Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  ‘I hope God will have mercy on you,’ said Sebastian.

  Coote felt the blood rising in his head. He clenched his teeth. The sweat glistened on his pale skin. He felt for a moment like putting an end to him here and now. He hated the sight of the wide deep eyes, with no fear in them; the miserable bones in his thin body. He could have stamped him out with his boots.

  But he conquered himself. It would only disarrange the set-piece.

  ‘Move,’ he said.

  Four soldiers came around Sebastian. He turned with them and moved towards the accessible way. He passed his people. They were looking at him with blank expressionless faces. A woman sobbed. He knew what they were feeling – not fear, but their own helplessness. He raised his hand in front of him and made the sign of the cross over them. Then he was on the rim and was walking down.

  The soldiers closed in on the people, and they moved them after him.

  When you are young it is a gay thing to climb a mountain. It makes going to church a high adventure. You have fun, if you are a boy teasing the sliding girls, helping them over the rough places. It is an opportunity to hold a hand or squeeze a waist. You listen to the groaning of the old ones whose bones are creaking in the ascent. You imitate them; maybe laugh at their striving, never reflecting that some day you will be the same. Anyhow you are under the sky and your heart is young, and the weather is mild and you don’t know any different.

  The procession down the mount was a very silent and awesome one. Dominick felt Mary Ann’s hand slipping into his own. It was cold and it was trembling. He held it tightly.

  Pedro was with them, and then he wasn’t with them. He ran ahead of them. He broke through the ring of soldiers around the priest and he caught his hand. They were going to beat him away, but they were undecided. They left him.

  ‘We have come a long way together, Pedro,’ said Sebastian. ‘You must not feel sad,’ Pedro shook his head. His head was up to Sebastian’s shoulder. He will be much taller than Dominick, Sebastian thought. ‘ This is the appointed time,’ he went on. His thinness made it easier to walk. He had no fat to make him sweat. ‘There is always a dangerous time when people are deprived of a prop. They become confused, like poor Murdoc is confused. He is blinded with ambition. Listen, Pedro, you must strengthen the young. You must strengthen the people. You’ll find a way too, you’ll see.’ He glanced sideways at him. The tears were pouring down Pedro’s face. ‘You mustn’t be sad, Pedro. This had to come some time. It was meant to be this way. You must pray that I will die well. God bless you. Leave me now, because I have little time to pray myself. God will bless you. Keep up your Latin. You are very good. Strengthen your Greek, and get somebody to help you with your mathematics. You’re hopeless. Try Murdoc’s ollamh. He’s a good mathematician.’

  He released Pedro’s hand abruptly. Pedro stood still. He watched the back of the priest, so incongruous on the side of the hill in his vestments. The bottom of the white alb was being stained with the bog. He just stood there. He was engulfed by the people until he felt the strong arm of his father around his shoulder. Then he moved with them.

  At the bottom of the hill the horses were waiting.

  Coote mounted one. Half the other soldiers mounted theirs and one of them, a bulky man who was chewing tobacco and spitting on the ground, brought a strong rope and tied it tightly around the chest of the priest and under his arms. Then he mounted and tied the other end to the pommel of his saddle and when Coote’s arm dropped, the soldiers shouted and the horses jerked and ran, and the priest was pulled after the horse. He ran for a little, they saw that, and then he couldn’t run. He fell and he was pulled over the ground. His hands were up trying to protect his face. They saw the blood on his hands and forehead before the twist of the hill took him out of their sight.

  They were still herded by the walking soldiers. The lot of them felt drained with despair, devoid of power. They were walked about a mile to the little beach of the silver sand. The tide was out but it was on the turn. The beach was smiling under the sun. The waters were glinting green and blue. It was a happy day.

  Dominick could follow the trail of the priest nearly all the way. Over the rocky ground, and through the thorns of the gorse bushes. He had left a little of himself along the way, a strip of vestment here, a little skin there, a drop of blood on a white stone, a little of his hair on the fruiting briars.

  And on the beach they saw how he was going to die.

