1798

by Joe Murphy

  The Slieveboys loured above Carnew in a threatening swell like the dark mass of a gathering storm. Upon their lower slopes the lights of isolated farms glimmered with a pumpkin glow and the gentle breeze hissed and shivered through gorse and hedgerow. The town itself was mostly darkened at this late hour but here and there a flicker from a lamp or candle strove to hold back the night. On the streets nothing moved save for a lone black mongrel who limped pitifully down the length of the town’s main thoroughfare.

  Dan and Elizabeth approached Carnew along the narrow winding roads that netted this hilly part of the country.

  Since they had commenced their affair some eight months previously, Dan had demonstrated himself to be gentlemanly and attentive. And since Elizabeth’s father had grown suspicious and disapproving of him, Dan had avowed to always escort her home from whatever secret trysts they had arranged. Even if, like tonight, that meant that he would not see his bed until well after four in the morning. But to a young man borne on the heady surge of first love, fatigue is alien, the preserve of the old, like the spectre of death.

  As they rode they spoke to each other softly, even their lowered tones loud in the silence. It seemed as if the entire country was sleeping, not even the harsh scream of a fox jarred the tranquillity and, on that moonbright whip of roadway, to them it seemed as though the entire universe was theirs alone.

  They rode unhurriedly, neither anxious to arrive at the Blakely homestead on the outskirts of Carnew. This part of the county was sparsely populated and only infrequently did they notice the white bulk of a thatched cabin or see on a distant hill a yellow eye of winking lamplight. Eventually, however, Dan and Elizabeth began to find themselves passing through the more densely populated tracts and townlands bordering Carnew itself. As the number of cottages increased, Dan’s heart sagged in equal proportion. The solitude, the absence of prying eyes, the quiet dark of the Wexford countryside, these were his and Elizabeth’s confidantes, their unspeaking companions in all they had done since the springtime.

  On the outskirts of Carnew the road they travelled split in two, one branch heading into the town, the other swinging north. It was along this northern branch that Elizabeth’s father had set up his household and it was at this fork in the road that Dan reined his horse to a weary stop.

  Both young lovers sat their saddles in silence for a moment before Dan spat, ‘I hate this Elizabeth. This slinking about like thieves in the night. Every time we are forced to part like this it drives a spike into my heart.’

  Elizabeth’s expression was veiled by the darkness but her voice was strained. ‘Oh Daniel, father will relent. The country will come to its senses and when things return to how they should be, father will be sure to welcome you with all the affection he once did.’

  Looking at her in the moonlight, her face a petal against the black of the ditches, Dan stated, ‘I will marry you, Elizabeth and to hell with family and church and all.’

  Reaching out to him with one gloved hand, Elizabeth smiled. ‘I know my darling. And I shall marry you.’

  When the ditch rustled and a white figure spilled into the roadway, both Dan and Elizabeth almost tumbled from their saddles with fright. Their tender moment so rudely and unexpectedly shattered, Elizabeth stifled a scream and fought to control her startled mount while Dan hauled at his own horse’s reins and one hand flew reflexively to the hanging flap of his saddlebags.

  The figure before them sprawled on the packed earth of the road. It was wearing a rumpled, white muslin dress embroidered with buds and leaves and upon its head was a shapeless white bonnet. The figure looked up from where it lay and raising itself to its knees cried, ‘Oh, glory be to God! It’s you, Ms Blakely. I knew I heard your voice.’

  Elizabeth and Dan were looking down upon the wizened face of an old woman. Her eyes were wide and staring and every wrinkle of her flaccid skin was swilled with shadow. Her hands, shivering as though with an ague, feverishly made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Chrissie!’ gasped Elizabeth. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Why are you here?’

  Dan regarded the withered old woman before him. Taking in the dirt marring the hem of her dress, the tattered rent in one sleeve and the woman’s hysterical and terrified aspect, he concluded that any tale she might relate would be one of woe.

  Elizabeth dismounted and knelt in the dirt beside the old woman, clasping her quaking hands in her own. She addressed Dan briefly, ‘This is Chrissie. She is a maidservant to our family.’

  Then she asked the maid, ‘Chrissie, what has happened?’

