Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I’m not who you think.’

  ‘Won’t you kill me?’ the priest asked.

  Dominick put his hand in under the breastplate, caught hold of his linen shirt and tore it. He kept pulling at it until a substantial piece came away in his hand. He folded it, gently eased back the flap of the torn scalp and tied the piece of linen around the priest’s head.

  ‘Friend,’ the priest said.

  ‘We’ll have to go,’ said Dominick. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ the priest asked.

  ‘We’ll go home,’ Dominick said.

  ‘If that’s the will of God,’ said the priest.

  ‘Can you stand?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘I can try,’ said the priest.

  Dominick helped him to his feet. He was very shaky on his legs. He leaned against a tombstone.

  ‘My strength is drained away,’ he said. ‘Why am I here? I was in the church. I saw the sword falling.’

  ‘We’ll go through the town,’ said Dominick. ‘If we die we will die.’

  ‘No man can kill us,’ the priest said, ‘if it’s against God’s will.’

  ‘We might be better dead,’ said Dominick.

  He was tearing at the lower part of the priest’s habit, so that what remained looked like a tunic held at the waist by a leather belt with coarse narrow-fitting breeches below. He pulled the sandals off his feet. He could have been a wounded soldier divested of his accoutrements for ease of movement. Dominick didn’t care. He did all this as if he was somebody else, his brain moving his hands to actions in which he had not the least interest.

  ‘We will go now,’ he said, putting his right arm around the priest’s waist. ‘Lean on me.’

  ‘God bless you, Dominick,’ said the priest. ‘Dominick MacMahon who lives in the lane of the Irish behind St John’s Street. ‘‘Our enemies encompass us about. They fall on us in their myriads. There is no escape.’’ ’

  ‘So be it,’ said Dominick.

  He led out of the gate. The priest was a heavy man. He stumbled as he walked.

  ‘Listen to the sounds of the town, dear God,’ the priest said, ‘and tell us what we have done to You.’

  ‘Don’t listen,’ said Dominick. ‘ Just don’t listen.’

  How can the moon shine, he wondered? Why can’t dark clouds cover it? Wouldn’t you think the moon would be so sad that it couldn’t look down, here on this night; this pin-point on the map of the universe? Was it because it saw a great space of the world, and in other places people were laughing and making love and dancing harvest dances and singing and there was so much happiness in those places that the moon could be complacent about this one spot on the face of the earth?

  They walked slowly through soldiers and horse-droppings and blood and unlicensed terror. It was the licence that saved them perhaps, men being told that all was theirs, people and places, maidens and virgins and widows and the soft flesh of infants, the gold and silver and precious things and food and wine and furnishings, so that very little men felt as great as God with all these things under their hands to do with as they willed. What an opportunity for man to throw off all the habiliments of civilization and conscience, knowing that what you were doing was right, that your commander had ordered you to do so, that everyone was doing it, and that no matter what you did, you were pleasing God?

  They walked down the hill.

  Everywhere God’s work was going on. Indescribable. The dregs of tattered souls. Who had time to pay attention to a soldier who was foolish enough to take time out from the rape and the slaughter to help a wounded comrade? Nobody. And that saved them for the time. Even crossing the bridge where they were tying people back to back, despite their screams, their pleadings, their soiling of themselves through abject fear, and hoisting them and throwing them into the tide-swollen waters of the Boyne, on which the moon was beaming benignly.

  ‘Oh, no. Lord, no!’ the priest was saying. He could hear the screaming, the terrible fear-ridden pleading that would reduce any man’s stomach to jelly; that and the screams that were drowned in gurglings, and loud laughter and the encouraging of the spectators, shouting down over the bridge. ‘Swim for it, you filthy fishes, swim for it,’ and the sound of here and there a discharged musket.

  Dominick’s teeth were clenched so tightly that his jaw was sore as they walked away from the river. ‘ It would be easy to die,’ was what he said. The priest was dry sobbing. Dominick had a very tight grip on him until they were well past the bridge.

