The Year of the French (47 page)

“They will hang you at the end of all this,” she said, pulling the brush through the unruly hair. “From a gallows in this very town.”

“You never know,” MacCarthy said mildly.

“And you will deserve it.”

“Very likely. Owen MacCarthy, the judge will say, you have taken Kate Mahony to bed and for that you must hang. There is more woman than one would give a pull to the rope.”

“My name is not Mahony,” she said. “ ’Tis Cooper. Have you forgotten that?”

“Well now, Kate, you did a fair job of forgetting it yourself these past two hours. Sure all Mayo knows you as Mick Mahony’s daughter, and so they would call you were you married to Cooper or to me or to anyone else.”

“To you? I thank you, no. Married to a hedge schoolmaster with a rope waiting for him.”

“Give over that talk about ropes, would you?”

“You are frightened, are you not? And well you might be. You may play the rake, but the gallows frightens you.”

“It would frighten any man. If it comes I will scream with terror but it is far distant from this room and the two of us.”

She put down the brush and turned around to face him. “You are a terrible fool, MacCarthy. They will hang you or they will shoot you in the fighting, one or the other. There are roads open to you that you could take out of Mayo.”

“ ‘I’m a rogue and you’re another,’ ” he said in English, “ ‘and I’ll be hanged in Ballinrobe when you are hanged in Ballintubber.’ There is a vile, vulgar rhyme for you. In English they have all these boasts about rhymes and what great things they are, and see there how it works.”

A fine figure of a woman in her nightdress, sensuous as always, and as always a touch of the slattern, the dress hanging loose from a shoulder. Candlelight flickered on pale skin, brown-freckled. Warm beneath the blanket, MacCarthy, naked, would have rested there forever.

“A fine figure there,” he said, speaking his thought. She smiled, wide, generous mouth.

“You are in grave danger yourself,” he said. “Many have been hanged this year for consorting with rebels.”

“A queer kind of consorting it is that we have been at.”

“You would think differently if you knew Latin.”

“All that Latin going to waste,” she said. “The Latin and the poetry and the rest of it.”

Soft muslin masked the wide-hipped body. In sunlight, her eyes reflected summer grasses. Now shadowed, hidden. A woman will give herself to you, belly pressed to belly, legs uplifted, wrapped, tearing fingers coiled in hair, moist open lips. Then move away, the body reclothed, hand and white arm combing with familiar skill disordered hair. And it was as though no mystery had been unlocked, no bridges crossed, no door swung back. With clothes they put on mystery again, each passionate word unsaid. And for her? What had he meant to her, unlikely stranger in a darkened room, unfamiliar form hulking above her?

“Latin and the dear knows what else,” she said, “and what good has it ever done you? It will not save you now.”

“Consort,” he said. “To keep company with. As we now keep company.”

“It has always been a wonder to me that the language of the Mass can be used to speak of matters that are best left unspoken.”

“Such matters are older than the Mass,” he said. “By hundreds of years. The Mass came late.”

“You are a great scholar,’ she said. “A great scholar and poet without ten pounds to his name.” She looked at herself in the cloudy mirror, and then turned her head away abruptly. What had she seen there?

“My fortune is yet to be made,” MacCarthy said. “I have great hopes for it.”

“You have neither fortune nor future,” she said. “Not now.”

“You never know,” he said. “You would be more comfortable and warm under the blanket, ’tis grand in here.”

“ ’T was a kind thought you had to visit Mount Pleasant and see how was I faring with no man’s hand to protect me against lawless bands. You are a kindly man. That I will grant you.”

“Small kindness. I came here in the hope that one thing would lead to the next, and at the end of it we would spend the night in the one bed.”

“Sure I had no such thought as that,” she said, scandalised. “No married woman should have such thoughts. I am not one of those sluttish wives who bring grief upon their heads. I have a husband and a home, and I am content with them.”

The monumental hypocrisy of women. Sitting there before him, body still warm from his. What need would she have to brush her hair at all, had it not become entangled with their passion, damp with their passion’s sweat. A woman can remember the bed without believing what she remembers. A great convenience, and man’s perpetual defeat.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she asked him.

