Coburn slept through the day. He woke that evening. Declan was a shadow by his side.
‘Is Kate safe away, Declan?’
‘They’ve been gone six hours, Mr Daniel. Tomás will have her in the Limerick house by now.’
‘How long do we have here?’
‘Not long, sir. They’ll have more troops up by now.’
‘We must move, Declan.’
‘I’ll not shift you, Mr Daniel, until I have to. I know a bit about bleeding – I’ve seen enough of it – and you’re not ready yet to go anywhere. We must wait until the wound begins to close.’
‘How will you get us away?’
‘A little gap, a tiny escape hollowed out by men many years ago.’
‘Tell me, Declan, so I can ready myself.’
‘The Protestant landlord who owned these woods forbad the building of this church. But my people did build it and they hid it here, deep inside the thick of the trees so they could come to Mass. To get here and out again they dug a deep path and wove the saplings together over it so that it was like a tunnel. No stranger found it then, nor will they now. No soldier could ever know it’s there. That’s our way out, Mr Daniel.’
‘I’m in good hands, Declan.’
‘You are, sir. I’ll be with you all the way and hope I live long enough to tell the story one day.’
‘I’m thirsty, Declan.’
‘A good sign.’ He held a water jug to Coburn’s lips.
‘And hungry.’
‘Even better. Father Kenyon is bringing more food.’
‘What chance do we have?’
‘More than half a chance if Tomás brings the horses. He knows where to get them.’
They heard a noise outside, a rustle in the undergrowth. Declan drew his pistol. Then came Father Kenyon’s warning call, the thrice repeated call of the thrush. Declan put his pistol back down on the floor beside him. The priest entered carrying the bundle of food.
‘I’ve got this for you, Daniel. From Dr Joyce, God bless him. Some more of his wonder moss. And a little more opium to help you sleep.’
‘What of the soldiers, Father?’
‘Too many, Daniel. The town’s full of them and they’re spreading out across the lower slopes of the woods.’
‘Declan says Kate was away in good time.’
‘She was. Well away, Daniel. She’s in safe hands now.’
Mother O’Connor’s house in Limerick was close to the Shannon in a narrow alley off Bell Tavern Lane. From the top garret window Kate could see ships passing in and out of the docks and the endless flotilla of barges scurrying among them, carrying their cargoes to the mass of stevedores working on the warehouse quays. That morning she had watched a ship sailing downriver, westwards towards the Atlantic, its decks crammed with silent, motionless people. Not one of them waved goodbye to the Ireland.
She had been welcomed into the family and this was her third day. She had washed, fed and given the safe sanctuary of the room at the very top of the house.
Mother O’Connor, like her eldest son Declan, was strong and large with a shining dome of a forehead and a thin covering of ginger hair pulled back tight in a bun. Living so close to the docks, in a slum of strangers, she was careful and cautious, living by the maxim that nothing and no one was quite what they seemed.
From the day her husband had deserted her for a younger woman in Cashel, seven years before, she had lived on her wits and by them she had prospered. She knitted cotton jerkins for visiting seamen, sold jars of homemade illicit rum and lent small amounts of money at a pawnbroker’s rate of interest. She kept to herself and those who did business with her knew it was wise not to argue over trifles.
She lived cheek by jowl with inquisitive, suspicious and troublesome neighbours and it worried her that some might have seen Kate’s arrival. They would ask themselves who she was, this handsome young woman taking a room in the O’Connor’s house, with such clothes and a clean head of shining black hair. They might suspect she was a fugitive running from the constabulary or a wife from her husband. Whatever her secret, they knew there might well be some profit in discovering who she was and why she was hiding in such a place.
Mother O’Connor was anxious, which was not her nature.
‘I had thought of cutting off your hair, Kate, and giving you some old rags to live in. But if you’ve been seen, and I think maybe they’ve already spied you, that would only make them more suspicious. We just have to pray you won’t need to stay long here.’
‘When is Tomás leaving?’
‘Tonight. He’s taking some horses from the coach yard after dark. They’ll not be missed until morning. You mustn’t worry. Leave that to me. You’ll have your man with you by this time tomorrow.’
‘I’ve no way of thanking you. You are risking so much for us.’
