Queen by Alex Haley Read Free Book Online

arms and legs. It had
    been a good fight, but they felt no sense of jubilation. It was only a
    skirmish, and the real battle was yet to come.
        The messenger ran. He had seen the fight and bashed a few British heads
        with his long, thick pole, and felt a swingeing surge of excitement, for
        this was something that was worth the telling, and it was his alone to
        tell.
        He raced from the town, and pole-vaulted ditches and hedges with
        breathless, careless speed, to the villages nearby and gasped his news.
        Other messengers took up the cry, and soon the county rang with the glad
        tidings, that a small group of unarmed peasants, led by two priests, had
        defeated the might of Britain.
        They left their homes, taking with them what weapons they had, and came in
        a trickle at first, and then a flood, to Gorey Hill, not far from
        Boulavogue, where the fathers, Michael and John, had made their camp.
        Within two days their number was a thousand, and within a week, three times
        that.
     
    But on that first night they were only a dozen, the priests and Jamie and
    Sean, and eight more, young men eager for battle. The soldiers could have
    struck them down with ease, if they had found them, but they did not bother.
    They contented themselves with setting fire to a score of peasant cottages,
    as vengeance for their defeat. Several of the women who had fought, and a
    few who had not, were raped.
        Jamie and Sean had cast their lot with the priests because there seemed no
        better place to be. The fathers had thanked them, and accepted,
        unwillingly, their congratulations. Father John looked at his hands again.
        "With my own hands I choked a man almost to death," Father John said. "I am
        in fear for my mortal soul."
        "But he didn't die," Jamie said, puzzled by the priest's grief.
        "No." Father John nodded, but mournfully. "But others will, and I believe
        that I will do some of that killing."
        He looked at his hands again, as if continually astounded by what they had
        done. "I have devoted my life to the healing
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    grace of God, but it seems He has other plans for me."
        Sean took charge, for the priests were not practical men of war.
        "They will come again," he said. "We had best find a hiding place."
    "Yes," Father Michael agreed. "Are you with us?"
        He was only offering shelter, but he had the first two recruits of his
        army. The priests led Jamie and Sean to Gorey Hill, avoiding the
        soldiers' camps, and to a small shack that they used when the town was
        unsafe for them. As the four men wended through the dew-soft evening,
        other young men joined them, and made camp on the hill, and, safe in the
        night, celebrated, at last, their victory. Some had beer, which they had
        stolen and shared, and food given them by their families, for all
        understood that it was only the beginning. But it was something. After
        years of servility, it was a start on a long road to freedom.
        The little group of unarmed, unlikely soldiers who had priests as their
        generals sat around the campfire, as soldiers do, after battle, and
        recounted the stories of their day and their fight. They relived every
        moment of the small battle, and exaggerated their roles in it, and their
        own valor, and laughed with love at the reckless women who had probably
        saved their lives, although none would admit that.
        Jamie had never known such a sense of companionship and, sitting in
        Sean's company, felt that he had proved his bravery to the world, and,
        most important, to his friend. At that moment, he wanted no other life
        than this, to do daring, foolish things in a great cause, in the company
        of