No Famine of Spirit

© 2013 Hank Manley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/15/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3172-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3170-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3171-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919792

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

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Other Books by the Author

Fiction

Bahama Snow

Bahama Payback

Bahama Reckoning

Coral Cemetery

Fundamental Behavior

Vengeance

A Legacy of Honor

The Iron River

The Isle of Women

A Sea Too Far

Non Fiction

A Grand Quest

Beyond the Green Water

Tales of a Life Upon the Sea

Special Thanks To:

Gretchen Manley for her tireless proofreading of my manuscripts, her helpful story suggestions, and inspiration for all my female heroines.

Donna Chapin for her through proofreading, insightful observations for improvements, and constant support.

Killing Field of the Civil War

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T he brutal Potato Famine, which saw the death of at least one million Irish citizens and the Diaspora of another million and a half wretched souls to America and Canada, actually began in 1845. In the year 1846 the potato crop, which fed 60% of the entire population and 100% of the poor, was a complete failure. There was no blight in 1847, but the severe lack of seed resulted in another vastly insufficient harvest. The crop completely failed again in 1848. It wasn’t until the mid 1850s that the catastrophe finally ameliorated.

Unbelievably, during all the years of the famine, Ireland was a net exporter of food as the British landowners of Irish soil shipped their produce back to England while Irish men, women and children starved to death. Funerals were so frequent among the poor that mourners stopped attending. This behavior was diametrically opposed to Irish custom.

I begin my story in 1859 with the famine still raging. I needed to rewrite history slightly in order for Daniel McCarty to be seventeen on the Gettysburg battlefield. I hope strict history scholars can forgive my transgression and simply enjoy the tale of an intrepid Irish lad who displays no famine of spirit as he forges ahead on his life’s journey.

September, 1859 Limerick, Ireland

~1~

T he wrenching growl of young Daniel McCarty’s empty stomach woke him before the first pale ray of dawn penetrated the gaps in the deteriorated wooden door of his home. His eyes popped open, and he scanned the interior of the one room rock hovel which afforded only rudimentary shelter for his entire family. The powdered remains of a peat log in the center of the dirt floor of the wretched abode gave off a faint incarnadine glow which allowed the thirteen year-old lad a modicum of vision.

Daniel’s older sister, Nancy, lay wrapped in a tattered blanket on the beaten floor, her attenuated body tucked in a fetal position. One frail arm protruded from the thin covering, the limb as fragile as a bird’s leg. Her thinning hair, filthy and matted, lay plastered with fevered perspiration across her forehead.

Daniel’s mother, Janet, was scrunched in a distant corner of the ten-foot long room, as far from her snoring husband as she could manage. Her swollen lip and bruised cheek were indistinguishable to Daniel in the faint light, but the unseen wounds were as vivid to the boy as if they were illuminated by a dozen flaming lanterns.

The patriarch of the McCarty family, thirty-six year-old Michael, sprawled on his back exhaling noxious fumes of stale Guinness stout. His lips wobbled softly around the passage of air, and periodically he belched and swallowed, his tongue wandering outside his mouth as if seeking to recapture the taste of last night’s beverage from his disheveled mustache.

The boy slipped out from beneath his ragged bed cover and brushed the filth from the backs of his arms and legs. He crawled to the entrance of the stone lean-to, pushed the rickety door open, and reached around the corner. His hand felt for one of the solid peat logs he had sliced from the nearby bog the previous day.

Daniel easily lifted the heavy, dense block of fuel with his sinewy forearm and carried it back into the dank home where he had been born. He placed the log on the meager ashes which were smoldering inside the small circle of rocks. Within moments the fresh peat began to turn crimson. Wisps of smoke rose toward the corrugated roof carrying the familiar, pungent odor that pervaded virtually every dwelling in the country.

Danny, darling, Janet McCarty whispered. I hope you’re not getting up. Try to get some more sleep. The woman’s plaintive voice was effused with fatigue, desperation and defeat.

