1798

by Joe Murphy

  Hay’s face darkened at this and his next words were weighted with menace. ‘Our enemies are professional officers, Mr Roche, and I have seen the coldblooded nature of professional officers on the battlefields of Flanders. I fear that your ignoring me this day will cost us all our heads in the end.’

  He turned on his heel then and without offering salute he stalked down the hill to where the cannon were being cleaned and oiled.

  Fr Murphy, Roche, Fitzgerald and the assembled crowd all watched him leave and a malign hubbub began to buzz through the ranks. This was stilled when Edward Fitzgerald raised his hand and declared, ‘Since Mr Hay’s concerns are great I feel that we should immediately present our terms to the garrison. I presume unconditional surrender of the town and all its arms in exchange for the safe passage of the garrison and civilians are what is called for?’

  A roar of acclaim went up at these words and as it died Fr Murphy spoke into the void left behind.

  ‘They are to leave Wexford with their colours cased and drums muffled. We shall afford them no respect. Let them know that they are beaten.’

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Fitzgerald. ‘In that case, I suggest that Thomas Richards and myself shall immediately return to the town and present our terms. Meanwhile his brother shall be held here as a guarantee against foul play.’

  Again the gathered rebel rank and file cheered at this. Dan, however, saw Roche and the priest exchange another dubious look. After a contemplative moment that seemed to stretch just a fraction too long, Fr Murphy nodded once and said, ‘Then you must make haste. I must admit that Mr Hay’s words have spilled cold water down my back.’

  Within moments the little diplomatic mission had been assembled. Fitzgerald, looking splendid on Loftus Richards’s black charger, was waving his tricorn as he passed through the ranks like the lord that many of the peasantry thought that he was. Thomas Richards sat his own saddle with a look of terror washing his face of colour, as around him vast numbers of fighting men poured across the slopes to bid them farewell. Hats and neckerchiefs were flung in the air and a wild yell battered his ears. He had never before seen so many fierce-looking vagabonds in the one place. To Richards the world seemed upended, its filthy belly exposed to the light.

  Once they rode out of sight beyond the low rise obscuring John Street, the leaders began assembling their corps. Standards were hoisted and the cries of the various parishes and baronies winged about the rugged shoulders of Forth Mountain. Bodies of men converged and meshed. Those who had been on the march now for four days formed ranks and files with a precision whose execution seemed alien in men so ragged and unkempt. The newer corps valiantly attempted to emulate the veterans, the Bantry men who had won the howitzers taking their cue from the Scarawalsh men alongside them. Women and children extinguished cooking fires and gathered up bundles of cloth and blankets. Babies wailed.

  Very soon the entire thrusting bulk of the mountain, usually a glowing edifice of purple heather and green-golden gorse, was a black mass of bristling weaponry.

  Dan watched as Anthony Perry walked down the line of men from the Gorey barony. He had placed a broad-brimmed hat on his head over the white knot of his bandages but in the shadow of its brim, crawling down across his left eye and cheek bone, the pale sheen of a scar glimmered hideously. Yet there was more life about him than there had been the previous day. He moved with greater animation and the doleful welter of emotions that had swam constantly across his features was replaced by an expression of granite resolve. Though, as he drew closer to Dan, it was clear that there was sadness in his eyes. Men looked to him in good cheer, offering words of support and welcome and Perry returned them readily enough, but those great, sad eyes refused to meet the faces of his comrades. His gaze scudded past, a stone across water.

  Assembled in their corps, the multitude of the United Irish Army stood ready, waiting for the return of Edward Fitzgerald and their chance to enter Wexford Town. Edward Roche, Fr Murphy and a dozen of the main chiefs were engaged in animated discussion just ahead of the front ranks.

  ‘Probably arguing over the best place to get a pint,’ commented Tom.

  The rebel army stood for an hour before Roche, with a perplexed frown marring his forehead, ordered a detachment of the Shelmaliers to advance to the Windmill Hill, a small knoll halfway between their position and John Street, to await the senior officers of the garrison and to receive the stores and arms and ammunition that were theirs through right of conquest.