  It was only as they came nearer to his own street that his desire to live survived, perhaps because he thought they had no hope at all of getting this far and they had. Even if it was only a respite from their eventual end, because it was clear now that the whole intention was that there should be no witnesses left alive to Drogheda. And when there are no witnesses, isn’t every man innocent? You have his word, and his word is good indeed.

  His short street was empty. The hurricane had passed through it, the great cleansing wind, the sword of the Lord.

  He got to his door, and over the step, past the drunken doorway. The priest fell to his knees near the counter and supported himself on his hands. Dominick eased up the flap of the cellar.

  ‘Man,’ he called. If only she were a man now, he would need her. That was young Peter, when he started to talk. He couldn’t get his tongue around Mary Ann. He held his breath. Perhaps they had found the cellar. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ he heard her whisper. ‘I’m glad you came home to us. Peter is raving, so he is.’

  ‘All right, love,’ said Dominick, ‘keep away from the steps. We are coming down.’

  He raised the priest to his feet and practically lifted him down, swung him free and let him drop. Then he came down after him, carefully closing and bolting the cellar flap. Then he went down the steps, walking very carefully, went blindly to the niche where the candles were, struck the flint, got the spark, and shortly the cellar was flooded with the dim yellow light Dominick went on his knees beside his son.

  Man had him lying on straw in the corner. His four-year-old face was flushed, his flaxen hair was wet.

  Man said: ‘I washed the cut on him, Daddy. It was bleeding awful.’

  He looked at her. A competent little girl in a red kirtle. Very black hair all curled and very black eyelashes. Her eyes were wide and her red lips held out from her teeth, with her head on one side. Always that way. Intense.

  ‘Oh, Man,’ said Dominick and took her into his arms.

  ‘Why are you wearing that thing, Daddy?’ she asked. ‘ It’s hurting me.’

  He freed her. Just as well. He divested himself of the breastplate and the helmet. His torn shirt hung around him awkwardly. He pushed it into his breeches. Then he looked at his son again. He raised the cloth that was covering the wound in his head. He had been hit with the flat of the sword. Otherwise he would be dead. But there was a gaping cut in his scalp, and as he pressed the skull gently Dominick could feel it depressing under his fingers. The boy muttered and moved his legs.

  ‘Oh, Pedro, Pedro,’ said Dominick, calling him.

  The eyes opened for a moment to look at him, but closed again. No words came from the childish lips, just a sort of wuff sound.

  ‘He’s been at that, Daddy. Wasn’t he bold to run out on the street? Mammy told him not to. Where’s Mammy gone, Daddy?’

  ‘She’s with friends, Man,’ said Dominick. ‘She can’t come now. We’ll meet her again.’

  He was searching the shelves. He found the basket and took the shoemaker’s thread from it and a sharp needle. He took the bung off the small barrel of whisky and dipped the thread and used some of the whisky to bathe the cut on Peter’s head. Then gently, very gently, he eased the needle into the scalp one, two, three, four, five times, and drew the edges of the wound together. The sweat was running down all over his body when he tied the knot. He rubbed it away from his forehead, and then tearing more from his shirt, and wetting that too with whi
sky, he wrapped it around the boy’s head and covered his hot body with cloth which he cut from the bolt of frieze.

  ‘Who’s that man, Daddy?’ Man asked him.

  ‘Listen, Man,’ he said. ‘You sit here by Pedro. Here’s a cloth. When he sweats rub this on his forehead. Will you do that?’

  ‘I will, Daddy,’ she said, and sat obediently by the side of her brother. Looking at her and Peter was nearly breaking Dominick’s heart. Only he wasn’t being given time for heartbreak. It had been arranged that way.

  He went over to the priest, who was leaning against the steps, his head, rising and falling. He was in pain. His lips were moving. Dominick placed the back of his hand against his cheek. It was hot.

  ‘Father! Father!’ he called.

  The priest’s eyes focused on him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I will have to stitch your wound,’ said Dominick. ‘It will hurt you. Will you drink a lot of brandy? That might kill the pain.’

