The Year of the French (23 page)

The letter signed and folded, John joined his brother in the drawing room. The curtains were closed, and George was reading by a bright lamp. A fruit knife lay upon the low walnut table.

“It is very late,” George said. “I thought you were in bed.”

“I was writing,” John said.

“Writing, indeed. A tiring occupation.”

“Only a letter,” John said. “To Ellen.”

“Most tiring of all,” George said. “Writing to a woman is sheer hell. Every sentence is a grenade which can explode in your face. They save the letters and then fling sentences from them at you.”

“Not Ellen,” John said. He sat down facing his brother, and stretched his legs towards the fire. “I lack your experience with women of the world.”

“A pity, perhaps,” George said. With the small, sharp-bladed knife he cut open a page. “Negotiations with a clever woman is splendid training for other matters. Politics, for example.”

“Or warfare,” John said. “To judge by your metaphors.”

“Yes,” George said. “Politics or war. Dangerous matters for the inexperienced.”

“Dangerous indeed,” John said.

“War or politics. Or rebellion. Rebellion is the most dangerous of all. Conspiracies, informers, hot-headed companions. Exciting enough, no doubt, but a most unhealthy kind of excitement.”

“Less unhealthy than courting the wife of a duellist,” John said. “I have heard of such a thing.”

“At least the prize was certain and specific,” George said.

George pushed his spectacles high on his pale forehead.

“And was it worth the danger?”

“Oh yes,” George said. “Indeed it was. I think of her often. A sweet-tempered creature and magnificent in bed. Clever as well. A damned clever woman.”

“You set great store by cleverness, do you not, George? I was oppressed by that when I was younger. I am not clever at all.”

“But you are, John. You are. You are just clever enough to find your way into serious trouble.”

John sighed. “Very well, then. Shall we talk about it?”

“Not tonight. Time enough later on. Later on we shall have a long talk about it. It is late at night. A bad time for a quarrel.”

In unsteady firelight, the portrait of a tall, straight-backed man in foreign dress faced the brothers, unnoticed.

Castlebar, August 15

“God save all here,” MacCarthy said in a loud voice as he entered the alehouse.

“God save you kindly,” the man of the house said, and several of the men sitting by the fireplace. Two British soldiers in their coats of lobster red looked at him incuriously and then turned away. MacCarthy put down his copper, and carried a tankard of porter the length of the room to join a bald, middle-aged man.

“You are far from Killala, Owen MacCarthy.”

“I am so, Sean MacKenna, and it was to visit you that I came here. I called in at the shop, and Brid said that I would find you here. ’Tis well for you that you have both a shop and a school and can spend your evenings in the taverns.”

“You are no stranger to them yourself,” MacKenna said, and made room for him on the low bench.

“Ach, sure, the taverns in Killala are dirty old places. ’Tis a fine lively town you have here, with the marks of civilisation upon it.” The English word,
civilisation
, rang like a copper on the floor of his Irish.

“You are welcome always in Castlebar,” MacKenna said. His voice, like his words, was grave and quiet.

“There are a fair number of those lads in the town,” MacCarthy said, jerking his head towards the two soldiers.

MacKenna nodded. “There are two regiments of them. The Prince of Wales’s Fencibles one is called, and I cannot remember the other. They are in barracks now, but ’tis said that they may be put at free quarters among the people. How would you like to share your bed with those two?”

“No better than they would themselves. It is a hard life soldiers have, sent off from home to live among Irishmen and wild Indians.”

“They were in the fighting in Wexford,” MacKenna said, “and now they have been sent here. Strange creatures they are, and their English is very poor.”

“Likely enough they will have business to attend to in Mayo.” It was a question.

MacKenna answered it. “I wonder, Owen, would you not teach the Latin tongue to the Whiteboys of Killala, that they might spend their nights peacefully upon Caesar and Virgil?”

“Much use those boors would have for the Latin tongue,” MacCarthy said. He buried his nose in the tankard.

“There are Whiteboys in Castlebar now,” MacKenna said, “and in town-lands to the east, but they have done nothing. They put a placard up on the gate of the Protestant church. The drawing of a coffin and some misspelled words.”

“The Whiteboy touch,” MacCarthy said. “There are lads calling themselves Whiteboys in Foxford and Swinford as well. A carter gave me a lift from Ballina to here, and he was full of talk about them.”

