The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  When the door had closed on her Mrs. Stacey broke the silence. Low and grim she muttered: ‘It waited till the right time to burst.’ She swung the crane from the fire to remove a pot. ‘What’s this Young Thomas used to say when no butter but turf would come on the milk an’ we churnin’, an’ across the bog at the same time Mag Miney would churn pounds of butter from a taschain of cream? There’s more things in heaven and earth, he used to say, than anyone in this world dreams of.’

  Sterrin went to her room and put on the black water-silk gown she had long since laid aside. She ran her hands down over her body. Illness had whittled down her waistline. She could almost span it with her two hands. That was something, anyway! She felt a sudden resurgence of her old pride in her looks and took a step towards the mirror, then stopped. No, not now. If I look at it I won’t be able to go on. Her marred face would not fit in with her plan to help ‘the course of justice’. She dragged her hair from its chignon and pinned it in bunched-up ringlets that fell on either cheek. The new style was a help to her scars, though she hated the podgy look of those barrel curls dangling on women’s faces. She preferred to drape her hair across her ears and secure it back in a knot on her neck. Grecian, they called it, though the Bard used to say it was the old Irish fashion. Ah, Bard, what would you say if you knew that the last of the family was on trial for his life? And what would you say, Bard, if you were to know the paltry part myself is trying to play in his cause? Pride and shame halted her, but suddenly she recalled the Bard in his bawdy moments.

  I know what he’d say, her thoughts took tongue with the dint of her desperation. He’d say. More power to you, Sterrin, Daughter of Roderick O’Carroll. Go in there to Templetown and beguile the daylights out of that man. She pinned an exquisite veil of finest Carrickmacross lace over her face. She rummaged for lip salve and longed after the French lip rouge in jewelled boxes that had gone with the flames. Ah well! Her eyes fell on the red-backed novel beside her bed. She seized it. Any port in a storm! She moistened the cover and rubbed its red dye through the lip salve, then with the aid of a tiny pocket mirror that barely showed her mouth, she raised the veil and reddened the pouting outline. She threw Donal’s cloak about her shoulders and from the doorway darted one frantic look towards the mirror.

  In his Templetown lodgings the judge frowned at the sound of a tap on his sitting-room door. Hadn’t he given orders that he was not to be disturbed? Without waiting for his response the door opened. Despite the veil his first impression was that the intruder was a beautiful woman. The slender frame, the poise of the head, the suffusion of hair, the set of the shoulder. The face was framed in the white satin lining of the hood that rested upon her shoulder in classic folds. His eyes, narrow from assessing men right through their faces to their hearts to see if they held guilt, tried to penetrate the very attractive veil, but all that he could see was a glow of red defining a mouth that would have allured in the days of his susceptibility!

  ‘Madam, this is—’

  ‘I am Lady Devine. I—’ She was about to recall their meeting at the Assizes Ball at Kilkenny when she remembered her audacious choice of a rebel song when it was her prerogative to call the tune; and his embarrassment. Till now, all she had remembered was his appreciative glances and the fan-fluttered hints of his amorous past. ‘You visited us at Kilkenny,’ she amended.

  If this was a belated return visit, it was as disconcerting as her choice of dance tune! But he was on his feet to his former hostess. ‘I heard, with deep regret, of its demolition by fire. I heard, too, that you suffered injuries saving the life of your maid.’

  A glove, ready unbuttoned, was removed from beneath her cloak. He saw her draw her hand from beneath her cloak as though it were a nervous gesture of unconscious reaction; noted a quick glance at a red scar on a pretty hand, then it was back beneath the folds.

  ‘I have come about my brother—’

  His hand shot up. ‘My Lady! This is something that cannot be discussed between us. You may not tamper with justice. The prisoner who will stand before me tomorrow cannot be tried as anyone’s brother or son. He will be tried as a rebel and given a fair trial.’

  ‘He is no rebel,’ she flashed. ‘It is I who am the rebel.’

  I can well believe it, he thought. And a dangerous one. The kind of rebel the young men would follow madly and think ’twas Caitlin Ni Houlihan herself. Ireland the Queen, with that regal head of hers and that clear voice. He’d follow her himself, begod, if he were twenty years younger, aye, fifteen years younger.

