were~ superbly trained and an-ned. The priests were peaceful men, who be-
lieved that there was nothing that a fight could achieve that a smile
could not, except blood and death and anguish.
Jamie and Sean resisted the powerful simple urgings of the priests. This
was no place for them, and it disgusted them to see that several of the
peasants had already stepped forward and made their mark on the petition.
As they were about to leave, they saw a messenger come gasping into the
town. He shouted out his news. The Commissioner had been replaced;
martial law prevailed. At nearby Dunvin, twenty Catholic peasants had
been mercilessly shot for refusing to denounce their religion. At Camew,
twice that number had died.
Father Michael stared at the man, dumbstruck with pity and horror, and
crossed himself, and murmured prayers for the souls of the dead. His
brother, Father John, lifted the parchment that was the petition high in
the air, and tore it to shreds, to the silent appreciation and
deep-rooted fear of the people.
Then they saw the flames, and the redcoats.
The church at Boulavogue had been boarded up for years, unused by the
clergy since the religion was proscribed. Father
26 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
John and Father Michael held their services in barns, or milking sheds,
or ditches, believing that the Holy Spirit was with them wherever any
number, no matter how few, were gathered together. But the church
building, abandoned and rotting, had been a powerful symbol for the
community, and they lived in the hope that one day the edict against their
religion would be repealed, and they could take down the boards, and open
the church, and let the sweet light of day come flooding in.
Now it was burning, torched by the soldiers, who were marching toward
them. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that a fate similar to that of
their cousins in Dunvin and Carnew awaited them unless they renounced
their religion, and this they would not do, They would fight and die if
necessary, and preferred this to abandoning their God.
To everyone's surprise, it was Father John who led the charge. The sight
of his beloved church in flames, the news of the death of so many
innocents who had done nothing more than worship God in their own way,
and defended that right to worship to the death, enraged the gentle
priest. With a cry that came from the very pit of his soul, he grabbed
a stout staff from a man standing near, and ran screaming at the
soldiers.
Where Father John went, Father Michael went, and where the priests went,
the flock followed. All the men in the square grabbed whatever weapons
came to hand, pitchforks and sticks, spades and cart whips, and followed
the priests into the fray.
Sean looked at Jamie in triumph, and both cried out in exhilaration, Sean
in Gaelic and Jamie in English.
"Erin go bragh!"
"Ireland forever!"
They leaped from their horses and ran to the thick of the fight,
punching, kicking, wresting guns from soldiers. The women of the town
stood and cheered their men to battle.
The soldiers were surprised by the speed and ferocity of the attack, and
its very unlikeliness, and for the first few minutes, the peasants had
the advantage. But, better trained and better armed, the troops recovered
their wits, and fought back. In hand-to-hand combat, the peasant band
slowly retreated toward the square.
BLOODLINES 27
A man fell to the ground, his head cracked open by the butt of a musket.
His wife, who had been praying for him, ran to him, and saw that he could
not live, or perhaps was already dead. Years of repression and anger,
years of hardship, years of brutality by the soldiers now welled up in
her. A banshee cry came from her, and she threw herself at the soldier
who she thought had killed her man, kicking and screaming, tearing out
his hair, gouging at his eyes.
It was a clarion call to the other women. The primal scream that they
heard from the now widowed woman woke the animal in all of them. Like
their men before them, they grabbed anything they could find to use as
weapons-pots and pans, sticks and stones, or just their bare hands-and
they descended on the soldiers like lions in defense of their lair.
The soldiers were astounded. They were trained to fight men, other
soldiers, in fon-nal ranks of order. They were trained to kick and
crucify docile peasants. They were trained to whip and mutilate untrained
youths. But they were not trained to face a screaming, caterwauling mob
Of rampant women out for blood.
It was a rout, and the soldiers fled, to the cheers and jeers of the
people. They fled to regroup, and nurse their wounds, and be harangued
by their officers for letting a pack of women get the better of them.
Most of them lived to fight another day, and would never underestimate
the ferocity of females again.
Not all of them lived. One soldier's neck was broken. Another had a
pitchfork through his heart. Five peasants were dead.
When the soldiers where gone, the cheering died to nothing. The women,
as if appalled by the forces that had been unleashed from inside them,
became docile, and wept for the dead, and for themselves. Their husbands
and sons came to comfort them, and stood with them, thrilled but
apprehensive, for they feared what the soldiers would do in retaliation.
The brother priests stared at one another, and then each looked at his
bloody hands. They whispered together, and began to make plans, for they
had entered, or been dragged into, a strange and frightening new world,
but they knew there was no going back.
Jamie sat on the ground and tended his bloody nose and a
28 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
gash on his arrn, while Sean sat beside him, and put a wet cloth to his
blackening eye, and looked at the scratches on his arms and legs. It had
been a good fight, but they felt no sense of jubilation. It was only a
skirmish, and the real battle was yet to come.
