The Blood Dimmed Tide Read online

  The slur of rubber knocking against the deck made everyone turn to stare at the tall figure of the Red Cross nurse, pushing the invalid soldier in his wheelchair. She was middle-aged with burnished red hair tied up in a bun, which when released must have extended to the full Celtic mane. There was an exhilarated look to her features, which were oddly familiar. Her eyes were bright, and a long strand of hair hung loose. She gazed around the cabin with a challenging look, and then wheeled the soldier to the shelter of a bulkhead. She wrapped him tightly in blankets and joined us at the railings.

  ‘How is your patient?’ asked the major.

  ‘Not in any immediate danger. Though he’s gravely ill from his wounds.’

  ‘Then he’ll not survive a rough passage,’ said the man in the black cap a little brutally. He tossed his cigarette into the dark waters below.

  ‘My patient has vowed to return to his birthplace should he shuffle there on his knees.’

  ‘Then it will be more penance than pilgrimage.’

  Although the nurse looked composed, I could see the sinews in her neck muscles stretching with anger. She breathed heavily as though the air on deck had grown scarce. Then she walked back to the invalid soldier.

  After the paying passengers had boarded, the ship was loaded with its cargo. The prisoners on the docks linked their arms, less a gesture of solidarity and more an attempt to remain upright and resist the rolling waves of exhaustion that passed through their ranks. After another hour had passed, the guards finally led them onto the boat. Unwashed, bedraggled and soaking wet, they dragged themselves up the gangway in the shambling crouch used by miners underground.

  From my vantage point, I did not see any traitors or heroes among them, just a lot of humiliated young men, some rather scared, some isolated and lonely looking, all of them lacking any sign of tenacity or allegiance to a die-hard cause. Perhaps the government had deprived them of their moment of heroism and that was why they looked so hollow and defeated.

  Eventually, the boat steamed out of the harbour, and the men were left to find whatever shelter or comfort they could on the quarter deck. The Red Cross nurse emerged from the cabin next to mine and walked among the prisoners, tending to the ones who appeared to be suffering the most. Their eyes lit up at her red-haired presence, as though something bright and warm was being brandished before them. She seemed perfectly at ease in the company of these down-hearted men, many of whom spoke only in Irish. It was as though she had known them all their lives. There were no signs of awkwardness or strain on her part, and her soothing words appeared to revive them.

  It was a rough passage overnight to Dublin, the boat’s first stop. With no lights allowed anywhere on board because of the blackout, the deck of prisoners became a chaotic dormitory. To add to their discomfort, the weather was freezing cold. I had not imagined such a large boat could be gripped by frost while rocking from wave to wave in the middle of the Irish Sea. Snow began to fall, forming a pale coagulating slush on the decks. The boat drifted through the slowly descending flakes.

  Unable to sleep with the rocking motion of the boat and its creaking timbers, I sat up and stared through the porthole at the gathering snow. From the cabin next door, I heard a door open and close gently. Pulling on a coat with deep pockets, I left my cabin and followed a single track of footsteps around the bridge and down to the lower decks.

  A dark layer of greasy ice covered the wooden boards where the prisoners slept on the quarter deck. I walked along the dark edge of their bodies. Strangely, in that oppressive environment, a feeling of expansiveness overcame me so strongly that it circumvented the bonds of loyalty to country and King. I found myself giving cigarettes and some of the bread and cheese I had crammed into my pockets to one of the men, a mad-eyed, bearded young fellow. His hands were eager, and they were joined by a circle of other outstretched hands.

  A figure carrying an oil lamp moved from behind a bulkhead at the far end of the cavernous deck. Its only identifying feature was a red cloak. The Red Cross nurse turned, her red curls falling about her pale face. She moved through the men on some mysterious wave of self-confidence, as though she were testing her middle-aged beauty on the soon-to-be-freed prisoners. They cleared a space for her, giving the impression they were expecting a stage performance. She spoke in a low angry whisper, which the creaking of the ship disguised, but I caught a phrase now and again. She was talking about patriotism and a coming war, and there was a raw energy in her voice. I stared at her and suddenly saw her in the right light. It was the same woman who had addressed the protesting widows outside the converted poorhouse.

