Something new was happening now. Kelly was shouting something at him. He was priming his pistol. The English were coming. They were coming up the other side of the hill. He’d be ready for them. He nodded and held his pistol firmly, pointing it up the hill. He’d be ready for them, sure enough.
He heard a hiss and a cry. He felt Kelly’s hand grabbing him unceremoniously by the collar, trying to haul him off away somewhere. He stumbled, then saw a flash, and found himself lying on the ground. He blinked. On his left, a couple of men were writhing on the ground. Kelly was on the other side of him. He sat propped oddly, as if he were trying to read a book just to the side of his chest. But there was a gaping, bloody mess where one side of his head was supposed to be. He stared. Kelly was dead. He didn’t feel too bad himself. But when he started to get up, his left leg didn’t seem to be moving properly. That was odd. He put his hand down, and frowned. It felt wet. He looked down and saw there was a great gash down one side of his leg, with blood seeping from it and a piece of metal sticking out. He didn’t feel much pain. He’d have to attend to that shortly, he supposed, but there were other things to do first.
He looked up the hill, and there, silhouetted against the skyline, was the line of English troops advancing. In front of them, some brave fellows were standing their ground, others fleeing. He pushed his pistol forward and tried to keep it steady. Now he was going to get a shot at them. This time he’d bring a man down.
Jonah Budge hadn’t wanted to miss this battle. He and a dozen of his Yeomen had attached themselves to Lake’s forces as they came south. The rest of his men he’d left under his second in command, a solid merchant from Wicklow who could be relied upon.
He’d learned a valuable lesson today, and he was the first to admit it. When he’d scoured the hamlets on the Wicklow Mountains after the affair at Rathconan, he’d earned a reputation for swiftness of which he was rather proud. If he saw a group of men preparing to give him a fight, or a barn burning—and there had been a few of those—he had always dashed straight for the object in question. His speed and aggression had always carried the day, and twice he had certainly saved some unfortunate Protestants from being murdered or burned alive.
“These papists will usually scatter if you go at them quickly,” he told his men. For whatever other people might say, it was clear enough to him what this business was about. The papists were trying to rise and up to all their old tricks. “Give them half a chance, and they’ll repeat the massacres of 1641 all over again,” he would say. It was up to decent Protestants like themselves to crush them. “Crush the croppies,” he’d cry. And though he used the abusive term for the modern revolutionaries, what he actually meant, and what his men clearly understood, was: “Crush the papists.” Speed was the thing. Treat them like animals.
But Lake, tough though he was, had been more circumspect. Where Jonah Budge would have been up the hill and at them by dawn, Lake had held back, and held back again, battering and wearing them down with his artillery, as though they were a walled fortification to be reduced to rubble.
“They are an army, and they will fight like an army,” he had cautioned. “Attack too soon, and I’ll lose half my men.” And, it had to be said, the croppies in the town had done well and given the trained troops a bloody nose. Lake knew what he was doing, therefore, and you had to respect him for it. While the poor devil on the hill had been blown to bits, Lake had hardly lost any men at all.
But now at last, Budge thought, I can do things my way. As he marched up the hill, the exhausted croppies put up a stiff fight. Some of the fresh government troops were falling. But the croppies could hold them. They were pulling back.
As he came over the crest of the hill, he saw to his irritation that there was one flaw in Lake’s battle plan. There was a gap in the English lines at the base, where one of the commanders had failed to reach his station. The croppies knew it, too. There was a stiff fight up at the top, but once the English troops could gather to move down the slope in formation, the croppies had started to scatter and flee. They were making for the gap. Some squadrons of cavalry were aiming to cut them off, but it looked to Budge as if some of them would get away. His job was simple, though. Deal with those on the hill. Finish them off.
