Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  ‘Are we safe now, Daddy?’ Mary Ann was asking him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘ Not yet. Let us go on.’

  He moved on with the horse.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Way, way, far off,’ he said, ‘where we can build a stout house and rest for ever and fear no man.’

  ‘Do we have to walk again?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no walking much, Man,’ he said. ‘We will get a boat.’

  They were walking by the Little Bridge river that swept around the walls, under the tower of the Little Gate that joined the main flow at the South Milinn. There were houses on their left, closely packed, most of them thatched, some of them mud built, some of them stout built, quite a few of them tall two-storey houses. Many of them were destroyed since the siege. They had been taken over by the people pouring into Connacht from across the Shannon, waiting until they were assigned their portion of land or tenancies which had been promised them when they had been forced out of the other three corners of Ireland. Most of them would never be settled. There wasn’t enough to go around. It was called the Lord’s Suburb, because some of the houses were occupied by a Lord and a Lady and a Sir and a Lady and there was said to be a viscountess and her son living in one of the ruined rooms. It was a place of poverty, crowded with miserable people, helpless because they had never used their hands, deprived of their servants and their wealth, reduced to possessing only what was on their back, each day going into the town to wave their pieces of official paper in the faces of the grinning magistrates. Their children were playing in the roadways, looking incongruous in their shabby good clothes. They crossed the wooden hurdles over the Abbey stream. He could see the buildings of the abbey on his left. The tall tower was half destroyed. The rest of it was used for stabling horses; for an overflow from the town gaol; for a courthouse.

  Ahead of them where the Deig Nua divided from the Little Bridge River he saw the bustling of the Wood Quay.

  It was a very hot day. Even now that the sun was heading towards the west sea, it was hot. The heavy clothes he was wearing were making him break out into rivers of sweat.

  There was apparent confusion at the quay. Some of the turf boats were still unloading. There were mounds of brown turf piled along the way, and the baskets of the patient horses were being loaded. The eel fishers were using hand nets to draw their wriggling catch and pack them into the wooden water-butts. Some country people were getting into boats and pulling out into the main river. Old women heavily dressed and red-faced and clumsy with their baskets, and their young ones lithe and playful, drawing curses from their parents as they rocked the light wooden boats.

  Dominick walked close and looked for O’Fowda. He should be easy to mark. A master boatman is a man who is in charge and gives orders. He gave the rope to Mary Ann and went closer to the quay. It was a short quay, built up of large loose limestone blocks, mortared, but cunningly fitted. He was conscious of the lack of noise from feet. All of them, including himself, were in their bare feet. He listened to the scratching noise that hardened soles made on the warm stones.

  A stout barrel-chested man with brown hair and a big face. That would be O’Fowda. He was ordering here, shouting there. But he walked with authority. He’d kick a boy in the backside, butt a horse in the belly to get him out of the way.

  Then he was standing on the quay with his hands on his hips looking down at a boat which had just arrived. There were two men in it, and they were loaded with wooden logs, which they proceeded to throw up on the quay. They were freshly cut and Dominick smelled them, willow and ash and birch and scrub oak. They smelled as if they were living. They brought to his mind the cool shade of the woodlands, crackling branches under his feet. Funny, but this was the moment he knew that he was finished with towns for ever. This scent of the fresh things, not of sewers, and men’s leavings and flesh putrefying on gallows; stale smells were the smells of towns; everything you smelled was at second hand, already on the point of decay, and the smells of fear which was a worse thing.

  ‘Murdoc sent me.’ he said, standing behind O’Fowda.

  The man didn’t move. He kept talking down to the two men in the boat.

  ‘Late you are,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll have us until dark here, so ye will.’

  ‘How could we help it?’ one man asked. ‘Isn’t the night young?’

  ‘Come next week this time and you’ll stay on the water,’ he said. Then he turned to Dominick. ‘ Well, man, have you the horse ready?’ he asked. ‘Where is the horse?’

  ‘Over here,’ said Dominick, walking back.

