Coburn did not wait to be named as Ogilvie’s murderer. He announced it himself. Within a week he published a pamphlet declaring war on the landlords. Within days it was being read across all of Ireland.
Let them see their blackened piles, let us destroy the great wealth that lies between tyranny and liberty. Out of persecution comes a lust for revenge. Let them know vengeance is a pitiless obsession, and that we know well enough how to harness that. We will not get justice from the English by holding out an empty hand. Fill it with a gun or pike and if you have none, close your fist. Let our landlords threaten us and we will answer them with fire. Let us stop them now and not wait until caution clears our heads.
His call to arms was quickly answered. The cull of marked landlords began. Lists of those to be attacked began to circulate and they were not all of Coburn’s making. Many were headed with the line: ‘Your lives are not worth the paper this is written on’. Many killings were acts of individual vengeance.
Within two weeks, six landowners were shot dead as they rode from their estates. A seventh was blinded by grapeshot. Within a month, ten more had been killed and as many wounded. Such was the complicity and silence of the people that not one of the assassins was arrested. Of all the murders, it was Mahon’s that angered the British government most.
Major Denis Mahon was a handsome, popular and well-intentioned young officer in the 49th Lancers Cavalry Regiment. He had inherited an estate in County Roscommon from his distant relative Lord Hartland. The old peer had died in a lunatic asylum and left a derelict estate and debts of over £30,000 in unpaid rents.
The young major began the new management by encouraging those tenants who would peaceably give up their plots to leave so that the land could be turned over to sheep farming. He hired two ships and those who wanted to emigrate to Canada and America could do so for free. He paid for extra provisions aboard the ships so that none would suffer in the crossing. Eight hundred accepted his offer. Three thousand more did not. They could not pay his rent and they would not leave. He felt he had no option. He gave them an ultimatum. They must pay or be evicted and evicted they were.
The parish priest of Strokestown denounced him publicly from the pulpit as a tyrant, the worst since Cromwell. Such words coming from a priest were encouragement enough. That November evening, Major Mahon having just finished chairing a meeting of the workhouse committee, was driving in an open carriage on the high road out of the town towards his estate. Three miles on, as he came to the crossroads, he was ambushed by two masked men on horseback. Before he could reach for his own gun they shot him twice in the chest. He died an hour later. As soon as it was dark, fires were lit on the hills in celebration.
Fear now spread fast among the landed gentry and those in their employ. Poor Law relief was suspended in many counties because officials were afraid to travel. Land agents and bailiffs were careful not to venture beyond the safety of their masters’ estates.
At Carrick-on-Shannon, mourners who attended a funeral of a landowner all carried guns. The hearse was escorted by four armed policemen.
Landowners and their families hurried to leave for the safety of England. Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, felt so threatened he quickly sent his children back to their London home. He also sent a letter to Prime Minister Russell, threatening to resign.
There is an open and widely spread conspiracy for shooting landlords and burning their properties. A flame now rages in a rebellious campaign and my fear is that it will become a general conflagration. The condition of Ireland is now that of a servile war. Distress, discontent and hatred of English rule are increasing everywhere. I receive murder threats daily and dare not go out without bodyguards and those I barely trust. I am a prisoner of the State, living in an enemy country. There are weapons in the hands of the most ferocious people on this earth. The time to suppress sedition has come. You will not ask me to remain here when I feel my power has gone.
He did not have to wait long for the Prime Minister to reply and he was heartened by it.
These outlaws must be caught. I will send you another regiment to do it. If they remain free to do as they will, there may soon be little room for us left in that accursed country.
But Russell hesitated. He had promised Clarendon the immediate dispatch of fifteen thousand more troops. Without explanation, they were delayed. There were demands that those caught in acts of rebellion should be charged with high treason and, upon conviction, the punishment was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. But Russell chose to ignore the clamour. His political opponents in Westminster accused him of cowardice. Others began to wonder whether it was, instead, cunning.
Coburn and Kate were now never long in one place. Notices offering rewards for information leading to their arrests were nailed up in every town and market place in all the thirty-two counties. Caution being the wiser part of valour, Coburn sent O’Brien, Meagher and Duffy out to galvanise the people, and instructed Father Kenyon to establish the strength of support among the priests.