‘And willingly so. I heard him speaking here in Limerick, not a year ago. I’ve never thought things could ever change in Ireland, but when I listened to him and all his fine words, I really did begin to think we were ready for something better.’
‘And now?’
‘It will come, my dear. I do believe it will come one day and I thank him for that. I thank you both.’
Tomás had picked the three sturdiest mares from the coach depot on the far side of Wellesley Bridge. He waited until the nightwatchman was long asleep and the horses had finished their oats. They made no fuss. He would have to ride them without saddles, but the rendezvous at Rathkea, where he would wait for Coburn and Declan, was barely twenty miles as the crow flies. It was no hardship to ride bareback.
He was close to his mother’s house when he saw movement in the shadows. There were no gas lamps and no moon, but there was no mistaking them. He had dodged too many soldiers in his time.
They were less than a hundred yards ahead, about a dozen, but he guessed there were more beyond the turning that led to the back of the house. They must know about Kate. Someone had informed. He led the horses further back and tied them to a bollard on the quayside. Then he began climbing.
When he reached the top of the first house, fifty feet up, he took off his boots and swung them round his neck. Then, stepping ever so gingerly, he went from roof to roof, treading the tiles as if they were made of porcelain, until he came to the roof he recognised as his mother’s. He leant over the guttering and tapped on the window of Kate’s garret.
‘Kate,’ he whispered.
He tapped again. ‘For Christ’s sake, Kate, wake up. The military is here. Open up. It’s me, Tomás.’
Kate lit her candle. Tomás’s face was looking at her through the window. She opened the fanlight and he squeezed himself into the room.
‘They’re on their way. I saw them. We’re done for, Kate, there’s no way out. And by Christ I had the horses ready too.’
Mother O’Connor knew what to expect before she heard the knocking. Alarm was no stranger. As she feared, the neighbours had told on her. A fist hit the door hard. A man shouted.
‘Open this door! I am an officer of the Queen’s army. Your house is surrounded by my men. Open and you’ll not be harmed.’
Mother O’Connor did what she had to do. The officer entered, a young man, so young to be a captain. A soldier stood either side of him. They held their rifles aimed at her.
‘You can put your guns away,’ she said. ‘There are no men in this house and you’ll have no cause to shoot at me.’
The young officer beckoned to his men and they lowered their weapons.
He said, ‘I have come to arrest a woman hiding in this house.’
‘There is no woman here but me, young man. This is a clean and respectable house so I’ll ask you to search elsewhere.’
‘I know she is here,’ the officer said. ‘Her name is Kathryn Macaulay. I demand you give her up.’
‘I’d give her to you if she was here but I’ve never heard of …’
‘My name is Kate and I go by no other name.’
Kate came into the room from the stairs, wrapped in a blanket.
The officer stepped towards her. ‘You are Kathryn Macaulay, daughter of the deceased Sir William Macaulay?’
‘I was his daughter once and I repeat, my name is Kate.’
‘Whatever name you prefer to go by, I am here to arrest you. You are charged with treason and I am to escort you to Newgate Prison in Dublin. You are to prepare yourself for that journey. And it is a long one.’
Mother O’Connor shouted at him. ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. You cannot take her all that way. Do you not see she is carrying a child? It will kill her and her baby too. Have pity. In the name of our God, let her stay awhile. Take her now and you will kill both of them.’
The officer looked stunned. He paused, seeming not to know what to say next. Then he mumbled his words.
‘I did not know this. I was not told. But I must obey my orders.’
‘May I dress?’ Kate asked.
‘Of course.’
The officer turned and ordered his men out of the house. But as Kate went to climb the stairs back to the garret, the officer closed the front door behind him, locked it and stepped back into the room.
‘Kate.’ He said it quietly. It was almost a whisper. ‘Come here, Kate. I have little time. My men will expect me to leave soon.’
‘You call me Kate? Why?’
She came back, hesitant, confused and stood close to Mother O’Connor.
‘Do you not recognise me?’ the young officer said. ‘It was I who came to you in Cashel with that offer of a pardon and free passage to America.’
‘It was dark,’ she replied. ‘I would not have known it was you. Why should it matter now?’
‘There was no such offer. It was deceit. A trap. They wanted a quiet killing of you both. If you had surrendered I had orders for my men to shoot you.’
