by Joe Murphy
Yet even this, private and hidden though he thought it was, did not escape Elizabeth’s scrutiny.
She narrowed her eyes and said softly, ‘It is not your fault, Daniel. He left to ensure this Rising succeeds. It is the only way you have of returning safely to your home.’
Dan snorted, ‘Our home is burnt to the ground. We have land but it will take time to make it what it once was.’
‘It will take time for us all to make something from this trauma,’ Elizabeth replied.
Dan, however, wasn’t listening to her. His attention had been abruptly snagged by a group of men and women clustered at the junction with Chapel Lane. All wore the dirty greys and ragged browns of poor townsfolk, their calves stockingless and their dirty feet without shoes, caked in the grime and dust of the streets. They had been engaged in a raucous, scuttling jabber of conversation but at the couple’s approach they quietened. A stillness came over them and they directed hard stares towards Dan and Elizabeth. There was a threat in those stares that Dan found chilling, a nasty belligerence married to a brutish swagger.
As the young couple passed, the frigid zone of silence wrapping the group seemed to extend and enfold them so that even the mere thought of speech or gaiety was snuffed out like a guttering candle. Dan felt the hairs at the nape of his neck lift in apprehension and he silently thanked God that Elizabeth was at his left and that his sword arm was free. For her part Elizabeth sensed something of the foreboding in the air as she leaned into him, angling herself away from the shabby clot of people whose eyes fastened onto her like claws.
Dan had shepherded Elizabeth past the last member of the group when the noise of someone hawking up a lungful of phlegm rasped from behind them. Dan spun just in time to see one of the townsfolk, a balding, sunken-cheeked fellow with a nose slanting crookedly across his face, spit a glistening rope of snot and spit onto the road just short of the hem of Elizabeth’s dress.
Dan was moving before he realised it. Outrage and fury spurred his muscles into action before his mind had even fully grasped the situation. Only the weight of Elizabeth swinging from his arm like a sort of anchor kept him from drawing his sword in a shining arc of violence and bloodshed.
‘No, Daniel!’ she cried. ‘Let them be. They know not what they do. When things become less fraught I am sure they will regret their actions this day.’
Dan halted and regarded the group of people before him. In spite of their pugnacious attitude they had all taken a step backward at the sight of Dan’s anger and one or two of the women – and not a few of the men – seemed poised for flight.
Dan pointed at the man whose spit now dried in the dust and growled, ‘I will not ask for an apology from the like of you. But I assure you that what my wife says is true. You will regret your actions this day.’
Elizabeth whispered, her voice soft as snowflakes, ‘Don’t, Dan. They are too many.’
The man merely laughed in a bitter cough of sound, devoid of any light or joy. ‘Would you go ’way out of that. You’ll find yourself floating in the harbour like a lot of the others will soon enough.’
Elizabeth’s grip upon Dan’s arm stilled his urgent impulse to gut the man.
Without another word Dan and Elizabeth walked away from the crowd and turned down Chapel Lane. Behind them the crow cackle of laughter rattled into the street.
‘Don’t mind them,’ breathed Elizabeth at last but her voice was thin with the strain of false courage.
‘I don’t like this,’ Dan muttered. ‘For the last few hours, ever since the Northern Division was assembled to leave, something terrible has been occurring to me. The town is changed, the air has darkened. Have you seen the looks directed at some of the citizens by their fellow townsmen? Have you noticed the whispering cabals gathered on every corner?’
Elizabeth looked into his face, her expression clouded with concern, ‘I see ne’er-do-wells and rabble-rousers who have naught else to do but spread gossip and engage in bullying those whom they think might be intimidated. Mr Harvey and Mr Fitzgerald are themselves Protestant, Mr Keogh, who has been established as Mayor, also. No man can surely be ignorant enough to act on bigotry in such circumstances.’
‘I would not have thought it,’ replied Dan. ‘But I fear that Tom may be right. Human nature is a gutter-bound thing no matter what ideals one might aspire to.’
Elizabeth shook her head then, her mahogany curls unfurling from beneath her hat. ‘Oh Daniel, do not allow the actions of a stupid, oafish gang to colour your thoughts like this. Be happy. You will soon meet my charming aunt.’