In March, a meeting was held in the Music Hall on Abbey Street in Dublin, where the Young Irelanders publicly announced the plan for national insurrection. Men of fighting age were invited to join a national guard with a target of fifty thousand volunteers. An Irish brigade was to be recruited in the United States for dedicated Irish-Americans willing to launch themselves across the Atlantic and fight for a free Ireland. Pamphlets were distributed in the hall with instructions on how to organise street fighting. Boiling oil was to be poured on soldiers’ heads from windows, broken glass scattered in the streets to halt the cavalry, homemade ammunition, including grenades containing acid, would be made ready and lead, stolen from rain spouts and rooftops, would be made into bullets.
O’Brien reminded his audience that Irishmen made up a third of the entire British Army and ten thousand more of Irish stock were serving in the British constabulary. Would they ignore a call to arms to free their motherland? O’Brien told them that the French had pledged their support and he was about to leave for Paris to enlist the help of the revolutionaries who had so recently and bloodlessly deposed their king.
O’Brien, well tutored by Coburn, gave a final rousing speech. He addressed Lord Clarendon as ‘Her Majesty’s Executioner’ and ‘Ireland’s Butcher’. He spoke of the holy hatred of foreign domination and the determination to rid Ireland of her oppressor, ‘which glows as fierce and as hot as ever’.
He ended his speech draped in a green cloth.
‘Rouse yourselves. Let us fan the embers and send care to the winds. Ignore English law, arm yourselves and be ready to march on Dublin Castle and tear it down. Let us shred English power forever.’
The cheering in Abbey Street could be heard all the way to St Stephen’s Green. O’Brien and Meagher were immediately arrested but they were not, as expected, charged, convicted and transported to Botany Bay. Instead, to the surprise and disgust of all England, they were released on bail and O’Brien, breaking his bail conditions, promptly left for France for the meeting with his young rebellious counterparts in Paris.
Irish newspapers were now daily printing the full texts of public speeches up and down the country calling for insurrection. Unsigned pamphlets, detailing the easiest and quickest ways to kill English soldiers, were being handed out on the streets under the very eyes of the police and the soldiers themselves. And nothing was done to stop them. Only The London Times found space in its columns to protest.
In the wake of this Irish rebellion, English leniency, call it generosity, is hardly to be expected. The course of English benevolence is frozen by Irish insult. In no other country have men made treason and then come begging for sympathy from their so-called oppressors.
‘What is happening, Kate? We push and they retreat. We go one step forward and they step back. What game is Russell playing?’
Following the attacks and murders of the landlords, Coburn had expected an immediate and brutal reaction. None came.
‘Why is it, Kate? What are they planning? Could I walk in the streets of Dublin today and not be taken? Are they fools? Or are we?’
‘They are not fools, Daniel. They are simply waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘For nothing to happen.’
‘For nothing? Nonsense! It is happening. It’s all around us. The landlords live in terror. Those who haven’t left are making ready. O’Brien is in Paris, Meagher and Duffy are out there with the others and Father Kenyon is moving among the young priests. There’s a swell of support across the country and it’s rising.’
‘Maybe the English don’t think so. Maybe they think that only we believe it. Remember they’ve seen this all before and remember what they did to the people who fought them the last time.’
‘There’s not an Irishman who doesn’t remember ’98.’
‘Perhaps they’re just biding their time.’
‘For what? What are they waiting for?’
‘They do not want to make a martyr of you. If they catch you, if they catch us both, we will hang. You’ve said that yourself. With the two of us convicted of treason, they will have no choice. Maybe they’re wondering what might happen if we hang. Whether Ireland will then find its courage.’
‘How simple you make it sound, Kate. So, shall we surrender ourselves and then not live to see Ireland rise?’
‘Perhaps I know the English mind better than you, Daniel. Don’t you see? They have to keep us alive. Our deaths could just be the spark that ignites. Russell cannot have that happen until he is ready. Why do you think we have been left to ride so freely? The English are calling Russell a coward. I don’t think so. I think he has a plan. He is waiting.’
