Dallas Sweetman
Page 4
We geared ourselves to fight.
Since I was a servant I but followed Lucius to war. Yet I hoped it might bring me my change of fortune.
Now Lucius in his battle gear.
I had no honoured place, but banged his gear and plates back smooth like a blacksmith in the evening, and combed his hair, and picked the white lice off his vests and pants – (doing so) – because at war there was no washing, and those English hordes were lousy as a ship.
The battle – the new English lords and their men against Lucius and his men. Slow killing and toil. Music.
That was the battle of Baltimore, if you have heard – long piles of killed swordsmen, with lacerated limbs, and so much blood, we called the field the Field of Blood from that time on.
Picture the beautiful army of Lucius, in their honoured suits, a hundred men of substance from his lands. Picture the opposing rabble that stood for an army, in their thirsting, hungry manner. Hear the harsh, roaring leader floundering on, and steel entering those extraordinary breasts, as brave as bears must be, and elegant in some wise as wolves.
How we managed to crush them, I do not know. The old Christian God smiling not upon the new.
But even in general victory, my own heart was mired in bitter thoughts.
No moment came, no chance of valour, or work of victory proper to myself.
Onlooker only ever, debased, crushed down by my unlucky father, I returned to our mansion only the servant I was, unchanged.
Mrs Reddan I took their coming strangely. I did not like to see that man return, that Dallas Sweetman, with his lying name. I knew my lovely Lucinda was safe from him in Lisbon, and was grown a woman too, but still, to see that thieving ignorant soul return, even though it brought Lucius home – I could not be glad.
Oh, let me present a comely history, concordant with the facts.
By this time, though Lucius was growing old, we had wed. I was content to be the human coals to warm his side. I loved him, and he loved me, and his sister loved me, and she knew I would not upset her portion. I bore a child to him, late though I was in the summer of my life. Lucius called me beautiful, though I was not, God knew, and yet in my confinement he prayed at the door, for the mercy of a deliverance. God heard his excellent prayers. He was a caring, curious, contenting man.
Dark looks and hatred was all I got from Dallas Sweetman, and at my request he was put out on the land, to work as a steward, and not set his boots indoors, though in truth he was for ever creeping in. His hopeless performance at the war, proving himself a mere servant in his soul, had also altered him in Lucius’s sight, who had expected better of him. Now he was not a man of miracles, but of falling.
This is better truth.
Lucinda and Matthew had been sent to Lisbon, yes. After some years of study, Matthew went ever deeper in his fervent prayers, and became a monk.
But Lucinda could not abide where she was. Her simple loving heart always turned to Lucius, her own heart calling to his heart across the sea between them. And we feared her return, Lucius and I, for her sake.
There was nothing of Dallas Sweetman in it, he was quite forgotten in her heart.
Burned away, a dry leaf in a bonefire.
Dallas How like that ruined, ended, blinded, scrap of Jaques’s I am, here in this place of darkening fortune, telling of things long past, as if to tell them were to live them o’er again.
Dust in my mouth the meat of other days, dust in my crown the blowing summer days.
When youth was there but not accounted, youth was there and never noticed.
And nothing built up as ballast against this factual struggle of old age.
But I must go on, recount to you this most grievous passage coming, when things so happened that I lost my better soul.
Sweet judges, listen, and understand me, as I paw at the four locked gates of the New Jerusalem, ever locked against me.
Music.
A fellow like me come out of England on his father’s side, and whose mother moreover was a Godkin from the Barony Forth of Wexford, still may love Ireland.
But Ireland changes by the year, she is like the barnacle that becomes the goose at length, and who could tell their cousinage?
Yet for a truer native like Lucinda, Ireland is a tune, a ground of life, a telling story.
And she wrote to tell Lucius she was sorry homesick for us all, for him in chief (I hoped a touch for me).
Lucinda (reading the letter) ‘My beloved father, loved above all others.
‘While well understanding the reasons for my exile, I am sending this to you as an opening of my heart.
‘My father, I yearn to lay my head on your shoulder as in our old days, and sit with you as we once did, and go out into the failing light and see the sun go down in all his kingly attire, red and gold, and stand together in the old silence.
‘The fields, the meadows, the margins of woods, the islands beyond – all call me home. The edifice of what you are, most of all.
‘My father, allow me to come home, if only for a stated term. I am withering here in Lisbon, despite the great kindness of the Princess, and all the promise of what I will inherit. Spread of orchards, infinite estates, are very little beside my love for you.
‘Your daughter, Lucinda.’
Lucius with the letter, Dallas attending.
Lucius I tell you, this must be done well. Now even more than before the Protestant heresy looms over young minds. I would she might stay in Lisbon. But if home she must come, it will be by strict instructions. She must travel with a trusted priest and speak to no one, unless they are vouched for by religion and name. I will write to her, Dallas, and say these things.
Dallas That is wisdom, sir, doubtless.
And so he did.
The Princess of Brazil comes forward, Lucinda before her. The Princess is very gorgeous and wonderful in her clothes. She lifts a crucifix and advances on Lucinda, as if to drive it through her head. Lucinda doesn’t flinch.
