1798

by Joe Murphy

  Foote was nodding slowly and glanced surreptitiously at the officer beside him before saying, ‘You are certain that he is bringing artillery?’

  Maxwell sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaustion threatening to flare into anger. Foote had asked the same question three times in the past hour.

  ‘Just because the rebels bloodied your Cork nose on two separate occasions,’ he barked, ‘does not give you leave to witter on like a woman. For the last time, General Fawcett is bringing artillery. Regular artillery, not militia or yeomanry; but His Majesty’s Royal Artillery. Do not ask me again Colonel.’

  Foote swallowed, his mouth and throat dry, and replied, ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

  ‘We must do something about these refugees,’ Maxwell said abstractedly. ‘They are doing nothing but spreading panic.’

  For the past two days Wexford Bridge had been an almost solid mass of terrified people. Worse was that, once they had reached the town, their fears only seemed to multiply as the confident and imperious military that they so fondly imagined readying to sally forth and vanquish the rebel mob was proven to be a fantasy. The soldiers and yeomanry patrolled the town and guarded its walls but they seemed horribly paralysed, incapable or unwilling to mount an offensive. Several concerned citizens, including rectors and magistrates, had been turned away from Foote’s offices with their tails between their legs for having the temerity to suggest that the garrison might meet the insurgents head-on.

  The loyalist panic had rippled through the town’s population until the trickle of people leaving Wexford by boat or road turned into a flood. As quickly as people entered the town, they left by the terrified cart load. And now, to Maxwell’s chagrin, the boats had stopped sailing. Only minutes before, a runner had come pounding up from the docks bearing the message that most of the ships had put out into the harbour and were refusing to accept passengers. Huge crowds had gathered on the quayside, their faces gaunt with dread and alarm, their pleas for safe passage winging across the waves like wounded birds only to be lost in the ominous silence emanating from the ships riding at anchor.

  This was certainly what Foote thought, for as the morning had progressed and Maxwell perused crackling maps and officers’ reports, Foote had paced back and forth in demented monotony until Maxwell had brought him to the window to gaze out over the town.

  Now, with the knowledge of the ship captains’ vacillation, siding neither with the rebels nor offering loyal citizens an escape route, biding their time with canny patience, Foote and Maxwell found themselves tangled in the same chains of disquiet. Of the two officers, Foote was obviously the more anxious and he sucked a long breath in a whistle through his front teeth. ‘I wish General Fawcett would come,’ he said.

  Without his mind formulating a response, Maxwell heard his own voice reply, ‘I do as well.’

  The morning wore on with the expectation of the inevitable rebel onslaught growing like a tumour in the minds of the military. Private soldiers, heads drooping with lack of sleep, were rudely jostled back into wakefulness by comrades whose own eyes were bulging and liquid with fatigue. Men watched the horizon to the north in ever-growing despair, convinced that at any moment the tell-tale plume of dust would arise signalling the rebel advance. The stories of the loyalist refugees, replete with images of savage pikemen dashing out the brains of screaming babies and tearing at soldiers’ throats with cannibal ferocity, had filtered through the garrison so that that remaining North Corks and the two hundred Donegal Militia were in a state of utmost anxiety.

  And still there was no sign of Fawcett.

  By one o’clock the atmosphere in Wexford Town had reached an excruciating pitch. Loyalist panic had been souring all morning and had now turned to a thick and desperate anger.

  At the first knock, Maxwell looked up from where he was sitting at the desk, sorting through details of troop numbers and dispositions. Foote, who had been staring out the window, his eyes unfocused and his thoughts elsewhere, jumped as though he had been pinched.

  The knocking came again, more urgent this time.

  ‘Come,’ ordered Maxwell curtly.

  Opposite Maxwell, a large pair of ornate panelled doors swung open and Captain James Boyd of the Wexford Yeoman Cavalry strode purposefully into the room, Tarleton helmet carried under one arm and cavalry sabre swinging at his hip. He stopped in front of Maxwell and saluted sharply.

  ‘At ease,’ drawled Maxwell. ‘What brings you here, Captain?’

  ‘I come with grave messages from the townspeople, Colonel,’ replied Boyd, his eyes staring straight ahead through the tall rectangle of empty window over Maxwell’s right shoulder.

