The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan Page A

because of his ignorance, and every schoolmaster in Mayo knows that. They are not fools in Ballintubber. They are decent men with a respect for learning, but sure he is good enough for Kilcummin. They deserve no better.”
    “He is a man with books in his house,” Quigley said hotly, “and a tremendous knowledge of the history of the Gaels from the time of Noah.”
    “Noah my arse,” MacCarthy said. “ ’Tis a wonder you did not have this prodigy write your letter for you.”
    “ ’Tis more than a schoolmaster you are, Owen. You are a poet and the writer of acclaimed verses.”
    “And you would break my pen to your coarse plough,” MacCarthy said. He felt the whiskey; his head danced.
    “It makes no sense,” Duggan said, “to have a fellow like this wander about without taking the oath, and him with our names in his head. He would shop us for the price of a jug.”
    “I am no informer,” MacCarthy said. “I want no part of you.”
    “It would be no harm done for you to take the oath, Owen,” Hennessey said. “There are good men in Kilcummin and in Killala who have taken the oath, and others will. These men here are as fine as you could wish, and they are men with friends.”
    “What you did the other night,” MacCarthy said, “was to put the fear of God into a mean, shameless little bastard. Let it rest there.”
    Duggan shook his head. “If you will not take the oath, we have no need for your advice. We have our plans made.”
    “By God, we do,” one of the farmers said. “We will rule the barony.”
    “You will not rule the gaolcart and the gallows,” MacCarthy said. “And that is how it will end, with your black tongues lolling out and your breeches soiled.”
    The music began again, and the sound of feet on the floor of close-packed clay. I should be there, MacCarthy thought. Let my head be filled with music and whiskey, not argument. He drank again.
    “By God, Owen MacCarthy,” one of the farmers said, “you should make us a poem about the raid upon Cooper by the Whiteboys of Killala.”
    “I will not,” MacCarthy said, furious. “My poems are not about churls crawling across fields to cut the legs of cattle. My art is noble in subject and language.”
    “You are too good for us, perhaps,” Duggan said. “You should be spending your days and nights with Treacy at Bridge-end House, with your poems about the glory of the Gael.”
    The army of the Gael. In Wexford they confronted armies, seized towns, banners marched before them, and their beacon fires blazed upon the hills. In far-distant France, great ships were making ready. Not here, not in this wet, muddy land beneath sullen hills.
    “There is always a welcome set before me at Bridge-end House,” he said, “and brandy at my hand and silver coins. Thomas Treacy knows the honour due to a poet who has mastered his craft.”
    “ ’Tis no great honour to keep a school in Killala,” Duggan said contemptuously. “You live as we do. More meanly than some of us.”
    “What can you know of such matters,” MacCarthy said, “huddled away in a corner of Mayo? I have seen the entire world, I am a travelled man, and I have been received with honour. I have seen the great waterwheel in Clonmel, and Dunboy Castle on the Cork coast where Murtough O’Sullivan held off the soldiers of the English King, and Dunluce Castle in Antrim amidst the black Presbyterians.” Hollow, the hollow words rattled like shells in his skull. I am drunk, he thought indifferently. Notes of music cut the shells.
    “You may have seen these things,” Quigley said. “But you will not see them again. It is said that you would not be welcome in some of the places you have been.” Moon head nodded. “Mind you, I say no word against your poetry. But Malachi has the right of it. ’Tis a queer sort of place for a man with the airs you give yourself.”
    “A poet always has his welcome,” MacCarthy said, “in the halls of the old gentry and in the beds of the