‘What is your name?’ he heard the woman asking him.
‘My name is Dominick MacMahon,’ he said.
‘You are from the North,’ she said.
‘I am from all over,’ he said. ‘From the four corners.’
There was a strain on his arms already from rowing against the stream. Oyer to his left the moon was high in the sky, but it shone on the water beyond them and left this side of the river in shadow. He saw the town now with the river running into it and curving around the walls. And he saw the light of it for a little longer, torches that seemed to be moving magically of their own accord, and then they came to a bend of the river with the bulk of the destroyed castle near them, standing starkly with the moon looking in through one window of it as they passed, and then there was nothing to see except the sky and the water and he glided the boat out into the centre of the stream, and bent his back and was less cautious about the sound the oars might make.
He was conscious of his own ineptitude, his ignorance of these waters and the inevitability of pursuit.
‘Mrs O’Fowda has a sort of moustache, Daddy,’ Mary Ann was saying. ‘And she is fat and big and she cries at the least thing, but she is very loving and I hope we meet with her again. Did you like the sugar cakes, Pedro?’
Pedro answered by thumping the boards of the boat three times. That was an emphatic affirmative.
‘I smell fish,’ said Mary Ann.
Dominick heard Mrs Dorsi laughing. He could see the blur of her face and the shine of her white teeth.
‘That’s me, Mary Ann,’ she said.
‘You are talking too much maybe, Man,’ said Dominick.
‘Oh, but I never had such adventures, Daddy,’ said Mary Ann. ‘If I don’t talk, I’ll burst. I smell fish and sort of honey. Is that you too, Mrs Dorsi? Why do you smell of fish?’
‘I’m wearing a fisherwoman’s clothes,’ said Mrs Dorsi. That’s how I got away.’
‘Are you fleeing too, like us?’ Mary Ann asked. ‘We’re used to it. We’re always at it. When I grow up and get married I’m going to marry nobody unless he stays in the one place all the time.’
Dominick put back his head and laughed heartily. He had to stop rowing for a few strokes.
‘God bless you, Mary Ann,’ he said then.
‘And what’s the smell of honey, Mrs Dorsi?’ she asked.
‘You must call me Columba,’ said Mrs Dorsi.
‘Is that your name?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Dorsi. ‘The honey smell is the last of a French perfume, Mary Ann. The very last. There will be no more.’
‘How did you get away?’ Dominick asked her.
‘They put a guard on the house,’ she said. ‘But there is a passage from the house to the graveyard near the church. I went that way. I changed clothes with a fisherwoman from the Claddagh. She liked the change. She gave me a round basket with fish. I walked over the bridge with the rest of the women.’
‘I went with Davie, Daddy,’ said Mary Ann. ‘We rowed from the quay across the river and Mrs Dor – Columba was waiting there on the shore. And you should have seen Mrs O’Fowda crying because I was going. She said I should have been in bed.’
‘Do you know Murdoc?’ Columba asked him.
‘I do,’ he said.
‘He’s a very brave man,’ she said.
‘He’s a very reckless man,’ Dominick said.
‘What’s in a name?’ she asked. ‘ It’s such a wonderful thing to see a brave man. I thought there were no more left at all. I’m tired of cowards. I thought there was no man in the world left who would be brave. Then I saw him.’
‘You saw him being brave?’ Dominick asked. He couldn’t say that he had seen her. She wouldn’t remember his face from the hall, he thought. He had that hat over his eyes and the clothes Tom had given him.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I …’ She stopped then. She could hardly go on and tell him the position she had been in. ‘I saw him being brave.’
‘Where are your people?’ he asked her.
‘Over the sea,’ she said ‘All of them. They went before the siege. Also my husband. My husband is not a brave man. I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go. I despise cowards. You have to stay and fight. Stay and fight, not run away.’
‘You are running away now,’ he pointed out gently.
‘This is different,’ she said. ‘ Coote wants my house. Now he can have it. But I will be breathing freedom. You know where Murdoc lives? Have you been there?’
