1798

by Joe Murphy

The edge to Dan’s voice was unmistakable, ‘I am no coward madam and I would call out any man who should dare suggest such a thing. How dare you.’

  ‘How dare I?’ she spat. ‘I dare because I do not believe you in every part of what you profess.’

  Dan’s brows beetled further and his mouth worked with the beginnings of protest but she cut him short.

  ‘I do believe you wish to keep me safe and I do believe you consider the surest way to achieve this is to send me from you. What I do not believe is that you care tuppence about what either your or my family think and I believe you care even less for the military. I do not call you a coward for fearing steel or shot. I call you a coward for not trusting me enough to tell me the truth.’

  Dan gaped at her, ‘Elizabeth,’ he began at last. ‘I have given you no cause to imagine any such thing of me.’

  ‘“Imagine”, Daniel?’ she said, incredulous. ‘I imagine nothing. And the cause you gave me is the very fact of you being who you are. You are glass to me, Daniel Banville. You always have been. I may not know exactly what you are muddled up in, but I know that you are involved in something. It is agony to me that you cannot see fit to even inform me as to what you seek to protect me from. It is hurtful, unmannerly and unbecoming of you. In fact, when you are man enough to be truthful with me, whole and complete, then you may write to me at my father’s house.’

  Dan stood with the May sunshine falling through a ceiling of leaves, and felt his own heart shatter in his breast.

  ‘You wanted to keep me safe,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘You wanted to send me away. Well you’ve gotten your wish Mr Banville.’

  With that she spun away from him, her dress flaring out and her sun-bonnet abruptly askew. Her arms swinging and her riding boots scuffing the clay as she went, Elizabeth stormed off, down the road towards Newtownbarry.

  Leaning like a fallen spar against the low stone wall, Dan watched her go with eyes that stung. Even now, as she stalked away from him with chin held high and face haughty as a ship’s figurehead, he knew he would do anything for her. Physically he was stricken. And yet something had lifted from his mind. Some weight had been removed. As much as his heart wept to see Elizabeth leave in such anger, his mind rejoiced at her going. Now, he knew, she would be safe. Whatever occurred to change the fortunes of his battered county, Elizabeth would be safe from the worst of it.

  And as he watched her go, a small, venomous voice bawled inside him that she was right all along. He was a coward. There’s no choice now, it seemed to chuckle.

  There was now no Elizabeth to place above all else. Suddenly, he was free – free to do what must be done.

  Tom sat on the edge of the stone trough and leaned one elbow on the snout of the water pump. Evening was coming in a mounting golden haze, creeping up from the horizons of the world. Overhead, swallows tumbled and plummeted, mocking the leaden shackles that bound all else to the earth’s dusty surface.

  Tom squinted up at the screaming, angular little birds as they shot through the summer air. He drew one hand across his clammy brow and then looked down to where one of his father’s harriers sat with a splintered length of tree branch in its mouth. The dog’s saliva dribbled from the branch’s kinks and knotty protrusions and the animal whuffed and whined in gormless excitement.

  For the love of God, thought Tom, even throwing a damned stick is making me feel unwell.

  For eighteen days he had been drinking. Drinking and avoiding all human company with the same assiduity with which he had avoided solid food. He had become a recluse in his own home, a shadow in the daylight. For eighteen days Laurence Banville had not said a word to him whilst his mother nattered into the hollow space between father and son. She fussed and flustered and laughed in the silence as though her family were not fracturing before her eyes. Over the last couple of days Tom had noted the deepening fissures around her mouth and the plough lines across her forehead, and the disturbing edge to her forced good humour.

  Every day her headaches grew worse; every day she retired to her bedroom earlier than the day before.

  The foxhound at his feet dropped the stick and pawed forlornly at Tom’s stockinged calf. Its claws made a series of dusty brown smudges against the white linen. Tom absentmindedly patted the animal’s head and stared off into the middle distance, his blue eyes unfocused and his thoughts dulled by the aching in his head.

