by Colin Murphy
‘What?’
‘Just another one of your victims! How many more are there going to be before you’ve satisfied your blood lust?’
‘As many as it takes to free Ireland, something all the boycotts in the world will never achieve–’
‘Walsh? What the fuck are ye doin’?’ McGurk’s voice took them by surprise, as much from the fact that they’d almost forgotten the presence of the others as from what he was saying.
Owen and Thomas turned their gaze on Bull Walsh, who had been sitting in complete silence beside the door, hanging on every word spoken by Thomas, yet his eyes appearing vacant as they looked not at the walls about him, but across the landscape of his memory. Now his large, imposing bulk stood erect, his arm extended, gun pointing directly at Thomas.
‘Drop the gun, Joyce.’
‘Are ye fucking mad? What are ye doing?’
‘Drop it or I’ll kill ye where ye stand.’
Thomas lowered the gun to his side and allowed it to drop to the floor. Owen now stood almost by his side.
‘If your brother’s been living a lie, you’ve been living one a hundred times greater.’
It was the longest sentence Thomas had ever heard the man speak. He shook his head in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What did you say was the name of the house? Oughty House? Where your land agent lived? Harris?’
Thomas nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s right. What about it?’
‘Let me finish yer story for ye. The men ye heard coming up the track as ye were leavin’, that would have been Pádraig Walsh, Éamon Walsh and Jimmy Burke. I wanted te go with them, but they wouldn’t let me. Tim. That’s my name. Tim Walsh. Pádraig Walsh’s son. Éamon was my uncle. Jimmy was a neighbour. They were going up te see Harris te ask him te defer the rents, not te kill him. They weren’t even armed. The front door was open and they went in, saw the bodies and ran. But the old stableman, or whatever he was, he’d come to, woken up. He was walkin’ around the front of the house when he saw the three of them running out the door. He put two and two together and got five. When the RIC questioned him, he identified me father, me uncle and our neighbour as the three killers. Jimmy tried te get away to America. He was arrested on Westport Quay. They shot Éamon dead near his home when he resisted arrest. Me father and Jimmy were put on trial. They swore their innocence. But me father was known te be nationalist. And they had an eyewitness. That was all they needed. They hanged them in Westport. I watched. They left them hanging by their necks for half an hour after they were dead, so all the world could see the dead faces of the murderers.’
‘Bull, wait. I didn’t kn–’
‘Ye knew. Ye knew they were going te Harris’s house that night. Ye knew that they’d get the blame.’
‘No, I couldn’t have known there’d be a witness. I thought they’d go there and then just run.’
‘Ye were fuckin’ counting on it, you bastard! Ye were counting on them getting blamed, so you’d have plenty of time te get away.’
‘No! You’re wrong!’
Walsh emitted a small laugh and shook his head almost imperceptibly.
‘I swore after I’d watched me father die an innocent man that I’d make the English pay. I spent my entire life doing just that. Killin’ them, one after another. It became as easy as wringin’ the neck of a chicken. They weren’t even human te me. And all that time, I was hatin’ the wrong people. All that time, it should have been you. You. Ye as much as put the rope around me father’s neck and pulled the lever. And me uncle. And Jimmy. All their deaths were down te you. You fuckin’ evil bastard!’
Walsh raised the gun an inch, pointing it straight at Thomas’s heart. Thomas didn’t move, simply stood there blank-faced, as though in acceptance that his time had come.
‘Wait! Walsh! Don’t!’ Owen shouted and went to move in front of his brother. Thomas pushed him roughly away and he slammed back against a wall.
‘Listen!’ McGurk shouted, as the sound of a horse coming to a stop reached their ears. ‘Is it Doherty?’
They stood in silence for a few seconds as a shadow flitted past the window. The door was pushed in and Donal Doherty stomped brusquely into the cottage. He stopped in the centre of the room as he realised the scene didn’t meet his expectations, then looked behind him and saw Walsh standing there with the gun levelled at Thomas.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Where have you been?’ McGurk asked, his voice fraught with dread, perversely hoping Doherty’s return would herald some measure of sanity.
‘Fuckin’ horse threw me when I was tryin’ te get away. What’s goin’ on? Bull? What are ye doin’?’