The messenger ran. He had seen the fight and bashed a few British heads
with his long, thick pole, and felt a swingeing surge of excitement, for
this was something that was worth the telling, and it was his alone to
tell.
He raced from the town, and pole-vaulted ditches and hedges with
breathless, careless speed, to the villages nearby and gasped his news.
Other messengers took up the cry, and soon the county rang with the glad
tidings, that a small group of unarmed peasants, led by two priests, had
defeated the might of Britain.
They left their homes, taking with them what weapons they had, and came in
a trickle at first, and then a flood, to Gorey Hill, not far from
Boulavogue, where the fathers, Michael and John, had made their camp.
Within two days their number was a thousand, and within a week, three times
that.
But on that first night they were only a dozen, the priests and Jamie and
Sean, and eight more, young men eager for battle. The soldiers could have
struck them down with ease, if they had found them, but they did not bother.
They contented themselves with setting fire to a score of peasant cottages,
as vengeance for their defeat. Several of the women who had fought, and a
few who had not, were raped.
Jamie and Sean had cast their lot with the priests because there seemed no
better place to be. The fathers had thanked them, and accepted,
unwillingly, their congratulations. Father John looked at his hands again.
"With my own hands I choked a man almost to death," Father John said. "I am
in fear for my mortal soul."
"But he didn't die," Jamie said, puzzled by the priest's grief.
"No." Father John nodded, but mournfully. "But others will, and I believe
that I will do some of that killing."
He looked at his hands again, as if continually astounded by what they had
done. "I have devoted my life to the healing
BLOODLINES 29
grace of God, but it seems He has other plans for me."
Sean took charge, for the priests were not practical men of war.
"They will come again," he said. "We had best find a hiding place."
"Yes," Father Michael agreed. "Are you with us?"
He was only offering shelter, but he had the first two recruits of his
army. The priests led Jamie and Sean to Gorey Hill, avoiding the
soldiers' camps, and to a small shack that they used when the town was
unsafe for them. As the four men wended through the dew-soft evening,
other young men joined them, and made camp on the hill, and, safe in the
night, celebrated, at last, their victory. Some had beer, which they had
stolen and shared, and food given them by their families, for all
understood that it was only the beginning. But it was something. After
years of servility, it was a start on a long road to freedom.
The little group of unarmed, unlikely soldiers who had priests as their
generals sat around the campfire, as soldiers do, after battle, and
recounted the stories of their day and their fight. They relived every
moment of the small battle, and exaggerated their roles in it, and their
own valor, and laughed with love at the reckless women who had probably
saved their lives, although none would admit that.
Jamie had never known such a sense of companionship and, sitting in
Sean's company, felt that he had proved his bravery to the world, and,
most important, to his friend. At that moment, he wanted no other life
than this, to do daring, foolish things in a great cause, in the company
of like-minded fellows, and to sit with them afterward and revel in the
memory of it.
Then they saw fires, and stood and looked at the burning cottages around
Boulavogue, and knew what the soldiers had done.
" Damned British Protties!" a young man said, tears in his eyes. His name
was Liam and his home was in flames.
Jamie was silent for a moment, but had to tell them, whatever the
consequences might be.
"I am not Catholic," fie said.
There was an awful silence, and then Liam, who had damned the British
Protestants, damned him too, and spat at him.
30 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Then go to your heretic mates," Liam cried, ready, at that moment, to
kill Jamie.
Jamie knew it was a test, and the moment was his. Others might defend
him. He had to defend himself.
"I did not think to fight with God," Jamie said softly. "I thought our
cause was Ireland."
The moment passed. Liam leashed his anger, and looked away. Father John
made a joke, which voiced what most of them felt.
"It doesn't matter," he said, "if he's a good Catholic, or a wretched,
fornicating Protestant-he is a good Irishman."
They laughed to break the tension, but Sean did not. Proud of Jamie, he
said something simpler, and, to Jamie, so much more important. He stared
at Liam.
"He is more," he said. "He is my friend."
It was said quietly, just as it was, a simple statement, but it
communicated to Liam and to them all the sure and certain conviction that
anyone who challenged Jamie also challenged Sean.
They lay side by side, on the soft Irish grass, under blankets the women
had brought them, and stared at the stars.
"It was a good day," Sean whispered, and turned his head to sleep.
"It was a good day," Jamie whispered. He stared at the moon and shivered
for his life.
It had been the most wonderful day of his life. The cause was just and
the fight was good. But he had discovered a terrible secret within him.
He did not want to die, because living was infinitely precious to him.
4
For ten days they camped on Gorey Hill until they were three thousand
strong. The volunteers brought hope and conviction, and a crusading
dedication to their holy cause. All had weapons, pikes and pitchforks;
some had horses and a few others guns. They sustained themselves with
faith and ancient battle songs.
Very few brought any food.
