On Vinegar Hill, the council of war that had made a cauldron of bad temper and ill-will under the canopy of Roche’s tent, continued with all the vehemence of a faction fight. The graceless bawling that had threatened to destroy the entire enterprise had died down and Roche and Fr Murphy had placed at least temporary rein on the emotions of their captains. The round table still remained surrounded by the chief commanders whilst about them the captains and chiefs of the parishes and townlands made another, more sullen ring. The air was crackling with tension and barely-restrained ire as arguments and proposals were hurled across the tent. For nearly two hours now the conclave had been in session and still was no closer to consensus. Men came forward to show the bubbled scars of pitchcappings and claimed that the entire army should march in haste to deliver retribution on the heads of those who perpetrated it. Others claimed they should avenge the dead of Carnew and Dunlavin by straightaway adding those dens of Orange iniquity to the list of towns set to accompany ravaged Enniscorthy. On and on it went, as men with no concept of military strategy were given free hand to throw whatever half-baked conceits or personal grudges they harboured into the general melting pot.
‘This is ridiculous,’ stated Dan bluntly.
‘A waste of time,’ added Miles Byrne.
It was at this moment, when Dan felt that no direction would ever be found and that the vast army camped outside would surely fragment and drift away, that a growing uproar penetrated the walls of the tent. The din intensified as one of the men guarding the tent’s entrance pushed the canvas flap aside and called, ‘General Roche, you should see this.’
‘Adjourned, for the moment, gentlemen,’ stated Roche flatly, sweat glistening on his upper lip and matting his sideburns to his cheeks.’
At his words the captains, grumbling and muttering amongst themselves, filed out.
Dan and Miles blinked in the sudden effulgence and raised their hands to shield their eyes. They scanned the lower slopes to ascertain what might be prompting such a happy swell of noise. For happy it was, with no sense of panic or alarm about it. Just a multitude of voices raised in good cheer.
Then, over the shoulder of hill to the south, the first small, ragged figure of a crowd of people came walking lightly, his young face aglow and calling out, ‘Edward Fitzgerald! It’s Edward Fitzgerald! He’s escaped and come back to us!’
Behind the boy, surrounded by a flux of admiring forms, rode two men. One was older, with ascetic features and a weak chin, dressed in a once-lavish jacket that had seen better days. The other was splendidly mounted and dressed, wearing a gentleman’s tricorn and a frock coat that seemed brand-new, stained only here and there with the dust of his journey. He waved to people as he jogged his mount forward, smiling and gracious as a lord.
At a little distance from the gathered leaders the crowd fell away, laughing and joking and crying, ‘Three cheers for Lord Edward and Mr Colclough!’ as though they were returning friends or long-lost relatives.
Alone, the two horsemen covered the last twenty yards of stony ground and, without their flotilla of admirers, their faces assumed a much graver aspect. As Dan watched, Edward Fitzgerald, seemingly without thinking, reached down to where excited hands had twined a green ribbon into his horse’s mane. Unconsciously he loosed the piece of fabric and it floated elegantly to the ground to be trampled by his mount’s heavy stride.
Dan frowned, troubled.
Fitzgerald and Colclough dismounted in front of the assembled captains and immediately Edward Roche rushed to shake their hands. ‘By God, I am happy to see you! What of Harvey?’ he gushed.
Fitzgerald was silent, his eyes roving from one captain to the next, seemingly transfixed by the sheer number of men that had flooded to the United banner.
Colclough however, coughed politely and said, ‘Bagenal is unfortunately still detained at Wexford Gaol.’
‘Come,’ instructed Roche. ‘Sit with us and tell us how you executed your escape. I must say, you look in tolerable good health for a prisoner of the military.’
Colclough and Fitzgerald exchanged awkward looks but followed Roche as he led them into the tent. The other captains trailed after, the ones who knew Fitzgerald happily informing the others that now, with ‘Lord Edward’ to lead them, they would storm Dublin Castle itself.
‘There’s something not quite right here,’ Dan muttered to Miles Byrne.
Byrne’s young face was twisted around a fretful scowl. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the condemned expression on Fitzgerald’s face. He is one of the most active and able gentlemen that I am acquainted with but to see him so cowed makes a mockery of everything I know him to be.’
Dan lifted the tent flap, the canvas warm and rough, like a callus, to the touch, and allowed Byrne to go ahead of him. Inside, the tent was filled with a downy quiet that seemed to smother all noise at its conception. The colonels and General Roche were sitting at the round table with the captains spread out around the walls. Every eye was latched onto Edward Fitzgerald where he sat with Colclough, a little apart from the other leaders. Every eye except Anthony Perry’s, who instead directed his gaze into the blank lustre of the table top as though lost in his own thoughts.
Fitzgerald coughed, paused, swallowed drily and then rubbed the heel of his palms across his closed eyes.
Roche was frowning now and he urged, ‘Come on, Edward. Out with it.’
Fitzgerald sighed and with a grimace said, ‘The numbers on this hill surpass my wildest dreams of what a United Army might look like in the field and your triumphs at the Harrow, Oulart and Enniscorthy are on the tongue of every person that we have encountered from here to Wexford. I had not hoped that we would be so successful and so soon.’
‘Why then, with a victorious army before you, do you seem so melancholy?’ asked Fr Murphy suspiciously.
Fitzgerald cast his gaze aloft in despair and moaned, ‘Because we are alone. Because the rest of the country is subdued.’
An outburst of anger and dismay flared through the gathered leaders before Roche silenced all by surging to his feet.
‘How can you say that?’ he demanded. ‘How could you possibly know?’
‘Colonel Maxwell who now commands Wexford Town with over a thousand men swore to me it was so.’