Dan laughed sourly. ‘From bad to worse. I wish Mr Harvey would decide to act. We should be away. Idle hands will always find evil work to do.’
Twenty minutes later Dan was forced to admit that Elizabeth may have been unfairly harsh on her aged relative. He had not met the woman as yet for she expressed a wish to see him ‘as befits a good Catholic gentleman and not some vagabond who spends his life in ditches’. They had been met at the door by her manservant, a dour old man with a stooped back and whose breeches seemed to be forever on the brink of slumping about his ankles. He had allowed Elizabeth to enter and go straight down the hallway but had ushered Dan into the pantry where a tin bath sat steaming and where a razor, mirror and soap had been placed on a shelf. Dan had gushed his thanks and when the old servant had shambled out he undressed and sat soaking up to his middle in the lapping warmth of clean water.
As he scrubbed at himself with the soap he reflected that any woman who could be so hospitable to a guest of different religion and who had arrived at the head of a conquering army could hardly be the dragon that Elizabeth had described. The water around him began to fog with the detritus of days living in fields, of smoke and fighting and death. Clawing for the razor and mirror he commenced to scrape away the bristles that had come to mat his jaw and had lately began to itch with an irritating heat. Soon he sat in what amounted to little more than a brackish puddle, a scum of filth fouling the surface.
Wrinkling his lip he heaved himself out, dried and dressed himself. The new coat, shirt, riding breeches and stockings that he had procured felt fresh against his newly scrubbed skin but the effect was somehow counterpointed by the battered state of his old yeoman’s boots and the mottled wash of bruising that seemed to swim below the surface of every patch of skin. A narrow, crimson line beaded with scabs arced below his right eye where a briar had hooked at him. No wig and no tricorn might count against him but overall he felt he looked as well as he could hope to, considering everything.
Breathing deeply he left his weapons in a dark corner and opened the pantry door only to find the old serving man waiting for him.
‘I feel much better, now,’ Dan remarked. ‘A hot bath does wonders.’
The serving man merely cocked his head to one side and wordlessly looked at him with a mix of pity and contempt. He then shuffled down the corridor, leaving Dan to follow in his wake.
Mrs Abigail Brownrigg, née Blakely, was the childless widow of a prosperous grain merchant who had fortunately passed to his eternal reward long before the grain prices collapsed in 1797. Upon his death she had found herself alone in a large townhouse with only her two servants, Pat and Molly, for company. To while away the hours she spent her time composing withering letters to her closest relatives and calling upon them unannounced to belittle their housekeeping or terrify their wives. Elizabeth had not seen her for seven years and yet her last visit to Carnew was still spoken about in the Blakely household in hushed tones, as though it were some awful tragedy. Nobody had ever sought out the old crone of their own volition and none had ever thought to pay her a visit in her cold, echoing house, her clocks ticking away the seconds to the grave.
She had greeted Elizabeth earlier in the day with detached surprise and a dry civility which had left Elizabeth fearing that worse was to come.
Now the two women sat in Mrs Brownrigg’s drawing room, both perched primly on the edge of high-backed armchairs, a small wo
oden table the colour of Elizabeth’s curls positioned between them. Upon this table, a dainty china tea set was placed with a plate of bread and apple tart beside it. Each woman held a small cup of tea in her right hand, a saucer in her left, and both sat in complete silence. Between the two tall rectangular windows opening out onto the back garden, a grandfather clock stood with its pendulum measuring out life spans in brief, swishing, slices of time.
The old servant paused at the open door to the drawing room and coughed politely. ‘Mr Daniel Banville, ma’am.’
The old woman nodded and Dan entered. His first impression of Elizabeth’s aunt was one of poise. She sat in her chair with all the elegance of a sculptured swan. Her back was straight, her neck long and her chin jutted forth with a regal air above the lip of the teacup suspended from delicately pinched fingers. She was old, of that there was no doubt, for wrinkles chasmed the skin of her throat where it climbed out of the modest bodice of her charcoal dress, and her hands were wormed with a blue tracery of veins. Brown spots speckled the pale skin of those hands and her bones tented up through the flesh like white knots. Her eyes, however, were jewel-bright and regarded Dan with the probing scrutiny of a hawk.
