Bridie's Fire Read online

  The chicken that they kept in the cupboard was scratching and clucking, anxious to be out in the day. Bridie padded across the pressed-earth floor, reached in between the wooden bars of the cage under the cupboard and drew a warm egg from beneath the hen.

  The door to the cottage was open, and the fire was smouldering on the hearth. She wondered why Mam and Dad hadn’t woken her when they left and why her mother hadn’t let the chicken out. Still clutching the warm hen’s egg in her hand, she stepped over the threshold. Pale dawn light crept across the morning sky. Bridie walked around the back of the cottage to where the family potato plot lay. Her parents were already at work in the field, but there was something odd about the way they were going about it, a frenzied desperation in their movements. Then Bridie saw that the leaves of the plants looked strange, limp and wilted. The day before they had been a thick tangle of stalks and rich green leaves.

  Then, as her father dug his hands into the black soil, he moaned, a horrible low growl like a wounded dog.

  ‘Da, don’t!’ she called, frightened.

  He looked up, his face white and contorted with despair. ‘It’s the blight, girl.’

  Bridie caught her breath and pressed her fists against her cheeks. She knew what this could mean. She had seen the gaunt and desperate men and women, turned out of home when their crops failed and they’d been unable to pay their rent. They drifted across the land and wound their way around the peninsula, begging at every door, driven by a hungry wind. All across the country, first in the north, and then rapidly spreading south, the potato harvest had been hit by a terrible cholera, but the O’Connors had been spared – until now.

  Bridie slipped the egg into the pocket of her dress and set to work alongside her parents, separating the good potatoes from the bad. Some were no more than black pulp, with a stench that burnt her nostrils. Others showed a row of small spots, like tiny weeping sores.

  At the end of the day, a day in which they barely stopped for a moment from the grim work, Dad leaned against the whitewashed wall of their house and looked out across the ravaged field. ‘There’s just enough good spuds to half-fill the pit. We’ll take care with these, and God save us, there’ll be enough to tide us through the winter.’

  They filled the store-pit with what they’d salvaged, and laid straw across the top. Mam said a prayer over the pit and Bridie knelt beside her with head bowed, whispering the words with anxious longing.

  That evening, Bridie and her father walked down the narrow white path to the O’Farrells’ house. Mam and the boys were already in bed, but both Bridie and Seamus O’Connor were restless. It was a sombre gathering at the O’Farrells’. Their crop was blighted as well, and not even the whiskey could break through the chill that settled on the room. Bridie was in no mood to tell fairy stories to the O’Farrell children, so instead she sat beside her father, nestling in against his strong body and listening quietly as he and Mick discussed what had brought the disease to their crop.

  As they argued back and forth, Bridie shrank closer to her father, her mind consumed by guilty imaginings. Had she brought this ill luck on Dunquin by riding the black pony? She remembered Roisin’s screaming that the pooka would bring the devil to their door. And now it had come true. She frowned and concentrated hard, trying to make sense of what the men were saying.

  Mick thought it was the summer storms or the easterly winds or maybe even the moon, but Seamus O’Connor shook his head, adding, ‘Whatever cause brought this upon us, you can be sure the English will make it no easy cross to bear. There’ll be no help for the likes of us, Mick O’Farrell. The hunger has the whole of Ireland by the throat. My blood shivers when I think of the poor widows and orphans flung out of their homes, the men working and dying on the public service for a handful of cornmeal while good butter and oats and the best Ireland has to offer is loaded onto boats bound for England.’

  ‘And here you were telling me only a few years back that our man Dan O’Connell would change it all for us,’ said Mick. ‘But to be sure he can’t change the will of God, boyo.’

  Seamus slammed his hand down hard on the table. ‘Mick O’Farrell, I tell you these troubles and the hunger they will bring are man-made and not the will of God!’ Bridie could feel the tide of rage rising in her father’s body. He shook his head angrily, pushed a handful of curly black hair away from his face and reached for another mouthful of whiskey. ‘Whatever becomes of us, I’ll not have you slack-jawed about the Great Liberator,’ said Dad. ‘They’ve laid him low, and he can’t talk for us now, but if he could, he’d put a stop to their mischief!’

