A Close Run Thing

by Allan Mallinson

  An hour later he was in the stables telling Johnson he would take out Harkaway. ‘But a hunting saddle, not the Hungarian,’ he insisted, ‘and no shabracque, just a sheepskin.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Johnson in a resigned but reproving tone. ‘If t’adjutant were ’ere, though, there’d be words.’

  ‘Look, the horse has never seen an army saddle; I want to stretch his legs after the crossing and I have not the time to start fitting one now. The RM would understand, even if the adjutant would not.’

  But the riding master would not be able to save Johnson’s skin. ‘Why does tha ’ave t’ride in uniform, though?’

  ‘Because I think the adjutant would want me to, that is why,’ replied Hervey, tiring already of his groom’s primness in matters of saddlery.

  Johnson was quick to recognize the hopeless circularity of the argument and shuffled off to the harness room, muttering.

  ‘And just a snaffle – no curb,’ Hervey called after him. But if he thought it prudent to ride out in uniform (and it was not merely the adjutant’s expectations which had decided it) he had at least resolved that it would be undress. That way he showed himself to be a soldier yet without the appearance of being on official business. This had been the practice in the Peninsula, and was, for the most part, a modest guarantee of being able to ride unmolested by the provost-marshal’s patrols. But he would go armed nevertheless. After Johnson had saddled up the bay, therefore, Hervey fastened his double pistol holsters on to the saddle arch. It was not easy with a hunting saddle, but he managed by improvising straps through the D-rings meant for the breastplate. He then unhitched his sword and sabretache from his sword-belt and mounted with his customary vault. Johnson let go the bridle and then waved him off. Hervey sighed to himself. Three months in barracks had seen no conspicuous amendment in his groom’s bearing; an ostler might wave off a postboy, but Johnson was meant to be a trooper. There seemed little to be gained by reminding him of that, however, and formality was left instead to the fusilier sentry at the gate who presented arms briskly, though quite unnecessarily since a butt salute was all a lieutenant was entitled to.

  The map he had studied earlier that morning suggested a route to the south of the River Lee, along the road due west which, in a day’s hard riding, would take him to the Atlantic. Then there would be nothing beyond but America, with whom the nation was still at war. But this was to be a morning’s ride only, a preliminary reconnaissance in order to gain some feel for the country. He thought he might go as far as Macroom, eight leagues or so distant, and if Harkaway were supple enough perhaps a little beyond to catch a glimpse of the mountains dividing County Cork from Kerry. Then, crossing the Lee, he would return to Cork city along its north bank.

  It was a fine morning. It had been fine for weeks (Johnson had told him), and the stubble fields were witness to this soon after leaving the city. The road was not unduly busy but, even so, no one gave him so much as a second look. That came as no surprise: there had been a large garrison in Cork for centuries, and it could not have been unusual to see individual officers riding out. He hoped, however, that soon his appearance might be rather less familiar, for he wanted to see the Ireland of which they had spoken the night before rather than what seemed to be just an outpost of the Pale.

  It was a disappointment therefore when, after several miles of what he supposed was a road which would soon bring him to ‘real Ireland’, he came across a troop of artillery in the road, trotting towards him at ease as if on morning exercise. He saluted their captain, who acknowledged it as if such a meeting were an everyday occurrence. Puzzled as to where they were going, or where they had come from – for there was no artillery in the city, as he believed, he trotted on another mile or so until reaching Ballincollig. According to his map it was a small town of no significance; but, curiously, there was an artillery picket on the road at the town limit. The gunners saluted him, but the bombardier in charge said nothing, allowing him to pass unremarked. Half a mile beyond, however, he was to discover the reason for the picket; gunpowder mills of colossal proportions, and barracks next door for an entire artillery brigade. Little wonder the map made no reference to them, he supposed, for here was a part of the nation’s great war machine which was better kept privy since it lay within such easy reach of a hostile landing. Cork was home and victualling station to the Irish squadron of the Channel fleet, he knew well enough, but this … He wanted no tour of the mills, however, nor to dine with the artillery, both of them gracious enough invitations offered the instant the picket officer saw him. He wanted simply to get on.

  ‘That I would not advise – not alone, that is,’ said the picket officer. ‘A mile or so west of here and it can be as wild as Cantabria; I surmise that you will know my meaning well enough.’

  Hervey was encouraged, much to the artilleryman’s dismay.

  ‘Believe me, we had a courier ambushed not five miles from here last week.’

  He had no intention of abandoning his reconnaissance, however. ‘I thank you for your warning, sir, and I will prime my flintlocks. I must see something of the country, though, untamed as it is.’ But he wished he had his folding carbine, and as he took his leave he resolved to have the saddler enlarge one of the holsters at the first opportunity.

