The physical casualties were among the middle and lower classes, the less aware and more isolated families. Anglo-Irish clerics who had forbidden the Irish their religion were automatically put to the sword; so were Anglo-Irish schoolmasters who had forced an alien culture and language on their pupils, and Anglo-Irish magistrates and lawyers with their contempt for the native Brehon laws and their insistence on enforcing statutes which worked against the people who had to obey them. Their wives and children either died with them or were raped and sent naked into the cities with their nostrils slit or their tongues cut out as an example of what lay in wait outside.
And in places like Waterford, Cork, Youghal and Kinsale, overcrowded, insanitary and short of food, the survivors lay in the streets and public buildings as the October winds dropped and the rains of November became incessant. Town criers passed among them calling out names to try and reunite separated families, while searchers studied faces in the burial pits to see if they could recognise a lost wife, father or child. The quartering on the Cork townspeople of 1,000 newly arrived English troops only added to the misery.
The extent of the devastation was so awesome that the first reports arriving in England were disbelieved. When, finally, they could no longer be dismissed as exaggeration, the queen put the blame on the colonists themselves; had they but obeyed her strictures to employ only English this would not have happened. Having never visited Ireland, she refused to listen to those who said that if the colony had not used Irish labour there would have been no colony.
Edmund Spenser’s letter to the queen, written ‘out of the ashes of desolation and waste of this your wretched realm’, begged for understanding and help. He excused himself and his fellow undertakers and laid all blame on the obduracy of the Irish. He had thought that by putting the civil example of English life before the native Irish they could be converted out of their savagery. ‘But it is far otherwise, for instead of following them, they fly the English and most hatefully shun them, for two causes: first, because they have ever been brought up licentiously and to do as each one liked; secondly, because they hate the English, so that their fashions they also hate.’
Help us, he wrote, for now we ‘have nothing left but to cry unto you for timely aid’.
It was the last letter he ever wrote, and its cry went unanswered. By now Tyrrell’s forces had established themselves and were besieging the cities. The O’Neill raised James FitzThomas FitzGerald, the late Desmond’s nephew, to be the new Earl of Desmond in the south and although the clans called him the ‘Hayrope Earl’ because his only possession had been straw, they followed him as the clans in the north of Munster were following Tyrrell, with a discipline which was new to the Irish experience. All the secret training of the last years came into its own and the chieftains of Munster cohered for once under the leadership of these two new generals who, in turn, took their orders from the O’Neill.
The old Irish aristocracy, who had been regranted their ancient land and given new English titles in return for swearing allegiance to the Crown, saw which way the wind was blowing, broke their oath and went over to the O’Neill’s side. Mountgarrets, Cahirs, Devereuxs, Kavanaghs, the men of whom Elizabeth had boasted, turned their coats so fast that by December Sir Thomas Norris in a letter to the queen could list only four principal men not in revolt. The country, he said, was ‘impassable for any faithful subject’.
Black Tom, Earl of Ormond, stayed loyal but he also stayed in Leinster, fighting to protect Dublin and his own estates and unable to maintain contact with the embattled English of Munster.
The thousand English troops in Cork sallied out of the city to be dissipated in the new warfare that O’Neill had perfected. There was some isolated fighting, but in trying to come to grips with the enemy the English were led into bog and mountain ambushes or lost their numbers from desertion and ague. Munster was sacrificed, at first out of helplessness and then deliberately, to gain time for Elizabeth to raise for the Earl of Essex the greatest army that had ever been sent to Ireland.
The interval was the occasion for the deaths of famous men. Sir Richard Bingham died in Dublin, unfit to have his old duties put on his shoulders. Sir John Norris died, worn out. His young brother, Henry, was killed in a Connaught ambush along with his men and Clifford Conyers. Sir Thomas Norris, still trying to keep the Cork road open, received an Irish spear through his breastplate and died of gangrene at Mallow before the castle there finally fell.
King Philip II of Spain died, to be succeeded by King Philip III.
