Liberty

by McWatters, Nikki;

  ‘I think not!’ I gasped. ‘I have no desire to be your wife.’

  ‘The Lieutenant will take you away from the slums,’ my father said wearily. ‘It’s a very good marriage, Jeanne. Besides, it’s not up to you. And sadly, it’s not up to me either. The Captain has agreed to the Lieutenant’s request. It is out of my hands, our hands.’

  ‘No! I won’t. Never!’

  ‘Now, now! We’re not going to get off on the wrong foot, are we, Jeanne?’ Lagoy said patronisingly, raising a dark eyebrow. ‘I will be good to you and we will learn to care for one another.’

  I looked at my father, silently begging him to make this all go away, but he looked completely broken.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jeanne,’ he said, a tear rolling down over his deeply grooved cheek.

  ‘But Colin?’ I said, the tears pricking in the corner of my eyes. ‘Papa. What about Colin?’

  ‘Colin Pilon?’ Lagoy gave another boom of laughter. ‘The chicken boy? Come now, Jeanne, you’re a fine specimen of womanhood and deserve better than that peasant. He is just a boy. I am offering you a life away from all … this.’

  He waved a hand, indicating the small, mildewy room. My heart sank. I was powerless. The Captain of Beauvais decided who married whom and most women in my position would be well pleased to be betrothed to a lieutenant, a man who might one day be captain. But I wanted my peasant boy. I wanted Colin. I looked to my father and then to Lagoy with his flashy brass-buttoned jacket. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve as the chicken in the sack began to cackle.

  ‘Your mother would have approved, Jeanne,’ my father said, noting the wriggling hessian bag by the door. ‘And you are nearly seventeen after all. You won’t get a better offer. For your mother, ma chérie.’

  ‘That is not true and you know it, Papa,’ I cried. ‘She believed in love. You told me. You told me.’

  I could not remember my mother’s face but I carried her in my heart and I knew she would want me to be happy. But Lagoy was leering at me as if I was some small cake he would certainly devour. I knew that I might never know happiness again.

  ‘Please, Papa,’ I begged. ‘Tell him “no”. I will go into a convent. Anything. But you cannot make me marry this man.’

  ‘It is not your father’s decision but mine,’ Lagoy said smugly. ‘I meant it, Jeanne, when I said that I could have you in a finger snap. I am the Captain’s man. He did consider that my choice was unusual because of your lowly station, but your mother’s well-born blood means that you have potential.’

  ‘Potential? For what?’

  ‘For making me a happy man with a house full of healthy children.’

  I wanted to be sick. My stomach was knotting and heaving. My father was rocking in his chair. He was distraught but, like me, was caught in a bind. Our poverty shackled us to powers greater than we could withstand. Despite this, my father had always encouraged me to be bold. ‘Your mother had a fire in her heart and her belly and sometimes her tongue,’ he often laughed, and told me that he wouldn’t have had her any other way. ‘Speak your mind and never let anyone force you to be someone you are not.’ He had always been protective of me, after losing my mother so young, so tragically, so violently. As his health declined, he began to cling to me and had come to rely on me heavily. Now he was asking me to let this man force me to become someone I was not. I would not become Madame Lagoy.

  ‘Please, Jeanne,’ he whispered, with a frightened look in his milky eyes. ‘It is best for you.’

  ‘Because the alternative,’ Lieutenant Lagoy smiled, licking his lips like a snake, ‘is that your father will be thrown into the Paupers’ Prison and tried for treason.’

  There it was. My father had been threatened. I looked back to him and softened my face and heart. He knew that to refuse, to resist, would mean more than prison for him. Although he had long been called The Coward, I knew that it was not cowardice driving his acceptance of the proposal. He was concerned only for me and what might happen to me if he refused Lagoy. The man was going to marry me whether Papa agreed or not.

  Lagoy held my life in his hands like a fragile duckling in the jaws of a fox. I stood no chance and had no choice. For my father, who had done so much for me, I had to accept my fate. But as I stood there, the handles of my hatchets digging into the flesh of my thighs, I hoped that the Burgundians were en route to Beauvais and I hoped that it might mean a change, for good or bad, of the destiny that lay ahead for me.

