Liberty

by McWatters, Nikki;

  I had to make light of the awful events of the previous day or my dreams would be tied up in nightmares for a very long time. This was war. My life and the city were in danger and all was fair in such circumstances. Self-defence can bring out the monsters in our blood and steel us for brutality that would otherwise be unthinkable. I managed to hack through the last of the ropes around Colin’s hands and then his feet. I lifted the pail of water to his lips and urged him to drink. He slurped greedily and then nodded. I grabbed his hand and ran back through the maze of tents, grabbing a lit torch as I went, dragging him stumbling behind me.

  ‘Don’t bring a torchlight,’ he gasped. ‘They will see it bobbing in the darkness. No fire, Jeanne.’

  ‘That,’ I smiled, ‘will be the least of their worries. Let them come. I want them to rush back to camp. All of them. Every last one of them.’

  As we reached the outskirts of the encampment, I stopped at the head of my long, weaving line of white powder and looked back at it snaking about the ground toward the weapons carts and onto the tents.

  ‘Now run. With all of your might. Run!’

  And I dropped the torch to the ground and watched the powder catch and begin to sizzle and spark and race along like a streak of lightning toward my targets.

  ‘Go!’ I cried and together we ran back into the forest. We used our hands to feel our way, tripping over roots and rocks, making as much distance between us and the Italian camp as possible. My hands were scratched by trunks and branches and my chest was full and tight. I felt my clothes snag and tear on brambles.

  ‘This way,’ I panted as we reached the brook where the two horses stood quietly in a patch of bone-white moonlight, shards of diamonds catching in their big round eyes.

  ‘What is this, Jeanne?’ Colin gasped and bent down to catch his breath.

  ‘I have horses, Colin,’ I said. ‘Good horses. And I thought with the silver that you …’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘I know. I saw. But we could sell one of the horses,’ I stammered desperately. ‘And ride together to the port, catch a boat to England, start again, marry. Leave all this behind. But we must hurry now.’

  In that moment a huge explosion ripped through the night. Sparks and flames shot up into the sky. Another and then another. It was as if the entire world was shattering and erupting. The sky was a crimson blush, and the sound of roaring foreign voices screaming and shouting filled the air.

  Colin put his hands on my cheeks, coming close. ‘I have my honour, Jeanne,’ he said. ‘I love you, but I would not have you love a man who steals horses from another and deserts his city in a time of need. You deserve better than that.’

  ‘But Colin,’ I stammered. ‘If we go back …’

  ‘We go back heroes,’ he said. ‘Not me so much. But you! You just took out seven garrisons of men and the entire gunpowder artillery of the enemy. That was the core of their entire operation, Jeanne! You have single-handedly crippled Charles the Bold’s entire campaign against Beauvais.’

  I felt strengthened by Colin’s words. He was a man of honour and wanted us to return to Beauvais to share our tale of victory. Taking his hand, we began to make our way home.

  By the time spring gave way to summer, the conflict between the rebels and the redcoats had been pushed to the level of war. There was tension in the streets and even more in the marketplace at Newtownards.

  After the redcoats’ suspicion following Jimmy’s escape from the lock-up, George and Will had been making themselves scarce. And although my father was reluctant to let me go about on my own, he made an allowance for the Saturday market. With the summer sun high in the sky and the sound of voices filling my ears, I pressed through the crowded streets, which were closed off to horse traffic. Peddlers shouted and the fishmonger hollered over the briny stench of his slippery-skinned produce.

  ‘Betsy!’ I heard my name and looked around to find who hailed me.

  Cousin Mary came pushing through the jostling bodies and waved. There was no sunny smile and a permanent crease was beginning to fold down in the middle of her forehead, making her look ten years older than she was.

  ‘Where’s baby George?’ I asked, moving my heavy basket to my other arm.

  ‘With me mam,’ she told me. ‘Any word from George? Or Will?’

  I narrowed my eyes at her, overcome with suspicion.

  ‘Who’s asking? You or Connor?’

