The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) Read online

  “Don’t worry, I’m here to help the wounded, not get involved in your armed rebellion. These men are going to be cut to pieces if they stand around waiting to get shot much longer. Do something! Order a retreat,” she insisted through her sore jaw.

  “An O’Brien never turns and runs!”

  “Fine, then, stand up again and get yourself killed! But if you do die, you’ll never see all the things you wanted to do for Ireland come to fruition,” Emer argued, her aqua eyes blazing. “All this will have been for nothing, as will have all your work in the Repeal Association, and for Young Ireland.”

  O’Brien studied the young woman’s lovely face intently, sensing that her passionate sincerity and sympathy for his motives, rather than cowardice, motivated her request. He might not have understood every word she said, since she seemed to have some sort of speech impediment, but her look said it all. Today was not the day to fight and die.

  He stopped struggling then, and admitted, “I tried every constitutional means at my disposal to rid this country of the British imperialist yoke, and now look at where the road to reform has brought me. A backwater town in the middle of nowhere, with only a pile of stones to throw. What a way to end it all, not in glorious victory, but ignominious defeat.”

  “It doesn’t have to end here, Mr. O’Brien. The dream doesn’t have to die, it just has to lie dormant for a few more years. Look at them all." She gestured impatiently.

  "These people are starving. The time of rebellion is not yet ripe. But you can stop this before it goes too far. Go over to them, and tell them to stop throwing stones and disperse. Then get out of here yourself, before they catch you.”

  “I can’t leave the wounded here at the mercy of the British!” O’Brien exclaimed, like a true army general.

  “Do you want to rely on the mercy of the British yourself, who will no doubt be delighted to try you for treason and hang you from the nearest tree?” Emer shot back, as she turned over the first man lying nearby, and saw that half of his head had been blown away by a shot.

  Her stomach lurched at the waste of it all. She turned to the second man, who had a very severe stomach wound, and saw that he would be dead within minutes no matter what she did to try to save him.

  Crawling nearer to Terence as the shots continued to hail down, she tore off a strip from the dead man’s shirt, and then began to examine his bleeding leg.

  “The bullet didn’t go through your thigh. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “It bounced off the stone wall,” Terence muttered through gritted teeth as Emer probed the wound gently with a clean finger, before washing the wound with the rest of the water from her small flask and then binding it tightly with a strip of cloth.

  Emer looked up from her task, and saw O’Brien staring at her with inscrutable grey eyes.

  “Go, Mr. O’Brien! Leave now, before they come out of the farmhouse and rout your forces. There are some police horses over in that field, do you see? Take one, and ride like the wind.”

  O’Brien crouched low and declared, “Farewell, and thank you.”

  Emer raised one hand in salute, and had the odd feeling as she watched him make his way over the wall that she would one day see William Smith O’Brien again.

  Emer now had to decide what to do with herself and Terence, for through the open window she could hear the police inspector giving orders for them to reload and fire at will.

  Emer grabbed the window ledge and hauled herself up, and shouted, “You can’t fire on them. They're virtually unarmed and helpless!”

  “Get out of the line of fire, boy, before you get shot yourself.”

  “You can’t do this! They’re nothing but a bunch of ragged scarecrows, desperate to do anything that will give them some hope, can’t you see that! They haven’t any extra ammunition, otherwise they would have reloaded by now. They certainly wouldn’t be throwing rocks at you if they had bullets!”

  “They are rebels, no matter if they are armed with guns or stones,” the police inspector replied sourly, and repeated his order to fire.

  Emer remembered her conversation with Father Darcy, and declared angrily, “Fine, then, do them all a favour and shoot them in cold blood. It will be better for them to end it cleanly with a bullet through the head, than months and months of suffering from cold, hunger, and fever.”

  The policeman blinked, and when a few more shots rang out, Emer said nastily, “You can go and chase them down the road, and shoot them like dogs. Look, they’re leaving already, and won’t put up much of a struggle! You might even get a promotion for your brave deed in putting down these dangerous rebels.”

  The police inspector suddenly turned away from the window and growled, “Hold your fire! They’re gone now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Emer called.

  Then, as a few more shots flew into the farmyard, Emer crawled over to where the injured had fallen, and did what she could for them, tying her bandage from her sore jaw which she had tugged down her neck so she could speak around her wrist now like a white flag to show she was a noncombatant.

  True to Emer’s word, most of the crowd of spectators, a ragged band of women and children, had already vanished as if into thin air. The few men armed with pikes and pitchforks were running way over the fields and back to their houses as fast as their legs could carry them.

  The police inspector then gave orders for his men to survey the area to make sure there were no more rebels lurking in order to ambush them. Then Terence and Emer and the other four wounded who were still alive were hauled to their feet.

