1798

by Joe Murphy

  ‘I suppose,’ Tom grunted and then, smiling at Proctor, he commented, ‘I hope that my eyes don’t resemble the marbles that are staring out of your face or Lieutenant Esmonde will be apoplectic.’

  Laughing, the men swung up into their saddles and wheeled their horses about. In front of them, the lane they were now trotting along joined with the main thoroughfare just as it came to the crest of its slope. Turning to the right, the two yeomen followed the street until it levelled off and opened out into Gorey’s market diamond.

  Before them, much of the yeomanry corps was already assembled. Each red-coated trooper sitting his horse and conversing with his comrades. Occasionally a horse would shy or prance upon the hard clay, sending up little cumulous exhalations of dust. The smell of horseflesh and the reek of men under a hot sun attracted swarms of flies which alighted upon horse and rider and settled on the mounds of dung spattered about that wide meeting place. The huge beech tree rose from the centre of this diamond. Its branches were mostly bare so early in the season but its lower arms were now slung with creepers of bunting. Red, white and blue triangles sewn on to a white length of rope festooned the tree’s dark boughs and at its base a rough stage made a rickety platform large enough for three or four people to stand abreast. Even now, as the cavalry gathered before it, two workmen in sag-brimmed hats were hammering the last few nails into the stage’s unpainted timbers. The sound of their labour pounded out over the crowd of horsemen, regular as a drumbeat.

  As order asserted itself beneath the raised horsewhip and cajoling tongue of Lieutenant Esmonde, the fifty or so cavalrymen in the diamond formed up into five squads of ten, each squad in two ranks of five yeomen. It was then, as he and Proctor moved to join their respective ranks that Tom perceived, gathered on the edge of the diamond, the red-coated forms of several of the North Cork Regiment. Each soldier was armed with a musket and a bayonet hung from a pipeclayed sling at his hip. Even from a distance of fifty yards, Tom could see the sour derision on their faces as they surveyed the horse boys and, as he watched, one placed his Brown Bess between his legs and mimicked a child on a cockhorse, flapping his bicorn above his head like something deranged.

  Maybe thirty yards to the left of this group, Tom was astonished to see the mounted figure of John Hunter Gowan sitting astride a massive bay charger. Wearing a scarlet frock coat with fashionably turned down lapels and cuffs over a white, ruffled shirt, white breeches and black riding boots, Tom considered that the old loyalist had firmly nailed his colours to the mast. Upon Hunter Gowan’s head, a black bicorn, worn with the points fore and aft, only served to amplify the desired impression of a British military officer. He was casting his condescending gaze over the yeomen and a fatherly smile played at the corners of his wide mouth.

  Not for the first time that day, Tom considered the implications of what he intended to do. Around him he could count only seven other Catholics and in that number he included Sir Thomas Esmonde, the First Lieutenant. At the turn of the year there had been forty-seven. All had resigned, some claimed they had been forced to resign, at the prospect of the Test Oath. He himself had been away in Dublin on the occasion of the first swearing, he had not been there to persuade his brother and the others to retract their resignations. He was sure that his pragmatism would have swayed at least some of them.

  Yet here he was, as the April sun spread warmth from his black helmet to his already damp scalp and then down the back of his neck. Here he was, with flies buzzing around his ears and his horse nervous under him. Here he was, with a shadow-host of doubts clamouring within his brain.

  A crowd of townsfolk had begun gathering at the mouth of the diamond, muttering and laughing, the women bending their heads together and the men taking out pocket watches or glancing at the sun. Then, at the head of the troop, sitting his horse alone and isolated, Lieutenant Esmonde raised his sword in his right hand and in a voice that resonated from building to building over the bearskin crests of the yeomen, he announced, ‘Captain Thomas Knox Grogan and His Excellency, the Right Honourable Lord Mountnorris.’

  There was a muffled cheer from the crowd which was quickly hushed but Tom was unnerved that a number of hisses and lowing boos went up along with the acclamations. Undeterred, Lieutenant Esmonde continued, ‘Three cheers for the captain and His Lordship! Hip-hip!’

