1798

by Joe Murphy

  Byrne, Tom thought it was, more from the swagger in his voice than the youthful musicality, then spoke. ‘Your “poor family” in its entirety, Mr Banville?’

  The question seemed to Tom to possess a honed edge and he was surprised by Dan’s response. His brother’s voice carried a note of barely-reined anger as he growled, ‘Yes, Mr Byrne. Everyone. Whole and entire. And I shall inform you gentlemen here and now that, should anyone voice any ill intention towards my brother, then I shall set them on the road and wash my hands of this entire endeavour. He has remained with the yeomanry thus far in order to protect his family and his home. He has never raised a hand against anyone.’

  Bolger’s voice soothingly interjected, ‘Mr Banville, nobody questions the motives of a yeoman and I am not about to start delving into loyalist minds. It is widely known that although your brother did not commit any violence on the part of the Orangemen, he did nothing to stop it either. My question to you is this - can he be trusted?’

  Into the black of the hallway, from out of the crack between Tom’s world and his, Dan’s voice, hollow and blank, stated, ‘No. He cannot be trusted in this enterprise.’

  Dan’s response hit Tom like a kick to the stomach. He had no idea what the purpose of this secret rendezvous was, as yet, but his brother’s words had wounded him. He had no idea that he and Dan had slipped so far away from each other.

  The northern accent of Perry then sounded low and definite, ‘Then we should keep our voices down.’

  Intrigued and dismayed now in equal measure, Tom pressed himself further against the aperture as though striving to slip through the very door itself. Ears straining, he listened in growing shock as the four men continued their conversation.

  ‘How many have we got in each barony now?’ asked Byrne.

  ‘A multitude,’ came Perry’s response. ‘If the blasted military would stop their confiscation of weaponry the whole country might be ours tomorrow. With or without the French.’

  ‘At the same time,’ said Byrne, ‘the outrages of those red-coated monsters, perpetrated daily against the innocents of the county, is the greatest tool we have in rallying people to the banner.’

  ‘I agree,’ Dan added. ‘If only the priests could see their way fit to aid the people and not keep them servile beneath the detestable English yoke. Fr Philip Roche was the only one with any spine worth the name and Caulfield has had him suspended for agitation. They’re preaching surrender of arms from the pulpit and denying good United men the sacrament of confession. I swear to you now, gentlemen, a day of reckoning is fast approaching.’

  ‘I have heard that Fr John Murphy of Boolavogue is a man of some high-standing and influence in the diocese and amongst the people. Has he then become the bishop’s lackey as well?’ asked Bolger.

  ‘John Murphy?’ snorted Perry. ‘That fat prevaricator? Something of dire consequence will need to occur to force his hand. No, I’m afraid we are on our own, without divine light or guidance in our lives.’

  A hushed sough of laughter slithered forth from the four men.

  Tom, growing more and more tense as his suspicions found more and more purchase, breathed deeply in the darkened hallway. He was becoming cold and his anxiety was stiffening all the muscles of his shoulders and neck so that the first spasm of a cramp bucked in the small of his back.

  ‘Any word from Dublin, Anthony?’ asked Bolger.

  A long pause followed this before Perry answered, ‘Some. But I am unsure of the exact details, as yet.’

  ‘Come now, Anthony,’ whispered Miles Byrne. ‘If you know anything of any substance or importance at all you should inform us. We are all here committed United Irishmen.’

  There it was.

  For Tom, standing cold and silent, his ear pressed to a splintered gap between wood and wall, those were the words that he knew would come. To hear them so blithely spoken by one who sounded so young was, to him, vaguely appalling. The deadly freight of those words seemed too heavy to be carried by so light a tone. Miles Byrne had laughingly proclaimed Tom’s elder brother a traitor to the realm. He had proclaimed a death sentence on the Banville house and property.

  Perry was saying, ‘If I knew anything of consequence I would communicate it instantly and without hesitation. However, until I am informed from Dublin, I am as ignorant of whatever plans the executive have as anyone.’

  All this was lost on Tom Banville. A furious knot of anger had clenched itself at the base of his skull and his teeth ground with animal rage. His breathing came quick through his nostrils and he thought the sound of it must surely disturb the quiet conversation taking place beyond the door.