  The Shelmaliers marched off and took up position within cannon shot of the rebel lines but still no word and no messenger issued forth to greet them.

  Still they waited while the sun tumbled from its zenith, falling westward through the eggshell sky, and men began to grumble and shuffle in the heat. Pikes were grounded and here and there men actually sat themselves down on the heather at their feet. The camp followers began to come forward, curious as to the lack of activity, and the children began to cavort between the files and tumble across the empty ground separating one corps from the next.

  Dan was craning his neck to see if Elizabeth still remained at the rear of the column when Tom spoke softly.

  ‘Fitzgerald is dead or deserted,’ he whispered.

  Dan regarded him in shock. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.

  Tom’s face was a frowning picture of frustration as he muttered, ‘We have been standing on this God-forsaken hill for nearly three hours now. If the garrison had accepted our terms word would have reached us ages ago. Something is not right here Dan.’

  Suddenly a gasp went up from the column to Dan’s right and men lifted arms and pikes to point off to the southeast. There, on the horizon from the direction of Rosslare, a mottled haze of smoke was drifting up into the sky, floating across the blue like a bruise. As the men watched, the dark trail of smoke began to creep westward towards Mayglass and Duncannon. The men began to mutter amongst themselves and abruptly the entire hill was a sibilant hive of buzzing conversation.

  All of a sudden Elizabeth was at Dan’s side. Her face was filmed with perspiration and from under the band of her sun-bonnet the delicate curls of her hair spilled unheeded and tangled. Her eyes were filled with an intense excitement as she exclaimed, ‘Daniel, you must see this! I was up at the Three Rocks and the whole country from Rosslare to Mayglass is in flames!’

  Dan looked at her, appalled. His face full of consternation, he asked, ‘Are you sure? You are sure it is smoke?’

  She nodded fervently and Dan cursed with a passion that startled Elizabeth. Tom merely groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose as though a headache thundered through his cranium.

  At that moment John Hay came dashing up the slope from where the guns had been harnessed to the traces of four heavy horses awaiting the order to move.

  He approached the group of leaders and began arguing in growling tones pitched just low enough to avoid eavesdropping. Every now and then he would gesticulate with sword-thrust vehemence in the direction of the trail of smoke to their south, his finger stabbing and his face scarlet with fury. Before him Roche, with his hands joined as though in prayer, was trying to explain something, glancing towards Wexford with wide, insistent eyes. What their exact words were neither the two Banvilles nor Elizabeth could determine.

  Eventually Hay turned away and, kicking heather and bracken with each incensed stride, he stormed back down the slope.

  Roche and the other leaders were muttering and shaking their heads, some morosely, others, Fr Michael Murphy chief amongst them, angrily. Then, loud enough so that he was heard by any pair of ears on the surrounding slope, Roche barked, ‘I know!’

  He turned to face the men and ordered, ‘Get these women and children to the rear. We march on the town.’

  No cry of joy greeted his words. No roar of bravado and fellowship filled the day with noise. Only a glum rumble of assent rolled through the ranks and the brittle clacking of pikestaff against pikestaff rattled across the desolate tracts of Forth Mou
ntain as weapons and equipment were shouldered. An odd laugh rang out from one or two individuals but their empty isolation in the general gloom only served to emphasise the bleakness that had suddenly descended. In the midst of victory, on the verge of taking the county seat and all that entailed, every man felt a sullen resentment blacken within them.

  Dan, Tom and Elizabeth, every man, woman and child who had seen the mocking plumes of smoke drifting up from the southern horizon, knew that they traced a swathe of arson, a trail of burning left by the fleeing and vengeful garrison of Wexford Town. Dan, Tom and Elizabeth, every man, woman and child, knew that they had been cheated.

  It was a victory that felt like a funeral.

  CHAPTER 15

  Debates and Divisions

  Dan, Elizabeth and Tom sat on the steps of the market house and looked out across the Cornmarket and down into the Bullring below. The morning of the 31st of May had broken with a flurry of ragged grey clouds trawled across the sky by a buffeting south-westerly wind. The wind had a bitter edge to it and the three companions huddled together unconsciously, Elizabeth with a heavy blue woollen shawl wound tight about her narrow shoulders. Dan lovingly leaned his head against hers and occasionally filaments of her hair would catch in his stubble and scrawl across the air between them.