‘And must we play his waiting game? How can we do that? I’ve read that revolutions rise to a peak and you grab it at the hour or you lose it forever. Ours is rising fast. The people are preparing themselves, just waiting for our call.’
‘Daniel, I love you. I love every part of everything you dream of, everything you are fighting for. But …’
‘But what, Kate? Speak.’
‘You talk of our people readying themselves. You and I have spent a year with them, speaking to them, rallying them. I’ve stood by your side and watched their faces as you spoke, heartened by their cheering. But every day, Daniel, every day, I have watched them grow thinner and weaker and hungrier and the crowds have dwindled and the cheering has grown fainter. Hunger has drained them. If they have no food in their stomachs, where’s their fight? Russell knows it. Trevelyan knows it. They all know it.’
‘My God! Is that what it’s all about? Is that what you believe? Has that been their plan from the start? To starve us slowly into submission?’
‘No! Not in the beginning, Daniel. I don’t believe it was. I won’t believe it. My father would never have been an accomplice to anything so vile. It has just become so. I remember Tom Keegan telling me of O’Connell’s monster meeting at Clontarf when a million men there could have taken on the English troops and beaten them.’
‘And so they will again, Kate.’
‘No, Daniel. Clontarf’s men were fit and healthy, not men already beaten. People have had their courage starved out of them.’
‘Then what we have to do we must do soon. The longer we wait, the fewer our chances. We cannot be puppets of Russell.’
‘Is it not already too late, Daniel?’
‘Too late? Is that what you think, Kate?’
‘I don’t know what I think. None of us know.’
‘Exactly, Kate. How can we know for sure? So we must gamble. I read once that revolutions are like the throwing of a dice. Nothing is certain until the end. If we’re not prepared for the risk, if we’re not ready to lose and die, then we are not the people to ask others to follow us. Kate, you cannot be with me if you doubt me.’
‘I will not leave you, Daniel. I could never do it. That first day at Dromoland you said we would ride to the gallows together. I agreed to the terms and I’ve not changed. Nor will I.’
There was no declaration by either side. Civil war does not begin by proclamation or by any curt exchange. Like a smouldering sheaf of straw, it takes only the random breeze to set it ablaze. Was it the sensational headlined story in The London Times that twenty thousand Irishmen armed with guns and pikes had taken the towns of Kilkenny, Clonmel and Carlow, blowing up railway lines and setting railway stations and post offices aflame? Was it the report that thousands of British troops had been mobilised and were rapidly embarking on warships in Holyhead bound for Dublin? Did one or both excite and encourage men to believe rebellion was already under way? But both reports were untrue. Fiction. Hoaxes. There were no fires in Kilkenny or Clonmel or Carlow and no British troops had left any of their garrisons that week. But the spark had been struck and the Irish were about to be propelled once again in bloody contest against their English masters.
Coburn planned to split his command four ways. Immediately O’Brien returned from Paris with the expected pledge of support from the French revolutionaries, he would tour the south to recruit and organise, taking in Tipperary, Cork and all of Kerry. Meagher and Duffy would rally support along the counties east of the Shannon as far north as Meath. He and Kate would ride west to Clare and Galway and Connaught. Father Kenyon would canvas those young priests who had already secretively pledged the support of their parishes. All that was lacking now was the call to fight and the weapons to fight with.
Prime Minster Russell knew otherwise. The information he was receiving told a very different story. As his predecessor William Pitt had done so cunningly in the 1798 rebellion, he had sent his own secret agents across the Irish Sea to mingle and listen. Those agents confirmed the surge of support for Coburn and his men and that there was a popular movement for rebellion. They reported that the Young Irelanders were being feted wherever they went and that there was much enthusiasm among the crowds. But the agents added vital addendum to their reports. They wrote that the rebels were grossly exaggerating the numbers attending their rallies, that support for them was ragged and spiritless, that there was no organisation in place, no headquarters, no preparations, no plan. And crucially, that the rebels had very few weapons and no stores of ammunition.