A gentle smile spread across Daniel’s cherubic face. He brushed the copious mop of ginger colored hair from his forehead and moved in the direction of his mother’s mournful appeal. There’s so much to do, the boy said as he crawled to his mother’s side and leaned forward to tenderly kiss her undamaged cheek. Don’t worry. I slept well last night. I’ll be okay.

Janet McCarty returned her son’s kiss with a quiet brush of her lips beside his ear. Her tortured heart, burning with hatred toward her husband, breaking with agony for her starving daughter, swelled with pride and boundless love for her only son.

Please find some good potatoes today, darling Janet begged. Nancy… Nancy must have something to eat… very soon. I don’t know how much longer… The grieving mother’s voice tailed off to silence as the thought of another day without food was too overwhelming to voice.

I’ll bring back something to eat, Daniel promised. There must be some potatoes in the ground that aren’t spoiled. I’ll keep digging until I find some good ones.

The youngster glanced at his sister lying motionless under the grimy cover. He was unable to clearly discern her face, but the image of her lips tarnished green from munching on grass returned to haunt and infuriate him.

Janet McCarty pushed herself to a sitting position and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Weariness pulled at her face. The flesh appeared to sag from her cheekbones. She attempted a smile, but the effort was too daunting.

The deeply religious woman peeked upward. "Why have you forsaken us, Lord? she lamented in a brittle whisper. What have we done that has caused you to cast down so much suffering?"

Janet’s watery eyes remained directed toward the ceiling as she sought celestial answers to her woeful earthly condition. Her right hand mechanically touched first her forehead, and then her heart, followed by taps to the left and right completing the sign of the cross. The quintessential Catholic gesture, drilled unmercifully into virtually every Irish man and woman in the country, was purely reflexive and without conviction or hope.

Daniel McCarty looked at his mother as she beseeched her God for answers to their unfathomable plight. His embryonic understanding of religious matters persuaded him to doubt any heavenly involvement in the dire situation. What kind of deity worthy of worship or adoration would foist such a dreadful condition on his supposedly beloved people? The boy’s agile mind was convinced any suggestion that God actively participated in the famine was ridiculous.

People came from England a year ago and told us to plant other crops, Daniel said gently. We were warned that the potatoes in the east had been ruined in past seasons. They told us the disease could easily spread across the country to our fields. But nobody listened, he said ruefully. Father didn’t listen.

Janet McCarty lowered her eyes. Her lips began moving silently in solemn prayer, the only positive action she could dredge from the horrific circumstance cast upon her family.

It’ll be okay, Daniel said in a calm voice as he placed a reassuring hand on his mother’s frail shoulder. I’ll just have to work harder, but it’ll be okay.

Janet cast a spiteful look at her reclining husband. The image of his broad hand striking her across the face flashed through her mind, and she involuntarily flinched and raised her hand to her jaw. She returned her gaze to her son, the one cherished thing in her life in which she dared invest hope.

You shouldn’t have to do all the work, she said with a sniffle. You’re just a boy, Danny. It’s not… it’s not fair.

Please don’t worry, Mother, Daniel soothed. It’s just for a little while. Things will get better. I know they will. I’ll make them better.

The young lad gave his mother a final kiss and a reassuring hug before turning toward the blackness of the Irish morning. He ignored the rumbling in his empty stomach.

A ruffling of bedcovers announced the awakening of Daniel’s father. A soft phlegmy moan drifted from the man’s mouth.

You get them sheep out of the west pasture and into the north lot, Michael McCarty grumbled from his prone position.

The increased illumination provided by the new peat log revealed Michael’s ruddy face, vein-lined cheeks, bushy eyebrows and a thatch of reddish hair peering over the edge of a soiled wool blanket.

Daniel turned to his father and stared silently for several seconds. The unmitigated love he had once held for the burly man was sorely diminished by the recent vicious treatment of his mother. The boy had never witnessed his father striking his mother, but he had observed the unmistakable evidence. He knew he was no match for the man physically. He lacked two inches in height and perhaps more in reach. He gave away almost two stones in weight. But he vowed there would be no further assaults. Somehow he would prevent more suffering by his mother.

Still, a vestige of respect and a sense of obedience remained for the man who was his father.