“There was a woman, the wife of Hugh O’Rourke of Brefny, and Thomas Costello the poet was always after her. Then O’Rourke went off to fight the English, and the woman speaks this poem that he is to come back because she cannot resist Costello. To be sure, the woman didn’t write it at all, but Thomas Costello.”

“How do you know that—”

“How do I know it! Sure, Thomas Costello was a fine poet and what would a woman be doing, writing a poem?”

Smile, half masked by candlelight. “What, indeed. And when did all this happen, if it happened at all?”

“Ach, hundreds of years ago. In the days of the O’Neill rebellion. Come over here under the warm blanket before you freeze to death.”

“Hundreds of years. Who cares about all that rubbish, save schoolmasters.”

“ ’Tis a fine poem, all the same. By God, it is.”

“That woman didn’t know the meaning of trouble. Look at myself, would you, with poor Sam locked away by the Whiteboys, and no man here to defend Mount Pleasant. They can come here when they choose, burning and screeching.”

“I have a belief, Kate, that Mount Pleasant and yourself will come out of this unscratched. You are your father’s daughter.”

“You are not helpful, are you, when a woman turns to you in her distress?”

“I will have a word tomorrow with Ferdy O’Donnell, if you like, but ’tis little enough that Ferdy can do for one who lives this far from the town. If you are fearful, you had best go to the Palace, to Mr. Broome and his wife.”

“And leave Mount Pleasant naked against the likes of Malachi Duggan? Before one of them can set a bare, dirty foot into Mount Pleasant, I will scratch the eyes out of Malachi Duggan’s head.”

His father could tell one bit of turf from the next, as MacCarthy could sample whiskeys, crumbling the turf in his fingers, touching his tongue to it. Landless Brian MacCarthy, son of an evicted peasant, carrying his spade from one Kerry hiring fair to the next, his own son scuffling, dirty-skinned, behind him. Mick Mahony gouging and scrambling, toe of boot to a peasant’s arse, obsequious smile for landlord and magistrate. Kate Mahony, loose mouth and wild body wasted on drink-sodden Cooper, mistress of Mount Pleasant. It was land that they hungered for and not the passionate bed, but the poets spoke only of love, laments for the Stuarts, grief for the banished chieftains. He was as bad as the rest. The subjects suitable for poetry had been prescribed centuries ago.

“Gold from the furze, silver from ferns.”

“Your life is wasted,” she said. “You have thrown it away in your foolishness.”

“I had little to throw.”

“You had a school, that girl in the village, the poetry. You will have nothing now.”

“By God, Kate, I am much of your opinion. What the hell am I doing at my time of life, swaggering around like some half-mounted squireen at a fair?”

“It is your question. Let you answer it.”

He moved to prop himself on one elbow, and held out his other hand towards her. She shook her head.

“No more of that. It will be light soon. It was a very foolish thing I did with you tonight, Owen MacCarthy. God knows that it is my own husband should be with me now, and it is no fault of mine that he had to stuff himself into a red uniform and be captured by savages from France. It was to me that he owed his first duty, the selfish beast.”

“It may have been the woman after all who wrote the poem, and not Costello at all.”

“What does that matter?” she said impatiently. “A wild rover like yourself, taking the virtue from maidens and the honour from married women, you think you have the best of every bargain but you have nothing at all. No house that you can call your own, no woman’s love that you can claim a year from now. A month ago, from the window of this house, I heard a man in the field singing one of your songs. The songs may be remembered, but not the man who wrote them.”

“What could be better than that, for your songs to be anonymous and remembered?”

She rose suddenly and stood looking at him, loose fists pressed against hipbones. “You are a child, Owen, for all the size and the age of you and your dreadful life. God forgive me, I have gone to bed with a child.” She crossed the room and sat beside him on the bed. “Owen, have you never wanted anything?”

“You,” he said. He ran the back of his hand down her hair.

“Oh, to be sure. Or any other woman. That is not wanting something.” But she did not draw back from him.

“I was born with nothing and I have nothing. That cannot be changed.”

“That must be a terrible way to live.”

“It requires practice.” He touched her cheek lightly.