‘Get out of the way.’
Doherty was almost directly in Walsh’s line of fire. He looked around at Thomas and Owen.
‘Why are ye pointin’ that at Thomas? It’s the other bastard ye should be…why is he still alive, for that matter?’
‘Shut up, Doherty,’ Thomas said.
‘What? I’ve had enough of this. Let’s get this over and done with.’
Doherty brought his pistol sharply up towards Owen and fired, denying him even an instant of contemplation of his end before the bullet struck him. As he spun about and fell across the chair, which collapsed beneath his weight, he was conscious of a sudden explosion of pain – he was conscious too that Thomas had thrown himself at Doherty as he’d fired. Otherwise he would surely now be dead. He rolled on his back and clutched instinctively at the wound in his shoulder, and felt blood oozing between his fingers. Above him he watched as his brother and Doherty struggled for control of the gun, their bodies pressed together, hands wrenching at the weapon, which Owen could see was angling ever more towards the side of Thomas’s head. His brother was losing the battle.
‘You fuckin’ traitor, Joyce…all of you, traitors!’ Doherty hissed venomously as he watched the tip of the barrel slowly move against Thomas’s temple. ‘I’ll kill every last fuckin’ Joyce in Mayo…startin’ with you…’
Doherty felt his finger tighten against the trigger. That was the final sensation of his life.
Bull Walsh took a single step forward, pointed his gun at Doherty’s head and fired. The Fenian’s eyes snapped wide and uncomprehending, his lips forming a perfect circle as though he’d suddenly witnessed something startling, and he fell face down against a small table, upending it and shattering the McGurks’ small collection of crockery into a thousand shards.
‘What are ye do–’? McGurk roared as he desperately scrambled to train his own gun on Walsh, but his sentence, like his life, ended prematurely as Walsh put two bullets in his chest. He collapsed back into the hearth, sending a small cloud of cold grey ash swirling about his lifeless face.
Walsh took a step forward, long, slow breaths escaping his lips.
Owen struggled to stand but only managed to get up on one knee. Thomas stood with his back to him, facing Walsh.
‘Walsh…don’t…’ Owen croaked.
‘Nobody’s going to deny me this. Not Doherty, not McGurk, not you.’
‘Do it, Bull. But leave my brother out of it,’ Thomas whispered, his eyes fixed directly on Walsh’s.
‘This is for me father,’ Walsh said through a snarl.
‘No! Walsh! Don’t fire! Walsh!’
But Owen’s cry was lost in the gunshot’s odious screech, the terrible sound replete with sickening finality. Thomas’s mouth shot open, his eyes wide, as his body was thrown back against the wall, hands clutching at the gaping wound over his heart. Owen screamed and threw his arms about his brother’s falling body, as though catching him might somehow prevent the inevitable end. Thomas slumped to the floor, Owen’s arms swathing his body, tears flooding his face, his fingers digging into Thomas’s flesh as he tried to cling on to his brother’s life, to wrench him free of death’s grasp.
‘Thomas!’ he cried.
Thomas turned his head to Owen. His lips tried to form a word, a valediction, but no sound came. His eyes met O
wen’s for a brief moment and then the life slipped from them, and they saw nothing.
Owen pressed his face against his brother’s and softly sobbed, unable to deny the terrible loss despite all that had passed between them. Then he remembered that Walsh still stood over him, a gun pointed in his direction. He turned his head despondently and looked up at the man.
‘It’s over,’ Bull Walsh whispered. He turned his back and departed the cottage. A minute later Owen heard the sound of a horse take off at a gallop and he was left alone with his brother’s lifeless body.
He had no idea how much time passed before Fr O’Malley’s shadow fell across the cottage floor. He heard the priest utter a gasped exclamation of shock before he felt hands pulling at his jacket and shirt.
‘Owen! Thank God you’re alive!’
Joe Gaughan’s face was there then, and he felt Joe’s hands exploring the wound.
‘Bullet went through,’ Joe declared. ‘I’ve seen this before. He’s lost blood, but it’s not bad. Father, get a cloth and water. Owen, can ye hear me? We’re going te bind the wound.’
