Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker

Cork, and east to Dublin, anywhere there might be food. The men and women moving slowly, steadily, as fast as the hunger would allow. Shawls thrown up over their heads, the loose, slouching plug hats pulled down over their heads. Unfired pipes shoved between their teeth in the rain, hands in their pockets. Walking out of the West—
    In Limerick she saw the cartload of orphans, left in front of the poorhouse door. The house full, the door shut against them. People hurried past on the street, looking away. The orphans sitting up in their shirts, large-eyed and bald, like baby birds in their nest, too bewildered even to cry.
    And near Tipperary she met a band of men carrying a black flag with the words “Flag of Distress” written on it. They looked as fierce and wild as wolves, armed with makeshift pikes and hoes, as if they were ready for anything. They asked if she wanted to join them, taking her for a boy. But then a man came down from the local works and gave them some bread and they melted away, as meek as lambs and glad to get it.
    They huddled just inside the cave, waiting out the rain that fell in steady sheets. All of them, men and women alike, covered with makeshift shawls of one sort or another—blankets, tablecloths, skirts. Anything to cover them. Faces flushed with fever, talking together quietly as they waited, repeating the same hopes and rumors of the road.
    â€œI heared there was flint corn at St. Brendan’s Well.”
    â€œAh, no, we just come from there,” a grey-haired, stoop-shouldered man answered apologetically.
    â€œWait till the Liberator gets back from London, he’ll see to us—”
    â€œDid you hear what he told the Commons?”
    The stoop-shouldered man recited as if it were a lesson he had learned by rote in the hedge schools.
    â€œ ‘Ireland is in your hands, in your power. If you do not save her—’ ”
    â€œGod bless him, Swaggerin’ Dan!”
    â€œ ‘I solemnly call on you to recollect—’ ”
    â€œAye. They needs to recollect us soon.”
    â€œTakin’ boats full a corn out of the country ever day, while they leave us Peel’s brimstone—”
    â€œ ‘—a quarter of her population—’ ”
    She leaned against the rock of the cave’s mouth, listening dully to the others speak of the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell. Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Trying to look like a half-starved boy, in her scavenged pants and shirt, she figured that was safest on the road.
    Not that she had seen one man in ten left with the strength or the inclination to interfere with her. Not that there was anything left to fear from these, jammed together in their cave. For all the angry words, they remained calm and placid, ready to accept whatever their fate might be. “It is the will of God,” she had heard them say, then curl up and die on the spot.
    The worst way to die ever discovered. Ruth feeling the same, feeling as if, in the end, life would just flow out of her like water draining out of the limestone after a storm.
    And why, oh why, should anyone extend it so long?
    â€œLook in here!”
    Behind them, they hadn’t quite noticed it, the opening into the rock stretched far back into the hillside. The walls straight and even, obviously the entrance to a dolmen—perhaps the tomb of some important, ancient king, like ones the farmers still found after a heavy rain.
    â€œBack there?”
    They peered down into the black passageway of the tomb.
    â€œAre ye daft?”
    â€œWhy not? It’s a king’s barrow. Why else would they dig it so deep?”
    â€œWe were all kings in this land once, you know—”
    â€œNo sayin’ what there might be.”
    â€œSure, but it’s a fool’s errand. How would we even find our way?”
    â€œI have matches!”
    A mad-looking young woman, blue eyes spinning like cartwheels, held up a