The Year of the French (87 page)

“They are savages,” Stanner said. “We were losing the power of our eyes in that pesthouse. When we came out into the light it burned our eyes. As much sunlight as could come to us through rain, mind you. They would have piked us in the street, ripped out our bowels.”

“You have suffered grievously,” I said, and turned away from him. Down the street I ran, pushing my way past soldiers and gawking townspeople. The man they had hanged was Duignan, the prophecy man. I had never seen a man hanged. His face was dark red, his tongue hung loose from his slack jaws. His thin trousers were stained in an unseemly and disgusting manner. What had this witless and wretched fellow done? Perhaps he had run towards the soldiers, shrieking his unintelligible gibberish. Or perhaps he had done nothing, had stood staring at them with round mooncalf eyes.

A fresh wave of nausea swept over me, and I stood against the wall. Perhaps my senses took leave of me again, for I next remember an arm across my shoulders, and I opened my eyes to find myself looking into those of Captain Cooper.

“Come away out of this, Mr. Broome,” he said. “Let me take you home.” He had a heavy mat of beard, like Stanner, and his eyes were red-rimmed.

“Men hanged,” I said. “Dead everywhere upon the streets, and now a man hanged.”

“More than this fellow,” Cooper said. “They have put up a gallows on the wharf, and they are court-martialling men and then hanging them. It is madness itself. They have all gone mad. I am leaving this place, by Jesus. I am going back to Kate at Mount Pleasant. But first I will take you to your house.”

“They have no authority to do that,” I said.

He gave a kind of yelp of humourless laughter, and took my arm. “No, sir,” I said, and would not budge. “This is my parish. I will not hide in my bed. I will demand to know what is happening in my parish.”

“Look around you, man, and you will see what is happening. There is no need to ask. I am sick of all this. Blood and death.” He echoed my words, and suddenly, despite my own unbalanced state, I saw that he too was distracted and upon the verge of hysteria and tears. “My own men will not listen to me,” he said, “much less the English soldiers. The Highlanders are the worst. I saw them smash a man’s skull. There has been a stop put to that, at least. There are court-martials now.”

“And the gallows,” I said.

“Stay in this charnel house if you will,” he shouted in sudden anger. “I will have no part of it. I am going home, and if they want this bloody uniform they can send for it.” He dropped my arm then, and walked away from me.

I ran down the street in the opposite direction, towards the wharf, but stopped by the body of Ferdy O’Donnell. Death had diminished him. He lay with his head lolling towards the street. I began to weep. Great tears squeezed from my eyes and coursed down my cheeks. Perhaps he would have killed the yeomen. I will never know what went through his mind in that last hour. I took his hand in mine and held it against my tears.

“Can you think of anything you want to add to this?” the subaltern asked.

“I cannot remember what I have said or what I have not said,” Barrett answered. “What does it matter?”

“You must compose your thoughts now,” I said.

“You must pray.”

“Can you write?” the subaltern asked. “Can you put your name to this?”

I put my hand on his arm. “Leave him alone, young man, Leave him some time alone.”

“How much time have I?” Barrett asked.

“Until the first light.”

“It is almost the first light now,” someone said.

But there was no light in the cabin save for the weak light from the candle.

“I will be with you,” I promised Barrett.

“I would give much for a priest,” Barrett said. “It is a black, dirty soul I will be bringing to judgement.”

“You must pray,” I said.

“ ‘Where there is true repentance.’ Ours is a merciful God.”

Suddenly Barrett smiled at me. “It was a queer kind of confession,” he said. “To a Protestant clergyman and an English officer. It will have to do.”

“All right, then,” the subaltern said. “We will give you some time to yourself.” He stood up, and his body obscured the candle’s flame.

“I will be with you,” I promised him again. “At the end. You will not be alone.”

Barrett did not reply.

Outside the cabin, the subaltern and I stood together in darkness through which the first light had begun to creep.

“I am sorry the poor devil could not have his priest,” he said. “They believe that their priests have powers to forgive sins, do they not?”

“Something like that,” I said. “ ‘Where there is true repentance.’ ”

“Is this the truth, do you think?” he asked.

“Part of the truth,” I said. “Part of it is true.”

“Is this what he would have told his priest?”

“I do not know,” I said.

Weymouth, England, Late September

The King was taking the waters at Weymouth, which he had been visiting regularly since 1789. Two days earlier, the officers of the frigate
Argus
had presented him with pikes taken up from the bog of Ballinamuck. His Majesty held one of them, marvelling at its crudity, a length of ash and then, hammered crudely out at some Mayo forge, the flat spear with the short, deadly hook curving outwards from its base. Savages on the African coast must carry such weapons as these. His Majesty shook his head, and consigned the pikes to his collection of curios.

The King was strolling on the esplanade when the messenger brought him the despatch from Nelson, having covered the hundred and thirty miles in seventeen hours. London already knew. The news had come yesterday, and the bells of Saint Paul’s pealed, then those of a second church, and a third, until the whole of the city was clanging. That night the city was illuminated, and the guns at the Tower fired salute after salute. His Majesty read the despatch twice, once almost hysterically, after seeing the first three words, and then a second time, more slowly. To the astonishment of the crowd on the esplanade, he began to cry. Great tears rolled down his cheeks and his heavy body shook. They thought that he had been brought the news of a disaster. Then, almost as astonishingly, he began to read aloud to them, his voice, at once coarse and soft, carrying a thin, nervous edge of relief.

“Admiral Lord Nelson begs leave to report to His Majesty and to their Lordships of the Admiralty that the French Fleet in the Mediterranean has been destroyed at Aboukir Bay at the mouth of the Nile. General Buonaparte’s army is now cut off in Egypt, without hope of reinforcement. The Mediterranean is now a British sea and shall remain so. The destruction of the French Fleet was achieved without loss of British ships.”