Owen nodded. ‘I’m all right,’ he whispered, then grasped the priest’s wrist.
‘What is it, Owen?’
‘Father. Joe. We have to get out of here. The police.’
‘First we have te fix ye up.’
They spent ten minutes washing and binding the wound with torn strips of a bed sheet. As Joe wrapped the cloth painfully about Owen’s chest and shoulder, the priest looked about him at the vacant stares of the dead.
‘Holy God,’ he muttered.
He turned first to Thomas, knelt and drew his palm down across his eyes to close them, made the Sign of the Cross on his forehead with his thumb, then, head bowed and hands clasped, he recited the words:
‘Requiem æternam dona eis Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescat in pace. Amen.’
He repeated the ritual with the others, differing only with McGurk; just a couple of months beforehand, he had been a young man living in expectation of the child his pretty new wife would deliver to him. The priest shook his head and laid a hand on McGurk’s forehead. ‘Oh Martin. How does it profit you now?’ he whispered.
He turned to the others.
‘Can ye stand, Owen?’ Joe was asking.
‘I think so.’
‘Father, help me,’ Joe said and they managed to get Owen on his feet.
‘Joe…’ he said. ‘I need you to do something. My brother. His body. Take it away. Maybe to the church.’
‘Whatever ye want,’ Joe said, looking uncertainly at the priest.
Fr O’Malley nodded. ‘I’ll take Owen home. You take the body in your cart. There’s a small room for the repose of the dead behind the sacristy. I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ he said, as they stepped out into the early morning sunlight.
Síomha screeched as she ran from the cottage with Tadhg and Niamh at her side, and they enveloped him in a tangle of arms as he climbed uneasily from the priest’s car.
‘My God, you’ve been shot!’
‘I’m all right. I’ll be fine. Oh God, Síomha!’ He clasped her in as tight an embrace as his wounds would allow.
‘What happened? Oh Jesus, Owen, I was certain you were dead,’ Síomha cried, Owen’s face cupped in her palms.
‘Daddy, are you all right?’ Niamh cried.
‘Let’s get him inside, Síomha,’ Fr O’Malley counselled.
Owen lay on the bed as Síomha redressed the wound, Fr O’Malley and the children running to and fro with basins of boiled water, bandages and a bottle of Harper’s Tincture of Iodine, whose application actually hurt Owen more than being shot. When, finally, the treatment was complete and weariness began to overtake him, he clutched at his wife’s hand, rested his head back and met her eyes.
Síomha glanced over her shoulder at Tadhg and Niamh. ‘Your father needs to rest now. We’ll be out in a few minutes.’
With the children gone, Owen looked towards the window and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Thomas is dead. Don’t ask me what happened,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll explain everything later.’
She nodded and clenched his hand tightly. ‘Jesus, Owen, we were frantic all night. We didn’t know where to look this morning. The Holy Well, around the estate. We met Joe and he told us about the gun. Then Father here suggested McGurk’s. He wouldn’t let me come. I was sure you were…’
Owen felt the swell of a sob and pulled her face down to his as he sought to conceal the conflicting emotions of his love and grief.
Fr O’Malley, who had been standing behind her, took a step nearer.
‘Owen. Did you–?’
Owen shook his head. ‘I didn’t kill any of them, Father. It was another man. He’s gone now.’
‘How many people?’ Síomha asked.
‘Thomas, Martin McGurk, a man called Doherty, a Fenian.’
Síomha blessed herself. ‘Mother of God.’
‘Owen, how are we going to explain all this?’ the priest asked.
Owen looked at his friend and Síomha.
‘We’re not,’ he said.
CHAPTER 39
AN EVICTION BY THE LEAGUERS
Mr Boycott, to whose aid the Orangemen went to near Ballinrobe, has quitted his residence there for England.