He was descending with his men down the slope when he saw the fellow lying on the ground twenty yards ahead to his left. He had a pistol. He was pointing it, with painful slowness, towards him. Evidently, the croppy was wounded. He was going to take a final shot. Budge didn’t hesitate. He kept walking straight towards him. He had fought a duel once, some years ago, and this reminded him of it. As he came closer, he was not afraid—not because of bravery, but because, having a very good eye, he could see that the fellow was going to miss. The pistol went off with a puff of smoke. The ball hissed by, above and to the right. He kept walking. The man was looking at him, slightly surprised. A gentlemanlike face, it had to be said. When Budge was a few paces away, he took out his own pistol, paused, and aimed carefully. The man didn’t flinch.
“Croppy, lie down,” Budge said quietly, and fired, and Patrick Walsh was no more. Then he moved on.
Brigid knew what it meant as soon as she saw the woman. It was Kelly’s sister. Her husband had sent her a letter from Wexford.
The two women greeted each other quietly. It was many years since they’d met. The letter from Wexford had given a brief account of what had happened at Vinegar Hill, and how both Patrick and Kelly had been lost.
“I am sorry for your loss,” said Brigid. “It was good of you to come. I should like to bury his body,” she continued, but Kelly’s sister shook her head.
“That’s done already,” she told her. “Don’t go near the place. You should stay here, out of sight.”
The English victory had been complete. General Lake had hardly lost a hundred men. Quite a number of the United men had managed to get away, though, and regroup at Wexford. Some of them were now marching west into Kilkenny, hoping to reignite the rising there; others were planning to slip past Lake and head north into Wicklow.
“Don’t think of going north for the present,” her visitor cautioned Brigid. “There’ll be trouble all over Wicklow and beyond.”
After this, Mount Walsh was silent. The days passed, and nobody came there. Brigid was resigned to waiting. Only young William was fretful, wanting to join the remaining United men. But Brigid was firm. There was nothing useful he could do there, she told him flatly, and he had promised Patrick that he’d look after her. “Would you leave me to go back to Dublin all alone?” she asked. And so, reluctantly, he stayed where he was.
A week passed, then another. News came of incidents in various parts of the region. A Protestant house burned by Catholics; an Orange lodge beating up some Catholic families. As the central network of the United Irishmen broke apart, the rebellion was sinking into ugly sectarian strife. They heard that the northern section of the United men had got into the mountains, that they were passing near Rathconan, and finally that they had dropped down into the plain of Kildare. Only then, some three weeks after the news of Vinegar Hill, did Brigid say to William: “We’re going home.”
Finn O’Byrne watched the arrival of Brigid and William with care. He’d only been back in Rathconan a few days himself.
The business at Rathconan had been swiftly dealt with. Acting as magistrate under martial law, Arthur Budge had not hesitated. Having marched them down to Wicklow, he’d tried, sentenced, and hanged Conall upon the same day. The rest of them had been held in prison for almost five weeks, while Jonah Budge and the Yeomanry cleared the mountains. They hadn’t known what would happen to them until, upon Arthur Budge’s authority, they were released. One move from any of them in the future, they were curtly informed, and they could expect death.
On their way out of Wicklow, they saw Conall. He’d been hanged from a bridge, and the blackened remains of his body were still dangling there. They had paused to pay their respects.
“It might have been any of us
. Especially you, Finn,” said one of the Brennans.
“I know it,” Finn said gravely.
“It’s a terrible thing to see.”
“It is,” he’d agreed, with secret pleasure in his heart to see Conall Smith so utterly destroyed. “A terrible thing.”
They came back subdued, but as heroes.
Only two people in Rathconan failed to treat Finn as he would have wished. Surprisingly, one of them was old Budge. He knew that Finn had saved his estate, perhaps even his life; and it seemed to Finn that he should have been grateful for it. Yet despite the fact that he hated everything the rebels stood for, and despite the fact that he wouldn’t have hesitated to hang Conall Smith for what he’d done, there was something in his eye that Finn did not like when the old Protestant landlord looked at him now. It was masked, of course. No word was ever spoken. But the look was there: the ancient, instinctive distaste that men feel for a traitor. And that from an Englishman. It was intolerable.
