“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.
All the time the baby was growing, she had longed for O’Byrne. She had imagined him at his house and up in the mountains. How she wanted him to be with her, to put his hands on her and to feel the little life within her, to share it with her. His absence was like a nagging pain. She wanted to write to him, and discovered she could do so through the new Post Office. Making the letter look like a business communication of some kind, she sent him a carefully worded message, indicating that she hoped he would come to call at the house of Smith the merchant soon. And then she waited.
Heart over head, as Lawrence would have said. She had not reckoned with this agony of separation and uncertainty; and yet, she told herself, she’d have done it all again, for the wild release the affair had given her, and for the new joy it had brought into her life. She saw the irony—that her joy was only by courtesy of her husband’s kindness—but she could not be answerable for that. Life was as it was. There was no more to say.
He came at last, with Maurice. He had waited, cleverly, at a place in the town where he knew her son would pass. And with a cry of joy at seeing him, Maurice had brought him to the house. When they were alone for a moment, she had reminded him: “The child is yours. I know it.” And he had smiled.
“I’ve dreamed of running away with you,” she told him. “Running off to the mountains with you in the old Irish way.”
“You would, too.” He laughed softly. “You would if you could. I think you’re even wilder than I am.”
“Perhaps I will,” she said.
He stroked her hair affectionately.
“You’re better off here.”
“Do you love me?” She looked at him in doubt.
“Is your memory so short?” He was still stroking her hair.
“I’m getting very big.”
“You are magnificent.” It was said with real feeling. Then he continued softly: “You are so beautiful, you know. So beautiful.”
They had heard Walter enter the house. O’Byrne had kissed her lightly and left the room. She heard his voice outside in the passage as he encountered Walter, and gave him the usual congratulations. She heard Walter reply quietly but firmly: “She is with her family now.” And she knew that O’Byrne would not visit the house again.
You are so beautiful—those meaningless words had brought her joy and comfort many times in the weeks ahead.
When the baby was born, everyone had made a fuss of it. Maurice in particular had looked again and again to see if the baby had his green eyes. “Babies’ eyes often look blue for a little while,” she had told him. “You can’t be sure of the colour at first.” But the tiny boy’s eyes were not green. They were blue.
It was only a little while after the birth that she realised that something was wrong.
If Lord Deputy Wentworth considered the Ireland under his charge in the spring of 1639, he could feel some satisfaction. True, he had by no means done all that he wanted to do. The plantations were nothing like the ordered Protestant colonies that they were meant to be. The one he’d planned for Galway was not even begun. If he went into the house of any merchant or craftsman in Dublin, or any gentleman in the country, he’d probably find scurrilous pamphlets about himself. But it was an age of pamphleteering; and if he was hated by Catholic and Protestant alike, he did not care. He wasn’t interested in being popular. He was interested in raising money for the king. And in order. “I believe in being thorough,” he liked to say. “Thorough.” And he had certainly proved it. They might hate him in Ireland, but they were still cowed, and the island was quiet— which was more than could be said of the rest of the king’s realm.
King Charles’s attempt to bully the Scots had proved a disaster. Having pledged to their Covenant that they’d have none of Charles’s popish church north of the border, the Scots had stuck to it. Charles had blustered, then tried to negotiate. The Scots had watched him impassively. “He’d like to compel us, but he hasn’t the power,” they correctly concluded. And they sat tight. By the spring of 1639, therefore, King Charles had decided on a show of force. He began to collect troops, and tried to find gentlemen who’d be willing to lead them. It wasn’t proving easy.
On a mild day in April, down on the old Wood Quay, the people watching the boats bringing passengers from a vessel anchored out in the str
eam saw a curious sight. For clambering with surprising agility from a boat, at the very spot where, over forty years before he had first set foot on Irish soil, came the tall, spindly figure of Doctor Simeon Pincher. He was dressed, as always, in black. But today, instead of the stiff Puritan hat that he normally favoured, Doctor Pincher was wearing a large, floppy cloth hat of the kind that, in a later age, would be called a tam-o’-shanter. And when the boatman, hoping for a tip, asked him, “Are you all right, Sir?” he answered very cheerfully, in a voice that the boatman could have sworn sounded Scottish:
“Aye, man, I’m well enough.”