–The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1880
Look at the case of Captain Boycott the other day. (Cheers) It is perfectly impossible to resist the five million people of the country, and the Government cannot do it if you are organised and determined. He was a very plucky man, and yet the Government of England was obliged to employ something like 7,000 soldiers and police for a whole fortnight to save £100 worth of turnips and potatoes. (Laughter) Well, now, this one example should be sufficient to show you how utterly impossible it is for the oligarchy of the country to contend with the organised power of the masses. I believe that we have forces sufficient to achieve our ends and we call upon you as one man, if you believe in us, if you believe in our honesty, to stand by us and to help us with the ability, with the genius, which God has given to Irishmen, confident in ourselves and in yourselves and the future of our common country. (Great cheering).
–Charles Stewart Parnell, speech in County Cork. The Times, 5 December 1880
6 DECEMBER 1880
‘It’s beautiful, Owen,’ Síomha whispered almost to herself as she looked down into the valley on a bright, crisp winter’s morning. Tawnyard Lough glinted in the sunlight, the glassy surface reflecting the almost cloudless sky, its small cluster of islands overflowing with fir trees and wild shrubs, and Maumtrasna’s great bulk rising behind it.
‘A view I used to wake to every morning. I haven’t seen it in over thirty years.’
‘Why didn’t you ever come back, Owen?’ Fr O’Malley asked.
He shrugged and simply smiled. ‘Never had the time.’
They had travelled the previous day and stayed the night in the home of the local priest, who had gladly submitted to Fr O’Malley’s request on condition that the now-famed Master of the boycott tactic address his parishioners. Tadhg, Niamh, Fr O’Malley, Owen, Síomha and Joe, who had conveyed Thomas’s remains in his cart, had managed to cram themselves into two tiny rooms in the priest’s cottage. But it sufficed, and besides, they’d all known much greater discomforts in the past.
The land that Owen’s father had farmed on the side of Tawnyard Hill had lain untilled since the days of the famine, sheep its most frequent visitors. After the land agent Harris’s death, it had gone through many hands and now belonged to yet another absentee landlord who had never set eyes on the place. His land agent, however, had agreed to permit a burial on the hillside, his compliance spurred no doubt by the presence of Fr O’Malley.
‘Right, we’ve a bit of work te do,’ Joe said as he stared up the slope from the track, where they’d secured Joe’s cart, the jaunting car and Thomas’s horse.
Despite his protests, Síomha refused to allow Ow
en to assist as Joe, Tadhg and Fr O’Malley hoisted the simple pine casket from the cart and began to climb the slope. Owen’s wound was healing well, but any serious strain would undo all the work of the past ten days. So he led the way, and Síomha and Niamh, holding hands, following closely behind them. Thirty minutes later, after several gasping stops, the slope eased and flattened, revealing the area where Owen and his family had struggled to coax a meagre existence from the poor earth. Above them, Tawnyard Hill rose up another thousand feet towards the blue sky.
‘Mother of Jaysus, Owen,’ Joe gasped, clutching at his chest as they rested Thomas’s coffin on the ground. ‘Couldn’t ye have had a childhood home a bit nearer the road?’
Only Tadhg, in his youth, seemed untroubled by the exertions. Fr O’Malley was red-faced and perspiring profusely.
‘Sorry, Joe. It’s steeper and further up the hill than I remember.’
‘Ye were like Tadhg there the last time ye came up that hill, for God’s sake.’
Owen laughed, despite the sadness of the occasion. He clapped Joe on the shoulder in gratitude, not just for his exertions but for everything he’d done in the past days. He had removed Thomas’s lifeless body and transferred it to the church in Neale, where Fr O’Malley had arranged to have two local women quietly prepare him for burial. Joe had then built the casket and, despite the enormous amount of work on his own plate, had volunteered to help Owen conduct his brother to his final resting place. Considering what Owen had helped to do for the tenants, he’d said, it was a mere pittance in repayment.
Word had reached the constabulary that same day, courtesy of Joe, that shots had been heard near McGurk’s cottage, and upon investigation two bodies had been discovered, one of them a known activist in the militant republican movement. The RIC were currently working on the theory that some factional dispute had resulted in the men being murdered by a third party – not too distant from the facts. But they as yet had no clue who the killer might be and considering the secrecy in which these groups operated, it was Sergeant Murtagh’s view that they were unlikely ever to catch the culprit. No involvement of Owen or his brother was ever established or even considered. Tim ‘Bull’ Walsh was never heard of again.