‘Mr Banville,’ she greeted, ‘I have heard so much about you that I felt I must see you in person.’
Still standing, Dan offered a bow and replied, ‘I am delighted to meet so close a relative of Elizabeth’s. She speaks of you with great fondness.’
Mrs Brownrigg sipped her tea demurely before saying, ‘Poppycock. Young man, if you seek my approval you would do well to mind your tongue. I am universally loathed among my relatives and well I like it.
‘However, blood is the tie that binds and since my niece is in need of succour and seems unaccountably fond of you then I am forced to accept you into my home. What I am not forced to accept is balderdash from any young man, let alone a croppy.’
Dan blinked and Elizabeth gasped, ‘Aunty!’
‘Come now, child,’ replied her aunt, and Dan thought he could detect the merest hint of humour in those bright, birdlike eyes. ‘Mr Banville is a grown man and seems quite used to fighting. I am sure he is neither thin-skinned nor devoid of wit enough to necessitate your springing to his defence. What say you, Mr Banville?’
Dan smiled. ‘I am a stalwart croppy, Mrs Brownrigg, of that you are correct. However, if you can forgive that one trifling flaw I can assure you that I hold your niece very dear in my affections.’
Mrs Brownrigg motioned for a chair to be brought in and the servant plodded over to retrieve one from beside a bookcase packed with volumes, their spines fissured from decades of constant use. He placed it before Dan with a grunt of effort.
‘You may go now, Pat,’ instructed Mrs Brownrigg. As the old servant shambled from the room, his brogues scuffing the floorboards, she continued, ‘Mr Banville do sit down, your great bulk is intruding upon the elegance of my drawing room.’
Elizabeth smiled at Dan apologetically as he seated himself with the odd feeling that, in spite of her tone and words, he liked this old woman.
‘You have not been formally introduced to Elizabeth’s parents, I presume?’ she continued.
‘No, unfortunately,’ answered Dan. ‘The circumstances at the time prevented such a meeting.’
Mrs Brownrigg grunted and said, ‘Circumstance is an ever-changing thing. Please, Mr Banville, help yourself to tea and cakes. Molly makes exceedingly good apple tart.’
Dan thanked her, carefully poured himself a cup of tea and placed a sliver of apple tart onto a small saucer with all the delicacy of a man lighting a fuse.
‘He has good manners, at least,’ commented the old woman.
Elizabeth remained silent but her eyes constantly flickered to Dan’s face, her expression tortured, her shoulders now hunched.
‘Oh, do sit up straight, girl, and stop making faces,’ snapped Mrs Brownrigg before addressing Dan again.
‘As I said, circumstances change and I feel we have reached one such change of circumstance in this town, if not this whole country.’
Dan nodded, ‘I feel you are correct.’
She nodded, ‘We are Protestant. You are Catholic and a rebel. Only days ago the very thought of having you under my roof would have appalled me.’
‘I shall not stand for this!’ interrupted Elizabeth, her voice almost shouting. ‘I love this man, Aunt Abigail.’
She had sat through this charade for longer than she felt necessary. The lidded mockery in her aunt’s voice, the arch superiority of her bearing, all grated on Elizabeth’s nerves like a rasp across a knot. She had sat here now in her aunt’s sepia-shadowed lair for over an hour as the many clocks measured out every second in brittle chops of noise. And every second she sat, sipping at her aunt’s weak tea, she felt the gloom of the place wrap her more closely. She could not sit here and have Daniel baited like some doltish child.
Sensing her protectiveness, hearing the outrage in her voice, Dan responded, his own voice level, his thoughts flat and calm, ‘Let your aunt finish, Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth’s lips tightened almost imperceptibly and she flung him a shrewd look, the dark of the room making her eyes glimmer in brilliant imitation of her relative’s.
Mrs Brownrigg nodded, a brief dipping of her chin and a dry warping of her corrugated skin, ‘Of course you love him, my dear. You are young and he is a fine figure of a man. What you and all the rest of my unfortunate relatives have in common is neither foresight nor common sense. Mr Banville here seems to know when to speak and when to listen, perhaps you should learn from him.’