  ‘We’ll get him and bring him over,’ said O’Fowda. He walked beside Dominick. He was holding his arm.

  ‘I have to change these clothes,’ said Dominick, noticing now that there were several soldiers walking here and there on the quay, looking, probing. His heart sank again. ‘They must be got back to Peadar O’Cualain. He says you know him, and the horse too.’

  ‘What delayed you?’ O’Fowda was shouting at him. ‘ Bring the horse and get the baskets loaded. They are on to you already,’ he said in a lower voice. ‘You can’t get away from here now. They are looking at every boat that goes or comes.’

  ‘What’s the best thing to do?’ Dominick asked. He felt helpless. He felt sorry that he hadn’t made his own plans. It was always difficult when you had to rely on others. But what could he do now?

  ‘Take the horse,’ O’Fowda was saying. ‘Go back a bit. Cross the drawbridge and go down by the houses towards the Sickeen bogs. You’ll see two paths leading into the big rushes. Take the second path.’ They were standing beside the horse now. O’Fowda was looking at the loaded baskets. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘ You can unload the baskets down there by the rushes and send the horse back. Stay there then. Don’t move out of it. We’ll get to you when it’s dark.’

  He stood back.

  ‘Can I help it if the bloody wood boat is late from Annagh?’ he said. ‘I have to stay here. If you don’t want to, take your horse and get out of here,’ Dominick muttered at him.

  ‘Go on! Go on! Go home to your wife. She’ll be glad to see you if she hasn’t another man with her, and then she won’t be glad to see you.’ He laughed. He walked back shouting, towards the men in the wood boat. ‘ Now see the trouble you are causing,’ he shouted, ‘is there no peace to be found with you? Wouldn’t it be better for the lot of us if your damn boat was at the bottom of the lake?’

  Dominick had turned back the way he had come. Not too fast. He wanted to get upon the horse’s back and beat him into speed. They crossed the wooden hurdles over the river and then turned left and went over the drawbridge. The hooves of the horse sounded hollow. They were far from the little Gate, but on their right the Lion’s Tower rose and the armed men up there were leaning and looking down at them. When they reached the first houses, he skirted them and turned sharply left and breathed again when the bulk of houses cut off the sight of the soldiers on the tower. Beside him, Mary Ann padded on, uncomplaining now. He reached and laid his hand on her head. In five minutes he was free of the houses. They were walking on a rough bridle path on fairly hard ground. Then the ground became softer, and in spots they sank to their shins in black-yellow mud. The rushes were rustling in the heat wind, and he could smell the river. He couldn’t see it. But the two great groups of rushes were distinct. The path climbed away while another hardly discernible went left. He climbed and for some time they were on hard ground and he could see the river out to his left, broad and soft-flowing and shimmering bluely in the hazed sunshine. Then they went into the soft parts again, and when he came to the second great acreage of rushes and found the narrow trail that went through them, winding on the little hard ground that remained, he took it, and went up, sending the children to walk ahead of them. The rushes were tall. The tops of them were waving over their heads. After about three hundred yards of rushes they could lookout at the river, at the boats that were being rowed away towards the sun. At this
point there was a beach of hard yellow gravel. He started to take the bundles out of the baskets.

  ‘Mary Ann,’ he said then, ‘are you brave?’

  Mary Ann looked at him.

  ‘It depends on what I have to do, Daddy,’ she said.

  He laughed at her.

  ‘Would you be able to lead the horse back to the quay?’ he asked.

  She considered it.

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  ‘Go slow,’ he said. ‘ Just go there with the horse. Leave him there, and then walk away and come back here. Could you do that?’

  ‘I can do it,’ she said.

  There were so many things that could happen! He put them out of his mind. This was the only way. He opened one of the bundles and took out his own clothes. He used the horse for a shelter and changed into them. They were lighter than the other sweat-soaked ones. Those he put into the basket. He turned the horse back the way they had come.

