Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  ‘To transplant before the 1st of May under penalty of death. To be provided in the province of Connacht, said land to be assigned by the Commissioners sitting at Athlone, of three hundred and forty acres. With said Comyn four servants, viz. Daniel Barry, tall stature, red beard, bald pate; Thady Cullen, small stature, brown hair, no hair on face; Morgan Cullen, small stature, blind of one eye, no hair on face, and Honour McNamara, middle stature, pale complexion, red hair.’

  ‘And where is your woman and your children and the rest of your people?’ Cole asked him.

  ‘Sir,’ said Sir Nicholas, ‘I wished to avoid the rush. My lady is in delicate health. I thought of your kindness you would grant me the pass to Athlone without interrogating her and my children.’

  ‘Monstrous!’ Cole was on his feet. ‘Go back! Each one must be brought here to face me. How do I know you are not sheltering a beast of the woods in your pack? Bring them all before me.’

  ‘Sir,’ Sir Nicholas was getting desperate, ‘ I swear there is no priest in our company.’

  ‘Go back! Go back! Bring them before me!’ Cole was leaning on the table shouting. Tendons were standing out on his neck.

  Now what will the proud man do? Dominick wondered.

  The proud man said, ‘I thank you, sir. I will find them and bring them before you.’ Then he turned and blindly made his way back through the dense crowd. Dominick saw his face. The blankness of defeat and helplessness. Maybe he is like ourselves after all, he thought, and then edged closer to the table.

  The reading went on as they got closer and closer. Thomas Eustace, low stature, brown hair, twenty-five years, hath ten hogs, a plough of garrans, two cows, five sheep.

  ‘Ignatius Stacpoole, orphan, aged eleven years, flaxen hair, full face, low stature: Katherine Stacpoole, orphan, sister to the said Ignatius, aged eight years, flaxen hair, full face, having no substance to relieve themselves but desires the benefit of his claim before the Commissioners of Revenue.’

  These two made Dominick feel sad. Two young children, holding hands, well dressed one time but not now. What story was behind them? What had happened to all their people? What was to happen to them?

  One of three things, he saw.

  Pass to Athlone for land assignment by the Commissioners. Pass across the bridge to Connacht, or what they called laughingly. Pass to Bristol.

  This was if people had no substance or no claim of substance. Over on the right there was another table to which they were passed. Here there was a tall swarthy man, dressed in black, who always seemed to have a black tube of rolled tobacco in his mouth. Over to confront him went the destitute, always, Dominick noticed, if they were young women or young men. Here this man rose and put his hands on them. He squeezed the breasts of the girls and hit their chests and felt their thighs through their wet clothes. He made the young men take off their coats and he felt their limbs. Some of these were taken through the small door there, and others of them were sent back for a pass for the bridge.

  And then Dominick was facing the magistrate, trying to keep his face calm, his mouth open a little, trying to stop himself from spitting into the face of Cole who watched him with red-rimmed eyes.

  The elegant Doyle was reading a paper that Dominick handed to him. Where in the world did Dominick get the paper? Sebastian wondered, as he kept his mouth hanging open and looked with a blank vague look at the window over the altar.

  ‘Dominick MacMahon, merchant, fair complexion, middling stature, no hair on face, ordered to transplant from the town-land of Drogheda.’

  ‘Drogheda!’ Cole shouted. ‘Were you in Drogheda, man?’

  Dominick looked at him and muttered in Irish: ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Speak up! Speak up! Speak up!’ said Cole.

  ‘The man can’t talk English, apparently, your Honour,’ said Doyle.

  ‘How can he be a merchant and not talk English?’ Cole asked.

  Dominick nearly chuckled. A reasonable query, he thought. ‘He sold merchandise to the natives, your Honour,’ Doyle said.

  ‘He should have been destroyed in Drogheda, ground down there. How did he get away? Ask him?’

  ‘How did you escape from Drogheda?’ Doyle asked in Irish.

  ‘We escaped through a hole in the cellar of our house,’ said Dominick. ‘ I got a boat. That’s how we got away. We are witnesses of the massacre. We will never forget.’

