It lay farting at their feet. Suddenly it pricked its ears and uttered a low growl. Frank strained his ears. The dog growled again. Frank could hear nothing but the moaning of the wind in the trees. But his mother had heard what the dog had heard. She flung the teacup across the room, jumped to her feet and began to shout.
She ran to the half door. The dog was barking now. ‘It’s only the wind you’re hearing,’ he pleaded. There’s no one on the road below!’ But she pushed him away from her roughly and ran to the mantelpiece above the range where the pledge to the Sacred Heart had hung since her wedding day. It was her personal pledge, her guarantee of a place in heaven. She reached up and tore it roughly from the nail. Then clutching it in one hand, and Frank in the other, and with the mongrel at their heels, she dragged him out through the door, leaving the house open to the four winds.
Magee and his henchmen were cold, wet, hungry and lost. He had gathered them up at short notice, half a dozen members of the Temperance Lodge Band, and led them into the mountains above Armagh. It was an act of desperation, but Magee didn’t intend to be caught hanging round the town when the boys in the back room opened a post mortem into the débâcle. With each passing hour his frustration increased. Ignorant of the wild and treacherous terrain, they had clambered above the tree line round Slicve Gullion. The land was deserted, as lonely and alien as the back side of the moon. The very sheep seemed threatening. A mist had come down and they had lost their bearings; they had squelched through moorland, slithered among the crags, wandered deeper and deeper into the wilderness with each step. The trombone player had caught the side of his face on a rock and his cheek sagged bloodily open. He muttered mutiny and when Magee rested he kept the Stanley knife to hand. They had run out of food and whiskey, and the cigarettes were long since finished. Had they stumbled on a homestead they could have plundered it for victuals and drink and sat it out till the cloud lifted, when they could risk the descent. But there were no farms here, only the ruins of long-abandoned settlements. All night long they tramped in circles, Magee watching his companions growing gaunt and murderous. They would all die if they didn’t get back among their own people soon.
A forced march over the jagged rocks of a dried river bed finally brought them below the clouds. They headed for the valley below, stumbling all night among the boulders, afraid to sleep lest the cloud come down again. As dawn broke they came upon some tracks, and an hour later, dispirited, empty-handed, but at least alive, they found themselves on the crag overlooking the Feely house.
They saw that it had been hastily abandoned; its doors stood open, but a fire still smouldered in the hearth. The bass drummer kicked open the press in search of food; it yielded little but a few ends of hard bread and a scrape of margarine. Magee found a packet of Gold Leaf on the floor with half a cigarette still inside. He straightened it out and lit it from the fire. He had never set foot in a papist house before. He looked round the kitchen with fascination. A line of popish icons stood on a crude shelf, statues of the Virgin, the Child of Prague and John Bosco. There was a lithograph of the Holy Family with a prayer for peace in the home. But riveted as he was by these manifestations of idolatry, it was the framed photograph that caught his attention, a photograph of Frank’s first communion. Magee recognized the man in the picture, even with the hat pulled down over his eyes. The late Joe Feely! With one swipe he scattered the lot on the floor. The red nightlight before the Sacred Heart still glowed. He ripped it from the wall, unbuttoned his flies and pissed on the lot.
His activities were interrupted by a sound in the distance. It was the sound of a crowd, a great crowd on the move. The sound of wailing and praying, and discordant music, and laughter and chanting. They were far away as yet, over the next hills, but they were approaching fast. His colleagues heard it too. All their bravado had been left behind on the mountains. They stood in the kitchen transfixed. They were in dangerous, unknown, unpredictable territory and the sooner they found their way out of it the better. The noise was growing louder by the minute. And then above the wails and entreaties of the Donatists they heard the bagpipes of a Hibernian band.
It had been many a long year since the Hibs had dared put their snouts out in decent company, but with the birth of this strange new sect a handful of old survivors from the lakeshore had emerged blinking into the sunlight to don their green regalia, dust off their banners and take to the roads. To a true blue Loyal Son of William like Magee, the raucous sound of a Hib band was like a red rag to a bull. He crept to the door and looked up the road. And as the main body of the march came into view his heart started to pound with anticipation. He was beginning to appreciate the meaning of their incessant demand. What was more he was in a position and in the mood to do something about it.
The serious Donatists were recognizable from their garb – an attempt at the sackcloth and ashes of the desert hermits of the early church – and from the weals on their bodies caused by the lashes of purification they rained down on their flesh. Their eyes were raised in supplication to heaven; there was no doubting their desire to join their heavenly master as soon as it could be arranged. Their lips moved constantly, pleading with the Almighty to grant them an early release from this vale of tears and a glimpse of the treasures in store for them. Their numbers had been swollen by a great crowd of hangers-on, the sort of character any diversion in a country district will attract. At the prospect of a bit of crack, especially at the expense of others, the lower elements of a dozen parishes were egging the pilgrims on. Some of the young lads had cut switches from the hedges, and ran up and down the column of penitents whacking at their legs and backs to mortify the flesh. Others had grown weary of this sport and trudged dourly alongside, swigging from bottles. A few older women hobbled behind the crowd, carrying picnic bags and folding chairs. Bringing up the rear, an ad hoc colour party had raised a tricolour, on the grounds that any outing could be an occasion for showing the national flag.
Magee saw his opportunity. There was a narrow bridge on the road about a mile below the house. He directed the bandsmen into the fields on either side of the road beyond the river, ordering them to lie low till he gave the signal. His heart began to pound. Years ago himself and McCoy had employed a similar tactic at the ambush at Burntollet, when they had weighed into a crowd of students marching for civil rights. They still sang songs of that famous rout. With God’s help today would see an even bloodier victory.
He kept to the lee of the hedgerows till he had reached the bridge and crouched below the parapet till the head of the march was nearly level with him. Then sure at last that he had not got the wrong end of the stick and was not making a ghastly mistake, he stepped into the road in front of them and held up his hand. In the other he clutched a meat cleaver. The pleas of the Donatists would fall on deaf ears no longer.
At the sight of the Portadown men the hangers-on took to the fields, scattering their flasks and sandwiches on the road. Some of them were not quick enough for the Loyal Defenders of William; their appeals for special status went unheeded. It began to rain and the road and the river ran red with the blood of the grateful dead. For an hour they stuck to their task. This was the sort of battle that coursed through the blood of Portadown men. It was another Dolly’s Brae, another rebel rout. Then at last, the business taken care of, the sons of William shouldered their cudgels and pocketed their knives. They helped themselves to cold tea and sausage rolls which had been discarded round the killing ground. Their good spirits and sense of camaraderie restored, they set out on the road for home. They would have to keep moving, for not all the natives would be as obliging as those they had just dealt with. They would keep to the fields and ditches till they were sure they were out of hostile terrain. But once home there would be some serious drinking to be done. The whole business had given them a terrible thirst.
Magee got to the Shambles and dismissed his companions. The square was littered with cobblestones. The door to the Martyrs Chapel gaped open. He didn’t need to be told where he’d find McCoy.
‘You didn’t find her then?’
