The Rebels of Ireland (92 page)

“I refuse to leave,” said William.

“What'll you do about that, Nobby?” one of the others asked with a smirk.

In any sane world, Nobby thought, he'd just kill the young man and do what he liked with the woman. But because of Budge's orders, this aristocratic young whelp was making a fool of him.

Then he thought for a moment. If this young man was claiming responsibility for a papist rebel woman, then something wasn't quite right with the young man either. So he'd teach these people they couldn't make a fool of him. He looked at his companions and gave them a meaningful nod.

“Help the young gentleman on his way.”

William started to protest, but the two mounted men were grinning. One of them had the reins of William's horse. Suddenly, they wheeled together and came one each side of him. Scooping down so fast he had no time to resist, they seized him one by each arm and started to ride away, carrying him between them. William was struggling wildly, looking back over his shoulder. As much as anything to show him who was boss, Nobby now lunged forward and grabbed Brigid by the breast.

“We'll have to find a way to pass the time,” he said.

Brigid screamed. William, with a sudden wrench, managed to break free. The two riders, laughing, went on a few paces and turned. But he was running back towards Brigid as fast as he could. As he came close, he drew his sword.

With a curse, Nobby ripped open Brigid's coat, then let go and turned to face William. Brigid, her eyes blazing, reached into her coat and pulled out her knife. But this Nobby did not see. William stood before him, panting, his sword drawn.

“Leave her alone, you filthy brute, or you'll hear of it,” he cried.

Nobby's face suffused with rage. He wasn't going to be insulted like this, in front of his fellows, by this cursed boy. Forgetting his instructions, he swore another oath, drew his own sword, and rushed at William.

William was white with anger. He had never fought for his life before; but unlike Nobby, he had received fencing lessons. As the Yeoman rushed and swung at his neck, he instinctively took up his
stance, deflected the blow, and lunged. And Nobby stopped, his mouth falling open, the sword through his heart. He sank to his knees. William pulled out his sword. Nobby pitched face forward onto the ground.

Behind, the two Yeomen looked at each other in amazement. This was not supposed to happen. Should they kill the young man? They weren't sure. William had already turned to face them. He was very pale, but quite collected. His sword, red with blood, was in his hand, but he did not offer battle. He waited. Brigid was straightening her clothes. The dagger was in her hand. For a moment there was complete silence.

Then, half a mile away, they caught sight of another party of horsemen coming up the track behind them, and one of the two Yeomen announced with relief:

“It's the Captain.”

When Jonah Budge arrived, he took in the scene at once. He scarcely needed to ask what had happened. He knew Nobby. He saw the confusion and awkwardness upon the faces of the two Yeomen, the outrage of Brigid and the righteous indignation of young William.

Jonah Budge was a tall, somewhat brutal-looking fellow. But he was capable of thinking very fast. He dismounted. Walking calmly to William, he made a slight inclination of his head and asked for his sword, which William tendered. Then he stepped over to Brigid and politely held out his hand for her dagger, which, reluctantly, she gave him.

“Thank you,” he said.

He went to Nobby's body and turned it over. Stooping down, he inspected it. Then, with careful deliberation, he inserted Brigid's dagger in the open wound and pressed it home. Leaving it there, he wiped William's sword clean on a tuft of grass and stood up. He faced Nobby's two companions.

“It seems the woman stabbed him when he tried to arrest her.”

They gazed at him, and then the light of comprehension dawned in their faces.

“Yes, Sir. That's right, Sir.”

“No!” William cried. He looked at them in amazement and horror.

“You'll swear to that, no doubt?” Budge continued, ignoring William entirely.

“Oh yes, Sir. No trouble at all.”

“That's not what happened at all,” cried William. “The fellow tried to rape her, and when I challenged him, he came at me. It's I who killed him.”

Budge looked at the two men hard, and also at the other Yeomen nearby.

“There must be no doubt, you understand? From this moment on.”

“No doubt, Sir,” they said quickly. “She stabbed him, all right.”

“Well, there it is,” said Jonah Budge coolly. “I cannot believe your testimony, Mr. Walsh. Nor, I assure you, will any court.” He gave him a curt nod. “You may go, because we shall know where to find you. Your sword will be returned to you in due course.” He told the two Yeomen to pick up Nobby's body and strap it to his horse. “Troop,” he then called to the others, “place the woman on her horse and keep hold of the reins. She comes with us to Wicklow.”

“You are nothing but criminals,” she told him with disgust.

“And you, Madam, are accused of murder.” He mounted and signalled the Yeomen to move off. As they did so, William was still furiously protesting. Budge waited until his men had gone a short distance before he turned to him again.

“Your gallantry is all very fine, young man. Commendable, I'm sure. But the fact is, I have just done you a most signal favour.”