‘Lies!’ spat Fr Murphy, rising to stand with Roche. ‘Damned lies, spawned to dilute our spirit and cool the fire of our purpose.’
Roche was leaning on the table, glaring at the men before him with a terrible discernment. ‘They sent you here, didn’t they?’ he asked, jabbing a thick finger first at Colcloough and then at Fitzgerald. ‘This Maxwell sent you here to ask for our surrender. And you consented to be his pigeon. For shame, gentlemen!’
Colclough lowered his eyes, unable to meet Roche’s glare, but Fitzgerald’s face remained stoic and determined.
‘They sent us here with terms, Edward,’ explained Fitzgerald. ‘If you disband and go home now the rank and file along with their families and property will be spared. Otherwise, most terrible war will be unleashed upon every man woman and child in the county.’
At these words a rolling thunder of fury and indignation rumbled through every one of the gathered captains. It was Miles Byrne’s young voice, however, that cut through the rumbling anger and belled forth strong and clear, ringing with his irrepressible self-assurance.
‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the sheer gall of you to express such sentiments astounds me and beggars belief. Are you aware of the absurdity of telling a victorious army to disperse and go to their homes, and there wait until they might be shot in detail?
‘What these “terms”, and I would hesitate to put such a name on what amounts to mere doggerel, serve to indicate is how panic-struck the garrison of Wexford Town really is.’
A general murmur of agreement rippled about the tent at Byrne’s words.
‘If we were to descend on Wexford swiftly, like the wrath of God Himself, we must surely take the town and all its supplies,’ stated Fr Murphy hammering the table with his fist.
Another captain, unknown to Dan and wearing an ivory cravat, most likely stolen from some gentleman’s wardrobe and badly knotted about his own grimy throat, roared in approval, ‘I’m for that! We should drive them across the water to Wales!’
A great cheer went up from the gathering at this and, as Dan watched, cohesion and accord began to gel men together who had, only minutes before, been about to fling the entire United Irish enterprise into oblivion rather than have their individual vendettas thwarted. Hands were shaken that before had been balled into fists and men were suddenly galvanised and eager, anxious to be on the road to Wexford Town.
Amongst them, however, John Hay and William Barker frowned and said nothing. Their advice and their good sense had been washed away on a flood tide of enthusiasm and anger. The terms offered by Maxwell had pricked the leadership’s pride and given direction to all the pent-up frustration and energy that had moments before been without any obvious outlet.
Edward Fitzgerald and John Henry Colclough watched in awe and despair as the men they had sought to protect from an all-out war were now set inflexibly upon that very path. The guilt that Fitzgerald felt in the pit of his stomach was like something alive and squirming.
Outside Roche’s tent, Colclough was unceremoniously dumped into his saddle. All about and on the slopes sweeping down to where Enniscorthy smouldered, spitting and coughing like a dying man, corps of insurgents were raising banners and cries went soaring into the air: ‘Bargy men to your colours!’ and ‘Shelmalier men, to me!’ Over and over the calls rang out, multiplying and re-echoing until Vinegar Hill was a swarming mass of men coming together by company and forming about the emerald banners of their own parish and barony.
Colclough looked about him in mingled pride and fear and then turned to Edward Roche who stood at his horse’s head. ‘Are you sure you wish me to communicate those exact words?’
Roche nodded deliberately, just once, his chin ducking into the flesh of his jowls and said, ‘Those exact words. Tell Maxwell that as long as he holds Harvey, then we keep Fitzgerald and that no terms on his part will be listened to other than the complete surrender of the town.’
Colclough nodded, took one last look as the vast camp mobilising about him and replied, ‘As you wish, General.’
Then he was gone, spurring his horse southward toward Wexford, dust and flies left hanging in his wake.
Dan watched the man thunder away and considered how simple, once a purpose had been decided upon, it had been to marshal the men and delegate duties. Within minutes, committees had been established to oversee the supply and welfare of the men. A semblance of order was to be restored to the desolate hell that Enniscorthy had become and Vinegar Hill was to be the main depot and rallying point for all United forces. William Barker was elected to oversee the repair and defence of the town that he loved and had grown up in. Officers from each parish, with a small cohort of pikemen each, were immediately tasked with providing supplies and provisions for the fighting men. The swollen bulk of Vinegar Hill was to become the main reservoir of food, with the women and children remaining to bake bread and cook the meat. The garrison at Enniscorthy under Barker was to be replenished and relieved at regular intervals by men newly arrived at the camp. Vinegar Hill was to become a symbol of abstract defiance, a place not just of upheaval but of organisation and self-reliance as well. A new order was being born; bloodied and bawling in the sunlight.
Dan was pleased that Roche and Murphy had been at pains to order Thomas Dixon and his men to join the long column facing south. The two leaders had separated Dixon and his fellow zealot, Luke Byrne, by virtue of the fact that they belonged to separate corps. Byrne was left behind on the hill, stewing in chagrin, whilst Dixon stood grumbling at the head of his men, craning his neck back towards the windmill and the prisoners within.
Elizabeth, however, was to prove an entirely more difficult problem. She stood outside their little den of blanket and gorse, arms akimbo and eyes flashing.
‘Don’t be such a fool, Daniel Banville,’ was her response to his request that she remain at Enniscorthy.
‘Elizabeth,’ he said, infuriated, ‘why must you be so stubborn?’
Her eyes widened at this and her lips tightened with anger. ‘And why must you be such a fuddy-duddy?’
Tom, who was busying himself with buckling on sword and pistols, sniggered derisively.
Dan ignored him and pleaded with Elizabeth, ‘This might very well prove to be a most bloody encounter. There are over a thousand troops at Wexford and here, at least, Mr Barker shall have crews of men rebuilding the town. You shall be safe here amongst the women.’
