Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  Murdoc laughed. Now I know why that other curmudgeon laughed too, he thought.

  The man facing him with the thick candle in his hand was slight and small, with almost yellow hair, a thin face, extraordinary light blue eyes, and a mouth that turned up at the corners. He wore knee-breeches of fairly good cloth and a white linen shirt, open at the neck. He was well made, all the same, Murdoc thought. The wiry kind. The deceptive kind. He also wore heavy shoes that should have made sound, and that hadn’t so he supposed he must walk like a cat.

  ‘I thank you for giving me didean,’ said Murdoc.

  ‘All Irishmen are entitled to shelter,’ said the other. ‘If I didn’t give it to you, the next man would, but fortunately for you, you knocked at the only house on this side with a cellar.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Murdoc asked.

  ‘I am Dominick MacMahon,’ said the man. He’s young, Murdoc was thinking. Early twenty. Isn’t he very young to be so settled?

  ‘I am Murdoc O’Flaherty,’ he said then. ‘I owe you my life.’

  ‘You owe me nothing,’ said Dominick. ‘If you were a dog I would have done the same. In fact I’d prefer to do it for a dog than a soldier.’

  ‘What kind of an Irishman are you at all, with a name like that?’ Murdoc was mad. ‘Did you know a great man with your name died on the ice of the river a few weeks ago? Were you related to him?’

  ‘I might have been, on the wrong side,’ said Dominick.

  ‘Where is your blood?’ Murdoc asked.

  ‘It’s in my veins,’ said Dominick, ‘and that’s where it’s going to stay.’ He looked at the furious eyes of the other. ‘And you better not spill it now,’ he said, ‘or you’ll have no chance of getting free.’

  Damn him to hell, Murdoc thought as he laughed. A blooming laugh. Then he looked with panic at the shutter which had betrayed the light before. It wouldn’t do so any more. The crack was covered with a strip of cloth. The other’s eyes were twinkling.

  ‘Hindsight,’ he said, ‘ and the walls are thick. Come to the other room with me. It might be warmer there.’ He started to climb the wooden ladder that led to the floor above. Murdoc looked around before he followed him. Bales and barrels. Elusive smells. Foreign ones. The heavy thing over the flap of the cellar was a sort of rough table with shelves in it for holding cloth. Then the light went out of it as Dominick’s candle went with him to the room above.

  Murdoc mounted the ladder.

  He emerged into a more brightly lighted room, and a little warmer. There was a raised place over in the far corner covered with blankets. He could see the straw under the blankets. There was a girl sitting up in this bed looking at him. The sight of her made Murdoc hold his breath. Dominick’s candle was revealing her. Black, black, curly hair and brown eyes and a white skin. The eyes looking closely at him.

  ‘She should be living in the west,’ said Murdoc, ‘ riding a little horse with her hair on the breeze. She is wasted in this rich land.’

  Dominick laughed. Why did I say that? Murdoc wondered. ‘The big soldier is paying you a compliment, Eibhlin,’ said Dominick then.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Eibhlin.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Murdoc. ‘Only good people should live in the west land. Strong people, good-looking people. All these rich land places. No good. That’s why I said it.’

  ‘Why are you here so, man?’ she asked him.

  ‘Anywhere I can get at them, I will go,’ he said. ‘If we kill enough of them there won’t be any of them left and then we will have this land to ourselves again.’

  ‘In other words, you just want to fight,’ said Dominick. ‘Sit on the stool near the fire.’ ‘ Notice there is no fire. That’s your Phelim O’Neill. There’s no food. Until tomorrow. The ships got through yesterday. But we will give you something to drink.’

  ‘That O’Neill,’ said Murdoc, spitting in the dead ashes of the fireplace. ‘A cock on a dungpit, crowing and crawing and scratching. The siege is lost, I tell you that. If it had been Rory O’More. But it wasn’t it’s that other one. If it had been Eoghan Ruadh. But it might be yet. Then we can fight all over again.’

  ‘Fight, fight, fight’ said Dominick, handing him a pewter tankard. ‘What in the name of God would you do if there was no more fighting? Would you set up straw men in a field and start fighting them?’

  Murdoc drank. The spirit was very fiery. It nearly made him cough. It was good to feel it ripping its red-hot way to his belly.

