1723

YOU’RE VERY GOOD to offer,” Terence Walsh said to his brother Fortunatus. “But I should warn you that he may cause trouble.”

The sun was dipping over St. Stephen’s Green. There was a soft glow in the air.

“I’m sure,” Fortunatus replied with a smile, “that young Smith can’t be so very bad.”

You’ve no idea how bad he can be, Terence thought, but he didn’t say so.

“If only I weren’t going away.” Terence had been promising himself this little retreat to the monastery in France for a long time now, and they both knew it. “You’re so good-natured that it’s almost a fault,” he continued. “I really shouldn’t be asking you.”

“Nonsense.”

How delightful the evening was, thought Fortunatus. Dublin was certainly a pleasant city—so long, of course, as you were a member of Ireland’s ruling elite. And even if my dear brother is not, Fortunatus reflected, that is what I am. A handsome city, too. For in Dublin, at least, the Protestant Ascendancy over Ireland was expressed in bricks and mortar.

It was astonishing how the place had changed in his own lifetime. Inside the walls of the old medieval city, the narrow streets and alleys, and the landmarks like Christ Church and the old Tholsell town hall, were not much changed, except for a few repairs. But as soon as you looked beyond the walls, the change was striking.

For a start, the River Liffey was not only crossed by several stone bridges, but it was noticeably narrower. The marshes that had started just downstream from the Castle, and skirted the ancient Viking site of Hoggen Green where the precincts of Trinity College now lay, had been reclaimed and the riverflood contained within walls. Upriver on the northern bank, the Duke of Ormond had encroached on the water further when he laid out the Ormond and Arran quays, with lines of warehouses and buildings that would have graced any city in Europe. Outside the city’s eastern wall, the former grassy common of St. Stephen’s Green was now surrounded with fine new houses, with subsidiary streets leading down to Trinity College. The curving line of the little stream that had run from the common down to Hoggen Green and the Viking long stone, had disappeared under the roadway of one of these, a pleasant crescent called Grafton Street. On the western side of the city, not a mile from Christ Church, the huge Royal Hospital at Kilmainham had been modelled on the stately, classical Invalides of Paris; and on the northern riverbank, opposite, stood the gates to the Phoenix Park—the enormous tract that Ormond had landscaped and stocked with deer. The Phoenix Park was bigger and grander than anything London had to offer.

But what was truly striking was the appearance of the new houses.

The British might not be original in the arts, but in their adaptation of the ideas of others, they would often show genius. And during the last decades, in London, Edinburgh, and now Dublin, they had perfected a fresh method of urban construction. Taking simplified classical elements, the builders had discovered that they could endlessly repeat the same brick house, in terraces and squares, in a way that was both economic and pleasing to the eye. Elegant steps led up to handsome doors with fanlights above; outside shutters were not needed in the colder northern climes, so nothing broke the stern brick surface of the outer wall; severe, rectangular sash windows stared blankly out at the northern skies, like the shades of Roman senators. Over the doorway, like as not, there might be a modest classical pediment, for decency’s sake—to omit that might have seemed like a gentleman emerging without a hat— but all other external ornament was avoided. Austere and aristocratic in style, yet domestic in scale, it satisfied lord and tradesman alike. It was, without doubt, the most successful style of terracing ever invented and would make its way across the Atlantic to cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In time, it would come to be known as Georgian.

All around St. Stephen’s Green, Trinity College, and behind the quays north of the Liffey as well, these classical brick terraces and squares were spreading. As the city’s wealth and population continued to grow, it seemed to Walsh that a new street sprang up every year. Dublin, after London, would soon be the most gracious European capital in the north.

“What’s wrong with him, anyway?” asked Fortunatus, as they reached the corner of the green.

“He is Catholic.”

“So are you.”

“He carries a deep resentment.”

“Ah.” Fortunatus sighed. “He has not been as lucky as we.”

Looking back now, he could only be amazed at the foresight of their father. Dutch King William might have promised tolerance to the Irish Catholics, but his parliaments, especially the Irish Parliament, had other ideas entirely. The English Parliament, after all, had gone to all the trouble of throwing out King James just to keep England free of Catholicism. But James was still at large with his young son, supported by his bellicose Catholic cousin, King Louis XIV of France, and Ireland, as always, looked like a perfect base from which to harass England. The western island was to be kept garrisoned, therefore, and under the iron control of English administrators and the established Protestant Church.

As for the new, Cromwellian settlers like Barnaby Budge, hadn’t God sent them to Ireland to humble the papists and ensure the triumph of His Protestant faith? And weren’t they, besides, occupying the land that the papists would still like to claim back now? Not only their consciences, but their very survival, depended on keeping the Catholics down.

So they had started to pass laws for the purpose. Through the reigns of William and Mary, then of her sister Anne, and now of their German cousin, George of Hanover, the list of anti-Catholic laws had grown longer.

A Catholic could not hold public office or sit in the Dublin Parliament. He could not become a full member of a city guild. Most of the professions were closed to him. He could not attend university himself, or—at least legally—send his children abroad for their education, either. He could not buy land, or even hold it on more than a thirty-four-year lease. Any land he already owned at his death would be divided up equally amongst his sons, unless the eldest converted to the Protestant faith, in which case the Protestant son was to inherit all and his brothers get nothing. And so the list went on.

It was an iniquity; it was an insult; above all, it was calculated to destroy Catholicism in Ireland.

Donatus had died late in the reign of Queen Anne, but he had seen enough to see the wisdom of his decision that Protestant Fortunatus should protect his Catholic brother. Other families since had made similar arrangements, but the early conversion of Fortunatus Walsh had stood him in good stead. He’d married well. Friends in high places, pleased with his loyalty, had several times given him those genial government posts—inspector of this, collector of that, or some other position in the sought-after Revenue— with which, for very little work, a gentleman could handsomely increase his income. Thanks to all this, Fortunatus had been able to add several hundred acres to the family’s holdings. Why, when a member of the Dublin Parliament had died recently, he had even gotten a seat in the Irish House of Commons. He had been in a good position to help his brother Terence, therefore.

And Terence had needed it.

“I’d have liked to be a lawyer,” Terence had always said. But although, as a Catholic, he might have been a lowly attorney, the profession of barrister—the gentleman lawyers who argued the cases in court and made all the money—was for Protestants only. For a time, he had tried to be a merchant in the city and had joined the Merchants Guild. As a Catholic he had to pay fees every quarter, higher than those a Protestant paid, and was denied any voting rights in the guild elections; he was also unable to become a freeman of the city. But he could trade.

“Swallow your pride and make money,” Fortunatus had advised him. “Even a Catholic may get rich.” And he had gladly staked Terence with some capital so that he could trade. But after five years, though he had made a living, Terence returned the money and told him: “I’m not cut out for this.”

“What will you do, then?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Terence had replied, “that I might practise medicine.”

Fortunatus had not been pleased. The practice of medicine was not, in his judgement, a very respectable business. True, anatomy and medicine were studied at the great universities. But the surgeons who pulled your teeth or amputated your leg shared a guild with the barbers—indeed, the surgeon might be the same man who cut your hair. And there was nothing to stop anyone in Dublin setting up as a medical man, whose methods were mostly confined to cupping and bleeding you, or applying herbal remedies of their own invention. Most of these physicians, in his private estimation, were quacks.

But a Catholic could be a physician. There were no restrictions at all.

So after a period of intense study with one of the better medical men, Terence had set himself up near Trinity College, and Fortunatus had recommended him to everyone he knew, with the cheerful injunction to his brother: “Try not to kill all my friends.”

And Terence had done uncommonly well. He had a pleasant manner; the fact that he had gone prematurely grey, and wore a little pointed beard, gave him a look of kindly authority that his patients found reassuring. “It is even possible,” his brother allowed, “that you may do your patients some good.” But above all, Doctor Terence Walsh was a gentleman. The whole of fashionable Dublin agreed. The fact that he was Catholic and that most of his patients were Protestant was not an issue. Old ladies asking him to come to their bedside, aristocrats who might need to confide some medical embarrassment over a glass of claret, could feel that he was a discreet and trusted member of the family. Within three years, he had all the patients he could handle. And being an honourable man, he also set aside time for the poor folk living near him, whom he treated without charge.

The family had been able to help him in other ways. His father might not be allowed to leave him anything directly, but by making use of family trusts, it had been easy enough to give him the use and the income of a small estate out in Kildare. Other families they knew had done the same. If the authorities in Dublin Castle were aware that the law was being quietly flouted, they never said anything. And last year, Fortunatus had seen another way to help his brother.

“Terence,” he announced, “you’re going to become a Freemason.” There had been craft guilds of stonemasons since the Middle Ages. It was not until sometime after 1600, and for reasons unknown, that some gentlemen in Scotland had decided to form what they called a Freemasons’ lodge, which used the ceremonies and “mysteries” of the medieval guild but was dedicated not to the building trade, but to general good works. Only gradually did this new Freemasonry, which was run as a friendly secret society, spread to England and Ireland. But in the last two decades it had suddenly become fashionable, and Fortunatus had joined the most aristocratic of the new Dublin lodges.

“We must get you in, too, Terence,” he had explained. “The Masons make no religious distinctions. Your being a Catholic is not a barrier. And it will be good for your career.” Indeed, they were on their way to a meeting of the brethren that very evening.

Having enjoyed so much support from his own loving family, it was natural as well as commendable that Terence, in turn, should have wanted to help a kinsman himself.

Like young Garret Smith.

If old Maurice Smith hadn’t been killed at the Battle of the Boyne, his descendants might not have fared so badly. For King William’s Treaty of Limerick was generous to those of King James’s army who had surrendered. But for those who had been killed back at the Boyne, there was no such provision. They were judged to be rebels and their estates were confiscated. By the time it was all over, the Smiths were ruined.

Fortunatus remembered the family at that time very well. Maurice’s son Thomas had been philosophical, but his grandson Michael—a boy a few years younger than himself—had not taken it well, becoming bitter and withdrawn. The Walshes had done all they could to help. After all, Fortunatus remembered, old Maurice was actually my father’s first cousin. But Thomas had died, Michael had been resentful, and the two families had drifted apart. Michael had clung to a heroic picture of his family’s role and of the character of King James, and always swore that the Stuart king, or his son, would return and restore the Catholic faith to Ireland.