  ‘Betsy! You don’t think …’

  I gave her a look, pursing my lips and raising one eyebrow.

  ‘Of course not Connor!’ she pouted. ‘George is my cousin after all. I was just curious. Although, to be honest with you, Betsy, the rumours going about are that the boys are hiding out, protected by the rebels.’

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ I lied and tried my very best to look as innocent as a lamb. ‘They are both living the life in Portsmouth and writing home is clearly the very last thing on their minds.’

  ‘Well, I hope that Will of yours is staying true and not chasing English skirts. Funny place for them considering how much they hate the English!’

  ‘It’s a rite of passage, Mary.’ I dug down deeper into the lie. ‘All the young lads like to work the docks for a bit. It’s a melting pot of cultures and you can make very good international connections.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Cousin Mary leaned toward me. ‘And Brigit? Any word from her?’

  ‘You know we have no idea where she and Jimmy are!’ I lied again, feeling like I’d have to spend a month praying to the Lord for forgiveness for so many untruths. ‘None whatsoever, but I hope she and little Isabella are safe and far away.’

  ‘Have you heard that Henry Munro is the new rebel leader?’ she hissed close to my ear.

  ‘What? The linen merchant? The handsome one? That Henry Munro?’ I said, unable to contain my surprise.

  ‘The very same,’ she said, her eyes wide with the gossip. ‘Lots of other local rebel-heads have toppled and been arrested down south. The rebels are losing their fire. You don’t want to be singed by the dying embers, my dear cousin.’

  This was worrying news but I tried to sound nonchalant.

  ‘It’s not my concern anymore,’ I said, tossing my hair over one shoulder. ‘George and Will have lost interest too. That’s why they went away for a bit.’

  ‘If you say so. How’s your da?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  It was another lie because my father was not himself. He looked at me with an air of distrust and had done so every day since Brigit left for Scotland. The beating he’d taken from the Monaghan Men that terrible day had left him with no sight in one eye and a hip that had never been right since. The constant pain and frustration he found in doing the normal activities that he loved so much – the gentle walks over the hills behind our house and long nights of reading – had left him even more surly and ill-tempered than before.

  ‘Pass on my regards to him,’ cousin Mary said, over the din of the market.

  Suddenly a voice rang out in anger and the crowd of people around us began to move and sway. An air of excitement and apprehension rippled through us as more shouting erupted and people scurried away from the noise like rats that have had light cast over them. I could see that the fuss was between two soldiers and a young man with a blue cap. It looked to me like one of the Ballenger boys. I recognised one of the soldiers as Mary’s Connor.

  ‘Oh Lordy.’ Cousin Mary began to fuss. ‘I should go. You should go. Go. Go. Go.’

  She turned and hurried away without another word. I did the same and pushed out past the towers of chicken coops and briefly turned back to see that the young lad was lying in the dirt while Connor and the other soldier laid their boots into him, shouting the word ‘Rebel’. I couldn’t understand what would make an Irishman turn his back on his heritage and join the ranks alongside the English. Was it money? Fear? Or did it
appeal to their base and bullying natures? It wasn’t just Catholic versus Presbyterian versus Protestant. The United Irishmen were wanting all to live in harmony with equal rights in the law no matter what your faith. I couldn’t understand the religious folk who couldn’t see the sense in that. God was God. I’m certain He wasn’t keen on all this fighting.

  Sorry as I was for the young lad, I was glad there were no eyes following me that day. All through the spring, those mercenaries had kept our house under surveillance and did spot visits on a regular basis to try to catch known rebels in our house. The McCrackens were on their watchlist, as were all of Will’s kin and poor Mr Jack Neale, who still kept looking for his precious Annie. None of these oath-sworn United Irishmen, or women, had stepped over our threshold in months and for the past two months, after someone had put forward their names as suspected rebels, George and Will had been hiding out in the hills. I maintained their lie to my father, who seemed to believe that they were headed abroad, to England. He believed they had gone to seek employment at the docks in Plymouth where there was constant labouring work servicing the convict boats that wove a steady ocean path to the faraway prison settlement of New South Wales. I knew Da was suspicious as he often wondered aloud why it was that George never sent mail or word when it would have been so easy to do so. I would shrug innocently and suggest that he must be busy or have fallen in love with some English rose. Which was a ridiculous suggestion because George loved the English about as much as he loved swarming hornets.

