Wexford Town was an altogether different place this second time the Wexford Army of the United Irishmen entered it. Gone were the green banners and the platters of food, gone were the kisses and the emerald garlands. It was as though the men who had fought at Vinegar Hill and Foulkesmills, the men who had come within a whisker of overthrowing the King’s Government in Ireland, carried a plague. They were like lepers and outcasts, and the townsfolk could not be rid of them quickly enough. They were frantic to erase any association between themselves and the banner of the United Irishmen. Even Bishop Caulfield had made an appearance, mewling and bawling from his high windows that they would bring disaster down upon the town if they stayed. In short, Wexford Town awaited Brigadier General Moore with open arms.
A large column of rebels including Fr Murphy and Miles Byrne had filed out of the town and waited on the Windmill Hill or at the old Three Rocks encampment. Some, Anthony Perry, Fitzgerald and Roche among them, had decided to head north along the Coast Road and try to slip past General Lake’s dragnet. All the leaders, from captain to colonel, realised that to be taken by the military on this day, so soon after the Battle of Vinegar Hill and the murders on Wexford Bridge, was a death sentence.
Tom Banville stood in the cemetery of the Protestant Church of St Iberius and watched his brother weep over the heaped loam of a fresh grave. Dan was on his knees and the convulsions that racked him spoke of a hurt too raw and too physical to imagine. One hand was clawed into the rich, sandy chocolate of the soil while his other was pressed to his pale and tortured forehead.
At the head of the grave-mound a simple wooden cross stood slightly askew, a brass plaque tacked to it. In hard, engraved lines the inscription read, ELIZABETH BLAKELY, DIED 15TH JUNE 1798. KILLED BY A UNITED IRISHMAN.
There was something pointed in that inscription that cut at Tom, something acid in those words that he did not like.
Beneath the cross, a rain-battered bunch of purple wild flowers lay forlornly, sinking into the soil.
Tom stood for long minutes while Dan hacked his grief out onto the deaf clay of Elizabeth’s grave. Then, as his brother’s sobs abated, he said slowly, carefully, ‘Miles Byrne has gone out to The Three Rocks. He says Fr Murphy wants to lead some of the men out into the midlands. We cannot stay here. We shall all be hanged.’
Dan was silent.
‘Dan—’ began Tom, but he was cut off by his brother’s words.
‘I will not leave her,’ he croaked, his voice still gummed with grief. ‘I cannot.’
‘Then we shall both stay here,’ replied Tom. ‘We shall both stay and be made crow’s meat by Lake. I thought you were lost once, Dan. I will not see you lost again.’
Dan exhaled then, a long expulsion of breath as though he sought to purge the sorrow that lay so heavy in his chest. ‘Go with Miles, Tom. Help him get the men out of Wexford. You are all that Ma and Da have left. Get away from here. Go to Dublin. Find them. Tell them I love them dearly. Tell them I regret the pain I have brought them.’
Tom let the sea breeze whisper, feather-light, past his cheeks. The breeze brought with it the organic, rotting stench of the docks and the calls and cries of those desperately striving to hook from the water the bodies of the ninety-seven men and women whom Thomas Dixon had piked to death.
‘You are sure you wish to stay?’ asked Tom, his mind recoiling at his own question. How could he allow his brother to remain behind, to face a rigged court-martial, friendless and alone?
‘I am sure,’ replied Dan, and in those three words was all the dragging weight of purpose that Tom needed to hear.
Dan meant to die here, by the side of his beloved. He would be shot, stretched on her grave before he allowed himself to be taken from her. When the soldiers came they would find a man already six days dead.
As Tom regarded his brother he knew he could not save him; and all the while those five damned words spat accusingly out from the brass plaque on Elizabeth’s temporary cross.
Tom knew that his brother felt every syllable of those five words were for him and him alone.
‘I will be at the camp, Dan,’ Tom said, hating the pleading, bleating note that had entered his voice. ‘I beg of you to reconsider and join me there. Please, do not do this. You’re my brother.’
Dan turned his head then and Tom almost staggered back a step at the vision his brother’s face presented. Before his eyes, Dan had become empty, his flesh grey and slack, his gaze dead.
Dan’s mouth worked slowly, ‘You are all I have left, Tom. I kept you safe. I came for you in the end. Tell Ma and Da that, would you? Tell them I came for you.’
Tom’s own eyes now overflowed and he stepped towards his brother, hugging him fiercely to his chest, ‘I love you, Dan.’
Dan’s right arm came up and wrapped around Tom’s shoulders but his left hand did not lift from where it was buried in the soil of Elizabeth’s grave. ‘And I you,’ he whispered.
Tom wrenched himself away from his brother and ran from the graveyard, the tears streaming unashamedly from his eyes. He wept for Dan and he wept for Elizabeth. He wept for himself. He wept like a child for his county and for his country. He wept for the future and all that he had left behind.
In the silence of the graveyard, Dan Banville knelt as though made from the very clay banked and piled in a low heap before him. He knelt by his darling Elizabeth and waited for the soldiers to come.
‘I am coming soon,’ he whispered. ‘I am ready.’