The Jacobite cause, as this longing for the Stuarts was called, might not have been entirely hopeless. When the unpopular German, George of Hanover, had come to the English throne, there were many who wanted to have the son of King James back instead. There were even scattered risings. But they soon fizzled out, and nobody rose for the Stuart Pretender in Ireland. Soon after that, Michael Smith had lapsed into disappointment and drink. Two years later, he was penniless and dead.

But he had left a little son. And it was young Garret Smith that Terence had determined to help. He had found lodgings for the boy and his mother—modest certainly, but cleaner than the ones they’d had before—in Saint Michan’s parish on the north side of the Liffey. At his special request, the priest there had ensured that the boy received some education. Then, a few years ago, he had made the necessary payments for the boy to be apprenticed to a respectable grocer in the parish. And once a month, without fail, he would bring the young man to dine with his wife and children in the friendly comfort of their family home in the hope that, in due course, when he had set himself up in business and found a sensible wife, young Smith might follow a similar, if more modest, path himself. In short, he had done everything that a kindly member of the Walsh family might be expected to do.

It was hard to say exactly when the trouble had begun. He had not taken the boy’s scrapes or his brushes with authority too seriously. “It’s just a young man’s devilment,” he would say genially. More problematic had been the day when his wife had found Garret teaching their children to be Jacobites.

“I’ll not have him bringing trouble of that kind into this house,” she had protested to her husband. And it was only after much pleading, and the promise that young Garret should never be left alone with their children, that Terence had been able to bring him to the house again. “He shall not come here while you are away in France,” she had declared.

During the last year, there had been some complaints from his master the grocer, as well. Terence had encouraged the good grocer to take a firm hand.

“I must confess that I’m concerned,” he told Fortunatus. “I shall be away a month, and there’s really no one to keep an eye on him, or take charge if there should be any trouble. But I feel that I’m taking advantage of your good nature in turning to you.”

“The young man is just as much my kinsman as yours,” his brother pointed out. “I’m probably at fault for having done nothing for him before.” He smiled. “I’m sure I can handle him.” Fortunatus prided himself on his ability to manage people.

“I may tell his master, and the priest, that you will act for me in my absence, then?” Terence said with great relief.

“I shall go to see both those gentlemen myself. Set your mind at rest.” Fortunatus put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “And now,” he continued cheerfully, “we are about to enjoy a dinner with our brother Masons at that excellent tavern in Bride Street. And since I intend to consume at least three bottles of claret, I shall expect you to carry me home.”

The sun was already high the next morning when the servant girl drew back the long curtains. Fortunatus blinked, and wished that he had not. The sunlight hurt his eyes.

“Will you close them again, for the love of God?” he groaned hoarsely. His throat was a desert, his head a cavern of pain. “Too much claret,” he said shakily to the girl.

“We heard Your Honour singing when your brother brought you home last night,” she answered amiably. “You have visitors, Sir,” she continued, “waiting below.”

“I have? Send them away.”

“We can’t, Sir. It’s Mrs. Doyle.”

She was waiting for him in the front parlour. Like all the houses on St. Stephen’s Green, the main rooms were very tall, and like most Irish houses, sparsely furnished. The hanging on one wall, and the dark and clumsy little portrait of his father on another, did little to add cosiness to what might otherwise have been mistaken for the stately anteroom or a public Roman mausoleum.

She made no comment upon his haggard appearance as he gazed at her with hollowed eyes and wondered why it was, even on the best of days, that his cousin Barbara made him nervous.

It was getting on for two centuries since his ancestor Richard had married the Doyle heiress. How many generations had passed since then? Six or seven, he supposed. But the families had always kept on close terms. “Our Doyle cousins were uncommonly good to me and to your grandfather,” Donatus had always told him. If the Walshes were generous to relations less well-placed than themselves, they prided themselves on remembering favours received as well. And Barbara Doyle was not only the widow of one of these kinsmen, but she had been born a Doyle herself; so she was a kinswoman on two counts. “Cousin Barbara,” the whole family called her. When her husband had suddenly died, leaving her with a young family, they had been there at once to support her, and she recognized the fact. Anyone less in need of support, Fortunatus considered, it would be hard to imagine.

God knows what she was worth. She’d been left a rich woman, and she’d made herself richer. Every year, as a new terrace of houses would spring up in Dublin somewhere, you could be sure that Barbara Doyle owned one of them. Indeed, she owned the very house they were in now, since Fortunatus rented it from her. He wondered nervously why she had come.

Hastily, he urged her to his best armchair—for her comfort, no doubt, but chiefly because she wasn’t quite so infernal sitting down as standing up. Even her little son John, whom she had brought with her for some reason, was quickly offered a silk-covered stool.

Yet even if she was richer than he was, she was still only the widow of a merchant, whereas the Walshes, since time out of mind, belonged to the landed gentry. So why was he afraid of her?

Perhaps it was her physical presence. She was large, stout in leg and body, and undoubtedly weighed more than he did. In the enduring fashion of the Restoration, she wore a low-busted dress, from which her breasts swelled out mightily. Her hair was thick and black, her face was round, her cheeks a blotchy red. But it was her basilisk-brown, cold-staring eyes that always disconcerted him. Sometimes, under their bellicose glare, he would even find himself stuttering.

“Well, Cousin Barbara,” he said with a forced smile, “what can I do for you?”

“Now that you’re in Parliament,” she answered firmly, “a good deal.”

And his heart sank.

If it hadn’t been for the seat in Parliament, he probably wouldn’t have rented the house. Usually, a country gentleman would rent a Dublin house for the social winter season if he had a son or daughter to marry off—and Walsh had no children of that age at present—or if he had parliamentary business to attend to. Having got his seat, Fortunatus, who was usually careful with his money, had decided that if he was going to do the thing, he’d do it in style. So he had taken a big house on fashionable St. Stephen’s Green. But it had cost him dear, for rents in the best parts of Dublin were scarcely less than those in London, and he was paying Mrs. Doyle the princely sum of a hundred pounds a year—which was almost more than he could really afford.

Barbara Doyle fixed Fortunatus with a baleful gaze. Then she made her announcement.

“It’s time,” she said, “that Ireland stood up to the English.”

There was hardly a person in Dublin who would have disagreed.

For if the English Parliament wanted the Irish kept safely under Protestant rule, that did not mean that they were interested in the welfare of the rulers. They weren’t.

After all, Ireland was a place apart. True, many of Cromwell’s English followers had obtained Irish land. But often they had sold it, taken their profits, and returned to England. Some of the largest English landowners held huge tracts there now, but engaged middlemen to extort the highest rents they could and remit the money to England, where these great men preferred to live as absentees. As for the Protestants who actually lived in Ireland—and their number was large—even the new arrivals had mostly been there a couple of generations now, and time and distance had bred forgetfulness. The English wished them well, of course, so long as they weren’t a nuisance.

“But these Irish colonists need to be kept in their place,” the English judged. Even back in the days of Charles II, the English Parliament had found it needful to restrict Ireland’s time-honoured exports of beef, for an obvious cause: “Their beef competes with our own.” During the reign of King William, it had also been necessary to embargo the Irish wool trade for the same excellent reason. And when Ireland’s almost entirely Protestant gentry and merchant class had protested, the Parliament men in England knew what to think: “There’s something about that damned island that makes people disloyal.”

Indeed, a few years later, the English Parliament had been obliged to remind the Protestant Irish Parliament somewhat firmly, “The troops you have raised and paid for are by no means to be considered under your control.” And just a couple of years ago, King George had even had to promulgate a Declaratory Act to remind them, once and for all, that London could and probably would override any decision or legal judgement they made.

“We are loyal to the king and his established Church,” the Irish Parliament concluded, “yet we are regarded as inferior subjects.” They were exactly right.

The Catholics, though affected by anything that damaged the island’s trade, were not really part of the quarrel. They had their own problems to worry about. It was the Protestant ruling class, the Ascendancy—the Anglo-Irish as they were starting to be called—who felt so badly used by London. Why, even the best-paid government jobs, the sinecures, the best-endowed livings for the clergy—the expected perquisites of government in that genial age—were being given to men sent over from England. “Why should it be only the second-rate jobs that are left for our own boys?” the Irish gentry wanted to know. And if the oppressed Catholic peasants hated the absentee landlords and their grasping middlemen, the Ascendancy often disliked them almost as much. “This rent money flooding out of the country to the absentees is stealing away Ireland’s wealth,” they complained. The amounts that left were not in fact large enough to do serious damage, but both Barbara Doyle and Fortunatus Walsh were convinced they did.

The final insult, however, had just occurred this very year.

“What are you going to do,” Mrs. Walsh demanded, “about those damned copper coins?”

It has always been the prerogative of rulers, in all countries and in all political systems, to look after their mistresses. King George of England, naturally wishing to do something for his mistress, the Countess of Kendal, had had the happy thought of giving her a patent to mint copper halfpence and farthings for Ireland. The gift of such a license to a charming royal friend was such a normal thing that nobody had even thought about it twice. She in turn, not being in that business, had very sensibly sold the patent to a reputable ironmaster named Wood. And now Wood’s copper change had arrived in Ireland.

“Why should we take these cursed, clipped coins in Dublin?” Barbara Doyle fixed Fortunatus with a bellicose eye.

In fact, when Walsh had inspected some of Wood’s coins, it had seemed to him that their quality was perfectly sound, but he did not say so now.

“What is so foolish about the business,” he remarked with perfect truth, “is that we’re actually short of silver coinage these days. It’s silver we need, not copper.” The various outflows of money to England had produced a shortage of the higher-value currency on the island recently—which was one of the reasons why even the English placemen in the Revenue Commission had warned London that this copper issue was a bad idea. But if he hoped to deflect his cousin’s assault by changing the subject, Walsh was out of luck. Barbara Doyle had never been deflected in her life.

“Do you think Ireland should be governed by the favours given to a jezebel?” she threateningly enquired.

That his cousin was actually shocked by the king having a mistress was doubtful; as for royal favours, Ireland had been familiar with those since before Saint Patrick came. “The whole thing was done behind our backs,” she cried. “That’s what turns my stomach.”