  I waited until after lunch for my father to fall asleep, as he was accustomed to do of a late afternoon; the half-quart of whisky after lunch was always slept off deeply before he rose, ready for dinner. That June afternoon, I stood poised in the hallway off the parlour, looking at the family portraits, waiting for the sound of those first baritone snores. I smiled at Mam’s picture, and for the one-thousandth time looked for similarities between us. Her twinkling, mischievous green eyes could have been mine staring back at me from a looking glass. I remembered so little of her, but I missed her so much that whenever I thought of her I got an aching pain beneath my ribs. I felt a warm rush through my veins as I examined the likeness of Katherine Campbell with her wild burgundy hair and a look that could fell an oak tree. I imagined it was a flame of pride running through me that I was related to her.

  A rumble rolled out from Da’s room and I was away before he took his next laboured breath. I ran down to the stables like a bolting yearling, my boots crunching on the gravel, my hair trailing behind me, loose like a flag. The sun stung my forearms and I felt free and wild, dressed in a pair of George’s breeches with his white shirt tucked into them. If anyone spotted me galloping over the hills they would think me a boy, once I’d tied up my hair and tucked it under a riding cap.

  Finn McCool was pleased to see me and gave a warm snort and nuzzled my palm.

  ‘We’re going to have some fun, Master McCool, indeed we are,’ I said into his soft mane as he tossed his head and impatiently pawed the stable hay with his hoof. As I saddled him, he lifted his head and gave a loud neigh. He all but up and told me straight that he was excited and well pleased to be going on a jaunt.

  I waited just behind the well, counting to four hundred, before taking to the back paddocks and leaping over the hedges into open country. I couldn’t be too cautious. Every time I went riding into the wilderness I watched the gravel path from the road to make sure no one had me under surveillance. The coast was clear.

  With the wind whistling against my face and the sound of Finn McCool’s well-shod hooves pounding the warm dry earth, we sallied fast over three wide-sweeping hills, out past the abandoned dairy that used to belong to the O’Sheas before Danny and his son had been found swinging from a tree near their front porch. It had been a tree old Danny had planted with his own hands as a boy, so the story went, and no one believed the pair had strung themselves up. There was the small matter of their hands being tied. Despite this, the English establishment found that the men had taken their own lives and they’d been denied a church burial. Poor Libby O’Shea and the seven little ones had been sent abroad to a convict settlement for cattle thieving. It was all a terrible set-up because they believed Danny O’Shea was sympathetic to the rebel cause. Everyone had to watch their backs carefully. The English were afeared that there would be an uprising and, to be honest, I hoped they were right. During the past months there was a heating up, like the head of steam about to escape from a kettle. The uprising was definitely a’brewing and while I’d kept my head low, I’d left my ears open and everything I heard I ferried back to George and Will at least once a week. The situation was fraught with tension and everyone was on edge. I felt it. The English felt it. Even Da felt it. There was too much cruelty, too much entrenched hatred toward the Irish culture. It made my blood boil. You wouldn’t put a fox and a goose in the same pen – that’s how it felt in Ireland.

  From the top of the last hill I looked down over the pristine, verdant valley. By the edge of the burbling creek, under the shade of a big box tree, a young man was seated on a horse. He was tall and dark and looked toward the higher ground as if he was expecting someone. I was riding astride my horse. A woman riding a horse this way was widely regarded as an offence against decency but there was no one on the hills to see me and if there was they’d see my breeches and assume I was a youth.

  I rode down the hill fast into the valley and drew my horse up to his. Will placed his hand on my horse’s bridle and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

  ‘A ghrá mo chroí.’

