by Joe Murphy
‘Sergeant,’ he began frostily. ‘Go tell Lieutenant Bookey that when Dan comes back we’ll have him answer any questions he cares to ask. Until he does come back, Sergeant, the searching of this homestead will result merely in the untimely death of your good self and at least one of your men.’
The snap of his pistols being cocked was deafening in the abrupt silence.
‘The choice, Sergeant, is yours.’
Sergeant Cullen’s eyes, red-rimmed with fury, roved from father to son and then back. His gauntlets creaked on his horse’s reins and over the anxious muttering of his men he addressed the two civilians before him.
‘We shall return, Banville. When you least expect it, we shall be at your throat with fire and steel. And as for you, Tom, you have signed your death warrant. This is treason and I’ll have every loyal Catholic in the county clamouring for your head. United Irish scum, the two of you.’
He spat a great globule of phlegm at their feet, wheeled his men and was gone in a swirling cloud of dust and flies.
PART TWO
WITH HEART AND HAND
CHAPTER 7
Outbreak
Tom awoke first, shivering. The hour just before dawn was always the coldest and his trusty had slipped from him during the night. The greatcoat lay in a slithered pile, rumpled about the roots of the hoary old gorse bush. Daylight, lifeless and anaemic, crept in a dove-grey tide between branch and briar. Through the straining, green spines of the gorse, Tom could just begin to discern the emerging shapes of ditch and stone, field and fen. A fog, luxurious as velvet, clung to the earth and wound from tree to tree, shackling all of nature in its clammy, damp embrace. On the horizon the nebulous ball of the sun was just nudging the skyline into fire. In the distance, to the southwest, a column of smoke mounted the morning.
‘Good morning,’ came Dan’s sleep-gummed voice.
‘Is it?’ snapped Tom.
Dan, from under the heavy folds of his own greatcoat, exhaled in bovine simple-mindedness, blinked, rubbed his stubbled jaw and asked thickly, ‘What’s wrong?’
Tom retrieved his coat and wrapped it around his shoulders. He eyed his brother with bilious intent, ‘I’ve a crick in my neck and I feel as though my toes have fallen off. And do you know who I blame?’
Dan blinked again, stupidly, and yawned ‘Who?’
‘You!’ hissed Tom. ‘You and your ridiculous French ideas. We’ve been hiding out now for what, three or four days? No word as to whether Ma and Da ever got to Aunt Helen’s, no word from your damnable United Irish friends and nothing for shelter except gorse and tree branches. Thank St Jude that the weather has kept up.’
Dan was sitting up now, scratching the stubble under his chin with obvious pleasure.
‘I hope you are infested with fleas, you great lummox,’ Tom huffed.
‘Look, Tom,’ said Dan placatingly. ‘I’m sure we would have heard if Ma and Da had been apprehended. Word would have been spread to try and get us to come out. They’d be used as hostages to our good conduct. But I am worried that Perry hasn’t tried to communicate or provide us with a safe house. He himself resides just outside of Inch, I wonder have we any chance of making it?’
Tom shook his head with an air of finality, ‘None. That’s some journey to be undertaking with the cavalry and militia scouring the country. We wait and we hide and we stay alive.’
Dan nodded slowly. He lifted his gaze and regarded his younger brother with doleful resignation as Tom asked, ‘Are you certain that was the house that went up last night?’
Dan puffed out his cheeks and nodded again.
The oily dark of the previous night had been rent by a volley of musketry. Both young men, huddled beneath the bristling belly of an elephantine gorse bush, had leapt with terror. With pistols in hand they had crawled through the curling waves of ferns that surrounded them and gazed south and west to where their home had sat, nestled in its natural bowl of fertile farmland. Even across a distance of more than a mile, the magnitude of the blaze was obvious.
In a hollow of midnight the Banville household and outhouses were ablaze. The flames licked and tongued the dark in blistering flickers and howling streams of sparks spiralled into the starlit dome of the night. In front of the blaze, like black toys placed by a demented child, the tiny figures of men and cavalry cavorted like demons in the orange corona. The inferno lit the most grotesque aspect of their home’s destruction in vivid, nightmarish shades. As the brothers watched, a group of soldiers lifted their muskets and fired into the squat, stone building that was their father’s kennels. Seconds later the report of the weapons reached the Banville brothers, drowning the howls of the poor animals, trapped and dying.
