Scarlett (111 page)

They heard thunder in the distance at the O’Hara party. Everyone stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped laughing to look up in hope at the mocking bright blue sky. Father Flynn added a special Mass every day and people lit candles with private prayers for rain.

On Midsummer Day the clouds borne on the west wind began to pile together instead of scudding past. By late afternoon they filled the horizon, half-black and heavy. The men and women who were building the bonfire for the night’s celebration lifted their heads into the staccato gusts of wind, smelling rain. It would be a celebration indeed if the rains returned and the crops were saved.

The storm broke at first dark, in a cannonade of deafening cracks of lightning that lit up the sky brighter than day, and a deluge of rain. People fell to the ground and covered their heads. Hail peppered them with stones of ice as big as walnuts. Cries of pain and fear filled the moments of silence between lightning cracks.

Scarlett was leaving the Big House for the music and dancing at the bonfire. She ducked back inside, soaked to the skin in only seconds, and ran upstairs to find Cat. She was looking out the window, her green eyes wide, her ears covered by her hands. Harriet Kelly huddled in a corner holding Billy close for protection. Scarlett kneeled beside Cat to watch the rampage of nature.

It lasted a half hour, then the sky was clear, star-studded, with a gleaming three-quarter moon. The bonfire was sodden and scattered; it would not be lighted this night. And the fields of grass and wheat were flattened by the hail that covered them in gray-white misshapen balls. A keening rose from the throats of the Irish of Ballyhara. Its piercing sound cut through the stone walls and glass panes into Cat’s room. Scarlett shuddered and drew her dark child close. Cat whimpered softly. Her hands were not enough to hold back the sound.

“We’ve lost our harvest,” Scarlett said. She was standing on a table in the middle of Ballyhara’s wide street, facing the people of the town. “But there’s plenty to be saved. The grass will still dry to hay, and we’ll have straw from the wheat stalks even though there’ll be no kernels to grind for flour. I’m going now to Trim and Navan and Drogheda to buy supplies for the winter. There’ll be no hunger in Ballyhara. That I promise you, my word as The O’Hara.”

They cheered her then.

But at night by their hearths they talked about the witch and the changeling and the tower where the changeling had stirred the ghost of the hanged lord to vengeance.

T
he clear skies and relentless heat returned, and lasted. The front page of the
Times
was made up entirely of reports and speculations on the weather. Pages two and three had more and more items about outrages against landlords’ property and agents.

Scarlett glanced at the newspaper every day, then threw it aside. At least she didn’t have to worry about her tenants, thank God for that. They knew she’d take care of them.

But it wasn’t easy. Too often, when she arrived in a town or city that was supposed to have stockpiles of flour and meal, she discovered that the supplies were only rumors, or were all gone. In the beginning she haggled with vigor about the inflated prices, but as supplies became more scarce, she was so happy to find anything at all that she paid whatever was asked, often for inferior goods.

It’s as bad as it was in Georgia after the War, she thought. No, it’s worse. Because then we were fighting the Yankees, who stole or burned everything. Now I’m fighting for the lives of more people than I ever had depending on me at Tara. And I don’t even know who the enemy is. I can’t believe God’s put a curse on Ireland.

But she bought a hundred dollars’ worth of candles for the people of Ballyhara to light in supplication when they prayed in the chapel. And she rode her horse or drove her wagon carefully around the piles of stones that had begun to appear beside roads or in fields. She didn’t know what older deities were being appeased, but if they’d bring rain she was willing to give them every stone in County Meath. She’d carry them with her own hands if she had to.

Scarlett felt helpless, and it was a new and frightening experience. She had thought she understood farming because she’d grown up on a plantation. The good years at Ballyhara had, in fact, been no more than she expected, because she had worked hard and demanded hard work from others. But what was she to do, now that willingness to work wasn’t enough?

She continued to go to the parties she had accepted in such high spirits. Now she was looking for information from other landowners, not for entertainment.