  ‘A little brandy, Dominick, not a lot,’ said the priest. ‘You won’t hurt me now. I am gone beyond hurt.’

  Dominick filled a small pewter tankard from the cask. He put it into his hand. He helped him to raise it to his lips. The priest drank a little of it.

  ‘You have good brandy, Dominick,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because it came in without paying toll,’ said Dominick.

  The priest laughed weakly. He had strong white teeth. His lips were pale.

  ‘Do what you have to do now,’ he said.

  Dominick unwound the piece of his bloodstained shirt. He had a dreadful reluctance to do what had to be done. What is the use, his mind was asking him. Won’t we all be dead anyhow in a short time? Just a little time for diligent search and they will find us here.

  But he drank some of the brandy himself and then set to and sewed up the priest’s head, thinking that it was like sewing a large piece of leather, and wondering at the coincidence of Father Sebastian and Peter having somewhat similar wounds, only the priest’s skull was intact, and wondering at himself, how he could be doing all this as calmly as a tailor sewing at a bench. The priest winced very little, even when the alcohol went deep into his wound first, and afterwards the needle. He believes in God now, Dominick thought, and he is offering up his suffering. Little use that is. If God was listening what had happened would never have happened. He would have saved the women and children at least. He would have sent his angels with flaming swords to protect them. They could not have been destroyed.

  It was done. He put the priest lying down on the straw and covered him with his expensive cloth. The priest sighed very deeply and closed his eyes, and over their heads the tramping and the noise began.

  Man came to him and he held her in his arms. He sat on the stone floor leaning his back against a barrel, and wrapped her in cloth.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she said, listening.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘Go to sleep, Man. Just go to sleep. Don’t be afraid. Here’s your Daddy.’

  She snuggled deeply into him. He kept one hand over her free ear. He didn’t blow out the candle. He looked at the propped floor over his head. It was padded and lined with canvas and straw. He could hear the shouting and the laughter and the heavy feet. They were going to sleep. Their work for one day was over. Tomorrow would be another day. They wanted rest so that they could rise refreshed to commence on more of the Lord’s work. He was surprised how cool he felt. How calm.

  Now what am I going to do, he wondered? A sick and wounded boy and a sick and wounded and almost helpless priest, and my beloved daughter.

  All the gates would be guarded, all the walls patrolled. The country for miles around by this time would have been laid bare and the very field-mice would be cowering in terror. So what way out have I, dear Lord, if there is a lord of us all, kinder and more decent than earthly ones.

  And he set himself to think, the warm body of his daughter in his arms, her small, sweet breath an inspiration on his cheek.

  Chapter Five

  HE EASED the stone back a few inches and sweet fresh air blew into the cellar as well as chinks of daylight. He tried to judge what time of the day it would be from the quality of the light. He’d say well after midday. Immediately he had awakened from his troubled and restless dreams and nightmares, he had closed his mind. It was almost automatic, like a shutter coming down on it.

  The candle had burned away. He lighted another one and then went to look at his son. He was lying on his back, one arm thrown across the form of his sleeping sister. Dominick felt his cheek. It was quite cool. Eibhlin often said that about them, that children could get things that would kill an adult and throw them off. Man’s sleep was untroubled. Her cheeks were flushed, but from a healthy flush.

  He sat down for a moment and looked at them.

  You are mine, he thought. You are all I have left, and I’m going to see that you are left. You are going to survive. I don’t know how yet but you are going to survive. He listened. There was no noise now from the house above. He had heard various noises during the night and the morning, but there was nothing to be heard now. He knew what he was going to do. At least he knew what he was going to try to do. There was only one way.

  He went over to the priest.

  His face was very pale and haggard. He had a clean-shaven face like Dominick’s own, but now it wanted to be shaved, a blue-black beard was sprouting on his jaws. It emphasized his paleness and made him look like the illustration of a saint after a tortured death.

  He shook him gently.

  ‘Father! Father!’ he said.

