Seek the Fair Land Page 14

  The man at the head of them was the only grey one. His hair was black and well streaked with grey. His eyebrows were thick, and the caverned eyes under them were quick and darting, and missed nothing on the way. The belts holding up their Irish trousers held swords in scabbards, and there were knives in their belts resting in highly decorated sheaths.

  They saw few people on the way. The ones they did meet looked curiously at them, and almost fearfully.

  They drew up in a tight bunch in front of the drawbridge of the fortification and the leading man looked coldly at the two soldiers who barred their way.

  ‘Who are you?’ the soldier asked. ‘What do you want?’ He was gripping his musket tightly.

  ‘Tell your leader,’ said the man in a rich deep voice, in clear English, ‘that O’Flaherty has come to see the President of Connacht.’

  The soldier looked at him, then said to a companion, ‘Back, Jack, and tell the Colonel.’

  He stayed there while the other went. He looked from one to the other of them. He met black, brown, blue, and green eyes, all having one thing in common, that they hated the sight of him. The soldier was nervous. He shuffled his feet. He was glad to hear the firm step of the Colonel behind him.

  ‘Well, now,’ said the Colonel. ‘You want to see Sir Charles Coote.’

  ‘No,’ said O’Flaherty, he wants to see me.’

  ‘Ho,’ said the Colonel, ‘hair-splitting.’

  ‘Better than skull-splitting,’ said O’Flaherty sardonically.

  ‘You are armed,’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Swords could be no match for muskets and culverins,’ said O’Flaherty.

  ‘All right,’ said the Colonel. ‘I will take you to Sir Charles.’

  He turned and walked briskly.

  The horsemen clattered across the wooden bridge inside the fortifications on Giant’s Hill. Here the Colonel mounted a horse, a very beautiful black horse who would make two of any of the little horses, but the others looked at him, and one of them spat. He was a war horse, a big heavy bastard, they thought, who would sink to his withers in the bogs of the mountains and be food for the grey crows.

  The Colonel waved his hand at them and-set off and they followed him through the first tower on the bridge O’Flaherty could see the ships at the quays on his right, and away up on his left the wicker salmon traps. There were men in small black boats up there with poles in their hands. On the bridge itself were fishermen with tridents, which they were preparing to drop from the height of the bridge on to the shallow waters where the salmon would rest after their struggle from the sea. The fishermen looked blankly at the cortege. They mounted the steps and went through the leaves of the middle tower, the hooves of the little horses very sure on the stone steps going up and coming down. Then they went through the third tower, O’Flaherty wondering and thinking how hard it would be to take this town; seeing the looming towers and the thick walls. But greater places than this had been taken before. Not that he wanted to take it. They could have it for themselves, now that he had what he wanted. He would do a lot to hold on to what he had now.

  The Colonel cursed and lashed out with a whip as they came through the jam of the sea-fish market inside the third tower. There was a terrible smell of fish, fresh, salted, decayed, and on the point of decay. It was all women who sold the fish, big handsome women, peculiarly dressed. These were the women of the Claddagh, selling the catches of their men who would be lolling now on the green in the warm sun.

  They passed from fish to the smell of meat near the Shambles where the butchers carved and gouged and tore at the skinned animals with hooks and knives. The Shambles was not full. The meat was scarce but becoming a bit more free after the dearth of last year’s famine.

  Through the market-place they forced their way, the people looking at them, even the soldiers holding the auction becoming silent to watch the curious cavalcade. O’Flaherty looked at the faces of the people. He could pick out the townspeople by the look of shut-off fear and dislike that appeared there when they saw the saffron-shirted men. They had had cause to fear the O’Flahertys for many long years before this. The dislike and fear were inherent in them. He snorted, as he thought how puerile their fear was, and a far worse than the O’Flaherty here now.

  The Colonel dismounted outside the castle.

  ‘Will you dismiss your men?’ he asked.

  ‘My men, all but one, come with me,’ said O’Flaherty. ‘Why? Are you afraid?’

