Seek the Fair Land Read online

  ‘You will come back,’ said the priest.

  ‘How do you know?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘First because you are determined to come back,’ said the priest. ‘And second because God wants us to live.’

  ‘Let’s leave God out of it,’ said Dominick. His voice was hard. ‘If we get free we will try and get across the country to the mountains. In the siege of ’ 41 we sheltered a man. His name was Murdoc. He came from over there. He talked a lot, but I remember one thing he said about the fair land in the mountains where you could see your enemies and where you could be free. That’s where we are going, where we can be free, free.’

  ‘Freedom is in your own heart,’ said the priest.

  ‘Father,’ said Dominick, ‘I am under a strain. Don’t talk to me about things like that. Promise that, or I won’t be able to go on with it. These hands and these legs and this brain of mine are going to get us free. Don’t hold me back.’

  ‘I won’t hold you back,’ said the priest.

  ‘We can take very little with us,’ said Dominick. ‘We will have to load our bodies with the things that will be necessary. I don’t know how long it will take us to get across. It might be years. The whole land will be torn apart. But we will get there. And we will survive.’

  ‘Where is your wife?’ the priest asked.

  Dominick looked at him. His face was ravaged. He rubbed his hands through his hair, clenched his teeth. Then he got hold of himself.

  ‘She is … she is with neighbours,’ he said, as he cast a glance at Man, who heard things when she wasn’t supposed to hear them. But the priest understood. He had seen it all in Dominick’s eyes. So that was why, he thought. Poor Dominick!

  ‘I will have to chance going up above,’ said Dominick. There are things up there that we cannot do without, if they haven’t found them. The children must be quiet.’

  ‘They will be quiet,’ said the priest.

  Dominick walked up the steps. He listened. Raised the flap, looked, went swiftly out, and closed the flap all in one movement. He listened again. Then he moved towards the steps to the upstairs room. He regarded the chaos of downstairs indifferently. There was nothing left whole. The place was like a privy.

  He went up the steps slowly. It was empty. His books were on the floor. Nearly every leaf of them had been torn. They had used them to light a fire. Only the heavy calf bindings remained of the book of the Gospels. He went over to the dais where they had slept. He bent his head to the spot where she had slept, but there was no scent of her remaining. Only the smell of leather and sweat, and of the rough men who like birds had soiled the place with their droppings. He closed his nostrils, pulled back the straw and lifted the stone under the palliasse. He took the canvas bag out of it. Its contents had been added to over a long period, and what had they been added to for, he wondered. But in the times ahead it might be useful. The meanest of men would sell himself for money.

  He didn’t look at the place any more. It was dead for him. It didn’t belong to him. Things without people are as dead as the dead. It takes people to make them appear to breathe and live and have quality.

  He stopped half way down the steps as the horse hooves clattered in the street outside.

  They didn’t stop, so he went on. The shouts and screams from outside left him indifferent too.

  He called at the crack and when he heard the bolts being pulled back, he went down. He shot the bolts again after him.

  The priest was breathing hard. The effort of climbing and unbolting had left him almost exhausted. I can’t rely too much on him, Dominick thought coldly.

  He got his needle and thread and cloth, which he cut with a knife, and he started to sew together a belt that would go around his waist. The priest was leaning back again. Peter had finished his bowl and was holding it with one fat fist, and beating it with another.

  ‘Pedro is not talking at all,’ said Man.

  ‘He will,’ said Dominick. ‘It’s as well that he doesn’t talk now.’

  ‘Father Sebastian must be tired,’ said Man. ‘He’s going to sleep again.’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Dominick, ‘sit down now and be quiet.’

  ‘Will you tell me a story?’ Man asked.

  ‘I will,’ said Dominick, and told her the story of the Prince who rescued the lady from the dragon. Man enjoyed it. She questioned him all the way through it. She accepted nothing. Only once did she ask him when is Mammy coming home.