  ‘How did you marry a man like that?’ Murdoc asked Eibhlin. ‘An Irishman with a noble name serving a crowd of lickspittles in a walled town when he should be out abroad in the fields and the woods with a horse under him and the rest of his clan at his back.’

  ‘Too many of his people did that,’ she said. ‘Go and look at my baby,’ she said then imperiously, pointing to the bottom of the bed.

  He rose and lumbered over to where her finger was pointing.

  There was a basket there. A little girl was sleeping. She just fitted the basket. One pudgy arm was thrown back. She was the living spit of her mother, black curly hair. Murdoc chuckled. He straightened to look at them. Dominick was looking at the sleeping child. His face was soft. Eibhlin was looking at Dominick. A terrible black gloom came over the heart of Murdoc as he looked at the three of them. Not that he hadn’t children of his own, wherever they were, and women, not wives. He couldn’t see his children in the womb, which was where he would have to, since he never stayed long enough to see them any other way.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But one day …’

  ‘One day that never comes,’ said Dominick. ‘ I know that. Up in the north we were many. We were planted and so we resisted the planting. Until I was sixteen. Fighting, fighting, living like animals in the woods. Who had I left then? Nobody, nobody at all. All gone. Every single soul gone. Only me. I came into the walls. I’m going to stay in the walls. Let them rise or fall. I’m going to be me and my family, and I’m going to survive. All of us are going to survive.’

  ‘You poor innocent man,’ said Murdoc. ‘ There is worse coming to the towns. Men have told me, who have smelled the wind. There is a new power rising in England. The others will be only lambs compared to them. Listen. Leave the town. Remember I told you this. I tell you, go and seek the mountains. You hear that. No man is really free until he has the Beanna Beola at his back. Then you are free. No man can come at you but you see him. Take off when this is over. Listen to me. Oh, man, seek out the fair land under the Beanna Beola, and you will be free and you will survive.’

  ‘Why can’t you do that, then?’ Eibhlin asked him.

  ‘You see me,’ he said, ‘ what am I? I’m a soldier. I like to fight. I like to be what I am, but always this is a dream. Some day I will go back.’

  ‘You go back and leave us alone,’ said Dominick. ‘ What are their wars to us? We are here, and we will stay here, let the English take the town or the Irish take the town, the little men will always be there, working away, rebuilding what is destroyed. They want us. They need us. They can’t get on without us. We will be all right as long as we let them fight over our heads. Will you go now? They’ll come back again.’

  ‘How will I go?’ Murdoc asked. ‘Could I get over the walls?’

  ‘No,’ said Dominick. ‘ They will be well watched. Can you swim?’

  ‘I can,’ said Murdoc.

  ‘Then swim you will have to,’ said Dominick. ‘Put this in your breast.’ He handed him a small stone jar. ‘It will keep you warm.’

  ‘I owe you my life,’ said Murdoc.

  Dominick laughed.

  ‘It’s not worth much,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long-lasting, I can see.’

  Murdoc laughed too.

  ‘May God befriend you,’ he said, ‘and give you happiness.’

  ‘And you too, Murdoc,’ said Eibhlin. She held out her hand to him. He took it in his own huge paw, a bloodstained one, he saw now. They both looked at it. Then he saw her eyes on his coat. That was b
loodstained too.

  ‘I don’t want to smell blood on Dominick,’ she said.

  ‘I hope you never have to, Eibhlin,’ he said. ‘We will meet again under the Beanna Beola, with the help of God.’

  ‘I hope Our Lady brings you safe away,’ she said.

  ‘Come now,’ said Dominick, ‘ soon it will be getting light and it will be too late.’

  Murdoc looked around the room before he followed him down the ladder. It was a happy room. There were gleaming copper pots on the wall, and over the bed there were shelves holding heavy bound books. These made Murdoc shake his head.

  ‘They are the things that made a slave out of a MacMahon, I’ll wager,’ he said, pointing to them.

  Eibhlin laughed. She had a deep bubbling laugh. It was the last sound of her that Murdoc heard before he went down the ladder after Dominick.

  ‘Where now, friend?’ he asked.

  ‘Into the cellar,’ said Dominick, going down. Murdoc followed him. It was a small cellar. It was damp. It was filled with barrels and bales. Dominick left the candle on a barrel and cleared a space near the river side of the wall. He leaned there and pulled and a deep heavy stone came out of the wall as if it was on oiled runners, as it was.

