1798

by Joe Murphy

  She had left no note for her family. They would never understand. Her love and her passion for her young croppy had eclipsed them all.

  When she found him, she thought as she struggled along a narrow rutted lane, she would kick his shins.

  Kilthomas Hill rose like a great black wave above her. On its upper slopes, hundreds of camp fires burned like winking devils’ eyes in the dark. It was toward these fires that Elizabeth trudged. The sheep-walk on which she found herself traversed the hill as it climbed, and her feet, even in the stout black brogues she wore, slipped and slalomed on wet clumps of sheep manure. From up the slope the chatter of the peasants and the soaring, leaping, whirl of a dozen fiddles and tin whistles skirled through the dusk.

  Elizabeth toiled ever upwards, her breath rasping now, her mind straying to the last time she had made her way to the crest of this great slump of heather, gorse and bracken. She tried not to think of Daniel’s arms around her, tried not to succumb to those thoughts until he was again in front of her, alive and strong and vital.

  The peasant camp on the hill was, even to Elizabeth’s untrained eyes, an unwashed tangle of bodies and blankets, leering men and bawling children. She stood on the edge of the main cluster of fires and gazed in frank horror at the scene before her. Women and children crowded around makeshift hearths, their black iron pots and kettles suspended above the flames from green boughs fashioned into cranes. Smoke curled from unwashed cluster to unwashed cluster, wafting through all like the music of the fiddles. The reek of spilled whiskey, the stench of bodies, and the sound of laughter created one uniform mass from the scores of disparate families and groups. Wives, shawls of blue or grey pulled about their shoulders or over their heads, fed squealing children or chastised the men who passed around great glugging jars of poteen or stout. And all was lit in the infernal glare of the leaping fires. To Elizabeth it was like a scene from the Bible; Gomorrah made manifest.

  And here and there, to her disgust, the black lengths of pike after pike were lashed together like the framework of some pagan monument.

  Her mind recoiled at the thought of Daniel being amongst these people. He was no more a part of this bawdy revelry than she was herself. With a deep breath she squared her shoulders, hefted her case and approached the nearest camp fire.

  A tight circle of women sat in the glare of the blaze and a heavy cauldron bubbled and belched on the flames.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she ventured.

  The women, ignorant of her presence, gabbled amongst themselves, one throwing a handful of greenery into the foaming pot.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Elizabeth said again, louder this time, so that the circle of women could not fail to hear her. ‘I’m searching for Daniel Banville.’

  As one they looked up at her, a pale girl, alone on the edge of their firelight.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ the nearest woman exclaimed. ‘What has a young one like you out rambling the fields at this time of night? Sure, the yeos are scouring the countryside. Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘No, madam,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘I am unfortunately in the whole of my mind. I have come to find an acquaintance of mine. A young man from the Castletown district. A Mr Daniel Banville.’

  The woman cast a cold eye over Elizabeth’s soiled dress with its green embroidery of buds and leaves, her bonnet with its dried flowers. The woman’s companions stopped their chatter and gazed on Elizabeth too.

  Elizabeth was suddenly acutely aware of the finery of her dress, her lack of a shawl, the pinched vowels of her accent.

  The woman was silent and her jaws drew inward as she thought. She then whispered hoarsely, ‘I don’t know what kind of friend the likes of you would have here with the likes of us. I don’t know your Mr Banville. But I’ll tell you this, daughter, I’d be careful wandering around looking for people. There’s a lot of young fellas here with nothing to be doing of a night.’

  Elizabeth’s throat tightened at these words and she could feel the muffled drum of her heart throb against her ribs. Nevertheless, she faced the woman with all the courage she could muster and stated calmly, ‘Be that as it may, I must find him. He … ’ she paused for the smallest fraction of a moment, ‘ … means the world to me.’

  One of the other women, younger, with a face dark and beautiful beneath a layer of grime, now grinned at her and chided her companion, ‘Ah, don’t be frightening the poor girl, Mags. She’s only trying to find her man. And lucky he is to have such a one as her.’

  She then turned a pair of dazzling blue eyes on Elizabeth and continued, ‘I don’t know your young man either but someone around here might. Ask the women at the cooking fires. Men are dumb beasts at the best of times and when they’ve been drinking, sure, they don’t know their arse from their elbow.’