  Dominick held a board over the flame of the candle and each time the black soot formed he rubbed it on his body. His fair hair was tied back. He had his face blackened and most of his shoulders and his arms. He wore breeches and black stockings on his legs and nothing more. The two children were asleep on the straw. Father Sebastian rubbed the soot on the parts where Dominick couldn’t reach. His rubbing was feeble enough. His arm got tired very quickly, and his breathing came fast. He thought how deceptive Dominick was in his clothes, what a powerful muscular body he possessed. He felt the strength of him and hoped that his closed mind would open.

  Dominick said: ‘That’s enough. I’ll go now. When I come back you will hear me. Stay close to the stone. Douse the light of the candle. When I call, send out Peter to me and then Man, and then the bundle, and after that come through yourself. Will you be able to do all that?’

  ‘I will,’ said Father Sebastian.

  ‘We won’t have a lot of time,’ said Dominick.

  ‘You can rely on me,’ said Father Sebastian.

  ‘Good,’ said Dominick. He blew out the candle. He went over to where the stone was, feeling his way. He pulled it back. His judgement was good. It was as black outside as the inside of an evil heart. He backed out.

  ‘God bless you,’ he heard the voice of Father Sebastian whispering. Then he let himself down until he felt the water tugging at his legs and he dropped noiselessly into the water. The tide was flowing. Just starting to flow, so he let himself go along with it, his hands holding on to the slimy stones not yet covered. It was really dark. He couldn’t see even the bulk of the town. The water gurgling in his ears kept him from hearing anything. The houses that backed on the river had privies. They would be over his head. They also dumped offal and unwanted things into the river so that the sea would scour them away. He didn’t want to get into the middle of the flood. There the river would be running, and it was hard to swim in it.

  Very slowly his eyes became accustomed to the blackness as the tide swept him slowly up and up. He knew he was free of the walls when his hand was no longer touching the stones, and his nostrils filled with the smell of autumn rushes and mud and silt. As the river narrowed he found he had to swim ever harder as the tide weakened. But it was not as bad as he thought it would be. It was better to have the tide weak now in order to have it strong when he wanted it. He knew the river and the way it wound, very well. That was his business, a man who had been intent on by-passing the toll laws of the town and spreading his wares where no questions would be asked. The knowledge was useful to him now.

  Less than a mile on, he came into the sandy reach where the river wound. He rested there, before pulling himself up. He felt the stones under his bare feet and the grass and he walked towards the dimly outlined buildings of the fishing village.

  His long journey was in vain.

  Not a house intact. The roofs had been set on fire. All that remained of them were gaunt blackened sticks and an overpowering smell of burnt straw and wood. His hands felt bodies too. He didn’t stop to look at them, to peer closely and try and recognize a well-known face that might have joked and laughed at him. Once his hand touched the naked flesh of a woman. Here too. He wondered how many people had got away. A river was a treacherous place for escape. You could be tracked along the banks, but some of them would have got away. Some of them.

  He went back to the river. He walked four hundred yards down from it, into the four acres of rushes. He knew his way through, walking in the soft tilth, sinking up to his knees, and extract
ing his foot before it went too deep, and he came to the cleared space where they left the coracles.

  There were three coracles there. So all of them had not got away. Was he to thank God that some of them had been killed so that he could have a boat?

  What use questions like that? They were round coracles, cowhide stretched over willow, birch, and larch branches. They were difficult to manage if you didn’t know how. He knew how. He had so little time and he had a good way to go against the stream. He sat into one, freed it and paddled out through the rushes, to the faint gleam of water where the river was.

  Out there the tide was flowing faster and he was swept around and around in his boat until his legs found purchase against the batons, and using the sweep he made headway against the tide. This time he travelled in the very middle of the river where the stream would help him before it was overwhelmed. There was a gleam of light in the eastern sky. Don’t come up yet, he beseeched the moon. It was somewhere there.

