1798

by Joe Murphy

  Cloney’s head shook once and he said, ‘I saw it myself. I saw the men shot to death on the grass. I saw the black remains of the barn. I saw the charred corpses still standing upright, they were so tightly packed in.

  ‘Worse is that it is all Mr Keogh and Mr Roche can do to stop the same thing happening here. Dixon is rabble-rousing like a prophet from a mount and people are openly going about speaking of how all will be fine now that a Catholic is in charge. The boys up in Enniscorthy have been slaughtering loyalists like cattle ever since the town was taken and Dixon’s followers want the same thing here. They heard what the soldiers did at Ross and they think Scullabogue is something worth emulating. There is a growing panic, Dan.’

  Dan’s mind contorted like something tangled in a snare. It horrified him that while he lay, supine and useless, his county had turned on its head. In a few brief days the Rising had become a foetid mess of atrocity and barbarity. Victory had been theirs for the taking and now it seemed to be slipping, day by day, from their blood-slickened grasp. Here in the warm chamber of this room, comforted by Elizabeth’s ministrations, it was appalling to think that beyond these plastered walls Wexford was becoming a witch’s cauldron. His world had become suddenly filled with gore and despair, as pathetic as the bowl of red-tinted water that cleaned his wounds.

  Frowning, Dan replied, ‘If you find me some clothes, my sword and my pistol, I shall lend my good arm wherever it is needed.’

  Turning on his heel, Cloney came forward and placed his hand on Dan’s good shoulder. He smiled warmly at the injured captain and said, ‘I will not lie to you, Dan. To have you back, either in the field or to keep peace within the town, is something that I dearly wish for. But you are of no use to anyone for a day or so more. Listen to Ms Blakely.’

  Cloney continued, ‘I must be away now, for I fear that I have put too much of a strain upon you too soon. You look as white as those sheets you lie on. I am off to Lacken Hill. When you feel properly able, and only when you feel properly able, you will find me there.’

  ‘See you soon, Thomas,’ said Dan wearily, suddenly aware of a blanket of tiredness settling around him. ‘Thank you for the news. Have heart. We are not defeated yet.’

  Thomas Cloney watched Dan Banville slip into slumber as he finished speaking. Smiling wryly, he left the room and closed the door gently behind him.

  The next two days passed for Dan in a blur of sleep and soup and dressing changes. Elizabeth had assumed the role of nurse and through her gentle touch and careful hand he felt vitality returning minute by minute. His strength grew exponentially and on the evening of the second day, as Elizabeth unwound the white gauze from around his head, he said, ‘I believe we should go for a stroll tomorrow. I feel quite better.’

  Elizabeth regarded him critically and then leaned to the left to inspect the wound that had gouged a furrow along the side of his head. It was healing nicely, scabbed over already, his hair, growing again after so long, falling so that it was hardly visible.

  She pursed her lips and frowned, replying, ‘Your head does not need a bandage any longer, my love, but I fear your shoulder is still too open to go traipsing about the town.’

  Dan lifted his left arm and flapped it like a wounded bird. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It is fine. I will not pretend it gives me no pain but the shot went straight through the flesh. The best thing for me is to get some exercise.’

  ‘We shall see,’ was all she said.

  To his surprise, early the next morning Elizabeth arrived in his room with a bundle of clothes folded over one arm. She dumped them unceremoniously onto his bed and stated, ‘If you wish to go for a walk, you will need to make yourself decent.’

  Dan’s broad face broke out in a grin and he said with roguish impudence, ‘You become more like your goodly aunt every day.’

  She arched her eyebrow at him and flounced from the room.

  Dan dressed himself as best he could, his shoulder screaming in protest as he slipped his shirt over his head. Eventually he stood and looked down at himself. Shoes, stockings, breeches, shirt and coat, all were exactly as they should be; no mean feat for a man who had been shot by a cannon only six days before.

  He walked to the door with a steadiness that surprised even himself and opened it to find Elizabeth waiting for him, her eyes bright and a smile fluttering at the edges of her mouth. Seeing her there, with her hair pinned in a bun at the nape of her neck and her sun-bonnet predictably askew, he felt a surge of warmth in his chest.

  ‘I love you, Elizabeth Blakely,’ the words were out of Dan’s mouth before he even new they were there.

