The Rebels of Ireland

Unless the French came. That might change everything. But the French had not come, and who could say when they would?

  They’ll take Rathconan, he thought, and places like it, and three weeks later they’ll all be flogged or in chains. He could see it clearly. At Rathconan, Conall would be singled out as the ringleader, of course. But the next person after Conall would surely be himself. It was a frightening thought.

  Well, now he had made his decision. It was the only logical thing to do. But it needed to be done carefully, and there wasn’t much time.

  He could go to old Budge, of course. That might have seemed the simplest way. But it carried risks. He’d be seen, almost certainly. He wasn’t sure how the landlord would react. The old fellow might not even get away. The alarm would not be sounded. He could see the whole thing blowing up in his face.

  Or he could leave. Go down into Wicklow himself. Perhaps too late to do much good. And they’d know he betrayed them. He’d be a marked man. A knife in the back, sooner or later. Or worse.

  No. There was only one good way to do this.

  He began to walk down the track that led down the valley. There was a cache of arms a short distance down there. A good excuse to be going in that direction, if anyone should see him. But he was not seen. There was a clump of trees by a turn in the track, and he concealed himself on a high bank, with the track below him. Then he waited.

  An hour passed. Then another. If Arthur Budge did not come soon, then his plan would collapse. Perhaps his father had made a mistake or the man had changed his mind. Perhaps he wasn’t coming.

  Or what if someone had already betrayed the rising? What if both the Budge sons should come riding up the track with two dozen Yeomen this very minute? No words would be any use then. It would be too late. They’d take him as a rebel. Dear God, he could feel the rope around his neck already. He broke into a cold sweat. Maybe he should take his chances and run back to the old man. In an agony of indecision, he let another half hour pass.

  Then the lone figure of Arthur Budge appeared, riding up the track below him. He scrambled down the bank.

  “Your Honour. You mustn’t be seen . . .” It only took him a few sentences to explain. Budge was staring at him with angry eyes. But he was listening.

  “Who’s the leader?”

  “Conall Smith. He’s out raising half the country now.”

  “Midnight, you say?”

  “Or soon after. Your Honour, now that I’m after telling you, you must arrest me, too. If they know that it was me that warned you, I’m a dead man.”

  Arthur Budge grunted.

  “I’m thinking,” Finn continued, “it’d be better I didn’t tell your father, in case he let anything slip and gave the game away.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “It was decided only this morning,” Finn answered, with perfect truth.

  Budge nodded curtly, wheeled his horse, and was gone.

  Finn went down to the arms cache and inspected the pikes. He rearranged them, then covered them over again.

  Conall was going to swing. They’d hang him right enough. They’d give him the works, cut him open first, like as not. That’s what they did to traitors.

  The man was like his father. Arrogant. With all their learning, those Smiths always thought they were better than the Brennans and the O’Byrnes. Even the man’s quiet voice, his gentle laugh, had something of the condescending in it. Well, he wouldn’t be so condescending at the end of a rope.

  So who was the wiser man now? he thought, as he made his way back into Rathconan.

  Rathconan was quiet that night. Soon after dark, as planned, fifteen men stole softly out and, under Finn’s direction, took pikes from their different hiding places. Two other caches remained untouched. As agreed, they waited in their own houses until midnight. A little after that, a soft knock came at the door of Finn’s cottage, and he came out. Together with Conall, he proceeded to seven other cottages, picking up men at each.

  Two of the men carried lamps, covered over so as not to give out any light until it was required.

  Silently, they made their way up to the big house. There would be no attempt upon the heavy oak door, which Conall had made himself. They were going to break in one of the windows. This would make a noise, but it hardly mattered. The men who would burst in knew every inch of the house and where each of the inmates would be sleeping.

  Big strands of cloud passed across the stars, obscuring the sliver of the moon. The night was dark. There was not a sound as they stood in front of the house.

  Then, suddenly, there were torches and lamps behind them. Figures were looming out of the darkness. The door and the windows in front of them burst open with a bang and a clatter, and by the sudden lamplight they saw musket barrels pointed at them.

  “Stand fast. One move and we shoot.” The voice of Jonah Budge, harsh and peremptory.

  Then his brother Arthur’s voice, from the doorway.

  “You are all arrested. Conall Smith, come forward.”

  They were all held in the house until dawn. Soon after that, manacled and in chains, they were marched out and down the long track towards Wicklow.

  As they left Rathconan, Finn O’Byrne saw the figure of Deirdre standing by the roadside. She had been gazing miserably at Conall, but now Finn realised that her eyes were upon him. She stared at him fixedly.

  She had guessed. He saw it in her eyes. A terrible look. He turned his face away. How she knew, he could not tell. She could not have seen. It must be by instinct. But she knew.

  Though exhilarated from his exploits, Patrick had looked rather tired on the day after his return. Brigid wasn’t sorry.

  “There’s nothing for you to do anyway,” she pointed out. “You’ve done all you can.”

  It proved fairly easy to occupy young William. One day he was sent over to see Kelly at his estate nearby. He could also be sent down to Wexford town to obtain the latest news without much danger. So Brigid had Patrick to herself. The weather was dry and warm. Spring was turning into early summer. For several days, they enjoyed the huge mansion and its grounds like a pair of young lovers.

