Behind the Walls (20 page)

Adam was impressed but would not admit it to the reverend who seemed to be waiting to be complimented on his wonderful idea. As much as this sort of peacock behaviour grated on him, Adam did envy the reverend for the enormous sense of belief he had in himself.

A messenger was despatched to the Jacobite camp. Now, there was nothing to do except wait.

The people of Derry moved away from the walls but did so slowly in the hope that the ones on the other side wouldn’t feel abandoned. Even more rain fell. Adam had hoped that the weather might take pity on the naked crowd and allow the sun to warm them, but no such luck.

He was unsure what to do himself as the good reverend made for the cathedral, in order to pray, he said, for a
timely solution to the matter in hand. For a second or two, Adam considered following him, putting space and the walls of St Columb’s between him and the poor unfortunates milling about. However, he was his father’s son and, therefore, not surprised when his legs refused to take him away from the wall. Instead, he found himself calling down to the spokesman and asking his name.

‘Samuel Clebourne,’ the man said, adding, ‘I’m a school teacher.’

‘Nice to meet you, Samuel,’ said Adam. ‘I’m Adam Murray.’

Samuel smiled. ‘Yes, I know who you are, Colonel Murray. We all do. You’re the one who is going to save us.’

Adam was stunned by the teacher’s words which had been spoken with absolute conviction. Doing his best to mask his confusion and come up with some sort of response, Adam couldn’t help noticing quite a few heads bobbing up and down in agreement. He tried, ‘I don’t … that is, I don’t know. I’m not sure …’ Adam felt dizzy.

Using his shoulder to flick the raindrops from his nose, Samuel said, ‘In the years to come people might well wonder what this was all about.’

As casually as he could, Adam leant the top half of his body against the wall, hoping that it merely looked as if he was interested in what Samuel was saying and not that he feared he was about to fall down at any moment.

‘Not just this,’ Samuel was saying, gesturing at himself and his soaked neighbours. ‘I mean, all of it. Keeping the gates closed when it would be so much easier to let the Jacobites in, especially after James assured us he wouldn’t punish anyone.’

Adam couldn’t help himself; he whispered, ‘I cannot imagine that it will make much sense at all.’ It was the first time he had admitted this.

Samuel shook his head dolefully. ‘No, probably not. But I generally find that the big things that really matter – things like love, duty and truth – don’t always make sense. In the end, you just do what you feel is right.’

Samuel might have said more except he succumbed to a coughing fit, reminding himself and Adam of the horrible position he was in. Adam couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be naked in this weather, not knowing how long they would have to wait until they could go home again.

They probably expect me to do something and here I am, just talking away like it’s an ordinary day and I’ve nothing better to be doing
.

He was relieved to have his attention diverted by his guards and the Jacobite prisoners. No doubt Samuel meant well, but on this wet Tuesday afternoon the responsibility and expectation that Adam felt was too heavy for his thin shoulders.

Nodding a curt salute to Samuel, who had managed to
catch his breath and stop coughing, Adam followed the others to the bastion while his thoughts crashed about inside his head. He was pleased at the shock and bafflement on the Jacobite prisoners’ faces on seeing the vast crowd of freezing men, women and children huddled in front of the city walls. One of the more senior officers didn’t have any qualms about voicing his surprise, ‘What on earth is going on? Why are they naked?’

Adam answered him, ‘They are our Protestant neighbours. Your Lieutenant-General de Rosen rounded them up from nearby villages, stripped them and marched them here in the belief that we’d have to take them in, all these extra mouths, to finish the last of our food but …’ Here, Adam experienced a surge of pride. ‘But they won’t come in.’

The officer scowled. ‘That fool, de Rosen! King James will have his head for this!’ The man went on to study the crowd and muttered, ‘No, this isn’t right at all!’

Adam shrugged and said, ‘You should know that we have sent a message threatening to hang all of you if these people are not sent home.’

The prisoners glanced at one another and then out beyond to their fellow soldiers in the distance. Not one of them showed the slightest hint of fear.

‘Governor Walker has asked for your priests to come over. They’ll be allowed to see you and make the necessary preparations.’

The officer made no comment on this; he was more concerned about something else. He said, ‘We are soldiers of King James.’ He was obliged to ignore the rude sounds of grunting and spitting from the large crowd of onlookers in order to continue. ‘What I mean is, we should die by the pistol not be hung like common criminals.’

‘Or,’ offered Adam, ‘Lieutenant-General de Rosen could allow these people go free and you and your men can go back to jail?’

The officer conceded, ‘Well, yes, that would be the best outcome. No denying that.’

For those few minutes Adam and the Jacobite officer could have been any men, any place in the world – two acquaintances gadding about the day’s work. Instead, they were on the walls of Derry, a Jacobite and a Williamite, drenched from the rain and yearning for a hot dinner that wasn’t to be had. They looked out at the hill across from them, each thinking the same thing.
Where, in God’s name, is this going to end
?

