1798

by Joe Murphy

  On the opposite side of the gate, standing up to his shins in the straining emerald blades of growing barley, an ancient farmer leaned on a heavy blackthorn walking stick, almost as tall as himself, and scratched his beard thoughtfully. At his feet a black and white farm dog sat and gazed up at him adoringly, its tongue lolling over its teeth like a wet ribbon.

  ‘John Donovan and Lieutenant Bookey, that’s what I heard anyhow,’ the old man was saying.

  ‘Jesus Christ, both of them?’ asked Sinnott incredulously.

  ‘That’s the God’s truth,’ replied the farmer, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Donovan was shot by his first cousin, Tom Donovan, and Bookey was piked in the neck.’

  William Sinnott exhaled, long and wondering, and said, ‘Lieutenant Bookey of the Camolin Cavalry killed at The Harrow just last night?’

  ‘That’s the long and short of it,’ said the old man.

  Dan and Tom exchanged curious looks before Dan called out, ‘What happened then? What of those that did the killing?’

  ‘Eh?’ came the reply.

  Sinnott leaned forward and raised his voice somewhat, ‘He asked what happened to those who killed the yeomen? Where did they go?’

  The farmer’s wizened hand went back to scratching his beard and he croaked, ‘Well, the yeos all flew back to Ferns and Fr Murphy and his men went about the place collecting guns and pikes. I think old Reverend Burrows up in Kyle Glebe was killed in the middle of it all. Piked to death.’

  The old man shook his head morosely, ‘He didn’t deserve that. He was a good man. He was no tyrant.’

  Dan pushed forward now and, as the curious group of peasant soldiers looked on, he too leaned over the gate and said loudly, ‘Fr Murphy? Fr John Murphy of Boolavogue?’

  ‘The very one. He gathered together everyone he could and sent young Jerry Donovan dashing about on a horse roaring, “Get up and fight! Or you will be burned or butchered in your beds! The country is in a blaze around you!”’ The old man laughed then, a wheezing, brittle sort of sound, ‘Jerry Donovan, with his lame leg, rising the country, what has happened to the world at all, at all?’

  ‘Where are they now?’ pressed Dan.

  The farmer sucked in his cheeks with a smack and tapped his lips with one crooked finger, ‘The last I heard tell was from Edward Hanley there about an hour ago. He said there was a huge crowd of people gathered outside Jeremiah Kavanagh’s hostelry. That’s on the crossroads there at Ballinamonabeg.’

  ‘I know Kavanagh’s,’ offered Sinnott.

  The old man laughed again, rocking himself back and forth on the fulcrum of his stick, ‘Young Hanley said he was getting as far away from there as he could before every soldier in the county comes down on the place.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dan as he pushed himself away from the gate and hurried over to where Tom was frowning at him in puzzlement.

  ‘What has happened to make you so flushed?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Dan. ‘Only Anthony Perry’s “fat prevaricator” has singlehandedly risen all the parishes around this neighbourhood.’

  ‘Fr Murphy of Boolavogue?’ asked Tom, incredulous. ‘He’s not even a United Irishman, is he? He was one of those priests you made monotonous habit of railing against.’

  ‘Indeed,’ laughed Dan. ‘He was one of the most outspoken in urging the surrender of arms. It turns out he spent most of last night committing violence to get them back.’

  He threw his hands in the air, ‘The world has turned upside down.’

  Tom thought for a moment before surmising, ‘So this sheep of a priest has now become a dyed in the wool croppy? I’d suggest that self-preservation after the murder of the two yeomen was a sharper spur to his actions than the prospect of a republican idyll.’

  William Sinnott was now at Dan’s elbow, ‘It is good that they’ve all gone to Jeremiah Kavanagh’s. It is only a mile or so from here. Kavanagh fought with General Washington against the English and is as fine and committed a United Irishman as lives on these shores. He might bring some order to what is occurring. What do you make of the priest’s involvement, Mr Banville?’

  Dan squinted into the lofting sun as though to receive divine guidance from its glare. ‘I don’t know, William. Anyone drawn to a banner of defiance at the current time in our country’s sad history must surely be a United Irishman, if not in name then at least in spirit. I would hazard that once the first hot rush of excitement passes and the captains and colonels meet to formulate a plan of action, then the priest will fall away in importance. He must be commended for his exertions thus far, however.’