‘No, I shan’t,’ she replied. ‘Half the women here will not even look at me let alone afford me any assistance or kind words. I am coming with you Daniel and I am not for turning on this.’
Dan knew it was pointless to argue further.
Tom then stood and pointed, his expression curdled into a snarl. ‘That horrible termagant is coming too, it seems.’
Down the slope towards the fighting men, the bloated form of the questioning woman from the other day stumped through the gorse and long grass. Her lumpen arms were enfolded about a bundle of clothes and a cooking pot swung by a length of twine from one meaty shoulder. Her gaze swept the hillside in half-lidded disdain as though to offer challenge to the world, as though she were at eternal war with life itself.
As she passed the assembling column of rebels, which now stretched from Enniscorthy to more than a mile beyond its southern boundary, she paused and, bending all of her great bulk forward, she kissed Thomas Dixon on the cheek.
‘Well, glory be to God,’ exclaimed an astounded Dan. ‘Will you look at that.’
‘Shite will always attract flies,’ commented Tom, for which he received a chiding slap on the arm from Elizabeth.
With everything arranged as best they could, the little group moved down into the valley amidst a horde of others, men leaping over hummocks, pikes in hand, hurrying to their companies. As they reached the foot of the hill, Elizabeth made to turn right, intending to join the still numerous flock of women and children who had decided to remain with the column rather than stay in the relative safety of Enniscorthy and its environs. As she took her first step away from him, Dan seized her by the shoulder, turned her and kissed her passionately. Tom directed his gaze downward and scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot.
‘If Dixon can get a kiss before marching off in the hot sun,’ Dan said rather breathlessly, ‘then I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’
Elizabeth stared up at him with a stunned expression, her eyes somewhat dazed, her mouth slack. She swallowed once and replied, ‘Mr Banville, how indecorous of you.’
With that, she adjusted her battered sun-bonnet and made her way off to the rear.
Laughing, Dan and Tom strode quickly to take their place at the head of the Castletown men. A green standard, stitched with harps and shamrocks and emblazoned with the word ‘Liberty’, hung from a banner pole above their front rank. The banner man was a young farmer who recognised them immediately. ‘Captain Banville,’ he greeted with a nod. ‘Young Mr Banville. I hope you are well.’
Tom stared at the man in frank surprise and said, ‘Jim Kehoe! And I thought you were a peaceable young fellow with no interest in anything except barley and potatoes, and you a United Irishman?’
Kehoe nodded, ‘That I am. Me and Captain Banville took the oath at the same time, didn’t we Captain Banville?’
‘That we did, Jim,’ said Dan. ‘Now stop calling me “Captain”.’
Tom was shaking his head, flummoxed. ‘Am I the only one in the whole parish who wasn’t a United man?’ he asked.
Dan patted his brother on the back, a wide smile breaking across his broad features, ‘You know, I think you may very well have been.’
The minutes dragged on as stragglers were rounded up and added to the ever-growing multitude of pike- and gunsmen. The column was now a formidable thing of vast numbers and honed steel. At its core were six thousand men who had stormed a principal town and wrested it from a well-armed garrison. At its core was a fearless determination.
And yet Tom was troubled.
In spite of the rebel army’s successes thus far, in spite of its burgeoning numbers, there was a blank where there should have been something vital. The lack of cannon, cavalry and ready supplies of ammunition were unfortunate, and to Tom, insurmountable – but something else was dragging a saw blade across his nerves. The prevarication shown by the leadership over the best course of action, the arguments and the parochialism as related by Dan did not bode well for the future. John Hay and William Barker had been forgotten in the rush to exterminate an already beaten army, huddling and afraid in Wexford Town.
New Ross, he thought. We should be marching on New Ross.
At length a bugle sounded from the vanguard of the rebel army and corps after corps of men began the march to Wexford Town. Above the column, pikes and pole-arms made a rattling forest of needling black, swaying and weaving in rhythm to the men’s gait. Each pike head glistened where oil and whetstones had done their work, polishing the blade and hook and sharpening their lethal edge. Thousand upon thousand, rank on rank, the United Irish Army snaked along the road, men binding neckerchiefs about their noses and mouths against the dust of their passing.
Out ahead, Miles Byrne and his Monaseed contingent had taken up the familiar role of vedette for the mass of fighting men behind. They ranged along the road and criss-crossed the fields to either side but no word of ambuscade or counter-attack came back from them.
To the army’s right, the River Slaney ploughed lazily along, languid in the afternoon heat. On its wrinkled surface, a family of swans sailed proudly, their pristine white elegance balanced upon the pale smear of their own reflections. Abandoned gabbards and sand cots were left beached against its banks, a reminder of peaceful times, seemingly gone forever.
Enniscorthy soon became only a smoking memory behind a turn in the road and still they marched, feet grinding the earth in a long, harsh continuous growl. No one marched in step and it was all the men could do to keep each individual corps from splintering and merging with the one behind. Every so often, Roche or either of the Fr Murphys would come riding along the flanks, exhorting the men and chivvying along those inclined to dawdle.
Twilight was beginning to purple the horizon as the rebel army tramped across Ferrycarrig Bridge, two miles west of Wexford Town. Along the march no sign of soldiers, cavalry or civilians had been seen. It was as though the whole world had been gutted. At Ferrycarrig, the head of the column veered not east towards Wexford Town but rather southwest, towards the hulking, dusky, heather-bruised mass of Forth Mountain. They passed beneath the old Norman watchtower, venerable and grizzled on its granite tor and then swung right.
Dan was confused. ‘Why are we making for another campsite?’ he wondered aloud.
‘I cannot fathom,’ answered Tom. ‘I do not see why we should not sweep into the town under cover of darkness and carry the place by storm. This, to me, smacks of another needless waste of time. The men are fresh, they have rested and eaten well all day.’
