McFeeley's Rebellion

by Theresa Murphy

  McFeeley’s Rebellion

  Theresa Murphy

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Epilogue

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  SLITHERING AND SLIDING in the mud, an expression of distaste twisting his florid face, Colour Sergeant Gray made his way through the darkness along Slap Arse Lane. That spring of 1685 had been a wet one in Ireland that had turned much of the Curragh Camp into a quagmire. There was a heavy drizzle now to add to the misery of the camp followers who lived rough among the furze bushes. The usual number would be found dead from exposure in the morning. Perhaps they were the lucky ones, escaping a more agonizing death from the diseases of their profession. He could hear them making sounds as he passed, a moaning caused by either loving or dying. The colour sergeant was on an unwelcome mission, but he would do his duty. Coming upon the silhouettes of the abodes of the slightly more fortunate whores, he had to steel himself to investigate if the man he sought was here. To do so would be to see sights that repelled him and smell smells that would revolt him.

  A sudden movement had the colour sergeant spin round. A soldier had come slinking furtively from one of the tents. Hatless, his tunic flapping open, he was as thin and bent-backed as a whippet. He had taken his first long stride when the colour sergeant’s hissing order turned him first into a statue and then a quivering wreck.

  ‘Oh, God…!’ the soldier gasped in fear.

  ‘No, just Colour Sergeant Gray, lad,’ the colour sergeant managed to find a touch of ironic humour in his despondency. ‘Your name and regiment, soldier?’

  ‘I was just …’ the soldier began, desperately trying to dream up an excuse.

  ‘I know full well what you were just doing, soldier. Your name and regiment?’

  ‘Mottram, sir,’ the soldier stammered. ‘Kildare militia.’

  ‘Ah!’ Gray gave a little grunt of satisfaction. Despite standing knee-deep in unchaste women, his guardian angel had not abandoned him. ‘So you know Sergeant McFeeley?’

  Mottram looked up at the intensely dark sky. He looked to his left, to his right, in front and behind him. He looked everywhere but at the colour sergeant, who barked impatiently, ‘Well? Do you know him?’

  ‘Sir,’ Mottram said at last in the affirmative.

  Gray was feeling easier about Mottram now, whose narrow face had an innocence suggesting it was curiosity rather than sin that had led him into the Curragh’s ‘Babylon’.

  ‘Sergeant McFeeley is down here somewhere, lad. Can you tell me where he is?’

  The young soldier shook his head emphatically.

  ‘You will be helping Sergeant McFeeley by telling me where he is, soldier.’

  Looking at Gray anxiously, suspiciously, Mottram did a check: ‘Is that true, sir?’

  An exasperated Gray discovered he was envious of the immoral, swashbuckling, two-fisted Colm McFeeley. It took most non-commissioned officers years to achieve a tiny fraction of the loyalty Mottram was showing. McFeeley commanded it instantly, not through fear, although he could be menacing, but with his innate charisma.

  ‘The sergeant is wanted at headquarters and delay could have serious consequences for him,’ the colour sergeant said tersely.

  Mottram sagged a little at the knees and his jaw fell. Then he stretched a long arm to point at the hovels the more successful and ambitious harlots had built out of gorse and mud. ‘The one that has smoke coming from it, sir.’

  Nodding, the colour sergeant said sharply, ‘Away back to your tent, lad. If I ever hear of you being within pissing distance of Slap Arse Lane again you’ll be in big trouble.’

  The private soldier took a few tentative steps away from Gray, expecting to be called back at any moment. When this didn’t happen he increased his speed and lengthened his stride in thankfulness, leaving behind a colour sergeant who felt alone and isolated.

  Gray’s nostrils twitched as peat smoke reached him from the hole in a roof. A propped-up sheet of corrugated iron, rusting and as ugly as everything else about the place, served as a door. Gray had made a fist, ready to knock, then dropped his hand when he realized how ludicrous such an action would be. He wasn’t calling at the rectory for Sunday tea. He kicked the iron to one side and bent to peer into the rough dwelling.