Neither Lieutenant-General de Rosen nor his Irish counterpart Colonel Hamilton were impressed by Derry’s threat to hang the prisoners. This was war after all and the death of soldiers was only to be expected.

Governor Walker scoffed at the fact that not one priest had turned up to administer the last rites to the Jacobites. He had them write to their immediate superior, Colonel
Hamilton, not to plead for their lives – they were happy to give their lives for King James – but that they didn’t want to die like common criminals. They wrote:

Driving the prisoners to the wall has enraged the garrison. We are to be killed unless they are withdrawn immediately. We should die with our swords in our hands. We beg you to speak on our behalf to Marshal de Rosen.

Like his king, Colonel Hamilton was known for his dislike of killing civilians. However, his reply was a short note stating that the naked Protestants had only themselves to blame. They should have begged Derry to take them in. Meanwhile, the only comfort he offered his own men was that their deaths would be avenged, which was truly no comfort at all.

In other words, everyone was at a standstill for the rest of that miserable day. Nobody was to sleep much as darkness fell. Of course it rained and the wind howled throughout the night.

Adam tossed and turned, wondering how many of the crowd would be dead before the morning. He swore he could hear their moans beneath the wind, and the hopelessness of it all burned in his empty stomach.
What kind of men make hundreds and hundreds of ordinary folk spend a night out in that without a blessed stitch between them?

There had been an attempt to scrounge some food to smuggle out to the desperate crowd, but there really wasn’t
much to give. Also, Adam knew that refusing their fellow Protestants entry into the city hadn’t been a popular decision but it was a necessary one for Derry’s sake.

Nevertheless, the physical appearance of the pathetic crowd, which was all too obvious, did provoke some jealousy amongst the hungry population. For instance, Adam had clearly heard one woman loudly proclaiming, ‘Them folk had their breakfast before they got here. Look at the plumpness of them! It’s plain to see
they’ve
not gone without food.’

Adam had gritted his teeth and taken a deep breath. Food wasn’t the only thing in short supply at this stage: mercy and kindness were becoming scarce too. The worst of it was that Adam had found he could not ignore her words. To his mortification he had realised he agreed with her. They did look well-fed, though he knew that at least he and the rest of his fellow citizens still had their clothes.
We’re all prisoners, no matter what side of the gate we’re on.

As he lay sleepless on his mattress, his hunger assailed him again. ‘Oh my God!’ He said this aloud but it wasn’t a prayer. An idea had sprung out of the darkness of his mind. ‘We’re all prisoners? So be it!’

He left his bed and made his way to the bastion wall in search of Reverend Walker and found him up by the Jacobite prisoners who all seemed in dire need of a wash. The churchman looked up at the young officer’s arrival. Adam
greeted him. ‘I was just looking for you, sir. I’ve thought of something we can do with the group!’ He spoke quietly so that only the reverend could hear him.

After the previous long, long evening, Governor Walker was open to ideas about anything at all. This waiting for something to happen was bad for his nerves. There had been no positive response to his letter yet, aside from Colonel Hamilton’s snippiness, which he had convinced himself was only a temporary response. Surely the man would not allow this situation to continue much longer. The governor found it hard to concentrate on much else as he waited, and hoped, to hear from Colonel Hamilton a second time.

He stepped forward to meet Adam and they moved farther away from the Jacobite soldiers and their own guards.

‘Let’s make a secret exchange!’ Adam’s eyes shone as he spoke. ‘We sneak out some of our sickest people to join the crowd and take in some of their healthy men to boost our army.’

Expecting to have to explain himself further, Adam opened his mouth to say more but there was no need. Governor Walker actually punched him in the arm, by way of thanks, and called the two Sherrard boys over, only telling them: ‘Colonel Murray needs your help. Do whatever he asks of you!’

Adam’s first order was an easy one. ‘Follow me!’

Chapter Twenty-Five

S
ome of the older soldiers did not want to leave Derry. They had stood guard on the wall from the very beginning. It was up to Robert and Daniel to find them, wake them up if necessary and tell them that Adam Murray needed them to go.

Robert found the guard, who all those months ago had taken a chance and handed him the keys of the gate. He was in a bad way; his mouth was a curve of open sores and Robert wasn’t entirely sure that the man could see him because his eyes looked like they had been dipped in milk. Assuming that the man probably had gone blind, Robert felt free to take a step back from him. The guard’s breath was dreadful, and a second smell, that caused Robert’s own eyes to water, told him that the poor fellow was no longer in charge of his bodily functions. Yet, despite all this, the guard wanted to stay and fight.

‘But I can’t go now. It wouldn’t be right, I’m no coward!’