And that, thought Fortunatus, was the rub. It was the casual insult implicit in the transaction that had infuriated everyone. Time and again, the English Parliament had refused to let the loyal Irish mint their own coins, since that would have smacked of too much independence; now, without even a word to the Irish Parliament, and against the advice of the authorities in Dublin, this private coinage had been foisted upon them.

“It’s shameful,” he agreed.

“So what are you and the Parliament going to do about it?”

The Irish Parliament met from the autumn to the following spring, every other year. After a gap of eighteen months, a new session was just about to begin. Fortunatus had no doubt that there would be a big protest about the coins, but whether it would do any good was another matter.

“I shall speak out on the subject, you may be sure,” he answered firmly.

“Damn your speech,” she answered. “Those coins must be withdrawn. And you and your friends must see to it.” She stared at him. Her eyes were not in the least friendly.

“We shall do our best,” he said guardedly.

She continued to stare.

“The lease on this house is up for renewal soon,” she remarked. “I could get a hundred and twenty for it. More, I dare say.”

He gazed back in horror. Was the woman actually trying to bully him into a parliamentary action, which he probably couldn’t accomplish anyway, by threatening to raise his rent? Or possibly evict him? The naked brutality of the thing was appalling. And in front of a child!

He looked down to the stool where the little boy sat, and found the child staring at him coldly. His eyes were just like his mother’s. Good heavens, he realized, the widow Doyle had deliberately brought the child along to show him how to conduct business. And she’s teaching him, he thought with despair, how to bully me.

And then, suddenly, he almost burst out laughing. The dreadful woman was right, of course. The boy had to learn. For wasn’t this exactly how all public life was run? Indeed, he didn’t suppose that parliamentary politics could be organized in any other way. In England, government ministers and mighty aristocrats with control of patronage commanded small armies of parliamentary men, who did their bidding in return for favours, or the fear of losing them. Even in the Dublin Parliament, powerful men like Speaker Conolly, or the Brodrick family in Cork, controlled large factions with promises and threats. In her crude way, Cousin Barbara was just trying to do the same.

The problem was that he had no idea how the business would go once the Parliament met; to imagine that a new and insignificant Member of Parliament like himself could promise anything was absurd. Yet as he gazed at her, he had no doubt that she would carry out her threat.

“We shall have to see, my dear Barbara,” he said carefully. “I shall certainly do my best.”

But when she left a few minutes later, he shook his head and wondered—was he about to be evicted from his house?

It was partly to take his mind off this tiresome subject that he decided, that very afternoon, that he’d walk across the Liffey to see about young Smith.

Having crossed the Liffey, he made his way into the parish of Saint Michan’s. It was one of the more ancient parishes, lying on the western side of the old Norsemen’s district of Oxmantown, and there had been a church there since time out of mind. Making his way through several handsome new terraces, he came to a more modest quarter still occupied by gabled houses which dated from the century before. And entering Cow Lane, he was soon directed to the premises occupied by Mr. Morgan MacGowan, grocer.

He liked what he saw. A yard with stores around it. From an open door in one of these came a faint and pleasant malty smell; inside, he could see smoked hams hanging from hooks, and sacks of spices— cloves, garlic, sage, peppers—on a low wooden shelf that ran along the wall. There seemed to be children everywhere, running barefoot in the yard, buzzing in and out of the house like bees around a hive, peeping from rafters. Ushered inside the house by the tradesman’s pleasant wife, he found an old-fashioned parlour with a wooden floor, a scrubbed wooden table, wooden benches and stools, all spotlessly clean. When he explained that he was the brother of Terence Walsh, his welcome turned from politeness to warmth, and the smaller children at once made it clear that they expected to be swung around in the yard. When he mentioned the name of Garret Smith, however, he was informed that the young man was out, and, it seemed to him, a cloud passed over Mrs. MacGowan’s face. Soon after this, MacGowan himself arrived.

The tradesman was a small, round, comfortable-looking man. The grocer’s trade in Dublin was a pleasant one. Unusually, there was no guild, and therefore no discrimination against Catholics. A Catholic like MacGowan could engage in the grocery business without a sense of inferiority, and could prosper. Grocers were among some of the richest merchants in the city. And though MacGowan was not rich, Walsh had a feeling that he probably had more money than he cared to let you know.

They talked amiably for a few minutes, about Terence, for whom the grocer clearly had a high regard, and his forthcoming journey. Though he had not travelled abroad himself, MacGowan was clearly well-informed about the trade and ports of France, and Fortunatus liked him.

“So I hear,” he said after a little while, “that you have had some trouble with our relation, young Garret Smith.”

MacGowan was silent for a moment. He looked at Walsh carefully, as if he were considering something.

Walsh noticed that the grocer had a curious stare. He didn’t think he’d ever seen one quite like it. As he cocked his head slightly to one side, his left eye drooped half closed, but his right eye remained fixed upon the person he was speaking to, and opened so wide that it seemed as if it had grown, staring at you with a gaze of such intensity that it was startling.

“He does his work well enough,” MacGowan said quietly. “I sent him to Dalkey on an errand this morning, or you’d have seen him here.”

“He gives no trouble, then?”

“He has a headstrong spirit, Mr. Walsh, and he thinks highly of his own opinions, as many young people do.” He paused. “He’s a clever young fellow, Sir, and I think he has a good heart. But he is subject to moods. He can sing you to sleep, or make you laugh till you cry. But then something will make him angry . . .” He paused again. “He’s fallen into bad company recently. That’s my opinion, Sir.”

“What sort of company?’

“You remember the trouble in the Liberties the other week?” As in other cities, there were sometimes fights between different gangs of apprentices. In the poorer sections of Dublin, especially the old Liberty areas which had been under the feudal rule of the medieval Church, there had been some altercation between the butcher boys and the Protestant Huguenot immigrants from France. Recently, some Huguenot boys had taken a savage beating.

“A bad business,” said Walsh.

“It was a terrible thing they did,” MacGowan continued. “He’s been spending time with the butchers—though I have told him not to keep bad company—and he was there when it was done. I don’t say he had a hand in it. Please God he didn’t. But he was there. And when I told him he must never go there again, all he said to me was: ‘It was only some Protestant Frenchmen that they beat. They deserved no better.’ Those were his words.” The grocer continued to fix Walsh with his one-eyed gaze.

“That was very wrong of him,” Fortunatus agreed. “Though I dare say he only spoke in the heat of the moment.”

“Perhaps.” MacGowan’s gaze travelled slowly round the room until his eye appeared to fix on some distant point outside the window. “He worries me, Sir.”

Fortunatus nodded.

“And is there anything else,” he gently enquired, that you think I should know?”

MacGowan’s eye stared at him once again, then looked down at the floor.

“No.” He paused. “But you could ask Doctor Nary, the priest,” he suggested quietly. “He might know more than me.”

As the house of Doctor Cornelius Nary lay not far away, when Fortunatus left the grocer’s, he decided to see if he was at home. Indeed, he was quite glad of the chance to visit him, for the parish priest of Saint Michan’s was one of Dublin’s more notable figures.

So he was delighted when, arriving at the door of the house, he was greeted by the worthy divine himself.

“I am Fortunatus Walsh, the brother of Terence Walsh,” he began politely, and got no further. For the priest beamed.

“I know who you are,” he cried. “I know your brother well, and I know all about you. Come in, Fortunatus, and welcome.”

Like other priests of that time, you would not necessarily have known that Doctor Nary—it was an odd spelling of the usual Neary, which the doctor pronounced “Nairy”—was a priest at all. Sometimes, to be sure, he wore the flowing gown and tabs of an academic and divine, but today he was simply dressed in the long buttoned tunic, cravat, breeches, and stockings of an ordinary gentleman, and his wig was off. Fortunatus was especially struck, however, by the priest’s noble features. His face was a perfect oval, with fine, almond-shaped eyes and only a slight loosening of the flesh under the chin. As a youth, thought Walsh, he must have looked like a renaissance Madonna. When he smiled, the eyes creased with humour in a pleasant way. Though now in his sixties, the priest looked fit and energetic. He led Fortunatus inside to a modest study, neatly crammed with books, offered him a chair, and, sitting down at his table, enquired, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye:

“So what may a Catholic priest do for a good Church of Ireland Protestant like yourself?”

If the English did not like Catholicism and did all they could to discourage it, the native Irish had ignored the Penal Laws and kept steadfastly to their faith. So the government had been forced to compromise. The religious orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits especially—were all strictly outlawed. Bishops were also forbidden. But ordinary parish priests were tolerated, as long as they had registered with the authorities and taken an oath of loyalty to the crown.

Cornelius Nary had been at Saint Michan’s for a quarter of a century. He ran a busy parish with the help of several junior priests. Having studied theology in Paris, he was a noted scholar; he had written a thousand-page history of the world, and even translated the New Testament into everyday English. He was widely liked by the Protestant clergy. Fortunatus knew that the vicar of his own Church of Ireland parish held Nary in high esteem. “What I find admirable,” he told Walsh, “is that he stands up for his faith in a manly way: he writes pamphlets against us Protestants—and you have to admire his courage—but he’s always reasonable, never discourteous.” It might be that the Catholic priest was merely diplomatic, but he was careful always to present these religious disputes as an honest disagreement between well-meaning parties. “If matters between Protestants and Catholics could always be conducted in such a manner,” the vicar had confessed, “I personally would see no need for the Penal Laws at all.”

Fortunatus told the priest that he had come from Morgan MacGowan and explained his mission at once.

“You’ll be aware that Terence has taken an interest in our relation, Garret Smith.”

“It does your brother credit. I placed the boy with an excellent little school in this parish, you know.” Under the Penal Laws, Catholic schools were not supposed to exist. But the English administrators had long since discovered that, instead of being the barbarian beasts that they had supposed, many of the native Irish regarded education as a birthright, and it had been quite impossible to keep them from it. Officially, therefore, they did not exist; but behind closed doors, Dublin was full of them. “He proved to be very intelligent,” the scholarly priest continued. “I gave him instruction myself.”

“He is a fortunate young man, then,” said Fortunatus politely.

Nary gave him a wry look.

