The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  After he rode off, the mistress turned to me as I scrubbed the doorstep. “Your master won’t thank me for taking him away from the affairs of business.”

  I sat up on my hunkers. “You could always tell him the lie of the land, and let him make up his own mind.”

  “I hope to shield him for as long as I am able. He must have no distractions from business. His mother’s illness took his mind off affairs for longer than was desirable.”

  “I’d be inclined to let him know all the same, mistress.”

  “You mind your place, Ellen.”

  She went indoors to pen her letter, but came back almost at once to say Mary Dunbar fancied a dander, and I was ordered to go with her because the mistress was too worn out to tramp the countryside.

  I wasn’t too pushed about it myself. Just me and Mary Dunbar? You’d never know what might happen. The mistress read my face. She was holding my master’s latest letter, in the process of answering it, and waved it at me. She knowed full well I liked to hear news of him. “Your master says he’s ruined from paying for coaches. Listen, I’ll read you a passage. ‘I am unable to walk anywhere in Dublin for the state of the roads and the dirty condition of the streets. Coach hire is crucifying me – I was eighteen pence out of pocket today because I had so many calls to make. I took on a servant called Barney Goggin, recommended to me by Richard Pue of Dick’s Coffee House, who makes the best coffee in the city.’”

  Oh ho, I thought, he’s passing time in coffee-houses, hearing about the world’s doings. Little suspecting the doings here.

  “‘This fellow Goggin is full of bluff and blarney. He started off well, but as soon as I paid him he took to the drink and I saw no more of him until every penny was spent. Then he turned up looking sheepish and smelling like a tavern. I spoke to Dick Pue about him, because I cannot have an unreliable servant. Pue said my mistake was to give him an advance, and I should pay the fellow nothing more until I am ready to leave the city. He passed some amusing remark about what happens when Barney Goggin gets grog in – he makes a rhyme out of everything, and is known for it far and wide. I suppose I should give this Goggin another chance. It is inconvenient to take on another servant at this late stage. I call into Dick’s Coffee House every day, because there is no better spot to chew over the latest news. It is in the drawing room of Carbery House, formerly the Earl of Kildare’s home, and is close to my lodgings (they are tolerable, by the way) on Skinner Row. Lawyers, merchants and various squires, up from the country, sit round his fires discussing politics and other news. The London Gazette, the Paris Gazette, the Flying Post and other newspapers are to hand, so we have all the domestic and foreign news. Auctions of books are held at the back of Pue’s premises. I have bought some already, which will be of use in the children’s education.’ There now, my husband is thinking of us all, though he is far from home.” She folded up the letter. “I should really put the children over their ABCs but I haven’t the heart for lessons today. Take them walking with you and my cousin instead. Tell them if they come back with roses in their cheeks, I’ll give them a treat.”

  “Where are they, mistress?”

  “They went out to play as soon as breakfast was finished. They race outside any chance they get.”

  I set off looking for Jamesey and Sarah. Usually you’d find them teasing the rooster or jumping about in the barn, but there was no sign of them. As I hunted, I turned over the idea of writing to my master myself, to tell him how things stood here at Knowehead. But sending a letter to her master is not something a maid does easily. Besides, he might complain to the mistress about being slow to tell him and, in turn, she could accuse me of getting above myself. It was hard to know what to do for the best.

  The bairns were in the top field, hanging round Noah Spears at his digging and sowing. Their faces fell when I told them they were to walk out with me and Mary Dunbar.

  “Do we have to?” asked the wee miss.

  “Why, what would you rather do?”

  Jamesey piped up, “We wanted to sail paper boats in a barrel of water. Noah said he’d help us make them as soon as he’s done here.”

  “You must’n keep Noah back from his work.”

  “Ach, let them be,” said Noah. “They’re out of harm’s way here. If you catch me drift.”

  “Aye, I hear what you’re sayin’. All right. Jamesey, Sarah, you mind you’re no trouble to Noah.”

  “Can we go to your cottage for stew afterwards, Noah? Like before?” asked Sarah.

  “It was rabbit stew,” Jamesey whispered to me, “caught in one of his traps – but we never let on to Sarah.”

  The mistress pulled a face when I told her the children preferred to stay with Noah Spears, and she said they missed their father. “It’s male company they’re after,” she added, as though defying me to gainsay her.

  I scooted up the ladder to the attic for my woollen shawl.

  Mary Dunbar strolled on ahead, and I found her among Peggy’s rhubarb rows. Juking down, touching the leaves coming up, so she was. “Best let them be,” snaps I, sharper than a maid should speak to a lady. But I was on edge at being in charge of her, with nobody to send for help if she took a fit.

  We went east as far as the Gobbins, though I had to take her arm because her strength failed her before we got the length. I expected the young lady to quiz me again about the pointy rocks at the foot of the cliffs, and the bodies that were ripped open on them, for her thoughts ran to the morbid. But she only looked at the fishing boats, bobbing in the distance. With Islandmagee being an island, near enough, all but the poorest family had some kind of boat – journeys made by water were always quicker than by road. Many of Islandmagee’s men earned a living before the mast.

