The Rebels of Ireland (28 page)

Even then, for a time, he could not quite believe it. His loving, virtuous wife acting in such a way? For several days, he remained stunned, in a state of shock. He must have looked terrible, for as she came in one afternoon, Anne looked at him in surprise and asked with a mixture of alarm and impatience: “Are you ill? You look like a ghost.” He told her he was tired, and that it was nothing, and pretended annoyance over some trifling piece of business. After that, he was careful to conceal his feelings. He was not ready to have a confrontation yet. Instead, he had forced himself to consider the matter as dispassionately as he could.

Did she mean to run away with O'Byrne, or if he forced the issue, might she do so? He did not think so. She was taking pains to be discreet. She could hardly wish to bring disgrace upon herself and scandal to her children—especially Maurice, who was still at home—by such an action. And yet, he reminded himself, he'd never have thought she would do what she had already done in the first place. Could he himself put an end to the matter by confronting
one of the lovers? Probably. Whatever this was for his wife, O'Byrne was a younger man who would soon be looking for a new wife. For O'Byrne, he guessed, this was an interlude that could be ended. But what then? He'd have a wife at home who could only resent him. Most men would still opt for that, he supposed. But for him, the thing was not so simple.

He loved her. But he could never forget that it was his brother that she had loved originally, not him. All these years, he had tried to be a good husband to her and make her love him, and he had supposed he had succeeded. She had said that he made her happy. But now it seemed that, after all, he had not. He had failed, and she, out of kindness, must have concealed from him all this time that she did not love him as he did her. What must that have been like for her?

For the fault was surely his. She was not a flighty woman. There was no question of that. She was moral; she was good. She was everything a wife and mother should be. He loved her passionately, but it seemed she did not love him. The pain was almost more than he could bear.

He had no one to talk to. Of his father's family, there was nobody left. He certainly wouldn't mention it to any of his children. Dishonour their mother in their eyes? Never. Anne's family obviously knew. Would he be the husband that comes whining to his wife's family when she's unfaithful? He'd too much pride for that. No, he must bear his anguish, and his rage, alone.

For rage he felt. Rage, as a man, at being mocked: mocked by his wife, mocked by O'Byrne. Mocked even in a sense—because they knew—by Lawrence and Orlando. And his rage set limits to his love. The affair was still not public. He was fairly sure of that. Anne's brothers might know, but they were hardly likely to let their sister's shameful secret out. Were any of O'Byrne's people aware? Quite likely not; and if his guess was right, O'Byrne would be discreet. If the matter became public, however, if all Dublin were to know of it, and therefore his children, too, then for all that he loved her, he'd send Anne from his house. Of that he was resolved.

But what if it remained a secret, though? Was there a glimmer of hope? When the affair were to end, as it surely must, and Anne resume her life again—what should he do then? How would he feel? Was it possible that Anne would feel some love for him? Might she not, at least, see some fineness? For he deserved that much. He thought about it. A word even, if she meant it, would be enough.

It was the role of wives to wait for straying husbands to return; but he had known of cases with the roles reversed. For the time being, therefore, for the good of the whole family, he'd pretended he knew nothing. Their marital relations still continued, in a desultory way; but if he fell asleep at night, saying that he was tired, she didn't seem to mind. Their lives continued quietly as usual. Sometimes, lying in bed beside her, he had fancied that he smelt the scent of another man upon her skin, or in her hair, but closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. Only one thing more had offended him. And that had been that Maurice loved O'Byrne. He understood the boy's fascination, of course. The handsome Irishman with the same green eyes would have to have been a fascinating figure to the boy. But even my son thinks O'Byrne a finer figure than his father, he thought bitterly. O'Byrne has taken even that from me. It was a final resignation, then, when he had let the boy go away with him. The boy wants to leave me, too, he thought. What can I do? How can I blame him? But when Anne had followed him up into the mountains, upon a somewhat specious pretext, he had almost burst out in vexation, and was held back only by the knowledge that, if he protested too much, he would tell her that he knew the truth. But that had been the final blow. He would keep silent for the family's sake; but he was not even sure, after her departure for the mountains, that he could ever entirely resume his intimacy with her again.

Then and afterwards, however, he had continued to drag himself through the days. He went about his business and, at close of day, sat in his chair in the parlour and felt his body silently growing its layer to soften the arrows of pain. To his wife he was quiet and mild, watching her sometimes and wondering, did she never guess he
knew? But then, that was the misery of it. She did not see because she did not want to. She did not want to since she did not care, and did not care because she loved another. Such was the circularity of his life, as he grew stout.

The house was quiet when he reached it. The servants were busy in the kitchen. Neither Anne nor his son was indoors. Normally, he would have sat down in his chair and, perhaps, taken a short nap; but after his conversation with Orlando, he did not feel sleepy, and casting about in his mind for something to do, he decided to go up to the attic and look through the documents of the Guild that resided in the chest up there. He'd been meaning to sort through them for years, but never got round to it. Grunting a little to himself, he climbed the stairs.