Doctor Pincher had been to Scotland.
There were many in Trinity College who believed that Doctor Pincher had become a little eccentric. There was no harm in this. Elderly university teachers were supposed to be eccentric. So the sight of the strange hat would only have brought smiles of pleasure to the undergraduates as he strode past the college gates to his lodgings. And if the Calvinist firebrand who had electrified the congregation at Christ Church years before was now seen as harmless and a little mad, this suited Pincher very well.
Before reaching his lodgings, Pincher sent a college servant on two commissions: the first to fetch a pie from Tidy’s wife; the second to find young Faithful Tidy and tell him to come to his lodgings at four o’clock precisely. As soon as he was home, Pincher poured himself a small glass of brandy and then sat down to write.
When Faithful Tidy came to the lodgings, he made sure to be on time. In doing so, he was carefully following his father’s orders.
It had become clear, as soon as he arrived at Trinity, that having personally guaranteed his presence there, Doctor Pincher regarded Faithful as his personal property. The young man, who still referred to the learned doctor as “Old Inky” behind his back, had somewhat objected to being used to run errands, but his father had counselled him to be patient.
“How often does he call upon you, Faithful?”
“Maybe once a week.”
“That’s not so much. You owe him something. Just do it with a willing manner.” His father nodded. “He may be old, Faithful, and not the man he was in Dublin once, but you never can tell how he may be useful to you in good time, if you serve him well.”
More recently, Faithful had come with another complaint.
“He has me take letters to a place down by Saint Patrick’s and leave them in a doorway.”
“No harm in that.”
“The letter’s always sealed. Addressed to Master Clarke.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I never see the man. I just leave it there. Once, I asked a neighbour who Master Clarke might be, and he said he never knew such a person. There’s something strange about the business, in my opinion. I’d like to wait one day and see who takes the letter. Or break the seal and read it.”
At this, however, his father had become very agitated.
“Don’t do it, Faithful. This is none of your affair. And if it’s anything it shouldn’t be, the less you know the better.” He looked at his son urgently. “You carry a letter from Doctor Pincher of Trinity College. You know nothing of the contents or who receives it. You’ve done nothing wrong. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
And it was a letter to the possibly fictitious Master Clarke that Pincher put into his hands at four o’clock precisely that afternoon, with instructions to take it to the usual place. Faithful set off at once.
When Faithful had gone, Pincher stood up, stretched, poured a glass of wine, and cut himself a large slice of pie. He felt contented with the world.
His visit to Scotland had been a great success. He had travelled to Edinburgh and met numerous learned preachers and Presbyterian gentlemen. He had liked them, and the place, so well that he had reflected to himself: I should have come here when I was a young man, instead of Dublin. It was soon clear to him that the great National Covenant to which the Scots had sworn was a formidable instrument indeed. King Charles might march northwards with whatever following he could gather, but the Scots weren’t frightened in the least.
“God’s on our side,” one gentleman had told him. “Also the numbers.”
It was also clear that these gentlemen had been in correspondence with some of the Puritan gentlemen in England. The king would not find it easy to get support against the Scottish Covenanters from his English subjects. Pincher had returned more than ever determined to pursue his own secret war.
The document which Faithful Tidy had just taken would be collected by a third party, whose name was not Clarke, and thence delivered anonymously to a printer. Within days it would appear in Dublin, the Ulster plantation, and many other places besides. It was a vigorous little pamphlet. Late in life, Pincher had discovered a talent for journalism. Its object was to attack no less a person than the Lord Deputy himself.
Would Pincher be in danger if he were discovered as the author? Possibly. In England, seditious writers had even been known to have their ears cut off. But having lived so long, having been repressed in his personal life and blighted in his ambition, Pincher hardly cared. His mission in life was to keep the pure flame of the Calvinist faith burning brightly in Ireland, to proclaim God’s word and the Puritan cause, and to attack the evils of popery. He was careful not to attack the king, but he could and did insult the cursed Wentworth.