  Sebastian felt his blood go cold. He swallowed. He had to make a terrible effort to keep the horror out of his face.

  Doyle said: ‘It’s hard to understand, your honour, but the fellow apparently wasn’t there, when the town was, eh, cleansed.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Cole. ‘Who’s with him?’

  ‘A servant and two children,’ said Doyle.

  ‘Pass him into Connacht,’ said Cole, tiring of them. ‘ Hurry up! Hurry up! Who’s next? It’s time for food. Must I be here for hours?’

  Doyle passed the document to one of the clerks. He wrote across the face of it. Dominick took it. Sebastian tried a look at Doyle as they turned. He only got a glimpse of the smoothly shaved side of his face and then he followed Dominick.

  When they got outside the church, they saw that the rain had lessened. It was tapering away.

  They didn’t speak. They walked towards the bridge.

  There was just one crowd in front of them getting their papers examined, but there was another test, they saw now. There was a tower each side of the bridge and from each tower there was a man hanging from a block of wood that had been forced out of one of the narrow windows. On the body on the right there was a notice: ‘A popish priest’, and on the other body there was a notice: ‘For sheltering a popish priest’. This was the test. The soldiers were watching each face as they looked at the hanged man. You see, your natural inclination would be to bless yourself and say, The Lord have mercy on the dead. They wanted that. What would they do to you if you did it? Dominick didn’t stop and think. He kept his mouth shut, his lips from moving and his hands by his sides, praying that the children would not look up. They didn’t. They kept their heads bowed to the rain.

  They waited and waited, and they handed the document to the soldier. The soldier looked at him and then at Sebastian.

  ‘Any of you a priest?’ he asked.

  They didn’t answer.

  ‘See what we do with them?’ The soldier pointed. They didn’t look. ‘ Go on, look,’ he shouted. They looked. Their faces were blank. The men hadn’t been killed by hanging. No spine breaking. They had been let down gently so that they strangled to death. ‘Come back here,’ the soldier went on, ‘and that’s whatll happen to you. Go on!’

  They walked on. The end of the bridge seemed to be a mile away. They walked slowly. Now at least I know, Dominick thought, why the others didn’t look back.

  A bit farther on, when they were out of sight of the bridge, Sebastian said: ‘Dominick, how in the name of God did you do it?’

  ‘Mister Doyle,’ said Dominick, ‘the elegant one. He did it. Could you not recognize a brother in him?’

  ‘Doyle, a brother?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dominick, ‘ he’s a Reverend Francis Doyle. He is a Jesuit. Last night I came on him. He was nearing confession at the back of the church. You see, Sebastian, your old lady gave you faith. Then there’s the Reverend Francis Doyle to give courage.’

  ‘Alleluia,’ said Sebastian.

  As if to greet them, the western sun broke through the clouds for a few moments, and sent broad sunbeams slanting to the sodden earth.

  Chapter Twelve

  THEY STOOD on the rampart overlooking the Ship Quay and Tom Tarpy declaimed:

  Twice seven high towers defend her lofty walls,

  And polished marble decks her splendid halls;

  Twice seven her massive gates, o’er which arise.

  Twice seven strong castles tow’ring to the skies;

  Twice seven her bridges, thro’ whose arches flow

  The
silvery tides, majestically slow;

  Her ample Church with twice sev’n altars flames,

  An heavenly patron every altar claims;

  While twice sev’n convents pious anthems raise,

  (Sev’n for each sex), to sound Jehovah’s praise.’

  ‘In other words.’ Tom went on, ‘fourteen bulwarks, fourteen towers, fourteen gates, fourteen tribes and the lot of them bastards.’

  Suddenly it seemed to them as if on a signal, from all around inside the city, there came a roll of drums, a rolling that went on and on, while interspersed with the roll of the drums came the strident call of trumpets, harsh, challenging.