Yes, Daniel said at last. I know the grass is eaten down in the west. I was going to move the animals before I went digging.

And repair that rock wall to the east, Michael McCarty snorted as he rolled over on his side and pulled the blanket closer to his shoulder. We can’t have any of the stock escaping to the neighboring farm.

Yes, Father, Daniel finally said. I’ll take care of it today.

*         *         *

Daniel McCarty eased the decrepit door open, ducked his head, and walked through the low opening of the stone hut. He shivered in the chilly morning and beat his arms around his body several times to hasten the circulation of blood. To the east, beyond the rolling hills of grass, a faint gray began to fill the lower sky.

The intrepid lad walked slowly up the incline behind his home, making his way along the four-foot tall wall of rocks that had existed for centuries. His rough cloth shirt scratched at his back, and his torn and faded pants, hand-me-downs from his father, rubbed his waist where they were cinched tight with a length of hemp. His feet, swaddled in worn leather and bound at the ankles, brushed the dew from the grass and left dark prints where he had tread.

Daniel reflected on his recent decision regarding his inability to read. The vast majority of Irish were illiterate. Learning to read was punishable by death according to ruling English law. Daniel had decided to defy the law and enlist the services of one of the friars living in the abbey two miles to the east.

Reading was power. Rumors circulated of secret hedge schools existing in the brambles at the edges of fields where prying eyes couldn’t see. There, ambitious Irish men and women gathered to be taught by learned elders. Daniel was determined to learn to read. He also resolved that the present circumstances of his life, as heinous and difficult as they were, would prove to be only temporary.

The young boy vowed that he would rise above his lowly condition of virtual slavery and make a success of himself in the world. He understood with a clarity beyond his years that the responsibility for his fate rested solely in his own hands. His father could not be counted on to lead the family from their desperate state. His sister was too weak to assist. Daniel was persuaded his mother’s reliance on her religious beliefs would prove misplaced and ultimately ineffectual.

September, 1859 Richmond, Virginia

~2~

H arriett Jane Hampton awoke to the muffled sound of satin curtains fluttering in the gentle breeze that drifted through her second story window. The sun was two hours high in the cloudless blue sky, and dust motes danced lazily on the light wind entering her spacious room. The fourteen year-old young woman rolled to her back and stretched her arms across the wide expanse of her luxurious four-poster bed. Her eyes remained closed as she deeply inhaled the freshness of the morning air.

A deferential knock on the bedroom door preceded the entrance of a rotund black woman dressed in a sharply creased, pure white, full-length dress. Black ankle-length shoes were laced on her broad feet. A white bandana encircled the top of her huge head, completely covering her knot of frizzy black hair.

Miss Hallie, the woman said with a playful hint of admonishment, you got’s to get up this glorious mornin’. Don’ you remember your father wanted you to have breakfast with him on the veranda?

Hallie Hampton opened her eyes, sat up against one of several feathered pillows, and shook her head. Struck by the intense morning rays, her elbow-length brunette hair glistened a burnished auburn. Her matching eyebrows, gracefully arched above surprisingly light blue irises, framed a strikingly beautiful face with a thin, slightly prominent, patrician nose, smooth cheeks, and evenly tapered chin.

A sparkle of rebelliousness lit Hallie’s eyes. Oh, Gracie, the young woman teased. Tell my father I’m taking breakfast in bed this morning. I don’t feel like getting up today.

Gracie waved away the ridiculousness of Hallie’s comment. Every slave at Rhionnon Hall knew that Harriett Jane was the antithesis of lazy. Most days the house servants spent an inordinate amount of their time cleaning Hallie’s soiled clothes after the girl spent her day cavorting outside. The field hands were often employed to search for Hallie after she had ridden recklessly about the plantation in search of adventure.

The unusual display of lassitude this particular morning was not a surprise to Gracie who was more than a simple house servant. The sage woman frequently served as a sounding board for Hallie’s deepest feelings.

I knows you don’t want to talk with your father ’bout young Shep Stuart, Gracie said sympathetically. But he’s a nice boy. What you got against him?

