Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  He lay back with his head in his arms, closing his eyes against the glare of the sunshine. He could picture in his mind the land he had reclaimed from the stony embrace of the mountain and the glutty pluck of the bog. He remembered the joy of reaping his first sheaf of corn. It was good and it would be better. His children looked well too. None of them had felt a touch of ill-health. They hadn’t time. There was too much to do. And there still remained a lot to be done.

  A great shout brought him sitting upright again.

  The young men were playing hurling on the fields. There seemed to be a lot of them and there didn’t seem to be any order in their playing. They were all naked to the waist, had linen about their loins and rawhide leather on their feet to save them from the sharpness of the protruding-rocks. The soaked rawhide ball, now dried, made a sharp clucking noise as it was hit by the curving boss of the hurleys that were made from ash.

  He could see the two champions in the middle of the field. They pressed shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh with their heavy hurleys waving, and mostly the ball was fed to them from the mêlée of players on either side of them, and when it reached them what a struggle they had! Dominick felt his own muscles tensing as he watched them. The sun was gleaming off their sunburned and sweating bodies. He knew the tall dark one was Dualta. He was well built. He had no spare flesh on him at all. The other was as tall as he, fair and very lithe, and his white teeth were gleaming in his face.

  The struggle between the two of them took on all the signs of a good wrestling match as the ball came towards them and each one endeavoured to trap it, engage it, free himself from the attention of the other and send it sailing to the line of his opponent. The hurleys swung, and dashed, and the young champions dodged and twisted and threw themselves at one another, and out of their struggle the ball soared into the air towards Dualta’s line, and they relaxed, and the fair-haired one’s backers cheered for him.

  Dominick wondered how they could be so energetic on such a hot day when they didn’t have to be. I am getting old, he thought then. This made him think of Mary Ann and he looked for her.

  He saw her on the edge of the field. She was sitting down in the midst of several other young girls. But you couldn’t mistake Mary Ann’s black curly hair and the profile of the round firm chin. He noticed that the girls were presenting an indifferent front to the struggle on the field. But they were watching the play of muscles in the sunlight. Wasn’t that what most games were for? he thought with a grin – so that admiring females could see the prowess of the stretching muscles, like the bird he had heard of that arched a beautiful tail to attract the notice of the female. And the female always pretended not to notice.

  Good God, he thought then, Mary Ann is growing up. What is she now? Sixteen. She was a young woman, he thought, as his heart missed a beat. No wonder she should be a young woman. She had seen enough and done enough since she was a child to have the wisdom of a woman twice her years.

  All the same it was sad. He looked at Peter. He was with younger lads. They had pieces of sticks and an old rag ball and they were playing with those and to them their match was far more important than the one on the field.

  Getting old, he thought as he lay back again on the rock. Shortly my children will have grown from me, and I will end up an old man sitting over the fire of a lonely evening and spitting into the ashes. This picture of himself made him laugh; even if it was true or false, it showed from the thought itself that he was getting old.

  ‘Don’t move now, Dominick,’ said the voice of Sebastian almost in his ear.

  ‘I won’t move,’ said Dominick.

  ‘Look over towards the mountain on your left,’ said Sebastian.

  Dominick shifted his head. He saw the mountain, ten, twelve miles away, enveloped in a blue heat haze, and from the very tip of it a black column of smoke was rising.

  ‘Coote is coming,’ said Sebastian. ‘He will be here in a few hours.’

  ‘What is that to us?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘I think it means a lot of things,’ said Sebastian.

  Dominick turned and lay on his belly. This way Sebastian’s deep-sunken eyes were looking into his own. Sebastian’s face was thin, but he looked healthy, tired but healthy.

  ‘I have to do something for you,’ said Dominick with a sigh.