Cushioned by ferns, their nostrils filled with the damp smells of growth and decay, they had watched as their home was consumed.
Now, looking at his brother’s wounded face, Tom said, ‘You know we can’t go back to it. They’ll be waiting.’
‘Oh, I know,’ agreed Dan. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing there for us now.’
‘There’s nothing anywhere. Ma and Da are gone to Arklow, thence probably on to Dublin. If the county calms a little we may be able to join them. As it is we’re a death sentence to any who should seek to aid us. I can’t believe Mick Sinnott’s father is being so good to us.’
Dan grinned, ‘He’s a United man.’
‘Well I wish he’d rise up then,’ snorted Tom. ‘It might have the effect of causing the yeomanry to look after their own skins and not be poking into barns and ditches for the like of us.’
Dan smiled fondly at his younger brother, ‘Thanks, Tom.’
‘Don’t say a word until we’re safe and can sleep under a roof again. This entire disastrous turn of events can be laid in your lap and the laps of those friends of yours that have so conveniently disappeared.’
The morning wore on and both men tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. The gorse’s twisted trunk split and snaked in myriad directions but by balling up their coats for padding it made for a not unpleasant hiding place.
The gorse bush was one of a number crawling like some spiny pestilence across the brow of an uneven outcrop of rock. All around them, the land lay somewhat lower than the stony protrusion and afforded the brothers a fair vantage point from which to look out for approaching troops. Every so often a column of soldiers or troop of horses would jog along the road in the distance but not once did they come within musket shot of their position.
At night though, the savagery of martial law was grimly evident.
As dusk fell and night sluiced the countryside with shrouding shadow, fires began to spring up all around them. As the stars spangled the heavens, so too did an infestation of smoky orange scuttle across distant fields and villages. Gunshots and the dull, crackling rush of collapsing thatch drifted on the breeze. And in the morning, with every breath, a vague taste of charcoal, of ash, infused the air and caught in their throats.
Tom and Dan had sat there, side by side, night after night and watched the country burn.
The afternoon of the 26th of May found both Tom and Dan wide-eyed and standing on the edge of their little kingdom of gorse. Struggling up the hill toward them was young Mick Sinnott, a bag of provisions slung over his right shoulder and an expression of fierce determination branded across his twelve-year-old face. His tongue was clenched firmly between his teeth and his left hand sought purchase for his skinny frame by grabbing handfuls of grass to steady himself as he climbed. This fervent enthusiasm, this frantic single-mindedness, had surprised them both.
They had watched the boy come running through the fields from two miles away to their south. They had watched him trip and stumble, dragging his canvas sack through briars and gorse, tangling himself up in thistles and whitethorn. On the little figure had struggled, never slackening his pace, never going around an obstacle when he could go through it.
Now, looking down at him as he battled the last leg of his mad dash, Dan wondered aloud, ‘Wh
at on God’s green Earth has gotten into him?’
‘Knowing our luck, it could only be bad news,’ said Tom flatly.
Dan smiled wryly and punched his brother playfully on the shoulder. ‘Maybe the French have landed,’ he joked.
Tom glanced at him with one eyebrow raised mockingly, ‘That would be good news, would it?’
Blowing like a church organ, Mick Sinnott reached the crest of the hill and stood in front of the two brothers. He planted the provisions at their feet and then leaned back and inhaled so deeply it seemed as if he was trying to take in the sky itself. His red face gradually cooled, blanching as he got his wind back and his chest ceased its violent gasping.
Dan and Tom allowed the young lad to regain his composure before Dan asked, ‘What has you tearing across half the country, Mick? Do you bring news from your Da?’
Mick looked from one to the other before saying, ‘I do. But I’m not supposed to tell ye out here. I’m not to be seen with ye and I’ve a lot to tell.’
‘Come on into the gorse, so,’ instructed Tom.