  The Colonel was scornful.

  ‘If that’s the way the Lord President wants it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the way he is going to get it,’ said O’Flaherty.

  He dismounted. His men dismounted. One man gathered the reins of the little horses and walked them around the corner of Skinner’s Street where they would not be in the way of the crowds. He held them there, leaning against the wall, spitting occasionally in the dust, while the Colonel entered the castle gate, O’Flaherty followed the Colonel, and his men followed O’Flaherty. They seemed to fill the entire hall before the door into the great room opened before them.

  There was a guardroom just before the door. When Dominick followed Tom in here it was occupied by a few lounging soldiers and three men. They were restless men. One of them was white-haired with delicate features. He walked with his hands clasped behind him, his blue eyes darting a glance as they came in.

  ‘You too, Tom?’ this man said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom.

  ‘Is your brandy tribute not running short?’ he asked.

  ‘Every well has a bottom,’ said Tom.

  A short dark-haired stocky man laughed. He was well dressed. He looked well fed. His hands were hairy but they bore no signs of hard work.

  ‘Who will reach the bottom first?’ this one asked.

  ‘I will,’ said a young fair-haired man standing beside him. ‘ Some monsters are insatiable, like the gods of the Incas. Coote is like that. His belly is unfillable.’

  Said Tom to Dominick in Irish in a low voice, ‘ The white one is Richard Blake, the squat one is Oliver French, and the young one is Martin Browne. Isn’t it low the high are becoming?’

  The door opened. A small man with severe black clothes on him stood there. His puritan haircut was destroyed by the way his hair curled. He had long eyelashes, a small mouth. He was delicately built, like a young woman. His gestures were feminine, like his walk. He stood aside and gestured them past him. Dominick followed the other four. He noticed as he passed that the young man was highly scented.

  They stopped dead, just inside the door, because a very strange scene confronted them in the great hall. Right at the back there was a large fireplace of polished black and green marble. Out from this there was a table of black oak, carved. The walls all around were lined with soldiers, and behind the table sat a lounging man, dressed in black.

  His hands were very big, but very white. His hair was black and his face was very white. His eyes were intelligent and close-set, his nose big and bony, his mouth small with narrow lips. The cropped hair showed ears that were small and set close to his skull.

  But it wasn’t the sight of the Lord President that made them stand still. It was the sight in the fireplace. Two long-handled pikes had been lashed together to make a great X, and a young woman was tied to this X by wrists and ankles. She wore no clothes. Whatever covering she had was provided by her long black hair which she had been able to shake over her shoulder by swift jerky movements of her head. Coote was watching their faces. The soldiers were watching their faces. They laughed. They saw the eyes of the tall white-haired man flick as if he had got a blow in the face from a switch. They saw the eyes of the dark squat one goggle. Dominick saw the back of Tom’s neck turn fiery red. For himself he couldn’t look quickly enough at the face of a man who could set a scene like this. The man spoke.

  ‘You may approach, gentlemen,’ he said. They walked towards the table. Now Dominick understood why Tom was one of the party. A sort of subtle blow at t
he pride of the great ones, that even in paying their tribute they should have to do it in the company of a tavern-keeper and his assistant. Dominick felt that each man would have gladly killed Coote, if the odds were even. That was it, if the odds were even, if none of them wanted to survive. And didn’t he know it?

  As they got closer, he saw that the very white skin of Coote was oozing moisture, which he was constantly wiping away with a linen handkerchief. Each time he put up his hand to wipe his unpleasant skin, Dominick could see that his fingernails were long and dirty.

  ‘You have come in due time, Richard,’ Coote said to the tall man. The tall man was counting out guineas on the table from a leather bag.

  ‘It can’t last much longer, Coote,’ he said. ‘ You are coming near the end of my resources.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Richard,’ Coote said. ‘I have noticed the ones who squeal most manage to come back longest.’

  ‘If they don’t come back,’ said Richard, ‘their houses and properties are confiscated.’