  The first bite of chill autumn was in the air as they walked back home that night. Bridie felt her whole body aching with grief and guilt. She couldn’t put the thought of the black pony from her mind. When Seamus noticed her slackening pace, he hoisted her up onto his broad back and carried her the rest of the way home. The coarse fabric of his coat scratched her cheek but she wrapped her arms tight around him. When he set her down outside the cabin door they stood for a moment, looking up at the swirling stars. Bridie slipped her hand into her father’s and he squeezed it firmly.

  ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I did a wicked thing. And I’ve brought the curse upon us. It’s all my fault that the praties turned black.’ She wiped a tear away from her cheek with the back of her hand. Dad knelt down and swept her up into his arms, bringing her face close to his.

  ‘Husha, what’s this you’re saying?’ he said, his warm, whiskey-scented breath against her cheek.

  ‘I rode the pooka, with Brandon. A wild black pony on the beach near the cuisheen. It’s an evil sign, isn’t it?’

  Dad laughed and brushed his hand against Bridie’s hair. ‘If it was the pooka you were riding, you’d not be here in my arms, girl. No, it was only a black pony and you can be sure of that. You’ve no cause to go blaming yourself for anything.’

  He sat down on the bench outside the house and settled Bridie in his lap.

  ‘You’re frightened of what lies ahead, aren’t you, child?’ he said softly. Bridie nodded.

  ‘Wisha, sweet child, if I could spare you the grief of this world, I would. But I know you’re a match for the devil and all his mischief. When you were born, just a fresh babe, and I held you in my arms for the first time, I knew that we had to call you Bridie, after the blessed St Brigid. I knew because the moment I set eyes on you, I saw you had holy fire in you, exactly like our own St Brigid.’

  ‘But Mam said St Brigid had golden hair, like the flame. Mine’s as black as soot,’ said Bridie.

  Her father laughed and tugged at one of her black curls. ‘But you’ve got the markings, girl. St Brigid was scarred on her lovely face too. It’s a sure sign.’

  He traced the long pale scar that ran across Bridie’s face from temple to chin with his fingertips. ‘I’ll never forget the day you won that. There I was rowing to the Great Blasket Island, and when I look back what do I see? My own darling girl running along the high cliffs and then, like a bird, launching her sweet self into the air, red petticoat flying. I tell you, child, my heart was in my mouth as you fell. I’ve never rowed so hard in my life. When I found your little crumpled body lying on those sharp rocks and the spark still in your heart, I knew it was a miracle.’

  ‘Will there be a miracle to save us from the hunger, Dad?’

  Bridie felt her father sigh. He drew her closer to him, folding his jacket around her to keep her warm.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story. A story about your own sweet saint,’ he said.

  Bridie shut her eyes and let the sound of his rich, deep voice wash over her. She loved the way she could hear his words with her skin, not just her ears.

  ‘When St Brigid was a baby and her mother was living with the druid, they left her sleeping in the cradle and set out to work in the fields. But when the druid looks up the hill to his house, he sees great licks of flame leaping from the windows and his own home a-blazing. He comes running up the hill to save the little baby,
and as he runs closer, the flames stretch from earth to heaven. But when he reaches the babe, there she is lying in her cradle, smiling the sweet smile of the innocent, and the flames all around her are leaping from the holy presence of the little babe herself. And the druid’s house wasn’t burnt to the ground, for the flames were the fire of God. St Brigid was never harmed because the fire burnt within her, in her heart and her soul. And I swear, when I first held you, Bridie, I saw that fire in you, darling girl. You make sure no one ever puts it out. That angry fire will keep you strong against all the evil the world can bring.’

  ‘So the evil will come?’ said Bridie in a small voice.

  ‘There’s always evil to battle, but the O’Connors have fighting spirits. No matter what lies ahead, nothing can put that out, not the wind, nor the sea, nor the sharp rocks of Dunquin. Nor least the English and their famine. But it’s time you were asleep, my darling, you’ll be saying your prayers and curl up with your brothers in your little bed. It’s off to dreams of Tír na nÓg for you.’