  How could he? Tom fumed in the cauldron of his mind. How could his brother betray him? How could he trust him so little?

  Amidst Tom’s anger, the hurt of a little boy derided and ignored by the brother he idolised swelled up inside him. And with the hurt and anger hot tears welled in his eyes, sparkling in the darkness. Soundlessly, Tom backed away from the door and step by agonising step made his way back down the hall and climbed the cold stone staircase. His shoulders stooped, his head bowed. In the empty spaces of his soul, Tom felt like a stray cur, a kicked mongrel.

  CHAPTER 6

  Confrontations

  The military barracks in Wexford Town squatted like a great grey toad basking in the sunshine. From its walls, narrow, slitted windows squinted out over the town and leered, ever-watchful, across the wide, mud-brown expanse of Wexford Harbour. At one such window a frock-coated gentleman in a powdered wig cast his troubled gaze upon the streets of Wexford and with his right hand tugged distractedly at his lower lip. From his vantage point, the town was a hive of peaceful industry. The traders and workmen of John Street called and cursed and spat as the morning sun rose ever higher. Coopers and tanners, jackets discarded, sweated at their stinking labour whilst blacksmiths and farriers, every line of their features silted with soot, haggled and gossiped, their forges throwing all the heat and noise of a battle into the street.

  Women and townsmen bustled to and fro in the narrow thoroughfares around the Bullring. Wealthy merchants in rich fabrics mingled with the dashing uniforms of military men. From the docks came the eternal hue and cry of fishermen and sailors and with it came the elemental reek of the sea, that distinctive blend of salt and rot, always present, infusing every particle of the sprawling county seat. Above the steep slate roofs of the market houses and customs buildings ringing the dockside, the immense span of Wexford Bridge could be seen in the middle distance, describing a flat trajectory out and across the mouth of the River Slaney. And nearer, above the roofs, the masts and spars of a score of ships were black against the sky, bobbing and dancing in the breeze like a forest of trees. Or, thought the frock-coated gentleman, a forest of pikes.

  From behind him, a voice intruded upon his contemplations. ‘You seem troubled, Henry.’

  Henry Perceval, High Sheriff of Wexford, turned his back to Wexford Town and faced into the gloom of the barracks room. Before him, two men were seated at a heavy carved wooden desk. One wore the red jacket and yellow facings of the North Corks, his gold epaulettes and red sash marking him as an officer. The other, leaning back in his chair, his greased and gleaming black riding boots crossed at the ankle and resting on the desk’s polished surface, wore the blue and red of a captain in the Shelmalier Yeoman Cavalry.

  Perceval cast a wry glance at the cavalryman’s boots, which was ignored, before he addressed him, ‘I am indeed troubled, Le Hunte. I am quite put out by all of this. Every report furnished to me adds a little more to my trepidation. What is to be done?’

  The North Cork officer regarded the sheriff with cool condescension and interjected, ‘My dear Mr Perceval, what is to be done is the execution of our duties. I fail to see how these reports are perturbing you in such a fashion. The arms collections are progressing tolerably well and any of the peasantry foolish enough to gainsay the King’s troops finds out the error of his ways and so provides good example to
his fellows.’

  Perceval shook his head, ‘It is not the progress of the arms collections that disturbs me, Colonel Foote. It is the sheer amount being collected that preys on my mind. My God man, I had no idea that there were so many pikes and guns in the hands of the peasantry. What if they should elect to use them?’

  ‘Henry, Henry,’ began Le Hunte. ‘They shall never use them. As the good colonel has pointed out, the collections are going well. Young Bookey of the Camolin Cavalry is doing a particularly fine job. Between Enniscorthy and Arklow I doubt there is a rebel with any more than a pitchfork.’

  Henry Perceval stepped away from the window and dragged a chair out from under the desk. Sighing, he eased himself down onto it.

  ‘You look tired, Henry,’ said Le Hunte with genuine sympathy.

  ‘Tired?’ laughed Perceval. ‘I am exhausted. I do not remember the last night I have managed to slumber unbroken til the morning. My wife has retired to our home in the country for she cannot abide the constant impositions on my time. Day and night, gentlemen, day and night I am assaulted by talk of insurrection, by people frightened by rumour, by requests for warrants.’

