The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  The lieutenant in charge explained his mission to Dominic. The captain was on his way. He was here with his men to give protection or arms against the Fenians.

  Captain Fitzharding-Smith was ushered in in time to hear Dominic give the reply that the father he scarce remembered had given to Captain Fitzharding-Smith twenty-three years before, when the then lieutenant had suggested that he seek protection against the Whiteboys. His family, Dominic said, had never sought military aid against their tenants or any of their countrymen.

  The young lieutenant—he was the one Dominic had fought the duel with—interpreted Dominic’s refusal as a personal thing that slighted his own powers of protection—and perhaps his swordsmanship. He smoothed his long moustache and gave a curt word of command and he marched his men off the premises. Captain Fitzharding-Smith lingered on. He had hoped for a private word with Sterrin. He was worried about her. He had heard mention of her name in connection with a hideout where Fenians met and trained. He had listened to the inexorable order—Fenians to be shot at sight, and he had seen in lonely places, in the wake of patrols, the unarmed, unidentified bodies of young men from God-knows where. Lady O’Carroll came down and told him of Sterrin’s illness. He expressed his concern but the news brought him a strange sense of satisfaction. No warning of his, he felt, would have caused my Lady Sterrin to lie low.

  When Dominic sauntered into Sterrin’s room with the news of the military visit he was hardset to hold her down from rushing to warn the men in the fort. Eventually he got the password from her ‘—though I doubt if it will avail,’ he grumbled, ‘if the military get there first. They’ll use explosives, not passwords.’

  ‘Take the short cut,’ she urged and then she recalled him to give him a warning signal in case the military were ahead of him.

  She lay restless, refusing draughts that might betray her into sleep. Lady O’Carroll delayed the late drawing-room tea because Dominic had told her he would be back for it. When Hegarty came to quench the drawing-room lights, she bade him wait. At midnight she decided that Dominic had been thrown from his horse. The men servants organised a search. In the kitchen the women kept vigil. Mrs. Stacey turned the fanwheel round and round with her thoughts until the roar of eight blazing fires stayed her hand. At two o’clock Sterrin tossed the bedclothes from her.

  ‘Are you crazy, Miss Sterrin’s Ladyship?’

  Sterrin pushed the maid from her path. In the stable yard Big John pleaded with her. She rode out, fever, pain completely overborne by the force of her dread for her brother.

  The fort was empty. By the light of the lantern that she had carried inside her cloak she saw the door lying on the ground. There was a strange acrid smell in the air. It was as Dominic had said. The military had used explosives instead of passwords. But where, dear God, was Dominic?

  The mare walked her home unguided, almost a dead weight across her shoulders. In the stable yard Big John was just in time to lift her as she slid to the ground.

  Captain Fitzharding-Smith came early in the morning to break the news to Lady O’Carroll that her son had been arrested.

  Dominic had been turning away from the fort, his message delivered, when the military came charging up towards him with bayonets drawn. As they seized him, he implicated himself completely by sounding the bird cry that Sterrin had given him. The men inside heard and burrowed through the labyrinth to safety.

  In the days that followed the staff at Kilsheelin were helpless and bewildered. It seemed to them as though the citadel of their lives was falling down through the centuries upon their unprotected heads. Their Ladyships, both prostrated upstairs. Their young master about to go on trial. For his life, maybe. The end of a dynasty! When they heard the name of the Assize Judge they were filled with despair. His grandfather used to try the rebels of ’98. Twenty a day he would sentence to hanging, they recalled to each other, and he would crack jokes with the black cap on his head. This grandson cracked no jokes, but he found the black cap no burden. To Fenian rebels, high or low, he was merciless.

  Upstairs Sterrin lay half delirious in fever. Dominic! The sensitive boy who had taken so long to grow into his years. It seemed like yesterday that he was an unbreeched lad rejoicing in his first pair of trousers, made from his great-grandfather’s velvet breeches. And now, the grey frieze of the convict. For all the lovely hours of his youth. And she had sent him! The last of the O’Carrolls. A wailing shriek went out from her. It echoed down the corridors and stairs and into the great kitchen that had known the echoes of her laughter.