Hallie swung her legs from the high bed and dropped to the richly carpeted floor. She instinctively pulled the sheet back into place and straightened the blanket.

Gracie moved to the bed and gently moved Hallie’s arms from the task. You don’t need to be doin’ that, Miss Hallie, she said with mild reprove. Dat’s my job.

Hallie shook her head. Her expression betrayed more than exasperation at Gracie’s refusal to allow her to perform the simple task of making her own bed. She focused, not for the first time, on the impropriety of slavery. The profound implications of one person being owned by another, and forced into servitude, again drove Hallie into a deep, elegiac mood.

It just doesn’t seem right, Hallie said, expelling her breath.

Now don’t you fret none, Miss Hallie, Gracie said sympathetically, understanding exactly the young woman’s discomfort. Dis thing be much bigger than both of us. Sometimes, that’s just how life be.

Hallie brightened slightly at Gracie’s continued cheerful demeanor. You’re a good person, she said patting the black woman on the shoulder. A very good person. I hope one day…

Gracie smiled and playfully spanked Hallie’s derrière. You got’s to get dressed so you don’ hold up your father no longer.

Okay, okay, Hallie chuckled.

And tell me again why you don’t like that Shep boy, Gracie said in a teasing voice. He seems like a very nice fellow.

Oh, Gracie, Hallie said with a bemused smile. It’s not that he isn’t a nice young man. He’s perfectly nice, in fact. It’s just that he doesn’t… he doesn’t… I just don’t get excited when I’m with him. Shouldn’t there be some… thrill between a girl and a boy? I don’t know, she added. There’s just no spark.

Hallie’s brief coda to her imperfect answer precluded additional comment.

Gracie chuckled. Oh, girl, she said in a kindly, maternal tone. You got a lot to learn ’bout this world.

And some days, Hallie countered, the more I learn the less I want to know.

*         *         *

Harriett Jane descended the broad staircase from the high balcony of the second floor. Her boot-covered feet barely made a sound on the thick carpet that covered most of the center portion of the brightly polished, wooden steps. Glistening twin banisters framed the stairs, supported by immaculate white painted spindles. At the first floor level each hand railing ended in an elaborate full circle of varnished wood atop a cluster of supporting posts.

Hallie walked toward the broad covered porch that spread across the entire width of the immense plantation house. Massive Doric columns sat directly on the stone floor along the outer edge. Each flute of the thick supports that held the cantilevered second floor aloft was carefully crafted in exact similitude to those of the Parthenon in Athens. The stout columns tapered gracefully upward to square capitols directly beneath the overhang. More slender and graceful Ionic columns supported the roof along the outer edge of the walking breezeway on the second floor.

Abner Hampton sat at the head of a long table draped with a pure white cloth. He was sipping a steaming mug of coffee and perusing a copy of the Richmond morning newspaper. At his daughter’s arrival, he dropped the paper, stood and smiled.

Hallie, he beamed. Good morning. I hope you slept well last night.

Harriett Jane was Abner’s only child. Four years earlier his wife, Martha, had died giving birth to a little boy who was to be the heir to Rhionnon Hall. The premature infant struggled for three heart-wrenching days and nights, before finally succumbing to the inadequacies of partially formed lungs.

The double tragedy nearly destroyed Abner Hampton. He had truly loved Martha and considered her a friend and companion as well as his wife. But the loss of his son, so desperately awaited and eagerly anticipated, was emotionally devastating. More pragmatically, the loss of a natural born heir was highly problematic. Who would inherit the estate, the plantation, and the wealth Abner had spent a lifetime building?

Hallie was bright, ambitious, resourceful and beautiful. But she was a woman, or at least nearly a woman. Was she capable of running Rhionnon Hall with its myriad complexities of planting, harvesting and marketing, purchasing fresh slaves, controlling the increasingly restive workers and ensuring a robust profit to perpetuate the enterprise into a future that loomed with growing ambiguity?

