Land of Hope

by Paul C R Monk

Damon Laverty had joined King James’s army not just because everyone else had. In truth, he couldn’t care less about who was in charge across the Irish Sea. All he cared about was pretty Maddy O’Flanerty, the baker’s daughter, and getting some decent pay in order to fetch her hand. But he was not prepared to give his life for the sake of a king’s throne. It was a good crack at first, but now he had had enough. And what was he going to say to his best mate’s ma about her son Danny getting his head shot off by a cannonball?

  He put it all to the side for the moment. The woods were close by, and if he could just sneak off while no one was looking, just like Jerry his other pal had done before the siege began, then he could be home in less than three days. Then he would do as his old man had told him to do: he would take to the oar and bring the fish to market like his forebears had done.

  ‘Where you off to, laddie?’

  Damon looked up. He saw two angry-looking men facing him. One of them was holding a dense, knotted stick that he was tapping into the palm of his hand. Damon turned to his right, only to face a woman standing impassively between two other men. He recognised her. She was the one he had to pull away from Danny while her husband was being held for clobbering a sergeant. The sergeant then had the man shot and his house torched.

  ‘L-Look, listen,’ Damon blurted out, sensing his life was in danger. ‘I didn’t shoot your husband . . . I . . . I could have aimed to kill, but I did not. I swear to God I aimed aside.’ But his plea made no difference. This was not a tribunal. It was going to be an execution.

  The sound of cantering hooves made the party turn in unison. A chestnut-brown horse came through the middle of the pack, carrying a soldier in grey uniform.

  ‘Stand back!’ cried out Lieutenant Delpech to the assailants.

  ‘He’s ours!’ roared one of the men.

  ‘Is retaliation what the Lord taught you?’ returned Jacob sternly.

  ‘Is plundering and burning and killing what the Lord taught them?’ said the woman virulently. ‘He killed my husband!’

  ‘I didn’t, I swear to God, I aimed aside!’ said Damon desperately.

  ‘Aye, we’ll pay our dues in heaven or hell, as long as these bastards get what they deserve!’ said one of the men.

  ‘For the love of Christ,’ said Jacob, maintaining a loud, commanding tone of voice, ‘has there not been enough of killing?’

  But since they were blinded by grief, humiliation, and anger, Jacob was sure these people would not let the man live. Turning and bending down to the soldier, he said sharply: ‘Give me your hand now!’ It was the only way of saving him from execution and the townsfolk from mortal sin.

  Damon did not think twice. He seized the cavalier’s hand and climbed behind him sharpish. In her hunger for revenge, the woman ran behind the horse for a few yards while shouting out: ‘You dirty, filthy scumbag! Come back here and yer dead!’

  Jacob cantered back to the main file where horses were screening the Jacobites from the furious, madding crowd.

  Damon descended, back among his regiment.

  Another woman cried out in indignation: ‘You should be executing the bastards!’

  ‘Whose side are you on, anyway?’ shouted a man.

  Trying to keep control of his shying horse, Jacob said in a loud but controlled voice: ‘I am on the side of God!’

  But the townsfolk were not impressed; they were not ready for a moral lecture. They had already seen too many men and women die through turning the other cheek.

  The jostling crowd began surging like the ebb and flow of a swelling sea, and more and more Jacobites were being set upon, some dragged from their column to receive a beating. Jacob realised that someone was about to be killed, and that the first death would lead to a massacre, one way or the other, and he was in the thick of it.

  But then a rapid movement entered the corner of his eye. He turned to see a scarlet coat, a blue sash, and a hand holding up a pistol midway down the line. A deep, gravelly voice called for order, but to no effect. Then a tremendous blast rent the air, sending birds from the surrounding woods into flight. The clamour died down as quickly as when Mrs O’Leary had let out her primal cry. Officers being manhandled were able to shake themselves from the grips of their assailants as an instance of total calm followed.

  It was the old duke in person, Schomberg, sitting high and mighty on his large horse, a picture of dignity and conviction in his grey periwig and tricorne hat. He was holding up his smoking gun. Raising his accented voice, the marshal endeavoured to talk sense into the townsfolk. But the voice of the crowd soon rose up again, calling for executions, and protesting against the Jacobites being marched off without so much as being called to account for their dastardly actions.