‘No,’ said Dominick.
‘I have seen it once long ago,’ she said. ‘It is near the mountains. There will be free people there. Like Murdoc. They won’t be afraid. They will fight, and laugh and say what they like in the open air and they won’t be looking over their shoulders to see if anybody is listening to them. Isn’t that true?’
‘I hope it is true,’ said Dominick.
He stood like a mountain,’ she said, ‘with his legs spread, and he laughed in the face of death. He is a great man. I had begun to believe that there were none left.’
The boat shuddered and jolted them and came to a stop. It had run up on a muddy bank. Dominick freed an oar and pushed it off again.
‘I will have to keep my mind on my work,’ he said.
She took the hint.
‘Put your head on my shoulder, Mary Ann,’ she said, ‘and go to sleep.’
He was pulling away at the oars again. Blisters had formed on his palms near the butts of his fingers and had broken open. When he grasped the oars now he could feel the fluid bursting out of them. It was like a sharp knife being drawn across his palms. They made him wince. Soft hands, he thought. A few weeks in a town and your hands are as soft as a woman’s.
‘There’s a forest of stars in the sky,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Is mother like a star, Daddy?’ Mary Ann, he thought, as he gasped, always she could hit you in the chest when you didn’t expect it.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘ like a star.’
‘Well, it’s not cold anyhow,’ said Mary Ann. ‘It’s a good job we hadn’t to flee in the winter.’
‘Shush,’ he said, ‘try and sleep.’
He felt desolate as he pulled away in this winding alien river. It was wide and deep. From each side of it he could smell the rush-lands, a pungent acrid smell of decay and growth. He was like a wisp blown by the wind, resting nowhere, happy nowhere. He wondered if he could ever rest again; if he would ever be happy again. He thought that his only chance of happiness would come from seeing that his children were happy.
The muscles of his back were aching. Already? With many more hours of rowing so that they might find safety. The moon was shining directly on his face.
The woman looked at him. She felt the soft breath of the sleeping girl on her cheek. Remembered how long a time ago it was that you could just fall asleep as if you had been hit on the head.
She liked the look of the man’s face. It was a thin face. You could see all the bones of it a well-shaped head, with the hair tied close to it rising from a strong neck. But there were sorrow lines on his face. She could see that, the pucker between his eyes and the way his eyebrows slanted down.
‘Your wife is dead?’ she asked softly.
‘My wife is dead,’ he answered.
It silenced her, the finality with which it came from him, as if it was dragged from way down in him. She thought: Suppose I was dead and somebody had asked my husband, Walter. Would he be able to answer like that? Her lips curled in disdain. Then she thought of the great figure of Murdoc standing facing Coote in that hall. His one encompassing glance at her tied there at the fireplace. And she knew. Even before he did, she knew that he was going to do it. Her heart had started a slow pound. She wasn’t surprised at his actions. She just knew. His strong grim laughing face was implanted for ever on her memory. She wanted to see him again. She didn’t care what she had to go through as long as she could see him again.
All Dominick could see of her was the white blur of her fac
e as she turned it into the shadow of the boat. She was asleep, her face close to Mary Ann’s. He felt with his hand behind on Peter’s shoulder and then to his face. His eyes were closed.
Dominick dug in his feet and squeezed his hands on the oars and pulled away.
He remembered about coming to the place where the river and the lake met. He had trouble getting through it. There were many shallow places, but he guessed his way by the rushes and broke into an expanse where a great sheet of water lay basking under the moonlight. It looked very big and very frightening. But there was no wind and the way was smooth and he headed into it.
