O'Hanlon

By Ron Duffy

A member of the ancient landowning Irish nobility, Redmond O'Hanlon is swept up in the Rebellion of 1641 which sought unsuccessfully the return of lands confiscated from traditional chieftains. He flees to France, serves with distinction in both the French and Spanish armies at war in Flanders, and returns to Ireland expecting the restitution of his family's lands by the restored King Charles II. Disappointed, he takes to the hills and woods of southern Ulster, the leader of a band of outlaws, famed as far as France for his daring exploits and his bold flaunting of attempts by the English government in Ireland to capture him and "rid the country of this most cunning and notorious challenge to their authority."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Duffy
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201068400

Ron Duffy

Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Ron Duffy spent three years “on the road”, mostly by bicycle, travelling extensively in both western and eastern Europe, with “working sojourns” in Norway, Austria and England.  HisMy adventuring over, he settled down to studies, and obtained a BA in Geography from the Queen’s University of Belfast. He then emigrated to Canada, took an MSc in Biogeography at the University of Calgary and studied for his PhD at McGill University in Montreal. In Montreal he started a long career as a university lecturer in geography. Duffy’s writing career began when he started publishing mostly travel and history articles in numerous Irish, British and Canadian newspapers and magazines. In 1988 McGill-Queen’s University Press published his non-fiction book, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War which was based on his PhD thesis. In 1988 his play, Hearts and Minds, won first prize in the novice section of the annual Alberta Playwriting Competition. Another play, Loved and Left, was given a staged reading by Theatre 80 in Calgary. Retired from lecturing, Duffy turned to writing full-time. In the Whistler Independent Book Awards competition in 2012 his novel Crossed Lives was a nominee, and his historical novel O’Hanlon received an Honourable Mention. He has also written a trilogy of Irish novels, The Unquiet Land, In Turbulent Times, and A Further Shore, since published independently in one volume, and a World War Two novel Brandt.  As a companion volume to the Ulster trilogy he wrote Until The Troubles Started: A Brief Political History of Northern Ireland.

Book preview

My wife

has wanted me to write this novel

for a very long time.

Here it is,

JOANNE,

written for you

with immeasurable gratitude

for fifty years of care, devotion and love.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/gif/ire1600.gif

PART ONE:

REBELLION

ONE

I hate him. I loathe him. I detest him. I should love to tear his Cicero and Caesar and Pliny into thin strips and stuff them down his gullet till he chokes. I should love to tie the ends of his loose sleeves together in a tight knot and hang him from the highest wall in school for all to ...

‘O'Hanlon.’

His name shouted so loudly, the sound would have drowned the loudest of thunderclaps. He snapped out of his subversive reverie. The Latin master's long, gaunt, shaven face was so close to his that he could feel the breath of him. As close as a living mortal came to a dragon’s breath.

‘Would you deign to descend from the empyrean heights of Elysium, in which you appear to be entranced, and join us mortals in this room, O’Hanlon?’

‘Yes, Magister Reddiman.’ O’Hanlon glanced down the table at which half a dozen students sat, all of their eyes fixed on him.

‘Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,' the teacher repeated loudly without moving his glowering face away from the unfortunate student’s. ‘You did hear me this time, O’Hanlon, you unwashed blackguard from the bogs of Hibernia.’

‘Yes, Magister Reddiman.’ O’Hanlon spoke with the recently acquired full adult pitch of a fifteen-year-old.

‘Now pray enlighten your fellow scholars as to what Gallia refers to.’ Reddiman stood up straight. ‘You have studied the text for today, have you not?’

‘Yes, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Well?’

‘Gallia refers to Gaul, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Gaul, you say. Gaul. Not a very enlightening response, O’Hanlon. You might simply have guessed Gaul from its similarity in sound to Gallia. So what in Caesar’s day, O'Hanlon, was Gaul?’

‘France, Magister Reddiman.’

‘France, you say. France. O'Hanlon, I fear that not too much of my teaching is managing to penetrate that block of bog-oak that serves you as a head.’ Reddiman turned towards the other end of the table and waved his book in the air. ‘Master Culpepper, from the open page before you, read that opening sentence, and Master Fletcher, you will inform this Hibernian ignoramus as to what territory was included in Gallia or Gaul.'