And the Princess of Brazil was of the same mind as Lucius.
Princess I beg thee, little waif and wanderer, not to travel to so benighted and disastrous a country, where my own influence is a sparrow’s. Stay with me here, marry a person of this court, and I will grant thee lands and title, and make thee a proper Portuguese lady, and shrive all Irishness from you, as a token to pull thee from Death both temporal and spiritual.
Lucinda My heart aches for Ireland, Majesty, and for the embrace of my father.
Princess But I have such orchards and acres to give, stay with me here, do not risk to go back into that foul country, once so sweet with Catholic thought, but now like a poisoned well, that may kill you to drink from.
Lucinda (opening her palms in supplication) Let me go, great Princess, back into the embrace of my father and my country.
Dallas So, a priest was chosen of immaculate character, that he might protect her, a man of darkened middling years.
She travelled with this man in some small splendour, in that she had always near her a gold toilet equipage so she might keep herself dainty on the journey, to the value of five thousand pounds.
If she married of course, she was to bring an enormous dowry to that man, as being the only girl, and dearly loved and prized by her father, all the more so now her brother was a monk.
Whoever wed her would take the Lysaght name unto himself, and be a sort of semi-Lysaght for the ages.
I do not know the weather for her ship, but it duly brought her to Rosscarbery, in her own county of Cork.
The sound of harbour water and the bells and knockings of ships. Lucinda in her travelling cloak.
In the small hours of the night it docked.
When first light came she gathered her dresses and herself, and her equipage was to be following after.
The gangplank, by a forced provision of the tide, had quite a span between ship and shore. As she crossed over, her dresses caught in something, and pulled her sideways, and she fell with a yelling splash int
o the filthy harbour, causing the sailors and the captains there to scurry about like woodlice disturbed by a lifted rock.
Lucinda simply sits on the ground, the cloak spreading as if floating.
The priest in whose care she was, hesitated and dithered, not knowing what to do, and fearing the water himself.
Her dresses held her floating. But slowly, down between the terrible ship and the stony harbour wall, she could be seen to be sinking, sinking.
Suddenly from out the idle crowd a man came forth.
He was a tall, dark-suited man, with a beaky nose, and he jumped quite fearless into the brine, and came up just beside her, and catching a rope thrown down, pulled her to him like the wisp she was, and bound the rope around her, and the sailors pulled her up, then threw it for him again.
The Reverend Mountifort Longfield appears, ties a rope around her.
Lucinda stood pouring on the dockside, but refusing to move away, still peering back down at her rescuer.
In the slug of the tide, the ship pressed closer to the wharf, pinning the gentleman below. With keenest thought, she arranged the sailors on the stones, and told them to push at their gigantic ship, and rock it by inches back, and this they did, and the unknown man was free, and was pulled up.
When he came to the top of the wharf, dripping and laughing, with a broken hand, Lucinda fell to her knees and thanked him, and gazed up at the face that had given her back her life.
Mountifort pulls her close.
It was a long, strange face, but laughing still, and it was then the poor priest saw that the man was a reverend of that very selfsame creed she was to have been protected from.
She saw this too, but seemed to have no pain of it.
She looked at the fuddled priest, and this easy, smiling man, and maybe in that moment she made a choice, and suffered some dark sea-change.
At any rate, news came to us in Baltimore that she was betrothed to be wed.
Lucius appears.
To this very man –
Lucius This evil minister –
Dallas – as Lucius called him, as he paced his private rooms. The priest himself carried this terrible news.
He was not just raging, poor Lucius Lysaght, but also weeping. He boiled up against this unknown man, this thief of his daughter. He wished him dead, he wished him gone.
Lucius That my own sweet child should bring this catastrophe on me. To a family that for five hundred years has worshipped at a proper altar, that for seventy years and more has resisted the perversion of their creed, and yet loved King and Queen. Held all their lands despite rapacious challenge. Seen the storm of Protestantism rising, like a thousand white horses on Baltimore Strand, and resisted. My head is bare to her, my heart is open, she strikes my crown and stabs me through. I wish, Dallas Sweetman, you had never found her on the beach, and that the pirates might have had her.
Dallas But I knew this speech was false. His mind was aching with that awful fear, that piercing sword, when a man of strong belief is asked to bend.
But bend he could not.
Lucinda Mountifort took me from the sea, as the sea started to devour me. I saw his love in his long face, and for my part loved him just as fiercely, simply. When it was to be a choice between him and my father, my heart parted like an apple, one half was all Mountifort, but the other half was thrown into the mire, to be stamped on by devils. But there is a rightness in the fog of things, and I followed the sound that spoke of rightness. He was my love, ordained in some long ago. It was a woman’s love, grown and complete, a yearning and a confusing delight. I could not have enough of him, like a luxury sent from afar in small quantities, even as I kissed him I starved for more kisses. My love was famishing and fulfilling all in one. But the word that came from my father, of distress and pain, was like that owl that sounds his one note over the boglands in the night, sweet and terrible, and something in me heeded it, and something in me prevented me going. I loved my father in infinite measure, and yet there was a greater infinity in my love for Mountifort, and his for me. He was just a tall, long-faced, easy, ordinary man, that seemed to me the definition of celestial all the same. And that is the force of human love, transmuting, instructing, bidding.