  In spite of herself Elizabeth felt a grin hook at the corners of her mouth and she laughed in relief as much as in amusement at the woman’s coarse words.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with genuine gratitude. ‘When I find him I’ll make sure you are rewarded.’

  The first woman snorted and, in an oddly flat tone, said, ‘Keep your rewards, daughter. The likes of you will find it hard enough in the days to come without giving away the little you have.’

  Feeling a chill twist about her spine, Elizabeth moved away from the group of women, picking her way between slumbering labourers, the detritus of cooking and the odd group of armed men. Everywhere she went, hard eyes followed her movements and voices were lowered in guttural whisper. Still, her determination carried her on and, at every cooking fire, she stopped to ask the women if anyone had seen her Daniel. And at every cooking fire the answer came back in tones of pity, in tones of distrust, in tones of contempt.

  Daniel Banville was not there.

  From camp fire to camp fire, from one huddled family to the next, Elizabeth slipped like an apparition. As the hours passed she was become a banshee, carrying with her a growing air of loss. And yet the more she searched the greater was her need to find Daniel, the more she yearned to hold him, to tell him that whatever he faced, that whatever future he thought to carve out, it was hers too.

  From camp fire to camp fire she flitted until, exhausted and alone, she sank down beside one of the great cedars that ringed the head of Kilthomas Hill. She sank down and stared into the deepening dark as the camp fires, one by one, flickered and died and the fiddles stilled and left a forlorn absence in their wake. In the ashen dusk, to the south and east of her vantage point, a blaze suddenly blossomed like a falling ember. She stared blankly at the distant inferno, her thoughts numbed by fatigue, her mind still fixed on the course she had charted for herself. She had no doubt that Daniel would arrive here eventually. She was sure that it was with such a mass of peasants, of rebels, that Daniel saw himself. His glorious revolution had occurred at last; a thousand men, women and children sitting on a hill wondering what to do next. She stared into the faraway dark as yet another blaze sprang up and then, like some dim rip-tide, sleep bore her under.

  Staring into the gloaming, Tom Banville squinted and muttered, ‘They don’t look like soldiers.’ Then, turning to Dan, he asked, ‘What time do you make it?’

  Dan shrugged and looked to the horizon where the sun had set some hours before but which was still all aglow.

  ‘I’d say it’s about ten o’clock,’ he replied. ‘Maybe half-ten.’

  The Banvilles gazed off into the growing darkness once more. All about the countryside fires were blooming, hot orange in the dusk. Yet these were somehow different to the blazes the brothers had witnessed with depressing regularity up until now. They were more scattered for one thing and, to Tom’s eyes, they did not appear small enough to be individual cabins burning themselves into blackened oblivion. Most of the fires were huge, towering above the countryside around them. Amongst the fields and hedgerows small flocks of tiny dark figures could be seen flitting to and fro. Gathering, splitting, reforming, growing, these bands of men flowed along
ditches and cattle tracks. In the distance, something that troubled Tom as much as it stirred a formless hope within Dan, the heather on Carrigrew Hill was erupting in flame.

  ‘No,’ repeated Tom. ‘Definitely not soldiers.’

  ‘I do believe,’ Dan ventured, ‘that the Rising has started.’

  ‘How?’ wondered Tom, his tone incredulous. ‘How, with Perry and God knows who else in gaol? How did this start? How do we stop it?’

  Dan was openly grinning now, his mouth a crescent moon as the darkness grew ever deeper. ‘It only takes one man to make a stand, Tom. If it is the right sort of man others will stand with him.’ He laughed then. ‘You know yourself that this county is full of the best and most active gentlemen in the world. Should one parish face down the tyrant then surely all right-thinking people should follow.

  ‘This is glorious, Tom! Can you not feel the bigots and rascals shaking in their boots? Can you not feel the very stones of Dublin Castle tremble?’

  Tom eyed his brother in bafflement, ‘I cannot see how you entertain any hope of this succeeding, Dan. The first charge by cavalry or bayonet and a good many of those ‘best and most active gentlemen’ will be lying stretched in their own blood.’