  He could see the bulk of the town faintly, lights and reflected gleams. It was just a town for him, his mind told him, no name, no nature, no attachment. It was just a place he was leaving.

  It was difficult. He had a hard time getting the unwieldy craft to the south side of the river when he had crept into the blackness of the wall bordering it. When he was a little way in, he grabbed for the stones still remaining over the tide, held the rope of the coracle in his hand, got out of the boat and started to walk and scramble down along. The tide took the boat. He had the rope over his shoulder. It was cutting into it. He found it hard to walk. The stones were very slippery, but his right hand gripped the top ones that were dry.

  He was pleased to come to the iron hook. He pulled the boat close, tied the rope. Then he put his head in the aperture and called: ‘Father! Father!’ There was no sound in reply. They have been found, was his thought. Oh, they have been found! And then as he was about to mount and crawl he heard the voice of the priest. ‘All right, Dominick.’

  He closed his eyes and dropped his head. He was trembling.

  ‘Here’s one,’ said the voice.

  Dominick reached and found Peter’s legs pushed out to him. He sought greater purchase for his feet as he held him. ‘Ssh,’ he said in his ear as he hauled the boat close and placed him into it. Peter made no sound.

  ‘No talk, no talk, Man,’ he said into her ear as her body came to him. She said ‘Ssh’, that was all, and then he carefully placed her beside her brother. He took the two bundles as they came, and put them into the boat which was now pressing painfully into his legs as it was being swept upstream by the tide.

  ‘Now, Father,’ he said.

  This was the worst part. If it was only himself they could be away. What did a priest know about round coracles?

  The bulky body came through the aperture. He pulled the boat around as well as he could.

  ‘Careful, careful,’ he whispered, guiding the legs of the priest as they felt for the boat. If he leaned his weight on the side it would topple. But the priest surprised him. He curled one foot inside the edge and twitched it, and the boat swung around and as it swung the priest stepped right into the middle of it and sat. It balanced.

  Dominick paused for a moment before he freed the rope. He wondered if he would reach in and pull out the stone. He decided he wouldn’t. Let them wonder. Let them see it. Let the thought strike them that after all there might be a witness. Then he pulled the boat towards him with his foot, stepped into it on the end opposite the priest, freed the rope and let it go.

  They were swept into the middle of the stream. He didn’t want to use the paddle. His feet were high in the air, resting on a bundle and on the body of Man, hitting the knees of the priest. If he used a paddle it might flash, it might make a noise.

  The boat swirled and swirled and then remained steady in the middle of the tide, and then went up with it, carried on it and they were free from the town and approaching the first bend, when the great swollen yellow moon arose for a magnified look at the slaughtered town.

  Chapter Six

  HE WORMED his way through the tall stalks of wheat. There was no wind. The only sound he could hear was the lowing of unmilked cattle. The sun was sinking, beginning to colour the clouds on the horizon. The vault of the sky was coloured a misty blue.

  He had had a change of mind. He had landed on the north bank of the river that morning instead of the south. It was an instinct in him that said, go to the land where the sword has already fallen lest in fleeing it falls on your neck. He wondered if he had been right, if they would not have been safer to go south and escape before the army converged on it. Looking north now from his height, he could see that the hill on which he lay was ringed with smoke, as if he was encircled with signal fires. The smoke rose in tail columns to the sky like black and grey marble pillars supporting the vault of heaven. Who could have believed that destruction would have come to this land so fast! It was a pleasant smiling land of gently rounded hills and wooded slopes, as fertile as a healthy woman. The soil was deep and it was rich, and it reared great cattle and crops. Its wealth was in itself and that was why it was so desirable to men who didn’t possess it. To be safe you must own nothing, you must possess nothing.

