Dark Rosaleen (28 page)

William Smith O'Brien was a handsome man who lived on his brother's estate at Dromoland Castle in County Clare. He was a Protestant, a member of the Westminster Parliament and an active participant in the Catholic Association, dedicated to the repeal of the Union with England. Whatever the political contradictions, he was first and foremost an Irishman.

He was known as a benign and benevolent landlord and was serious in his politics. He passionately believed that only by political negotiation could peace and Irish independence ever be achieved. Violence would hinder change rather than hastening it. He believed that whatever new freedoms the Irish might enjoy, they were only England's to give.

He changed his mind one day in his ancestral town of Cashel. The square was packed. It was a political meeting, the first for many years. Such meetings were prohibited but there was not a Redcoat nor a peeler to be seen. Two men stood astride a statue of a saint. One was a tall, well-built young man with auburn hair that all but touched his shoulders. The second man was a priest. Draped around the statue was a string of green flags.

O'Brien was curious. He was not in town for politics. Wheat and its weekly price were his business that day. It was the voice that held him. A gentle coaxing voice that made men move closer and cup their ears to hear it better. A voice with sudden strength that rose loud with such venom and anger that men clenched their fists and tightened their jaws. They had not heard its like since Daniel O'Connell, the Great Liberator himself. The crowd pushed nearer. They cheered loudly as the man paused and were silent again as he spoke. But these were not O'Connell's words. The young man with the bright eyes had a different manifesto. His was a call to arms.

‘We have been conquered not once but many times. Our lands confiscated, our churches razed, our people brought to the very verge of extinction. We were once beautiful people, our men famous for their strength, our women for their beauty. Our land was a beacon of learning, our poets, bards and music known and loved here and beyond. Our monasteries were the hubs of learning, full of light and culture. Look at us now. Our earth and our people exist for English profit. Only when they rid this land of us will they be content. The English sent fifty thousand pounds to help the starving Irish. They've sent twenty million pounds for the Negro slaves in the West Indies. Such are our masters' priorities.

‘I defy anyone to exaggerate the misery of our people. Look at yourselves. You are like famished sheep. Will you let your Ireland perish like a lamb? Or will she turn as a baited lion turns? Let us unmuzzle the wolf dogs! They are here throughout the land fit to be untied and they become more savage every day they are kept caged. Let us together push the English back into the sea. Curse the tyrants that suck our blood. Fight! Fight for Ireland. Let our blood flow. Fight for liberty!'

That day, an Irishman was preaching rebellion, insurrection and revolution for all to hear in the streets of Cashel. It fired a passion in O'Brien, descendant of the king who had defeated the Vikings. The eight-hundred-year-old bloodline was suddenly rekindled. He resolved that hour to seek out the tall man with the auburn hair, the one called Daniel Coburn.

‘He does not ride with women, Miss Kathryn. He is very selective. He has to be. I think you are a very doubtful recruit.'

They sat facing each other at the end of a long oak table in the hall of O'Brien's castle at Dromoland. He had placed a tall candelabrum midway along it and a platform of light walled off the far end of the room. Kate had not seen a servant or any person since she had arrived. O'Brien provided bread and a round of cheese and filled two mugs from a jug of porter. He passed one to her.

‘Mind you,' he said. ‘We could make splendid capital out of it. Just think. The daughter of a knight of the realm, the former Relief Commissioner himself, creating havoc and gallivanting around the country with a ragged band of Irish revolutionaries. What wonderful propaganda!'

‘Why do you mock me?' Kate said. ‘I am already disgraced and my father is no longer anyone's favourite except his enemies'. I've come to you for help. I cannot go to anyone else. If they find me I shall be sent to England. I don't think I could bear that.'

‘So you want to help Ireland?'

‘I want to help the Irish who are suffering.'

‘There are good Irish ladies already doing that. Why don't you join them? Anna Parnell of the Ladies' Land League will find you a place, I've no doubt.'

‘My father will drag me from them. I can only bring them harm.'

‘Then what help can you be to us?' O'Brien asked.

‘Whatever help you need.'

‘To cook and sew? Woman's work?'

‘Whatever you want me to do, I will do.'

‘Are you fit to do it?'

‘I am fit.'

‘This is men's work.'

‘And I am a woman.'

‘Yes, and you are untried in what we do.'

‘Then you will teach me.'

‘You are very cocksure of yourself, sitting here comfortably, eating my cheese. But life would be very different once you rode with us, very different indeed.'

‘I'll bear that difference. That's why I am here.'

There was the sudden sound of a chair scraping the floor and movement at the far end of the room. A voice said, ‘Would you steal? Would you kill?'

Daniel Coburn entered the pool of light and sat on the edge of the table close to her. How often, despite herself, had she conjured up a face to match the eyes she remembered from that evening by the river at Fivemilebridge, when he had ridden away with Moran? How often had she dreamt of it since he had fired his pistol and saved her from the hands of the mob on that day riding with Una? Now he was so close she could feel his breath on her forehead. His nearness was suffocating. It frightened her. It intoxicated her. She trembled as he spoke.

‘Tell me, Miss Kathryn, if you came with us, would you select the role you'd want to play? Pick and choose according to the time of day? Whether the sun was out or not, whether it was warm or cold? Would you wear gloves to protect your dainty English hands so that guilt did not stain them?'

