1798

by Joe Murphy

  ‘You’re confident then?’ asked Le Hunte.

  ‘This is not America, gentlemen,’ chuckled Watson. ‘I can assure you of that.’

  Colonel Foote was silent as the men around him laughed in relieved bonhomie, reassured by Jonas Watson’s commanding presence. Foote however, was not so easily placated. Nor was his belief in the unconquerable might of the military so unshakable. He had seen over a hundred of his men butchered, massacred before his disbelieving eyes. And now, the very next day, another hundred trained soldiers had been put to the sword and a garrison town had been taken from under the very noses of its defenders. A nauseating sense of foreboding was swilling within him, sour and clinging. In spite of Watson’s words, Lieutenant Colonel Foote was afraid.

  Beyond the amber-lighted walls of the market house, beyond the smell of cigar smoke and good brandy, Wexford Town was crouched and tense. All through its streets and alleys, redcoats jostled and marched, flowing like blood through arteries. And in barracks and lodgings, cold under the rising moon, the bleak sobs of a hundred and twenty widows and their children spilled wetly into the night.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hard Councils

  Dawn of the 29th broke in pearly translucence over the sprawling camp on the slopes of Vinegar Hill. A summer fog had billowed up from the river during the night and added to the retching smoke of smouldering Enniscorthy. The sun, invisible in the haze, nonetheless ignited the air with a cold fire, setting the mist aglow, filled with a white, seemingly sourceless light. All about Enniscorthy and its environs bands of men were flitting through the dawn like ghosts as more and more detachments of United Irishmen moved toward the hill and its green bough standard.

  On the crest of the hill under the ruined windmill, a small group of men, amongst them Miles Byrne and Tom Banville, stood in the damp and watched as Captain Thomas Dixon meted out justice. A mahogany bureau had been brought up from the town and had been placed in front of the windmill’s ragged doorway, two of its four legs propped up with lumps of rock to keep it steady on the uneven ground. Behind this desk, Dixon sat with the air of a conquering lord, his lank hair slicked back and his fingers drumming an impatient tattoo. To either side of him, six of his own corps stood with pikes in their hands; in front the old tithe collector shivered in the dank air.

  Tom had left Dan and Elizabeth still sleeping in their makeshift shelter, the couple wrapped in each other’s arms, oblivious to everything except each other. He left them and made his way through the opalescent dawn, his boots dragging wetness from the grass with every step so that they were soon drenched and glistening as though freshly polished.

  He had left because he had known that Dixon would stage his little outrage at dawn. The majority of exhausted men would be sleeping whilst the coming day would lend a grotesque semblance of military regulation to what Tom presumed would be a grotesque parody.

  For grotesque it was, with Dixon rabid behind his incongruous desk, playing the part of a military judge and his men sneering horribly as though party to some private joke.

  Tom had not expected to see Byrne here but the young captain greeted him with a grim, wordless nod, his features those of a man who had swallowed his own vomit. He regarded Dixon with a cold contempt but, like Tom, thought it wise not to interfere. To divide the myriad rebel factions in any way might undermine the whole teetering edifice of their efforts and bring everything crashing down in an orgy of recrimination and confusion. So the two men merely watched as Dixon, supercilious and preening, addressed the old man who stood quaking in the shadowless effulgence of the dawn.

  ‘So what you’re saying is, you’re not an Orangeman,’ stated Dixon.

  ‘Yes, sir, your honour,’ replied the old man, tugging his stringy, grey forelock obsequiously.

  ‘Yet you admit to collecting money and rent for that auld bastard George Ogle?’ asked Dixon. ‘You admit to working for a man who has dedicated every moment of his waking life to destroying the very idea of the United Irishmen?’

  ‘I cannot deny that,’ said the man querulously.

  Dixon slammed his hand onto the desktop with such force that the whole thing sprang from off its stone perches and listed like a ship in a storm. He surged to his feet and tossed his head back and he gazed at the old man with the haughty disdain of a lawyer who has speared his opponent on a cold point of logic.

  ‘Then,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘you admit to working yourself for the overthrow of our proud and victorious organisation?’