  And from the ranks of yeomen, ‘Huzzah!’

  ‘Hip-hip!’

  ‘Huzzah!’

  ‘Hip-hip!’

  And on the last ‘Huzzah!’ two men emerged from one of the market houses facing out onto the diamond. One man was middle-aged, portly and wore the Tarleton helmet and braided uniform of a yeomanry officer while the second, older and much slimmer, wore the elegant attire and pinched expression of a member of the aristocracy.

  The two peasant labourers had completed their work on the platform beneath the beech tree and were even now hurrying off to one side, tugging the drooping brims of their hats as they went. Knox Grogan and Mountnorris, for this was whom the two most recently arrived gentlemen evidently were, mounted the rough-hewn steps of the platform and stood facing the yeomanry while the planks beneath their feet groaned treacherously.

  As Tom watched, Lord Mountnorris came to the front of the stage and raised one lined hand for silence. The entire gathering, even the attendant townsfolk and their urchins, fell quiet. Mountnorris’s features were pallid in the daylight and wattles of grey skin clung heavily to his eye sockets as he began to speak. And as his words echoed in the spring air, it was apparent to all those gathered there that the biggest landowner in all of Wexford was exhausted and under grievous strain.

  In a voice cracked and arid he began, ‘Yeomanry of the Castletown Corps, loyal subjects of the King and true friends. You have been called to muster here today to pledge your loyalty to your King and Country and to renounce once and for all any and all activities or organisations of a subversive bent. There are those of our enemies who would seek to pull our great civilisation down about our ears. There are those who would hope to ape the barbarity of the Americans and the excesses of the French. This we cannot, under God, allow.

  ‘For some of you this is your second swearing of this oath and I would implore you not to consider it an insult to your proven character that you must perforce revisit ground over which you have already passed. For that I apologise but I will say that this second round of the oath is a most dreadful necessity.

  ‘Sixteen parishes in this county have been proclaimed by certain magistrates to be in a state of open rebellion. Sixteen, when one is too many! But, my friends, if we prove our loyalty and foreswear all other paths we may continue relatively unmolested during these trying times.’

  At this, the aging aristocrat raised his hands and voice and cried out, ‘How many gathered here would wish martial law declared on this county? How many?’

  From around Tom a scattered few yeomen cried out in the negative but from behind him, from the ranks of the curious townsfolk, a great roar went up, ‘No!’ and mingled in amongst it were cries of, ‘Send the North Corks home!’ and, ‘Stop the burnings!’

  Now, however, from some unknown compulsion, Tom sought out the form of Hunter Gowan amongst the press of people. There he still sat, resplendent upon his great horse, a handkerchief, like an eruption of froth, extravagantly pressed over his mouth. From one laced corner leaked a wrinkle of lip and from the wild gleam of his eyes Tom knew that the man was laughing.

  Mountnorris gestured for silence before continuing, ‘I am relieved to hear your voices raised so. To impose the rule of the military on such an industrious and peaceable population would be an abomination.’

  He addressed the ranks of yeomen sweating in their uniforms, their horses snorting and quivering impatiently, ‘Yeomanry, your captain will now conduct you in your oath.’

  With that he stepped aside and Captain Knox Grogan, flushed and limping slightly with gout, moved to take his place. In one dimpled hand he held up a heavy, leather-bound bible, the red
silk page marker lolling from it like a serpent’s tongue. His voice was stronger than Mountnorris’s and it boomed out over the crowd, ‘Castletown Corps, in God’s presence, raise your right hand.’

  Along with every other man in his corps Tom Banville lifted his gauntleted right hand. ‘Damn you to hell, Da,’ he muttered. ‘And you too, Dan. I’ll do this for us and for our family. I’ll not have us ruined in the eyes of the powerful. Men of consequence have only one creed and it comes in a purse.’

  From the corner of his vision, Tom perceived Richard Proctor dart him a lightning glance and then look away, smiling.

  Then the world seemed to explode into a mass of startled shouts and whinnying horses.

  The crowd, choking the point where the diamond became Gorey’s main street, scattered like quail. Women screamed and violently hauled bare-footed children, wailing, to safety and from out of this rent in the throng, sitting astride his roan gelding, Laurence Banville thundered like the coming apocalypse.

