by Joe Murphy
Here the messenger stopped reading and gazed about him as the ring of rebel officers erupted in a cacophony of fury.
‘Why in God’s name should we protect people who have treated us like vermin?’ cried one, and then other voices were added to the chorus.
‘They flogged my brother to death!’
‘They burned my farm to the ground!’
Anthony Perry reached up and snatched the paper from the astonished messenger’s hand and a silence fell over the gathering as he shook it in one fist.
‘What does Harvey mean by this?’ he asked. ‘Does he seek to hamstring us in our efforts?’
Before the horseman could answer, Tom stepped forward, his anxiety spurring him into action, and asked, ‘What of New Ross?’
At Tom’s words the man seemed to sag in his saddle and a sickening expression washed over his features.
Shaking his head slowly as if he could not believe his own words, the man answered, ‘That scrap of paper is Mr Harvey’s last command. He has resigned as commander-in-chief.’
At this a huge rippling sigh seemed to pass through the rebel leaders. Tom, however, was silent, every word the man spoke driving into him like a nail, crucifying him where he stood.
‘New Ross is still in government hands. The Southern Division was thrown back with great loss. The Kilkenny men abandoned us.’
Into a deepening well of blank silence the man continued, ‘There were massacres. The soldiers burnt a house in Mary Street where our wounded were being cared for. They all died. All of them.’
The outrage that this ignited in the men was quickly smothered by the man’s next words.
‘But that’s not the worst of it. Some men fleeing the battle came across a Mr King’s farm at Scullabogue. We were holding over a hundred loyalist men, women and children there. These men, they shot thirty people on the lawn and then locked everyone else into the barn.’
Beside him, Tom could hear Fr Murphy mutter, ‘Oh, God no.’
The rider glanced about him for a moment, swallowed hard and said, ‘They burned it down around their ears. Women and children, sirs, all dead in the ashes.’
Perry lifted one hand to a jaw hanging limp with shock. Licking suddenlyparched lips, he asked, ‘What did Harvey do?’
The messenger nodded to the paper now rumpled and torn in Perry’s bloodless hand, ‘He issued that order and then resigned in dismay. He is most distressed, for I fear his constitution is not at all suited to circumstances such as these.’
Miles Byrne spat onto the ground in disgust, ‘No one’s constitution is suited to circumstances such as these. Who commands now? What of the Southern Division?’
The messenger nodded, ‘General Roche has assumed command and he requests that Fr Philip Roche ride south with me and take specific charge of what’s left of the Southern Division. The English are in total command of the countryside around New Ross and all efforts are to be directed towards stopping their advance on Wexford Town.’
A multitude of eyes then swept to Fr Philip Roche, whose tall frame towered over the men around him. Fr Roche’s eyebrows rose in surprise but he nodded his head in reluctant acceptance.
Tom had felt a pressure swelling inside him, squeezing his lungs so that it seemed he must burst. As the gaze of the officers was directed on Fr Roche his own had remained locked upon the young rider before him. Stepping forward he seized the horse’s bridle and glared fiercely at the startled man above him.
‘What of Daniel Banville?’ he asked. ‘He is a captain. Does he live?’
The young messenger blanched at Tom’s savage aspect but eventually stuttered, ‘I am not familiar with the name, sir. A great many of the captains lost their lives at New Ross. They were cut down at the heads of their corps. I cannot say if your brother was amongst them or not.’
Tom nodded once, curtly, and his eyes fell to where his hand had clawed about the tack of the man’s horse.
‘I apologise,’ he said.
He turned and moved through the circling officers.
Miles Byrne watched Tom with narrowed eyes before slipping after him. He left the officers, like battered scarecrows, gathered around the pale horseman and hurried in Tom’s wake. Once clear of the hill and making his way down into Gorey proper, Byrne caught up with Tom and placed a hand upon his shoulder.
‘Where are you going, Tom?’ he asked.
Tom shambled to halt like a ship foundering in rough seas and blinked at him as if he were a stranger. Shaking his head like a man rousing from sleep, he found he could not say anything.
‘Come sit down,’ said Byrne.