“Oh, he doesn’t think so, I assure you. He has the greatest contempt for me. He told me so himself.” Observing Walsh’s astonishment, Nary laughed. “I’m not nearly good enough for him, you know.”

“How can he possibly . . . ?”

“Oh, he’s a most furious young Jacobite, you know. He despises me because I am registered and do not flout the law—much as I dislike it—and because some of the Church of Ireland clergy are my friends.” Nary shrugged. “I like to think he does me an injustice.”

In fact, as Walsh knew very well, the priest had done more than write some fearless pamphlets. Ten years ago, he had been forced into hiding and then arrested after illegally helping some poor nuns who’d been dispossessed. Only two years ago, when a Catholic in Cork had been unfairly condemned to death, Nary had openly rebuked the authorities by draping his entire chapel in black mourning cloth. There was no question about the man’s courage. He had simply calculated that he could achieve more for the faith by making friends than by making enemies.

“I had been intending,” said Fortunatus a little doubtfully, “to keep an eye on him while Terence was away.”

“You were?” Nary clearly found this quite amusing. “And you a Protestant. Brave man.”

“He sounds a monster,” Walsh ventured, “and yet it seems to me that you like him.”

The priest nodded.

“You are right. I even discussed him with the bishop.” Catholic bishops might not be allowed in Ireland officially, but of course they were often there, and the authorities usually ignored them. “Yet neither of us was certain how to help him. The bishop wondered if he would make a priest. He has the brain, but no vocation.” Nary gazed thoughtfully at Fortunatus. “You might say that he is both the best of young men,” he continued, “and the worst. His mind is very keen. Give him a subject to master, and he will swoop down upon it like a falcon. He will master it with an intensity at which I marvel. I lend him books. He has read prodigiously. But he lacks a centre. I’m not even sure of his convictions. Just when you suppose you have engaged his attention, he’ll turn from you—it’s as if he’s been swept up by a whirlwind into the sky. And suddenly you’ve lost him.” He paused. “He has a terrible, dark passion,” he added regretfully.

“I asked Morgan MacGowan if there was anything in particular I should know,” Fortunatus remarked. “He said I should ask you. I’m wondering what it might have been.”

“Ah.” The priest sighed. “That would be the girl.”

“He mentioned no girl.”

“How like him. He wouldn’t because, in his eyes, she belongs to me.” Doctor Nary stared up at the bookcase where three unsold copies of his translation of the New Testament kept each other company. “Kitty Brennan. A servant girl in this house. Her family live down in Wicklow. Poor farmers. I feel responsible for her. So I take it unkindly that young Smith has made the girl his sweetheart.”

“He has seduced her?”

“I don’t say that. For all I know, it was the other way round. But I have asked him to promise not to see her anymore.”

“Has he done so?”

“No. And I shall have to send her back to her family. We can only hope there have been no unfortunate consequences.”

“Terence said nothing of this.”

“He doesn’t know. It has all come about this last week or so.”

“Surely the girl should go at once, then, for everyone’s sake.”

“I fear so. She’s not a bad little soul, and I’m sorry to send her back to her wretched home. But . . .” The priest shook his head, then suddenly burst out: “The young fool. He could go far. As far, at least, as a poor Catholic boy can go in Dublin nowadays.”

Fortunatus watched him thoughtfully. It was clear that Nary was frustrated with his difficult protégé.

“You say he has read a great deal.”

“He’s been through half my library.”

“He comes to dine with Terence and his family every month, as you probably know. I suppose I could do the same. But I have to go up into County Cavan for a few days shortly. I wonder if I should take him with me. It would keep him out of trouble.”

“I could send the girl away while he’s gone,” Nary said thoughtfully. “That might do very well. Though you’re a brave man to take him. What do you mean to do up there?” It was clear from his tone that to Nary, who came from the rich farmland of County Kildare, the northern county of Cavan with its bogs and little lakes held no attraction.

“I’m to visit an old friend, a schoolmaster. He’s a learned man, and a wit as well. It might interest the boy.”

Doctor Nary was listening carefully. Now he gave Fortunatus a sharp look.

“A schoolmaster, you say, with a house in Cavan? And what would be the name of this place, might I ask?”

“The house is called Quilca.”

“Quilca?” Nary slapped his hand on the table. “I might have guessed. Quilca.” He shook his head. “And tell me this—will there be other company there, from Dublin?”

“I believe there will, yes. Another old friend of his.” He grinned. “I think you know already. The Dean of Saint Patrick’s.”

“I knew it,” cried Nary, in only partly mock vexation. “The intolerable unfairness of the thing. It’s me you should be taking, Walsh, not young Smith.”

“I’m sure you’d be very welcome.”

“Perhaps. I hope so. But I’ve other duties here.” He sighed. “I feel, Fortunatus, like the worthy brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Here I am, labouring faithfully in the service of the Lord, and it’s that young rascal who’s to go to Quilca. Why, man,” he burst out, “you’ll be in the finest company in all Ireland!”

“I would not disagree.”

“Take him to Quilca, then,” groaned Cornelius Nary. “Take him for the good of his soul. Though I hope you do not live to regret it.”

“I’m sure I can manage him,” said Fortunatus.

“Perhaps. But I warn you,” said the priest, “that you are taking a considerable risk.”

It was some hours later that the three brothers met in the family house in Belfast. They came together in sadness.

Outside, it was raining. If Dublin was still bathed in evening sunshine, up here, eighty miles to the north, a wet wind from the west was dragging a pall of grey cloud over the Mountains of Morne, and a dreary rain was falling over the great port of Belfast beyond.

A month had passed since their father had died, that sound, God-fearing old Ulster Scot. They had buried their mother ten years ago. There was nobody left in the family now but Henry, and John, and Samuel Law.

Henry observed his brothers. We are decent young men, he thought. We love each other as best we can; and when love is difficult, loyalty always remains. We cling to that.

“Well, Samuel, no doubt you’ve made up your mind. What’s it to be?” John, the eldest, straight to the point. Tall and dark-haired like their father. Hardworking, the undisputed head of the family now.

Samuel smiled. Perhaps because he was the youngest, he was the most easygoing. He was built differently, as well. He was considerably shorter than his brothers, even a little chubby. His hair was sandy, flecked with red—an inheritance from their mother’s side, Henry supposed. But he knew what he wanted. Always had. In his genial way, considered Henry, he’s just as stubborn.

“I’m going,” he said. “There’s a good ship leaving next week. I’m going to America.”

John nodded. If a man left for America, the chances were that you would never see him again.

“We shall miss you,” he said quietly. That was a lot, coming from John, the man who never gave way to his emotions. Even then, Henry noted, he did not say “I shall miss you,” but “we.” That made it a statement of family duty rather than personal feeling. Henry smiled to himself. John never changed. Just like their father. “But I think you are right, Samuel,” John continued gravely. “I believe I’d go myself, except for . . .” There was no need to finish the sentence. John was the only one married as yet, and they all knew that his wife had made her feelings very clear. She had a large family in Ulster and no intention of being parted from them. “I am sure that it’s God’s will, and that you’ll prosper there,” John added.

“It isn’t just for myself that I’m leaving,” said Samuel. “But if God grants me a family one day, I’ll not bring them up in Ireland.”

And no one could blame him for that, thought Henry. For under Ireland’s English rule, the Law family lived under humiliating disadvantages. Not because they were Catholic but, on the contrary, because they were Protestant.

If there was one thing the Ascendancy believed it had learned from the past, it was that religious disputation led to bloodshed. The disputes must therefore end. The official Church, with its compromise liturgy and its bishops, might not be perfect, but it represented order. It was to be established once and for all, and any other groups, whether papist, dissenters, sectaries, or anything else, were to be rendered impotent. Even the stern Elect of God were now to be humbled. “We had enough of those damned Presbyterians before, especially the Scotch ones,” the gentlemen of the Ascendancy parliaments declared. So their legislation was directed not only against Catholics but all dissenting Protestants as well. “Join the established Church,” they were told, “or be second-class subjects.” And so the Scots Presbyterians who formed the most vigorous part of the Protestant community in Ulster were therefore debarred from civic and public life, and humiliated.

It was three generations since the Law family had come to Ulster. Hardworking, respectable Lowland Scots, their great-grandfather had proudly taken the Covenant; it had been a younger son, looking to make his fortune, who had come over to Ulster. There he had prospered in the wool trade, conducted through the growing port of Belfast, and raised his family in the Presbyterian faith. The Law family had been horrified when Catholic King James came to the throne, and delighted when King William beat him. And after the Battle of the Boyne, they had assumed that the new Protestant regime would be the end of their troubles, not the beginning of them.

When the English showed their loyalty to their fellow Protestants in Ireland by destroying their wool trade, the Law family had suffered a grievous financial blow. But it took more than that to defeat their sturdy Scottish enterprise.

None of the three brothers would forget the day—they had still been boys at the time—when their father had called them into the cobblestone yard and shown them a small barrel.

“This was just landed, from America,” he told them. “And it will save us. Do you know what is in it? Flaxseed.”

For from flax came linen.

There had been linen in Ireland from time immemorial. But the opening of the New World had now provided a vast potential supply of cheap flaxseed. As the wool trade declined, enterprising men like Law saw an opportunity. They started making linen instead of woollen cloth, and since the English themselves were not much engaged in that commodity, they had no need to destroy the livelihood of their Irish friends in this new trade.

And no one was more active in promoting the linen business than the Law family. They did not simply trade in finished linen. Soon Mr. Law had a network of a dozen farmers whom he provided with seed, spinning wheels, anything else they needed for making the yarn. With supplies guaranteed, he devoted himself first to making the linen and then to selling it. By the time King George came to the throne, Law had his own warehouse on the wharf at Belfast, and shares in half a dozen ships. He also had three sons who were thoroughly trained in the business.

The Laws were a typical family of their kind. Their faith, though it derived from the Calvinism of the century before, was of a gentler nature. They found inspiration in the simple affection of their family, in praying, or better yet, singing, the beloved Psalms together. And they were not without humour.