Leaving his family in Cork, Edmund Spenser brought the last despatches from Sir Thomas Norris to England and delivered them to Whitehall where the queen stayed in residence throughout the New Year, having daily emergency meetings with her Council. He was paid eight pounds for acting as courier, and badly needed them. Such patronage as he’d had was gone or being bestowed on new poets and, like the other refugees from Ireland, he told a story nobody wanted to hear. Once he mentioned a child that had been lost in the sack of Kilcolman.
He found a room at a crowded inn a few yards beyond King’s Gate at Westminster, and fell ill. It was a winter in which the Thames froze from bank to bank for the first time in thirty years, and it took ten days before any of his friends heard of his condition. He died on the morning of Saturday, 16 January, attended by the inn’s landlady.
When the winter was over, the Earl of Essex was ready to sail with 16,000 foot, nearly 1,500 cavalry and the promise of 2,000 reinforcements every month, so that the whole thing could begin again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The greatest misfortune in the world is to be a civilian rooted to the land for which two opposing armies are contending. Whether the armies are liberating or conquering, when the dust settles the civilian has either been killed, starved or made pregnant.
And to be in the Awbeg and Blackwater valleys of Munster as the sixteenth century drew to its close was to be continually occupied (or liberated) by one army, and then liberated (or occupied) by its opponent.
From the point of view of the contestants, the area was desirable because it formed a crossroads giving easy access to both the coast and west Ireland. It was also fertile, and the war degenerated into which army could feed off the harvest over the coming winter while denying it to the other.
From the point of view of civilians trying merely to survive – and they became fewer and fewer – it was like being a beetle stuck to a tray into which first red and then green paint was poured; as the two colours sloshed back and forth, the beetle ended up drowning in a dirty and somewhat familiar brown.
Standing on the duckboard which kept him above the mud outside the elegant pavilion, Lord Roche heard his title inaccurately announced by the liveried servant who had fetched him from the gates of the camp: ‘The Lord Maurice Roche, my lord,’ and heard equally clearly the answer: ‘Let him wait.’
Maurice, Viscount Fermoy, studied the scenery and the weather which had just become fine but frosty after the rainy summer and was nipping the leaves on the few remaining trees into gold and red. This had been a valley of trees, he thought, one’s trees, one’s valley. Apart from the tents and movement of the camp which spread in an untidy sprawl along nearly half a mile of the Blackwater from Mallow, the landscape was deserted. No, there were some rooks circling and cawing around the elms on the hills which swept up on either side. Amazing birds. One had personally fed on enough of the buggers last winter to have wiped out every nest in Munster, yet here they were back again. Survivors. Filthy eating, but survivors. Maurice, Lord Roche, approved of survival.
His gaze fell on his gloves, bought in 1598, last year, before the unpleasantness; Cordovan suede, 12s.4d, and one would have thought for that money they’d have lasted somewhat better than they had. Caitlin had wanted to boil them and serve them with vegetables for the servants’ dinner, but one had dissuaded her from the idea by a black eye. A good cook, though, when she had the wherewithal.
The whole question of appropr
iate attire for this audience had perplexed one considerably. One’s violet taffeta sleeved cloak with the standing collar, £18.7s, was too rich and would set the English into thinking one could contribute supplies to their army. Besides, one had an idea that the fashion for cloaks hanging to the fork had gone out in the last year. On the other hand, too poor and the bastards would disregard one.
‘You may go in, my lord.’
Maurice, Viscount Fermoy, entered the pavilion and flung himself onto the Earl of Essex’s dress boots, cream doeskin, gold-buckled, five pounds if they were a penny. ‘Most magnificent and redoubted lord, pillar of my life, eternal praise for thy chivalry in rescuing from the savagery—’
‘Get up.’
