Dark Rosaleen (32 page)

‘Come out! All of you,' he shouted. ‘I'm torching this house and none of you will be hurt if you come out now. I cannot wait long. Come and be quick with it. You'll not be harmed.'

He turned his horse again and rode along the line of windows, smashing the panes of glass, breaking the frames.

‘You have minutes to get out. This house is going to burn. Come out now. Save yourselves!'

He heard a man shouting inside. Then the screams of the girls. A shot was fired. Then a second. The front door opened and a man came out bleeding. He staggered forward and clutched at the lion's head. He raised a hand towards Coburn and tried to speak as blood trickled from his mouth.

‘The master … The master …' Then he fell onto his chest and did not move.

A girl and a boy ran out from the back of the house, past Coburn, and threw themselves down on the lawn behind him. He raised the flaming torch above his head and the three horsemen left the trees.

‘In with it, boys, and fast!' he shouted to them. ‘In at every window. The curtains first, then torches to the rooms.'

The maid and the boy lay flat on the grass, too terrified to move. They watched the horsemen with their flaming sticks, putting fire in through the windows and the open front door, spreading the flames. There was no delay, no moments of waiting for the fire to take hold. Within seconds, the rooms exploded with a roar and smoke blasted out in great black spirals. The heat burst up through the ceilings into the second floor and there was a mighty crash of timbers and another explosion. Balls of white hot splinters cascaded out as if they had been shot from cannons.

Coburn saw Kate riding fast towards him, raising her arm towards the roof. He looked up. Through the smoke, standing high on the parapet, he saw Edward Ogilvie.

‘What's the bloody fool doing?' O'Brien brought his horse to Coburn's side. ‘He's shouting at us. My God, Daniel. Look at him. He has someone in his arms. He's holding a girl.'

Coburn jumped from his horse, went to the boy and pulled him up off the grass. He shook him hard.

‘Is it the maid? Did she not come out with you?'

The boy could not speak.

Coburn slapped him across the face. ‘Talk boy, talk. Can he get down from there?' Coburn shouted again at him. ‘Is there a way down? Quickly, tell me!'

The boy stuttered. ‘At the back, sir! Stairs … The stable … At the back … Iron stairs.'

Coburn shouted to Kate. ‘Take my gun. Ride to the gates. Fire one shot if you see any movement from the road. One shot. Go now, go!'

Coburn and O'Brien ran to the back of the house. There was much smoke but the fire had yet to reach there. A narrow cast-iron stairway spanned the stable to the first floor of the house above the kitchen. Coburn ran to it and began climbing. The rungs were already warm and blasts of hot air seared his face. Thirty feet up he came to a ledge where the iron stairway ended. A single wooden ladder continued up to the roof. As he held the first rung to climb again he saw Ogilvie standing on the parapet above him, the girl tight in one arm, a pistol in his other hand.

Coburn shouted, ‘Give her to me, Ogilvie!'

‘I'll have you first!' he shouted back. ‘You've killed my servants and now you are trying to kill me.'

‘Your servants are alive. You shot your own man.'

‘He refused to bar the windows. He defied me.'

‘Give me the girl and jump, you fool! The wall is collapsing.'

‘Look at me, Coburn. Look up at me. Let me see your face.'

He swung his pistol towards Coburn and pulled the trigger but the shot that killed his butler had been his last.

Coburn shouted again. ‘Let her go, you fool. Lower her down and then jump down to the ledge here. I can't wait longer. This wall is red hot.'

Part of it began to crumble. A shower of sparks shot out of a window and the wooden ladder was suddenly ablaze.

‘Jump with her, Ogilvie … jump now.'

‘I cannot. I will not reach it.'

‘You will, you fool. Now, or you'll burn!'

‘Why have you done this to me, Coburn?'

‘Think, man. Think of all you did. Think of the thousand poor devils you shoved out of their homes. That's why we're torching yours.'

Coburn began feeling his way back down the iron stairs. The rungs now burnt his hands and feet. The heat was intense and the smoke began to choke him.

Ogilvie pushed the girl aside. ‘Don't leave me here, Coburn. I'll jump. Catch me. I cannot do it on my own. Stay and catch me!'

Coburn stopped. But it was too late. Flames suddenly burst up through the roof and a mass of slates and bricks blew up into the air like an erupting volcano. The force of it lifted Ogilvie and the girl bodily off the parapet, spun them like a top and sucked them screaming backwards into the well of fire.

Coburn touched the ground as O'Brien came running to him.

‘Hurry, Daniel. Kate has fired the shot. They must be coming … The Redcoats. Duffy and Meagher have gone to her. We must ride. Hurry, man!'

They met the others waiting at the gates. On the rise of a hill less than half a mile away, they could just make out the line of red marching towards them.

‘This is as far as they dare come,' Coburn said. ‘They don't know how many of us there are. They'll not push further.'

‘Do we ride off together?' Meagher asked him.

‘No! Go separately. But not directly. We'll meet at Dromoland in a week. Be in no hurry. We've done what we came to do and more. But once they know Ogilvie is dead, there'll be hell to pay.'

‘Who will they blame, Daniel?' Duffy asked. ‘Who will they go for?'

‘They will blame us because I will let them know it's us. That's what this is all about. We've made the first strike and it's a bloody one. It is us they'll be after now. This is the beginning, boys. We have marked it this night.'

In turn they reached out, shook hands with each other, then rode off their separate ways. Coburn and Kate went together, side by side. They looked behind them. The sky was glowing orange.

Coburn did not wait to be named as Ogilvie's murderer. He announced it himself. Within a week he published a pamphlet declaring war on the landlords. Within days it was being read across all of Ireland.

