The Music Makers by E.V. Thompson

Author:E.V. Thompson [E.V. Thompson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719812767
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2013-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lying in the bushes beneath a wooded ridge in the Wicklow mountains, Liam and Nathan Brock watched the soldiers searching the slope on the far side of the valley. They were out in considerable force with a long line of scarlet-coated infantrymen beating their way through the gorse and fern and ahead of them more than twenty blue-uniformed hussars, mounted on fine horses, probing the secrets of the undergrowth with drawn swords. Above the slow-moving troops a full company of riflemen armed with the latest-model percussion rifles commanded every vantage-point, ready to shoot any Irishman flushed out by the military ‘beaters’.

Liam was alarmed at the scale of the search, but Nathan Brock reassured him.

‘What we are seeing is probably the whole of the search party,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it all before in these mountains. It is an opportunity for the English to exercise their soldiers and they use as many as they can find. They will search the open country over and over again for weeks, then they will go away and all the fugitives will come out of the forests where they have been hiding.’

‘Why don’t the soldiers go into the forests?’ To Liam it seemed the obvious thing to do.

Nathan Brock chuckled. ‘If they did that, they would lose the advantage of numbers and be picked off one by one, like apples from a tree. Oh no, Liam. You won’t get soldiers looking for Irish rebels in a forest. They learned a hard lesson many years ago, and learned it well. For that reason we’ll be safe from them while we stay in among the trees, and sooner or later we will meet up with Dermot and the others.’

Proof that Nathan Brock knew what he was talking about came on their second day in the forest. Two ragged men, armed with crude pikes of green wood tipped with rusty iron, stepped from the bushes ahead of them and barred their way, demanding to know their business.

‘What is that to do with you?’ asked Liam. ‘If your intention is to rob us, then you are wasting your time. We have little money – although there is some food that is yours for the asking.’

‘We’ll have the food,’ said one of the ragged pikemen. ‘But we still want to know your business.’

‘We are looking for someone,’ said Nathan Brock. ‘For Dermot McCabe. Do you know him?’

The two men were busy cramming food in their mouths, but both nodded. Swallowing hard and choking on a crust of pie, one said, ‘We are his men. Have you come to join him, too?’

‘You are his men? You are not from Kilmar. Who are you?’

The other man brought the point of his pike up close to Liam’s face threateningly. ‘We are the ones who ask questions. Who are you?’

‘You are talking to Dermot McCabe’s brother,’ said Nathan Brock hastily. ‘I am a friend. We have come from County Wexford to see him.’

‘He don’t look much like Dermot McCabe,’ said the pikeman, eyeing Liam suspiciously.

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