Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  He pushed his way through the cow-market in Pludd Street. Away at the end of it he could see that the other markets were breaking up. People with horses and cattle were driving away from the squares, and heading towards the gates.

  He walked down slowly. He fumbled under his shirt and reached his fingers into his pouch and got the golden sovereign in his hand. He continued rubbing the coin against the cloth of his shirt and his breeches. Gold was always better when it shone. He came into Earl’s Street and as he passed the lane he turned and looked down. It was empty, except for a lot of soldiers who were crowding around the door of Tom’s tavern. Tom wouldn’t be buried. Even dead they would hang him in chains. He lost himself among the crowd in the horse-market, and walked through looking for a likely face.

  It is difficult to read the faces of the people. They would have animated faces talking to a friend, with laughter wrinkles crinkling the sides of their eyes. But if they saw you noticing them, the blinds would come down on their faces. Most of the horses had panniers, baskets slung on each side of them, in which the produce had been carried, wood or turf for burning, or cabbage or vegetables, or bags of grain. There were old men and young men and middle-aged men, some with beards and some with moustaches and some of them clean-shaven and some of them needing shaves. How would you find one you could trust, even for money? He was getting a bit desperate as he wandered among them, listening to conversations dying whenever he came too close.

  He was over near the walls and the stone steps leading to the ramparts when he felt the hand on his shoulder and heard the voice saying: ‘MacMahon.’ Instinctively he felt for his belt, and his mind was working, on the problem, how he would turn with a sweep of his arm, and a kick with his foot, to topple his arrester, and then he would run through the horses, under their bellies, and he would reach the Strand Gate, run on to the quays and back in the Ould Gate into Quay Street until he would get lost in the Shambles.

  ‘They are looking for you,’ said the voice. He turned. A small man, smaller even than he, with ferrety eyes and bandy legs. He lived in the lane. He was badly dressed. He always seemed to be shaking his shoulders as if he was being tormented with fleas. Perhaps he was. ‘Tailor,’ he said, ‘you shortened my life by five years.’

  ‘You have a right to be frightened,’ said Tailor. ‘They searched the lane like they were looking for gold.’

  ‘Do they know my name?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ said the tailor. He chuckled suddenly. ‘Man, we cleaned out Tom’s place. It was scoured like the white sand on the sea shore afore they kem. You missed though. You failed there.’

  ‘How? How?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘The one you knifed, you missed him,’ said Tailor. ‘He got away on his own legs.’

  ‘Not dead?’ Dominick asked, ‘Not dead?’

  ‘No,’ said Tailor. ‘A bad miss. But they’ll hang you just the same.’ Dominick didn’t care. He felt relief flooding over him. Why? Because Sebastian hadn’t said: ‘Well done, Dominick. It’s great that you killed a man for no reason except that he killed one man who had already killed another man.’

  ‘Tailor, dear,’ said Dominick, ‘find me a man who will rent me his horse and his baskets and his clothes. Do you know one here?’

  ‘Ho-ho,’ said Tailor. ‘I see. Of course I do. Come, we will look and find the very man. For money he would rent out his grandmother to a sailor.’ He walked away from Dominick. He passed through the people. For Tailor they would smile and laugh, Dominick noticed.

  In the middle of the crowd they came on a squat man with a four-day-old grey-black beard. He was chewing tobacco. His teeth were stained yellow. He had very heavy eyebrows and small sparkling eyes under them. Tailor clapped him on the back. He didn’t knock, a stir out of him. He was wearing heavy frieze clothes, with short Irish trousers, and his big feet bare. ‘Peadar,’ said Tailor to him in Irish, ‘is your day good and how the devil are you?’

  ‘Oh, Tailor,’ said Peadar. ‘ I’m not well. I’m racked with pains of many descriptions, and if you are looking for the money I owe you for cutting this cloth, believe me I will pay you next market day. Things are bad. The weather is awful. Nothing is growing. And the price they give for turf wouldn’t pay for the trouble of cutting and saving it.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said the tailor. ‘I’m not after you yet. You see my friend here?’ The shrewd blue eyes looked him over. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I see him for whatever good that will do me.’ Then he looked down at Dominick’s hand, where the golden sovereign was catching the winking lights of the sun. ‘A grand man,’ he said. ‘A decent citizen as anyone can see, and who do I have to murder?’