‘This we knew. Of course we knew. But what are you saying? You come to arrest me and now you tell me this.’
‘Kate, you will find this hard to believe. But I have come to help you escape.’
‘Mother of God!’ Mother O’Connor collapsed on her stool.
Kate did not move.
‘You trick me,’ she said. ‘Why do you trick me?’
‘Look at me, Kate. Look at me. Do I not remind you of somebody, somebody you knew years ago, somebody who was your friend when you had none? Was he not your ally?’
‘You are not he. He is dead.’
‘What was his name, Kate? You cannot have forgotten him.’
‘I shall never forget him. His name was Shelley. Captain John Shelley. And I loved him as a brother.’
‘Kate, I am Richard Shelley, captain in the Hussars. I am John’s younger brother.’
She looked at him again, his pale face, his high cheekbones, his fair hair and his eyes, grey-green and full of sadness. And she knew it to be true.
Captain Shelley went to the front door and unlocked it.
‘Sergeant, bring all the men to the front and have them lined up in column for escort.’
‘Even the men at the back, sir?’
‘I said all the men to the front, sergeant. Now.’
He closed and locked the door again.
‘Kate, it is not by accident that I am here. I have worked on it, planned it. When I knew for sure that you were alive, I manoeuvred my way towards you again, planning it day by day, asking favours, bribing, switching regimental orders, doing everything that was necessary to make it certain that I would be put in charge, the one officer whose responsibility it was to hunt you down. Now I’ve found you, Kate, and I have made preparations. I have a way out for you and it will succeed, trust me.’
He looked to Mother O’Connor. ‘You will help her?’
‘I will, sir. Just as fast as these legs will carry me.’
‘Once my men are lined up outside, you will escape through the back alleys. You will make for the port. There is a ship there named Pegasus. She’s a three-masted square rigger, a white and black hull, moored on pier eighteen. Have you got that, Mother?’
‘I have, sir. Pegasus on pier eighteen. I know the way well enough.’
‘The master is Robert Howard, an Englishman, a good friend of mine and once my brother’s too. He knows all about you, Kate, and you’ll not want for anything. It sails tomorrow evening. Captain Howard will hide you until you’re safely up the Shannon beyond Loop Head and out to sea.’
Kate said, ‘I cannot go.’
‘You must. You have no choice, Kate. I have no choice. If you refuse I must take you to Dublin. Please, you must go.’
‘I must wait for Daniel.’
‘There is no time. Say yes! Now. Otherwise I must unlock this door and take you away.’
‘I promised I wouldn’t go without him.’
‘You are waiting in vain, Kate. We know where he is. The 49th has surrounded the wood he’s in and there’s no escape. They will burn him out if they have to. They will not stop until they have him, alive or dead. You must believe me’.
‘Why are you doing this for me? Tell me.’
‘Kate, you know why. They killed my brother. He wrote to me about you and what you had both planned to do together. He told me of the things he had seen here, all those terrible, terrible things. But I did not believe him, I could not. It seemed impossible that so much was happening, so many evils and the powerful in England were turning their heads from it. John was so disgusted by what he had seen, so full of despair and so desperate to help that he defied his own country, the country he loved. Then they executed him as a traitor, killed him in cold blood. Mown down by English rifles.
‘When my regiment was commissioned to come to Ireland I saw it all for myself. My very first duty in my first week was to protect a tumbling gang as they destroyed an entire village. I was helping them when I should have been protecting the families. I was only nineteen, fresh from England, and I saw it all, the screaming, the beatings, the children. I see it still and I cannot bear to see more.
‘Kate, if you do not go they will hang you and your child and God help me because I will be party to it and my brother’s ghost will haunt me until the day I die.’
Mother O’Connor would hear no more. She pushed Kate towards the stairs.
‘No Irish babe is going to die on English gallows. You will go, Kate, even if I have to carry you away myself and I’m bloody well capable of that. Now go, get your clothes and be quick with it.’
Kate said nothing. Then she nodded and quickly climbed the stairs.
‘What will happen to you, sir?’ Mother O’Connor asked the captain.
