The Year of the French

by Thomas Flanagan

  “I can go into a town where a word of English would be as rare as a golden guinea, and I will be as welcome as a bishop. Listen.”

  Roisin Duhy. Who wrote it? Older than O’Rahilly. Word and sound yoked together like man and wife. Behind it lay a world for which MacCarthy ached in the ugly, stinking room. Brady’s memory was a magpie’s nest, silver rings and tin thimbles buried in the twigs.

  “They had no cause to seize me up and smash my fiddle. I know delightful songs of loyalty in English, that are much admired by the yeomen and the militia. I could have set their feet tapping.” His own feet twitched. Road-battered brogues, mud-caked.

  “O ye bright sons of Mars,

  Who defend our green isle. . . .”

  MacCarthy took the fiddle from Brady’s lap and balanced it in his hand.

  “That’s a yeoman’s song for you,” Brady said. “I sang it to the yeomen in Mullingar last month and they poured whiskey into me until it ran out my nose.”

  A jagged splinter of dark, polished wood hung almost free. Carefully, MacCarthy removed it and dropped it into the gaping wound. No fiddle-maker in Athlone could repair it, however great his skill.

  “Ye bright sons of Mars,” he said.

  “Whoever he might be,” the singer said.

  “A god of battles,” MacCarthy said. “In the Roman times. With a breastplate dazzling like the sun and a bolt of lightning in his naked hand.”

  “There now,” Brady said. “There is the scholar for you. What am I beside you?”

  “We are neither of us much,” MacCarthy said. “Sacks of old words.” He handed back the fiddle and stood up.

  A slack smile from Brady. Gaps between his yellow teeth. “There is a song you have about a woman.”

  “Oh, by Jesus there is. A dozen of them.” In meadows, strong legs spread wide, wild, shy bodies pressed beneath him. “Women, drinking, rambling. There is not a mischief in Ireland that I have not put a song to it.” The small change of my craft. The true poems were slow, mysterious, fresh light flashed from the smooth sides of their ritual.

  Days passed. The warehouse was a backwater of war, its heavy door a weir. Odd fish flopped in. The men from Mayo, pilgrims to Ballinamuck, were quiet in their knowledge of an earned vengeance; men with pikes, all of them, and some had set fire to big houses. They remembered buildings red against an evening sky. The others were carried in by the tides, mouths slack with incredulity and fear. If they had read a pamphlet by the United Irishmen they were suspect, or if they had signed the wrong petition. There was a great scouring of the midlands, sedition was being scrubbed out as you would scrub burned porridge from a pot.

  Cumiskey was released. Fair to him, he saw to the wounded one last time. He knelt beside O’Murtha, one of the men from Belmullet, and they seemed to MacCarthy creatures from two different planets, O’Murtha a heavy-boned spalpeen, his arms long and heavy-muscled.

  Cumiskey pointed to the darkening wound which ran from knee to ankle, exposing tendon and bone. “Nothing to be done,” he said. “It has mortified. I am as useless to this fellow as an old woman with her sack of herbs.”

  “It is a great comfort to him all the same,” MacCarthy said. “Yourself a doctor from the town of Carrick.”

  “It is a criminal neglect of helpless prisoners,” Cumiskey said. “I refuse to believe that Lord Cornwallis knows of it. A man with his reputation for humanity.” He resettled his spectacles on the bridge of his small, soft nose. Curved glass, gold-encircled, they ordered his world.

  “A great comfort,” MacCarthy said.

  Cumiskey stood ill-at-ease. Already, in imagination, he had left the foetid, crowded room, was trotting down the riverside street to his house, his surgery of sharp knives, his small daughter tracing the letters of the alphabet. Embarrassment held him.

  “It is most unfortunate that you involved yourself so deeply in this dreadful adventure. Violence boiling beneath the crust in those barbarous counties.”

  “A misfortune indeed,” MacCarthy agreed.

  MacCarthy watched him walk into the sunlight. Militiamen, briefly glimpsed, stared with indifference. North Cork Militia. English books awaited him, words marched across their pages, trim as platoons, busy with the world’s business. English sent wheels spinning, sent out ships from harbours, regiments moved at its command. Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain. Goldsmith, shy Longford stammerer. He found his place among the London poets, their words resonant with power, empire of iambs. Great ocean waves hold us locked.