‘Perhaps Fitzgerald has given them cause to delay?’ ventured Dan.
‘Perhaps Fitzgerald should be flogged and sent back to the garrison that he professes such intimacy with,’ replied Tom acidly.
Dan scowled at him but said nothing.
In the gathering folds of darkness Roche and Fr Murphy led them up the bordering slope and through the surrounding bracken and briar. Above them, like blots of ink against the red gouts spreading across the sky, the outcropping of the Three Rocks loomed ominously. Underneath these fists of rock and dry moss the rebel army spread out on the swathe of heather and made what shelter they could from blankets and swatches of canvas. The road below was lost behind the uneven swelling of the mountain’s slope and above them there was only the vast, gemmed cloak of the night.
Tom, Dan and Elizabeth sat out in the open, cushioned on a feathery mattress of heather, and watched the men and women around them construct tents and lean-tos, using the hafts of pikes for scaffolding. No fires were lit; orders had been passed down that light of any kind was to be immediately extinguished. Nevertheless, here and there, men who had never bowed to authority in all their days surreptitiously sucked on glowing pipes.
Tom was about to say something, to caution Dan about the danger posed by fire amidst the tinder-dry undergrowth, but Dan raised a hand, cutting him off.
‘Let them,’ the elder Banville whispered. ‘They have seen and sacrificed enough to allow them the simple pleasure of a bowl of tobacco of an evening.’
Tom grunted but still felt the need to add, ‘If they set fire to the hillside around us or give warning to any eagle-eyed yeo, then all their sacrifice will be for naught.’
Elizabeth yawned and held Dan closely to her and on her face a contented smile played at the bow of her mouth. ‘You worry too much,’ she said.
The following morning broke across Wexford Town like a gentle wave. A mackerel sky of dappled, sea-blown cloud gaped overhead and seemed to widen and deepen as the light gradually grew.
The Colonels Maxwell and Foote stood tiredly on the quays and looked out across Wexford Harbour where a freshening breeze tossed the waves into saw-edged flux. Gulls, angular and screaming, scudded across the combers, delighting in the toss and tumble of the wind. The flat, wooden thrust of Wexford Bridge lanced out across the water to terminate on the East Shelmalier shoreline opposite; a long, tarred, skeletal arm clawing off into the distance. About the toll house sitting on this northern end of the bridge, a large group of people had gathered. Unlike the loyalist refugees of the past few days, these people made no effort to cross the water or make for the town. Instead, they milled about on the wave-sluiced shore and busied themselves ransacking the abandoned toll booth. Foote fancied that he could hear glass breaking, delicate and almost musical.
Behind the two weary officers was a small detachment of equally weary North Corks. Foote regarded them with eyes that felt filmed with sand and then turned to Maxwell.
‘Should we order those vagabonds on the bridge to disperse?’
Maxwell exhaled heavily and rubbed his chin with a gloved hand. The rasping sound the leather made against the stubble of his sprouting beard startled him and he looked down at his palm in surprise. Slowly, he removed the glove, smoothed his moustaches and replied deliberately, ‘No.’
Replacing the glove and flexing his fingers within he explained, ‘With those thousands of ruffians encamped at the Three Rocks, those people yonder are most likely a ruse to split our forces. They cannot cross the bridge without being cut to pieces by our musket shot and they cannot do any mischief to us from so great a distance.’
‘They can cut us off from any retreat northward,’ said Foote cautiously, his eyes flickering to his superior and away again like midges across water.
‘If we do abandon the town,’ answered Maxwell, ‘it will be to make for the fort of Duncannon to the south.’
He paused and looked to the west, though the crowding buildings of the busy port blocked any view of the countryside beyond. He squinted at the sky then and took a gold watch from out of his waistcoat pocket. In the dawn the inscription, With all my love, A.M., was swilled with sepia, the letters curling darkly against the bright metal.
‘Fawcett should be here,’ he growled angrily. ‘What is keeping him?’
Foote considered for a moment before saying, ‘When that messenger, Sutton, arrived in from Fawcett just an hour ago he related that he had grave difficulty avoiding the mass of banditti on the slopes of Forth Mountain. He was but one man alone. Fawcett’s column must surely number in the hundreds and must find it impossible to negotiate the countryside around the rebels without drawing them down upon him.’
Maxwell watched the crowd on the far bank of the harbour mill and swirl in agitated bursts of movement. He stood for a moment in silence before musing, ‘If we were to fix the rebels in place, then that would surely allow Fawcett to get through.’
Foote frowned at his commanding officer, his face anxious, ‘Sir, that would necessitate leading a large body of men out through John Street and into open country. The rebel camp at the Three Rocks is said to number over ten thousand. If they were to fall all at once upon the men I am sure that we must come out the worst of it. Captain Snowe was, last night, most vociferous in his opposition to any engagement with them without at least parity of numbers or cavalry in support.’
Maxwell sniffed derisively, ‘I feel Captain Snowe has been most abominably unmanned by his defeat at Enniscorthy. We have Boyd’s cavalry along with Captain Cox’s two hundred horse from Taghmon. We should be able to outflank the rebel position and keep them perched amongst the heather and stones.’
‘And if Fawcett still cannot get through, or if the rebels fall on us like a wolf on the fold, what then?’ wondered Foote.
Maxwell smiled grimly, ‘That will not happen. If the rebels were possessed of the intrepidity they pretend to, they would have come close on the heels of Colclough and forced us to give battle immediately. Instead, they dally. I think that three hundred troops and two hundred cavalry should be enough to cool any rebellious fervour. With Fawcett at their back I am sure that they must be positively bamboozled.’
Foote nodded contemplatively before stating, ‘I believe you should have Mr Watson ride with the men. His experience in fighting the colonists might be of great value in our current predicament.’
