by Joe Murphy
The big, aproned man before him nodded a single time, a barely perceptible ducking of the chin into the thick roll of flesh swelling out from beneath his jaw, and then he was gone. Occasionally, as he passed to scoop a pint for some other patron from the great keg beneath the counter, he would wordlessly add more to Tom’s drink until the young man was comfortably enfolded in a fog of inebriation.
All this time, as he sat there sliding further and further into an alcoholic numbness, he had steadfastly refused to consider his father’s actions, had refused to dwell on the anger he felt not just towards him but Dan as well. They were both so blind. Nevertheless, the further he pushed it from his mind, the more it preyed upon him, until at last his jaws throbbed from holding them clenched and his skull ached with tension. Only the deep earthy flavour of the stout gave him any release and with every bitter mouthful he felt his rage and embarrassment, little by little, lose their grip upon him. So he sat, slumped over his beer, until a tiny fragment of conversation snapped his head up and pulled his frame upright as though a ramrod had been slipped into his spine.
Two men had eased open the inn’s door, closed for some time now as the early summer nights still retained a graveyard chill, and were removing their trusties, each man beating the dust from his greatcoat’s cape-collars and sleeves. Both newcomers wore short jackets with round-buttoned cuffs and the tied neckerchiefs of tenant farmers or well-off labourers. It was from these men that Tom heard the words that so snagged his interest.
One of the men doffed his broad-brimmed hat and, placing it on a peg hammered into the wall, declared, ‘Bejaysus, sure every blacksmith in the county’s a United man. If Caulfield wants to excommunicate them all he’ll have some job on his hands.’
The second man was about to respond to his companion when the innkeeper abruptly barrelled through the aromatic murk of smoke and caught both men roughly by the front of their jackets. Tom could not guess what sentiments were exchanged between the three, but the innkeeper repeatedly flung apprehensive glances in his direction and, once, he thought he heard the word, ‘Yeo’, pitched soft and low and hissing.
At length, and without either buying a drink or sitting down, the two newcomers collected their belongings and departed, leaving the proprietor to fasten the door behind them. Wringing his hands in his apron once more, he approached Tom and leaned heavily on the counter beside him. His weight was enough to make the bar’s stained planks sag and he listed into Tom so closely that the young man could smell the sour odour of his body through his linen shirt.
The man was missing several teeth and, as he whispered, Tom felt himself hypnotised by the tidal surge and withdraw of saliva through the gaps left behind. He regarded Tom with a gaze like a blade, ‘It is almost nine of the clock, young sir, and seeing as you’ve paid for your bread and board, I can vouchsafe that, should you retire on the instant, you will sleep safe and sound until the morning. That is, unless some of your fellow travellers decide to come a-calling in the middle of the night with steel in their hands and fire in their bellies. Is such a thing likely?’
Tom studied the fleshy face. The man’s eyes were clear and earnest and somehow fervent in the tarnished illumination of the room’s oil lamps.
Tom found himself shaking his head, ‘No fear of that.’
‘Well good evening then, young sir. It is not a night to be roaming too far abroad. These are becoming dangerous times and when you find a safe bed, it’s best to lie in it.’ He made to leave but then paused and, placing a hand on Tom’s shoulder, he whispered, ‘I hope whatever weight is on you is lifted soon, young Banville.’
He strode off down the room haranguing groups of cottiers and frock-coated travellers alike. He moved like a colour sergeant and swore like a trooper and as Tom watched him conducting his rounds the question came unbidden, ‘How did he know my name?’
Confused and still more than a little drunk, Tom heaved himself clear of the counter and lurched through the common room like a ship running against a storm. Blank eyes and cold stares fastened on to him as he passed and he had a vague impression of the innkeeper, now impassive and aloof as a carven idol, standing, arms folded, in one dark corner.
A wooden staircase descended into the common room along one back wall and Tom gripped its age-smoothed banister, afraid to let go. Step by creaking step he mounted the stairs, his left hand ball-knuckled about the banister, his right extended out and down in front of him to ward off the floor should it attempt all at once to arise and clatter into his face. His breath came in short, heaving puffs as he shambled towards his room, unlocked the door and entered.