  The ceiling was too low for standing erect, but both the soldiers and the women joked that this was no handicap when taking their horizontal exercise. In the dim light of a makeshift lamp he could see two figures sitting apart on bags of damp, rotting straw that served as beds. One was McFeeley with a cup in his hand, his fair hair tumbling down over one eye and a welcoming smile on his handsome face. Gray silently cursed the man for being as cool and detached here as he was on either a parade ground or battleground. Colm McFeeley always seemed to be under-playing his role in life. It was as if a major part of him had stepped back to be a permanent and cynically amused observer.

  The woman, who was on the colour sergeant’s right, had long black hair and an unexpected youthful prettiness. There was a wholesomeness to her that was totally out of place in Slap Arse Lane. Yet it hadn’t escaped Gray’s notice on his sudden entrance that she had to swiftly tuck her bare breasts back inside her opened dress.

  ‘You’re wanted, Sergeant, at once,’ Gray announced, finding that distaste made him keep his eyes slightly averted from McFeeley.

  Colour Sergeant Roland Gray was married to as good a Protestant woman as you’d find on a two-day march. An ideal wife, she lived in the camp with him, taking care of his every need. The physical side of their relationship made no demands on them. Gray lived according to holy rules. It was St Paul who had said that it was better to marry than to burn.

  ‘Where and by whom?’ McFeeley asked, his superior education as evident as always in his enunciation and grammar.

  ‘My orders are to escort you to the Four Winds Hotel, Sergeant,’ Gray replied.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ the girl asked anxiously as McFeeley left the dugout.

  ‘No,’ he told her unfeelingly as he stepped out into the night and fell in beside the colour sergeant on a walk that would take them to the suburbs of Dublin.

  They were side by side but separated by an invisible barrier. The colour sergeant only wanted to get this sordid duty over. Anger had him inquire, ‘Have you no shame, Sergeant?’

  Delaying a reply as they came out of the muddy lane onto a hard road, McFeeley dislodged wet clay from his boots before he said, ‘It shames me to kill a man, even in battle.’

  ‘You deliberately misunderstand me,’ Gray complained. ‘I was referring to those awful women. There are many fine soldiers lying diseased and disabled in the hospice because of them. If you lack respect for your body, surely you must fear destroying it.’

  ‘I select my women with as much care as I select men for a dangerous expedition.’ McFeeley gave the senior sergeant a grin. ‘I only choose newcomers.’

  Gray heard this and understood why the girl in the hovel had been so different to the grotesque, foul-mouthed, drunken whores he was used to seeing hanging around the camp. God only knew why she had joined the ranks of the oldest profession. Still able to view a memory of the girl, surrounded by an aura of sweetness, he felt a new anger towards McFeeley.

  ‘You could have saved that young girl, Sergeant,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘How?’

  Finding that he didn’t have
an answer, Gray was rescued by them reaching the hotel. He was determined not to go into the building with McFeeley who had made no attempt to do anything with his mud-stained uniform and his too-long, untidy hair.

  McFeeley found Captain Critchell waiting for him in the foyer of the hotel. Claude Critchell was a middle-aged man whose face was marked by acne from his youth, and probably too much alcohol since. Having served under him at the large camp at Loughlinstown, McFeeley recalled that the captain was boring company when in his cups. On those drunken occasions Critchell would claim to be of pure Anglo-Saxon stock descended from Ethelred, brother of Alfred the Great.

  ‘Good of you to come, my dear fellow,’ Critchell greeted him. ‘You look somewhat dishevelled. Were you not a superb horseman I’d suspect some filly had thrown you.’

  ‘No, I managed to stay on,’ McFeeley replied with a smile. ‘What’s this about, sir?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, my dear fellow,’ Critchell said. ‘But I can say that you will be going on an immediate transfer to England. Waiting here to see you is none other than Lord John Churchill, the most important man in the British army. I will take you to him without further ado, Sergeant.’

