The Year of the French (66 page)

“Not roaming nor wandering,” the Granard captain said. “There are some of us that have been sent to find the Mayo men and tell them what has happened in Longford. I will ride up along Lough Allen into Sligo. I would be upon the road now if darkness had not fallen.”

“There is no need for that,” MacCarthy said, but only Laverty heard him. He raised his voice. “There is no need to bestir yourself,” he said. “The Mayo men are at Lough Allen themselves. They will be in Drumshanbo tomorrow.”

They turned then to look at him. The Granard captain stared with small eyes sunk deep into his meaty face. “What in hell does that mean?”

“There is no need to find the Mayo men,” MacCarthy said. “They will cross the bridge here tomorrow on their way to Longford. And the Frenchmen with them.”

The Granard captain rested his glass on the counter, and said to Dunphy, “Who is this fellow?”

“A friend of mine,” Laverty said quickly, turning his sightless eyes towards the sound of the voice.

“And why is he here, Martin?” Dunphy asked.

“They will cross the bridge,” MacCarthy said, “and the English cavalry after them. Go back and tell that to the people in Longford.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” one of the local men said.

“He was a schoolmaster with me in Munster,” Laverty said. “I knew him years ago, when I had my sight. He is a most respectable man.”

“He was then, perhaps,” Dunphy said. “He is not now. He is drunk now.”

“What would a Munster schoolmaster know about the Mayo men?” the Granard captain said to the room.

“God preserve us,” another of the local men said. “The Mayo men and the English cavalry. There will be slaughter here.”

“Here or somewhere,” MacCarthy said. “There are thousands of the English soldiers waiting for them in Carrick. They must know that in Longford, surely.”

“You are the fellow that I know nothing of,” the Granard captain said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I was with them,” MacCarthy said. “I was with them in Mayo and in Sligo. I saw them turn south.”

Laverty put a cautioning hand upon his arm.

“Is there a man in the room who believes this fellow?” the Granard captain asked. “If you were with them in Mayo, you would be with them now in their time of triumph, and not sitting drunk in Drumshanbo. Do you claim to be a United Man?”

“Time of triumph,” MacCarthy repeated. “ ’Tis running they are, as fast as they can, with great English horsemen after them. The one hope they have is for the Longford men to keep open the road to Dublin. Get back with you to Granard and tell them that.”

“Are you a United Man at all? Let you say the oath.”

“You stupid great ox,” MacCarthy shouted, as Laverty’s hand tightened on him. “Don’t talk to me about oaths.”

“ ’May the King’s skin make a drum for the United Men to beat, and may all Ireland be free from the centre to the sea.’ That is the oath of the United Men, and there is not a United Man in the kingdom who does not know it.”

“A lovely oath,” MacCarthy said, “couched in noble and stately language. I am a poet myself, and by God I envy you that oath.”

“There is a drink for you here, Owen,” Laverty said, and moved it towards him with his free hand.

MacCarthy picked up the glass, his hand shaking with drink and anger. Whiskey splashed upon his fingers.

“Look at that fellow,” the Granard captain said. “So drunk he cannot get the drink to his mouth. If you look at that fellow you will know why we have been slaves upon our own land.”

“He has the right of it there, Martin,” Dunphy said. “Take your friend out of here before he does himself a hurt.”

“ ’Tis dark night,” Laverty said to MacCarthy. “Come along back with me to the school and bide there until morning.”

“I will go if I please or bide if I please,” MacCarthy said. “And I have no wish to bide in this town. Will no one talk sense to this man, and bid him go back to Granard?”

Cautious, voice dry as thatch, Laverty said, “Let it be, then, Owen. Lead me over to the bench by the fire, and we can have a quiet drink on our own.”

“You can indeed,” Dunphy said. “You can have a drink without call for payment.”

The Granard captain said, “ ’Tis not yourself talking, but the drink. I accept that. But drink or not, you should be less quarrelsome. You have a sharp tongue in your head.”

MacCarthy nodded towards his belt. “That is a handsome great weapon you have there.”

“It is.” The heavy, pale face broke into a sudden grin, teeth yellow, dark in flickering flame. Awkwardly, he hauled the pistol from his belt, and held it for their inspection. “Two days ago I killed a man with this pistol. Do you believe that?”

“I do indeed,” MacCarthy said. “If you have been waving that engine in the air, I wonder have you any family left at all.”