“Ah well,” she said, “it must be wonderful all the same to live without worrying and scheming.”

“Wonderful indeed,” he said, drawing her head to his shoulder.

Beyond them, the candle flickered upon the empty mirror.

Ballycastle, September 2

On September second, Cornwallis moved northwards from Tuam to Hollymount. A messenger from Longford brought word to Humbert from Hans Dennistoun that the midlands would rise in two days’ time. And John Moore again rode past Killala to visit the Treacys on the Ballycastle road.

In the weeks which had passed, summer had begun to move towards autumn, but the morning was bronze, warm sunlight bathing fields which were turning yellow. Mayo had its own seasons, a flat land held between ocean and mountain, and was now at the turn.

At the near side of Ballina, he drew rein before the massive pillars which once had held the gates to Mount Lawrence Hall. The house, standing on a knoll and screened by a leafy plantation, had been burned. Smoke and the stench of charring clogged the nostrils of his imagination. And yet the Lawrence harvest was being reaped: he could see small figures moving in the distant fields. He rode up the straight avenue until he was abreast of them, then jumped the low wall and cantered along the narrow path until he was within hailing distance. The reapers paused and stood watching him, forearms shading their eyes.

“Where are Mrs. Lawrence and her daughters?” he called. They stood silently, watching. When no one answered he dismounted and walked towards them. “I asked you about Mrs. Lawrence.”

An old man, scythe blade resting on the ground, said, “They went into Killala, to the Protestant clergyman’s.”

Moore looked behind him, towards the house. “Who did that?”

After a pause: “It was burned after the big battle. There is nothing left standing in there. Not so much as a chair. It has all been burned or carried off.”

“By the rebels,” Moore said.

The old man rubbed the back of his hand against a stubble of grey. The much younger man beside him, who might have been a son, said, “Sure who could say? They came after dark, and they seemed like a small army. We stayed in the cabins until they were gone.”

“But you stayed,” Moore said. “Is it for Mr. Lawrence that you are saving the harvest?” Moore’s Irish was very weak, and his vocabulary small.

“Mr. Lawrence may not be back, nor any of his family. ’Tis said that all of the gentry are leaving Mayo forever.”

“Then you are saving it for yourselves?”

The man shrugged. “All of the cattle were driven off by the men who came at night. All but a few. And do you know what they did with those few? The gates were taken off, and those few were roasted on them, over a great fire. They took their leisure here, by God.”

The old man gave a long, phlegm-choked cough, and then spat between his feet. “What is there can be done with a harvest but save it, whoever it is to be saved for? The gentry are gone out of it. Mr. Lawrence is off with the English soldiers, and the ladies are in Killala.”

Moore looked from one face to the other, and then back to the fire-gutted house. He had never visited there. The Lawrences were hard Protestants.

“Are you an Englishman, sir?” the younger man asked.

Moore stared at him, puzzled, and then said quietly, “No. I am Irish.”

“If you are English you should not go into Ballina. The men that are now in Ballina are very bold.”

“I will be careful,” Moore said gently, and then turned back towards the avenue.

The main street of Ballina, straggling off at an angle from the placid Moy, was green with trees and boughs of liberty. As Moore turned into it from the river road he was stopped by four men with pikes. One of them closed a fist upon his bridle. They did not recognise his name, but he persuaded them to lead his horse to the tavern which Michael Geraghty was using as headquarters. He found Geraghty in a small inner room, dressed in one of the French uniforms with unbuckled collar, a plate of bacon pushed to one edge of the table. Moore sat down facing him.

“What has been happening in Ballina, Captain?”

“Sure what would be happening here, with all the excitement below in Castlebar?”

“You’ve had your excitement. I have just seen Mount Lawrence Hall. Or what is left of it.”

Geraghty nodded, and then reached towards the deal sideboard for glasses and a bottle. “A bad business.”

“Is that all you have to say about it? And it was more of Malachi Duggan’s work, I take it.”

“It was not,” Geraghty said slowly. “It is not. My own boys burned that house. The United boys.”

“Your own men! What in hell are you telling me, Geraghty? If you had a hand in that business you will answer for it. Men have been whipped bloody in Castlebar for less than that.”