‘I don’t know. I have thought it all out so carefully, every little detail except for this, the final bit. Perhaps, inside me, I never thought it would come this far, that I’d never get to her in time. I’ll probably tell them you tricked me or some such story, but they’ll not believe me. So now I shall do what is expected of me, surrender to my sergeant and wait for my regiment to do what it must do. The punishment will be severe, perhaps even final. I’ll not expect mercy, nor should I. But it doesn’t matter now, it really doesn’t. Once Kate is away and Pegasus is out of the Shannon I shall at last be at peace with myself and with my brother. The debt will have been paid. He will have been avenged and all the wickedness wiped clean from both of us.’
Mother O’Connor said nothing more. She crossed herself, reached for his hand and kissed it.
Tomás, hidden in the garret, heard it all. When Kate had gone he sat still, listening for any movement by the officer below. Then he heard him unlock and open the front door. From his window, he saw him hand his pistol and sword to the sergeant. Then they marched him away.
The horses were still tethered where he’d left them. He whipped the lead mare and cantered away, not caring if the clatter of hooves on the cobbles as he crossed John’s Square wakened the constabulary. There was no one to stop him now. Soon he would be well away from the city and deep into the country he knew so well, there to find his brother and Daniel Coburn waiting in Rathkea. It was still some hours to dawn and he knew he had done well.
The tinker family in Rathkea brought them a jug of boiled tea and they drank it scalding hot. On the horizon, beyond the layer of heavy black clouds, a thin stream of sunlight caught the treetops that outlined the distant Bansha Woods.
‘Tell it again, Tomás. As you heard it.’
‘Mr Daniel, I’ve told you twice already.’
‘I want it again, word for word.’
‘The officer said it was called Pegasus, sailing from pier eighteen. I remember that clear enough.’
‘What time does the ship sail, Tomás?’
‘The officer didn’t say a time. Just in the evening.’
‘Did Kate say anything when she left?’
‘Not a word.’
‘But you’re certain she went for the ship?’
‘No, Mr Daniel, how can I be sure? But the officer said it had all been arranged. He said it was well planned and the English master would look after her.’
‘And the officer was marched away by his own men?’
‘Yes! I heard him tell my mother he would surrender to his regiment and that he would be punished. I saw them march him away under guard. I saw it clearly.’
‘Did he say why he did it?’
‘He said the English had killed his brother, but I couldn’t make out what that was all about.’
‘Did you hear the officer’s name?’
‘No. My mother was making such a fuss I couldn’t listen properly.’
‘Tomás. Close your eyes. See the dark. Think back. Listen again.’
Tomás did as he was told. Coburn waited.
‘Think, Tomás. Listen to the voices’.
‘I’m trying sir. But it’s all a jumble. I was scared. I thought they’d come up the stairs. I thought they’d have me.’
‘Ease yourself, Tomás. Slowly now. Remember. You are up the stairs, listening. The officer gives his name. Now, give me the name.’
Tomás pressed the palms of his hands hard over his eyes, slowly rocking his head from side to side.
Then, ‘It’s coming, Mr Daniel. I think it’s coming. I remember it sounded like … Kelly. Yes! That was it. It was Kelly.’
‘Tomás. No! Think again. Would an English officer have a name like Kelly?’
‘Well that’s what it sounded like. Or was it …?’
‘Shelley?’
‘Shelley? Christ! That’s the one, Mr Daniel. That’s the one for sure. It was Shelley. No mistaking.’
‘Thank you, Tomás. Now I understand. Now it makes sense. Captain Shelley joined the boys some years back and the English outlawed him as a traitor. When the boys raided the depot at Kinvara, the Redcoats were waiting. It was a trap. They killed the lot of them. It was Martineau that planned it.’
‘The one we hanged?’
‘Yes, Tomás. The one we hanged.’
He raised himself slowly onto his elbows. ‘Declan, get me to that ship. Get me to the Pegasus.’
‘You dared not go to Limerick.’
‘I know that. Find another way. There must be another way.’
‘There is only one other way, Mr Daniel.’
‘Tell me, Declan.’
‘There are the hookers, the sailing boats that bring the river pilots off the ships mid-channel of the Shannon, close to Inis Cathaigh’
‘Where’s that?’
‘The English call it Scattery Island, off the Clare coast.’