Nonetheless, they were tough Scots, with a strict Presbyterian church, and they believed firmly in the virtue of hard work and frugal living. They had, all of them, a sharp eye for profit and a dislike of unnecessary costs. Mr. Law had been able to acquire a handsome town house in Belfast; but when his wife had suggested she’d like some fine silk curtains for the parlour, she had been told that the old tapestry ones left by the previous owner, with only a small amount of mending—her husband kindly got down on his knees to show her how easily the thing could be done—might perfectly well be made to serve another twenty years. And since a display of silk would, in any case, be vanity and ostentation, religion dictated what her husband desired, and so there had been no need for the matter ever to be raised again.

Close-knit, churchgoing, sober, healthy, frugal, debt-free: this was the Law family. And, there could be no doubt, the Presbyterian faith was of particular assistance for a manufacturer of dry goods. But since that heritage meant that they would not bow the knee to a bishop, the Ascendancy could not accept them; and so, in a strange irony, the fact that they were strict Protestants meant that they must be treated, almost, like papists.

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the Presbyterians of Ulster had been leaving. Being intrepid Scots, whole families would often go together, so that thriving colonies of Ulster Presbyterians had sprung into existence in the New World with remarkable speed—colonies where a new arrival like Samuel Law would find a ready welcome in a godly congregation.

Not that the Law brothers were blind to the other reasons for going. They were businessmen, after all. “Land is to be had cheaply in America,” Samuel had pointed out. “The opportunities for trade are sure to grow.” They had also discussed where he should go. Many families they knew had settled in New England, others in Delaware, New York, or even down as far as southern Carolina. There were Ulster settlers all the way down the Eastern Seaboard. But Samuel had expressed a preference for Philadelphia.

“You are still determined upon Philadelphia?” John now enquired. He had not entirely approved of Samuel’s choice, objecting: “The place is run by Quakers.”

“There are Presbyterians there,” Samuel reminded him.

Henry decided to come to his aid.

“Philadelphia is a good choice,” he agreed. “It has a fine future. The city has many attractions.” It had not escaped Henry’s notice that a family they knew who had emigrated there some months before had a very pretty daughter. And he gave his younger brother a wink that their brother John failed to see. “But I shall miss you,” he added. “And if you ever change your mind and return, I shall rejoice to have you back again.”

Samuel grinned. If he secretly preferred Henry to their older brother John, it was understandable. As tall as his brother, Henry had thick brown, wavy hair and was always judged to be the most handsome of the three. He was the athlete, too. Hardly any of the young men in Belfast could keep up with him in a race. Though he worked just as hard as John, Henry was easygoing. Yet he was also more adventurous. The women all liked him. Samuel knew a dozen girls who’d be glad to marry Henry, and several times he’d thought his brother was going to choose one of them; but it had seemed to Samuel that something was holding Henry back. It was as if his brother had a plan—no one knew what it was—but something that he meant to accomplish before he settled down.

“With the two of you here, I’m not really needed,” Samuel remarked. “But once I’m established in Philadelphia, I hope we may conduct business together across the Atlantic.”

Henry nodded. Though Samuel did not know it, he and John had already agreed to stake him by sending him a shipload of free goods. As for the business in Ireland, it was true that he and John made a formidable pair. They both knew every aspect of the linen trade, but in recent years John had attended to the supply and manufacture, and Henry to the selling, which reflected their particular talents. If Samuel wants to trade in other commodities, Henry thought, it’ll be me that sees the opportunity, and John who’ll need persuading.

“I must return to my lodgings soon,” said Samuel. “It’s amazing how much there is to do before I leave.”

“Let us pray together, then,” said John Law, “for God’s blessing upon your journey, and all that you may undertake.”

And so, with quiet affection, the three brothers prayed together for a little while, as they had always been taught to do.

After Samuel had gone, Henry remained with his brother.

It was quiet. Neither man spoke for a time. Henry watched his brother thoughtfully. Though John never showed his emotions, it was clear that he was melancholy. Perhaps he had been secretly hoping that Samuel would not go. Henry had never been in any doubt that Samuel was leaving, but you never knew with John. He stayed awhile, therefore, to keep him company.

And for another reason, also.

He had been wondering all day whether to give his brother the other piece of unwelcome news, or whether to wait. On balance, he thought it was kinder to let him absorb all the bad news at once.

“We shall have to consider how best to carry on the business when Sam is gone,” he said at last.

“Yes.” John nodded.

“I believe Dublin will be important for us.”

The linen trade had been growing rapidly not only in Ulster, but down in Leinster also. The new Linen Hall in Dublin was already a thriving centre of the trade, and in recent months Henry had made a number of visits to the capital. “There is even more linen being shipped out of Dublin nowadays than out of Belfast,” he had reported. “I think we should have a second business down in Dublin as well,” he now continued. “You have everything so well in hand here, John, that you scarcely have need of me; but if I went down there, we could greatly expand our affairs.”

Since all this was entirely true, there was no need to say that, without the presence of Samuel to act as a buffer between them, Henry would have found his brother’s solemn and sometimes overbearing presence too difficult to live with.

“So you, too, are leaving me.” John nodded slowly.

“Not leaving, John.”

“There is much truth in what you say,” John continued quietly. “I don’t deny it.” It was clear that he was not deceived. He knew very well that, behind his brother’s genial charm, there was also an ambitious mind, just as ruthlessly determined as he was, and who would find it irksome to take orders from an elder brother. He knew he should not be hurt. “I should come to Dublin to help you set up the manufacture,” he could not help adding.

“Ah.” Realising the hint of reluctance in his own voice, Henry added quickly: “There is no man who could give me better advice, John, in all Ireland.”

“It will be strange not to have you here,” John said sadly.

“Dublin is not far from Belfast. I shall be coming back and forth all the time.”

“There is another consideration.” John’s voice showed his concern. “It is easier by far to be a Presbyterian in Ulster than it is in Dublin. Here we are many, and strong, whereas in Dublin . . .” He looked at Henry searchingly. “It will be hard for you, Brother.”

Henry returned his gaze evenly. He had given this part of the matter much thought. He gave him a reassuring smile.

“I shall be in God’s hands,” he said.

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

It was Tidy who saw them coming down the lane. He recognised Walsh at once. Fortunatus was riding a handsome chestnut gelding and leading a packhorse. He wore a long coat and a battered old three-cornered hat. But you could see at once, thought Tidy, that he was a gentleman.

Of all the seventeen living grandchildren of Faithful Tidy, Isaac Tidy was one of the poorest. He was short, with oily, crinkly yellow hair, and he stooped forward. But he had his standards. As a youth he had tried several occupations. He had worked for a printer, for he could read and write, but he had disliked the long hours of drudgery and the smell of printer’s ink. He had looked for a position as a verger or sexton in a church. And it was while doing so that he had encountered no less a personage than the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, who had taken him on as his manservant. The position, it might be thought, was somewhat menial for a man whose grandfather, he quietly let you know, had been Chapter Clerk of Christ Church. “I would not have done it,” he told his family, “for any other man.” Nobody in Dublin would have denied that Dean Jonathan Swift was a man of quite particular stature. And so completely did Tidy identify with his master and his exalted position, so indispensable did he make himself, and so well aware was everybody of his own, not-to-be-sneezed-at ancestry, that when even the junior clergy addressed him as Mr. Tidy, he took it as no more than his due. And if there was one thing Isaac Tidy liked, it was a gentleman.

For Irish society, as far as Tidy was concerned, was divided into two, and only two, classes. There was “the quality,” or “the gintry,” as he, like many Irishmen, pronounced it; and there was the rest. This single line of demarcation, as mighty and defensive as the Great Wall of China, crossed many social terrains. Dean Swift, a man of birth and education, was gintry, and Tidy wouldn’t have served him his claret otherwise. Fortunatus Walsh, the Old English, Protestant member of the Dublin Parliament, with his Fingal estate, was also, obviously, gintry, and so, therefore, was his brother Terence the doctor, despite being a papist. Indeed, even a native Irish Catholic, so long as he was a landowner, or a man of wealth with some plausible claim to princely ancestry, might qualify. But most people you met in the street did not.

He could always tell. He himself didn’t always know how he did it. But Tidy usually needed only a few seconds, or at most a minute or two, with any man to sniff him out. And if that man was putting on airs and graces, but he didn’t really belong to the gintry, Tidy would know it. He’d be civil enough, usually; he mightn’t say anything. But he’d let that man know by subtle means that, even if the Duke of Ormond or the Lord Lieutenant had taken him for a gentleman, he, Isaac Tidy, knew him for the impostor he really was. Under his seemingly subservient gaze, even the boldest intruder began to feel awkward.

As the new arrivals approached Quilca now, Tidy’s attention was fixed upon the dark-haired young man who was riding beside Fortunatus. His clothes were carelessly worn. You couldn’t tell by that, though. He also was wearing an old three-cornered hat. But where did he get it? Was it his own, or had Fortunatus lent it to him? The strangest thing, though, was that while Fortunatus looked perfectly happy, this young man appeared to be paying him no attention at all. For while his horse walked beside Walsh’s, he himself was busy reading a book. Now, would a member of the gintry do that? For once, Tidy wasn’t sure.

As they came to Quilca, Fortunatus felt rather pleased with himself. He knew very well that, before going to France, Terence had impressed upon young Smith the need to behave himself. But it had been a stroke of genius on his own part, he considered, to keep the young man occupied with a book.

Having discovered that Garret was not yet acquainted with them, he had brought two small volumes from his own collection of the plays of Shakespeare, thinking that if the young man got bored during his time at Quilca, nobody in that household would be offended if he sat down in a corner to read. Garret, however, had begun the process a little earlier than he had intended. They had ridden quietly enough on the first day of their journey; but when they had stopped at an inn last night and sat down for supper, Garret, after allowing Fortunatus to engage him in conversation for a while, had not considered it necessary to continue their talk, but had taken out King Lear and proceeded to read it for the rest of the meal, remarking only at the end of that silent repast, “This is very good, you know.”

He had finished it that night. This morning he had enquired if there would be books at Quilca, and when Walsh had answered, “Undoubtedly,” he had nodded, then taken out and proceeded to read that play during their journey. He had just come to the end of the third act when they arrived.

If some people might have thought Garret a little rude for so entirely ignoring the kindly gentleman who had brought him there, Fortunatus, on the contrary, was delighted. For if the young man had such a thirst for literature, he thought, no matter what his views, he would be welcomed, and enjoy himself at Quilca.