  Mrs. Stacey hesitated no longer. She looked at the faces round her. Big John’s, Hegarty’s, Mike O’Driscoll’s, Ellen’s and in an outer sphere, not of their close-knit kin, Pakie Scally; gratitude for the home that had reared him yielding the loyalty that was theirs by generations of association. Milesian servant and Milesian lord fighting the same odds, sharing the same destiny. Mrs. Stacey’s milk had nourished Sir Roderick, the father of Master Dominic, her darling. At the breast of Hegarty’s mother, old Sir Dominic had been nursed in fosterage. Big John, too, his blood was linked with the O’Carrolls by the milk of his womenfolk.

  ‘I’ll do it!’ The big cook rose slowly to her full height, grim with purpose, she dwarfed them all; even the coachman no longer towered. His good shoulder drooped in sorrow to meet its maimed comrade. They knew what she meant. In the night hours it had been whispered on a stillborn breath—a thought too terrible to voice. Hegarty broke the silence. ‘In God’s name, then!’

  Big John turned towards Pakie Scally, ‘Yoke the back-to-back.’ He turned back to the cook. ‘I’ll drive you—Mary!’ A frightened gasp went from Ellen. ‘Mary!’

  It had started.

  They drove first to the house of the widow of George Lucas—the murderer of Sir Roderick who had died in jail. She listened and went pale. ‘I’ve never had anything to do with the like—’

  ‘Mary Lucas,’ interrupted Mrs. Stacey sternly. ‘Lady Sterrin is your foster-child. Sir Dominic is the last of his line. If his father’s young life had not been taken from him by your husband—’

  ‘You have no need to tell me,’ the woman whispered. ‘I know.’ She looked about her fearfully, then whispered. ‘I’ll be there.’

  Josie Scally, neat and lissom in her parlourmaid’s dress, opened the back door of Mrs. Wright’s private residence beside the shop. ‘But Mrs. Stacey, ma’am,’ she said when she heard, ‘my name isn’t right. I’m Josie—’

  ‘And Mary too,’ the big cook interrupted. ‘You were christened Mary Josephine.’ And then solemnly, ‘We have need of you, Mary Josephine Scally.’

  Dread lent a greenish hue to the olive pallor of the Connemara girl.

  ‘All right, Mrs. Stacey,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll be there.’

  Amongst the tenants five more women named Mary were enlisted. ‘We will get the others at the Crossroads dance on the Holy Day,’ Mrs. Stacey said. ‘The crowds of the world will be there.’

  But on the Holy Day the American flag waved forlornly over the empty dance sward. Where fiddlers and melodeon players were to have played for the dancers it was a time of mourning. Boats still brought lists of dead from the battlefield at Fredericksburg. There were bereavements in every townsland; still worse, neighbour glanced askance at neighbour, for neighbour’s son had killed neighbour’s son. It was said that of the fourteen hundred Meagher took into battle, only two hundred and fifty survived. Some told of bodies lying on the frozen plains still unburied. At Mass on that Assumption Day it was like Palm Sunday. Every second prayer-book held a green sprig; not of blessed palm but of the evergreen that had been plucked, at General Meagher’s suggestion, by the great Irish 69th and worn in their tunics as they rushed to meet the death storm of Mayre’s Heights.

  After Mass, Mrs. Stacey waited at the Crossroads but the mourning women drove past her and past the flag their sons had died for; no lingering or gosthering. Mrs. Stacey drove on, her dread purpose unfulfilled. The Assize Judge drew nearer on his c
ircuit, and in the barracks, day after day, Dominic, frail but inflexible, faced his questioners. Mrs. Stacey went to the railroad station where the mothers and widows of the fallen men were to collect their pay. She spoke to the black-cloaked women. Some turned from her. But Mrs. Ryan Fortynine, a cousin of Black Pat Ryan’s, listened and nodded her head. One or two others did the same.

  Sterrin’s fever abated. As her strength came back, she felt an overpowering surge to be up making some effort for her brother; anything, throw herself on the mercy of the court, give herself up; go plead with the Deputy Lieutenant of the County. He had been entertained here at the lunch for the opening of the railroad. Her legs felt strangely stiff and weak as she made her first effort across the room while it was empty. She rested awhile on the chaise longue then moved restlessly to the window and rested her warm forehead on the cool glass. Gradually, as one plan after another chased around her frantic brain, she became conscious of something unusual going on in the yard beneath. Every few moments, a woman, cloak-muffled, would flit almost furtively across the yard towards the kitchen entrance. As a fourth woman entered the yard towards the kitchen Sterrin opened the window. In the shaft of light as the kitchen door opened to her knock, Sterrin thought she recognised Mrs. Ryan Fortynine. She leaned out and caught a low murmur of greeting—‘God be with you, Mary,’ and the visitor’s response, ‘And with you, too, Mary.’