He guided Tom to the splintered edge of the boardwalk and forced the stupefied captain to sit.
‘Dan is lost, Miles,’ his voice fell from his lips like something wounded.
Byrne knelt before him and gripped his shoulders and said, ‘Tom, there is no guarantee that Dan is amongst the fallen at New Ross. A man of such valour and activity as your brother would surely have been noted had they managed to bring him low. Take heart, Dan. Edward Roche will instil a new eagerness for battle in our southern comrades. A better man in a time of crisis one could not hope to find.’
A red flash of anger sparked in Tom’s eyes and he growled at Byrne, ‘I have been duped by Dan and your good self on this matter before and I tell you again, I care not a whit for Roche or your “Liberty” or for your damnable green flag. The only thing I cared for has been robbed from me. Our home is destroyed. My parents are in exile. How am I to tell them that I allowed Dan to die alone in some pigswill street in New Ross? How am I to tell them I cannot even point to a grave over which they may grieve?
‘No, Miles, you and Dan were both mistaken. The United Irishmen does not need captains like you and I. It needs leaders, real leaders, men who would not have sent my brother to his death.’
Byrne looked at him with troubled eyes, ‘What are you to do?’
Still sitting, a great seething welter of anguish churning inside him, Tom felt the first tears for his lost brother trickle from his eyes. He raised a hand and dashed them away ashamedly. Byrne looked away.
‘Do?’ sniffed Tom. ‘What can I do?’
The Northern Division of the United Irish Army marched through Gorey on the 9th of June with an air of confident joy scarcely dulled from the day before. Perry had ordered the advance on Arklow the previous evening and Bagenal Harvey’s last command had ensured that all fighting men had reported promptly to their corps. In spite of New Ross, in spite of the massacres at Mary Street and the disgusting brutality of Scullabogue, in spite of the fact that the country had largely abandoned the Wexford Rising to its own fate – in spite of all this, the army was in high spirits. Were they not victorious? Were they not the masters of the entire north of the county and much of southwest Wicklow as well? Had they not met the English in open battle and sent them flying before their pikes? The setback at New Ross was, to most minds, merely that, a set-back; a thing easily remedied. Edward Roche would work his magic on the administration of Wexford Town and thousands of fine fellows would soon punish the garrison at New Ross for their temerity at seeking to thwart the will of the people. Meanwhile, Arklow would have fallen and the road to Dublin would be wide open.
The men marched as though to a victory celebration rather than a battle for their very existence. Only among the leaders was a terrible grimness apparent, an urgency and will to action that had not communicated itself to their men. The precarious position of the Rising weighed upon them. If they failed to take Arklow then they would be pinned within their own county, trapped like birds in lime.
Perry trotted his mount up and down the line of march, haranguing and lambasting, goading men to move more quickly. The men nodded and smiled and roared in greeting at his approach, then simply ignored him.
They passed out of Gorey and into the quilt of barley and grass that was the countryside beyond, the army stretching for two miles along the dusty road to Arklow. More than once, battalions crowded hard on each other�
�s heels, forcing the entire column to come to a ragged halt while the captains and colonels strove to untangle the mess. Curses and harsh words rattled back and forth in the sweltering air.
The march to Arklow should have taken three hours; the awful realisation began to dawn on some of the leaders that it could take twice that.
At the head of the Castletown Corps, beneath Jim Kehoe’s limp green banner, Tom Banville walked in numbness. He marched when the column marched. He stopped when it stopped. Yet nothing touched him.
During one idiotic halt he gazed in abstraction as Fr Murphy railed bitterly at Perry and Esmond Kyan, ‘You are going to be defeated, it is too late in the day!’
Tom knew that Fr Murphy’s words should have trilled some shudder of unease in him, yet it failed to penetrate, failed to get inside his bones and allow him to contemplate what was to come. For Tom, the march was never-ending now, an eternal moment in which he was trapped, past and future swallowed by loss. Each footstep pounded a word through his head, over and over.
Dan. Is. Dead.
