Dallas Sweetman

by Sebastian Barry

  Years went by – long years for them, as the years to children seem, a too-brief term to me. Terrible wars engulfed the old realms of Munster.

  On the better lands, old lords and lordlings were murdered quite away, new English armies crushed Old English hopes.

  But still the Lysaghts on the margins held.

  Then, in those civil evils, wide as the State, befell another, a smaller matter none the less of greater evil. It happened to Lucinda.

  Lucinda The wolf in the shadows. I was just a young woman, about fourteen. Many women of that age married in Ireland, but I was pledged to no one.

  This memory mingles with Dallas Sweetman, he swirls about there, like dark berryjuice dropped in water.

  Dallas Sweetman. He seemed to me immaculate and strange. He had taught me everything he knew of facts and figures and wonders, of stars and the sun, of the Greeks and of the Carthaginians, of Romans, their poetries and their gods. His words fell into my childish lap like coins, all the riches of his mind minted into words that came solid into my self, like a soft intrusion. I dreamed of him at night and even by day he seemed more dream than something truly real. I clothed him about with girlish light.

  Mrs Reddan Then a dark year came, and there passed a story that grieves me still to say.

  And I could never be certain of that story, to speak to Lucius, but certain enough to doubt and fear his servant.

  One morning early in the late of summer, when the year begins to turn to thoughts of death, going up with water and apples to Lucinda, I found her bed empty. There was a terrible fear in me, and dark certainty of some harm. I went out into the meadows and moved through bulking cows, and over to the path that took me to the woods, and into the dripping, darkening trees, and by some rich instinct of kinship and love, following an ancient path, soon into a glade I came, the first cold sunlight roofing it, and there in the centre in the weakening grass, I saw her, wounded and cold herself, not asleep but weeping. Had someone fetched her from her very bed, covered her head in cloths, and stolen her away, to harm and enfold her in that place? She would never say. I took the hood from her head, and held her, but could not get her to speak for days. And the only hint of her trouble was, she could not be near to her erstwhile servant Sweetman, but kept away from him, trembling and sad. So I suspected him.

  Lucius put out a notice of words that anyone found to have effected this crime would be, according to old laws, castrated, and his limbs lopped off, his entrails dragged steaming from his belly and fed before him to pigs, and then be dragged into the roughest field, and dragged about drearily, and hung until dead, and quartered, into four quarters like a very Ireland.

  Dallas God above all gods! What happened is not known. Lucinda never spoke. Lucius suspected that out from those woods came a creeping wolf, a cold brute, one of those new men of England as may be. Perhaps such a man thought Ireland was just wildernesses, uncivil, and everything there was for him to take, to seize.

  Yes, Mrs Reddan found Lucinda calling, bleeding in a larksome dell, the birds of the summer innocently singing all about. She gathered her up, and carried her into the house, just as I had when she was a little one, and helped her to her chamber, and drew water for her from the kitchens. And Lucinda asked that I not be called, I know, but for a reason I could not fathom. Oh, this I swear, before the courts of God, before you, my judges, this I swear, without fear of Hell for so terrible a lie.

  For it is simple truth.

  Mrs Reddan This is his bleakest lie, that he saw her in terms of love, and did not molest her innocent self. I suspect him, I suspect him.

  Dallas Let me go on, as best I can, my self diminished by those accusations.

  Ireland herself diminished, the country seemed to narrow. Lucius’s old trade of hides and tallow, sent forth upon the earth for wines and salt, was faltering. The very old faith on which he rested was proving his undoing.

  But not yet, not yet.

  He feared everything. He feared of course for his daughter now the most, for her further destruction. He feared to send his son to Dublin, as his family had been wont, for dread of some Protestant discussion that might foul his mind. So he resolved to send them out to Lisbon, where by long trade and courtesy he knew the royal house, and especially that lady called the Princess of Brazil, a deep, shining, Catholic woman. And there his son Matthew might learn the laws of man and God, and Lucinda be made safe in the refuge of a royal court.

