Seek the Fair Land Read online

  ‘Mary Ann made that,’ said Dominick. ‘She has a light hand with rough materials.’

  ‘Wait until she gets the proper meal,’ said Murdoc. ‘She will be a treasure. Listen. In one week I walked thirty miles. In all that time, between the Blackwater and here, I haven’t seen a single human being. This is as true as God. Houses without smoke, skeletons in fields. A great dead desert, with the land putting forth weeds the size of the empty houses. They have defeated us. They have made us into a blighted land.’

  ‘It’s the will of God,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘I beg to disagree with you,’ said Murdoc. ‘I have seen a lot There are only two conclusions.’

  ‘State them,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘There is no God,’ said Murdoc, ‘or God is on the side of them and we were wrong.’

  ‘You have seen a lot?’ Sebastian hazarded.

  ‘Too much,’ said Murdoc. ‘When Drogheda fell I was in Wexford. There were two men there called Cooke and Bolton. Their names will be remembered. They murdered about ten thousand. This I saw. There were about three hundred women and children praying around the corpses in the square. You have heard of evil things done by the Turks or the Goths or the Huns. They would have spared those, I think, but Cooke didn’t. I was dressed as one of them by this and I saw them being killed, every one of them. They didn’t leave a sinner alive of them within twenty miles of the place. I was in Clonmel when it fell. I was with Hugh Dubh. And I was in Limerick. I’ve seen them being locked into churches and the churches set on fire. I’ve heard them screaming. I’ve seen commanders holding babies by the leg and knocking their brains out against a stone. Every church in the land is turned into a stable or a brothel. I’ve seen this. It’s a terrible thing. Now if our God had seen all this too. He would have done something about it. But no. All the time it happens. And it is permitted. It doesn’t make sense. You get to the point where you can look at these things and say: well, maybe they are right, maybe we are the whore of Babylon and the time has come to destroy us.’

  Sebastian had stopped skinning the goat. He let his head rest on the back of his hand. Then he looked up.

  ‘Have you seen nothing with hope at all, Murdoc?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know what hope is now,’ said Murdoc.

  ‘Nothing at all that was noble?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘I’ve seen things that pleased me,’ said Murdoc. ‘I’ve seen the soldiers dying in thousands from a very painful black flux. I’ve often stood over them and watched them dying in agony. Each time I would say: Well, if you had stayed at home, this wouldn’t have happened to you. I’ve been with bands of good men, since Limerick, and we have often trapped a score of them and hanged them from trees. That was pleasing. But is that hope when we can kill a few of them? Isn’t it too much? Hasn’t Cromwell’s God got the edge on us?’

  ‘Have you seen nothing that stirred your heart?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Murdoc. ‘Last winter I was in the woods. I was looking for honey. And I came to a hollow tree. Do you know what was in that tree?’

  ‘What?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘A woman,’ said Murdoc. ‘A young girl. She was a nun. She had a black habit on her and a white thing on her head. She must have fled there from them and died. She was lucky. Some nuns didn’t get away in time from them. I don’t know how long this girl had been there. It must have been a long time, maybe from the winter before. The spiders had woven cobwebs all about her. And there was a look of peace on her face. Her body should have been rotted. But this is strange, it wasn’t. And she smelled of honey. There in the woods. It was probably the bees. I buried her under the tree.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean something to you?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘One bud doesn’t make spring,’ said Murdoc. ‘I saw brave things. There was this Bishop of Limerick. Ireton caught him. He condemned him. He gave him a painful death. ‘‘I will see you in eight days, Ireton,’’ he said to him, ‘‘before the Tribunal of God.’’ You could see Ireton wilting after that. Every day. And he was called. I’d like to think he was in hell, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Bishop that’s in hell.’

  ‘You have seen too much, all right, Murdoc,’ said Sebastian. ‘You have lost hope. You are tired.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Murdoc. ‘I’m just thinking over things. What cause is there for hope? All our soldiers are gone. In their thousands after Limerick. There are songs in Irish being sung in every land from Holland to Russia, but what does that do? It leaves this land as open as the embrace of an evil woman. From sea to sea. We have been given everything, war, plague, famine, and the sword. We are left without hope. Can you tell me why?’