Russell then sent his agents a question that would decide his next move. He asked them if the mass of Irish were physically fit to fight. Were they collectively strong enough, man on man, to endure a lengthy war? He received their prompt and unanimous reply. The Irishmen were not strong. They would not stand and struggle for long. They would soon die from exhaustion. Their hunger would kill more than the Redcoats’ rifles.
It was what the Prime Minister had wanted to hear, what he long expected. He would delay no longer. It was time for his planned offensive. Ireland was again about to be reminded of the futility of opposing England.
The fifteen thousand troops that he had promised Clarendon immediately set sail for Dublin. The Hussars with field artillery were sent to Mayo, five thousand troops were dispatched to Clonmel and another battalion to Limerick. The Enniskillen Dragoons were brought up from Newbridge to Dublin and two squadrons of Light Dragoons reinforced the garrison guarding Dublin Castle. The 75th Regiment, at the ready, bivouacked in nearby Phoenix Park. Moving columns of riflemen, light artillery and cavalry, able to move rapidly, were ready to scour the countryside. The fleet, anchored off Lisbon, was ordered to sail immediately to Cork and three warships, the Dragon, the Merlin and the Medusa were anchored off Waterford. Two more were within short-shelling range of Wexford. The Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo and of Irish birth from County Meath, volunteered to advise the government on further troop displacements.
The suspension of habeas corpus was rushed through Parliament. Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Drogheda were put under virtual martial law. Irish civilians were no longer allowed to own weapons of any kind and anyone found carrying one was summarily sentenced to one year’s hard labour. If a landowner or government official was murdered, all men in the surrounding district between the ages of sixteen and sixty were expected to actively assist the police in the arrest of the murderer. Anyone resisting or failing to cooperate would be sentenced, without trial, to a minimum of two years’ penal servitude. Over one hundred and twenty people were arrested on various charges on the first night.
There was worse news from O’Brien. He returned from France but not with the much hoped-for pledge of support in his pocket. The exuberant reign of liberalism and idealism there had been short-lived. Having deposed their king, the Republicans were now fighting each other and barricades had once again been erected in the streets of the capital. The Archbishop of Paris, crossing no man’s land in an attempt to mediate, had been shot dead.
The Vatican took notice. Pope Pius IX immediately issued a Papal Prescript forbidding his flock to involve themselves in matters of State and politics. In a separate edict he directly accused the Irish clergy of ‘giving provocation to murder.’ Father Kenyon, the Patriot Priest, was summoned by his bishop, severely reprimanded for his support of the Young Irelanders and suspended. That same day he came to Coburn and told him he was returning to his parish and would remain there, obediently silent.
‘I am condemned by my own Church, Daniel. I have no option. I cannot help you.’
‘Father, you have twenty parishes under your wing. That’s over a thousand men and boys and I need them all. You’ve given me a list of a dozen priests who you say will follow us. I need everyone one of them too. Most of all I need you.’
‘Do you not understand, Daniel? We priests are now forbidden by our Pope, our Holy Father, to involve ourselves. Do you expect me to disobey him? If I thought we had a glimmer of a chance, I would face the wrath of God for my love of Ireland. But I will not lead my people in an act of mass suicide. You talk of rebellion, but go to the towns and villages, raise the green flag and see how many gather round it. See how little spirit there is left out there.’
‘We can’t surrender now.’
‘This is not surrender. This is being wise. Go into hiding. Plan it better. Pick your time. You cannot beat the English now. They’re too strong and too many. They’re everywhere. Give way for a while.’
‘I’m damned if I will.’
‘You’re damned if you don’t. This is a bootless struggle.’
‘Then I’ll struggle on without you.’
‘You’re a fool, Daniel. You’ll be drowned in blood.’
‘Goodbye, Father.’
‘No! Not goodbye, not yet. I’ll be with you in the shadows watching and praying. That’s as much as I can do. The moment you are really in need, I’ll be there.’
Father Kenyon wet his forefinger and made the sign of the cross on Coburn’s forehead. Then he left for Tipperary to watch and wait and help feed his starving parishioners.
‘It is betrayal. He obeys his Italian master and deserts Ireland. Every priest is pulling away from us now.’
Coburn had summoned O’Brien and Meagher to meet him in Wexford. Kate sat, as usual, at Coburn’s side.