Maurice Roche rose, glancing up at the beautiful face as he wiped the tears from his beard. It was showing disdain, but one could tell one had been on the right lines. And one had been right about cloaks; Essex’s swirled down to his ankles. Velvet. Gold-tasselled. All of £24 by today’s prices. ‘Pardon my emotion, my lord, but to my poor eyes you are emperor of the sun, the summer’s nightingale.’ He gave a sob. Definitely the right lines.
‘You are protesting your loyalty to Her Gracious Majesty, are you?’
Good God, what did he think one was doing? ‘It has never wavered, my most noble lord, in thought, word or—’
‘Then where is your son?’
‘Laid low, puissant lord, from a wound received fighting our lonely battle.’
‘Who for?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said who for. For whom? Which side was he on?’
Could the noble earl have possibly glimpsed David during that last skirmish between the English and Tyrrell? No, it had been an ambush, and David had sensibly refused to wear Irish colours, and kept his visor down. If one had been dealing with a man of sense one would have explained that to send one’s sons to fight for the Irish, while keeping in with the English oneself, was the only way one could survive this hell and still come out with credibility for whichever side won in the end. But one doubted Essex’s sense. If he’d had any he’d have stayed at home tucked up in bed with the queen, bony old besom though she was.
Maurice made his eyes steely with resentment. ‘The Roches claimed Ireland for the Crown when they landed with Henry II in the twelfth century…’
‘Very well, very well.’
Well, they had. Well, not Henry II exactly. They’d come over with Strongbow in the hope of easy plunder, but the moment Henry II had shown he was the stronger they’d declared for him. Time for the gifts. ‘My lord, to mark this glorious deliverance at your hands, may I present…’ A really lovely chalice some of his kerns had taken from Effin church before they’d burned it, and a kid-bound copy of Spenser’s ‘Colin Clout Comes Home Again’ that his MacSheehys had looted from Kilcolman. Mother of God, what a title. But the noble earl seemed touched.
‘I am touched, Viscount.’ Essex stroked the soft cover. ‘Our greatest poet. He died in poverty, which is the lot of poets. I sent him money at the last but he said he was too ill to spend it, so he was buried at my charge in Westminster Abbey, as he deserved to be.’
‘Indeed, my lord, you have acted the Mycaenas to a great poet and a great loss.’ And a great pain in the arse. It was Roche land the damned rhymster had been granted, and one had spent £279.4s.8d in litigation, to say nothing of setting on the MacSheehys, trying to get him off it. Well, he was off it now.
‘But I warn you, my lord,’ Essex was saying, ‘Her Majesty will countenance no temporising by her Irish nobility.’
Would one be offered supper? There was half a juicy venison pasty on the camp table and a silver gilt drinking cup weighing forty ounces of silver if it weighed anything, and some Bordeaux still in it. How long had it been since one had tasted good wine? Or venison for that matter?
‘…would command your aid in this matter,’ Essex was saying.
Maurice tore his eyes away from the table. ‘Alas, my lord, would that one could aid your great endeavour, but one’s beeves were driven off by the rebels, may their souls be damned, seed, breed and generation.’
‘Your attention wanders, Viscount,’ Essex said sharply. ‘As I have just explained, one of the many duties I have been given to perform in this unhappy land is to discover whether or not this lady is still alive, and if so, where.’
‘Which lady is that, my lord?’
‘God’s teeth, man, I’ve just told you. Lady Betty.’
Barbary, eh? What did they want with her?
‘It is unseemly,’ Essex went on, ‘that the widow of an Armada hero, and moreover one who has been received by the queen, should have suffered death at the hands of barbarians and lie dishonoured in some unknown grave.’
Barbary? ‘Rejoice, my lord, for she is not dead. Perhaps you will inform our great queen that on the dreadful night of the massacre, and at great personal risk to oneself, one sheltered this poor lady and shelters her yet.’ Not exactly that night, of course; that night one had shut oneself up and listened to the screams of the English peasants. They should never have come to Ireland and taken land which wasn’t theirs in the first place. Good riddance. But Barbary… One’s Christianity to that obstinate female had been unsurpassed.