  ‘All right, Man,’ he said. He kept his voice casual. This was something she could have been doing every day in the week. ‘Don’t be too long. But don’t look as if you were hurrying. All right?’

  ‘All right, Daddy,’ she said. Then she ‘ck-ck-cked’ at the horse, hauled at the rope and he followed her quietly.

  Dominick waited and listened until he could hear no more of them and then he sat on the bundle, and put his arm about his son who was looking at him inquiringly.

  ‘She’ll be fine, Pedro,’ he said. ‘Man will be safe. You’ll see,’ I better be right, he thought grimly. I better be right.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE SUN went down. They couldn’t see its end because on the other side of the river the land rose a little. But they saw its death in the sky all around them. The smooth water became multi-coloured, and in the middle where the current broke the smooth flow the change of light and colour was dazzling. The birds started their night calling, and from upstream two wild duck came whistling down towards them, splashed the water near them and swam into the rushes. The drake quacked twice, contentedly, and then settled down.

  Dominick felt Peter’s worry, now and then saw the white of his eyes as he raised them to book at his father’s face.

  She will be all right, he told himself. They couldn’t have associated her with him so quickly. It would take them time to find out his name and the fact that there were two children with him. Whatever delayed her had to be good.

  ‘You know Man,’ he said to Peter. ‘She gets talking to people.’ So she did too, even to the wrong kind of people, that was the trouble. If a person was friendly to her, Man would be friendly to him, soldier or sailor. She would even talk to Coote if he was friendly to her. At this thought, Dominick broke out in a cold sweat. ‘Wait,’ he said then. ‘I will go back a little and see if there is sign of her.’

  He raised himself. His limbs were stiff. He walked through the path in the rushes, cautiously emerged from them and climbed to the high ground. He looked. He could see the bulk of the town, a dark mass against the green sky. He could see the heads and shoulders of the patrolling sentries on the walls where the dark bulk of buildings behind them did not make them vanish. He could see the gleam on the waters of the many streams that were swallowed by the fortifications and the mills. But there was no sign of the little girl. He wondered if he would go back in and find her. That would be foolish. It would mean three of them separated and he thought how Peter might feel if he was caught. No, for once have faith in goodness, in the name of God, he told himself. He went back to Peter.

  ‘The boatman may have held her for a reason,’ he said to Peter. That was a sensible idea, if it was true. ‘When he brings the boat he will bring Mary Ann.’

  He held on to that thought. It was sensible. He thought of Tom Tarpy. Such a big jolly happy man. Ah, they said, but you should have seen him before the troubles came on us. Death was very fleet. One second you were here, and the next your mind was standing in front of a different judge from the ones provided here. Be merciful, Lord, to Tom, he thought. He was hurt at the things that were happening all around him. Tom’s soul was tired of iniquity, he thought. But weren’t we all the same way? It was such an easy time to die. It took very little to find death now. A shouted word of defiance, a miscalculated spit, an overheard conversation, a look from the sides of the eye. Little things like that invited death with willing dispensers on every side only too pleased to give it to you. Had it always been like this, he wondered, that one race could so despise another race, that they regarded it as an actual virtue to kill them as if they were vermin? His mind flitted back over his gleanings of history. It was all there. It had happened before. He supposed it would keep on happening until the end of the world. Just because people wouldn’t love. What? Love Coote? That’s right. The physical look of him, the evil eyes, the white moist flesh. You have to hate what he stands for and what he means, but you have to try to love him. No! That’s impossible. But that’s the answer according to Sebastian. Could Sebastian do it, if it was put to him to save his life, or lose his life?

  He felt Peter’s hand pulling at his knee. He looked. It was much darker now. He had to bend low against the light remaining on the horizon.

  He strained his ears. He could hear nothing, but he could see after his eyes became adjusted a shapeless-looking thing that was making its way across. Very silently. He saw it reach the centre of the stream and the current took it so that it went off course, and then he heard a splash or two and saw it settling back and heading almost in a line towards their position. He got to his feet.