Scarlett arrived a day late at Kilbawney Abbey for the Giffords’ house party. “I’m terribly sorry, Florence,” she said to Lady Gifford, “if I had any manners at all I would have thought to send a telegram. But the truth is, I was going from pillar to post looking for flour and meal contracts and I completely lost track of what day it was.”

Lady Gifford was so relieved that Scarlett was there that she forgot to be offended. Everyone else at the house party had accepted her invitation instead of another because she’d held out the bait that Scarlett was coming.

“I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to shake your hand, young woman.” The knickerbockered gentleman pumped Scarlett’s hand vigorously. He was a vigorous old man, the Marquess of Trevanne, with an undisciplined white beard and an alarmingly purple-veined beak of a nose.

“Thank you, sir,” said Scarlett. What for? she wondered.

The marquess told her, in the loud voice of the deaf. He told the entire house party, whether they wanted to listen or not. His bellows reached all the way out to the croquet lawn.

She deserved congratulations, he roared, for rescuing Ballyhara. He’d told Arthur not to be such a fool, not to waste his money buying ships from the thieves who robbed him, claiming the timbers were sound. But Arthur wouldn’t listen, he was determined to ruin himself. Eighty thousand pounds he’d paid, more than half his patrimony, enough to buy all the land in County Meath. He was a fool, he’d always been a fool, the man never had any sense at all, even when they were boys together he’d known it. But demme, he’d loved Arthur like a brother even if he was a fool. No man ever had a truer friend than Arthur was to him. He had wept, yes, ma’am, actually wept when Arthur hanged himself. He’d always known he was a fool, but who could have dreamed he’d be such a fool as that? Arthur loved that place, he gave his heart to it, and in the end his life. It was criminal that Constance abandoned it the way she did. She should have preserved it as a memorial to Arthur.

The marquess was grateful to Scarlett for doing what Arthur’s own widow didn’t have the decency to do.

“I’d like to shake your hand again, Mistress O’Hara.”

Scarlett surrendered it to him. What was this old man telling her? The young lord of Ballyhara hadn’t hanged himself, a man from the town had dragged him to the tower and hung him. Colum said so. The marquess must be wrong. Old people got things mixed up in their memories… Or Colum was wrong. He’d only been a child, he only knew what people said, he wasn’t even in Ballyhara then, the family was at Adamstown… The marquess wasn’t in Ballyhara either, he only knew what people said. It’s all too complicated.

“Scarlett, hello.” It was John Morland. Scarlett smiled sweetly at the marquess and retrieved her hand. She tucked it in Morland’s elbow.

“Bart, I’m so glad to see you. I looked for you at every single party of the Season and never found you.”

“I passed this year. Two mares in foal outrank a viceroy every time. How have you been?”

It had been an aeon since she’d last seen him, and so much had happened. Scarlett hardly knew where to begin. “I know what interests you, Bart,” she said. “One of the hunters you helped me buy is outjumping Half Moon. Her name is Comet. It’s as if one day she looked up and decided it was fun instead of work…” They strolled off to a quiet corner to talk. In due time Scarlett learned that Bart had no news of Rhett at all. She also learned more than she wanted to know about delivering a foal when it was turned in the mare’s womb. It didn’t matter. Bart was one of her favorite people and always would be.

All the talk was of the weather. Ireland had never before in its history had a drought, and what else could this succession of sunny days be called? There was almost no corner of the country that didn’t need rain. There’d be trouble for sure when rents were due in September.

She hadn’t thought of that. Scarlett’s heart felt like lead. Of course the farmers wouldn’t be able to pay their rents. And if she didn’t make them pay, how could she expect the town tenants to pay? The shops and bars, even the doctor, depended on the money the farmers spent with them. She was going to have no income at all.

It was horribly difficult to keep up the appearance of cheerfulness, but she had to. Oh, she’d be glad when the weekend was over.

The final night of the party was July 14, Bastille Day. Guests had been told to bring fancy dress. Scarlett wore her best and brightest Galway clothes, with four petticoats of different colors beneath a red skirt. Her striped stockings were scratchy in the heat, but they caused such a sensation that it was worth the discomfort.