  ‘Correction, sir,’ said the little black fellow who was standing by Coote counting the money and ticking it off on a sheet of paper with a quill, ‘they are not confiscated. They revert to the Parliament for non-payment of taxes.’

  ‘It’s robbery either way,’ said Richard.

  ‘Please, Blake,’ said Coote, ‘be careful with your words. They could be taken as a reflection on the Lord Protector and where would you end up then? You might end up tied to a fireplace like your friend young Mrs Walter Dorsi.’

  He was challenging Blake to make a remark about her. Blake’s eyes didn’t shift from his.

  ‘What unspeakable crime would a Christian have to commit, Coote, to be degraded in a way only you could devise?’

  He is courageous, Dominick thought, but where does that go? It doesn’t let the girl go free. He could look at the girl. He could admire her composure. She could be in her early twenties. She had dark eyebrows, and widely spaced eyes, over a thin sensitive nose with flared nostrils. Her eyes were calm. They were avoiding the looks of no man. He didn’t think that any man could look at her and not drop his eyes from the calm look of hers.

  ‘She refused tribute,’ said Coote, ‘and referred in malodorous terms to the personal appearance of the Lord Protector, a crime for which we all pray that the Lord will forgive her.’

  He was grinning. His teeth were big and yellow-stained. He looked to Dominick like a man with a disease of the liver. Was that why he was such a man, or was his nature devised for the times?

  ‘Now that you have won your effect,’ said Blake, ‘isn’t it possible for you to display a spark of human decency and let her go?’

  ‘No,’ said Coote. He banged his hand on the table. ‘And you be careful, Blake. It is unusual for me to warn twice. I have done it with you. There will be no third.’

  ‘Have I permission to retire?’ Blake said.

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ said Coote. ‘You can step back until you get permission to go, and feast your old eyes on the punishment of heretics.’

  ‘Here, here, Coote,’ said French, paying the guineas on the table. ‘You have me nearly broken, dammit. How can we survive? If you don’t take it easy, there will be nothing left.’

  ‘Next,’ said Coote.

  Young Browne put down no money.

  ‘I have come to the end,’ he said.

  ‘You know what that means?’ Coote asked.

  ‘I know,’ said Browne, ‘but I’d prefer it that way. At least I won’t have to see you every week.’

  ‘It’s a game cock, hah,’ said Coote. Dominick saw how he enjoyed himself. ‘Can you see all your nice apartments being raped by the common soldiery, Browne? And the inmates? Do we have to expose your intimate possessions for sale in the public market-place? We’ll do it. Mistress Dorsi’s most intimate things are at this moment on the block.’

  Dominick had a flash in his mind of the blue silk dress with the red roses. He wondered if he would kill Coote. He had no weapon. Could he snatch a weapon from a soldier and have him killed before he himself was killed? Was it his duty to die? There it was again. Was it his duty? So Mistress Dorsi would remain tied and exposed at a marble fireplace because none of them had the real courage. He understood a little now of the sheeplike way in which the men and women had boarded the slave ship.

  ‘You’ll suffer, Browne,’ said Coote. ‘ You have offended me and the Lord Protector, whose laws are designed for your own good, inspired by God.’

  ‘I have made my choice,’ said Browne.

  ‘The good Tom,’ said Coote. ‘How faithful you are, dear Tom!’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Tom. He reached back and took the jar from Dominick’s hands. ‘You wanted it, but by all that’s holy, just when I was going to hand it to you, didn’t the great thing slip out of my hands and fall on the marble floor like this, and break into bits?’

  Dominick held his breath, for Tom had taken the jar and broken it deliberately at his feet. The bits of crock flew and the room was pervaded with the smell of brandy. Tom’s neck was still red. He was glaring at Coote. If he had something in his hand he might have killed Coote. But why didn’t he hit him with the crock, Dominick wondered, that might have done it? But he didn’t. None of them were willing to do it. They had all made gestures, and he could see from Coote’s cold grin that he liked people to make gestures.

  Coote shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid that crock will have to be replaced with six more, Tom,’ he said.