  ‘Ho! What’s your name,’ whispered one of the prisoners.

  ‘Charles Adams.’

  ‘Well, Mr Adams would you mind feeding me, too.’

  I handed him a hunk of dry bread and a slightly damp cigarette.

  ‘How do you cope with these conditions?’ I asked.

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘The overcrowding. The cold and the hunger.’

  ‘We’re Irishmen. We’re used to these things.’

  He hunched forward and lit the cigarette. A haggard look of exhaustion was thrown into sharp relief across his youthful features.

  ‘Officially, we’re not meant to be here,’ he said. ‘We’re the ghosts of the Easter Rising.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The British government sentenced us to death by firing squad, but fortunately for us, they grew tired of executing rebels.’ He snorted out two jets of smoke and jerked his head back defiantly. ‘Their offer was to go back home and give up the struggle or languish in gaol. But damn them, we’re not going to give up now.’

  It struck me that the ship was a symbol of England’s relationship with its oldest colony, a union drifting in the dark towards a terrible new dawn, a hold of mutinous men trapped below decks.

  ‘I’m a law student, not a soldier,’ confided the young prisoner. ‘I didn’t even know the Rising was going to take place on Easter Sunday. I happened to be passing Boland’s Mill when I saw the rebels take up their positions. When I get back to Dublin I shall continue the struggle, only this time in the courtroom.’

  The nurse drew her cape over her head and climbed a set of steps at the other end of the boat. In her absence, an agitated current seemed to stir the bodies of the prisoners. Someone coughed. A voice rasped from the darkness. A controlled, anonymous voice. ‘Don’t get carried away with your charity, Mr Adams. Ye and the nurse are only paying back England’s debts to Ireland. They’re six hundred years old and fathomless.’

  I turned in the direction of the voice but there were only bodies slouching in various stages of sleep.

  The next morning, before the sun rose, I got my first sight of Ireland. The rattle of the anchor chain woke me from a disturbed sleep. The engines slowed and the deck was full of footsteps. Through the porthole, I could see bonfires blazing on the wild hillsides of a subdued-looking coast. Under a blanket of feathery falling snow, the natives had gathered, determined to celebrate the return of their glorious rebels.

  At Dublin port, the prisoners disembarked, free men now, to a crowd of cheering well-wishers. The gangplank was their last connection with grim reality before their feet temporarily touched dry land, and then they were lifted off as returning heroes by their supporters and carried away into the darkness of a winter morning.

  The mail boat ploughed back into the Irish Sea. I went up to the bow deck with my books but was distracted by the sight of the waves rising higher and higher. A storm had been brooding behind the snow. The boat seemed to gather speed, as if plunging downhill. The deck tilted sharply with the surges, and I held on to the railings for dear life.

  One of the passengers from first class had followed me to the bow. It was the tall man with the black cap and the hungry look to his face. I had caught his eye earlier that morning, and from then on, I seemed to
become a focus for his attention. He stood at the opposite railing and watched me, his face darkening with angry curiosity as the boat toppled from wave to wave, and the sky grew warped and heavy with storm clouds. He seemed indifferent to the rolling pitch of the sea. I retreated below, but his presence stalked me as I wandered from deck to deck.

  The storm reached its peak when we passed Belfast, prompting a recital of the rosary from the passengers in steerage. I had no clear recollection of the ship’s passage along the circuit of cliffs and silver strands that make up the Antrim coastline, other than that it felt like a grim descent down the course of a steepening cascade. Struck down with seasickness, I passed my time staggering from my cabin to the deck railings, where on several occasions I emptied my stomach into the whirlpool of the sea until there was nothing left to retch but bile. Like the sea, the nausea came in waves, lifting me from crest to crest of violent self-purges, then reducing me to a state of exhaustion in between.

