The Whitest Flower. Brendan Graham

little gathering, besides a priest, a lawbreaker, and a pair of tuneless musicians. And, of course, the singer,’ he said, pulling his horse around in front of Ellen. ‘Beecham, is this the sweet thrush we heard, whose notes floated across the Mask to greet us as we rode here?’

      Beecham’s reply was drowned out by the landlord’s command to Ellen: ‘Step forward, woman, till we see you.’ Ellen moved forward. The children gathered into her, afraid.

      ‘Ah, a thrush with fledglings,’ Pakenham continued, leaning forward in the saddle. ‘Methinks I know this red-crested thrush. What is your name, woman?’

      ‘Ellen O’Malley,’ she said, not proffering the usual ‘your Lordship’. This was not missed by Pakenham.

      ‘Ah! I see!’ he exclaimed, looking back to Michael and then turning once more to Beecham. ‘A fine little nest of songmakers we’re raising here, Beecham – don’t you think?’

      Beecham muttered again, but this time a ‘yes, M’Lord’ could be distinguished.

      ‘Well, we’ll see what sort of music you lot make on empty bellies, and what jigs and reels you hop to when you present yourself to me over the next few months.

      ‘And you, Priest, stick to your popish spells and incantations, and don’t meddle in my affairs.’

      The priest did not respond to the taunt as Pakenham kicked the stirrup into the flank of his mount, emphasizing the threat. The mare responded with a high whinny until he jerked her around again to face Ellen.

      That one’s trouble, Pakenham thought to himself. There was a defiance about her and that husband of hers not found in the other wretches – except for the priest.

      Ellen stood, never flinching before the horse which, goaded by Pakenham’s rough use of the bit, bridled in front of her. She could see Michael tensing himself, ready to jump in if insult or hand was laid on her.

      Pakenham addressed her again: ‘You’ll sing for your supper yet, my red-haired songbird – mark my words!’

      Ellen’s eyes never fell from his for a second. But for now she would keep her peace.

      Eventually Pakenham broke the moment, calling over his shoulder: ‘Come, Beecham, let us away from here and back to Tourmakeady, to whatever modicum of civilization is to be found in this damned country. For now we will leave these scoundrels to their dancing, but they’ll dance all right: any riotous behaviour on my lands, and dance they will – at the end of a rope!’

      Ellen watched as they rode off towards Tourmakeady. Mary and Katie were in tears at either side of her, frightened by the menacing attitude of both horse and rider. Patrick meanwhile had moved slightly in front of her, instinctively stepping into the role of protector.

      Suddenly, a shout rang out from the retreating landlord. ‘The devil! I’ve been struck. There he is – up there! After him! I’ll have his hands off,’ they heard Pakenham order his escort, all the while holding a hand to the back of his head where the well-aimed missile had caught him.

      A cheer went up from the crowd, but Ellen was concentrating on the drama unfolding on the road below them. A movement caught her eye and for a moment she had a clear view of Pakenham’s assailant. There, in the murky shadow of the mountain, was a figure clambering up where no horse could go. The figure stopped and turned to look once, not at its pursuers, but back towards the villagers. Back towards her.

      Ellen saw a young face exhilarated by the chase, and by the revenge exacted for the insult to the red-haired woman. Then the face was gone, and Ellen knew that the fair-haired boy would escape his pursuers.

      The following day Michael came running to her, down from Bóithrín a tSléibhe. ‘Ellen, the Church – Lord Leitrim has torched the thatch of it again! A curse on him, I’ll wager Pakenham put him up to it this time!’ he cried out.

      ‘You’d think he’d leave the House of God alone,’ Ellen replied. ‘That’s a few times he’s tried to burn it since Father O’Brien refused the keys to him.’

      ‘Well, the priest is right,’ Michael said. ‘Even if Leitrim owns the church, no man is God’s landlord. He can torch it now, but one day himself will feel the torch of hell for it. We’ll see how he’ll landlord it below there!’ And he laughed.

      It was true, Ellen thought, the landlords owned everything, even your religion. And they tried to own the people, not only their little bit of land and the botháns and whatever they produced, but their bodies and minds, too.

       4

      Ellen was in the middle of the morning lesson with the children when first they heard it. The shout seemed to come from faraway, and Ellen, thinking it was the men in the fields calling to one another, paid no heed but carried on with her story. She was busy explaining to a very attentive trio of pupils how the potato first came to Ireland, why it seemed to have overrun the whole land, and as a result why this blight was so serious. It had been Mary who had raised the question. Indeed, the topic for today’s lesson was hardly surprising, given that so much talk recently, from church to crossroads, was about the blight.

      The children listened enthralled as Ellen told them about the jungles of South America and the great river ‘longer than all of Ireland’. She told them of the Indian tribes who first grew the potato in the mountains, ‘long before the time of the infant Jesus’. Then she told them of the men who sailed across the world in great ships from Spain – sailed for a whole year to reach the lands of the Indian tribes, and how those men took the mountains and the great river from the Indians, and put their own names on them.

      ‘But it was not the Spaniards who first brought the potato to Ireland,’ she told them. ‘It was an Englishman called Sir Walter Raleigh. He would sail to all the far-off countries and bring back gifts for the Queen of England, and it was he who brought the potato to County Cork almost two hundred years ago.

      ‘At first there were many different kinds of potato grown in Ireland, not just the “lumper”. But you remember I told you about Cromwell driving the people to the poor land out here in the West?’ They nodded.

      ‘Well, when the people had only a little land on which to live, and the land was poor, they had to find a potato which would grow where other types of potato wouldn’t. That was where the lumper came in. Even up in the boggy lands on the top of the mountain, where nothing much but turf and heather grows, your father has the lumpers growing.’

      ‘Why didn’t we pick those ones?’ piped up Katie.

      ‘Because they’re our little secret, and we want to leave them another few weeks. Anyway, we haven’t room to turn in here, with potatoes on every side of us.’

      The shouting outside had grown nearer, and now there seemed to be more voices added to the clamour.

      ‘Sit still here for a few minutes until I see what all this rí-rá is about,’ Ellen told them. Then she ran outside.

      What she saw sent a chill through her. Coming up the bóithrín from the direction of Glenbeg was a group of men and women, all of them clearly distraught.

      ‘Tis here, ’tis here!’ they shouted. ‘Tis back behind in the Glen. The blight, God’s curse on it, has come down on us at last.’

      As they drew nearer, Ellen recognized Johnny Jack Johnny to their fore. She ran down the bóithrín towards him. All around her the cabins of Maamtrasna emptied of people as the villagers rushed to hear the news they had dreaded.

      ‘Johnny, what is it?’ she demanded.

      ‘Oh, woman,’ he answered, his voice broken with the news he bore, ‘’tis a terrible sight indeed. Last night the fields were green with fine healthy stalks. This morning they’re as black as the pit of hell.’

      ‘Overnight?’ she said, reaching