1798

by Joe Murphy

  ‘That was an opportunity missed,’ stated Dan flatly.

  Roche nodded, ‘It was that. We would have wiped them from the face of the earth had they kept coming, of that I am certain. Horses, swords, pistols, carbines, ammunition, a treasure trove is making its way from us even as these farmers celebrate.’

  ‘It will give them hope,’ said Dan. ‘By God, it gives me hope to see a blackguard like White beat such a hasty retreat.’

  Tom was standing quietly, swishing his sword’s blade through the long grass at his feet and staring at the point in the road where the cavalry had halted, a whisker from ambush and annihilation. ‘Two hundred cavalry,’ he mused. ‘Two hundred cavalry, well-mounted and armed, led by one of the most zealous monsters in all the land, turn and run from a field full of peasants? I am dumbfounded.’

  He turned to Roche and Dan, a wry smile twisting his lips, ‘I may have been wrong,’ he laughed. ‘This might just be easier than I thought.’

  Elizabeth watched the rider with a mixture of curiosity and bemusement. She had been awake since before the seam of daybreak crept along the horizon and spent the morning wandering amidst the camp’s groggy multitudes. The fires had all been rekindled in short order and now a haze of wood smoke mingled with the disappearing dawn fog. She had awoken with a thirst roughening her mouth and a hunger gnawing at her stomach but without food or water and without a friend to beg charity from, she resigned herself to an uncomfortable morning, the growing smells of cooking mocking her empty stomach.

  The camp had come alive, like a corpse re-animating, stiffly at first but gaining momentum moment by moment. Pots were rinsed and scrubbed and slung above the wan flames of new kindling. Men tramped about with armfuls of firewood or stood on the gorse-stitched flank of the hill and gazed south whilst their children lolloped and gambolled around their legs. It was to the south too that Elizabeth found her attentions first drawn. Out there across the silver swamp of retreating fog, from the black gnarls of copses and along the lengths of leafy avenues, tendrils of charcoal rose against the sky. Elizabeth could easily guess their origin and the jovial agitation these distant testaments to arson provoked in the rebels on Kilthomas Hill frightened her a little.

  Of Dan Banville there was no sign and her concern for him grew with every passing minute.

  Then, suddenly, a figure appeared at the base of the hill. Wending its way up the slope, its appearance dragged people from their cooking fires like the pole draws a compass point. As the rider moved closer Elizabeth could see that it was a burly man, clad in the fine-fitting but rough clothes of a well-off farmer, a broad-brimmed hat crushed down onto his meaty head.

  At his approach the crowd of peasants began to wail. He passed through them like a galleon through the glass waters of a fish pond. His horse, a placid, heavy-chested, dove grey animal, pricked its ears forward and high-stepped as callused hands reached for its rider and a hundred voices cried out, ‘Fr Michael! Fr Michael!’

  Fr Michael for his part merely smiled a wet smile of pontifical benevolence and rose his hand as though bestowing a blessing on the ragged multitude that now surrounded him.

  Elizabeth snorted in derision and shook her head. Here was a mob of people intent on substituting one untouchable elite for another.

  From all that Daniel had said, from all that he had inadvertently revealed, it had become obvious to Elizabeth that he was a United Irishman, if not by name then certainly by inclination. This rabble of tenant farmers greeting a mounted priest as though he were Alexander himself was not the vision that Daniel had presented to her. An Ireland free from the power of all churches, a debased people throwing off the shackles of Crown and Cross, a people free from the compulsion to bow and scrape; that was what he had hoped for. The scene being played out before her now seemed like an affront to that ideal.

  She curled her lip as her stomach grumbled in protest at being left empty for so long. Smiling wryly, she looked down and patted her midriff, muttering, ‘If you are going to complain so, then I think we shall have to lower ourselves to beg a morsel to eat.’

  She laughed then, thinking, What would father and mother think? Sarah would have a convulsion!

  Still laughing, she raised her eyes and then all mirth died within her. Every cell of her body, every atom of her being suddenly turned to frost. Her mouth worked mutely as a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions pulverised her from within. She blinked deliberately. Once. Twice. She willed her vision to clear, wished that her eyes had somehow betrayed her.

