The Rebels of Ireland (68 page)

The language of the toast said it all. Part Shakespearean English, part seventeenth-century sermon: it was Protestant, antipapist, half-pagan, triumphalist. It was serious, yet not to be taken too seriously—so long as the freedom-loving Protestants were comfortably in control, of course. It was Ascendancy Dublin.

“Amen!” they all cried. “Nine times nine!”

And now, for those with the head for it, the serious drinking of the evening could begin.

It was some way into this latter process that John MacGowan committed his indiscretion.

Hercules had his own way of dealing with long evenings of drinking. Firstly, he was blessed with a head like a rock. If he had to, he could outlast most men in a drinking session. Secondly, it was easy for him to keep a cool head, because he was secretly bored—as he always was when no useful business was being conducted. But thirdly, he had become practised at drinking less than he appeared
to. In convivial company with his friends, therefore, he was less of a companion and more a cold observer than they usually realised.

During the meal, he had been sitting across the table and a few places down from John MacGowan, and had the opportunity to observe the grocer from time to time. At first, MacGowan had spent most of his time listening and smiling, perhaps a little uncertain of himself as a newcomer to the company. Hercules had noticed a few beads of sweat on the balding front of his head, and wondered whether they came from the heat or from nervousness. Gradually, however, he appeared to gain confidence. He started to chat, even to tell a joke or two, and these being well received by his neighbours, he perceptibly relaxed. He drank more; his face began to glow. From time to time, when not engaged in conversation, he looked down at the table and laughed to himself—though whether because he was a little drunk or enjoying some private joke concerning the proceedings, it was impossible to tell. When the elderly man on MacGowan's left, having drunk his fill, quietly departed, Hercules walked round the table and took his place beside the grocer.

MacGowan greeted him with a nod, though Hercules wasn't sure if the grocer remembered who he was. After a moment or two, he said to him casually:

“You're in the grocery trade, I think you said. Family business?”

“Indeed it is. Several generations now.”

“You won't mind my saying, I hope, but MacGowan being a Catholic name, I should think the family might have been a little put out, with you being a Protestant, I mean.”

MacGowan gave him a cautious glance, but Hercules smiled and returned a look of great sincerity.

“In fact,” the grocer replied with a slow nod, “it must be said that it was a Protestant who saved my family. A remarkable woman, old Mrs. Doyle: but for her, my grandfather would have been ruined, instead of which he died a very prosperous man. The business is split between us now, but it's thanks to her that we have it.” And he fell silent for a few moments. Hercules noticed that, as he cogitated,
MacGowan half closed his left eye, while his right opened very large as he stared at the table.

Hercules took a blue jug and poured punch for them both.

“Let's drink to her,” he said.

MacGowan grew quite friendly after this. He cracked a few jokes, at which Hercules laughed companionably, and poured him more punch. The grocer's face was growing quite red and there was a slight slur in his speech, but he kept going very gamely, with Hercules encouraging him in a friendly manner at his side.

“I wonder,” Hercules ventured at last, “whether you ever came to know a Doctor Terence Walsh.”

“Doctor Walsh?” The grocer's face lit up with pleasure. “Indeed I do. That's a very fine old man.”

“I quite agree. I have the honour to be a kinsman of his myself.”

“Ah, indeed?” From the slight look of confusion on MacGowan's flushed face, it was clear to Hercules that the grocer had rather forgotten who he was.

“You'll know his son, my cousin Patrick, then?”

“I do. I do.” MacGowan was looking a little fuddled, but delighted.

“He told me all about your being here tonight.” Hercules gave him a grin and a wink.

“He did?”

“He's my cousin. A very good fellow.”

MacGowan gave him a confidential look.

“He told you about the bet?”

Hercules nodded.

“I wasn't clear if the bet was made with himself, though,” he said.

“No, it wasn't. That was with two other fellows. But he came to hear of it. You don't think he'll tell anyone else, do you?”

“Never.”

“He's a capital fellow.”

“He is indeed.” He dropped his voice. “For a Catholic to get in here like this…into the Orange Aldermen themselves. What a thing to do. How much will you get?”

“Two guineas for getting in at all. Two more if I'm undetected. Then another two if I can do it next month as well.” He grinned. “So I've two guineas already.”

Hercules laughed. Then he got up, walked round the table to the lord mayor, and told him that they had been infiltrated.

The next few minutes were interesting. There was no precedent for such a thing, and so while they held him on the bench, and delivered a few kicks and blows to his body to pass the time, the company had to come to a decision—which, as the lord mayor pointed out, might set a precedent—as to what to do with the Catholic grocer who had dared to violate the sanctity of the proceedings and witness their secret counsels in this manner. Some of those present were very angry indeed and argued that, since there was, unfortunately, no law which could sent him to the gallows where he clearly belonged, they should at least, as decent citizens, beat him within an inch of his life. Others, their judgement perhaps clouded by drink, argued that since it was done for a bet, the punishment for the fellow's crime, heinous though it was, might be somewhat mitigated. Hercules himself, having performed his proper service by exposing the crime, took no part in these discussions. In the end, the moderate council of the lord mayor prevailed, and they only dragged him over to the window and threw him out.

