Well, she still had her wits; Barbary of the Order could trick a small boy from under the noses of country bumpkins; Grace O’Malley’s granddaughter could stare down the mere Munster Irish if she had to, even if they had gone mad.
She had no idea. She realised that later. The road was clear because a mile further on a long convoy of undertakers fleeing into Mallow had been ambushed. And the wind that had brought the promise of delivery by the great O’Neill had ripped away everything that tethered the ambushers to coherence. She walked into a dimension where the capacity to commit atrocity had become as infinite as the atrocities which had given rise to it. There was no satiety. A group of men had dragged a farmer out of his cart and were kicking him, had been kicking him for so long that they were exhausted; one of them was holding onto the cart pole so that he could stay upright and keep on kicking, although the farmer was dead. One staggered over to the horse, which had been killed by a spear through its neck, in order to kick that as well.
They were still kicking as they watched her go past. ‘Do you want a go, mavourneen?’ the man clinging to the pole asked her.
‘Me man’s at the Aherlow and I wouldn’t be sorry to join him,’ she said, ‘but God save all here.’
The man smiled and kicked again as she walked away.
‘Keep on,’ she said to herself. ‘It’s the boy who matters.’ But they mattered enough to make her stop further on and weep and be sick.
She’d seen bears baited in her time, hangings, quarterings, but her resistance to cruelty had broken down when she’d seen the hanging mother and child, and it broke down further now under this uncontrolled and uncontrollable surfeit of it. Fifty yards on a naked man – she thought it was Prebendary Chadwick but she couldn’t be sure – was being hanged until he choked, brought down to be revived and hanged again until he choked, brought down… ‘Ye’ll want to see this,’ called a woman who was helping some men pull the rope. ‘They’ll have done it to one of yours, like they did it to mine.’ She nodded, and stood to watch the cycle, astounded they didn’t tire of it and that the man didn’t die, only released when at last he did.
The woman came out from under the tree, brushing her hands in satisfaction. ‘And who are you, now?’
‘Me man’s at the Aherlow. I’ll be joining him.’
She went on. She was in an Irish cloak, her Irish red hair illuminated by fire, blown about by the wind under its Irish roll, a pack in one hand and an Irish knife in the other, speaking good Irish, indistinguishable from other Irish madwomen who roamed the road, except that her knife had no blood on it.
Further along, a bonfire lit up a place of execution where an anvil stood for a block and a cleaver was serving as a headsman’s axe. Again she was invited to watch, kindly, as if they were offering to pay for her to see the strong man at a fair; again, to refuse would have been to court suspicion. The anvil was bloody and some of the young men were out in the road rolling heads along it in a game of bowls and swearing because the heads bumped and rolled out of true.
Two men, one middle-aged and a young one, were decapitated in front of her and in front of the woman whose husband and son they were, who held another child to her side, a young boy, about Sylvestris’s age; but it wasn’t Sylvestris, it was the youngest Biddlecombe. She recognised Mistress Biddlecombe. Years ago, on another wild night, she and Rob and the other undertakers had accompanied the Biddlecombes to their holding. She remembered one of the children, perhaps the young man whose head now lay on the ground, saying he wanted to go home, and Mrs Biddlecombe saying: ‘This is our home.’
The man with the cleaver turned to the woman and her child, and Barbary’s hand went automatically inside her cloak to the Clampett in her belt. The man nodded to the little boy. ‘Does he speak the Irish?’ His mother tried to say he did, he spoke Portuguese, Arabic, anything they wanted him to, but nothing came out of her mouth. ‘Speak Irish to me, lad,’ the man persisted.
The boy had courage and hatred. His face said he was going to survive to grow up and kill the people who’d killed his father and brother, but his mouth said clearly in Irish: ‘A windy day is not for thatching.’
The people around the anvil laughed. ‘Apt, my boyo, very apt. This windy day’s for killing, so it is.’ The cleaver man put out his hand to pat the boy, but blood was dripping off it and he looked round for something to wipe it off. With an unthinking gesture born from years of cleaning men up, Mrs Biddlecombe proffered her apron, and cried as the man used it and thanked her.