There was nothing unspoken about Deirdre, however. As soon as he was back, she sought him out.
“Do you think I don’t know what you are?” she had whispered. “I know what you did.”
He’d faced her down.
“You know nothing.” She couldn’t. It was absolutely impossible that she could know. But she did.
“Judas,” she said. It didn’t matter. Nobody believed her. They all thought she was confused by her distress. But it didn’t stop her when she found herself near him, hissing: “Serpent.”
He didn’t feel guilty. He’d done what he wanted to. But for the contempt she showed him, he hated her.
Her youngest son and daughter, still in the village, also looked at him angrily; but other people there, including those who had been in prison with him, were telling them that Deirdre was mistaken. Soon he saw doubt as well as anger in their eyes. The accusation, he suspected, would die away. But since she was obviously out to poison the minds of the whole Smith family against him, he knew very well that when Brigid arrived, she’d do the same with her.
He wasn’t sure what he felt about Brigid. She had gone away so many years ago, and he would only see her briefly, once a year or so when she came up to see her parents. She wasn’t the wife, but only the mistress, of Patrick Walsh: that didn’t make her so important, he supposed. She was a well-known figure on the Dublin stage, of course. That had to count for something. After living in Walsh’s house all these years, she also carried herself like a lady—though it would be the stage, no doubt, that would partly account for her manner. But whatever the reason, he concluded, he didn’t like it, not one little bit, that she should arrive in Rathconan looking as if she was altogether of a different sort from the people like himself who, in the eyes of God and every reasonable person, were certainly better than she.
As for William, he still wasn’t sure where the young man fitted in. He’d been down at Mount Walsh, his own family house. God knows what money he must have. And now he was returning to Dublin. He’d never heard any mention made of the boy by Conall, or even Patrick, and he’d noticed that when they had discussed the rising, Patrick had made sure the boy was outside. This young aristocrat, he concluded, belonged to another world entirely, outside his knowledge, and therefore of no interest to him.
It was evening when they arrived, and they went into the cottage. After a little while, the young man came out. Finn watched him. He wondered if, being an aristocrat, he’d go up to the big house. There was only old Budge there at present, although Jonah Budge, back from his adventures in Wexford, was somewhere in the area with his yeomen. But the young man just walked to the track that led down the valley and stood there for a while, staring down towards the coast. Then Brigid came out to fetch him. As they returned, they passed not far from where Finn was standing. As she did so, she turned to look at him. And so it was that he received the full force of her stare.
Finn almost gasped. The flash of those magnificent green eyes as they fixed upon him: they’d take any man’s breath away. He had expected hurt, anger, rage even that he had killed her father. But though all these were present for a fleeting moment, they coalesced into something else.
Disgust. She was looking at him as if here were some filthy, loathsome creature that had come up from the ground. He, Finn O’Byrne, to be looked at in such a way: as if she wouldn’t soil her shoes with treading on him. Then she and the young man were gone.
All that night, Finn O’Byrne brooded about how he had been treated.
Brigid and William left in the morning. The countryside between Rathconan and Dublin was not entirely quiet, but Brigid was so anxious to get back to her children now that she was determined not to delay any longer. Since it was deserted, they decided to take the track that led over the high ground. In the unlikely event of their seeing any troublemakers, William had his sword and a pistol, and Brigid herself carried an ornamental dagger, small but effective, secreted in her riding coat. More to the point, however, the ground was firm and they had good horses.
It was only an hour after their departure that providence smiled upon Finn O’Byrne. Jonah Budge and a dozen mounted yeomen appeared. It took Finn only a couple of minutes to realise what this could mean. And thinking of an excuse to go over to the big house, he managed without much difficulty to find an opportunity to speak a few words to the officer unseen. When he had finished, Budge asked a few quick questions.