  The short march to the crossroads at Ballinamonabeg was a pleasant one. The heat of the sun lifting to its midday brilliance was tempered by a cooling breeze that came waltzing in off the sea. The men of the little group from the north of the county chatted and joked among themselves as they strolled. They sauntered with their shirts open and the butt of their pikes trailing in the dust behind them, kicking stones and pebbles as they walked.

  Tom, however, and Dan too to a lesser extent, remained slaves to their days in the military. Their ears strained for the slightest hint of approaching horses and their eyes scanned the skyline above the hedgerows, searching for the tell-tale curtain of dust that would signal the approach of a body of men.

  They could hear the noise of the crossroads long before their little bohreen opened out into it.

  Four rutted roads came together at Ballinamonabeg and at this junction a few small cabins had sprung up. It was here that the returning Continental Army man, Jeremiah Kavanagh, had chosen to build his public house. Across from where Dan and Tom stepped out into the open space of the crossroads a large, single-storey thatched building sat gleaming in the sunshine, its whitewashed walls reflecting the sun and its yellow covering of straw glowing gold in the afternoon light. Its thick stub of stone chimney jutted out of the thatch and wisps of turf smoke snaked lazily skyward, kinking and twisting in the breeze.

  From the open door of the pub a great tumult of people spilled out onto the road and lapped up against its walls and the ditches all about. Some appeared to be sleeping whilst some were animated and arguing. Quite a few, Dan noted, were bandaged and bloodied from their nocturnal activities. Quite a few more held a drink in their hands. All told, Dan was sure that there were well over a thousand men present and in the sloping fields behind Jeremiah Kavanagh’s pub he could discern a motley horde of women and children, hundreds and hundreds of them.

  All about, bristling with potential, their cruel heads glistening in the sunlight, pikes leaned against whitewashed walls or were stacked in neat piles like wood gathered for building.

  Tom tugged his brother’s sleeve and nodded curtly to a particular point in the crowd. There, holding their horses’ reins and conversing amongst themselves, were six brightly uniformed members of the Shelmalier Yeoman Cavalry.

  ‘It seems you’re not the only yeo to have a change of heart,’ Dan said.

  William Sinnott had moved off with his men and was mixing with the crowds, going from group to group and shaking hands with those he knew and making acquaintance with those he did not. Tom, meanwhile, took one look at the packed entrance to Kavanagh’s pub and snorted, ‘No chance of getting a drink in there.’

  Dan smiled at him, ‘I thought you were off the drink?’

  Tom shrugged, ‘I was. However, present circumstances would drive a nun to drink.’

  ‘Let us find out what the tale is behind this raggle-taggle army,’ suggested Dan, and he made his way over to the Shelmaliers. Tom shrugged and followed his brother, wending his way through the hubbub of the makeshift camp, stepping over prone figures, asleep or wounded and striding between stands of pikes pushed together like the frames of Indian tepees.

  The former yeomen looked up at the brothers’ approach, regarding them warily.

  ‘Good day to you, sirs,’ greeted Dan. ‘I am Daniel Banville and this is my brother Thomas, both for
merly of the Castletown Yeoman Cavalry. I hope we are well met?’

  The yeomen all offered their gauntleted hands to be shaken before one of them, a man just reaching his middle years, one hand tangled in the reins of a giant bay foxhunter, said, ‘Well met indeed. My name is Morgan Byrne and I find it comforting to know that at least a handful of men here have some military training. If Sergeant Roche had a month to drill these peasants we might make something out of them. They are enthusiastic enough but lack discipline.’

  One of his companions laughed softly, ‘Shouldn’t you refer to the good sergeant as “Colonel Roche” from now on, Byrne?’

  Tom, curious, asked, ‘Edward Roche of the Shelmaliers? Sergeant Edward Roche? He’s a United Irishman?’

  All six cavalry men now laughed openly.