  It was at the end of the first week in June that William returned from Wexford town with the bad news.

  Perhaps it was not surprising that after such easy initial success, the rebels should have been a little too confident. At the town of New Ross, guarded by a modest but well-trained garrison of government troops, they had been utterly routed. In the confusion, they had lost two thousand men. Even worse in a way, in Patrick’s eyes, was the sequel. During the retreat, a company of the rebels had taken the law into their own hands, rounded up two hundred people whom they took to be Protestant loyalists, and burned them alive in a church at a village called Scullabogue.

  “Catholics burning Protestants! We might as well be back in the time of Cromwell,” Patrick cried in anguish. “This is everything we stand against.”

  But there was more news, this time from the north. He was grieved to hear that in Dublin, Lord Edward had died in jail. But when he heard the news that the rising in Rathconan had been betrayed, and that Conall was to be tried for treason, he buried his face in his hands.

  “This was my doing,” he moaned. He looked up miserably at Brigid. “I have destroyed your own father. Full of grief though she was, she tried to comfort him and point out that Conall had chosen this path for himself; he listened to her, but the pain on his face remained.

  She was not surprised when, the next day, he started a fever.

  Part of the difficulty, it seemed to Brigid, was that there was nothing they could do. She knew he would have liked to go up to Rathconan with her, but with the Yeomanry scouring that area, and the likelihood of his own involvement in the United Irishmen being known by now, that was out of the question. Nor was there anything he could do about the disasters that had taken place in the south. This feeling of frustration and helplessness, she was sure, contributed to the worsening of his fever, so that by t
he fever’s third day, she was quite alarmed about him. Young William was wonderful. He made no demands, and did all he could to support her. After a few days, Patrick seemed better, but still very weak. She let William go out for news again, and learned that another section of the United Irish forces were trying to work their way northwards up the coast, commanded by Father Murphy, a priest who, despite the disapproval of the Church, was taking part in the rising.

  The weather was still dry. Strangely for that time of year, some of the grass was looking quite parched.

  A week went by. She encouraged Patrick to spend time in the sun, and he was getting stronger now, almost his old self again. But the news continued to be bad. Father Murphy had been killed. The United Irishmen were under pressure on the Wicklow border. A big military force, it was said, was coming down from Dublin.

  It was a day of rain, the first for weeks, when Kelly came riding up to the door. He was trying to look cheerful, but she could see he was flustered.

  “Is he better?” he asked her. “Can he travel?”

  “Why?”

  “The government army’s pushing down from the north. Everyone’s withdrawing. He’d better get out. They know who he is. If they find him here . . .”

  “Where can he go?”

  “He can come with me. There’s still a huge force down at Wexford. He should be safe enough there.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, Brigid. If need be, I’ll put him on a boat at Wexford and send him to France.”

  “I shan’t worry,” she said, “because I’m coming too.”

  But to this, as soon as he appeared, Patrick refused to agree.

  “You’ve the children to think of now,” he told her. “You aren’t involved in the rising. It’ll be me they want. And you’ll surely be safer here than anywhere else.” He turned to young William. “I count upon you, William, to protect her. Will you promise me that?”

  In this strategy, Kelly strongly supported him.

  “As long as they don’t find Patrick here,” he said, “they’ll be satisfied.” He turned to William. “Your quarrel with your father may or may not be known, but you’ve only to say that you’re the son of Lord Mountwalsh and that there are no rebels here, and they won’t dare to give trouble in such a place.”

  She knew they were right. It was the only way. She gazed at Patrick for a long moment and said:

  “I’ll help you get ready.”

  Ten minutes later, he was ready.

  They stood at the door. His horse was being brought round from the stable. The rain was falling, obscuring everything beyond the broad expanse of grass in front of the house, falling quietly like a veil. She could scarcely believe it had all come about so suddenly.

  “I shall be safe enough,” he said, and turning once again to William: “You have promised.”

  “I shall await word from you.” She reached up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, feeling the rain on her face, and whispered into his ear: “Thank you for my life.”

  He pretended not to understand.

  “You will see the children before I do, perhaps. You’ll give them every tenderness from me.”

  Then William gave him a leg up into the saddle, and wheeling about, he rode away beside Kelly without looking back.

  Brigid did not move for a time, but stared into the pale, blank shroud of the rain, falling almost silently—like a curtain, it seemed to her, at the end of a play.

  Night. It was almost the midsummer solstice. Below lay the little town of Enniscorthy, shuttered but watchful, where United Irishmen were encamped in their hundreds. Certainly enough to defend the place. But the main army had come up here, onto the pleasant slopes of Vinegar Hill.

  It had been Kelly’s idea.

  “We’ll go up the hill, Patrick,” he’d said. “Safety in numbers.” And Patrick was glad of it. The summer night was warm and clear. Above his head, a crowd of stars sparkled: bright, eternal for a few brief hours, until dawn came to wash them all away.

