‘You still had Rinn Mhil,’ said Coote.
‘I had,’ said Murdoc, ‘ until you decided to sell that too. How much did the Blakes pay you for it?’
‘How did you know that?’ asked Coote.
‘The walls and the winds have ears,’ said Murdoc. ‘I heard. So now where do we stand, Coote?’
Coote got to his feet slowly. He put his hands behind his back and walked to the fire. He was smiling grimly when his back was to Murdoc. He has no arms except a knife, he was thinking, and there is a loaded pistol under the pillow of my bed. So he could afford not to fear. Murdoc was convicted, found guilty, and would die. Coote felt his nerves tingling. He turned to face him.
Murdoc saw the change in his eyes and closed a little on him.
‘Unless you can provide, and fulfil your promises, Coote,’ said Murdoc, ‘you are going to die. Think over that. After a few moments you will have no more life in you, no blood. You will be face to face with God who so commends you. He will pat you on the back for the children you have killed. He will praise you for the countless thousands you have sent into slavery, and he will kiss your hands for the bewildered ones you have hanged from many gibbets. Isn’t that a pleasing thought, Coote?’
Coote’s mouth was dry. He had to moisten his lips.
‘Who has appointed you an executioner?’ he asked.
‘The people,’ said Murdoc. ‘All the voiceless ones. You made the law, therefore it is your law. It does not extend into the wild places because, as you have decreed, there live only beasts in those places who have no right to law, since they are the there Irish. So they have commissioned me. All the voices of the dead.’
‘And yet’ said Coote, ‘you will bargain with their wishes?’
‘Yes,’ said Murdoc, ‘because if you don’t keep your promises, then I can always carry out the sentence.’
‘I must sit down,’ said Coote. ‘ I don’t feel well. You have frightened me.’
‘I am pleased that you have the courage to admit it.’ said Murdoc. He watched him closely.
Coote sat on the bed, his hands widely out from him, supporting his trembling body. Because he was trembling, and the fingers of his right hand were beside the pillow.
‘All right,’ said Coote then, ‘I capitulate. I will make you the Lord of Iar-Connacht.’
‘And what proof have I,’ Murdoc asked, ‘ that this time you will really carry out your promise?’
‘This is the proof,’ said Coote, taking the pistol from under his pillow and pulling the trigger.
He should have waited, because his hand was not steady and Murdoc had been watching him closely. He jumped, the pistol boomed, and Murdoc felt the ball hitting his side, low down over his hip. It passed through the soft flesh and Coote saw the spurting blood, but by then it was too late for him because Murdoc was over on top of him with the knife bared. Coote had barely time to say. ‘No! No!’ before the long moment that Murdoc had foretold for him arrived and he died on the bed, and already they were pounding on the room door, and Murdoc, trying to stem the flow of blood with his hand held to his side, was back at the panel.
But there he stopped, because he didn’t know how to open it from this side. They were attacking the door now with axes, so he had no time.
He leaped over the dead Coote and the bed and got to the window behind. It was a narrow window with leaded panes. He reached for a chair and broke the panes outwards. He squeezed his body through. The remnants of the glass tore his flesh. He looked down. He was three storeys up, but twelve feet below the thatched roof of another house was built up against the wall of this one. He let himself down as far as he could go with his hands.
For a moment his eyes were on a level with the sloping sill and he could see the dead body of Coote on the bed, the mouth open and the eyes open, and could see the wood of the door behind bursting under the blows, then he dropped.
The straw was soft under his feet. He turned and walked down it and then felt with his feet for a window-sill, found it transferred his arms to that and let his body down and dropped. He was in a lane. Up above there was a figure at the broken window. There was the loud sound of a shot and a voice calling ‘Assassin! Assassin!’ He ran from the lane and found himself in North Street. The moon was shining brightly in it. He fled down its length. It seemed to him that the whole town was coming awake. There were shots being fired and loud calling and lights were springing on in the houses. But he had run down the North Street into Lombard Street across the Shambles and into Kirwan’s Lane before he heard the noise of boots on the cobbles and the sound of hooves. He paused here. He was very breathless.