  ‘The loan of your horse,’ said Dominick, ‘ and the loan of your clothes, all of which will be returned to you in a couple of hours.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ said Peadar. ‘ It would buy both the horse and the clothes all over, and you are willing to give that just for the loan of them? Are you straight in the head?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Dominick.

  ‘The black dogs want him,’ said the tailor.

  ‘In that case.’ said Peadar, ‘what’s stopping us?’ He started to take off his coat.

  ‘No,’ said Dominick, ‘ for God’s sake. We’ll go over here where we will not be seen.’

  He went over towards the Strand Gate where many bales and barrels were piled high. They clambered over some of those until they came on a cleared space where only the tops of their heads would be visible. ‘ Now,’ he said, and proceeded to take off his clothes. Peadar threw off his, while the tailor kept a lookout. There was no word spoken. Dominick donned Peadar’s clothes with distaste. They smelled of him and his sweat, but Dominick’s would be the same to him.

  ‘They’re a tight fit for me,’ said Peadar.

  ‘You can give them to your children,’ said Dominick.

  ‘You mean you don’t want them back as well?’ asked Peadar. He was amazed at such waste. Dominick thought of a time before when he had changed clothes too, long long ago, with a man he had killed. He clenched his jaws as the thought came to him. He handed over the gold. Peadar tested it and found it good, and looked at Dominick with wonder, shaking his head. He put it away. ‘It will be a good winter,’ he said.

  They walked back again to the crowd. There were a few heads turned to look at them. Peadar in the unusual garments drew a few wide eyes, but he just grinned and spat and walked to his horse. The baskets were on the ground. He raised them and fixed them to the pegs of the pannier on the horse’s back.

  ‘Be good with him, now,’ he said. ‘He’s a good horse.’

  ‘Is a man called Davie O’Fowda known to you?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘He’s the fourth cousin of my grandmother’s people.’ said Peadar.

  ‘Watch for him near the Little Gate,’ said Dominick. ‘He will come back with your horse and your clothes. And you have my thanks. You have saved my life.’

  ‘Very few lives are worth a golden sovereign,’ said Peadar, ‘ but if you are caught I’ll say you stole my horse and my clothes. Will that be unkind for you?’

  ‘If I’m caught,’ said Dominick with a tight smile, ‘it will matter little what you say about me.’

  ‘God speed you, so,’ said Peadar. Dominick went to the horse’s head and ‘ck-ck-cked’ and the horse moved. The tailor went with him as far as the Fish Shambles.

  ‘I wish you luck,’ he said. ‘If you ever come back, you will be welcome with us in the lane. Poor Tom. We will have to wake him. He made his own funeral. We’ll be as drunk as lords for three days and nights. They got no decent description of you except from the poor creature who turned. Some said you were six foot with black hair and some that you were only four foot with grey hair. Everyone had a different name on you. So they should be confused for a few hours.’

  ‘God bless you,’ said Dominick, and parted from him. Dominick kept his head down, his pace slow, and the awkward shapeless woollen hat pulled down over his e
yes until he came to the arch of his own lane. He guided the horse through here, having some trouble with the baskets, then he tied the rope of the horse to a bar outside the door and went in to greet his family.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DOMINICK PUSHED the last blanket-wrapped bundle into the basket; took a last hitch at the belly-band rope around the horse, said, ‘Now we are ready!’ Then he looked around for the others. ‘ Peter!’ he called. ‘Come and let me look at you.’

  Peter came from the tail end of the horse and stood there looking at his father with his head on one side. They had rubbed a little soot into his fair hair and streaked his face. The shirt he wore was tattered, and the patched breeches tied with a piece of rope. Since he had been in his bare feet for some time, his legs were brown and dusty. ‘You’re fine, fine,’ he said.