  With this he reached forward and picked up a bundle of handwritten papers that was neatly piled beside the crossed ankles of Captain Le Hunte. Disgusted, Perceval noted that, in spite of the boots’ polish, the soles were dappled with dried scraps of mud and horse dung. Small flakes of this stuff had detached and made a filthy little pile, which the regular movement of Le Hunte’s heels was grinding into dust.

  Thumbing through the papers, scrawled over in spidery black ink, Perceval asked, ‘And what am I to make of these?’

  ‘Those, my good Sheriff?’ asked Foote. ‘Why, those are the signed testimonies of loyal subjects providing information on known United Irishmen. What you should make of them is haste. I would favour dispatching elements of the soldiery and cavalry to arrest the men identified in those papers forthwith.’

  ‘On what grounds?’ groaned the High Sheriff in exasperation. ‘The vast majority of the names mentioned here come from the same tracts of North Wexford that have just been declared compliant. The people of the neighbourhoods from Enniscorthy all the way to the Wicklow border have been turning over their arms willingly, or so the military says. Why then should we arrest them? The gaol is already stuffed to bursting and the prison sloop anchored in the bay is fast becoming so.’

  ‘Mr Perceval,’ began Foote, his tone infuriatingly reasonable. ‘I do not understand your demand for “grounds”. Martial law has been declared. If you must rationalise our actions take it that the volume of arms being taken is testament to the fact that United Irishmen must be present in those parishes. Since only a United Irishman would have a pike, the fact of its surrender is enough to damn him.

  ‘Of course, I do not suggest that the entire peasantry be put to the sword but the select few whose names are mentioned in those missives should be clapped in irons as traitors and the very basest of scoundrels.’

  Le Hunte, his tanned face a mask of concentration, steepled his fingers below his chin and said, ‘I agree completely with Lieutenant-Colonel Foote. The leaders of this movement should be rounded up and tried immediately. If those men are not leaders then at least they may be induced to inform as to whom they receive their orders from. We are in the midst of a most awful chapter in our country’s history, Henry. We must not let it slide into barbarity.’

  Henry Perceval, sighed, a long and heartfelt exhalation. Exhaustion and worry could be read in every line of his face. Rubbing one ashen hand vigorously across his forehead, he closed his eyes and was, for a moment, still.

  ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Do what you will.’

  Tom Banville had slept fitfully. He had watched the moon arc up and over the Banville household, its light streaming more and more steeply through his window until it vanished beyond the eaves of the roof. Standing there, Tom felt oddly displaced. The first ashen presage of dawn was greying the world when he finally clambered back into bed. Sleep stole upon him with a poacher’s stealth, for when he opened his eyes the sun was above the horizon. He had not heard Dan’s guests depart but he presumed that they must have vanished before sunrise to avoid the militia and yeomen.

  The house was still sleeping as he dressed himself and made his way down to the kitchen. The banked fire of the night before still smouldered in the hearth and warded off any creeping chill that dawn might have brought. Nothing suggested anything out of the ordinary had occurred during the night, nothing suggested the treason that had been spoken within those four walls.

  Tired and angry, Tom Banville sat at the kitchen table and waited.

  He had to wait for half an hour before Mrs Prendergast arrived in a bundle of energy and fluster.

  ‘God almighty, tonight!’ she gasped and her hands flew to her bosom. ‘You frightened the life out of me, young Master Banville. Why are you sitting there at six o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘I’m waiting for my brother, Mrs Prendergast. Waiting and thinking.’

  She eyed him curiously, the wattles under her chin quivering with a life of their own, ‘Well, as long as you don’t mind waiting and thinking while I do the breakfast.’

  ‘Not at all Mrs Prendergast, work away.’

  Still considering him out of the corner of her eye she said, ‘You look terribly worn out, young sir. Are you perhaps only in? Would you be wanting a cup of warm tea or anything?’

  Twisting on his stool, Tom smiled at her in spite of himself, ‘I haven’t touched a drop, Mrs Prendergast. I’m quite alright. Thank you.’

  She patted him on the shoulder as she bustled by, ‘You were always my favourite. Even as a little lad.’

