The Rebels of Ireland (30 page)

“Anne, it seems the child is…sickly.” He paused. “Not whole.”

“Not whole? Misshapen? The child is misshapen?”

“It will be a simpleton.”

For a moment she had not wanted to believe it, but she had looked carefully and seen the truth of it: the broad face, the tilted eyes, the flat back of the baby's head—the mongoloid features left little doubt. She had seen children like that before. In old times, in some countries she had heard, such babies were held to be the off-spring of werewolves and were burned at the stake. In Ireland, more often than not they were treated with kindness. But they grew up slowly, never to full height, clumsy of speech. Often as not, they died before they were adults. Was her lovely child, the baby given her by O'Byrne up in the wild beauty of the Wicklow Mountains, such a one? Was it possible? How could it be?

After he had told her, Walter had kissed the child and placed it in her arms.

“He is God's creature, and we shall love him all the same,” he remarked quietly. It was typical of his generosity, and she could not but be grateful. But after he had left her alone again, she had held the baby close to her, and after she had quietly cried for a while, she had been overcome with a sense of passionate protectiveness which
the thought that she had failed, and that his life would be short, only made the more intense. Sometimes, these children were almost normal. When Walter had come back again, she had looked up at him defensively.

“He's only a little imperfect,” she said.

In a sense she realised, for Walter, it had been a relief. The presence of a healthy, handsome child of O'Byrne in his home, to mock him into his old age, could not be something he looked forward to very much. Indeed, her husband might secretly have hoped that the baby would be stillborn. In his eyes, at least, this defective child could in some sense be discounted, especially when set beside his own, handsome young Maurice. She had no doubt also that, though he had too much grace ever to say it, Walter must consider the baby's condition a sign of God's displeasure at her conduct. Most people would have thought the same. And if her husband was too kind to say it, she certainly expected something of the kind when Lawrence came to see her a week after the discovery. She was greatly surprised when the Jesuit picked up the baby and, having examined it closely, remarked:

“It has been noted by physicians that these children are usually born to older women. It is not known why.” After a short pause, he continued: “If you wish, later, for the child to be looked after with kindness, I can make arrangements. I know of such a place.”

“I should rather care for him myself.”

“That is between you and your husband.” He had given her a searching look. “Your husband, Anne, is beyond all praise. I speak as a simple Christian.”

“I know, Lawrence.”

“I am glad.” Mercifully, he had left it at that.

They called the baby Daniel.

To be fair, it wasn't often that Maurice Smith gave his father any trouble. But that didn't prevent Walter from worrying about him.
Like any parent, he worried about what might happen as much as what had.

It was a curious feature of Walter's mind that, despite his awareness that he was, by ancestry, an Irish O'Byrne, he always considered that he was entirely English, and that the Irish strain in his blood was like red hair, green eyes, or madness—that might or might not show up in some family member. His fear, which he never expressed to Anne, was that Maurice might turn out like his brother Patrick: handsome, charming, but weak. This Walter considered the Irish streak. All through the boy's childhood, therefore, he had kept an eye out: if he thought that Maurice was not attending to his studies, or had not finished a task he'd been set, he would quietly but firmly see that the work was done. As Maurice approached manhood, his father thought that, on the whole, he was sound.

Only one thing worried him. Maurice worked hard. But was there a certain wildness about him? If this was just the high spirits of a young man, well and good. Walter could understand. But if it was something more profound, then there were two possible explanations: it might be the Irish blood in him; or it might be the inheritance of the Walshes. Had the centuries of living cheek by jowl with the O'Byrnes and the O'Tooles down on the borderland of Carrickmines affected the family? Perhaps. They might have been representatives of the Old English order—that was certainly how he had thought of them when he married Anne—but he had realised since that there was a strain of wildness and unreliability in them which their piety had masked. Wasn't it just this instability that had recently come out in Anne?

Even without his discovery of her affair, therefore, his fear that his son might be attracted to Irish life would have made him discourage his friendship with Brian O'Byrne. Only the boy's endless pleading, and the fact that he could not tell him the true reasons for his objections, had finally worn Walter down to the point where he had shrugged his shoulders in secret despair and allowed Maurice to go up to Rathconan. And what a catastrophe that had turned out to be.

So when, in the spring of 1639, Maurice had said that he wanted to ride over to Rathconan to see O'Byrne, his father at first tried to dissuade him and had then forbidden it. Maurice had protested: “But he's our friend, and my uncle Orlando's, too. I was living in the man's house.” But Walter was quietly obdurate. Maurice had appealed to his mother. He had sensed that she wasn't in agreement with his father, but she only told him: “You must obey your father.”

Late in April, just after the return of Doctor Pincher from his travels, Walter announced: “I'm going into Fingal on business in a couple of days. I'll stay the night at Orlando's house and be back the following evening.”