After four hours of marching, the rebel army arrived at Coolgreaney, the last village before Arklow Town. The men were exhausted, and flung themselves down on any patch of open ground they could find. One enterprising group entered an abandoned pub and began raiding its stores for porter and whiskey. All about, men lounged with shirts unbuttoned, their heads tilted back as though all this were a simple Sunday stroll. Pikes were steepled together in skeletal bundles, forgotten as their owners laughed and talked and swilled mouthfuls of pilfered beer.
‘Mr Banville?’ came Jim Kehoe’s insistent voice.
Tom had no idea how long the man had been calling his name but his words carried the firm edge of someone annoyed at being ignored. ‘Yes, Jim?’ he answered.
‘May we fall out, sir?’
Tom shrugged dispassionately. Behind him, grumbling darkly, his corps fanned out and sat themselves down on the grass and earth.
It was then that something finally pierced his bubble of introspection. Halfway down the rutted tract of dirt that formed Coolgreaney’s only street, Fr John Murphy and the thirty men who had remained with him since that fateful night at The Harrow, stood and faced Perry and Fr Michael Murphy. The entire scene had an air of confrontation about it that stirred something within Tom. Fr Michael stood with arms crossed while Perry was half-turned and gesturing for Fr John to come with him inside the ransacked public house. Fr John, however, remained rooted to the spot and his men crowded around him, protective and anxious.
Tom walked slowly towards the peculiar gathering, skirting Fr John’s men as surreptitiously as he could.
‘I will have no part in it,’ Fr John was saying. ‘I made my feelings clear last night and against my better judgement my men and I have followed where you have led. My conscience though will not allow me to throw their lives away for no good reason.’
‘For God’s sake man, keep your voice down,’ hissed Perry. ‘If you insist on arguing in the street then let you at least have some consideration for the morale of those men you abandon.’
Fr John scowled at this, rasping witheringly, ‘How dare you! Where were you the night of The Harrow? Tell me that!’
Perry blanched at these words and Fr Michael blessed himself theatrically, snapping, ‘God forgive you, Father!’
Fr John continued, ‘I abandon no man but I shall not watch while you sacrifice hundreds of lives to bloodlust. We should be making for the mountains, not flinging ourselves on barricades. Arklow will be another New Ross, mark my words.’
Perry’s expression filled with a thunder-cloud darkness and he exclaimed, ‘You are an insufferable, stubborn man, Father! But if you insist on following this course of action then you are most welcome to join us on the road to Dublin after our victory.’
For his part, Fr John smiled grimly, stating, ‘And you are welcome to join me at Castletown, if you survive battering your brains out against the barricades of Arklow.’
With that, he and his men turned and made off through the scattered clumps of lounging rebels, heading south for Castletown. Troubled stares followed them as they went and cries of ‘Where do you go, Father?’ were ignored by Fr John and his column. Sitting astride his mare like a Roman general, he stared at the road ahead, his features impassive, his carriage proud.
Hesitating for only a moment, Tom Banville ran to where his Castletown Corps were spread out like a pride of lions basking in the heat. For the first time since the news came from the south, his limbs were invested with something like their old energy. The strange fog that had clouded his thoughts was lifted and the tortuous path forward that he had envisaged was now laid out before him with childish simplicity.
He skidded to a halt before his men, who regarded him with a sort of amused curiosity, and blurted, ‘Lads, I won’t ask you to go to Arklow if you do not want.’
The men before him began to mutter and exchange uneasy glances. At length, Jim Kehoe asked, ‘Why wouldn’t we want to go?’
Tom felt his temper rise but forced himself to remain calm, ‘Because if you lose at Arklow, you will be trapped. New Ross is garrisoned, as is Newtownbarry. Should Arklow hold against us we are surrounded. Arklow is not our fight. I will not order you to go where I will not.’
At this another man, a man whom Dan had told him was named Forde or Foyle or something along those lines, said, ‘You are not going, Mr Banville?’
Tom shook his head, ‘I am not. This is not my cause. I have lost my brother in one futile battle. I am reluctant to sacrifice either myself or my men in similar fashion. The course on which we are set is doomed.’