In front of him, a single straw mattress with a heavy woollen blanket lay, porcelain, under the gibbous moon, rising clean and cold beyond the room’s only window. Upon the bare floorboards his equipment still made an untidy pile in one corner and the entire chamber smelt of fresh hay and the lingering saccharine of the last occupant’s, or their companion’s, perfume.
Tom locked the bedroom door behind him and stripped down to his underclothes. He was about to collapse into the soft sanctuary of the bed when the events of the afternoon and evening trickled a cold stream of trepidation down his back.
In spite of the publican’s reassuring words, Tom felt the drink-gummed cogs of his mind spasm into motion. Checking that his door was locked fast, he shuffled over to where his equipment lay and drew his sword, which gleamed in the moon glow of his little room. Then, yawning with the exhaustion of the heavily drunk, he scrambled into the bed and felt the first dark, lapping waves of sleep wash over him. He lay there with the rising moon casting his room in black and silver and setting the steel of his blade to glimmer in his grip. He lay there, tired and alone, on his left side, keeping his sword-arm free.
CHAPTER 2
The Rising of the Moon
The same moon which set a pale watch over the unconscious form of Tom Banville rose above the uneven slopes of Kilthomas Hill. With ghostly lambency, it grinned cold and white upon the fields below. In this borderland between the counties of Wexford and Wicklow a hectic, thorny stitching of gorse ditches crosshatched the land, black in the moonlight. Between these ragged black seams cornfields and paddocks were a quicksilver quilt under the sky. Shadows seemed fluid and unctuous in the frosty light and along the laneways and cattle tracks nothing living broke the cold stillness of the crowding night.
In a copse of cedar trees, midway up the western slope of the hill, however, something moved in the blackness – two forms under the trees.
Amongst the cedar boles and feathery bracken, Dan Banville turned to the person at his shoulder and whispered, ‘Look behind you. Isn’t it striking?’
His companion turned to gaze out onto the countryside beyond the trees.
Dan smiled as the woman gasped in surprise and whispered, ‘Oh, Daniel. It is beautiful.’
She turned to him and he slipped his hands inside the warm travelling cloak she wore over her high-waisted and narrow-shouldered dress. Without hesitation he bent his lips to hers and felt them moisten and respond as the scent of her mahogany hair filled his senses with yearning.
Elizabeth Blakely felt his arms tighten about her, felt her own need arise within her, but, with iron self-possession, she caught hold of his wrists and forced his hands to his sides. Exclaiming, ‘Mr Banville, is this why you insist on meeting in such moonlit and deserted haunts!’ she adjusted the fall of her dress. Yet her mock anger was only that and Elizabeth knew, even in the dark, that her green eyes smouldered and her lips carried with their words the hint of an unspoken promise.
Dan laughed and held her hands in his, ‘Indeed, Ms Blakely, I bring you here to seduce you utterly and to hell with any owl or mouse that seeks to inform your father.’
Smiling up at him Elizabeth stepped inside the circle of his arms and allowed him to hold her to his chest. Still smiling she breathed, ‘That would be an intrepid spy indeed that would travel the six miles to Carnew just to tattle on two such as us.’
Dan grunted. ‘I would put nothing past your father. His disapproval of me grows daily.’
Elizabeth gazed into his down-turned face but beneath the canopy of gaunt cedars the shadows blurred his features into a ghostly smudge of white. Only his eyes were precise and distinguishable, their colour deepened to soot black but their character remaining, piercing and profound. To Elizabeth, from the moment they had first met that day of the fair in Arklow town, those eyes had always seemed as entrancing and depthless as the void between the stars.
She clenched her fists at the small of his back and gave him a reassuring squeeze. ‘You know my father’s liberal leanings. He is merely protective of his daughters. And since you left the yeomanry, he is understandably concerned as to which direction in particular you and your family will lean. Come,’ she continued, ‘I have a basket prepared.’
