The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  Margaret had got the full impact of Sterrin’s words. They held a whole lifetime of reproach; she put her hand to her head. There was no swaying there. It was only when she felt that queer, violent pain in the back of her head that the swaying started up. Had she neglected Sterrin? Had she been left too much with that knife boy, though indeed he was genteel, not like that uncouth groom. Too genteel. To think of his going straight to Sterrin’s bedroom when he came to play at Sir Jocelyn’s house in Kilkenny! It must have been a frightful shock to Sir Jocelyn to have found him there. He could easily have broken off the engagement, instead of pushing the marriage forward before the scandal could leak out, perhaps into the papers, even, Sir Jocelyn had said, because the actor was so prominent. Margaret wished she had a shoulder to lean on; she reached for the little satin box.

  Hegarty came softly down the room and coughed. ‘Your Ladyship—’ then he stopped dead. Her Ladyship was blowing a cloud of perfumed smoke from her lips.

  ‘Yes Hegarty?’

  ‘Er, shall I light the candles, your Ladyship?’

  ‘Of course, why ask?’ She made no effort to conceal the cigarette. The cat could stay out of the bag. Hegarty had neither taper nor tinder. He made his escape to the kitchen and blurted his tale into the still seething excitement about the elopement.

  Mrs. Stacey took the clay pipe from her mouth. ‘Cigarettes,’ she gasped, ‘the two of them at it!’ Then with supreme disregard for consistency she went on. ‘Do you know what I am goin’ to tell you?’ They had a shrewd idea. ‘I’m goin’ to tell you that the prophecies are coming true.’

  ‘Saint Columcille never prophesied that women, ladies—would smoke cigarettes,’ said Ellen scornfully.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs. Stacey, ‘but he prophesied something not far from it. He prophesied that women would wear trousers—it’s the same kind of ungenteel thing. There’s not a bit of differ between a cigarette in a woman’s mouth an’ a trousers on a woman’s legs.’

  O’Driscoll got to his feet. He had been the centre of interest over the way he had stood up to Mrs. Delaney. ‘I go against you, ma’am. I’m thinkin’ that a pair of trousers would cover more than a cigarette would; more’s the pity.’ He ducked from the aim of a turf sod and Hegarty said that there would be law and order in this kitchen from this day forth!

  * Chattering.

  57

  Sterrin tossed the little cigarette into her bedroom fire. It was as puny as her own exposure of Mamma’s secret addiction. The odd time that Sterrin took a pull, she liked it to be strong and pungent. Sterrin was exhausted. It had been a day of varied excitements. She made Hannah set up the hip bath and have the water made hot. Depression was not to be tolerated. She would throw it and her stiffness out together. In the distance beyond the window a light spurted up, then another. She wondered idly as she threw scent balls into the tub what it might be. Probably travelling tinsmiths. Then Pakie Scally poured in the big jugfuls of hot water. He gossiped as he poured.

  ‘There was a young lad in the kitchen asking for milk for the evicted people.’ He nodded in the direction of the distant flames.

  So that was what the flame was, she thought.

  ‘There were Peelers all over the place!’

  Any ordinary evening she would have been bringing food to the encampment. ‘Peelers!’ she repeated. Police! The word alerted all her senses. Blast Belle and her ploughboy! They had driven all thought of the password out of her head. She had not even given it to Denis the blacksmith, but at least she had warned him to keep away. Dear God, to have fallen down upon such a trust! The lives of men at stake! She turned from the enticement of the warm, fragrant bath, every bone in her body aching. The bath would have to wait.

  Surely, she brooded, as she rode up the hill towards the fort, there must be some other way of helping people besides all this cloak and dagger stuff? Lawlessness, grim oaths and men like the unhappy Bergin. How he would gloat over her failure to do her duty. Why did he ever take the trouble to help her during the fire? Oh, this is no life for a lady! I should be lying in my bath. I should be dancing. I’m not the dedicated type. And then that inexorable phantom procession approached, the six hundred trudging wearily past, raising reproachful eyes to her; the little gaunt boy running from her, from all that she represented. No, one could not fight that kind of thing alone. One had to belong to an organisation that had discipline—and ruthlessness. That was the only way to tackle and overthrow the system that perpetrated such inhumanity. No good in doing Lady Bountiful with a basket of food to some homeless encampment.