  ‘Because we were all sinners,’ said Sebastian.

  Murdoc looked at him, opened his mouth, and laughed. Dominick noticed that Murdoc had lost quite a few of his strong white teeth. He was trying to think back, to visualize the big pulsating warrior he had remembered. Have I changed too? he wondered. All these things that Murdoc is saying, were they in my own mind too?

  ‘You talk like a friar,’ said Murdoc. ‘That’s not reality. Were we worse sinners than the people who are destroying us? Are they saints?’

  ‘The Israelites were chosen by God,’ said Sebastian. ‘When they sinned they were punished. They were purged by pagans. That is the answer, Murdoc. We will emerge a better people, not today but tomorrow. We will learn to live with sorrow and to laugh at it, but we never will, if we abandon hope We must believe in God, hope in His mercy and love our enemies.’

  ‘Even while they are cutting our throats, raping our children, hanging our priests, we must love them, is that it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Sebastian.

  Murdoc was on his feet.

  ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘None of that. We were meek. We took them in. We didn’t hate enough. We didn’t fight enough. We left them an opening in our sides and they infected our bloodstream. We didn’t hate enough.’

  ‘We didn’t love enough,’ said Sebastian.

  Dominick thought that Murdoc would hit him. He rose to his feet.

  ‘You are tired, Murdoc,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you rest?’

  Murdoc let the breath out of his body.

  ‘Yes, Dominick, that’s what’s wrong with me. I’m tired. I have seen too much. Maybe I will see clearer when I go home and smell the clean sea. Hah! We will argue again, Sebastian. But I like fighters. Have you ever fought?’

  Sebastian considered this.

  ‘Yes, Murdoc,’ he said. ‘I have fought.’

  ‘Well, you are alive,’ said Murdoc.

  ‘That is the will of God too,’ said Sebastian.

  Murdoc snorted. He followed after Dominick. Dominick showed him where to lie in the cell, gave him the skins to cover him.

  ‘You keep odd company now, Dominick,’ Murdoc said. ‘Leave this place and come with me. Bring the girl and the boy and come with me to the mountains.’

  ‘No, Murdoc,’ said Dominick. ‘ Not now. I’m tired of the mountains. I’m tired of plains. I’m tired of land. I’m tired of hunting and fishing and living on the edge of starvation. I want the town around me.’

  Murdoc laughed.

  ‘Still the same,’ he laughed. ‘Right, man, go and see the towns. I have seen them. You go and see them. Oh, God, but I’m tired of towns and land and walking. When I am settled down, I will never walk again even if I have to make men carry me on their backs. Oh, man, but I’m tired.’ He was stretched and asleep almost before he had finished speaking.

  Dominick went back. He stirred up the fire, threw a little more wood on it.

  ‘Murdoc is sick,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘It is a sickness that comes on all of us,’ said Dominick. ‘It is very strange that we should meet again like this.’

  ‘Not very strange,’ said Sebastian. ‘It was meant that way. There is a reason for it. There is some purpose in it.’

  ‘I hope it is for good,’ said Dominick.


  ‘I hope so too,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘We will have to leave here,’ said Dominick. ‘There’s no game left. It’s getting harder and harder to find them. All the animals are being swept away by the wolves.’

  ‘And soon the people will be. I heard today,’ said Sebastian, ‘that they are going to shift everyone west of the Shannon. There is going to be the greatest transplantation of all time.’

  ‘There won’t be many left to go,’ said Dominick. ‘At least they will be pushing us in the way we want to go. I want a place where we can stay, and never move.’

  ‘You’ll find it, Dominick,’ said Sebastian. ‘Some day you will find it.’

  ‘God is good,’ said Dominick, and the priest looked at him a moment. Dominick met his eyes. They smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  THE RAIN poured steadily from a leaden sky. They stood on a rise and looked down at the town of the ford. Smoke from a few houses was baffled by the low clouds and spread out in a grey haze over the town and the broad river of the Shannon. The river was on their right and they could see where the long lake of Ribh was swollen by it.

