Scarlett (75 page)

The wind blew her hood onto her shoulders, and warmth touched her bare head. The shower was past. She looked up at the clean-washed blue sky; clouds, dazzling white, moved like dancers before the gusting winds. So close they seemed, so warm and sheltering the Irish sky.

Then her gaze fell and she saw Ireland before her, green upon green of fresh-growth fields and tender new leaves and hedgerows thick with life. She could see so far, to the mist-edged curve of the earth. Something ancient and pagan stirred deep within her, and the barely tamed wildness that was her hidden being surged hotly through her blood. This was what it was to be a king, this height above the world, this nearness to the sun and the sky. She threw her arms wide to embrace being alive, on this hill, with the world at her feet.

“Tara,” said Colum.

“I felt so strange, Colum, not like me at all.” Scarlett stepped on one of the wheel’s yellow spokes and then up onto the seat of the trap.

“It’s the centuries, Scarlett darling. All the life lived there, all the joy and all the sorrow, all the feasts and battles, they’re in the air around and the land beneath you. It’s time, years beyond our counting, weighing without weight on the earth. You cannot see it or smell it or hear it or touch it, but you feel it brushing your skin and speaking without sound. Time. And mystery.”

Scarlett pulled her cloak close around her in the warm sun. “It was like at the river, it made me feel peculiar, too, somehow. I almost could put a word to it, but then I lost it.” She told him about the Earl’s garden and the river and the view of the tower.

“ ‘The best gardens have views,’ do they?” Colum’s voice was terrible with anger. “Is that what Molly said?”

Scarlett drew her body deeper into the cloak. What had she said that was so wrong? She’d never seen Colum like this, he was a stranger, not Colum at all.

He turned to her and smiled, and she saw that she’d been mistaken. “How would you like to encourage me in my weakness, Scarlett darling? They’ll be introducing the horses to the race course in Trim today. I’d like to look them over and choose one to carry a small wager for me in Sunday’s race.”

She’d like that very much.

It was almost ten miles to Trim—not far, Scarlett thought. But the road twisted and turned and veered off from time to time, in directions away from the one they wanted, only to twist and turn some more until finally they were going again where they wanted to go. Scarlett agreed enthusiastically when Colum suggested they stop in a village for a cup of tea and a bite. Back in the trap they went a short way to a crossroads, then turned onto a wider, straighter road. He whipped up the pony to a smart pace. A few minutes later he whipped it again, harder, and they raced through a large village so quickly that the trap teetered on its high wheels.

“That place looked deserted,” she said when they slowed again. “Why is that, Colum?”

“No one will live in Ballyhara; it has a bad history.”

“What a waste. It looked right handsome.”

“Have you ever been horse racing, Scarlett?”

“Only once to a real one, in Charleston, but at home we had pick-up races all the time. Pa was the worst. He couldn’t bear just to ride along and talk to the rider next to him. He made a race out of every mile of road.”

“And why not?”

Scarlett laughed. Colum was so like Pa sometimes. “They must have closed Trim down,” Scarlett commented when she saw the crowds at the race course. “Everybody’s here.” She saw a lot of familiar faces. “They’ve closed Adamstown, too, I reckon.” The O’Hara boys waved and smiled. She didn’t envy them if Old Daniel happened to see them. The ditching wasn’t done yet.

The packed-earth oval was three miles long. Workmen were just completing installation of the final jump. The race would be a steeplechase. Colum hitched the pony to a tree some distance from the track, and they worked their way into the crowd.

Everyone was in high spirits, and everyone knew Colum; they all wanted to meet Scarlett, “the little lady that inquired about Robert Donahue’s habit of wearing gloves for farming.”

“I feel like the belle of the ball,” she whispered to Colum.

“And who better for the position?” He led the way, with many stops, to the area where the horses were being led in circles by riders or trainers.

“But Colum, they’re magnificent. What are horses like that doing in a pokey little town’s race?”

