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  Jamie's father, James, was often away, on business in Belfast or Dublin,

  but sometimes Jamie was allowed to accompany him to races in which a

  Jackson horse was entered. Then his father was a different man to him.

  Free of the burden of being a parent, free to indulge his love of the

  track, James Jackson was attentive to his son, and taught him something

  of the ownership of racehorses, and the special skills that racing re-

  quired. If his horse won, which his favorite, Crazy Jane, often did, James

  was expansive and bought his son gifts. If their horse was not placed,

  father and son traveled home in mutual, depressed silence.

  Occasionally, his father would entertain, and the breakfast for the hunt

  club would be held at the mansion. These social events were used by James

  to extend and develop his social and business connections with the ruling

  class, with the Leslies and especially Dacre Hamilton.

  10 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  Hamilton was the major English presence in the county of Monaghan, and

  served as sheriff. He was a strict Protestant, with no sympathy for

  Catholics. He took pleasure in rigidly enforcing all the penal laws

  against the peasants, whom he regarded as illiterate idolaters. These

  laws, instituted after the British victory at the Battle of the Boyne,

  were used to keep the defeated Catholics out of money, land, and power.

  The laws encouraged religious conversion and informing on neighbors-and

  even families, for only a Protestant in a Catholic family could inherit

  the land.

  James expected his children to attend these functions, which they did

  unwillingly, for Dacre Hamilton was not loved by any of them. He had once

  briefly imprisoned their brother and sister, John and Eleanor, for some

  youthful high jinks. John had defended a hedge-school teacher against an

  irate landlord, and Eleanor had announced in public that she thought the

  religious persecution of the Catholics was obscene. Dacre Hamilton also

  protested to James Jackson, and warned him to exercise greater control

  over his children's opinions and actions. James had taken a riding crop

  to John, and locked Eieanor in her room for three days. It was this that

  persuaded John to emigrate to America and Eleanor to move to Dublin. The

  other Jackson children were wary of Hamilton, and while they enjoyed the

  sport of the hunt, they disliked the overweening sycophancy to England

  of the hunters. Encouraged by Sean, Jamie began to believe that most of

  the club would rather be in pursuit of Irish peasants than foxes or

  hares.

  Nothing was more indicative of the social gap that existed between Jamie

  and Sean than the manner of their formal education. A tutor was engaged

  for Jamie: Jimmy Hanna, an impoverished young man of good leaming, from

  Dublin, who had recently graduated from Trinity College and was looking

  to make his way in an unfair world. The classroom was the music room of

  the Jackson house, and they would sit together in isolate splendor, the

  teacher and his only student, and Jamie was introduced to the classical

  world of Latin and Greek, of mathematics and history. As he got to know

  his student better, and trusted him more, Jimmy introduced him to the

  glories of Irish literature. Jamie loved the beautiful words, and the

  BLOODLINES 11

  worlds they evoked of rain-washed fields and white-walled cottages, of

  lowering skies and breaking sunlight. Of heroes and rainbows.

  With poetry as a foundation, Jimmy gently led his student to Ireland's

  present troubles, gave him a clear appreciation of the battle that lay

  ahead to rid their country of foreign rule, and taught him that freedom

  was the most precious word in any language.

  Sean's school was behind a hedge. The British authorities were fearful

  of education for the peasants. History, presented in the wrong light,

  could lead to sedition, and many of the hedge-school teachers were deeply

  involved in the liberation movements. The teachers taught where they

  could, in ditches and behind hedgerows, with some lucky few having access

  to a shed or shack. They were paid in kind, with peat for their fires,

  or food for their stomachs-small stabs of bacon, or some potatoes, a bag

  of meal, a pound of butter or a few eggs. Textbooks were few, and those

  the teachers did have they had usually copied themselves, from printed

  books they could not afford to buy. Often a young man of the village

  would be posted as lookout, for many landlords kicked teachers off their

  properties, and burned their precious books, or charged them with

  sedition.

  Sean's classes lasted only two or three hours, and he could go at all

  only when Maureen had something to give the teacher, but Jamie studied

  morning and afternoon. His older sister Sara was a frequent visitor to

  his classroom, for she was smitten by the tutor.

  Jimmy Hanna had come to them through a family connection. The Irish

  Protestants were few in number, and even fewer owed their first

  allegiance to Ireland rather than England. Jimmy's brother Hugh was a

  friend of their sister Martha, who was completing her studies in Dublin.

  Both brothers were handsome, educated men, dedicated to the Irish cause,

  and both sisters, Martha and Sara, were headstrong and willful. Lacking

  parental affection and guidance, they longed for love, and followed the

  example of their older sister, the firebrand Eleanor, by challenging

  their father and all he stood for, if only to try.to make him appreciate

  them more, or at least play some active role in their lives. Their

  patriotism was genuine,

  12 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  and deeply felt, and they saw in their own lives the greater cause. Like

  Ireland, they were unloved by him who governed them and had dominion over

  them, so they identified with the larger community, and dedicated

  themselves to its well-being, for at core they were deeply lonely. When

  a handsome young man who shared her convictions rode into Ballybay and

  into her life, and encouraged her to have faith in herself, Sara fell

  hopelessly in love. She would sit for hours in the classroom watching him

  teach, learning from him herself, and about him.

