by Joe Murphy
Tom squinted as the plummeting disc of the sun arrowed forth one last burst of molten gold before it dipped below the horizon and was gone. Concurrently with the dying of the light a cry arose from the outer pickets. Tom stared into the gloom as a sentry came hurrying through the fields, his path eating a black trough through the hazy yellow of the ripening barley. Behind him trailed a ragged group of five men but even at this distance, down the slope and five hundred yards across the ditches, Tom recognised the proud, almost swaggering stride of Miles Byrne. He moved without hindrance although the absence of his horse testified to the hectic nature of the retreat. Two of his companions however were visibly struggling through the clinging corn and Byrne paused for a moment to allow one man to lean on his shoulder.
Tom felt relief flood through him – a sensation he had not experienced since that first survivor, his shoulder lacerated by a cavalry sabre, had come stumbling into the firelight.
At length the men reached the camp and Byrne strode purposefully across the slope, making for the leaders’ tent. Tom intercepted him and greeted him with a handshake.
‘I thought I told you to mind yourself,’ he said, smiling.
Byrne smiled wryly in return, ‘That, my friend, was easier said than done.’
Tom regarded the young captain critically. His green jacket and white shirt were as dapper as ever but it was on his face that the events of the day had wrought the most pronounced change. His complexion had the same yellow cast as tallow or lard and weariness had ploughed deep furrows around his eyes and mouth. The muscles of his jaw seemed weaker somehow, more slack than when he had ridden away so gallantly that morning.
Taking all this in, Tom asked, ‘How did this happen? We have heard differing reports that all cement into one awful impression.’
Byrne’s shoulders appeared to slump but with a visible effort he straightened himself and assumed his familiar manner of vital exuberance. ‘The day was won,’ he began. ‘That is what makes the whole sorry story so galling.
‘We had taken the town and I had advised Fr Kearns to send a detachment of men along the road to Carlow and so act as a picket or to catch the soldiers as they retreated.’
Tom frowned. ‘What did the old braggart say?’
Byrne laughed bitterly, ‘He cut me short. He sat his horse and held up a whip, which was his only weapon. “Tell all those you have any control over,” he says, “to fear nothing as long as they see this whip in my hand.” He then led us in a prayer.’
Byrne shook his head sadly, ‘For want of foresight, a hundred men lie dead in the lanes and gardens of Newtownbarry.’
Tom scowled, ‘The story is the men were drunk.’
Byrne’s young face became an open mask of surprise. ‘For my own part, I must declare that I did not see a single man intoxicated during the time we occupied the town. Besides, the strongest liquors could scarcely have caused drunkenness in the short space of time we were in the place.’
Tom nodded dubiously, one eyebrow lifting of its own volition. Regarding the young captain searchingly, Tom asked, ‘What make you of the Queen’s County Militia? What of the Rising elsewhere?’
Byrne raised his right hand and scrubbed his palm across tired and smoke-raw eyes. From his lips there issued a dry, cold laugh possessing all the warmth of a draught from a pagan tomb.
‘I fear we are alone, Tom.’
The following morning was one of fog and mist in the town of Carnew, huddled at the base of the Wicklow Mountains. Cloud rolled down through the valleys in great voluminous folds and pearled gorse and fern with beads of wet.
Colonel Lambert Walpole looked out onto the town’s main street and thought that for the day to be in any way good, the sun would have to burn off the vapours overhead and soon. He stood framed against the rectangle of sourceless white flowing through a ground floor sash-window of Carnew’s market house. Like most market-houses in this part of the world, the building was finely built, slate-roofed and its interior contained a number of sizable chambers. Its white-framed windows with their winking checkerboard panes looked out on Carnew’s main street, warping the world onto which they gazed. In the pallid dawn, local labourers were unloading casks of butter and sacks of meal from two wagons, their draught horses standing placidly between the traces. Walpole’s contingent of men had eaten the town to the bone over the course of the previous day and night.
