by L. E. Waters
Acheson slams his gloves on the table and yells, “That is not the horse, you idiot!”
“Officer, are you sure that is the horse that pertains to this case?” the judge asks.
“It is the only horse in the stables, Your Honor.”
Acheson screams, “That is not my horse!”
The judge asks me, “Is this the horse you were riding yesterday?”
“Yes, Your Honor, ’tis the very one.”
He turns to Acheson. “You said yourself this is not your horse, so I cannot charge this man for stealing a horse no one’s missing. This case is therefore dismissed.”
Acheson picks his glove up, takes a deep breath, and says to me, “This isn’t over, yeoman,” and walks out.
An officer comes to untie my hands, and I make my way to where they have the sorrel tied up. I’m about to get on when the guard grabs the horse’s saddle and, with his hand on his pistol, demands, “So, where’s that reward?”
I gather the reins up in my hand and put them in his. “She’s all yours. She’ll fetch a good price. Just be sure to sell her in the next county.”
He seems pleased with this, and I kick up my heels as I walk down the dirt road toward my home. Once I tell Da the tale, he laughs louder than I’ve ever heard him laugh before. As soon as he gains his composure, he says, “You’ll have to go away from here for a time. Acheson doesn’t give up easy, and he’ll try to make your life hell if he finds you here, indeed.”
“Already made my choice. I’m going on exodus in France. I’m sure their military will accept me.”
He shakes his head in deep thought. “It’s the very best you could do, son, right now, with all this retribution going on around us.” He reaches over and hugs me. “Give Cromwell a steel kiss for me if you see him.”
I pack up and say my good-byes, with Ma in tears yet again.
“Wish I could go with you.” Art kicks his worn dried leather boots in the dirt.
“Going to miss this farm. I only feel alive while I breathe this valley air.” I take it in deep.
“Oh, go on now, dear, ’twill be here when you get back.” Ma wipes her tears with the ties on her headdress.
Da stands straighter. “That’s right, Redmond. I’ll never let those confiscators get their bloody hands on it.”
And I walk down the glens and roads I know so well, alone, into foreign arms.
Chapter 4
Years later, when I think it’s safe that Acheson has searched high and low for me and given up, I return. It feels so good to be back on Irish sod again that I don’t even bat an eye at the old nag I have to ride on. In France, I rode the finest horses in formation, and now I’m given a bag of bones worthy of an Irishman. But I set my sights for that little cottage on the knoll and can almost smell Ma’s stew over the fire.
I can tell something’s different from the view up the road. Where Da once had fences for the livestock, I see shining, waving golden tails. I kick the old thing to gallop, but all she does is trot faster, farther up the path. I can’t breathe as I see that the fields reach up over the hills and cover the area where I perfectly recalled the farm should be. My blood thickens, and I turn the horse to head to the only place I think I can find someone to tell me where my family has gone.
I walk through the dark, wooden doorway of the tavern and immediately inhale the thick smell of cheap whiskey and homegrown poteen. Only three men are in the room. The one in the middle turns at my entrance, and he does a double take upon seeing me.
Art says, slurring slightly, “Count O’Hanlon!” He turns to the man next to him. “He got counted off in France, you know.”
The other man turns slightly and takes a look. “Well la-de-da,” he says and goes back to his drink.
“I’ve seen the farm. Where’s Ma and Da?”
“St. John gave us the boot two years ago.” He takes a swig of his drink. “You can find them at your Ma’s sisters, in the workhouse out back. Sky farmers, now.”
“I was sure Da would’ve appealed and gotten all our lands back.”
“Oh, sure, he did that settlement appeal, but nothing came of it. Throwing good money after bad, is all. That bastard Sir Henry St. John is still sitting in Tandragee, watching all his crops grow where we laid our heads.”
Art doesn’t look good. His clothes are dirty, and his color’s poor. I think of Ma and Da and worry about how they fare. Without a word, I turn and run out the door.
Art comes hollering behind me, “Redmond, where you off to?”
“Going to look in on them.”
I jump on my horse and go much slower than I want. It feels like years before I reach the old cottage at the edge of town. The cottage itself is half the size of ours and in great disrepair. Behind a heap of peat stacked for the fire sits a small workhouse that has plants growing from the thatch and smoke seeping out the cracks in the walls. Ma sits on a large stone by the well, plucking a chicken. She looks up at the sound of my horse’s trot, and her haggard face brightens.
“Redmond! Hugh! It’s Redmond!” she yells behind her to the workhouse. My Da comes coughing out of the smoky building.
“Count Redmond, Mary!” He comes up with a warm embrace. “Come have a seat inside and tell us all about what you’ve seen.”
“Have you appealed?” I ask, too angry to sit.
His face drops. “Sure, I’ve spent the last four years fighting them in court. Nothing, we have nothing.”
Ma twists her hands nervously, turning pinker with every word. “But we are getting along fine here, Redmond. It’s not so bad. We’ve got everything we need, can’t ask for more.”
“Never dread the winter till the snow is on your blanket, right, Mary?” He gleams at her with such pride.
“I sent back all I could for you. Did you get it?” I glance around, wondering why they couldn’t have afforded a better place with that money.