  It seemed to Dominick as if the whole of heaven held its breath for a short time. There were three ships below them moored to the quays on the high tide. All the sailors and men bustling and shouting around them stopped what they were doing and listened. In the city itself the clatter of horses’ hooves, the grinding of the cart-wheels on the cobbles of the main streets, the chattering of people in the four markets, ceased,’ Even the soldier near them, sitting on the carriage of the culverin, lowered the bottle from his lips and listened. Dominick felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. He had been in the city for some weeks. It shouldn’t have meant anything to him, but for a moment he could appreciate the terror that struck at the heart of the people. Every Saturday without fail at this time in the morning the drums roiled and the trumpets called. He could appreciate their feeling that the last trumpet call at the end of the world would be the reality of which this was the foretaste.

  Almost as suddenly as they began, the drums and the trumpets ceased and people took up their work and their talk again, talking louder and working faster as if to shut out the meaning of the rolling drums.

  From where they stood on the rampart Dominick could see the towers and castles, the landmarks of the walled town he had come to know. To the south of them reared the Lion’s Tower, the Tower of the Great Gate with the clock on it, and the Shoemaker’s Tower. To the north of them he could see the Tower of St Nicholas’ Church, behind it the towers of Athy’s Castle and the French Castle, and straight in front of them beyond the masts of the three-masted barges, he could see the rise of Martin‘ s Mill, set behind Blake’s Castle, and the three great fortified towers of the Bridge Gate. It was strong-looking, formidable, great towers rising inside great walls, and yet it seemed to him as if the trumpet calls had made all the whole town shrink a little. It could have been the June mists rising and fading from the kiss of the sun.

  ‘Bastards,’ Tom Tarpy repeated, ‘proud lovers of Christ and haters of the Irish, but they are paying for it now, the poor devils, they are paying for it now.’

  The soldier approached them with the empty bottle. He was wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He was a big uncouth fellow with strong hairy wrists emerging from tunic sleeves that were too short for him.

  ‘Better go home, Tom,’ he said, ‘and get your tribute ready, or they’ll take the clothes off your back.’

  ‘All right, you great filthy ape, you scouring of dung,’ said Tom in Irish, taking the bottle from him. ‘ Thanks, Jake. I’ll do that. It’s only the officers that get the tribute, hah? What do they do with it all? Four hundred pounds a month is nice money! Where does it all go to, Jake, tell me that?’

  ‘The common soldier doesn’t see much of it, anyhow,’ said Jake. ‘I can tell you that.’

  ‘Why should you get anything when you can take what you want?’ Tom asked.

  ‘All I want now is to get home,’ said Jake. ‘ You listen. I’m sick of this bloody country, I am. I’m sick of what I see. I don’t want to be here. I want to be in the hop-fields now, and in the great places where the apples are hard, and the cider is good, and the ale is good. Not hogwash, not fancy Spanish wines. I want to go home, Tom, that’s what I want to do. I fight. That’s good. But not afterwards, when the officers are making hay for themselves and we have to look at the hate in the faces of the people.’

  ‘That’s a long speech, Jake,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘You’re a fool if you don’t,’ said Jake. ‘You should. Get a sword and strike around you. Do something. Don’t be waiting to be slaughtered or sent away like those poor baskets. What kind of a war is that? What have soldiers got to do with things like that?’

  He was looking down below him at the quays. There were two gates, the Strand Gate near them and the Ould Quay Gate farther back, and through the two gates now from Earl’s Street and Quay Street marched two lines of people, shepherded-by soldiers with pikes. They were manacled wrist to wrist. They were very silent. There were young boys and older boys and young girls and older girls. Most of them were bare-footed, or had rags or canvas tied around their feet. Their clothes were ragged, soiled. There were woollen clothes and linen and what had once been silk dresses. There were girls with fair hair and brown hair and black hair. Their faces were dirty. Some of them were barely covered; some of them were holding their clothes in front with their free hand so that they would not be exposed.

  There were older men, some of them white-haired, some of them tonsured. These men were manacled separately, hands behind their backs. You could see they were priests. One or two of them were dressed in the tattered habits of their orders, the rest were dressed in torn civilian clothes, which somehow looked terribly incongruous on them. They were all brought to stand in front of the gangway going up to the middle ship. Dominick found he was holding his breath, that his hands were grasping the stone under them until he could feel it biting into, his palms.