“What had he to say?”

“That the people in Mayo intend to rise up, as the people in Wexford did, and in the north. But he was a foolish, toothless old fellow. Words dribbled out of him and you wouldn’t believe a tenth of them.”

MacKenna shook his head. “You can hear the same talk in Castlebar. We are all to be set free and have fine great farms. And all the old stuff from the prophecies of Columkille and the chapbooks that prophecy men used hawk at the frairs. There has been a child with four thumbs born to a miller in Sligo, and that is a certain sign. You have never in your life heard such foolish talk.”

“I have indeed,” MacCarthy said. “It is a thriving trade in this country.”

He picked up their empty tankards and brought them to the counter. The two red soldiers were to his left side, talking quietly together. They seemed distant from the room, encased within their coarse, vivid cloth.

“I am thinking of moving on, Sean,” he said to MacKenna when he returned with fresh porter.

MacKenna nodded. “ ’Tis a hard disagreeable town that you are in, beside that ugly sea.”

“Ach, ’tis not that. ’Tis frightened I am. When the Whiteboys were starting up, I wrote their proclamation for them, and they are after me now for a second one. It will not be long before some little bastard of an informer whispers my name to the magistrates.”

“Holy Mother of God, Owen! What possessed you to do such a mad thing? They do not care who they hang.”

“ ’Tis done,” MacCarthy said. “Whyever I did it, ’tis done. Much choice I had. Ach, I am not sorry I did it. ’Tis a terrible life the people have, and well you know it. I declare to God, Sean, things happen in this kingdom without rhyme or reason. Some fellows hough a landlord’s cattle in Killala, and a few weeks later the people in Castlebar are talking about babies with four thumbs.”

“More than thumbs and babies,” MacKenna said. “They say that the French are on the sea and that the army of the Gael will rise up.”

Scraps from old songs floated, soundless, in the close air. He saw once again the forest of black pikes against a grey horizon.

“Perhaps they are,” he said. “How would they know about a thing like that in Mayo or in Sligo?”

“You have the right of it, Owen. You should clear out of Mayo. ’Tis sorry I would be to see you at the assizes.”

“I came here to see you for that reason. I thought you might know of some town to the east that had need of a master.”

MacKenna drank and then nodded. “I will write tonight to Pat Dunphy in Longford. He always has great knowledge of such matters. Sure what town is there would not be proud to have Owen MacCarthy the poet for master?”

MacCarthy smiled. “More town than one, Sean. And well you know it.”

“Not at all,” MacKenna said quickly. “Not at all. There is not a town but should be proud. You are a fine poet, and your name is honoured by men who have never seen you.”

“Especially by those. I can be a great disappointment. But I keep a good school. To be sure, people must make a few allowances, but I am worth it.”

“You should keep to this,” MacKenna said, raising his porter. “ ’Tis the hard drop makes the trouble. I will write to Pat Dunphy tonight, and to Andrew MacGennis in Mullingar. ’Tis the rich counties have the most need of masters.”

“That would be kindness,” MacCarthy said. “In a week or two if you have heard nothing, I may drift down that way and take my chances.”

“You should, Owen. ’Tis sorry I will be to lose your company, but you should go.”

“What if they are indeed upon the sea, Sean? When I was a young lad in Kerry with my head full of other men’s poetry, I used walk along the cliffs, and look out across the water. They would be great, tall-masted ships, I thought, moving silently, with sails spread like clouds.”

“Ach, the English could be pulled low and the French raised high, and you and I would still teach school. The cabins would be as small, and the spuds as hard. You should have more sense.”

“ ’Tis easy for the two of us to talk,” MacCarthy said. “Yourself with the shop and the school both, and myself with the poetry. What of the thousands of poor fellows who never know will they be driven off their bit of land, and who never see the inside of this alehouse because they lack the single copper to put down?”

“Sure the French wouldn’t bring with them barrels of coppers for the spalpeens of Connaught. It is murder and bloodshed they would bring. I have no use for that.”

“I know,” MacCarthy said. “I know that.”

MacKenna nodded towards the two soldiers. “Those fellows with their drums and guns and guns and drums. They mean less than a butterfly in the air or a branch in flower or a girl’s voice raised in song.”