‘Declan, this is nonsense. Pegasus leaves Limerick this evening and Clare is days away. I’ll have bled myself dry with Kate already out in the Atlantic.’
‘I know that well enough, Mr Daniel. But when the sky’s as black as it is now and with a southerly wind blowing, the pilot boats will tie up on the Kerry shore. They leave their moorings a good two hours before the ships come level.’
‘How do we get on to a pilot boat?’
‘I’ve done it before, Mr Daniel. It’s a way of getting certain people out, people who wouldn’t dare leave under the eyes of the English in Limerick.’
‘How far must we go?’
‘Near to Ballylongford, about fifty miles from here, maybe more, and it’s rough going, sir.’
‘Then that’s where we go, Declan, now!’
‘But if your bleeding starts again, Mr Daniel, how far can you ride?’
‘Never mind. I’ll make it, Declan. Just get me to it.’
‘I will, sir. I will get you there.’
Father Kenyon arrived with oatcakes, a fresh bundle of moss and a small bottle of laudanum.
‘This is goodbye then, Daniel. Did we ever think it could end like this?’
‘No, Father. We once dreamt of a different ending. Can you tell me why it had to be this way?’
‘No, I cannot. Nor can any one of us. But everything that is done is done for a reason, whether men realise it or not.’
‘Even the famine?’
‘Even the famine. There is a purpose, Daniel, somewhere there is always a purpose, though I do not pretend to know what it is. Each time I anoint a dying child, or give my blessing to a good and decent man dying, I ask God, “Why?” And He never answers. It is the greatest test of my faith.’
‘Faith in a God that condemns us to this. No, Father. We are abandoned people, as helpless as thistledown in the wind.’
‘But how is that, Daniel, since thistledown’s purpose is to carry its seed? All we can do is to wait for the seed to settle and prosper.’
‘You hoped it was me.’
‘Yes! We hoped it was you.’
‘Must I blame myself?’
‘There is no blame.’
‘It was the people who betrayed us.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the priest. ‘Who are you to condemn them? Shouldn’t we have known that a belly empty of food has no fight in it either?’
‘We came to them too late.’
‘Or maybe too early.’
‘This was not the moment to turn history and I was blind to it.’
‘Oh, Daniel! Why are men so severe with themselves? Like two sides of a coin, always at odds. Comfort yourself. You were not cast as the Great Patriot. You are a fighter and we know that the great men sit at the rear. You must now let others do the fighting and the dying.’
‘You were ever the optimist, Father.’
‘Yes! Daniel. Optimism and faith. They live together.‘
‘God grant you survive.’
‘We will. We shall survive the famine, we will outlive the fever and finally outrun the English. One day they’ll be gone and we will still be here and our children will live to see our land prosper. Have no fear. This is not the end by any means. The winner will always be he who refuses to lose. And remember my words, remember them when you think of us. Never regret what is gone, Daniel. The past is just a prologue.’
‘I will remember, Father. They are wise words’.
Father Kenyon knelt by Coburn’s side, leant down and kissed his forehead. Then he went quickly to the door, turned and crossed himself.
‘God speed you to the New World, Daniel, and take the love of Ireland with you.’
They stopped many times. A fit horseman might canter fifty miles cross-country in six hours with a stop or two. But Coburn was half drugged on laudanum, without stirrups and with only sacking as his saddle. He could not trot his mare, every step jarred his bones, every stumble threatened to break open his wound. They stopped at streams for water and rest the horses but Coburn would not have them stop long, and urged Declan to go on. The wind cut his face and his wound burnt as if the bandages were on fire. But he thought only of her, knowing that every hour of pain brought her nearer.
It was almost dark when they came to the shores of Ballylongford. A sharp wind carried a cold drizzle from the sea and, behind it, the threat of fog. A line of oil lamps lit up a long, narrow wooden jetty where half a dozen small boats were tied up. Men sat smoking pipes, huddled beneath a shelter of an old discarded sail.
Declan shouted to them.
‘Which one of you is meeting the ship Pegasus tonight?’
‘Who is it who wants to know?’
Declan went closer to the man who had answered.
‘Is it you?’
‘It is. What is it of yours?’
‘Because we’re coming with you.’