He consulted the rough chart when he was about half way across, and he prayed that the moon and its light would stay with him. He rowed for many hours, until his hands were two gaping aches. He came out of the wide water into the narrow places where black rocks poked up their ugly sharp heads over the water, and where many of them lurked just under the water. But there had been a lot of rain before the fine, and the water was high and covered most of them well. He twisted and wound through these narrow places with his heart in his mouth as he watched the moon getting bigger and bigger and lower and lower in the sky, but the luck was with him because just as the moon departed, right behind him a narrow band of dawn-light appeared in the sky and in front of the light he saw the black of the trees, a grand comforting black band of trees stretching for many miles along the shore, and he headed for those across a very wide bay, and was almost too tired to rejoice when the keel of the boat grated on the soft shingle.
Chapter Eighteen
HE AWOKE with a start. The sun had cleared the tops of the trees and was shining in his eyes. He didn’t think that was why he awoke. He listened. Away from over the water, he thought he heard a sound. He couldn’t identify it. He sat up on his bed of pine needles and threw off the blanket. He stood and he groaned, as the muscles in his back screamed for him.
They were in a sheltered bay. The arm on his left poked out into the lake and cut off his vision of the narrows. He looked at the other blanket-covered forms. He would leave them for the moment. Judging by the height of the sun he could have been asleep only for about two hours.
He looked around him. They were sheltered in a belt of tall pine trees. Some of them were straight and some of them were contorted. Closely planted as they were, most of the lower branches had died. He picked the tallest one and started to climb. He groaned as his aching muscles revolted. The weeping resin from the bark stuck to his hands uncomfortably. The open blisters of his palms didn’t like the sting of the resin.
He came to the part of the tree where the branches were green and strong. He swung around the trunk so that he would not be visible from the water. The needles were sharp and stuck into him. When he was as high as he could go he parted some of the green branches and looked.
He saw two boats and they were very near to him, particularly the one on the left which was searching along by the shore. They were two long boats, each having six oars, with three men rowing and armed soldiers sitting in the stern. He heard voices now and the dull clump of the oars on the greased row-locks.
He came down from the tree fast, keeping on the hidden side of it. He thought how lucky they were. Another fifteen minutes and they would have been caught. Even now they weren’t out of danger.
He bent over the woman. ‘Wake up,’ he said. His hand was hovering ready to clap it over her mouth. The dark eyes looked at him blankly and then recognition dawned in them. ‘They are close,’ he said. ‘Get up and go back farther into the wood with the children.’
She nodded her head, threw off the blanket and for the first time he could look at her in the light. Her black shining hair was tied in plaits. One of them had come loose. She had a good forehead, a curved nose, a wide face, and a strong chin. She didn’t show fear in her eyes. You could rely on her. Her hands were small and soft, he could see, the hands of a non-worker, but they looked capable. When she stood he thought she looked odd in the thick clothes, as if she was dressed for a part which didn’t belong to her. Indeed he could smell the fish, he thought, mixed with pine needles.
He was shaking Mary Ann awake. So used to being in trouble, Mary Ann awoke alert and prepared. He told her.
‘All right, Daddy,’ she philosophically. ‘I’ll get Pedro.’
He went back to the boat. It was a heavy boat. You’d want three men to pull it up on the shore. He decided not to try. He took the oars out of it and threw them on the shore. Then he pushed the boat out and jumped into it as it went into deep water. He could see the bottom. It was about six feet deep. He balanced himself on the boat and then walked on the freeboard. It went under water. He kept standing there until the side went under the water and the lake started to pour into it. It took a long time to fill. He kept standing there until it swamped and sank under him. A few strokes took him to the shore.
He shook himself like a dog. Their belongings were piled under a tree. He didn’t remove them. He took the blankets and threw them over them, and then covered the blankets with old tree branches and the young growing ferns and green alder branches which he hastily tore from their stems. He looked around once more and then went into the wood carrying the oars. Farther in he hid them in the scrub. He whistled softly and heard Mary Ann’s low call. He found them deeper in the trees. They were crouching behind a briar thicket in an open part of the wood.
‘Listen,’ he said. We should be safe. If they come in and find anything, I will attract their attention. While they are chasing me you three go back farther into the wood, as far as you can go, and when you come out of the wood keep going until you meet people, a house. They tell me all the people on the shores are true. All right?’