He couldn’t afford to wait. He was losing blood. They could trail him with it, and he ran down this lane into the lane of Martin’s Mill, and pausing here he looked at the steps that led up to the ramparts.
They were unguarded.
So it would have to be this way. He ran up the steps and tried to think what depth of water there would be at this spot outside the walls. The tide had been ebbing when he left Dominick. Dominick, he thought. There is Dominick! He will be there. Dominick will set me free.
He reached the ramparts and climbed up and looked below him at the sea-flooded river. He could see the bridge to his right and he searched the arch under it through which the far stream flowed and he thought he could see the darker darkness of Dominick and the boat. He waved an arm.
It seemed to be a signal. From all sides muskets roared, from behind him and from the towers on the bridge, but they were aiming at a difficult target in the deceptive moonlight.
Murdoc only felt the ball that hit him in the back and hurled him off the ramparts into the water below. Nobody will ever see me die he thought, as he fell and the water found him.
Chapter Thirty
BUT DOMINICK saw him.
From under the bridge, where he had moved quietly and was holding on to the rough stones. He had heard the shots and the shouts in the town, and, his heart beating fast, he had remained there, looking behind him and ahead of him.
He had happened to be looking in the right direction because he had traced the sounds inside the town down towards Martin’s Mill.
He had seen Murdoc on the ramparts, and when he had stood tall there and waved, Dominick had thought: Oh, you fool, you fool! and when the fusillade came, he had seen him fall as if he had been punched in the back.
And by this time Dominick and the boat were into the stream which was running fast on the ebbing tide, and he had pulled very hard, very hard, the fifteen yards that separated him from the Mill, and when the body of Murdoc rose from the water he was near him and reached a hand for him, but then decided and did what he had to do very quickly. For there were balls hitting the water around them, from the bridge behind and from the ramparts, so Dominick, still holding on to Murdoc, slipped over the side of the boat into the water, and held him close as both of them were taken by the cataracts that were formed just here by the great stones of the ragged bed of the stream. The boat drifted away lightly.
He didn’t hear any more shots.
When his head emerged from the white flurry of water, or when his flailing feet hit the bed of the river he kicked away towards the far side. Between the ebb of the tide and the swift coarse flow of the river they were tossed like ships of wood on the power of the water, but the farther they got from the quays and the walls, the less chance there was of their being seen, and Dominick had no thought of how long it took or whether they were safe and sound, when he felt the rounded green-weeded rocks under his feet, and holding tightly to the body of his friend, falling and rising and falling again, but aided by the slimy dangerous rocks themselves, he dragged him as far as he could from the grip of the river, on to the point of the land that was known as Rintinane, and he stretched him there on the stones and bent his face over him.
He had seen the hole in his back, but there was no blemish on his chest, so the ball was still in him. He put his hand on his face. It wasn’t cold yet.
‘Murdoc! Murdoc!’ he called softly.
His heart was still beating. He could feel that when he put his hand on him, and then he saw the ‘blood welling from his side.
‘Murdoc! Murdoc?’ he called again, and the eyes fluttered open and looked at him. His face was pale and looked green in the moonlight.
‘Coote won,’ he whispered. ‘Go, Dominick. Go now. Save yourself.’
‘What happened, Murdoc? Tell me what happened to you,’ Dominick asked him.
‘Coote clever,’ said Murdoc. ‘Pistol under the pillow.’ He tried to laugh, but blood came out of his mouth. He knew this. ‘But Coote is dead too,’ said he. ‘Dominick!’
‘Yes,’ said Dominick.
‘Don’t let them get me,’ he said. ‘Put me on the tide. They must not get me, Dominick. Now. Let me go now. On the tide. Hear, Dominick?’
‘Yes,’ said Dominick, ‘all right, Murdoc.’