  She blinked at him, surprised by the sudden expression of affection, then linked his arm and kissed him on the cheek, ‘And I love you.’

  The sun glowed beatifically in the high blue of the sky with only a few sea-tossed clouds to contend with. A cooling breeze, seemingly the one constant in Wexford Town, slipped across the waves of the harbour and slunk along the alleys and laneways leading up from the quays. All about the town, hanging flags and bunting still cast everything in shades of emerald. The green boughs that had been lashed to shop fronts and railings had, however, turned to brittle brown shreds in the heat. Now, as Dan and Elizabeth strolled past, they shed their leaves in rattling drifts, their heads bowed, their once-vital branches become mere kindling.

  At every step through the streets of Wexford Town, Dan felt his strength grow and his legs become more confident. Gone was the palsy that he had felt trembling in his muscles only two days before. Apart from the fact that he carried his left arm curled into his side, there was nothing to suggest that he was in anything but perfect health.

  They walked down Main Street, its shops and merchants’ premises all closed but their places taken instead by carts and wagons, peasants and farmers selling wares. Women queued in chattering lines of muslin and linen, waiting their turn. Even in the midst of war, families needed to be fed. As they walked, Elizabeth noted that the only men they encountered were those too old or too young to carry a pike or gun; too old or too young or too hurt. Here and there, clustered in small hobbling groups, wounded men leaned on crutches or compared blood-crusted bandages that swathed arms and heads. Unconsciously, Elizabeth gripped Dan’s arm even tighter. Leaving Main Street behind, they turned right onto the quays, the sea air in their noses.

  There on the quays, a mob of people had gathered around a young man who sat, stunned, on the ground, his nose bleeding and an expression of distilled horror paling his face. Another man stood over him, facing the crowd with a scrap of fabric clenched in his right fist. The fabric was orange.

  This second man, a short fellow with the blistered face of a blacksmith or tanner, held the orange cloth aloft with a triumphal screech and shook it as though it were a military banner.

  ‘Look at this!’ he was yelling, whirling about as he did so. ‘This was torn from the inside of this blackguard’s coat. Look at it! Orange, orange, orange! What good patriot would suffer himself to wear orange?’

  The crowd roared their approval as he swung a kick at the young man at his feet.

  ‘Off to the gaol with him, lads!’ the man ordered, and fifty pairs of grasping hands hoisted the unfortunate, bleeding wretch to his feet and began to drag him down the street.

  Elizabeth’s grip coiling about his right forearm was the only thing preventing Dan from springing forward to the young man’s aid.

  ‘God almighty, Elizabeth,’ he argued. ‘We can’t just stand here and allow a man to be carted off to gaol simply because the lining of his jacket happened to be orange. This is madness!’

  Elizabeth looked up at him, ‘It would be madness to intervene – you can barely move your arm!’

  Dan watched the mob disappear around a corner and growled, ‘I shall have words with Roche about this.’

  As he climbed into bed that night, a heavy weariness stealing over him, he thought that Bagenal Harvey and Matthew Keogh had much to answer for allowing the district to descend into
such chaos. He would go to Roche first thing and ask for the immediate arrest of that scoundrel Thomas Dixon; then he would ask for permission to travel north with Elizabeth. All day, a cold worm of trepidation had fattened itself in his brain and now sat swollen and unspeakable, deep in his skull. Scullabogue, the lust for revenge, the petty cruelty of the people, all this meant that Wexford Town was no place for Elizabeth. The longer they remained, the closer they were to something awful.

  Edward Roche was away at Vinegar Hill when Dan called on him the next day. The British had flung their cordon ever more tightly around the county and the need to find a defensible position was occupying the mind of the commander-in-chief. The plan to hold the advance of the government forces until the French arrived was consuming Roche and he spent every minute of the day poring over maps and charts and sending messengers out to Fr Roche to the west and Anthony Perry to the north. And still the government columns merely sat and waited, swelling their forces in anticipation of General Lake’s order to advance. No matter what the rebel leaders did, the garrisons around the county held their positions, stubbornly refusing to come into the field.

  With Roche gone, Bagenal Harvey was next on Dan’s list. His rapping on the former aristocrat’s door was answered by a footman who informed the exasperated captain that Mr Harvey had retired to his bed for the afternoon. As for Matthew Keogh, he was nowhere to be found.