  Maxwell groaned and rubbed his weary eyes with fingers rough from years of hard living. Instead of replying, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

  Instead of Maxwell, it was Foote who asked, ‘What do they want?’

  Boyd looked uncomfortable at this and his mouth wrinkled wryly. Every line of his face expressed reluctance at what he was being forced to communicate. He paused, made to speak and paused again as though the words had become lodged in his throat.

  ‘Out with it, man!’ Maxwell snapped.

  Boyd bridled at this but finally blurted out, ‘Many prominent citizens feel we should negotiate with the rebels. Edward Hay and Matthew Keogh, both loyal citizens and beloved and esteemed by all for their fairness and liberal natures, have been inundated with requests to mediate with the rebels. The townsfolk wish to negotiate a truce before the town is lost and their lives and property forfeit.’

  ‘Edward Hay,’ said Foote, ‘would hardly be considered a model citizen. I have no doubt he has United sympathies.’

  ‘If we had a reason to arrest him, sir, he would even now be lodged in gaol with the other reprobates and malcontents,’ Boyd replied.

  Steepling his fingers, Maxwell asked, ‘The townspeople are so lily-livered that they would negotiate with traitors to the Crown?’

  ‘They are desperate, Colonel Maxwell,’ stated Boyd.

  Maxwell pursed his lips before musing, ‘And desperate times demand desperate measures, isn’t that so Captain Boyd?’

  Boyd looked momentarily confused, a dark fissure appearing between his black brows, before he uttered a noncommittal, ‘Sir.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Maxwell, suddenly smiling. ‘What you can do is reassure the townspeople, through whatever spokesperson they are ignorant enough to listen to, that all is in hand. Then get me Edward Turner, Mr Watson and Mr Perceval the High Sherriff.’

  ‘Sir,’ acknowledged Boyd, managing to express in that single syllable a whole universe of confusion.

  ‘Do not presume to understand, Mr Boyd,’ snapped Maxwell. ‘Do as you are told.’

  Boyd saluted and hurried from the room, buckling on his helmet as he did so. An odd sense of urgency seemed to grip him at Maxwell’s words and he raced down the stairs and out of the building as though his life depended on it. The sunshine flung his shadow out beneath him as he ran, squat and frantic in the high afternoon light. Behind him, in the market house room, he left a confused Lieutenant-Colonel Foote and an unaccountably good-humoured Colonel Maxwell.

  ‘Sir, do you mind if I ask what you have planned?’ asked Foote.

  ‘I intend to upset that rabble in Enniscorthy for as long as I possibly can, giving Fawcett and his cannon time to get here, whilst at the same time keeping the damned population here from rioting in panic and costing us the town through hysteria.’

  Intrigued now, Foote made his way to one of the deep armchairs and eased himself down into it, the peaks and switchbacks of his Cork accent now soft as he almost whispered, ‘I am puzzled, sir, as to how you hope to accomplish both.’

  A smile crept slowly across Maxwell’s face like something crawling from under a stone. ‘If the townsfolk wish to negotiate then we shall let them,’ he said slowly. ‘But we shall also send word with all possible speed to Fawcett informing him of the seriousness of the situation and
advising that we link our forces and come at the rebels from two sides.’

  He made a sign with his right hand, index and fourth finger extended and jutting aggressively, ‘We shall spear them on the horns of a bull.’

  Foote was regarding the senior officer with an expression of appreciation. ‘Then you do not mean to abide by the negotiations with the rebels?’ he asked.

  Maxwell scoffed, ‘Rebels in arms against a sovereign power are to be treated with neither the respect nor the delicacy that one might reserve for a regular army. The rules of war do not apply here.’

  ‘And who shall we send as emissary?’ Foote pressed, eager now and leaning forward in his chair. ‘It is a task fraught with peril for at the very sight of a known yeoman or magistrate they will like as not tear them limb from limb.

  ‘Keogh or Hay, perhaps?’ he suggested.

  Maxwell’s hand went to his mouth and he smoothed the dark wings of his moustache. ‘I would suggest Harvey and Fitzgerald,’ he said at last.