  The gabbon hawks shrieked at us, for being too close to them, I daresay, and Mary Dunbar went to the cliff edge to see if they were nesting. They were held in high regard by the gentry, who used them for hunting. I had to pull her back because the ground was treacherous after weeks of heavy rain. She hummed to herself, enjoying the outdoors. I liked it there myself, despite the duty of minding her, because nothing beats fresh air for blowing away the cobwebs.

  “Local lads climb down the cliffs on ropes to collect seabirds and their eggs,” I told her.

  “You’d want to be sure of your rope,” she said.

  We chatted about the different families living on Islandmagee, and I told her how they came across from Scotland in the early 1600s, defying native and nature to build homes and farms. Others followed when they saw a good life could be made here.

  The young lady had a powerful curiosity about the early settlers. “Were Hamilton Lock’s people planters?” she asked, and I gave a wee jump at the offhand way she throwed in his name.

  “Don’t go namin’ him – you’d never know what power his ghost might take from folk repeatin’ his name.”

  “His name rings in my head, Ellen. I hear it morning, noon and night.” I let on not to hear her, but she went on, “I heard he liked horses better than folk.”

  I was surprised into letting down my guard. “They say he had a way with horses – he could gentle the wildest stallion.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My granda knowed him as a wee lad. Hamilton was some years ahead of him, but they were acquainted.”

  “Is that how he earned a living? Taming horses?”

  “As far as I know he did a dose of things. Most of them bad. He was in the army for a time, but he was too unruly to take orders. He went to sea forbye, and I would’n be surprised if he was as rowdy on the high seas as he was on the land. But there’s more to Islandmagee than Hamilton Lock.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Why, there’s the land, Mistress Mary. It’s the land that matters. And it’s generous to the folk that work it. So is the sea, come to that.”

  “But the islanders profit from the sea in more ways than one, don’t they?”

  “Oh aye?”

  “Smuggling.
A wee bird told me the caves at the foot of the Gobbins shelter smugglers. As well as witches, of course.”

  Shivering, I pulled tight the grey shawl my mother had knitted for me and, as my fingers touched it, I thought of her sitting by the fire with the needles clicking. This past while, I was tied to Knowehead, without much leave to visit the ones at home. I wondered whether Ma fretted for me, on the back of all the gossip lately.

  “Time we turned back, mistress.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “I’ve been in one of those caves, you know. At night. I was carried over the cliffs on the back of a huge goose sent by Mistress Anne. She said witch magic has more force behind it in Lock’s Cave. But the coven can’t use the cave any more, now that it’s watched. They move from place to place. This angers them, and they take it out on me. Nowhere else suits them half as well.”

  “Where do they meet now? You should tell the minister.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Hamilton Lock met a grisly end, didn’t he?”

  “I could’n say.”

  “I’ll ask Peggy. She’ll tell me.”

  “Hamilton Lock got what was due to him. That’s all you need to know. He committed one crime too many for folk to stomach. I daresay he thought he could get away with anythin’, on account of gettin’ away with so much in his time.”

  “You mean he wasn’t just part of the massacre? Did he do something else?”

  “Hush now. That’s enough.”

  “I’ll give you a present if you tell me everything you know about it: half a dozen jet buttons from my japanned box. You can sew them on a frock. They’ll turn heads at the meeting-house.”

  I knowed the buttons she meant and was tempted. My master might admire me wearing them, I thought, before shaking myself. I must not go courting my master’s admiration – it was too dangerous.

  “Do tell, Ellen. All right, I’ll make it a dozen buttons.”

  Maybes the buttons swayed me. But it struck me how it was high time Mary Dunbar understood why Hamilton Lock’s name was blackened beyond repair – and why it was better left unsaid. She seemed inclined to see him as a figure of interest, rather than the thoroughgoing rogue that he was. But there was something else made me decide to tell her, too. I think it was because I was on standing on the self-same spot where it happened.

  “Very well. But first you must promise not to breathe a word of this to the mistress. She’ll give me my marching orders if she hears I’ve been blabbin’ about him.”

  She held up both wee hands, two fingers overlapping on each. “I promise.”

  “I had this story off my da, who had it off his. It was back in the time of the Magee massacre, when blood ran like rainwater on the island. Hamilton Lock was only twenty or thereabouts, but he was strong and well-growed, and he hacked and hewed like a man possessed. He tore the clothes off the backs of the dead to wipe away the blood drippin’ from his face, and carried on with his rampage. I heared he seized a suckin’ babe from a cradle and stamped on its head with his boot, crushin’ it like a nut. They say he laughed at the sight of its poor wee flattened skull.”

  The weight of this story was more than I could bear to tell standing upright. There was a rock a few yards away, and I walked over to sit on it, Mary Dunbar following.

  “Hamilton Lock hated the Irish. I daresay he had his reasons. Hate like that does’n come out of nowhere. His hate ran straight from his heart into his sword arm: it was a fever he had. He was named by a young woman called Bridget McGill who survived the killings. She was in her brother-in-law Eiver Magee’s house, down Carnspindle way, when the attack came. It was one Sunday night shortly after Christmas. A crowd of soldiers tore into Eiver’s house, all fired up on drink, wavin’ pikes and muskets about. That was the start of it. They killed all round them, afore headin’ to the next house for more of the same.”

