Daniel Coburn was a man of many colours, a revolutionary mired in contradictions. Like all Irishmen, the ’98 rebellion was scorched into him like a branding iron. Wolfe Tone, O’Neill, Emmett, Monro, Fitzgerald and Father Murphy were among his many martyrs and the slaughter at Vinegar Hill and the barbarity of the Gibbet Massacre were the founding of his deep hatred for the English. When he was eighteen he had walked thirty miles from Connemara to Daniel O’Connell’s monster meeting in Clifden. Like the many thousands there that day he was inspired by this man of fine words and grand vision. It was the young boy’s baptism.
Coburn the child had survived one famine. Coburn the man was now living through another far more tragic one. It swept aside all past values. The whole pyramid of Irish life had been precariously balanced on the potato crop. That base had collapsed and a whole new way of life had to be devised.
He had a vision of the peasantry rising as one, raising the green flag in armed rebellion, an agrarian revolution that would herald the birth of a new social order. Up and down the country he had preached it again and again. The future of Ireland lay in the absolute possession of the land, the Irish sole owners of Ireland’s soil. He took to it with a passion, as fervently as a man adopts a new religion. It was his shibboleth and he never wavered.
He was encouraged by events beyond both Ireland and England. The dawn of universal liberty was now being trumpeted throughout Europe and Continental governments were falling like dominoes. The French ruling elite had been overthrown yet again. In a bloodless revolution, another republic had been proclaimed, and King Louis Philippe had fled across the Channel to Dover in disguise. Insurrection in Sicily had forced the monarchy to concede a new and democratic constitution. There was mass rioting and barricades in Vienna and Prince Metternich was obliged to become another exile in London. The people of Milan drove their Austrian rulers out of the city and raised improvised banners declaring its autonomy. Further south, the Venetians had fought their own military, seized their garrison and arsenal and demanded self-rule.
The republican victories throughout Europe were seen as Ireland’s own and the Irish cheered them all and none cheered louder than the Young Irelanders. Bonfires were lit on the highest hilltops from Donegal to Munster, from Wicklow to Killrush. Crowds in the streets of the towns and cities carried banners celebrating the triumph of Europe’s dispossessed.
Coburn was convinced it would set off an Irish explosion, certain that the fuse that had been burning imperceptibly for centuries must now detonate. He decided that his tour of the counties, his meetings and his speech-making were over. The message had been spread far and wide and there was not a man or woman in Ireland now that did not know of the Young Irelanders and not one among them who said they would not rally to the cause. Now was the time for deeds. The providential hour should not pass if the people were to be liberated.
The landlords would be targeted. They would be made to live in fear. If some had already fled to the safety of England, then their bailiffs would suffer on their behalf. Their lordships’ mansions would be torched, their livestock slaughtered and taken as food. No estate would be safe and there would be no exceptions.
Coburn made ready his campaign. English newspapers would no longer ridicule the Young Irelanders and their aspirations with cartoons and make-believe stories. They would now have something real and harsh to report.
The ship was a clear sharp silhouette against the moon’s light on the water. She was out from Wexford, bound for the French port of Cherbourg, carrying a cargo of corn and flour. At the mouth of the river Slaney the wind failed, and her sails dropped. So her master decided to bottom her on the South Slob mudflats and wait for the tide to rise.
Word of it came quickly to Coburn from men who had loaded her the previous day. Three hundred and eighty sacks of grain were in her hold.
‘We take. We give,’ said Father Kenyon. ‘We are the men in the middle. A few sacks will keep more than a few alive. It’s a gift from God.’
‘We’ll need carts,’ said Duffy.
‘I’ll get the carts,’ said Meagher.
‘And curraghs,’ Coburn said.
‘I’ll have them, too.’
‘Daniel. Will we kill?’ asked O’Brien.
‘Only if I kill first,’ Coburn replied. ‘You will wait for me to strike. It may not come to that.’
‘We will take a gun each then?’
‘No! I will take only mine. If I have to use it, then we are lost. They’ll hear it on shore and we’ll have no time to escape them.’
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ the priest asked.
‘Tell me,’ said Coburn.
‘I shall,’ said the priest. ‘What will you do if you can take all you want? Where will you hide sacks of grain hereabouts? The Redcoats will take every cottage apart, even the tumbled wrecks. They’ll turn every sod of turf and every stone too. Have you thought of that, Daniel?’