Walpole was young to hold the rank of colonel. Only in his early twenties, his dark hair was combed back in a dashing hazel wave and his sideburns described two perfect rectangles down either cheek. His uniform was pristine in every line and element and he carried himself with the grace of a courtier, one more at home in the great palaces of London than the confines of a dreary little market town in Ireland.
‘Colonel,’ came a voice from behind him, ‘General Loftus is most desiring of an answer.’
Walpole turned his back on the window and swept the room in which he stood with an imperious gaze. Several of his staff officers lounged in chairs and couches that had been requisitioned and placed around a broad circular table on which stood a glass decanter of sherry. Beneath the vessel, as though held there purposefully by this incongruous paperweight, a variety of maps and reports were spread.
In front of the table and the object of every stare in the room was a dusty and fatigued-looking dispatch rider. He stood to attention with his cavalry helmet tucked stiffly under one arm. His eyes were focused directly ahead but every so often would flicker to the sheet of paper held nonchalantly in Walpole’s right hand.
One of Walpole’s officers, a Major Jackson, swung his leg down from where it draped across the arm of his chair and commented drily, ‘Ain’t old Loftus an eager one? He is determined to lead the charge, is he not?’
Walpole laughed hollowly and a cold sneer crawled across his face. Lifting the paper he wagged it as though it were a piece of incriminating evidence before saying, ‘The man wishes us to link up with him at Arklow. Ain’t that rich, my boys? He quotes from General Fawcett at Duncannon who is of the opinion that “any attempt that was not next to a certainty of succeeding against them should never again be attempted.”’
His voice took on a disbelieving tone as he read from the letter in his hands, ‘They are no longer to be despised as common armed peasantry. They are organised and have persons of skill and enterprise amongst them.’’
Walpole shook his head and snorted in derision, ‘What do you make of this, gentlemen? Has Fawcett taken leave of his senses or is Loftus trying to put the wind up us?’
The dispatch rider coughed pointedly and with his eyes still carefully focused over Walpole’s left shoulder he said, ‘General Loftus has asked me to impress upon you the urgency of his request, sir.’
‘Damn General Loftus!’ Walpole barked.
The dispatch rider blinked and shifted uncomfortably as a charged silence filled the room. Walpole’s lackeys sat a little straighter in their chairs and one or two exchanged knowing looks.
Walpole was pacing now, his boots hammering on the floorboards, punctuating his words with hollow thuds and harsh scrapes as he spun on his heel. His young face was storm-racked and his eyes flashed in the opalescent morning light.
‘Loftus over-reaches himself,’ he raged. ‘I have not ingratiated myself with those fools in Dublin Castle, I have not demeaned myself with their company, to be ordered about as though I were a scullery boy.
‘I have not seen anything in the midlands to suggest that these Wexford louts will be anything more than a leaderless rabble. We taught those others a lesson at Gibbet Rath and by God I shall teach these rebels a lesson here. I will not allow Loftus to claim the credit. By Jove, I cannot countenance it in the slightest. My blood is boiling at the very thought. The sheer effrontery of the man!’
One of Walpole’s lieutenants, a pudgy man with the cherubic face of an infant, raised a hand timidly.
His colonel ceased pacing and snapped, ‘Have you something to say, D’Arcy?’
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D’Arcy cleared his throat before venturing, ‘General Loftus is quite experienced, sir, and these rebels have been quite a nuisance. Perhaps personal ambition should be put aside for the common good.’
Walpole stared at the man as though he had begun raving.
‘D’Arcy, you are a fool,’ he stated simply. ‘If you cannot add something of value to my thoughts then remain silent.’
He tapped the letter to his chin in a manner one might expect to see in an amateur actor who feels his minor part must be exaggerated, ‘I do not think that General Loftus is fully aware of our situation. I feel he underestimates our numbers and capabilities.’
With that he addressed the dispatch rider who remained standing silent and dutifully stone-faced, ‘Tell General Loftus that I have five hundred fine fellows with me in this dreary little hamlet. Tell him that I am sure this force sufficient to our present need and that, with his permission of course, I wish to push into the county myself. Can you remember all that?’
