The Rebels of Ireland (8 page)

“I think she does,” said Orlando.

“And Walter Smith—what did you think of him?”

Orlando gave him the best account he could of the young man, from what he had seen during his visit. “I think he is a good enough man,” he admitted, and Lawrence nodded approvingly.

“How does he compare with Patrick, though?” he enquired.

“Oh, well…” He was just about to answer when he spotted the cunning trap, and inwardly cursed his elder brother. “I can't really tell. Anne says that Patrick is taller.”

“You have not seen him yourself?” The dark eyes were piercing. Lawrence seemed to see every guilty secret in his mind.

“She was with our mother when they met, but I was not there,”
Orlando answered with a shake of the head. A clever answer, which was even true. “Hmm,” said Lawrence.

He did not bring up the subject again. Not long after that, he had gone into Dublin for the day. It was the following morning that Orlando overheard his father in conversation with him.

“You tell her yourself,” he heard his father say irritably.

“It is for the best, I assure you,” Lawrence's voice replied. “I shall be kind.”

And so, it seemed, he was.

“I was sitting on the bench in front of the house, just sitting there in the sun,” Anne told Orlando afterwards, “when he came and sat beside me. He was kind. He talked of love.”

“Lawrence talked of love?”

“Yes. It seems he was once in love. Think of that!” She smiled, then frowned. “I believe he was speaking the truth.”

“He is on your side against Father?”

“Oh no. He spoke of Patrick. He said that first love is strong, but that we may not come to see whether a lover's character will truly suit us until we have known them for a long time. ‘Then how are those to find happiness who are betrothed to a person they scarcely know?' I asked him.”

“He had no answer for that?”

“He did. ‘Their parents are better judges than themselves—or hope they are,' he said. Then he laughed. I was quite surprised. ‘And Father thinks that Walter would suit me better?' I said. ‘There is no question of family fortune here,' he says. ‘They are brothers, after all. It's a question of character. You love Patrick at present, but in years to come, I promise you,' and he gave me one of his earnest looks, ‘it is Walter who will be a good husband and bring you a far greater happiness than you imagine.' That's what he told me.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked him if Father would compel me to marry Walter. ‘No,' he cries, ‘not at all. He will not. Ask him yourself. He wishes you to
return to France until the spring. When you return, you shall meet Walter and come to know him. But if then he is not to your liking, if you do not think I mean that you could love and honour him, then the betrothal shall be undone.'”

“He said nothing else?”

“Yes. After I had been silent a little while, he took my arm and smiled and said to me: ‘Remember, Anne, this little rhyme, for there's much wisdom in it.

 

Head over heart,

The better part.

Heart over head,

Better dead.

 

I assure you I know it to be true.'”

“That was all?”

“No. There was one thing more. I shan't be seeing Patrick again.”

“He forbade you? I'll go to Dublin and bring him here if you like,” Orlando cried.

“You don't understand.” She grimaced. “He's gone. He's not here anymore. He's left on a ship.”

“Where to?”

“Who knows? England, France, Spain—America, for all I know. He's been sent away and won't be back until I've married someone else—I can promise you that.”

“Is it Peter Smith's doing? Surely Patrick himself didn't just…”

“No. Don't you see? It was Lawrence. Behind my back he'd already arranged it all. Oh, I could see it. I could see it all. I hate him,” she suddenly screamed. Then she burst into tears.

But three days later, quietly enough, she left with Lawrence to return to France. There was, after all, nothing else that she could do.

With Anne and Lawrence gone again, the house reverted to its habitual peace in the great quiet of Fingal. Orlando resumed his studies. Martin Walsh went into Dublin once or twice a week. On Sundays, they went across to Malahide Castle, where the priest said mass or conducted a service discreetly within the old stone house. September was warm. The weather was fine. Martin Walsh, enjoying the genial calm of his estate, had not gone into Dublin for some days, when one afternoon, just as he was about to go into the house after a walk, Orlando saw the figure of their cousin Doyle riding towards him. The big man dismounted quickly and gave Orlando a friendly nod.

“Is your father here? Ah. Here he is,” he continued as Martin Walsh appeared at the door. “I've news for you, Cousin—unless you've already heard?”

“I've heard nothing.” He glanced at Orlando and gave Doyle a questioning look.

“The boy may hear it. All the world will know soon enough. It's the news from Ulster.” He took a long breath. “The Earl of Tyrone has gone.”

“Died?”

“No. Taken a ship and sailed away. O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, has gone with him, and others besides. The earls have flown, Cousin Walsh, they've turned their backs upon Ireland, and they won't return.”

Walsh stared. For a moment or two, he didn't speak. Then he shook his head in amazement and asked a single question.

“Why?”

The Earl of Tyrone. Orlando had never seen him, of course, but he had been there, a tall, dark figure in his imagination, heroic, almost godlike, the last great prince of ancient Ireland, heir to the O'Neill High Kings, dwelling up in Ulster. Orlando had an idea that Tyrone might still return and drive the English officials out of Dublin one day; then no doubt he'd resume the kingship of his
ancestors at royal Tara. And Old English though he was, Orlando had found this vision of an ancient Irish ascendancy more exciting than frightening. As for O'Donnell, he was the greatest Irish prince in Donegal. The north and north-west, the remains of the ancient tribal lands; Tyrone and Tyrconnell, last of the ruling princes of Ireland: fled.

“Why?” Doyle shrugged. “The word in Dublin is that O'Donnell's been plotting with the King of Spain, just as Tyrone did before, and he discovered that the government had got wind of it. So he ran while he could.”