  There was a stake out there driven into the sand. And all around it was piled dried pine wood and gorse bushes.

  They were marched on to the sand. They were forced to stand in a ring around the stake.

  Dominick had hoped that Sebastian would be dead, that a comforting blow on the head from a stone would have deprived him of his senses. But he wasn’t dead. He was sagging a little in his bonds, and his mouth was open trying to breathe. The vestments were very tattered and bloodstained, and torn away from his body so that the white skin of his chest was exposed. But his eyes were open and looking at them. At times his lips moved. Sometimes he had to blink his eye as the blood from a cut over it blinded him.

  Coote sat on his horse, looking at him. You could hear the lap of the waves. He wondered if the priest realized Coote’s ingenuity. You must never make martyrs. Or if you do make them, there must be no bones, no bodies, no relics to remain. Here was the wonderful solution. He would burn him on the beach, hair, hide, and all, and the ashes that remained would be washed away by the sea. Sebastian would be obliterated; virtually obliterated.

  Sebastian was in great pain. He found it hard to breathe. He thought that some of his ribs must be broken and piercing his lung. He saw the eyes of Coote and he read them, and if he could, he would have smiled. If he could have spoken to him he would have reminded him of the desire of Ignatius of Antioch:

  God’s wheat I am and by the teeth of wild beasts I am to be ground that I may be Christ’s pure bread. Better still coax the wild beast to become my tomb and to leave no part of my person behind once I have fallen asleep. I do not wish to be a burden to anyone. Then only shall I be a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ when the world will not even see my body.

  Dear Coote, he would have told him, you can do nothing but the Lord let you.

  Then he looked at the people. He tried to tell them with his eyes how much he loved them; his desire that they should know that what they were suffering having to watch him die would hasten the day of their own freedom. Then he was racked with terrible interior pains and had to close his eyes.

  He opened them again to see Murdoc and his household coming down the beach on horseback. They hadn’t come of their own will. There were many soldiers around them, and also the Colonel of the Island who was gazing at the battered body of the priest tied to the stake with some satisfaction. This man wasn’t really cruel, Sebastian thought, he was just a good quartermaster, so many dead, so many alive. But why did they bring Murdoc? Then he was rent with pain again and he prayed: Lord, let me abide the fire before thy people.

  Murdoc’s face was rock-hard as he sat on his horse looking. He was away on the left with Columba, whose face was as white as a sheet as she looked at the drooping Sebastian. Behind him were Morogh Dubh and his people, all unarmed, all watching with blank faces. Coote was in the centre and on the other side of him were the people, who raised dull eyes to view Murdoc.

  Coote’s hand fell, and the torch was applied to the gorse. It flared, took light and swept upwards, and ignited the piled pine. They saw Sebastian’s face, strained back from the smoke and the flame. But the fire was only beginning. Then the gorse spines crackled and held and burned with a white flame. They saw Sebastian’s grey beard vanish, presenting for a moment the thin face of a stranger. Then his hair was gone, and then the remainder of his vestments departed. For a moment they saw his naked body through the flames. They were holding their breaths, clenching their hands, waiting for the pungent scent of scorching flesh, when out of the silence of themselves, and o
ver the lap of the gentle waves there came the flat sound of a pistol shot. They saw the ball bit the breast of the priest and they saw the scarlet, and they saw his head bow as if in gratitude to the man who had fired the shot.

  Murdoc’s pistol was still smoking. He dropped it by his side. He looked at Coote. Murdoc’s face was cold. Coote’s face was colder. But he just looked and then turned away again, and the fire gained and grew and the shell that was Sebastian’s disappeared.

  They were kept there to the bitter end.

  The sea was approaching, and when there was nothing left of the stake except a short burned stump, that was being consumed, the soldiers stoked and pushed the fire towards it so that none of that either would remain.

  At this moment Coote reached into a pouch and took from the pouch six brightly polished golden sovereigns. Then one by one he threw them, so that they lay glinting on the sand by the hooves of Murdoc’s horse. One by one, and each one declaring: Here is payment for an informer. Here is the gold of Judas. Here is the price of the head of a he-wolf or the head of a priest.