“Oh, thank you, dear. Bless your heart for taking such good care of us, Redmond. We got every guinea.” Ma looks like this is killing her.
“It paid for all the court appeals and lawyers. Now it’s all we have to get by,” says Da.
“Come on inside, Redmond. I’ll make you some nice tea.” The lines crease deeper on Ma’s forehead.
“I’ve got something to do.” I turn my old horse and kick her as hard as I can. With a whinny, she bounces to life for the first time, and we make good speed through the village and back up the dirt path I know so well.
I come to the place where my horse’s tracks are still warm. I tie her to a tree and see her nostrils flared, sucking in and out as much air as she can draw. I walk out into the golden field and rip the top of the wheat to see ’tis near time for harvesting. I throw it down and go to the place where I was born. Nothing, not even a stone or ditch, gave any signs of the place I held so dear. It has been erased—makes me even doubt it ever existed.
I search for turf, take a flint out of my pocket, and work to light the driest parts. It starts to glow and smoke, and soon I have a small flame. I light each large piece and throw them, with a guttural scream, into every corner of the field. Nothing seems to happen at first, and then the fires reach up from the ground, creeping up each piece of wheat. I run to my mare, untie her, and take off into the other fields. By the time the sun starts to go down, I manage to ignite all of Da’s fields, and I stand on my horse, overlooking the blaze on the peak I watched Tandragee castle from only years ago. I stand in the shadows as the light of the day vanishes, only to be replaced by the glow of the enormous fire. Dogs begin to bark off near the castle, and guns fire.
I shout, “This is only the beginning!”
I direct my horse away from the fire and back to the tavern Art’s languishing in. The taproom’s much more crowded now that night has fallen, and Art doesn’t notice me until I come up right behind him.
“Redmond, did you hear someone set fire to St. John’s fields?” He slaps my back, but when he sees my face, he realizes I’d already known.
<
br /> “Here, Redmond, buy us one more pint, and we’ll get out of here.”
He staggers a bit out the door and takes a look at my horse. “Well, you’re going to have to walk, because I can’t keep up with that in my condition.”
“We going back to stay with Ma and Da?”
“Oh, no, they’ve a small mattress on the dirt, too small for even the both of them. Oh, no sir, I’ll take you to a little place I’ve come across in my journeys.”
Even though he’s intoxicated, he makes his way stealthily through the woods outside of town and tiptoes across the stones in the bog without one slip.
“Go tie your mare up here. She’ll be safe. The Tories don’t bother to come this way lately.” He pulls aside some brush and reveals a small entrance to a cave. “Room enough for two. But we better sit out here and chat about what you’ve been up to tonight. It’s a little cozy in there.” He smiles and sits.
“Just gave St. John a little housewarming present.” I start my pipe up and take a long drag while Art laughs heartily.
“If I didn’t know that all St. John’s dragoons would be crawling all over those fields right now, I’d have a mind to go watch the show myself.”
“Well, you’ll get your chance next one.” I pass my pipe.
“Next one?” He takes a drag. “What are you talking about, next one?”
“Oh, I’m going to light all of his fields, every workhouse, every barn, every manor until I get up to Tandragee myself to give Ole St. John a message. I’ll make him scratch where he doesn’t itch!”
“What did they do to you in France?” He laughs. “I’ll start calling you Owen Roe!”
“This is no way to live, Art, no way at all.” I shake my head.
Art sobers up for a moment. “No, you’re right there, Redmond. This is no place for me.”
“Better to hang from Downpatrick than kneel for St. John or any other planter.”
“’Tis the truth.” Art sits up and asks, “So where do we start?”
“Have any guns or weapons stashed away?”
“Naw, do you?” He looks around my waist.
“No, but I’m sure those planters’ houses and stables are full of them.” I start getting up.
“Where are you going now?” he says in a high voice.
“To go get some guns.”
I pull Art up on the back of my mare that protests the great weight. She tries to move sideways to get one of us off, but I give her a swift kick, and she begins to move slowly. We make our way around the roads, and I pick a planters’ house near St. John’s.
“Why you stopping this close to the fire?”
“They’re all probably off putting it out to save their own fields.”
“Oh, clever,” Art says with a wink.
We dismount and watch from behind a stone wall. There seems to be only women in the house. I point to the stables and say, “No doubt there’s a musket or two kept by the horses. Looks like no one’s there.”
“Let’s go, then.” Art starts creeping along the wall down to the stable.
“No, you go and light that east field. They’ll think the wind blew the fire over and ’twill distract them. Be quick about it, though. This’ll draw more men over.”
Art nods and smiles. “Meet you back here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
I can tell he’s enjoying this. I watch him disappear down the hill, and I’ve faith in minutes he’ll be throwing the sod like I’d told him to. I run, hunched over, behind the stone wall and reach the barn as a servant cries out, “The east field’s caught!”
I push back on the wall when a door flings open from the stables, and two men run out and up the field, luckily, without a glance back. I dart in the stables and search up and down until I see her—a beautiful thunder gun—the largest of blunderbusses, right over the tack room door. I grab it and the six boxes of shot on the shelf there and make my way back out without breathing.
