1798

by Joe Murphy

  ‘Daniel!’ snapped his mother. ‘What a terrible thing to say. Your brother, I’m sure, is as abstemious as you and your father.’

  Tom looked at his father, expecting the old man to make some comment or at least to respond in some form or order. Laurence Banville, however, gave no sign, made no act of acknowledgement, to hint that he knew Tom had even entered the room. He simply remained, his silvered head stooped over his plate, his jaw working quickly and mechanically like a bull’s.

  Betraying an uncharacteristic air of fluster, Mrs Banville gestured to the empty chair beside her, ‘Sit down, Tom. You’ll be having something to eat of course.’

  Tom moved around the table and seated himself next to his mother. His limbs felt stiff and unaccountably tired as he eased himself down onto the highbacked chair and set about buttering a slice of brown bread, which he plucked from a pewter platter in the centre of the table.

  Dan watched him as he smeared the butter evenly over the bread, bit into it and chewed laboriously, as though every drop of moisture had evaporated from his throat. And as Tom tongued what felt like wood shavings and ashes around the arid chamber of his mouth, he saw Dan grin at him across the table.

  Tom felt like hitting him.

  His father’s voice startled him when it came, unexpected and rasping.

  Without raising his head, without meeting his son’s gaze, the old man growled around a spoonful of meal and gravy, ‘Pat Doyle was taken off and pitchcapped there yesterday.’

  A heavy silence enveloped the table. All three men had stopped eating. Only Mary Banville continued as though she had heard nothing. The clink and scrape of her spoon against her plate was brittle and grating in the abrupt quiet.

  ‘Who did it?’ Dan asked.

  Still not looking up, cutlery poised in his fists, Laurence Banville replied, ‘The North Corks. The bastards. God’s curse on every mother’s son of them.’

  Then his gaze finally lifted and the opaque blue of his eyes sought out those of his youngest son, ‘It’s said the brave boys of the yeomanry then set his house afire. Let your mind imagine that.’

  The great billow of silence rolled back once more and only the relentless rattle and scrape of Mary Banville’s plate and spoon broke through the folds of tension.

  Tom sat voiceless as his conscience was held transfixed by the conflicting winds of crossed purposes, unsure of what to say or even how to say it. He had known Pat Doyle nearly all his life. The man was a fine hurler and had often been invited to play on old Caesar Colclough’s teams down at Duffry Hall. To hear that he was taken by the North Corks knifed something cold deep into his chest. And yet, for as long as he had known Pat Doyle, he had known a man prone to brawling, to making incendiary speeches, to aggravating strife between tenant and landlord.

  It was his father’s challenging stare that finally tipped the balance.

  Returning his expression, Tom said, ‘Da, Pat Doyle’s a troublemaker and malcontent. A rabble-rouser. Always has been.’

  Laurence Banville’s eyebrows rose in twin arches of bristling outrage, and across the table Dan’s mouth was an empty O of astonishment.

  With flushed cheeks and tears in her eyes, Tom’s mother turned sharply towards him. In a voice unnaturally calm for all her obvious distress she said, ‘Pray tell, Tom, what is your opinion of Murt Cody, over in Monaseed?’

  Both Tom and Dan’s features clouded identically. For a moment they were almost twins rather that younger and elder brother.

  It was Dan who first coaxed his feelings into words. ‘Ma,’ he began, ‘what happened to Murt?’

  To their surprise it was Laurence who answered in a voice that bubbled with venom.

  ‘Those stout fellows of the Gorey cavalry emptied their carbines into him in front of his wife and children.’

  Tom felt something curdle inside of him and when Dan slammed his fist into the table, his face a furnace of rage, Tom didn’t even flinch. He sat waxen and unmoving as Dan thundered, ‘Four days of martial law now Tom. Four days of house burnings and judicial torture. White and Gowan rampant. Are you to become an apologist for tyranny?’

  Tom was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. His chair tumbled backward and clattered to the floor and his right fist stabbed a shaking finger at his brother.