  Dominick wore a goatskin cloak and held it out from him so that Peter could shelter under it. Mary Ann was sheltering under the bulk of Murdoc.

  ‘Well?’ said Murdoc.

  ‘Well?’ said Dominick.

  Sebastian pointed down below them. From all sides of the compass the small black dots of people were converging on the town.

  ‘My way is with the people,’ he said.

  ‘To go with the people you will have to have papers,’ said Murdoc. ‘Every crossing, every ford, every way there will be soldiers waiting for your papers. The soldiers alone are the judges of life or death, man. If the papers are blotted, they can kill you out of hand, like a chicken for the pot. It is an evil thing to submit your life to a paper that’s signed by their hands. Is it a protection?’

  ‘My way is with the people,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘From here, the way is known to me, Dominick,’ Murdoc said. ‘We will cleave our way across Roscommon, over into Muigheo. From there it will be easy. These are men that never surrendered to anyone. The way is hard but it is clear.’

  ‘My children have had it very hard, Murdoc,’ said Dominick. He could feel the bones of Peter’s face under his hand. The bones were prominent. He saw the eyes of Mary Ann peering at him from under the cover of Murdoc. Her eyes were very big. They were too big. It had been a very hard winter. He had not liked leaving their watery haven, but it had become too hard to find food. Murdoc had foraged. He had never returned empty-handed. Nor had Dominick himself, but their hauls were meagre. All the corn they had scraped from the untended fields had now failed them. They possessed between them and starvation about four oatmeal loaves. ‘ No, Murdoc,’ he said decisively. ‘I have to go down to that town.’

  ‘You are foolish,’ said Murdoc. ‘But off with you. I go the other way. I could never live without a sword at my belt. No man in the world is going to get that off me. It’s a sad parting, but I wish ye well. Some day we will meet again. You know the where I have talked of it many times. You know the way of it.’

  ‘I have a picture in my head of it,’ said Dominick.

  Murdoc bent down, held Mary Ann in front of him.

  ‘God be with you, my love,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget Murdoc easy, will you?’

  Mary Ann shook her head.

  ‘No, Murdoc,’ she said, ‘We will miss you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  But Mary Ann wasn’t crying, Dominick noticed. Murdoc was changeable. A restless man. Sometimes he would play with Mary Ann and Peter. He would roll on the rushes with them shouting with laughter. That was one moment, and the next moment he would be sitting up, sour-faced, a frown between his eyebrows, his fist thumping the ground. Then he would have no time for playing with children. So they were wary of him and his moods. So was Dominick for that matter. In a way he would be glad when they had parted. He thought this and then he thought that it was wrong, because when he was in a good mood, Murdoc was colourful, dramatic, with his eyes lighting up with laughter and excitement, talking about his ancestors, boasting; of their deeds, emulating them with movements, and talking of himself and his, actions, a giant figure of a man, a big man, small only in the way that he never cared for Sebastian. Sebastian was patient, kind, but inflexible in his views of right and wrong. It came to the point that all Murdoc’s explanations were challenges. Sebastian often avoided them, but when he was faced with it, he expressed his views calmly and clearly and Murdoc would shout at him: ‘ You should have been a friar. You’re wound in wool, man.’

  So Dominick went close to Murdoc and took his huge hand and squeezed it with both of his own.

  ‘We will miss you, Murdoc,’ he said. ‘You will take strength from us. But we are little people, and we may escape in under their arms like little people always do. Nobody could mistake you. We will meet again, God willing, and we will laugh over these days.’

  ‘I hope so, Dominick,’ said Murdoc, ‘ I hope so. Beware of yourselves and don’t let them hear Sebastian talking or they’ll take him for a priest and hang the lot of ye.’ He kissed Mary Ann. She rubbed her face. She always did after the feel of his tough whiskers.

  He slapped Peter on the back. He slapped Dominick on the back. Then he faced Sebastian. They were of a height, and yet Murdoc looked the bigger man.

  ‘We are going to meet again, Sebastian,’ said Murdoc. ‘ I feel it in here.’ Thumping his big chest. ‘I don’t know if that’s good.’

