The Whitest Flower. Brendan Graham

was intrigued by the redhead’s refusal to be goaded into openly insulting him. She had chided him with dignity, adroitly extricating herself, and that husband of hers, from a fraught situation. What features she had! Why, with a decent set of clothes on her, you could parade her up and down Pall Mall all day and every head in London would turn to behold her. She would be a worthy adversary for him, much more so than that flighty, fidgety Bridget, who had just returned with his port. Although the girl had led him a merry dance for quite some time, he had had his way with her in the end. Bridget responded to his look by casting her eyes to the floor. Pakenham could imagine her, running to the priest, looking for forgiveness after sinning against the Sixth Commandment – and with the landlord too! No doubt she’d been given treble the normal penance, for she was thrice-damned, him being also Protestant and still perceived as ‘English’ by those sagarts, even after being here two hundred years!

      He would let the O’Malley woman’s impudence go for now – wait and see what the lean winter months would bring. This Famine would be of assist to him with this one. Of that he had no doubt.

      He turned to Beecham. He had other matters to attend to.

      ‘Yes, well, that’s enough for today, Beecham. Mark a further year’s holding for O’Malley here, decide on the new rent and …’ he paused, as if the idea had just come to him, ‘I want you yourself to check the extent of land reclamation carried out in the Maamtrasna Valley and report any under-declarations to me.’

      ‘Yes, Your Lordship,’ Beecham replied, his lips curling into a smirk.

      ‘O’Malley, ma’am – I bid you the compliments of the season.’ Pakenham fixed Ellen with a rather wan smile and then, without looking away from her, commanded: ‘Bridget, my port. Fetch it to my study, and wait for me within. I shall be there momentarily, as both Mr Beecham and our other guests are leaving.’

      Pakenham knew that the inference would not be lost on Ellen. For the first time, he saw the redhead’s eyes flicker as she glanced towards Bridget – now flushed with the humiliation of being publicly shamed.

      Bridget nodded and, almost inaudibly, replied, ‘Yes, sir,’ before hurriedly leaving the room.

      Ellen felt much sympathy for the girl. Again Pakenham had used the young servant as a pawn in his game with them. He had made a point in demonstrating to them – and to Ellen in particular – his power over others. Shown how, had he chosen to, he could have used his power to make them suffer by denying them another year’s tenancy.

      Pakenham, too, had invaded her intimacy. Let her know what was about to happen to the young servant. Let her know that it was she, Ellen Rua, he would be thinking of. She, and not Bridget Lynch. Ellen felt sick. She wanted to get as far away as possible from him.

      As if it were not her speaking, she heard herself say, ‘Thank you, M’Lord, and may the Christ-Child and His Holy Mother, Mary, Virgin most pure, bless you and keep you free from all sin.’

      At this very pointed reference to his intentions towards Bridget, Pakenham gave the merest hint of a smile, but said nothing. Ellen and Michael then left the kitchen, and the landlord’s odious presence.

      No sooner had they gone than Pakenham, white with rage, picked up the nearest object to him, which happened to be the bone-china teapot, and dashed it against the floor of the kitchen. Bridget rushed back in steadying the glass of port on the silver salver she carried.

      Pakenham made a lunge at the girl. Apoplexy contorting his face, he raged: ‘Damn them! Damn them to high heaven, these Irish bitches!’ That red-haired she-devil had blessed him – her landlord! The gall of her! And not only that, she’d cautioned him not to sin! Not to sin, and she nothing but a whore’s melt – born of an unholy union with a disgraced priest. The whole countryside knew of her. How dare she speak to him of sin!

      ‘Damn her!’ he roared at Bridget. ‘And damn you, too, you little she-witch. You’re all hewn from the same tree – sniggering, whispering bog-bitches!’

      He made another lunge at Bridget, but succeeded only in grabbing the intaglio-cut Venetian glass, filled to the brim with fine port wine.

      ‘Damn the whole conniving lot of you! Get out of my sight, girl! Go on, get out of here! Go home to that breastthumping holy mother of yours – or I’ll not be responsible for you!’

      As Bridget dropped the silver salver and ran, Pakenham hurled the glass past her. Its ruby-red contents, symbol of her downfall, hung for a moment in the air above her before emptying down on her head and shoulders, baptizing her, anointing her with its unholy chrism.

      Ellen and Michael heard the crash of the silver and, then, as Pakenham’s shouting followed them down the path, the sound of glass smashing into the door. At the rose gardens they stopped, hearing Pakenham’s final outburst, followed by the door banging closed and the sound of footsteps running from the house.

      Ellen looked at Michael. ‘The girl will be all right now – for the Christmas at least!’

      As they left Tourmakeady Lodge behind them, Michael was angry. ‘Pakenham and his likes should be run out of the country once and for all. O’Connell is wrong: peaceful means will never do it. We have to take back what is rightfully ours – they’ll never just hand it over,’ he said. ‘I think Pakenham would wish the blight to hit us again. If the crop failed and we had no rent for him, he’d have us on the roadside quicker than you could cross yourself. It would suit him to clear the land, and have bigger holdings, with sheep and cattle on them, instead of humans. The people should rise up – it’s the only way.’

      They decided not to go on to Castlebar. No matter how bad things had been in other years, they had always managed to buy the Christmas. But now, with a rent increase looming over them, they were forced for the first time to break years of tradition.

      So they turned and headed back along the road that skirted the western boundary of Lough Mask. It was a December day to the core: bright and frosty and fresh. Along the way they stopped here and there to exchange news and greetings with any they chanced upon. Otherwise, they walked briskly, eager to be back with the children before nightfall, but their hearts heavy that it was disappointment only they brought home with them this year and not the Christmas.

       9

      They came at first light, Beecham and a trio of the constabulary. Mountain and marshland alike they combed, Beecham writing it all down in his book and drawing lines on some map he had. Roberteen followed them and saw it all.

      As they rode off again through the village, Beecham shouted, ‘Tell O’Malley that Sir Richard thanks him.’

      That evening, after dark, three men called to speak to Michael.

      Ellen recognized Johnny Jack Johnny’s son from Glenbeg, but the Shanafaraghaun man, as he was referred to, was a stranger to her. She was surprised that Roberteen made up the three.

      She put the children to bed, although Patrick wanted to sit up with the men. ‘Are they Young Irelanders?’ he whispered. She wondered that herself.

      They sat with Michael at the hearth for a while, then all four went outside. She noticed that the unnamed Shanafaraghaun man did most of the talking. ‘He was in Dublin with O’Connell,’ Roberteen had said when he introduced the man to Michael, ‘but he broke from O’Connell again.’

      An hour or so later, Michael came back alone.

      ‘O’Connell is for repealing the Union with Britain without violence – “Not a single drop of blood,” he says – but the Young Irelanders are for the sword, and the Shanafaraghaun man is for the Young Irelanders. He says the sword is a sacred weapon,’ Michael told her, his face animated in the firelight, ‘and that moral force should be backed by musket force!’

      Then he handed her a piece of paper which the Shanafaraghaun man had given him.

      When