  The touch of panic in Elizabeth’s voice brought Dan’s brows beetling down over his grey eyes and he found himself dreading the servant’s next words.

  She began in a voice as frail as her old body, ‘Oh, Ms Blakely, I’ve been looking for you for an hour. We could not discover you in the house. The women were let go free but you weren’t with us and we were so frightened.’

  She began to sob and her words became thick, ‘Thank Jesus that you’re safe. Your mother and your sister are with Mrs Barber and she sent me and Mary to look for you. I hid in the ditch at your approach, I thought you were more yeos come to murder me.’

  ‘‘More yeos’?’ said Dan.

  The woman nodded, ‘Oh, young sir, the Carnew Cavalry under Captain Wainwright came to poor Mr Blakely’s house and wanted to arrest John Mahon for being a rebel.’

  Elizabeth’s sharp intake of breath cut across her, ‘The scullery lad? Why, he’s just a boy.’

  ‘I know,’ continued Chrissie. ‘That’s what your father said and he wouldn’t hand him over. That’s when Captain Wainwright told all the womenfolk to leave. Oh, Ms Blakely, I’ve never been so frightened. My poor heart almost burst and nowhere could we find you.’

  Elizabeth grabbed hold of her shoulders then, rather more roughly than she intended. She could feel the old woman tremble in her grip and felt her bones, like bundles of kindling, under her dress. ‘You said mother is with Mrs Barber. What of my father? Chrissie, you must tell me of my father.’

  The maidservant was shaking her head now, her toothless mouth contorted in anguish, ‘Ah, my darling young mistress, I don’t know anything about what those devils have done to him. The last I seen of him he was standing at his door with a fowling piece in his arms daring the whole fifty of them to get past him.’

  Dan’s gaze swept the darkness in the direction of Elizabeth’s home and he said gravely, ‘I see no glow above the ditches, Elizabeth, so the yeos have not set fire to your home and we have heard no sound of shooting.’

  Fixing him with a blazing stare, Elizabeth hissed, ‘We must go to my house. I must see my father. I must see for myself that he is unhurt.’

  Dan, who had ridden with the Castletown Cavalry and who had seen the damage a sabre cut could do without the flash and smoke and, above all, the noise of a firelock, frowned down at her. He was about to suggest that she reconsider when the old woman wailed and flung her arms about her young mistress.

  ‘Ms Blakely, you cannot! The yeos will get you. Come with me to your mother and sisters. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’

  Elizabeth merely rose to her feet, dragging the sobbing scarecrow of a maid up with her. ‘Until I see my father alive in his own house I will go nowhere but onwards. Go to my mother. Tell her she shall find me at my own home, one way or the other. Give her and my sister my affections, Chrissie.’

  Then in a stern voice like the crack of splintering wood, she ordered, ‘Go!’

  Chrissie threw a disbelieving look at her mistress then she raised a high keen into the air and cried out, ‘The world’s gone mad! We shall be burying you tomorrow, Ms Blakely. Oh, God in heaven, my heart, my heart!’

  She tottered over to where Dan still sat his horse and pawed at his breeches, ‘God preserve you, young sir. Don’t allow her to do this. Take her up on this great strong horse and carry her to her mother. I beg you.’

  Dan opened his mouth to try and mollify the ol
d woman, when Elizabeth snapped at him in that same stern tone, ‘Do not attempt to hinder me, Daniel Banville. I am going to my father.’

  She stalked over to Chrissie, who shrank back from her as though expecting a blow, ‘You have been told, Chrissie. Go to my mother and tell her what my intentions are. Now be off! My mother is likely anxious for news.’

  Still wailing, the wrinkled maid gazed in abject horror at Elizabeth and then staggered off down the road to Carnew, screeching as she went, ‘They’ll all be killed and then what am I to do?’

  Elizabeth climbed back into her saddle and sat with an air of stubborn arrogance that somehow reminded Dan of his brother. She flashed him a quick glance and said, ‘I mean what I say, Daniel. Do not hinder me.’

  Dan nodded once, silently, and they both moved their horses forward at a trot. Elizabeth said flatly, ‘You do not have to accompany me but if he is dead, I shall require you to help me move him.’

