by Joe Murphy
The young captain continued, ‘What Mr Harvey and the others should have done was use that press in Wexford for the printing of proclamations, which should have been issued and distributed in their thousands, prohibiting pillage or plunder of any kind, but particularly against taking the life of even the greatest criminal before he was tried.’
Tom snorted disdainfully, ‘I feel your ambitions for old Ireland free are foundering, Miles.’
Byrne sighed, ‘No, Tom, they are as strong as ever but we must remove ourselves from these doldrums. We must learn that not every setback is a mortal blow and that the initiative must be seized. We esteem our enemies too much. We have bested them over and over. Even Newtownbarry was won before we let it slip away. While we wait and second-guess their motives and movements, while we wonder what has occurred throughout the rest of our poor, degraded country, our enemies are no doubt actively engineering our downfall. Every minute we sit on this hill is a moment closer to our doom.’
Tom closed his eyes, wondering at the joyless fates that had conspired to land him here on the slopes of Carrigrew Hill. He found himself thinking of Dan and hoping with every fibre of his being that he had fought his way through New Ross and that he was somewhere now on the road to Waterford. He thought of Elizabeth, the Protestant girl whose smile made Dan’s face glow. He hoped that whatever world might exist after this war might embrace those two with all the warmth they deserved. If he fought for anything it was for his brother; and his brother fought for an Ireland united without recourse to creed or colour.
As the sun died in a welter of crimson and the stars began to dot the heavens with pin-pricks of winking silver, Tom Banville found himself praying. Silently, under the vault of the night sky, Tom prayed for Dan and for Elizabeth and for Ireland. But most of all he prayed for himself, that he might have the strength to see this through.
CHAPTER 18
Walpole’s Horse and Walpole’s Foot
Gorey lay prostrate under the evening. Its long main street was a channel of golden warmth and the few members of its civilian populace who had not fled north to Arklow sweated, seeming to melt, in the heat. The 3rd of June had been the hottest day of an already remarkable summer and the country was gasping beneath the glare of the sun. The least movement squeezed perspiration from every pore and welded shirts and stockings to clammy skin. The blue sky, seeming so high and eternally distant for so long, now seemed to drape itself over roofs and chimneys, a sapphire tarpaulin under which the world sweltered.
As the evening spilled syrupy light over the town of Gorey, General William Loftus stood in the reception hall of the market house and looked in disbelief from Lieutenant-Colonel Jones to the now-familiar dispatch rider who was swaying where he stood. Dust caked the rider’s uniform and his hair was sweat-soaked into a single oily slick that clung to his head like tar. Fatigue dragged at him like an anchor and it was all he could do to face his general without falling flat on his face.
Loftus transferred his gaze to the scrap of paper in his hand and with an oath balled it up and flung it to the ground.
‘He says he shall be with us this evening or tomorrow morning at the earliest! The insolent scoundrel!’ Loftus’ face was infusing with a deep beetroot red that darkened to bruise purple in the hollows of his cheeks.
Jones nodded placatingly, ‘How has the good Colonel Walpole couched such disappointing words?’
Loftus was furious, his usual precision torn to shreds and flapping loose through Walpole’s recalcitrance.
‘The bounder has the temerity to chastise me for not allowing him to take the county on his own! He writes that if his talents are to be wasted, then we can go without! I shall flog him to within an inch of his life!’
Jones coughed delicately and nodded toward the dispatch rider who was stifling a yawn and striving manfully to ignore the raging of his commanding officer.
‘Yes, yes, very good. You are dismissed,’ said Loftus absent-mindedly.
The messenger sagged in relief, his face splitting in a grin of gratitude. Saluting with all the elegance that his aching bones could muster the man fled the building, closing the door behind him.
‘We should press on without him,’ advised Jones slowly, the sing-song of his voice soothing in the blistering atmosphere. ‘The Gorey Cavalry have reported that the camp on Carrigrew is big but that they lack warlike stores and seem reluctant to attack.’