‘I will do my best, sir,’ said the rider flatly.
‘Tell him I shall await his favourable response,’ Walpole concluded. ‘You may go.’
The dispatch rider saluted, spun on his heel and hurried from the room, buckling on his helmet as he went.
Walpole regarded his officers for a moment and a look of contempt stole across his features, ‘Who would have thought Loftus to be afraid of farmers and bog savages?’
That evening of the 2nd of June found General William Loftus incandescent with rage. The same tired dispatch rider who had that morning stood before Colonel Walpole and listened to his railings was now an unwilling witness to another officer’s temper.
General Loftus had procured for his offices a large room in a finely appointed townhouse, south-facing and overlooking the bridge at Arklow. Beyond his windows the Avoca river, speckled with the grey and white of squabbling geese, moved with lazy ease to the sea, sliding under the bridge’s arches like brown oil. The town of Arklow climbed up and away on either side of the river’s banks, its slopes gentle and rolling, the roofs of the buildings edging only gradually one above the other. The sounds of civilian life drifted through the air, mingling here and there with the harsher drum and rattle of his thousand men. The soldiers and townsfolk mixed freely, no blood was spilled, no bodies lay strewn and broken. This was a town untouched by events to the south, unscarred by a war that seemed set to consign Wexford to an abyss of flame and slaughter.
General Loftus, however, was in no mood to appreciate the tranquillity of the scene.
‘The pup!’ he roared. ‘The unabashed gall of the cur is quite unbelievable. How dare he!’
‘He seemed quite adamant, sir,’ offered the dispatch rider.
Apart from the messenger, only one other officer occupied the room, a thin lieutenant-colonel with the ascetic bearing of a scholar. No gaggle of acolytes attended Loftus and the charts and reports that covered his heavy desk were arranged neatly. Everything in the room was set precisely, every angle was squared and each chair perfectly equidistant from the other. This was a room of method, of reason, and Walpole’s insubordination introduced an uncomfortable twist to its straight lines and hard edges.
Loftus stood in simmering fury and hissed, ‘I don’t care if he quoted from the Bible. I shall not have a mere colonel dictate my plan of action.’
The narrow-faced lieutenant colonel spoke, his voice soft and thoughtful, ‘Walpole does have influence in Dublin, General.’
‘Be damned to his influence!’ fumed Loftus. ‘His friends have no sway here. I will not be played for a fool by a courtier and a dandy.’
He turned then and cast his gaze out the tall window giving onto the Avoca and the town beyond. His eyes took on an unfocused aspect and he swivelled his head to the right as though through sheer force of will he could penetrate the intervening miles between Arklow and Carnew, boring through hill and mountain to spear Walpole with his anger.
‘Dare we advance without him, Jones?’ he asked at last.
The lieutenant-colonel’s melodious voice came again, ‘We have a thousand men and horse and are well-supplied with ammunition and artillery. The men are rested after the march from Dublin. It would take a force of considerable size and fortitude to oppose us.’
Below Loftus the Avoca slithered silently along. The long drought had lowered its level but even so the river was still wide and its current strong. Here and there however, stones and detritus, fallen trees and the spoil from middens broke the wrinkled surface. At one point, just before the bridge, hard by the south bank, the skeletal spars of a sunken boat clawed forth from the water like the monstrous ribs of some nightmarish sea monster.
Loftus sighed, ‘But do we know the rebels’ disposition? Do we know their numbers and their intent?’
Jones reached for a bundle of papers on Loftus’s desk and began hurriedly flicking through them.
‘I have read them all,’ stated the general, his eyes still staring out into nothing.
‘The rebels have taken Enniscorthy, of that we are sure. There is no word yet from Wexford Town but it is utterly inconceivable that it should have fallen as well. A rebel advance on Newtownbarry was repulsed early yesterday and thus far they have remained camped on the hill of Carrigrew. They number in the thousands and the bloody nose that L’Estrange gave them yesterday will hardly dent their numbers, although it has seemed to have cooled their ardour.’