  At the base of the hill’s western slope, out of the green and gold of the quilted countryside, a creeping red line had bled into being like a laceration. Red coats and black bicorns coloured the paddocks below as they marched. And just on the edge of hearing, the burred rattle of a drum could be heard and above the soldiers’ heads their colours were unfurled. Slightly to the right of the infantry, a mass of cavalry were snaking around the flank of the hill, snaking along the road that Elizabeth and Dan had travelled on so many occasions.

  The yeos had come at last.

  Her heart beating in her ears, Elizabeth breathed deeply and fought to prevent herself from screaming in panic. Daniel, she thought, where are you?

  Now, above the chatter of the crowd as it swilled about Fr Michael, a warning cry went howling up into the air. Immediately, every pair of rebel eyes turned towards the west and a brute keening arose from the throats of the women. At this sound a gaggle of children, and not a few of the men, began to edge slowly towards the line of cedars at the summit of the hill. Elizabeth too, to her shame, felt herself take a mindless step backward before she steadied herself and planted her feet. She would not move from here. She had made her choice.

  Fr Michael, however, was not so easily thrown off his stride. To Elizabeth’s surprise the stocky priest was now standing in his stirrups, haranguing those around him.

  ‘You run!’ he cried. ‘Why? Is this not why we are here? Is this not why we have left our homes and gathered all together as free people under God?’

  At his words every one of the wavering peasants halted as though rooted to the very bedrock. Men raised their heads and looked to him whilst their wives and children paused, pulling at their husbands, their fathers, urging them to come away, to hide amid the fern and timber.

  Fr Michael was gesturing now, his arm describing a wide arc, taking in the countryside that lay supine and smoking below him. ‘Look!’ he roared in his bull’s voice. ‘See how our comrades have dealt with the tyrants this very night. They must surely bring us to battle else be driven into the sea. We are gathered here to stand. We are gathered here to fight! Why run? Why hide? Fight for freedom or be shot like dogs! Fight for Ireland!’

  The hundreds of men gathered in the gold spill of morning gave vent at these words to a roar of defiance that only increased the wailing of their families. The gathering was all at once a frenzy of activity. Where once farm hands and labourers stood stultified by indecision and fear, now they rushed to unlimber pikes and shepherd their loved ones to safety in the woods and bracken. Unnoticed by all, fearful but unbowed like a hind ringed by baying hounds, Elizabeth Blakely leaned against the bole of a cedar tree and prayed silently.

  She prayed for herself and for Daniel. She prayed that they might see each other once more, just once before the world was consumed by chaos and ruin.

  Fr Michael, atop his horse and grandly instructing the men around him, was by now attempting to form two lines of pikemen, hundreds strong, strung out along the contours of the hill.

  Below him, even as his men steadied, the soldiers had formed an unbroken chain of scarlet and steel. As one they lifted their muskets and at a distance of a few hundred yards a coughing eruption of blue powder smoke rippled out along their line. A moment later the fizzing chatter of the gunshots skittered across the slopes.

  Elizabeth jumped at the sound, certain she saw more than one of the rebels drop his pike or makeshift polearm. Although no one had fallen at this first volle
y, Fr Michael’s little army seemed to be on the verge of flying to the four winds like a bevy of startled snipe.

  ‘Hold!’ the barrel-thick priest roared. ‘Hold, in the name of God!’

  The soldiers were advancing now, the sound of their drum a brittle accompaniment to the terror they instilled with every step. Elizabeth watched as the yeos steadied themselves and, at a word from an officer sitting his mount at the extreme right of their line, they loosed another volley into the mass of rebels. A stinking wall of powder smoke was flung up between the two opposing lines, everything within its folds becoming nebulous and ghostly.

  Again, not a single United man fell, but at the report of the muskets three of their number turned tail and fled, terrified, into the cedar wood. Elizabeth’s eyes followed them and in her ears the lamentation of the women mounted ever more desperately. They crouched in the musty fern and snagging briar; crouched and clutched crosses and rosary beads. She stood as still as the trees themselves and heard prayer after garbled prayer make a droning procession through the undergrowth.

