riotheclown

Prompt: Bridge

Title: Leaving County Wexford
Author: Urb-banal
Word Count: 992
Genre: Historical Fiction
Warnings: violence, religious references

Note: this was published in B.F. over a year ago. I have made some changes. It is the first part of a series called "Mary Read" who was a famous pirate. It is not historically acurate because the bridge only shows up in history later during the rebellion of 1798 and was only built in 1795. Mary Read died in Nassau in 1720.

Mary Walsh is the name of a comedian here in Canada from NFLD. who was on a show searching her ancestry. With all the irish blood in me I do not care about the history. I think I am more interested in the people who fled the trouble. A Google search led me to the story of Mary Read and pirates! I got hooked on the character. I have taken many liberties with history to tell herstory.

Leaving County Wexford

There was a time when, if you lost everything, particularly if you were a young woman, you laid down and died; as simple as that, the reason for death written down as “died of a broken heart”.

A good reason for a broken heart would be, for example, that your husband “drowned”, after he was garroted, lifted up on a spike and thrown off a bridge. A normal girl, especially a new bride, would go home, eat poison and wait for death. A truly passionate girl would jump off the bridge after him, whichever way, a broken heart would be the cause of death. “The course of love” etc.

There were songs written about such things. But rarely did they write songs about a girl picking herself up off the muck and heading out for parts unknown. No, in fact I don’t think they ever wrote songs like that. Such a girl would have been considered not worth a song. She might even get burned as a witch! That’s how romantic the people were in Wexford.

I loved him. He was handsome and had a voice that could melt butter. He sang to me every day, chasing me along the path to my mother’s house while I would beg him to stop and leave me be. Well, as you can imagine, he caught me. There was no question about us getting married; the sooner the better regardless of his religion. My mother didn’t want another bastard to raise and she could see where things were going. I didn’t know anything but that my whole body ached to have him.

I never asked him to convert or to make such a fuss about his family shunning me. I told him over and over I was fine. I told him I would convert, but he would hear none of it. It was his stubborn pride. He was right and that was all that mattered. It’s always that way with men. You can call it blasphemy but I think even Jesus was surprised, once he got nailed to the cross and had a bit of time to think, how things turned out.

I was scared and the more frightened I became the more brazen he became. He made a parade of me just to show them. I think he was a little mad.

The mob came to our little cottage and called him out and before he could start with his proclamations of allegiance to the head of his chosen new faith he got a shellale to the side of his head and fell to his knees.

I wasn’t thinking because I ran to him when I should have run away. A woman I was friends with, up until then, grabbed me and started to cut off my hair. The rest called curses at me, “Witch” being the favorite. My husband was being propped up to watch but he looked senseless. I know that he would have torn off his own skin to see me shamed that way if he hadn't been knocked silly. He loved my red hair.

The next thing I knew we were both being pushed and shoved down the road. Some of my kin tried to stop them but it was no use. It all turned into a brawl and as you probably guessed, my poor dear husband was drowned but not until he had been lifted up on a skewer for all to see.

After that I must have been hit in the head because I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the mud along the bank of the stream. I felt like I’d been swallowed up like Jonah. At first I couldn’t tell what was up or down or sideways or what. My head hurt something awful. There was a strong smell of blood. My nose had been broken. Then I realized there was someone lying against me!

It was a young man. He was not waking up because he was dead. I knew him. His name was Michael.

They must have thought I was dead. Perhaps more of my kin had come and chased them off.

I sat up. Poor dead Michael’s head rolled into my lap. His face was hairless. He had never yet kissed a girl. I bent and kissed him and rocked his dead body in my arms for a while, cooing like he was my child. I can’t explain why I did this, but it seemed the thing to do at the time. He was not much bigger than I. Michael Connor would have been fourteen that year. He was an apprentice cooper.

I knew about making barrels. The thought came to me that I could get by for a bit pretending to be him. My mind was racing. I would get to a port town and join a ship.

I could see the faint outline of the road and the bridge. It had been a moonless night. I wondered how long away the dawn was.

I undressed Michael and then myself and shifted our clothes one to the other as modestly as circumstances would allow until I was standing over a body what looked just like me dressed in my clothes.

This was when I started crying. Perhaps I am a witch like they said. I was crying for my own poor self and not my husband and then I cried for the shame of it.

The next thing I did was drag “Mary Walsh” which was actually the body of Michael Connor dressed in my clothes, back to the cabin. I propped the body in a chair, set a cup in its hand, rested the head on the table and then set fire to it.

I never looked back. I didn’t want to watch the home I had loved burn. I didn't even pause as I crossed the bridge where they'd killed my husband Patrick Walsh.

I was Michael Connor running away to join the Merchant Marines and make my fortune, as far from my bloody home as a ship could take me.