  He heard the sound of the approaching horses below him and looked down towards the river. From here as it looped below his hill he could have leaped into the water of it. On each side it was open and shelved to beaches of golden sand, and even in the middle it was very shallow and made music for itself as it sang its way over the gravel and the small stones. The approaches on either side were built of toghers, wooden hurdles laid on the soft ground to absorb the passage of hooves and occasional wheels. The band of horsemen came from the south. There were about twenty of them in a troop. They splashed across the river and dismounted on the other side. Their faces were smoke-begrimed. Their tunics were stained. They removed their helmets and pegged the horses. They took food from their saddle-bags and squatted on the ground free of the toghers and started to chew. He could hear their voices. His stomach tightened at the sound of the almost unintelligible English they spoke. They were clean-shaven, heeding shaves. Some of them went to the water of the river and scooped water into their faces. Some of them relieved themselves into the river, standing there talking to one another as they did so, laughing.

  The Colonel sat apart. He didn’t dismount. He stayed on his horse. His eyes moved steadily over all the landscape around him, searching the hillock where Dominick rested. He had a flat face with bunched muscles at the side of his jaws. Dominick could see the muscles bulging tightly as he chewed.

  His hands were dirty. Such was the clarity of the late day.

  Dominick stiffened as he saw the figures coming towards the ford. They came very slowly from the north. They saw the troopers and they still kept coming. A woman, a tall woman. Her hair was uncovered. It was long hair falling on her shoulders. There were grey ashes on her black hair. Her face was smoke-begrimed, the long woollen dress she wore was dirty with soot. She was carrying a bundle in her hand, possessions wrapped in what had once been a black cloak. There were three children with her. One was a boy of about twelve. His black hair was matted. He wore a coarse tunic and torn breeches. His legs were bare and brown and dirty. His face was dirty. His prominent teeth seemed startlingly white in his face. There were two girls, small ones, about ten years of age. They walked one each side of the woman, holding on to her dress with grimy hands. One was very fair-haired. Her face was dirtied, as was the face of the other little one. They are walking to death, Dominick thought. It was pathetic. He could see the improvisations that had been made. The dirt applied to the faces was too regular; the clothes were obviously wrong. He wanted to stand up and scream at them ‘Go back! Go back!’ like the heather bird.

  They came on. Some of the soldiers came close to the road, one of them unsheathing a sword, and still eating. He looked to the Colonel. The eyes of the Colonel were regarding them. They passed by under the muzzle o
f his horse, as if they didn’t see him. The hand of the woman didn’t even tighten on her bundle. The soldier was waiting for the Colonel’s nod. He didn’t nod.

  The strange little party walked into the water of the river. The water came almost to their knees. Dominick could see the water darkening the bottom of their clothes. The boy stumbled once and fell forward. He saved himself with his hands but the water had wet all the front of him. The two soldiers near him laughed. That was all. They crossed the ford and walked out on the other side.

  Only Dominick could see what happened then when a turn hid them from the ford. The way the woman looked back, one hand up to her heart, her dull-looking, stupid-looking face now transformed, and then she gathered the three children, spoke to them, and they ran off the rough path, through a copse of low sallies, and ran and ran across a broad cleared space towards an oak wood on the far hill. Could I do that? Dominick wondered. It’s something to know. Look like nothing. Look dirty and deprived, like nothing, and you might get away with it. But how about if you were a man? Even if you drooled and were dirty and put on the face of a fool would you get away with it?

  The next one came riding towards the ford. He was a good stout man on a black horse. He had a red face. His saddle-bags were new and they were full. He was dressed sedately in brown clothes and good white linen. He was a little worried. There was a slight frown between his eyes. Behind him there came another horse. His good lady was obviously mounted on it. Her white face was reddened from the sun. She wore a dress of red damask and a black woollen cloak lined with scarlet. A middle-aged servant walked beside the master’s horse. He was a thin-faced man with a hat set firmly across his forehead. And a young maid-servant walked by the side of the lady, holding on to her stirrup. She was young and plump, this maid, and she was fair. She wore a black cloak and a brown dress and her hair was uncovered.