  The man gaped at this, his mind working furiously and his hands wringing in supplication. ‘Why, no sir,’ he stammered, suddenly terrified. ‘I just did what I was told. I collected rents. That is all. I’ve never harmed anyone in my life.’

  Dixon spat a long stream of saliva at the man’s feet, stemming his flow of words.

  ‘The fact that blood-sucking leaches like you are alive at all is an insult to likes of me and mine,’ he growled. ‘You’ve stolen the rewards of our blood and sweat for the last time. Your kind is finished.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. Please,’ began the tithe collector. His knees buckled and he collapsed forward onto the damp, shallow soil that crowned Vinegar Hill. His hands were like pale, blind spiders as they clawed across the ground and his face, wrinkled and haggard, was awash with tears. ‘Have mercy, sir,’ he begged.

  And as he lay there, prostrate in the dirt, a single shaft of sunlight burned through the mantle of mist and lit the top of Vinegar Hill like a beacon.

  ‘Kill him,’ ordered Dixon, the weight of hatred loading his voice.

  Simultaneously, both Tom and Byrne turned away from the scene and walked down the hill. Disgust curdled both their stomachs as the defenceless old tithe collector’s screams tore through the air before stilling with gut-wrenching suddenness. The entire trial, if it could be called so, had taken no more than ten minutes.

  Tom was shaken and turned to the eighteen-year-old beside him, ‘That was as despicable an action as I’ve ever seen. That was as bad as anything that the North Corks have perpetrated against the peasantry.’

  Byrne was nodding distractedly as sleep-muddled heads began appearing from under blankets and hedgerows all about them. ‘We must be wary of this,’ the young captain cautioned. ‘We cannot allow the Rising to become a sectarian circus. If word becomes general that we are executing innocent Protestants under any pretext, then sympathy throughout the rest of the country, especially Belfast, will wane.’

  Walking alongside him, Tom asked, ‘Do you think the rest of the country is at arms?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ replied Byrne. ‘If our people, paralysed by arrests and half prostrate through torture, could rise up and rout the King’s forces then I don’t see how the brave fellows of Kildare and Meath could have failed.’

  ‘Carlow,’ said Tom bluntly. ‘And Kilthomas. Both were disasters and both bode badly for the state of the rest of the country.’

  ‘You think we are alone?’ asked Byrne.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Tom. ‘But if Dixon and Luke Byrne are given free hand then any hope of a general Rising, with Catholics and Protestants shoulder to shoulder under the banner of liberty, will be lost.’

  He pointed to the two standards stabbed into the earth just to the left of the windmill, with its green branch silhouetted in the haze. The two standards hung limp now, not a breath of air stirred either the green and gold or black and white.

  ‘I would rather we followed the green than the black, Miles,’ stated Tom. ‘A religious war would tear the country apart.’

  ‘This is not a religious war,’ retorted Byrne savagely. ‘And Dixon’s kind does not represent the vision of our leaders. Wolfe Tone is a Protestant, Bagenal Harvey is too. If Dixon and his followers want to sully our name with matters of base concern then I am certain that the leaders will take action against them.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Tom. ‘Go tell that to the poor wretch they’ve made worms’ meat of a moment ago.’

  Byrne rega
rded him thoughtfully, then turned and walked away as all about him people roused themselves from slumber and hurried up the slope, curious as to what had transpired under the broken, black tooth of the ruined windmill.

  Tom, Dan and Elizabeth sat at the opening of their little shelter and looked out over the Slaney valley. The sun had finally burnt off the cataract of fog and now blazed down upon the earth like an angry eye. Below them, the town of Enniscorthy was a slump of charred timbers and soot-smeared walls, the stone buildings that withstood the fires of the day before clustered mainly about the hollow space of the market square.

  The flood of men had continued all morning, pikes and muskets and eager hands pouring in from the surrounding countryside. A particularly fine group of men had come marching in from Killann carrying a green banner with the United harp glittering upon it in gilt thread. At the head of this band was the biggest man either of the Banvilles had ever seen, a blond young man, almost seven feet in height and riding a massive draught horse with the cool command of a born leader.