Anne didn't give the matter much thought until, on the morning that her husband left, she came upon her son about to leave also. When she asked him where he was going and when he'd be back, he said he had to see a friend and would return the next day. She thought he looked evasive, and she questioned him further. What friend? “No one you know,” he said, but her instincts told her it was not true. She insisted, and told him that if he didn't tell her the truth, he should not leave. So finally he admitted that he was going to Rathconan. “I'll be back before Father returns,” he said. “He needn't know.”

Anne stared at him. She knew what she ought to say: he must not go. It was her duty to support his father. Yet she had received no word from O'Byrne since his visit. She longed for something, even a word from him. If Maurice were to see him, he could at least bring her word of him, how he was, some covert message from him perhaps. “You should not disobey your father,” she said weakly.

“Are you going to tell him if I go?”

Now he was making her his accomplice. He had no idea what he was doing, of course. If only the circumstances had been different. She could have sent a message with him. But at least she would hear something this way. She hesitated. Then she took the coward's way out. “You're to obey your father,” she said. “And if ever you don't, I have no wish to hear anything about it. I don't want to know.” Then
she turned on her heel and left him. A few minutes later, she heard him ride away.

At dusk that day, Walter returned. His business had finished early, and so he'd had no need to stay at Orlando's. It wasn't long before he asked for his son. Anne was sitting in the parlour, the baby Daniel in her lap.

“He rode out this morning. He told me he mightn't be back tonight,” she answered with perfect truth.

“Where was he going?”

“He didn't want to say.”

“You let him go?”

“I thought perhaps…I had a feeling it might be some girl…”

Walter was silent. It was obvious what had happened. There was one place he knew the boy wanted to go. So Maurice had waited until he thought he could slip up there without his father knowing. He was furious that his son should have been so deceitful, but he had enough good sense not to be morally outraged. Boys did these things. His wife was another matter. She claimed not to know? He stared at her accusingly. She quailed, and dropped her eyes. He slowly nodded. So that was it. She'd let their son go to see her lover, in open defiance of his wishes. A deep, sullen rage welled up within him. He gazed at the baby for several long, terrible moments. Then he walked out of the room.

The next day when Maurice returned, his father was very calm. He did not even ask where he had been. But he informed Maurice that he was not to disappear for the night at any time without his permission, and he also informed him that he no longer had a horse, and that it would not be restored until the following Christmas. He immediately sent him upon some errands in the town.

Later, Anne learned from Maurice that O'Byrne was as well and as cheerful as ever, and that he would be visiting Dublin in due course.

“Soon?”

“He didn't say. But he sent his best remembrances to you.”

In the weeks that followed, Walter Smith was very busy. It also seemed to Anne that she detected a change in him. Whether or not he had actually lost a little of his extra weight she wasn't sure, for they were not physically intimate. But there was a new briskness and hardness about him as he conducted his business each day, as if, in his own mind at least, he no longer needed her.

She waited, meanwhile, for some word from O'Byrne.

When Wentworth's officials asked Doyle to join an important Commission, he assumed that he must have been remembered with favour after his dealings in London a dozen years ago in the matter of the Graces. “You're seen as a dependable Church of Ireland Protestant,” one of them told him. “I suppose,” Doyle remarked wryly to his cousin Orlando soon afterwards, “I must take that as a compliment.” And though he had no desire to desert his family to go on the mission, he continued, “I'd be a fool to refuse.” So it was, one summer morning, that he set out with a large party of gentlemen and officials from Dublin Castle on a journey northwards. He would be gone almost a month.

The purpose of the Commission was simple: to ensure there was no trouble in Ulster.

When King Charles and his reluctant army arrived at the Scottish border late that spring, the Covenanters had come out to meet them. There had been a few skirmishes, but King Charles had got nowhere and concluded a truce. The government of his realm was now at a stalemate. Meanwhile, the royal council had been looking at Ulster and asking the obvious question:

“Are the Scots in Ulster going to start trouble, too?”

As Doyle rode northwards, he couldn't help being impressed. The Commissioners and their entourage were a considerable party, but accompanying them was a military force of mounted men, foot soldiers, and musketeers that was like a little army. These were not like the raw levies that the king had led so uselessly against the Scots.
They were trained soldiers. When he confessed his admiration to one of the officials, the fellow smiled. “Even the Presbyterians will find them persuasive,” he replied.

Once in Ulster, the procedure they followed amazed him. The way that Wentworth intended to ensure peace was to force the Ulster Scots to take an oath of loyalty. There was nothing new in this. King Henry VIII of England had done the same when he broke with the Pope in Rome, and some loyal Catholics who refused, like Sir Thomas More, had gone to their deaths. It was their refusal to take this same oath that was keeping Orlando Walsh and the rest of the Old English Catholics out of public office now. In traditional Ireland, the swearing of loyalty oaths was a normal procedure—although, wisely, it had usually been accompanied by the taking of hostages as well. The oath they were to administer now was called the Oath of Abjuration. The swearer had to abjure—to renounce—the mighty Covenant of Scotland and to give their loyalty to King Charles. Doyle had supposed that they would be going to the men of substance and obtaining the oath from the head of each household. He should have known Wentworth better.