For Georgiana, the summer of 1798 was a time of disillusion.

While Patrick and his friends were busy down in Wexford, she had watched sadly as news came in also of the United Irishmen's other rising, in Ulster. Protestants and Presbyterians mostly, idealists for a new world, people like her dear father's family, they had succeeded briefly; but the government forces had been too much for
them, and even before Vinegar Hill, they had been smashed. She mourned them.

The end of the summer brought one more, bitter irony.

The French arrived. They came too late and they came in vain. In August, a small force headed by a certain General Humbert landed upon the western coast of Ireland, at Killala in County Mayo. They were good troops. They even gave General Lake a bloody nose. For a little while. But they were isolated. The United Irishmen had only a meagre organization to offer in the west, and though some brave souls rose in support, most of the population, having already seen the failure in the east, left the little French force to conduct its business alone. By the time he reached the Midlands, Humbert saw he could get no farther, and wisely gave up.

Two months later, a larger French fleet appeared farther north, off Donegal. Six of its ships were captured, and on one of them, the authorities discovered Wolfe Tone himself, dressed as a French general. Court-martialled at once, he took his own life in his prison cell. And that was the end of the rising of '98.

Yet if these great events were depressing, it was an aspect of the rising nearer to home that made Georgiana truly uncomfortable.

When William arrived back, she had been relieved that he was safe. But the news he brought of the death of Patrick and Conall, and the arrest of Brigid, filled her with grief; and when he told her that it was he, and not Brigid, who had killed the Yeoman, she was horrified.

“She is innocent,” he declared, “and I mean to speak for her at her trial.”

“Do you want to be accused of murder yourself?”

“It wasn't murder. I was defending her.”

Georgiana could see why the court would be ready to sentence Brigid, the daughter and mistress of known revolutionaries. But young William must be somewhat suspect, since he'd been expelled from Trinity. If he irritated the authorities by trying to intervene in her trial, might they not turn upon him?

She tried to persuade him to change his mind. He was shocked that she should even suggest it.

She had no choice. She went to see Hercules.

If she had come to despise her son, she still found it hard to believe his reaction. He was furious that his son should be mixed up with such a business, and when she pointed out that he had only defended Brigid, he seemed to feel that William should have left the yeomen to get on with their work. “If I help him today, he'll only disgrace me tomorrow,” he said.

“You will do nothing for your son?”

“Nothing.”

Yet if Hercules was a monster, what could she say of herself?

Georgiana had always thought of herself as a good person. She had never known what it was to feel moral guilt. But she knew what she had to do now. Young William must be removed from the scene. Sent away again. Kidnapped if necessary. He must not testify in court. Brigid might tell her story and hope the court would accept it. But William was not going to be there. Georgiana was too honest to hide the awful truth from herself. Brigid was her protégé and her friend, but William was her grandson. Brigid would have to be sacrificed.

Yet how could she get him away?

Help came from an unexpected quarter. Two days after her interview with Hercules, he turned up at her house.

“The trial of Brigid Smith will not be for many months,” he informed her. “So many thousands of rebels have been captured that the courts-martial will extend far into next year. In the meantime, therefore, I'm arranging for William to visit England. He will not know it, but once there, he will be detained. He will never get back for the trial.”

“Why this change of heart?”

“Arthur Budge came to see me. It was his brother who arrested Brigid. They would be glad if William didn't raise the matter of the arrest. It might be…embarrassing.”

“So you'll help your son so as not to embarrass the government and its minions?”

“I think it's for the best. But I shall need your help. I want you to persuade William to visit London with you. After that, arrangements will be made.”

She agreed to do it, of course. She was actually in London with him when they heard the news of the second French appearance and the arrest of Wolfe Tone. She stayed in London until mid-November, after which William, having been assured in a letter from his father that the trial of Brigid would not take place before the spring, was taken by an obliging landowner to stay with his family in the depths of the country.

The trial took place the day after Georgiana arrived back in Dublin.

She would have liked to go. She would have liked, at least, to see Brigid. But she couldn't. How could she face the woman she had just betrayed?

“What will become of her?” she asked Hercules.

“An offer has been made to her,” he answered. “She maintains her innocence, and though the judges would not accept her defence against the word of the Yeomen, the court-martial could be embarrassing. As an actress, she has quite a following in Dublin. It was thought best to keep matters as simple as possible by offering lenience. If she pleads guilty, she will not be sentenced to death.”

“Thank God for that.”

“She will be transported to Australia.”

“Australia? The penal colony? Even if she survives the voyage, never to return: isn't that almost a sentence of death?”

“Not at all. The climate there is excellent. And she will not want for company. We shall be transporting considerable numbers of rebels down there.”