Abner thought the task too daunting, even for his talented daughter. Among the negatives he saw in Hallie’s potential to carry on in his eventual absence was her inexplicable attitude toward the slaves and slavery. Hallie had initially expressed uncertainty about the institution of slavery. More recently, she had amplified her view. Abner was fearful she would soon stand on the side of those calling for the abolition of the engine of wealth throughout the South. How could crops be picked without slaves? How could landowners turn a profit from their vast possessions without slaves? How could the genteel life of the South be preserved without slaves?

The answer, in Abner’s view, was simple: it couldn’t. Every vestige of current Southern living would disappear without slavery.

Abner realized he had to find a suitable man for Harriett Jane to marry. He had to act with some haste in order to have time to train a future son-in-law in the intricacies of running Rhionnon Hall.

*         *         *

Good morning, Father, Hallie chimed brightly. She walked briskly to Abner’s side and, on tip toe, kissed his whiskery cheek warmly. What’s for breakfast?

Abner smiled and air-kissed his daughter’s cheek while he hugged her shoulders. Why do you always ask that? he laughed. You may, as is true every day, have anything you want for breakfast. There’s never a famine at Rhionnon Hall.

Two smartly dressed house servants stood rigidly flanking the inside opening of the veranda adjacent to the kitchen. As Hallie approached her chair, one of them stepped forward and bowed at the waist. Good morning, Miss Hallie, he said. What can I bring you from the kitchen? I seen a bowl of flapjack mix by the stove. We got fresh eggs from the barn.

I’ll have some flapjacks and one egg, she responded. And some bacon if there is any. And a cold glass of milk, please.

Yes, Miss Hallie. I be right back in two shakes with your breakfast.

Abner Hampton looked at his daughter with pride. At fourteen years of age she was rapidly flowering into a stunning, mature woman. Dressed in tailored riding clothes and boots, she struck a poised, confident figure. The scruffy tomboy of only two years ago, perpetually disheveled and needing a good scrubbing, had given way to a polished female of strength and capability.

Hallie’s shoulders were wide. She carried them back naturally, emphasizing her budding breasts. In spite of a hearty appetite, the seemingly uninterrupted motion of her life kept her stomach flat and her waist trim.

What are your plans this morning, Abner asked. You know I invited Mr. Stuart and his son Shep for lunch. They should be here by one o’clock.

Hallie looked at her father and grinned. She knew he loved her without compromise. She understood he tried to do what was best for her. She was painfully aware of the precarious situation regarding a successor to Rhionnon Hall and the Hampton fortune. The death of her mother and infant brother was still excruciating on several levels.

I’m going to ride to the James River after breakfast, she said. I haven’t been there in a month, and I want to see if there are any rockfish around. I had so much fun catching them in July.

But… perhaps you could do that after lunch – with young Shep? Abner offered. He might like fishing.

Hallie shook her head. I’ll be back for lunch, Father, she said definitively. Don’t worry. I won’t embarrass you with my absence. But I won’t give Shep Stuart false hope either. I’m not going to become his wife.

Abner Hampton’s shoulders noticeably sagged. His eyes cast toward the table in resignation. But Hallie… you just don’t seem to understand the need…

I understand all too well, Hallie said. I thank you for thinking of me, but I really don’t want to discuss it any further.

Hallie’s breakfast arrived. A steaming stack of blueberry flapjacks tottered on an ornate china plate. Maple syrup overflowed the pile. Four crisp slices of rich bacon were perfectly aligned to the left; a neat heap of fluffy scrambled eggs sat to the right.

Indeed, there was no famine at Rhionnon Hall.

September, 1859 Limerick, Ireland

~3~

D aniel McCarty plodded up the incline behind his home, paralleling the rock wall painstakingly constructed more than three hundred years earlier by a previous slave of the ancestors of the English owner of the land. At the junction of another rock wall jutting ninety degrees to the left, he climbed over the substantial four-foot high structure and entered the area his family called the west lot. Fifty slumbering sheep dotted the two acre pasture, indifferent to Daniel’s arrival.

The boy crossed the heavily trod and well-grazed turf until he came to a third wall on the northern edge of the field. At the far corner he approached a wire mesh gate framed by poles across the top and the free end. A single wire was attached to the vertical pole that locked the rudimentary enclosure by draping over a rock on the adjacent wall. Daniel lifted the wire loop free and dragged the gate open.