‘Then don’t hide them on land,’ said Meagher. ‘We can drift the curraghs to Gerry Cove on Beggerin Island. Only our own people know of it. Let’s keep the sacks there until the searches are over. Then we can give the grain out to the people, little by little.’
‘And we will hold off the day,’ said the priest. ‘Well done, Meagher.’
‘You will not come on this one, Kate,’ said Coburn.
‘I will,’ she replied.
‘You will not come.’
‘I will too!’
The tide was flowing out to sea. Soon it would be slack water and an hour later the water would begin to rise again and soon the ship would be on her way. There was no time to haggle. What they had to do they had to do quickly.
The current turned on itself under the lee of the mudflats and carried the three curraghs out without effort. Only light pulls on the oars were needed to bring them close to the ship. Its black tarred hull towered above them. Its sails were tied and there was no movement on deck, only the soft rattle of the rigging and the slap of water against the planking. At the stern, her name was painted in large white letters: Jackdaw.
Coburn, Meagher and O’Brien pulled themselves up on the aft anchor line. Duffy and Kate followed them.
‘Who’s there?’ They saw a lantern swinging and the shadow of a man standing by the hatchway. He shouted, ‘Have you come to take my ship?’
‘No, sir,’ Coburn replied. ‘We have come for a little of your grain. Our people are starving. I’ll ask you not to resist. We will not cause you harm. Just a few sacks is all we need. You’ll not miss them.’
The captain came towards them, a short, broad man with a beard flecked with grey. He was wearing no topcoat or cap. He held a mug of tea in one hand, the lantern in the other.
‘Is your gun loaded?’ he asked.
‘Why else would I carry it?’ Coburn replied.
‘You will get ten years transportation for that.’
‘And death for you if you try to take it from me.’
‘I have men asleep below. I have only to shout.’
‘Then I will shoot you,’ said Coburn.
The captain hung his lantern on a hook at the mast. ‘Must I die for a few sacks of grain?’ he asked. ‘Must you hang for it?’
‘We can both live,’ Coburn answered. ‘You are taking food from our land, food from our people.’
‘What use is raw corn to you?’
‘One ear of corn, one handful of flour will save a life. What I’ve come to take will save a hundred families. It belongs to them. Think of them, Captain. Think of them’.
He needed no reminding. He had been sailing to ports along the Irish coast all his working life and had never been far from the wretchedness of the poor. He was no stranger to their miserable lives. In this past year of famine he had been forced to witness what no decent man should be asked to bear. The images would never leave him. The howling of the hungry in Tralee as they watched barrels of herring and sacks of barley being loaded, bound for a foreign port. How bodies were left rotting in the snow in Westport because the ground was too hard to bury them. How he had shot the dogs eating them until he had no cartridges left.
He needed no reminders. He held out his hands, palms open.
‘I have no gun,’ he said. ‘Put yours away and take what you want. As much as you can carry.’
‘You trick me,’ said Coburn.
‘No trickery, my desperate friend. Take it. The rats will take more than you can carry by the time we get to France.’
‘I will want twelve sacks,’ said Coburn. ‘We have three curraghs at your side.’
‘Then pull back the canvas and open the hatches. Send two men down and two to haul.’
‘And when we’re down there, you will call your men?’
‘No! But the choice is yours. And make it fast. There’s a breeze up and I’m waiting on the tide.’
He unwound the rope and threw the end into the hold. ‘Do it now or go.’
O’Brien and Meagher went into the hold. Duffy took the line.
Coburn called to Kate. ‘Take my gun and pray the captain is a cautious man.’
She stepped into the light of the lantern. Only then did the captain show surprise.
‘Lord above!’ he exclaimed. ‘So this is the lady all England is talking about. And here you are, on the deck of old Jackdaw. Will anyone believe me when I tell my story? I doubt it. But here she is, the Dark Rosaleen.’
‘My name is Kate,’ she said. ‘I go by no other.’
‘Whatever name you go by, you are exactly how they say you are.’
He moved a step forward to see her better. She stepped back out of the light.
‘Captain. Stay still. Don’t let me use this.’
‘You’ll have no cause to. I’m not an Irishman, Kate. Like you, I’m from England, from Kent. But I’m pleased to have met you and I wish you luck.’
Twelve times the rope was lowered and twelve sacks were lifted from the hold. Soon the curraghs were full and low in the water.
‘Why have you done this, Captain?’ Coburn asked.
‘Must you ask?’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Not one you have to know. But Jackdaw’s my ship.’
‘How do we thank you, then?’
