The Rebels of Ireland

  Then Stephen said that he was sorry that he should have asked her at such a moment when she would wish to have time to consider. And perhaps she might like to consider the matter on her way to Liverpool, and, if it was possible, give him her answer before the ship sailed to America; and that he would gladly await her decision in Liverpool.

  Maureen said, very quietly, “I do not know,” as if in a daze. But she did not mean that she did not know if she loved him, or whether she desired to marry him. She meant that she did not know if he truly wished it, or even, if he did, whether she—after so much time and so much pain—a woman of thirty now, who had never been kissed and lost all that she’d loved, could make him a wife.

  Somewhere on the ship, a bell was rung and a voice cried out that those not sailing should soon disembark.

  Then Tidy placed his arm around her and said to her:

  “Come. You have nothing to lose.”

  Had she not? She could not tell.

  “Come, Maureen, it will be all right.”

  So, her heart beginning to tremble suddenly so that, unable to help it, she started to shake, and held between the two of them, she let Stephen and Tidy lead her down the gangplank and off the ship.

  RISING

  1891

  IT BEGAN, though he, Fintan, could not have foreseen the consequences, in the high, secret places in the Wicklow Mountains where the little streams gather and run down, like the River Liffey itself, into the wider world.

  He did not know—as fathers often do not know—what influence he had upon the boy. But then, with his feelings for the place and the memories he had, how could he not pass them on?

  He was a long-legged man, with a dark, hanging moustache and thinning hair that rose in brave spiralling curls from his head. He loved to put the boy on his shoulders and stride up into the mountains. And always he’d be telling him things. He couldn’t help it. A year ago he’d taken Willy to Glendalough. God knows what the boy had understood. He’d only been six. “In my grandfather’s day,” Fintan had told him, “this was a strange sort of a place, all grown over, with a pagan reputation. ‘There were junketings at Glendalough on midsummer nights that cannot be spoken of,’ he used to say. Until the priests put a stop to it, you know.” Willy noted a certain wistfulness in his father’s voice, even though its significance was unknown to him. Fintan had shown Willy the two lakes and the hermitage of St. Kevin and the monastery buildings with their round tower. “When I was young,” he explained, “it was Sir William Wilde, the eminent surgeon from Dublin, that used to bring parties of people up here. But there was nothing of the pagan about him. He was all for uncovering the ruins and restoring the place. A distinguished old gentleman. He had a long white beard. And it’s his son Oscar, the writer, that’s made such a name for himself in London now with his plays.” For if Fintan O’Byrne was not an educated man, he was a great reader of newspapers, and it was often surprising what he knew.

  His grandmother was one of the numerous descendants of Patrick Walsh and Brigid, so he was aware that the blood of Walsh and Smith, as well as O’Byrne, ran in his veins. He was especially proud of being an O’Byrne however, for two reasons. The first was that, by tradition, he took it as a given that the estate of Rathconan, by rights, belonged to his family.

  The second concerned his great-grandfather, Finn O’Byrne. For about a dozen years after Emmet’s rebellion, Finn had returned to Rathconan with his family. It had been known that he’d had some part in Emmet’s noble undertaking, but in the safety of his old age, when Finn had let people know that it was he who had killed the infamous Lord Mountwalsh, he had naturally become something of a local celebrity. Fintan himself had always been a law-abiding man, but he was certainly proud that his ancestors should include such a noble and heroic revolutionary as Finn O’Byrne.

  But if he brought up his family to be proud of the area to which they belonged, and their place in it, there was one figure he insisted that they revere.

  “Haven’t I stood beside him in a mountain stream, just the two of us, like ancient Irishmen, panning for gold, to make a ring for Katherine O’Shea?” he would cry with pained emotion.

  Parnell. Parnell the patriot. Parnell the leader, whose beloved home of Avondale lay only a few miles down beyond Glendalough.

  And what was the word the boy would hear again and again— and with good reason—whenever that blessed name was said? “Betrayed, boy. Betrayed by his own. Betrayed by the priests as well, it has to be said. Betrayed.”

