The Rebels of Ireland (23 page)

And now, he thought, the boy was ready. The moment he had
been waiting for all these years had finally arrived. When the morning service was over, he informed his wife:

“It's time I took him to see Doctor Pincher. I want you to arrange it today.”

Doctor Pincher was glad to see Mistress Tidy.

He had been feeling rather low of late. Until recently, it had not occurred to him that he was getting old. It was a toothache that had reminded him. In an age when so many men were staining or rotting their teeth with tobacco or molasses from the New World, Doctor Pincher's austerity had protected him from these vices, and as a result, he had kept all his teeth, which were long and the colour of old ivory. But a month ago he had suffered a raging toothache and had one of them pulled; so that now, on this right, lower jaw, a gap had appeared that his tongue would sadly explore every waking hour, to remind him of his mortality.

But this little
memento mori
had only added to a more general sense of failure that had pervaded his life for the last ten years.

He had never recovered, really, from his time in jail.

It had been the strangest business. He could never put his finger on what had gone wrong. In those first, heady months after his great sermon, he had enjoyed a degree of fame. Important men—some of the larger plantation landlords, even his patron Boyle, newly made Earl of Cork—had written to him or sought him out to express their unequivocal support. “It needed to be said,” they warmly declared. But then, shortly after the delegation to England had returned, the unspeakable thing had happened.

Soldiers had come marching into Trinity College, when he was in the middle of a lecture. They'd arrested him in front of his students. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself before men in Dublin Castle, men he knew, with grim looks on their faces.

“Sedition, Doctor Pincher,” they declared. “Possibly treason. You have spoken against the queen.”

“How so? When?”

“Your sermon in Christ Church. You called her a harlot and a Jezebel.”

“I did not.”

“The king thinks you did.”

The thing was absurd, monstrous, untrue. But there was nothing he could do. There was no trial, no chance to clear himself. He was taken forthwith to jail, to remain there at the king's pleasure. It was hinted that there might even be further consequences. Fatal perhaps. In an agony, he passed his days in his small stone cell. And in that time he also discovered one other thing. If he thought he had friends, he had none. Or scarcely any. The Castle men, his admirers from the congregation, his colleagues at Trinity—not one of them came by. No word was spoken for him. He was a man marked by disfavour, dangerous to associate with, to be avoided. Only two people gave him any hope.

The first was Mistress Tidy. She came every day. She brought him broth and cakes, a little ale or wine. Like a ministering angel, she never failed him. Nor did she ask for anything, though of course he paid her. He wondered if Tidy himself might come, but he did not. Never mind: she was enough. Without her, he freely confessed to himself, he might at times have come close to despair.

The other was Boyle. Without the new Earl of Cork, for all he knew, he might have stayed in jail until the end of his days. But by God's grace, the mighty landowner had, in 1629, become the Lord Chief Justice, and at Christmas that year, Boyle had been able to order his release. By way of consolation, his patron had even found him some land in south Leinster where, Pincher had discovered to his gratification, there was some extensive woodland to cut down.

So he had resumed his life again. His Puritan friends, although they had never come to see him, treated him as something of a hero. Hadn't he been imprisoned for his faith? His students applauded him when he next came in to lecture. He tasted, as every public man
must, the bittersweet fruit of hollow affection, and learned to be grateful for the gift thereof.

Only one thing still puzzled him. How had the charges ever arisen in the first place? He did wonder whether perhaps something might have been said by one of the Catholics in the delegation that had gone to the court in London, and he once even asked Doyle about this.

“If they did,” Doyle answered him truthfully, “I can promise you I'm not aware of it.”

The thing remained a mystery.

Nor had his hopes for the Puritan religious cause been satisfied. At first, at the time of his release, there had been some further clamp-downs on the Catholics. But his hopes for the Protestant Church had been smashed less than three years later when King Charles's new governor had arrived.

Wentworth. The name came like a curse to his lips. He would never forget that terrible Sunday, not long after the new Lord Deputy's arrival. He had been delayed and left late for the morning service at Christ Church. By the time he got there, the congregation had gone inside, and Wentworth and his large entourage were already seated in their royal pews. Entering hurriedly, Pincher had unobtrusively found a place at the back of the nave. In his hurry, he had scarcely looked around, but quickly sank to his knees for a moment's prayer, before slowly raising his eyes to gaze eastwards towards the choir. And then he had started in horror.

The eastern end of the cathedral had been completely rearranged. The communion table, instead of being in its usual place in the centre of the choir where all might easily approach it, had been removed to the eastern end where, raised on a dais, it had been converted to a high altar. Over this altar was spread a magnificent altarcloth, threaded with gold, and upon it, in splendid silver candlesticks, burned six tall candles. Standing before the altar in a surplice so gorgeous that it might have come from some popish church
in Spain, or even Rome itself, was the officiating clergyman. Pincher stared, stunned, at the terrible sight. He half rose. Only a residual spirit of self-preservation held him back from crying out: “Popery! Idolatry!”