Georgiana still didn't go to the trial. It was very brief.

One concern she had was the fate of Brigid's children. They were Patrick's, after all. She was aware that they were being cared for by
Brigid's brother; but now she wondered whether she could make amends to Brigid, and to Patrick's memory, by doing something for them. But she heard that Brigid's mother Deirdre had been at the trial and that, at Brigid's particular request, she had taken charge of the children. It seemed that Brigid wanted them to spend the rest of their childhood away from Dublin, up in the purer atmosphere of the Wicklow Mountains.

It was another six weeks before William discovered that he had been duped. He wrote her a letter of some bitterness, although, fortunately, he laid the deception entirely at the door of his father. Then he continued:

 

I have decided not to return to Ireland for the present, but to go to Paris. And I am hopeful, Grandmother, that since I have only small funds of my own, that you might furnish me with some money, which I am certain that my father will not.

 

She sent him a hundred pounds the very next day. But she did so with misgivings. What did he mean to do in Paris?

 

EMMET

1799

 

B
Y THE START
of the new year, Georgiana realised that she was rather lonely. She loved Mount Walsh, but she did not want to go there now. She wanted to stay in Dublin; she missed the lively company she had enjoyed when her husband was alive. Could she, as a widow, have that again?

To her surprise, she found that she could.

After the rebellion, people with liberal views were out of fashion. Sympathizers with the United Irish cause tried not to draw attention to themselves. Old Doctor Emmet had closed up his town house and left the city. So when, early in 1799, Georgiana opened her house once more, those who remembered the kindly hospitality of old Fortunatus and of her husband were only too glad to find a haven there. Congenial people of every political persuasion were welcome; she even found that people from the Castle came to her.

For if Hercules and his friends were eager for revenge upon the revolutionaries and their Catholic friends, there were calmer voices
in the British government who took a different view. And the most influential of these was the new Lord Lieutenant himself.

Lord Cornwallis might have had to surrender to the American colonists, but he was a fine general and he had become a wise statesman. With the Irish revolt under control, he looked for solutions, not revenge; and Hercules and his Ascendancy friends did not impress him.

What solutions were available? Firstly, he wanted to reduce the tension. Large numbers of rebels had been captured. The leaders had to be tried, but executions should be limited, and most of the rank and file could be pardoned. Leading United Irishmen like Tom Emmet, who had been held before the revolt, would have to stay in custody, but negotiations were started for their eventual release. More significant, however, was another, growing perception.

“The biggest problem in Ireland,” Cornwallis and his colleagues were concluding, “is the Irish Parliament.”

Grattan's Parliament: seventeen years ago it had seemed to bring hope of a new and liberal Patriot regime, but the reality had been so different. It was Hercules and his friends, and the Troika, who had triumphed. And what had been the result? A huge revolt and three attempted French invasions. The argument was growing in Westminster: “these Irish Ascendancy men aren't fit to govern. They'll always bully the Catholics. And the last thing we need, when we're fighting the French, is trouble on our western flank.” Indeed, some thoughtful men concluded, the system of the two parliaments was inherently flawed anyway. “The London Parliament will always want to limit Irish trade, which they see as a threat; and between Dublin and London, there's always going to be a dispute about who pays for what.” The solution?

Union. Unite England and Ireland. Just as England and Scotland had been united, the two lands would become a joint kingdom. A hundred Irish MPs would sit in the London Parliament and have a vote in governing both lands; thirty-two Irish peers and bishops would sit in the British House of Lords. Trade would be unre
stricted; Ireland would be better off, as Irishmen and Englishmen joined together to form a stable nation. Wasn't that a better way to proceed?

The Irish did not think so at all. Take away the ancient grandeur of the Dublin Parliament and its magnificent classical building? Anathema. At the start of 1799, they voted it down. But the English government was not to be so easily put off. The proposal was raised again, insistently.

And in the easygoing atmosphere of Georgiana's house, this was soon the main topic of conversation.

She found that her Patriot friends were divided. Grattan's followers eloquently defended the Parliament their leader had created. But some Patriot members, shocked by Hercules and his friends, had lost faith in Dublin and confessed: “We'd probably do better in London.”

Nor, for that matter, were the hard men of the Ascendancy all agreed. Some, shaken by the revolt, thought that a united kingdom might indeed bring more safety and order to the island. But Hercules himself was in no doubt. “I've been talking to the Orange lodges up in Ulster,” he told her, “and they want none of this union. They think the London men are far too soft on the Catholics. And they're quite right. We must keep the Dublin Parliament.”

But even the Protestants of Ulster were by no means agreed.

“Many Ulster Presbyterians are quite in favour of union,” Doyle informed her.