The lad circled to the far edge of the field, behind the reclining flock, and clapped his hands together vigorously. Come on, you wooly critters, out you go, he called in a loud voice. Time to move to the north field where there’s fresh grass to fatten you up for the English gentry awaiting your arrival on their overflowing plates.

Daniel had never attended a single session of schooling. He couldn’t read or write. To learn was a major crime in the eyes of Ireland’s English masters. Yet his untutored mind was sharp and inquisitive. He listened attentively to the men in the village as they discussed political and economic issues, unschooled though they might be. The boy grasped the enslaved position of the Irish as tenant farmers for the absent English landowners. He realized the food his family grew belonged to an unseen Englishman, and that only the meager additional harvest he and his father managed to produce could be consumed or sold.

The fat sheep parading past his legs, a potential source of vitally needed nourishment for the boy and his family, were untouchable. Consumption of the owner’s stock was theft and punishable by death.

Coin existed in Ireland but only in limited amounts. The monetary system was the British pound. There was no such thing as Irish money. Daniel’s family was required to pay one guinea annually to the owner for the privilege of living on the land and eking out a bare existence from the soil. A guinea had been established a hundred-fifty years earlier as the equivalent of twenty pounds and a shilling. Five pounds per quarter were due for each of the first three quarters of the year; the last installment was traditionally settled with the presentation of several fat fowl of equivalent value.

The rental arrangement, understood by Daniel, amounted to a 10% return on the owner’s investment which was valued at about two hundred pounds. In normal years, an industrious tenant family could ship the required compliment of potatoes back to England and also feed itself with relative ease. The average Irishman in the middle 1800’s consumed up to fourteen potatoes per day, making him one of the best nourished citizens of all the European countries. Additional potatoes were sold in the market to pay the rent. Several coins might be left over for the occasional pint of Guinness, a regular part of the Irish diet for one hundred years.

Daniel felt his stomach roil and tasted the acidic juices burning in his throat as he watched, helpless and angry, the untouchable food marching past his feet. Why should an Englishman possess land in Daniel’s country? Why could an Englishman subject him to the indignity and cruelty of abject slavery? The history of the relationship between Ireland and England was unknown to the lad, but the result of the tortured and unjust union was poignantly apparent.

The boy comprehended the reasoning behind the English laws that prohibited the citizenry of Ireland from attending school and becoming literate. An uneducated, non-reading population posed little threat of joining together and rebelling against the insane system imposed from abroad. The eight million residents of Ireland, jovial and gregarious by nature, stoic in character to a fault, forever disunited by the inability to read, would continue to suffer silently under the oppressive regime imposed by a foreign power.

Daniel McCarty vowed not to be among the dominated for much longer. But first he had the immediate problem of feeding his family.

*         *         *

The previous spring Daniel had been in Limerick village when a representative of the English government spoke to the residents. The man had warned of the potential for massive crop failure. The potatoes in the eastern part of the country had suffered greatly in prior years. There was genuine fear the cause of the crop catastrophe would spread westward.

The type of potato grown in Ireland was the infenaus lumper. The reason for this particular potato was that it produced more tonnage than any other variety. But it was also the most vulnerable to fungus.

Approximately one third of all tilled land in Ireland was given over to cultivation of the lumper potato. Five or six million people in the country were heavily dependent on the crop; more than three million relied on it for food exclusively.

You must plant other crops in case the potato fails here, in your own fields, the Englishman had pleaded with the assembled tenant farmers. None listened.

Plant corn or oats or barley, the man implored. But the stubborn residents of Limerick had scoffed at the idea of changing a pattern of planting that had served the population for hundreds of years. The farmers elected to change nothing.

Only one boy had heeded the sage counsel.

Daniel McCarty had approached the Englishman after the assembly broke up and asked where he could obtain some corn, oats and barley seed.

The Englishman had a supply of each type of seed on hand for demonstration purposes. With the distinct lack of interest shown by the town farmers for any crop other than the potato, Daniel became the recipient of the man’s total inventory.

