The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  For a woman raised in London she rode well, her slender, small-breasted body erect, hands sensitive to the horse. The countryside, for all its desolation, was splashed with light. Like the moors of Scotland or Yorkshire, perhaps. Landscapes of the imagination, without boundaries. But at Garrycloona peasants surrounded her, a dozen of them, carrying sticks and scythes. They had no English. Their language, alien gutturals, ominous, broke across her in a wave. Terrified, she flailed left and right with her whip and rode through them. Malcolm was fighting for them, for their nation, but she could not speak their language.

  He was fighting not for them but for a word. Ireland. Not moorlands and rivers, not people, but a word. The word was a bell, vibrant and thrilling, ringing through her memories of conversations. Ireland. Ireland was oppressed. Ireland must fight for its freedom. Ireland must take its place among the nations of the world. Not Derrybawn despoiled, its rooms open to the rain, nor the kitchen at The Moat with its gossiping, profane old women. It was a cold word now, thin and colourless as ice on a winter pond.

  She rode back without haste, slim, straight body swaying slightly in the saddle, through Ballina town, noisy with soldiers. The green boughs of liberty had vanished from cabin lintels, and the small Protestant shops were open again, their stocks depleted, rough boards covering their shattered windows. A regimental band was at practice in the Diamond, shrill fifes and crackling drums. The music seemed to be floating to her from home, summer afternoons in London, a military review. A small girl, she stood with her father at their Jermyn Street window, as the band marched beneath them. “Slut of a rebel’s wife,” Mrs. Hendricks screamed down the avenue. She rode across the five-span bridge. A corporal waved his file of men against the low wall to let her pass: a lady, small, haughty face, riding habit of green velvet, black high-crowned hat.

  But at The Moat, an immense map of Ireland lay spread across the table, held flat by books at its corners. Cross-hatched ranges of hills, blue silk threads of river, mouth-filling names, Clonakilty, Lisdoonvarna. Somewhere, perhaps towards the map’s centre, a different army, blue uniforms, dark Mediterranean faces. Peasants marched beside them, like those who had surrounded her with scythes at Garrycloona. The names all had meaning in that alien tongue. Malcolm had tried to teach her. A word had carried him away, into the map. It was not Ireland in that tongue but Eire. Ireland was an English word. Bold black line upon the map, the coach road westwards from Dublin: Kinnegad, Mullingar, Longford. To the north of Longford, Granard, where they broke their journey for a night, a young Mayo squireen and his London bride.

  She left the map to wander through the silent house, part farmhouse, part fortress, built in rapparee times. In the drawing room, a great-grandfather hung above the mantel, gaunt-faced beneath white, clumsy wig. Builder of The Moat, grandson of a Cromwellian trooper, sturdy colonist in an alien, savage land. A glass-fronted oak cabinet which a month before held muskets, fowling pieces, two old swords in grimy scabbards. Above it, the crudely painted portrait of a stallion, raw bones and glossy flank dwarfing the conventional background of hill, trees, steeple. Beyond the window, the unharvested fields stretched towards river. Distant horizon of mountain waste. Echoes of Malcolm’s voice and hers drifted from empty rooms, thin and hollow, like a spinet’s music.

  The black nights oppressed her. Alone, frightened by an alien land and people, she longed for London’s bustle, her family’s warmth, crowds in the streets, the cries of vendors. She sought nourishment from daydreams, phantasies. The patriots were entering Dublin in triumph, green banners streaming in the clear, bright air, trumpets clear of sound as silver coins upon a marble table. Malcolm in a uniform green as her riding habit, frogging of gilt and silver. A harp, gold threads woven upon green silk, unfettered by crown. A sea of people flowed towards the green from Dame Street and Sackville Street. A schoolgirl’s dream, shaped from bright coloured pictures, the stiff figures of storybook heroes, beneath them patriotic legends. Flimsy as gauze, the daydream shredded, vanished. Darkness and silence mocked her.