  Foote stared at him with eyes blinking wildly and blustered, ‘But, sir, both those men are under arrest for plotting against the Crown. Harvey has been implicated as the supreme figure behind the United movement in the county whilst Edward Fitzgerald was named as chief amongst the others. Why would you send these men back to the very people who must desire their release?’

  Maxwell leaned forward now too and hissed, ‘Because, my dear Colonel Foote, if we break Harvey and Fitzgerald then we break the back of the United Irishmen. Ourselves and General Fawcett can then sweep them back into the bogs where they belong.’

  ‘Pardon the impertinence, sir, but you are a shrewd man,’ said Foote.

  ‘I am a soldier, Colonel,’ came Maxwell’s reply. ‘Nothing more.’

  An hour later Maxwell, Foote, Perceval, Turner and Jonas Watson all crowded into the guard room of Wexford Gaol. The gaol itself was a squat, thick-walled building possessed of the same ponderous, elemental quality of boulders and cliff faces. It occupied a site backing onto Meadow’s and Cardiff ’s quays but its grim facade loured over the narrow, cobbled defile of Barrack Street. All about the building, the reek of the docks was a miasma and from its handful of narrow, barred windows, red-brown stains washed with disgusting implication down the stonework of the exterior walls.

  Within, the gaol was very much of utilitarian design, lacking all decoration or any sign of warmth or comfort. The cells occupied most of the structure, their heavy wooden doors age-blackened and iron-bound, chipped in a myriad of places by the ebb and flow of human misery.

  The guard room was a small, claustrophobic cube of undressed stone. Whitewash made the walls glare back the light of two lanterns that provided the only real illumination in the place, the only source of daylight being a small, empty aperture set high up in the eastern wall through which a gouge of blue sky showed, like the promise of something unattainable.

  A splintered, unvarnished table sat in the middle of the guard room, which usually provided a grimy beach on which the detritus of the guards’ meals fetched up and were left to rot. At this piece of furniture, Maxwell, Foote and Perceval sat on creaking chairs. Behind them, Edward Turner and Jonas Watson leaned against the dusty white of the walls.

  On the opposite side of the table sat two men. One was well into his middle years, quite heavy-set with the rotund physique of a well-moneyed aristocrat. A powdered wig, now mouse-grey from his time in the gaol, was incongruously perched on his head. He wore a simple white shirt, buff breeches and black shoes. His stockings, which had been silk and very finely made, had been confiscated by one of the guards almost as soon as he had entered the place. His soft calves were streaked with dirt and his loose jowls quivered as his eyes flew from face to face before him.

  The other man was slimmer than the first and younger, though a slackness about the jaw line and gut betrayed the fact that he too enjoyed a life that, until now, had not been ravaged by hardship. He wore no wig and his brown hair curled thick and full away from his temples and was held at the nape of his neck by a small black bow. His eyes twinkled with intellectual vitality and there was a certain pugnacity to the set of his shoulders and the line of his jaw that might have been deemed foolish considering his present circumstances.

  This second man now spoke, his attention fixed on Henry Perceval, the High Sherriff.

  ‘My dear Henry,’ he said. ‘How pleasant to see you. Such fine company you’re keeping. May I be so bold as to enquire when you intend to let us out?’

  Henry Perceval sighed in exasperation, ‘Mr Fitzgerald, while I commend you for your bravery it would go better with you were you not so flippant.’

  Fitzgerald raised an eyebrow and retorted, ‘Flippant? You think me flippant? I would like you then to provide me with any reason why myself, Mr Harvey here beside me, and Mr Colclough are being detained here without trial or opportunity to defend ourselves. I am a trained magistrate, Mr Perceval, and you are acting unlawfully.’

  Perceval shook his head but, before he could answer, Colonel Maxwell spoke slowly and levelly, ‘Martial law holds sway here, Mr Fitzgerald, and I would be more worried about your very soul than the niceties of courtroom etiquette.’

  ‘And you are?’ asked Fitzgerald, his mask of bold impudence still in place, only undermined by the slight pallor that crept suddenly into his cheeks.

  ‘My name is Colonel Maxwell,’ came the reply. ‘And I am a person not to be trifled with. I have news of your rebellion – your “Rising”, I believe you croppies call it.’