Moments later Dan and Tom and Mick Sinnott were uncomfortably crowded into the hollow space below the gorse’s tangled spread. Everything was quiet here and only the sibilant soughing of the breeze through the thick green spines gave any indication of an outside world. His back to the gorse’s dry and age-warped trunk, Mick took a deep breath and rushed out an avalanche of words.
‘Hold your horses, Mick,’ ordered Tom. ‘Whatever you have to say to us must be very exciting or you wouldn’t be in such a confounded hurry to relate it. However, I doubt your Da would appreciate you making a hash of his message, so take your time. Why didn’t he just send us a note?’
‘He can’t write,’ interjected Dan. ‘Go on, Mick. Take your time.’
‘Da said it was important that I learn off what I was to tell you,’ began Mick. ‘I was up half the night making sure I got it right.
‘The first thing he said to tell you was that the magistrates are worse than anyone ever thought. No good Catholic will ever try and find protection under the law again.’
‘What has happened?’ urged Tom.
Dan knifed him a look and turned back to Mick. ‘Go on, Mick,’ he said. ‘One thing at a time.’
‘I’m trying,’ complained Mick. ‘But if he keeps interrupting me I won’t be able to remember.’
‘Sorry—’ said Tom.
‘Now, Da said there’s been some awful stuff done in Wicklow. Worse than here. There’s been people shot in cold blood in Dunlavin and twenty-eight people were massacred in the ball alley in Carnew, without trial. They were accused of being United Irishmen.’
Mick continued over Tom’s low, despairing moan.
‘The midlands are risen. Kildare and Meath are all aflame. There was a battle at Carlow as well but the soldiers won, they’re killing anyone with so much as a pitchfork. There’s hundreds dead all over the country!’
Dan and Tom stared at each other in mingled horror and excitement. Tom shook his head, ‘This is a disaster, Dan. A peasant army cannot hope to win against regular troops. They will be butchered. If this Rising spreads to Wexford there won’t be enough soil to bury the corpses. If Carlow was a rout what hope have we of carrying the day?’
‘We’re more organised than Carlow, Tom,’ said Dan. His face had hardened, resolve gleamed in his eyes as though he were eager to hear of the spread of rebellion, eager for the call to arms.
‘What of here, Mick?’ he insisted. ‘What does your Da say of Wexford? Surely we must rise or be slaughtered in our beds or shot out of hand like the poor people of Dunlavin and Carnew? Come, Mick, tell all.’
Mick Sinnott was nodding to himself as if to make sure he had left nothing out so far. Satisfied, he went on.
‘Da says we can’t rise.’
‘What?’ exploded, Dan
‘Thank God,’ breathed Tom, concurrently.
‘Da says Mr Perry – he said you’d know Mr Perry – he said Mr Perry was arrested a couple of days ago and they’re holding him in the market house in Gorey.
‘He says without him no one around here knows what to do. Everyone’s gone into hiding to preserve themselves from the yeos.’
Dan slumped into himself where he sat. His bones seemed to melt like lard in a fire. It was as though the man who was, only a minute before, so eager for the command to rise, had become wax, unfixed and plastic in the midday heat. His face had become slack and the eyes which had so blazed with anticipation were now dull cobbles set into flaccid cheeks.
‘Well, that’s it,’ said Tom. ‘What do you propose we do, and to what end, now that your dream of glorious revolution has been scuppered?’
Dan regarded him with open hostility, snarling, ‘You don’t have to sound so glad about it.’
Turning to Mick, he patted the boy on the head and said ruefully, ‘You did well, Mick. Thank your father for us. Tell him we shall remain here tonight but we shall not need him to furnish us with anything more than he has already. This will be our last night spent in this spot.’
Mick nodded and rose to depart, his narrow frame brushing through the thick undergrowth like an animal born to the wild. Dan and Tom sat for a moment in studied silence.
‘What do you propose?’ repeated Tom at last.
His eyes still vacant and a wan hopelessness in his voice, Dan replied, ‘I do not know, Tom. I fear our only chance is to get away to Dublin. I am worried about Elizabeth, however. If the trouble at Carnew is as bad as Mick hinted at then I feel I should go to her.’