  ‘The word is that Murdoc is going to take the oath,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dominick, ‘he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I am afraid he will,’ said Sebastian. ‘You must talk to him, Dominick. I cannot talk to him. There are very deep barriers between us. I could do more harm than good if I talked to him. He mustn’t do this, Dominick. I have tried all I can. With him I can try no more. He would only do it to hurt me. Why doesn’t he like me? Why am I so distasteful to him? I never hurt him.’

  ‘The truth you talk is not palatable,’ said Dominick.

  ‘He is walking on the white stone shore,’ said Sebastian. ‘He will be such a lonely man, Dominick. But how many will follow him? Cain you tell me that? As you know them, how many would follow him that far?’

  ‘As many as you could put in your ear, I think,’ said Dominick. He rose to his knees. ‘ You know their souls better than I do. It seems to me they are part of the mountains and their faith is part of them. I will go after him. Does he walk alone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sebastian. ‘He is walking alone. Only say what you yourself have in your heart, you can say no more.’

  Dominick got up, stretched himself and walked down from the hillock. The hurling game had ended in a shout of victory. His own side had converged on Dualta and had raised him on their shoulders, shouting and cheering. Dominick passed by.

  The young men converged towards the place where the girls were sitting watching with an indifferent look on their faces. Some of them went and sat by the girls, joking with them, pulling at their plaits.

  Mary Ann got to her feet and walked over to where Dualta was sitting on the ground. His hands were propping up his body, which was covered in sweat. ‘Hello, Mary Ann,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Why do you work so hard on a hot day?’

  ‘That wasn’t work,’ he said; ‘that was pleasure.’

  ‘You have little to do. What does it matter if one fellow is better than the other fellow?’ she asked.

  He looked at her serious intent face. He laughed, got to his feet.

  ‘It means that the winner wins a prize if he is the champion,’ said Dualta. ‘Well, I must go,’ he added. ‘Tonight I will show you how to dance at the bonfires.’ He walked away from her.

  ‘And what prize did you win?’ she called after him.

  ‘Prize?’ he asked, turning back. ‘Oh, the prize. You were the prize,’ he said indifferently, ‘and I won you.’

  He looked at the angry colour rising in her cheeks and laughed and walked on.

  Mary Ann was really furious. She bent at her feet and scrabbled a clod of the soil with her digging hands and flung, it after him. It was a lucky blow. It hit him on the back of the neck.

  He said ‘Ow,’ and put his hand up to the hurt. He turned. The others had seen his discomfiture. They were laughing. They were calling to him. But Mary Ann was bending again for another clod. She gathered it and threw it. Dualta ducked.

  ‘Do you think I am a sheep, a cow, an animal?’ Mary Ann was asking in a high voice. And this time she took up a stone, and Dualta couldn’t face it. He ran away with his hands over his head. And she ran a bit after him, and flung the stone. It missed him, but she had set something in train because all the girls were bending for clods and throwing them and the young men, laughing and calling and pretending great fear, were running in all directions over the field. But Mary Ann meant it!

  Sebastian, smiling, watched them and wished his heart was as light as theirs.

  Dominick worked his way through the gathering at the end of the field. He spoke to a few men, ducked his head at a few women. Soon he was clear o
f the crowds and he walked until he could see the sea, and when he had clambered over many rocks and rough places he saw the white stone shore, and he saw the figure of Murdoc standing tall near the shore and now and again bending and throwing a stone at the lapping water and all the time his eyes were directed towards the south. He looks like a man who is expecting a ship to come home, Dominick thought, as making up his mind he suddenly and determinedly made his way to the man on the beach.

  Murdoc could see it all exactly as it happened.

  A long trail of men would set out from the town, by midday on Tuesday, about fifty men, his watchful other eyes had told him. Since it was Coote they would be well armed and travelling light. He didn’t think that the Commissioner, who was a stout man too fat and well fed for his arteries, would enjoy the journey because where they were going no carriage with wheels could go. It would have to be horses.

  That night Coote would stay at the castle of Magh Uillinn while his men bivouacked in the inhospitable fields down near the rocky lands of the great lake.