“Put up your book now, young Garret,” he cried happily. “For you are at the gates of heaven.”

Quilca: the country retreat of Doctor Thomas Sheridan, Church of Ireland clergyman, friend of Dean Swift, Irishman, and the greatest educator in all Ireland.

It lay beside still waters. A habitation had existed there a long time, for the grass-covered circle of an ancient rath still occupied the site, and was used by Sheridan as an outdoor theatre. But at some time more recently, a modest gentleman’s house had been constructed next to the rath, with a commodious stone-walled garden down to the water, where you might almost have supposed yourself at the house of some scholarly canon in one of the great cathedral closes of England, rather than in County Cavan, surrounded by miles of bog land. This was Sheridan’s temple of the muses.

It was not in good repair. The roof was missing several slates, the gaps having been obligingly filled by the birds with what appeared to be permanent nests. On the walls, ivy had hastened to make good the many deficiencies of the masonry, covering the crevices which, it was clear, Sheridan himself was never going to trouble about. Whether his head was too full of the classics of Greece and Rome, or whether he had inherited a fine carelessness as to small things from the Irish chieftains from whom he was descended, it would probably never have occurred to Sheridan to dislodge the birds from the roof, which, he doubtless considered, was as much theirs as his own.

And it was Sheridan now, accompanied by the Dean of Saint Patrick’s, who came out to greet them.

They were a striking pair. Swift was the older man by twenty years, in his midfifties now. His face, which had once been round with a jaunty chin, had been drawn down to a longer, graver repose. His mouth, once puckish, was thin and ironic; his eyes, still humorous but somewhat sad. Something in his manner indicated that, though disappointed in his hopes of higher English office, he was still Dean of Saint Patrick’s, and conscious of the dignity of his office.

Sheridan, beside him, though a person of some consequence himself, was too vague to remember it, and so full of good humour that you suspected he might dig the Dean in the ribs at any moment— which would cause the Dean affectionately to reprove him—or at least attack the older man with an outrageous Latin pun, at which the dean’s gravity would probably collapse. With bright eyes and a broad brow, he looked what he was, a merry scholar.

“Who’s this, O Fortunate?” he cried, indicating young Smith.

“A kinsman of mine,” replied Fortunatus cheerfully, and introduced young Garret to the company.

“He reads while he rides,” said Sheridan. “But what, when he rides, does he read?”

“Macbeth, today,” said Walsh after Garret had failed to answer.

“Indeed?” Doctor Sheridan turned his kindly eyes upon Garret so that he could not escape them. “I have never known anyone to read Macbeth on a horse before, Mr. Smith. The sonnets perhaps, but never Macbeth. Might I enquire if you like it?”

Garret eyed him warily. He wasn’t going to be patronised into any kind of submission.

“It’s English, but it’s good enough to be Irish,” he said quietly. His even gaze offered neither respect nor friendship.

Swift gave Walsh a bleak look. But Sheridan seemed delighted.

“It is,” he cried. “It is. Spoken like a true Irishman.” He turned to the others. “It really ought to be translated into Irish, you know.” He turned back to Garret. “Are your own abilities enough, do you think,” he asked him seriously, “to attempt such a task yourself?”

“Perhaps,” allowed Garret. “I suppose I might try.”

“Capital!” cried Doctor Sheridan. “A young Irish scholar. Welcome, my dear Mr. Smith, to Quilca. Let us go in.”

As the party entered the house, only Isaac Tidy remained outside. He had been observing the young man closely.

With his sallow face and his mass of dark hair, this young fellow had not impressed him at all. He must be about twenty, but he had no manners at all. He might be related to Walsh, but even a fine gentleman like that could possess a kinsman without quality. Besides, he’d seen through the young man easily enough. Why was he rude? Because he was defensive. Always a giveaway, that. No, Tidy gathered his observations together, totalled them, arranged them in order, and, in his mind, put young Smith in a box and closed the lid. He was not a gentleman. Never was and never would be. There was something else he didn’t like about him, too. He had strange green eyes.

And he’d bear watching. Like as not, Tidy thought, he’ll try to steal the silver.

Fortunatus was watching him, too.

As soon as they had been shown their chamber, with an oak bed for himself and a couch on which Garret could perfectly well sleep, it was clear that Sheridan was anxious to take them round his domain, and so they soon gathered outside again with Sheridan and the Dean, and proceeded into the walled garden. As they walked down to the water’s edge, Sheridan was in a bubbling mood.

“Those roses, Walsh, are new since your last visit. The lavender has a powerful scent, does it not? I had it from a gentleman in London. Over there, Mr. Smith, I mean to plant a cedar of Lebanon, when I can get one.”

Indicating the landscape of woods, drumlins, and bogs all around, he informed Garret:

“All this was Sheridan country. The name is one of the oldest in Ireland, you know. The O’Sioradains came from Spain, they say, soon after the time of Saint Patrick. We had the great castle of Togher before the coming of Strongbow, and our lands extended,” he gave a fine wave of his arm, “right across Cavan.” It was clear to Fortunatus, from a faint look of irony on Swift’s face, that the Dean had heard this speech before. “We are descended from the O’Rourkes, princes of Leitrim, the princes of Sligo and Tyrone, from O’Conor Don. . . . I tell you this so that you may know that here you will find the very heart and soul of ancient Ireland.”

“I can’t see how, when you’re a Protestant,” said Garret Smith rudely.

Fortunatus was ready to intervene and rebuke the young man, but Sheridan waved him back.

“You are right. It is strange, for most of the Sheridans are Catholic. But I’ll tell you how it came about. More than a century ago, my ancestor Donnchaid O’Sioradain was orphaned and taken in by a kindly English clergyman who brought him up in his own religion. My forbear became a clergyman himself, and a close associate of Bishop Bedell of Kilmore.” He was in full flood now. “Did you hear of Bedell? He was the only English bishop who preached in the Irish tongue, and even translated the Old Testament into Irish as well. He was a good man, and well loved in Cavan. So much so that when the great rebellion came in ’41, not a hair of his head was touched. When the rebels came to his house, they told him he had nothing to fear and that he should be the last Englishman ever put out of Ireland. When he died, half of those who walked beside his coffin were Catholic Irish chiefs.” He smiled. “Our history, you see, Garret, since it is the story of people, is not always as simple as we might suppose it to be. And it was inspired by him that my Protestant branch of the Sheridans, which has included several clergymen, tried to make the Church of Ireland a Gaelic church here in Cavan.” He sighed. “But circumstances were against us.”

Garret said nothing, and Fortunatus had no idea what he thought of the Sheridan family history.

“Come,” said Sheridan, “let me show you the rath.”

Garret seemed to like the rath. Sheridan’s enthusiasm for the theatrical possibilities of the old earthwork was infectious, and he even managed to draw the young man out a little.

“Come, Garret, stand by me here, and let us recite the great speech from Macbeth. No need for the book. I’ll teach it to you. ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’” And he proceeded to recite the next thirty-three lines from memory—a feat which quite impressed the young man. “Shakespeare’s very well,” he announced after they had finished, “but it’s Greek drama that should be performed in a circular space like this. So you know Sophocles, Euripides? No? Read them. I’ll lend them to you. They say the ancient Irish were a Mediterranean people,” he went on, “and I believe it to be so. Look out at the waters of Dublin Bay, Garret, look south down the coast past those volcanic hills, and whom do you see arising from the soft waters? Manannan mac Lir, our Irish sea god. And who is he, if not Poseidon himself, sea god of the Greeks, under another name? We are Greeks, Garret, Greeks,” he cried, adding in a lower voice, “taken over by Jesuits.” He gave the young man a sly glance when he said this. “I suspect you are a Jesuit in spirit, Garret,” he said, gently teasing. “You have a mind like a knife.”

Though Fortunatus watched a little anxiously, Garret did not seem to take offence at this banter or the shrewd perception that lay behind it. He merely inclined his head silently, which seemed to satisfy Sheridan.

As they went back to the house, Garret and Sheridan went side by side, talking quietly now, while Fortunatus walked beside the Dean.

Swift had remained half smiling but taciturn during most of this performance. As they strolled, Walsh engaged him in conversation.

“I’ve admired Sheridan for so many years,” he remarked. “He seems to me the best sort of clergyman—and he has the finest school in Ireland. I send my son to him. His school plays are famous. But I never realised until today what a passion for the theatre he has. He’d make a fine actor.”

“True.” Swift gave a wry smile. “The pulpit and the theatre, Walsh, are never far apart.”

“It’s clear he loves Quilca. I never saw a man so obviously delight in his house.”

“So do I, Walsh. ’Tis a pity,” Swift raised his voice just enough to carry, “that the place is falling down. Last time I was here, there was a crack in the wall of my room that let in such a draught I had to stuff it with my coat. The roof leaks abominably, too.”

“I heard that,” called out Sheridan. “There is nothing wrong with the roof.”

“You wouldn’t notice if it was off,” retorted Swift.

“Occasionally,” the Irishman replied airily, “it flies away like a bird to visit an uncle in Cork, but it always returns. It only complains,” he added with a certain emphasis, “if swifts nest beneath it.”

“Ha.”

“Besides, you’ve been perfectly dry.”

“It has not been raining.”

Entering the house, Sheridan led them to a large, long room. The shutters were nearly closed, so that the room was in deep shadow, but Fortunatus could see the central fireplace, in front of which stood a large upholstered bench, a pair of tattered wing chairs, and a small table covered with papers. At the far end of the room, against the wall, stood a refectory table, doubtless taken from some monastery in Tudor times; and it was only when he noticed young Garret staring at it that Walsh realised, with a start, that it was occupied by what appeared to be a long, thin corpse, as though laid out for a wake. Sheridan glanced at it.

“That’s O’Toole,” he remarked. And he opened one of the shutters. Then, turning to Swift and indicating the papers, “Come, Jonathan,” he said, “let us resume. Perhaps our friends can help us.”