Thomas Culpepper, the boy with the unruly bush of brown hair and spotty face replied, 'Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.

‘Very good, Master Culpepper. Well read indeed.’ The teacher stood still, surveying the six young men seated in mute obedience along the opposite side of the table. His was a frightening presence in a black gown that hid the thinness of his tall body but not the scowling face with its dark, deep-set eyes and thick, bushy eyebrows. ‘From that sentence, Master Fletcher, what can you tell us about Gallia?’

‘G-G-Gallia was divided into three p-p-parts, Magister Reddiman,’ the pale-faced boy stammered nervously.

‘Exactly. And what would tell you right away that it included more than just France?’ The Latin teacher retreated slowly backward until his buttocks rested on the front edge of his desk.

‘One p-p-part was inhabited by the Belgae, Magister Reddiman, which would suggest that the territory known as Belgium was also part of Gaul.’

‘Very good, Master Fletcher.’ Reddiman smiled. ‘The Belgae were a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples, and Gaul was a territory covering not just France as we know it today but a large part of Western Europe.’ Reddiman turned to another student. ‘Do tell us, Master Grimstone, why this territory we are studying in Roman times is important to us today.’

‘It is still an area where nations are at war, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Exactly Master Grimstone.’ Reddiman gave Grimstone a fawning smile. ‘Not the Romans, of course.’

‘No, Magister Reddiman,’ Grimstone responded confidently. ‘Gallia includes the territory of Flanders, the theatre of wars between France and Spain, and France and Austria.’

‘The theatre of wars indeed. You are familiar with the terminology, Master Grimstone. Very commendable.’

Grimstone looked smugly around at his classmates and scowled at O’Hanlon.

Reddiman retired behind his desk and leaned on it with long, white hands that protruded from the floppy sleeves his black gown. A graduate from Emmanuel College of the University of Cambridge, Josiah Reddiman first taught at the prestigious Felsted School in Essex, a notable educational establishment for the sons of Puritan families. Four sons of Oliver Cromwell attended Felsted School, as did the mathematician John Wallis who was a pupil of Reddiman’s there. ‘Was Julius Caesar justified in waging war against the people of Gaul?’ Josiah Reddiman, the fearsome young Latin teacher, asked the class. His eyes moved from one intimidated student to another, then he picked his favourite victim. ‘O’Hanlon.’

‘No, I do not believe so, Magister Reddiman.’

‘No? And why not, do you think?’

‘Caesar had no just cause to invade people who were not a threat to Rome, Magister Reddiman,’ O’Hanlon answered in a firm, emboldened voice. ‘He wanted to bring the whole of Gaul within the Roman Republic and make himself the sole ruler of the Republic. The Gallic wars were fought only to promote Caesar’s political career. He had no right to do so.’

‘Would the fact that you are from Hibernia influence your opinion, O’Hanlon?’ Reddiman leaned forward like a snake about to spit venom.

The lone Irish student, Redmond O’Hanlon, glanced around at the faces of his English classmates seated at the long table and said nothing.

‘Master Grimstone, what is your opinion in this matter? Was Caesar justified in waging his Gallic wars?’

‘Yes, he was, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Explain.’

Grimstone happily obliged. ‘Gaul was of significant military importance to the Romans, Magister Reddiman. The Romans had been attacked several times by tribes both native to Gaul and further to the north. Conquering Gaul allowed Rome to secure the natural border of the river Rhine.’

‘Masterfully put, sir,’ praised Reddiman. ‘You therefore believe in making a first strike against an enemy who is planning to attack.’

‘Only if you know that the enemy really is planning to attack,’ O’Hanlon blurted out, his temper rising against Grimstone.

Reddiman turned angrily on O’Hanlon. ‘And who asked you to speak, O’Hanlon? When I desire to hear your learned opinion I shall request it.’ He coughed, then looked at his book on the desk. ‘Everyone. Turn to section thirty-six in this first book.’ Reddiman was turning pages, and his students were doing likewise. ‘You see the name Ariovistus there. He was a German eventually defeated by Caesar.’ He looked up at his class. ‘Master Culpepper, read in Latin what Ariovistus believed.’ He waited. ‘You have found the page, Culpepper?’

