Lucinda Sly (10 page)

‘Did you bar both doors?’ Lucinda asked him, afraid that her husband had returned.

They jumped out of the bed, both searching for their own clothes. Who was standing at the room door but Bridget Massey, a friend of the Slys. She stood there goggle-eyed looking at the two naked figures before her, Dempsey looking for his trousers and Lucinda trying to cover her body.

‘Oh God protect us,’ Bridget wailed, ‘but the Devil’s work is
going on in this house of damnation this evening.’

‘I know what you think we are doing,’ Lucinda began, ‘but the opposite is the case. The bed is full of fleas. John was trying to get rid of them when they got into our clothes.’

Bridget turned and went straight for the door.

‘Upon my soul,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have seen people beating a blanket with a bat but I never saw two naked people killing fleas without one.’

She went out the door taking out her rosary beads for the house and its inhabitants … that God would be merciful and forgive their sins and that he would banish Lucifer to the hobs of hell.

‘What will we do now?’ Dempsey asked. ‘If she opens her mouth you will be as good as dead, Lucinda.’

Lucinda thought a moment.

‘Leave it to me,’ she reassured him. ‘I will visit her tomorrow and I will bring her a lump of butter and a dozen eggs. She knows well what kind of man Walter Sly is.’

‘Tell me if you think she is loose with the tongue,’ Dempsey pleaded.

‘Look,’ Lucinda informed him, ‘even if she is, she is of the breed of the tinkers. Sure, nobody believes a word they say even if it was in the confession box.’

By the time Sly reached home that night, or the following morning I should say, it wasn’t far from cockcrow. Nearly the whole village heard him with his shouting and bawling like a madman. Dempsey was in his own bed in the back kitchen and
Lucinda had one eye open in her own bed. She heard the front door opening and then the thud of Sly’s drunken body falling into the middle of the kitchen.

‘Lucinda,’ he demanded, ‘get up and get me some food.’

Lucinda pretended not to hear him. Sly went down to the
bedroom
, caught her by the hair of the head, pulled her out on to the floor and down to the kitchen. Then he began to kick her.

‘All right,’ she shouted in fear, ‘give me a chance to wake up.’

Just then Dempsey came into the room from the back kitchen in his drawers. When he saw the abuse Sly was meting out to his wife, he jumped in between them. He told Lucinda to sit down on the chair.

‘But I have to prepare food for Walter,’ she whimpered fearfully.

‘By the time I’m finished with him, he won’t have much mind for food,’ Dempsey promised her catching the collar of Sly’s coat and letting fly with his left fist to Sly’s jaw. He punched Sly with his right and left until he was on the flat of his back. He lifted him from the ground then and took him to the bed.

‘Now, my good woman,’ Dempsey addressed Lucinda, ‘he has no need for food or to put you to the trouble of preparing it.’

Lucinda burst out laughing.

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laughing in three months,’ Dempsey smiled. ‘You should laugh more often.’

‘Oh, John,’ Lucinda replied, ‘you should have stayed out of this mess. When he wakes up in the morning he’ll give you the road.’

‘Indeed he won’t,’ Dempsey assured her. ‘Don’t you remember
the last time I gave him a couple of thumps; he blamed his
neighbour
, Michael Connors. Off to sleep with you now and don’t be in any way worried.’

Midsummer, 1834. Walter Sly had added extra cows to his herd. A person not in the know would say that he had added to his herd to improve his farm but that was not so; he did it to add to Lucinda’s and Dempsey’s workload so that they would be so exhausted in the evening that they would have no time for romance.

Michael Connors, Sly’s neighbour, had whispered in his ear that Lucinda and Dempsey were becoming very fond of each other … Yes, and that it was no wonder that he was getting pleasure where Sly once was. Rumours were going around that Lucinda was the worst kind of witch. Even the women who sold butter beside her on the street in Carlow had turned against her because at that time there was no worse sin than a woman having an affair with a man who was not her husband. Some of the bigwigs’ wives were engaged in such practices, it was said. Many of them were banished but it was seldom spoken about as they were sent on a long holiday never to return.