  “What else could the priests do,” his mother would protest, “with him a known adulterer? They could hardly condone it.” His mother’s role was to ensure that religion was respected in the house. Willy understood. “It was the British that betrayed him. Murderers that they are.”

  Her own mother had lost all her family in the Famine before she came to County Wicklow. And she had brought up her daughter to know that it was the English policy of deliberate murder that had done it.

  But it was a single day, in October, that Willy would remember best.

  “Come, Willy,” said his father, “we’ll go up to the big house and see Mrs. Budge.” He smiled. “She won’t eat you.”

  Willy was not so sure.

  The return of Rose Budge to Rathconan that summer had been the subject of much curiosity. Though her father had left her the estate some years before, she hadn’t been seen there for almost twenty years. Her husband, Colonel Browne, was scarcely remembered at all, though Willy had heard his father describe him once. “A great gentleman he was. And a hunting man. There wasn’t a fence he wouldn’t take. And a scholar too, I believe.”

  This last was true. It was really a tragedy that the Colonel and Rose had never had any children, for the Colonel was not only a fair mathematician, but an excellent linguist who had studied the cultures of India, to which his military service had taken him. Rose had never been brought up to be anything but the wife of an Irish landowner or military man; but having no children, she had per-force to join in her husband’s interests or find herself rather lonely. And Colonel Browne, being a kindly man, shared as much with her as he could, without over-taxing her intelligence. As a result, her imagination had become like some large store room in an oriental bazaar, containing a random selection of exotic objects. And it was with all these memories of oriental customs, and huge Indian skies that, upon the untimely death of the Colonel earlier that year, she had returned—middle-aged, but still the same strong, rangy figure she had been in her youth—to take up residence, as the last of the Budges, at her ancestral home.

  Willy and his father were shown into the library.

  Though it had two windows and a fireplace, it was not a large room, and had never contained more than a modicum of books; but it had to be said that to enter it now was to be impressed.

  For a start, the room was stiflingly hot. Though it was a warm October day outside, the windows were all tightly closed, and the fire was well stoked. The curtains had been almost drawn together, so that each window now appeared as a bright slit, through which the sunlight came like a knife. She must have taken a meal in there, for Willy’s senses were affronted by the spicy, sweet, unfamiliar smell of curry, which permeated the air and made him feel slightly dizzy. On one wall there now hung a picture of an Indian temple under an orange sky which, it seemed, must also have smelled of curry. And in front of some empty bookshelves, in a black frame, there was a sepia photograph of an oriental wall carving of such startling eroticism that, if there was any chance the boy might have understood it, his father would have been obliged to cover his eyes. But it was not at the photograph, but at the figure of Mrs. Budge, that Willy was staring in alarm.

  She was sitting upright in a wooden-backed chair, wearing a long, dark red gown and a turban.

  Why she had started to wear this strange headgear was known only to herself. She had made it one afternoon in September, put it on her head, looked in the glass and, presumably, liked what she saw: for she had been wea
ring it ever since.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Budge,” said Fintan.

  There had been some uncertainty, when she first arrived back, as to what she should be called. As the Colonel’s widow, she was, of course, Mrs. Browne. But when the oldest member of the household, Mrs. Brennan, who had been cook to her father, tentatively called her by that name, the lady of the house had looked thoughtful and remarked, “I was always Rose Budge, when I was here before.” And when, as an experiment, the cook called her “Mrs. Budge” the next time, she received a nod which seemed to indicate approval. So it was always “Mrs. Budge” now, which served as a gentle reminder that the family were still the masters of Rathconan.

  And did she mean to keep the place? It seemed so. For when Mrs. Brennan enquired, “Will you be staying here a while, do you think, Mrs. Budge?” she had received the firmest of replies.

  “Where else would I stay but at Rathconan, where my family has been for two hundred and fifty years?”

  She looked at her tenant now, and asked him politely enough what he wanted.

  “It’s about my land, Mrs. Budge,” he said. “We’ve been tenants on it as long as the Budge family has been here.”