  Bridge-end House, Ballycastle, Early September

  It was with John in his Castlebar gaol that her mind should be filled, but the word gaol brought no image to her. A stone cell, straw upon the rough-paved floor, a door bolted and locked. He could not move from it, walk into the sunlight. She herself was not free: his gaol the pivot upon which her world turned and she could not imagine it, could not imagine John within it, blue eyes and hair of gold darkened by the shadows of captivity. What she could not imagine was drained of meaning for her, formless and dreadful. The foolishness of men! She had warned him that it would come to this. In the sewing room, sunlight upon scraps of bright cloth, calico, silk, muslin, velvet dark blue, sensuous. He had not listened. Her body pressed against his, she had sobbed. His hand upon her head, stroking her hair. She remembered that, shears upon the low table, blades sharp as knives. “There will be no life for us together,” she had told him. “There will be,” he said; “you will see.” She could see nothing.

  Her father could not help her, his words awkward, fumbling between comfort and unimaginable truth, the language of a remote law which held the powers of death, of restoration. “It is a capital offence,” he said; “it is in every country—Spain, France, here. High treason. It is a crime darker than sedition. It cannot be argued away.” But at other times he would tell her that George would manage something, he had friends in London, powerful friends. They were a clever tribe, the Moores. Spain had enriched them, vineyards and olive trees, ships from Alicante and Cádiz. Casks of wine and brandy carried in darkness to the strands of Mayo and Galway, excisemen bribed to look the other way. “Half the gentry of Connaught traded with them. A clever tribe. We stayed here and rotted. It will not help John now. They hate the Moores, all those jumped-up Cromwellian squireens. They hate George, they hate his airs. He is a cold, proud man.”

  “But he will manage something. You just now said so.” Manage something: how were things “managed”?

  “Not here. Not in Mayo. In London. Fox is his friend there, Sheridan. They are out of power now. If Burke had lived. Burke was his great friend.”

  “What can London do for him?” Ellen asked; “he is in a Mayo gaol. They have built a gallows there, on the green.” She remembered the green, trim and well tended. On market days, squires and their wives strolled along its paths, the men shouting to each other, boisterous, pockets stuffed with pound notes, rolled and banded. She could not imagine the gallows, wooden, hideous, a noose of hemp.

  “Transportation,” her father said; “it is an alternative punishment. Good heavens, child! If Lord Edward Fitzgerald had not died in prison of his wounds. Do you imagine that they would have hanged like a common criminal the brother of the Duke of Leinster? These things can be managed.”

  Managed: it was a man’s word. They were all men: George, Fox, Sheridan, the Duke of Leinster. Smooth and opaque, a pebble plucked from the strand, the word held and hid John’s life.

  They were standing on the terrace from which, a few weeks before, they had watched through the brass spyglass. Three ships from France, men in blue uniforms. “Damn them,” Treacy said, remembering the ships. “They have savaged the churches of their own country. Altars desecrated, tabernacles. Priests hacked to death upon the streets of Paris and in its cellars. France, the eldest child of the Church. That was once their boast. Their King slaughtered, and their radiant young Queen. Now they have brought their madness down upon us. And with what profit to us? Penned in here, waiting for the Protestants to bring their dragoons down upon us. Bands of lawless rapparees raging up and down the barony. A foolish boy awaiting his death in Castlebar gaol. Damn them!” Awaiting his death. But something would be managed for him. She was as tall as her father, slender-waisted: MacBride blood, her father said, all the MacBrides were tall. It ill became women, but her fine features atoned for this; the Treacys were a handsome race, this was agreed upon by all. She said: “They brought liberty, John said. Muskets and fir
elocks and soldiers trained in the wars of Europe. A chance to fight for liberty.” Liberty: another word. Her father did not like this one: smooth pebble rejected, flung back into the bay. “The liberty of Castlebar gaol,” he said.

  Men lived by words, abstractions, killed and were killed by them, words impalpable as smoke, but with the power to make prison bricks, forge swords and pikes, hew and plane the wood for gallows. “Eldest daughter of the Church”; what in God’s name did that mean? Tabernacles smashed open, and blood on the cobbles of Paris streets. But women live within their words, powerless and uncomprehending. Liberty was a word, but love was not: love was John’s hand upon her hair, stroking it. A word had taken him away from her, removed his hand.