‘Mr Banville,’ the reproach in Jim Kehoe’s voice was like an anvil, ‘Dan, God be good to him, will be spinning in his grave to hear you say such things. We are United Irishmen, every one of us. We cannot leave off now when success is so close.’
Tom nodded slowly, his heart heavy, ‘So you are all resolved to continue with Perry’s assault on Arklow?’
Every one of the Casteltown Corps, now all sitting up, their eyes as intent as hunting hounds’, nodded mutely.
Tom sighed, ‘So be it. Should you carry the day at Arklow then I do not think I shall join you at Dublin. Take Arklow and the country is yours. If you are defeated then you shall find me with Fr Murphy at Castletown or at the camp on Gorey Hill. Today you follow Miles Byrne as though he were Moses himself. He is the best we have left. I wish you well, lads.’
Saying nothing, the men he had led against Walpole at Tubberneering, the men who spilled blood for him and who adored his brother, watched as Tom Banville walked away from them. For his part, Tom felt a vast sadness enfold him. They were Dan’s men, he knew that deep down. They followed him because he was Dan’s brother. He had never taken the United Oath, he had never invested himself in the illusion of liberty with the same conviction as Dan or Miles. He had never truly belonged. Without Dan he was a stray dog, battered and homeless.
He found himself hoping fervently that the men of Castletown might somehow survive the coming battle, that their bravery might be rewarded with glory rather than grape shot. He hoped Perry and Fr Michael were right. He hoped that by tomorrow morning both he and Fr John would be confirmed as the cowardly fools that some must certainly think them. He hoped all this and yet he knew the desperation of their situation. He knew they were alone in their struggle. And he knew that the Crown would be waiting for them at Arklow.
His dearest wish as he left Coolgreaney behind was that he might have time to find Dan’s body before a red-coated soldier tightened the noose about his own neck.
At Castletown the sounds of the battle in Arklow were like the muffled thundering of waves against distant cliffs. For an hour the unabated din echoed across the countryside. For an hour Tom and Fr Murphy stood facing northwards in Castletown’s deserted street. Only the clash of steel on steel was inaudible, that and the wet tearing of flesh, the sobbing screams of the dying.
At eight o’clock the brittle,
autumn-leaf crackle of musketry died to a graveyard silence. An unbroken hush draped itself across the land. Over field and hedgerow, ditch and gorse, not even the singing of birds fractured the calm.
Then the first of the survivors came. Ragged and wounded, a tattered scarecrow of dirt and gore, he shambled down the road leading in from the north. His face was a devil’s mask of black powder burns and his shirt was slit along one red-sodden sleeve where a cavalry sabre had slashed him. He carried no weapon, only the weight of defeat and the horrors of what he had witnessed.
Tom and Fr Murphy approached the man who stumbled towards them in a daze.
Seizing Fr Murphy by the lapels, the ragged refugee babbled, ‘They’re killing the wounded. Their cannon cut us down like wheat. Fr Michael is killed. My God, Father, what are we to do?’
Fr Murphy exchanged a glance with Tom before calmly asking the man, ‘How did Fr Michael die? What happened?’
The man shook his head as though befuddled and answered, ‘He was blown from his horse and fell close to a burning cabin.’
His face when grey as he continued, ‘The Ancient Britons, they stopped and used his fat to grease their boots.’
Fr John’s face became hard, as though chiselled from unyielding rock. ‘Go on,’ he said.
The man breathed deeply, his senses slowly returning now that he was safely away from Arklow, ‘We flung ourselves against their barricades and they were breaking, by God they were breaking. You could see them running across the bridge and up the Dublin Road. Byrne and his Monaseed boys were masters of the right flank but we were being tumbled in twenties by grape shot and muskets. And then we started to retreat and they set their cavalry on us. There was butchery in the fields. Forgive us Father but we had to leave the wounded behind. We left them to be shot like dogs.’
The man was close to tears now but Fr Murphy pressed on, ‘Who gave the order to retreat?’
The man shook his head, tears streaking through the black that caked his face, ‘I don’t know, Father. Everyone and no one.’