The Rebels of Ireland (27 page)

A week before Maurice was due to return, however, one of O'Byrne's cattlemen appeared at Smith's house with a message that Maurice had broken his leg and that his departure from Rathconan might be delayed.

“I think I ought to go to him, Walter,” Anne declared, and her husband did not disagree. Taking the groom with her, she set off for Rathconan with the cattleman.

On her arrival, she found her son in good spirits. He was confined to a large bench in the hall and his leg was in splints. “Like a fool, I slipped off a rock in a mountain stream,” he told her, “but I'm all right.” O'Byrne was firm, however. “He must keep absolutely still for a week,” he commanded. “I don't want it setting crooked.”
The main problem seemed to be keeping O'Byrne's younger children from crawling all over Maurice.

Privately O'Byrne told her: “I'm not sure it's broken at all. It may be just a bad sprain.” He grinned. “But I thought it might bring you up here.”

Anne sent the groom back to Dublin to report the situation to Walter. Remaining at Rathconan, she fell into a simple regime. During the day, she would sit and read to Maurice or otherwise keep him amused. In the evening, O'Byrne would play a game of chess with him. At nights, Maurice slept in the kitchen, where the cook kept an eye on him, while his mother slept upstairs in the guest chamber, to which, when the household was all asleep, O'Byrne would secretly come. Once, when she was afraid that their lovemaking might have made too much sound, he laughed quietly. “No sound carries through these stone walls, I can assure you. A lion could roar.”

During the day, from time to time, she would walk about outside to stretch her legs, but as O'Byrne was busy, she seldom saw him. On the fourth evening, however, he turned to her son and remarked: “We're taking cattle up the mountain tomorrow, Mwirish. It's a pity you can't join us.”

“Couldn't I come?” Anne asked. “I've always wanted to roam up there.”

O'Byrne looked doubtfully at Maurice.

“We need to make sure that Mwirish here doesn't move.”

Maurice smiled. It was clear that by now he regarded O'Byrne as practically a favourite uncle.

“I'll answer for my safety if cook will keep your children away,” he laughed.

And so it was agreed that Anne should go up with the cattlemen into the mountains for the day.

The next morning was delightfully warm. It was almost May. The cattle drive was a slow process, with the cattlemen calling out and occasionally prodding the cattle with their sticks as they urged them up the tracks; and although they set out early, it was noon be
fore they reached the high pastures. But as far as Anne was concerned, it was worth it. All around them stretched a huge, high tableland. The sky was blue. The views over the distant coastal plain were magnificent. Just below them, in the passes, the little mountain streams tumbled down towards richly wooded slopes.

After a little rest, some of the cattlemen were returning, and O'Byrne asked Anne if she wanted to go down with them.

“I should like to stay up here,” she answered.

O'Byrne stayed with the cattle for a time, until he was satisfied that everything was in good order; then, turning to Anne in front of the remaining men, he remarked:

“It's a beautiful walk towards Glendalough. Would you like to see it?”

“What do you think?” Anne asked the men.

“It is. It's a fine view. Well worth the walk,” they told her.

So telling the men that he'd be back, O'Byrne escorted her politely along the path that led southwards. He strode at a good pace, but she had no trouble keeping up. When they were well out of sight of the men, however, he slowed a little and put his arm around her waist, and they proceeded like that.

As they went across the open spaces and the winding ravines, Anne knew that she had never been so happy in her life. With the wild mountain landscape before her, the warm sun on her face, the delightful sensation of his arm around her waist, she felt so wonderfully free and confident. It was exhilarating. She gave a laugh of sheer happiness. A little farther on, she murmured something without even knowing that she had done so, and was quite surprised when O'Byrne asked her what she meant.

“You said: ‘Heart over head,'” he explained.

“I did?” She laughed again. “It was just something my brother Lawrence once said. He was wrong, though.” She had never been more glad to be alive.

They had gone a couple of miles when they came upon the place. A bend in a ravine had formed a natural little grassy arbour
beside a mountain stream, protected and hidden by the surrounding rocks and trees. Without waiting for O'Byrne, Anne climbed down to the water's edge. After standing there a moment or two, she took off her shoes and stepped barefoot into the stream. It was colder than she expected, and when she stepped out, her feet were tingling. She laughed. She took a few steps towards the shelter of the rocks. She could feel the grass between her toes. O'Byrne was sitting on a rock above, watching her.

She half turned away. It was not difficult to loosen the clasp at her shoulder. A moment later, her clothes were falling to the ground and she was naked. She took a deep breath and felt the faint caress of the breeze on her breasts. She closed her eyes. The soft air was brushing lightly round her back, her legs, every part of her. She gave a tiny shiver. Then she turned to face O'Byrne. He was still sitting quietly on the rock, watching her. She smiled.

“Are you coming down from there?” she enquired.

“I think I may as well.”

She watched him as he came easily down. He was strong, she thought, but lithe as a cat. Then he was standing in front of her. She could smell the light sweat on his chest.

“Do I have to undress you?” she asked playfully, and he smiled.

“Do you want to?”

“I do,” she said.

She had never made love in the open air before. The hard ground under her felt good as the long strands of grass pressed against her harshly, leaving their imprint and little green smears on her skin. The scent of the grass was in her hair, and the tinkling sound of the stream was their accompaniment. Once, as they rolled together over the ground, they almost tumbled into the water, and both burst out laughing. She had never felt so alive before. They remained there, making love and caressing, something over half an hour.

Afterwards, as they walked back, it seemed to her that, here in the great open wildness of the Wicklow Mountains, something special had taken place within her; as if, on that day, the sense of de
privation, the anger that had blighted her life for so many years, had been assuaged and that she was free and whole again.