  Abruptly Tom’s eyes widened and he pointed to the sweep of fields arcing about the foot of their little outcrop. ‘Someone’s coming—’ he said. ‘They’re not soldiers. Some of them are carrying pikes.’

  Below them, in the gloom, a group of ten or twelve men was making its way through the fields, using the heavy ditches as a screen between them and the road. All seemed to wear the drab clothing of peasant farmers and some carried the long lengths of pikes awkwardly in their grip or slanted over their shoulder. Dan and Tom watched them come with both curiosity and trepidation.

  As the little group neared the base of the outcrop, Tom, off-hand and casual, asked, ‘I presume you have your pistols to hand?’

  Dan nodded, ‘Don’t ask silly questions, little brother.’

  The group of men were now scaling the uneven and rocky slope directly beneath the two brothers. The ones with pikes were desperately trying to avoid poking their fellows or tangling the ten-foot pole-arm in their own legs. Their trials would have been comical were it not for the constellation of arson that winked all about from the surrounding countryside.

  Eventually the group arrived, puffing, before the two Banvilles, their leader, a middle-aged man with the leathern features and massive arms of a farmer, immediately offering a hand to Dan. ‘My heart is glad to see you well Mr Banville. I am overjoyed that you are still here and that we got to you before you upped and left.’

  Dan laughed and shook the man’s hand. ‘By God, William Sinnott! I had not thought to see you again. In truth, since bands of men began roving the countryside we were confused as to what was happening. What is happening? Your message said that Perry was arrested and the others were in hiding. You dashed the prospect of any Rising in this part of the country.’

  Sinnott’s eyes had left Dan and now regarded Tom with a sort of cool dislike, as though the two men were strange dogs come suddenly muzzle to muzzle. Instead of answering, Sinnott growled, ‘This must be your yeo of a brother?’

  The men behind him, a fist of rancour and shadowed ill-will, grumbled and gestured toward the younger Banville, their voices low, their intentions whispered.

  Perceiving this, Dan drew himself up to his full height and glared at the men. ‘Indeed, this is my brother,’ he snapped. ‘This is my brother who stood with my father when the soldiers came for me. This is my brother who has turned his back on tyranny and is shoulder to shoulder with the people in their endeavours. If you do not like the fact that he is here then he and I shall leave and never return and you shall have chased away two men whose fighting arms will be needed before long.’

  Sinnott, still eyeing Tom with some hostility, grunted in grudging acceptance. He then turned and pointed out into the countryside below. Night had fallen completely now, shrouding the scattered swarms of men as they scuttled from district to district, emphasising the brilliance of the roaring fires.

  ‘I never thought this would happen,’ Sinnott was saying. ‘Perry is gone, so too is Miles Byrne. A lot of the other captains are fled. This,’ he jabbed one hoary, callused finger into the night, ‘this is not of their doing. Word started to come up from around Enniscorthy and Scarawalsh a few hours ago. The captains down there had gotten their men out. Those bastards in Dunlavin and Carnew had forced the leaders to schedule this very night as the time when we exact revenge for years of bloody mistreatment.’

  ‘Why did it take word from down south?’ asked Tom. ‘Why, you were adamant only this morning that a Rising in Wexford was impossible.’

  Sinnott cast him a sour look and replied, ‘With Perry’s arrest nobody in these parts knew what was happening. The parishes around here were paralysed and fearful. We thought Perry had been induced to inform and that the yeos and Orangemen would be upon us all like a pack of wolves at any moment. God help the man but he must have held out, for the boys of Bantry and Ballaghkeen were in the field before sunset and now we’re with them too.’

  Sinnott’s face had twisted into a zealous mask, the moonlight lending him the aspect of some fiercely animated ghoul. Dan however was shaking his head and his eyes were sad. Slowly he asked, ‘How long has Perry been in custody?’

  Sinnott shrugged, ‘Three days, maybe four. But are you not listening? He held out. He held out so that the rest of his comrades could do their work.’

  Dan and Tom exchanged an uneasy glance. They knew the depths a torturer could plumb, they had seen the excesses to which a man might go when removed from all legal fetters and morality.