Lucinda spent a hard summer and autumn as more animals were out on pasture and extra fodder had to be provided for them
for the winter. Walter Sly spent most of the summer going to fairs enjoying himself and drinking heavily. That was the summer that Lucinda was at her wits’ end, and, but for John Dempsey’s help and friendship, she would have been put into the lunatic asylum. Her bones were protruding through her skin, she had lost so much weight.

The November Fair was the one Walter Sly most looked
forward
to as it was held in Carlow town. He would always have two or three horses ready for it. It was a hard, dry Saturday morning with a frosty breeze that was blowing from the north as is usual in November. Lucinda and Dempsey milked the two cows that weren’t dry yet. As soon as the three of them had eaten breakfast, Sly ordered Dempsey to inspect the boundary ditches and to make any necessary repairs. Dempsey went out the front door and over the ditch into the field. Sly watched him until he disappeared from sight. Lucinda knew that something was irritating him and that he didn’t want Dempsey to be present.

No sooner was Dempsey out of sight than Sly turned on Lucinda and hit her across the face.

‘For the last couple of months,’ he snarled, ‘the butter money is short. Is this how you are paying your stallion for his services?’

He hit her again and went to the bottom of the kitchen. He took the bowl from the top of the dresser and shoved his hand into it. He took out two pounds.

‘What’s this?’ he bellowed. ‘Or do you think you are married to a stump of a fool?’

Then he smashed the bowl on the floor. He put the money into
a pouch that was already bulging with notes. Lucinda burst into tears.

‘It was my mother who gave me that bowl for my first marriage,’ she sobbed.

Sly caught another bowl and smashed it. Lucinda could bear this no longer. She went down to the dresser, took four mugs that were in the house before she married Sly and smashed them on the floor.

‘Any fool, woman or man, can smash ware on the floor,’ she cried, walking away from him.

At this, Sly’s face turned the colour of a turnip.

‘As soon as I get a chance,’ he fumed, ‘I’m going into the attorney to take your name off my will and, if there’s any sight of you when I come home tonight, I’ll make a skillet of your head.’

He rushed out to the stable, saddled his horse, put headstalls on the two young horses he was ready to sell at the fair, jumped on his horse’s back and tightened the reins he had on the two horses.

‘Go on,’ he bellowed in a voice so harsh that the horses ran as fast as they could down the boreen.

It was hunger that reminded John Dempsey that it was time to head for the house. Lucinda had boiled a pig’s head and a pot of potatoes. As soon as he came in the door, she got a fright.

‘Oh, God save us,’ she exclaimed, ‘I thought it was Walter who was there.’

She turned her back to him as if she were concealing
something
.

‘What’s the big secret you are hiding from me at the table?’ Dempsey enquired.

‘You won’t believe this,’ Lucinda began, ‘but before Walter left he lost his head with me. He hit me a few times with his fists and broke some of my delf on the floor. And he found the money I was hiding in the bowl. I have seen him mad many times but I have never seen white froth coming from his mouth until today. He said he would make a skillet of my head when he came home … Oh, John,’ she sighed, ‘I will be got dead in the morning.’

Dempsey saw a wooden box on the floor.

‘What’s in the box?’ he asked Lucinda.

‘When Walter was beating me,’ she told him, ‘I saw something falling on the floor. I thought at first that it was some sort of pin. I stayed where I was until he had gone for a while. I picked it up from the ground. What was there but a key. I hadn’t the courage until now to find out what the key would open but it is suitable to open this box that was under the bed. You won’t believe what is in the box.’

‘Upon my soul,’ Dempsey observed, ‘from the state of your eye, it wasn’t a slap you got but the fist.’

Then he walked to the side of the table.