"God will provide," Father Michael told them, but there was little to
eat, and in private the priests prayed for manna from heaven, or a
miracle of loaves and fishes.
Jamie was in despair. Cursed with a rational mind, with every increase
in their swelling numbers, he felt his belief in their ultimate victory
diminish. He could not make anyone else understand the proportions of the
coming disaster.
"It is pointless, we cannot feed them!" he whispered angrily to Sean, who
shrugged.
"They are starving anyway, and prefer to fight," Sean said, irritated by
his friend's practicality, for it dampened his own optimism.
Before them, on the plain, the British assembled a formidable army.
Although few in number, less than a thousand, the Ancient Britains had
a fiercesome reputation as a ruthlessly successful fighting unit. Their
very name carried with it the frightening ferocity of their ancestors,
naked savages painted blue, whose primitive religion called on the sun
itself as their ally, and whose battle skills had been honed against the
unconquerable forces of Rome. Eventually, they believed, they had
conquered those invincible legions, and driven them from their shores,
and the noblest days of their history came to them---Arthur, and his
heroic knights, whose quest was holy-and even if the legends of that
history were not true,
31
32 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
they were believed. They were ruled by formidable monarchs, 'whose
achievements propelled and nourished them, and they had conquered, on land
and at sea, half the known world. It was this unshakable faith in their own
invincibility that had given them an empire the like of which the world had
never seen, and earned their country the title "Great." A bunch o
f rowdy
Irish peasants were nothing to them.
The flawless order and discipline of the red-coated army arrayed before
them struck fear in the Irish hearts, and hunger brought dissension to the
ranks. They were not afraid to die for their cause, but they would rather
die in battle than suffer the slow death of starvation. Their generals,
however, the priests, seemed reluctant to fight.
Yet fight they must, and perhaps succeed, for if they did not fight they
could not win.
It was a warm night, and a fine, soft rain was falling. Sean came to Jamie,
who was lying against a tree, trying to sleep. His clothes were wet, his
blanket was soaked, and he had not eaten anything other than some oatmeal
for days. But Sean had a smile on his face.
"It is tomorrow," he whispered. The words hardly gladdened Jamie's
miserable heart, and he tried to come to terms with the fact that tomorrow
he might die.
"If I should die," Sean said softly, "and you should live, do your old
friend one last favor."
"Anything," Jamie answered.
"Bury me decent, in some quiet place," Sean said.
Jamie did not react for a moment, for Sean's simple acceptance of his
possible fate disturbed him. Nor was he puzzled that he did not ask the
same of Sean, for he was determined not to die.
"Swear it to me," Sean insisted.
Jamie swore his vow, which seemed to satisfy Sean. They lapsed into silence
for a while, each man considering the morrow.
"Are you scared?" Jamie asked him, when he found the courage to voice his
own fear.
"Oh, I expect so," Sean laughed. "But anything's better than living as we
have."
He stared at the drizzling rain and was glad of it, for the
BLOODLINES 33
resulting mud would hamper the formally uniformed British, and give the
peasants some small advantage. They were used to mud; it was the stuff of
their lives. They built their houses from it, and burned it to warm them,
and its clover fed their cows. He looked at Jamie, and saw, not for the
first time, fear in his friend's eyes. He laughed, put his arm round his
friend, and took a small flask of poteen from his pocket.
"And it's better than being bored to death," he said. He held up the
flask.
"Erin go bragh," he whispered, excitement in his eyes, for he had been
chafing for action. He passed the flask to Jamie.
"Ireland forever," Jamie agreed, and drank deep of the harsh liquor, and
felt better as the warm fire raced through his body, and calmed his
raging fear.
They attacked at dawn, hoping for the benefit of surprise, but the Ancient
Britains were ready. They had been trained on the battlefields of India
and America, and always stood to just before dawn, for that, experience
had taught them, was when savages attacked.
The mud was not the peasants' ally because they had to run through it,
down the hill, and slipped and slid toward the waiting muskets of the
British, who stood in formal ranks, picking them off as they presented
themselves. Jamie believed it must be a rout. They could not possibly
win. The sound of gunshots and the screaming of wounded and dying men
deafened him; the riotous energy, the flashing of colors, and the sight
of spurting blood almost blinded him. He saw the standard-bearer shot
from his horse, and all hope deserted him.
He saw Father Michael caught in the dichotomy of priest and soldier. As
men died, his faith asserted itself, and he ran to give them the last
rites, which were more important for their immortal souls than any
earthly victory. He had hardly begun to say the precious words of
redemption when a bullet blasted into his heart and he fell to the ground
to die beside his brothers, and went unsung and unshepherded to heaven.
Still the peasants charged, for they could not go back, only forward.
Sean, riding by on his horse, saw the tattered rebel flag, green with a
golden harp, trampled in the mud. Fury invaded him, and reckless abandon.
He snatched up the glo-