The Year of the French Read Online Free Page B

wall. Ranged across its far side, his two dozen books: the Aeneid , Keating’s History of Ireland , the Eclogues and the Georgics , some volumes of Shakespeare, Paradise Lost , a box which held his copies of the poems of O’Rahilly and O’Sullivan.
    He opened the two boxes which contained his craft. In the larger one, his own manuscripts, poems completed, poems to be remade, his translation of the first two books of the Metamorphoses into Irish, his sheets of blank paper. In the other box, a small brass bottle of ink, a sharp knife, his assortment of pens, grey goose for poetry, black crow for business. He placed paper and ink before him, sharpened his quills, and dipped a black feather into the ink.
    In the early morning, when he felt Judy standing beside him, he was still sitting at the table, moving a grey goose feather across the page, scratching out a word, adding one, scratching that one out. Absently, with his hand, he moved along the line of her leg, cupped her haunch. A small girl, the hand had not far to travel.
    “Where were you last night?”
    “That is no concern of yours.”
    “It might be.”
    “It might be, but it is not. I was at Matthew Quigley’s.”
    “What possessed you to go out there, with three fine taverns in Killala?”
    “The Sign of the Wolf Dog. That would put a thirst on a man, right enough. I felt a need for the quiet beauty of Kilcummin strand.”
    She ran her hand through his red hair. “You can be a terrible liar, Owen.”
    “I can. It is a poet’s way of reaching for truth.”
    “There is not a sin you commit for which your poetry is not the excuse. Is it a poem that you are writing now?”
    “It might be the start of one. I won’t know for a while.”
    “That is Irish you are writing. I can tell the difference now.”
    “It is in Irish that all my poems are made. This will be a strange one, if it ever takes shape.” He put it aside, and took a fresh sheet of paper. “I have been all the night at it. My backside is numb. There was a fine handsome moon last night. It was worth seeing.”
    “Did you think of me when you saw it?”
    “I did, of course.”
    “Liar.”
    She cut slices of bread, buttered them, and handed him one. It was not a bad life at all, he thought. Buttered bread every day, as suited his craft and his calling. He was far above all the poor fellows who had only their potatoes, and perhaps a bit of salt fish. And he had a lovely small girl to slice it for him, and to open her bed to him. There had been better times in Munster, but there had been worse. When he finished the bread, he wiped his hands carefully along the side of his breeches, out of respect for the good paper.
    “Judy, in the days before I came here, used there be many evictions, the way the O’Malleys were turned out by Captain Cooper?”
    “When haven’t there been evictions? Wasn’t my poor husband’s own brother turned out, and now he is perched on the side of the mountain?”
    “Who was his landlord?”
    “The Big Lord himself. The Big Lord gave orders from London, and Mr. Foster who was the agent in those days turned out Hughey and his family. He must have done something that the Big Lord didn’t like, and the Big Lord turned him out.”
    “He must hold a heavy grudge against the Big Lord.”
    “Sure what good would that do? But he keeps wondering what thing he did that was wrong.”
    Patient beasts. Like their own cows, they are moved about, uncomplaining. Of less value than the cows, for they cannot be brought to market. Like cattle, they stand motionless in the fields, fearful of rain in one season and of drought in the next. Evicted, they walk the roads or climb the hills. Duggan had his work cut out for him. Southwards in distant Wexford and northwards in Antrim, a bare two months before, men such as these had toppled down towns and regiments. Not here.
    Lingering, regretful, his hand touched the night’s work. Grey goose and black crow, maimed cattle and the virginal