  Following the captain along a dark passageway, McFeeley noticed that Critchell was beginning to stoop from age. His glorious fighting days were over. A few more months in an administration job like this and his heroic deeds would be forgotten by everyone but Critchell himself. Fighting for your country was a short-lived occupation that went unappreciated. The financial rewards were pitifully meagre and heroism extremely fleeting. Although aware of this, McFeeley had been in the army since a boy, and had no intention of leaving. If asked why, though, he would be stuck for an answer.

  They entered a room in which an elegantly dressed man sat slightly hunched at a desk, studying papers that lay in front of him. Good-looking in a smooth-faced way that was the trademark of his class, he was, McFeeley guessed, around his own age in the mid-thirties. As Critchell and he entered, Lord Churchill neither looked up nor gave any sign that said he knew they were there. A tall elderly man stood behind Churchill. Taking his cue from His Lordship, the tall man looked straight ahead to indicate that he too hadn’t noticed them.

  A few minutes went by in which Captain Critchell cleared his throat noisily without result. It was so quiet that McFeeley knew that Churchill was using an old aristocratic ploy to remind peasants of their place, and he began to bristle a little.

  Then Churchill vigorously tapped the documents in front of him with the army ‘walking out’ finger of his right hand, and looked up at McFeeley to speak as if they were in the middle of a discussion. ‘I must say that this is a far from an admirable history, Sergeant.’

  It was only then that McFeeley realized that it was his army record on the desk. The papers must make bad reading but it had never worried him. A soldier should be judged on the battlefield, not from some scrawled words on a piece of parchment in an office. He watched Churchill push himself up from the desk with both hands, speaking as he rose.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ the nobleman went on, ‘you have not been called here for criticism or reprimand. In fact, and as a soldier I find this difficult to utter, it is your series of insubordinations and your ability, if that be the word, to remain at all times an individual in a disciplined force that recommends you.’

  Churchill was then standing upright, stretching his body a joint at a time, starting with the ankles. He was taller than McFeeley, but his narrow-chested physique suggested that his battle campaigns had been fought with a pen rather than a musket.

  With all the advantages in life that meant he didn’t need to, Churchill spoke in a blustering way, firing out words at a speed that suggested he feared argument. McFeeley felt that this was from a basic shyness in the lord. Definitely not a sly man, he did, however, speak more confidently when not looking directly at the person he was addressing.

  ‘The world is changing, McFeeley. England is changing, and the army has to change accordingly,’ he announced as he studied the ceiling ‘We have a new monarch. His Majesty King James II is on the throne and each and every one of us shall serve him loyally. But we shall all be put to the test ere long, Sergeant. There is dissent in the kingdom, and His Majesty has enemies abroad, not the least of whom is the bastard James Scott who makes claim to being the legitimate son of Charles II, and therefore the nephew of James, our monarch.’

  ‘James Scott is the Duke of Monmouth,’ Critchell elucidated for McFeeley.

  ‘I am aware of that, sir,’ McFeeley said, annoyed at being regarded as some doltish and illiterate foot soldier.

  ‘Our enemies are a new breed, McFeeley.’ Churchill locked eyes with the sergeant for the first time. ‘No longer are the cannon, the sword or the rifle sufficient, Sergeant. Guile must now be met with guile. It is my intention to add a new dimension to the British Army. You, Sergeant McFeeley, are the man on whom my hopes will rest.’

  Brushing his unruly hair back with both hands McFeeley considered patting off the now dry mud on his uniform, but stopped himself from making a mess on the floor. He could detect the fragrance of the young woman still with him. He found a perverse amusement in bringing the scent of a whore to be breathed in by someone like Lord John Churchill.

  ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ he said.

  Returning to his seat at the desk, Churchill asked Critchell to outline the plan for McFeeley. Walking up and down as he spoke, the captain explained that McFeeley would be taken from his regiment and brought to England alone. Once there he would work in any capacity that he was ordered to. For instance, Critchell gave an illustration, he might be assigned to any regiment, perhaps as a private soldier, maybe as an officer, depending on what the intelligence work he would be engaged in demanded.

  ‘I will be required to gather information,’ McFeeley remarked.

  ‘Exactly,’ Critchell nodded.