“But they rose against the English,” she pointed out.

“True, but it didn't work. And they think union would be good for the linen trade.” He grinned. “Calvinists like profits, as you know.”

“And you,” she asked the Dublin merchant, “what do you feel?”

“Oh, I'm quite against it,” the old man replied. “If the Parliament moves out of Dublin, it will be terrible for the Dublin tradesmen, and for people like me with houses to let.”

But perhaps the most interesting discussion took place at her house at the start of the summer. It was a gathering of old friends,
Patriots mainly from the days of old Fortunatus. John MacGowan was there. And one of the Patriots had brought a young lawyer with him. “For I know that you like to meet the coming young men.”

The young lawyer was a tall, handsome fellow with a mop of curly brown hair. He came from an old Catholic gentry family in County Kerry. Whether it was normal when one was getting older she didn't know, but she often found that young people were happy to confide in her things that they might have hesitated to say to others. Certainly, young Mr. Daniel O'Connell did not try to hide the fact that he was ambitious.

“I have to make my way in the world, Lady Mountwalsh,” he said. “So I have just joined the Freemasons.”

“A wise move,” she agreed, “especially, if I may say so, for a Catholic.”

He nodded when she said this, but at the same time, he sighed.

“To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “though my family is Catholic, I've little personal interest in the Catholic religion. You could call me a Deist, I suppose.”

He was also frank about his politics.

“I saw the excesses of the French Revolution,” he told her, “because I was actually in France at the time. I abhor violence.” And he was entirely pragmatic. When one old gentleman, who was an enthusiast for the Irish language, began to wax lyrical upon the subject, O'Connell would have none of it.

“I don't deny the poetry of my ancestral tongue,” he said. “I was brought up to speak it. But I must say that I think it tends to hold my fellow countrymen back, and I shouldn't be sorry if it disappeared.” The old gentleman was horrified, but O'Connell remarked to Georgiana: “You know, I only said what many ordinary Irish people think.”

He wasn't sitting near her at dinner, so they had no further conversation until, with the dessert course, a general discussion broke out upon the question of the union. Several views were expressed. Most of the Patriots were against it on principle. To her surprise,
however, John MacGowan, whom everybody knew to be a United Irishman, was prepared to consider it.

“We know we shall never get any satisfaction from the Troika and the Dublin Parliament as things stand,” he pointed out. “Even a London Parliament might be better than what we have.”

This was immediately countered by a Patriot member.

“For better or worse, there has been a parliament in Ireland for centuries. Take it away, and you'll never get it back,” he warned.

“And what,” Georgiana asked, looking down the table, “does Mr. O'Connell think?”

She could see that he didn't particularly want to be called upon, but he spoke up nonetheless.

“I don't like the idea of the union, because Ireland is a nation. But of one thing I am certain: whether Ireland forms a union with England or not will scarcely matter as long as the vast majority of Irishmen are treated as inferior citizens because of their ancestral religion.” He looked around the company. “Until Catholic disabilities are all removed, until Catholics can enter Parliament and hold office as high as any Protestant, we shall have explosive discontent in Ireland whether the Parliament sits in Dublin or London. It will hardly make a difference.”

It was now that a white-haired old Patriot spoke.

“I was one of those who voted with Grattan, so I am not easily persuaded of the benefits of Union. But I was in London recently, and I should tell you this. Cornwallis is entirely of your opinion. Prime Minister Pitt in London is coming round to the same view. They'd like to assure the Catholics and their Patriot allies that, as soon as Ireland is unified with England, the new British Parliament will grant the Catholic Emancipation that you want. The only problem is that they can't say it openly, because if they do, they'll never get the Protestant majority in the Dublin Parliament to consent to the Union. That's the message, in private, they want to convey.”

“Do you mean,” said Georgiana, “that the English government has to hoodwink the Irish Protestants?”

“Lady Mountwalsh,” the old man said with a smile, “I never used those words at all.”

She did not see Daniel O'Connell again for some time, though she heard word that his career was thriving. But the conversation of that evening was often in her mind.

For the old Patriot's words were soon borne out. Nothing official was said, but she heard from friends: hints were being dropped, private assurances given. By the autumn, it was clear that a bill would be brought before the Irish Parliament, around the turn of the year, which would invite that body to vote itself out of existence, and that the Patriots and supporters of Catholic Emancipation had been assured that, soon afterwards, their wishes would be granted. But even if these liberal men could be squared, what about the Ascendancy diehards who formed the majority? How would they be persuaded to give up their local power?

She was rather surprised, therefore, shortly before Christmas, when Hercules casually informed her:

“I've changed my mind. Union's for the best. It's the path of progress, I'm convinced if it.”

She wondered why.