  Damon Laverty sensed that things were about to turn nasty again. The townsfolk had become a sinister mob. He had been saved once by a greycoat, but he knew that none of the other Protestant horsemen had much heart to impose order upon their fellow Protestants.

  So, eyeing his previous pursuers and the vindictive woman now calling for immediate justice, again he decided to slip away. Taking advantage of the distraction caused by Schomberg, he backtracked discreetly through the file of soldiers. Then he dashed back the short distance to the approaching battalion of Williamites on foot.

  Meanwhile, midway back up the line, Schomberg intoned with finality: ‘Get back to your town, or face the consequences!’

  At the tail end of the column, Jacob noticed other Jacobite troops following Laverty’s lead, preferring to find refuge among their Williamite counterparts than to risk facing the mob.

  But now fully aware of the battalion of redcoats on foot coming up the rear, the townsfolk stood back, some unclenching their fists, others lowering the arms they had snatched from their former gaolers.

  Under the duke’s command, the battalion on foot swiftly took control. They pushed the dishevelled Jacobites back into line, and forced the battered and bruised to limp onwards. Denuded wives were clad in coats to cover up.

  In this way, the Jacobite column was conducted to a safe distance from Carrickfergus, the pretty port town they had left in ruin and desolation.

  On leaving the Jacobites to their fate on their march south through the hills to Newry, Delpech turned to de Sève, who had ridden up to his flank. ‘I wonder if any of those men will be held to account,’ he said.

  ‘God’s justice will prevail,’ said Philippe. Jacob still hoped it would. Philippe went on: ‘I just wonder why we are letting them go only to return our fire another day!’

  Jacob then saw the young soldier he had saved. He was marching in file with Schomberg’s men. ‘The world is an unfathomable mess,’ said Jacob, and took refuge in his pipe.

  *

  Some hours later, on marching upon Belfast bay with his new brothers in arms, Damon Laverty got to thinking that he might even be able to find a way to join a ship and sail to the New World, where he had heard fortunes were made.

  FIFTEEN

  Sitting on his chestnut-brown mount, Jacob said a silent prayer for the souls of the men whose bodies were being released from the hangman’s noose.

  Jacob sometimes wondered if Protestants and Catholics had forgotten they were Christian. But he knew the men’s souls would be with God if they had faith, be they Protestant or Catholic. They would be judged on their life’s deeds, not their desertion from the English army.

  They had left Belfast the day before. Marshall Schomberg had recovered all of his army and had set the whole train of twelve thousand foot soldiers and two thousand on horseback on the road to Dublin. That was where James Stuart had set up his government, and where the bulk of the Catholic king’s army was encamped.

  The bodies were swung onto a cart waiting on the roadside outside the fort of Hillsborough. Jacob clicked his horse onwards.

  Private Laverty continued to stare for a full minute after watching the grim fate of the Protestant deserters. He knew it was what awaited him should he get caught by his former bro
thers in arms.

  For the time being, he had let go of his hopes of finding a ship to take him to the New World where fortunes were made. Instead, he thumbed the rosary deep inside the pocket of his new jacket that had belonged to a dead Williamite. It was what his mother had taught him to do as a boy, to pray to the Virgin Mary in times of trouble. He had seen men dangle before without giving it a second thought. But perhaps the unsettling sensation in his stomach was due to his feeling under the weather. It always made him feel down whenever he got a sniffle. He should have learnt to smoke a pipe like a sailor, he thought to himself; it settled the nerves, apparently, cleared away foul smells, and staved off hunger.

  On horseback, Delpech discovered a beautiful land made up of lush green glens, wooded mounds, and pretty villages. But the further southward he rode, the more devastated the landscape became, Jacobite invaders having looted and torched entire townlands that were now empty of people.

  With such a large army, the going was slow. They spent the night outside the deserted market town of Dromore. By the end of the next day, they had reached Loughbrickland, where they encamped on the side of a hill. The Huguenot cavalry regiments were allocated their own area so as not to stir up inherent rivalries between English and French troops.

