The Year of the French Read Online Free Page A

men and a bullock with brains. A bullock with eyes as round as moons.
    Outside the tavern, the moon mocked him. Full, perfect. It fell upon rock and strand and black bay. The night air was chill. Far to the west, Downpatrick Head, fierce-snouted peninsula, and the lonely, savage barony of Erris. To the south, the Nephin Mountains, stretching towards Achill Island. To the east, the Ox Mountains, in the softer county of Sligo. A hard land indeed, after the sweet kingdom of Kerry, and the cheerful bustle of Cork. The wildest and poorest county in Ireland, the people of Galway said of Mayo. Well were they qualified to judge such matters, poor creatures.
    His path followed the line of the bay, narrow, uneven. Ahead of him, Killala, cupped by low hills. At their centre, on Steeple Hill, the ancient, upthrust arm of a round tower, black against the darkened sky. What man could know the age of such towers? Far older than the Dane, some said; older than the Sons of Milesius and the coming of the Gaels. Perhaps so. It was a land where history was measured by ruins, Gaelic fort and Norman keep. Not even the round towers marked the farthest line of wrack, for were there not the dolmens, and the queer underground burial chambers, immense, as though for giants?
    He entered Killala at its western end, past cabins with fishing nets hung out to dry upon their walls, and walked along narrow, winding streets. He paused by the open door of Tobin’s tavern, whose sign he could make out with the moon’s help: the Sign of the Wolf Dog. Even the names they gave to places of cheer were faintly ominous: stiff-bristled mastiff, lips curled back from fangs. He was Ovid, banished to wild Tomi. From the tavern, a tide of murmurs spilled out into the street. Perhaps the travelling man had more to tell them about the broken rising in Wexford. Thousands of men upon the roads of Wexford. Towns had fallen before their onslaughts; militia and yeomanry had been beaten, scattered bodies, red-uniformed, upon thick-grassed fields. Pedlars and travelling men were now their Homers and their Virgils, tales carried to distant taverns.
    MacCarthy almost entered, but then walked on, past Hussey’s Catholic chapel, newly built and awkward with embarrassment beside the trim shops of the Protestant merchants, Bassett, Beecher, Reeves, Stanner. Once they had been wealthy; once Killala had been a thriving town. Now the trade was all in Ballina, southwards at the base of the bay, on the road to Castlebar. Poor Protestant merchants of Killala: poor Reeves, poor Stanner. Right-angled to the street, facing the market house, the Protestant church, and the residence of Broome, its clergyman. In its old, flourishing days, Killala had been an episcopal see; Broome’s house was still called “the Palace,” a large, wind-battered building of cut grey stone with tall, handsome windows. Walking beside church and bishop’s palace, MacCarthy left the town, past scattered cabins, past the large, low hut where, from late autumn to spring, he held his school. All instruction offered in grammar and navigation, Euclid’s Elements , Ovid and Virgil, bookkeeping and metaphysics. Offered but not accepted, save by a few of the brighter lads, an eye on the priesthood. The others wanted only sums and catechism, a smattering of English. But they loved the sonorities of Latin, the changelings in Ovid, the stories MacCarthy had picked up on his years of wandering across Munster. Tricked into knowledge with the honey of anecdote. He climbed a low hill to the Acres, two rows of cabins, walls of rough stone washed white, discoloured thatch.
    He pushed open a door. Against one wall, mattress of straw on low frame, Judy Conlon lay asleep. He lit a candle of tallow set in a clay dish, and then stood beside her. Kneeling briefly, he ran a finger gently along the line of her cheekbone. She stirred, and a small hand moved to the tangle of black hair. He put the candle on a table set against the opposite