‘Between the Antrim Militia and local yeomanry, I have a thousand men under my command, Jones,’ replied Loftus. ‘I am not about to risk their lives by rashly venturing out into hostile country when we should have half as many again. We shall allow Walpole until first light to arrive but if he does not I shall have him shot for dereliction of duty, do you understand me, Jones?’
‘Perfectly, sir,’ he replied.
Loftus thought for a moment before saying, ‘The prisoners held in this market house, have they been induced into providing information about the rebels?’
Jones nodded, ‘Exhaustively.’
‘And?’ Loftus prompted, ‘I am in no mood for games, Colonel.’
Jones blinked and continued hurriedly, ‘None are talking, though a onearmed fellow named Esmond Kyan is supposedly a high-ranking United Irishman. Anthony Perry named him in his confession.’
‘One-armed?’ asked Loftus, suddenly curious.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Jones. ‘Lost it in duel. He’s a former Royal Artillery Officer. He could prove useful.’
‘As a hostage?’ asked Loftus archly.
Jones smiled, ‘Needs must, Mr Loftus, sir. Needs must.’
Darkness had cooled the furnace of the day and the sun had torn the whole western horizon into a ragged tatter of red when a shout of alarm barked out from one of Loftus’s southern pickets. Colonel Walpole had arrived at last. He rode a dashing grey stallion with a high-stepping gait as though on parade. His cocked hat was crisply tailored and freshly blacked and the red of his coat glowed in the twilight like a coal fallen from a hearth. Behind him his men trailed in two well-armed files with the baggage train bringing up the rear.
As soon as he had entered the limits of the town, passing below the vast spread of the venerable beech rearing regally above the market diamond, a runner appeared, issuing a summons from General Loftus himself.
Walpole reined in his mount while his men filed past and regarded the messenger with aristocratic condescension. ‘You should tell the general,’ he replied, ‘that I must see to my quarters before I see to his requests.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ answered the runner, his Antrim accent dulled and softened through fear of the mounted officer before him, ‘General Loftus wants you immediately. He said that if you refuse to come before him he would consider you in breach of a direct order, sir.’
‘Would he now,’ said Walpole slowly, rolling the words around in his mouth as though they were some exotic delicacy. He shouted towards a sergeant who was just then marching past, his half-pike shouldered and his face a leather mask of controlled belligerence.
‘Sergeant O’Connor, pass the word that the men are to be placed at free quarters in the town. If any of my officers should ask, tell them I am at a very important meeting with General Loftus. Stratagems and such, as it were.’
The sergeant saluted with a grin like a gash in tree bark.
Walpole turned to the runner and gestured with a delicate flick of his wrist, ‘After you, Private.’
General Loftus looked up from his desk as Walpole entered the small room that he had commandeered for use as his offices.
The room had once been a sort of library adjoining the main chamber of Gorey’s market house and one wall was entirely filled with a series of shelves occupied by volume upon volume of old books. Loftus had taken the time, in his thorough way, to leaf through several. He found old histories and tracts on farming, almanacs and tables of the tides, all coated with a sumptuous powdering of rat-grey dust. He then carefully arranged three chairs around the room’s
solitary table, each one as perpendicular as possible to the table’s edge. He placed a lantern on the left side of this table and by its yellow gush of light he arranged his maps and journal neatly in one corner. He set his pocket watch on top of this stack of paper and, while the minutes ticked by, thumbed through a pamphlet produced by the Ordnance Survey.
Now, balled in the golden sphere of illumination cast by the lantern, Loftus greeted the walking nuisance that was Colonel Lambert Walpole.
‘Don’t bother saluting, you buffoon. I should have you shot.’
Walpole’s face took on the indignant look of a cosseted brat who has suddenly been chastised. His mouth gaped and a little quiver of anger rippled along his jaw.
‘That is an insult, sir,’ he eventually spluttered.
Loftus stood and in the honeyed light of the lantern dark shadows abruptly swam forth from the hollows of his eyes. ‘Your behaviour is an insult,’ he replied. ‘The very fact of your existence is an affront to the uniform which you wear. You are a dangler at court, sir, but I will not have you dangle here. You will respect orders or you will be court-martialled, is that clear?’