Robert shook his head, forgetting about the man’s possible blindness. ‘It’s nothing to do with being a coward. Actually, it’s the opposite.’

How many times more would he have to say this today?

Adam wanted a hundred men at the very least. It was proving difficult to keep count, especially when men like this guard, who felt that Derry was expelling them as failures, required more than a few words of coaxing.

The guard persisted. ‘Let some other man take my place. I can still hold my sword.’

Robert doubted if the man could stand by himself, never mind swing a heavy sword. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Some other man will take your place.’ He paused to allow his listener to think about this. Then he said, ‘We’re going to switch you for one of the fellows outside the gate, a fresh fighter. They haven’t been starving like we have.’

Tears rolled down the guard’s face as he accepted what Robert was saying.

Robert bid himself to be kind. ‘There’s no need to feel shame. You have given your all and now you are being asked to go one step further. I warn you, what you are being asked to do is not easy.’

At this the guard forgot his sadness and sat up a little straighter.

Robert knew he was winning this little battle. ‘Do you hear that wind and rain? Well, Derry needs you to remove your clothes and spend the rest of the day outside.’

The boy could see the guard running through all this in his mind and added, ‘It is of great personal risk. Really,
you would be risking your life in these wet conditions, particularly after months of reduced rations.’

The guard began to smile and now he nodded his head, saying, ‘Yes, yes, I understand. And you say that Colonel Murray has expressly ordered me to do this?’

Before Robert could answer him, the guard stretched out a scrawny arm. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but if you would be so kind as to help me up and out of my shirt. It’s just I get a little dizzy.’

Robert offered, ‘You can leave it on until we reach the gate.’

The guard, however, wouldn’t hear of this. This was his chance to take command of himself. ‘No, sir. Best I take it off now, for the colonel and for Derry.’

On the other side of the city Daniel led a group of grumbling ancient warriors towards Bishop’s Gate. Thoroughly frustrated, he felt that snails could crawl faster than the men were walking.

‘Of course, you’re young!’ One of the men kept muttering this as if that fact was Daniel’s fault.

Fortunately it was too dark, and the soldiers were too caught up in their ailing bodies to notice the black looks that Daniel fired at them.
Did they have to be so slow? Did that fool Scarrow have to keep coughing like that; it was disgusting. Why was this taking so long?

His thoughts weren’t exactly charitable. Since Horace’s
death he hardly recognised himself. There were days where he felt he had been cruelly tricked into taking part in something that he should never have got involved with. He knew it did not make a whit of sense because if he somehow was given the opportunity to do it all over again, he knew he would do the exact same thing again, that is follow Robert and the others and help close the gates.
But nobody told me that my dog would have to die.

He had said as much to his father who upset him deeply by asking if he would have preferred his baby sister or his mother to die in Horace’s place. It was a horrible question and also, Daniel felt, an unfair one.
Is my father actually criticising me for mourning my pet?

These had been his waking thoughts and, thus, explained his appalling bad mood.

This miserable lot are being handed their freedom. Why can’t they move faster?

Scarrow started whining again, in between creaking gasps for air, ‘Oh, why won’t he slow down?’

Daniel bit his lip but ended up saying anyway, ‘Just be glad you’re getting out of here. How can you want to delay a moment more, for God’s sake?’

His three followers were too exhausted to form a reply to this so Daniel was free to continue berating them. ‘You get to go somewhere else, where they don’t eat dogs or people’s pets!’

His anger, however, wasn’t strong enough to carry him when his own strength dwindled. Therefore, it was with great bitterness that he had to slow down, accidentally giving in to the useless Scarrow.

Because he had time to think, the most outrageous thought formed in his mind. He could strip off and slip out with the sick soldiers or – even better – he could hit one of these fools over the head with a rock and take their place. He could do it; he really could. And go somewhere else where they don’t make you eat your best friend.

He yelped out a word, a bad word, one he had never dared to say aloud before, but now he sent it bouncing off the walls and the stones beneath his feet. It summed up everything, all his frustrations and his mixed-up feelings about Derry and even his family.

The men didn’t chastise him; words like that were part of their daily conversation. They merely shrugged their bony shoulders in agreement, not that Daniel noticed.

At Bishop’s Gate, Adam was busy. As the Sherrard brothers delivered their charges, and then returned for more, it was Adam who held the gate open, just enough to allow the sick to squeeze through and then have their substitute come through from the other side.

The bad weather was both a hindrance and a help. On the one side it was not pleasant to be out in it but, on the other side, the Jacobites preferred to be out of it
too and kept to their camp.

Each naked body that came in was quickly given clothes and told to take their place on the walls. The new men were glad to be of service and glad to be wearing clothes again, although they could have done with a bowl of soup after their ordeal. However, they quickly understood the city’s plight; there really was little food to be had, other than small tallow pancakes that were flavoured with ginger.