  He saw the eyes opening. There was blankness in them. They looked at Dominick and then they filled with a look of pain, not physical but mental, and for a moment Dominick’s heart raced as his mind turned over the events of yesterday, sickeningly, and then he tightened his jaws.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  The priest put a hand up to feel his bandaged head. He didn’t wince as his fingers pressed there. His hand was large, with long fingers, a useful hand. He struggled up on to an elbow.

  ‘I am alive, Dominick,’ he said.

  ‘Have some wine,’ Dominick said. ‘And there is a little oaten bread.’ He had it ready for him. The priest pulled himself up farther, his back against a barrel. He took the tankard of wine. He sipped it, tasted it, swallowed it.

  ‘God bless you,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We will have to leave the town,’ said Dominick.

  ‘How?’ the priest asked.

  ‘There is only one way,’ said Dominick. ‘By the river. How well are you? Will you be able to help?’

  ‘I’ll see,’ said the priest.

  He helped himself to his feet, Dominick squatting and watching him critically. He took a few steps.

  ‘I’ll be able to help,’ said the priest. ‘I think you can rely on me.’

  Dominick thought so too. He was assessing in his mind how much he would be able to ask from him.

  ‘Daddy,’ said the voice of Man. There was fright in it. He was over beside her in a moment.

  ‘Yes, my love,’ he said.

  She put her arms about his neck. She hugged him.

  ‘Why are we here, Daddy?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s an adventure, Man,’ said Dominick, ‘like in a story.’

  ‘Peter is awake too,’ she said.

  His heart contracted. He looked at Peter. The eyes were open widely, blue eyes. They were looking at him.

  He put his hand on the boy’s face.

  ‘Hello, Pedro,’ he said, ‘and how are you?’

  Pedro’s lips moved, but no sound came out of them.

  ‘Hello, Mary Ann,’ said the priest. He was kneeling beside Dominick.

  She went shy, a finger going into her mouth.

  ‘You remember me, Mary Ann,’ he said softly. ‘Who made the world?’

  ‘God made the world,’ said Mary Ann, ‘and you’re Father Sebastian. I wou
ldn’t know you with the funny cap you have.’

  He smiled.

  ‘You’re welcome to our house,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Mary Ann,’ he said gravely.

  ‘You fell, Pedro,’ said Dominick, ‘and you hurt your head.’

  The child’s hand was up feeling the cloth wrapped around his hair.

  ‘Over there beside the steps,’ said Dominick deliberately, ‘you’ll find bread in a bowl. Go on over and eat it, Pedro.’

  The priest moved. Dominick held him back with his hand.

  ‘Go on, Pedro,’ he said, ‘ over by the steps.’ Because the child had only moved a hand. That was all. And he could hear. But could he walk?

  In a moment, Peter considered what he had been ordered to do. He turned over, he was still such a child, and started to crawl; then he rose, tripped over the sort of dress he wore, righted himself with the adroitness of long practice and walked towards the steps, firmly.

  Dominick released his pent-up breath.

  ‘They hit him with a sword,’ he said quietly to the priest. ‘His skull is hurt.’

  He followed him. He had the bowls prepared, of the bread soaked in wine. Peter was diligently poking in the bowl with his fingers. Dominick sat beside him and fed it into his mouth, looking anxiously at him. The child chewed slowly, as if it was an effort, and then carefully swallowed and would have said ‘More.’ but no sound came from his lips. Dominick fed him more.

  ‘Yours is ready too, Mary Ann,’ he said.

  She came over and sat down beside him and started feeding delicately from the wooden bowl.

  The priest sat beside Dominick. He ate some bread and washed it down with a mouthful of wine.

  ‘How, Dominick?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll have to go and look for a boat,’ said Dominick. ‘I can’t go down the river. All the ships are there. I’ll have to go up river. It will be a very small boat. There are only two hours in which we can do it. Before the moon comes up and while the tide is flowing. We have to be on the water before it starts to ebb, or we are lost. That’s the only way. I will go and I will come back. If I don’t come back you will know that I am dead.’