1798

by Joe Murphy

  Casting a quick look behind him toward where a red-uniformed line of soldiers was massing, Tom said, ‘I thought you were dead!’

  Dan replied bleakly, ‘So did I.’

  Tom frowned then. Something in his brother’s eyes, something in his bearing hinted at darkness.

  ‘Is Elizabeth safe?’ he asked.

  Dan’s face paled and his eyes brimmed like wellheads. ‘I will tell you later,’ he said. ‘For now we must cover the retreat to Wexford.’

  Swiftly stepping into the ranks, the Banville brothers stood with swords drawn, shoulder to shoulder. Tom’s eyes were troubled and he cast a sidelong glance to where Dan stood. He was overjoyed to be reunited with his brother but the horrible grief he saw within Dan disturbed him deeply. Then, as Tom watched, tears sprang from Dan’s eyes and coursed in full flood down his cheeks.

  ‘Mr Roche!’ cried a rebel voice. ‘They are bringing forward cannon. We cannot stay here!’

  In front of Tom and Dan the soldiers’ lines had opened to admit the heavy carriage of a brass nine-pounder. It was wheeled to a halt and its gunners commenced the swarming, arcane operations that readied it to fire. Ramrods and wadding and a bucket of water were all dumped beside it and a wooden case full of grape shot canisters was hefted forward from the rear.

  Anxiety rumbled through the insurgent ranks and, beneath the disquiet, Dan said matter-of-factly, ‘They killed her, you know.’

  Tom blinked and he whispered in outrage, ‘Elizabeth is killed? By whom?’

  Dan swallowed drily and stated, ‘A man called Thomas Dixon. I would have you kill him if you find him.’

  Tom Banville’s stomach pitched with nausea. Dan’s words seemed to pinwheel about his mind without ever finding real purchase. The fact of Elizabeth’s murder sickened him physically and yet it was an unreal thing, like a distant scream on an empty mountainside.

  Tom regarded his brother fiercely, his lips suddenly dry, stitched onto his face. He rasped his tongue across them and he said, ‘I’ll kill him for you, Dan. We’ll kill him together.’

  But Dan did not answer. Mute tears merely snaked through the grime that marred his face. He was suddenly a creature of moist, white clay, soft and sobbing.

  Then, Roche’s voice rose in command, ‘Shelmaliers, in good order, fall back to Wexford!’

  With a rattling of pike and musket, the men under Edward Roche began a grudging retreat from Enniscorthy. In front of them, the lines of redcoats remained where they stood, unwilling to risk a confrontation with so many well-armed men. As they marched, Tom Banville glanced once more at his brother. Dan’s eyes projected an unsettling bleakness; it was as though, with his brother safe, he had lost the will to live. Silently, Tom marched and with each step towards Wexford Town, a desolate foreboding grew within him. The battle had been lost, the Rising had been lost, and now he feared his brother was lost too, trapped in the all-consuming quicksand of grief.

  CHAPTER 25

  What is Left Behind

  Wexford Town was an altogether different place this second time the Wexford Army of the United Irishmen entered it. Gone were the green banners and the platters of food, gone were the kisses and the emerald garlands. It was as though the men who had fought at Vinegar Hill and Foulkesmills, the men who had come within a whisker of overthrowing the King’s Government in Ireland, carried a plague. They were like lepers and outcasts, and the townsfolk could not be rid of them quickly enough. They were frantic to erase any association between themselves and the banner of the United Irishmen. Even Bishop Caulfield had made an appearance, mewling and bawling from his high windows that they would bring disaster down upon the town if they stayed. In short, Wexford Town awaited Brigadier General Moore with open arms.

  A large column of rebels including Fr Murphy and Miles Byrne had filed out of the town and waited on the Windmill Hill or at the old Three Rocks encampment. Some, Anthony Perry, Fitzgerald and Roche among them, had decided to head north along the Coast Road and try to slip past General Lake’s dragnet. All the leaders, from captain to colonel, realised that to be taken by the military on this day, so soon after the Battle of Vinegar Hill and the murders on Wexford Bridge, was a death sentence.

  Tom Banville stood in the cemetery of the Protestant Church of St Iberius and watched his brother weep over the heaped loam of a fresh grave. Dan was on his knees and the convulsions that racked him spoke of a hurt too raw and too physical to imagine. One hand was clawed into the rich, sandy chocolate of the soil while his other was pressed to his pale and tortured forehead.

  At the head of the grave-mound a simple wooden cross stood slightly askew, a brass plaque tacked to it. In hard, engraved lines the inscription read, ELIZABETH BLAKELY, DIED 15TH JUNE 1798. KILLED BY A UNITED IRISHMAN.

  There was something pointed in that inscription that cut at Tom, something acid in those words that he did not like.