‘Capital idea,’ agreed Maxwell, his mood visibly lifting and the fatigue that dulled his eyes seemingly fleeing with the dawn. ‘I do believe that our position might not be as dire as first we thought.’
Foote eyed him dubiously. ‘Sir,’ he said.
The same dawn that found Maxwell and Foote standing on the Wexford quays illuminated the Three Rocks in shades of dove-grey. Through the bracken and ferns, leaping over briar and knuckled stone, a figure came running through the cold morning light. He scrambled up the western slope of the hill and knifed between snoring bundles of blankets and ragged tents whose canvas coverings were beginning to snap and rumple in a mounting breeze. The man’s breath was coming in gasps now and he hauled himself toward the summit by balling his fists amongst the dew-slick undergrowth and pumping the burning muscles of his legs. At the crest of Forth Mountain, Roche’s tent hulked against the brightening sky with the two banners rippling out from their poles, the green and the black, the harp and the chasuble.
The pikeman sitting at guard outside the tent’s entrance rose at the man’s approach and staring hard into the grainy dawning he called in greeting, ‘Thomas Cloney! What’s a Bantry boy like you doing running around so early. Sure, aren’t youse late for everything?’
Then the man took in Cloney’s breathless face, his bracken-soaked clothes and asked bleakly, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I may speak with General Roche,’ Cloney panted, his hands on his knees. ‘There’s soldiers coming from the west. They’re bringing cannon.’
Minutes later and Edward Roche was hurriedly tucking his shirt into his buff-coloured breeches and asking, ‘What would you have us do, Father?’
Fr John Murphy was also frantically striving to dress himself in the grey twilight of the tent’s interior. He pulled on his heavy brogues and replied, ‘I am not a military man, Mr Roche, and know nothing of artillery but I do know that if we allow them to come close enough to unleash shot and shell then it will go badly for a lot of the men out there.’
Sitting up from where he lay swaddled in blankets, Edward Fitzgerald raised his hands and commented, ‘I have not been amongst you for long enough to voice any opinion on the strengths of the fighting men nor do I feel it appropriate that I should offer any military advice in my current circumstances.’
Roche flung him a caustic look before addressing Cloney. ‘How many are there?’
‘A hundred, maybe more,’ replied Cloney. ‘It doesn’t seem to be a full regiment and the soldiers are led by a lieutenant. They look like a support column.’
‘So where is the main body of the regiment?’ asked Roche, loading his pistols.
Cloney shrugged, ‘There’s no sign of them. Our lookouts report this column with the artillery moving against us but the country out as far as Taghmon is free of the soldiery.’
‘Perhaps they hope to trap us somehow?’ asked Fr Murphy.
Cloney shook his head, ‘I think the artillery column has just ranged too far ahead of its regiment. John Kelly of Killann wants us to trap them on the road as they cross over from the west and wipe them out. I would favour that too. The men of Bantry have missed Oulart and Enniscorthy, let us taste victory here.’
Fitzgerald was now standing and pulling on his breeches, his face branded with a doleful expression, the outward manifestation of the conflict raging in his heart. He sighed and asked, ‘You are sure this could not be an ambuscade?’
Cloney nodded fervently, ‘There’s not a redcoat around to bring them succour. They’re ignorant and unmindful as a new-born lamb. Kelly has a thousand of the boys assembled already. All he’s waiting for is the word from yourselves.’
Murphy and Roche exchanged a long glance whilst Fitzgerald stared at the heather-carpeted floor.
‘Have it done,’ Roche said flatly.
Captain Adams of the Meath Militia rode in some confusion at the head of his marching column. Forth Mountain rose about him in a great swollen bulge of fern and furze. To his left the slope fell away into the lightening gloom, scattered with a patchwork of rough fields that God alone knew what crops or animals could be sustained by. To his right, the hillside rose in a chaos of whipping briar and clutching bracken, dismal and painted in shades of grey and brown by the breaking day. The road his column moved along ran west to east along the flank of the mountain, dusty and overgrown, its neglect and disrepair evident in its ruts and washed-out potholes. A more desolate place he could not imagine.
He frowned beneath the peak of his cocked hat and cast his eyes back over his column and into the silvered countryside below. His Meath infantry, all sixty-six of them, stomped along stoically with only one or two yawning from the tiredness of marching through the night. Behind the red coats of his own soldiers came the dark blue of the twenty or so men and officers of His Majesty’s Royal Irish Artillery, the silver braiding of their blue coats glowing like spider webs in the morning light. Amongst them, on heavy carriages drawn by four deep-chested horses, sat the toad-like bulk of two howitzers with all their supplies of ammunition and powder.
And yet there was no sign of General Fawcett.
Adams was beginning to think that he had been duped.
The night before he and his detachment had paused for rest at Taghmon, where General Fawcett had supposedly already placed his men at free quarters, a necessity that the peasantry despised and resented. When Adams and his column had arrived however, they were informed by a group of apparently concerned villagers that Fawcett had pushed on immediately, such was the gravity of the situation in which the garrison at Wexford found itself. Taking them at their word, Adams had ordered his men to march on into the darkness, without sleep and without reconnoitring the land ahead of them.
He had allowed himself to be made a fool of, he reflected bitterly.
A sudden grumbling bubbled through the ranks of his men and the column came to a ragged halt, the soldiers muttering amongst themselves and one or two pointing down the slope to where the bracken and briar bristled about splintered outcrops of rock. Beside Adams, Lieutenant Wade shrugged in his saddle and called out, his voice echoing and gross in the silence, as though it were a violation of the dawn.
‘You men,’ he cried, ‘who gave you the order to halt? Have you something to say for yourself, O’Hare?’