  ‘I will not listen to lies,’ began Fitzgerald, but Harvey’s hand gripped his forearm with surprising fervour.

  ‘Hear him, at least,’ the plump aristocrat advised.

  Fitzgerald glanced at him in open confusion but relented, motioning for Maxwell to continue.

  The vaguest hint of a smile hooked at the corners of the officer’s mouth and then was gone as he said, ‘Your little Rising has taken place without you. Of that I am sure you are glad.’

  Fitzgerald and Harvey exchanged amazed looks and Fitzgerald leaned forward, forearms resting on the grease-smeared table. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about, Colonel. But let us assume for a moment that I am in league with these dastardly United Irishmen. How might the outbreak of rebellion give you cause to visit us here in gaol?’

  ‘Because I am going to tell you something that might change your opinion of matters and rob your eyes of their sparkle, Mr Fitzgerald.’

  Both Fitzgerald and Harvey regarded Maxwell cautiously. ‘Go on,’ instructed Fitzgerald.

  ‘Dublin did not rebel,’ stated Maxwell. ‘The little fighting that there was in other counties was petering out by yesterday. Your county and the foolish people that reside within it are fighting, unsupported, against the entire military apparatus.’

  He grinned then, blatantly and cruelly, and in a voice carrying all the weight of a falling axe, he said, ‘You are on your own.’

  Fitzgerald was dumbstruck but Harvey shifted his weight uncomfortably and dabbed his sleeve against the folds of flesh that swelled about his open collar. ‘Let us imagine for a moment that what you say is the truth,’ the portly aristocrat said quietly. ‘Let us furthermore imagine that I or any of my acquaintances may be in any position to influence the rebels. What would you have done?’

  Fitzgerald was spurred into outrage at this. ‘This is all lies, Beauchamp!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is a plot engineered so that we might incriminate ourselves and save them the trouble of a trial.’

  He addressed the military men in front of him, ‘If you wish to hang us, then have done with it. We are not objects for your entertainment.’

  ‘Mr Fitzgerald,’ replied Watson, his odd accent soothing and placating. ‘We do not wish to visit violence upon any person. It is violence and bloodshed that we are so strenuously attempting to avoid. A rebel band has attacked and burned Enniscorthy and now seems bent on threatening this very town. There is a garrison of over a thousand men here, gentlemen, there is
cannon and cavalry and a wall we can defend. Peasants and farmers cannot hope to take this place without soaking the entire neighbourhood with their blood. You cannot hope to win this war.’

  Fitzgerald drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘You wish us to become emissaries,’ he said at last. ‘You wish us to tell the rebel forces to disband.’

  ‘We wish to offer terms,’ said Maxwell delicately. ‘If the rebels surrender their arms and return home, we shall overlook the more grotesque actions of their rank and file. Only the leaders shall be held to account.’

  ‘What about our position?’ asked Harvey, his eyes darting from one hard face to the next. ‘What can we hope to gain from such an action?’

  Perceval, with a pained expression on his face, reluctantly replied, ‘You shall save yourself from the gallows. If you bring this whole sorry mess to a satisfactory and speedy conclusion you may escape even the need to make reparations.’

  Fitzgerald looked stricken and his eyes cast this way and that, as though questing for some bolt-hole or escape route. At length and with the palpable ache of a man conflicted in his own mind, he pressed, ‘As officers and gentlemen, upon your honour, you swear to me that what you say is true.’

  Maxwell nodded in a melodramatic parody of sympathetic understanding, ‘I swear to you that you have no hope in the coming fight. Your cause is already lost.’

  ‘I will not go,’ Harvey’s voice came thick and wet as porridge. ‘I will not go. They do not know me and will shoot me on sight for betraying them. I will not go. Send Colclough in my stead. Tell them that I remain a hostage here to their good conduct. Colclough and Edward, here, will go. Won’t you, Edward?’

  Fitzgerald seemed to have withered where he sat and wore an expression of heartbreak. He glanced at the men before him, gaze lingering lastly on Harvey’s heavy features, his eager eyes and sweating brow. ‘It seems as though I have no choice,’ he mumbled at last. ‘I will take John Henry with me and I will go to Enniscorthy.’