‘You’re wrong, Mrs O’Malley,’ he countered. ‘I went to Tuam. I spoke with the archbishop.’
‘Then why is the Church silent on this? Why will the Catholic Church not lead us out of our poverty and misery? That is the scandal, Father.’
‘Ellen Rua!’ The priest raised his voice, demanding her attention. ‘Now, you listen to me for a moment. When Michael visited me, I was horrified to hear of Pakenham’s doings. Shortly thereafter, I set out for Tuam. Archbishop MacHale, in his wisdom – and he is experienced in these matters – advised that I should neither say nor do anything which might inflame the situation. I am bound by my vow of obedience to obey his Grace in all things.’
‘But is nothing to be done, then?’ she demanded.
‘The archbishop is doing something: he will consult with the other bishops in General Assembly at Maynooth. They will assess how the Crown is dealing with the present crisis, and if necessary, a deputation will go to Rome to petition the Pope to intercede with Queen Victoria. In the meantime, there should be no disturbances, no riotous behaviour, which might prejudice the position of the Holy Father.’
‘This is an old story, Father,’ Ellen replied, unappeased. ‘Nothing has been done by the bishops to improve the position of the poor since we were joined with England in the Union. And neither Queen Victoria nor her Government will recognize the Church of Rome. All that will happen is that more monies will be sent to Maynooth, and the bishops will fall silent again.’
‘It is not right for you to speak this way about Holy Mother Church, who always cares for her flock as Christ did.’
‘The Church cares only when it comes to the collection of dues,’ she rejoined. ‘It is no longer the Church of Christ. It is the Church of businessmen and traders, the Church of towns and cities, not the Church of the hills and valleys. When did the archbishop ever set foot out of Tuam to see how like animals we live, scavenging the bogs and bare rocks for what we can get to keep body and soul together?’
‘This is blasphemy you are speaking, Ellen Rua,’ the priest retorted, thinking what a mistake he had made in coming here.
‘Well, if it is itself then God will strike me down, Father!’
‘God forgive you for that, Ellen Rua, for I cannot,’ he said, making the Sign of the Cross on himself.
She looked at him across the hearth. ‘You are, I believe, a good man,’ she said. ‘But you have been too long at Maynooth, among the men of power – the priest-politicians.’
Father O’Brien studied her now. How did she know these things? Her father, the fallen priest, must have turned her against the Church, the Church that had turned on him, turned him out. That was it.
‘The Church that I, and these villagers, belong to is the Church of no voice, but it is the real Church of Christ. And you and the bishops have forgotten that, Father.’
There, she had said what she meant to say, she would say no more to him. It was not against him she spoke. He had to follow the rules. It was against the system itself that she raged. Layer upon layer of privileged, educated men laying down the law for the uneducated and underprivileged.
She rose as he made to leave. ‘God go with you on the road, Father,’ she bade him, no trace in her voice of the anger she had displayed towards his Church.
As he nudged the big grey mare on to the mountain track which would carry him back towards Finny, the young priest’s mind was filled with the woman’s fierce condemnation of the Church he served.
Ellen Rua was a devout woman, but also a strong woman who dared to speak her mind. He had no doubt she wasn’t alone in her feelings about the Church. He had sensed for some time that the people felt let down by him, but most of all by the Church. A Church that had gone astray.
When he came to the ford at Beal a tSnámha, the priest’s thoughts turned to Ellen Rua’s husband. He remembered how he had ridden out to this point to deliver Michael back across the water, the day he had come to talk about Pakenham. As the water swept up around his feet, he wondered what it must be like to be the husband of such a woman. Soon he would return to the warmth of his parish house in Clonbur. He would change his wet clothes for dry ones. Yet, back there in the cabin, just himself and the woman across from each other, he had been conscious of something being present. Something that his priest’s house in Clonbur, with all its comforts, didn’t have. Even while under attack from this woman – her eyes and hair all ablaze in the firelight – he had felt alive, invigorated, unshackled.
As he looked back in the direction of Maamtrasna, he promised himself that – for the Church’s sake – he would not let the red-haired woman down.
The snow did come – big soft, downy flakes, dancing earthwards, decorating the valley in white. The children were delighted. Mary and Katie ambushed Patrick and some of the other village boys, who then pelted them with hard, hand-packed snow, sending the young warriors home to Ellen in tears. The tears soon passed, but the snow didn’t. It hung on to usher in a white New Year.
Ellen loved the stillness the snow brought. When the first new moon of the New Year came, she went to her place by the lake. She stood and watched the moon’s yellow light splash down on to the Mask. Unmoving, she listened to the rhythm of the land, the usual night sounds stifled by the blanket of snow. She had been thus occupied for some time when a scratching sound disturbed the tranquillity. It seemed to be coming from the far side of a nearby clump of bushes. Ellen crept up to the bush, expecting to see a fox or some other wild animal. Instead she found Roberteen Bawn.
The boy was bent over the snow-covered ground, apparently burying something. Intent on what he was doing, he had not heard her approach. That rascaleen’s up to some mischief again, thought Ellen. Out scratching around in the night, like that. Quietly she plucked a handful of berries from a hollybush, then cast them over the bushes at the crouching boy.
Roberteen Bawn leapt up swearing: ‘The divil! God’s curse on you – whoever’s there!’
He turned this way and that but could see no one. Then he heard her laughter. He knew it instantly: the red-haired woman, making a laugh at him again. All the same, when Ellen stepped out from the bushes, he was flushed with the gladness of seeing her.
‘Well, Roberteen, it’s only me,’ she greeted him as she approached. ‘What was it you were doing?’
‘Ah, nothing – nothing at all,’ he said, and put his hands behind his back.
‘Was it burying something you were – a secret trinket, a message from someone special – burying it under the new moon?’ she teased.
‘No, not that!’ He didn’t want her thinking there was someone else, that he had cast off his affections for her now that she was full with the child.
She walked round behind him. He kept turning with her. He had something in his hands. Something he was hiding from her. Something he hadn’t yet buried in the hole in the earth … Then she knew.
‘It’s the “Mayo moon” you’re doing, isn’t it, Roberteen?’ she asked, her eyes twinkling in its light. ‘Well, well … it is.’
Sheepishly the youth looked down at the ground. Then, slowly, he brought his hands to the front and held them out for Ellen to see. They were full of the earth he had taken from the hole in the ground. Only then did he look up at her.
‘’Tis an old custom,’ he began. ‘My mother told me … for the young men in Mayo and the West … the night of the first new moon in the New Year … to go and lift the clay out of the ground …’ he continued haltingly, embarrassed to be telling this to her.
‘I