  Shards of language lay about his feet; broken echoes filled the room. He heard his voice bellowing in Munster taverns, saw MacKenna bending near-sighted head over manuscripts copied and recopied. A language for rent days and pothouse bawlers. Taverns deep-valleyed beneath Kerry hills. Who speaks it but ourselves, to wind and bog? Merriman teaching school in Limerick. English, their parents want for them. Far from Kerry they will fit the knot under my jaw. On the butt end of this century I will choke, and my poems will become curiosities.

  Dublin Castle, September 13

  “Trench will deal with the rebels holding north Mayo,” Cornwallis said. “An English regiment or two and some Irish militia. Good for appearances. Irish rebels scattered by loyal Irish militia.”

  “Break them up,” Dennis Browne said. “After order has been restored, the magistrates of Mayo and Galway can deal with them. You may depend upon that.”

  “Oh, I do, Mr. Browne. I do indeed,” Cornwallis said. Along the dark, polished table, heads wagged at him. The gentlemen of Connaught. Members of Parliament. Magistrates. The misgovernors of this bog. Impatient to let loose their yeomanry. “I have a more serious task in hand. A second French fleet has set sail. If it contrives to slip past Admiral Warren, I propose to smash the Frenchmen on the beach. Wherever they land.”

  “Bloody damned Frenchmen,” John Broderick said. “Turn a province upside down and then wind up as guests of the state at the Mail Coach Hotel.”

  “It is what we would expect for British officers should they be so unfortunate as to be captured on French soil.”

  “Ladies sauntering down Dawson Street to peer at them the way they would at a pack of the royal princes,” Broderick said. “What are they but banditti? Forty houses burned to their foundations from Mayo to Longford.”

  “Not by the French,” Cornwallis said patiently. “Our friend Humbert is a most remarkable rogue. He will have a worse time when he gets back to France. They have become damned uncivil in their treatment of defeated generals.” He smiled down the table. “It is a sore point with me. I have been a defeated general in my time.”

  The gentlemen of Connaught politely studied their sleeves. Uniform sleeves, some of them. Militia. Yeomanry. A warty little squire leaned forward. What was his name? Master of reclaimed bog and a few hundred bare-arsed peasants. “Browne has the right of it. Don’t trouble yourself about Connaught. We’ll settle those lads for you.”

  “Yes,” Cornwallis said dryly. “After the British army has smashed them for you.” He gestured to Wyndham, who leaned forward to hand him an order book. “The President of their precious republic was a young landlord named Moore. He is in Castlebar gaol.”

  “The brother of one,” Broderick said. “He is the brother of George Moore of Moore Hall. A Papist, with a headful of strange notions.”

  “George Moore?” Cornwallis asked. “Not at all. We have friends in common. He dabbles in history. I am damned sorry that this misfortune has befallen him. The brother must be a harum-scarum sort.”

  “He is,” Dennis Browne said. “I know them well, the two of them. Our families are connected, in a manner of speaking. It goes back a long way, to the times when the Brownes were Papists as well.” He stared straight at Broderick and smiled.

  “Whatever about that,” Cornwallis said, “the real instigator seems to have been a solicitor named Elliott. There is no doubt that he was a member of the Directory of the United Irishmen. A crony of Tone and Emmet and the rest of them.
We will try him here in Dublin, together with Bartholemew Teeling. State trials. Some of the local leaders go back to Castlebar—a schoolmaster and a few other ruffians.”

  “There is enough rope for them in Castlebar, by God,” another magistrate said. Cornwallis knew that one. Gingery little man from beside one of their lakes. Lake Cong.

  Cornwallis turned to Wyndham. “Make certain that the prisoners in Carrick have been seen to. Some of them may be wounded. We will hold them there for a few weeks, until Killala has been settled. I have seen them. Ignorant and pitiable wretches.”

  “Those are the men who fired houses and carried the pike into Longford,” Warty said. “If they can stand up to the rope, it should be given to them.”

  A bloody-minded people. We spurred them on. From the days of Elizabeth. Here in this castle. So much for a rebel’s head. Delivered in a sack, and the gold coins counted out to them. My God, how these people hate each other! Blind men, fighting with daggers in a hogshead.