  And she the great princess was anxious so to have them, for fear some Protestant might seek Lucinda’s hand. She was not told I am sure of Lucinda’s ordeal, in case it would place a mark of spoliation on her, in the manner of the time.

  She was fourteen now, and by the grave of my father, I do swear, never had I seen so beautiful a girl.

  The vision of Lucinda in her beauty.

  I was thirty years old, yet she pulled my heart.

  Soft and trim, no painter would need to dissemble her in the painting, she had no blemish that I could see, and had a brilliant, forceful, seeing, asking mind.

  She had stretched my knowledge to the furthest reach. I had described to her in desperation the very waterfalls at the edge of the known world, though in truth I had not seen them.

  And I prayed in my secret mind that something might happen in my uncertain world to restore me to fortune, so I could ask for her – though I sensed it a foolish prayer. Yet the country was tumbling all about, who would say where things might rest.

  But Lucius feared that Irish world as much as loved. Great lords had been dissolved like uncertain snows in April.

  Old companies of servants, old households, with stewardships and the like going back five hundred years, had proved not great woods but drifts of snowdrops.

  The gears of religion were grinding, impatient winds were blowing across the land, new English hearts beat loudly for Irish land. And we had seen possible evidence of their rapine, their careless hatred of us, and their mocking force. New English rapining Old English, ugly tune!

  And though great Elizabeth loved Old English lords, she said, for being ever true to her crown, yet now, Lucius saw, there was a new voice in her throat. And her agents were men of death. And he feared that his babes might be engulfed, or their souls robbed away by that swelling faith he feared, as well as their very forms.

  At fourteen packed away to Lisbon!

  Lamentation in that Lysaght house, the very last blooms, the very last roses pulled from out the ground.

  But Lucius was sure.

  Lucius embraces his children.

  I was not sent with them. He went the way himself and returned alone, and I suspected why.

  That Lucius had watched me with her, and knew my heart.

  Lucinda Bound for Lisbon. To leave my father.

  But something of me was a ghost, left behind in Ireland. A dream afflicted me, over and over, even in the huge richness of a royal palace. Myself alone, on the wet grass. The eyes of the wolf shining in the dark like emeralds no one would want. In my throat was trapped the word, ‘Dallas’, that I wanted to shout out, for the rescue of his love. But no one came, eternally.

  The dream, the dream. But is it a dream? I am always there, standing by the wood.

  The upper sky shrugging with thunder, like an enormous sleeper in a bed.

  And then, like a storm finally breaking, the grey figure breaks from the trees. Running at me in leaping arcs, smoking with hair, and mangy, terrible, it reaches me, and as it does, the word breaks at last from my mouth, ‘Dallas, Dallas.’

  And the wolf devours me.

  And the wolf is only a man, a man of ordinary evil, that tries to rob the soul out of me, but he fails.

  But he fails while I tense in awful terror.

  No terror ever again like to it.

  Fear so deep the devil in Hell is aware of it.

  And the man searches about in my person, tearing and destroying, and when he seems to find what he sought, leaves me.

  I lie in a stupor of hurt and
despair.

  Deeply ashamed, shame as deep as the devil in his burning lair.

  Who comes? It seems to be no one, a person of shadow, with ragged wings, like an angel of the old faith, but it digs its arms under me, and lifts me, and carries me across the lawn, my blood falling on the grasses, and into the house.

  That I think must have been Mrs Reddan, in other instances not a true friend to me.

  Perhaps my enemy.

  In that instance, almost a mother.

  Mrs Reddan’s face, listening, alert.

  And later, when I slept and woke, I told her about the wolf. And she told me the wolf was caught, and hung like a pig, its throat cut, and its blood gathered in a bucket to make night charms, in the dark of my father’s granary.

  And I was no longer a child from that day.

  And I asked her not to bring Dallas to me, because I was ashamed.

  I thought he would detest me now, because of the great calamity of my pollution, and would see me as beautiful no longer, because I did believe he thought me so, though he never said a word, nor ever spoke to me except as a loving servant.

