The Year of the French (69 page)

“They are brave men fighting for their country.”

“Brave men, is it? Much you know about it, ma’am. Sure they are the same cowardly skulkers who were roaming the county two weeks ago, burning people’s houses down about their ears and hauling away chairs and silk gowns and plate silver. There are families sitting down tonight in Ballygawley cabins to eat their spuds from bone china. Fighting for their country indeed. Fighting for their neighbours’ goods is more like it.”

Mrs. Hennessey had her own friends, two Ballina widows who would walk out from town two afternoons a week to sit and talk with her at the deal table by the kitchen fire, drinking endless cups of strong brown tea. The events of the day were for them an endless source of scandalised gossip. They deplored all parties equally, rebels, yeomen, redcoats. All had violated the pattern of life, all acted upon the promptings of unfathomble, primordial iniquity. The rebels were vagabones and thieves, the soldiers brutal savages. The two old women were horrified and delighted. They left in time to be back in Ballina before dark. Once Judith encountered them on the avenue. She smiled and they made awkward curtseys, without looking into her face. She was alone.

At night, in the small office which Malcolm used as a library, she sat with head bent towards green-globed lamp, turning pages of the books which they had read together, in London and then at The Moat—
Émile
and
La Nouvelle Héloise
, Paine’s
Rights of Man
, Volney’s
Les Ruines
. A cargo of eloquence, crated and corded and shipped to Mayo. Watercolours of a new world, luminous and airy. But Mayo was old, dark, tenaciously holding its mysteries—three old women, like the fates, like Macbeth’s witches, huddled by the fire in a room otherwise without comfort, draughty, the floor paved with uneven flags and dirtied by potato peelings. She would fall asleep for an hour, the book falling from her hand. Waking, in the small room, night pressing upon the window, the fire dead, she would sit quietly, reluctant to move. Rousseau, laureate of loneliness, would be lying at her feet. Somewhere distant, Malcolm was caught up in unimaginable events, the stuff of fiction, marching armies, battles, triumphs, a republic. As though a book had swallowed him.

She carried the lamp with her to bed, resting it on the dressing table. In her loose nightdress, hair unbound, she stared at her reflexion. Grey eyes, small oval face, it returned the stare from the depthless surface of the tarnished mirror. Dark land, a dark sea divided her from her London home. One night she brought with her the French translation of
Gulliver’s Travels
and, opening it, the letter to her husband from the Society of United Irishmen fell to the floor. She read it perched upon the side of the bed, bending forward to catch the light. A summons from the distant world of books, ideas, principles, it had taken him from the estate, away from her. The ringing phrases stirred her feelings now, but faintly, like music heard across a river. She carefully folded the letter and replaced it in the book. Little men and big men, Doctor Johnson had said of the book, dismissing it.

To the left of The Moat and two miles distant stood Derrybawn, Sir Talbot Parson’s house. Empty, one of the ravaged houses. Its tall, graceful windows, opening upon an ornamental garden, had been ripped from their casings. All through a long afternoon, a small army of men and women had carried out into the garden furnishings, hangings, crockery, paintings, casks of whiskey and wine, gowns and coats, chairs, tables, beds. Torn books, ripped paintings still lay strewn in the garden, protected by an Artemis in white marble. To the right of The Moat, at Cloverdale, lived Mrs. Hendricks, widow of a member for Mayo, a tall, imperious woman, red-cheeked, nose like a cutlass. Judith, lonely for company, visited her once but was driven away. Mrs. Hendricks’s voice, maddened and vindictive, followed her down the avenue. “Rebel! Slut of a rebel’s wife! Whore!” There were no other county neighbours.

The stable boy was gone. Like Malcolm, he was off with the rebels. She remembered him with affection. His name was Teague, a short, stumpy-legged boy, round head balanced on thick neck, ready smile, a shock of yellow hair. One horse remained; the others had been commandeered by the French. She saddled it one morning, and rode westwards, toward Lough Conn. A clear September day, puffs of cloud, a lark high in the air. Away from The Moat, freed from her thoughts and memories, her spirits rose.

For a woman raised in London she rode well, her slender, small-breasted body erect, hands sensitive to the horse. The countryside, for all its desolation, was splashed with light. Like the moors of Scotland or Yorkshire, perhaps. Landscapes of the imagination, without boundaries. But at Garrycloona peasants surrounded her, a dozen of them, carrying sticks and scythes. They had no English. Their language, alien gutturals, ominous, broke across her in a wave. Terrified, she flailed left and right with her whip and rode through them. Malcolm was fighting for them, for their nation, but she could not speak their language.