  His formless contemplations were interrupted as the harrier’s sharp head lifted and its ears pricked in anticipation. The animal stirred itself and turned to face the hard-packed curve of earth that swept from the stableyard around to the front of the house. A low, excited yipping emitted from the animal’s slack muzzle and, a moment or two later, Tom saw the source of the dog’s excitement. The scuffling thud of a tired horse’s hooves padded into the stableyard, closely followed by the animal and its rider.

  Dan sat astride the roan foxhunter with the bearing of a man exhausted. To Tom he looked like a man who had been on the wrong end of a beating or had run too long a race. In short, Dan looked like Tom felt.

  Tom pushed himself up from the stone trough with a shuddering and heartfelt sigh that was pathetic coming from one so young. With the hound gambolling about his legs he moved, lead-footed and stiff, towards his elder brother. Dan had reined in his tired mount and had dismounted, his broad back stooped as he examined the roan’s back legs and fetlocks.

  ‘He’s a bit lame,’ Dan offered at Tom’s approach.

  ‘That would crown a perfect day all round,’ replied Tom.

  Dan looked up from where he was bent, his face sheeted in the shadow flung by his brother’s presence. It was a face that, in Tom’s mind, had somehow altered – almost imperceptibly, Dan’s aspect had changed. His broad features were identical to that which Tom had grown up with. The same tight nest of wavy brown thatched his head and his eyes retained their old sea-grey curiosity, still regarded him and scrutinised the world with an academic’s thoughtful consideration. Nonetheless, the Dan Banville that frowned up at him from that puddle of shadow was not the Dan Banville of the years, the day, the hours before. His jaw seemed harder, jutting and clenched, and some odd purpose had tightened his mouth, narrowing his lips into thin, humourless strips. It was a face that Tom, all at once, could not imagine smiling.

  ‘Why do you say that, Tom?’ asked Dan, as though he were the same Dan as always; always curious, always caring.

  It took a moment for Tom to answer, so perplexed was he by the subtle change he perceived in his brother. When he did answer it was with a snort of self-mockery. ‘I’ve been dying sick all day. I think I may have reached a nadir. I don’t think I can cope with it anymore.’

  Straightening, his hard face stony and grim in the westering sun, Dan asked, ‘Cope with what, Tom? The drink? Or is something deeper troubling you? Eighteen days, Tom, you’ve been hiding in your own misery. You have to come out eventually.’

  Tom patted the gelding’s thick neck and smiled at his brother. ‘I know, Dan. I’m thinking of resigning my commission in the yeomanry. I haven’t been in any state to attend a muster in eighteen days. They probably think I’ve deserted or become a United man at this stage of things.’

  Dan’s eyes shone but any warmth in them failed to communicate itself to the rest of his features, and his cheeks and jaw remained cold and tense. ‘Good for you, Tom,’ he said. ‘Those bastards have cut loose completely throughout the entire neighbourhood. The county’s in flames because of them and those North Cork scoundrels.

  ‘Although Richard Proctor and one or two of the others have paid visit to you at various hours. “Enquiring after your health” they said. Da ran them off, of course. They were seemingly quite concerned about you. As have we all been.’

  Tom regarded his brother and shook his head slowly, ‘I do not deserve such sentiments. But tell me, where have you been all day? And what travails must you have come through? You look as though you’ve been carrying this horse rather than the other way around.’

>   Immediately Dan’s brows darkened and his head dropped forward as though his body had been robbed of its strength. Yet, the eyes that fixed Tom from under those pitch brows, were aflame with something raw, something fervent.

  ‘I was off doing something that must, through pointed necessity, have been done.’

  Tom searched his brother’s features whilst his fingers bunched and unbunched in the roan’s coarse mane. At length he cocked his head and said, ‘It’s that Blakely one, isn’t it. Elizabeth. The Protestant girl you’ve sought to keep secret from all and sundry. Something has transpired between you hasn’t it? She’s turned down your hand in marriage, hasn’t she? Well come on, out with it.’

  For the merest sliver of a shattered instant Dan’s face registered an expression of genuine anguish before it slipped away and was gone like smoke in a gale. He shook his head once sharply and his voice came low and wavering, ‘No, she did not deny me. I have ended our correspondence and that is that.’