  It worked to Jamie's advantage, for sometimes, on a dreary, drizzly

  afternoon or a pretty spring day, Jimmy, anxious to be alone with Sara,

  would curtail the lessons, and Sara's eyes would sparkle. She would send

  Jamie off to old Quinn in the stables, or to Jugs for some food, or to

  play with his croppy friend Sean. Then she would sit with Jimmy and hold

  hands with him, or sometimes they would kiss, and the warmth and

  reassurance of his presence, the strong beliefs that they shared, and the

  generosity of his nature persuaded Sara that she was loved.

  When she found out that Sarah Black had become more than a friend to her

  father, although less than a wife, Sara was bitterly hurt. She could not

  understand why her father would not marry the woman, and bring her to his<
br />
  house so she could fulfill some of the functions of mother-or older woman

  friend at least. In her distress, she turned to Jimmy for comfort, and,

  lacking any moral conviction or example, she surrendered herself to him.

  They took their pleasure secretly, covertly, in places where they thought

  they would not be discovered, but they were not discreet enough. Jamie,

  returning to the house one day because Sean was sick, saw them coupling

  together in the classroom. He did not announce his presence, for he was

  at puberty himself, and fascinated by the things Sean had told him. He

  watched Sara and Jimmy for a while, through the slightly open door, but

  then became embarrassed and excited, and crept away to his bedroom, to

  caress his own adolescent need.

  He could not keep quiet about what he had seen for long, for it gave him

  some ascendancy over his sister, which was important to a boy of his age.

  Sara blushed and flared, and slapped his face for a peeping Tom, and then

  cried, and swore

  BLOODLINES 13

  him to secrecy. When she had his promise, she giggled, and began to treat

  him as a young man from then on, and no longer as a boy.

  Thus the Jackson children grew up effectively left to their own devices,

  and found love where they could. They were not unhappy, for each child had

  developed a keen self-reliance, and each tried to give his brothers and

  sisters something of what they lacked. These sibling bonds, woven in

  youth, stayed with them, and were a source of comfort and support to them

  all their lives, though never constraining.

  But Jamie determined to create a family that would supply to his own

  children what he had never had. His father's house was not his home,

  merely the house in which he lived.

  For home, he had learned from Sean, is where you are loved.

  2

  Jamie was fourteen when he had his first experience of violence by the

  soldiers. For years he had known that the local priest, Father Moran,

  forbidden to practice his religion in public, still tended the spiritual

  needs of his peasant congregation in a small cave on Crieve Mountain.

  Jamie knew very little about the Catholic religion, but was told by his

  father and other Protestants that it was a pagan cult of cannibalism, ven-

  erating a priest in Rome, and worshiping graven images. Its followers

  believed that in the communion they were eating the actual flesh of

  Christ. Jamie had never seen the priest, but knew of him from the peasant

  whisperings. He became a legendary figure in Jamie's mind, a secret,

  superstitious man of magic, who lived with the leprechauns on the misty

  mountain, and practiced strange and ancient rituals, spoken in Latin, that

  were to do with birth, and marriage, and death, and the life to come.

  14 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  He was with Sean at the cottage when the messenger came by. The

  messengers carried poles, to help them vault over hedges and ditches, and

  brought important news to the villages of Ireland. This messenger, wary

  of the longer-haired Jamie, whispered to Patrick in Gaelic, which Jamie

  hardly understood. Patrick spoke to Maureen and Sean, also in Gaelic, and

  Jamie could feel a sudden excitement among them, and a sense, for the

  first time in his life, that he was an outsider to them. When he and Sean

  went fishing the next day, Jamie badgered his friend about the messenger,

  and eventually Sean swore him to secrecy and told him the news. It was

  Easter, and Father Moran was going to say a public mass in the village

  square the following Sunday.

  Jamie was thrilled and appalled. The saying of mass was proscribed, and

  if the soldiers or any English sympathizer knew of it, the priest would

  be imprisoned. At the same time, Jamie itched to know about the secret

  religion, and what it was that made its persecutors so angry.

  Reluctantly, Sean agreed to take Jamie to the mass, but made him swear,

  by all he held holy, by his mother's grave, that he would tell no one.

  They met at the cottage on Sunday, ate soda bread and cheese, and then

  Sean walked with Jamie to the village. Maureen and Patrick went on

  before.

  Jamie was not sure what he expected to see, but certainly had not

  expected what he saw. In the village square, an old man in black was

  holding a simple cross and chanting in Latin to the fifty or so kneeling

  villagers assembled there. He saw nothing subversive, nothing pagan,

  nothing that might destroy the fabric of the society in which he lived,

  only a deep and simple faith, and an adoration of the cross and what it

  symbolized.

  It was Easter Sunday and Christ was the risen king, he understood from

  the Latin words, and his Protestant soul could not argue with that, for

  it was what he was taught and what he believed. He found the rituals odd

  but oddly beautiful. He marveled at the true belief of those assembled,

  and at their stubbornness and bravery for resolutely following a faith

  that was so viciously circumscribed by the authorities.