“I am no stranger to weapons,” the Granard captain said, but he placed the pistol back in his belt. “I understand their ways.”

“You do,” MacCarthy said. “But you do not understand the ways of armies. No more than I do myself. And that is why we are slaves. If you would pay heed to me, you would be doing the Mayo men a good turn and yourself as well. ’Tis no concern of mine.”

He turned, and walked to the bench by the fire, leaving Laverty to find his way after him with Dunphy’s help.

“There now,” Dunphy said, handing them their glasses. “Have a quiet drink the two of you and then clear off for Martin’s school. You have had a long evening, the two of you.” He nudged Laverty.

“We will so,” Laverty said.

MacCarthy rested his elbows on his knees and looked up at Dunphy. The room was heavy with the smell of bodies pressed together, shapes lit weakly by candleflame. Whiskey was a sick, sweet taste in his throat.

“Have you believed a word of what I have been saying?”

“I don’t know,” Dunphy said. “ ’Tis always quiet in this town. Some of those fellows you see there are full of swagger, but ’tis all talk. I don’t know what to make of either of you, yourself or that big fellow from Granard. In this place we are at the latter end of things.” He rubbed wet hands along the length of his apron.

“We are all of us at the latter end of things,” MacCarthy said.

Ghostly, lit by pale moon, gilt clock hands swung through time.

“ ’Tis prodigious,” Dunphy said. “The midlands risen up and the Mayo men marching here.”

“That is a terrible temper you have always had, Owen,” Laverty said, after Dunphy had walked away from them. “You are too old to be brawling in taverns.”

“The army of the Gael!” MacCarthy said. “They strap a belt around a faction fighter and call him a captain.”

“Sure that is all we have.”

“They have more. Horsemen with swords and men in uniforms who have been to the four corners of the earth. English or French—’tis all one.”

Laverty twisted his glass between his fingers.

“ ’Tis true,” MacCarthy said. “The Frenchmen value us no more than they would the shit from a goat. They came here upon their own quarrel, and they swept up a few thousand of us to do their dirty work. We are a nation of scullions and stable boys.”

“ ’Tis no business of yours. ’Tis a poet you are and not a soldier. Yours is the noble calling.”

“Hired boys and cowherds,” MacCarthy said. “Sure when have cowherds ever been free?”

“Ach, sure we were a great people once, for all that. ’Tis in the poetry. You have written it yourself.”

Stately bumpkins, wigs clapped over matted black hair, the gentlemen of Ireland rode behind James to the Boyne—Clancarty, Mountcashal, MacMahon, O’Gorman. Their levies trudged behind them, barefoot, frightened or ferocious, pike or firelock clutched in awkward hands. William did for them. Scattered them at the Boyne, levelled them into the mud at Aughrim. Behind Limerick’s walls they starved. Patrick Sarsfield, Ireland’s darling, sailed off for France with his bumpkins, his broad back turned against the barefoot mob on the Limerick shore. Wreathed with the bays and laurels of an intricate language, dead heroes rode through looping lines of poetry, noble and courteous, generous in defeat. Ploughs and cabins, stinking dunghills and the roads of beggary. Poetry shelters us.

“Oh, to be sure,” he said. “A great people.” Sheep without a shepherd. Dark gold in candlelight.

A far crossroads, the Drumshanbo bridge across the Shannon. He turned to look at the men gathered around the Granard captain. He brings them a miracle, the midlands risen up, mobs with sharp-edged swords attacking companies of yeomen, slashing at bridles. Scraps of verse floated down to them, the army of the Gael, sifting through tavern dust.

“Have you been in Granard, Martin?” he asked.

“Have I not! I was there two, no three years ago, when they had the famous competition of the harpers. Oh, but it was lovely, Owen! There were harpers there from all over Connaught and Munster, and they played the one against the other in competition, like stairs mounting upwards. Harpers from Munster as well.”

“The best harpers are from the north,” MacCarthy said. “And the best poets from Munster. That is accepted knowledge.”

“Wasn’t Art O’Neill himself there, the finest of all harpers. But his fingers were so stiff with age that he couldn’t coax the music from them, and the prize went to a man named Fallon. Was that not a shameful disgrace to fall upon a man like Art O’Neill?”

“Two days ago,” the Granard captain was saying, “on the road outside Ballinalee, there were thirty or forty of us, and I was the captain. Most of us had scythes, and a few of the fellows had nothing but long poles sharpened to points on the one end.”