  He swept her up in his arms and carried her inside.

  It was the stench that woke Bridie, even worse than the smell of the black potatoes that they had grubbed from the soil yesterday. The cottage was rank with it. Brandon woke up too and whispered, ‘What is it, Bridie, what black curse is it?’

  In the dark, they heard their parents stir to waking and fling the door open to the night. They listened to their father’s voice rising in despair.

  ‘Rotten, black and rotten the lot of them, rotting in the pit, they are!’ Their mother wailed in the darkness, keening as if there had been a death in the house.

  Bridie and Brandon went outside and stood beside the pit in the moonlight, shivering even though the night was warm. The air felt thick and heavy and Bridie tried not to breathe too deeply so that the rank and bitter smell wouldn’t get inside her. It smelt of death and misery. She reached out for Brandon’s hand and drew him closer, so close that she could feel his heart beating as hard and fast as her own.

  The hunger came sooner than they’d expected. Before the month was out, there were no potatoes to be had anywhere on the Dingle Peninsula. Brandon and Bridie and the O’Farrell children spent hours every day scouring the beach for tough little periwinkles, and scraping limpets from the rocks. All the cockles and mussels had been taken long since. Soon the rocks were stripped bare. Even the dulse and sloke seaweed that they raked up with their hands was sparse, for now there were crowds of hungry villagers trying to harvest what they could from the shores.

  One day the children came home, and Mam was at the hearth, cooking up a mixture of gruel and nettles in the pot over the stove. She took the limpets from Brandon and set them to roast on the fire. Then she spooned a little of the nettle brew into a wooden bowl and handed it to Bridie.

  ‘Here, girl, take this to the poor wretch out by the side of the house,’ she said. When Bridie looked doubtful, her mother waved her outside. ‘Remember, we’re never so hungry that there’s not someone hungrier than we are,’ she said.

  Bridie found the man propped against the wall of the cottage, his breath coming in short gasps. She squatted down beside him and offered him the bowl but the man just stared back at her with glazed eyes. She tried to spoon the porridge into the man’s mouth, but it ran back out again. She wiped a bit of it away with the hem of her dress.

  ‘Mam,’ she called, stepping away from the man. ‘Mam, come quick.’

  ‘Jesus and sweet Mary,’ said her mother, kneeling down beside the man and taking his hand. ‘Will there be no end to it?’

  That night, Bridie heard her parents arguing in fierce whispers. ‘Erra, woman, you can’t be going hungry now with the state you’re in. You’ve got more than your own mouth to think of feeding.’

  ‘But if they catch you, man! Think of it! What will become of us all if they send you to New South Wales? I couldn’t be doing it alone. There’s no money for thread and besides that, not a soul who can afford to have their finery mended. You must think of the children and not your pride.’

  ‘Husha, girl. It’s the children and yourself that I am thinking of! Whatever way the wind blows, I’ll not watch my family starve. I’ll be a rogue for as long as I need and no longer. And I swear I’ll never take a penn’orth from a poor man, but I’ll feel no grief for the ill-bred upstarts that can afford to lose a lump of loot. And who are the real rogues, when there’s food a-plenty in the land but none for the starving? When a fine man like Mick O’Farrell is forced to the public works, working like a dog for a bag of coarse meal that won’t feed his starving children?’

  In the small glow from the embers, Bridie saw her father pull on his boots and slip out the door. She listened to the wind howling off the sea and shuddered at the thought of her father taking the currach out on those wild waters. She’d heard of small parties of men making raids along the coast and disappearing into the dark night. The embers flickered and then grew dimmer and Bridie closed her eyes and prayed for the fire inside her to grow stronger, strong enough to keep the darkness from swallowing up each of the people she loved.