“It is a most wonderful and miraculous victory, Your Majesty,” Lord Stanley said. “Within a single month, rebellion defeated in Ireland and the enemy in Egypt. The two ends of the world.”

But the King scarcely heard him. Holding the rolled despatch in his hands, he walked the length of the esplanade. Unimaginative and untravelled, his mind shuffled vague landscapes, green plains, the sandy desert, deep blue waters. British infantry, at the run, stormed enemy positions, a blur of scarlet. Officers led them forward, pointing towards the foe with drawn swords. On still waters, beneath the blue and white sky of a coloured engraving, British ships pummelled the enemy, black cannon protruding from the gunports, puffballs of white smoke. The British ensign floated, defying logic, in a windless sky. Grandson and great-grandson of German princelings, his heart expanded in patriotic fervour. Providence had come once again to the side of England, not rushing, but with measured step, across moorland, desert waste, the broad expanse of ocean. Truly a people blessed by Heaven.

That evening His Majesty attended the theatre, which displayed an illumination, hastily contrived.
Britannia Treading Anarchy and Rebellion under Her Feet
. Aboukir. The King pronounced the unfamiliar word, mouthing its syllables with pleasure. Britannia, her breasts swelling with triumphant indignation, held down rebellion with firm, sandal-clad feet. Anarchy crouched beside them, looking fearfully towards her. It was a vigorous scene, and the King applauded it heartily. He tried to remember the name of the Irish county where the French had landed. It had all ended well.

Dublin, Late September

Humbert and his officers were lodged in the Mail Coach Hotel, south of the Liffey in Dawson Street. It had become a fashionable district some decades before, when the Marquis of Kildare built his great town mansion. “Where I go,” he told his critics, “the rest will follow.” And follow they did, peers, Members of Parliament, solicitors, bankers, merchants. Their houses faced leafy squares and gardens, or else faced each other across wide, dusty streets. A pleasant, easy society, conscious of its modernity, dwelling in buildings without a past, without history, undarkened by the shadows which hung north of the Liffey, a Dublin which remembered footpads and ruffians, sedan chairs, torchlight falling upon narrow alleys. Here the city was spruce and new, bricks and stonework fresh. Wind from the mountains drew off the pungent smoke of turf fires, sudden showers cleansed the streets. From Stephen’s Green to College Green was a pleasant walk, ten minutes or so, nods for acquaintances, chat with a friend, and, at the foot of Grafton Street, Trinity College and the Houses of Parliament facing each other, far from rebellions and the bogs of Mayo. An equestrian statue of King William commanded College Green, Protestant emblem for a Protestant city. Turn right, stroll down Nassau Street beside the railings of Trinity, turn right again, and you are in Dawson Street.

In these weeks, many Dubliners took the stroll, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the French officers, who were often to be seen at the windows. Fontaine, in particular, was gallant by nature, and would occasionally blow a kiss to a young lady or to a pair of young ladies walking with arms linked, peering shyly towards the window from under lowered lids. They would hurry past, then pause at the Anne Street corner, and each would describe what she had seen. The French officers were a great success with the Dubliners, who now felt, all danger past, that theirs had been a most romantic adventure. They had expected to see desperate, hardened Jacobins, but these fellows, despite their hard-worn uniforms, were more like dandies. It became the fashion for British officers to visit them, and hear at first hand an account of their plans and exploits, and the more astute could detect the tension between Sarrizen and Fontaine. None could miss the contempt and detestation with which they spoke of their Irish allies.

Humbert himself, however, did not receive visitors. He had taken, by preference, a large room in the rear of the hotel, on the first floor, and he remained behind its closed door. The one exception which he made was for Cornwallis, who visited him late on a September morning.

Cornwallis was in uniform, scarlet against the pale Dublin sky as he climbed down from his coach. Leaning on a stick, he walked slowly up the steps, with a few dozen citizens watching. When they recognised him they set up a cheer, which, turning briefly, he acknowledged with a wave. “ ‘Cornwallis, he’s our darling, he saved us from the foe,” someone shouted, quoting a street ballad. Cornwallis, his back turned, grunted and stumped into the hotel.

Humbert stood up to receive him. He had been sitting behind a small dining table, with a bottle of brandy in front of him. His uniform was rumpled, and there was a glaze of dark beard on his cheeks.

Cornwallis waved his hand. “Sit down, General. Sit down.” He sat down himself, but first drew up a third chair. With great care, gently, he rested his left foot on it. “Gout,” he said. “A damned painful disease. Like a hundred small daggers sticking into you.” He spoke idiomatic French, but with a wretched accent.

“In my country,” Humbert said, “it is called the aristocrat’s illness.”

“It isn’t true. I knew a footman with gout once. Perhaps he’d been eating too well. That will do it, that and wine.”

“We are in your debt,” Humbert said stiffly, “for the courtesy which has been shown to us.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow. You will be home soon. Your passage is being arranged. By way of Hamburg.” He folded his hands across his belly and smiled. “You must be very eager to see Paris again,”

“Very eager,” Humbert said drily.

“By God, sir, your government will have no cause to fault you. A brilliant campaign, sir, if I may say so.”

“My government prefers victories to brilliant campaigns.”

“All governments do,” Cornwallis said. “All governments. We are in the business of winning battles, we generals. And if we drop one—I speak from experience, as you must know. You failed here, on this wretched island. But as for me, I lost an entire continent. There’s carelessness for you. What the devil, you could not possibly have succeeded. Not in a thousand years. You were outmanned and outgunned, with no allies save those poor wretched peasants. You did splendidly at Castlebar, but after that you were in a cleft stick. You couldn’t stay and you couldn’t move.”

“If the second fleet had arrived while I was in control of Castlebar . . .”