‘You are not. You have no authority.’
‘See here, friend. Is my pistol authority enough? Tell me, which is it to be?’
Within the half hour they had lifted Coburn into the boat and tucked him under the small fo’c’sle wrapped in a blanket and sheltered him from the spray with a tarpaulin cover. His wound was seeping blood. Declan took molten candlewax from the lanterns and, rolling it in his palms until it was warm and supple, smeared it, layer upon layer, across the bandage until the dressing was tight. Soon the bleeding stopped.
‘You have much pain, Mr Daniel?’
‘I feel nothing, Declan.’
‘Be brave with it, sir. We are at last on our way.’
It began to rain hard and the wind smacked at the sails as the helmsman tacked slowly out towards mid-channel.
Declan shouted to him above the wind.
‘When will we sight her mast light?’
‘You’ll not see it yet,’ he answered. ‘Not for a while.’
‘How will you know it’s her?’
‘I’ve been ferrying pilots on this river for over forty years and I can tell a ship by the smell of her. I’ll give you warning when I sight her. And you’ll not need the pistol now. I know who it is you are carrying and I’ve much respect for him and I can see he’s very sick. The waters are rough, it’s wind against tide and it’s rising but I’ll do my best to keep it easy. Tuck that tarpaulin tighter. Keep him warm and keep the water off him.’
Declan held the lantern higher to the man’s face.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Brennan.’
‘When this is all over, Brennan, people will remember you.’
‘It’s a small part I’m playing but I’ll have a hell of story to tell.’
‘How will we get him aboard the ship?’
‘The master will turn into wind and we’ll heave to on the lee side. The water will be steadier there for the pilot to get clear. It will not be easy but there’ll be plenty of muscle to haul him up. You must trust me.’
‘I trust you,’ said Declan.
The helmsman tacked his boat deeper into the blackness that was the Shannon, without compass, without stars or river lights to guide him, sometimes running with the wind, sometimes fighting it, but all the time getting closer to his rendezvous with the great sailing ship. The rigging shrieked in the wind, the short mast bent under the blow and they stood ankle-deep in bilge water. The boat twisted with the force of the waves, rising on a crest and then plunging down into the trough in great dizzying sweeps with the white huge back breakers rising behind it. Declan spread his large body over the tarpaulin covering Coburn to protect him from the storm.
Then he heard the helmsman shouting. He was pointing out beyond the bow and as the boat rose again, there, cutting through the rain and spray, Declan glimpsed the glistening black hull and white sails of Pegasus.
She stood on the deck, shivering in the cold heavy sea fog. It hid the coast from her, teasing her, tormenting her, vague outlines of a land she would never to see again. The salt from the spray mixed with the salt of her tears and she turned away from the wind and wiped her eyes.
Along the shining deck she saw the prow climbing and dipping, ploughing through the waves, torrents of water gushing through the scuppers. She knew she was looking west, towards the vast Atlantic Ocean, west to Canada and America, places that promised her safety, a new life for herself and the child she would bear in the New World. And in return, there would be emptiness, the dread of a lifetime of loneliness, praying for the tides and the winds and another ship to bring him to her.
She heard the moan of a fog horn ahead and men shouting. Were they familiar voices she was so desperate to hear? She heard the thud as the rope ladder hit the hull’s side. The river pilot was leaving. She saw the glow of a lantern held on a pole high above the gunwales. As the bow parted the fog, she saw a small boat with a single sail and the shapes of men beneath tarpaulins.
‘Another’s coming aboard.’ She heard the shout above the roar of the wind. She strained to see. She might even have believed it was him. She sighed and wept at her fantasy and recited out loud yet again the words of the poem she had heard for the first time from a little boy in a land near dying.
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
I could kneel all night in prayer
To heal your many ills,
My Dark Rosaleen.
She closed her eyes and turned her head once more into the wind. When she opened them again, Ireland was already a shadow.
Sebec Lake
Maine County
So ends their story as told to me. It was Ireland that first called them together, Ireland that forged them into one and delivered them to the New World, where they lived long and happily, as I can vouch. Daniel and Kate Coburn are buried here in Maine, side by side in the foothills of the Appalachians. Forever in America and I thank God for it.
– THE END –