He explained that the race was neither little nor “pokey.” It had a purse of fifty pounds for the winner, more than many a shopowner or farmer earned in a year. Also, the jumps were a real test. A winner at Trim could hold his own against the field in the more famous races at Punchestown or Galway, or even Dublin. “Or win by ten lengths any race at all in America,” he added with a grin. “Irish horses are the best in the world, it’s accepted knowledge everywhere.”

“Just like Irish whiskey, I suppose,” said Gerald O’Hara’s daughter. She’d heard both claims all her life. The hurdles looked impossibly high to her; maybe Colum was right. It should be an exciting race meet. And even before the races, there’d be Trim Market Day. Truly, no one could wish for a better vacation.

A sort of undercurrent rumble ran through the talking, laughing, shouting crowd. “Fight! Fight!” Colum climbed up on the rail to see. A big grin spread across his face, and his fisted right hand smacked into his cupped left palm.

“Will you be wanting to place a small wager, then, Colum?” invited the man next to him on the rail.

“That I will. Five shillings on the O’Haras.”

Scarlett nearly toppled Colum when she grabbed his ankle. “What’s happening?”

The crowd was flowing away from the oval toward the disturbance. Colum jumped down, took Scarlett by the wrist, and ran.

Three or four dozen men, young and old, were grunting and yelling in a melee of fists and boots and elbows. The crowd made a broad uneven circle around them, shouting encouragement. Two piles of coats to one side were testimony to the sudden eruption of the fight; many of the coats had been stripped off so quickly that their sleeves were inside out. Within the ring shirts were getting red with spilled blood, from the shirt’s owner or the man he was hitting. There was no pattern, no order. Each man hit whoever was closest to him, then looked around for his next target. Anyone knocked down was pulled up roughly by the person nearest him and shoved back into the fray.

Scarlett had never seen men fighting with their fists. The sounds of blows landing and the spurting blood from mouths and noses horrified her. All four of Daniel’s sons were there, and she begged Colum to make them stop.

“And lose my five shillings? Don’t be daft, woman.”

“You’re awful, Colum O’Hara, just awful.”

She repeated the words later, to Colum and to Daniel’s sons and to Michael and Joseph, two of Colum’s brothers she hadn’t met before. They were all in the kitchen at Daniel’s house. Kathleen and Brigid were calmly washing the wounds, ignoring the yelps of pain and accusations of rough handling. Colum was passing around glasses of whiskey.

I don’t think it’s funny at all, no matter what they claim, Scarlett said to herself. She couldn’t believe that faction fights were part of the fun of fairs and public events for the O’Haras and their friends. “Just high spirits,” indeed! And the girls were worse, if anything, the way they were tormenting Timothy because he had nothing worse than a black eye.

T
he next day Colum surprised her by showing up before breakfast riding a horse and leading a second. “You said you liked to ride,” he reminded her. “I borrowed us some mounts. But they’re to go back by noon Angelus, so grab us what’s left of last night’s bread and come along before the house fills with visitors.”

“There’s no saddle, Colum.”

“Whist, are you a rider or not? Get the bread, Scarlett darling, and Bridie’ll make a hand for you to step on.”

She hadn’t ridden bareback and astride since she was a child. She’d forgotten the feeling of being one creature with the horse. It all came back, as if she’d never stopped riding this way, and soon she barely needed the reins at all; the pressure of her knees told the horse what they were going to do.

“Where are we going?” They were in a boreen she’d never walked.

“To the Boyne. I’ve something to show you.”

The river. Scarlett’s pulse quickened. There was something there that drew her and repelled her at the same time.

It began to rain, and she was glad Bridie had made her bring a shawl. She covered her head, then rode silently behind Colum, hearing the rain on the leaves of the hedge and the slow, walking clop-ping of the horses’ hooves. So peaceful. She felt no surprise when the rain stopped. Now the birds in the hedges could come out again.

The boreen ended, and the river was there. The banks were so low that the water all but lapped over them. “This is the ford where Bridie does her washing,” said Colum. “Would you fancy a bath?”

