “Is that what you gossip about?”

  “Oh, I know you don’t fancy the lad. It’s just you’ve been frustrating we meddlers for a while. Seems to be from a good family. The Bradys practically run this town, if it weren’t for the landlords.”

  “Maybe it’s not power I’m craving. Perhaps I don’t want to be Queen of Branlow.”

  “Could be worse. You could have been a plain looker like myself.” Fiona nudged Clare. “There. Right behind you, two lads deciding who’ll have the courage to ask the town’s most beautiful woman for a dance.”

  Clare couldn’t resist her curiosity and glanced over her shoulder to see the Finley twins ogling her. The boys were handsome and hardworking, and a nuisance to Clare. She spun back to Fiona. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Oh, child. God made you special, ’tis all, full of dreams and great expectations.”

  “Now you sound like my grandma.”

  Fiona chopped the last of the carrots. “If you see a hint of Ella in this withered t
ree, I’d consider it the greatest of compliments.” She pointed the knife toward Clare. “I swear to you, I’d catch her speaking to the Almighty Himself all of the time. I can understand why she would, what with those two sons of hers battling all the time, your father and that wild uncle of yours.”

  She scooped up the vegetables in her apron, turned, and dumped them evenly into the two cauldrons. “Your grandma worried about you, Clare.”

  Clare shrugged. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be reliving the pain of losing her nanna. She wished she hadn’t mentioned her name.

  “Ella was concerned how life was pressing on you, wearing you down. She told me this in her last days.”

  So many gentle moments sharing tea on the front porch with Grandma Ella and never could Clare remember seeing concern on the woman’s face. “She never spoke of this to me.”

  “She wouldn’t. That wasn’t her way. But I knew she saw in you the hope of righting the wrongs of her two sons.”

  “Doesn’t sound like she was worrying.” Sometimes Fiona got too close to the hurt and this bothered Clare. She wanted to push back.

  “I’m sorry, dear.” The matronly woman tried to smile. “This is your special day, and here I am getting somber, tired old lady that I am.”

  Now Clare felt guilty. Fiona lived a hard life and it was written on her body and face. “Please, I truly want to know. What was it Grandma Ella told you?”

  “Were you waving at me, Mrs. MacBrennan?” Pierce said, who had approached out of Clare’s line of sight.

  “I most certainly was.” Fiona ignored Clare’s shielded expression of disapproval. She put her arm around Clare’s shoulder. “This young lady needs a dance in the worst of ways.”

  Pierce bowed. “Then dance the lady will.” He held his arm out to Clare, who yielded and then gave Fiona an expression of protest.

  “Your father outdid himself,” Pierce said, guiding her to the dancing.

  “It’s a bit much, don’t you think?”