  What on earth would Mrs. Ryan Fortynine be doing here at this hour? So far from her little shop in Templetown. Sterrin was not likely to mistake Mrs. Ryan Fortynine. Every year at Christmas, when she was a little girl, she used to give her a quart can of sweets. Another figure appeared. This time, even before the light flashed, Sterrin recognised Mrs. Ryan Ha-Lad. But she was a regular visitor to the kitchen nowadays. Why this furtive approach, almost tiptoeing and looking to right and left? The greeting was repeated. Each addressed the other as Mary and now Sterrin was certain that the one who greeted the visitors was Mrs. Stacey. She had never heard Mrs. Stacey addressed by her Christian name. There was something eerie about all this. These women were not dropping in for a friendly coordheec in the kitchen. They were coming stealthily as though their purpose was sinister. A shiver of memory ran through Sterrin. Still another figure was flitting through the dusk, and in the flash from the doorway Sterrin recognised Josie Scally, the sister of Pakie and Attracta. She was conscious of something like relief that there was a break in the dark chain of Marys—But no! ‘God be with you Mary,’ said the voice of Mrs. Stacey. ‘And you, too, Mary.’ Mary! From the homeless mite who had materialised long ago in the kitchen from under her dead mother’s cloak that had draped two other sisters as well, and when they had given their names the High Priestess of the kitchen had said to her, ‘Mary Josephine is too long. I’ll call you Josie.’

  There was no one about. Hannah was helping Nurse Hogan with Lady O’Carroll, who was crushed with worry about Dominic. Sterrin tiptoed slowly down the back stairs, clinging to the banisters, amazed that she could not take two steps at a time.

  No voices sounded from the kitchen. It was strangely quiet as though some distant torrent had suddenly ceased. She peeped in. Ellen sat crouched over the fireplace, hands limp, no knitting, no crochet. Attracta sat at a table, her face in her hands. The men, Hegarty, O’Driscoll and Pakie Scally, stood around, their eyes straying towards a passage beyond the yard door. From where they watched there came a low diapason of sound.

  Sterrin grasped the door and tried to quieten her breathing. It was labouring as never before. But she must see what was happening. Suspicion was hardening into certainty. The only way that she could get to that passage without going through the kitchen would be to retrace her steps up the servants’ stairs and across the gallery and down the main staircase, across the hall to where a little passage branched off the kitchen to the Bard’s quarters.

  To contemplate that way, it seemed endless. She, who should accomplish it with a hop, step and a jump! She set her teeth, gripped the banisters and started to climb. When she finally dragged herself across the gallery she leaned over the polished banisters and slid down the front staircase on her stomach, the way she had done as a child. At last she reached the passage outside the Bard’s bedroom where the strange noise was coming from. Soundlessly she turned the knob. The door was locked. She moved on and let herself into the big music room, where he had spent his years since the Big Wind had damaged the outer wall of his bedroom. Soundlessly again she turned the knob of the inner door. It yielded and a gasp of horror escaped her. The Bard’s bed was dressed for a deathbed. Around the bed the black-cloaked women bowed and writhed and brought their hands together in silent claps and from their lips came the subdued wails of the death lament. The focus of their keening was a small black object that lay in the centre of the corpseless bed.

  And Sterrin knew that she was witnessing the terrible Wake of the Thirteen Marys.

  She turned to fly the horrible scene but her limbs were powerless. Then she heard Dominic’s name, but the black article on the bed did not belong to Dominic; not as the rosary beads and the military medals of the Scout’s son and of others like him had been waked instead of their young bodies that lay under American skies. Dominic was alive and no one would wake the living youth, unless those who wished him dead. And this wake was to wish him life. Another name was mentioned. The women clapped and moaned in a grief that was almost satiric. Sterrin knew the name. In the Fenian ‘circle’ it was uttered with dread. The Judge who bore it left a trail of hangings and transportations and floggings in the path of his circuit. Tomorrow he would pass sentence on Dominic.