Let them see their blackened piles, let us destroy the great wealth that lies between tyranny and liberty. Out of persecution comes a lust for revenge. Let them know vengeance is a pitiless obsession, and that we know well enough how to harness that. We will not get justice from the English by holding out an empty hand. Fill it with a gun or pike and if you have none, close your fist. Let our landlords threaten us and we will answer them with fire. Let us stop them now and not wait until caution clears our heads.

His call to arms was quickly answered. The cull of marked landlords began. Lists of those to be attacked began to circulate and they were not all of Coburn's making. Many were headed with the line: ‘Your lives are not worth the paper this is written on'. Many killings were acts of individual vengeance.

Within two weeks, six landowners were shot dead as they rode from their estates. A seventh was blinded by grapeshot. Within a month, ten more had been killed and as many wounded. Such was the complicity and silence of the people that not one of the assassins was arrested. Of all the murders, it was Mahon's that angered the British government most.

Major Denis Mahon was a handsome, popular and well-intentioned young officer in the 49th Lancers Cavalry Regiment. He had inherited an estate in County Roscommon from his distant relative Lord Hartland. The old peer had died in a lunatic asylum and left a derelict estate and debts of over £30,000 in unpaid rents.

The young major began the new management by encouraging those tenants who would peaceably give up their plots to leave so that the land could be turned over to sheep farming. He hired two ships and those who wanted to emigrate to Canada and America could do so for free. He paid for extra provisions aboard the ships so that none would suffer in the crossing. Eight hundred accepted his offer. Three thousand more did not. They could not pay his rent and they would not leave. He felt he had no option. He gave them an ultimatum. They must pay or be evicted and evicted they were.

The parish priest of Strokestown denounced him publicly from the pulpit as a tyrant, the worst since Cromwell. Such words coming from a priest were encouragement enough. That November evening, Major Mahon having just finished chairing a meeting of the workhouse committee, was driving in an open carriage on the high road out of the town towards his estate. Three miles on, as he came to the crossroads, he was ambushed by two masked men on horseback. Before he could reach for his own gun they shot him twice in the chest. He died an hour later. As soon as it was dark, fires were lit on the hills in celebration.

Fear now spread fast among the landed gentry and those in their employ. Poor Law relief was suspended in many counties because officials were afraid to travel. Land agents and bailiffs were careful not to venture beyond the safety of their masters' estates.

At Carrick-on-Shannon, mourners who attended a funeral of a landowner all carried guns. The hearse was escorted by four armed policemen.

Landowners and their families hurried to leave for the safety of England. Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, felt so threatened he quickly sent his children back to their London home. He also sent a letter to Prime Minister Russell, threatening to resign.

There is an open and widely spread conspiracy for shooting landlords and burning their properties. A flame now rages in a rebellious campaign and my fear is that it will become a general conflagration. The condition of Ireland is now that of a servile war. Distress, discontent and hatred of English rule are increasing everywhere. I receive murder threats daily and dare not go out without bodyguards and those I barely trust. I am a prisoner of the State, living in an enemy country. There are weapons in the hands of the most ferocious people on this earth. The time to suppress sedition has come. You will not ask me to remain here when I feel my power has gone.

He did not have to wait long for the Prime Minister to reply and he was heartened by it.

These outlaws must be caught. I will send you another regiment to do it. If they remain free to do as they will, there may soon be little room for us left in that accursed country.

But Russell hesitated. He had promised Clarendon the immediate dispatch of fifteen thousand more troops. Without explanation, they were delayed. There were demands that those caught in acts of rebellion should be charged with high treason and, upon conviction, the punishment was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. But Russell chose to ignore the clamour. His political opponents in Westminster accused him of cowardice. Others began to wonder whether it was, instead, cunning.

Coburn and Kate were now never long in one place. Notices offering rewards for information leading to their arrests were nailed up in every town and market place in all the thirty-two counties. Caution being the wiser part of valour, Coburn sent O'Brien, Meagher and Duffy out to galvanise the people, and instructed Father Kenyon to establish the strength of support among the priests.

In March, a meeting was held in the Music Hall on Abbey Street in Dublin, where the Young Irelanders publicly announced the plan for national insurrection. Men of fighting age were invited to join a national guard with a target of fifty thousand volunteers. An Irish brigade was to be recruited in the United States for dedicated Irish-Americans willing to launch themselves across the Atlantic and fight for a free Ireland. Pamphlets were distributed in the hall with instructions on how to organise street fighting. Boiling oil was to be poured on soldiers' heads from windows, broken glass scattered in the streets to halt the cavalry, homemade ammunition, including grenades containing acid, would be made ready and lead, stolen from rain spouts and rooftops, would be made into bullets.

O'Brien reminded his audience that Irishmen made up a third of the entire British Army and ten thousand more of Irish stock were serving in the British constabulary. Would they ignore a call to arms to free their motherland? O'Brien told them that the French had pledged their support and he was about to leave for Paris to enlist the help of the revolutionaries who had so recently and bloodlessly deposed their king.

O'Brien, well tutored by Coburn, gave a final rousing speech. He addressed Lord Clarendon as ‘Her Majesty's Executioner' and ‘Ireland's Butcher'. He spoke of the holy hatred of foreign domination and the determination to rid Ireland of her oppressor, ‘which glows as fierce and as hot as ever'.

He ended his speech draped in a green cloth.

‘Rouse yourselves. Let us fan the embers and send care to the winds. Ignore English law, arm yourselves and be ready to march on Dublin Castle and tear it down. Let us shred English power forever.'