  Revolution was the only solution, and revolutions, as the French leader, Monsieur Landu Rollins, had said of O’Connell’s peaceful methods, cannot be fought with rose-water. How often had she heard Papa quote that! Well, here is your daughter, Papa, wearing the Red cap of Revolution!

  ‘Halt!’ Her heart missed a beat. A file of policemen had emerged from a thicket. She thought to urge the horse into a gallop, but caution prevailed. High-horsing would not avail this time. She recalled her scornful taunt to Bergin this morning. ‘Are you sure you can trust me with the password?’

  The officer in charge bade someone uncover the lantern. It was held up to her face. ‘Your name, Madam,’ She gave it coldly. ‘What is your business abroad?’

  ‘I am not in the habit of accounting for my presence on my own property. What is your business on our land?’

  The interrogator was not Sub-Inspector Bible, but his authority was more compelling. ‘Madam,’ he said with quiet insistence, ‘somewhere on your property there is unlawful assembly and drilling. This is an unorthodox hour for a lady to go horse-promenading.’

  She twisted around and pointed her whip to two bulging saddlebags. ‘This is my business abroad—food for those people down there.’ She nodded towards the red glow. She gave silent thanks for the expediency that had prompted her charity.

  ‘Indeed,’ she went on with a smiling change of front. ‘I ought to have been there long ago, but I was busy over another type of lawlessness. I had to travel quite a distance in pursuit of an eloping couple and bring the young lady back to her mother.’

  ‘Ah,’ the officer allowed himself to smile too. ‘We had been apprised of that abduction. I’m glad that you were able to restore the young lady to her mother. And now, we must not detain you any longer.’

  He caught the bridle and with calm deliberateness turned the horse the opposite way round until it faced directly the distant smoke from the evictees’ encampment.

  ‘Did you know,’ he said blandly, ‘that you were heading in the wrong direction?’ With a quick word of command he turned back in the direction in which Sterrin had been riding. She had not hoodwinked him. She had led them straight back to the spot they had just missed. The password! That police officer would give the other password and the door would be opened to them and twenty—maybe thirty men would be—‘shot at sight’? Given life sentences in the colonies? Hanged? The one in charge would certainly be shot, perhaps ‘at sight’—Donal. She raised a hand as though to stop the raiders. The folded whip dropped to the ground from her limp grip. Suddenly there came an excited shout from the raiders. They had found the entrance to the Danish fort. The shout summoned her to her senses. She dropped the reins, placed a finger on either side of her pursed lips, and uttered a wild, whistling, lonely cry. Would Donal, if he were inside, recognise the sound drawn from the lonely heart of a betrayed bird. Was she too far away for her voice to penetrate the thick walls of the fort?

  Donal, tensed at an earhole in the fort, heard the strange cry of the domestic goose when the gander that has been its love since spring, hears the distant cry of the wild geese and suddenly, in response to some primal instinct, deserts her for his wild brethren. He warned the sentinel not to open the door. The password was in the wrong hands.

  Sterrin tethered the horse a distance away and when the raiding party, thwarted, had long departed, she tiptoed to the entrance.

  ‘Donal,’ she called s
oftly. It was a complete violation of the rules. Names were never used; only initials, and not one’s own. And of course it would be a sentinel who would be posted inside the entrance—demanding the password. Oh, dear! Tonight she was a completely demoralised soldier of the Irish Republican Sisterhood; completely untrustworthy. That silly frivolous Belle and her absurd elopement.

  But it was Donal who answered. And he too forgot the conspiratorial initial. Instinct prompted him to respond to that unmistakable voice.

  ‘Sterrin,’ he answered and drew back the massive bolts. On straw in a corner lay a youth of about seventeen. A half-suppressed moan escaped and Donal dropped her hand and went to the lad. In the dim light of a lantern she saw his white pinched features.