  Yeomen fled to either side of his hunter’s path, some fighting to control their terrified horses, some drawing their swords, but none, not one, moved to intercept the furious old man. For furious he was. Even as his father flew across the hard clay of the diamond Tom could see, could feel, the anger radiating from him. His eyes were twin bullet holes of black rage and his liverstrip lips were pulled back from teeth bared in a yellow snarl. His horse’s flanks were covered in the foam of its exertions and in his hand he carried a heavy, straight-bladed sword.

  Tom sawed at his mount’s reins, striving to steady her as the other cavalry mounts bucked and danced like the waves of a parting sea. His father, amidst all the screams, the shouts, the frantic orders and countermands, his father, with a face like the devil himself, was upon him before Tom could even call on him to stop.

  Laurence Banville brought his horse to a rearing halt before his astonished son. The gelding pawed the air for a moment and then stood blowing and huffing wetly, its mad rush at last ended. Around the father and son the yeomen simply sat their saddles in stunned silence. Even Mountnorris, Knox Grogan, and Lieutenant Esmonde seemed completely dumbstruck. From the ringing crowd of townsfolk, however, first one child and then another began to bawl their fright up into the uncaring sky.

  ‘Da—’ began Tom, but before he could continue or even formulate a proper sentence, his father had cut him off.

  ‘Thomas, I will not let you do this. I have not had a second’s repose since you informed me of your decision and I thank St. Patrick that I’ve arrived here in time. So help me, Thomas, I will cut you down myself before I allow you to give yourself over, body and soul, to this shower of murdering lickspittles.’

  At these words some of the yeomen closest to the two men made to heft their weapons. They stilled, however, when Tom’s sword flashed from out its scabbard, the whispered slither of its drawing a sibilant promise of death. His horse prancing beneath him, Tom roared, fixing one yeo after another with a glare of inferno belligerence, ‘The first man to raise arms against my father will die on this blade.’

  In the midst of this, as Tom’s horse pirouetted and he held his own comrades at bay, Hunter Gowan’s voice raised itself in mockery, ‘You see? Gentlemen, this is why Papists and the lower sort should not be allowed to wear the King’s uniform.’

  Like a whip-crack Laurence Banville dragged his exhausted mount around and faced Hunter Gowan, the sword in his old hands levelled and pointing at the loyalist middleman.

  ‘Lower sort?’ he raged, ‘I’ll ‘lower sort’ you, Gowan, you upstart cur. There is better blood in my dogs than in you, me old shillicock.’

  At this, most of the watching crowd and yeomanry gasped in shocked disbelief. However, Tom noted with a certain glee, quite a few of both yeos and civilians let out a great gust of laughter. Hunter Gowan’s face became livid, almost the colour of raw meat, but before he could retort, Lieutenant Esmonde had grasped the bridles of both Tom and his father’s horse and was glaring at both men. The Lieutenant was on foot now and so was forced to look up at the two mounted figures above him. As a consequence the sunlight falling across his face made his brown eyes glitter and flash. He was blisteringly angry.

  ‘How dare you gentlemen! The sheer gall of it! First you disgrace yourselves by interrupting the Test Oath and remonstrating in front of the Captain and His Lordship and then you most outrageously insult a most loyal and zealous guardian of the community. For shame gentlemen! For shame!’

  Laurence Banville, sword still in hand, stared down at the lieutenant, ‘I have come here for my son. I’ll not bandy words—’

  However, his flow of invective was truncated by Lieutenant Esmonde’s volcanic indignation, ‘I have not finished, sir! As for your son you are welcome to him. He reeks of whiskey and I cannot and will not stand idly by while a man draws steel on his fellow soldiers. Your son has brought shame on his corps and should consider himself lucky not to be summarily court-martialled.

  ‘As for you,’ he continued, addressing Tom, ‘I suggest you return home with your father and await the Captain’s summons. I am afraid your actions do not sit well with him. I am sorry to say I cannot see this going softly for you. You and your father are a disgrace. A disgrace!’