  ‘That’s right, Dan,’ he roared. ‘You sit here at our fine table in our fine house and you bluster in outrage at the fate of peasants and tenants. If their treatment is so terrible, then grant them sanctuary in the comfort of your own bed. Let them sup from your ample plate. Tyranny? Is that what you call it, Dan? If it were not for that ‘tyranny’ which you so bridle against, we would not be sitting in this house. What you call tyranny others call law.’

  Tom was aware of his mother’s shocked gasp, aware of his brother’s face as it blanched from angry red to white. It was upon his father, however, that his words had wrought their most dramatic effect.

  Laurence Banville was half-risen from his chair at the head of the table. His aged eyes bulged in their sockets and the veins of his neck and temples were wormed beneath his skin.

  The gentle, intruding cough of Mrs Prendergast petrified the family into tableau.

  The old servant was lost for words. She blinked her eyes and her lips worked mutely for a moment until Laurence Banville erupted like a cannon, ‘What the hell is it you want?’

  Mrs Prendergast squealed in shock and grasped the jamb of the doorway in which she stood for support. In thirty years of service Laurence Banville had never before raised his voice to her. Involuntarily her right hand came up to bless herself and her voice came warm and wet, ‘Please, your honour, Lieutenant Esmonde is out in the yard. He wants a word with the young sir.’

  Without looking at Tom, Laurence answered, ‘A word? Tell the blackguard he may have a whole library of words. My son has naught else to say here.’

  Tom’s anger was still too fevered to allow him to be hurt by his father’s dismissal. Dan’s gaze weighed heavily upon him but, ignoring it, he turned to his mother and said, ‘Good day to you, Ma.’ He spun on his heel and marched out of the room. Mrs Prendergast fled before him, a leaf before a storm.

  Behind him, Dan’s eyes followed his departure, their solemn grey tinged with anguish rather than anger. He sat, robbed of voice and thought by his brother’s words; sat and watched as his father began to silently eat his breakfast once more, his wrath palpable; sat as his mother’s eyes began to seep forth their tears and in her chest the first sobs began to clot her breathing.

  Lieutenant Esmonde was waiting for Tom outside the front door. He was dressed in his coloureds rather than his uniform and his finely cut frock coat was only a little stained from the dust of his travels. As Tom came down the hallway the lieutenant touched the front peak of his gentleman’s tricorn.

  ‘Good morning to you, sir,’ said the lieutenant as Tom came to a halt on the threshold.

  ‘And the same to you, Lieutenant,’ replied Tom.

  To Tom, the officer appeared far more pallid than when they had last spoken. Although only thirty, Lieutenant Esmonde seemed to have caved into himself. Wan folds of flesh creased around his eyes and his lips were chapped and peeling. Even his cheeks were sunken. It was as though the man were slumping into an awful premature decay.

  Looking at the cadaver before him, Tom was certain that Sir Thomas Esmonde had come to bring news of his court martial. In that instant a hot gust of anger flamed within him. He imagined that his father and brother were laughing like jackals.

  Sick to his stomach from something far more bitter than the after-effects of drink, Tom asked, ‘What brings you here Lieutenant? Surely you bring with you news of my disciplinary charges. What has Captain Knox Grogan resolved?’

  Esmonde sighed in response and raised his arms to form some halfconceived gesture but then dropped them. They hung at his sides, like weighted chains.

  In a voice every bit as tired as he looked, he began, ‘This does not sit well with me, Banvill
e. In fact,’ he added, ‘I am quite put out. Quite put out. But the fact remains that circumstance necessitates the reinstating of your name on the roll of the Castletown Corps of Yeoman Cavalry.’

  Surprised by this unexpected turn of events, Tom spluttered, ‘My name reinstated? Returned to the roll? What events would compel your honours to disregard my father’s admittedly heinous actions?’

  At these words some bright fleck of their old steel entered the lieutenant’s eyes, ‘Do not saddle your father with the entirety of blame. It was you who drew your sword on your fellow soldiers. It is not something I shall easily forget.

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Esmonde continued, ‘there have been a number of absences during the past week. The imposition of martial law delivered unto us a great many onerous responsibilities. Some of less stalwart disposition would rather abandon the country to insurrection than enforce the will of our rightful government.’

