Liberty

by McWatters, Nikki;

  ‘It would be foolhardy!’ my father said. ‘Completely foolhardy. It would be suicide for Beauvais!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, wiping my hands on my outer skirts. I jumped, startled, as a heavy thudding came from the front door.

  ‘Who could that be?’ Papa grumbled.

  I withdrew the bar, raised the latch and opened the door. Colin all but fell through it.

  ‘Every able-bodied Beauvaisi must come to the town square immediately!’ he panted. ‘The carpenters on the top steeple of the Cathedral have caught sight of the Bold’s convoy. They will be here by dusk.’

  ‘That soon.’ I sighed, feeling faint. ‘It doesn’t seem real. I never completely believed it would happen. Not here.’

  ‘Take her away to safety, Colin,’ my father said, trying to stand but falling back into his seat. His face was turning an awful shade of grey. ‘Flee. Take Jeanne far from here and marry her and never return.’

  ‘Papa,’ I cried. ‘We cannot. Lagoy would punish you with prison or worse.’

  ‘My life is all but done, Jeanne,’ the old man whimpered. ‘I was a coward once and did not act to save you. Now, please. Go. Do not have a care for me. You have made my life so precious and wonderful. Colin is a good man. Please, Jeanne.’ My father began to sob and choke.

  ‘Don’t get upset,’ I said, going to him. ‘Think of your heart. I will not leave Beauvais without you, Papa. I could not leave you to that fate alone. Anyway, with Beauvais about to surrender or be besieged, I hardly think we can sneak out of here unseen.’

  ‘You stay here safe and sound, Monsieur Laisné, and I will take Jeanne to the square and protect her and get her safely back to you as soon as I can,’ said Colin calmly.

  ‘Be very careful,’ my father said, looking helplessly at us both. ‘If Lagoy sees you together, alone, he will be livid. He’ll have your hide, Colin. Maybe even your head!’

  ‘Lieutenant Lagoy is not yet back from his mission, Monsieur Laisné, so until he is, I will be looking out for Jeanne and he can thank me upon his return, because he has left her here in a most precarious position.’

  ‘You stay here, Papa,’ I said firmly. ‘No matter what happens. I will knock three times and then two. Open the door to no other call. Keep the latch down until I return to tell you what our fate might be here in Beauvais. I should be back within the hour or, at worst, just after sundown. And we will know more then.’

  ‘I can barely walk, mon ami, so I won’t be going anywhere,’ he said weakly. ‘I can barely make it to the door.’

  The bells were tolling loudly and Colin was impatient to leave. His nervous energy buzzed about him like a swarm of wasps. I readied myself to leave and threw on a light claret-coloured summer cape, pushing aside the bright red velvet cloak on the rack.

  ‘Take the hatchets I made you, Jeanne. I insist,’ my father added. ‘I taught you to use them and I would have you do so now to protect yourself if need be. You inherited your mother’s nerve, her will of steel. Two qualities that will protect you at a time like this.’

  I didn’t like to tell him that I kept them on my person most of the time outside of the house. They made me feel safe in a world that was often unsafe for young women.

  ‘Be safe, Jeanne,’ my father called. ‘If you flee it will be with my blessing.’

  Colin gave me a hopeful look but I growled at him under my breath.

  ‘Not now, not ever.’

  There were townspeople everywhere. It was a mad panic in the streets. Women and babies were crying. Men were running and over the top of all this noise came the long, resonating clang of the city bells.

  ‘If Balagny chooses to surrender you must hide in your attic until the Bold’s men have settled in and taken over,’ Colin told me as we hurried through the throng that was pressing like a human sludge toward the town square of Beauvais. ‘They go for the pretty maidens first! Spoils of war.’

  ‘And if we choose to defend ourselves?’ I asked, letting my hands fall to the hatchets hiding beneath my cape.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Captain Balagny was standing on the raised platform beneath the bell tower. We were so far back in the swelling, sweat-soaked throng that we could not hear his words and had to be satisfied with the reports being passed back through the crowd from one person to the next, shoulder over shoulder.