  “How you restore order—civil order—to Mayo is your own affair,” he said, “but I will deal in my own way with military prisoners.”

  “Never fear, Lord Cornwallis,” Dennis Browne said. “Never fear. Give us a month, and Mayo will be as peaceful as Yorkshire. It is our own county, after all. A poor enough place, to be sure, but we wouldn’t trade it for all of India.” He swept his eyes over the others, as though drawing their weight into his words. “We will give you order, I promise you that.”

  He would keep his word. To landlords, viceroys, henchmen. The true Irishman, affable, obliging, clever as a weasel. The others were bumpkins, but this was a very clever gentleman indeed. Cornwallis would not trust him ten yards beyond the room. Crooked as a ram’s horn, unprincipled, charming. The power of the Crown in Ireland rested upon Dennis Browne and a handful of men like him. My God, what a country! Cornwallis sighed.

  When the others had left, Browne lingered, leaning forward over the table, humming.

  “You have the right of it there,” he said. “All this killing and tying up country lads at the triangle. It is order and justice we want, not random cruelty.”

  “I am much of your mind, Mr. Browne.”

  “One lad in particular I was thinking of. The one you mentioned. John Moore. You yourself found the right word for him, harum-scarum. You could no more keep that lad from mischief than you could keep yourself from high treason.”

  “The charge against him is not mischief but high treason.”

  “Treason is but a word,” Browne said. “Like any other. John Moore would be a captain of militia today, had there been no Malcolm Elliott to pour poison into his ear. Elliott was the instigator, you said that yourself. It is a marvel to me, the firm grasp you have of these matters.”

  “It is not a word,” Cornwallis said. “It is a crime, punishable by hanging. Young Mr. Moore was President of the Republic of Connaught.”

  Browne laughed, as though at a sally of wit. “Sure they could as well have called him a Roman emperor. There you have it. George should have kept a firmer rein upon him, but his head is always in his history books. As you said yourself.”

  “I am not certain of your drift, Mr. Browne. Are you suggesting that the nominal head of the rebellion should not be brought to trial?”

  “Indeed I am not!” Browne held up strong white hands in deprecation. He smiled at Cornwallis, and thought, Don’t play the dull, stolid Englishman with me, you bastard. “Indeed not.”

  “What then?”

  “Those fellows we were just now talking with. Good-hearted lads, every last one of them. But I would never call them a brainy lot. Would you? Returning Mayo to the ways of peace will take more than Johnny Broderick stumping across Tyrawley with a company of yeomen and a portable gallows. Mayo is like any part of the world, it is a sort of tissue of power—Lord Glenthorne and my brother Altamont and myself. The big landlords. And I would put George Moore there. Papist or not. It would do the Crown no harm at all to place George Moore under an obligation.”

  Before speaking, Cornwallis paused to study him. An attractive man, not one of your red-faced squireens. Pale, composed face, brown eyes soft and watchful, ready, flickering smile. A witty man, with a gift for irony. A selfish man, too fond of his own cleverness.

  “And if he were under an obligation to yourself as well,” Cornwallis said. “You would not object to that?”

  The smile was quick as spring rain. “I would not. George’s friends in England are well placed. And I have a suspicion that in the future most of Ireland’s business will be transacted in London. The days of our little Parliament here in Dublin are numbered, I think. But of course you would know more of that than I do. Much more. No, you are quite right. I would welcome a chance to be of service to George.”

  “And at such a cheap price,” Cornwallis said. “We have only to turn loose a traitor.”

  “Not turn him loose,” Browne said sharply. “Not hang him. There are other punishments. Transportation is a bleak enough fate for a young man. George would be most grateful to settle for that. And I have not lied to you about John. I know him well. He is not a traitor but a spoiled boy. Spoiled first by his father and then by George. He is a high-spirited young fellow. You would take to him, I think.”

  “I doubt that,” Cornwallis said. “He is old enough to know right from wrong, and it was sinfully wrong of him to seduce from their loyalty poor peasant lads who unlike him have no friends at court. It is time that the people of this country, high and low, rich and poor, learn that the law is more powerful than their wilful passions and follies.”

  “But you are not saying, are you,” Browne asked, “that poor young John must hang? Sure that would break more hearts than George’s.”