  Sterrin moved to stop the frightful orgy, but Dominic’s face swam before her, the gentle brown eyes, the fair hair. Calvagh O’Carroll had had fair hair, too, and he was hanged. Nonchalant as a French aristo in a tumbril he had helped the hangman to tie the knot. And the citadel of the O’Carrolls had dwindled further. And the little boys of old Sir Dominic had died of the cholera. All but Papa. And Papa had been murdered. Murdered by the husband of that woman over there, writhing and moaning with the others to save the life of his victim’s son. The last of the splendid line.

  Something stirred in the pre-Celtic roots of her being. She dropped the hand raised to protest. She closed the door and left them to it.

  It is only a silly superstition, she told her labouring heart as she climbed back. Like putting one’s clothes on the floor in the shape of a ‘T’ on Hallowe’en night. Like pouring melted lead through—! ‘Hannah!’ The maid was rushing along opening doors as she went. ‘Miss Sterrin, where were you?’

  Sterrin threw herself into the maid’s arms.

  ‘Hannah, don’t leave me. Hannah, stay with me all night.’

  The maid carried her to her bed.

  ‘You were down there, Miss Sterrin,’ she spoke in a fearful whisper. ‘I see it in your face.’ She didn’t realise that the face was naked of masks or bandages or veil. She saw only the terror-filled eyes, the mouth trembling as never before.

  ‘You saw them!’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘Don’t think of it, Miss Sterrin.’

  ‘I shall always think of it. I shall never be able to forget it, Hannah. Never!’

  *

  The day of the trial extra police were drafted in from neighbouring towns. They stood with fixed bayonets round the courthouse. Every tenant turned out. Young Sir Dominic was beloved of them all. While they crowded the front entrance a cab brought him to the back entrance. Inside, the panoply of justice was arrayed. The world must know that Sir Dominic O’Carroll would not be the victim of an indiscriminate order. No shooting at sight. A jury waited in the wings. Many of them, landlords, were incensed, not because of treason against Her Majesty, but because of this business of Lady Devine. The idea of feeding and pampering tenants whom they had chosen to evict.

  The minutes dragged by. Court officials whispered. In the gallery Maurice O’Carroll and Lord Cullen looked at watches and conferred. Lady Biddy Cullen was there and Mrs. Delane
y, Mr. and Mrs. James Wright and Miss Berry Comerford. Ulick Prendergast waited as he had waited in sympathy for the father of the boy that last day of his life. So did Michael Joseph, Michael Ryan and Marty Hennessey and as many of their faction as could squeeze in. James de Guider assisted his brother, Stephen, into the court—the first time the lame old gentleman had been in Templetown since the famine. Their relative, Patrick de Guider, was there, the sole survivor of the fourteen brothers who had died of famine fever contracted from the stirabout line of Connemara migrants.

  The Clerk of the Crown Peace came into the Court and announced that the trial must be postponed. The judge was ill!

  Pakie Scally erupted from the court. He went to the Kilsheelin carriage and whispered to Big John. The coachman looked down to where his cousin, Mary Hennessey, stood looking up. He nodded—a prearranged signal—and she turned to Mary Ryan and to Mary Lucas and behind them was Josie Scally, christened Mary, who had crept out in her mistress’s absence. They were there; all of them. The women who had keened the terrible Wake of the Thirteen Marys.

  Mrs. Stacey tensed at a window in the castle as she saw Pakie Scally coming at full gallop. He gave her the news. The judge was ill at his lodgings; gravely ill. He had felt poorly starting out from the last Assizes town. The doctors had advised him to desist, but he had pursued his circuit. And now he lay at his Templetown lodgings in an agony of colic from which he could scarce recover.

  She moved into the room she had made ready with her own hands. She quenched the candles that still burned round the empty, black-draped bed where she and the women she had summoned had keened the living judge. She lifted the three-cornered black object from the centre of the bed and handed it to Pakie.

  ‘Get it back to where it came from,’ she said.

  That night the judge died.

  Another came in his place. His name brought a glint of hope to Sterrin. She went to the kitchen.

  ‘This time,’ she said, ‘let justice take its course.’ It was the only indication she allowed them of her knowledge of the wake. At the door she paused. ‘The last judge died as a result of something that the doctors are calling appendicitis.’ She looked meaningly around the circle of faces; ‘Something inside him that burst.’