  ‘What’s meant will be, Murdoc. You are a good man. Use your sword less and your head more and things will run sweetly for you.’

  ‘The devil with you,’ said Murdoc. There you go again. You talk in parables. Why can’t you use straight sentences like an honest man? Tell me that?’

  ‘It must be because I am crooked, Murdoc,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘No,’ said Murdoc, ‘but you are twisty. My soul to hell if I understand you. But I wouldn’t mind you in a fight. And you are a good teacher. That Mary Ann can write better than I can, old as I am. Pray for me, see. You’ll do that, I know. I’m what I am and I don’t change. You’ll see.’

  ‘God be with you, Murdoc,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘All to the good, so,’ said Murdoc. ‘I’m off. Ye’re foolish but who am I to change ye? Watch yeerselves. Be cunning. Be dirty. Be ignorant. That’s the way ye’ll get by. Only the useless ones of the land they let get by. I’m gone.’

  He didn’t look at them any more. He had no bundles, no possessions, only what he wore and his sword and a piece of oaten bread in his pouch. He went down the hill and headed back the way they had come, to the farther lonely reaches of the Shannon where he could cross in hardship but in comparative peace. He was like a great bear: One that you get fond of. But unpredictable. No cunning in him at all. Then he was gone from their sight.

  ‘I will go down to the town,’ said Dominick. ‘I will buy what we need. Man always wants gold. Let us find shelter for you first. You wait for me. I will be back.’

  ‘You know what you are doing, Dominick?’ said Sebastian.

  ‘I’ll get by,’ said Dominick. ‘They are not killing us much now. That’s the sign. Now they are in the market. I was always a good merchant.’

  ‘I see an empty house down there,’ said Sebastian. He pointed. It was below near the river. They could see the thatch of it. The cleared space around it was being encroached on by scrub. The thatch was green from decay. No smoke rose from it.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dominick. He took off the skins and gave them to Peter and Mary Ann. They walked together under the cover of them.

  They approached the house cautiously, breaking their way through the thickets of withered briars. What a change, Dominick thought, remembering back, so long ago when he could freely travel in the country. There would be chickens picking and dogs barking, baring their teeth in front and wagging
their tails behind, and a curious woman at the doorway with the well of emptiness on her face until you talked and she knew what you were and she would loosen her face and you could see her warm feelings.

  The door was banging drunkenly. The windows were very small and deep and sloping so that while the winds could enter the rain could not.

  Sebastian went to the door.

  ‘God bless all in this house,’ he said. It was gloomy. Not a lot of light entered. The fireplace was black but no fire burned in it. There was a smell of dampness and decaying straw.

  He was about to turn and say, ‘It is empty’, when he heard the voice. A weak voice coming from the place above the fire. He peered and could see the bundle on the rushes and out of the bundle the movement of a hand. He walked in and over, keeping his body from blocking the light from the door. What light there was shone on the face of the old woman too weak to raise her head. He got on one knee beside her and felt for her hand. It was a hand of mainly skin and bone.

  ‘God bless you,’ her voice said, ‘and are you a priest?’

  Sebastian felt as if he had been hit in the chest. He could see the long straggly white hair and a thin peaked face with sunken eyes surrounded by a million wrinkles.

  ‘How did you know I was a priest?’ Sebastian asked, stroking her hand.

  She sighed.

  ‘They told me,’ she said, ‘and they were right.’

  ‘Who told you?’ he asked.

  ‘They did,’ she said.

  ‘Wasn’t God good?’

  ‘Have you no one?’ he asked.

  ‘No one now,’ she said. ‘The sickness took the gradle of them and the soldiers took the rest. Yesterday I could walk and light the hit of fire and cook the gruel. Now it is over.’

  ‘We came looking for shelter,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘My house is yours, love,’ she said. ‘You will listen to me and let me go. You were sent. Don’t leave me now.’

  ‘Only for a fraction,’ he said to her. He let her hand go. He went to the door. He said to Dominick: ‘Bear the rain a minute more,’ and then went back to her, taking the makeshift stole from his pocket and putting it around his neck.