  ‘The poor man,’ whispered Tom. ‘Three days at least.’

  ‘I hope he died quickly,’ Dan added, blessing himself.

  Sinnott was staring quizzically at the two young men before him, his forehead creased and furrowed.

  ‘Everyone is doing as discussed, Mr Banville, sir,’ he offered at last.

  Now Dan looked confused, ‘What is it that you are saying, William?’

  ‘We’re taking our weapons back,’ he said. ‘You were there, Mr Banville, when this was organised. We’re raiding the collection centres. All the big houses where our guns and our pikes are kept, we’re ransacking them and piking any Orangeman or yeo we find.’

  Tom gazed out over the flame-spangled landscape. Magistrates’ houses, rectors’ glebes, captains’ mansions, landlords’ estates, anywhere that surrendered arms were being stored, was now aflame and crumbling.

  ‘You’ve opened a hornets’ nest, gentlemen,’ Tom intoned wearily. ‘Those moneyed gentlemen, whose property you’ve so proudly made bonfires of, will not rest until every rebellious head in Wexford is decorating a spike.’

  ‘What do you suggest we do?’ asked Dan. ‘Farmers cannot fight soldiers without weapons.’

  ‘Farmers cannot fight soldiers at all, Dan,’ retorted Tom. ‘This burning and looting of wealthy Protestants has all the trappings of religious bigotry. Reclaiming arms is laudable and eminently sensible if you expect to fight but torching the houses? Piking people on their lawns? This will look to Dublin like bloody, parochial vengeance – not revolution.’

  ‘Haven’t we a right to vengeance?’ asked Sinnott, bridling at Tom’s words.

  ‘Of course you do,’ sighed Tom. ‘But there are ways of going about it. You could burn every tyrant’s house between here and Carlow and it would provide no compensation and very little consolation to the relatives of their victims. If you want vengeance, true vengeance, you must become more than just a rabble.’

  Sinnott was nodding now, regarding the young former yeo with a new respect. ‘Will you two come with us? We could do with a couple of trained fighting men. We’re heading down south to Ballaghkeen to see what’s transpired during the night. If they have been as successful as us there won’t be a soldier left in Wexford by tomorrow evening, they’ll have all run away in terro
r.’

  Dan laughed, ‘I doubt that, William. I doubt that very much. The soldiery are all holed up in the garrison towns for the night, watching and waiting, hoping the people will become fatigued or disinterested, hoping that they will become gorged on violence and destruction and that they won’t have the stomach for any more. They’ll move in the morning, William. When they do we’d best be ready.’

  Sinnott and his group conferred briefly and then each in turn shook Dan’s hand.

  Dan turned to his brother, his eyebrows raised questioningly.

  ‘I shall come too,’ Tom said through gritted teeth. He smiled wryly at his brother, ‘All roads in this direction lead to hell but we shall walk them together.’

  Dan grinned and threw his big arms around Tom’s shoulders, wrapping him up with fierce affection. However, Tom noted with dry perspicacity, no welcoming hands were offered him by the sour-faced peasants, no acceptance was there yet for a man who so recently wore the red coat.

  It took only minutes for Tom and Dan to gather their meagre supplies and equipment. It took minutes more for the two young men to instruct the surprised group of farmers in how to march with pike on shoulder and to move as a cohesive body without tripping each other up. Then, with the air of children playing at soldiers, the little corps of peasant farmers marched down the hill and into the dark of the enveloping countryside. The two brothers strode behind them, Dan’s face alive and vital, Tom frowning and troubled whilst all about them, on hills and high points, more and more bonfires were sent whooping up into the night sky.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Coming Soldiers

  Whit Sunday, the 27th of May, and another perfect morning had broken across the rolling Wexford countryside. The barony of Ballaghkeen edged onto the sea and there was indeed a tang of salt in the air and, here and there, the clay of the roads was streaked with pale brush strokes of sand. On one narrow roadway, hemmed about by the thick green and yellow of gorse ditches, Tom and Dan Banville stood amongst the twelve farmers from their own Gorey barony and watched as William Sinnott propped himself up on an old, salt-bleached wooden gate.