  “Jesus, you Irish must be fanatics. Look at what I’ve got here, two boys, not much older than twenty, and one of them a nearly mute cripple at that,” he snorted, when he saw Emer was having difficulty walking in addition to her jaw which had been bandaged.

  “I just came down the road, on my way from Cork to County Meath, Lord Devlin’s estate at Kilbracken. I’m not a rebel,” Emer argued, as the police dragged her to a waiting horse, and then forced her to try to mount.

  “She ain’t a man neither, sir,” one of the constable said in embarrassment as he struggled with her, and came into close contact with her anatomy through her thin shirt.

  “Good God, you must be mad, woman,” the inspector grumbled.

  Terence looked at Emer with a new admiration lighting his eyes, and was pushed forward by the constable so hard that he fell on his bad leg, and keeled over cursing in agony.

  “He’s been shot, can’t you see that! I’ll walk, he can ride,” Emer offered, about to swing back down from the animal’s back.

  “Don’t be stupid, you’re even more of a cripple than your young friend from Liverpool here,” the inspector barked.

  Then in a more kindly tone, he ordered, “Go on, lad, mount up behind her,” and helped Terence up into the saddle.

  The horse was then tied to the sergeant’s, and the small convoy of rebels was led away from the partly ruined farm-house.

  “Where are you taking us?” Emer asked, pleased to at least be riding for a change, even though she feared being sent to prison if the misunderstanding about her presence at the rebellion in Ballingarry couldn’t be cleared up.

  “You are to be taken to Clonmel prison to await trial,” the police sergeant informed her flatly.

  “But all I wanted to do was help the wounded. I would have even tried to assist your men had they sustained any casualties,” Emer replied indignantly.

  “That’s as may be, miss, but you were caught with this man here, and must go to trial for crimes against the state.” The sergeant shrugged, and rode on, leading their horse north.

  Emer felt a sinking sense of hopeless despair, as once again she faced the prospect of transportation, if not worse, for committing an act of treason.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  After a journey of about twenty-five miles, which took Emer and Terence through the historic town of Cahir, with its imposing mediaeval castle situated near a magnificent bridge cr
ossing the Suir river, they finally arrived at the small town of Clonmel the following day.

  Despite Emer’s worries, she noted appreciatively that it was a charming settlement on the banks of the Suir river, with many paths stretching along the banks, and a large variety of warehouses.

  Again, she could see times had been hard in the once glorious town, for the warehouses looked abandoned, and the streets were thronged with beggars of every description, as well as people literally falling down dead of exhaustion, hunger or fever.

  Emer was appalled at the contrast between the wealthy residents, promenading along the city walls in their finery, and the half-naked paupers barely able to stand.

  “And those are the people you wanted to fight to the death, Terence,” Emer indicated, pointing to one of the wretched urchins. "Can’t you see, they’ve been fighting to the death for their very survival since 1845? Their loss has been far heavier than yours yesterday."

  “We’ve had many Irish immigrants in Liverpool since the famine struck, but I had no idea it was like this,” Terence admitted shamefacedly.

  “I know how you feel, Terence, really, I do. I didn’t know the extent of the disaster either. Not until I was forced to emigrate last year from Meath, and saw a mass of suffering humanity just like this crammed into a cargo hold, and treated worse than cattle,” Emer sighed. She patted Terence’s arm comfortingly as it rested around her waist to help her sit astride their shared horse.

  The sergeant led them down the main street, past the ancient mediaeval West gate, and towards the Treasury building at the eastern end of the town. Also known as the Main Guard, it was an imposing seventeenth-century structure, on the other side of which was situated the bleak jail.

  Though the hold of the Pegasus, the slums of Toronto, and Grosse Ile had all been dreadful, the prison at Clonmel was one of the worst places Emer had ever seen in her life. The jail was packed with over three thousand souls, though normally it could only accommodate two hundred.

  Emer and Terence were put in separate cells at first, wherever they could be squeezed in. Emer noticed that just before she had been shoved into a small space which reminded her of a chicken coop, a corpse had been taken out of it to make room for her. She sat on the floor by the door to avoid the horrible stench from the far wall, which the inmates had done their best to set aside for use as a privy, and to avoid stumbling over the many legs which stuck out at every conceivable angle as the prisoners tried to sit comfortably on the damp stone floor in the confined space.

  Emer sat on her now empty bag of provisions which she had been carrying over her shoulder, and offered around her water bottle, which she had just filled at the pump outside. Many of the men looked as though they hadn’t had water for days, and some were quite obviously in the throes of a severe fever, yellow fever Emer assessed with her expert eyes.

  To pass the time, Emer listened to the inmates talk of their plight. She noticed curiously that for the most part they were all young boys, some of them not much older than her brother Cathan. They all looked thin, pale, and defeated.