‘I would not wear gloves,' she said. ‘You mock me too.'

Coburn laughed as another man moved from out of the dark. A priest stepped forward.

‘Don't, Daniel. We know who she is and what she has done.'

He held out his hand to Kate. ‘I'm Father Kenyon from Tipperary. Silly people call me the Patriot Priest.'

He turned to Coburn. ‘She has done much for our people, we know that well enough. If we cannot enlist her, the least we can do is show her some gratitude and good manners.'

He reached over the table and drank porter from O'Brien's jug.

‘Miss Macaulay…' Coburn said.

‘I am Kate,' she interrupted. ‘I have no other name.'

‘Yes, I know,' he said. ‘Indeed I do. I have read Sir Robert's letter and it makes sad reading. But then Ireland is brimming with sad stories, enough I think to sink her. Yours is just one of a million.'

‘How much did Sir Robert tell?'

‘That you have mongrel blood.'

‘Enough of that,' said Father Kenyon. ‘Stop your blather, Daniel. It wouldn't do for any one of us to inspect our pedigree too closely. Now stop it!'

‘Sorry, Father,' said Coburn. He was still smiling. ‘And sorry to you too, Kate. I'm not used to company of your sort nowadays. But I do seem to remember that it was you who was prickly the last time we met.'

‘It was a very frightening time. You must forgive me.'

‘I forgive you. I do, really. In his letter, Sir Robert says you have crossed sides.'

‘I had no choice. I am my mother's child.'

‘But I think you turned long before your father put you out.'

‘Why do you think that?'

‘Can I guess when it was? And where?'

She waited. She did not answer.

‘Was it Limerick?' he asked. ‘When you said goodbye to the Keegans?'

‘How did you know?'

‘I was there. Only yards from you.'

‘You followed me?'

‘Not exactly. I had other business there that day. But I knew you'd be coming. You have become a friend of our people and I wanted to see you again. I think we owe you something, Kate. You have your story. One day I will tell you mine. All of us here have things to tell. Our stories explain everything. What we are and why we are here. They are our credentials.'

‘Will you take me?' she asked.

‘What are your credentials, Kate?'

‘Only my story and you know it now.'

‘We mean to change things, Kate. Change Ireland. Kick the English out. Your own people. You will join us in that. Fight with us against the English?

‘They are not my people. How many times must I say that to convince you? My people are not the English nor the Irish. They are the people who are suffering so dreadfully.'

‘What you have seen restores your pity?'

‘I am not wanting in pity. I ask you again. Will you take me?'

For some minutes Coburn said nothing. The priest emptied O'Brien's jug of porter, refilled it and cut himself a slice of cheese.

Coburn came and sat beside her. He did not look at O'Brien or Father Kenyon. He looked directly into her eyes. Then he took her right hand and shook it.

‘Yes! You can ride with us. All the way to the gallows. Ride with us, Kate, and you and I will hang together.'

‘Do not tempt the Lord,' said the Patriot Priest. ‘He is aggravated enough already. But may luck ride with you both.'

He kissed his fingers, crossed himself and touched their heads. It was his blessing.

She rode with them as hard and as long as any man among them. She asked no favours. None were offered. If two of the more prominent Young Irelanders were suspicious of her, it did not last. In the months that followed her introduction, Thomas Meagher, son of the Mayor of Waterford, and Gavan Duffy, a grocer's son from Monaghan, tried many times in many ways to test her. She did not fail.

When the snows came early that November, she had ridden with them to all but a few of Ireland's counties. From Donegal north to Bantry south, from Wicklow in the east to Mayo in the west. It was there, in the shadow of the Connemara Mountains, that Coburn took Kate to the place where he was born.

It was desolate country, a narrow corridor of camouflaged greens and browns, dividing the two vast loughs of Mask to the north and Corrib to the south. The towering Maamtrasna Mountain, its plateau mostly hidden in mist, sloped down to flooded plains and there was not a tree to be seen from Cornamona to Clonbur. It was as if all living things had fled from the place. Or that life had never come to it. Coburn stood by the water's edge.

‘This was my home, Kate. The stones you see scattered here were once my family's home. I was one of many, nine of us, maybe more. The cottage was always full of children coming and going from other families, so I never did know how many were ours. My mother was always carrying, every year there was another baby. Some died soon after they were born and were buried at night so we wouldn't know.' He pointed towards the foot of the mountain.

‘They're out there somewhere, along with the others.'

Kate followed his gaze.

‘What others, Daniel? Who else is buried there?'

‘I don't know them all, Kate. Only a few of them belong to us. There was so much dying then. You've only seen this famine but it was almost as bad then, twenty years ago. Many went down, starved to death, frozen to death, black and bloated with the fever.'

‘It's hard for me to think of it that way when we stand here,' Kate said. ‘There's a grand beauty about it, as if it has never been touched.'

‘Maybe it's been given new life by the blood of the dead.'

‘It's horrible to say that.'

‘I think of it no other way. I never stop thinking about it.'

He paused. ‘We shouldn't have come here, Kate. Not to this place. I have been many times before but I should not have brought you now. All my good memories have long been drenched by bad ones.'