‘We’ll see,’ the woman said.
‘You’ll see nothing,’ he said. ‘You’ll do what you’re told.’
He saw her lips tightening.
‘I’m not thinking of me,’ he said. ‘ I’m not thinking of you either. I’m thinking of my children.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll run.’
He lay flat. He could see their little bay. The water was blue. There was already heat in the sun.
He saw the bow of the boat come across the point. He could hear the voices. The boat turned in towards the shore. They went right along by it keeping about ten yards off. If they had seen the boat? If they had been sleeping there? If anything? It didn’t really matter. There was no use bothering your brain with ifs. The soldiers could have seen the sunken boat, he was sure, if they were looking down. They didn’t see it. They circled the bay and went out of sight again. He could see the other boat now over on the far side skirting the small islands on the opposite shore.
‘What do we do now?’ the woman asked.
‘We do nothing,’ Dominick said. ‘We stay here and wait until the boats come back again.’ They wouldn’t go much farther. They would know there was just one man to row, since it was a single-handed craft. They would know damn well how far one man could travel in the time since the boat had been reported gone. They would go another few miles and then return and give every little bay and beach a thorough searching on the way back to the town.
‘I’m going to sleep,’ he said. ‘I need sleep. Call me when they come back.’
He rested his cheek on the back of his hands. He relaxed his body and he slept.
The woman watched him. She could only see the back of his head. He wore no shirt. His body was still wet from the water. His breeches were beginning to steam in the sun.
‘Your father is a brave man,’ she said to Mary Ann.
‘He’s very useful,’ said Mary Ann, ‘ but he rushes around a lot.’
‘How long has he been rushing around now?’ she asked.
‘Oh, ever since I can remember,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Ever since they cut Peter’s head and Mammy died. Show Columba your scar, Pedro.’
Pedro was quite pleased to show his scar. He lifted back his long fair hair. She put her hand on his head. He was smiling
at her.
‘Who did that to you?’ she asked.
‘He doesn’t talk,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Since he got that, he doesn’t talk any more.’
‘Doesn’t talk any more?’ Columba asked.
Peter was smiling at her. He nodded his head.
‘Daddy says it’s just as well,’ said Mary Ann. ‘He says I talk enough for two,’ Columba laughed, but it was rueful. You think you have troubles, she thought, until you hear about other people’s troubles.
‘Tell me more about what you remember,’ she said.
Mary Ann was only too pleased to tell her. Mary Ann loved to talk, and Pedro loved to listen. So she talked, and talked, while her father slept and their enemies scoured the bays on the blue water and sweated like pigs under the hot sun, and searched in vain.
It was early morning. The sun was bright already. The sky was
clear and blue. There was a healthy south-west wind that ruffled
the water, so that low waves sparkled in the sunlight.
Dominick walked the shore. He had floated a line and walked
against the waves. The weighted board out from him travelled like a leaky ship, plodding and lopsided, but it made the three roughly fashioned flies hop on the tops of the waves, he thought, like three drunken old ladies doing a dance. He had to laugh at the thought. The shore he walked on was rough with round rocks and sometimes spiky ones biting into his bare feet. He heard Peter behind him hitting his hands three rimes off his thigh. He looked at him. The boy caught his eyes and pointed west.
Dominick paused in his walking and looked. Ahead of them he could see the land on each side beginning to rise to the low hills until eight or ten miles away they met at a conjunction of real tall ones with tapering peaks, their tops pale blue against a deep blue sky. The narrowing lake down there seemed to be a finger pointing at them.
‘That’s where we are going, Pedro,’ he said. ‘Right down there. Right into the middle of the big fellows.’
Pedro clapped his thigh four times.
Dominick laughed, started to walk, and then the pull on the line almost cut his hand in two. He looked. One of his flies had gone and the board was soughing and weaving sullenly. Peter was jumping up and down on the stones clapping his hands.
Seek the Fair Land Page 19