  Dan went home that evening to a genteel dinner with Elizabeth and her aunt, his shoulder burning and a string of curses wheeling through his mind.

  The next day, the 14th of June, was not so uneventful.

  Dan and Elizabeth walked arm in arm through the Cornmarket. Dan’s health was returning at an astounding rate, in direct contrast to his falling spirits. Matthew Keogh, the town’s notional governor, seemed to have taken a leave of absence, while Roche had taken up almost permanent residence on Vinegar Hill, striving to simultaneously coordinate the movements of both rebel armies. Into this gap in authority Thomas Dixon and his followers were pouring a stream of bilious invective. Houses of Protestant citizens which had remained untouched throughout the Rising were now being ransacked at the least pretence. Whole streets were now composed of defiled homes, windows broken and their doors hanging from their hinges like torn limbs. Dixon’s mob had turned more than a few into public latrines and the stink of human faeces now crawled from out the once-perfumed boudoirs of fashionable ladies, long fled. The town’s gaol was packed to bursting.

  Worse still were the continuing deaths on Vinegar Hill. The cry of blood for blood could not be silenced.

  Dan had resolved to see if John Kelly was in any way close to recovery. To his mind the United movement was wavering, rudderless and alone and surrounded by enemies. In such circumstances, men of John Kelly’s character would be needed more than ever.

  As they turned down the short ramp of street connecting the Cornmarket with the Bullring, a commotion caught Dan’s attention. Outside The Cape of Good Hope, a pub of deserved renown, an altercation suddenly flared between two opposing groups of rebels. Civilian townsfolk drifted anxiously away from the scene, women hurrying in a swish of skirts, hands clamping straw hats to their heads, men striding quickly with fearful backward glances.

  A dozen Wexford Town insurgents, identifiable by their see-sawing accents, were facing a hard-bitten band of Enniscorthy men, their own voices accented more sharply than those of their southern comrades. Between both groups a terrified and bleating handful of shackled prisoners were the subject of pointed words and shaken fists.

  Inevitably, Thomas Dixon and his wife were standing close by. Dixon’s face was creased in a weasel-like sneer and his arm was draped casually around his wife’s bulbous waist. As the townsfolk slipped away, a trickle of Dixon’s men began to converge on the Bullring like vultures flocking to a carcass.

  ‘Let us go around them,’ Elizabeth whispered, tugging at Dan’s sleeve.

  Dan frowned down at her and replied, ‘No, let us wait. This may be revealing.’

  One of the Wexford Town rebels was pointing a quivering finger at the leader of the Enniscorthy men, saying, ‘You know full well that Matthew Keogh wants these prisoners lodged in the gaol. You aren’t taking them back with you now.’

  The Enniscorthy man, a twig-thin figure with eyes like bullet holes and a mouth like a wound, snarled back, ‘And you know Luke Byrne has tried these men already. They’re to be done to death and that’s it. Keogh can go be fecked.’

  The prisoners, four men all deep into middle age, quailed at the Enniscorthy man’s words.

  Around Dixon there had now gathered a good-sized group of pikemen, well-armed and looking on with expressions of cruel mockery.

  ‘Let the Orangemen go back to Vinegar Hill,’ Dixon interjected loudly. His nasal whine cutting through the air made both sets of rebels look towards him.

  His wife’s great, yielding face split into a grin, her teeth standing crookedly in her gums.

  ‘Let the Orangemen go to hell,’ she cackled and around her Dixon’s followers laughed uproariously.

  The insurgent contingent loyal to Matthew Keogh looked about them in the sudden realisation that they were outnumbered. The four chained prisoners seemed shocked, their faces draining of colour and their eyes staring like frightened animals.

  Dan was moving before Elizabeth could stop him, tearing himself free of her grasp and heedless of her stricken expression.

  ‘Daniel, don’t!’ she hissed, but he ignored her and marched down the slope to stand between Dixon and the prisoners.

  ‘Good day to you, Captain Dixon,’ said Dan, almost pleasantly.

  ‘Not dead, after all, Banville?’ replied Dixon.

  Dan smiled at him and said, ‘Why do you want to send these prisoners back to Vinegar Hill, Mr Dixon? Luke Byrne will have them killed on the spot. Mr Keogh wants them to be locked away in the gaol and Mr Keogh is still governor of this town, is he not?’