‘You have no need. But go now. Once you are away, I will have to send a man ashore to raise the alarm. I’ll say there were twenty of you, each with a gun. I’ll have my story.’
‘You are a Christian man, Captain. You have saved many lives. They will not know of you but I will never forget.’
The tide had turned and the current was flowing inland by the time the curraghs were within sight of Beggerin. The rebels heard the ship’s horn and a gunshot. The captain had raised the alarm, as he said he would. Now he would have to wait for the military to come aboard and he would have his story and many of their questions to answer. His sailing would now have to wait another day and another turn of the tide to take him and his cargo to France.
It was Meagher who brought it to Coburn. He had torn it out of the Cork Examiner: a newspaper report on yet another series of brutal evictions. It might have passed unnoticed by them except for the name of the landlord.
‘Kate,’ Coburn called to her. ‘I think you know this man.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Edward Ogilvie.’
He held out the newspaper cutting. She took it and her hand was not still. It was a name from another age, swallowed up in the mishmash of the past where fond and hateful memories jostled with each other. Could she ever forget him, the repugnant half-sir and his bullwhip, the jeering face, the smell of whiskey on his breath, the stench of his sweat, Eugene and blood on her skirt?
‘I see he’s still remembered, Kate,’ said Coburn.’ You’re in a bit of a tremble. Sit by me.’
She read the report. Then she let it drop to the floor.
‘What is he to you, Daniel?’ she asked.
‘He is a landlord to me. He is the enemy to me. Did you not read it all?’
He picked the cutting off the floor. Meagher and Duffy, who were sitting across the large kitchen in Dromoland, came closer.
He read it aloud.
From the estate of Mr Edward Ogilvie, MP.
This past week, three villages of Castletown, Coppeen and Enniskeen were tumbled and all tenants evicted with the help of a company of the 49th Regiment. They were turned out in the depth of winter, being denied clothes to carry or any provisions. It was a night of high winds and storm and their wailing could be heard from a great distance. They made shelters of wood and straw but Mr Ogilvie and his drivers pulled them down. They stood bewildered looking at the ruins of their homes and their few possessions being trod into the mud. They pleaded with Mr Ogilvie but he ordered the soldiers to drive them off. Three hundred persons, including pregnant mothers and their children in various stages of starvation and nakedness, wandered away not knowing where they were going. Some were too weak to crawl. They were dead by morning.
‘Meagher brought it to you,’ Kate said. ‘Why?’
‘Do you need to ask?’
‘Will you go for him?’
‘I think we will. He was not meant to be first on the list but he’s put himself there.’
Meagher spoke. ‘Daniel, think more on it. Let’s not be hasty. He’s a member of the English Parliament. It’s a high risk for us. Let’s go for a lesser man. He can wait. We’ll have him when we’re better at it.’
Coburn looked across at Duffy. ‘And you? Is he too big for us?’
‘I think Meagher’s right,’ Duffy replied. ‘It’s a good distance away and remember we can’t be sure what help we’ll have there. It’s not a place we know.’
‘Shall we wait for O’Brien?’ Meagher suggested.
Coburn looked to Kate. ‘And what of you, my Rosaleen? How soon do you think we should pay Mr Ogilvie a visit?’
She took his hand. ‘If we are together, Daniel, we must decide together.’
‘Yes!’ He nodded. ‘That’s right, Kate. We’ll wait for William.’
O’Brien returned and it was agreed. Ogilvie was indeed a big target and a dangerously important one but Coburn argued that that was exactly why he should be the first to be attacked. It would be a sensational coup for the Irish and a shock to the English.
Meagher started on his journey to Ogilvie’s estate the next day. He would find out how close the nearest military garrison was to it, map out its geography, establish how well it was guarded, how many servants lived in the mansion, and how often Ogilvie was in residence.
He would take soundings of his tenants and gauge what support he could expect from them. They would be suspicious of him. Strangers were not welcome anywhere now. Too many were paid informers or agents of the landlord and the constabulary. But Meagher had his ways. He was a handsome young man with a ready wit and persuasive charm and the maid servants in the mansion were also young. He would need his guile. He would need to be patient.
Within the week, he returned to Dromoland. He sat with Coburn, Kate, O’Brien and Duffy at the long oak table.
‘He’s been busy doing a lot of clearing. The three villages are bare and there are more tumblings to come. They say he means to turn his land over to sheep and bring in Scottish shepherds and that by the end of the year, there’ll not be an Irishman left there.’
‘Did you find out if he is there every day?’ asked O’Brien.