  “Isn’t Carnspindle where you’re from?”

  “It is, aye. Bridget McGill said Hamilton Lock was at the front of the band that come bustin’ into Eiver Magee’s. ‘Death to all papist rebels!’ he bellowed, and fired a musket shot at Eiver. Bridget was standin’ behind Eiver, and the bullet passed through him and into her throat. She fell like a stone. The next thing she knowed, Lock had her by the hair and was pullin’ her to the door, past the bodies of family and friends. What he had in mind to do to her, the Lord only knows. ‘No time for that,’ someone shouted. ‘We’ve a long night’s work ahead of us.’ So he let her drop, contentin’ hisself with cuttin’ off her girdle to give to some lassie he had his eye on. Bridget McGill played dead, and after the soldiers left she hid out by the rocks at the shoreline. Next day, she managed to get away in a boat. She carried a scar on her neck for the rest of her life. Long gone, she is now. But my da knowed her when he was a wee lad.”

  I sat for a while, watching the gulls dive for fish, yellow feet pressed tight against their bellies as they rose back, squawking, into the air. Lucky birds, with wings to lift them up the cliff face. By and by, I felt able to pick up my story again.

  “Some say it was thirty families done to death, others say thirty people. The truth falls in-between. Truth usually does. My da did a head count and reckoned it at about seventy deaths. That’s how it was when times were troubled. Kill or be killed. It was done to teach the Irish the penalties of insurrection. The Scotch general they sent over to protect the settlers – Munro was his name – he had this to say about the Irish: the more you scourged them, the better they learned to respect you.”

  “Unless they learned to hate you,” said Mary.

  “Aye, hate. That can be a powerful force. Hamilton Lock is proof of that. Anyhows, there was an inquiry into the massacre a dozen years later. This would be the 1650s, long afore you or I were thought of, mistress. Some of the soldiers were dead, but others were still about. Cromwell was in charge by then, puttin’ order on the Scotch as well as the Irish. From what I hear tell of Cromwell, he’d a lost no sleep over what went on here. He’s dead more’n fifty years, but the Irish still spit on his name. ‘The curse of Cromwell on you,’ they say. Anyhow, for the look of the thing, maybes, he ordered an inquisition into what went on here. His men took depositions, an’ cobbled together an account of what happened with the Magees. A sorry tale it was. Even leavin’ out the worst part.”

  “What was the worst part?”

  I was too choked to answer. Instead, I listened to the waves crashing against the rocks below: such violence there is, in an incoming tide. But something worked on me to speak. I have a half-notion it was the story itself, forcing its way out. Insisting on being said aloud. I struggled with it, and lost. Easier to command the rain to stop falling, or sheep to lay eggs, than to hold that tale in.

  “You only have to stand on this cliff-top and hear the wind and sea to understand how it was. The Magee men were e’ther lyin’ in their own blood or tryin’ to flee. But the women would’n leave their bairns, and wee legs could’n run fast enough. The soldiers rounded them up and chased them to the Gobbins. The way I heared it, they deliberately gave them a head start. The better to enjoy the hunt. When they got them the length of the cliffs, they did a Godforsaken thing. They drove the Magee women over the top, babes and all. Killing the menfolk was one thing. But what they did to the women and childer –”

  A long sigh came from Mary Dunbar, as if she’d listened to enough. As if she’d like to be let off the rest. But I wasn’t able to stop now.

  “What they did to the women an’ childer was done for sport. Hamilton Lock’s notion of sport.”

  The words were like stones vanishing slowly through mud.

  “The depositions given in to the inquiry tried to make out the bloodshed at the Gobbins never took place. As if anyone could invent such a story. Maybes folk were ashamed to admit to it – even them that had no hand in the deed. The inquisition Cromwell ordered said no evidence was found. Hearsay was all. But it happened. Oh aye. It happened. There were eyes to see it. To remember. And to pass it on.”r />
  After a long pause, Mary Dunbar collected herself. “You know so much about the island.”

  “Islandmagee is my home.”

  “Were your family among the first settlers to come over from Scotland?”

  “I could’n say, mistress. That’s before my time.”

  “But you were born here?”

  “Aye, like my father afore me, and his father afore him.”

  “So you’re been here for several generations?”

  I gazed at the greens and blues and purples of the land, and a fierce love for it swelled inside me. “Islandmagee is in our blood, and let nobody say different. We have a right to be here.” Surprise bloomed on her face, and I saw I might have been too insistent. “There’s no place like it for gettin’ under your skin,” I said.

  “My father says we improved Ulster greatly, by planting a colony and civilizing the Irish,” said Mary Dunbar.

  “I’ve heared it remarked upon often enough, mistress.”

  It was agreed among the Scotch of Ireland that Ulster was a wilderness before it was planted. Yet if you ask me, Islandmagee held itself apart from the people who settled it – planter or Gael. It was hospitable enough. But there was a distance. You could never truly possess the land.