‘Yes, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Then read.’

‘Ad haec Ariovistus respondit: jus esse belli ut qui vicissent iis quos vicissent quem ad modum vellent imperarent.’

‘O’Hanlon, translate.’

‘To this Ariovistus responded ...’ O’Hanlon paused, unsure of how to proceed.

‘Yes,’ Reddiman urged sternly. ‘Continue.’

‘Responded ... that it is the ... the right of war ... that those who were victorious should govern those they ... conquered, in whatever manner they pleased.’

‘A passable attempt, O’Hanlon,’ Reddiman said. He cast a glance around the class. ‘You will note, gentlemen, that a subject clause denoting result after ut and an impersonal verb takes the subjunctive.’ Then his gaze swung to O’Hanlon. ‘Now, O’Hanlon, do you believe that the victors in war have the right to treat those whom they have conquered according to their pleasure.’

‘Only if their pleasure extends to fairness and justice and leaves the conquered people with autonomy within the borders their own territory.’

‘You are an idealist, O’Hanlon,’ Reddiman remarked. ‘Conquerors are rarely magnanimous to that extent. What say you, Master Grimstone?’

‘The conqueror becomes the master of the conquered, Magister Reddiman,’ Grimstone asserted. ‘The Romans were bringing culture to a race of Celtic barbarians and a system of law and government by which they could be civilised.’ Grimstone sneered at O’Hanlon and added, ‘What England needs to do in Ireland.’

That was too much for the hot-headed young Irishman. He rose from his seat, rushed to stand behind Grimstone, and slapped him several times on either side of the head with his closed textbook. Culpepper and another student, whose name O’Hanlon did not know, pulled him away.

‘O’Hanlon,’ Reddiman roared. ‘Come forward this instant.’ He opened a drawer and took out a leather strap that O’Hanlon recognised as the rear cinch of a saddle. ‘Such an outburst of uncontrolled ill-temper I have rarely seen. Bend over the table. Stretch your arms out in front of you.’ Then with gleeful sadism Reddiman thrashed O’Hanlon on the buttocks, back, and backs of his legs. ‘That should learn you to keep that temper of yours under control. Return to your seat.’

As Reddiman replaced the strap in the drawer, O’Hanlon, fighting back tears, gave the Latin teacher a cheeky, defiant grin which he then displayed to his classmates as he took his seat.

Reddiman took a deep breath, tugged on his gown, and straightened the textbook on the table. ‘Now, where were we?’ He looked up at the class. ‘Master Grimstone, you made the incendiary remark that England should do in Ireland what the Romans did in Gaul: civilise the barbarians. Though I might agree with the sentiment of your remark, I believe it is one to which we should allow our own resident Celtic barbarian to respond. We might learn something to our advantage.’ Reddiman’s apparent impartiality was expressed with a barbed tongue. ‘Are you capable of speech, O’Hanlon?’

‘But of course, Magister Reddiman.’ O’Hanlon grinned again provocatively.

‘How then would you respond to Master Grimstone?’

O’Hanlon was determined not to let Grimstone, or Reddiman himself, get away with insulting the Celtic peoples by referring to them as barbarians. ‘Our resident Puritan ignoramus ...’

‘Stop there, O’Hanlon,’ Reddiman commanded curtly. ‘The words Puritan and ignoramus are not to be uttered in the same breath. No one of the Puritan faith can be classed among the ignorant of this world.’

Not even Grimstone, O’Hanlon thought. Nor Magister Reddiman himself for that matter. It is acceptable to refer to the Irish O’Hanlon as an ignoramus but not the Puritan Grimstone.

‘I have afforded you an opportunity to respond to Master Grimstone, not to insult him. You may continue.’