“The young Protestant, Lord Mountwalsh’s son, is not involved? I shouldn’t care to arrest the son of such a powerful man.”
“There’s no need. He knows nothing. I noticed that they did not discuss anything to do with the rising when he was in the room. I think they were using him as an excuse to travel down to Wexford,” Finn added.
“So Brigid Smith is Conall Smith’s daughter, and also the woman of Patrick Walsh?”
“And it’s he that gave the order for Conall to start the rising here at Rathconan.”
“Can you testify against her? Have you evidence of her active involvement?”
Finn hesitated.
“Testify? No. For you promised to keep me out of it. Besides, I’ve nothing I can swear to beyond her being with him. But I’m sure she was in it. She must have been. If you take her in for questioning,” he added with relish, “who knows what you might shake out of her?”
“I’ll think about it,” said Jonah Budge. Soon afterwards, he and his men left.
Behind him, Finn O’Byrne smiled to himself. He wondered what they would do to her. That would teach her to scorn him.
Brigid and William were almost at the point where the great plateau of the Wicklow Mountain range falls sharply down into the Liffey basin when they saw the three horsemen approaching.
They could see that the men had uniforms, so they were not unduly concerned. They had taken their time crossing the mountains. The day was pleasantly warm. As the three men came close, they drew to one side from the track to let them pass. But they did not pass.
The three yeomen had been travelling for some hours. They were hot, and tired, and somewhat irritated. There were several ways to go over the mountains, and having failed to find anything, Jonah’s men had split up into smaller groups to try each path. They knew little about their quarry, except that the young man was a Protestant from an important family and mustn’t be harmed, and that the woman was the papist daughter of Conall Smith and wanted for questioning.
The yeomen varied widely. Even in Jonah Budge’s little force, some were solid citizens, others merely fellows looking for an excuse for violence.
They ordered William and Brigid to dismount. As they were armed, it seemed better to comply. One of the yeomen, a sandy-haired man a little older than the others, dismounted also. He turned to Brigid.
“You are Brigid Smith?”
“I am the Honourable William Walsh,” William cut in firmly. “My father is Lord Mountwalsh, and this lady is under my protection. I advise you to let us pass.”
“You’re free to go, young g
entleman,” the fellow replied gruffly, “but it’s this woman that Captain Budge wants for questioning. Those are my orders.” He gave Brigid a crude look of appreciation. During the last weeks, there had been several occasions when, turning the papist rebels out of their hovels, he’d come across some handsome females. There had been one young wife he particularly remembered. It had been a night raid and he’d got her alone in an empty cowshed. She’d screamed, but those of his companions who’d heard had only laughed. A tasty morsel that had been. This green-eyed woman was dressed as a lady, but wasn’t she only the daughter of the fellow hanging from the bridge at Wicklow? And this was a quiet place. “We’ll wait for the captain here,” he said to the other two. “You escort the young gentleman down to the Dublin road.”
“I refuse to leave,” said William.
“What’ll you do about that, Nobby?” one of the others asked with a smirk.
In any sane world, Nobby thought, he’d just kill the young man and do what he liked with the woman. But because of Budge’s orders, this aristocratic young whelp was making a fool of him.
Then he thought for a moment. If this young man was claiming responsibility for a papist rebel woman, then something wasn’t quite right with the young man either. So he’d teach these people they couldn’t make a fool of him. He looked at his companions and gave them a meaningful nod.
“Help the young gentleman on his way.”
William started to protest, but the two mounted men were grinning. One of them had the reins of William’s horse. Suddenly, they wheeled together and came one each side of him. Scooping down so fast he had no time to resist, they seized him one by each arm and started to ride away, carrying him between them. William was struggling wildly, looking back over his shoulder. As much as anything to show him who was boss, Nobby now lunged forward and grabbed Brigid by the breast.