‘Are the priests that important to us?’ she asked.
‘By doing nothing they do us much harm.’
‘Maybe they’ll keep their silence.’
‘Silence too is damning.’
‘What do we do then, Daniel?’ Meagher asked.
‘Father Kenyon says we should bide our time. Wait another year.’
‘It will give us time to prepare ourselves better,’ said O’Brien.
‘People will be stronger then,’ Meagher added.
‘Only if there’s food,’ said O’Brien.
‘And what if there’s not?’ asked Daniel. ‘Do we fight the bloody British Empire with an army of skeletons?’
‘Our revolution then hangs on the potato,’ Meagher said.
‘It does,’ Coburn answered. ‘If this famine stretches further, and there’s not a decent crop next harvest, there’ll not be an Irishman alive left to fight.’
‘Then we have no choice,’ O’Brien said. ‘We do it now or we never will.’
‘Kate?’
‘You’ve always said that no one person can decide it, Daniel.’
‘Tell me then, all three of you. Do we go or do we not?’
There was a moment of silence as if each was afraid to be the first to lead in such a decision. To do nothing would be tantamount to surrender. But to fight and lose? It was O’Brien who spoke first.
‘We’ve come this far after a year of talking and a thousand meetings. If we go away from it now, will we ever return? It’s with God now. We rise and win. We rise and fall. There is only one honourable course.’
Meagher stood up. ‘I remember you saying, Daniel, that we must fan the embers of the fire. Leave it a year and that fire may well be out. I’m for it.’
Coburn clasped his hand. He looked across at Kate. She nodded.
‘So it is then,’ he said to them. ‘We do it now or we will never do it. Are we agreed?
‘We are agreed,’ they answered together.
‘Then send your men out and get the people on the streets. Target Kilkenny, Callan and Carrick. Have them out and the green flags flying. We’ll have two last rallies. Cashel is your town, William.’
‘Indeed, Daniel. It’s been O’Briens’ for five hundred years.’
‘And Waterford is yours Meagher. Arrange both meetings at the same time on the same night. Get out there and excite them. We have to make the people believe we can do it. Kate and I will come to both.’
‘Is that wise, Daniel?’ she asked. ‘The military will be there.’
‘So will our people and a thousand of them will give us cover enough. I have to be among them. They have to see me and hear me this one last time.’
‘And what then?’ Kate asked.
‘Then we’ll go at them ever so slowly, ever so carefully, attacking them in pockets. They are too big and we are too little to face them full on. But we’ll hit them in small places, again and again, biting them like a thousand thunderflies.’
‘Should we go for the railways?’ asked Meagher.
‘We will blow the lines,’ Coburn replied.
‘And the ships in Cork Harbour?’
‘All targets now.’
‘They’ll up their patrols,’ said Duffy.
‘We’ll make them helpless, however many troops they ship in.’
‘This will be a different kind of war, Daniel.’
‘It’s the only one we’re capable of fighting’, he replied. ‘We will be like the will-o’-the-wisp, moving at night, invisible by day. The English have their cannons but we have a better weapon. We have surprise, we have the unexpected. They have an army but we have patience and sufferance. Wars need not always be fought on battlefields; that much we have learnt. No soldier, no politician, no landowner will feel safe. They’ll ever be looking back over their shoulders. We will snipe at them, have them jumping at every shadow. It’s the fear that will get them, that little bit of constant terror. That’s how it’ll be. We’ll fight them with terror! We will be terrorists. They will never have had to fight an enemy like us before.’
The Rock of Cashel sat above the town, a towering mass of limestone crowned by Cormac’s chapel in the cathedral ruins. It was once the shrine of ancient Ireland and the stronghold, five hundred years before, of Brian Boru, King of Munster and William O’Brien’s ancestor. The moon, white and fully round, lit up the mass of stone, making it appear translucent. Below spread all of Tipperary.