  ‘Who is that?’ Elizabeth had asked in wonder.

  ‘Mount Leinster’s own darling and pride. John Kelly of Killann,’ Dan answered.

  So it had continued. The companies of men bringing with them wives and loved ones and, on not a few occasions, several unfortunate prisoners. As the day grew brighter, it was Elizabeth who first noticed the commotion down where the arch of the bridge flung itself out and over the Slaney’s lethargic current. Where the bridge joined with the far bank, a group of rebels coming down from the hill had knotted, huddled as though sharing some hidden secret. Beside them, stretching along the road north toward Ferns and Gorey, was a corps of perhaps two hundred pikemen. It was around the head of this corps that the rebel group had fisted. As Elizabeth pointed, the soft murmur of distant cheering drifted up from the scene at the bridge and the watchers on the hill could see the crowd flinging their hats and beavers aloft in jubilation into the morning air. They looked tiny and black, like flecks of soot, as they fluttered back to earth. Then, with a surge like a gushing spring, the crowd hefted a figure onto their shoulders and began to carry him like a victorious prize-fighter towards the camp.

  Even from some distance the bandages whorled about the figure’s head were clearly discernible, glowing white and bloody against the earthy drabness of their background.

  ‘Now who could that be?’ wondered Tom.

  ‘Whoever he his, he has suffered the tender ministrations of the authorities,’ replied Dan.

  As the man was borne out of sight below the bulge of Vinegar Hill’s lower slopes, the contrast between his reception and the fate of some of the other new arrivals appalled Elizabeth. The cruelty that this war had vomited into being was a spreading slick in her mind. At every turn, just when horror piled on horror to such an extent that it seemed unbearable, yet more depravity followed. It was no wonder she cleaved to Dan and he cleaved to her with such ferocious affection. They were each other’s happiness, each other’s life-blood. From a deep and festering well of fear and disgust she asked, ‘Will they murder many more, do you think?’

  The abruptness of the question startled her two companions. Dan and Tom turned to her from where they had begun to debate who the returning hero might be and fixed her with very different expressions. Tom’s was resigned and sad whilst Dan was frowning in indignation.

  ‘I do not think these “trials” will be allowed to continue,’ said Dan. ‘They make a mockery of what we stand for.’

  ‘They make a mockery of what you, yourself, stand for,’ corrected Tom. ‘Dixon has the whip hand and if Roche wants to stop him, he’ll have a deal to do. No one will risk splitting the movement at this stage in the proceedings.’

  ‘So they will continue, in spite of humanity and goodness and decency? In spite of the vaunted Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite?’ Elizabeth asked bitterly.

  ‘I believe so,’ said Tom

  ‘They cannot,’ said Dan, simultaneously.

  Up the slope, from the direction of Beale’s Barn, a handful of bleating prisoners were herded, one by one, to be ensconced within the flinty walls of the shattered windmill. The brothers and Elizabeth tracked the progress of each one with hearts heavy as cannonballs in their chests.

  The resurgence of the exultant whooping that they had heard wafting up from the bridge some twenty minutes before brought them out of their introspection. Off to their right, where the fields sloped gently down to the road leading in from Oulart, the excited chatter of men and women buzzed across the hillside.

  Shrugging, they rose to their feet and made their way off across the jagged contours, curious to see what had spurred the camp into such good spirits. They stepped carefully between cooking fires tended by women who craned their necks to catch what all the fuss was about, and they had to stop on more than one occasion when gaggles of children cavorted past them, throwing a ragball or playing hurling with bits of branches. Wood smoke and the scents of cooking wreathed everything, mingling horribly with the acrid stink crawling up from the valley below.

  Eventually, the little group had traversed the hillside and were now standing on the outskirts of a mass of people as they sent a great huzzah roaring into the heavens. In the midst of this crowd, a figure dressed in dark frock coat and breeches was being bounced into the air by dozens of strong arms. The man was grinning in what Dan thought to be earnest and pained good spirits, like an adult humouring a child. One hand was clamped to the bandages that wrapped his head like an obscene turban.

  As Dan watched, a slow dawn of recognition broke across his thoughts.