  From there that night the boats would softly put in with Morogh Dubh and their ten men. It was a moonless night, but not dark owing to the fine June weather.

  The sentry would die swiftly and quietly, the lines of the horses would be cut, a shot would be fired and the horses scattered to the four corners of the land, and Morogh and his men would be away and collecting horses from their many relations before the black ones knew what was happening.

  What would Coote say to the Master of Gnobeag? Murdoc wondered with a smile. He would not be very favourable to the Master of Gnobeag if all went well. That was as it should be Murdoc did not think much of the Master of Gnobeag.

  A half day lost collecting the horses. Some of them would have broken their legs on that rocky land. They would be shot, and the riders would be returned to the town.

  Wednesday night Coote would rest at the castle of Acadh na n-Iubhar. The sentries would be doubled and trebled, but nobody would sleep with an easy head, and nothing at all would happen to them, and Coote would wonder if the Master of Gnomor knew anything about what had happened to them the night before at Gnobeag. He would be suspicious of the Master of Gnomor and that was as it should be.

  But Coote would not leave the territory of Gnomor in peace. Some miles beyond Fuathaidh where the Abhann Roibh ran to the great lake and the land rose to the high bog plains and the thick woods, as their guide led them through the only bearable places, out of the woods would come ten horsemen on their mountain horses with their battleaxes and their swords swinging, and the rearguard would be chopped and disorganized, and bursting through them the ten men would let their able-footed horses guide them racing over the soft lands on the far side. He saw the column halting. He heard the shouts. He heard the shots being fired after the fleeing horsemen. He saw the troops detached for the pursuit, and he saw them and their horses, heavily loaded, big awkward animals, suddenly floundering to the bellies in the soft lands they couldn’t negotiate, and the eyes of their riders white with fear as they felt the oozing bogs sliding up their thighs, the brown bog water pouring into their heavy cavalry boots.

  They would have to be retrieved, and the dead above would have to be buried. He imagined Coote’s frustration. He would look at the hills around him, search the plains. There were no peasants he could find to help them, even to kill them and make improvised pathways of their bodies. Coote would appear calm, his face as pale and undisturbed as ever, but Murdoc could feel the anger of his heart, the straining of his nerves, the desire for revenge in this barren land. And he would not feel good about the Master of Gnomor.

  In Connmaicnemara they would wearily make their way into the holding of Baile na hlnse. Coote would rest there in the castle on the lake. They would not be disturbed, but their nerves would be on edge. Coote would be suspicious of the Master of Baile na hlnse, and the following day he would have cause to be, because as they passed close to the Beanna Beola – and the guide would see to that since Murdoc had instructed him personally – they would pass through a cutting, with sound ground under the horses’ hooves, and from above Morogh and his men, at the right time, would loose a great fall of boulders and rocks that would cause confusion and maybe death or injury to the milling horsemen down below, and Morogh and his men would slip away and should soon be here, a comfortable time before Coote.

  Murdoc laughed.

  ‘Why are you laughing, Murdoc?’ he heard the voice of Dominick asking him.

  Murdoc turned.

  ‘I am laughing because I am happy, Dominick,’ he said. ‘I am laughing at my dreams.’

  ‘They must be good dreams,’ said Dominick.

  ‘Big,’ said Murdoc. ‘They are big, Dominick. I feel like an eagle looking down on a stretch of land between Loc Orbsen and the sea, who is saying: This is ours. Now this will be mine.’

  He sat on the stones. He took up a round one. It was rounded from the action of the waves and was almost pure white quartz. He played with it.

  Dominick sat beside him.

  ‘Are you gaining all this to lose your soul?’ Dominick asked.

  Murdoc looked at him out of the sides of his eyes.

  ‘Get thee behind me, Sebastian,’ he said.

  ‘Coote is coming?’ Dominick asked.

