“You can stay with us,” I say, surprising myself.

We don’t have room for them, or food for them, and ever since Dermot and Emily died Ma’s been in a bad way. I’ve no idea how she’ll react when I show up with these five. I hold out my hand to her again, and she takes it.

We all come out and I breathe in deeply, clearing my nose of the stench of her hut. The air has a pre-harvest crispness to it that tastes cool and sweet against my tongue.

The bailiff’s off his horse, standing back to one side of the hut, and Mary and her children stand a ways off to the other side and watch us hack at her home. We wedge poles in the crevices between the stones, shifting and pushing until the walls crumble and the roof falls in.

Then the five of us pocket our wages. When the paying’s done, I wave Mary and her children over to me.

“Let’s go then,” I say.

“What are you doing with them?” the bailiff asks.

“I’m taking them home with me.” My stomach gives a little flip worrying about Ma.

“You can’t do that,” he says. “They’ve been evicted.”

Liam, Seamus and Killian slip away, but Paddy steps up to the bailiff waving his freckled arms. “Well, it’s nought to do with you, is it?” he says. “You’ve already knocked their home to bits. Your work here is done.”

“The law says you can’t take them in,” the bailiff says. “If you do, you’ll get evicted too. They have to get clear off Lord Edwards’s land.”

“All of it?” exclaims Paddy. “That greedy English bastard owns the whole damn hill. And the next.”

“It’s the law.”

“English law.”

“You watch your mouth there, laddie.”

“You watch my arse.” Paddy pulls his breeches down and we all get a good look at his scrawny white backside as he dashes away.

I tell Mary and her children to come on and we trudge off.

“It’s not worth it,” the bailiff calls after me. “It’ll be your place next.”

I can’t take them home. Instead, I take them to Father Michael. I don’t know what he’ll do with them, but at least they can stay in the church while he thinks it through. Nobody’ll tumble a church.

Father Michael used to be round and jolly. Now he’s saggy and solemn. He comes out to meet us in the churchyard like he’s walking in a funeral procession. I guess the last few years have put him in the habit.

“The bailiff says I can’t take them to mine, so I brought them to you,” I tell him.

He nods. He knows what I’ve been a part of, but I don’t think he judges me for it. He just looks sad and broken. “I’ll try to find a place for them at the poor house,” he says.

Mary looks stricken. “They’ll take my children.”

The poor house separates the men and the women and the children. I’m ashamed to look at her. For the thousandth time, I curse the English landlords for taking our healthy crops, our barley, wheat and rye, and shipping them away to sell. Lining their pockets while we starve. And I curse the rot that’s come like a plague out of the Old Testament to blacken our potatoes and famine us. I stop just short of cursing God for letting it happen.