Authors: Peter Sirr
Black Wreath (4 page)
I
t’s hard to keep cheerful when you’re dead. From the night of the black wreath onwards, James’s life seemed to spiral downwards as if, being thought dead, the city had decided to wash its hands of him and no longer offer him any protection. But he wasn’t dead, James told himself, even if there were those who wished it. For the first time in his life James realised what it meant to have enemies, deadly enemies who wished him harm. After they left the house, Harry and he kept clear of the main streets and avoided the bridge, crossing the river by ferry instead and making their way circuitously westwards.
‘You can’t go back to the dancing master’s,’ Harry insisted. ‘He’d sell you for a quart of gin.’
‘But where can I go?’ James asked.
Harry indicated with his thumb a window at the top of a ramshackle house. James followed Harry upstairs to a garret not
unlike the dancing master’s but a good deal smaller. Harry’s mother, a frail woman with a heavily lined face, and his two younger sisters were seated on the floor. There was no furniture that James could see.
‘Who’s this?’ Harry’s mother asked gruffly. ‘And what’s he doing here?’
‘It’s James, Lord Dunmain’s boy,’ Harry began explaining.
‘Oh la deh da,’ one of the girls piped up, suddenly interested.
‘Spare some change, m’lud,’ the other added.
‘Don’t mind them,’ said Harry. ‘He’s in trouble, that’s why he’s here. They buried him in Christchurch last week.’
‘That’s what I call trouble,’ the first sister grinned.
‘Doesn’t look too bad for a corpse, does he?’ said the other.
‘Dead or alive, he can’t stay here,’ Harry’s mother was adamant. ‘We don’t keep a hotel here, your honour.’
Harry prevailed on his mother to let James stay for that night, but as soon as it was light, James rose and left, walking out into the still sleeping city. He felt a wave of hopelessness wash over him as he walked down the hill towards the river with no particular purpose in mind. How could his father have abandoned him so utterly? How could he have had the heart to attend his funeral service and accept the condolences of his friends and acquaintances as if his son were really dead? There could be no way back now; there was nowhere else for James to go. This was life now – this grey morning, these streets and whatever happened in them.
In the days that followed James learned the life of a street
boy, prowling around the city from need to need. Hunger drove him towards the markets, hoping for a discarded hunk of bread or a stray piece of fruit. He earned the curses of the market women and, often, a hail of stones from the other boys who haunted the streets and whose territory he was encroaching on. Sometimes a milk woman might take pity on him and give him a ladle of milk, or a baker might toss him a loaf that was on its way to becoming a brick. He learned to live with constant hunger, and sleep with half an eye open. The nights were dangerous, as anyone sleeping in an exposed place was liable to attack by passing footpads or beggars, and James sought out the shelter of the Phoenix Park. Even here he had to be careful, as many criminals also found its seclusion irresistible. Under cover of darkness, he would move slowly from tree to tree until he found a spot where he could hear no voices or nothing that sounded like human footsteps in the undergrowth. Only when he had had sat for a long time in silence did he eventually allow sleep to take hold.
He often went to see Harry at his pitch. Sometimes, Harry would lend him his spudd, polish and wig and let him tout for customers. Some of his first customers complained that he wasn’t quick enough and one or two clouted him about his ears for sloppy work, but he soon improved, and the pennies he got allowed him to buy bread and fruit. There was one brutish client James would not forget quickly. The man was well dressed, a nobleman of some kind, with straggly black hair and narrow eyes and a look of permanent disdain etched on his features. He looked like someone born to be cruel. He thrust
his boot into James’s lap as if he meant to injure him and, as he worked, James could feel the man’s merciless eyes boring into him. The boots were of the best leather and didn’t need much work, but the man was quick to find fault.
‘Call yourself a shoeblack, you dirty little caffler. I’ll blacken your eye for you!’ He pulled his boot away and walked off, throwing a coin over his shoulder as he left, causing it to land right in the middle of a filthy puddle.
James felt himself sinking in this life. Every day he seemed to be filthier, more degraded. What would Master Naughton think of him now? He must find of way of getting back to the school, or he would live and die on the streets like so many of the beggar boys he saw every day. But how? When your life was changed for the worse, there didn’t seem to be an easy way to change it back again. He was thinking these dark thoughts one morning as he stood on the quays watching the murky waters, when he became aware of a sudden commotion in the streets that led down to the river. He heard drums, whistles, and rhythmic chanting, and then suddenly they appeared, a long line of men bearing sticks and knives, including some men James recognised from his days with the dancing master. They were dressed in their work clothes: tailors, weavers, buckle-makers, farriers, but their faces seemed to belong to different men: they were hard and angry, set to a common purpose. These were the Liberty Boys, James realised, one of the city’s most feared gangs, fired up now and spoiling for a fight.
‘Up the Liberty Boys!’ some shouted, and the chant was
taken up by the whole company. Without knowing exactly how it happened, James suddenly found himself caught up in the rush and swept along the quays, part of a menacing column of violent intent whose cause was mysterious to him, but to which he seemed, now, to belong. The anger that been welling up inside him for many weeks, as his life plunged remorselessly into the depths of the city, seemed to flow out of him all of a sudden, matching itself with the mood of the rushing crowd. As well as anger, there was a current of pure exhilaration. He was, now, a Liberty Boy, a fully functioning member of this streaming mass of clubs and knives and bloodthirsty howls. Whatever their purpose was, it was now his too and he was glad to be part of it.