Dan had ridden some hours in the gathering dusk to arrive at this rendezvous and was ravenous with hunger. Yet, another hunger gnawed at him like some curious contagion working upon his innards. Elizabeth Blakely was in his blood like laudanum. His wits were dulled in her presence; but he ached for her and in her absence a hot gap opened in his guts that could only be filled by her voice, her touch, her kiss.
He had made his way southwest from his father’s house, mostly moving across country but trotting along the roads when they afforded him the most direct passage. To some observers and indeed in the opinion of some chroniclers, the landscape of Wexford was a fertile one mismanaged by bad farming and marred by huge tracts of rough ground, overrun by furze and heather and thorn. To Dan Banville, however, his county was one of splendour beneath that high April sky. The ditches to either side were frantic with life and the emerging gorse flowers, coaxed forth by the turning season, were iridescent saffron against deepest green. He had ridden with a smile on his face for the most part, his thoughts already lingering beneath the cedars on Kilthomas Hill but, occasionally, his smile would falter at the sight of a burned-out cottage, or the galloping mass of a yeomanry squadron would force him onto the verge of some dusty, rutted lane.
On these occasions, or the single time he thought he heard, barely on the cusp of perception, the crackle of muskets in the distance, he felt something inside him grow cold. On these occasions he would grit his teeth and unconsciously his lips would move as if offering up a prayer or framing some awful curse. Then he would move on and strive to fill his mind once more with thoughts of Elizabeth Blakely and a yielding cushion of sprouting fern.
Dan and Elizabeth emerged into the moonlight from out of the cedars at a spot close to where Elizabeth’s horse was tethered, cropping the coarse grass between its hooves. A grey woollen blanket had been spread under the frenzied scrawl of a blackthorn’s branches and upon it a wicker basket sat, tied with string.
‘Elizabeth,’ said Dan, ‘there was no need.’
Even as the words spilled from his lips however, his stomach made a liar of him by rumbling like the wheels of a laden wagon over cobbles.
Giggling, Elizabeth patted the young man’s stomach, ‘It seems all the hard work your father has you engaged in has done wonders for your appetite.’
Abashed, Dan seated himself upon the blanket and Elizabeth, still giggling, took her place beside him. Her delicate fingers worked at the knots binding the picnic basket and, as if by magic, she extracted half a loaf of bread, some cheese and a wide segment of apple tart. She also produced a stoppered jug filled with milk as her father, a wealthy brewer, was firm in his disapproval of his daughters partaking of alcohol.
The young couple sat beneath the stars, Elizabeth with both her own cloak and a broad swatch of Dan’s greatcoat wrapped about her to ward off the deepening chill, talking and laughing like young couples the world over. Between bites of bread and cheese Dan’s voice unconsciously raised itself in exuberance, its baritone carrying down the steep slope below them, before Elizabeth hushed him in good-natured exasperation. They sat untroubled by anything outside the compass of their entwined arms until at last Elizabeth cast a quizzical look at Dan and asked, ‘Whatever happened to your curls? You look as shorn as a sheep.’
Dan, who had leaned back to take a swig of milk, darted her a glance from the corner of his eye and, lowering the jug, smiled at her. ‘If your temples became as high and wide as mine, my dear, you too would find short hair more becoming than a thin straggling of thatch.’
Elizabeth ran her fingers through his short fringe and said, ‘I do find it most becoming, but should Hunter Gowan or Hawtrey White mistake you for a croppy I would be forced to visit you in gaol where the food is not so palatable and the company, or so I am told, is not so agreeable.’
Dan felt the soft flesh of her wrist and palm briefly caress the stubbled curve of his jaw and allowed himself a moment of blissful contentment before he spoke. And when he did speak, there was a timbre to his voice that his brother would have recognised as an echo of their father’s arrogance and contempt.
‘Elizabeth,’ he breathed softly as her hand brushed his face, ‘If you are afraid of Hunter Gowan or Hawtrey White, then I would urge you not to be. They are as insects. Nothing but upstart planters and the dregs of Cromwell’s butchers.’
