The Year of the French Read Online Free

whiskey, and filled his glass to the brim. The parting glass.
    “That is not true,” Duggan said. “You would be happy to sit arguing here while there was any of that stuff left in the jug. You are a slave to it, and every man here knows it.”
    “We are all slaves,” MacCarthy said. It tasted better now, soft and cool. “Slaves to this or slaves to that. I will write your letter for you, and I will write it with my left hand. But I will take no other action with you or for you, and I will take no oath. You will bring blood into the streets of Killala and Kilcummin, and it will not be the blood of landlords.”
    “Some of it will, by God,” Quigley said. “If our blood is spilled, so will theirs be. We will bring the bright edge of the knife to them.”
    MacCarthy looked at him, despising the round, complacent face. The room was dark now. The face floated in dying afterglow, a fatuous moon. MacCarthy suddenly hurled his glass into a corner of the room; whiskey splashed across his hand.
    “Listen to him,” he said to Duggan. “Listen to that man. That is the kind of man you will have with you, who has never seen blood save for the blood of cows and pigs. He will be drinking his own bad whiskey and making his boasts and he will drink and boast you up the steps of the gallows.”
    “But you have seen blood,” Duggan said, with his humourless irony.
    “I was schoolmaster in Macroom when Paddy Lynch was hanged with five of his followers. I saw his feet reaching for the air and I saw his face. That brought me close enough to blood.”
    “By God that would take away a man’s appetite,” O’Carroll said to Duggan, but he smiled nervously to take the edge off his words.
    Duggan shifted to face him. “If we are careful and quiet there will be no hangings in Tyrawley.”
    “In Castlebar,” MacCarthy said. “They will load you in carts with your wrists tied behind you and take you down to Castlebar and try you there and hang you there. If you have a hundred men, you will have ten informers and if you have five hundred men, you will have fifty.”
    “Will you listen to this man?” Duggan said to O’Carroll, his voice rough with contempt. “A man who owns nothing in this world but a sack of books and half of Judy Conlon’s bed. Let you listen to him, and in two years’ time there will be nothing left in Tyrawley but graziers and cowherds. And Judy Conlon.”
    “Be careful how you talk, Duggan,” MacCarthy said, standing up. What use would I be against him, with his hands like great hams, smoked and seasoned by the blackthorn and holly of the faction fights. “By God,” he said to the others, “it is once in a while a great comfort not to have land.”
    “It is,” Matthew Quigley said. “A great comfort. If we do not forget loyalty to our neighbours.”
    “Owen is not the man to forget that,” Hennessey said. “Sure, what life would a schoolmaster have if he did not stand in well with his neighbours?”
    “None at all,” Duggan said. “No life at all.”
    MacCarthy remained standing. “My thanks to you for the whiskey, Matthew. To which of you am I to give the letter when I have it written?”
    “As well to me as to another,” Quigley said. “I will walk down to the Acres for it tomorrow evening.”
    “Not the Acres,” MacCarthy said. “Nor my schoolhouse either. I will meet you at Tobin’s tavern.”
    “Sure don’t be in such a hurry, Owen,” Hennessey said. “Have you no song for us?”
    “A song, is it? A pity I haven’t Paddy Lynch here to teach you to dance upon air. Poor Paddy, he was a true artist. He learned the mystery of that craft, but he told it to no one.”
    Only Quigley laughed. “You are a witty man, Owen. A witty man when you have drink taken.”
    “That is often enough,” MacCarthy said.
    “Safe home, Owen,” Hennessey said.
    He took a last look at them, indistinct now in the dark room. What harm will they do, four men in a tavern by Kilcummin strand? No, three