‘They say he stays in the house all weekdays but he’s away on Saturdays and Sundays. No one seemed to know where.’
‘He’s not on his own?’ said Duffy.
‘He has two girls serving in the house. There’s a man, his butler-cum-groom and a fetch-and-carry young lad. They all live in. That’s all. His agent lives some miles away at Macroom.’
‘What of the military?’ O’Brien asked. ‘Did you see them?’
‘I saw their barracks. About two miles from the house, towards Enniskeen. Fusiliers. I’d say about fifty of them.’
‘You’ve done well, Meagher.’ Coburn shook his hand. ‘Tell me, do the servants ever leave the place?’
‘Not when I was watching. The gates are some way from the house and there’s only one path to it. I never saw them on it.’
‘Then we can’t torch it,’ said Duffy. ‘Not if they’re inside.’
‘We’ll find ways,’ Coburn said.
‘The problem is how we put in the fire,’ said Meagher. ‘There are shutters at every window. It’s a fortress. Ogilvie knows he’s at risk. I watched his man put up the boards every day just before dusk. If we’re going to torch him it’ll have to be while it’s light and that’s not a good thing.’
‘When is dusk?’ Coburn asked. ‘What time will that be?’
‘It will be dark around four.’
‘Then that will be the hour. In the half light.’
‘You said you want the servants out,’ Kate said. ‘But they’ll not leave if Ogilvie is there. How can they? We can only do it when he’s away.’
‘You’re a fine lieutenant, Kate.’ Coburn took her hand and kissed it.
‘Don’t mock, Daniel. You’ve only got two days of the week to do it, Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Don’t the servants go to Mass?’
‘I wasn’t there on a Sunday.’ Meagher answered. ‘They might well do. There’s a small chapel in the village. I suppose it’s …’
Again Kate interrupted. ‘Daniel, you say we must attack just before dusk. The servants might go to Mass but they’ll not be in church all Sunday.’
‘Then I don’t know how we can empty the house,’ said O’Brien.
‘We’ll have them out,’ said Coburn. ‘Fear will do it. Sunday it is.’
The sun had sunk an hour before but its amber light still rose over the cedar trees and lit the rooftops of the house. It was large, built by the Georgians, not of grey Connemara stone but red brick imported from England. An avenue of limes, a quarter of a mile long, led up from the wrought iron gates of the estate to a pair of lions carved from granite that sat either side of the massive oak front door. The immaculate lawn, with long regimented flower beds, stretched right up to the base of the tall front windows.
They dared not stay long. They were seen arriving as they rode through the ruins of the villages wrecked by Olgivie’s tumbling gangs. Those who watched them go by would talk about these strangers and that talk might find its way to the police and then quickly on to the Redcoats two miles away.
Their torches of oiled peat were ready to be lit. It would not take long. The house would be well alight and beyond rescue long before the soldiers or any of the neighbouring landlords raised the alarm. That was the score of it. There was nothing to fault. It was simple, quick and safe.
They waited by their horses within the cover of the trees. Kate was their sentry. Coburn saddled up.
‘I will go and call them out,’ he said. ‘Just the four of them, is it, Meagher?’
‘Yes, Daniel! The four servants.’
Coburn lit his torch of peat.
‘Wait until the four of them are on the lawn,’ he ordered. ‘Wait until they’re well away from the house and I give the signal. Then come and ride in fast. And keep moving.’
He cantered to the house and hit the front door hard and loud with the flaming stick.
‘Come out! All of you,’ he shouted. ‘I’m torching this house and none of you will be hurt if you come out now. I cannot wait long. Come and be quick with it. You’ll not be harmed.’
He turned his horse again and rode along the line of windows, smashing the panes of glass, breaking the frames.
‘You have minutes to get out. This house is going to burn. Come out now. Save yourselves!’
He heard a man shouting inside. Then the screams of the girls. A shot was fired. Then a second. The front door opened and a man came out bleeding. He staggered forward and clutched at the lion’s head. He raised a hand towards Coburn and tried to speak as blood trickled from his mouth.
‘The master … The master …’ Then he fell onto his chest and did not move.
A girl and a boy ran out from the back of the house, past Coburn, and threw themselves down on the lawn behind him. He raised the flaming torch above his head and the three horsemen left the trees.
‘In with it, boys, and fast!’ he shouted to them. ‘In at every window. The curtains first, then torches to the rooms.’