At this, Elizabeth drew away from him. Her shoulders slipped from under the heavy folds of his trusty and she sat rigid and distant. In the moonlight, her hands clasping the cloak close about her were like pale spiders and her eyes flickered with the brittle light of the hanging constellations. In an attitude of frozen detachment, she queried, ‘Do you consider all Protestants “upstarts” and “butchers” Mr Banville, or just those, like my father, who are descended from planter stock?’
‘Elizabeth—’
‘Don’t,’ she interrupted. ‘Unless the next words that come from your lips are an apology, you should save your breath and allow me to return to Carnew.’
Dan felt a hot cloud of anger envelop his brain but bit back the words that threatened to slip from his mouth. Instead he levelly intoned, ‘You know, Elizabeth, that I meant no insult to you or your family, but if I have wounded you in any way then I truly regret it.’
‘Of course you do,’ she snapped. ‘You regret it with every ounce of the fervour with which I sometimes regret being born Protestant. You have no conception of what it’s like, Dan. My father is liberal and is hated for it by the magistrates of Carnew. And is Protestant and is hated for that by the peasantry. Only his money provides him with the respect that should be his natural right. If there is a United Irish uprising tomorrow how will men like him be treated? We are afraid.’
Dan watched as the anguish in her words made a grim bow of her mouth and the tiny rivulet of a single tear sparkled upon her cheek. Shaking his head, he moved towards her and when she did not pull away he placed one big arm about her shoulders and drew her to him.
‘Elizabeth, I do not know how men such as your father might fare should there be a Rising in the morning. I do not know how any of us should. But you should not fear because of your religion. In spite of what the yeomanry say, in spite of what vomits from the Orange Lodges, I do not believe the United movement to be sectarian. Wolfe Tone and many other prominent United leaders are all committed, landed Protestants. Almost to a man they deplore ignorant bigotry. They would likely welcome your father into their ranks as a fellow liberal!’
He continued quietly, ‘I do not believe that there will be a Rising in Wexford unless the North Corks and yeomanry are given their head. Mountnorris and the likes of the Colcloughs down in Tintern are doing the work of a hundred in taking the heat from any brief sparks that alight in their districts.’
Elizabeth sniffed and cast an appraising eye over Dan’s features. His gaze was distant and while his arm was reassuringly draped around her it seemed to her that the young man’s thoughts had drifted out to roam over his troubled county and that something odd, almost wistful, had entered into his voice.
‘You almost seem disappointed,’ she said.
‘Disappointed? No, not
disappointed. Yet I believe that a people should not be compelled to labour under the twin weights of a fat aristocracy and a conniving church. Do you realise that Bishop Caulfield and almost every other Catholic priest has condemned and damned the very name of the United Irishmen? It sickens me, Elizabeth. It sickens me that such knaves think themselves fit to even tread upon the soil of this land.
‘The people of Ireland, Elizabeth, be they Catholic, Protestant or dissenter, the people should be free. Free to shape her destiny, free to set her on her rightful path amongst the nations of the earth.’
Elizabeth’s finger, stiff and firm, placed against his lips, stemmed the flow of words. To Dan’s surprise she was gazing at him with an expression of fear and awe.
Her lips worked silently. Then she ran her tongue along them and whispered, ‘What you say is nigh on treason. You read too much of worldly things. Too much of this American polemic.’
Then she smiled and brushed her hand over his roughly chopped curls, ‘Or do I love a Frenchman?’
Her remark slipped past Dan before his mind could fully grasp the implications of her words. Then, like a slow dawn, his eyes grew wide and he said, ‘You love me?’
Elizabeth laughed and declared, ‘I do, Daniel Banville. I love you be you French, American or Chinaman. I love you dearly.’
Smiling, his face aglow with a warmth at odds with his natural pallor, Dan kissed her gently on the lips, ‘And I love you, Elizabeth Blakely. Though you be but an upstart planter.’
Elizabeth’s mouth sprang open in disbelief and she slapped him playfully on the shoulder, her eyes gazing into his and her smile mirroring his own.
Behind them the moon continued to rise, frosting everything with an eldritch gleam; each shoot of grass a drawn blade and every thorn a pike head.