Dallas Lucinda was sent a notice not to come home, to stay where she was, wherever that was. Moreover, there would be no question of a dowry, as Lucius would disinherit her immediately.
By this means he hoped to cool her. That she might return contrite, begging for mercy and forgiveness. Lucius was certain the evil prelate – whose name we now knew was Mountifort Longfield, a well-born man enough for all that – would not wish to marry a beggar. The priest was the messenger in it all.
Lucius presumed the rescuer of his daughter a villain, because of his unholy cloth.
In this he was wrong. I was told that Mountifort Longfield laughed, as was his wont, and said she would do as the angel she was, which was a person beyond price.
Lucius dismissed the priest, who had to slink back to Lisbon to God knows what fate, to endure the wrath of the Princess of Brazil.
Lucius dons his great cloak.
You will wish to be told that Lucius came through this sorrow, and some great boon came to him to save his heart. It was not so. He put all his lands and buildings in order, went over the bay to Sherkin, and fell from the great cliff there in a darkling night.
Mrs Reddan Oh, foul, most foul. I am amazed at this vile history.
Lucius sits on the ground, the cloak spreading about him.
Dallas Three days I lay in that very selfsame room where I had hid his children all those years before. I lay upon the selfsame bed, with its withered peltings, and wept. I wept for poor Lucius, that kingly, kindly man.
Now foul Mrs Reddan was to be queen of everything, and that I could not bear. I packed my few sticks and books, and set out for Cork.
Mrs Reddan appearing.
Mrs Reddan Oh, let me set this to rights.
At length Lucinda came home. At the harbour of Rosscarbery she fell into the water and was rescued by a young man in holy orders. He risked his own life by jumping in to save her, and for this she gave him her very love. It was difficult vexing news for Lucius. In the first part, as a Protestant she would lose her Portuguese inheritance. In the second, he worried for her immortal soul. Yet Lucius was kind above all. He went to see her. Although with me he expressed a violent choler, yet when Lucinda showed the man to him, and asked for his forgiveness and his blessing, Lucius after much debate and vexatious thinking obliged. She already had her golden equipage, and Lucius added five thousand pounds to her dowry. Her husband we knew would have taken her with nothing, but I am sure was well pleased with this progression.
Lucius We must learn how to live in Ireland. Old ways are weakening and there must be new. My happiness has been recomposed by my new wife. Likewise, my darling Lucinda, may it be with you. Be both Catholic and Protestant, Old and New English, and in all regards a child of this country, and may we all be happy. Our country is uncertain and tumultuous. God protect us, and bless our future and our progeny.
Mrs Reddan On Lucius’s return, disappeared Dallas Sweetman from our estate.
Music.
Dallas There was fierce rage in me. All the long road, as I urged my pony on, I thought of my perfect master, and resolved to kill this man that had murdered him and all his world.
Mrs Reddan Your words no longer bear anything in them except a general misery and sorrow.
Dallas When the name Lucinda was on my lips, I spat, and cursed her.
I called her a harlot to the old Cork skies, and gave thanks to God her mother had not lived to see this sundering of her faith, the purpose of their lives undone.
Mountifort Longfield had a handsome house, and a glebe of some rapacious Protestant lord. It was situated at the edge of that great city, with its own orchard and lawns and sharp-cut hedges.
Easy as an innocent I approached the house, and told who I was, and asked to see my lady.
Mountifort and Lucinda seated, like an emblem of marriage.
There she sat with Mountifort by her. I walked in a door one kind of man, but when I saw her, I was entirely changed.
She looked like a ghost, a wraith, a blowing flower.
No substance had she, with sunken face, her young eyes so blue but rimmed with sooty black. Mountifort Longfield held her arm, as if for fear she might fall from her chair without support.
She asked me in broken voice the story of her father. I told it true, but simple and short, not to add to her signalling pain. I told her also that he loved her to the last, and spoke ever softly of her. That he did not kill himself for her, but because he had lost his wits, a thing, I said, long gathering, I believed, having watched him these last years.
Her listening face.
As I spoke, the poison rose up from her skin, it seemed, and a tiny faint blush of pink touched again on her cheeks, like slight, first flowers in the prime.
He embraces her.
You will say, my judges, I did wrong.
Why did I not tell the truth, and cast down and blight her as a blasphemous witch?
But, my judges, so soft was she, so slight, so ruined, I could not but put her together again, if I could.
Mountifort gets up and embraces Dallas.
Mountifort Longfield, himself a gentle man, rose from his place, walked down the long scrubbed floor, and to my amazement, took me in his arms.
I had never been embraced so strange before, a thought from the great distant past assaulted me, and I remembered my own father doing so, before the days of his ruin.
What a strange matter it was.
Mrs Reddan (shaking her head, quietly now) You lie.
Dallas Mountifort Longfield, that deadly man, as I had thought, in the moment that he thanked me, returned to me a vision of my lost father.