  Jacob was getting used to hearing French spoken all around him. It still seemed odd, though, to hear a Huguenot rejoice upon finding an old acquaintance or a distant cousin in the fields of Ireland. The main topic of conversation since leaving Dromore was the latest intelligence regarding the township of Newry. A key position on the road to Dublin, Newry was the last stop before the Slieve Gullion mountain that separated Ulster from Leinster and the plains of Meath.

  ‘Berwick?’ said Jacob to Monsieur de Bostaquet, an affable and forthright middle-aged gentleman turned soldier. Having fled France and relinquished his fortune rather than his faith, he had joined the Dutch provinces and crossed the Channel to England in King William’s army. They were standing around the campfire, having just left their horses to pasture. De Bostaquet knew the ropes, gave guidance to the many gentlemen merchants who swelled the Huguenot ranks so they were more battle-savvy than they would have been. Jacob and Philippe appreciated his company.

  ‘The Duke of Berwick,’ said de Bostaquet, ‘King James’ natural son, from a second bed, but his natural son all the same, Sir.’

  ‘I heard he has a reputation, this Berwick,’ said Philippe.

  ‘Indeed, already, one so young too. Not yet twenty if my memory does not fail me, and already given with passion to the practice of pillage and torching. One to watch, you might say,’ added de Bostaquet with a hint of irony, ‘and now the blighter is in Newry!’

  On the news of Berwick’s occupation of Newry, Schomberg pushed his army southward through the increasingly ravaged glenscape. The rare farmsteads Jacob passed had all been pillaged and torched. And with no one about to harvest it, the corn stood rotting in the fields. But worst of all, the weather turned bad: now a fine drizzle, now torrential rain.

  By the time they reached the foothills of the Morne Mountains north of Newry, Berwick had retreated with his army, leaving a town in flames in his wake.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Jacob, looking down from the hills at the coils of smoke rising above the walled township. The place was clearly still ablaze. ‘Why such gratuitous destruction?’

  ‘It is exactly the tactic Louis’s commanders employed in the Palatinate,’ said Monsieur de Bostaquet, riding by Jacob’s left flank. ‘It is so we find nothing we can use.’

  They clicked at their mounts and rode down into the town, where a few townsfolk were still fighting the fire with buckets. Only a handful of houses were still standing.

  Schomberg was both moved and furious over the dastardly acts that Berwick continued to perpetrate. The marshal ordered a corps of horse to press onwards in an attempt to surprise the young scoundrel before he destroyed the township of Dundalk.

  *

  Damon Laverty’s morale was in his boots. The weather was atrocious, the soup as clear as cabbage water, and the high winds kept blowing down his tent, which he would have to pitch all over again tomorrow. He should have stayed with his garrison and marched south; at least they were fed properly with solid portions of meat and a decent clump of bread to soak up the broth juice. He never seemed to make the right choice, though, either jumping in too early or not holding out long enough to reap the fruit of steadfastness. Was he really so fickle? That was what his mother often called him, fickle as the wind, and he was beginning to think she was right.

  A troop on horseback passed by him. Soaked to the skin, he looked up from the stake he was hammering into the sodden ground, angling it so that it would stay in. He caught sight of the French cavalier who had saved him from a summary execution. He stood upright and gave a salute, for you never knew when you might need a friend. Then a treacherous gust kicked into camp, blowing a wet canvas flap into his face. It was all bloody unfair.

  *

  No sooner had they been served their bowl of watered-down broth than Jacob’s party were called to saddle up.

  Jacob’s backside still ached from the previous stint in the saddle as he rode past the infantry camp, where he caught sight of the young soldier he had rescued. He had visibly defected, or deserted, depending from which side of the fence you looked at it. Delpech gave a nod to the soldier’s salute. The lad looked so young, thought Jacob, or was it he who was getting old? He had noticed that people seemed to be looking younger these days, quite frightening to think about. Or could it be that, given the nature of the context in which he found himself, he was surrounded by an abnormally young population compared to normal everyday life? At any rate, he was consequently all the more glad for Isaac de Bostaquet’s company. Hale and hearty in his mid-fifties, de Bostaquet was a tour de force and served as a source of hope—hope that it was not too late for Jacob to endure life’s battles and raise his children to his family’s former station.