‘My fellow student, Martin Grimstone by name,’ O’Hanlon began tantalisingly, ignoring the glowering countenance of the teacher, ‘obviously missed the meaning of, or just did not comprehend, the translation of the last sentence that Master Culpepper read from the very beginning of Caesar’s book. May I ask the aforementioned Martin Grimstone to translate for the illumination of us all’—O’Hanlon read from his open book—‘Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.’

Grimstone scowled at O’Hanlon, his face scarlet with anger. Then he looked at Reddiman. ‘Must I do what this...this blackguard from the bogs of Hibernia requests, Magister Reddiman?’

Reddiman was secretly enjoying this confrontation. ‘May I remind you, Master Grimstone, that you opened this joust by remarking that the Romans were bringing culture, law and government to a race of Celtic barbarians. So please translate the sentence read to you by O’Hanlon. I believe that O’Hanlon’s reference is to the three tribes of Gaul. Translate for us, Master Grimstone.’

Grimstone was reading the opening sentences of Caesar’s book. Then he translated: ‘All these ... differ from each other...in language, customs and laws.’

‘Did you say "laws", Grimstone?’ O’Hanlon grinned at his fellow student.

‘Answer him, Master Grimstone,’ Reddiman ordered, as Grimstone appeared reluctant to do so.

‘Yes,’ came the churlish response.

‘So the Romans were not bringing laws and government to uncivilised Celts who were without laws or government.’ O’Hanlon pressed home his advantage. ‘The Celtic peoples in Gaul already had a system of laws. Later in the first book of De Bello Gallico Caesar refers to the fact that though the Romans had conquered the Celtic Gauls in war, they permitted them to enjoy their own laws.’

‘"Suis legibus uti voluisset,"’ Reddiman quoted. ‘Can you add anything to our understanding of these Celtic laws, O’Hanlon?’

‘I can to a certain extent, Magister Reddiman.’

Reddiman smiled. He had to admit to a certain liking for this Hibernian youth from the bogs of Erin. ‘Go on then.’

‘The Celts, at least in Ireland, are proud of their ancient system of what they call Brehon Laws, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Brehon meaning what precisely?’

‘It is an English form of the Irish word for a judge, Magister Reddiman.’

‘You referred to these laws as being ancient. How ancient?’

‘I doubt if anyone knows, Magister Reddiman. They may go back to pre-Christian Ireland. They governed everyday life and politics in the country.’

‘Most illuminating, O’Hanlon. Sometimes your erudition surprises me. That block of bog-oak serves you well at times.’ Reddiman turned to Grimstone. ‘It would appear to me, Master Grimstone, that you owe our resident Hibernian an apology. The Irish are not so uncivilised after all.’

‘With respect, Magister Reddiman,’ said Grimstone, ‘I should point out that we know nothing whatsoever of these Irish laws that O’Hanlon boasts of. They may be as barbaric as those of Blackamoors. I venture to say that their system of laws is as outdated as their papist religion. O’Hanlon deserves no apology from me. Nor will he receive one.’

‘A valid point, Master Grimstone,’ Reddiman agreed. ‘Laws as ancient as those O’Hanlon has told us exist in Hibernia may indeed be as barbaric as we are told the majority of Hibernians are themselves. No apology is necessary.’

*

‘Reddiman does not like me. He regards me only as an Irish papist.’

‘I think you might be wrong, Redmond,’ Fletcher said in the confidential voice used to reveal secrets. Jeremy Fletcher, a pale, sickly lad, thin and short of stature, was Redmond’s closest associate at Richmond School in Yorkshire. Outside the classroom, released from the frightening stare of a teacher like Josiah Reddiman, he spoke without his nervous stammer.

‘What are you saying, Jeremy?’ Redmond asked in disbelief. ‘It is obvious that Reddiman does not like me.’

‘Reddiman has earned a reputation as a Puritan of what he would refer to as strong moral probity.’ Fletcher smiled, unconsciously plucking a few blades of grass from under his raised knees. ‘Grimstone—another grim, stony Puritan—shows his dislike of you in Reddiman’s presence because he seeks Reddiman’s approval. He desires to oust the fawning Culpepper as Reddiman’s favourite. But I would venture to say that Reddiman has more respect for you than you give him credit for. He did after all allow you the freedom to joust, as he expressed it, with the churlish Grimstone.’