  ‘You’d better be sure your da doesn’t find out that you’re running around with the rebels.’ My cousin Mary fussed at me as she put her baby back in his crib. ‘See what happened to your sister, Brigit. Your da hasn’t spoken to her for ages, has he?’

  ‘Nearly a whole year. He won’t even tolerate her name being used in the house,’ I replied.

  ‘I don’t know how much of that is the fact that Jimmy Ballantine is a Catholic and how much it is his rebeldom.’

  ‘Rebeldom.’ I smiled. ‘That’s a grand word.’

  ‘It’s serious business, Betsy!’ Mary grumbled. ‘I don’t even like talking about it in the privacy of my own house. You’re playing with fire. The redcoats flogged a boy to death the other day, right out in front of a church! Sixteen, he was. He had a bundle of Northern Star newspapers in his kit and they flogged him till he was a puddle of jelly.’

  I pulled a face and tried to get that image out of my head.

  ‘Besides, cousin,’ she frowned, wiping her hands on her skirt, ‘it’s not ladylike to be hanging with these lads.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my brother?’ I said crossly. ‘Or William Boal? They are right gentlemen. And we’re revolutionaries, not rebels.’ I picked at the edge of my soda farl and stirred my tea, looking out the doorway to the woodpile where a cat coiled itself sinuously.

  ‘You’re not still sweet on that Boal fellow, are you?’ Mary raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Not just sweet on him, Mary! I kissed him today and he kissed me right back.’

  ‘On the lips?’ she gasped.

  ‘No, on the sole of his foot, you foolish girl. Yes, of course on the lips.’

  Mary stared at me, put her hands on her hips and blew a wisp of carrot-red hair out of her eyes. ‘Well then.’

  ‘Well then,’ I mocked back. ‘George was mortified!’ I laughed. ‘You should have seen his face. And Will blushed. He actually blushed!’

  ‘So does he mean to make an honest woman out of you?’ Mary said as if she were a woman twenty years older than me instead of my old playmate and childhood confidante.

  ‘Are you suggesting that I am dishonest?’ I pouted.

  ‘Well, you have a wild streak, Betsy Gray. You are too pretty for your own good and your father would disown you if he knew you were running about with the rebels and—’

  ‘Revolutionaries,’ I reminded her.

  ‘… kissing boys in public houses.’

  ‘Ah, but that bit was fun! Remember when you kissed Michael Dyer behind the milking shed?’

  ‘Stop it, Betsy. They hung William Orr today. This is not a game. We’d do best to put our heads down and let these fired-up men fight their own battles,’ she said, her tone as dry as kindling. ‘I think you are attracted to the drama of it. The excitement. You’re altogether too flighty!’

  ‘No, Mary,’ I said very seriously. ‘I am not some ignorant, illiterate lass who follows the boys because they want to clash with the establishment. I am a passionate, intelligent Irishwoman. And I support the cause that would see us freed from the Saxon yoke of England. I would see a Republic of Ireland.’

  ‘Heavens be! Listen to you!’ Mary scoffed. ‘Next you’ll be wanting to run the parliament yourself.’

  I pulled out my hair ribbon and shook my hair and grinned at my stiff and proper cousin.

  ‘Now that is something grand to aspire to. I think I’d make a fair running of it,
to be sure.’

  ‘I really don’t know what they taught you at that fancy school down in Dublin, Betsy, but it’s certainly given you airs,’ Mary said. ‘Connor says that education is dangerous for women.’

  ‘But Connor is a lump head.’

  ‘Betsy!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t disrespect my husband in his own house.’

  ‘I’m simply saying,’ I sighed, ‘that you don’t have to agree with him in your heart. In your heart you’re still a Gray. In your blood. And despite my father’s protestations, he is a real Irishman right into his bones. We all must be because …’

  I heard the clatter of wheels on the gravel outside and stopped speaking, cocking my head, afraid that the dreaded Connor was arriving home.

  ‘Ah, I have a surprise for you,’ she said, jumping to her feet and all but running to the doorway, clapping her hands.

  Moments later, my sister, Brigit, walked through the door. Her belly had grown large with child since I had seen her last. I burst into tears of joy.