‘If your daddy and your brother had been as sharp as you, they’d be alive this minute. Take your good mother into Mallow now, and tell anyone who stops you that Ruairi Mac Dowd gives his permission.’
The entertainment over, Barbary turned and went on. She never did find out whether or not the Biddlecombes got to Mallow.
She stopped to retch. You’re killing the wrong people, she thought; it’s not the Biddlecombes who dictated the policy that brought this about, it was the Raleighs, the bishops, the Wallops, Loftuses and Norrises, the Spensers and Elizabeth the Queen, opportunists with disregard for anything but their own greed, who inspired this hatred and left victims like the Biddlecombes to face it. The wrong people were suffering.
Spenser Castle was burning, she saw it as she crept through the Deer Park and heard the full roar as the wind lifted the flames seventy feet up into the sky. There was an impression of figures moving about it, but she couldn’t see clearly. The gatehouses were still undamaged, black squat shapes outlined against the orange glare. Careful now. On this territory she’d be a scapegoat as much as the poor people killed back there. She dropped her pack behind a tree and hared across the road to run beside a hedge across the field leading to the walls, but ploughed earth slowed her to a tramp. She walked bent to keep her head below the hedge’s skyline, but if anyone was looking in her direction they could hardly fail to see her. It was as light as day.
She gained the wall and shuffled along it to the gates, Clampett in one hand, knife in the other.
Somebody was coming out of the gates, pushing a cart loaded with objects. The figure stopped to pile them on a heap of small furniture and silver already in the drive. It was Rosh.
Barbary shuffled further along the wall and hissed. ‘Rosh. Rosh.’
The woman turned and came scurrying towards her. ‘Is it yourself? Mother of God, have you no sense?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Saving some of me employer’s fine belongings.’
Barbary clutched her. ‘Rosh, is Sylvestris here? Have you seen him?’
She saw Rosh’s face go blank. ‘Didn’t he get away with the rest?’
‘No. I’ve got to find him, he’ll be so frightened. Help me, Rosh.’
The light reflected off Rosh’s eyes as she squeezed Barbary’s arm. ‘You’re not to worry now. I’ll find the small gentleman. Stay here and I’ll look.’
‘Be careful. The others might see him.’ The roar of the flames from the house included laughter and shouting.
‘Ach, they’re too busy looting. To every cow its calf and to every book its copy, as the proverb says.’
‘Certainly.’ She leaned back against the wall, watching Rosh walk away into the glare of the drive. Now that she’d shared her burden, she was aware of how much it weighed. I’m going to die, she thought. Let me get him safe and then I’ll die. I’ll be back, she’d told him. October the sixth, and what was it now? Time had become dateless, stopped in another dimension the world had transferred to. Christ, that’s where he is. Where she’d told him to be. If he was anywhere, he was there.
She ran to the edge of the gatehouse and peered round. No sign of Rosh, still sound of activity up on the burning hill, but nobody in sight. She ran as fast as she could to the steps, up them, and pushed open the gatehouse door. She called quietly: ‘Sir Stayon.’ There was no answer. She looked in the well house, in sudden dread down the well itself. She went up to the next floor. There’d been no looting here, but
there was no boy. She heard a step on the gravel in the drive outside, and crept up to the door of the top room and moved it a fraction. There was a gasp from inside. She stepped in. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’
He was crouched on her bed. He flung himself on her and she hugged him. ‘There, there. It’s all right, I’m back now. I’ve got you back.’
From outside Rosh’s voice called softly: ‘Where are you?’
Still holding Sylvestris, she leaned to the window. Only Rosh stood below. ‘Up here. I’ve found him.’
‘Stay there. I’m coming up.’
‘Don’t let her.’ The boy’s hands were squeezing into her shoulders. ‘She’s the one. She’s been telling them what to do. I saw her.’
He’d been through a lot. ‘It’s Rosh,’ she explained to him.