  “Hell, we deliberately committed crimes to get ourselves in here,” one of them admitted. “I only hope they send me to Botany Bay really soon.”

  “But why would you want to got to prison, and be transported?” Emer gasped, astonished.

  “Because the food in here is far better than what we get in the workhouses, and we don’t have to do back-breaking work smashing stones to build roads eight hours a day, six days a week for it,” another youth replied in a dejected tone.

  “My God, I had no idea,” Emer gasped.

  They all nodded.

  “The authorities are willing to give us food though we all sit around doing nothing in this cell, and yet people who wish to do a decent day’s work are unemployed and allowed to starve. The only help the authorities are willing to give is to make them build roads that lead nowhere, all for eight pence a day, or a free bowl of gruel,” complained another lad bitterly.

  Emer listened all day, and as she did so, a plan began to form in the back of her mind.

  Towards the evening, Emer could no longer stand sitting about doing nothing in the cramped quarters, and so she asked if she could see Terence, whose leg was injured, and offered to use her nursing skills on behalf of the prisoners if the governor was willing to grant permission.

  The jailer raised his eyebrows, but he let Emer out of the cell, and led her to the tiny single cell where Terence was being kept as an avowed leader of the rebellion.

  Emer was given some water and bandages, and left alone with Terence.

  “What was your other cell, like? Pretty horrible, or is it that you just couldn’t wait to see me again, my dear,” Terence teased.

  Emer told him all she had learnt from the young lads waiting to be transported, and also revealed the appalling state of their health.

  “You're a far better revolutionary than I could ever be, Emer,” Terence remarked cryptically.

  “How so?” Emer asked, gazing up into Terence’s sparkling blue eyes, which had suddenly grown quite serious.

  “Because you're willing to help anyone who needs it, rich or poor, and without ever once expecting to be paid back for it.”

  Emer blushed at the unexpected compliment, and turned back to nursing Terence’s leg.

  While she worked, she asked him to tell her a bit more about himself. Emer was astonished to learn that he was a prosperous merchant from Liverpool who earned thousands every year, and yet he had dropped everything to join an insignificant rebellion out in wilds of Tipperary.

  “At least the other leaders, James Stephens, and O’Brien managed to get away. With any luck they can escape to the Continent, and raise French support for our cause,” Terence predicted optimistically.

  Emer shook her head. “From what I hear these days, the French are having a hard enough time governing themselves without interfering with the British, upon whose support they rely for trade and commerce,” Emer said grimly.

  “You’re no ordinary farm girl, are you?” Terence said in surprise.

  “No, I was a governess, and then a nurse, and now I’m a prisoner,” Emer said with a sigh.

  “I'm sorry, it was all my fault,” Terence apologised, with his most charming smile.

  She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t not really. You see, I escaped from the ship bringing me from Canada to Ireland to be transported to Botany Bay anyway, so I’m a fugitive from justice no matter what way you look at it,” Emer declared with a shrug.

  Terence gazed at her in stunned surprise, and Emer sat down in the tiny space left for her on the floor that wasn’t taken up by the wooden bed or privy, and recounted her travels and experiences since she had last left Ireland as the darkness set in over Clonmel prison, her new home for God only knew how long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  After a few days of confused reprisals that marked the aftermath of the rebellion, the authorities in Tipperary tried to track down the remains of the armed group, and sought the rest of the leaders of the attack on the police at Ballingarry.

  Emer and Terence were kept together in the tiny cell at night in order to separate them from the common prisoners, so as to ensure that they didn’t spread their treasonous practices throughout the jail.

  The prison authorities assumed her to be a man, but when the Governor of the prison summoned her to answer her request about performing nursing duties, he revealed, “We know who you are now, Mrs. Dillon. The captain of the Britannia informed the authorities in Cork that you had been lost at sea. Quite frankly, I’m astonished that you made it this far without either drowning, given your crippled state, or being picked up by the constables due to that flaming burgundy hair of yours. It's an amazing achievement, and I'm only sorry you've managed to get into trouble again so quickly.”

  “Sir, all I wanted to do was help the injured in Ballingarry. I am no rebel, sir. I never even threw one stone, so help me. So if you persist in keeping me locked
up for crimes I never committed, then the least you can do is let me not waste my time here.

  “As I've said, I'm willing to nurse the sick in the prison infirmary, and would ask you to address the sanitary conditions in the cells. The buckets are never emptied, and the floors are running with filth. If you don’t do something soon, this place will have an epidemic of yellow and even black fever and cholera on its hands in no time,” Emer said, trying to keep her tone as even as possible so as to not be accused of disrespect and summarily dismissed.

  “How do you know so much about the fevers?” the governor asked in surprise.

  He stared at her with something akin to pity as she told her tale of her crossing from Ireland to Canada and all the fever cases she had seen.