‘You are a shrewd observer of us mortal humans, Jeremy,’ Redmond stated, ‘but I believe you are wrong about Reddiman’s opinion of me.’

‘Let me tell you something I have never divulged to anyone in Richmond.’ Jeremy moved closer to Redmond though no one was near enough to hear. ‘My uncle, on my mother’s side, is Sir Horace Deal.’

‘The Royalist Member of Parliament?’

‘Yes. And a close confidant of His Majesty. I was staying in his house in Greenwich about two months ago. My uncle had friends in his study. A meeting was taking place. The bedchamber I was sleeping in has a casement that opens above the front of the house. I was looking out at the stars, trying to locate Cassiopeia—part of an astronomy assignment—when my uncle’s guests were leaving. One of them was Magister Reddiman.’

‘Are you certain it was him?’

‘No doubt about it.’ Jeremy waited while Redmond thought of the implications of this intelligence. Then he went on, ‘It is my belief that Magister Reddiman is pretending to be a Puritan, a supporter of Parliament against the King.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘His motive eludes me. Unless he seeks a close association with the puritans to gain information that might later be of use to the Royalist party.’

‘A spy, you mean.’

‘Possibly. England is full of spies at this time. Always has been. It was Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, as I have learned in history, whose work led to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots. She herself said that spies are men of doubtful credit who make a show of one thing and speak another. I believe that that applies to Magister Reddiman.’

‘What does this show of erudition have to do with Magister Reddiman’s conduct towards me?’

‘He must appear to be averse to Catholicism and to favour puritanism. One way to do that is to act the part in front of Martin Grimstone who will then report to his father Sir Humphrey Grimstone.’

‘It sounds credible,’ Redmond agreed, ‘but it could be that your imagination is running away with you. Unless your uncle is a spy, highly placed in Royalist society but spying for the parliamentary side and reporting to Josiah Reddiman. I have no doubt that Magister Reddiman is puritan through and through.’

The boys were sitting side by side on the grassy slope below the pale sandstone walls of the soaring keep of Richmond Castle. Below them lay the wide, cobbled marketplace, crowded with people, and around and beyond it the roofs and stone houses of the beautiful old town of Richmond. The sun was already low in a dusky, yellow sky.

‘Do not feel that Reddiman has selected you alone for disapproval, Redmond,’ Fletcher said. ‘He has suspicions that even King Charles himself is a Roman Catholic.’

‘He is not alone in holding such suspicions.’ Redmond lay back in the warm grass and closed his eyes. ‘King Charles married a Roman Catholic princess after all. And French to boot. A sister of the Catholic King of France.’

‘He has been seduced by her according to my father.’

‘I heard that the radicals in the House of Commons were threatening to impeach her.’ Redmond’s voice was dreamy as the dusky evening air. ‘Can you believe it? Bringing the Queen of England to trial. Even if she is a foreigner.’

‘You know why, do you not?’

‘Not really.’

‘As an Irishman you should,’ said Fletcher. ‘The radicals believed that she was scheming to bring Catholic troops from Ireland to stamp out dissent in London.’

‘Is that why the King had to send her to The Hague?’

‘I should think so. They both probably feared for her life.’ Fletcher pulled again at a tuft of grass, his head lowered. ‘My father sees trouble ahead,’

‘Your father works for the Lord High Treasurer in London.’

‘As a secretary. Yes. He sees trouble beginning to build between King Charles and parliament.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘The King believes in his divine right to rule and raise taxes as he wishes. He is coming more and more into conflict with the members of parliament. My father is concerned. He describes the situation as potentially explosive’

‘Like Pliny’s volcano.’

‘Yes. Like Pliny’s volcano.’ Fletcher looked at O’Hanlon and smiled. ‘Reddiman would be proud of you for that.’ The class had read Pliny’s account of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The two boys remained quiet for a while: O’Hanlon on his back, his knees drawn up, his eyes closed; Fletcher sitting with his arms embracing his upraised knees, his gaze fixed on the town below.