  Dan was sunk in contemplation, chewing the inside of his lower lip as he had done since he was a child and, again, he nodded once, this time adding, ‘If he is dead and the yeos gone I shall help you. If he lives and the yeos remain, then I cannot enter your father’s yard at your side.’

  Elizabeth’s expression crumpled into a frown and her voice was breathless with disappointment, ‘Why do you say such things? Would you leave me to face them alone because my father disapproves of you?’

  Dan sighed. Ever since the old maidservant had appeared like a ghost from the roadside ditch, he had been struggling with his conscience. He loved this woman. Loved her more than anything in his life. It was the expression of betrayal branding her features that swayed him. That look of hurt and abandonment.

  ‘Your father’s disapproval of me matters not one whit, Elizabeth. I would not purchase his approval for the cost of a button.’

  Elizabeth looked like she had been slapped and began to splutter some halfformed retort but Dan’s next words silenced her. There was something in him now that she had never seen before, something commanding, something harsh, something brutal behind his eyes.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ he barked. ‘Let me finish. I have in my saddlebags a brace of pistols. From whom I gained them, and to what purpose I carry them, are my own affairs. But I promise you this, before a hair of your father’s head is touched by those bastards, at least two of them will be dead.’

  Stunned, Elizabeth gazed in amazement at the man before her, his closecropped hair and sideburns, his trusty with its cape-collar emphasising the broadness of his shoulders and his hands, always so gentle, now sworn to do murder on her behalf. She saw him metamorphose before her vision, stepping out of himself, so that he was no longer the son of a wealthy Catholic middleman and instead became something darker, something harder.

  Dan continued, ‘I shall leave the road before the avenue that leads to your home. I will tether my horse far enough away to ensure that the yeos don’t hear and then secrete myself somewhere close by.’

  Elizabeth’s expression was avid now, an alien excitement fluttering at her breast, ‘And what shall I do?’

  ‘You shall enter the yard at the front of your house and if your father still lives and if he still contends with the good Captain Wainwright you shall attempt to coerce the yeos into leaving. They might not be so eager to bully and intimidate in the presence of a well-known and respected Protestant lady. Do not be afraid. I will be watching and what one man can do unseen from the shadows may rival what fifty can do standing in the light.’

  Elizabeth’s gaze was frank and appraising and her tone was level as she said, ‘I do not believe you are telling me the truth whole and entire. Yet I assume that if you are not then you must have good reason for it. I trust you Daniel Banville but I will demand a full reckoning in time.’

  ‘Good,’ he replied curtly.

  Some minutes later, the moon revealed the entrance to the Blakely house’s avenue. All along its length, stately beeches loomed against the night sky and at its head, nestled in a knuckled fist of trees, sat the imposing home of Andrew Blakely and his family. Dan thought that, from out of the pitch mass of leafless branches and soaring trunks, came the soft orange flicker of torchlight.

  He turned to face Elizabeth, ‘I must leave you now for a brief while but do not fear. I’ll be no more than a stone’s throw away.’

  Not waiting for an answer, he kicked his horse’s sides and sent it pounding toward a low and thinly growing segment of ditch. With a great heave of muscle, the big foxhunter smashed over and through the foliage. Dan felt a brief whipping of branches against his legs and heard the splintering crash of his mount’s passage through the hedge and then he was staring into the wide expanse of open pasture that Andrew Blakely had cleared around his home.

  Heeling his mount into a canter, Dan set off up the field and was roughly halfway to the Blakely home when Elizabeth turned onto the avenue. In the dark Dan could barely see her form as it passed like a shadow beneath the skeletal arch of the beech trees’ boughs.

  As his horse moved softly, silently, across the gentle slopes of the grassy pasture, Dan, for the tenth time since its inception, dissected the Spartan details of his rough-hewn scheme.

  He had extended his lead on Elizabeth. He was urging his mount on, pushing it up the slope whilst she was bravely keeping both her emotions and her own animal in check. She did not want to spur, clattering and snorting, into a mass of armed men. One surprised finger on a loosely sprung trigger might spell disaster. So she continued her stately progress along her father’s avenue, her jaw clenched and every fibre in her body straining with the effort of self-control.