  ‘In the present climate, with both Catholics and Protestants taking an avid political interest,’ Lord Churchill said tiredly, ‘one finds it increasingly difficult to decide who to trust. You will be our eyes and our ears, Sergeant.’

  ‘For the present,’ Churchill explained. ‘Though at times you may be asked to play the role of anything from a foot soldier to a colonel, to the army you will be a sergeant. I have no doubt that you will be successful in this post, so eventual promotion will be a certainty.’

  ‘Special privileges will follow, should you decide to take on this dangerous mission,’ Captain Critchell told him, coming round the desk to face McFeeley squarely. His grave expression had chased away the softness that McFeeley had noticed when first seeing the nobleman. He was now an officer whom McFeeley would be prepared to follow.

  Having already made up his mind, McFeeley was mentally phrasing his acceptance but cancelled out the idea as Churchill raised a hand in a staying gesture.

  ‘My conscience would not allow me to have you give your answer without one final aspect of this matter being revealed to you,’ Churchill said. ‘It is that if at any time an enemy of His Majesty King James II should manifest an army, then you may well be required to become part of that army so as to keep us informed of movements, plans and developments. Think on it well, Sergeant McFeeley.’

  ‘I have done my thinking, my lord. I welcome the challenge that you offer me.’

  ‘Good man, I knew we could rely on you, Colm,’ Critchell said, delivering a friendly and admiring slap to McFeeley’s shoulder.

  One

  IT WAS A June midnight in which the tiny seaside town of Lyme, held secure by lofty hills on three sides, slept a troubled sleep in an uneasy world. Some kink of nature in the Dorset skies gave the moonlight a bluish tint that enhanced the deep purple of the sea and cast shadows to have the shoreline stand out dramatically. That summer’s night was tranquil with the sound of water lapping against the pebbles of the beach as gentle as a lullaby. It defied the imagination to produce a reminder of the fierce south-westerly gales that
in winter smashed constantly against the Cobb. No insomniac seagull dared wing its aimless way to ruin the peaceful scene. Out in the bay three large ships had ridden at anchor long enough to blend with the moonlight like grey ghosts.

  On the beach two men stripped naked, their careful movements indicating that they were mindful not to ruffle the velvet softness of that special night. One of them was Colm McFeeley, his fair hair burnished by moonlight. The second man was a mixed race soldier known only to his comrades as Private Jack. No one knew whether this was his first name or surname. McFeeley had selected Jack for this mission because of his physical strength and his taciturnity. An incessant talker made a dangerous comrade on a night raid.

  Folding their civilian clothing, they both placed it in bags, which they carried to push into gaps in rocks that stood above high water. Coiling a rope around his bare waist and securing it, McFeeley gave Jack a nod that said it was time to go. Both men had a sheathed dagger with a nine-inch blade strapped to their lower legs as they walked the final few yards of the irregular narrow strip of white surf that marked the shoreline. Then they waded through the water, their progress recorded briefly by the rippling sound of the sea their legs disturbed. Keeping to their feet as the water rose first to their hips, then their chests, they lurched forward and began to swim as the mildly chilly hands of the sea touched their shoulders.

  Both capable swimmers, they made slow strokes that were deceptively strong and moved them through the water swiftly. Nearer now, they were able to see the three vessels clearly. Nearest to them, with ungraceful lines and pushed low into the sea by a weighty cargo, was a two hundred ton fly-boat that lay at anchor close to a one hundred ton ketch that was also heavily laden. Treading water, McFeeley studied the two vessels, conscious that they contained the arms and ammunition of the Duke of Monmouth’s as yet unformed army. Jack had stopped swimming, too, and was looking through the night at McFeeley, awaiting orders. Turning his head a little, McFeeley took in the thirty-two-gun, three-masted fifth-rater, the Helderenberg, that he had heard Lord Churchill and others laughingly say had cost the Duke of Monmouth £5,500. The fact that Private Jack and himself were swimming out here in the middle of the night was evidence enough that, despite the laughter, neither this ship nor the Duke of Monmouth could be regarded as a joke.