  ‘I can well believe it, my Lady,’ he repeated aloud, ‘I seem to recall a certain rebel song called for at a certain ball.’

  ‘Ah, that was naughty of me!’

  ‘There is nothing I can do. Milady,’ the judge was firm.

  ‘Sir, he is so young, sensitive, immature—’ The clear voice was cutting through the surge of memory. ‘He is the last of us—my mother—You see, sir, I asked him to take a message. He had no idea of its implication. I rushed him because I was ill myself.’

  ‘Otherwise you would have brought it yourself. What was the message, pray?’ Dammit. What am I saying? This was parleying with her.

  ‘Just to warn brave men that they were to be denied the benefit of appearing before you in “fair trial”. They were to be shot at sight!’

  A nimble wit, by gad. It could be titillating to draw it further.

  ‘A daring admission! My Lady, I regret that I must end this interview; this discussion. It is extremely unethical.’ Suddenly he frowned. ‘There have been other unethical methods tried on your brother’s behalf. Some absurd superstitious rites. Stupid, of course, but ruthless, murderous even, in their concept.’

  In the Bar mess that evening the barristers had talked of nothing else. Grand Jurors, they said, were laughing at the idea of it, while looking over their shoulders apprehensively.

  ‘Surely, my Lady, you don’t believe in that kind of thing?’

  ‘My father did.’

  ‘He was superstitious?’

  ‘Far from it. He was intolerant of all superstition except that one. But, that, of course, was merely an association with him. In his childhood some women held the Wake of the Thirteen Marys on a priest.’

  ‘You surprise me. I didn’t think that they would wreak such hatred upon their priest.’

  ‘It was not that they hated the priest whom they waked. It was that they loved so much his predecessor who had been transferred. They wanted him back.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The new priest died. But of course,’ she commented reassuringly, ‘it was of a broken heart that he died.’

  ‘It is monstrous,’ said the judge. ‘Ghoulish—such practices should be investigated by the law and punished. Tell me, my Lady, this orgy, this er—wake, is it still in progress?’

  She gave a slow shrug. ‘Who knows? People—our people would do anything if they thought it would save my brother but—’ she paused and her eyes seemed to compel him. He could not see their colour. Colour never mattered to him. It was the setting that he had ever bothered to observe. He could detect the almond sweep in the deep pit of these eyes behind the veil.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They would do anything for me, too, if—’ she paused on the slight emphasis, ‘if I were to ask them.’

  The little niggling cloud that had shadowed the judge since he had heard of the wake seemed suddenly to melt. His rest tonight would be all the more peaceful for the assurance that a circle of harpies was not trying to keen him out of existence. Her ungloved hand was extended to him, high arched, inviting. He took it and turned the scar upwards.

  ‘A brave scar, my Lady.’ He raised it to his lips. ‘You are a very gallant person. Lady Devine.’

  Next day on the bench, through interlaced fingers, he watched Donal Keating conduct Sir Dominic’s defence. Donal’s name was not yet on the Hue and Cry list. No one suspected that he was a Fenian leader.

  The testing time had not found Do
minic lacking. He had divulged no name to his questioners. The judge listened to the impassioned plea, the prisoner’s youth, his family’s great prestige, and of course, his complete innocence. He didn’t miss the equally impassioned looks that escaped from the Defence Lawyer towards the veiled figure on the public gallery. Whatever was behind that veil now, there were women who could exude the quality of beauty even though they were as plain as bedamned. I’d take me oath he’s pleading for the sister’s love as well as for the brother’s release! The learned Counsel looked a lot thinner than on the night of the Kilkenny Assizes Ball, when he danced after her, holding up her train and singing, ‘Paddies Evermore’. The solemn-faced judge sighed nostalgically. Didn’t I do it all myself? Rebellions, love, poetising, until the serious things, fame, money, rank, caused him to put them away like a gay costume after a Bal Masqué.