‘Well, well, well. What have we come upon here?’

The familiar voice of Martin Grimstone caused Redmond to sit up from his prone position. A group of Richmond youths stood before him and his friend Jeremy Fletcher, while a couple of heavier lads still struggled up the slope to join the others. O’Hanlon knew that Grimstone exploited his rank and wealth—the son of Sir Humphrey Grimstone, a successful lawyer and prominent Parliamentarian, a close associate of Hampden, Selden, Pym, and Eliot—to become the leader of a gang of the rougher young men of the town. They bullied those younger, smaller and weaker than themselves and extorted money or belongings from those who suffered their attention. Grimstone, being the leader, gave the orders to his minions, but, not being strong of body himself—and there was a good chance that the tables might be turned on him—he was always guarded by two or three of the sturdiest youths of the school. He repaid his henchmen by giving them leave to eat and drink at his expense in local inns when they were ‘short of monies.’

‘Is this the Hibernian hog-minder I see before me?’ Grimstone turned to grin at his followers. He was a short, slim, anaemic-looking young man with thick lips, a sharply pointed nose, and curly brown hair. ‘A papish pariah, I believe. A rogue of low caste whose family had their lands in Ireland taken away from them for insurrection against our former Queen Elizabeth. A cringing Roman Catholic traitor to England, I would opine, has no right to attend a renowned school in this Protestant country.’

He raised the thick stick he held by the side of his right leg, concealed under his cloak which he tossed over his shoulder. He took a step towards O’Hanlon, forgetting that he stood on the slope of a hill. With an alacrity that took his would-be assailant off guard, O’Hanlon hurled himself at Grimstone’s shins straight from his sitting position, without first rising to his feet. Grimstone fell over backwards, and locked together, both young men rolled a few feet down Richmond Hill. O’Hanlon wrenched the stick from Grimstone’s hand, sprang to his feet like a cat and, holding the heavy stick in his two hands, he spun round to face those youths bold enough to consider approaching to the aid of their overwhelmed comrade. In a crouching stance, the cudgel held above his right shoulder, O’Hanlon dared anyone to counterattack. No one did. Bridling darkly at O’Hanlon, they sidled away cautiously as Grimstone rose unsteadily to his feet and brushed grass off his clothes.

‘You will live to regret this, O’Hanlon,’ he threatened.

‘I did not start it,’ O’Hanlon shouted after the departing bully. ‘Nor did I merit it.’ He waited till the gang was well down the hill before he dropped the stick.

Fletcher brushed a few leaves of grass from O’Hanlon’s doublet. ‘May I ask a question, Redmond?’

‘Ask away.’

‘Where did you learn to fly?’

He walked home with laggard steps across the wide, cobbled marketplace, past the medieval market cross, and through the narrow alley by which Dominican monks of old reached their monastery. Halfway along, he passed under one of the gateways through the town wall. Turning left he trudged towards his great-uncle’s large stone house along a wide, busy thoroughfare. His had been a long day. Classes at his grammar school, the first school in Richmondshire, started at seven o’clock in the morning and continued till five in the afternoon. The grammar in question was Latin and Greek, though only a minority of pupils mastered those ancient languages. As he plodded homeward, weary as a ploughboy, the young O’Hanlon tried to remember Latin phrases from the book of Caesar’s wars that his class had been studying. He was thinking of Caesar’s horse.

‘Every conqueror needs a distinguished horse which only he can ride,’ Reddiman had said a couple of days ago. ‘A number of our classical sources contain the information that Julius Caesar possessed such a horse, born on his own lands. A distinguished horse indeed. Is it possible that one of you might know what distinguished Caesar’s horse?’

‘I do, Magister Reddiman.’ Fawning Culpepper of course.

‘Do enlighten the ignorant, Master Culpepper.’

‘The front hooves of Caesar’s horse resembled feet.’

‘In what way, pray?’

‘They were divided in such a way as to resemble human toes, Magister Reddiman.’