  ‘They will be here just before sundown,’ one man turned and shouted back.

  ‘There are tens of thousands of them,’ cried another.

  ‘Surrender? Balagny is calling for a surrender?’ someone shouted angrily and the news was met with a roar of disapproval.

  ‘No surrender!’ became the chant and soon the gathered townspeople were speaking as one. ‘Liberté! Liberté! Beauvais! Liberté!’

  It became a chorus so loud that the cobblestones beneath my feet trembled. I joined in the rallying cry.

  ‘Liberté! Liberté! Beauvais! Liberté!’

  I had tears in my eyes and was so moved by the passion of my people. We were fiercely loyal to King Louis XI, with many believing him to be the greatest monarch in all of history. Charles the Bold was a brute and a bully and not one of us wanted to bow our heads to him.

  ‘Do you know what the King said?’ Colin shouted at me over the din. ‘When Charles the Bold first started campaigning against the French?’

  I shook my head, barely able to hear him. He leaned in closer.

  ‘He said that “The first place to resist him will be sufficient to undo him”.’

  I smiled. King Louis had visited Beauvais just once in my lifetime, riding through town on a fancy chariot as we waved and shouted joyously. I was a child then and I had thought him a god.

  ‘Beauvais,’ I whispered, nodding to Colin and together we continued to chant with the crowd. ‘We must resist him.’

  ‘Liberté! Liberté! Beauvais! Liberté!’

  If patriotism and community were weapons we would have had the power to squash the Burgundians like hooves on ants. But the truth was, all we had was spirit. We were short of soldiers and artillery. Beauvais had fire in her belly but little steel in her hands.

  Colin moved his mother to his sister’s home during the evacuation of all the outer suburbs into the city. At dusk, we stood together on the wide and high stone wall, looking out at the spectacle as the Burgundians set down their huge battalion across the open fields. The paddocks as far as the eye could see were filling with soldiers, horses, mules, carts and cannons. Big cannons. More arriving every minute.

  ‘There are so many of them,’ I said, overwhelmed by their numbers and impressive organisation.

  We all watched keenly as an enemy messenger wearing a tall feathered hat was given safe passage into Beauvais via the small door at the side of the main gates. He cantered his well-dressed horse across the long bridge. We presumed that he was escorted by one of our men to take his message to the Captain. His message would be that Charles the Bold was seeking the loyalty and surrender of Beauvais to Burgundy. I was jittery with a mix of apprehension and excitement. Not only me, the whole city blistered with it. Captain Balagny had reluctantly listened to the people who were determined to defend the city. We all knew, after the messenger was let out of the gates with a scroll under his arm, what the message he was delivering back to the Bold would be:

  Beauvais declines to surrender. Take her at your own peril.

  I rested my hands on the stone wall and leaned my chin down on them as I watched the messenger disappear into the sea of armed men. Burgundy’s flags were flapping from spears and poles and the noise of thousands of voices floated up to us on the cool night breeze. The enemy would be tired from their day’s march and Colin explained to me that they would set up camp that evening and begin their onslaught of us the next morning at sunrise.

  ‘I am afraid that they might come for us in the dark,’ I said. />
  ‘No, Jeanne. That is not how war works,’ he told me. ‘There are rules of battle engagement. It is unchivalrous to attack your enemy at night. It would be considered cowardly and shameful.’

  Colin came up behind me and cloaked my body with his, speaking into the back of my head.

  ‘This may be our last hour together,’ he said. ‘I will be working the second shift tonight to gather anything and everything around the city that can be used as a potential weapon. We are lighting fires at dawn to boil cauldrons and collecting heavy stones, anything at all that can be thrown from the walls to repel them.’

  ‘Those cannons,’ I said, shaking my head, looking down at them. ‘Boiling water and cabbage bombs are not going to stop a cannon ball.’

  A child ran by, behind us along the wall, shouting. ‘Lagoy has returned through the tunnels and has brought a small squad of archers.’

  My spine stiffened and I stood up and backed into Colin’s arms, feeling true dread, greater than that of looking upon an army of enemies. My bones felt like taut twigs and my blood went to water.