Rosh stood in the doorway which shaded her figure from the glow that pervaded the rest of the room, but not the carving knife she held in front of her. ‘I’ll be thanking you to give me the boy,’ she said reasonably. ‘You can go or you can stay, but we’ll be destroying the seed of Smerwick, if you please.’
Barbary gaped, disbelieving her ears, still trusting in the Rosh with whom she had once saved a life, her friend, but instinctively she pushed Sylvestris behind her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I came to this house for that,’ said Rosh, still reasonable. ‘I stayed for that, I’ve worked for it. There was Irish at Smerwick as well as Spanish, and my man and my elder son among them. Surrender they said, and they surrendered and they hanged them. And your man was there and wrote that it was a good thing done. His father.’
This was impossible. Nobody could have spent years being pleasant, being Rosh, the worker, Rosh of the funny proverbs, and concealed the secrets that were coming out of her mouth now. An artificiality had descended over the three of them in the room that kept Barbary unafraid. She was just as reasonable as she said: ‘You can’t hate that long. Not a little boy.’
Rosh smiled. ‘Oh, they topped it up. They kept topping it up.’
Outside the window a man’s voice called. ‘Where’s yourself, Roisín MacSheehy?’
It took seconds to sink in. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, you’re a MacSheehy.’
Roisín nodded pleasantly. ‘They never ask your name. Did you know that? In their wickedness and stupidity they hang your people and never so much as ask your name. Good old Rosh I was, and good old Rosh I’ve stayed for this day.’ Light flashed from the knife as she edged to the window. It was the twin of the one that had killed Mrs Ellis. Rosh shouted: ‘Up here. And quick.’
She believed it now. She was afraid now. ‘You won’t have him, Rosh. Lock the door.’ She lifted the Clampett out of her belt. ‘Lock the door or I’ll kill you.’
She’d pointed the gun so many times in the past and it had always done the trick. It would work again, one Irishwoman to another.
‘No,’ said Rosh and moved forward.
Barbary shot her. Her finger pulled on the trigger, the unused flint scraped against the rough steel plate to spark the powder, and the steel ball Will Clampett had shaped so carefully in its mould went through Rosh’s dress and into her lungs. She leaned back against the door, still standing, the smile still grimacing on her face.
Barbary stepped across, pushed her aside so that she fell, and locked the door. ‘You,’ she said to Sylvestris, ‘out of that window.’ The percussion had temporarily deafened her, she seemed to be speaking into wool. ‘Use the ivy and get to the Deer Park.’ Someone was hammering on the door, throwing themselves against it so that upper and lower panels came momentarily away from the frame.
‘I won’t leave you.’ Cycles completed themselves on this night; she’d cried that to her mother and her mother had stayed to get killed by the English. She was her mother now and, by Christ, the Irish wouldn’t kill her. ‘Out. I’m coming too.’ She began priming the Clampett again as he got up on the sill and squeezed through the open shutters. A good thing they were both undersized.
Something was hitting the floor in regular thumps. She looked down. Rosh was lying on her side, stabbing the knife into the floorboards. She leaned down and took it away from her. ‘I’m sorry, Rosh.’
‘Ach,’ said Rosh, as if it was nothing. ‘We shouldn’t have gone to the Ellises first.’ Blood came out of her mouth.
Barbary went over to the window facing the Ballyhouras. The boy was halfway down, but the man on the landing had left the door to get help, she could hear his feet running down the steps. She went to the window overlooking the drive and as he came into her view, shouting, she shot him, a bullet into the back. ‘God bless you, Will Clampett, for the artist you are.’
Carefully she put the gun back in her belt. The barrel scorched her flesh through her dress into a scar that never went. She clambered out of the window and climbed down the ivy, picking the best footholds. There was no hurry, she could do anything, she could kill people. She even spared time at the foot of the wall to prime the Clampett again. ‘They won’t have heard,’ she said. ‘Wind and fire’s too strong. Now then, where shall we go? I must get my pack and then it’s the back way, I think. Stay here.’
He wouldn’t, so they made a long detour to get to the Deer Park, spent an age finding her pack, and went through the trees until they were out of the light of the flames to cross the road again.