  In a minute Dan had reached the dense hedge that cordoned the house and had tied his horse’s reins to a young ash tree sprouting from an explosion of gorse. He was some three hundred yards away and from this point he could clearly discern the wavering sparks of the yeo’s torches guttering through the trees. Carried on the breeze the jarring sound of upraised voices stabbed his guts with urgency.

  Calmly, but with dextrous speed, Dan pulled his twin pistols from his saddlebags, then loaded and primed them. The acrid smell of the powder was merely a faint presage of the sulphurous stink that arose when the flints struck steel but even at this Dan wrinkled his nose. In spite of his deadly eye and matchless accuracy, Dan had never been fully at ease with guns and their lethal potential in his hands.

  He tucked the pistols into his waistband and set off towards the house, his movements precise and deft, a hound on a scent. As he moved, he heard the voices drifting through the dark grow in volume and a raucous laugh tore the quiet around him. At this laugh Dan felt a slight relaxation of the trepidation that had been expanding in his chest like some poisonous bubble. The laugh carried with it none of the rust-edged derision that might suggest some brutality being done in the gusting light of the torches. Instead it was almost comradely, as though a jest had been made, one which raised a communal roar of laughter.

  As Dan reached the band of ancient beech trees which mantled the Blakely house and its outbuildings, he doubled over into a crouching run. So far he had been cautious, wary that the yeomanry might have set pickets in place to guard their actions. It was with grim satisfaction that he discovered no watch had been placed against unwanted intrusion. To Dan, it appeared that the yeomen were so confident in their position, and in their assumption that their very presence would cow the population, that they had abandoned whatever military instincts they might have once possessed.

  Dan slipped through the stand of beech, flitting from tree to tree, his rustling steps masked by the creaking of branch and bole and the gentle soughing of the breeze. As the torchlight grew brighter, he paused for a moment, his big frame huddled into an expanse of fern and nettle. Soundlessly, he drew both his pistols and, using a fold of his trusty to muffle the snap of their mechanisms, he cocked both weapons.

  Around him the foliage hissed and rippled and exhaled its rough pungency to catch at his throat and fill the cavities of his sk
ull with an impression of damp vitality. The surrounding undergrowth foamed and lapped up to the base of a stable flanking the Blakely dooryard and then flowed away to either side. The stable itself was a cold black hulk in front of him, its angled slate roof a testament to the wealth of Andrew Blakely. From around the corners of the building the voices of the yeomen rolled and tumbled, their good spirits apparent and their lack of caution total.

  Like a pike through river weed, Dan slid through the ferns and nettles and placed his back against the cold and jagged stonework of the stable wall. Here he was in almost total darkness, yet he sidled to his right with all the poise and surety of a man taking an afternoon stroll. His breathing was coming quicker now and he was aware of the rapid drumming of his heart beneath his ribs. Unconsciously his fingers tightened their grip on the walnut stocks of his pistols and with a deep breath he slunk around the corner of the stable and, striving to remain in shadow as much as possible, he hunkered down and surveyed the scene being played out in the dooryard.

  The avenue leading to the house entered to Dan’s right, opening out into an almost circular expanse of flat, caked earth. Around the perimeter of this open space, stone-built sheds and stables squatted, grey and silent. The glowering two-storey mansion stood directly opposite where the avenue entered the yard, its myriad windows staring sightlessly onto the space below. At this moment the yard was awash with torchlight that illuminated a troop of perhaps twenty yeomen. The old maid, thought Dan, had exaggerated. Ten of these fellows held flaming brands aloft or had jammed them drunkenly into the hard earth. The majority of the yeos had dismounted and although the fire’s light made demon masks of their features, to Dan’s surprise, it appeared as though they were enjoying themselves.

  The yeos had doffed their helmets and some had slung their swords on the pommels of their saddles. In their hands, to a man, they held a glass or mug or cup brimming with what Dan assumed could only be whiskey or brandy. Wending between the dark blue of the uniforms, a middle-aged serving man hastened hither and thither with a large earthenware jug. The look of terror wrenching his features out of shape was unmistakable as a brand. Frowning, Dan sought out Andrew Blakely amongst the uniforms and found him almost immediately.