  ‘Oh my sweet golly goodness,’ I muttered, fanning my face. ‘This is a nice surprise. You must be getting close now, Brig. It looks like the wee babe has dropped a little.’

  ‘Yes, love. Any week now.’ She laughed.

  ‘And you brought the cart all the way down from Antrim to see me? You treasure.’ I hadn’t seen my sister for some months, maybe three. How fast these babies grew!

  ‘How’s Da?’ she asked, waddling across to me and hugging me as best she could around her enormous waist.

  ‘Grumping as usual.’ I smiled back at her, sniffing my tears. ‘Did you hear that George took the Oath and Will is set to do the same tonight?’

  ‘I hear them talking up in Antrim,’ my sister said, settling herself onto a chair. ‘Obviously Da knows nothing of this? About his son taking the Oath? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he’d have a seizure. The dreaded Oath!’

  ‘I don’t even like you saying those words in my house.’ Cousin Mary tutted. ‘A man was hanged this very day for the crime of taking the Oath. Please tell me you haven’t done the same, Betsy!’

  ‘No, I have not.’ I shrugged. ‘George will not allow it.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t lost all sense then.’

  ‘Mary,’ I sighed with exasperation. ‘You listen to everything your husband tells you and think it to be so. George hasn’t lost his senses. He’s found them. And while I might not have officially taken the United Irishmen’s Oath out loud, I have in my heart. The redcoats are bullies and butchers and servants of a greater evil.’

  ‘It’s you who’s been listening to everything your brother tells you and believing it!’

  ‘Come, come, girls. Get me a cup of tea and stop your arguing,’ Brigit said, banging her palms on the table.

  Mary went through to the kitchen and put another pot of tea on the stove.

  ‘She’s just so frustrating!’ I hissed at Brigit. ‘She’s even beginning to talk with an English accent. Can you hear it?’

  ‘Stop it, Betsy!’ Brigit snapped. ‘I’ve come a long way to see you and I want it to be a lovely visit. How’s my old mare, Molly?’

  ‘She’s old and a little lame in her back leg but I won’t let Da sell her to the butchers.’ I smiled. ‘I’m very fond of her. I talk to her in the paddock and slip her spotted apples. I’ll say hello from you. She always knows when I’ve seen you. She can smell you on me.’

  The baby was stirring in the crib in the corner.

  ‘What did Mary call the little boy again? I’ve forgotten,’ my sister asked.

  ‘George!’ I told her. ‘She says it’s in honour of our brother but I think she probably named him after mad King George of England. She’s become such a lover of the Crown. You know her Connor has joined the Monaghan Militia. They are traitors joining with the redcoats.’

  ‘Hush now,’ Brigit said. ‘You be careful what you tell Mary. Her husband could take us all down. I don’t like him all that much.’

  I went to the little baby and picked him up awkwardly. His swaddling was coming loose and I handed him to Brigit after she held her arms out imploringly.

  ‘Just think,’ I said, looking down at the little face with the rosebud lips. ‘You’ll soon have one of these for yourself. Are you excited?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Brigit smiled, tracing her finger around the baby’s face. ‘I can’t wait. Jimmy’s built a beautiful crib.’

  ‘I’m sure Da will soften his heart to you soon, Brig,’ I said. ‘It’s a shame Ma isn’t here to welcome a grandchild. She’d be like a mother hen. She’d never let you have the baby. Remember how she was with little ones? She used to smell them and say they were like fresh-baked cakes.’

  ‘I remember! The neighbours’ children were always about. The family house is quiet without her, I bet.’

  ‘Yes, Da is quite solemn and serious and George and I are always out and about getting up to mischief.’

  ‘Well, you take heed you keep your heads low,’ Brigit said, rocking the small baby on her lap. ‘Mary is a good girl but that husband is trouble. Just keep your mouth on a short rein around her, you hear?’

  ‘But she would never betray us,’ I whispered. ‘Never. She’s kin. She understands the cause. She’s just too afraid to admit it. Her Connor is a bully. I don’t suppose she really likes him all that much either.’