  “I haven’t said that,” Cornwallis said. “We must talk a bit more about the changes which will be taking place in Ireland in the next few years. You are a most able man, Mr. Browne, and your advice is always welcome. But please don’t let that brogue which you affect creep back into your speech. You are much more persuasive when you sound like an Englishman.”

  “By God,” Browne said, “there are damned few Englishmen who have your sense of the country. Are you certain you don’t have a drop of Irish?”

  “I intend no discourtesy, Mr. Browne, when I say most fervently that I do not.”

  Browne smiled again, this time a wide, genuine smile of delight. “Let us talk a bit about Ireland then, if you have the time. There is no subject closer to my heart.”

  An hour later, Cornwallis stood looking down from the state apartments into the upper Castle Yard. Spitting rain fell upon the cobbles, and the two soldiers who stood sentry at the gate, beneath the statue of blindfolded Justice, were soaked. Better for England if the entire island sank without a trace. Half water already: rain, bogs, rivers, reedy lakes. A brown-coated figure answered the sentries’ query and then dashed through the yard, hat held down with both hands against the blustery wind. A clerk? Perhaps an informer. Ireland nurtured them: go a bit of the way towards treason, then turn in panic and run to government. We bargain with them here, in this sprawling castle, modern brick joined to Tudor towers. Elizabeth bought heads from them, chieftain’s head dripping with gore, sightless eyes, hauled by lank hair from the sack.

  The others were as bad, the gentry of Ireland—Anglo-Irish or English-in-Ireland, whatever they chose to call themselves. Trailing their brogues around London, then going back to shiver in their mortgaged manor houses. Country magnates scheming for office, a kind word from the Castle, their wives warmed by the candles of Viceregal balls. Dennis Browne was their prime specimen, mouth stuffed with affable japes, but the brown eyes watchful and treacherous. What need had he for the life of a foolish young squire unless it served some unnamed scheme? As well deal with Mogul prince or red Indian sachem. Not for much longer. Only for as long as it took to sweep away their doll’s-house parliament of silver-tongued orators and bribed placemen.

  “Sir?”

  Cornwallis tu
rned towards Wyndham.

  “Despatches from the packet boat,” Wyndham said. “They will keep until morning.”

  “No word of Nelson, then,” Cornwallis said. “Or Buonaparte. Europe is at stake out there—Egypt, the Mediterranean—and we are stuck in this bog. No matter. I have had a good run—forty years, almost. Settle the affairs of this damned place once and for all, and then a squire’s life, eh? Not much older than yourself, Monsieur Buonaparte. And there he is, a new Alexander. Bad luck you weren’t born a Frenchman, Mr. Wyndham.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever thought, Mr. Wyndham, that in a year or so you will be serving in a new century?”

  “It will be the same army.”

  “Now there is a point which you should discuss with Monsieur Buonaparte. He has different notions. Bold as brass and smart as paint. Give that fellow his head and he will turn the world upside down. Mustn’t let that happen, eh? Eh?”

  “No, sir,” Wyndham said. He centered the despatches neatly on Cornwallis’s bare, massive desk.

  “They are new men,” Cornwallis said, “Buonaparte and Humbert both, and the whole pack of them there in Paris. A most remarkable man, poor Humbert. Do you know that he can barely put his signature to a piece of paper? A most remarkable man.”

  “He showed to no great advantage at Ballinamuck,” Wyndham said.

  “Ah, Ballinamuck. More reputations than his have been lost in Ireland—Essex, Raleigh, Lauzun, that Spaniard. Pity Lake’s battle didn’t have a loftier name—Ramillies, Malplaquet, Yorktown. I intend to bring my own reputation out of here in one piece. Ireland is going to be changed, Mr. Wyndham, and changed now. Too many half measures for too many centuries. We can no longer afford that. Not with the Frenchies on the march. Make Ireland British. Smash up their wretched little parliament, and bind her to us with bands of steel. Pitt wants that, and I want it.”

  “A tall order, sir.”

  “Is it, Mr. Wyndham? Perhaps so. Perhaps we aren’t clever enough to contrive a new Ireland, but at least we can smash the old one. All we need for that is enough gallows and enough men like Dennis Browne.”