  The party rode on to the assembly point south of the town at the foot of Slieve Gullion mountain. There they joined Count Mesnart, Schomberg’s third son, who was in charge of leading the detachment of officers to Dundalk.

  *

  Jacob, like every other cavalier, kept his aches and pains to himself. For they all knew that an epidemic could be looming on the horizon. Even as they rode past the infantry camp, Jacob had noted the chorus of splutterings and groans.

  ‘In a word, camp fever,’ said Isaac to Jacob as the cavalry train rode two abreast into the hilly terrain. ‘You don’t want to stay in camp too long, my good fellow. Avoid it like the plague!’

  But Jacob soon found there were inconveniences that counterbalanced the benefits of being out on a mission. Lashing rain and gale-force winds constantly assailed the party in their arduous trek through the tricky, boggy tracks of Slieve Gullion. Neither Jacob nor Philippe had a cape. Their unwaxed jackets became heavy sopping weights on their shoulders. To add to the hindrance, the retreating Jacobite soldiers had taken care to smash river fords, which meant the horses had to wade through the cold mountain waters.

  Philippe cursed the clap of thunder and the rain that now came down even harder as they crossed a mountain stream.

  ‘There is one consolation, though,’ said Isaac as they rode on through the night between the dark wooded slopes. ‘Means there is less likelihood of musket attack.’

  ‘That’s true, because of the rain?’ said Philippe.

  ‘Ha, of course, a musket will not fire in the wet,’ added Jacob.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Isaac. ‘Gunpowder does not like water any more than we do!’

  He was right, of course. For although Jacobite scouts were certainly following their progress, the Williamite detachment encountered no enemy vedettes, and they breached the hill of Faughart as the sun cracked through the violet clouds over Dundalk Bay. Jacob scrutinised the sky, as did others of the detachment. Then, with satisfaction, he said: ‘There is no smoke!’

  The
cavaliers had battled hard against fatigue and the elements, but it had paid off. Now they rode into Dundalk town, saved from destruction and without a shot being fired. Young Berwick, having got wind of the cavaliers’ approach, had given the order to flee during the night.

  *

  The unwalled town consisted of one long street that ran north to south from the tip of the Kilcurry estuary. The first task was to scour both town and surrounding country in search of provisions for the men and forage for the horses. Jacob and Philippe searched the deserted houses, but Berwick’s army had already helped themselves. The two men could gather but a beggarly store of corn, hardly of any consequence for the cavalry detachment, let alone the main bulk of the army soon to arrive.

  Thankfully, some hours later, as the main army marched down the hill, sopping and caked in mud, a patrol turned up with two thousand sheep, and the slaughter began.

  Meanwhile, Delpech and de Sève dried their clothes and stole forty winks in a vacant house, relieved to find a bed, a hearth, and shelter from the howling wind and the rain. But barely had any notion of rudimentary comfort seeped into their tired minds and limbs than the call was raised again. This time, it was for officers to double back through the mountain to Moyry Pass to help retrieve the soldiers who had collapsed from hunger, fatigue, or illness.

  Jacob saddled up with Philippe, Isaac, and the rest of the task force. Though the rain had ceased, eight thousand hooves and twenty thousand marching boots had turned the mountain trail into a quagmire in places. But within the hour, they had reached Moyry Castle, a rudimentary three-storey tower house that guarded the pass, and which at present gave refuge to the lame men.

  *

  Even though his limbs were as stiff as an old maid’s, Damon Laverty could have kicked himself for joining their stupid war in the first place. And he had no inclination to leave the tower house, especially so late in the day. It was more than he could bear to pull his aching body away now from the drowsy heat of the fire crackling in the hearth on the second floor. The dry logs piled at the side of the fire had been a constant source of comfort. He had been looking forward to a nice warm night with a solid roof over his head, away from the relentless wind and dampness of camp life.