The maid and the boy lay flat on the grass, too terrified to move. They watched the horsemen with their flaming sticks, putting fire in through the windows and the open front door, spreading the flames. There was no delay, no moments of waiting for the fire to take hold. Within seconds, the rooms exploded with a roar and smoke blasted out in great black spirals. The heat burst up through the ceilings into the second floor and there was a mighty crash of timbers and another explosion. Balls of white hot splinters cascaded out as if they had been shot from cannons.
Coburn saw Kate riding fast towards him, raising her arm towards the roof. He looked up. Through the smoke, standing high on the parapet, he saw Edward Ogilvie.
‘What’s the bloody fool doing?’ O’Brien brought his horse to Coburn’s side. ‘He’s shouting at us. My God, Daniel. Look at him. He has someone in his arms. He’s holding a girl.’
Coburn jumped from his horse, went to the boy and pulled him up off the grass. He shook him hard.
‘Is it the maid? Did she not come out with you?’
The boy could not speak.
Coburn slapped him across the face. ‘Talk boy, talk. Can he get down from there?’ Coburn shouted again at him. ‘Is there a way down? Quickly, tell me!’
The boy stuttered. ‘At the back, sir! Stairs … The stable … At the back … Iron stairs.’
Coburn shouted to Kate. ‘Take my gun. Ride to the gates. Fire one shot if you see any movement from the road. One shot. Go now, go!’
Coburn and O’Brien ran to the back of the house. There was much smoke but the fire had yet to reach there. A narrow cast-iron stairway spanned the stable to the first floor of the house above the kitchen. Coburn ran to it and began climbing. The rungs were already warm and blasts of hot air seared his face. Thirty feet up he came to a ledge where the iron stairway ended. A single wooden ladder continued up to the roof. As he held the first rung to climb again he saw Ogilvie standing on the parapet above him, the girl tight in one arm, a pistol in his other hand.
Coburn shouted, ‘Give her to me, Ogilvie!’
‘I’ll have you first!’ he shouted back. ‘You’ve killed my servants and now you are trying to kill me.’
‘Your servants are alive. You shot your own man.’
‘He refused to bar the windows. He defied me.’
‘Give me the girl and jump, you fool! The wall is collapsing.’
‘Look at me, Coburn. Look up at me. Let me see your face.’
He swung his pistol towards Coburn and pulled the trigger but the shot that killed his butler had been his last.
Coburn shouted again. ‘Let her go, you fool. Lower her down and then jump down to the ledge here. I can’t wait longer. This wall is red hot.’
Part of it began to crumble. A shower of sparks shot out of a window and the wooden ladder was suddenly ablaze.
‘Jump with her, Ogilvie … jump now.’
‘I cannot. I will not reach it.’
‘You will, you fool. Now, or you’ll burn!’
‘Why have you done this to me, Coburn?’
‘Think, man. Think of all you did. Think of the thousand poor devils you shoved out of their homes. That’s why we’re torching yours.’
Coburn began feeling his way back down the iron stairs. The rungs now burnt his hands and feet. The heat was intense and the smoke began to choke him.
Ogilvie pushed the girl aside. ‘Don’t leave me here, Coburn. I’ll jump. Catch me. I cannot do it on my own. Stay and catch me!’
Coburn stopped. But it was too late. Flames suddenly burst up through the roof and a mass of slates and bricks blew up into the air like an erupting volcano. The force of it lifted Ogilvie and the girl bodily off the parapet, spun them like a top and sucked them screaming backwards into the well of fire.
Coburn touched the ground as O’Brien came running to him.
‘Hurry, Daniel. Kate has fired the shot. They must be coming … The Redcoats. Duffy and Meagher have gone to her. We must ride. Hurry, man!’
They met the others waiting at the gates. On the rise of a hill less than half a mile away, they could just make out the line of red marching towards them.
‘This is as far as they dare come,’ Coburn said. ‘They don’t know how many of us there are. They’ll not push further.’
‘Do we ride off together?’ Meagher asked him.
‘No! Go separately. But not directly. We’ll meet at Dromoland in a week. Be in no hurry. We’ve done what we came to do and more. But once they know Ogilvie is dead, there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘Who will they blame, Daniel?’ Duffy asked. ‘Who will they go for?’
‘They will blame us because I will let them know it’s us. That’s what this is all about. We’ve made the first strike and it’s a bloody one. It is us they’ll be after now. This is the beginning, boys. We have marked it this night.’
In turn they reached out, shook hands with each other, then rode off their separate ways. Coburn and Kate went together, side by side. They looked behind them. The sky was glowing orange.