Andrew Pepper - Bloody Winter

His mind turned to one of his recent visits to the house, Martin Knox comfortable in the presence of his two sons, his real sons, a gentle man embittered by circumstances.

As the first skeins of milky light gnawed at the sky, Knox stumbled almost by accident on the flint track, Clonoulty just a few miles farther along.

By the time he reached Father Mackey’s house, the sun was pale and orange in the east. He paused on the doorstep, remembering for the first time in hours that his son was gravely ill. He let himself into the house, careful not to make any noise. It didn’t matter. One of the servants met him in the hall.

Knox stepped into the drawing room where he could hear voices. He saw Mackey first, standing by the window. Then he saw Martha, both of them up, despite the early hour. He saw her face, the deadness in her eyes, and felt his stomach lurch.

‘Is James…?’

‘The doctor thinks he’ll make it.’ Relief flooded her face. ‘It was touch and go for a while but the fever has passed. He doesn’t think it was cholera after all, just a fever.’

Knox went to hug her but she pushed him away. ‘I had to go through all of this on my own, Michael. Do you know how lonely I’ve been? How afraid? You said you were only going to the barracks…’

Already exhausted, Knox blinked, not knowing what to say; how to make this better. ‘Can I see him?’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say, Michael?’

‘I…’ Knox wanted to tell her what he’d found out, about his father, about Moore, but the words wouldn’t come.

When he tried to take her in his arms for a second time, tried to hug her, to comfort her, she pushed him away. ‘You just weren’t here, Michael. You haven’t been here for a while.’

Mackey coughed and then excused himself — he couldn’t get out of the room quickly enough.

Martha’s face was like a suit of armour. ‘Where have you been, Michael? What could have been more important than being here with us?’

Knox felt light-headed. All he could see was his father’s face; all he could hear were the man’s sobs.

‘You made your choice, Michael. You chose to chase after a dead man, find justice for a corpse.’

What he wanted to say was: there is no justice. Not at this time. Not in this land.

‘I don’t know you any more, Michael. I don’t know who you are, what you believe in. I want to be by myself for a while.’

‘But James is going to live. He’s going to pull through. Isn’t that the important thing?’

Martha stared at him. She wanted him to say something else, to reassure her, to be the husband she hoped he still was. Knox could see this, see how much she needed him.

I am not who I thought I was. This same thought kept racing through his mind. He tried to find the words but they wouldn’t come. A tear rolled down his cheek.

Martha’s expression was sorrowful, yet also defiant. ‘I think you should go, Michael.’

Knox looked at her and again tried to summon the words he wanted to say, the words she wanted to hear. None came to him.

‘What’s happened to you, Michael? What’s happened to all the goodness that used to be in there?’ She tapped his chest.

His mother had always told him to be good. Never tell a lie. He could hear her say it. My good little boy. It was all a sham.

Martha looked at him, bemused. ‘How can we have fallen apart so badly? We were always the strong ones.’

Knox thought about all the dead bodies he’d seen, the needless suffering, the families torn apart, the lives sacrificed. What he’d done had been a protest, small and insignificant as it was, against the affairs of men like Asenath Moore. His father. The man who’d driven families from their homes and left them to die. How could Knox have sat back and done nothing?

‘I’d like to come back tomorrow.’ Knox tried to remember who he was, who his wife was. It was like looking at a stranger.

She followed him to the front door, and when he had opened it and let himself out, she stood there on the step, puzzled and sad, perhaps wondering how they had been reduced to so little.

‘Michael?’

He turned around and looked at her, expectant.

She smiled, her face softening. ‘Come back tomorrow morning. You can see James then.’

The Queen Anne mansion rose up out of the mist. Knox approached it from higher ground to the east, having to cross a bog and then the river, close to the place where they had found the body. He’d wandered aimlessly for most of the day and now it was almost dusk. The pale sun had dropped below the Galtee mountains and the temperature had fallen but Knox hardly noticed. He followed the path of the stream, the water black and empty, aware that anyone looking out of the front windows would see him. But he wasn’t con-cerned about that. Staring at the stately house, he wondered where his mother and Moore had lain together, where he’d been conceived — perhaps in the pantry next to the pots and pans, Moore’s trousers around his ankles.

The fields to his left were barren and marshy, the wind blowing from the east, icy and insistent, carrying with it the voices of those who had fought and died; the fourteen who’d ransacked a barracks in Ballack at the end of the Napoleonic war and who’d been punished for their insurrection, the O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh and their faithful who’d held out for days against Cromwell’s Ironsides.

The famine dead. The fallen. Ghosts.

Knox entered the house through the poor door and made his way up the stairs. The house felt cold and empty but he knew Moore would be there. It was dusk, which meant he would be dressing for dinner. Knox knew the man’s routine as well as his own — his family life had been determined by it. He’d always wondered why his mother had been allowed to live away from the house when the other servants, maids and kitchen-hands, lived in quarters in a nearby annexe. Now he knew why she had been granted special privileges. And wasn’t it true that she’d asked Moore to put in a good word for him with the constabulary? What Moore had given, he’d also taken away. Knox’s whole life had been shaped by the whims of this one man. His father. Knox found this notion repugnant.

Moore’s bedroom was at the back of the house: Knox had ceased to think of him as Lord Cornwallis. Without knocking, he entered and found the man half undressed, sitting in front of a looking glass. A fire crackled in the grate. Moore saw Knox’s reflection in the mirror and turned around.

‘What’s the meaning of this, boy?’ His expression was indignant but Knox could see he was worried.

‘I’ve just come from visiting my mother.’ Knox held the aristocrat’s stare. ‘She told me the truth about my parentage.’ He approached the dresser where the older man was sitting.

‘What’s all this about, boy? You’re talking a load of damned nonsense. Barging in here like this. I’ll have you whipped if you’re not careful.’

Undeterred, Knox said, ‘My mother was a fine-looking woman. She still is, in fact. It’s no wonder she caught your eye.’

In that instant he could see that Moore knew. The bluster left him and he was quiet. Knox thought about the times he’d been cowed by Moore’s rank and status, the things he hadn’t said.

‘You may have lain with my mother but you’ll never be my father, at least not in the proper sense of the word.’ As he said this, Knox thought about the man he’d always looked to as his father and wondered what this new revelation made him.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’

Moore had turned around and Knox slapped him once across the cheek. He saw the shock register on the aristocrat’s face, the fact that a man of Knox’s status had insulted him in such a manner.