  3

  St Brigid’s Eve

  Bridie sat on the threshold of the cottage with the door at her back and her lap full of rushes, making St Brigid’s crosses. Her fingers were numb and aching from the cold but she kept on knotting the rushes, turning them over and binding the centre until each cross was perfect. Out across the sea, dark clouds were gathering on the far horizon. She wished her father would come home. She’d woken in the dark of night to the wind howling off the sea like a banshee. She heard the anxious whisperings of her mother and felt the cold winter air blasting into the cottage as her father opened the door and slipped out into the blackness.

  Brandon struggled up the steep path from the cuisheen and then turned onto the pathway to their house. He dropped the sack he was carrying and sat down beside her on the step, panting. His knobbly red knees stuck out through his ragged trousers and he rubbed them for warmth.

  ‘They’re only empty shells, Bridie. The rocks, they’re scoured clean. There was nothing to gather. Do you think they’ll work, even though they be empty?’

  Bridie didn’t answer. She stared out over the green fields to the sea, the St Brigid’s crosses in her lap, unable to look into Brandon’s anxious face. Ever since she could remember, they’d scattered shells in the corners of their home every St Brigid’s day, and prayed to the saint to keep them safe from hunger for another year. But last year, St Brigid hadn’t listened.

  ‘This year, we’ll shout to make her hear us,’ said Bridie, tightly knotting another cross.

  That afternoon, Bridie and Brandon walked down to the small clutch of houses that stood above the cuisheen. Bridie carried a basket filled with the rush crosses. There were other Brigids at Dunquin, but none of them had wanted to help deliver the crosses this year. When Bridie had asked Brigid MacMahon to join her, the little girl had simply stared and turned away to face the fire again, too exhausted by hunger to move. They trudged down into Dunquin with heads lowered against the driving wind. Their bare feet were blue with cold and icy needles of rain soaked their worn clothes.

  ‘I don’t see that crosses and shells can keep us safe,’ argued Brandon.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, boyo. Sure, our prayers will be answered one day,’ said Bridie.

  ‘They haven’t done, have they?’ he said, kicking at a clump of grass by the road. ‘Mam’s always a-praying and it doesn’t make anything come right. I’m still hungry most of the time. Even with the food our dad brings home that we hide in the hole, there’s never enough.’

  ‘Cut the sign of the cross on yourself and ask God to forgive you. The Devil will hear you and we’ll lose what little we have left,’ she said sharply. Then she looked at the boy and her heart leapt with pity. He looked so small and sodden, with his red curls plastered darkly against his pale brow. ‘Darling boy, I know what you’re saying. Sometimes I feel mad as a bull with our St Brigid. I’m
thinking, isn’t it a saint’s business to guard her people? Especially when that saint knows so much about the hearth and the home? But then I’m reasoning, I’ve got you and our dad and Mam and baby Paddy and together we make a grand family so even if there isn’t food, there’s plenty of heart. So c’mon, bucko. We’ll go down the cuisheen to see if Dad’s coming home in the corrach, and we’ll give each of the men a cross to take home with them.’

  The sea was wild, foaming white and churning, the sky like black slate. Except for the swirling movement of the ocean, it was hard to tell where sea and sky met. There was no sign of the little boat.

  ‘He won’t try and come home across that, will he? He’ll stay on the Great Blasket Island, to be sure?’ asked Brandon, suddenly anxious.

  Bridie pulled at the strands of black hair that whipped across her face and stared out at the wild sea. She knew their father wasn’t out on the Great Blasket Island. She was sure he had gone on a foray further along the peninsula. She scanned the sea and shoreline, willing the currach to come into view. The waves rose up on the sea, like walls of water, as if it was boiling, the Devil himself stirring its heart.

  Further down along the pebbly beach, a group of people gathered around something. It looked like a seal that had been washed onto the shore, its black body humped on the beach. Brandon and Bridie took the narrow path along the clifftops towards the village, keeping apace of the crowd that was moving along the beach. Bridie’s basket grew sodden in the driving rain, the little crosses unravelling as the water swelled the rushes. Doggedly, the two children pushed on through the wind to the village.

  They went from door to door, offering a rush cross to anyone who opened. Half the houses were empty now – so many people had left, taken by death or gone to America to escape the hunger. Some people didn’t even open their doors, and those that did had nothing to offer the children in exchange.