  ‘There aren’t six more,’ said Tom; ‘there aren’t five or four or three or two or one. There are no more.’

  ‘Then,’ said Coote, ‘the soldiers will have to search for them.’

  At that moment the doors were flung back and it seemed as if the empty part of the room was filled with giants. They all turned; Dominick found it hard to believe that he was looking at Murdoc. He recognized him at once behind the fierce moustache. He saw his eyes going to Coote and then to the girl at the marble fireplace, and then he approached Coote and the table with his ten tall men behind him, as the harried voice of the Colonel was shouting, ‘O’Flaherty, Lord President.’ The men in front of the table fell back as he drew near.

  But Murdoc’s approach was unorthodox. He thrust a great hand across the table and instead of taking the Lord President’s hand he grabbed him by the tunic and lifted him straight out of his chair into the air and swung him around, so that his legs were dangling off the floor, and with the other hand he held a dagger so that the great white chin was resting on the point of it. It looked as if it had been practised. Murdoc’s men turned outward in a semicircle from him where he held Coote and their swords were free. All around them after the first shock of amazement the soldiers had cocked muskets and come forward or the long pikes were lowered.

  ‘You die, Lord President,’ said Murdoc, ‘ before a shot can be discharged.’

  He was looking into the yellow eyes so near his own. For a few seconds of time a frightening look had appeared in them. That’s his weakness, Murdoc thought, he is afraid of death, but then as the eyes became cold, and lost their dreadful emptiness, he thought, but he is not afraid to die.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Coote said, into the tenseness.

  ‘The girl goes free,’ said Murdoc.

  ‘The girl goes free,’ agreed Coote.

  Murdoc spoke to one of his men, in Irish. ‘Free her,’ he said, ‘and help her, and when she knows what she wants to do, bring me word.’

  A big fellow with a fierce black moustache detached himself from Murdoc’s group and went up to the girl. He drew a knife and severed her bonds, freed himself of the brown cloak and wrapped it around her. He held her arm. She tottered for a few paces, and then she walked with him. She didn’t look at Coote as she passed. She didn’t turn on him and spit at him. She showed great control. She walked beside the big man and then they were gone.

  Murdoc said to Coote: ‘I’ll let you go, that’s easy. What happens then? Are we kil
led? Before we die, we will kill a lot of men, including you. If that’s the way you want it, say so and I’ll cut your throat now and save us the trouble later.’

  ‘You will not be killed,’ said Coote. ‘ You have my word.’

  ‘From what I hear, it’s not up to much,’ said Murdoc, lowering him to the ground but still keeping a grip of him. ‘ But I suppose it will have to do,’ He was grinning. To his surprise, he found the yellow teeth grinning back at him. Coote was taller than he had thought. It’s a wonder he was taken by surprise. It wouldn’t be usual for him to be taken by surprise. He loosed his grip of him.

  ‘You sent for me, Coote,’ he said. ‘ I came.’ Coote kept looking at him.

  ‘It was kind of you,’ he said, with delicate sarcasm. ‘Everyone else get out of this room. Percy, get everyone else out of here, except myself and my friend.’

  Percy was wringing his hands. ‘ Oh, sir! Oh, sir, this violence,’ he was saying.

  ‘Percy!’ said Coote.

  Percy fluttered. ‘Please, please, clear the room for the Lord President.’

  Slowly the soldiers drew back. Percy approached the others. ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen, if you will,’ he implored by gesture. Blake, French, and Browne turned and walked out the door. They didn’t look back. Tom followed them, and Dominick followed Tom. He was laughing inside, it wasn’t funny, but he was laughing. It could only be Murdoc, he thought. Only Murdoc.

  The room was cleared. The door was closed. Coote went back and sat behind his desk. He was brave all right, Murdoc thought.

  ‘You are not afraid?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not afraid,’ said Coote.

  ‘Not even of hell?’ Murdoc asked.

  ‘No,’ said Coote. ‘Your uncle died. You have taken over his possessions.’