‘Quite right, Master Culpepper. You are a true scholar of the classics.’ Reddiman clasped his hands which then disappeared into the sleeves of his gown, a sign that he was about to talk. ‘A soothsayer construed this unusual condition as an omen that the owner of such a horse would one day rule the world. Naturally, the horse would endure no other rider save Caesar. This observation in Caesar’s ancient biography seems to recall the characteristics of Bucephalus, the wild horse tamed by Alexander the Great, which provided that hero too with an oracle predicting world empire.’

In his imagination Redmond saw the branches of a tree in the park across the road metamorphose into the limbs and body of a horse, with thundering hooves and nostrils snorting fire. Horses were the young man’s first love. ‘The talents of horses are beyond telling,’ Pliny wrote: ‘ingenia eorum inenarrabilia.’ He described the famous horse of Alexander the Great. ‘They called him Bucephalus,’ Pliny wrote, ‘either because of his fierce demeanour or because of the mark branded on his shoulder that was shaped like a bull’s head. Young Redmond O’Hanlon wanted a horse like that someday, a horse ‘of stunning form’, as he remembered Pliny writing, who would let no other rider but Alexander mount him.

Daydreaming thus, with head mostly bowed, he passed large houses with deep eaves and carved corbels, projecting upper stories, and lattice windows. These houses belonged to the well-to-do gentry of all professions—merchants, drapers, and the like—one of whom was Lucius Marsham, his great-uncle on his mother’s side. Great-uncle Lucius had amassed a fortune as a Swaledale wool merchant. He persuaded his niece’s husband Loughlin O’Hanlon to send his son Redmond to school in England. Great-uncle Lucius, whose own family of four sons and two daughters, had grown and left home, or died early, agreed to cover the expenses of Redmond’s education and to house, feed and clothe him in his grand home in Richmond.

‘The grammar school is the entry gate to the professions and superior trades,’ great-uncle Lucius had argued. ‘We live in a new world of commerce, Loughlin. Even your lowliest peasants see the need for better education. And thanks to the efforts of your Archbishop Ussher and his ilk, any Irish Catholic must either abandon his religion or expatriate himself if he seeks an education.’

‘Even our university in Dublin has been given over to the Protestants as Trinity College,’ Loughlin pointed out.

‘And the only education that a Catholic can obtain in Ireland is to be got from some school that was liable to be abolished at any moment, and its masters sent to prison.’ Lucius was building a strong argument. ‘The voyage to the Continent is long and hazardous, so it follows that children will either go without an education or be compelled to leave their home for years to study on the Continent. That is too expensive. Many of your young Irish are coming to England for their education. Closer to home and not so costly. Why deprive your son?’

‘You always did favour Redmond,’ Loughlin observed.

‘A lad of spirit and intelligence. Why should I not favour him? And I miss having a boy about the house.’

‘Why Redmond and not Art or Ardall or Hugh?’ As a father, Loughlin was interested in how others viewed his sons.

‘Art has an explosive, erratic complexion. He is prone to impetuous action. A life devoted to the risks and dangers of cards and dice and the illusory pleasures of the alehouse and the brothel is not the life of a potential scholar. Ardall is shy and lacks personality. He is too much in the shadow of Hugh instead of standing for himself on his own two feet. As for Hugh, he is morose and choleric. The loss of Tandragee to an English nobleman, the loss of all Irish lands to foreigners, eats into his soul. He holds a consuming grudge against the British monarchy and by extension against all Englishmen. He would never consider an education in England even if I were to offer it to him. He is learned and scholarly enough.’

‘What are the entry requirements for this school?’ the cautious Loughlin asked.

‘The only entry requirements are that pupils can read and write. I am assuming that Redmond has mastered those abilities.’

‘He has, of course. In English and Latin. He speaks Irish but does not read or write it.’

Shortly before Redmond’s eighth birthday his maternal grandmother, Lucius’s sister, had given him ‘an ABC’ and started him down the road to literacy by having him translate Plutarch’s Lives and Pliny’s letters, and read the ‘New Testament of Jesus Christ, translated faithfully into English’ and printed by John Fogarty in ‘Rhemes’ in 1582 ‘specially for the discouerie of the CORRVPTIONS of diuers late translations, and for cleering the CONTROVERSIES in Religion.’ This stern old lady, educated by a governess in a large house in the south of England, had come to the Barony of Orior to marry her Irish land-owning husband and was surprised to discover that many Irish women not only read Latin but conversed in it.