A sergeant, who was peering down-slope with a hawkish expression, started at the mention of his name and saluted sharply.
‘Sir, one of the men here thinks he saw something moving below on the slope.’
Adams’s frown deepened and he twisted in his saddle to scan the hillside with eyes suddenly wary, all thoughts of Fawcett abruptly supplanted by more immediate circumstances. It was at this moment, just as the leather of his saddle creaked and he adjusted his weight to cast his gaze over the rough expanse of ditch and brush below him, that a white rag, tied to the shaft of a pike, was raised aloft from the blanketing undergrowth some hundred yards down from their position.
The men of the Meath Militia immediately spurred into action. Flintlocks were drawn back with a sound like the crackling of autumn leaves as men aimed their muskets toward the tattered white flag that had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
A silence fell over the column. Into that silence, for the briefest moment, Captain Adams breathed in panting anticipation until a cold fist abruptly seized his heart and squeezed as if to burst it.
‘Turn!’ he yelled in sudden realisation. ‘Turn, for the love of God! Face up the slope!’
He was a fraction of a second too late, for as the words sprang from his lips, so too did a spitting roar of musketry spring from the gorse and fern and thick undergrowth behind the soldiers. Smoke suddenly coughed across the roadway and filled the space between the ditches with a roiling blue-black fog.
Adams had no idea how many of his men had fallen to that first volley but he knew that his column was in bedlam. Within the fog of gunsmoke men had no idea from where the rebel guns had opened fire and some stood staring blankly at their fallen comrades whilst others fired blindly in the wrong direction.
‘Up the slope!’ Adams shouted, spurring his mount down the length of the column. ‘They’re above us!’
At that moment the entire hillside above the troops seemed to explode into lethal animation. Men spilled out of the bracken as though the very land was spewing them forth. The foremost of all was a blond giant who leapt with one bound over the low ditch bordering the road and hammered into the column with all the force of a charging bull. Adams watched, horrified, as the man’s pike punched straight through the nearest soldier so that its brutal steel point exited between his shoulder blades in a sickening spume of crimson. Adams’s men were being butchered.
Wheeling his horse, he yelled above the terrified screams of his men and the guttural whoops of their murderers, ‘Spike the guns! Don’t let them take the artillery!’
His eyes sought out the park of cannon and its blue-coated defenders and his face slackened in despair. The rebels had already seized them. Several of the artillery men were being held, pinned and struggling, to the ground whilst a group of peasants danced around the cannons, slapping them and rejoicing as though the each weapon were some fond pet or faithful hound.
Adams wheeled his mount once more, sawing savagely at the reins, his despair and panic rising to a hectic pitch. He could not reconcile what he was witnessing with what he knew of the world. His uniformed soldiery were being massacred, their cries obscenely desperate in the smoke and fumes.
Through the pall he saw the horde of the rebels standing over the bodies of his men whilst others chased off through the bracken, scything down those Meathmen who had tried to run, spitting them where they begged on their knees for mercy. Frantic and dismayed, Captain Adams spun his horse and thundered off to the west, lashing the animal with every atom of his strength. Behind him a huge roar of triumph and exultation swelled and climbed, soaring into the sky, huge and joyful, like the sun rising above the brow of Forth Mountain.
Dan beamed in satisfaction, ‘That was some victory.’
Tom was shaking his head in bafflement but nonetheless a smile made a broad curve of his lips. ‘I am amazed by our continuing success and good fortune. Our little army now has artillery. Who would ever have believed such a thing possible?’
The two brothers and Elizabeth were watching as the twin howitzers were wheeled forward through the ranks. The men of Bantry, who had won so valuable a prize and had been led so ably by John Kelly, were being feted throughout the camp as heroes and warriors on a par with the Fianna and Red Branch Knights. Songs and laughter rolled across the slopes of Forth Mountain as scouts came in from the countryside to the west reporting that Captain Adams and a few terrified survivors of the ambush at Three Rocks had continued their flight until they had run headlong into General Fawcett. At the news that the column had been annihilated and the cannon captured, Fawcett had immediately turned about and headed back to Duncannon. The general, it seemed, had decided to abandon the garrison at Wexford to its fate.
The rebels had now arranged themselves so that the bulk of the army was positioned on the eastern slope of Forth Mountain, overlooking the approaches to and from Wexford Town. A slight rise in the ground obscured the John Street gate which should have been clearly visible only two miles distant. John Hay had immediately taken charge of the newly acquired artillery and, using all the experience he had gained in service with the French, he now directed the placement of the guns so that their great maws overlooked this slight rise. Any sortie from the town or any force seeking to enter from Ferrycarrig must run the gauntlet of Hay’s well-directed shot and shell. The gunnery privates who had been taken prisoner were now pressed into operating the howitzers and keeping them supplied with ammunition. The men, beaten and bloodied, had no choice but to comply.
Debates now began amongst the rank and file as to what to do next. Most favoured advancing straightaway to Wexford Town whilst others, with Thomas Dixon and his wife most vocal among them, favoured scouring the surrounding countryside for known loyalists and yeomen. The very sight of Dixon and his wife was enough to send tremors crawling across Elizabeth’s skin and as the morning wore on she found herself drawing closer and closer to Dan as though to draw strength from his confidence and good humour. Dan was flushed with the success of the dawn victory and the capturing of the artillery but even for him the silence and aura of indecision emanating from the higher circles of leadership were becoming disturbing. As nine o’clock approached, Tom was spitting in frustration, ‘Why are we not doing something?’
Miles Byrne approached them, his raking stride carrying him easily up the slope away from the forward lines and the howitzers, now well dug-in behind a ditch. He swept his hat from his head and wiped a hand across his brow saying, ‘Good morning, Dan, Tom. Ms Elizabeth.’
