by Joe Murphy
Still without a word and still without even acknowledging his brother’s presence, Tom made his way straight to his father’s study, with Dan trailing in his wake like a scolded dog. Without hesitation, Tom went to a large cabinet standing in one shadow-shrouded corner and, opening it, extracted a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Then, still as mute and seemingly deaf as lead, he stepped over the paper lying on the floor, pushed past his brother and stepped into the hallway beyond.
He was about to mount the staircase when Dan, exasperated, finally gripped him by the collar of his jacket and spun him round. The candles cast them both in its halo of illumination and the whiskey sloshed and gurgled in its bottle as Tom pivoted with one foot upon the wooden steps. He stared into Dan’s face as his brother’s voice rumbled, ‘I would hear of your actions this night from your own lips, Tom, before I hear them magnified by the wailing of the tenants.
‘What did you do?’
Tom remained silent for a moment, his chalky features blank, and exhaled in a bitter expression of self-contempt, ‘I did nothing, Dan. Nothing.’
With that he wrenched himself free and lurched up the stairs. Behind him, Dan stood in the dark, confusion and worry marring his brow, and his arms hanging at his sides. On the stairs, moving in a ball of light, Tom felt his stomach heave in disgust and in his head a single thought convulsed, sour and malignant.
The truth was just that. He had done nothing.
Nothing.
CHAPTER 5
Revelations
Eighteen days later and Tom Banville had not surfaced from beneath a wave of alcohol and self-reproach. His father, it seemed, had decided to behave as though his youngest son no longer existed, whilst his mother’s headaches grew in frequency and severity as she struggled to hold together the unravelling fabric of her family. Dan Banville, a frown now permanently creasing his brow, had neither sympathy nor understanding for his younger brother.
News of the North Corks’ raid had reached the parishes around Kilanerin the morning after it took place. Word of Paddy Cullen’s death and the yeomanry’s role in it spilled from the tongues of the people; everywhere it entered a new ear it grew in virulence. And this was not the only outrage. Under martial law, Wexford was becoming a butcher’s slab, slick and impregnate with blood.
On the morning of the 18th of May, Dan knocked on his brother’s bedroom door as he had done each morning for seventeen days. And, just as every other morning, not a sound was made in response. Dan stood for a moment and shook his head. His right hand hovered over the door’s latch, almost, but not quite, touching it. Then, with a muttered curse, he turned on his heel and walked briskly away.
His father and mother had left just after dawn, rattling down the road with the horse and buggy, the reins held loosely in his father’s veiny hands. They had gone to the funeral of an old acquaintance of Laurence’s who had died of a burst heart as the yeos raided his cottage. However, the absence of his parents and Tom’s continued self-imposed hermitage suited Dan perfectly on this particular day.
He had not seen Elizabeth for nearly a month. Since before the declaration of martial law, in fact, and even the frequent letters they exchanged were not enough. He had resolved to meet her and in her letters she had fervently expressed the same.
They had arranged to meet that afternoon in Newtownbarry, a tryst that would require Dan to travel almost the entire width of the county but he did not mind one whit. Even with soldiers rampaging and intimidating throughout the countryside, he desperately needed to speak to her. He had found no way in the last four weeks to write anything more than platitudes and meaningless commonplaces. Even now he could not fathom a way in which to express what he needed to tell her.
He could not fathom how to break her heart.
He passed through the empty house and, avoiding the dairy where Mrs Prendergast scrubbed and sang snatches of folk songs, left by a side door opening out onto the kennels. At the sound of the door closing the harriers commenced a low, yipping chorus of barks and whines. Since the military had seized the county in its armoured fist, a Catholic seen riding with hounds was liable to attract a hail of hot lead. So for the last few weeks the dogs had remained locked away. Confined to their kennels, the animals were frantic for the open fields and treated anyone who passed by as a potential liberator. As Dan strode past the low, green-painted kennel doors, the wet noses of the hounds could be seen protruding from the gap between wood and ground, snuffling and snorting in the dust.