He was fighting not for them but for a word. Ireland. Not moorlands and rivers, not people, but a word. The word was a bell, vibrant and thrilling, ringing through her memories of conversations. Ireland. Ireland was oppressed. Ireland must fight for its freedom. Ireland must take its place among the nations of the world. Not Derrybawn despoiled, its rooms open to the rain, nor the kitchen at The Moat with its gossiping, profane old women. It was a cold word now, thin and colourless as ice on a winter pond.

She rode back without haste, slim, straight body swaying slightly in the saddle, through Ballina town, noisy with soldiers. The green boughs of liberty had vanished from cabin lintels, and the small Protestant shops were open again, their stocks depleted, rough boards covering their shattered windows. A regimental band was at practice in the Diamond, shrill fifes and crackling drums. The music seemed to be floating to her from home, summer afternoons in London, a military review. A small girl, she stood with her father at their Jermyn Street window, as the band marched beneath them. “Slut of a rebel’s wife,” Mrs. Hendricks screamed down the avenue. She rode across the five-span bridge. A corporal waved his file of men against the low wall to let her pass: a lady, small, haughty face, riding habit of green velvet, black high-crowned hat.

But at The Moat, an immense map of Ireland lay spread across the table, held flat by books at its corners. Cross-hatched ranges of hills, blue silk threads of river, mouth-filling names, Clonakilty, Lisdoonvarna. Somewhere, perhaps towards the map’s centre, a different army, blue uniforms, dark Mediterranean faces. Peasants marched beside them, like those who had surrounded her with scythes at Garrycloona. The names all had meaning in that alien tongue. Malcolm had tried to teach her. A word had carried him away, into the map. It was not Ireland in that tongue but Eire.
Ireland
was an English word. Bold black line upon the map, the coach road westwards from Dublin: Kinnegad, Mullingar, Longford. To the north of Longford, Granard, where they broke their journey for a night, a young Mayo squireen and his London bride.

She left the map to wander through the silent house, part farmhouse, part fortress, built in rapparee times. In the drawing room, a great-grandfather hung above the mantel, gaunt-faced beneath white, clumsy wig. Builder of The Moat, grandson of a Cromwellian trooper, sturdy colonist in an alien, savage land. A glass-fronted oak cabinet which a month before held muskets, fowling pieces, two old swords in grimy scabbards. Above it, the crudely painted portrait of a stallion, raw bones and glossy flank dwarfing the conventional background of hill, trees, steeple. Beyond the window, the unharvested fields stretched towards river. Distant horizon of mountain waste. Echoes of Malcolm’s voice and hers drifted from empty rooms, thin and hollow, like a spinet’s music.

The black nights oppressed her. Alone, frightened by an alien land and people, she longed for London’s bustle, her family’s warmth, crowds in the streets, the cries of vendors. She sought nourishment from daydreams, phantasies. The patriots were entering Dublin in triumph, green banners streaming in the clear, bright air, trumpets clear of sound as silver coins upon a marble table. Malcolm in a uniform green as her riding habit, frogging of gilt and silver. A harp, gold threads woven upon green silk, unfettered by crown. A sea of people flowed towards the green from Dame Street and Sackville Street. A schoolgirl’s dream, shaped from bright coloured pictures, the stiff figures of storybook heroes, beneath them patriotic legends. Flimsy as gauze, the daydream shredded, vanished. Darkness and silence mocked her.

Bridge-end House, Ballycastle, Early September

It was with John in his Castlebar gaol that her mind should be filled, but the word
gaol
brought no image to her. A stone cell, straw upon the rough-paved floor, a door bolted and locked. He could not move from it, walk into the sunlight. She herself was not free: his gaol the pivot upon which her world turned and she could not imagine it, could not imagine John within it, blue eyes and hair of gold darkened by the shadows of captivity. What she could not imagine was drained of meaning for her, formless and dreadful. The foolishness of men! She had warned him that it would come to this. In the sewing room, sunlight upon scraps of bright cloth, calico, silk, muslin, velvet dark blue, sensuous. He had not listened. Her body pressed against his, she had sobbed. His hand upon her head, stroking her hair. She remembered that, shears upon the low table, blades sharp as knives. “There will be no life for us together,” she had told him. “There will be,” he said; “you will see.” She could see nothing.