“Mother of God,” a local man said. “And you went up against the English with those?”

“There were three or four of us had proper weapons, that we had taken away from Mr. Shaw at Castlehaven. That is where I got the pistol. But the rest had but the scythes and the poles. And down upon us rode eight of the Castlepollard yeomen, from Westmeath. Lord Longford’s yeomen. We made slaughter upon them. We pulled them down from their horses and killed them. There was one big fellow that was pulled from his horse and began to rise up again. I put this pistol into his eye and pulled the trigger.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the local man said, looking at the others.

“It wouldn’t fire at all. It made a tiny click that you could hardly hear. And I turned it around in my hand and beat him about the head with the butt of it until he was dead.”

“I knew O’Neill,” MacCarthy said.

“The age on him, Owen! And as blind as I am myself. He was ninety, I swear to God. Did you know that he was once taken to Scotland to play before the gentlemen in the Highlands?”

“I marvel you didn’t hear about the time he played before Brian Boru. You could learn the history of the world by talking to Art O’Neill and with himself in the centre of it.”

“Well, so. I can only tell you what he told me. He told me that he had played for Murtogh Oge O’Sullivan. I don’t know was that true or not.”

“That was true,” MacCarthy said. “I have heard that often. Murtogh’s purse was always open. He was a generous man.” Bonniest of the wild geese, quick-turning gull hovering over the coasts of France and Munster. When the English took him at last, he died hard, his body dragged at rope’s end from Beare to Cork City.

“They were the great lads, were they not, himself and Art O’Leary. The last of our own gentry. After them, we had nothing left but our own muck. And they were killed, how long ago, twenty years, thirty?”

HANDSOME, GENEROUS, AND BRAVE
the tombstone in Kilcreagh calls O’Leary, shot down outside Macroom because an English shoneen coveted his horse. No sword could best O’Leary’s, no man could face his rages, no woman’s bed was barred to him. But it was his wife who wrote his great lament.

“You have the right of it there,” MacCarthy said. But perhaps they had been but squireens, like Randall MacDonnell, dunghill swaggerers, glorified by legend.

“That would be a story to tell,” Laverty said. “To have known Murtogh O’Sullivan.”

“O’Neill was the man to tell it,” MacCarthy said.

“Sure I never thought you had such a dislike of poor Art O’Neill.”

“Dislike, is it? He was the best musician in Ireland, and he ended his days playing jigs in the kitchens of the big houses.”

“ ’Tis said that he was never in Granard that he did not stop at Councillor Edgeworth’s, and well received he was.”

“In the kitchen,” MacCarthy said. He drank off half his whiskey. “Well do I know the kitchens of the big houses. Boxty and a cup of ale.”

“ ’Tis true for Dunphy,” Laverty said. “We are at the latter end of things.”

Sudden laughter from the other end of the tavern. Greedy, they shared the boasts of the Granard captain. MacCarthy watched him spread wide his arms. Southwards, at Granard and Longford, peasants had swarmed upon the bands of yeoman cavalry, pikes ripping at reins, riders pulled to the ground. At tavern ease, an Odysseus at rest, the Granard captain rehearsed his triumphs. Crowding near him, their faces were twisted with excitement.

“I went up into the house of Mr. Shaw of Castlehaven,” he said, “with eight or more fellows at my back. ‘Mr. Shaw,’ I said, ‘I am sorry to disturb your quiet evening, but we need arms for the Irish Republic, and to drive the stranger into the sea.’ They were all sitting there in the drawing room, the grandest room you have ever seen, himself and his wife and their daughter Anne, a quiet and a comely maiden. She was working at her embroidery. That room was furnished as though for twenty—tables and pictures on all the walls, a great case with hundreds of books in it. ‘You are making a great mistake,’ he said to me. ‘I don’t think so, Mr. Shaw,’ I said; ‘I don’t think so at all.’ And we took away with us three fowling pieces and a musket and this pistol with which I killed the yeoman.”

“There are weapons enough for an army here in Drumshanbo,” a local man said. “At Mr. Forrester’s house. The Rise, it is called.”

“They could be put to better use,” the captain said. Cowherd, belted and armed for battle. MacCarthy had seen him before, in old woodcuts from the Elizabethan wars, mouldering in Munster libraries. Rude wood-kerne.

MacCarthy drained off his glass, and then put his hand on Laverty’s shoulder. “I am off now, Martin. One of these fellows will see you safely home.”