  After his release. Sir Dominic was carried from the Court on the shoulders of his cheering tenants. In the outsurging crowd Sterrin got separated from Maurice who had come from Waterford for the trial. Jammed in the doorway crush she saw the redoubtable Scout; sadly out of character; no longer the thrusting, elbowing newsmonger clamouring to know ‘Why Wasn’t I Told?’, the supreme newsbearer who had bribed with gold a waggoner so that he, Scout Doyle, would be the first to proclaim to Templetown the astounding news of O’Connell’s arrest. Sterrin had a flash of memory of the doughty Scout arriving at a lumbering gallop up the front avenue, no less, to proclaim the great news to her papa. As she passed him Sterrin said, ‘It is great news, Mr. Doyle.’ The sad face quickened at her recognition. The chimney-pot hat swept high.

  ‘An auspital occasion, my Lady. Most momentatious! My heart mourned with the mother’s heart of Lady O’Carroll in her hour of decrepitude.’

  Sterrin had a feeling that the verdict had deprived him of sharing an equality of grief with her mother. On a sudden impulse she said:

  ‘I wish we could get the news more quickly to her.’ She nodded to where the eager supporters were endeavouring to unharness the horses and draw the carriage themselves. ‘Would you be so kind, Mr. Doyle, as to hire a horse, or fly chaise, in my name at Mullally’s and hurry ahead of us to Kilsheelin?’

  Like the old war horse that scented the battle from afar, the Scout was back in his role. The horny elbows were flailing right and left beating a path for the bearer of ‘momentatious’ news.

  Another voice murmured into her ear as she forced through the cheering mob. The blacksmith, under cover of assisting her to the carriage where Cousin Maurice O’Carroll was waiting, had something else to convey to her with his congratulations. She gave him a quick look of apprehension.

  ‘My cousin insists on taking me to Waterford tomorrow—but—only to recuperate. No more of the other—I have involved my family too far.’

  ‘Your Ladyship, nothing could be more opportune for us now than your trip.’

  She had never heard such urgency in the quiet voice.

  ‘It was yourself who spoke of your uncle’s cave, his Sacred cave. Let him allow our ships to land guns in that cove. Your Ladyship, please! This is the last demand I shall make of you. We are within a heartbeat of success. No more trials and transportations.’

  Maurice O’Carroll drew her to the carriage. Sterrin struggled to hold back the tears. She had reached breaking point, and was shaking from exhaustion and fear. The opening of the carriage door seemed a reprieve from the sinister commitments of secret oaths. But as she placed her foot on the step she gave a quick glance over her shoulder and nodded her head to the blacksmith.

  58

  Thomas came from his hotel room drawing on his gloves. Immediately, two big obvious-looking men rose from an ottoman and approached him. One of them spoke to him, ‘Are you Captain O’Carroll of the American Army?’

  Thomas was outraged. ‘I am Thomas Young, the actor.’ He spoke with an elegant mince. The plain clothes men looked at each other. ‘But sir,’ said the man, ‘we have reason to believe that you have documents that declare your commission in the American Army.’

  A long, slow dawning played elaborately across Thomas’s face. ‘Those! But they are belonging to poor O’Carroll who went down in that awful charge led by General Hooker—’ He covered his face. ‘God, I hate to recollect it. I was to play there, and would you believe it, the theatre had been converted into a hospital! Blood! I simply loathe the sight of it!’ His voice fluted into femininity.

  ‘Poor O’Carroll,’ he resumed, ‘he asked me to bring some belongings to relatives in Londonderry—he was positively saturated with this—Seltic—sentimentality—I thought Londonderry was some suburb of London, but Major de Waters of the 10th Hussars—I’m supping with him tonight after the performance—tells me that the place is away in the north of this country, a whole day’s journey off. It is most inconvenient.’

  The two policemen looked at each other. The 10th Hussars! The crack regiment of the British Army!

  They started an apologetic withdrawal when the door next to Thomas’s room opened.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Alphabet Duignan. ‘His Excellency’s footman brought this. It is for tomorrow’s reception at the Vice Regal—’ Thomas flicked it a negligent glance and closed his eyes. Blast Alphabet! He gestured the card towards the police. ‘Do you wish to see this?’ Pray God you don’t! ‘If you have any further doubts.’ The police ‘not-at-alled’ and turned. Thomas was releasing his breath when they turned back from a whispered conference.