They crawled along bending, whipping hedges, over a wall, past the crescent lake flapping with water turned gold from the flames of Spenser Castle, and into the bridle path that led behind Hap Hazard to the Roche estate.
She had no feeling at all, she could walk and walk and kill and kill.
‘Is Father safe? And Stepmother? And the baby?’
She just said yes, they were. The transparency coming up in the east was a surprise, as if the wind had gained a special virulence from all the night’s deaths to blow daylight out. ‘It’s the dawn,’ Sylvestris said. ‘I never thought it would come.’
Could it make a difference? Perhaps horror was the monopoly of darkness and day would send everybody back to their homes, and bring all the dead back to life and make Rosh into Rosh again. Hap Hazard was burning away in the distance, out-lighting the dawn.
‘There’s something up ahead on the path.’
She peered to where leaves were jumping about a long protuberance on the track. ‘It’s just another body. Don’t look.’
‘Something moved. It’s alive.’
It wasn’t, she knew the inertness of the dead by now, it was just the wind moving a cloak, but she couldn’t stop him. ‘Oh poor lady, poor lady. She’s got a wound in her back.’ She wondered how anybody retained enough emotion to feel pity any more. A dark path of bruised grass leading away from the woman’s feet showed that she’d crawled from the direction of the road, which was only a field away at this point. English killed by the Irish? Irish killed by the militia? It didn’t matter, she was dead. ‘Leave it. It’s another corpse. There’s lots of them about.’
‘No. She’s alive, she’s moving.’
She sank down as he struggled to turn the body over. There was satiety in the night after all, and hers had been reached; if there was a God, and they crucified Him or Her in front of her, she wouldn’t blink an eye. She heard Sylvestris sob and pick something up that the woman’s body had concealed. He came over and put a baby in her arms. ‘It’s alive. She’s dead, but she hid the baby, poor lady, poor lady. Is it alive?’
She supposed it was; it was warm. Involuntarily her arms clutched it to her, but when she tried to get up she couldn’t. ‘I can’t move.’
‘You’ve got to.’ Pushing, pulling, pleading, he got her to her feet.
‘Where are we going?’ She had lost all authority, lost everything.
The boy said: ‘Ballybeg Abbey. It’s not far now. Tadg the poet will take us in, he’s a friend of mine. He won’t betray us.’
She shook her head at him. ‘He will.’ But she had no volition of her own, and he tugged her.
‘Please, Moth
er. Please.’
Somehow they reached the ruins of Ballybeg, ruins that had gone cold long ago after the English set fire to the abbey. Sylvestris ran ahead while she cradled the baby and crooned to it, and then there was an open door, light, and an old blind man saying he had orphans enough there already, but come in, come in and rest.
* * *
English Munster died overnight. The civilisation that had grown up out of the ruins of the Desmond Wars was uprooted and turned back to ruin not by enemy armies, but by the people who’d been forced to help build it.
O’Neill’s forces had barely arrived in Munster and certainly had not properly begun operations by 6 October, yet the whisper that they were on their way was enough for men and women who had been in subjection too long. Every bit of their long suffering rose up in their throat and vomited out in violence. All over the province gates opened from within to admit figures carrying torches, axes and knives. Livestock was driven off, its owners killed.
The same whisper sent the English lordship galloping to the safety of the Pale towns. Not one wealthy landowner lost his life at the hands of the rebels, though most lost the land itself. The greatest names in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary, Sir Henry Ughtred, Edward Fitton – Kerry’s sheriff – Sir George Bourchier, Aylmer, Sir William Courtney, Justice Goold, the Bishop of Cork, Chief Justice Saxey were only a few of those who left their residences behind to be guarded by retainers who either died defending them or handed them over to the rebels without a fight. One hundred of Sir Henry Wallop’s household servants were killed at his home in Enniscorthy, while he himself struggled through to Waterford with his family and a few possessions. Old Warham St Leger got to safety but his property was destroyed. The seignory of the absent Sir Walter Raleigh was razed.
The Pirate Queen Page 66