  Tom sat as Mrs Prendergast pinwheeled about him, a middle-aged dervish of activity. She set the fire to blazing, filled the great black kettle with water and proceeded to make a cake of brown bread. She was the heartbeat of the house, the very stuff of its day to day life.

  The next person to enter the kitchen was Laurence Banville. He strode in like a conquering general, loudly declaring, ‘What a lovely morning, Mrs Prendergast.’

  Then the liquid, old orbs of his eyes took in his younger son sitting, pale and ghostly, at the broad slab of the kitchen table. His voice faltered momentarily but then his eyes swept past Tom to fix Mrs Prendergast, and only Mrs Prendergast, with a rheumy blue stare. His voice came again, just as bullish as before, as though for one small moment the vision of his son hadn’t stolen it from him.

  ‘Good woman, could you see your way fit to making up a bit of a bundle for me today. Myself and Dan have to do some work in the top field. Nothing extravagant, of course. Bread, cheese, some of that ham from yesterday and a pint of milk and water should see us through.’

  ‘Of course I could, Mr Banville,’ came Mrs Prendergast’s cheerful reply. ‘I’ll leave it here for you.’

  Laurence turned on his heel then and made to mount the wooden stairs at the back of the kitchen when Tom’s voice, coming almost unbidden to his throat, said, ‘Da.’

  With one vein-scrawled hand curled about the worn banister, Laurence Banville paused for the merest instant and was gone.

  Tom gazed at the empty staircase for long minutes whilst Mrs Prendergast determinedly busied herself with the morning’s chores. He was still staring at it when his mother, dressed in a long linen dress and holding a straw bonnet in her dimpled little hands, descended from upstairs. She smiled when she saw him and swept immediately towards where he sat, her smile growing wider with each step she took. Bending, she kissed him on the forehead, stepped away from him and tilted her head in frank appraisal.

  ‘You look much better when your eyes are blue and not red, Thomas,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Ma,’ he replied. ‘I’ve given up the drink. For a little while anyway.’

  Mary Banville frowned delicately and shook her head so that her hazelnut curls bounced about her shoulders.

  ‘Sure, you hardly drank much anyw
ay, Tom.’

  With that she opened the back door and stepped into the sunshine of the stableyard. Warbling an old song in a key slightly too high for her, she strolled around the front of the house and left Tom to his contemplations.

  When Dan thudded down the stairs to the kitchen, his shirt was halfway over his head and in his haste he almost tripped on the second last step. He blundered into the middle of the kitchen and hauled his garment down over his shoulders. His hair was uncombed and his grey eyes were set in twin puddles of charcoal. The same dour set to his jaw was still apparent, as though it had become a permanent feature. When he saw Tom, however, he beamed, ‘Good morning, little brother.’

  He was taken aback by Tom’s bitter expression.

  Tom surveyed him, every fibre of his body aflame with anger. For Dan to be so cheerful, to be so deceitful and to seem so cavalier only served to further stoke Tom’s fury. How could Dan even look at him, let alone speak to him, in such a manner?

  Unmindful of Mrs Prendergast, uncaring of the consequences of his words, Tom snapped, ‘Don’t you “little brother me”, you dissembling knave. We have need to talk.’

  Mrs Prendergast, busy scrubbing a tin pan, began to loudly hum the chorus of an old gaelic ballad.

  Simultaneously, both brothers whipped their eyes in her direction.

  ‘The stables, Dan,’ Tom barked.

  Baulking, Dan raised his hands in supplication. ‘Later, Tom. Da and I have work to do. We must be away shortly.’

  ‘Ever the dutiful son,’ sneered Tom. ‘Does he know you are intent on bringing ruin down upon us all?’

  Dan blinked. Shock lacing his words with urgency, he hissed, ‘What have you heard, Tom?’

  Glaring at him, his face a study in controlled fury, Tom repeated, ‘The stables, Dan.’

  This time, silently, Dan acquiesced. His broad frame slumped and he walked slowly toward the kitchen door, opened it and shuffled into the yard like a man on the way to his execution. Wordlessly, furiously, every muscle tense and primed for violence, Tom stalked after him. In the kitchen, still scrubbing the pan, Mrs Prendergast stopped humming her tune and followed their steps anxiously.