  ‘Love of my heart, Will Boal,’ I said, kissing his cheek and then I threw back my head and laughed up into the pale blue sky. ‘I love it when you speak to me in the old tongue. And I love it out here. Let’s live in a cave and speak true Irish and be as ancient druids, living off the land and having no beef with redcoats or the rebels. Let’s live free.’

  ‘If we can run the English devils from our fair emerald isle, my love,’ Will said. ‘Then we will be free. That’s what we’re fighting for. Liberty. I don’t like it, the idea of fighting, but they’re not going to just pack up and leave because we asked them politely, are they?’

  Will led the way across the narrow, shallow creek and up the rise toward the yew-forest that covered the neighbouring hillside. We called this place the Red Deer Ranges. It was pastoral land peppered with scattered woods that had been abandoned during the last famine and had not yet been stolen by the Crown. In a clearing on the top of the rise, George and Will had been sowing a crop of mangelwurzel and barley for the purpose of distilling whisky. They were selling it on the black market to help raise funds for the United Irishmen to purchase weapons and favours from sympathetic Frenchmen and Scots who hated the English as much as we did. In a hidden rocky crop down by the creek, they had set up a still with a copper pot.

  Further back was a fortress-like hut with log walls and small loophole windows. It was not weather-bonded with packed peat and whitewash, so they would not be able to sleep in it for the winter months but for the warmer months it was a habitable hideaway.

  My brother greeted me with open arms. ‘Ah, Betsy, my darling sister,’ he shouted. ‘I hope you’ve brought me sugar and flour and tea besides.’

  I smiled and nodded, swinging a sack from Finn McCool’s side-saddle. ‘I don’t think Da will notice this much.’ I grinned. ‘I did a big purchase up at Antrim last week and some more this morning locally.’

  ‘Have you heard the word on the street, Betsy?’ Will said, taking my goods and kissing me on the cheek. ‘It’s on!’

  ‘What’s on?’ I frowned.

  ‘The rising. It’s been called. We are taking the towns and rising up against the English. Driving them from our shores! It’s happening, Betsy. The rebels are intercepting the mail coaches to Dublin to send messages about the assembly points. This is war!’

  I stared at him and then looked across to my brother, sure the
y were jesting me but their cheeks were pink with excitement and their eyes glistened with fervour. The redcoats were sludge-thick on the roads around these parts and most of the rebels had gone to ground like badgers. No meetings had been called for some time, unless of course they were very secret. I surely had not been invited along. I’d heard not a word because I was so busy and isolated, holed up caring for my elderly father, cut off from the greater world, bored, housebound and dejected. My weekly trips out to visit the boys were the highlights of my dull existence. My only other outing was to the markets for produce and staples, and I knew that the yeomanry followed me because on more than one occasion I was stopped and had my satchels searched. The soldiers were everywhere like rats in the sewers; redcoats bobbing through the marketplace, striding through the busy streets like warning flags, congregating in huddles outside churches and overseeing funerals and weddings as if it was any of their business.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Because Da says that the support for the rebels is falling away. Many have renounced their oath and are being obedient and accepting of the Crown. Saving their own skins. And I was coming to tell you that Henry Munro is in charge of our chapter. Cousin Mary told me.’

  ‘Damn them for that,’ George cursed. ‘Yes, we knew of Munro’s promotion from Jack O’Neal. He’s been bringing up weapons to us and he says we’re assured of one hundred thousand Pikemen. That’s enough men-at-arms to take on the dogs.’

  ‘Well.’ I huffed. ‘Pikes are well and good but they are no defence against a violent army with cannon fire and muskets aplenty.’

  ‘With enough muscle behind the pikes, Betsy,’ Will said, tying my horse to an elbow in a tree branch, ‘we can unsaddle the horsemen and give them a good walloping. We have the numbers on the ground, we have passion and our Erin pride. We love our island, our language and they would steal one and stamp out the other. The English lack any motivation but greed for power. We have that over them.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I nodded.