  And then, suddenly, over the brow of the hill away to the rebel right, the muscled ranks of the Carnew Yeoman Cavalry appeared. Against the pastel blue of the morning sky their coats were a deep, deep red. The red of spilled blood crusting in the heat, Elizabeth thought absently. The red of the slaughter house and chopping block. The red of emptied life.

  And there, in the middle of their line, his helmet discarded and his sword a sliver of ice in the sunlight, sat Captain Wainwright. At the sight of him, Elizabeth felt a sensation like a blade, as slim as a feather and as cold as glass, slip into her abdomen.

  The cavalry commenced a slow walk toward the rebel pikemen whom Fr Michael was valiantly attempting to wheel in order to face the oncoming wall of horse and steel. Then the thunder of their hooves began to build as the walk turned into a trot. In each saddle a red-coated yeoman rose and fell with disciplined and awful precision, each sabre held at a uniform angle, each face grim beneath identical Tarleton helmets. The cavalry came on, relentless and remorseless as a wave, their thunder building and building under the clear summer sky.

  Caught between the infantry and the charge of the cavalry, Fr Michael’s pikemen began to fragment. Their only hope lay in unity and yet their instincts compelled them to scatter, to race before the horses like hares before the hounds. From behind Elizabeth, panicked screams crawled up into the air and the woods exploded into rustling life as women and children fled out into the open, wailing and crying the names of their men as the yeoman infantry blazed another volley of whipping lead into the streaming mass of peasantry.

  This time, bodies did fall.

  Men, women and children bowled over and broken, smashed into oblivion by shot and ball.

  Before Elizabeth’s eyes the ragged campsite became a place of massacre. The cavalry hit home in an avalanche of violence and all was carnage. She watched, stunned and terrified, as a shining cavalry blade, one amongst a hundred, hammered down onto an unprotected head, flexing as it sheared through scalp and skull. Elizabeth, for so long an alien splinter floating beneath the hide of the body of rebels, was now abruptly part of it. Every terrified scream, every gore-splattered inch of skin, every staring and bloodshot eye, was now a part of her, and she of it.

  Someone, somewhere, screamed a scream of septic despair. A scream that was taken up and amplified by a thousand other throats. A chorus of screams to which Elizabeth added her own. And, like some dumb animal, with the rest of the herd she turned to run.

  Earlier that morning, Lieutenant-Colonel Foote of the North Cork Militia had bent over his desk and fumed. A map, held down by lead paperweights, crackled as his finger chased mobs of enemies across the faded ink on its surface. As his eyes traversed the map’s yellowed expanses his face began to adopt its jaundiced hue. Here and there his finger stabbed, darting into the wide tracts of empty land between the small black squares and church towers that represented towns and villages. Each time his finger came to rest, the name of some obscure place or parish he had never even heard of branded itself into his mind. Tincurry. Ballyroebuck. Ballindaggin.

  His complexion grew even more sickly as his eyes read the name of the most fateful little hamlet. The Harrow.

  ‘Is this entire county a nest of damned vipers?’ he roared, spittle flying from his lips and flecking the parchment over which he leaned. ‘What in blazes have our forces been doing over the last weeks? What in blazes are they doing now? Every whoreson rebel seems suddenly bloated with conviction while the rest of us cower in garrison towns! What of the arrests? The collection of arms? How in the name of almighty God is this possible?’

  Regarding him in uncomfortable silence, Henry Perceval and Captain Le Hunte shuffled their feet uneasily.

  ‘Bagenal Harvey and Edward Fitzgerald are in custody, Colonel,’ began Perceval. ‘That has removed two of their leaders from the field. White up in Gorey has made another number of arrests. The rebels are headless, Colonel. They cannot sustain such furious intrepidity without men to lead them.’

  Foote turned to glare at the High Sherriff and barked, ‘Really, Mr Perceval? What leads you to make that assessment?’

  Perceval swallowed drily, as though his tongue was a cotton rag, and said, ‘The refugees that have come in from the surrounding parishes are all of the opinion that the rebels are merely peasants bent on loot and destruction.’

  He lifted his right hand, in which he held a bundle of creased papers.

  ‘These reports from the garrisons all convey the same low opinion of the peasant mobs. They are full of passion but in the cold light of day they will not hold together. The militia and yeomanry will rout them in short order.’