The attic space was quite large. The ceiling had been covered with boards, so it was quite warm and dry, even in winter. He was rather proud that he had the records there at all. Most of the old Guild's accounts had been taken away by Wentworth and given to a new Protestant guild that had been set up. But he'd managed to keep these ones, and he had no intention of letting them go. The big, brass-banded strongbox stood in the middle of the floor, and he unlocked its three locks carefully with three different keys. It was with a certain sense of medieval mystery that his own father had kept them. And he had always meant to go through them himself one day.

At one end of the attic was an opening covered with shutters. He unfastened them and a stream of sunlight entered. He dragged the chest towards the big rectangle of sunlight and, sitting down on the floor beside it, began to take out papers.

As he had expected, most of the contents were records of minor events and disbursements, contracts with craftsmen for the upkeep of the fraternity's chantry and tombs. Nothing of great interest. As he delved further, however, he came upon documents that were quite old. He found himself in the reign of Elizabeth, Catholic Mary, the boy king, Edward VI. In that reign, he saw, a chalice and a number of the guild's candlesticks and other religious objects of value had been removed to a place of safekeeping in case the Protes
tants should try to seize them. It was as he reached the reign of Henry VIII that he caught sight of a somewhat different document. It was on thick paper, carefully folded and closed up with a red wax seal that had evidently never been broken. He took it out and held it in the light. Judging by the impression in the wax, it looked as if one of the Doyle family had sealed the document. On the outside, in a bold handwriting that he thought he might have seen somewhere before, he saw the following words:

 

DEPOSITION OF MASTER MACGOWAN
CONCERNING THE STAFF

 

He wondered what it meant. What staff? Some implement belonging to the Guild, he supposed. MacGowan would obviously have been one of the Dublin family of merchants and craftsmen. Whatever it was, someone had thought it important enough to seal it. Many letters and documents were sealed, of course. But all the same, the thing might be of interest. He fingered it.

Should he break the seal? There was no reason why not. He was the keeper of the chest, and the thing was probably a century old. He slid his finger along the edge of the wax.

“Walter?”

He turned. It surprised him that he had not heard her come up the narrow stairs, but there his wife stood, staring curiously at him.

“The door to the attic stairs was open,” she remarked. “I wondered why. What are you doing?”

“Just looking through some old papers.” A year ago, he would have shown her the document he had found. Now he just let it fall back into the chest. “Why? Were you looking for me?”

“I was.” She hesitated, gazing at him, and for a moment it seemed to him that he saw the same look he had noticed that first time he had guessed that something was amiss between them. She was considering him now. But then he saw something else. She was trying to conceal it, but she could not quite do so. It was fear.

“And why was that?” he asked mildly.

“Come down to the parlour. We can sit down there.”

He did not move.

“Is this bad news?”

“No. Not bad, I think.” She smiled at him, but in her eyes there was still a trace of fear. “Good news, Walter.”

“Tell it to me now.”

“Let's go down.”

“No.” He was mild, but firm. “I've things to attend to here. I should like you to tell me now.”

She paused.

“We are going to have another child, Walter. I am with child.”

It was a cause of rejoicing when, at the end of January 1639, Anne Smith was successfully delivered of a baby son. All the family visited. Her daughters had been coming in and out almost every day for months; they had taken great delight and amusement in their parents' unexpected good fortune after so many years, and showed a gentle concern for their mother's health, as well as teasing their father a little about his continued potency—all of which he accepted with a show of cheerfulness.

The previous August, Walter had gone to see Lawrence and had a long and frank conversation with him. “It's for the honour of your sister,” he'd concluded, “for the sake of the children, and for my own dignity, too.” And not without admiration, the Jesuit had agreed to all he asked. After that, both Lawrence and Orlando had made regular visits to the house; and presented with this united family front, it had never occurred to anyone, at least in Dublin, that the child in virtuous Anne Smith's womb could belong to any man but her husband.

For Anne, the months of her pregnancy had been a strange mixture of joy and loneliness. The stage had been set by that first interview
with Walter in the attic. She had gone for a walk beforehand to prepare herself, to prepare for the part that she must play.

“It must have been in April, just before Maurice was hurt,” she had said.

“Ah.” He studied the strongbox in front of him. His face had registered neither pleasure nor pain. “That would be it.”

He had not looked up at her at all. Slowly, almost absently, he had replaced the papers one by one in the box. Then, carefully, he had locked the three locks one by one. Only after that did he get up, and as he rose he gazed straight into her eyes and gave her a single, terrible look that told her at once that he knew everything. Before that look, she quaked.

“The children will be glad to know that we are to have another child.” He said it quietly. It was both an act of mercy and an order, and she hardly knew whether she felt relief, or that a knife had been stabbed, deservedly, in her heart. And as he gazed down at her, for he was still by some way the taller, she thought: Dear God, but he is terrible. Terrible, and fair. You had to admire him. She did admire him. But she felt nothing. She saw him, as never before, for the fine and noble man he was. And felt nothing. She could think only of Brian O'Byrne. The child was his. She was sure of it.