The drop onto the cobbled street was hardly more than a dozen feet, but MacGowan did not fall as well as he should have, and the landlord informed them later that he had broken a leg. But not badly: the surgeon had set it well enough. So that was the end of the matter.

At least, for the rest of the Aldermen. But not for Hercules. There was one other matter to be attended to.

The next day he went to see his cousin Patrick and asked to speak with him privately. The conversation did not take long.

“You knew about John MacGowan cheating his way into the Aldermen. But you didn't tell me.”

“It was difficult. I'd given my word. The thing was only a foolish wager.”

“You lied to me.”

“Not exactly. I said nothing, really. I hear the poor fellow was hurt.”

“You can make all the Catholic equivocations you please, but you lied.”

“I resent that.”

“Resent it all you like, you damned papist.”

Patrick shrugged contemptuously.

“If we have to meet at family gatherings,” Hercules continued coldly, “I shall be polite. I shall not offend Grandfather. But stay away from me. I never wish to see your face again.”

And so it was, unknown to Fortunatus, that the friendship between the two branches of the Walsh family, planned by his father and cherished for eighty years, came to an end.

For Georgiana, the years that followed Ben Franklin's visit were busy ones.

She was delighted some months after writing to Philadelphia to receive a courteous letter back from Judge Edward Law. From the tone of his letter, she had the impression that the judge was rather tickled to have a relation with such a fine-sounding title. Not only did he give her news of her American cousins, but kindly included a family tree. He also gave her an interesting account of the mood in the American colonies, which indicated that, in his opinion, the disputes between the colonists and the English government would not easily be resolved.

A year later, when news reached Ireland of the Boston colonists' destruction of a valuable cargo of tea, another letter from the judge arrived.

 

Here in Philadelphia, the governor avoided a similar conflict by persuading the captain to take his cargo of tea back to England.
But now that such a challenge has been made to London, I fear that legal retaliation will follow. And resorting to law, alas, can only make this conflict worse. I have written also to our cousins in Belfast.

 

This last sentence, she supposed, might be a gentle hint to her that, having gone to the trouble of reestablishing relations with the family in distant Philadelphia, it might be a kindness to do the same for her relations in nearby Belfast. In this case, she knew that her uncle John had had a son named Daniel, so she knew whom to write to. And indeed, if she asked herself why she had never done so, she had to confess that it was probably a fear that her Belfast relations, who were not at such a safe distance as the ones in Philadelphia, might embarrass her in some way. Having decided that this was small-minded, and having made sure that her kindly husband had no objection, she wrote a letter. But she received no reply.

The following year, old Fortunatus lost his wife, and Georgiana made a point of going round several times a week to keep the old man company. She would often find his brother Terence there, and it was heartwarming to see the two brothers sitting so contentedly together. Though he complained of nothing more than a stiff leg, it sometimes seemed to Georgiana that Doctor Walsh was not entirely well himself. Occasionally, he looked gaunt and tired. But he was obviously content to sit chatting with his brother all afternoon. And if she didn't find Terence, then she'd often encounter his son Patrick there instead. “It's good of the boy to come,” Fortunatus would say, “when he has better things to do.” Yet she had no doubt that Patrick enjoyed the old man's company.

Though his father had suggested he follow in the medical profession, Patrick had chosen the wine trade instead, and was working hard at it. The more she saw of Patrick, the better she liked him. He was clever, humorous, and kind. And he was not without ambition. “I hope to make my fortune if I can,” he told her frankly. And when she asked if there was anything else he desired: “I could never
change my faith, but if it were ever possible for a Catholic to do so, then I should like to enter Parliament.”

Though that still seemed a far-off hope, Georgiana was glad that there were now some small, but encouraging developments for the Catholics of Ireland. The Pope had opened the door. Some years ago, after two centuries of opposition to England's heretic monarchs, the Pope had compromised, and King George III was now recognised by the Vatican as the legitimate sovereign of Britain. That made things easier. “And with all this trouble in the American colony,” her husband told her, “the government wants to keep every section of the community as happy as possible.” In Ireland, Catholics were excluded from every office, because the Oath of Allegiance was worded in such Protestant terms that no Catholic could possibly take it. “So we're going to try to find a way round it,” her husband explained. The Protestant Bishop of Derry, working with some of the Catholic hierarchy, devised a new oath. Not all the Catholic bishops liked it, but others urged their flocks to take it. This might, after all, open the way to further things.”

“Will you take it?” Georgiana asked Patrick.

“I shall, at once,” he declared. And old Fortunatus was equally enthusiastic.

“This is what the family always stood for back in my father's and my grandfather's day: loyalty to their faith and loyalty to the king,” he reminded them. “I still pray,” he confessed to her after one of Patrick's visits, “that you may live to see the two branches of the family—Hercules and Patrick—both in the Parliament together.”