Scarlett shivered dramatically. “I’m not that brave. The water must be freezing.”

“You’ll find out, but only a bit of splashing. We’re going across. Get your reins steady.” His horse stepped cautiously into the water. Scarlett gathered up her skirts and tucked them under her thighs, then followed.

On the opposite bank, Colum dismounted. “Come down and have breakfast,” he said. “I’ll tie the horses to a tree.” Trees grew close to the river here; Colum’s face was dappled by their shade. Scarlett slid to the ground and handed him her reins. She found a sunny patch to sit in, her back sloped against a tree trunk. Small yellow flowers with heart-shaped leaves carpeted the bank. She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet voice of the river, the sibilant rustle of the leaves above her head, the songs of birds. Colum sat beside her, and she opened her eyes slowly. He broke the half loaf of soda bread in two pieces, gave her the larger.

“I’ve a story to tell you while we eat,” he said. “This land we’re on is called Ballyhara. Two hundred years ago, less a few, it was home to your people, our people. This is O’Hara land.”

Scarlett sat up, suddenly wide awake. This? This was O’Hara land? And “Ballyhara”—wasn’t that the name of the deserted village they had driven through so fast? She turned eagerly towards Colum.

“Quiet, now, and eat your good bread, Katie Scarlett. It’s a longish story,” he said. Colum’s smile silenced the questions on her lips. “Two thousand years ago, plus a few, the first O’Haras settled here and made the land their own. One thousand years ago—you see how close we’re coming—the Vikings, Norsemen we’d call them now, discovered the green richness of Ireland and tried to take it for their own. Irish—like the O’Haras—watched the rivers where the dragon-headed longboats might invade and built strong protections against the enemy.” Colum tore a corner of bread and put it in his mouth. Scarlett waited impatiently as he chewed. So many years… her mind couldn’t grasp so many years. What came after a thousand years ago?

“The Vikings were driven away,” said Colum, “and the O’Haras tilled their land and fattened their cattle for two hundred years and more. They built a strong castle with room for themselves and their servants, because the Irish have long memories and just as the Vikings had come before, invasion could come again. And so it did. Not Vikings but English who had once been French. More than half of Ireland was lost to them, but the O’Haras prevailed behind their strong walls, and tended their land for another five hundred years.

“Until the Battle of the Boyne, which piteous story you know. After two thousand years of O’Hara care, the land became English. The O’Haras were driven across the ford, those that were left, the widows and babes. One of those children grew up a tenant farmer for the English across the river. His grandson, farmer of the same fields, married our grandmother, Katie Scarlett. At his father’s side he looked across the brown waters of the Boyne and saw the castle of the O’Haras torn down, saw an English house rise in its place. But the name remained. Ballyhara.”

And Pa saw the house, knew this land was O’Hara land. Scarlett wept for her father, understood the rage and sorrow she’d seen in his face and heard in his voice when he roared about the Battle of the Boyne. Colum went to the river and drank from his hands. He washed them, then cupped them again and brought water to Scarlett. After she drank, he wiped the tears from her cheeks with his gentle wet fingers.

“I wanted not to tell you this, Katie Scarlett—”

Scarlett interrupted angrily. “I have a right to know.”

“And so I believe also.”

“Tell me the rest. I know there’s more. I can tell by your face.”

Colum was pale, as a man in pain beyond bearing. “Yes, there’s more. The English Ballyhara was built for a young lord. He was as fair and handsome as Apollo, they say, and he thought himself a god, as well. He determined to make Ballyhara the finest estate in all Ireland. His village—for he possessed Ballyhara to the last stone and leaf—must be more grand than any other, more grand than Dublin herself. And so it was, though not so grand as Dublin, save for the single street of it, which was wider than the capital’s widest street. His stables were like a cathedral, his windows as clear as diamonds, his gardens a soft carpet to the Boyne. Peacocks spread their jewelled fans on his lawns and beauteous ladies decked in jewels graced his entertainments. He was lord of Ballyhara.