‘Good morning, Miles,’ replied Dan. ‘Any word on what the plan is now that we find ourselves in such an advantageous position? What are the prospects of an attack on the town?’
Byrne’s young face soured at this and he sighed, ‘The leaders are debating what to do next. Every victory that we achieve in the field seems to stymie them rather than drive them on. Instead of greeting this morning’s work as the boon it is, they are intent on creating phantom problems for us to overcome.’
Tom kicked at the heather at his feet, growling, ‘A ridiculous waste of time. What could they be thinking?’
Just then a shout went up from the outer lines closest to Wexford Town. Over the rise in the distance, a large column of marching infantry and jogging cavalry were advancing. With colours flying and drum beating they came on with the cavalry swinging out to their left to prevent the rebels from flanking them on that side.
At the sight of the soldiers a sudden commotion seized the rebel ranks and men dashed hither and thither, snatching up pikes and muskets whilst women and children began to wail once again at the prospect of more death and violence.
Dan bent and kissed Elizabeth on the forehead. ‘Get beyond the brow of the hill,’ he instructed.
She smiled up at him, weary and resigned, and trailed her fingers along his jaw line. ‘Be careful, my love,’ she said.
He nodded and grinned coldly as she walked away before calling out in a belling voice, ‘Castletown Corps, to your colours!’
Alongside him, Miles Byrne was crying, ‘Monaseed men, to me!’
All about, the slopes of Forth Mountain had become a ringing anarchy of noise as orders were shouted and corps after corps assembled beneath their standards. The din was furious and in the middle of it all Edward Roche appeared beside Dan, Tom and Miles, his fleshy face intense and his eyes rapidly taking in the vista below.
‘Have your men move forward with me,’ he instructed Dan. To Byrne he ordered, ‘Have the Monaseed boys along with the Ballaghkeen contingents move around to our right. Should you get the chance I want you to fall on their cavalry with every ounce of your fury and strength, do you understand?’
‘I do, General,’ and then Byrne was off across the slope, calling men to him as he went.
‘Come along Mr Banville,’ said Roche. ‘Let us see what Mr Hay can do with our new toys.’
Colonel Maxwell surveyed the rebel position, now barely a mile in front of him. He had led the sizeable column of infantry and horse directly out of the John Street gate and had advanced purposefully and with good spirits into the countryside beyond. On his left Jonas Watson rode a stocky roan mare, on the old officer’s grizzled head a wide-brimmed hat cast his face entirely in shadow. Occasionally and with an automatic quality that suggested the absence of any real thought, Watson’s gauntleted hand would rise and he would smooth the long white moustache that drooped like willows on either side of his mouth. It comforted Maxwell to have Watson with him, for the old campaigner was glad to lend him the benefit of his experience in fighting irregulars across the Atlantic. It was reassuring that Watson considered the massive rabble blackening the slopes of Forth Mountain far less formidable than the rebels he had encountered in America. At his back marched Maxwell’s entire contingent of Donegal Militia. The North Corks, shaken and badly mauled, he had considered unsuitable for any further fighting.
As Maxwell rode along he nodded in satisfaction as the Taghmon Yeoman Cavalry swept out to his left, trotting in squadrons and sitting their saddles in as perfect a representation of martial discipline as one could imagine. The entire picture that the garrison wished to paint in the eyes of the watching rebels was one of military pomp and excellence. Maxwell could imagine the bitter waves of fear and intimidation that would surely flood through the insurgent ranks at the sight of their advance. At the column’s head, directly behind Maxwell and Watson, so that the snap and ripple was loud above their mounts’ hooves, the Union Flag and the yellow regimental colours of the Donegals were carried, biting and whipping in the gusting sea breeze. Maxwell turned in his saddle to admire the sight of his men stretched out on the road leading back to Wexford Town and his features filled with a fierce pride.
‘Your men look well enough,’ commented Watson without taking his eyes off the massed ranks of rebels on the hill before them. ‘They march in good order.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Maxwell. ‘I have never seen them so eager for the fray.’
‘I would hope,’ replied Watson, ‘that the necessity for a pitched battle might be avoided until we can link up with General Fawcett. These rebels of yours have substantial numbers.’
He pointed then, his hand lifting and index finger pointing inside the well-worn leather of his riding gloves. His liquid eyes were bright in the shade cast by his hat’s brim, as he said, ‘They have some men of ability with them too, it seems. See how they move to counter our cavalry.’
On the slope ahead of him, Maxwell could perceive a vast block of men moving through the fern and bracken, making towards the southeast face of the mountain, threatening the very cavalry that sought to pen them back. As he watched the rebels move, Maxwell was all at once reminded of starlings, flocks of tiny bodies, numberless in multitude, all moving as though controlled by a single intellect.
‘Let them,’ he grunted. ‘Should they decide to separate further, Cox’s cavalry may actually have the chance to get amongst them.’
At about seven hundred yards from the first of the rebel lines, Watson and Maxwell slowed the column’s advance, preparing to wait for the first sign that Fawcett had reached his side of the great hulking hill before them.
Watson leaned forward in his saddle and his eyes, narrowed and sharp as pins, scanned the ditches ahead of him with all the wariness and circumspection that years in America had bred in him. He regarded the cavalry strung out to their left and he eyed the tightly packed lines of pikemen strung along the slopes of Forth Mountain and crouched behind its ditches and hedgerows. He spat distastefully into the dust at his horse’s side and commented wistfully, ‘If only we had a field gun or two.’
Concurrently, from out of the ditches sheltering the vanguard of the insurgent lines, a dragon’s belch of smoke and flame vomited out into the morning. Maxwell and Watson had time to frown before the roar of the discharge rolled over them and the ground just to the right of the column leapt upwards in a brown jet of pulverised soil.