He closed his eyes. Dominick thought his face looked young in the light of the moon, all the grossness was wiped from it, as if it had been done by a healing hand.
‘I didn’t kill Sebastian,’ Murdoc was whispering. ‘I didn’t kill Sebastian. Tell them.’
‘Yes, Murdoc,’ said Dominick. ‘ I’ll tell them.’
‘Sebastian knows,’ said Murdoc. ‘He knows, Dominick.’
‘He knows,’ said Dominick, and then Murdoc was dead. Dominick could hardly believe it, but Murdoc was dead; his tempestuous, confused, noble and ignoble life was snuffed out of him. Why, he should have a great wake, Dominick was thinking, so that people could say he did such a thing and such a thing and it was good, even if he did such another thing and such another thing and it was bad. Who is going to be the judge of Murdoc but God? And Sebastian would be there to speak for him.
Dominick was very sad. He felt very lonely, kneeling on the wet rocks beside the body of his friend. Because he was my friend, he thought, he was indeed. There were feelings in us that were the same, for all the feelings in us that were different.
There was shouting behind him now, calling and more shots and the sound of horses. They would be pouring out over the bridge, he thought, and coming down this way by the reaches of the river.
He caught at Murdoc’s shoulder and turned his head towards the water. He had to pull him over the rocks again. He hated doing this, but he felt too tired and exhausted to carry him. When the water was to his waist it was easier to manoeuvre the body; he turned with it and walked and swam with it until he could feel the pull of the river at his legs and the power of the ebbing tide. He went dangerously far out into the water before he let the body go. He didn’t let it go until the pull of the water itself took it from his hands, and then he freed it and the tide took it from him and rolled it and turned it once or twice before it embedded it in the centre of itself and carried it away, into the bay, into the sea, to become part of it, maybe white bones on a Connmaicnemara shore.
Then he waded back himself and stood breathing heavily. He felt drained of strength and intelligence. He knew he should try to be getting away from where he was, so he moved along the rocky shore, stumbling and falling. There was little chance of his getting away, he thought. This point of Rintinane was a bleak place. It was flat. There was no place on the face of it where a man could hide and rest until he had recovered his strength. Anyhow, he thought, I have lived long enough. There isn’t such a lot left for me. All the people I love are gone, Eibhlin and Sebastian and Murdoc. One time the thought of my children would have spurred me to new life and new endeavour, but even they no longer need me. Mary Ann would have her Dualta and she would live and survive, and Peter could match anyone in the world at whatever he wanted to do and make the name of this MacMahon survive.
So what in the name of God did it matter what became of him? Just that they would say when they caught him that he was the assassin of Coote. Such a thought nauseated him. He wouldn’t touch Coote with a long stick, not to mention killing him. He would hate to be known as the assassin of Coote, and even if he was cut into little pieces he could never be got to say who was the assassin.
He walked along the shore. It gave way from rocks to sand. This reminded him of Sebastian. You will have to be kind to Murdoc, he thought. He did many good things in his life. You will have to speak up for him. He stood and turned.
He could see them, small figures in a line behind him. They were walking because no horse could travel this stony beach without a broken leg.
Then to his left down near the water he saw a crouched figure running. So he didn’t run himself.
He stood. Might as well be now, he thought Just as well.
Until this figure started talking.
‘Run, Father, for the love of Almighty God,’ the figure was calling, ‘or they’ll get you,’ and the voice of this figure was the voice of his son, Peter. Dominick thought he was in the middle of a nightmare, until Peter was dose to him, looking behind.
‘This way, for God’s sake, fast Father,’ he said, catching his arm and urging him. ‘Dualta is at the end of the point with a boat. Please, Father, what’s wrong with you? Run, for the love of God.’
Dominick couldn’t say anything. Peter ran ahead of him, beckoning him. Is this a dream? he wondered, and then decided to go along with it. He ran and the figure was still ahead of him. There was a strong breeze blowing from the river.
‘Keep low! ‘I Keep low!’ Peter was saying. Peter? How could it be Peter? Was this the extension of a dream, like what poor Columba had felt for the dead Murdoc?