  * * *

  Harkaway, it was soon apparent, was incapable of a fifty-mile march that day, especially in the unexpected heat of that early-autumn morning. A couple of miles further, therefore, Hervey turned south into the gentle hills which formed a watershed between the Lee and the River Bandon, and reconciled himself to a pleasant country hack rather than the more purposeful reconnaissance he had intended. In the event, however, he could not have achieved his purpose more subtly or economically. Had he pressed on towards Macroom, and beyond, he would have seen the English influence gradually diminishing until, had his gelding possessed the stamina, in the Derrynasaggart Mountains he would have found the meanest hovels – every bit as mean as the worst he had seen in the Peninsula. And they would have been as popular imagination supposed them, with turf roofs, filled with peat-smoke, in a remote and hostile landscape beyond the frontiers of the civilized Pale. Instead he entered a less elemental landscape (though he felt it distinctly alien nevertheless) within a few miles of Ballincollig – and thus within but a dozen miles of Cork. What he first noticed here, in countryside which otherwise looked no more remarkable than east Somerset, was the absence of church towers. From a hill anywhere in England, especially from the parts he knew so well, it would be possible to see several towers or spires. But not here. There was, indeed, a curious flatness to the landscape despite the gentle hills. Canon Verey’s history lesson ought perhaps to have alerted him to it, but the physical consequences of academic history were not always easy to foresee.

  He rode through several settlements – village hardly seemed an appropriate word for them – and, although there were some decent stone buildings, the majority were rougher, consisting of timber-framed daub or unshaped stones. Some, especially those lying outside the settlements, were rougher still, no better than he would have seen further west. There were remarkably few people about, too, and none working in the fields that he could see, unlike the busy acres of Wiltshire. He freely greeted those he did come across – touching his cap to the women – but the most he received in reply was an expressionless nod.

  At about midday, six miles or so south and west of Ballincollig according to his uncommonly accurate map, he came upon the ruins of a religious house, a small monastery perhaps, standing isolated amid ungrazed pasture. The map told him the place was Kilcrea but nothing more. The heat was now beginning to tell on Harkaway, and so he dismounted and let him drink at a stream nearby. There was not a soul to be seen, reinforcing the impression of isolation. Yet it did not look to him like a Cistercian house; for, although the setting was characteristic of that pastoral and reclusive order, the ruins themselves lacked the grandeur of Cistercian buildings. These had the look of a much later, and sma
ller, establishment. What was more, and in contrast again with all he had seen in England, the building was as a whole intact, the walls high and unbroken. In England a monastic house would have been given, or sold, to some favourite by Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution and converted into a dwelling-house, or else its stone would long since have been carried away for other building. But these remains seemed almost to have been preserved, cherished even. He was uncertain of his history. Were the monasteries dissolved here as in England at the Reformation? Somehow these ruins had the stamp of Cromwell’s work – a more malign destruction, perhaps, a spoiling rather than a dismantling.

  He pulled up Harkaway’s head from the water. The stream was cold, even on so warm a day, and he risked the colic. He led him closer to the ruins, loosening the girth and then unfastening the snaffle at the cheekpiece so that the gelding could eat some of the lush grass. Through the arched west entrance he could see that there were many gravestones within the walls – new ones, not the occasional ancient tomb of some medieval knight as in an English church. He took a picket peg, drove it into the ground and then tied Harkaway’s halter rope to it, leaving himself free to explore inside the walls.

  The silence was broken only by the call of rooks in a distant coppice and by the faintest whistling of the light breeze through the broken lancets above the arch. It was not difficult to imagine why this must have been – was still – a favoured place for the dead. Many of the stones were worn and their inscriptions indecipherable, although they were better sheltered from the elements than in most graveyards. Those which were decipherable were in English: he had thought some at least would be in Gaelic. Were the Gaelic-speaking poor not buried with headstones? Or perhaps the stonemason’s art was too refined for the language? Was this a place reserved only for Catholics of substance?

  He sat by one headstone whose inscription was too recent to have undergone any weathering.

  Here lyeth the body of Tim McCarthy

  of Balineadig who depd this life

  June 19th 1797 aged 73yr also

  Anorah his wife died Nov 2 1780 AGd

  46 years also Tim their son June 4th

  1797 Aged 26yr.

  God Rest their Souls in Peace

  Amen

  What, he wondered, had connected those two deaths in the same month of the same year? Had Tim McCarthy, his wife having pre-deceased him, died of sorrow at losing his son? Had some contagion been responsible? Or was it more sinister? Could they have been killed in skirmishes with the militia? Surely not the old man.

  But curiosity as to how they had come to die was only part of what intrigued him about the stone. More engaging was the simple diminutive ‘Tim’. He felt sure he would not have seen its like in an English churchyard: even if Tim had been the lifelong familiar, in death he would have been Timothy. The warmth in that cherished rendering ‘Tim McCarthy’, and the union in death with his spouse, brought to mind Genesis: ‘There was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife.’ Here was a special place. These McCarthys were not simply of the past but of a country he did not know. He felt so at peace that he might have lain down in the sun and been put to sleep by the distant cawing of the rooks and the gentle whistle of the wind, had he not thought better of leaving Harkaway to gorge on the rich green grass. Instead he left repose within the walls to the departed, and put an end to his bay’s feasting. As he refastened the bit, tightened the girth and then remounted, he resolved to return soon. And next time he would be in no hurry to leave the walls which had once enclosed so many devout men, and which now provided shelter for the last remains of so many beloved fathers, mothers, children.