  Tom eyed the lieutenant with the shrewd appraisal of a horse trader. ‘Defections or desertions, Lieutenant?’

  Esmonde’s lips cracked as he smiled coldly, ‘You’re a bright one, Banville. In that, at least, you take after your father.’ He paused before continuing, ‘Some have gone into hiding and so are presumed to be in league with whatever rebel agents there are in this district. Others have resigned their posts, being too delicate for the rough matter of restoring order. Those that are left are both zealous and brave.’

  Tom frowned, ‘Yet you wish to unreservedly admit an unapologetic Papist back into your ranks?’

  His eyes still glinting, Esmonde said, ‘Not unreservedly, Banville. There are some who hold your family high in their suspicions. However, and this is the marrow of things, there are more who hold your family high in their esteem. Through your intervention you might be able to avoid some of the more unpleasant aspects of the duty that we have lately been forced to perform.’

  Tom’s mouth twisted wryly, ‘You wish me to persuade people, by dint of my name and my religion, to give up their arms?’

  The lieutenant nodded, ‘Indeed that is the bare bones of it. Young Lieutenant Bookey and the Camolin Cavalry are gathering pikes and handing out protections by the dozen. He is having considerably less trouble than many other corps. His is an example worthy of emulation. Thomas Knox Grogan is a reasonable man and is fervent in his desire to maintain both the law and his reputation as an able magistrate.’

  Tom nodded, almost to himself, as though resolving some inner argument, ‘Then, Oath or not, you will grant me re-admittance to the corps and my family and its interests will remain protected by my demonstrated loyalty?’

  ‘Oath or not,’ said Esmonde.

  In his mind, Tom could imagine his family’s dissatisfaction. He could hear his father’s excoriating comments – or, worse still, feel the blistering cold of his silence. He could hear Dan’s intellectual apoplexy and see his mother regarding him with her heavy, sad eyes, her gaze plumbing his depths, sounding the dark hollow of his soul.

  ‘What would you have me do?’ he asked.

  Esmonde, moment by moment, seemed to be recovering some of his former vigour, yet in his eyes and in the slight curl of his lips he betrayed his abiding disdain for the young man before him. Unconsciously he rubbed his hands together in a manner Tom found unctuous and distasteful and said, ‘There’s to be a bit of a to-do tonight and the corps has need of your arm, your name and your presence.’

  Tom looked at him quizzically, ‘A ‘to-do’?’

  Esmonde observed him warily and each word that came from his mouth was now weighed and measured, his eyes gauging their effect, ‘We have been requested to augment a detachment of North Corks. They are an infantry regiment and as such have no cavalry. Their Colonel Foote is in some anxiety as to the state of the countryside.’

  Tom laughed sourly. ‘The state of the countryside has not been helped by that particular regiment’s activities. Don’t you think, Lieutenant?’

  If half of what he had heard about the red-coated infantry was true, then every member of their ranks openly wore Orange insignia while their officers wore the sash even beyond the doors of their Lodge. The coming of the North Corks had roughly coincided with the establishment of three other civilian Orange Lodges in the north of the county. The coming of the North Corks had brought the pitchcap and terror. Now, every day, Tom found himself more and more in agreement with Richard Proctor. His home, his people, were drifting into disparate camps, the one repellent to the very idea of the other. Tom found himself contemplating the grim vista of two traditions that would rather hurl themselves into oblivion than remain shackled to each other in claustrophobic rancour.

  His county was falling apart.

  Tom asked, ‘Augment them while they undertake what action, Lieutenant?’

  ‘A raid down near Kilanerin. It seems some stubborn souls are refusing to surrender arms. I believe they do not trust the government’s protections. No more than a pike in the thatch I’d wager but with the countryside in such a state of agitation every magistrate in the county is urging caution.’

  Tom sighed and raked his fingers through his still-wet hair, tangled from his night’s revelry.

  He answered, ‘I shall come, Lieutenant. But I warn you, I’ll not be party to the excesses of those Cork bastards.’

  Esmonde nodded once, sharply. ‘I shall re-roll you on the instant, Banville, with all the attendant rights and privileges of a loyal servant of the King. We marshal in Castletown at seven.’