Jones frowned at his superior’s words and cast an appraising glance at a map lying weighted on Loftus’ desk. ‘They have not moved on Gorey?’ he asked.
Loftus shook his head, ‘Not as yet, though if we dally further they could be in possession of that town within hours. Damn Walpole and his infernal lust for glory.’
Behind him Jones shrugged, ‘We could advance without him, sure in the knowledge that he must hurry to catch us in order not to miss the show.’
‘Advancing into the teeth of the enemy without five hundred men that should be added to our strength is not ideal, Mr Jones.’
Loftus’s eyes came abruptly back into focus and he allowed them to take in the vista of Arklow Town under a summer sky. He saw the Dublin road knifing over the great bridge and sweeping around the sharp corner that led to Main Street. He saw the buildings, thatched and whitewashed but with a cluster of slated roofs at the market diamond, stepping gradually higher as they mounted the crest of the hill, obscuring the outlying districts from view. Behind that hill a rebel army waited, a rebel army that had already butchered hundreds of uniformed soldiers. General Fawcett was wary of them, that much at least was clear.
And yet they had waited on their hill now for two days. Waiting for what?
Turning away from the window Loftus was suddenly resolute. ‘Mr Jones,’ he ordered, ‘we will draft letters to Colonel Walpole and Ancram and L’Estrange at Newtownbarry. We have wasted enough time. Action is called for. I want my orders in their hands by tomorrow morning.’
Behind Lieutenant Colonel Jones, his face streaked with dust and his lips cracked and parched, the dispatch rider groaned softly to himself.
Another sunset cast a topaz glow over the gorse-furred hump of Carrigrew Hill. Tom Banville and Miles Byrne sat side by side and looked out across the expanse of countryside to their west. Each man was silent, each held a slab of rough brown bread in one hand while a battered tin jug, filled with milk, was passed between them. The milk, still warm and thick, drawn from a cow’s udders only minutes before, glugged and gurgled as it was set down and lifted again, the only sound that disturbed the men’s tranquillity. Both Tom and
Byrne wore identical expressions of apprehension.
‘Why do we wait?’ Tom asked at last. ‘We sit and the priests say mass and we drill the men and we advance not at all. For two days now. Why?’
Byrne slowly chewed a mouthful of bread before washing it down with a swallow of milk. His eyes squinted into the sunset. ‘The leaders are awaiting word from some other quarter, I would imagine. Th
ey are afraid that the Rising has failed everywhere except here.’
Tom plucked at a blade of grass distractedly and replied, ‘If the midlands has been subdued and Dublin has not been taken, then who do they expect to have word from?’
Byrne sighed and closed his eyes, momentarily allowing the sun to wash over his face, before saying, ‘They are debating what we should do.’
‘What issues can they possibly be debating?’ said Tom. ‘Surely only two courses are open to us. Either we retreat to Wexford Town and break out through New Ross or we descend with our entire force on Newtownbarry and press on into the midlands.’
Byrne nodded, ‘I think Fr Murphy and some of the lads from Wicklow wish us to take to the mountains.’
Tom flashed him an incredulous look, ‘I will not take to the hills like some brigand, Miles. I will not live hand-to-mouth, surrounded and on the run. I will not leave Dan with no hope of seeing him again.’
Miles was silent for a while as the sun fell ever-further westward and shadows unfurled themselves, questing out from the boles of trees and tangles of gorse. At length he said, ‘Dan should be across the Barrow by now. Word should arrive from Waterford or Kilkenny soon.’
Suddenly uncomfortable, the thought of his brother surrounded by smoke and fire filling him with a terrible dread, Tom asked, ‘What word is there of Vinegar Hill? Has Fr Murphy elected to do anything about the murders?’
Byrne shook his head, ‘Oh, they were all suitably appalled, none more so than Fitzgerald, who waxed lyrical about the necessity of keeping law and order and yet none suggested that Luke Byrne be court-martialled or that a detachment be sent to procure the safety of prisoners. Meanwhile, at Enniscorthy they are massacring any man with even a hint of Orange sympathies.’