  My father’s loving servant.

  My first beloved.

  That did destroy me after.

  Then when my father said he would send me to Lisbon, I allowed it, almost gladly, thinking it would serve me in Dallas’s love, and save him from bearing such grievous news, or to suffer the sight of me.

  On the cold ship that ducked round the old toes of Ireland, I wept. My brother Matthew sat by my side. I wept. I had lost my world. The softness that moved over my father’s face when he looked at me. The way he would sometimes count my fingers, as he spoke to me, idly, finger by finger, as if by that action he might recover paradise.

  Music.

  Act Two

  As before.

  Mrs Reddan Now, where stand we, as the old ballad says? You have heard his tricky whistle-tunes, how he works to convince you with matters a credulous child would baulk at. He took to the great river so confidently in his little boat of truth. He has glided softly between the leafy banks, the sun has been kindly on his shoulders. But now the river widens and in the distance is the scuffy vapour of the falls, and the first faint hint of its roaring.

  Dallas Then were there years of many-headed woe. No Lucinda, the old skies of Ireland without their sun, and the country ravished.

  Ambitious, Protestant generals wished for those Lysaght lands.

  We journeyed, Lucius and I, and a small company, to London to speak to the Queen.

  He was speaking for all the loyal princes of the south and west, and other points.

  The glimmering faint figure of Elizabeth in her majesty.

  Lucius That we may sue to thee, Majesty, and ask for the great comfort of thy bosom, turned towards Ireland, that you might feed your kith and kin and faithful hearts, and be the great mother that thou art, and not forsake us as Fate rises to confound us.

  Elizabeth Good Sir Lucius, rest your mind. We are not a woman to forsake that Ireland, lying in the dark waters of the Atlantic like a drowning girl. We will give thee our gentling word and affectionate phrase, to carry back to the home place, where we will guard thee with our good will and special grace, and never be aught but protector to Ireland.

  Lucius Gracious and perfect Majesty, I hope my poor and rusted English, so long lying out in the rains of Ireland, will convey to you my love and permanent loyalty.

  Elizabeth Even as your loyalty, also our love. For I would send blessings unto Ireland, I would send a portion of our English sunlight, I would send unto Ireland the benefice of our beautiful Englishness, perfecting, quietening, finishing Englishness. Or else with hard hammer, heavy sword, vicious arrow and thundering gun, I would send into Ireland want, pestilence, narrowness, hunger and Death.

  Lucius (on one knee) My gracious Queen.

  Dallas All that was wonders. Her paper features, her strange darkness peeping through the white, her dress of gold stars and firing silver rods, the very seep and rancour of her court, the tides of knowledge and shoaling talk.

  Lucius saw the Raleghs and the Earls she loved, and noted, like the scholar that he was, how his own English was astray from hers, her talking odder, quicker, deeper than his own, as if that English brought to Cork five hundred years before had grown different, and was almost two differing tongues.

  But not two hearts. His own heart, he avowed, beat with a killing love for her, her might, her history, and her chilling eye.

  To the play that night. It was a new-made one, called As You Like It, and a wondrous thing all of itself.

  I had not seen any play before, being a confined and rural man.

  But this was a play of metal, yet light as air, and everyone there did love that Rosalind, and for me she was my Lucinda, all grown and fierce and kind, and I wondered as I watched what was befalling her in Lisbon.

  And the author himself played an old man, and was wellnigh devoured with shouting at the end, with praise and love. And we laughed at poor Jaques for his saddened talk and his bleak speech of the Seven Ages, now so well known, but then played for the first time, so that it fell on us like a miracle. And we universally desired only to lie an hour with Rosalind, though the part be played of course by a pretty boy.

  And for myself, that night, I dreamed it seemed to me a new dream of Lucinda, new and unchanged. The play released in me a possibility, that when she returned, it might be for me. And in the strange dream I dreamed a marriage.

  Lucinda lying asleep and Dallas in his dream approaches and stoops to her and takes her in his arms.