‘Come on, ye Liberty Boys!’ He heard a strong voice raise itself out from the mass, and realised it was his.
He now became aware of another commotion, a low rumbling undercurrent as if the very streets were responding to the noise of the Liberty Boys. When he looked ahead, he could see that this was in a way the case, except that the noise was coming not from the streets but from a throng of butchers, all in aprons, brandishing cleavers and milling around one of the bridges in large numbers. Many of them also had stones, and these began to rain on the Liberty Boys.
James was frightened now, and wished he hadn’t shouted out. He realised that the purpose he was caught up in was a bitter fight with these strong, armed and vicious-looking butchers. The Ormond Boys! Another gang, Catholics this time, and mortal enemies of the Protestant Liberty Boys. He was about
to enter a battle between the most notorious factions in the city. He noticed that they seemed to have the city to themselves; all the shops were shuttered, the windows closed, and the stalls taken in from the street. There were no Charlies or redcoats to be seen. The streets were a battleground, deserted by everyone except the fighters. Stones landed on the column James was in; the man beside him screamed suddenly, his face an ugly mess of blood. Someone pulled him roughly to one side, and he lay on the quayside moaning. James’s mouth was dry. Instinctively, he ducked as more missiles landed beside him. Men from behind him rushed forward, pushing him out of the way, and attacked the butchers head on with clubs, fists and knives. Screams tore at the air, blood spurted from legs, arms, faces. The bridge was a
melee
of bodies locked in combat. James could see white-aproned reinforcements coming from the direction of the Ormond Market. He wondered for a second if he would live to see the end of this day. He had no weapon to protect himself with and, although he had been happy to join the seething column of marchers, he had no particular desire to fling stones at the butchers on the bridge.
He didn’t have to wait long before one of the butcher’s apprentices saw him and made a sudden dash in his direction, brandishing a heavy axe-handle. James bent, found a stone and flung it at the apprentice’s body as hard as he could. His aim was good, and the apprentice stopped dead, stunned by the blow. James made straight for him and relieved him of the axe-handle before the Ormond Boy had time to recover.
James raised the handle as if to strike the apprentice, but the boy came to his senses and ran back into the body of the butchers, much to James’s relief. The battle for the bridge was becoming more intense by the second. The fighting was so close that the butchers hardly had room to swing their cleavers and much of the work was achieved by elbows and fists against eyes and noses. So great was the press of bodies behind him that James was forced towards the middle of the bridge, where he got several kicks and punches. Suddenly he felt himself grabbed by his shirt collar and then dragged along the ground by his arms.
‘We’ve got one!’ a shout went up.
‘Bring him back to the market and show him how we treat Liberty Boys!’
Several more hands placed themselves under James’s armpits, and he was dragged swiftly across the bridge. His heart raced and fear pulsed through his body. He had heard tales of the terrible things inflicted by the butchers on their captured victims. And he wasn’t even a Liberty Boy! They were hardly likely to be convinced by that, and would take any denial as an act of the purest cowardice. He was now in the middle of Ormond Market. Apart from his captors, the stalls were deserted. Sides of beef and mutton hung from hooks on beams above the stalls, and trays of offal and cuts of meat were set on tables at the front. As he was being bundled towards one of the stalls another group of butchers dragged in a young man, his nose bleeding profusely.
‘We got a college boy,’ one of them yelled. ‘And now we’re going to educate him.’
The others whooped at this revelation. James felt the blood drain from his face.
‘Let’s do them side by side!’ A roar went up, and the plan was instantly agreed to. James and the young man were bound together with ropes.
‘Courage, boy,’ the man whispered to James, ‘don’t let them see your fear.’
James clenched his teeth and looked directly at his captors. There were about six of them, and he recognised the apprentice whose nose he had bloodied earlier and who was now looking back at him with glee.
‘Free the hooks,’ ordered a butcher with a long thin face. He had a voice that other men listen to, and his dark expression was of complete absorption in the task. The other butchers lifted the sides of beef from two adjacent hooks and laid the meat on the table, and then pulled the table out of the way.
‘Hook them.’
Hands moved to hoist them.
‘At least spare the boy, can’t you?’ the college student said as they raised him towards the bloody meat hook.
The butchers who weren’t engaged in the hoisting, including Thin Face, were sharpening knives. The noise echoed loudly in the enclosed market square.
Suddenly a new voice rang out. ‘Wait!’ An older butcher had entered the market and was making for the stall.
Thin Face looked up, displeasure narrowing his eyes. ‘Purcell!’ he hissed.
The others turned sharply and, seeing the older man, lowered their burdens. The one called Purcell looked them up and down. His manner was not friendly.
‘Use the ropes,’ he ordered. ‘I want no deaths here today.’ He walked up to Thin Face, so close the other must have felt his breath on his face. ‘Put it away.’
Thin Face looked for a second as if he might be about to disagree, then slowly put down his knife.
James and his companion were hoisted again and lowered carefully onto the meat hooks so they hung suspended by the ropes around their chests. James felt the metal hook press painfully against his back. His feet were several inches off the ground. The butchers stood around admiring their handiwork.