O’Brien thought he had prepared his rally well. Messengers had been sent ahead days before with instructions to bring the townspeople to the foot of the rock, light watch fires and fly their green flags high on poles. He remembered his early time as a Young Irelander, those thrilling days of idealism and revolutionary fire. When he had dreamt of entering his ancestral home to be greeted by columns of sturdy men preparing for war. In his vision, carts would be ready laden with supplies, blacksmiths would be hammering shovels and hoes into weapons, old men would straighten their backs and women would throw off their aprons and together pull the wreckage from their tumbled homes and build barricades with the debris. Even the children would be little mercenaries come the day of the great insurrection. Such were once his dreams and now they were an age away.
He rode in at dusk with thirty men and halted within the ruins just below the peak of the Rock. He saw no watch fires, no sentinels. No green flags flew from poles, no candles flickered from any window. The town below him was silent and still. He beckoned the nearest rider.
‘Do you know O’Connor’s house?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘He has the big corner one on the square.’
‘I know it well.’
‘Go down on foot and be careful. If the military are there they are well hidden. Daniel will be coming any time now and it’s him they’ll be after. Find out from O’Connor what it’s all about. We’ll not move until you signal us with a light.’
They watched him go down. There was no sound, no shouts or calls from sentries. They waited.
‘Should one of us follow, sir?’
‘No!’ O’Brien answered. ‘If he’s caught, they’ll have you too. We’ll hold here longer.’
They moved deeper into the shadow of the chapel ruins.
‘They say there are tunnels under here, Mr O’Brien.’
‘And they’re right. A great maze of them. I know them well.’
‘We are safe here then? If the Redcoats come?’
‘We are,’ O’Brien answered. ‘Now let’s stop the talk.’ He was anxious. Soon Coburn would come riding in with Kate and they would be expecting crowds. They were to be their cordon of safety. Without them they would have no protection.
‘There’s something going on down there, Mr O’Brien.’
There was a single dim shaft of light from the centre of the town.
‘It’s in the square. Must be O’Connor’s. Our man’s made it, thank God. We’ll wait until he calls us.’
Suddenly there was commotion. More lights shone out. A man was shouting, then more shouts were heard and women were screaming. A shot was fired, then four, five, six muskets were firing together.
In the moonlight they saw soldiers running through the streets, some holding torches, spreading out from the town, left and right. At that moment O’Brien turned at the sound of hooves and saw Coburn and Kate galloping towards him. His own horse reared.
‘Get away, Daniel,’ he shouted. ‘Go off. We’re betrayed. They’ve been waiting for us.’
But Coburn did not turn. He brought his horse to a halt between the pillars of the chapel, out of the moonlight, and dismounted.
‘Are they around us, William?’
‘I don’t know. But there’s nobody above us yet. We’ve just come from the peak. Daniel, you must go while you’ve time.’
‘William, I have all the time I need now. There is no hurry any more.’
‘Why do you say that? What’s happened? What news of Waterford?’
‘I’ve heard nothing from Meagher.’
‘And Kilkenny?’
‘Empty except for Hussars.’
‘And Callan?’
‘Every door was shut. No one dared come out for fear of being shot. There was some fighting in Carrick but what could three hundred men with pikes do against three thousand Fusiliers. As soon as the shooting began they threw down their pikes and ran. The towns are silent. Youghal, Cork, Dungarvan, Limerick … They’ve all been scared off the streets. The army is everywhere. It’s over for us, William. Over, even before we’ve begun. All this time they’ve had their own people inside ours. They’ve been too clever for us.’
‘Mr O’Brien, sir, there are horsemen.’
A column of riders was coming towards them from the town, six Hussars in a single line. The leader was holding a white flag. The night air was clean and crystal clear and their tunics shone bright in the moonlight. They trotted slowly, almost casually, as if they knew there was no threat to them.
O’Brien held Coburn’s arm. ‘Daniel, go! Now! Kate, take him. It’s him they want.’
‘Daniel.’
‘No, Kate. We will not leave. They’ve not come to take me, at least not yet. Not with six men. They’ve come to talk and I think I can guess why.’
The riders halted some fifteen yards away. The leading officer lowered his flag as the others brought their horses level with his in a line. He shouted.
‘May I talk with Mr Daniel Coburn? I believe he is with you?’
‘He is here. Speak and he’ll listen.’
‘Is that you, Coburn?’
‘It is. What is it you want?