The cursed Wentworth was responsible. There was no doubt. This was exactly the kind of High Anglican ritual that King Charles and his Catholic queen favoured. The distant high altar, the candles, the priests in their rich vestments—forms and ceremonies over preaching, the power of king and appointed bishop over true teaching and moral authority. It was worldliness and corruption, popery in all but name: it was everything the Puritans despised and hated. Here, before his very eyes, Christ Church—the place where he had preached, the centre of Protestant Dublin, the veritable Calvinist temple in the wilderness of Irish superstition—was now made into a den of papists and idolators. And with Wentworth's arrival there was not a chance he would ever be asked to preach there again.

And there had been nothing he could do about it. The cathedral that was the centre of English rule had remained the same ever since. He would have liked to avoid the place, but in his position such a refusal would have caused endless difficulties. Humiliated, he went to church now with just as much reluctance as the Catholics had gone in the years before. The changes at Christ Church had gone hand in hand with a toleration of Catholics for which not even the prospect of a new Protestant plantation in Connacht could compensate. It seemed he had to witness the destruction of everything he had worked for.

He'd even thought of leaving Ireland and returning to England in disgust; but that would have meant giving up his position at Trinity, where, despite all these changes, he still remained a person of consequence. And besides, who was there in England to welcome him if he did return? Nobody, it seemed.

His sister had never written to him. Twice more, over the years, he had sent letters to her, but there had been never a word in reply. He had even made discreet enquiries in case she had died or moved
away. But he'd learned that she was still living in the same place, and in excellent health. Of Barnaby he heard nothing at all. Indeed, if there had been any other choice, he might by now have considered looking for another heir. He could leave Trinity a handsome endowment: something, perhaps, that would carry his name. But even this idea, it had to be confessed, was an admission of family failure. At the service this morning, it had struck him rather forcibly that he was old and lonely.

So he was secretly rather grateful when Mistress Tidy appeared.

There had been times when he had felt a little aggrieved at Jeremiah Tidy. He knew that this was unreasonable. Tidy had not been disloyal to him. Whenever they met, the sexton and verger would shake his head and tell him: “Things have come to a pretty pass in Christ Church nowadays, Your Honour.” But somehow, fairly or not, Pincher never felt that this expression of disapproval was quite enough. But faithful Mistress Tidy was quite another matter. When he thought of all her goodness to him, he could only marvel that she herself, humble soul that she was, seemed to set no great store on her own good works. “I am not learned, Sir,” she would say. “I cannot even read.” And he would smile. “God values us according to our calling,” he'd assure her. Once, she had come to him in genuine distress. A woman she knew in the city, a simple woman like herself who had never done any harm in her life, had fallen sick and seemed near to death. But the woman was a Catholic. “You have always said, Sir, that God has chosen some to be saved and others to be condemned.” Was it possible, she asked, that unknown to everyone, God might have chosen her poor Catholic friend to be saved, despite her religion? Not wanting to disappoint her kindly soul, he had answered: “It is true, Mistress Tidy, that the mind of God is not known to mortal man.” Then, touched by the relief on her face, he had quite ardently declared: “But I think I may say with certainty, Mistress Tidy, that you yourself will go to Heaven.”

She came to him today with a small plum cake, in the making of which she told him, if it was not a sin, she had added a little brandy.

He received it with gratitude and asked after her family. And when she told him that her husband and Faithful would like to call upon him that day, he answered pleasantly:

“By all means. Let them come at four o'clock.”

It was early that afternoon when, having eaten two slices of the plum cake, Pincher decided to take a brief stroll to wake himself up.

Leaving Trinity, he went through the gate in the old city wall and up Dame Street towards Christ Church. Passing one of the three public clocks that the city now boasted, he heard a bell strike and saw that it was the hour of three. Continuing westward, he passed out through another gateway and turned down the slope towards the ancient bridge across the Liffey. He calculated that he had just time to walk across it and return in good order before the arrival of Tidy and his son at his lodgings. As he reached the water's edge, he noticed that the breeze was stirring up the surface of the river into a thousand tiny, frowning waves.

Pincher stepped onto the bridge. It was deserted. He began to stride across. His long, thin legs, thank God, were still strong. The breeze over the water felt cold upon one cheek. He relished the bracing tingle it produced. After a few moments he noticed that, on the other side of the river, two gentlemen had also stepped onto the bridge and were coming in his direction. No doubt their purpose was to take some exercise, too. The taller was dressed in dark green; the shorter in russet. He reached the midway point. They were approaching him rapidly. Then he saw that the shorter man was Thomas Wentworth.

There could be no mistaking the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Short of stature, he had a moustache and a neat little triangular beard that did not entirely mask the sensual, petulant mouth. His eyes, which were puffy, glared at you bellicosely when he spoke, and were sulky in repose. His dark, curly brown hair was kept clipped into order, but it seemed that it might spring up aggressively at any time. A surly boy,
thought Pincher, made masterful by a king. Wentworth had recognized him and was coming straight towards him. He could not be avoided. He stopped, three paces from Pincher, and stared at him. His companion in green, one of the Dublin Castle officials, stopped also.