  As it came nearer he could hear the slight slap of the wave against the bow. He could only see the oarsman. There was nothing else to be seen, just the thick bulk of a man, leaning forward and pulling back again. He felt his mouth going dry with anxiety. If Mary Ann wasn’t in the boat, he would have to go and find her. There could be no other way of it.

  Ten yards from the little beach the oarsman rested. He whistled. It sounded exactly like a querulous water-hen. Dominick chirped awkwardly in reply and the boat moved in towards him. Dominick caught the bow and pulled it on to the beach.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ said the voice of O’Fowda. Dominick’s heart settled, and he saw the figure rising, from almost under O’Fowda’s feet.

  ‘Mary Ann, my love,’ he said, and caught her arms. Just as he noticed that the arms seemed a little too well fleshed for Mary Ann, he heard his daughter giggling and rising from behind the other.

  ‘You nearly kissed Mrs Dorsi, Daddy,’ she said. He released the arms. Mary Ann climbed out of the boat and splashed to the beach.

  ‘Where were you? What happened to you? Why did you frighten us?’ he asked Mary Ann, trying to sort out his bewilderment.

  ‘I was with Mrs O’Fowda in her house,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I was eating until I was stuffed. She had little cakes, with real sugar on them. Here, Pedro, I brought you one or two. Sugar is sweet. I never ate it before.’

  ‘You didn’t know I was going with you?’ he heard the strange voice say. She had a deep voice with music in it.

  ‘No,’ he answered. Going with us? A woman? Am I to be burdened again, he wondered? Is there no rest even in fleeing?

  ‘Murdoc should have told you,’ he heard her say. ‘I thought he told you.’ He remembered Murdoc talking to Morogh. Laughing behind the talk. So like Murdoc.

  O’Fowda was standing beside him.

  ‘You better go now,’ he said. ‘I can only give you an hour. Then I will have to tell them that there is a boat gone. That way I can cover myself. It will take them a few hours to get ready. That gives you three or four hours’ headstart It’s all I can do for you.’

  ‘You have done a lot for us,’ said Dominick. ‘I won’t forget,’

  ‘Just help somebody else,’ said O’Fowda, ‘that needs it. If we all did that, it would be a free land. Here’s a chart. Its rough but it will show you the way. Watch yourself. They will follow you. Three men rowing are twice as fast as one man.
You want to remember that. Don’t be caught in the open.’ Dominick felt the piece of parchment in his hand. He put it inside his shirt. ‘God be with you, Mrs Dorsi,’ he said, ‘I’d like to see Coote’s face when he finds you are gone, it’s worth the risk.’

  ‘Thanks, Davie,’ she said. ‘ Some day I will be back. I will remember.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mary Ann,’ said he to her. ‘Some day when all is quiet we will hope to see you.’

  Dominick was pushing his bundles into the boat, arranging them in the bow and the stern. It wasn’t a long boat, but it was broad. There was only a middle seat near the oars. It was a heavy wooden boat, pitch-caulked.

  ‘When you leave here creep over to the land on the east shore,’ O’Fowda was saying to Dominick. ‘Up all along by Tiroilean. The moon is coming up. When you pass the old castle you can go into the middle of the river. When you come out of the river into the wide way of the lake, head east until you come to the narrow places and beyond that to the great woods. You will have to get that far before morning if you want to be safe.’

  Dominick caught his hand and squeezed it. It was a broad hand, well calloused. The woman was sitting on the bundles, and Mary Ann was beside her. Dominick pushed the boat out and Peter climbed into the bow and sank there out of sight. Then Dominick stepped in, sat and raised the oars and O’Fowda leaned and pushed and the boat was free on the water.

  Dominick turned the bow of the boat upstream. He could just distinguish O’Fowda, a squat, powerful figure with an arm raised in the air, and then he had merged with the rushes and was gone. The oars felt awkward in his hands. His hands were not very big. The handles of the oars were thick and rough. He pulled the boat over towards the shore and then started to move along by it.