‘I must tell you first that Thomas Meagher has been arrested. By the time the few came to listen to him, he was already in chains. Your people tried to stop us and barricaded the bridge but with good sense he stood on his carriage and forbade them to try to rescue him. It was wise. We have three warships in the harbour ready to reduce that pretty town to rubble within minutes. He is presently on his way to Newgate Prison to join your man Duffy. Within the week they will be transported on the convict ship.’
‘I expected to hear no less,’ Coburn replied. ‘This is not our night.’
‘Yet it may well still be, sir. I am instructed to make you an offer. It seems that my government does not want you alive or dead. Neither you nor your mistress. My government fears that killing you by English bullets or hanging on English gallows might well incense people who until now have remained mostly subdued.’
‘Not subdued,’ Coburn shouted back. ‘Starved to submission.’
‘As you wish, sir. But the offer remains. Would you hear it?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It comes from the very highest office, from a gentleman whose word is final. To his mind, the Atlantic is more of a barrier to your mischief than the Irish Sea and he would prefer to export it elsewhere. There is a ship presently anchored on the Shannon soon to sail. That is our offer. Safe passage to America. I hope you agree that no pair of traitors can ever have expected such a generous settlement. And please do not expect help from the townspeople. My soldiers have orders to shoot on sight anyone who dares open their door.’
O’Brien leant towards Coburn and whispered, ‘We could shoot them now and be done with.’
Coburn did not reply to him. Instead, he looked to Kate. ‘Safe passage, Kate? To America. Is it a bargain? Nod if you think we should go the English way.’
Kate did not nod. She did not speak. Coburn waited. Kate shook her head.
Coburn urged his horse forward.
‘I see you are a captain and a very young one at that. Well, tell this to your gentleman, whose word you say is final. I reject his generous settlement. Tell him it settles nothing for me or my people, for such I believe them to be. You say you will shoot them if they come to help me and I believe you. You offer me free passage to America but I’ll not take it because I do not believe it to be an honest proposal. Nothing has ever come freely from you English except from the barrel of your muskets. Tell your master that we are defeated tonight but we will fight again another time and when we do, we will decide the place of it and the nature of it. You have been here for five hundred years but one day you will be gone and we shall still be here. Then you will understand why we hated you so much. And when you have gone we will hate you less and you will also know why.’
‘A pretty speech, sir, and I appreciate your dilemma. I do. But the offer stands. Refuse it and you are drafting your own death warrant and that of your mistress too. Must you do that to her? Reject this and you are a selfish fool.’
‘But not a trusting one.’
‘You have weapons?’
‘We are not fools enough to come here naked.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You are surrounded. Accept the offer. Agree and you and your mistress will be free to leave Ireland. Refuse and you both die.’
‘No, sir, we do not agree. Now go your way and we will attempt to go ours.’
The young captain urged his horse a few paces closer until he was only a length away. He lowered his voice as if he wanted only Coburn to hear.
‘You must listen to me, Coburn, listen to what I say. I will tell you my orders. If you will not surrender, I am to kill you and your mistress by whatever means. I am to burn your bodies and scatter your ashes. My masters want no martyrdom and no pilgrimage to your graves.’
‘Thank you,’ Coburn replied. ‘So we will be nowhere but everywhere. It’s a fitting tribute.’
The captain leant forward in his saddle and Coburn could now see his face clearly. How young he was! And how earnest he seemed. He hesitated, then spoke to Coburn again in a whisper.
‘It seems as if you jest, as if you think this is part of some game of ours. But I urge you to heed my warning, seriously. I do not want to kill you or your lady; do not ask me why. But leave here, Coburn. Now. I will give you time but it cannot be long. Once I am back with my men I must give the order to advance on you.’
‘Why? First you say you’ve come to kill us and now you urge us to leave, giving us time to escape. What kind of manoeuvre is this, what mischief? What is your trick?’
The young captain said nothing. To Coburn’s surprise, he saluted him and then backed his horse towards his men and as a troop, they all turned together and went slowly back down the hill.
As if to close a chapter, clouds suddenly swarmed over the moon and the Hussars disappeared into the blackness below.