*         *         *

The plot which the McCarty family worked as sharecroppers officially ended at the northernmost rock wall on the sloping hillside, more than five hundred yards above the dirt path in front of their wretched hovel. Beyond the wall a coppice of small trees ran across the hill for a width of three hundred yards. Above this thicket of trees, the rocky ground rose sharply toward the summit of the hill, making the land impractical for cultivation. As a consequence, no person had ventured beyond the boundary of the plot in several decades.

No person, save the adventurous Daniel McCarty.

Daniel had discovered a small valley beyond the tree line. Because of the rising topography of the property, the existence of the fertile glade was completely concealed from below. A seeping spring at the top of the dell developed into a trickling stream that provided pure, fresh water to irrigate the lush ground along the length of the natural depression.

The previous spring Daniel had chosen this secreted location to plant his own plot of potatoes. He had also planted the precious corn, oats and barley seeds obtained from the Englishman. Now, in the early fall, he hoped the initial crop would save his family from starvation.

Daniel had not told his father or mother about his efforts. He didn’t know who owned the land he had discovered, but he understood what he was doing was undoubtedly trespassing and definitely illegal. Discovery would lead to a harsh punishment. Entrepreneurial endeavors were not allowed in Ireland by the British.

Secondly, Daniel hadn’t wanted to raise false hopes. If his family knew of his efforts, and began to count on the yield for survival, and then the enterprise failed, the devastating news would far be more painful than a complete lack of knowledge of the attempt.

Daniel closed the gate on the north pasture after the last sheep had entered. He walked across the hillside and entered the nearest potato field within the confines of the property. Before venturing up to his private plot, he wanted to investigate a section of the field that should just be coming into fruition.

He had planted in the spring using potatoes from the previous year which had developed sprouts. The future crop was set in long rows of raised ridges running across the sloped land. Animal manure and seaweed had been used as fertilizer. At the far edge of the huge cultivated area, Daniel knelt in the soil. The stalks had died in this section of the plot, indicating the potatoes were ready for harvest. He lifted one of the green leaves and looked closely. The leaf was speckled with black spots. White mould dotted the plant.

The boy’s heart knotted in his chest.

The fungus, phythophthora infestans, its spores carried by wind, rain and insects from Britain and the rest of the European continent, had infested this section of the crop as well as the others.

Daniel dug into the dirt. His hand surrounded a potato only inches below the surface. He gently closed his fingers around the precious starchy vegetable. The prized food, which supplied virtually every vitamin and nutrient a human needed, squished into mush in his hand. The entire yield of the field would prove completely worthless.

Crestfallen, Daniel stood and looked down the hillside toward the dirt path and the pathetic structure he called his home. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the rusty pipe chimney. The droopy thatch roof, cut from the nearby bog, punctuated the forlorn condition of the cabin.

A fleeting vision of the nearby, abandoned, Bunratty Castle crossed Daniel’s mind. The soaring edifice, three stories at the center block with a six-story turret at each corner, would dwarf his five foot tall hovel. The crisply cut stones and flat-sided walls contrasted starkly with the helter-skelter pile of rubble that housed his family.

Daniel could not guess the number of rooms in the castle. Above the ground floor, used primarily for storage, was the Lower Hall for the soldiers. The Great Hall resided on the third level and was used for banquets and family gatherings. The towers contained two chapels, multiple living apartments, kitchens, eating areas and a dungeon. Any two of the accommodations would have totaled twice the number of spaces in his home.

The disparity between Daniel’s situation and that of the ancestors of the Maccon O’Brien clan, currently living more frugally in the Bunratty House near the crumbling castle, couldn’t have been more stark. How had a person acquired such wealth to afford a residence so grand? Was it possible for Daniel to rise from the abject poverty that engulfed his family and neighbors and perhaps afford a decent house and sufficient food to never worry about starving?

The lad didn’t know the answers to these questions, but he renewed his vow to break the bonds of his illiteracy and seek to rise above his present station.

Daniel looked down toward his house and the passing dirt lane. Nobody was in sight. He hurried upward from the barren potato field and headed for his secret plot of ground in