  ‘I must go,’ I said to Colin. ‘He can’t see us together. I will go home now to Papa and prepare him for what comes tomorrow.’

  Colin stepped away, nodding.

  ‘Get some sleep, Jeanne,’ he smiled. ‘We will all need strength come daylight.’

  ‘People will die,’ I said, whispering the words I hadn’t wanted to utter those past few days.

  ‘Yes,’ Colin said. ‘It is likely. But if we can defend our walls until Louis sends reinforcements we will stand a chance. We must stall them at all costs. If they get over the walls or through the gates tomorrow, we will pay a heavy price.’

  We looked at one another for a few long ghostly moments before Colin spoke.

  ‘Whatever happens, Jeanne,’ he whispered. ‘I will always love you.’

  ‘And I, you,’ I replied, then I turned and ran along the walkway toward the stairs before I began to sob.

  I walked home through the bustle and business of a city preparing for war. Fires were being lit. Iron was being hastily smelted, hammers and anvils were beating. Carts were trailing through all of the streets and laneways while frightened people piled onto them any weaponry or heavy tools that could be used as such. Captain Balagny and his men were shouting orders, arranging civilian men into groups and instructing the archers about vantage points on the parapets.

  I went home and slept, knowing that the first light would bring a day that might change my world forever.

  I awoke on the first day of the new year to find that there had been heavy snow overnight and it lay blanketing the paddocks. The horses would need some dry hay from the storehouse. I would get George onto it, I mused, as I got myself ready for the party.

  There were seven coming to lunch, not counting Da, George and myself. I wanted to make a good impression as Will’s parents were coming. I’d met Mr and Mrs Boal at church and at the marketplace many, many times, but had not yet supped with them or had much social connection. Mary Ann McCracken was coming, and of that I was mightily pleased, although her brother Henry Joy was off on secret rebel business, not that anyone would be telling my father that. The Reverend and my father would get wise and wordy with whisky, oblivious to the fact that they were supping with a large number of people who had taken the Oath of the United Irishmen, including the Boals. I felt equal parts guilty and smug at the thought of it. And praise be, my sister, Brigit, and cousin Mary would round out the gathering, but without their husbands, who were attending to business on opposite sides of the cause.

  The new babe had softened my gruff da’s heart. He was still no fonder of Brigit’s Catholic husband, but he had begun to let Brigit back into our lives for the sake of his little granddaughter who was already smiling and laughing at us all.

  By mid-morning I had drawn back some of the curtains, leaving others closed to protect the inner warmth of the rooms. George had piled the fireplace with turf and was busy working it into a blaze while the brass kettle sang from upon the hob. Our best crystal and pewter were neatly arranged, all polished and gleaming on the set table.

  ‘You look mighty winsome,’ Will said when his family arrived, and he kissed my hand like a right gentleman. ‘And a spectacular New Year to you, Betsy, my sweet. May it be the happiest one ever.’

  He was dressed in his finest suit and had oiled back his curls so they were less unruly. His face was clean-shaven and smooth. He stared deeply into my eyes and it felt like my innards turned over when he did. Will’s parents looked like he’d stumbled across them by the side of the road and paid them half a shilling to masquerade as his kin – they were short, portly and fair in contrast to Will’s swarthy complexion and lofty height. I was a tall girl but Will still towered over me. My da joked that our children, should that ever come to pass, would be giants, like the real Finn McCool, the first behemoth king of Ireland.

  Over a delicious meal of roasted guinea fowl, Da and Reverend McQuilton entertained our guests with jokes aplenty and great gusts of laughter. I served up some barley pudding for dessert and then, because baby Isabella was wailing, I took her walking about the house, bouncing her in my arms as I told her stories about each and every room. I showed her where Mammy, her grandmammy, used to sew when I was a little girl. I hated the very idea of sewing. I thanked the good Lord my father had sent me to a proper school that taught boys and girls sensible things like mathematics, poetry and history, which is why I understood the very nature of colonialism and the need for emancipation from the English rule. America had banished the British and we could do the same. Poor cousin Mary had been schooled at home in domestic subjects like butter churning and needlepoint, which is why her wisdom didn’t stretch much further from whatever blanket she was darning. Educating girls was the way of the future. People like the regal Mary Ann McCracken, who’d also attended a similar school in Belfast, were the promise of that future.