  ‘Might we just ask you this man’s name?’

  ‘That is a difficult question. You see,’ said Thomas, ‘the answer requires more time than I can spare.’ He started enumerating on his fingers, ‘Alcium, Beracium, Conceptionez, Dionysius, Ephraim—look here, I have to be on the stage in twenty minutes and he has a Christian name for every letter in the alphabet—show the gentlemen your baptismal certificate, Alphabet! The surname is Duignan. It was his father’s idea, the plethora of Christian names.’ The police had reached the stairshead. Thomas drew out his card and scribbled.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to see the performance? This will admit you to two seats, with my compliments.’

  They thanked him and withdrew. Thomas rounded on his body-servant. ‘You damned idiot! What did you mean by butting in? And could you find nothing more convincing than a card for the Fenian picnic at Cincinnati?’

  ‘I thought it would add vermilion to your statement, sir.’

  ‘It almost did,’ said Thomas grimly. ‘Go peep over the banisters and see what they are about.’

  Alphabet returned with the information that the policemen had just passed out through the front door. ‘They seemed satisfied, sir, that you were not a Fenian. One of them just tapped his forehead and shrugged. The gesture alluded to you, sir.’

  It was the first shadow on Thomas’s luck. It was also the first time in years that he had put on the play in which poor Henry Monteith, his leading man, had died. As Thomas lay on the Gaiety stage in Henry’s part he almost yawned. He had spent the previous night on the Dublin mountains drilling volunteers and he was sleepy.

  Up in the gods an impatient wag prodded him awake. ‘Ye’re a long time dyin’, Misther Young.’ The interrupter was chided from the opposite side of the gallery.

  ‘Shut up, you bosthoon! Some people have no appreciashun of dhrama.’ Thomas, in the process of getting up, nearly fell back when his sympathiser called down, ‘Take your time, Misther Young! Die away there!’

  Drill, thought Thomas, as he released his yawn in his dressing-room, does not blend with drama. But he kept his supper appointment at the officers’ mess in Island Bridge barracks. And he kept his appointment for the slopes of the Dublin hills at two in the morning, and of the two hundred British soldiers to whom he administered the Fenian oath there, at least eighty belonged to the dashing 10th Hussars.

  *

  Sterrin, lying on the chaise longue in her mother’s boudoir, read the account of Thomas’s run at the Gaiety. She was still convalescing from
the rheumatic fever she had contracted and wasn’t supposed to strain her heart by horse promenading or strenuous walking, yet here she was, lying completely still and her heart was beating as violently as if she had climbed the Devil’s Bit on foot! She resented the horrid thudding; not only because her heart had been growing strong but because it had started to know peace. Since Dominic’s trial she had made up her mind about Donal. His passionate plea in her brother’s defence had stirred more response in her heart than the pleas he had made to herself. Donal appealed to her heart though he could not compel it. And never could he cause it to beat as it was going now.

  ‘Mamma, will you be needing Big John this afternoon?’ she asked.

  ‘No, darling. Unless you wish me to accompany you on a carriage promenade.’

  Sterrin did not want to be accompanied. She wanted to go alone to the forge. The blacksmith would contact Donal for her.

  As she started out for the forge Big John told her that it had been raided. It was a year since she had seen the blacksmith. She dreaded to find that he might have had to go forth ‘on his keepin’. Still, all seemed well when they got there. She could hear the smith’s voice, a rich rumble of melody, as she entered the forge. He broke off with a startled exclamation as she followed in the wake of the horse Big John led in. ‘Which shoe is it?’ he asked. Then from somewhere under the horse’s belly he said, ‘None of these shoes is loose.’ He must be under some strain, she thought. Normally, he accepted that the horse was merely led in to cover her visit.

  Just then the police arrived. They seemed strangely surprised to see the smith here but they ransacked the place just the same. Constable Younghusband went up the chimney and when his feet had dangled down like a pair of churns for ten minutes he plumped to the ground. He held out something with an air of triumph to the officer. ‘I found the implements for making cartridges, sir.’