Two days later, a careful inspection of Maurice's leg satisfied everyone that although the ankle was badly sprained and the muscle torn, the leg was not broken. And so, after a last night with her lover, Anne set out with her son back to Dublin.

“I shall come to Dublin again,” O'Byrne secretly promised her, “in three weeks.”

“I hardly know how I shall do without you for so long,” Anne told him.

And indeed, all the way down from the Wicklow heights to the Dublin plain, she thanked the fates that she had found O'Byrne, and that her husband knew nothing.

On a hot July day in that summer of 1638, Walter Smith made a discovery.

He had just come out of the Post Office in Castle Street, from which he had despatched a letter to a merchant in London, when he met Orlando. The Post Office was one of the several improvements in Dublin that Wentworth could point to as benefits of his firm English rule. Others included the lanterns that now lit the dark streets of old Dublin at night and, most recently, a playhouse. But the Lord Deputy's blunt bad manners had offended almost everyone by now, and his attempts to get his hands on more Old English land in Leinster and Galway had left him few friends amongst the Old English Catholics, and so Walter Smith was rather surprised when his brother-in-law, falling into step beside him, remarked cheerfully that the political situation was looking up. How so? Walter enquired.

“Oh, I'm thinking of Scotland,” said Orlando, as if the thing was obvious—which, as far as Walter could see, it wasn't.

For to most Englishmen, the last year of royal government had been a disaster.

It was typical of King Charles that he failed to understand even the land from which his family came. The people of Scotland had made it plain enough to his grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots, that they overwhelmingly wanted a Presbyterian church. So it was folly to imagine that the Scots would now accept the sort of High Church services that had been imposed on England and Ireland. Yet this is exactly what King Charles had recently tried to do. If Doctor Pincher had been shocked by the popish ritual in Christ Church, the Scots were outraged when the king ordered such things in their own land. There had been a riot in the cathedral in Edinburgh and resistance all over Scotland. To these heartfelt protests, Charles was deaf. He was the king, so he must be right. By the spring of 1638 the Scots, from the richest aristocrat to the humblest labourer, had formed that great protest movement bound together by the National Covenant, and Scotland was out of control. King Charles was now trying to raise an army to march north against the Covenanters.

“And don't you see,” Orlando said to Walter, “that this may be good news for us?” In the first place, he explained, it would more than ever make the English government turn away from the Puritans—and that must include the Presbyterians, many of them Scottish, up in Ulster. “The king may come to regret that there were ever Protestant plantations in Ireland at all.” Beyond that, he pointed out, it would make the king more than ever grateful for the solid support of the English Catholics of Ireland. “This is the time, Walter, for the Old English to remind the king, as often as we can, that we are his loyal friends.”

“You believe that he may grant further concessions?”

“You have not seen my meaning, Walter,” Orlando continued. “I mean more than that. I think it possible, if these troubles with the Protestants go on, that the king may even turn the control of Ireland back to us, the Old English. The old gentry families that he can trust.” He smiled. “We Catholics may control Ireland again if we play our cards well.”

It seemed to Walter that his brother-in-law was a shade too op
timistic. But you never knew. Political reversals had happened before. Orlando could turn out to be right. They had reached the precincts of Christ Church.

“Won't you come to the house now?” Walter asked.

“I would. But I've an appointment,” said Orlando.

“I'll give your greetings to your sister, then,” said Walter.

“Ah. Please do,” Orlando said quickly. And then he was gone.

Walter continued slowly towards his house. There was no question, he had to admit, that he had put on weight during the last year. Not that he felt any the worse for it. Indeed, the extra layer of fat he had acquired was comforting. Sometimes, when he was sitting alone, it seemed as though his body had grown, like a friend, to keep him company and, as a good friend should, protect him from the attacks of a cruel world.

He was sorry that Orlando had not accompanied him home, because he loved his brother-in-law. But he was not surprised. He had noticed for a long time now Orlando's strange reluctance to encounter Anne. If asked to come to the house, he'd make some excuse, as he'd done today, and swear he'd come soon. Or if he came, though he greeted his sister with a kiss, there was always in his manner towards her a faint reserve. With himself, Walter had observed that sometimes, without meaning to, or when he thought he did not see, Orlando had given him a look of pity or concern; and if they were standing together without speaking, Walter could sense in the silence a hint of awkwardness. With Lawrence, too, he had perceived a thin veil of discretion, like a coat of varnish, upon the Jesuit's courtesy.

It was very understandable. They thought he did not know.

He knew. He had known almost from the first. He could remember the evening—it seemed so long ago—when he had noticed his wife looking at him thoughtfully. Nothing so strange about that, perhaps. Yet something unusual had struck him: her look hadn't been critical or unfriendly; it was just that she seemed to be contemplating him, as if from a distance. Was she wondering how he would react in some situation or other? Was she considering some aspect of
his character? She might have looked at him that way if she were comparing him with someone else, or even trying to decide how she felt about him. Surely such things were not to be thought of. But whatever was in her mind, her look suggested that some hidden separation had occurred; there was a dispassionate distance between them. He saw it, but said nothing. What should he say? In the days and weeks that followed, however, he had watched. And he had seen.

A careful glance at her figure in the looking glass, when there was no need to do that for him. A momentary look of impatience at something he said, which, if she felt, she had never let herself show before. Sometimes she seemed preoccupied, her mind elsewhere. At other times, her body had a wonderful glow. And somewhere in all this, he had noticed the behaviour of Lawrence and Orlando. Even then, he had scarcely been able to credit such a thing. Until one day he had followed her to the western market and saw her enter the lodgings and not come out. By that night, he knew it was O'Byrne that she had seen.