  The boy, Donal told her, was his nephew, James Prendergast Keating, son of that pair whose wedding long ago had caused such a furore in the castle; and the near dismissal of a certain knife boy. James was supposed to be visiting with his grandparents at Poolgower before starting his Law studies. He had escaped with a bullet in the leg from the raid that Bergin had told her of, where the leader had been shot dead on sight.

  ‘He must get to a doctor,’ Donal whispered. ‘The leg might mortify. Even if it does not he is not robust enough to bear prolonged pain.’

  Sterrin looked at Donal’s strained white face. It didn’t seem to her as if he, either, was robust enough to continue the prolonged hardship of his mountain outlawry. ‘If I could get him to Poolgower, my brother-in-law is there.’

  ‘What about your brother?’ She knew that he had made open pronouncements against the Fenians.

  ‘James’s James?’ he said bitterly. ‘He wouldn’t think twice of informing upon me. Fortunately, he is away on business.’

  ‘Come then,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you with this James.’ They half-carried, half-dragged him along the tunnel to the secret exit and on down to the dyke where the mare was tethered. Just as they were hoisting him on the pommel they heard sounds. The figures of men loomed out of the wet mist. Sterrin jumped bodily into the wet dyke and took the lower part of the boy’s body in her arms. Donal crouched beside her holding the upper part. She prayed that there were no mounted troops. Their horses might seduce a coquettish whinney from the concealed Clooreen. But it was the police patrol returning. Over the bank the two could see them hammering at the fort. The sentinel would have plenty of time to escape through the passage and burrow out to the hilltop.

  When the raiding party was out of sight, Sterrin bade Donal take the mare and go alone for the doctor. ‘We’ll never get him out of this now. I’ve got him in a fairly comfortable position.’

  Donal tried to remonstrate. It was raining heavily. Sterrin was soaked. ‘I cannot leave him like this. Hurry, you’re wasting time.’

  He eased the boy’s body against the bank and clambered out. A swirl of rain sent him sideways. He saw her stoop her head to thumb her hood forward without disturbing the boy. ‘Your cloak is ruined. You’ll be drowned.’

  ‘Ssh,’ she hushed him. ‘’Tis no time to think of finery. Take De Lacey’s fields—Lubey’s, I mean. He won’t be about at this hour. You’ll get to Poolgower that way in no time. I’d ride it in twenty minutes.’

  ‘You would!’ he smiled and disappeared.

  He made the ride in twenty minutes, but not the return ride with his brother-in-law. Dr. Greyson-Quigley. It was an hour and twenty minutes before sound of their horses gladdened Sterrin’s ears. She held the boy’s limbs out of the water and her own were cramped and chilled. Sometimes he moaned. Once he moved his head and spoke.

  ‘I say, I feel an awful rotter forcing a lady into such a predicament. You must be suffering frightfully.’

  ‘Don’t worry about my suffering. It’s the kind that will dry out.’

  After Donal and the doctor lifted the boy over the dyke, they had to lift Sterrin in the same way. She longed to rub her limbs. I’ll probably have to walk on my hands in earnest tonight, she thought with a grin. She had to squeeze back the tears. It was agony to try putting her legs to the ground. But she wouldn’t hear of Dr. Greyson-Quigley’s suggestion to come back for her when the patient was fixed up.

  ‘No, they are waiting for me down there. I promised. I feel better already.’

  As she neared the glow of the fires she heard footsteps padding hard behind her. Heavens, she thought, it must be one of the police raiders. But it was Donal.

  ‘I forgot to give you this. Your cramp put your wetness out of my head. Put it on!’ He helped her down and drew the horse out of sight of the squatters beyond the hedgerows. She was glad to undo her sodden cloak and put on the cloak he had brought her. The combs fell from her wet hair and a sudden red glow from the campfires showed her standing there with her hair cascading over her shoulders. He reached out and touched it gently.

  ‘“A sacred forest covering the mysteries of thought...”’ he quoted. She laughed and wrung the water from it.

  ‘There is no mystery in my thoughts just now; only to dispose of this food then get home.’

  He watched as she twisted it and pushed it up under the cloak’s hood and he went on quoting...

  ‘“Its wanton ringlets waved as the vine curls the tendrils.’”

