The Rebels of Ireland (60 page)

The trap was set. But where the devil was the quarry?

Terence had started it all, one evening three months ago, when he had looked up at Fortunatus as they were sitting with a bottle of claret between them in the parlour and remarked:

“I heard of something that might interest you the other day. Do you know Doctor Grogan?”

“Slightly.”

“Well, he has not as many patients as I, but he does well, and he's not a bad fellow. And he was telling me that he visits a family named Law.”

“Henry Law?”

“The same. You know him?”

“He's a linen merchant from Belfast. That's all I know about him.”

“That doesn't surprise me. He lives quietly and attends to his business. But there is more than that. Grogan has overheard things when in the house, and he has made enquiries. He's a most enquiring man, Grogan.” He paused for effect. “Henry Law is one of the richest men in Dublin.”

“The devil he is. And?”

“He has daughters. No son.”

“I see. Heiresses.”

“Better. There are three: Anna, Lydia, and Georgiana. But Lydia is sickly, and Grogan gives me his assurance that she won't last more than a year or two. So the entire fortune will be split equally between her sisters.”

“You are thinking of George?”

“I am.”

“He is still only twenty.”

“Georgiana is sixteen. By the time she is eighteen…”

“And we should get in before the competition, you mean.” Fortunatus considered the matter. His son George was a handsome and intelligent boy. He seemed to be easygoing. People liked him. But Fortunatus was a good enough judge of character to see where his son's interests lay. His other son, William, would be perfectly happy running the family estate in Fingal. When he'd brought William into the splendid new Parliament building that now looked down upon College Green, William was well-mannered enough, but Fortunatus could tell that he was bored. Not so George. His broad-set eyes took in everything. He didn't just listen to the speeches; it was clear to his father that he was carefully studying each speaker's style. “I should like to come here,” he told his father after his first visit. And he would ask searching questions about the leading politicians, and their families, and who held power over whom. “I can give you a start, George,” Fortunatus had told him frankly, “but if you want to make a figure in the world, then you must find a rich wife.”

“What religion are the Laws?” Fortunatus now enquired.

“The family was Presbyterian. But after he came to Dublin, Henry Law joined the Church of Ireland.”

“I should not like,” he said slowly, “to be seen to be fortune-hunting.”

“You must not. It would destroy your chances.”

“You have a plan in mind?”

“Perhaps. But first, there are things that you should know.”

Barbara Doyle had been delighted to oblige. Apart from the fact that her hair was grey now, it was remarkable how little she had changed. And Fortunatus had been in high favour with Cousin Barbara for many years now, ever since the affair of Wood's copper coins.

It hadn't been his speeches in Parliament; those had been excellent but useless, since the English government had refused, on this matter, to take any notice of Dublin's opinion. But then Swift's printed attacks had begun.

The
Drapier's Letters
had come out over a period of months. They were anonymous, but everyone knew that Dean Swift was the author. Who else could have written such magnificent, excoriating prose, so laced with irony? By the time Swift had done, the government of England had been made to look contemptible, and being no less vain than any other political men, Swift's ridicule proved more than they could bear. The coins were withdrawn. The Irish were triumphant. Having told Cousin Barbara that the whole business had been his idea, hatched with Swift up in County Cavan, Walsh had experienced a moment of near panic when, chancing to meet Barbara outside the Parliament building, he had seen Dean Swift emerge from Trinity College and come straight towards them. Mrs. Doyle hadn't hesitated to accost him.

“I hear that it was my cousin Fortunatus who put you up to those
Drapier's Letters,”
she challenged him.

“Indeed?” The Dean looked at her, and then stared at Fortunatus. He's remembering young Smith's impertinence at Quilca, thought Walsh with a sinking heart, and he'll deny me. He imagined his rent doubling. But whether it was the sight of his anxious face, or just his own good nature, the author of
Gulliver's Travels
decided to be merciful. “I wrote them only after his persuasion,” he confirmed—which, strictly speaking, was not even a lie. It was good enough for Cousin Barbara, anyway. She'd beamed at Fortunatus, and never given him any trouble since.

Her encounter with Henry Law the linen merchant, some six weeks before the performance of Handel's
Messiah
, could not have been more natural, since they both happened to attend the same parish church. Henry Law's wife was not close to the widow Doyle, who she thought had grown even bigger and more forthright over the years. They had little to say to each other. But Henry Law had
no objection to talking to her, and also had a shrewd respect for her business brain. They would often chat for a few minutes after the service, while Mrs. Law attended to more social affairs. So it had been quite easy, that Sunday, for Barbara to steer the conversation towards the subject of families split by religion.