Tom frowned at the bare earth for a moment before addressing his brother.
‘I do not think your lady friend is in any danger in Carnew. If Mick is neither exaggerating nor omitting some vital detail then it would seem as though the place has been cowed. I do not think a Protestant lady has very much to fear in that particular part of the country. The worst event that could occur to her would be a known United Irishman paying her a visit. Your concern could have her shot.’
Dan took a long breath and exhaled sharply through his nose, ‘You’re right. It would not be worth the risk. What do you think we should do?’
Tom laughed bitterly, ‘Well, we can’t live beneath a gorse bush forever. If we move we run the gauntlet of our enemies’ patrols. If we stay here we run the risk of being found. If we could find a way to Dublin we would be safe from Hunter Gowan, Hawtrey White and the lot of them. The question is, how do we close the distance between here and there.’
‘We could board ship at Arklow, maybe?’
‘Maybe. I think we must get away from here, whatever the case. Wexford is a death trap for United Irishmen. Unless your Rising spreads south from Kildare I cannot imagine the countryside in open rebellion. There will be no wholesale massacre of innocent people until that happens and I think we should thank God for that.’
Dan was forlorn. Wearily, he said, ‘And yet the daily outrages continue. A man shot here. A family pitchcapped. A house burned. There has been a reign of terror imposed, Tom.’
‘Yes, there has,’ replied Tom. ‘But there aren’t hundreds of corpses rotting in the streets of Gorey and Enniscorthy like there are in Carlow. Be sensible, Dan. Would you have our friends and neighbours die like cattle whilst shaking scythes at cannon?’
‘Is it not better that they die on their feet like free men than on their knees like slaves?’ said Dan.
‘Nonsense,’ Tom articulated the word with a tangible relish. ‘It is better that they live on their knees and crawl towards some future that lies within their compass than lie dead in a ditch. You asked for my opinion and now you have it. Arklow it is.’
Dan nodded again, like a broken-down carthorse with a load too heavy to bear. ‘Arklow it is.’
The market house on Gorey’s main street was a barbed cage filled with screams. On the weathered boardwalk outside, two soldiers of the North Cork Militia stood guard, their white crossbelts and brass buckles gleaming in the early afternoon sunshine. Beside
them their Brown Besses were held loosely, their bayonet points wavering slightly as the men, every so often, winced at the noises from within. Occasionally, one would exchange a pained glance with the other as the shrieks reached a crescendo before subsiding into a bubbling swamp of sobs. No one but the two soldiers occupied that part of the boardwalk and for the past three days the citizens had been crossing the road to avoid passing it. Nevertheless, a small crowd had gathered from time to time across the way, the men shaking their heads, the women blessing themselves and praying, all listening as the screams rose and fell, rose and fell.
The upper floor of the market house had been converted into a makeshift gaol and it was from the open windows of this floor that the terrible noises emitted. Within, the wide room was open and covered the entire expanse of the building, stretching away beneath heavy rafters for ten or fifteen yards on either side of a wide door leading to a sweeping stairwell. The room was originally used for meetings and business banquets, but since the coming of the North Corks it had been put to a more grisly use. Around the walls, thick bolts fastened lengths of chain, terminating in iron cuffs, to the brickwork. Fifteen prisoners were clamped by their ankles in this manner, chained and hobbled, sweating and stinking in the summer heat.
Each prisoner however, had moved to face the wall. Each pressed their filthy foreheads to the soothing cool of the plaster and stuffed ragged strips of shirt linen into their ears.
And, for the last three days, each had lofted prayer after prayer towards heaven. Begging the Almighty to make them stop.
Throughout the room, the stench of burning pitch, of burning hair, of burning flesh, was enough to make a person gag. Blue membranes of smoke twined, plaiting themselves through the still air. The chained men tried not to breathe the stuff in. They knew where it came from. They knew that with every breath of the sickening fumes they were taking in the stuff of another human being. Each shadowy tentacle of smoke was a ghostly echo of a man’s substance, an ashen manifestation of what had been stripped from him and burned away.