Outside behind the stable, I strike my flint in a bale of hay, blowing on it to catch faster. As soon as it takes, I run for cover and just reach the wall before men dash down to the stables for the horses, screaming that the stables are on fire as I make my way up the wall. I’m relieved to see Art grinning away, already on the horse in the woods. I hold out the gun, and he kicks her into a canter to come back to get me. I throw the gun to him, ammo already in my pockets and vault on her rear. She lurches and makes off quickly through the dark trees.
We hit five more planters’ houses that night, dodging behind rocks and throwing sod in the dry fields. Art picks up two pistols, and I get my hands on a pretty decent sword still strapped in its sheath on a chair on a porch. Before we lit one of the barns on fire, we took the three horses with us and made plans to head to Monaghan on the morrow to unload them. Midnight, we lay our heads down in Art’s cave.
He keeps snickering and finally says, “What would poor Ma think of us tonight?”
I laugh. “She’d be wearing down the beads on her rosary for sure.”
“True, very true, but your Da’s eyes would be tearing something fierce.”
“We better get some rest now. We should be up before dawn to move these horses.”
“Right you are, Redmond.” He turns over and sighs. “I never lived a better night than this.”
Chapter 5
As the cold still hangs in the air, I shake Art awake, and we make our way through the woods, each pulling a horse behind us.
“You’re a nervous woman, Redmond,” he scoffs.
“Can’t be too careful, Art.”
The sound of a rider comes through the trees on the lonely road to our right.
I give the extra horse to Art and say, “Stay here with your pistol set on this rider.”
I kick my horse to cut the rider off at the pass, pulling my loaded thunder gun up straight at the rider’s head. The man sees me, pulls his horse to a stop, and tries to reach for his waistcoat. I shoot quickly at the ground and point back up at the well-dressed rider.
“Keep your hands in the air and I won’t have to use these other two shots,” I say in English.
The man holds his hands in the air but is distracted by the whinnies of the other horses in the woods. The man turns at the sound.
“Oh, don’t you mind them, that’s just my men. All with their muskets pointed straight at your noggin.”
He looks worried and starts lowering a hand toward his pocket.
“Oh, no, take your coat and waistcoat off and throw the bags over. The hat too!”
He complies. I kick them over to the side of the road and grab the fine animal’s reins and step on them.
“Dismount!”
He leaps off.
“Are you with the military?”
“No, I am a merchant on business in Ponytzpass.” I detect a Scottish accent.
I bend down slowly to search the bag with one hand as I keep the gun fixed on him. I find a large bag of coin. I reach in, remove one, and throw it in the dirt in front of him.
“Since you’re no military man, I’ll leave you something to get home with.”
The man says nothing.
“Oh, and make sure you tell them you’ve been robbed by Count Redmond O’Hanlon.” I put his hat on, tip it to him, and I take the two horses and loot back into the woods to Art.
“One more horse to sell at the fair.” I take the other horse back from him.
“Well, there’s no turning back now,” he says, following behind me.
I jingle the bag of coins in the air. “We’re on the pig’s back now!”
We arrive at the fair by midday, and I go right to where the horses are. I get off and leave Art to tie up the five horses and walk to a squat man leaning on the side of the stables.
“You the man I should talk with to sell my horses?”
“That all depends,” he says in a gritty voice. “You got papers?”
I smile. “I forgot them back in Armagh.”
“You better go inside and t
alk to the boss then.”
I head inside where the man pointed, and I’m surprised to see a young man sitting at a desk with his wide-brimmed hat down.
Without glancing up, he says, “You want coin or trade?”
“All depends on what we can get for them.”
He looks up, and I recognize the face instantly. ’Tis the horse thief from Acheson’s!
At the same time, a smile breaks across his face, and his indigo eyes sparkle. “You’re that footboy who tried to steal that white mare!” He laughs so hard he can’t continue. “I watched you take her and heard you got caught in town right after.” He keeps laughing as I switch the weight off one of my feet.
“So what about the horses?” I try.
“I have to hand it to you, quick thinking about bribing that guard.” He puts his feet up on the desk. “You may not be as stupid as you look.”
“How’d you know I bribed the guard?”
He pauses with a smile. “Who do you think sold him the brazilet with alum?” He laughs again. “Good price I got for it too! Plus I took the white mare off his hands and sold it for twice as much in Ulster.”
I don’t say anything.
He shakes his finger at me. “That was a good day for me, but I still have to give you some credit for getting out of Armagh gaol. I took note of that little trick you pulled for a rainy day.”
“Well, glad to be of service to you, then. Can we discuss the horses, then?”
He pauses again with a grin on his face and then turns to look at the window to see the horses.
“Four nice ones and a nag.” He shrugs. “You selling them all?”
“Was thinking of trading them all in for two legitimate horses with papers.” He starts getting up while I’m talking. “Fast horses, that is.”
“I think I have just the pair.”
We pass the whole line of horses, some good, some have seen better days, when he points out two fine horses at the end, one grey, the other sorrel.
“I will give you an even trade, those five without papers for these two with papers.”