  “He was a fine boy,” Treacy said. “A high-spirited boy. Like a colt. I was very fond of him, Ellen. You know that.”

  “What is ‘transportation’?” she said. “They would ship him off somewhere, would they not, but he would be safe?”

  “With cutpurses,” her father said. “Cutpurses and harlots’ bullies and sheep stealers. Perhaps George might manage something better than that. If he can play for time. Spain, North America. If matters can be dragged out. He should engage Curran to manage the defence. Curran or Bushe. There was a time when Dennis Browne would have managed the affair for him, but when Dennis Browne comes to Tyrawley it will be with fire and sword. The Protestant bullies will make a fairday of their vengeance, God’s curse upon them all. You don’t remember the penal days, child, and neither do I, but my father did, your grandfather. Unlicenced priests hunted down like wolves with a price upon their heads. All that was winding down, but it will be back upon us now. The clever ones sailed off to France or Spain, as the Moores did. And the rogues turned their coats, swore away their faith, denied the Sacrament. We were gentry, Ellen. You must never forget that. As gently born as the Brownes or the Moores. When the Coopers and the Saunders and the Falkiners were prentice boys in London.”

  “None of that matters in North America, John says. Could George manage North America for him? How could that be managed?”

  But he did not hear her. His mind had slipped away again into the past, more real to him than the present, the terrace upon which they stood, bright sunlight upon ungathered crops, dull waters of the distant bay, a gaol in Castlebar. Dear God, she thought, give me patience with him. The past was his life, a box of mouldering parchments, cupboards of tarnished plate, his memories of her mother.

  As though the thought had travelled from her mind to his, he turned suddenly towards her and smiled. Faint wind ruffled thin locks of long hair. “You should have heard your mother on the day she learned that the O’Driscolls were leaving for America. ‘Mother of God,’ she said, ‘they will be eaten by the red Indians. Roasted alive over red hot coals and then eaten.’ Your poor mother knew little of the world. She was remembering some pious book with woodcuts of the Jesuit martyrs. The O’Driscolls are thriving in America.”

  “John and I could thrive in America,” she said. “If George could manage it. George and his friends in London.”

  “They have a farm somewhere on the Hudson River, north of the city. The red Indians were all driven from there centuries ago. They roam the plains of the west now. What your mother knew of the world she knew from woodcuts and engravings—the Alhambra in Spain, and Venice with its canals and bridges. She would sit pouring over them for hours. Novels and books of English verse. The Seasons by Thomson was a great favourite of hers. And Goldsmith, of course. The Deserted Village. She set you the task of memorising it, when you were far too young for such work. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said gently. “I remember.” Sunlight streamed into the parlour, fell upon frayed carpet and faded damask. She sat upon the carpet, long legs folded beneath her. Her fingers remembered the carpet’s feel, blue and red beneath her outspread hands. “I remember bits and pieces,” she said to her father; “I didn’t understand it.” “ ’There the black gibbet glooms beside the way,’ “she said to her mother; “I don’t know what gibbet means.” “That part doesn’t matter,” her mother said; “the second part is very sad, but the beginning is lovely. ‘These were thy charms—but all these charms are fled.’ That is where it changes and becomes sad.” “I don’t like sadness,” she said to her mother. “No one does,” her mother said; “but sadness is not the same when it is in a poem. It is not really sadness then.” Her mother knew the difference between words and feelings, words and things. Perhaps this was the secret, useless wisdom of women.

  “It was a good marriage,” her father said. “Our families arranged it, but we were very happy together. You saw our happiness. We were very fortunate. Many marriages are not fortunate, but people somehow manage. Where would we all be if they did not?”

  “Where indeed?” she said, dryly. Families mattered, children mattered, families and land, tight networks of kinship and alliances. Sure why should not arranged marriages work out as well as the other kind, if not better? But she and John had both . . . his remembered hand, his lips upon hers. And what of her parents? You never knew. They were very fortunate, her father said. She remembered his grief, remembered her own. She had her own grief now, John’s fate unimaginable, North America, or black gibbet. Liberty was a word, like sadness in books of poetry, or the language of romance in the novels which her mother had read in late afternoons, with half-smiles, sighing gently. Remembering her mother, she quickly bit her lip, turned away from her father. Perhaps the novels had told her of unexperienced feelings, half-believed, inaccessible.