  Tom nodded sagely and clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. The reason behind Dan’s strange difference was suddenly laid out clear before him. Tom sighed, ‘Probably for the best, all told. That there was a liaison with every potential for mischief. Probably for the best.’

  Dan shook himself free of Tom’s companionable grip and tugged the gelding roughly towards the stables. Looking once over his shoulder he spat, ‘You do not know her at all. Nor me as well as you might, Tom. Do not presume to know what is for the best.’

  With that he vanished into the ragged dark of the stable.

  Beside Tom’s legs, the harrier whined and nudged his hand with the wet pad of its nose. ‘I know, lad,’ muttered Tom in puzzlement. ‘I have no idea what’s gotten into him either.’

  Night found Tom awake and staring at his bedroom ceiling. It was half past midnight. For the first time in eighteen days his head rested upon the cumulous bulge of his pillow without the anaesthetic of alcohol to weight his eyelids. He lay there in the moonlight with his bedclothes kicked and twisted into a frothy wave about him. His bare chest was slick with moisture, yet the heat that drove down upon him seemed to clot the air and fill his throat and lungs with mud. He could not breathe and he could not sleep.

  In his mind Paddy Cullen’s shrieks, rising in frenzied horror, rose and fell and rose again like waves on beach.

  The fact of his involvement in the raid, the fact of his complicity in a coldblooded murder churned in his mind like a ball of broken glass. His father’s disdain, his mother’s slow descent into mania, all could be traced back to that awful night. He was on the verge of destroying his family and he had wallowed in drink and self-pity and allowed it to happen.

  He was left with no choice. He must remove himself from the yeomanry lists. He grinned bleakly into the blued silver wash of moonlight coming through his open window and thought what a grand irony it all was. He had stayed in the yeomanry to save his family, but instead it had almost ripped it asunder.

  Still, he was afraid, terrified at leaving his home without protection. His father’s mouth, his pantomime blustering, had gained them as many enemies as friends. Tom could imagine Hawtrey White and Hunter Gowan rejoicing at his resignation. He could imagine the whisper of steel as it slid free, imagine the flames reflected in its mirrored surface, imagine the gleaming of its bitter edge. He could imagine his home an inferno.

  The low drumming of approaching hooves seemed to already rumble in the quiet of his solitude.

  Tom sat up, his mouth pursed as he listened.

  In the black and argent chamber of his room he held his breath and froze, his ears straining and every portion of his flesh tingling in anticipation.

  He had heard hooves.

  Not the imaginary hooves of approaching bogeymen but the real thud and clop of iron upon clay and cobble. His eyes stared, unseeing, and the chords of his bedclothes lay looped at his feet.

  He had heard hooves. He must have. He was sure of it.

  Then, just as the need to take a breath began to tug at his chest, he heard a voice. Hoarse and whispering, it crawled up from the front dooryard below his open window and spilled across his watchful silence.

  ‘Hush, girl. Easy now,’ it said.

  In the moon-drenched sanctuary of his room, Tom blinked in astonishment. It was Dan’s voice that had come soft-pitched and hissing through the night.

  Tom moved quietly, slipping from under his bedclothes and sidling over to his window. Underfoot, the floorboards still retained some of their daytime warmth and as he moved across them his feet made little sticking sounds, tacky with sweat. His breath came in shallow spasms and his hands were cold and numb.

  In the dooryard, illumined by a moon bright enough to conjure shadows and draw darkness from the merest wrinkle in the landscape, Dan Banville was quietly leading three horses around to the stableyard. With him, the capecollars of their trusties lending them the aspect of predatory birds, three men moved in furtive and wary silence. As Tom watched unseen, the group slipped around the corner of the house and were gone.

  Tom leaned for long minutes against his windowsill, Laurence Banville’s dooryard a dimpled bowl of silver below him. His hands clenched and unclenched as he gripped the white-painted wood of the window frame and his brows remained furrowed and dark. Thoughts and questions wheeled and reeled in his head, each one branching and fracturing, shattering into a thousand competing ideas and considerations, a chaos of confusion and half-formed imaginings.

  What was Dan doing inviting people into their home at so late an hour? Why hadn’t the house been roused?