  Then he looked at his daughter. She was poorly clad, but it wasn’t that which gave him a kick in the heart, but the sight of the tears pouring down her face. Man, he thought, the girl who never cried, the little girl who had had thousands of occasions for tears in the last few years. He wanted to be soft with her, to get on his knees in the dust and take her in his arms. But he couldn’t. Time was too precious.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he said. ‘What are you crying for now? This is no time.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she said. She had to make her mouth crooked to say the words at all.

  ‘Well, you must be sweating so,’ he said, and then saw Sebastian standing behind her. He looked at him. Ah, so he thought. Sebastian had been her mother. All those years. Now that he came to think of it, she had been more in Sebastian’s company than she had been in his. Sebastian looked a bit stricken, too, for one who was able to control his features so well. He stood just behind her.

  ‘Keep up your writing, Man,’ he said. ‘I put a slate in the bundle.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And keep after the Latin grammar, Peter,’ he said. ‘That’s your weakest part.’ Peter didn’t look at him either. He was patting the hairy side of the horse’s face, rubbing the back of his hand along it and then his palm. The horse was placid. He was a brown horse. One hoof, pointed, rested tiredly on the dust.

  ‘And keep after the catechisms,’ said Sebastian. ‘It’s more important really than the Latin. You hear, Man?’ She nodded. ‘And if you come on groups of heathens out there who don’t know their catechisms you make them learn it. You’ll do that?’

  She nodded again, with her face averted.

  Sebastian got on his knees behind her then and put his hands on her arms, and his head near her kerchief-covered one.

  ‘Don’t cry, Man,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet again. You’ll see. You and Pedro can be my missionaries until I come.’ Then he looked up at Dominick.

  ‘God be with you, Dominick,’ he said.

  Dominick tightened his jaw muscles. He often noticed that before. Just let one person go soft and everybody was infected. And God knows there wasn’t time for that.

  ‘And you too,’ he said. ‘Well, we better be going. If we don’t go now, it will be too late.’

  ‘You better go,’ said Sebastian. ‘Mistress Coocke said she had too many moulds to fill to see ye further off.’

  Probably filling them with tears, Dominick thought grimly. Women were all the same. She had become terribly fond of the children, and why wouldn’t she? They were good ones. But she was as soft as her own fat, anyhow.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dominick, ‘I forgot to tell you. The man I killed isn’t dead at all.’

  Sebastian thought over that. And then he laughed, rubbing his forefinger under his nose. ‘God bless you, Dominick,’ he said. ‘ If I am laughing at the way you put it, my heart is light for you.’

  ‘I knew that would please you,’ said Dominick grimly. ‘ Maybe he’s dead since, but they saw him walking.’

  ‘If he’s dead, he’s not walking,’ said Sebastian. ‘Look, Dominick, never again, don’t ever kill again. There’s too much killing.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ said Dominick. ‘You know the way if you look long enough at a certain thing, and then turn your eyes to the sky, you transfer the image.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Well, that’s the way you have me now,’ said Dominick. There will be a million Sebastians surrounding me. We will miss you, but that’s only natural. You have been with us a long time. Give anyone time enough and they will grow on you. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Look, be a bit careful,’ he said. ‘ Your head is worth six pounds to anyone who wants to sell you. And six pounds is a lot of money. It only means being careful, that’s all. The Lord God expects you to be a bit cunning as well as reckless. You’ll watch it, hah?’

  ‘I’ll be careful, Dominick,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for so?’ said Dominick. We’re off now at last and with God’s help we will get free.’

  ‘You will get free,’ said Sebastian.