  ‘Hush now,’ Brigit said, trying not to laugh. ‘But he is a rotten egg. Poor Mary. You must be more kind though, Betsy. Mary is just like Da. They are afraid of the English and would rather not stick their heads up to make trouble. You can’t blame them. It’s a survival thing.’

  ‘But Mary loves us. Although, I do think she is happy to leave the dangerous rebel business to us.’ I smiled and reached out to touch my sister’s hand. ‘And Da too. I think he’s secretly a little in awe of people like you and Jimmy who hold so firm to your Irishness in the face of the English.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ she said sadly, shaking her head. ‘He’s more interested in keeping his estate and money. He’d see the Irish all become English so long as he stayed a gentleman.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. He loves you still, for all your Irishness,’ I said, although I don’t know if I believed it. ‘Just give him time. When he becomes a granddaddy, he’ll go soft.’

  Mary came back into the room with a tray of tea and more soda farls with butter. We spoke of other things, dragging the conversation out of the prickle thicket that was politics. I disliked pointless gossipy chatter and preferred speaking with George and Will about important issues of state. But I was well pleased to see my sister and made the effort to look interested in their conversations about babies and recipes. The only time I ever saw my sister was when Mary arranged these clandestine get-togethers behind her husband’s back. That is why I worried little about my cousin betraying us – because she still helped us in spite of her husband’s alliance with the English against his own people. Mary was only a year older than me but her life was so very different from mine. She had up and married early and wanted seven or eight children, one after the other. Her husband kept her shackled into domestic servitude and I had watched her go from a rosy, happy girl to a stiff, proper, frightened wife in the space of two years. I had no desire to rush into having babies. My father had status and modest wealth, which had allowed me an education and the choice to wait for a husband and babies. My uncle Robert, Mary’s father, had gambled and drunk away his inheritance, leaving Mary with little choice other than marriage to Connor and all that came with it.

  ‘So she’s kissed Will Boal!’ Mary announced as I finished my farl, making me laugh so hard that crumbs came out of my nose. ‘On the lips. In public.’

  ‘You never! Oh Betsy, he’s so handsome. Do we hear wedding bells on the breeze?’ my sister said, smiling broadly.

  ‘Steady up, Brigit! He’ll need to kiss me plenty more before I decide wheth
er he’s husband material!’

  ‘You watch yourself lass or you’ll get a reputation as a scrubber,’ Mary said, pulling a face as she reached for her baby son.

  ‘I don’t care if I do.’ I laughed.

  ‘You talk nonsense.’ Mary bristled. ‘You’ve always been tempestuous. That’s your Campbell blood. They say one of the great-great-aunts was burned as a witch near Glasgow. Kat Campbell. Scottish fire in the blood. I’m more cool-headed. More green shamrock.’

  ‘More boring,’ I teased.

  We laughed some more and then Brigit stood up, saying she needed to visit the privy. Her face dropped as if her skin was made of molten wax and her eyes widened.

  ‘Oh my,’ she whispered. ‘Betsy. Mary. I think my waters have broken.’

  We looked down to see her standing in a puddle.

  ‘Well, you’re not getting back on that cart!’ Mary announced. ‘You can’t travel after the water’s gone. Quick, Betsy, we need to get her into my bed and I’ll keep her comfortable while you ride for the midwife. Annie O’Neal is on Ballycreen Road, two stone houses past the dairy.’

  My skin was prickling and my heart was hammering. I nodded mutely and ran as quickly as my boots would take me to Finn McCool, then I galloped him out of there as fast as his own strong legs would take him.

  The music blared in through my window. I liked The Doors as much as the next person and thought Jim Morrison was pretty cool, but after listening to it for hours, the album was starting to drive me completely mad. I was sitting on my single metal-framed bed, surrounded by textbooks, feeling more than just a little overwhelmed by my study workload. I couldn’t concentrate on the terribly tedious notes about tort law because I found myself constantly singing along to ‘Light My Fire’. My room was tiny and while it was tempting to pull down the heavy window, I was frightened I would suffocate or bake to death. The heat in Brisbane was stifling. The ceiling fan stirred the humid air like a spoon in tea. It groaned and sounded like it was too darn hot and uncomfortable to do a proper job.