  Beneath the cross, a rain-battered bunch of purple wild flowers lay forlornly, sinking into the soil.

  Tom stood for long minutes while Dan hacked his grief out onto the deaf clay of Elizabeth’s grave. Then, as his brother’s sobs abated, he said slowly, carefully, ‘Miles Byrne has gone out to The Three Rocks. He says Fr Murphy wants to lead some of the men out into the midlands. We cannot stay here. We shall all be hanged.’

  Dan was silent.

  ‘Dan—’ began Tom, but he was cut off by his brother’s words.

  ‘I will not leave her,’ he croaked, his voice still gummed with grief. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Then we shall both stay here,’ replied Tom. ‘We shall both stay and be made crow’s meat by Lake. I thought you were lost once, Dan. I will not see you lost again.’

  Dan exhaled then, a long expulsion of breath as though he sought to purge the sorrow that lay so heavy in his chest. ‘Go with Miles, Tom. Help him get the men out of Wexford. You are all that Ma and Da have left. Get away from here. Go to Dublin. Find them. Tell them I love them dearly. Tell them I regret the pain I have brought them.’

  Tom let the sea breeze whisper, feather-light, past his cheeks. The breeze brought with it the organic, rotting stench of the docks and the calls and cries of those desperately striving to hook from the water the bodies of the ninety-seven men and women whom Thomas Dixon had piked to death.

  ‘You are sure you wish to stay?’ asked Tom, his mind recoiling at his own question. How could he allow his brother to remain behind, to face a rigged court-martial, friendless and alone?

  ‘I am sure,’ replied Dan, and in those three words was all the dragging weight of purpose that Tom needed to hear.

  Dan meant to die here, by the side of his beloved. He would be shot, stretched on her grave before he allowed himself to be taken from her. When the soldiers came they would find a man already six days dead.

  As Tom regarded his brother he knew he could not save him; and all the while those five damned words spat accusingly out from the brass plaque on Elizabeth’s temporary cross.

  Killed by a United Irishman.

  Tom knew that his brother felt every syllable of those five words were for him and him alone.

  ‘I will be at the camp, Dan,’ Tom said, hating the pleading, bleating note that had entered his voice. ‘I beg of you to reconsider and join me there. Please, do not do this. You’re my brother.’

  Dan turned his head then and Tom almost staggered back a step at the vision his brother’s face presented. Before his eyes, Dan had become empty, his flesh grey and slack, his gaze dead.

  Dan’s mouth worked slowly, ‘You are all I have left, Tom. I kept you safe. I came for you in the end. Tell Ma and Da that, would you? Tell them I came for you.’

  Tom’s own eyes now overflowed and he stepped towards his brother, hugging him fiercely to his chest, ‘I love you, Dan.’

  Dan’s right arm came up and wrapped around Tom’s shoulders but his left hand did not lift from where it was buried in the soil of Elizabeth’s grave. ‘And I you,’ he whispered.

  Tom wrenched hims
elf away from his brother and ran from the graveyard, the tears streaming unashamedly from his eyes. He wept for Dan and he wept for Elizabeth. He wept for himself. He wept like a child for his county and for his country. He wept for the future and all that he had left behind.

  In the silence of the graveyard, Dan Banville knelt as though made from the very clay banked and piled in a low heap before him. He knelt by his darling Elizabeth and waited for the soldiers to come.

  ‘I am coming soon,’ he whispered. ‘I am ready.’

  Acknowledgements

  The past is a strange place. The only way you can find a path into it is by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before. Therefore, I am indebted to all those scholars and historians who have dedicated far more time than me to exploring the events of 1798. Also, I have to express my gratitude to the staff and personnel of the National Library in Dublin, Enniscorthy Library and Wexford Town Library. To Dan and the staff of Liberties Press, thanks for your faith and hard work. To my friends and family who read the manuscript and who have helped me along not just this path but others too numerous to mention, a massive and heartfelt cheers. To my parents and brother, I owe everything good in my life to you three. And to my darling wife, Áine, your patience deserves more words than I could ever write. This, and everything else, is for you.

  About the Author

  Joe Murphy was born in 1979 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford where he lived for nineteen years before dying. Then he got better.

  He was educated in Enniscorthy VEC, from where he went on to study English in University College Dublin. After undertaking a Masters in Early Modern Drama, he went on to qualify as a secondary school teacher. He has had poetry published in an anthology of Enniscorthy writers, but Tomorrow The Barrow We’ll Cross is his first novel. His job is teaching.

  You wouldn’t believe the stories.

  Copyright

  First published in 2012 by

  Liberties Press

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  Copyright © Joe Murphy, 2011

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  ebook ISBN: 978–1–907593–70–3

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Cover design by Graham Thew

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  The publishers gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Arts Council.