  ‘It will be a tight fit for you,’ said Dominick, ‘but it’s your only way. The tide is in the estuary. It will carry you up the river. When you are free of the walls you can get on the bank.’

  ‘Why is this here?’ Murdoc asked.

  ‘I’m Irishman enough not to want to pay tolls,’ said Dominick.

  Murdoc chuckled.

  ‘I’m glad we came inside the wall, even if we failed, so that I met you,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember you for sure. God be with you!’

  He held out his hand. Dominick shook it.

  ‘The God of war will probably look after you,’ he said.

  Murdoc got on the floor and started to put his legs through the aperture. Then he levered himself backwards with his hands. The sword scraped the stone and he paused. It seemed to make a loud noise.

  ‘Easy now,’ the soft voice of Dominick whispered in his ear. He had the candle. ‘You’ll find your feet in the tide when you stretch your arms. Let yourself in gently and it will sail you away. Come back again, Murdoc, in better times and we will talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll see you in the fair land of the Beanna Beola,’ said Murdoc and then he was gone.

  Dominick listened closely. He could barely hear the splash that Murdoc made as he let himself into the freezing water. Then he pushed back the stone into its position, piled the bales around it, climbed the ladder to the room above and said to Eibhlin: ‘Our big slob of a soldier is safe away.’

  ‘He was a nice man,’ said Eibhlin.

  ‘For a soldier,’ said Dominick, and they both laughed.

  Swimming with one hand, Murdoc felt for the brandy jar with the other. If you thought of how cold it is you would die, he said to himself. He drank all the jar contained, and let it sink empty and gurgling into the water, then he used two hands to swim, keeping close to the quayed walls. The time seemed endless to him until the quays petered out and he smelled the decayed rushes on the river bank. He hauled his way into them and scrabbled his way to safety through the mud and stones.

  Then sitting in the mud he looked back at the town lying smugly under the waning moon and he said:

  ‘May the luck rise with you, Drogheda.’

  Chapter Three

  AT FOUR of the clock on the eleventh of September the first breach appeared in the wall to the east of St Mary’s Convent.

  Dominick was at the third breastwork where it joined the breastwork that curved to cover the towers behind tie Duleek Gate.

  St Mary’s Church was almost in ruins, the broken stones of its steeple had served to make part of the breastwork where he now stood. The whole south of the town was wreathed in smoke, and in places flames which were quickly put out.

  It was a demented moment as the heavy wall opened its chink of light and then burst apart as if it had been hit by the fist of a giant. Through the great crack appearing you could see the cannon belching flame from the Bevrack Mount outside, and the whole area black with the movement of men and animals – like ants they were, covering every hill and mound – and twinkling lights were appearing at the muzzles of muskets, and a harvest sun was gleaming benignly from the fittings of guns and weapons and stores. When he was on the Mill Mount before, he had seen the hosts of besieging men, and behind them the fields waving with golden grain, all but the great avenues trampled through the hearts of the cornfields.

  The breach in the wall was suddenly filled with men. You could see their mouths open in their black faces as they came through and were shot down, and then hacked to pieces by the horsemen who converged on them through the opening in the breastwork.

  Dominick’s bow went twing, not twang as it should have done if it were even a long bow, or quonk if it were a crossbow. What am I doing here, shooting at men’s throats with the short Irish bow that excited the curiosity of Spenser so long ago? Weren’t all governing people the same? Don’t arm the common people, and then when the great emergency arises bring them to the armoury and hand out weapons that have been stored there for a hundred years. When it was too late. He remembered the long evenings in the butts outside Tooting Tower. He was good with the bow. The butts were a relic of the days when the men were forced under penalty to practise the bow. But what use was the bow now against all the metal that was beating the town as flat as an oat-cake on an iron griddle; or taking the bodies of men apart and spreading them to the four corners of the world?

  Twing, and this time he saw one landing deep in the throat of a man. His head was thrown back. Scarlet started to flow on to his russet tunic before he fell.

  Then the opening was wreathed with smoke again as the guns outside, aiming half-pound bullets at the horses, found their mark and the horses screamed and threshed with agony as their blood flowed, and the footmen slipped on it, and the tall Colonel who had been commanding the horsemen fell with half of his chest shot away, exposed, black, and terrible.