  It was a good place to make a stand. As General Lake and his army pressed down from the north, the advance detachments of the United men had given ground; but at Enniscorthy the British would be facing a much larger force, getting on for twenty thousand strong, with carbines and artillery. “We’ll outnumber them by two to one,” Kelly had pointed out. “The terrain’s in our favour, too.” For Vinegar Hill was an excellent defensive position. On every side, the British would be forced to mount steep slopes to reach the United forces entrenched above. It was from a similar hilltop, a month ago, and before they’d even had the firearms, that the United men had driven off the well-trained North Cork Militia. With some confidence, therefore, they waited through the night.

  Patrick was happy. He had come there by choice. He could probably have travelled on to Wexford and found a ship, or even gone up into the mountains a dozen miles away to hide. But having been absent for all the setbacks of the last three weeks, he would have felt guilty indeed if he had deserted his comrades now. And what good fellows they were, most of them. He felt a surge of affection for Kelly and for all the thousands of unseen faces upon the hill. He even felt affection for the enemy. They were his fellow human beings, after all. He was sorry that so many would probably have to lose their lives during the day to come. It was a sad necessity that blood would have to be shed and sacrifices made for the creation of the new order in Ireland.

  He had no doubt that the new Ireland was coming. Not because of the present rebellion, whose issue was still in doubt, but because, before long, the thing was inevitable. All over the world, the old tyrannies were being set aside: the tyrannies of outworn authorities over the body and the mind. In America, in France, men would be free to choose their governments, make their own laws, and worship, or not worship, as they pleased. The reign of oppressor and oppressed, of Catholic and Protestant, would pass away at last. The age of reason had arrived, and surely now, all that was needed was a kick or two, and the rotten old structures of the past would collapse of their own accord. He was grateful that he should have had the chance to be a part of the dawning of this new and better world.

  A better world for his children. He thought of them with affection. It was almost a month since he had seen them last. How he wished it were possible for him to take wing, to fly through the night and spend an hour or two with them, to comfort them. He thought of Brigid also. When all this was over, the world would be changed. And once again, but with more insistence, he would ask her to marry him, and perhaps now she would agree.

  How strange it all felt, he thought, up here. It was as if, when the evening had thrown its noose of orange light over the hill, it had magically drawn it away to some place beyond time; and that this huge crowd of thousands had been transformed into some ancient Irish gathering, waiting to welcome the rising in the east of the midsummer sun.

  General Lake did not wait until dawn. He was a brutal man. He had hanged and flogged his way through Ulster in the spring to break the spirit of the rebels there. But he was a competent general. And faced with an army which outnumbered his own, defending a round hill, he did what any good general would do. He took advantage of his strengths.

  Placing his cannon carefully, as close to the hill as he could, he did not wait for the dawn, nor even the first hint of light in the eastern sky. The number of defenders on the hill actually worked against them, for they were so thick on the ground he did not need to be particularly accurate. He filled his cannon with balls and with grapeshot, and then, with a flash and a crash, he let rip in the night.

  “I’ll blast them to pieces in the dark,” he declared.

  At his side, Kelly was as startled by the bombardment as Patrick was. As the cannonballs hissed overhead, and dark splutterings of detritus burst up from the ground into the night sky, they heard screams from all around.

  “Does he really mean to charge up the hill in the dark?” he wondered.

  But General Lake had no such intention. He didn’t move an inch, but let his beasts, t
he cannon, do his work for him. They pounded the hill in the dark; they pounded it during first light; they roared at the rising sun; and their rough logic, which knew nothing of freedom, of ages ancient or to come, chopped, and carved, and dissected Vinegar Hill until its green sides were splattered and running with blood.

  The English artillery had another trick, too. Patrick witnessed it when a shell landed about fifty yards away, bounced, and came to rest by a group of pikemen, who looked at it with distaste. Then, suddenly, they were no more, but transformed into a flash and a bursting of bodies as the shell, with its new delayed fuse, exploded. The Irishmen had not seen the delayed-fuse shells before. Soon, there were eddies of panic all over the hillside as men tried to fling themselves pell-mell away from the shells when they landed.

  There was only one thing to do. A huge charge was begun, to sweep the English from their positions. The sheer weight of their numbers should have done it. Patrick and Kelly were towards the rear of the charge, both with pistols and drawn swords, behind a line of pikemen. But they never got to the base of the hill. So devastating was the enemy fire that the charge was brought to its knees and recoiled up the slopes. As they drew back, Patrick saw to his horror that the English were using the confusion to move their cannon forward. He discharged his pistol towards them, but he did not see anyone fall.

  Soon afterwards, they tried another charge, but with the same result.

  Down in Enniscorthy, English troops were trying to seize the bridge that led into the town, by which they supposed the Irishmen might try to escape. But down in the town at least, the United men were having better luck, and it looked as if the British were beaten back.

  Time passed. And still the bombardment went on. The heat was terrible. It was only now that Patrick realised that, while the cannon continued to roar, he scarcely heard them anymore. A strange kind of silence and unreality seemed to have settled upon the day. Glancing around, he wondered how many of the army on the hill were left. Half of them? He supposed so. Everybody seemed to be moving more slowly, though, as if there were all the time in the world. Come to that, what time was it? He didn’t know that either. The sun was high.