But of course the thing was deeper and more dangerous than that, and here his visit to Scotland had greatly encouraged him. For in Scotland he thought he saw a potential parallel. What if the Presbyterians of Ulster—many of whom were Scots—were to form a Covenant like their kinsmen across the water? There would be others, from the powerful Earl of Cork to the Puritans in Dublin, who would put pressure on the government. If Wentworth could be removed, the case would be even better. How this might come about, and where it might all lead, he could not yet foresee. But the general direction was clear. The men of God were on the march, and the popish King of England sooner or later would have to give way.
That evening, he wrote a letter to a Presbyterian gentleman in Ulster whose name had been given him when he was in Scotland. When he had finished, he smiled to himself. He would send it through Wentworth’s own Post Office.
She had not known at first. She might have been alerted when Maurice remarked, “His face looks strange,” and Walter had taken him by the arm and said, “The child’s just born.” She might have realised, but in the first flush of her happiness, she had seen what she wanted to. The others had all known, too, but it was Walter who had decided when she should be told, and he had done it himself, very gently, as soon as he judged she was ready.
“Anne, it seems the child is . . . sickly.” He paused. “Not whole.”
“Not whole? Misshapen? The child is misshapen?”
“It will be a simpleton.”
For a moment she had not wanted to believe it, but she had looked carefully and seen the truth of it: the broad face, the tilted eyes, the flat back of the baby’s head—the mongoloid features left little doubt. She had seen children like that before. In old times, in some countries she had heard, such babies were held to be the offspring of werewolves and were burned at the stake. In Ireland, more often than not they were treated with kindness. But they grew up slowly, never to full height, clumsy of speech. Often as not, they died before they were adults. Was her lovely child, the baby given her by O’Byrne up in the wild beauty of the Wicklow Mountains, such a one? Was it possible? How could it be?
After he had told her, Walter had kissed the child and placed it in her arms.
“He is God’s creature, and we shall love him all the same,” he remarked quietly. It was typical of his generosity, and she could not but be grateful. But after he had left her alone again, she had held the baby close to her, and after she had quietly cried for a while, she had been overcome with a sense of passionate protectiveness which the thought that she had failed, and that his life would be short, only made the more intense. Sometimes,
these children were almost normal. When Walter had come back again, she had looked up at him defensively.
“He’s only a little imperfect,” she said.
In a sense she realised, for Walter, it had been a relief. The presence of a healthy, handsome child of O’Byrne in his home, to mock him into his old age, could not be something he looked forward to very much. Indeed, her husband might secretly have hoped that the baby would be stillborn. In his eyes, at least, this defective child could in some sense be discounted, especially when set beside his own, handsome young Maurice. She had no doubt also that, though he had too much grace ever to say it, Walter must consider the baby’s condition a sign of God’s displeasure at her conduct. Most people would have thought the same. And if her husband was too kind to say it, she certainly expected something of the kind when Lawrence came to see her a week after the discovery. She was greatly surprised when the Jesuit picked up the baby and, having examined it closely, remarked:
“It has been noted by physicians that these children are usually born to older women. It is not known why.” After a short pause, he continued: “If you wish, later, for the child to be looked after with kindness, I can make arrangements. I know of such a place.”
“I should rather care for him myself.”
“That is between you and your husband.” He had given her a searching look. “Your husband, Anne, is beyond all praise. I speak as a simple Christian.”
“I know, Lawrence.”
“I am glad.” Mercifully, he had left it at that.
They called the baby Daniel.
To be fair, it wasn’t often that Maurice Smith gave his father any trouble. But that didn’t prevent Walter from worrying about him. Like any parent, he worried about what might happen as much as what had.
It was a curious feature of Walter’s mind that, despite his awareness that he was, by ancestry, an Irish O’Byrne, he always considered that he was entirely English, and that the Irish strain in his blood was like red hair, green eyes, or madness—that might or might not show up in some family member. His fear, which he never expressed to Anne, was that Maurice might turn out like his brother Patrick: handsome, charming, but weak. This Walter considered the Irish streak. All through the boy’s childhood, therefore, he had kept an eye out: if he thought that Maurice was not attending to his studies, or had not finished a task he’d been set, he would quietly but firmly see that the work was done. As Maurice approached manhood, his father thought that, on the whole, he was sound.