  ‘No,’ he whispered incredulously. ‘It cannot be.’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Elizabeth as she grasped his arm and stood on tiptoes in an effort to see above the heads of the crowd.

  Tom cocked his eyebrow and regarded his brother wryly, ‘You know that man?’

  Dan nodded fervently, straining his own neck to see now that the throng had lowered the man into their swarming middle. ‘I do believe that’s Anthony Perry or else my eyes completely deceive me.

  ‘I thought that he was arrested,’ he said in a tone suddenly and curiously flat.

  ‘He was obviously in custody at some stage,’ began Tom wonderingly. ‘How has he ended up here?’

  ‘Why did they let him go when the other leaders, Edward Fitzgerald, Harvey, Colclough, are all presumably still in custody?’ asked Dan.

  Both brothers exchanged troubled glances.

  ‘What did they do to him under all those bandages?’ asked Elizabeth softly.

  Tom scrubbed one hand across his stubbled features and said with some bluntness, ‘Pitchcap, amongst other things.’

  ‘Is there nothing but barbarity at loose in the world these days? Atrocity piles on atrocity and “an eye for an eye” seems to be the watchword of every man and woman,’ Elizabeth said despairingly.

  Dan bent to her and kissed her on the forehead, ‘There are things much more noble than the outrages we have lately witnessed, my darling. There is beauty and there is laughter and there is love even still.’

  ‘The weather has held up fine as well,’ grinned Tom.

  The crowd was dispersing now and Perry was being gently shepherded to where the other leaders had pitched a large tent. A green flag hung lifeless from a pole hammered into the ground in front of it.

  Tom was about to say something when a narrow woman with a face possessing the hard angularity of a greyhound’s, spat as she stalked past Elizabeth.

  ‘Excuse me!’ piped Elizabeth, incredulous.

  The woman continued walking, silent and purposeful but another woman, heavier than the first and following in her spiky path, hissed, ‘It’s because of youse filthy Protestants that our men end up like that.’ She stabbed a dirt-silted finger back toward Perry and then stormed down the slope.

  Elizabeth stood, shocked, her face slack and her jaw unhinging. She felt Dan’s big arm enfolding her protectively and his voice came soothing and deep, his bar
itone filling the empty world.

  ‘Don’t mind her, Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘They don’t know who you are and have no reason to harm you in any way.’

  Tom watched the women go with smouldering eyes, the blue of his irises seeming to become cobalt as a dark fury rose within him.

  ‘That fat sow from yesterday was sure she recognised Elizabeth,’ he growled. ‘I’d bet everything we once owned that she has been pouring poison into every ear that would listen.’

  The three companions stood as the crowd that had welcomed Perry scattered and drifted back to their own campfires. Like cattle plodding through the fields to be milked, they followed the sheep paths and beaten trackways between gorse and briar in slow, deliberate lines. Fighting men, now well-rested and well-fed, their eyes taking in the gutted corpse of Enniscorthy, which only yesterday had stood before them, garrisoned and defiant, moved steadily down the hill’s flanks. Minds turned now toward prospects of further action, to fights further afield, for as every child knew, the devil makes work for idle hands.

  Sitting on the threshold of their little bivouac, Dan watched Tom come sauntering across the slope. It had been three hours since Perry’s arrival and Tom had decided to go and reconnoitre the state of the rebel army.

  He sat down heavily beside his brother and said with an air of genuine disbelief, ‘Ten thousand. There are at least ten thousand armed men on this hill.’

  Dan’s eyes widened and he flung his gaze out over Enniscorthy and into the blue haze of the copse-studded countryside beyond. The county must be emptied, every man who could hold a pike or hayfork must be rallying to them. His heart fluttered in his chest in involuntary excitement. The vast sweep of field and forest before him was crawling with moving bands of men and not one wore the crimson coat of the King, not one soldier or yeo marred the scene with even a fleck of red. Browns and greys and, above all, greens were the colours that filled his vision. Every scrap of pasture, every dusty length of roadway was unburdened by the crushing weight of an alien authority. For the first time in his life Dan looked out on a country free and unbowed.