Her father could not help her, his words awkward, fumbling between comfort and unimaginable truth, the language of a remote law which held the powers of death, of restoration. “It is a capital offence,” he said; “it is in every country—Spain, France, here. High treason. It is a crime darker than sedition. It cannot be argued away.” But at other times he would tell her that George would manage something, he had friends in London, powerful friends. They were a clever tribe, the Moores. Spain had enriched them, vineyards and olive trees, ships from Alicante and Cádiz. Casks of wine and brandy carried in darkness to the strands of Mayo and Galway, excisemen bribed to look the other way. “Half the gentry of Connaught traded with them. A clever tribe. We stayed here and rotted. It will not help John now. They hate the Moores, all those jumped-up Cromwellian squireens. They hate George, they hate his airs. He is a cold, proud man.”

“But he will manage something. You just now said so.” Manage something: how were things “managed”?

“Not here. Not in Mayo. In London. Fox is his friend there, Sheridan. They are out of power now. If Burke had lived. Burke was his great friend.”

“What can London do for him?” Ellen asked; “he is in a Mayo gaol. They have built a gallows there, on the green.” She remembered the green, trim and well tended. On market days, squires and their wives strolled along its paths, the men shouting to each other, boisterous, pockets stuffed with pound notes, rolled and banded. She could not imagine the gallows, wooden, hideous, a noose of hemp.

“Transportation,” her father said; “it is an alternative punishment. Good heavens, child! If Lord Edward Fitzgerald had not died in prison of his wounds. Do you imagine that they would have hanged like a common criminal the brother of the Duke of Leinster? These things can be managed.”

Managed:
it was a man’s word. They were all men: George, Fox, Sheridan, the Duke of Leinster. Smooth and opaque, a pebble plucked from the strand, the word held and hid John’s life.

They were standing on the terrace from which, a few weeks before, they had watched through the brass spyglass. Three ships from France, men in blue uniforms. “Damn them,” Treacy said, remembering the ships. “They have savaged the churches of their own country. Altars desecrated, tabernacles. Priests hacked to death upon the streets of Paris and in its cellars. France, the eldest child of the Church. That was once their boast. Their King slaughtered, and their radiant young Queen. Now they have brought their madness down upon us. And with what profit to us? Penned in here, waiting for the Protestants to bring their dragoons down upon us. Bands of lawless rapparees raging up and down the barony. A foolish boy awaiting his death in Castlebar gaol. Damn them!” Awaiting his death. But something would be managed for him. She was as tall as her father, slender-waisted: MacBride blood, her father said, all the MacBrides were tall. It ill became women, but her fine features atoned for this; the Treacys were a handsome race, this was agreed upon by all. She said: “They brought liberty, John said. Muskets and firelocks and soldiers trained in the wars of Europe. A chance to fight for liberty.”
Liberty
: another word. Her father did not like this one: smooth pebble rejected, flung back into the bay. “The liberty of Castlebar gaol,” he said.

Men lived by words, abstractions, killed and were killed by them, words impalpable as smoke, but with the power to make prison bricks, forge swords and pikes, hew and plane the wood for gallows. “Eldest daughter of the Church”; what in God’s name did that mean? Tabernacles smashed open, and blood on the cobbles of Paris streets. But women live within their words, powerless and uncomprehending. Liberty was a word, but love was not: love was John’s hand upon her hair, stroking it. A word had taken him away from her, removed his hand.

“He was a fine boy,” Treacy said. “A high-spirited boy. Like a colt. I was very fond of him, Ellen. You know that.”

“What is ‘transportation’?” she said. “They would ship him off somewhere, would they not, but he would be safe?”

“With cutpurses,” her father said. “Cutpurses and harlots’ bullies and sheep stealers. Perhaps George might manage something better than that. If he can play for time. Spain, North America. If matters can be dragged out. He should engage Curran to manage the defence. Curran or Bushe. There was a time when Dennis Browne would have managed the affair for him, but when Dennis Browne comes to Tyrawley it will be with fire and sword. The Protestant bullies will make a fairday of their vengeance, God’s curse upon them all. You don’t remember the penal days, child, and neither do I, but my father did, your grandfather. Unlicenced priests hunted down like wolves with a price upon their heads. All that was winding down, but it will be back upon us now. The clever ones sailed off to France or Spain, as the Moores did. And the rogues turned their coats, swore away their faith, denied the Sacrament. We were gentry, Ellen. You must never forget that. As gently born as the Brownes or the Moores. When the Coopers and the Saunders and the Falkiners were prentice boys in London.”