  Half a mile on down the road – though track might have been a more apt description – he crested a small hill to see a plume of black smoke rising over a settlement a few hundred yards ahead. It would have been nothing unusual, perhaps, except that even at this distance he could hear shouting. His first instinct was to gallop there, for it was his duty to go to the aid of authority in a disturbance, and that was what he surmised to be the cause of the shouting. But he did not know the country or its ways and so he decided on a more circumspect approach. He checked that his flintlocks were still properly primed and then put Harkaway into a steady canter across the heath, rather than spurring him to a gallop down the road, and made a wide half-circle left towards a clump of trees just short of the settlement. From here he would be able to observe unseen, and if necessary approach the settlement on foot using the cover of the gorse which dotted the heath. He had just tied his gelding to a tree and taken his telescope from its holster when out of the village burst, like Phoebus, a horse hitched to a blazing waggon. At first Hervey thought this to be a consequence of the tumult; but then, as more and more villagers rushed from the settlement shouting, he realized that this alone was the cause of the disturbance. Straightaway he untied the reins, sprang into the saddle and wheeled round to give chase.

  A bolting horse, terrified by blazing hay which stays with him no matter how fast he gallops, has a prodigious turn of speed and endurance, even taking account of his cobby make and the load he pulls, and it was all that Hervey could do to press an already tired Harkaway into a gallop fast enough to begin making ground. It was three hundred, perhaps even four hundred yards before he was able to close with the deranged animal, but his difficulties had only thus begun as Harkaway himself began shying at the blazing hay. Hervey used all the leg he could to press his gelding closer to the other horse, and even drew his sword to lay behind the girth, yet it was only after several attempts to lean out (during one of which they almost fell as Harkaway missed his footing) that he was at last able to seize hold of the bridle. With all his weight now braced in the stirrups he heaved on it for all he was worth, but still he could not get the cob to pull up. In desperation he was about to leap on to the runaway’s back to try to clap his hands over its eyes (something he had known to bring even an artillery team to a halt) when he saw the river ahead, and the ford with its entry and exit cut into steep banks.

  Hervey would never know whether he steered them into the ford or whether that was the way the runaway had determined on, but they plunged in and he now dropped his reins to pull on the cob’s bridle with both hands, trusting to his legs alone to turn Harkaway sharply up against the bank downstream of the exit – a bold gamble on a well-schooled horse, let alone a green one. As he had further gambled, the bank was too steep to jump – though the runaway attempted to, rearing between the shafts as burning hay fell around. But all forward movement had now ceased and Hervey sprang from the saddle in order to separate cob from cart. Holding on desperately to its reins, he used his sword to slice through the straps which held the yoke in place. As he cut through the last one he let the reins go and the still-terrified animal lunged from the shafts, leaped the bank and bolted again. Hervey cursed furiously, and, though he had burned his hands, he vaulted back into the saddle (his bay having stood quite still throughout not ten yards away drinking from the stream) and took off again after the runaway. For a common horse it would give a blood a good run over this distance, he rued, and it took him another half-mile to catch it and bring it to a halt.

  They trotted back to the village in a lather, each exhausted. They gave the waggon a wide berth, for all its timbers were now fiercely ablaze, and were met at the edge of the settlement by the crowd of villagers who had alerted him to the distress and who had then watched his dramatic intervention. They were barefooted and looked pulled down. But, more than that, they were silent and unsmiling.

  One old man, though how old it was difficult to tell, in thick tweed trousers and rough flannel shirt, stepped forward to take what was left of the runaway’s reins. ‘Buíochas le Dia! Go raibh míle maith agat, a nasail!’

  The words meant nothing to Hervey, but the sense was clear enough. He had little idea how much the villagers had seen, but the return of the horse was probably cause enough for gratitude, whether or not its value was less than O’Begley’s five pounds. As he dismo
unted, those nearest stepped back, the reason for which he could not judge – mere apprehensiveness he suspected. His overalls were thoroughly soaked and his face was black, but it was the backs of his hands, beginning to blister, that were the object of the older man’s attention.

  ‘Are ye by yerself, sor?’

  For a moment he hesitated, wondering whether to draw his sword.

  ‘I mean, sor, them hands – they’ll be needing seeing to.’

  An old woman, black shawl over her head in spite of the heat of the afternoon, stepped forward and took hold of one of them, examining the burns.

  ‘Tar liomsa nóimead,’ she said, beckoning him through the crowd, which parted to let her lead him and Harkaway towards one of the turf-roofed cottages. She motioned him to enter, and he had but an instant to decide whether or not to risk handing over Harkaway, pistols and all, to the boy who had followed them. It was, said his instincts, a moment for trust.