Walpole’s chin worked back and forth as he fought the sentiments that threatened to explode from him. The impression he gave off was curiously that of a cow chewing cud.
‘You do realise who you are speaking to, General?’ Walpole asked.
Loftus’s eyes narrowed, but he persisted, ‘I know full well, Mr Walpole. I know you purchased your commission and have friends at all the best parties. I know what you do not have is military experience. I know that if you countermand my orders again you shall regret it, I assure you. You find yourself a long way from Dublin, Colonel.’
Walpole, his lips twin, bloodless worms squeezed tight together, breathed deeply through his nose. A silence crept upon the room and in its vacuum the young courtier weighed his options carefully.
At last he said, ‘I apologise, General Loftus, I was remiss in my duties. It shall not happen again. I am your humble servant from this day until the rebels are crushed.’
And then, Loftus thought, you shall use every nasty little trick you have up your perfumed sleeve to revenge yourself upon me.
‘Very well,’ the general said aloud. ‘Since we are to conduct this action in tandem I shall inform you of the plan of attack.’
He sat and indicated one of the vacant chairs so precisely positioned at the little desk, ‘Please, Colonel.’
Walpole eased himself onto the seat, flowing from his former attitude of attention into a languid sprawl, his skeleton seeming to liquefy and the chair creaking as he lounged like a house cat.
‘I think you should allow me to have at these brigands, General, whilst your column remains in reserve,’ he said with a lazy arrogance. ‘From what I have seen of these croppies, they fall to pieces at the sight of a uniform.’
Loftus smiled humourlessly, the lamplight now lighting one side of his face whilst swilling the nooks and hollows of the other with liquid dark, and said, ‘These croppies, sir, have taken two garrisoned towns and hold the entire county from here to Duncannon in their sway.’
Walpole was about to respond but then blinked and straightened in his chair, ‘Two towns? I thought they were repulsed at Newtownbarry?’
Loftus’s grin widened in direct proportion to the leaching of warmth from his expression, ‘They have taken Wexford. It was the first thing told to us as we arrived in Gorey.’
Walpole frowned then, his conceit giving way to caution and his conception of the situation slowly turning on its head, and said, ‘That cannot be.’
‘Oh, it can,’ replied Loftus, enjoying Walpole’s sudden discomfort. ‘These particular croppies are like none you have seen before.’
Walpole had recovered his sang-froid somewhat and, pursing his lips, said, ‘Still, we have a force of fifteen hundred horse, foot and artillery. Peasants cannot hope to stand against it.’
Loftus nodded slowly and unfolded a map which he plucked from the stack at his left hand. The paper popped and rustled as it opened with a noise like a fire beginning to catch. In the gold spill of the lantern the lines and shading of the map were jaundiced as Loftus used the tips of his splayed fingers to spin it about so that Walpole could read it more easily.
The young colonel leaned forward avidly and asked, ‘What is it that I am looking at here?’
Loftus tapped the map where a dark spatter of geometrical squares was marked with the label Gorey. ‘We are here,’ he said.
His finger then traced two black, inked arrows which swept south from Gorey across the flat abstraction of the Wexford countryside. One made directly south along the Enniscorthy road, the other forked to the east and snaked along the coast road to Wexford. Between these two ebon curves the hill of Carrigrew sat in a whorling nest of sepia contour lines.
Loftus’s finger jabbed again, ‘That is where the rebels are.’
Walpole nodded as understanding lighted his visage, ‘You mean for us to encircle them?’
Loftus appraised his subordinate for a moment before answering, ‘I mean for us to drive them before us and to annihilate them if needs be. If they flee south, then I have passed orders to L’Estrange and Ancram at Newtownbarry to move up from Scarawalsh and so intercept them. This “Rising” ends tomorrow.’
Walpole let a smile worm across his features, a limp, simpering thing and said, ‘Congratulations, General, it seems you have out-manoeuvred them. What role shall I have in this great victory?’