  Tom, scratching his own stubbled jaw, said distractedly, ‘As soon as I get the chance I am going to find a hot bath and I am going to soak in it until I shrivel into a prune.’

  Dan laughed, ‘We must stink to high heaven.’

  Elizabeth shook her head, wrinkling her nose, ‘You always smell like this.’

  The majority of the rebel army had spent the night before encamped on Windmill Hill just outside the John Street gate, soaking in a confusion of chagrin and disappointment. They had entered the town earlier to a rapturous reception. Green boughs and every scrap of emerald fabric in the place had been fashioned into banners and flags that were held flapping from windows and balconies. Every single inhabitant seemed to be grinning maniacally and cheering as though their lungs would burst, green cockades and sashes decorating every item of clothing they could be pinned to. Out in the bay the ships riding at anchor had run up green and white flags and had fired their cannon in salute as the leaders rode out onto the quays. Everywhere good cheer reigned and food and drink had been brought out on massive platters for the famished fighting men. Wexford Town had become a carnival, a celebration of life, of vitality; and a gurning prostration at the feet of a victorious army.

  The various corps of rebels had been immediately detailed to ransack the barracks and any prominent loyalist houses they could find. The men had returned without a single soldier or arms in any great quantity, a lone cask of gunpowder and a few fowling pieces were all that three hours of searching had revealed. The garrison had fled; Maxwell’s ruse had worked.

  The search parties had, however, uncovered a number of loyalists who were either resident in the town or who had fled there over the previous three days. People who thought they had escaped the butchery of Enniscorthy, suddenly, and to their horror and panic, found themselves abandoned by those they thought might protect them. All over the town loyalist middlemen and landowners were frantically clothing themselves in green, acclaiming the rebel army as though it were the Second Coming.

  Thomas Dixon had immediately convened an ad hoc court martial in the Bullring. Sitting behind a pilfered table, the dusk falling about him like a miasma, he was intent on pronouncing justice on a number of these unfortunates until Roche and Fr Murphy had excoriated him and had the prisoners removed to the gaol. The cobbled mall of the Bullring, now lined with abandoned traders’ carts and empty flour barrels, in times of peace was an elongated marketplace. The people of Wexford would congregate here in noisy knots of commercial frenzy, haggling over barley and corn, beef and butter, its covered arcade a chancel for knavery. Now, as the unfortunate prisoners stumbled and staggered their way to a miserable confinement, the space was filled with raucous jeers. Over a hundred people now packed the cold cells on Barrack Street and their wails and terrified pleading echoed all along a thoroughfare thronged with celebrating peasants.

  Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey and a frightened, blubbering Ebenezer Jacob had met the rebel vanguard as it spilled into the Cornmarket just above the Bullring. Jacob had ducked behind the United man as Fr Murphy loomed over them both, proud upon his heavy mount. Harvey had found the time to return to his town house and was now resplendent in a green frock coat, black breeches and ivory waistcoat. On his head a perfectly coiffeured wig perched in a mass of powdered curls, silk stockings sheathed his calves. He greeted the rebels like the aristocrat he was.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ he had said with a flourish. ‘Old Wexford is won. I have seen to it that all our brave patriot fellows have been set at liberty.’

  Fr Murphy looked down at him saying, ‘Bagenal Harvey, I presume? I am Fr John Murphy and because I do indeed “pretend to Christian charity” I will not say to you what I have thought of saying over the past hours since receiving that rag of a letter you wrote.’

  Harvey blinked, stunned, whilst Jacob cowered even further.

  Roche leaned out of his saddle and gripped the priest’s arm while explaining, ‘We are all very weary, Beauchamp, and the last day or two have been very trying. Not least because of your arrest.’