  She untied the food bag. ‘How on earth can you be romantic on a night like this!’ He took the bag from her and walked the horse beside her.

  ‘I can always be romantic where you are. It would take more than rain to damp the ardour I feel for you. Sterrin, will you not change your mind?’

  She stopped.

  ‘Donal, I will not face another loveless marriage.’

  ‘Loveless! How could our marriage be loveless and the love that I have for you.’

  ‘It isn’t fair to ask you to do all the loving.’

  ‘Oh, Sterrin, I’d do it with a heart and a half and for ever. Remember the happiest marriages are those where one loves and one permits herself to be loved.’

  His tender logic sent a faltering through her where his love had failed. Why not let herself be loved? She could never hope to know those transports of love she had known for another. Why should she condemn herself to go through life—probably as a sort of spinster widowed aunt eventually to Dominic’s children? She put out a hand.

  ‘Perhaps when all this is over I—I shall permit myself to be loved.’

  The words sounded condescending to her but they were the response to his reasoning and her hand pressed his with a gentleness that held no condescension. He held it as gently then raised it to his lips.

  ‘When all this is over!’ His pleasant voice was almost bitter. ‘When will that be?’

  She had never heard him express doubt. Always he held out high glad hope that Ireland at last was on the verge of absolute freedom.

  ‘But, surely, it will be any day now. America will send aid. We must be patient. Her officers have done splendid work already. The men are all ready; drilled and eager.’

  ‘Drilled to carry pikes and walking sticks against millions of breech-loaders and the cannons of the British fleet? Yes, the men are drilled and eager. They are on the topmost of their eagerness. They can go no further in that direction; only backwards. We might wait too long for America. She has her own war to finish. Meanwhile, we have sixty per cent of the British military in Ireland on our side. We have a fair stock from the police barracks that have surrendered to us. We could make a start before the disaffected regiments are shipped out of Ireland. But, no, our leader keeps preaching patience. Stephens has done his work. His secret society is functioning. He is a brilliant organiser, but not a soldier. He will wait too long.’

  Sterrin was startled at such criticism of the great patriot who was the supreme Head of the Fenians! And from Donal!

  ‘Yes, authority and power have gone to his head. Why doesn’t he lead the men he has organised into battle? Why protract this business of secret assembly, this cloak and dagger play? The secret administration of oaths. The men over there behind that hedge need no oath administer
ed to them. If they were not Fenians already they became ones the moment the pickaxe brought the first wall down on to their hearthstones.’

  Before she could break the silence he coughed violently. Impulsively she put out her hand to him again.

  ‘Donal, you are doing too much. Promise me that you will go home tonight and rest. Get out of these clothes. I’ll bring back your cloak tomorrow.’

  They were on the outskirts now of the firelight and he drew back from it in fear of recognition. From the shadow his voice called softly.

  ‘Keep it. It is my dearest treasure. I never hoped to see you wear it.’

  What a funny thing for him to say, she thought, as she moved on to meet the evicted.

  She thought of it later as she sat up in bed sipping hot milk laced with poteen. Hannah picked up her sodden clothes—‘Now that, your Ladyship, is what I would call a beautiful cloak.’

  Sterrin, her face coated in layers of ointment, looked at the cloak that the maid was holding out fully extended—a blue barathea affair, lined with white satin and heavily trimmed with bands of velvet. Now she recognised it. It was the cloak that Donal bid so heavily for at the Auction—and with recognition she realised what he had meant about its being his dearest treasure. She had been too weary and wet to take in the implication.

  ‘That isn’t the cloak you wore going out, your Ladyship.’ It was as near as Hannah dared approach to asking where it had materialised from.

  ‘I was loaned it when my own got saturated. I shall return it tomorrow.’

  ‘Where will I tell Pakie Scally to return it to, your Ladyship?’ Hannah was consumed with curiosity.

  ‘No place, Hannah, and thank you kindly,’ said Sterrin sweetly. ‘I shall return it myself tomorrow.’

  Sterrin did not return the cloak the next day. When she awoke in the morning her body ached from head to toe. She was racked with pain and spent the day in bed. In the evening a party of military rode up the avenue. All in the castle held their breath.