The officers’ horses whickered and snorted, bucking like ships in a storm, whilst the ranks of the Donegal Milita took staggering steps backwards, shock and fear curdling the features of each and every man. Maxwell, struggling to control his panicked mount, yelled in fury, ‘Hold my brave boys! Hold or we shame ourselves beyond redemption!’
Watson, who had managed to settle his mare rather more swiftly, was staring in smiling admiration toward the rebel position. ‘By God,’ he said softly. ‘They have artillery and persons who know how to use it.’
‘Could they be Fawcett’s?’ asked Maxwell, the creaking note of hysteria which he heard in his own voice appalling him.
Before Watson could answer, a second report bellowed out from the rebel ranks and the ground directly to the left of the column’s front rank coughed skyward and spattered those soldiers closest to it with a dry rain of stones and soil. The Donegal men shuffled again, their colours dipping and wavering as the ensigns began to quail, their shoulders seeming to cave into their chests as though striving to make themselves as small a target as possible.
‘Hold, damn you!’ shouted Maxwell.
‘Let me take some men,’ said Watson, calmly. ‘I’ll take them forward and we shall see whether those guns are ours and how many these rebels might have.’
‘That is dangerous, Mr Watson,’ replied Maxwell.
Watson laughed with all the warmth of a funeral dirge. ‘Their gunners have rather bigger and better targets than a mere scouting party, Colonel. I shall be safe enough.’
Maxwell nodded, ‘Be quick about it, Mr Watson. The men cannot sit here all day and those shots are getting closer.’
Watson saluted, a little too sharply for Maxwell’s taste, and wheeling his horse he selected five privates from the front ranks to accompany him. He then jogged off to the right, pushing through the scant gorse that made up the hedgerow at this particular point along the road, and quickly made his way forward through the fields. He crouched low in his saddle and ushered the redcoats with him to dash along the ditches like foxes at hunt, his face urgent, his gestures quick and honed as knives.
Maxwell was quietly impressed by the old campaigner’s bravery and decisiveness and, in spite of his own trepidation at remaining exposed upon the road, he watched as Watson and his men gradually closed the distance to the rebel lines.
He could not know that in a hedgerow close to the base of Forth Mountain’s eastern slope, one of Edward Roche’s Shelmaliers was taking careful aim along the severe length of his long-barrelled strand gun. He could not know that the Shelmalier, who had grown up sniping at barnacle geese as they came whirring high in over the sloblands and marshes of the Slaney’s mouth, was tracking Jonas Watson’s every bob and motion.
In the distance, Jonas Watson was blown from his saddle, his body tumbling, limp and grotesque, through the bordering hedgerow to lie bleeding and lifeless in the dust of the road.
Maxwell blinked in horror as time itself seemed to stop. The sun became a static ball of fire in the sky and all the world contracted until it consisted solely of the pathetic, rumpled hummock of Watson’s shattered carcass.
The rebel cannon flamed again and this time Maxwell felt words bubble up from a venomous wellspring of fear and loathing, bubble up and spew from his lips.
‘Back to the town!’ he heard himself cry. ‘Back to the town or our lives are forfeit!’
The front ranks of the Donegals immediately began a slow wheel. This manoeuvre would, however, have resulted in dragging the rear ranks forward into range of the rebel’s smoking cannon. Instead, first one and then another and then a whole flood of red-coated soldiery simply turned on their heels and took flight. Maxwell watched as his column, which had marched forth so proudly only an hour before, now disintegrated and commenced an inelegant scramble for the safety of Wexford Town. Kicking his horse’s flanks, Colonel Maxwell joined them and within moments had overtaken even the speediest of his retreating men.
The Taghmon Cavalry, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and now facing accurate cannon fire, all spun their mounts and joined the general rout. Behind them, dust and rebel cheers chased them home.
Upon the slopes of Forth Mountain Dan and Tom watched the sortie from Wexford Town turn tail and flee. Both men were smiling like proud fathers and before them, sweat trickling from their brows and coursing along the fringes of their sideburns, Edward Roche and John Hay were shaking hands.
Then, from behind them came a shout and Miles Byrne came leaping in boyish effusiveness through the bracken, holding his sword aloft so that it did not tangle in his stride.
‘General Roche, sir!’ he called. ‘We must make after them! We should have every chance of catching them before they reach Wexford. Pursued vigorously, we would surely enter the town with them pell-mell, without the least hindrance.’
Byrne came to a ragged stop before Roche, breathless and eager.
Roche regarded him for a moment before turning with a curious expression of longing toward where the last of Maxwell’s column was disappearing in the distance.
‘I should speak to Fr Murphy and the others before undertaking such drastic action.’
‘No you should not, Mr Roche,’ argued Byrne. ‘We have no time.’
Roche bridled at this and glaring at the young man before him, a stern echo of the yeomanry sergeant he once was entered his voice. ‘Do not contradict me, boy,’ he said. ‘Or you shall feel the back of my hand before you feel any other procedure of discipline.
‘We have time in abundance. The garrison is trapped within Wexford. They cannot hope to face us again and they cannot be relieved. They must sue for terms.’
Byrne looked about in dismay and Dan could perceive the same feeling of chagrin welling up inside John Hay as the old French officer shook his head forlornly and directed his gaze into the heather clumped about his ankles.
In the distance the pale dust cloud of Maxwell’s escape gradually faded against the blue of the sky like the gold of dawn fading in the brightness of its own birth. In the roadway, his jacket already crawling with flies, Jonas Watson lay staring at the doming heavens, his eyes wide and sightless. In the centre of his forehead a black hole was punched. He looked vaguely surprised in death and his wound gaped blankly from out of the smooth white of his forehead like the pitiless eye of hell itself, spilling congealing tears of red toward the gull-grey wings of his temples.