  Dominick slapped the horse on the flank and he set off, holding the lead rope in his hand. Mary Ann was walking beside him, and he could see Peter’s brown legs on the other side. He got to the arch and manoeuvred the horse until the baskets came free. They came into New Tower Street and walked towards Pludd Street and the cow-market. It had thinned out a lot. Streams of people were making up Skinner’s Street. He joined with them. All the time he was thinking: How many real friends does a person make in the course of a lifetime? What is a friend? Is there in the world a person who will really be your friend, who will give of himself to you every time you are in need, so that you can do the same for him, constant, unremitting friendship, with no selfish motive? Does such a thing exist at all? That’s why it was hard parting from Sebastian. Sebastian was only motivated by love. If Sebastian was called on to give his life to save you, he would do that, and he would do it with a smile. That was why it was hard leaving him.

  He glanced down at his daughter, at her face under the soiled kerchief. Her face was wet.

  ‘Man,’ he said, bending down to her, ‘if you don’t dry your face and blow your nose, I’m going to get angry. We have to save our lives.’

  She nodded her head. She obeyed him. She wiped her cheeks with her palms. In streaked them with dirt. That was good. She dabbed her sleeve at her nose. As they came to the four corners near the castle, the tension started to tighten in his stomach.

  Here the walking people, loaded with baskets or leading horses, divided into three ways. Some of them went up Great Gate Street to the way out there; some of them turned left down High Middle Street which would bring them over the bridge and into the west suburbs, and the rest went straight across into Little Gate Street. The streets were narrow and the houses were tall, and the declining sun was shut off so that the streets were in shade. He felt depressed as they passed the fresh fish market, with its live eels squirming in the water tanks, the huge pike smelling already in the hot sun, all except the salted pike some of which were strung and hung on poles.

  Past the market he could see the opening of Little Gate. It was crowded with soldiers, and even half way down the street he could feel the backlash of the hold-up.

  In a way it would be as well to be found. You would die, but however painful the death it could only last a short time and then it would be over. Ever since he could remember, except for the few blissful years in Drogheda, he had been running from something. Running from clans who were at war with his own clans, or running from clans which his clan had raided for cattle, and sometimes women. Fighting the new settlers, fighting the old settlers, living in woods and bogs. For a few short years only he had known the happiness of being static, just staying in one place with the person you loved, with no threats hanging over your head that you couldn’t avoid by the use of your intellect. I’m so damn tired of running away, he thought. If this is going to be the end of the running away, I would be pleased – until he thought of the children. His Man would be almost ripe enough to go to
the Barbadoes. That was a pleasant thought. See Man in the Barbadoes. See Pedro, poor dumb intelligent Pedro, slaving in sugar fields with his body scarred with the lash of the leather whips. That was a pleasant thought.

  They were examining passes.

  He knew that would happen, but he also knew that the only people permitted into the town without passes were the sellers of produce, like Peadar. There was a lot of shouting at the Gate. A lot of arguing. Some of the better classes were protesting against the brutal examinations of their persons, shouting out their names, being pushed to one side or shoved over the bridge, or sent back into the town with an escort who didn’t treat them delicately. Dominick bent down to the ground and got dust in his sweat-soaked palm and rubbed it on his face His clean-shaven features might look too good He pulled the cap farther over his eyes.

  ‘Well, who are you? Are these your kids? What have you in the baskets? What were you selling?’

  Dominick answered him in a blaze of Irish. He gesticulated with his dirty hands. He screwed up his eyes. He spat out the words. They had to be real in case the people around him might betray him. He was Peadar O’Cualain. He was from out the road beyond the lake. He brought turf and fuel to the market. He bought a few things at the market himself, like old clothes and shoes and bits of butter and things and spades for the digging of the land and a little meal and a few bits of bread and fish and things.

  They poked at his baskets with a pike. Just to be sure that there was no man hiding in them. If there had been there would have been blood dripping in the dust. He had thought of that too, that he was a small man and he could have gone out of the gates hiding in a basket. He almost turned pale at the thought now.

  He kept talking, talking and gesticulating, gesticulating, and he was across the wooden bridge and on the road and heading right towards the Wood Quay before he realized that he was through and free, and he could stop talking. His knees felt weak, and his mouth was dry. He stopped and rubbed the soft muzzle of the horse. The horse liked it. I’m getting too old now, he thought, for these sort of adventures.