  Who were those men?

  Why were they so quiet, so wary?

  Tom was dressing himself before he was really aware what he was doing. His breath was coming more quickly now, like a hound panting after a scent, as he jerked his shirt over his head. Without shoes or stockings he crossed to his bedroom door and eased it open. The slight whine of its hinges made him wince and splintered the silence that seemed to have enclosed the Banville household. From the kitchens below, where Dan and his midnight guests must surely be gathered, there was not a sound. The quiet, downy and inviolate, blanketed all the world.

  Tom hesitated for a moment before stepping across the door’s threshold. He was unsure of what he was about to do. On the one hand he was certain that Dan must have some reason to allow people, unannounced and secret, into their family home; on the other, the very fact of their anonymity and their cloak-swaddled silence trilled a note of curiosity in Tom’s young heart. For a moment he hesitated, briefly contemplating calling out and waking the household, but then the adventure of the mysterious seized him and he padded out into the hallway. It was as though he was transported back to his childhood, eavesdropping as Laurence Banville entertained, or stealing illicit cakes from Mrs Prendergast’s pantry. Whatever the reason behind Dan’s incongruous little party, Tom would find out through his own initiative. Younger brother he may be, but he was damned if he was going to be kept ignorant of something as extraordinary as a midnight conclave.

  He crept along the tongue of carpet lolling down the centre of the hallway. With every step he took he expected to hear a creak of timber and a commotion from downstairs, but all remained silent. The entire household, except he and Dan’s party, was sleeping. At the end of the corridor, instead of taking the wooden back stairs down to the kitchen, he turned right and ghosted down the stone steps of the main staircase.

  This staircase descended into the modest front hallway of the house and each step felt cold beneath his careful tread. Tom moved slowly now, acutely aware that the door to the kitchen lay behind and below him to his left. He thought he could hear, just on the cusp of apprehension, the muffled voices of men in conversation. He had taken this route because, should Dan go to fetch anything from his room, he would likely take the back stairs, and Tom could not see a reason why Dan or any of his guests would have any business in the entry hall. Nonetheless, once he had stealthily gained the foot of the stairs he cho
se each step toward the kitchen door with the careful deliberation of a stalking heron. Each step was noiseless, and the mere silken rustle of his shirt, barely louder than a moth’s wings, was the only sound he made.

  The kitchen door itself was a massive old construction of oak planks and iron rivets, ill-fitting and out of place with the simple elegance of the rest of the dwelling. It was a remnant of an older building, a vestige of a rougher age imperfectly hung on three heavy hinges. However, it was this alien aspect of the door that prompted Tom to press himself against it. A large gap ran between the age-blackened wood and its rough-hewn jamb. In the Winter, Mrs Prendergast and, indeed, Mary Banville herself, railed that the breeze coming through it would cut you in half; but now it afforded Tom with a perfect listening post from which to spy on his brother.

  In the dark, swaddled in a void of empty silence, Tom Banville listened.

  Inside the kitchen, a voice with the nasal yaw of Ulster in it was saying, ‘Aye, sure it only defies belief. I’ve never seen weather like this in May before. Every farmer in the county is delighted. We’ll have more straw and grain this winter than we’ll know what to do with.’

  A voice in a Wexford drawl, sounding little more than a youth’s but weighted with an undefined yet marked confidence, retorted, ‘If there’ll be anyone left to take it all in of course. The way things are going there’ll not be a soul left in the country except soldiers and yeos.’

  The first voice came again, ‘My God, where are my manners? Let me introduce you all. Dan Banville, this is Miles Byrne of Monaseed and my other more venerable companion is Peter Bolger from Tomnahely.’

  At this another voice chuckled, ‘Don’t bury me yet, Anthony. I may not be a young buck like Miles here but I’ve long days ahead of me yet.’

  Tom strained to spy the men through the crack between door and jamb as his brother’s voice, almost in a whisper, replied, ‘Thank you Mr Perry. Mr Byrne, Mr Bolger, you are both very welcome to my home. However, I would ask you all to please be attentive of the fact that my poor family is presently sound asleep and knows nothing of our meeting.’