  Because one pair he noticed. They were tied but they still held hands. He had seen them before, in the terrible church at the town of the ford. He could hear the reading in his ears: Ignatius Stacpoole, orphan, aged eleven years, flaxen hair, full face, low stature; Katherine Stacpoole, orphan, sister to the said Ignatius, aged eight years, flaxen hair, full face, having no substance. He remembered them all right. They had got a pass to Athlone, and now here they were on a pass to Bristol. Only since he came here had he recalled the terrible fate that awaited any sinner who got the pass to Bristol.

  ‘What’s it for?’ Jake was asking. ‘Kill them! That’s easier. Send them off to the Barbadoes. Why? So that Coote gets his share of the slave money. Every week I see them being shipped out. You know what will become of them? What do they do with the children? The young girls? What has happened to us? Do we believe in God? They are people, like ourselves. They could laugh and sing.’

  They weren’t singing now. Because suddenly some of the women started wailing, as the first few mounted the gangplanks and were herded to the holds where they climbed down ladders into the dark deeps of the ship. The women started screaming and crying. The men with them tried to hush them. They weren’t all the poor and the destitute. You could see intelligent foreheads, slim hands, and the priests started to chant and hymn. Their song rose gently like the mists rising off the river, but it seemed to drive their captors into a frenzy. They used the handles of the pikes on shoulders and backs, and then Dominick saw the swarthy man, who had been there at the town of the ford too, with the rolled tobacco unlighted in his mouth. The man with the black hat. He was there now, too, but he wasn’t beating his captives. He was striking out at his soldiers. He was a big man and his blows were effective. ‘No, no, no!’ he was shouting in his Bristol accent. But he wasn’t trying to save them from blows for their own sake. He was like a cattle dealer who wanted his wares to be delivered, to the market without blemish. The price would be higher.

  From practice, almost as soon as it started, the flock of white slaves were battened under the hatches, and the cries and hymns came very muffled from below. The soldiers talked to one another and walked off and stood on the quay as the sailors went to their jobs, loosened sail, threw off ropes, and the ship moved into the pull of the tide and slowly and majestically and beautifully pulled out into the middle of the estuary and with a nice gentle wind behind her sailed out into the bay with the sun
behind her shining on the waters, heading a long way across the Atlantic to the romantic islands of the Barbadoes, where the sun always shone, where there were lonely gentlemen getting a little tired of black women and half-breeds; where it was hoped that this present brood of indigent and papist people would, with the grace of God, be made into obedient, compliant people, almost English and Protestant.

  ‘What has God to do with it?’ Jake asked. That’s what I want to know. It’s all a matter of money. Somebody buys them at ten pounds a head and sells them for about fifty. If they do that to them, how do we know that some day they won’t do it to ourselves?’

  Dominick was looking at him. There was sweat pouring down the soldier’s face. He remembered the other one, who was asking questions too, almost until the moment he died. He looked at Tom. Tom was an enormous fat man, wearing a heavy linen shirt with the sleeves pulled up on it. He had a big head, two chins of rolling flesh. His arms were enormous. His dark curly hair was pitted with grey. It took a fantastic amount of cloth to go around his great belly. He was gripping the stone too and his face was held up to the sky and his teeth were grinding.

  ‘Why do they go like sheep?’ he said then. ‘Why couldn’t they turn on them and make them kill them? Why like sheep? Not me. Not me, I tell you. I would die and I would take some of them with me on the way. I would grind their faces on the flagstones. I would smash them to pulp, like crushed blackberries.’

  He hit his hand on the stone. It made a loud smack.

  ‘They want to live,’ said Dominick. ‘They want to survive.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Tom.

  ‘Thanks for the bottle, Tom,’ said Jake, handing the empty one back to him. ‘I will pay you tonight.’

  ‘You’re half human,’ said Tom, taking it. ‘We’d make an Irishman of you if you were here long enough.’

  ‘I’ll be here long enough,’ said Jake, ‘if the plague doesn’t get me, or if I’m not knifed of an evening in the Red Earl’s Lane.’