  At one point in my ordeal, my stalker joined me on the railings.

  ‘No one ever died of seasickness,’ he reassured me.

  However, there was nothing kind or comforting about his facial expression. He grinned at me like a hangman at the gallows.

  I was reluctant to open my mouth, afraid I would vomit again. The scorch of stomach acid hitting my throat reduced me to a coughing fit.

  ‘Drink this,’ he said, taking a small medicine bottle out of his pocket. With shaking hands, I tipped its contents into my mouth and swallowed them in a single gulp. He peered closely at me, his grin slowly sinking back into his skull. It crossed my mind that he might be a scoundrel, intent on robbing me. A large wave struck the side of the boat, and his silhouette was briefly wreathed in a halo of sea spray.

  ‘Just lie there,’ he said sitting down beside me. ‘I’ll keep you company until the sickness wears off.’

  Another wave of nausea made me sweat all over.

  ‘Tell me, Sir,’ he asked in a slow, almost absent-minded voice, ‘why aren’t you fighting in France?’

  I explained that I had failed the army medical due to fainting fits.

  ‘Then are you a supporter of the Crown?’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

  ‘Do you hold the King and his loyal forces in contempt?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what were you doing tending to the prisoners below deck last night?’

  ‘They were starving and nearly freezing to death.’

  He aped astonishment. ‘Starving? Almost freezing to death? I wasn’t aware that those bloodthirsty rebels were suffering to that extent. You should have reported your discovery immediately to the captain of the boat.’

  ‘Why are we discussing this matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Orders, Sir.’

  ‘Whose orders?’

  ‘Winston Churchill’s. My name is Wolfe Marley; I’m an agent of the British War Office.’

  I tried to read his features, but his expression was dark and inward.

  ‘What did the prisoners say to you?’

  I found myself unable to reply. My mind contracted with suspicion. His questions were surely an attempt to make me incriminate myself.

  ‘Did any of them try to engage you in conversation regarding future acts of treason?’ Again his empty gaze.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why is this important?’

  ‘Spies, Sir. I’m hunting for spies. Infiltrators, agent provocateurs hiding in the hold. You’ve read the newspaper reports, I’m sure. The whole of Ireland is a powder keg waiting to be set off by the meddling of naive Englishmen and vengeful Germans.’

  Sweat trickled down my neck.

  ‘Were there any other passengers from first class in the hold?’

  ‘No.’ My lie was too quick and it made him pause.

  ‘What are you reading?’ A faint contempt threaded through his voice. ‘William Butler Yeats? Now there’s an extraordinary poet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not many poets take an annual pension from the King, and then campaign to have his kingdom overthrown.’

  ‘Mr Yeats’ political beliefs aren’t that simple,’ I endeavoured to explain. ‘He has told me he doesn’t know which lies heaviest on his heart. The tragedy of Ireland, or the tragedy of England.’

  ‘And is that because of his poetic soul, or is he just muddle-headed?’

  ‘You’re trying to needle me. Mr Yeats is a friend of mine and a confidant.’

  ‘I’m only needling to find the truth. If Mr Yeats is your confidant, then what has he confided in you?’

  A darkness squirmed in his eyes. A pitch-black, wriggling darkness.

  ‘You’re travelling to Sligo?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To visit a paternal aunt,’ I lied.

  ‘You’ve been there before?’

  ‘First time.’

  ‘I’m baffled.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why a young Englishman would suddenly decide to make his first trip to Ireland at the most dangerous point in six hundred years of occupation.’

  ‘I’m not interested in history.’

  ‘Then you’re not equipped to visit Ireland. History will surround you. And the hatred it has spawned. When this storm abates, you should take a good look at the coast. What civilisation exists is centred on the estates of English landlords, and even their substantial mansions and castles face out to sea, away from the forbidding land. The sea is their point of contact with the rest of the Empire, their all-important escape route.’