  I rocked baby Isabella in my arms as she whimpered, and showed her where George slept, his walls covered in mountains of tattered books.

  ‘No one in the whole world reads more books than your Uncle George,’ I told her.

  I showed her the family portraits in the long hallway and introduced her to each and every one of them, from the beautiful one of Mammy, her blonde hair in ringlets about her porcelain shoulders, to an ancient one where the paint was beginning to peel and flake like the scales of a fish.

  ‘And this here is the oldest one.’ I cooed at the baby and then looked into the dark, penetrating eyes of the red-headed woman in the painting. Her hair was fire-red and her face heart-shaped. ‘Isabel Campbell. She was a wild one,’ I whispered to the babe in my arms and smiled at her. ‘Like us. She came to Ireland from Scotland and married a one-legged acrobat. Her sister, Katherine or Kat, was burned as a witch. Now there’s a great-great-aunt I would have liked to get to know. All of these women share our blood.’

  When I returned to the toasty warmth of the cosy dining room, only the women were still at the table, chatting and laughing. Mrs Boal’s face was flushed and she looked like she’d imbibed a little too much punch. I was worried that I’d made it too strong.

  ‘Have you scared the menfolk off with your liberal ideas, Mary Ann?’ I smiled, passing Isabella back to my sister now that she seemed to have settled.

  ‘Your father is right wary of me, I think.’ She nodded. ‘He’s not too sold on my ideas that Catholic, Presbyterian and all other creeds should be accepted and be free in a united, equal and liberated Ireland. I told him that women should also run for office and take appointments. He nearly choked on his own tongue.’

  ‘I bet he called you a rebel!’

  ‘That he did!’ She laughed. ‘And I asked him what he thought was so bad about that, but you’ll be pleased to know I stopped short of letting him know of my commitment to the cause and the small matter of having taken the Oath.
’

  ‘Shhh,’ cousin Mary warned, looking concerned. ‘My Connor is getting suspicious of you, Betsy. You and George and Will. I can’t say what it is but he always looks bitter when I mention that you are visiting or I am coming here to Gransha. I know he still believes your father to be loyal to the King so I am able to soften his suspicions by reminding him of that.’

  ‘Well, Connor should not be running around wearing a red coat!’ I frowned. ‘Do you know what they are capable of, Mary? Talk to poor Mr O’Neal who’s not seen hide nor hair of his good wife since those three bastards picked her up outside her cottage down on Ballycreen.’

  ‘Language, Betsy!’ Mary scolded. ‘Those military men have made a formal statement saying that they simply searched the cottage, found nothing and left her well and good.’

  ‘So where is she?’ I asked. ‘It’s been over two long months now, running into the new year.’

  Mary looked sad and perhaps a little afraid. She clearly did not like talking about Annie O’Neal. My cousin seemed nervy and ill at ease and I frowned, feeling most apprehensive about the angry bruised eye she was sporting. I caught my sister, Brigit, looking at it as well.

  ‘I pray for Annie O’Neal,’ Mary said, and looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

  We all fell into a pensive silence thinking about poor Annie O’Neal. My guilt over that sorry afternoon had made me sick and I slept badly every night thinking of it. I looked outside to see the men standing past the white-dusted hedgerow, looking at the damaged stable roof as they smoked their pipes in the white of the day. Their boots were sinking into the soft snow.

  ‘What on earth do they think they are doing out there?’ I laughed.

  ‘Oh, men’s business, I guess. Not for us womenfolk to know.’ Mrs Boal giggled and helped herself to another mug of punch.

  ‘Oh, Mary Ann, will you play us a jig on your fiddle?’ I asked, clapping, pointing to the case on the armchair in the parlour.

  ‘But of course, Betsy.’ She laughed. ‘No New Year is complete without a good jig!’