Loftus sniffed, his thoughts clamouring that the young colonel could not give a fiddler’s curse for either the success of their endeavour or the state of the country should they fail.
Keeping his voice level Loftus replied, ‘You shall move south along the road to Enniscorthy, through the village of Clogh and from there turn left to approach the rebels’ western flank.’
‘And I shall have full autonomy?’ Walpole pressed. ‘What numbers shall I have?’
Loftus sighed and cursed the fates that had landed him with such a grasping upstart for an ally. ‘You shall have half the garrison, Mr Walpole. Six hundred. Horse and foot and a park of artillery. I shall have the rest. Fifteen hundred, all told.’
Walpole could not help but grin gleefully, ‘Thank you, General. I shall sweep the brigands before me like chaff before a gale.’
Loftus leaned forward then, suddenly grim, his face hard and all the authority of his rank freighted in his voice, ‘You would do well to remember the successes of these croppies thus far, Mr Walpole. You are to remain in contact with me at all times. Co-ordination is the key to this enterprise. Do you have me, Mr Walpole?’
Walpole, still smiling at some hidden vista that only he was privy to, nodded absently and replied, ‘Of course, sir. I have you, sir.’
An hour before dawn the camp on Carrigrew Hill was silent save for the rasping, hacking breaths of a lone sentry as he struggled across the slope, blind in the dark. Blundering through furze he stumbled into an area of clustered tents and blankets, cooking fires of the night before now glowing piles of embers between. Careful not to wake the multitude sleeping all about, the sentry now strove to pick his way between the sleeping forms, his movements theatrical and his steps exaggerated in their slow precision.
It was only through enormous bad luck that he happened to place a foot on the outstretched hand of a sleeping Tom Banville.
The sentry jumped even more than Tom as the dark swamp of night congealed beneath a gorse bush suddenly transmogrified into an indignant rebel officer.
Tom, still half tangled in his woollen blanket, hissed, ‘What in Jesus’ name do you think you are doing, man?’
The sentry squinted in the pre-dawn black before whispering hoarsely, ‘Mr Banville? Thank God I’ve found someone. I’m looking for Roche’s tent and I can’t find anything in this feckin’ dark.’
Before Tom could respond a voice groaned up from a pile of blankets nearby like the sound of some spectre crawling out of the
pit. ‘Shut up, the two of you,’ it moaned wearily.
Tom pitched his voice so that it was almost inaudible, ‘What has happened? Why do you want Roche at this hour?’
The sentry swallowed before saying, ‘A man arrived at one of the outposts only minutes ago bearing word that the redcoats in Gorey are going to advance on us at nine o’clock.’
At least now we shall be spurred into action, Tom thought, our course is plotted for us.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked the man.
The sentry nodded, his head a lump of pitch against the slowly lightening horizon, ‘He says the soldiers are drinking the place dry, one of their officers is placing wagers that we’ll all be dead by midday.’
Tom’s lips tightened and he felt his brows draw down in anger, ‘Oh is he, now?’
He grasped the man’s shoulder and pointed off to the left where Roche and Fr Murphy’s tent was a pale cloud beneath a copse of cedars. ‘That’s what you are looking for,’ he said. ‘Now hurry. I’ll find Byrne and the other captains. We’ll rouse the men.’
As the man sped off through the gloom, the anonymous dark let forth another groan, more angry than the first, ‘For God’s sake would you be quiet!’
Tom smiled, his mind, still sleep-drugged but gradually coming to sparking life, was fastened onto the prospect of action. After three days of inactivity the rebels on Carrigrew now had a purpose. The fact of their being hemmed in by a chain of enemies that threatened to strangle their county suddenly was not of any consequence. Survival was now the imperative. And Tom knew that, should the fight be a successful one, then the breaking of that strangling chain was a real possibility. He dared not think it but the advance of the soldiers might have provided the kick that the United leadership so sorely needed.
Thinking this he faced the greying hollow of the fleeing night and crowed, ‘United Irishmen arise! The foe is astir and you shall be butchered in your beds! To your pikes and to your banners!’