  The friars were on the breastworks, about six of them. They had nearly built the breastworks themselves with their bare hands. Black faced, courageous, appealing, encouraging, shouting. The man he really knew. Father Sebastian, a very big man with a thin face, his robes tucked into his girdle, waving his arms, calling, building, appearing through the smoke.

  It cannot last, Dominick thought. They are too many. They can afford to die. But we are not all common men. Our people in here cannot afford to die. They have great possessions. They will want to live on. What is it to me if Englishmen kill other Englishmen, because that is what it amounts to. Because it is my town. Because I have a house here and because my wife Eibhlin is here and my daughter Mary Ann and my son Peter. It’s more than that too. He had been to Dublin since Cromwell had taken it. By sea in the small boat, for provisions. He had heard the hatred. Smelt it. He had seen the tall Puritan divine down on his knees addressing the troops with his arms held wide:

  I beg on my hands and knees that you go against them now while the hands and hearts of our soldiers are hot, and to you, my soldiers, I say briefly: Cursed is he that shall do the work of the Lord negligently: Cursed is he that holds back his sword from blood; yes, cursed be he that makes not his sword stark drunk with Irish blood, that makes them not heaps upon heaps, and their cursed country a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment to the nations. Let no eye look for pity, nor a hand be spared that does pity and spare them, and accursed be the man that curses them not bitterly from the depths of his heart.

  He was a gaunt man with a black hat, very tall and thin, and Dominick wanted to laugh at him, but he stopped as the forest of swords were raised in the air, with a great shout, and he and his companion melted away through the noisome filthy back-ways of the city and his blood ran cold at the calling behind him. That was in August, He got back in time to draw his ancient bow and quiver of arrow
s before the self-same soldiers and the self-same divine sat down before the walls, and prayed to their odd God to help them.

  The banks of a river can only hold a certain amount of flood water: the sea can be only partly contained by buttresses and quays until it is stirred by a mighty wind and unleashes its power.

  Now, almost it seemed in a moment, the breastworks were overwhelmed, overturned, and saturated with blood as a sea of men and horses and guns came through the breaches in the wall; a flood of cursing, psalm-singing, shouting men, cleaving and shooting, dying and killing.

  Dominick was swept away, in the rip-tide of men that retreated in a mass, many of them facing towards their slaughterers to hold them for a moment as the others got away. Some men just threw down their weapons and ran. Dominick was caught in the edge of the tide. His mind was clear. He wanted to work free to get down to St John’s Street and through it to the Irish quarter and his home. But he couldn’t do it. The press of men swept fast and inexorable like the tide to the square in front of the bridge and then over it, to become packed in the middle so that for a moment no man could move, hardly a sword-arm could be raised. Balls from the guns slew them and they remained standing though dead in the press. And then it caved in, almost it seemed again like the magic move of a jester, and Dominick and the others were beyond the Maiden’s Tower, and all the others, their destroyers, were breathing on the far side of the bridge, while drums beat Quarter and trumpets, frightened ones, called shrilly to be spared.

  The cause of it walked almost to the centre of the bridge, and faced his enemies.

  He was a middling-sized man, with long grizzled grey hair. He carried a naked sword in his hand. He wore a damask tunic and velvet breeches and a highly polished long boot on one leg. His other leg had long ago been shot away above the knee and he wore a wooden leg on it, the wood blackened and polished and burnished until it rivalled the sheen of his leather boot. A coloured feather swept back from his hat and waved in the gentle September breeze.

  Calmly and deliberately he walked to the centre of the bridge, almost seeming to avoid the corpses of his soldiers without seeing them or listening to the screams of wounded men. He stood there in the centre of the bridge, alone, in complete command of himself. A thin sunburned face, an aristocratic cast of countenance, Sir Arthur Aston, Bart, of Aston Sutton near Cheshire, veteran of Lithuania, of Poland, of the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, Sergeant-Major-General of the Royal Army, commander of the dragoons at Edgehill, former Governor of Reading and Oxford, and now Governor of this town which he was ordered to burn and evacuate, which order he had refused. What was he thinking about now, Dominick wondered, as he faced the black man on the black horse on the other side of the bridge, a pale-faced black man, squat, with flat features and an inscrutable countenance. Aston was like a yellowhammer facing crows, a colourful, fearless bird.