  He turned from them, releasing their horses’ bridles with an angry snap of the wrist, ‘Now be gone!’

  Laurence sat blinking for a moment before gathering his wits, ‘I will not sit here on my own horse in my own land and be insulted by that popinjay.’

  Tom turned to his father, his sword resting across his thighs, and snapped, ‘You will do anything he says because otherwise he will clap us both in irons. You’ve had your little victory, Da. You’ve prevented me going against our family’s vaunted principles. I’ll be fortunate if they don’t put me on trial over this.’

  He then transferred his gaze from his father to the yeomen, to the townsfolk, to the North Corks and to Hunter Gowan. Every face all at once seemed to belong to a sneering goblin. Pointed fingers and jeering guffaws were all directed toward the two Banvilles. Even Proctor was trying to stifle his laughter.

  Seething now, a young man’s wounded pride heating his words, he snapped, ‘You’ve had your little victory, Da and all you had to do to accomplish it was make a laughing stock of us both. When the tenants mock at mother on the way to mass, when people refuse to do business with you, you will find their cause in this one clownish act. You are a buffoon.’

  His father regarded him carefully, his rheumy eyes devoid of anger. Now they brimmed only with the hurt inflicted by Tom’s words. He sighed once, long and slow, emptying his brittle chest in a morose sough of emotion. Then, quietly, he said, ‘I would rather see all the leases burned and you dead than ever see you swear yourself over to them.’

  For a moment of stunned silence, Tom sat his horse and then, urging it into a trot, brushed past his father and made his way through the ranks of his comrades, who kept their eyes downcast, past the North Corks and the grinning Hunter Gowan. Ears pricked forward, the mare bore him through the lines of sniggering townsfolk and down into the near-deserted streets of Gorey Town.

  He needed a drink.

  He found an inn on the eastern edge of the town that had everything he could have wanted – good stout, spirits and above all several rooms to rent. Tom had no intention of going home that night. His anger, his battered pride, would not allow it.

  As soon as he had stabled his horse, he purchased a room and deposited sword, guns, jacket and Tarleton within, and locked the door. He had carefully stowed the key in his breeches pocket and then had taken up a comfortable, convenient – and permanent – position at the bar.

  The common room where Tom found himself was long and low-built. Exposed rafters supported the ceiling above and upon the wooden floor clean straw was spread to soak up spillage and the dragged-in detritus of the patrons. The inn itself sat on the old coach road that ran south along the coast towards Wexford Town and it appeared to the bitter young cavalryman to ca
pture a fair degree of passing trade. The inn’s heavy door was opened to the afternoon sun and through this bright and airy rectangle a steady chain of customers rattled in and out. Amongst them Tom sat and breathed in the thick pall of pipe and turf smoke, drinking measure after measure and watching the splendour of the day gradually dim into the velvet of evening.

  He had been sitting with his elbows resting on the bar counter and his hands curled protectively around his tumbler of stout for some time before the innkeeper approached, wiping his hands on his apron. With his face composed and carefully blank he commented, ‘For one so young to labour under such dejection as you do, sir, sets me thinking that maybe you have a story to tell.’

  Tom regarded him with the heavy-jowled frankness of a drunkard, ‘I’ve no more story to me than any other soul who comes through your door.’

  The man nodded to himself before addressing Tom once more, ‘You see, that’s where my difficulty lies. Most souls who do come through my door have a good few stories in them. They usually entertain us with wild fantasies of house burnings and torture, of laughing yeos shooting livestock and soldiers living on free quarters. Yet you sit here and claim no tale of your own?’

  Tom took a thoughtful sip from his tumbler, his senses too leaden to mutter anything but, ‘That I do.’

  The innkeeper, a big man with a heavy paunch like a mortar shell behind his apron, smiled in sympathetic understanding. ‘I see. Forgive me but the ostler who stabled your horse, and a fine animal too by all accounts, did happen to mention the cut of your travelling clothes, so to speak.’

  Tom, the thick hide of his introspection finally pricked by the barb in the man’s words, licked his lips and carefully pronounced, ‘My travelling is done for this night at least.’