Earlier, it seemed, the two men had been busy with a composition that the Dean was preparing—not a sermon or a religious tract, they learned, but a literary composition. Walsh had explained to Garret that, before taking up his position in Ireland, Swift had already made a reputation for himself in London as an editor and writer of powerful poems and satires. “He’s a close friend of the great poet Alexander Pope, you know,” he had told him. Swift liked to write up at Quilca, Fortunatus knew, because he found his friend Sheridan’s fanciful flights of language and imagination a useful foil to his own mordant irony. And the work upon which he was engaged was a strange one indeed.

It seemed to be a satire on the popular travel books—a curious tale of a man named Gulliver, who would make a series of voyages to imaginary lands—one island inhabited by tiny folk, another by giants, yet another ruled by rational horses; he even had a series of sketches about a visit to a flying island.

“We were choosing names for some of the curious places and creatures encountered in these travels,” Sheridan explained. “For names are important. We already have, for instance, Lilliput as the island where the little people dwell; and our rational horses are called Houyhnhnms—doesn’t that sound just like a horse’s neigh? But come, Jonathan, set us some more challenges.”

Encouraged by his friend’s enthusiasm, Swift obligingly read out a few passages, and the company set their minds to work.

“We should ransack every corner of our imaginations,” Sheridan declared. “Words from English and French, Latin or Greek, onomatopoeia, even Irish. Did you know that Dean Swift has some Gaelic, Garret? He does not speak it so well as you or I, but he has studied our native tongue, to his credit.”

The flying island Walsh and Swift thought should be Laputa. They also prevailed when, for the loutish creatures who annoy the rational horses, they chose the name of Yahoo. Sheridan, however, came into his own when a name was required for the small, mouse-like creatures that the Yahoos like to eat.”

“The Latin for mouse is mus, and the Irish word is luc. Therefore, I propose that these unfortunate little fellows be called luhimuhs. Can’t you just see the poor things?”

Swift was delighted with this. But the most ingenious choice was made a little while later.

“There is a land which Gulliver visits,” he explained, “where all those who wish to be received by the king must not only, in an oriental fashion, prostrate themselves, but must crawl towards him as he sits upon his throne, licking the dirt from the floor as they do so. What are we to call that?”

This was followed by a profound silence. Walsh knitted his brows; Sheridan gazed into space, lost in thought. Finally, Garret Smith spoke.

“The Irish for slave—and any man who does such a thing is a slave—is triall, and the Irish for evil and dirt is droch and drib. So you could call it Trildrogdrib.”

They all looked at each other. It was brilliant.

Then, at the far end of the room, a sudden chuckle came from the table by the wall, and the corpse sat up. “Excellent!” said the corpse.

“By God,” cried Sheridan, “you’ve woken O’Toole.”

When Sheridan had told Garret that he was in the very heart and soul of ancient Ireland, he had not entirely misspoken. It was a genial party that sat down to eat that evening. The talk, admittedly, was carried on mainly in English, but if O’Toole, for instance, quoted some Irish verses, Sheridan would like as not join in, with Dean Swift and Walsh nodding approval; and for a few minutes thereafter, the conversation of the whole table might transfer into Gaelic, during which the two women who had appeared with the meal from the kitchen would like as not join in. Only Tidy, who had been deputed to act as butler, would remain silent, as he himself had never wished to speak the Irish language and could never understand why the Dean troubled to do so. He also managed to give Garret a few contemptuous looks, which clearly conveyed his opinion that the young man should be waiting at the table, not sitting at it—and which nobody noticed except Garret himself.

The centre of attention was O’Toole.

Fortunatus had not encountered Art O’Toole before. The man was quite young, still in his early thirties. A fair, rangy fellow, eyes like pools of blue water, a long, thin face with a wide mouth and high, protruding cheekbones: in Walsh’s imagination, he took shape as a fair-haired violin. During much of the year, he lived with his family up in the Wicklow Mountains, but in the summer and early autumn he would take to the roads, as the poet bards of Ireland had done since ancient times, and be welcomed with respect wherever he went. Usually, in modest farms and hamlets, he would perform his art for the native Irish, who could only provide him with food and shelter for the night—and he surely only did what he did for the love of the thing. Sometimes at such ceili gatherings, he would sing, tapping his foot to the rhythm while a fiddler or two accompanied him. Or often he would tell stories from the old Irish folk tales. But best of all, if he was in the mood, accompanying himself on a small harp he carried with him, he would quietly sing verses of his own composition.

There were a number of poets of this kind on the island. The greatest of them was Turlough Carolan, a poet musician who had been blind from his birth. “Blind as mighty Homer,” Sheridan had once described him to Fortunatus, “and with the most phenomenal memory I have ever encountered. As for his verses, as one who is familiar with all the classical Greeks, I should rank some of them with Pindar himself.” Carolan lived in the region and had been to Quilca several times. O’Toole was his junior by twenty years, but in the opinion of many, might one day be his equal.

During the meal, the poet talked sparingly, reserving himself for his performance afterwards; but when he did speak, it was in a pleasant, easy manner, and it was clear to Fortunatus that, as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of Irish poetry, he was well acquainted with classical literature and even some recent English authors. He drank a little aqua vitae. “I offer you wine, Art,” Sheridan said, “but I know you prefer usquebaugh.”

“I do,” confessed the poet, “for I find that if I drink wine, my brain becomes clouded, whereas the water of life has little effect upon me, except somewhat to sharpen the faculties.”

“That,” Sheridan responded happily, “is exactly what claret does for me.”

O’Toole spoke to Swift with a marked respect, and to Walsh in a courteous manner, saying that he had heard much good of his brother Terence. He also spoke a few words to young Garret, who only replied in monosyllables, and Walsh supposed that the young man might be shy. But at one point, he did address the poet directly.

“What part of Wicklow do you come from?” he asked.

“From up in the hills. On the road to Glendalough. Rathconan is the name of the place.”

“Would you know the Brennans there?”

A faint cloud seemed to pass across O’Toole’s face.

“There is a family of that name there.” He looked at Garret carefully. “Have you a connection with Rathconan?”

Garret stared at him.

“You could say so.”

“Ah.” O’Toole nodded thoughtfully. “The green eyes. That would explain it.” But he made no further comment.

When the meal was done, he moved to a chair apart and took up his harp.

“First,” he announced, “some music.”

First he played a short jig, then a soft old Irish tune, so that Fortunatus assumed this was a prelude to an Irish tale. But then, to his surprise, O’Toole suddenly began to play a lively Italian piece which, to his even greater astonishment, he recognised as an adaptation of a violin concerto by Vivaldi. Seeing his amazement, Swift leant over to him.

“I have heard blind Carolan make an Italian composition of his own in just the same style,” he whispered. “Your Irish musicians could be the equal of any in Europe.”

Having proved a point, O’Toole skilfully returned to some Irish airs, and after three or four of these, he paused, while Sheridan brought him some usquebaugh. By this time, the women from the kitchen had also come back into the room, together with the boy from the stable and the men from the farm, so the whole household was present. “Now,” the poet said quietly, “a tale or two.” And sometimes singing, sometimes reciting, he wove the magical tales of old Ireland, of Cuchulainn, and Finn Mac Cumhaill, of ancient kings, and saints, and mysterious happenings. Most of the time he spoke in Irish, but once or twice in English, and always with the greatest ease. Apart from the occasional sip of his drink, he did not pause for over an hour.

“You will be celebrated, Art, long after we are forgotten,” said Sheridan warmly when he paused at last. For several minutes, the company drank quietly, the conversation little more than a murmur. Then O’Toole ran his fingers lightly over his harp again. “A composition,” he announced, “of my own. I call it, ‘The River Boyne.’”

For if the Irish Catholic cause had been utterly lost at the Battle of the Boyne, it had certainly not been forgotten. How could it be, when Protestant landlords occupied all the stolen Catholic land, and the law added insult to injury every day of a Catholic’s life? Small wonder, then, that the poets sang haunting, mournful songs to the Ireland that was lost, conjured visions of Ireland restored to its ancient glory, and dreamed dreams of the day when that should be. Above all, however, it was the sadness, the tender yearning for the Jacobite cause, that the harpers like Carolan expressed. And it was just such a lovely lament—for the bloodshed by the magical River Boyne, for the loss of Limerick, and the Wild Geese long since fled—that Art O’Toole sang now.

And it touched them all, Irish and English alike. Fortunatus looked around him and saw the serving women with tears in their eyes; Swift, silent but clearly moved; Sheridan, eyes half closed, half smiling, like an angel; even Tidy seemed thoughtful, aware, perhaps, of the beauty of the music. But it was Garret Smith’s face that Walsh’s eyes rested upon.

The transformation was remarkable. Gone was the self-absorbed, sulky look that he had mostly worn before. His face had relaxed; he was gazing at the poet with shining eyes, his mouth half open, rapt.

Whatever the young man’s faults, thought Fortunatus, young Garret had genius: there was no question. He really belongs at Trinity, he thought, and Terence and I could send him there if only he weren’t a Catholic. But as a Catholic he can’t go, nor enter the learned professions for which nature so obviously intended him. Instead, he must be a frustrated and discontented grocer’s apprentice. He shook his head at the terrible waste of it all. He thought of the conversation he’d had with the worthy priest and wondered what Garret’s feelings might be for the servant girl, illiterate no doubt, that he’d been busy seducing. At this very moment, very possibly, the poor girl was being taken back to her family up in the Wicklow Mountains. To the very place, it now turned out, where O’Toole himself lived. What strange coincidences. Was there some hidden meaning here? What did it all mean?

Nobody rose early the next day. In the middle of the morning, Fortunatus came down to find Garret sitting on a bench outside, reading Macbeth, and eating an oatcake. Sheridan and Swift were talking quietly down by the water.

At noon, O’Toole appeared, took a little light refreshment, and said that he must be on his way as he had ten miles to walk to the village where he was next expected. Sheridan and he had a brief talk together at which, Fortunatus had no doubt, a guinea or two had been bestowed. Then all the party said their farewells and gave the thanks that the poet rightly took as his due. Garret murmured something to him in Irish, which Walsh did not catch, and the poet answered with a calm nod. Then, with a long, loping stride, he was gone.

They were not to dine until late in the afternoon. Sheridan and Swift clearly wished to continue their conversation alone, so when Garret had finished his reading, Walsh took him off for a short walk. He tried to draw the young man out about his reactions to O’Toole the night before. Garret said little, but it seemed to Fortunatus that there was a suppressed excitement in his manner, as though he had made some secret discovery or made a great decision. What that might be, however, Walsh could not guess.