  Murdoc looked down at the glinting coins. His face became very pale. He looked at Coote. Coote was smiling. Coote was very pleased. By the Almighty God, Murdoc thought, what a wonderful revenge! What a wonderful beautifully timed revenge! He could almost admire it.

  Until he looked around him at the faces of the people. He read doom in their eyes. How would they kill him, he wondered? Would they tear him to pieces?

  Coote spoke. ‘ Nobody will put a foot on this beach for a month from now, under pain of death,’ he said. Then he turned the head of his horse and walked him away.

  Murdoc felt the hair rising on the back of his neck as the people moved towards him. There was nothing to stop them. The soldiers were gone. The four around the fire were grinning. They would not interfere.

  But the people did a strange thing.

  They left him alone.

  They trudged silently past him up the beach, on to the soft ground leading up to the firm land.

  Even his own people drew away from him. All except one or two, one or two. He was left there on the beach with Columba and Morogh Dubh. All the rest were gone so that he could muse at the ashes of the fire.

  When the people got on a height overlooking the beach where there was a great stone that the sea could not undermine, they stood there for a moment looking at the scene below them, the blackened sand, the figures of the four soldiers, with the water beginning to swirl around their boots, the figure of Murdoc looking up at them.

  Then they knelt on this place as if by an instinct and a young faltering voice started to recite the rosary.

  ‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ Peter intoned.

  ‘That’s right,’ Peter intoned.

  He didn’t know himself. He hardly knew. He didn’t recognize the sounds that were coming from his own mouth, but they were coming and he was saying them. And his father heard them, and was looking at him. Dominick felt chills on the back of his neck. He knew Mary Ann knew when he felt her painfully gripping his arm, and he knew the people knew when he saw their eyes widening and their ears opening, and their voices swelling, and I’ll tell you what was in Peter’s mind as the words came out of him. He was thinking: why, words are round. They are round, like circles.

  The last ashes of the fire on the beach succumbed to the obliterating waters of the sea.

  And on this same day, far away, on a soft bed of down Oliver Cromwell died.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  PETER MACMAHON was singing. He had rich lyrical notes in him but most times his voice was sadly out of tune.

  This was what he was singing:

  ‘The cat and the dog, they were singing together

  With mee-ow and bow-wow that would deafen old leather.

  The cat wanted mice,

  And the dog wanted meat,

  So neither got nought, for their song wasn’t sweet.

  The cow and the horse they were singing together

  With moo-moo and nay-nay that was blasting the heather.

  The cow wanted grass,

  And the horse wanted oats,

  So they died of their song and their master bought goats.

  The lamb and the lion they were singing together,

  Their maa-maa and urg-urg made the cock lose a feather.

  The lamb wanted Mam,

  And the lion wanted lamb,

  So the devil took both in the shape of a ram.’

  Dominick and Mary Ann were laughing at him, at the ways he would contort his mouth and his body to sing the sounds of the animals. He made it look convincing too, getting on all fours and shaking his head, his features almost taking on the looks of the animals he was sounding.

  ‘Will I sing more?’ he asked then. There are about another thirty verses.’

  ‘No,’ said Dominick, ‘ we have had enough. Let us continue with the hunt.’

  ‘Get up on to your feet, you ass,’ said Mary Ann.

  He did so.

  ‘And only kings have jesters,’ he said, ‘but they are paid. I amuse you for nothing at all, not even appreciation.’

  Dominick wondered what they had to laugh about.

  They were half way through the wood that clothed the side of Benbreac mountain. It was spring but the ground was still soggy, even under the pine trees, after the very heavy snows.

  ‘And you can’t sing anyhow,’ said Mary Ann. ‘ You sound like a female seal with a throat disease.’