  Dixon hawked up a mouthful of phlegm from deep in his narrow chest and spat with relish into the dust, ‘Keogh is a puppet. A Protestant puppet. Why should we feed and mollycoddle the enemies of the people?’

  Dan’s smile grew chill and, as Elizabeth watched, the set of his shoulders stiffened and his weight shifted to the balls of his feet.

  ‘“Enemies of the people”?’ scoffed Dan, eyes ablaze. ‘I’ll “enemies of the people” you, Dixon. Where were you at New Ross? When have you even crossed swords with the enemies of the people? You rant and you rave and you terrify the helpless but you remained safe here in Wexford when the real fighting had to be done. Some Protestants may be bad neighbours, Mr Dixon, but you are a bully.’

  Dixon’s men bridled at Dan’s words, but the few townsfolk who had remained to gawk were now turning and walking away, and from Keogh’s loyal guards there came no sign of support for Dan. They stood with eyes downcast, embarrassed by their own inaction but too afraid to become involved. Dan was alone, Elizabeth realised with horror, alone and wounded.

  Dixon was livid and he spat, ‘You are a fool, Mr Banville and a lackey of Harvey and his kind. They who have led us to the very brink of disaster. If you were at New Ross then you know the soldiers massacred our wounded. No prisoners were taken. Men were shot where they lay. And you want us to let Harvey and Keogh protect the butchers who have bled this sorry country dry for so long? Your kind makes me sick.’

  From the crowd gathered around Dixon a murmur of acclamation arose and from behind Dan one of the Enniscorthy men quipped, ‘Maybe we should pike this fellow too.’

  The prisoners merely whimpered, their lives like a ball of rags being kicked about between two opposing goals. Keogh’s men still said nothing.

  Dixon’s wife then spoke, the words sleeting from between her clenched teeth, ‘You’re some man, Mr Banville. A Protestant lover and a busybody. You stopped us piking Turner but you won’t stop us now.’

  Dixon nodded and smiled cheerily, ‘Things are changing, Mr Banville. You won’t find anyone w
ho lost friends and relations in the streets of New Ross so eager to protect Orangemen anymore. Things are changing. Roche is organising his brave last stand. Harvey has lost his nerve and Keogh is toothless. My time has come. Me and men like me. Those prisoners are going back to Enniscorthy and there they will die.’

  Dan ground his teeth, the knowledge of his defeat bitter in his stomach. Wordlessly, he turned from Dixon and approached the four chained prisoners.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

  One of the men, whey-faced and whose sad eyes were filled with a sort of depthless grief, replied, ‘Thank you for trying, young sir.’

  Then, with a whoop, the Enniscorthy rebels surrounded the prisoners and marched them down Main Street, roughly jostling and goading them as they went.

  Dan watched them go and then knifed the silent cluster of Keogh’s guards a look of savage disdain. The men stared at the ground, shame-faced and humiliated by their own inaction. Without a backward glance he ascended the sloping plot of hard-packed earth to where Elizabeth waited for him, her face pensive and her hands balled in the fabric of her dress.

  Behind him, outside The Cape of Good Hope, Dixon mused almost whimsically, ‘We must do something about the good Mr Banville.’

  The following afternoon found Dan Banville staring into a looking glass held in his right hand. His shoulder wound had been cleaned and stitched and now the black threads of the sutures dug tiny furrows in his flesh. All around it the yellowing haze of a bruise floated beneath the skin and the last red haze of infection was cooling to a dusky pink. Even now, ten days after the grape shot had punched through him, a bandage had to be applied daily to soak up the amber fluid that leaked from the knotted centre of the wound.

  It still hurt like blazes too, although, he reflected, probably not as badly as poor John Kelly’s thigh.

  After yesterday’s altercation with Dixon he had gone to visit Kelly. Dan’s mood was further soured by the sight of the blond colonel from Killann propped upon a nest of pillows in his sister’s bedroom. He sat in his bed a pale wraith, so far removed from the commanding presence of old. The change that the wound had wrought within the Bantry man made Dan feel uncomfortable, nudging his mind along dark paths reeking of death. Kelly had left a part of himself in the dust and smoke of New Ross and the continuing bad news from the west and north only served to depress him further. With an unexpected feeling of awkwardness, Dan had made his excuses and left. They had lived a dream, had come tantalisingly close to realising it, only to have it reduced to splinters before their eyes.