  Then at the wish of Lucius we went down by the fabled road to Canterbury, to shrive ourselves of sins, marvelling at that pretty country, taking a sup at a creaking inn, and strode in together to that tremendous place, all pillars reaching to a perfect heaven, stars in the roof, and a vastness of half-light and ancient prayers. And Lucius knelt in his deep Catholic way at the very spot where once St Thomas had been, in his hut of gold and jewels, and prayed near that absence and to that absence, in abject and wonderful faith.

  There in the gloom, like a quaint and Irish Erasmus, in the curious light of ancient stone, a light that has played lover to darkness, he told me a story – not an ancient story, but an old one, something from his father’s generation. It meant the world to him that I should hear his story, but to me it seemed only a tale of shadows and ghosts. For I was young.

  Lucius It was here, Dallas, when old King Henry was young, about the year 1540, in the time of our fathers, in his efforts to dismantle our old faith, that he ordered St Thomas Becket be called from his tomb to answer to charges of treason and heresy, and if he did not answer the call, that he be tried in his absence. For Henry loved nothing better than to be lawful in all things, even in his unlawfulness. The thought of his ancestor, old Henry II, being obliged, after Thomas was murdered, to come in through Canterbury on his knees, and reaching the altar, to strip himself bare, and be beaten by the monks with whips, to expiate his guilt in the murder, incensed our later Henry, as if it had been the work of the last week. They stood here, the officials, right on this spot, and cried out for Thomas Becket to attend them. They stood on the altar, looking up the long reaches of the cathedral, the tomb just visible in the distance. ‘Come down, Thomas Becket,’ shouted they, ‘Come down.’ For a moment one of them thought they saw a stir of light, and a great fear seized them that the choleric saint was coming. For he was well known in his lifetime for his beautiful anger.

  But of course he had been lying in his tomb three hundred years and more … They waited the thirty days and, St Thomas not complying, they tried him in the Archbishop’s palace in Lambeth, the King supplying a good advocate to defend our saint. And, in due course, it was found he had been traitor to his king, and heretical to his own church. And that he was henceforth to be known not as a saint, but to be called merely Bishop Becket, his name and image to be erased from windows and rubbed out of old books, his bones to be taken from
his tomb, and crisply burned, and thrown to the four winds, and his tomb to be destroyed and carried away. And all veneration, exhortation and pilgrimage in his name to cease. And in just a few years, Henry effected his great sundering of men’s belief, parting and altering Christ’s old river, decreeing two channels, and made one poison to the other, which plagues us to this day, oh most especially in Ireland. Where there was surely sundering enough without that.

  Henry II, by speaking in anger about Becket before his knights, may have seemed to commission his murder, but he went into Ireland also later, to expiate that seeming sin, at the request of the Pope, to reform the Irish church, even then showing pustules and cankers on its face. So if this spot be sacred on account of St Thomas, so is it also on account of that Henry, who knelt here in his pelt, because it was he brought us Old English first into Ireland. And so Lysaghts have always come on pilgrimage to Canterbury, if in these days more discreetly, and I hope always will.

  Dallas That is a curious old tale, my master.

  Lucius But true. Perhaps all souls might be called to account in this place. Why not? There is a myriad of things unknown.

  Dallas And having said all that, home we hied to our vexed island.

  Then, by our ironical history of Ireland, Lucius was forced out to war, Great Elizabeth not having such great control of her ravening generals as we had hoped, or indeed as she had promised. And in that shift of things we sensed even greater darkness coming.

  It was a new English lord that took it in his head that all Old English lords were weakened.

  And fell upon Lysaght lands with his teeming army.

  Now that great mildewed, massive, unwashed army was composed of savage men, the like of demons in an ancient story. They spoke their different English like a pouring sewer. It was rasping, grinding, crashing in the mouth, with their howling phrases, and their spitting wit. They seemed to know not civis, civitas or urbs, though they fought in the name of Elizabeth.

  Such fell on Lucius Lysaght.