‘Oh my!’ he exclaimed taking a gun from the box. ‘I wonder which one of us he was going to kill with this … Yes, and it is ready for use.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lucinda asked him, trembling.

‘What I mean is that there is a bullet in the gun. A person couldn’t be more prepared than that.’

They looked at each other and then at the gun.

‘But we have the gun now,’ said Lucinda with fire in her eyes.

‘Ah Lucinda,’ Dempsey pleaded, ‘didn’t I tell you before to put those thoughts from your mind?’

She turned on him. ‘John Dempsey,’ she began, ‘have you any backbone? Look! It’s very simple. We will both stay up tonight until whatever time he comes home. He will be blind drunk as usual. When he is seated in the chair and fast asleep, then we will do the deed.’

Dempsey wasn’t too happy with the plan but Lucinda explained to him that there were horse dealers who weren’t too happy with Sly and were out to get him for a long time and that it was he, Sly, who circulated that story. They would both take Sly’s body out to the haggard and she would go looking for the
neighbours
’ help.

‘What will we do with the gun?’ Dempsey interjected.

‘We will put it in the box and back where we found it,’ Lucinda told him animatedly.

‘This is our last chance to get rid of suffering and a bad
marriage
at the same time. Aren’t we the two who would work this farm together,’ she coaxed him.

‘It’s as well for us to have a bite of food first before I lose my appetite,’ Dempsey replied.

When she heard this, Lucinda knew that she had a partner who would do the deed with her.

The horse fair in Carlow town was on 8 November 1834, and it was the biggest horse fair in the county. Buyers and men selling
horses came from all over Ireland. Walter Sly knew most of them well from travelling from fair to fair. The horse buyers were big spenders and big drinkers and they knew their business.

It is said that the day you buy an animal is the day you sell it. Let me explain – if you buy a good animal, you will be able to sell it later on even if the price is high. The November fair in Carlow was the one where every breed and kind of horse was for sale from the work horse to the hunter, not to mention cobs, mules, jennets and donkeys. Everyone, from the highest gentlemen to the tinkers of the road, was at the fair and if a particular buyer didn’t know enough about buying an animal, an unscrupulous one would quickly fool him up to his eyes.

Walter Sly tied the two horses he had for sale to a ring outside Langstrom’s. He stabled the horse that would bring him home in Langstrom’s stable and put an armful of hay under his head.

Frances Campbell had a couple of horses for sale too. She was the wife of a man who held a seat in the House of Lords in England. They had stables in counties Carlow and Kildare. Before he married, Sly often had a drink with Frances and they would go home together when her husband was away in the House of Lords. Nothing much was made of it as they went home the same road or most of it anyway. But it used be said that Sly went the extra mile to her house with her for fear she would be attacked by tinkers. Some of Langstrom’s customers remembered her advising Sly against marrying Lucinda Singleton some years previously.

Frances was standing beside the two horses she had for sale as Sly was coming back from the stable. ‘Let’s go into the tavern,
Frances,’ Sly invited her, ‘and we’ll wash down the dust of the road.’

Frances only wanted the word. They both went in. They went into the card room at the back of the bar because women weren’t allowed to drink in the main bar at that time. They drank each other’s, and the King’s, health.

‘I haven’t seen much of you this past while,’ Sly began.

‘I spend most of the year in London now that my husband has been promoted in the House of Lords and, since he got his new post, my heart is broken,’ Frances said with disdain.

Sly looked at her.

‘Is it how you don’t like the city life?’ he asked her.

Frances shook herself.

‘I hate that city,’ she volunteered.

‘And what takes you over there so?’ Sly persisted.

‘Because it came to my ears that he was getting fond of a floosie who works as his secretary,’ she informed him.

When he heard this, Sly burst out laughing.

‘Isn’t he entitled to satisfy his desires?’ he laughed. ‘It’s only human nature – and look who’s talking! You’re no angel yourself.’

Frances smiled when she heard this.