  ‘You are racked with jealousy,’ said Peter. ‘ Oh, the years of enforced silence, when I had to listen to your croaking and couldn’t protest. You have no notion the many times I wanted to comment upon your appearance, your thickness of intellect, your maddening egotistical stubbornness. If it wasn’t for Sebastian –’ He stopped. The name hung in the air as if it was suspended from the branches of the trees. The three of them stopped walking, holding their breaths as they thought about him, and the last time they had seen him. ‘Sebastian,’ said Peter firmly, ‘ who counselled me, many times, I could have lost my silent soul over you.’

  ‘Father,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Think of the great days when he was dumb?’

  Dominick sighed. ‘Alas,’ he said.

  Peter laughed. ‘ I don’t know how you existed,’ he said, ‘you poor people without the counsel of my voice. It was like having a beautiful bird in a wicker cage and not being able to hear him sing.’

  ‘We didn’t know the beautiful bird was only a grey crow,’ said Mary Ann.

  They came clear of the wood. There was a thicket to the right of Mary Ann. It seemed to erupt, explode, as a red stag burst from it and ran ahead of them higher up the mountain.

  Dominick aimed an arrow at him, but he knew he was too late before it left the bow.

  ‘Run right, Mary Ann!’ he called. ‘Head him up. Don’t let him run to the right’ He just waited to see her going right The ends of her dress were tucked up to her waist to give her legs freedom. She had screamed when the stag ran from the thicket but now she recovered and ran waving her arms and yelling.

  Peter ran straight, waving his arms too and calling, the bow in his hand.

  Dominick went left squeezing his eyes against the glare of the sun to distinguish the rising ground ahead of him. He could almost see the trail up, that the stag would take and judged where he himself would go to stalk him. He hadn’t expected to meet one so low down. He thought they would be higher. They always went higher up after the snow left the peaks. He threw a look over his shoulder as he ran. Mary Ann had succeeded. The startled stag had veered from the right and was heading up the mountain. He was an oldish stag with tall antlers and he looked as if he would have quite a bit of meat on ham.

  And they needed meat, Dominick thought grimly as he ran, a slow loping stride that covered a lot of ground without exhausting him. He thought that Mary Ann would never last the pace, the rate she was travelling. She was still yelling and wav
ing her limbs. It was more to enjoy the fresh air than anything else that she was with them. ‘I’m sick of the house. I’m sick of gruel. Sick of meal. Sick of silly hens.’ That was Mary Ann when she decided that if they were going hunting she was going too. And they couldn’t stop her, as she hitched her dress and covered her feet in the light leather pampooties.

  For Coote hadn’t been finished when he killed Sebastian. You would think that. Heaven had been on his side with the wicked winter that had fallen on them, deep snows and heavy frosts so that the sea had been frozen at times, and the rivers and lakes were thick with ice.

  All Dominick’s sheep had been lost. When the first snowstorm had ceased after four days, all they had found was what remained of their carcases after the wolves had finished with them and left the rest for the scaul crows.

  Then their grain had been requisitioned by the soldiers, as much of it as they could find; as much of it as couldn’t be got under cover faster than the surprise raids. Milk, from their one cow, handfuls of grain from the hidden hoard, a few eggs, a rare fish from the sea. You find the fair land, Dominick thought grimly, but you don’t find peace, and what you have to eat must be fought for. The thought of venison brought moisture from his teeth.

  The land was rising more steeply now. He had to look up at it. His breath came in shorter gasps. He had to use his hands, and started to climb. In places there was a sort of track that he could walk precariously; at other places he had to dig with his fingers and haul himself up with his arms. He could see Peter starting to climb on his right. He was young and lissom and the climbing for him was an adventure. Of Mary Ann he could see no sign now at all. He hoped she was all right. She would be all right. When she got tired she would just sit and wait for their return.

  Mary Ann was enjoying herself. She was breathless, but the paths she was following were not too bad. This side of the mountain led to the top in long slopes, some of them abrupt. You ran down one steep hill and had to run up another. The valleys between were soft bog in most places, but she ran lightly across them, so that they did not suck too badly at her feet, and her legs were splashed with the brown bog water.