  Then the soldiers came.

  A troop of red-coated British soldiers marched into the

  BLOODLINES 15

  town, their officer on horseback. The officer rode to Father Moran and

  accused him of sedition. Fury and resentment ran through the congregation,

  but the priest held up his cross.

  "Go peacefully about your ways," he called to his flock. They fell

  silent, but stayed to watch for the safety of their shepherd. Jamie,

  standing with Sean, was aware of a deep and awful anger in his friend,

  and Sean glared at Jamie. -

  "Was it you who told?" he whispered furiously. Jamie swore not, but Sean

  was not convinced.

  "You knew," he said. "And someone told."

  Father Moran was arrested and tied to the posts of the village well. The

  old priest was flogged mercilessly in front of the people, and then

  dragged away. A palpable fury ran through the Crowd as they witnessed the

  flaying, and they jeered the soldiers, but the time was not right for

  rebellion. Some few lads threw stones and clumps of earth at the sol-

  diers, but were chased and beaten for it.

  As they walked home, Sean kicked the ground in his fury and frustration.

  Jamie tried to say something to comfort him, but Sean rounded on him, and

  asked him if he was proud of his rich, Protestant ruling class now. Jamie

  protested. He had been horrified by what he had seen, but did not know

  what they could have done to prevent it.

  "We must fight," Sean said. "We must be rid of them."

  Jamie could not see how they could win. The soldiers had guns. The

  peasants had only pitchforks.

  "It is enough," Sean insisted. "We are many and they are few, and it is

  better to die for what you believe in than live in bondage."

  He looked at his friend, who was not, at that moment, his friend.

  "Would you die for what you believe in?"

  Jamie felt guilty, because he was not sure th
at he would. The violence

  of the soldiers, and their blatant abuse of their power, had frightened

  him.

  Sean saw the fear and doubt in his eyes. "Living up there in your fine

  mansion, born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you don't even know what

  you believe," he said disgustedly, and turned away.

  It was true, Jamie thought. He loved Sean and his family,

  16 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  and Jugs and old Quinn, and his heart bled for their Ireland. He loved his

  sisters and brothers, and respected his father and what he had achieved.

  Above everything, he knew he loved being alive, and shuddered at the

  prospect of laying down his life for a cause he did not believe could

  triumph. The temporary souring of his friendship with Sean made him

  examine his heart, and he was shocked to discover that there was nothing

  he believed in that was worth his life. And not having such a cause, and

  lacking his friend, he was lonely, and sought for some passionate faith.

  Jamie returned home to be greeted by his father's wrath. James knew his

  son had attended the mass, because Dacre Hamilton had told him. He knew

  that a visiting English business friend had been assaulted, on leaving the

  Jackson mansion, by some peasants as a reprisal for the beating of Father

  Moran, because Dacre Hamilton had told him. He knew that his standing

  within his small, privileged community was threatened by the various

  actions of his children, because Dacre Hamilton had told him.

  James Jackson also knew that his business could not survive without the

  patronage of the British. He didn't need Dacre Hamilton to tell him this;

  it was the law of the land. There was an embargo on all Irish commerce

  and trade unless a British agent was involved. If it was decided that

  James was a Catholic sympathizer, or an Irish collaborationist, the

  agents would find other sources of supply for linen, and James could not

  sell his except on the local market, where the prices were meaningless.

  All because of his foolish children.

  He was hurt and angry. He had tried to give his offspring every

  advantage, and, one by one, they had rejected him, and all he had done

  for them.

  "All this could be yours," he shouted at Jamie, waving his hand at the

  estate, pointing to the mill. "But only if you have the good sense to

  protect it!"

  Obviously, the boy had no sense, and was in sore need of discipline. For

  reasons that were as much political as practical, James did what he had

  done for each of his other children. He enrolled Jamie in a school in

  Dublin, and wrote to his brother Henry asking if Jamie might board with

  him there.

  BLOODLINES 17

  All the Jackson children had boarded with Uncle Henry when they went to

  school in Dublin. He was all the things their father was not-a

  warmhearted and generous man, and dedicated to Ireland. He had a fine

  house in the best part of the city, but was living on yesterday's income.

  He owned an ironworks that had been successful, but the more he announced

  his sentiments against the British, the more his business declined. He

  still had loyal clients, but none of the large orders from the British

  Commissioner or the military came his way anymore. His financial fate was

  exactly what James Jackson was trying so desperately to avoid.

  The prospect of Dublin thrilled Jamie. He had never been there, but knew

  from his sisters, when they came home to visit, that it was a vibrant and

  exciting city, full of adventure and teeming life. He was sad to leave

  Washington and Jugs and old Quinn, and said many fond farewells to them,

  and assured Jugs he would change his linen frequently, and eat well, and

  not get into trouble. On his last day in Ballybay, he walked to Maureen's

  cottage, and said his good-byes to her and to Patrick, and thanked them

  for their many kindnesses to him.

  Then he turned to Scan, whom he had hardly seen since their argument. To