‘It wasn’t that he was playing around with his secretary that bothered me,’ she confided in him, ‘but when he wasn’t eating
supper
at home, I was worried that he would give me the road. That is very common in England at the moment. Then how would I be, without a title or a shilling in my pouch? I’d be like a tinker’s wife. But it’s not that but this. How are you getting on since you got married?’

Sly shook himself and looked around the room in case anybody but Frances could hear him.

‘You gave me good advice,’ he complained, ‘and I didn’t take it. I thought I was marrying an angel of a woman. Oh! She is far from an angel. An out and out bitch. I’d be as well off with an oak plank beside me in bed. She is cold, quarrelsome, headstrong and she thinks she is wearing the trousers. Upon my soul, it would take me the rest of my life to explain.’

Frances and Sly didn’t leave Langstrom’s until the afternoon.

‘Right,’ said Sly stretching himself, ‘if we don’t go about our business, we will have to take our animals back home again.’

Out they went.

It was late in the evening when Sly sold his two yearlings to a buyer from a stable in Kildare. He headed for the tavern along with the buyer. That is where he would be paid for his horses and he would give the buyer a small sum for luck. He met other buyers he knew. Without a doubt he would have to take a few drinks in their company. It was the tradition at the fairs.

It was some time later when Frances Campbell came in. She had to spend more time out in the street before a buyer approached her. Ned Radwell, a neighbour of Sly’s, joined them. Sly was very drunk but Frances wasn’t quite as bad. It was about five o’clock and already it was dark outside.

Frances was the one with the most sense at the end of the evening.

‘Walter,’ she said, ‘don’t you think it is time to be going home?’

The three of them left when they had finished their drinks.
They went out to the stable and harnessed their horses for the road home. They took the road out by Graiguecullen and up towards Bilboa. When they reached Bilboa the three of them stopped for a last drink before they parted. They had a drink with Thomas Singleton, Lucinda’s son who was in charge of the police station there. After a short time Frances and Ned left for home. Sly had only two more drinks with Singleton but, during that time, he let him know that Lucinda was becoming very cantankerous. Singleton told him that she used to be like that when he was young and that it would be better for Sly to take no notice of her. Singleton observed that Sly was blind drunk.

‘Maybe I should harness my horse and go as far as your house with you,’ he suggested when he saw that Sly was intent on going home.

‘Ah, I pity your poor head,’ Sly spoke in a slurred voice. ‘Put me in my saddle and the horse will go to the house himself.’

Singleton kept his eye on Walter on the horse’s back as they went off in the direction of Oldleighlin until they disappeared from sight at the turn of the road.

Lucinda was seated on a chair with John Dempsey opposite her on the other side of the fire and they had piled on extra turf as they weren’t expecting Sly home until midnight. They were both
nervous
as they weren’t sure that their plan was without fault but, as Lucinda said, it would be better to be in prison than to live the life she had with her blackguard of a husband. For a while Dempsey would be willing and, half an hour later, he would be in favour of abandoning the plan. But when Lucinda told him that she would
take the full blame if things went wrong, he relaxed. He was a
reasonably
young man with his whole life before him. He was very fond of Lucinda but there is a great difference between being fond of somebody and being in love.

They had no lamp lit and they were depending on the fire to cast sufficient light around the kitchen. Lucinda told Dempsey that if Walter saw a light in the kitchen late at night he would become suspicious as she usually went to bed at nine o’clock
during
the winter. At twenty past ten they heard the sound of a horse’s hooves coming down the boreen. They both jumped out of their chairs.

‘You know what you have to do,’ Lucinda spoke with a tremor in her voice. ‘Go into the back kitchen and I’ll go into the
bedroom
. Give him twenty minutes after he sits down in his chair. He should be sound asleep by then. Put your head out the door and if he is asleep come to the room door and you know the rest.’

From the humming they could both hear, they knew that Sly had drunk more than his fill. He always returned from the tavern humming and talking to himself.