  “And you’ve more now, I think, than was ever the case before,” she remarked with a nod.

  If the Famine had taken lives—and over a million had died—it was the larger process the blight had set in motion that had really changed the face of Ireland—eviction. In the years of the Famine and those that followed, the evictions had continued at a staggering pace. In the west of course, but in most parts of Ireland also, not tens but hundreds of thousands of families had been pushed out of their small, subdivided, and unprofitable holdings. Clusters of cottages, each with an acre or two, had been pulled down and put under plough or returned to pasture. In some areas, entire populations had receded, like an ebbing tide, from the land. Sometimes, large landholdings were left untenanted, or let to shrewd-eyed graziers. Often, the more successful tenants gained larger farms. An individual tenant was far more likely to be farming fifteen, thirty, or more acres, nowadays. And the new generation had learned a terrible lesson: the farm would not be subdivided now; it would pass on intact, to a son who, like as not had married later than his father had, and whose brothers would have to go out and make their own way in the world.

  In a way, it might almost be said that the English, who had always dreamed of populating Ireland with sturdy yeoman farmers, had got their wish—except for two differences: these family holdings were not English Protestant, but Irish Catholic farms; and with the memory of the Famine always hanging like a great cloud of anguish over the land, the farmers desired only to secure their hold upon their farms and, as soon as God granted, to see the usurping English landlords depart from them, never to return.

  The case of Fintan O’Byrne was of this kind. The clearances at Rathconan had not been wholesale like those in the west, but Mrs. Budge’s father had cleared out the subdivided holdings, and Fintan’s father had been one of the beneficiaries. The potato fields that had extended up the ancient hillside had been returned to grazing pasture now—though you could see their outlines clearly—and Fintan was tenant of dozens of acres, where his relations before the Famine had survived on little patches. In short, Rathconan had returned to something more like its traditional state, when Fintan’s ancestors had grazed their cattle upon the mountain slopes. And if Fintan had his way, the ownership of the land would soon return to him as well.

  “It’s my security I have in mind,” he said.

  “You’re a good tenant, I know,” she answered. “And there are no Captain Boycotts here.”

  It was forty years since the Tenants League had started to agitate for tenants’ rights in Ireland. Great men had taken the tenants’ side. In England, Gladstone, the powerful leader of the Liberal party, successors to the Whigs, had designed new laws to give them some protection. Most important of all, Parnell had been their champion. But progress had been slow. When, fifteen years ago, a new potato blight had started another wave of evictions—not without some violence—Parnell had given his famous order. Do not speak, he told the Irish, to any man who evicts his tenants; have no dealings with them, let them be isolated. “Shun them,” he commanded, “like a leper of old.” Captain Boycott, an agent responsible for numerous evictions, had been especially singled out. Since then, tenants had gained some further protections, but still not enough.

  “I was wishing to purchase the land I rent from you.”

  “To buy it?”

  “The Act allows . . .”

  She gave him a stony look.

  “I know about the Act.”

  It was a tribute to the effectiveness of Parnell in the London Parliament that not only the Liberals, but even the Tory party had now taken up the case of the Irish tenant. The government now wanted to encourage the tenant to buy his own land; and the latest legislation even offered a government loan to help him do so. If in his heart Fintan resented having to pay anything to recover land that, in his view, had been taken from him in the first place, he wouldn’t deny that the terms offered were quite attractive. “Four percent over forty-nine years. Over time that will be less than the rent I’d be paying,” he had calculated. Nor could Mrs. Budge have been surprised that he made the request. All over Ireland, during recent years, land had been changing hands from Protestant landlord to Catholic tenant at a remarkable rate. More than twenty-five thousand tenants had already taken up the government loans.

  “I suppose,” she continued quietly, “it’s Home Rule you’ll be wanting next.”

  He was silent. He wouldn’t deny it.

  Willy looked at the strange lady in her turban, and tried to work out how it was that the open mountain acres he knew and loved so well could depend upon the will of this being from another world in her frightening, spice-laden cocoon. The colour of her eyes was blue. That much seemed familiar. Her hair, and her face itself, it seemed to him, were drawn back and up into the tight recesses of that turban. Her features carried no expression that he could recognise.