“I never dreamed the peasants were so charmingly dressed under their dirt,” Lady Gifford exclaimed. “I’m going to buy some of everything to take to London next year. People will be begging for the name of my dressmaker.”

What a stupid woman, thought Scarlett. Thank goodness this is the last night.

Charles Ragland came in for the dancing after dinner. The party he’d been to had broken up that morning. “I would have left anyhow,” he told Scarlett later. “When I heard that you were so near, I had to come.”

“So near? You were fifty miles away.”

“A hundred would be the same.”

Scarlett let Charles kiss her in the shadow of the great oak tree. It had been so terribly long since she’d been kissed, or felt a man’s strong arms tighten protectively around her. She felt herself melting in his embrace. It felt wonderful.

“Beloved,” Charles said hoarsely.

“Shhh. Just kiss me till I’m dizzy, Charles.”

Dizzy she became. She held on to his broad muscular shoulders to keep from falling. But when he said he’d come to her room, Scarlett drew away from him, her head clear. Kisses were one thing, sharing her bed was out of the question.

She burned the contrite note he slid under her door during the night, and she left too early in the morning to need to say goodbye.

When she got home, she went at once to find Cat. It came as no surprise to learn that she and Billy had gone to the tower. It was the only cool place on Ballyhara. What was a surprise was to find Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick waiting for her under a big tree at the rear of the house, with a lavish tea spread on a shadowed table.

Scarlett was delighted. Colum had been such a stranger for so long, so stand-offish about coming up to the Big House. It was wonderful to have her almost-brother back.

“I’ve got the strangest story to tell you,” she said. “It drove me half-crazy with curiosity when I heard it. What do you think, Colum? Is it possible that the young lord really hanged himself in the tower?” Scarlett described the Marquess of Trevanne with laughing, wicked accuracy and mimicked his speech as she repeated it.

Colum set down his teacup with tightly controlled precision. “I have no opinion, Scarlett darling,” he said, and his voice was as light and laughing as Scarlett liked to remember it. “Anything is possible in Ireland, else we would be plagued with snakes like the rest of the world.” He smiled as he stood up. “And now I must go. I tarried from my day’s duties only to see your beautiful self. Disregard anything this woman may tell you about my fondness for the cakes I ate with my tea.”

He walked away so rapidly that Scarlett had no time to wrap some cakes in a napkin for him to take along.

“I’ll return shortly,” said Mrs. Fitz, and she hurried after Colum.

“Well!” said Scarlett. She saw Harriet Kelly in the distance, at the end of the browned lawn, and waved at her. “Come have tea,” Scarlett shouted. There was plenty left.

Rosaleen Fitzpatrick had to lift up her skirt and run to catch up with Colum halfway down the long drive. She walked silently at his side until she caught her breath sufficiently so that she could speak. “And what happens now?” she asked. “You’re rushing to your bottle, is that the truth of it?”

Colum stopped, turned to face her. “There is no truth of anything, and that is what scours my heart. Did you hear her, then? Quoting the Englishman’s lies, believing them. Just as Devoy and the others believe the shining English lies of Parnell. I could stay no longer, Rosaleen, for fear of smashing her English teacups and howling protest like a chained dog.”

Rosaleen looked at the anguish in Colum’s eyes and hardened her expression. Too long had she poured sympathy on his wounded spirit; it had not helped. He was tortured by his sense of failure and betrayal. After more than twenty years of working for Ireland’s freedom, after success at his assigned task, after filling the arsenal in the Protestant church at Ballyhara, Colum had been told it was all valueless. Parnell’s political actions had more meaning. Colum had always been willing to die for his country; he could not bear to live without believing that he was helping her.

Rosaleen Fitzpatrick shared Colum’s distrust of Parnell; she shared his frustration that his work, and hers, had been discarded by the Fenian leaders. But she could put her own feelings aside to follow orders. Her commitment was as great as his, perhaps greater, for she lusted for personal revenge even more than justice.