  Foote, his fury not in the least abated, spun and pointed out through the room’s high rectangular window. In the distance, the long flat span of Wexford Bridge was teeming with carts and horses, crawling with families scuttling along on foot. A stream of humanity was hurrying south into Wexford Town from East Shelmalier and the countryside beyond. ‘Tell that to them!’ seethed Foote. ‘Tell that to all the loyal folk who are fleeing in terror at this moment. Tell them we were too late. Late by a matter of hours!’

  He stormed over to the table and once more jabbed his finger onto a point in the map with such violence that he tore it free from its weights.

  ‘Tell that to Lieutenant Bookey!’

  The sparsely furnished chamber echoed his anger and, in the face of it, Captain Le Hunte was discomfited. ‘My dear, sir,’ he began, ‘we are all much put out by last night’s events and we all held Lieutenant Bookey very close in our affections. But Henry is right. We shall take these upstarts down a peg or two over the course of today. Mark my words.’

  ‘Oh, I do mark them,’ retorted Foote. ‘I mark them well. How do you propose to chastise them so easily, Captain? What’s this I hear about your corps of cavalry? How many have you left?’

  Le Hunte blinked, embarrassed, and stuttered, ‘I do not see how that …’

  ‘Answer me!’ Foote demanded.

  ‘Sixteen,’ replied the captain flatly.

  ‘Sixteen,’ repeated Foote, his voice shaking. ‘With sixteen horse you want to gallop off into a hostile country? No, my good Captain, that won’t do.’

  He addressed both men then, his voice at last levelling and the fury that had bleached his complexion now ebbing slightly. ‘Mr Perceval, you shall continue to apprehend as many of these vile rebels as you can. Do not limit yourself to the names Perry supplied us with. Tell your men to use their own initiative, I want any chance of conspiracy stamped out.

  ‘Le Hunte, have the remnants of your men mount and be ready to depart immediately. I shall muster as many of my North Corks as I can readily gather. If we are to provide these rebels with a lesson it will be a harsh one. There shall be no half measures, Le Hunte, no lukewarm response to treason. We cannot stand as loyal subjects are most barbarously murdered and property is ruined. We shall meet these peasants with overwhelming f
orce and we shall crush them underfoot. Is that clear, gentlemen?’

  Le Hunte and Perceval nodded fervently. ‘Yes Colonel,’ they chorused.

  An hour later and a long line of red-coated soldiers pushed their way northward through the crowds on Wexford Bridge. The civilians bustled to move out of their way, dragging children and handcarts to one side as the North Corks filed past in a tramping thunder of boots and rattling weaponry. Out in front, his yellow jacket contrasting starkly with the crimson column at his back, a teenaged drummer boy beat a lively rhythm. Just behind him, Colonel Foote rode side by side with Major Lombard, his young second in command.

  ‘Glorious day for it, ain’t it?’ offered Lombard.

  Foote merely nodded, his thoughts dark, his considerations already focused on the countryside to his north and whatever rag-bag of revolutionaries it may contain.

  Already across the bridge, the desultory remains of the Shelmalier Cavalry tried to look their best as they sat their foxhunters. Amongst them was the magistrate Edward Turner, who had come into the town the previous night bearing hysterical tidings of house burnings and savagery. He had been pressed into service as a guide for Le Hunte’s cavalry as they ranged out in front, a screen and vedette for the infantry.

  One hundred and twenty soldiers and officers marched out of Wexford Town that day, along with sixteen hardened yeomen, every one of them filled with the expectation of open battle and victory against a peasant rabble.

  The day grew steadily warmer as the sun pitched itself further into the azure dome of the heavens. Between the sheltering hedgerows the breeze had died to an occasional waft of sweltering air, only serving to emphasise the clamminess of skin, the sticky damp of shirt and red coat. The column of infantry marched at ease, their muskets held limply in sweaty hands and their boots scuffing up little cumulous puffs of dust with every laboured footfall. Birds, brown and black, flashed from cover at the soldiers’ approach and vanished in fluttering alarm over briar-snarled ditches and fences. All talk had stilled, the Corkmen marched in silence along the empty roadway.