“That is the case with my own family, you know,” Henry Law had remarked. “In Ulster, I was a Presbyterian, but when I came to Dublin and married my wife, I changed to her religion, which is Church of Ireland.”

“I didn't know that,” Barbara Doyle lied.

“Well,” he sighed, “my brother in Ulster has never spoken to me since.” He shook his head sadly. “I can well understand how he feels, but I have never felt so strongly myself. So far, all attempts by me to heal the rift have failed.”

Did he know Doctor Terence Walsh? she asked. By reputation only, he replied. A distant kinsman of her own, and a Catholic, she explained. Yet his brother, the Member of Parliament, and a solid Church of Ireland man, never let religion come between them. “He does everything he can to help Terence, and the two of them are bosom friends. They are very good people, I have to say.”

“Ah, that is how it should be,” said Henry Law. “I wish I had achieved the same. Those Walshes have an estate in Fingal, I think.”

“An old gentry family. But simple people. No foolish airs and graces there,” she said firmly. “Work hard and stick by your family.”

“I'd be glad to meet Mr. Walsh someday,” Henry Law said thoughtfully.

“And he'd have come to your house that very moment,” Cousin Barbara reported to Fortunatus afterwards. “But I know that's not what you want. So I just said nothing, and we parted.”

“He really feels so strongly about the matter of family?”

“He does. He has made a fortune in the linen trade, but he's always been ready to share what he has with his family. I learned this through the vicar, but he has twice saved his brother in Philadelphia
from ruin, to his great cost. Your treatment of Terence would be all-important to him.”

“He must regret his lack of a son.”

“There was a boy, born after the girls, but he died. The vicar told me that as well. He never speaks of it. After that, it seems, he changed. He loves his daughters, I'm sure, but he hasn't the same ambition for them.” Cousin Barbara grinned. “It's the mother who's ambitious for those girls. So tell me,” she enquired genially, “how are you planning to get the mother into your net?”

Isaac Tidy surveyed the room. There were three weeks to go before the grand performance of
The Messiah.
He did not imagine that the duke would require him for that event, but tonight the Lord Lieutenant was giving a Saint Patrick's Day Ball in Dublin Castle, and Tidy had been working hard on the preparations since the morning.

There were some, he knew, who had thought ill of him for deserting Dean Swift. But it had not been easy. The Dean's health had been in slow decline, and with it his temper. He had even quarrelled with Sheridan and turned him away. As Swift's life became restricted and morose, Tidy had concluded that there wasn't much he could do for him. “Unless I want to finish up his nursemaid, which I don't,” he told his relations. At this very time, he heard of a position opening up in the household of the new Lord Lieutenant, and he had applied for it at once. To his amazement, the duke himself had interviewed him.

“I won't have it said that I took you from the Dean of Saint Patrick's,” the duke had told him plainly.

“You have my word, Your Grace, that I have left his service already,” he had firmly replied. For guessing that this might be a condition, he had taken his chances and left Swift's employment that very morning.

Some people might have thought that his new position was quite
a step down. He was certainly not the butler. The duke had a butler. But he was an under butler, well above the legion of gilded footmen who strutted about the duke's mighty household. He was no longer the valued retainer, either, but a newcomer. And certainly nobody dignified him with the name of Mr. Tidy. But he was prepared to suffer these minor indignities because, by going to the duke, he had gone from a small private house to the palace of a mighty potentate. “Higher than the duke, in Ireland,” he told his family proudly, “you cannot go.” If he ever got the butler's position, he would tower over every unfree man in Dublin. He walked carefully, therefore, abandoned his contemptuous glances for those who were not of the “gintry” for a suavity that was haunting, and made himself useful to those above him and below. Within his limitations, he was really very clever.

Isaac Tidy was happy. In a while, the dancing would begin. The great hall of Dublin Castle looked magnificent. The grand redesigning of the Irish capital as a classical masterpiece was still a work in progress but now it had reached the shabby old Castle, too. Work had already begun on a magnificent ceremonial staircase and a set of staterooms that would rival anything in Europe. For the moment, the huge old hall was used for functions such as this, but even the hall, tonight, had been transformed by the decorator's art into a vast classical pantheon. And the company itself was equally splendid. Lords, ladies, gentlemen—here was the quality indeed. Many of the faces he knew; for once a person had visited any of the ducal residences, Tidy made it a point to remember him. As his eye travelled round the room, he even noticed, at the far side, the cheerful face of Fortunatus Walsh.

As for himself, here he was, where the entire company could see him, standing discreetly only feet away from, and awaiting the personal instructions of, the Duke of Devonshire. He permitted himself a tiny smile and glanced down at his exquisitely polished shoes. And in that tiny moment of bliss, he did not notice that Walsh had just given a nod to one of the ducal party.