“It is my sorrow that I will no longer be seeing you, Sean. There are few enough that a man can discuss serious matters with.”

“What of that woman of yours, above in Killala?”

MacCarthy shrugged. “I will leave her as I found her, a small-waisted young widow who would tempt a saint.”

“About some things, Owen MacCarthy, you are a careless and a selfish man.”

“ ’Tis far different for you, Sean, wed to a fine woman like Brid and with a fine lively little son. But that would not suit me at all. Look at poor MacGrath down in Clare, with every drop of poetry in him drained out by that shrew of a wife, and his two sons running wild. A frightful example.”

“A poor example, Owen, but I would do better to save my breath. It makes little sense to preach sermons at a poet.”

MacCarthy put his two hands on MacKenna’s soft, sloping shoulders. “I will be back again next week and we will make a night of it.”

“This next week,” MacKenna said. “Brid can make us a meal, and if you have any new verses composed, it would be an honour to hear them.”

“I may,” MacCarthy said. “There is an image stuck in my mind, but I have no words for it. It gives me no peace. ’Tis a queer backward way of making verse, like going through a door arse first. Kiss Brid for me tonight, and give Timothy my hug.”

As he was leaving, one of the soldiers called out to him. “Oy there, Paddy.”

MacCarthy turned towards him. “Oy there, red soldier,” he said in English.

“Where are all the pretty girls our sergeant said we would find here?”

“All locked away,” MacCarthy said, “with the fathers and husbands trembling at the thought of handsome soldiers in Castlebar.”

“Would you not know where we could find a stray one or two?”

“You should ask someone else,” MacCarthy said. “I am not a Castlebar man. Where are you from yourselves?”

“I am a London man, and my mate here is from Derbyshire.”

“You are far from home.”

MacCarthy dug in his pocket, and, having made certain that he had the coppers, bought porter for the three of them. Surprised and pleased, the Londoner raised his tankard towards MacCarthy in salutation.

“You are quiet people here, Paddy. And a great bloody relief it is. The fencibles have been in Wexford dealing with the croppies.”

“Croppies?” MacCarthy asked, puzzled.

“Rebels,” the Londoner said. “Down there, they call rebels ‘croppies.’ Haven’t you heard the song, ‘Croppies Lie Down’?”

“Lie down they did,” MacCarthy said.

The Londoner nodded. “We slaughtered them at a place called Vinegar Hill. Fair sickened me, it did. Ordinary blokes like you and me. Spoke English too, most of them.”

“Bloody savages,” the man from Derbyshire said. “Rebels to the King.”

He was thickset and slow of speech. The Londoner was short and wiry.

“A couple of thousand of them there were,” the Londoner said, “all hunted up onto the slopes of Vinegar Hill, with nothing but pikes in their hands. We smashed them with cannon fire and musket fire, and then went after them with naked steel. And what was it all in aid of, Paddy? Can you answer me that?”

MacCarthy shook his head.

“Pikes and scythes against artillery,” the Londoner said. “A great bloody way to commit suicide. Was that the plan, Paddy?”

The porter was darker than bog water.

“It makes no sense,” the Londoner said patiently. “I might want to fight my mate here, but I know he could break me in two.”

“Bloody fucking rebels,” the man from Derbyshire said. “Are you a fucking rebel yourself?” he asked MacCarthy.

MacCarthy nodded towards him, and said to the Londoner, “Why don’t you tell your mate there to put down the drink I bought him and see can he break me in two?”

“There you are now,” the Londoner said, with a delighted grin. His teeth were small and uneven. “There’s your Paddy for you, always ready for a fight or a frolic. My mate don’t mean nothing. Your drink was one too much for him. Don’t you go messing with soldiers of the King, Paddy. There’s too many of us. Look here, chum.” He drained off his porter, and signalled to the tavernkeeper. “We’re over here for your own good, see, not ours. You don’t want a pack of Frenchies here, sleeping with your women, and you don’t want mobs of bog-trotters waving pikes in your faces and insulting the King. Your King as well as ours. We’ve got no stomach for putting the steel to poor lads, but it’s our job, see? After Vinegar Hill, I saw mates sitting on the grass puking their guts out.”

“What about your friend there?” MacCarthy asked. “Did he have a weak stomach?” But he took the fresh porter from the Londoner.