  He gestured around him then, taking in the ragged, battle-worn rural rebels as they danced and gambolled with the smiling citizens of Wexford Town. Somewhere a fiddle struck up a jig and a torrent of laughter spilled through the streets. Roche’s voice hardened slightly as he continued, ‘I do not know what orgy of violence you or your captors expected Beauchamp, but we are not savages. We are United Irishmen, like your good self. We have not become murdering monsters overnight. We have no cause to ape the yeos and the North Corks.’

  He had said this with all the blunt finality of a hammer blow.

  Harvey swallowed and stuttered, ‘Well, yes, indeed. I never once thought that my good fellows would stoop to slaughter and rapine but the people of the town, even the liberal ones, were haunted by tales told by those from Enniscorthy. Obvious falsehoods, in my opinion, but one cannot help ignorance.’

  Fr Murphy grunted, his face still a quarry of unforgiving stone, and lifted his head to fix Ebenezer Jacob with a flinty look.

  ‘Ah,’ Harvey said. ‘Let me introduce Ebenezer Jacob, Mayor of Wexford Town. He and I have been relentless in our efforts over the past few hours in calming the panic of the populace. Every man jack is now fully behind the United movement, Catholics, Protestants, peasants and merchants, everyone can be glad that the days of the tyrant are numbered.’

  Jacob moved slightly to one side of Harvey, nodding gormlessly.

  Roche sighed, ‘I know Mr Jacob, Beauchamp. I am glad of your efforts in assuaging the fears of the population but we must act quickly to ensure law and order is maintained.’

  Harvey and Jacob had nodded fervently in unison, whilst about them the town was erupting in a bubbling fountain of camaraderie and good spirits.

  It had taken an hour for the first murder to happen.

  John Boyd, the brother of Captain James Boyd, had been recognised as he was jostled along the quays. Set upon and piked, he lay bleeding, begging for help and for water. A crowd had surrounded him, curious but unfeeling, like a cat inspecting a bird mauled to the point of death. They stood silently as he groaned in a pool of his own spreading blood until a heavy-set rebel stepped forward with a hatchet and dashed his brains out.

  The second murder had followed close after; George Sparrow piked to death in front of a screaming, horrified crowd of onlookers, his body lying rent and gushing red onto the parched and trampled earth of the Bullring.

  And then a calm had descended.

  The febrile mirth, the strained hilarity, all gradually slid from their hectic peak into a trough of awful realisation. The murders were the first things to chill the carnival and rime over its fires with a grim reality. The sec
ond was the complete absence of arms or supplies. The fighting men who had remained sober enough to gauge the significance of these events soon found their spirits dampened and their exhaustion dragging at their limbs like iron chains. The town had slowly emptied, the rebels moving out to the Windmill Hill in flotillas of tired flesh and hanging heads. Men from the same parish, men who had grown up together and now had fought shoulder to shoulder, supported each other as they swayed off into the black of the night.

  Eventually, as dawn was breaking, only Edward Roche remained behind. He stood on the quays and gazed out along the dark length of Wexford Bridge. The burned spars at the northern shore had been replaced by rough-hewn planks hours before the rebels had entered into the town and it was over this patchwork causeway that Edward Fitzgerald had vanished.

  Roche allowed Ebenezer Jacob’s words to roll about the inside of his skull like dice in a cup.

  ‘Fitzgerald was asked to disperse the crowd on the far side of the bridge. They had burned the toll house and the soldiery had torn up the planks to stop the spread of the fire. When the soldiers left, the rabble, I mean the people, threw timbers across the gaps. Fitzgerald tried to stop them making for the town when they saw how close you were. They ignored him for the most part and just when I thought he was about to wheel his horse and return, he instead drove the big beast on and galloped off to the north.’

  ‘His estate of Newpark is in that part of the country,’ Roche said. ‘Perhaps he has returned to his family for a night.’

  ‘Do you think he will be back?’ asked Jacob. ‘His presence is very comforting to the Protestants of the town. The murders of Boyd and Sparrow have put people quite on edge.’

  Roche had said nothing at the time, but as dawn broke across the harbour he had pursed his lips and exhaled slowly through his nose, ‘I hope so. For our sakes and his own, I truly hope so.’