  Murdoc turned his head, let his eyes rest on the column of black smoke far away.

  ‘Coote is coming,’ he said.

  ‘Coote would never come for nothing,’ said Dominick. He must have a purpose.’

  ‘He has a purpose,’ said Murdoc. His eyes were gleaming.

  ‘Tell me, Murdoc,’ Dominick asked, ‘are you going to take the oath?’

  ‘Listen, Dominick,’ said Murdoc. ‘This is out of your life. You know nothing about these things. There are terrible forces moving in the land. They could grind us to powder or we could be cunning and fight against them. You are happy here. Tell me that? Aren’t you happy here?’

  ‘I have caught hold of the tail of happiness,’ said Dominick cautiously.

  ‘Be that way,’ said Murdoc. ‘But there must be a power to protect your happiness, to guard it. You and hundreds of people like you, every little house among the hills that sends smoke into the skies.’

  ‘Would you trust a man like Coote?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘No,’ said Murdoc, ‘but there are other forces. Cromwell won’t live for ever. Cromwell is going to die, and when he does there are going to be great changes. You know what will happen then?’

  ‘Nothing good for us,’ said Dominick. ‘It will only be a change of masters.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Murdoc. ‘ There will be changes. And the thing to do at that time is to have, and to hold. Possession will be the thing. What a man has then, nobody will be able to take from him.’

  ‘If he has the right religion,’ said Dominick. ‘ Is that it?’

  ‘What religion is right?’ Murdoc asked. ‘What proof have we that ours is? You have seen what has happened to us. I have seen. Have I not felt for the raped virgins, for the broken-skulled babies, for the hanged men, for the slaves of the sugar plantations? What is left of it all that was so flourishing? Nothing at all except the two islands out there where the last remnants of the old religion are dying with despair.’

  ‘Not despair,’ said Dominick. ‘You don’t know. There is no despair. There is only joy.’

  ‘There shouldn’t be,’ said Murdoc fiercely. He got to his feet. He threw the stone he was playing with far out into the sea. It sank with a splash. ‘If God favoured us, would the whole land be like it is now? Tell me that?’

  ‘No,’ said Dominick. ‘It is the will of God that it be like this, to make better people out of the lot of us. To make us think so that some day we will be one. We have to fight for it.’

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about it,’ said Murdoc. ‘God never intervened when thousands were slaughtered by the sword and by famine and pestilence. The stronger side won. We were defeated. If what we believed in had been r
ight, wouldn’t the Lord have been on the side of the righteous? The English God was on the side of the English. There is only one God, therefore. He has pointed out unmistakably which side he favours. He favours them.’

  ‘He only seems to do so,’ said Dominick.

  ‘You don’t know what you are talking about, Dominick,’ Murdoc suddenly shouted. ‘It’s important for the sake of the people that I be big and grow and protect them. I will grow and I will be big and I will protect them. If it is only the taking of an oath that is between all that I want to fulfil, then I will take an oath. What is it? What the hell does it mean to swear an oath on a Protestant Bible?’

  ‘It means that you are throwing away the only thing that is worth anything at all to you,’ said Dominick. ‘It means taking the heart out of your body and throwing it into the sea like a stone. Do this and you will be a lonely man. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ said Murdoc. ‘I just don’t feel anything in here, Dominick!’ He was hitting his great chest with his clenched fists. ‘It seems nothing at all to me. I am looking at the future. What will happen in the future? Would it be better for me and my descendants to be over the people, than some proud Irish-hating man who will replace me and grind my people into the bogs?’

  ‘No one will ever grind your people into the bogs,’ said Dominick. ‘They can try. But they won’t succeed. If they are ground in the stone mills there will always be one that will survive. You don’t have to sell your soul for posterity, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I mean nothing. The things you believe don’t seem to mean much to me,’ said Murdoc. ‘ Maybe I’m sorry.’

  ‘Then you will take the oath,’ said Dominick.