  ‘He is indeed, as are we all,’ one answered. ‘A good proportion of the barony seems to be United Irishmen if the numbers of Shelmalier men here are anything to judge by. Most are fugitives from the militia and yeomanry and most have no arms, not even reaping hooks or hay forks. Some though,’ he said with a wink, ‘have long-barrelled shore guns and finer shots you will never see.’

  ‘Where is Roche now?’ asked Dan. ‘Who is leading the people?’

  The first yeoman gestured towards the pub, ‘Kavanagh, George Sparks, Roche and a few others, including that remarkable priest, are in there having a council of war. They’ve been in there for over an hour. We’ll all be sent home, mark my words. That will be the upshot. We have no cavalry, few firearms and no artillery. There is no sign of Edward Fitzgerald of Newpark, who should be here by now and already some of the poor farming folk have sloped off home, having had enough of fighting after only one night.’

  Dan studied the soldier carefully, ‘We are in such bad shape as all that?’ he asked.

  The yeoman nodded, ‘Unless some driving purpose unites all upon one course then I’m afraid it is back to their smoking homes for these people and a boat to France for the likes of us.’

  No sooner had the words left his lips than a young man, hardly out of his teens, raced into the camp from down the northern arm of the crossroads. His bare feet pounded on the sun-baked clay and his breath was ragged in his chest. His eyes were gaping discs of terror and his lips were as pale as fish bellies.

  ‘They’re coming!’ he roared. ‘There’s horses coming!’

  Immediately, pandemonium gripped the crossroads. In the adjoining fields, women and children sent up a wailing cry that frightened the birds from the trees, whilst the fighting men, resting in the sun, leaped to their feet, seizing pikes and pitchforks with an eagerness bred of terror. They then milled, however, unsure of what to do, each man looking to the other for instructions, each one suddenly stymied, their imagined course of action hamstrung by indecision. A few individuals began to separate themselves from the main body of the camp, step by step, moving south, away from the approach of the cavalry.

  Into this panic and confusion stepped Edward Roche. Dashing and commanding in his uniform of yeoman sergeant he immediately began issuing orders, sword drawn in hand. A large man, broad of shoulder with a heavily jowled face beneath sweeping sideburns, he dominated all those around him. Like a force of nature he held the gradually disintegrating mass of peasantry together. His orders were obeyed without question; men unused to fighting, unsure of their footing in such an unknown situation, were grateful to be given direction and leapt into action.

  Then, beside Roche appeared another figure. Dressed in the simple earthy tones of a comfortable farmer, big-boned and balding but possessed of an indefinable aura of conviction, he too began cajoling and harassing, deriding those few who had the temerity to slink away. Upon hearing his voice, a great many of those who had blanched at the news of the soldiers’ approach now gained heart. They surged forward and gathered around the two heavy figures that now seemed to hold the unwavering command of the entire mass of fighting men.

  ‘You see that man beside Colonel Roche,’ began the middle-aged yeo, ‘the one with the balding head, giving orders like an officer himself? That’s the good Fr John Murphy. The people love him, I’ll grant him that.’

  Then, with a gesture to his companions, he said, ‘Let us go and provide Roche with a bit of help.’

  Tom and Dan both shrugged and followed the Shelmalier men over to where Murphy and Roche were issuing directions. Roche, the military man, had seized the situation immediately whilst Murphy seemed to be the orator, extolling for his flock the virtues of bravery and honesty.

  ‘You there,’ barked Roche, noticing Tom and Dan amidst the uniforms of his cavalry men. ‘Do you know how to use those pistols you carry?’

  ‘Of course,’ shouted Dan in reply. Then, half-drawing his cavalry blade and ignoring Tom’s despairing look, he continued, ‘And this isn’t just for show either.’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ laughed Roche.

  Then, becoming suddenly grim, he ordered, ‘You men, with me. Fr Murphy here will defend the crossroads and the east side of the road with the men from the Harrow. Shelmaliers, anyone with a full pike or firearm is to make for that steep field yonder.’ He pointed with his sword.

  On the northwest side of the crossroads, bordering the road down which the terrified sentry had dashed, a sloping field rose grassy and peaceful to the horizon. Hedged by strong ditches of gorse and briar, it was here that Roche would set his ambush.