  He lifted the book of Yeats’ poems, and felt its heft.

  ‘I’m not a literary critic, just a fellow Irishman. But tell Mr Yeats he should have the good sense of his compatriots Wilde and Shaw, who wear their nationality lightly, and dramatise the world they know, rather than spinning one out of their boyhood imaginations.’

  When I did not reply, he stared at me.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough that the real Ireland is nothing like Yeats’ portrayal. It has grown cruel and savage beyond belief.’

  He handed me back the book. It fell from my grasp onto the deck, spilling its contents across the wet boards.

  ‘What do we have here?’ said Marley, lifting Rosemary O’Grady’s letter and the newspaper clipping. He gave them a furtive caress and read their contents with growing interest.

  ‘This is not my province at all,’ he murmured. He examined me closely. ‘I take it you are going to bring this letter to the attention of the Sligo police?’

  Before I could reply, water came surging over the bow of the boat, forcing us to retreat below deck. The momentum of the waves rocked the boat back and forth in steep, sickening arcs. Overcome with seasickness, I slumped against a bulkhead. My stalker swung himself alongside.

  ‘Tell me, what are you doing with this letter?’

  I felt my stomach dangle above the bottomless depths of the ocean, and then the motion of the boat hitting a sudden swell hurled it upwards again.

  ‘It was given to me,’ I said weakly, ‘by the Order of the Golden Dawn. The society has sent me to investigate her death.’

  He handed me back the letter and news report. We took advantage of a brief lull in the boat’s pitching and staggered to the dining cabin, where the major, his wife and the Red Cross nurse were deep in conversation. I sat on a bench and pressed my head against the cold porthole. They were discussing English perceptions of Sligo, and my ears pricked at the mention of Yeats’ name. I tried to quell the surges of nausea sufficiently to concentrate on what they were saying.

  ‘Sleuth Wood, Glencar’s waterfall, Rosses Point, none of them are worth the detour,’ sniffed the major. ‘Their names rouse the fancy but Mr Yeats has romanticised the
m out of all proportion. When his readers think of Sligo, they see gaunt cliffs, wild woods and crystal cascades. His image of Ireland might delight English readers but it hides a grim truth. The disquiet that pervades the country. Houses ablaze and men with guns everywhere. If Mr Yeats visited Sligo today none of it would feel familiar or safe.’

  ‘Is it true they’ve started assassinating English people?’ asked the major’s young wife, who had yet to visit the country.

  ‘Only those who have lived there for hundreds of years,’ replied the nurse with a glint in her eye.

  ‘Tell me about Sligo,’ the major’s wife asked the nurse. ‘I’ve heard the landscape is impressive.’

  The major grunted. ‘The rain is impressive.’

  ‘I’ve been that long in France I’m homesick even for the rain,’ said the nurse, a soft dreamy look filling her features, as though she were the queen of bad weather returning to her kingdom of rain.

  ‘The Irish seasons,’ said the major gruffly, ‘can only be distinguished by the temperature of the downpours. The cottages there and many of the big houses are so damp you could wash your face in the water streaming down the walls. The peasants and servants collect the drips in pots and pans and pour them into the rivers, which sweep the water out to sea where great clouds sweep it all back again. It’s an endless cycle of misery.’

  ‘But Sligo can be wonderful, in spite of the rain,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Thanks to its prosperous Protestant merchants and the great Anglo-Irish families who built it up from a muddy hovel,’ replied the major.

  I felt another convulsion heave my stomach. I rushed from my seat and burst forth onto the deck. When I returned to the dining cabin, the mood of the conversation had darkened. Marley had joined in the discussion.

  ‘They’re all leaving you know,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ asked the major’s wife.

  ‘The Burkes, the Butlers, the Gibsons and the Montgomerys. One by one, they’re going away. They’re forsaking their mildewy mansions and leaving in trains and boats and automobiles. Before the rebellious mobs take their estates apart.’