It was later, during the meal, when Fortunatus brought up the other matter that had been on his mind.

“I need your advice,” he told Swift and Sheridan.

“And why is that?” his host asked amiably.

“To avoid eviction,” Walsh replied with a laugh. And he told them about the visit from his cousin Barbara Doyle, and her fury over Mr. Wood’s copper coins. “I haven’t the least idea,” he confessed, “how to satisfy her.”

“From all accounts,” remarked Sheridan, “there will be protests in the Dublin Parliament from every side.”

“Which the government in England will ignore,” said Swift bluntly. “For I have it upon excellent authority that they mean to do nothing at all.”

“Yet surely,” said Fortunatus, “after the scandal of the South Sea Bubble, the London men will know that their reputation is at a low ebb. You’d think they’d be anxious to avoid any financial transaction that looks improper.”

The great crash, three years ago, of the entire London financial market, in a staggering series of overblown expectations and bogus stock offerings, had left the reputation of the City of London and the British government in tatters. Walsh could only be glad that his own savings, and those of most of his friends, had been safely in Ireland. There was hardly a town in England where someone hadn’t been ruined.

“You underestimate the arrogance of the English,” Dean Swift replied grimly. “The government believes that the complaints from Ireland are due to political faction. They suppose that those who raise objections do so only because they are friends of members of the opposition party in the English Parliament.”

“That is absurd.”

“The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it.”

“I wish, Dean,” said Fortunatus fervently, “that you would use your satiric pen in this cause. Even an anonymous pamphlet would be a far more powerful weapon than any poor speech I could make.” The Dean’s satires in the past had been published anonymously— though no one ever doubted who’d written them.

The Dean and Sheridan glanced at each other. Swift seemed to hesitate.

“Were I to consider such a thing,” he said guardedly, “it could only be after the Dublin Parliament has debated the issue and had a response from London. For me to write, even anonymously, must be a last resort. As Dean of Saint Patrick’s, I may speak out on a moral question, but not a political one.”

Fortunatus nodded.

“If it should come to that, however,” he smiled, “you must let me tell my cousin Margaret it was only thanks to my prompting that you did so. If I can take the credit, I may keep a roof over my head.”

“Very well. As you wish,” Swift answered. “Yet the truth is, Fortunatus, that I not only share your view about this business; my indignation surpasses your own.” He frowned, before continuing with some heat: “For this man to flood Ireland with his debased coinage, I find the most insupportable villainy and insolence. Then, when we complain, Wood and his hirelings represent it as disloyalty. It is infamous. Yet it is believed. And the reason for it,” he continued angrily, “I must acknowledge as an Englishman, is that while the English have a contempt for most nations, they reserve an especial contempt for Ireland.”

Walsh was quite taken aback at the sudden anger of this outburst from the taciturn Dean, but Sheridan smiled affectionately.

“There, Jonathan, you are a wise and circumspect fellow, yet your passion for truth and justice will suddenly come out and make you quite as reckless as I am.”

“Ireland’s wool trade is ruined,” Swift went on, “she is vilely treated at every turn, and it is done with impunity. Let me say, Walsh, what I think the Dublin Parliament should do. It should forbid English goods to enter Ireland. Perhaps then the English Parliament, and these operators like Wood, might learn to mend their ways.”

“That is strong medicine,” Fortunatus said.

“A necessary cure for a national reproach. But even this would be just a little bleeding, Walsh, a temporary cure. For the underlying cause is this. Ireland will be mistreated so long as its Parliament is subservient to that of London. We elect men as our representatives, yet their decisions are set at naught. London has not the moral or constitutional right to legislate for Ireland.”

“A radical doctrine.”

“Hardly so. It has been said in the Dublin Parliament for more than twenty years.” Indeed, leading Irish politicians of the previous generation like Molyneux had advanced just such a case. But Walsh was still surprised to hear it coming from the Dean of Saint Patrick’s. “Let me make clear,” Swift said emphatically, “it is my opinion that all government without the consent of the governed is the very essence of slavery.”

And it was now that young Garret Smith suddenly burst into the conversation.

The truth was that, for some time now, the other men had forgotten him. He had been sitting on Swift’s right but had not said a word, and while he was talking to Walsh and Sheridan, the Dean had had his back to him.

“Welcome,” he cried quite loudly, “to the Jacobite cause.”

The Dean turned sharply. Fortunatus stared at him. The young man’s face was flushed. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d evidently been drinking quietly by himself all through the meal. His eyes were shining. Was there genuine excitement, bitter irony, or outright mockery in his tone? It was impossible to say. But whatever it was, there was more of it to come.

“The Catholics of Ireland will bless you.” He laughed a little wildly.

And Fortunatus felt the blood drain from his face.

The boy didn’t understand what he had said. That was evident. But it was too late now. Dean Swift was turning upon him, and his face was black with fury.

“I am not, Sir, a Jacobite,” he thundered.

For, strangely, it was not the suggestion of Catholic sympathies that was so damaging to the Protestant Dean of Saint Patrick’s: it was calling him a Jacobite.

How could Garret understand? In the complex world of English politics, a man like Swift had to be careful. Though his sympathies had originally been with the Whigs, who had supported the new Protestant settlement after throwing out Catholic King James, Swift as a literary man had found friends and patrons who belonged to the Tory party. So in the minds of the Whigs, who were in power now, Swift was in the Tory camp. And since some of those Tories had formerly been supporters of King James, there was always the suspicion that any Tory might secretly desire the return of the hated Stuart royal house. Any Tory whom they desired to destroy, therefore, they’d try to expose as a Jacobite—a traitor to King George and the Protestant order. Guilt by association.

Hadn’t the Jacobite cause died when the Stuart Pretender had so utterly failed to make any headway back in 1715? You couldn’t be sure. King George and his family were hardly popular. In the cockpit of Westminster and the great country houses where rich English lords wove their political webs, intrigue was always in the air. Every man had enemies, even the faraway Dean of Saint Patrick’s, and there had been whispers from them that Swift was a Jacobite.

Did it matter? Oh, indeed it did. You could complain about Wood’s copper coins, you could argue that Ireland should be ruled from Dublin, you could even mock the government in a satire, and probably get away with it because, in the political world, that was considered fair game. But if they could prove you a Jacobite, that was treasonable, and they could bring you down like a pack of hounds upon a fox. It didn’t take much, either. A careless word in print, a sermon that could be misinterpreted, even an unwise choice of text, and your position in the church or university, your chances of preferment, the very bread upon your table, could be gone. These niceties were well understood by Walsh and Sheridan, but obviously not by young Garret. Under no circumstances could Swift allow himself to be labelled as a Jacobite.

“But you are!” cried Garret Smith cheerfully. “And if Ireland is to be ruled with the consent of the governed, then you’ll have Catholics sitting in Parliament, too.”

Swift glowered at him, then turned a furious look upon Walsh, as though to say, “You brought him here.”

The trouble was, thought Fortunatus, that the boy was actually right. When Swift spoke of the governed, Walsh knew very well that he meant the members of the Protestant Church of Ireland. Swift entirely believed in the need for the Ascendancy, and for the exclusion of Catholics and Dissenters alike. But the man’s innate passion for justice was leading him farther than he himself realised. That’s it, thought Fortunatus: he’s a good man, at war with himself, who doesn’t entirely know it. Perhaps that was the wellspring of his strange satire, of his love for stern classical order and Irish exuberance all together.

“You are impertinent, young man, you are ignorant, and you are wrong,” Swift shouted in a rage. “The Jacobites are traitors, and as for the Catholic religion, Sir, I must tell you very plainly that I abominate it. I abominate it utterly.” And he rose from the table and strode from the room.

“Damn,” said Sheridan. “Damn.” He sighed. “You’d better take your kinsman away, Fortunatus, first thing in the morning.”

It was a clear, crisp morning as they rode away from Quilca, but Walsh’s mood was hardly cheerful. Sheridan had spoken to him briefly before he left.

“I’m truly sorry that your stay is cut short, Fortunatus, but I can’t have Swift annoyed,” he had said. “Your young kinsman has genius, undoubtedly, but I fear he has much to learn.” What upset Walsh, however, was the thought that because of this, he might not be asked to Quilca again.

Young Garret seemed in better spirits. Though Walsh was not aware of it, Garret too had received a parting word, not from Sheridan, but from Tidy. The Dean’s factotum had skilfully waylaid him by the corner of the house where no one should see them.

“Well, young Smith, you’ve been thrown out on your ear, haven’t you?” he said nastily.

“I suppose I have,” said Garret.

“This isn’t a place for the likes of you,” Tidy continued, “sitting down at table with the quality. You don’t belong in the company of the gintry, and you never will.”

“I go where I’m asked,” Garret replied reasonably. “It’s rudeness to refuse hospitality, you know.” To this, Tidy made only a sound in the back of his throat as though he were about to spit. “Anyway,” said Garret, “Art O’Toole was welcome here, and he isn’t gintry, I should think.”

Since Tidy privately had no use for O’Toole either, he confined himself to silence; but something in his look suggested that, as a performer, O’Toole belonged in the servant class.

“Don’t give yourself airs and talk back to your betters,” he replied. “You should have been whipped last night, and thrown out into the stable yard where you belong. Now, get along with you.”

“Thank you,” said Garret.

As Garret rode beside him on the road south, Fortunatus wondered what his destiny would be. Would he settle down quietly as a grocer in Dublin? Would he get in trouble with the law? Would he do something entirely different and surprise them all? And what, after all, had he made of the last two days’ events? After they had gone a mile or so, he ventured to remark:

“I’m sorry you fell out with Dean Swift. He is a great man, you know.”

“Of course he is,” said Garret obligingly. “I admire Swift.”

“Indeed?” Fortunatus was surprised.

“At least he’s honest.” They rode on a few more paces. “It’s you and Sheridan,” he resumed cheerfully, “that I despise entirely.”

“Ah,” said Fortunatus.

But if Garret Smith did not even glance at him to see how he received this insult, it was because he did not really care. He had already made up his mind what he was going to do.