  Roche himself led the way, barging through thorn and nettle, heedless of his fine uniform. After him, a corps of maybe five hundred men streamed into the little paddock and took up silent position along the hedgerow bordering the road. Most carried pikes, but slightly above them, higher up the slope, Roche had positioned those few rebels with muskets and fowling pieces.

  In the middle of the line of pikemen, pistols and swords in hand, Dan and Tom Banville waited, gasping in the warmth of the afternoon.

  Gradually, an electric silence descended on the rebel ranks. Tension fizzed and crackled as men crouched, their hands balled in white knots about their weapons. Amongst cow parsley and fern, amongst spinning swarms of midges, hidden and noiseless in the long grass, Roche’s men waited and watched.

  Above the quiet of the pikemen and musketmen the lamentation of the camp followers twisted into the afternoon. Men’s names were wailed, their wives pleading with them to come to their families and children screamed for their fathers; but not one man moved from his position overlooking the north road. Not one man turned his eyes from where, perhaps half a mile away, a beige cockerel tail of dust was crawling up into the sky above the fields and hedgerows.

  The man beside Dan, grimy and bedraggled with a scabrous bandage bound around his left hand, began to pray. His voice was quick and whispered, the words almost running into one, ‘Ourfatherwhoartinheavenhallowedbethyname … ’

  The jangle of tack and the sound of hooves on clay suddenly filled the world. Yet under it, like a bodhrán beneath the high treble of a jigging fiddle, Roche’s voice rumbled, ‘Steady lads. Steady.’

  Through the meshing branches of the hedgerow, through the thorns and glorious yellow flowers, the rebel force caught first sight of the cavalry’s vanguard. They came on at a steady walk, three abreast with the rest, maybe two hundred if Dan was any judge, filling the road behind. They were a disparate group, motley in their uniform. Dan could recognise elements from Gorey, Ballaghkeen, Camolin, Coolgreany and others. Red coats mingled with blue and black but all were armed with pistols and swords and all wore an air of determination.

  Dan frowned then. One of the leading figures, in the middle dressed in red coat and Tarleton helmet, seemed familiar to him. There was a certain set to the shoulders, an arrogance about his bearing that proclaimed his identity louder than any herald. Before Dan could make a sound, beside him Tom spat in disgust into the ditch, ‘Hawtrey bloody White.’

  As though this were a signal, as though the invoking of his name somehow alerted the loyalist officer, just outside of musket shot, White raised his ri
ght hand and called a halt to his column. Down the ranks the order was passed and the two hundred horse came to a huffing stop, animals snorting and their tails whipping at nuisance flies and biting insects.

  White then reached into his saddlebag and drew forth a telescope, the long brass cylinder flashing back gaudy highlights as the sun struck its surface. Extending it, he raised it to his eye and scanned the road and ditches ahead.

  Shoes and boot leather creaked as pikemen adjusted their positions and even their breath seemed impossibly loud, a tidal roar in the stillness.

  ‘Don’t anyone move,’ hissed Dan.

  White was now in conference with the two other officers beside him. One man was gesticulating wildly, the bearskin crest of his helmet riffling in the breeze. The other leaned on his saddle horn and nodded solemnly, every now and then flinging a suspicious glance toward the rebel hedgerows. They debated like this for long minutes while the sun beat down, coaxing sweat from pores, gluing shirts to shoulder blades and the buzzing of flies grew more insistent. Then, abruptly, a decision appeared to have been made, for at a signal from White the entire corps of cavalry wheeled about and trotted back the way they had come.

  White alone lingered for a moment, his eyes flaying the ditches and fields, wary and hate-filled, before he too urged his mount into motion and disappeared into the dust-swaddled distance.

  The rebel lines watched the yeomen retreat with mingled feelings of relief and disbelief. A lone voice cried out, ‘That’s right ye murdering crowd of bastards, off with ye!’ A gust of laughter rushed through the ranks at this and then a cheer arose, low at first but gathering in volume as each man took it up and magnified it until the very countryside itself seemed to be bellowing in triumph.

  Only Dan, Tom and Edward Roche remained unaffected. They stood together in glum disappointment and watched as the dust of the cavalry’s retreat faded into the blue of the afternoon sky.