‘Then I shall send to your castle to fetch her.’
Ah. ‘My lord, she does not exactly live at the castle, it being unfitted at rebel hands, but on Roche land. Ballybeg Abbey is where you will find her.’ And good luck to you. Maurice’s heart fell to his rubbed buskins, Spanish leather, 14s. two years back, as he heard the audience come to an end with much about loyalty, Her Majesty’s determination to defeat the Great Satan etc., etc., and not a bloody word about inviting one for supper.
* * *
The Earl of Essex was subject to fervent, though passing, bouts of pity in the same way as menopausal women are subject to hot flushes, and he suffered one as the woman who’d once played cards at his house was carried into his pavilion that evening. She’d aged ten years in the last two; the amazing red hair was frosted here and there with grey, she was skeletal, lined, and with a sore by the side of her mouth. Hard green eyes stared, but didn’t seem to see him.
‘Night blind, my lord,’ said his sergeant, unhooking her arms from his neck and settling her tenderly in a chair.
Essex winced. Night blindness was a symptom of starvation. ‘Bring more light.’ He bent over the figure in the chair. ‘Do you remember me, Lady Betty?’
‘Yes. Is there anything to eat?’
The earl snapped his fingers for supper. To save the lady’s shame, he ordered all his officers out while she fell on it; she stuffed food into her mouth as if they’d set a time limit on it. ‘How’s Henry?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
She emptied her mouth just long enough to repeat the question. ‘How’s my son? Henry Betty.’
‘In fine spirits when last I saw him. Her Majesty shows continuing interest in his welfare.’ He watched her until she’d finished eating, spilling pastry and gravy down her none-too-clean cloak. ‘We shall soon send you back to him.’ The woman’s capacity for food was small; she had actually eaten very little, but she stared suspiciously at the servant who tried to clear the wreckage away: ‘I’m taking that home.’
‘Lady Betty,’ said Essex gently, ‘my army may be on short commons, but you shall take home as much food as you please. Now, have some wine.’
She made an effort to smile. ‘Won’t you join me, my lord?’
Some vestige of the woman she had been was still there. He sat down opposite and poured them both wine: ‘How bad was it?’
‘I’ve had better times. How are you enjoying Ireland?’
The earl had received many women in his pavilion since the campaign began, most of them progressing into his bed, but none of them had been conversant with the life he’d left in England as this woman was; however much of an oddity, she knew the people he knew, appreciated the magnificent position he’d held. And he’d missed conversing with
intelligent women; his wife and sister were the repository of every plan, every ambition he held. He need not over-confide in this poor wreck whose connections with the Irish were questionable, but her vulnerability demanded that, for sheer courtesy, he display his own. Besides, he required information from her.
So he answered her question, and got carried away as he usually did. This moist and miserable country that dwindled his army with its agues and plagues and lassitude, he had never wanted to set foot in it. He’d prophesied doom before he set out. Before God and His angels, he was badgered with commands from upstarts who had no idea of conditions that beset the man in the field. ‘There is not food enough, either for horses or men, and the cattle too lean to be driven or eaten. How can I go north against O’Neill until Munster and Leinster have been pacified? Yet the queen’s despatches yap go north, go north as if they require my life and not my success. Well, by God, she shall have it. She may mislike the course of my actions, but she shall be pleased at the fashion of my death. I shall charge the arrows of the enemy, fearing them less than the knives plunged in my back by those who call me friend.’
He strode the tent, his boots kicking up the scent of grass to mingle with other smells of beeswax and leather and calico while her eyes followed them, interested and sympathetic.
‘She doesn’t understand, my lord.’
‘By God, she does not. Do you hear what she writes?’ He brandished a letter. ‘“If sickness prevails why did you not move when the army was in a better state?” But didn’t I rout Tyrrell at the Pass of Plumes, even though he escaped at the last? “If winter approaches, why were the summer months of July and August lost?” Didn’t I take Cahir Castle?’
The Pirate Queen Page 67