Now and in the Hour of Our Death by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

ago. Sometimes she felt it was time that old custom went. Why shouldn’t a daughter inherit? Bridget, one of the two sisters in America, would have been first in line then.
    But better one child got the whole thing than under the old Irish Brehon law that divided the property equally between all the sons. In about three generations the descendants were lucky to have a couple of acres each. Only sufficient for one crop—potatoes. And in 1845, the crop had failed. No one needed to remind her of the Potato Famine, or any of the other horrors inflicted on the Irish people by their English overlords.
    Da had made sure that all of his children had learned their history, or at least his version of their history. It was very black and white. The Irish were good. The British were invaders and must be driven out. According to Da, the O’Byrnes had been fighting the British since the eleventh century. It was a family tradition. He’d explained to her their family name came from the Irish Ó’Broin and that meant “raven.”
    â€œHere.” Cal set a tray of cups and saucers on the counter beside the range.
    â€œI’ll just warm the pot,” she said, lifting a heavy iron kettle. That thing had stood on the range for as long as she could remember. How many times had she set it to boil on the old turf-fired range in this kitchen? The old kettle, the range, and the kitchen were the heart of the O’Byrnes’ farm. And for her the farm was home.
    After Da passed, working the farm had been too much for Cal and wee Fiach, even with the help of Sammy McCandless as a labourer, so she’d left university, not without regrets, and come home to help them.
    She emptied the teapot, spooned in tea leaves, and refilled it. “Just be a minute.”
    She’d become used to playing the part of the farmer’s wife, cooking for them—Cal would burn the water if he tried to boil an egg—keeping the house clean. But she’d made sure that her three years studying agriculture hadn’t been wasted.
    Cal was only too happy to listen to her suggestions about how to increase crop yield. She could plough a furrow as straight as anyone and chuck sheaves of barley into the threshing machine at harvest time when it was all hands on deck to get the ripe crop in before the rain.
    She’d be willing to go on doing her job here—until the Provos sent the British packing. And she and Cal and Sammy were working hard to that end.
    She watched Sammy pick his nose. He always did that when he was nervous. And he had reason to be. He wasn’t here just to talk about the weather. He had a job to do that would, with the help of Cal and her, bring the day closer when the Brits would be gone. Then she’d go back to university, not just to finish her degree but also to further her education and aim for a faculty position at the Hillsborough Agricultural Institute.
    She felt the warm side of the teapot and asked, “Do you fancy some bread and butter with that?”
    â€œDead on,” said Sammy, wiping his finger along the side of his pants.
    â€œRight.”
    She cut thick slices from a loaf of wheaten bread. The butter was hard, so she put the butter dish on the range top. As she waited for the butter to soften, she looked at the familiar faces of the men seated at the big bog-oak dining table.
    Cal, twenty-seven, two years her senior, had craggy, ruddy cheeks, badges given to all Tyrone farmers by the sun and the rain and the winds that swept down from the Sperrin Mountains. He had green eyes—not as green as her own—and an unruly red mop that hung over the nape of his neck. She’d collected the family colouring herself, but she kept her shoulder-length hair piled into a ponytail, russet and shining as a polished horse chestnut.
    Sammy was no oil painting. He reminded her of a ferret. Little black eyes that were never still, set to the sides of a sharp nose. Protruding