Dan entered the stables, saddled the roan foxhunter and walked him out into the morning light. As he rounded the corner of the farmhouse he almost barged into the unexpected and puffing form of Mrs Prendergast, who was barrelling along in the opposite direction, her arms laden with a basket of washing. The old woman was about to ask where he was going so early in the morning, and whether he intended to be gone long, but the dour look on Dan’s face stopped her. He passed her by without saying a word, mounted his horse and trotted off into the patchwork countryside.
Mrs Prendergast watched him go and, under her breath, muttered, ‘God keep you from those murdering bastards, young Master Banville.’
It took Dan three hours of hard riding to reach the outskirts of Newtownbarry. On the way he had come across several blackened husks of houses but fortunately managed to avoid any encounters with the arsonists. Even in passing though, the charred and crackling remains were dreadful to behold. Walls and thatch were often collapsed into a single smouldering jumble but, strangely, Dan found the most heart-wrenching were the cabins whose walls and roofs had not been fully consumed. These stood or leaned obscenely, their whitewash stained with dark fans of soot and their chimneys jabbing crookedly at the blue skies above.
These half-obliterated carcasses nudged his mind into thoughts of mortality. With their heat-warped timbers exposed and visible through the crumbling flesh of thatch and mortar, Dan found himself thinking of lambs savaged by dogs, their fleeces rent and their ribcages empty and broken.
At each of these ruined cottages a little crowd of people had gathered. The women comforting children whose tears streaked the ash that masked their faces, while the men used pitchforks and billhooks to sift through the glowing charcoal of their shattered lives.
Dan passed these desperate scenes in silence. As he passed, hard stares followed and callused hands tightened on the handles of half a dozen forks and scythes. To some he was Dan Banville, the former yeo, and their ire burned from their eyes. To others he was simply a rich man up on a big horse. To all he was an unwelcome guest.
Newtownbarry was a busy little town sprouting up on the Carlow border. From its elongated market square, the road to Kildare and Queen’s County skirted the Blackstairs and twisted off into the midlands. As Dan entered the town from the road leading in from Clohamon, the first thing he noticed was the blue, white and red bunting hanging from several windows. It seemed as though a few good citizens of Newtownbarry were eager to convey their unwavering loyalty to the Crown.
The next thing he noticed was Elizabeth Blakely, standing by the corner of a slate-roofed market house, her mahogany hair held up under a straw sunbonnet. She wore a high-waisted white dress embroidered with green leaves and flowering buds. At the sight of her, Dan’s resolve almost failed him.
Taking a deep breath, he heeled his mount onward. Through a fog of despair he crossed the hard earth of the street.
Elizabeth, he thought, I am so, so sorry.
When he was halfway across the town’s main street, Elizabeth caught sight of him and with a gut-wrenching smile she hurried over to intercept him. Dan dismounted and kissed the hand she demurely offered. To kiss her, even on the hand, in such a public place might be commented upon and word would surely reach her father in Carnew.
She smiled at him as they walked Dan’s horse over to the hitching rail running along one side of the market house. He tried to smile back but the sour feeling snaking along his nerves would not allow it, and his expression remained stolid a
nd wan.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ asked Elizabeth.
Dan finished knotting his horse’s reins to the rough timber of the hitching rail and said nothing.
Seeing her like this, so close and so warm, her eyes growing more and more concerned under creasing brows, Dan felt himself rudderless. He cursed necessity and damned the day he had first laid eyes upon her. Frozen, petrified by the gorgon’s stare of the inevitable, he returned Elizabeth’s stricken gaze with his own.
In a million years she would never understand.
At last, he offered her his arm and muttered, ‘Would you walk with me, Elizabeth?’
Perturbed, she answered, ‘Of course, my love.’
They turned down the street and went left up the little bohreen leading off to Clonegal. Chestnut trees arched over the road, the breeze rustling the first few broken-wristed bundles of leaves that spread themselves under the May skies. The young couple walked silently, neither seeking to intrude upon the quiet. In the distance the clatter and industry of Newtownbarry gradually faded to a subtle undertone beneath the lullaby of the whispering breeze.