  “I will consider the matter, Fintan, and we shall speak in a few days,” she said finally.

  Once outside, relieved to be in the fresh air, Willy turned to his father.

  “Shall we own our land again?” he asked.

  “Perhaps.” His father sighed. “But God knows what passes in that woman’s mind.”

  After they had gone, Rose Budge sat very still in her chair, thinking. She did not know why Fintan had brought the boy with him, to have the child standing there staring at her with eyes like saucers. Well, what of it? She must concentrate upon the matter in hand. She stared at the bright, intrusive slit of sunlight—the sunbeams, like so many thieves, softly stealing into the warm comfort of her home.

  So it had come to this. She did not blame Fintan O’Byrne. It was not he, but the man whom, no doubt, he worshipped, that was the cause of all this. Damned Parnell.

  Though they were neighbours and belonged to the same Protestant landowner class, the Budges had never cared for Parnell. “He has an American mother,” her father had always said. “That’s probably what’s the matter with him.” She herself had been abroad during his parliamentary career, but she had been kept well-informed.

  And scandalised. How could it be that Parnell, a Protestant landowner like herself, should so entirely have assumed the mantle of Daniel O’Connell? For that was what Parnell had done when, a dozen years ago he had burst, like a meteor, over the parliamentary sky. True, he could not be the champion of the Catholic Church. But he was the champion of the Catholic tenant and he had a formidable organisation. Moreover, he had taken O’Connell’s tactics to new heights, several times holding the balance of power in the British House of Commons and ruthlessly compelling both parties to legislate for the good of Ireland.

  And if Daniel O’Connell had hoped for the eventual Repeal of the Union with England, Parnell had been more blunt. He demanded Home Rule, loudly and firmly; he had
even pushed Gladstone to introduce a Home Rule Bill into Parliament. Personally, she had thought the whole thing folly. Even if the Ascendancy families like her own could be cowed or cheated into submission, there were others in Ireland made of sterner stuff. If the London men supposed that the Presbyterians up in Ulster would stand to be ruled by Catholics, they’d have a rude awakening. Lord Randolph Churchill had been correct when he had warned them: “Ulster will fight. And Ulster will be right.” Thank God Gladstone’s foolish measure had been smashed by conservative opposition. But that hadn’t quietened Parnell. In no time he’d had the Tory government doing everything it could, short of granting independence, to keep the Irish contented. Including this wretched business now of giving Fintan O’Byrne money to buy her out.

  “Traitor.” She said the word out loud to the listening room. A man who betrayed his class. Worse: because of him, the whole British Parliament was turning against their own kith and kin, the Irish Ascendancy. To pay the Catholics to buy us out of our homes, where we’ve been for centuries, and leave us to retire like servants pensioned off—to what? An apartment in Dublin or a suburban villa in England—we who were lords of the wide lands of Ireland? “Traitor.” She said it again, to the fire.

  At least, people said, he was a parliamentary man. There were others in Ireland who’d use other means entirely, murder even, to reach their ends. But weren’t some of those devils followers of Parnell, too? Some years ago, in Phoenix Park, the Chief Secretary, poor Lord Frederick Cavendish, had been murdered by extremists. At the time, she’d read that Parnell was behind it. Everybody nowadays told her no, it was all a forgery, he’d nothing to do with it. That might be the case. She couldn’t say. But he was a villain even so.

  He’d been punished, anyway. She wasn’t sorry. She’d heard that he’d been living with a woman not his wife, but the estranged wife of another. Mrs. O’Shea, they said, was a nice woman, and her husband had no interest in her. And certainly, those being the circumstances and after all those years, for O’Shea to have divorced her and named Parnell was quite uncalled for. It wasn’t what a gentleman would do at all. And it had destroyed the man. The English wouldn’t stand for it. Nor would the Catholic Church in Ireland, which had never been so pleased at his being a Protestant in the first place. They’d driven him out of politics. He was destroyed.