  Neither saluting nor offering a word of farewell, Lieutenant Esmonde mounted the slab-sided white hunter that stood placidly in the dooryard and trotted off.

  Standing in the empty doorway, Tom Banville lifted his face to heaven and closed his eyes. The warmth of the sun draped itself in kindly folds over his features, his cheeks, his damp forehead. And in the darkness behind his eyelids, in that blank solitude of doubt and silence, Tom Banville prayed he was doing the right thing. Before him, in the yard of the place he sought to protect, a blackbird trilled in bright alarm. Behind him, from the house of his father, came only a smothering silence.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Rule of Law

  Above Mount Leinster the plummeting sun was cradled in the russet gush of its own dying. Dusk emerged like a grey mist from under stones and the tangle of tree roots and ditches.

  Castletown’s main street was neither as large nor as urbanised as Gorey’s. It consisted mainly of two rows of opposing cabins, all whitewashed and thatched, most with two dark windows staring across the road. Towards the northern edge of the village the street bellied out into a small marketplace before narrowing and crumbling away into a countryside of gorse and long grass. This slightly wider marketplace was flanked along one side by the only slated building in the whole village, a large forge whose heat and light spilled out onto the hard earth of the street. At its door a heavy man in a leather apron looked out, arms folded and face bitter.

  In front of this building, a detachment of thirty North Cork Militia stood in two ranks of fifteen. Their red coats glowed in the failing light and the white of their pipeclayed crossbelts was dyed a burning rose from the glow of the forge. At their sides long muskets were held upright and their faces bore expressions ranging from boredom and impatience to casual good humour. Above the black bicorns worn on their heads, floating over the roofs of the cabins and rasping like autumn leaves in the breeze, the muttered argument of officers could be heard.

  Some yards behind the two ranks of infantry, Lieutenant Esmonde sat his saddle and listened while Lieutenant Musgrave of the North Corks vented his ire.

  ‘Twelve horse? You bring a grand total of twelve horse? This is an outrage, Sir Thomas.’

  At the head of a group of twelve yeoman cavalry, Esmonde observed Musgrave’s purple features, his jowls rippling beneath his sideburns, his forehead lined with fury beneath the peak of the cocked hat worn fore-and-aft upon his head. He stated calmly, ‘I bring twelve horse Lieutenant, because twelve horse is all I
have. One cannot simply conjure men and animals from the stuff of imagination.’

  The infantry officer, sitting his own horse, spat on the ground and with difficulty kept his voice from rising above a snarling undertone, ‘The pertinent matter is why you cannot bring more than twelve. Where have all your men gone?’

  Esmonde allowed the lilting yaw of the Corkman to fall into silence and said, ‘I was confident up until this moment that the corps had retained its unity in the face of the present strife. But since the proclamation of the county there have been a number of Catholic resignations. Captain Knox Grogan is much put out by this turn of events.’

  ‘And so he should be,’ railed Musgrave. ‘You bloody yeos are as artful and deceiving as the lowest croppy and as inconstant as any blasted Papist.’

  Esmonde’s face was again tired, his skin slack but at these words his jaw clenched and he hissed, ‘I would have you know that Doyle over there, Banville beside him and I, Lieutenant, are all Papists. Do you question our loyalty? Do you dare question mine?’

  Musgrave was visibly taken aback by this and his next words were devoid of aggression.

  ‘I apologise, Sir Thomas, but Captain Knox Grogan must then recruit from his Protestant tenants to replenish the ranks. To have a shortage of mounted troops would be disastrous in such a climate of insurrection.’

  ‘There will be no insurrection, Lieutenant,’ countered Esmonde. ‘None whatsoever, so long as arms are collected and troublemakers interred. And if thirty soldiers and twelve cavalry cannot affect a search of the peasantry in absolute safety then I myself shall resign. We are the King’s troops, Lieutenant, and this is Ireland, not France.’

  Behind Esmonde his small corps of cavalry slumped over their saddle horns and strained to listen to the argument of the officers.

  ‘That Cork officer, for a gentleman he is queerly difficult to understand,’ whispered Richard Proctor.