Eventually Elizabeth could take no more and suddenly spun him about, snapping, ‘What ails you Daniel? You are as melancholic as a widow.’
‘Elizabeth—’ he began. His tongue felt like a ball of wool in his mouth and his throat closed in rebellion.
‘Daniel,’ Elizabeth breathed softly, drawing him to where a low dry stone wall bordered the roadway. He let himself be guided by her, a ghost ship towed by a swan.
‘Daniel,’ she urged again, ‘whatever it is that burdens you so, I sorely wish you would tell me. How am I to help you if you will not let me?’
Leaning his back against the uneven, moss-cushioned stonework of the wall, Dan regarded her with the anguish and hopelessness of a drowning man. Then, shaking his head, he said in a choked voice, ‘Elizabeth, I do not think it fit that we continue as we are.’
Elizabeth, who had been grasping his right hand tightly in both of hers, abruptly let go and took a quick step away from him.
‘What did you say?’
Dan could not raise his eyes to meet hers, and directed his words to the rumpled grass verge at his feet. ‘I could not write to you for I could not find the proper words to put down and now, when I see you, I find my mouth is filled with stones.
‘I am so very sorry, Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth stood then, with her fists planted on her hips and eyed her companion from under cocked brows. ‘You mean to tell me,’ she began in a voice fizzing with scepticism, ‘that you have come all this way to cast me aside as though I were a rag used to clean your boots?’
Dan’s voice was strained as he beseeched, ‘Elizabeth, please don’t.’
Elizabeth’s head tilted to one side and she drew a long breath to speak. Dan was expecting a tirade, tears even, but instead she said, ‘What are you up to, Daniel Banville?’
Elizabeth’s foot tapped an impatient tattoo on the road and she probed, ‘Well?’
Frustrated and floundering in the mire of his own mind, Dan frowned and sighed, ‘Elizabeth, you cannot comprehend.’
Before he had a chance to elaborate further, the young woman in front of him exploded.
‘Rubbish! Do not dare to patronise me, Mr Banville. You stand here and you sigh and you blow like a leaky bellows and you have the gall to treat me so shabbily. How dare you!’
Her voice mounting like a thunderhead, she continued, ‘If you think I am some limp lily ready to wilt at any extremity then you are mistaken. I have stood by you against my father and against the advice of all my friends. I have met you secretly at great personal risk and now, from some obscure sentiment, you seek to push me away?
‘Look at yourself!’ she snapped. ‘You can barely stand let alone force weasel words and falsehoods from that mouth of yours. You cannot deny me. You cannot deny us.
‘And so I say again – what are you up to Daniel Banville?’
Dan at last met her gaze and the agony in his face made her recoil. His breath came in quick gusts and his hands gripped the stones of the wall against which he stood.
‘‘Deny you’?’ he asked. ‘I thought I could but now I find I cannot. You have robbed me of the only course of action that may have afforded you some measure of safety.
‘Leave me, Elizabeth. For the love of God, leave me and go back to your father’s house.’
She stepped toward him, hands reaching for the wide, trembling mass of his shoulders.
‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘What could make you say such things? Daniel, why are you so frightened?’
As his doleful eyes lifted to meet hers, his attention was pricked by a sound that had existed on the fringes of his awareness for some minutes but which only now had grown sufficiently intrusive to jerk his focus away from Elizabeth. Beneath the rippling of leaves, a bass rumble slowly mounted.
Down the road from Clonegal, white crossbelts vivid against deep blue jackets, a cavalry detachment was galloping their way.
Dan watched them for a moment, his eyes suddenly wary.
‘The Ancient Britons,’ he growled.
The cavalry pounded closer, their tack jangling and the wet, blowing of their horses loud above the hoofbeats. As they drew nearer, Dan pushed himself away from the wall and curled his left arm about Elizabeth’s waist.