Samuel Clebourne was among the new men. He shook Adam’s hand warmly. ‘Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down!’

A couple of hours later, Adam decided that enough people had been swapped. He told the Sherrard boys to return to their posts, noting how exhausted they looked. He had forgotten which one was older and younger; they were both so thin and pale.
Of course
, he reminded himself,
I probably look as bad as they do.

The new men stood out as if they had a light shining on them. It inspired confidence in him that there was plenty of fight left in Derry.

So, now, we wait once more
, he told himself.

The following day the naked crowd outside the walls was shepherded over to Windmill Hill, to wait yet again for what, nobody was sure.

Throughout all this the bombs continued to fall. Bishop’s Gate was taking a right battering and the walls either side
of it needed constant attention and the reapplying of mud and stone. Fortunately these were two items that were still plentiful in the city.

Governor Walker was adamant that any able-bodied soldier must now stay on the wall. He walked about with his notebook and pencil, constantly counting things like musket balls while also making lists of what foodstuffs were left, along with the number of soldiers who had died that day. He didn’t share with anyone else that he was keeping a daily record of events.

It had started accidentally. One day he busied himself listing out the food measurements, for he was in charge of doling out the soldiers’ rations. Next, he thought he should list the prices of the foods that were available to buy, along with their prices: 2
s
6
d
for a dog’s head; 1
s
for a rat and 4
s
6
d
for a cat. Gradually it occurred to him that he should write everything down. For one thing it gave him something to do and it reminded him that there would come a time when the siege would be over – nothing lasts forever – and people might like to understand how it had been for him and his parishioners, what they had gone through for God and for King William.

He blotted his paper, one evening, after describing how a certain citizen of ample proportions had not left his house in days because he felt his neighbours might wish to kill him in order to make a meal of his wobbly belly.
Oh, he wasn’t entirely sure if it was true or not but it made a good story.

He smiled and nodded his head, looking for his cat to share his excitement with. However, the poor creature had gone the way of other pets. After all, just the same as everyone else, the reverend had had to make sacrifices, including parting with his collection of beer and butter, but that was a long time ago now and best forgotten. He wouldn’t be writing that particular story down.

Yet, his ambition was being realised:
I will write about everything and then, when this is all finally over, I will publish it as a book. My own book!

He puffed out his chest and continued aloud, ‘My book will be known as the one and true account. Yes, yes, the king and queen themselves will read it.’

The reverend took a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in ink and, with a worthy sniff, wrote in large, confident letters:

He peered over what he had written, holding the page up to the flame of the candle, turning it this way and that, highlighting one letter at a time. Who would doubt
the written word?

From the city walls a shout went up. ‘Look! They’re leaving.’

James Morrison, Robert and Daniel followed the sound of the voice, just in time to see the crowd of naked parishioners being led off in the direction they had come from.

James took a guess. ‘They must be bringing them home.’

The brothers felt he must be right. Daniel also felt relieved but he wasn’t sure why. Something niggled at him. What was it? As they watched the sprawling crowd recede into the distance, he realised what it was. Now, he had to decide whether to keep it to himself or not. After all it was only his opinion and what did he know?

Still, at the heart of his understanding beat his rage over what had happened to Horace. The world was a different place since ‘that’ day, or maybe it was just that he had changed. He made sure to say the words as casually and lightly as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a heated debate that he didn’t have the energy for.

‘’Tis strange that!’ he sighed.

Robert glanced at James, leaving him to be the cooperative one.

‘What do you mean?’ asked James. ‘What’s strange?’

Daniel looked at him and looked away again as if he were embarrassed.

The reliable James was intrigued. ‘What is it, Daniel?’
How he hated to be left out of anything.

Daniel ignored his brother’s obvious growing discomfort, while poor James was oblivious to all.

Meanwhile, Robert sensed a tingle of his brother’s attitude. He stared hard at the multitude in the distance, prepared for just about anything. Daniel was so moody and peculiar these days. His father said he was grieving for Horace, and that grief affected different people in different ways.

Daniel leant against the wall and lied, ‘Well, it has only just struck me that no massacre ever occurred.’

James scrunched up his face to make sense of this but he needn’t have bothered. Daniel didn’t want his conversation side-tracked and continued, ‘All those hundreds and hundreds of people out there with no clothes and no weapons. The Papists could have slaughtered them all but they didn’t. It would have been so easy … but, they didn’t hurt them at all.’

Against his better judgement, Robert queried quietly, ‘So?’

By now James had figured out that he wasn’t required to make a contribution.

Daniel repeated his brother’s word, ‘So? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.’

Robert wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I’m glad they are being allowed home, but that doesn’t mean
that we are out of danger yet. Those people didn’t close the gates on the Jacobite army or fire on a king. We may still be made to pay for all of that.’

James wanted to add something else. ‘Have you forgotten that the ships William sent are somewhere out there?’