Elizabeth bridled and rattled her cup and saucer onto the table before her.
Seemingly oblivious to her chagrin, her aunt continued, ‘The fact of the matter is that the old order seems about to topple and you, Mr Banville, are an officer of the new. I am too frail and too cantankerous to leave this house and my dear niece is too silly to make her way in this new world without protection. What I would like to know, Mr Banville, is what your intentions are in light of our changed circumstances.’
Dan frowned, unsure of what the old woman expected. Honesty was called for, he felt, and so with a deep breath he plunged on, ‘Mrs Brownrigg, my intentions are to marry Elizabeth. I love her sorely. I am also duty-bound as a United Irishman to defend and liberate the people of Ireland be they Catholics, Protestants, labourers, servants or old, bitter ladies living out their days like spiders in a web.’
Elizabeth gasped in shock but Mrs Brownrigg laughed with a sound like dry leaves in the wind.
‘Oh, he is a rare one, Elizabeth!’ she exclaimed. ‘A rare one, indeed.’
Just then the old servant, Pat, came shuffling into the room once more, his hands wringing and his brow a swamp of glistening sweat. Dan spun in his seat to look at the man and the sight of his trembling form had the young captain half out of the chair and groping for his absent pistol before he could think.
‘I am sorry for interrupting, ma’am, but the croppies,’ here he knifed Dan a glittering look, ‘have set fire to Mr Boyd’s house and have surrounded Mr Harvey’s. They want Mr Edward Turner. They’re going to lynch him.’
Mrs Brownrigg sipped her tea, her equipoise undisturbed, ‘Well, Mr Banville,’ she asked. ‘What do you intend to do?’
Dan, who was on his feet now and anxious to retrieve his sword and pistol, regarded the old woman with piercing awareness. ‘Edward Turner is deserving of justice,’ he replied levelly. ‘I was there when he fired the cabins at Oulart.’
His eyes moved from the venerable aunt who sat serene and unmoving, gazing at him in cool detachment, to Elizabeth and back again. He cleared his throat and said, ‘However, justice must be meted out in the proper way and not by the hands of a mob.’
He turned away from them then, his face set and grim, ‘I will see what I can do.’
The black, cumulous tower that rose above Captain James Boyd’s former residence was the first sign that anything was amiss in the streets around Selska
r Church. The house had been ransacked and set alight and now flung sparks and butterfly wings of ash whirling up into the afternoon sky, the wind breathing life and ferocity into the flames. All along the length of George’s Street the stench of the inferno coupled with the blanket of smoke made passage impossible. Choking fumes and particles of cinder clogged the throat and blinded the eyes.
Around the corner, in front of Bagenal Harvey’s house, a mob had gathered. Pikes were brandished and burning torches, the flames almost invisible in the sunlight save for the wavering of the tortured air above them, were waved aloft. Men roared and bellowed and the entire assembly seemed to sway and roll as one body, like the sea. The din was raucous and ill-tempered and the stink of unwashed bodies and alcohol mingled with the acrid discharge from Boyd’s flaming abode. Every face was that of a demon, twisted and hate-filled, warped with a mindless lust for violence.
The mob arced out from Harvey’s front steps leaving an open space, like an amphitheatre, some ten dusty paces wide. Before the quartzite steps, seeming to fill all the available space like some fiendish dervish, Thomas Dixon paced back and forth.
‘Justice!’ he cried, his arms raised above his head, his hands tensed into talons. ‘All we ask for is justice!’
The crowd brayed in approval.
Dan Banville had hurried there as fast as he could, running against a large number of others who sought to distance themselves from the mob at Harvey’s door. When he arrived, panting and sweating, he had asked the first person he recognised in the assembly what was happening.
The man, a broad-shouldered veteran of Enniscorthy, had answered without tearing his gaze away from the bundle of angular energy that was Thomas Dixon, ‘Bagenal Harvey, our good commander-in-chief, has elected to hold a dinner party for all men of substance in the town.’