Without slowing, the horsemen of The Ancient Britons rattled past the young couple, one or two of the soldiers openly leering down at Elizabeth. Close to her ear, the stubble of Dan’s jaw scraped against his collar as his head swivelled to watch the cavalry as they clattered into Newtownbary.
‘God help whoever they’re after,’ said Elizabeth.
Dan nodded and growled, ‘If the French should land it would cut the legs from under their high horses.’
‘Daniel,’ Elizabeth began. ‘If you know anything of approaching trouble you should inform the magistrates. Collection of arms is underway everywhere. I am not so blind as you think, my love. Please, please, do not put yourself in harm’s way.’
Dan frowned, his arm still wrapped around her hips, and meeting her gaze he said, ‘I do not think you blind, Elizabeth. I could never think anything ill of you. Do not worry. I know nothing of approaching trouble any more than I can predict the weather. I no more wish to be in harm’s way than the next man.
‘Yet you must understand that being with me like this places you in an unenviable position. I am the son of an outspoken Catholic. I would not see you or your family persecuted for your association with me.’
She looked at him stonily, her brows lowering, ‘It is my opinion that you have as much to fear in your association with me as I have in my association with you. The peasants all around Carnew have taken to sleeping in the fields to avoid the nocturnal visits of the yeomanry. How would your father and your friends consider your consorting with a moneyed Protestant?’
‘Let them go hang.’
The vehemence in his voice, the sincerity, was absent. His tone was colourless. For the first time since she had met him, Elizabeth doubted her young farmer’s son. Not his truthfulness, but his motives.
It was this that prompted her to step away from him and ask, ‘If trouble comes, Daniel, if trouble comes and you have to choose between me and someone, something, else, what would you do?’
Shaking his head, his voice came strangled and agonised as if wrenched from some tortured part of him, ‘I would choose you, Elizabeth.’
This was the truth, whole and unvarnished and the reality of that truth made something curdle inside of him. Above family, above friends, above church, he would stand with the young lady before him.
Elizabeth heard the truth in his words. She heard the truth and perceived the determination of his bearing. In saying those words, her lover had almost torn himself in two.
And for an instant she hated him for it and hated herself for forcing him to say it.
‘Elizabeth,’ groaned Dan. ‘We cannot go on. Not like t
his.’
‘I love you Daniel. I pledged myself to you in the private chambers of my heart a million times over,’ she replied.
Dan nodded, a crater, tattered and raw, yawning in his heart. ‘And I to you. But private passion would make carrion of us both in the eyes of our people.’
Elizabeth’s eyes travelled over him as she murmured, ‘We could elope.’
The bitterness in his laugh was poison in her ears. He shook his head, ‘Penniless and friendless? We’d make quite the dashing couple.’
Her hands lifted then and she rested them against his chest. The first glimmer of coming tears flashed in her eyes until she blinked them away and asked hoarsely, ‘What do you propose? What solution? For I will not allow you to make such overtures as you have made and then dash it all to ruins. Please say that you are up to something Daniel. Please.’
Dan grasped her wrists in his rough hands and moved her gently from him, his actions at odds with his desires. The words that came from his mouth spilled like coal from a chute.
‘You and I have sneaked about and stolen kisses like poachers in fog. Now even that has grown too perilous. Things are changing, Elizabeth. For two such as us, this state of affairs might very well prove hurtful and ruinous to our families. Until the military is reined in, until a semblance of order is restored or a new order supplants the old, our love is a seed fallen on barren ground.’
‘That is a hard thing to say, Daniel. Hard and cruel.’
Dan looked at her. ‘It is the truth. The only way to preserve you from harm is to send you home. You must not have any association with me until after this has run its course and the country is less frenzied.’
‘This is your solution?’ she asked drily. ‘You seek to send me away from you because of the danger we place ourselves in?
‘For my part I would willingly brave ten times the dangers posed by the likes of the good Captain Wainwright. I did not expect to hear such womanish sentiments from you, of all people.’