  “Never fear,” her father said, misunderstanding. A hand placed awkwardly upon her thin, small-boned shoulder. “George will manage something.”

  Manage. For him as well, it was only a word, she knew suddenly. What did he know of such matters, a farmer haunted by stories of the penal days, hugging the shadows of a lost gentility. Somewhere off in London were great men, George’s friends—Fox, Sheridan, Lord Holland. Somehow, if they wished, they could turn the lock of a gaol cell in Castlebar, in the wilds of Mayo. How? Powerless for a century, the Treacys and the MacDonnells and the O’Driscolls. As powerless as women. Her father placed his hand upon her cheek, turned her head until she faced him.

  “He has been very foolish,” her father said softly. “You understand that, child, do you not? George warned him, and so did I. His life is at forfeit. You must learn to accept that. It is difficult, I know. I know that you loved him.”

  Her father knew nothing of their bodies pressed together, straining against each other, their lips touching, awareness of his flesh beneath wool. Her father knew love, a word. People somehow manage.

  “How did you first meet?” she asked him. “Mother and yourself?”

  “Why, it was at a ball,” he said, surprised and pleased by the question. “At O’Conor’s house, Clonalis, down in Roscommon. It took us two days of travel, your grandfather and your grandmother and your uncle and myself. We went armed, your uncle and myself, although it was against the Protestant laws for Papists to bear arms. But the roads were dangerous in those days, footpads and highwaymen and rapparees. It was at the time when the first Catholic Committee was being formed, and Charles O’Conor and Lord French were the chief men for Connaught. The ball was a most convenient excuse for the Papist gentry to meet together and discuss the petition for rights. But it was a true ball for all that, and the women were lovely, I remember their gowns and the softness of their faces by candlelight. Art O’Neill played for us that night, the greatest of all the harpers. Your mother was standing with other young women, and she was a full head taller than the ones she was with. She was the tallest young woman I have ever seen. Who is she?, I asked your grandmother, and she told me that she was one of the MacBrides. I danced twice with her that night, and would have danced a third time, but she said that this would cause comment, and she was right, of course. Your mother was a most sensible woman, as of course you know.”

  “But without the Catholic Committee there wou
ld have been no ball,” Ellen said. Words. Abstractions. Committees and petitions.

  “Why of course there would,” he said, puzzled. “There were always balls in those days, and very lovely they were. And the music we had then you do not have in these latter days. All the harpers are dead. Like the poets.” He shook his head. “We were a great people, and music and poetry were held in honour among us, as they had been by our grandparents. And all that while, we were outlaws upon our own land.”

  “There are outlaws today,” she said, turning away from him again, so that he would not see the tears of anger brimming in her eyes. “The gaols of Ballina and Castlebar are filled with outlaws awaiting sentence.”

  “That is very different,” he said. “Rebels who had taken up arms against their lawful King. The Catholic Committee was a committee of gentlemen. We commenced our petition with a declaration of loyalty to the King. That wretched little German is our lawful King. Women cannot understand such matters. It is not their sphere.”

  Sphere. In her father’s study stood a great sphere, a globe of the world, two feet wide and perfectly round, mounted upon a stand of wood, great oceans of blue, and continents in browns and whites and reds. Perfectly round and perfectly seamless. If you put your hand upon it and gave it a twist, it would spin upon its brass axis, within its frame of arched olive wood. Oceans and continents blurring together. But when it slowed, rested motionless again, if you looked closely, you could see that it was not seamless at all, a thin line, almost invisible, running from pole to pole, through oceans, bits of continent. Two halves, joined together by a craftsman’s cunning.

  “The harvest is lost,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak, looking out over the yellowing fields.

  “The best harvest in ten years it was,” Treacy said. “And all of the spalpeens off fighting for liberty in the taverns of Killala.”

  “Some of them,” she said. “Some are in Castlebar.”