“But Tyrone? The man was well set. They left him a free land in his own territory. He had no good reason to flee.”

“I would agree. But he saw it otherwise. The English officials are starting to buzz around Ulster. And no one will believe he wasn't involved somehow with O'Donnell and the King of Spain.” He sighed. “Besides, an Irish prince like that is not bred for times like these. He'll never be a royal servant.”

“To be Earl of Tyrone is hardly to be a servant.”

“But to him it is. The Irish are free, Martin. They have their clans, their ancient tribes, their hereditary family positions, but their spirits are free. As for their princes, they answer to themselves. Tyrone will never do the bidding of some puffed-up little English official with nothing but his temporary office behind him—and whom Tyrone regards as a heretic anyway. It's not in the man's nature.”

“So he's flown.”

“Like a bird. Like an eagle, I should say.”

“What will he do?”

“Wander Europe. Find a Catholic prince he may serve without dishonour to his name or his religion. Command his armies. Remember, he knows those Catholic kings and their armies already. They will honour him.”

“That is true.” Walsh nodded and sighed. “You'll eat with us, and drink with me tonight?”

Doyle smiled.

“It was my intention.”

They ate early in the evening in the house's spacious hall, and Orlando was able to observe the two men as they talked—his father, with his quiet, stately manner, and Doyle, dark, somewhat shorter, more intense. Through the meal, the talk was naturally about the politics of Tyrone's departure and what it would mean.

“Undoubtedly the government will confiscate all the earl's land,” Walsh remarked. “The legal means can be found to do it.”

“I suspect they will end by making a plantation up there. All the men who want land on easy terms will be rejoicing tonight,” Doyle said. But the thought did not seem to give him much pleasure personally.

When the meal was ended, the two men continued to sit at the table, drinking quietly together; and though Orlando knew that his participation was not required, he was able to sit quietly at the end of the hall by the big open fireplace, where the two men seemed to forget his presence. For even if they said little, or he failed to understand what they said, he wanted nonetheless to be in the company of his father and his cousin upon such an important occasion. He observed them both closely, therefore. And, young though he was, he sensed their mood and imbibed it, and for the rest of his life it would become a part of him.

This much was certain: for both these men, the evening was full of melancholy and a sense of loss. Doyle, descendant of Vikings and generations of Dublin merchants, a Protestant in name—or Church of Ireland, anyway—and Walsh, his cousin, a Catholic gentleman whose family had been a mainstay of the Old English gentry in Ireland for nearly five hundred years; two men at the heart of the English Pale, yet two Irishmen, too: for both of them, the departure of Tyrone and Tyrconnell was a personal blow. They clearly felt emotionally closer to the native Irish prince than to any Englishman sent out from London.

“The Flight of the Earls,” Doyle mused. “It's the end of an age.”

“May God bring them better fortune.” Walsh raised his wine goblet.

“I'll drink to that,” said Doyle.

And young Orlando, silently watching, understood that, in ways not yet clear, the world in which he lived had just changed forever.

It was the following morning, after Doyle's departure, that his father called Orlando. “You're coming with me,” he told him; and when Orlando asked where they were going: “Portmarnock.”

The little seaside hamlet of Portmarnock lay by the road strand of sand dune and beach that stretched southwards for several miles along the edge of the ancient Plain of Bird Flocks. Orlando supposed he would be required to saddle up his pony, but his father told him: “No, we shall walk.”

There was a light breeze. Clouds drifted across the sky, which changed accordingly from blue to grey. Orlando contentedly went along, side by side with his father, speaking a little from time to time, eastwards towards Portmarnock. As they left their own land, they passed the little deserted chapel where he had waited for Patrick Smith. “It's shameful that our own government forbids us to use it,” his father remarked.

As they walked, evidence of the Old English medieval occupation was all around: fields of wheat and barley; high, dark hedgerows; stone walls; here and there a stone church or a small fortified house. But soon they came to a somewhat less tidy terrain where the cattle grazed—the open seaward sweep down towards the coastline, which still possessed the echoing bareness of the days long ago when Doyle's ancestor, Harold the Viking, and others like him had laid out their Nordic farmsteads on the plain of Fingal.

Their destination, however, which they reached in less than an hour, was older by far than any of these. It stood alone, just apart from the hamlet of fishermen's cabins.

“Your brother does not approve of this place,” Walsh remarked with a small grimace, “or of my coming here.” It was the first time Orlando had ever heard his father say anything that hinted at the friction between himself and Lawrence. “But I come here by myself from time to time.”

It was nothing much to look at. Orlando had often passed within a quarter mile of it on his way to the beach. An old well, surrounded by a little stone wall. At some time a conical stone roof had been built over it, though this had now fallen into disrepair. The well was quite deep, but leaning over the parapet, Orlando could see the faint, soft gleam of the water far below. The well at his own house was nearly as deep but had never seemed especially interesting; this well, however, was different. He didn't know why—perhaps the relative isolation of that lonely place—but there was something strange and mysterious about that water down below. What was it? Was it a glimmering entrance to another world?

“The well is sacred to Saint Marnock,” his father's voice spoke quietly behind him. “Your brother Lawrence says it was a pagan well long ago. Before Saint Patrick came, no doubt. He says such things are superstition, unworthy of the faith.” He sighed. “He may be right. But I like the old ways, Orlando. I come here like the simple folk to pray to Saint Marnock when I am troubled.”

Saint Marnock: one of scores of local saints, their identities half forgotten except in their own localities, but often as not with a saint's day, and a well or sacred place where they might be remembered. “I like the old ways, too,” said Orlando. He was sure he did, because it made him feel close to his father.