But whatever it was, it brought interest to him, if only to find out how such a thing could be. So he bent low and followed the crouching figure over sand, over rocks, over big boulders, to a place where the blunt black snout of a sailing boat was jammed on the shore.
He saw the man in the boat, and even as he saw him, heard the creaking of the sails. He felt the hand on his arm, the urgency of it, and he climbed into the boat and then the boat was free on the sea and the black sail rose over his head and the wind took the sail and the boat turned from it and silently and swiftly headed out on the water of the bay.
Behind them there were shouts and shots.
‘Keep low! Keep low!’ Dualta was calling. Dualta too? How could he be part of the dream? But he was part of it.
Dominick sat in the bottom of the boat. There was water in it and it swirled around his already wet clothes. He let his head drop into his hands. He was trembling, until he felt warm breath on his cheek and heard the voice of his son talking to his ear.
‘Are you all right. Father?’ Peter was asking. ‘ You’re not hurt, are you?’
Dominick raised his head and felt for his son’s shoulder with his hand. It was real, substantial.
‘How, Peter? How?’ he asked.
‘Well, you are getting old, Father,’ said Peter. There was a smile in his voice.
‘Old?’ Dominick asked.
‘We decided when you left,’ said Peter, ‘Rory and Mary Ann and myself. He’s not as young as he was, we decided. So Rory planned it, just like he was fighting a battle. Dualta and myself came by sea. You went by lake. We watched you. We got here first and I was watching the river, all the time. I saw your boat under the arch when the moon came out and all the rest. That’s all. It was lucky we were here. Lucky the boat was hidden off the point. It was all luck.’
‘Not luck,’ said Dominick. ‘Nothing like that is luck. So I’m an old man, hah? And what about Mary Ann? You left her alone?’
‘No,’ said the voice of Dualta. ‘My father is with her.’ He was laughing. ‘He came over and brought three sheep for the wedding. You hear that. He says: Three sheep are just a gift for the wedding.’
‘If you hadn’t come I would have died,’ said Dominick.
‘That’s right,’ said Peter. ‘Now you must know you are getting old and you must settle down to a quiet life.’
‘Another thing I know,’ said Dominick as he raised himself to look on the moonlit waters of the b
ay.
‘If they send boats after us,’ said Dualta, ‘ we will land and cut across to the mountains.’
‘That would be best,’ said Peter.
One time, Dominick thought, I would be doing all the planning.
‘I know another thing,’ said Dominick loudly.
‘What’s that?’ Peter asked.
‘It’s this,’ said Dominick. ‘I really have a son. I am not alone.’
L’ENVOI
DOMINICK HAD his son until the following autumn.
Then one beautiful evening he said goodbye to him.
Dualta was holding the boat against the great-wooden side of the anchored ship, and Peter had one foot on the rope-ladder and one foot in the small boat. There was a dark-complexioned seaman bending over the rails of the ship above gesticulating madly, pointing to the setting sun.
‘What’s wrong with that fellow?’ Dominick asked.
‘He’s doing a powerful lot of talking,’ said Dualta.
Rory, who was looking down at them, said:
‘It is time to go, Peter.’
‘Well, God be with you, Father,’ said Peter, looking at his apparently calm and unfeeling father; wishing that he himself could say all the things he wanted to say, but feeling tongue-tied.
‘God be with you too, Pedro,’ Dominick said. His son was seventeen. The wind was ruffling his fair hair. He was a well-set boy, taller than Dominick, but with his physical toughness, and his mother’s delicacy of feature Dominick thought Rory was taking himself and three others to a seminary in France.
‘This is as much working for our country as if I was going to be a farmer or a soldier. Father,’ said Peter. ‘ It’s just in a different way.’
‘Aye,’ said Dominick, ‘I know that, Pedro.’
‘Only about seven years,’ said Peter, ‘and I will be back.’
Seek the Fair Land Page 34