So Redmond O’Hanlon, at the age of fifteen, travelled with his great-uncle and Aunt Letitia to Richmond and enrolled in the school that had been there for so many years that no one knew the date of its foundation. It first appeared in a registry estimated to have been written between 1361 and 1474. It was awarded a charter ratifying its status on 14 March 1568 by Queen Elizabeth and was one of the first free grammar schools in England.

In late afternoon Redmond O’Hanlon entered his great-uncle’s house. Its dim interior was panelled in wood and filled with plain and heavy furniture, most of it made of oak, darkened by age. The Marshams were wealthy enough to afford upholstered chairs, padded and covered in chintz. This was expensive, rare Indian chintz imported into Europe by Portuguese traders, an indication of the wealth and prestige of Lucius Marsham.

On two of these chairs beside a table in the parlour Lucius Marsham sat with a well-dressed stranger whom Redmond did not know. They were drinking wine in goblets from an earthenware decanter. With a pointed beard and a large wide moustache in the style of Van Dyck, the distinguished visitor wore the slashed doublet, breeches, and tall narrow boots of a gentleman.

Lucius, dressed like the stranger, but in a plainer style, stood up when the young man entered. ‘Patrick, this is my great-nephew Redmond, one of the unfortunate O’Hanlons of Orior. Redmond, this is Sir Patrick Acheson.’

‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Redmond,’ Sir Patrick said in greeting but without rising from his chair.

‘Likewise, Sir Patrick.’ The lad stepped forward to shake the visitor’s outstretched hand.

‘Patrick is the son of my old friend, the Baronet Archibald Acheson of Markethill. A former Scotsman, but I did not regard that as a failing on his part.’ Lucius poured wine into a third goblet. ‘Seat yourself, Redmond, and keep us company till supper is ready.’

Redmond joined the two men at the table, and his great-uncle passed the goblet across to him.

‘Last year Archibald died, and Patrick, now the second Baronet, was married.’ Lucius turned from his great-nephew to the Baronet. ‘You will long remember the year of Our Lord, 1634, Patrick.’

‘I shall in all truth.’

‘Your wife’s name is Martha, I believe.’

‘The former Martha Moore.’

‘I think I knew her father. William Moore.’

‘That is indeed her father’s name.’

‘A true gentleman.’ Lucius raised his goblet. ‘I wish you and Martha a long and happy life together.’

‘Thank you, Lucius.’ Sir Patrick sipped his wine. ‘Would that we could look forward to a peaceful one.’

‘That is a display of pessimism I would never have expected from you, Patrick. Do I not recall Clarendon himself speak of the reign of our present King as a time of great peace and prosperity?’

‘Misplaced optimism, I fear. A ferment is brewing throughout the land.’

‘You speak of England now, not Ireland.’

‘Unrest in England will inevitably embroil Ireland.’

‘You are in a mood of pessimism.’

‘Like thoughtful men in all of these islands, I am anxiously on watch for developments of a ... what shall I call it? ... a strained situation. From the very beginning of Charles’s reign the fires of discontent, if I may express myself in such a manner, have been smouldering with a worrisome potential. The newsletters upon which we depend for reliable information about what is passing in the land offer little encouragement.’

Listening to this conversation, the young O’Hanlon thought again of the volcanic eruption described in letters by the younger Pliny which Magister Reddiman had had his students translate and discuss in class and with which the young O’Hanlon was already familiar. In one of those letters Pliny described a cloud ascending from Vesuvius, the appearance of which he compared to that of a pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk then spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches. Redmond likened this most famous of all volcanic eruptions to the ferment perceived by the second Baronet Acheson as the trunk rising from a troubled Earth. Would it spread like the branches of Pliny’s tree to darken all of the British Islands? Jeremy Fletcher’s father had been talking in a similar vein.

‘We have had no parliament for half a dozen years,’ Sir Patrick continued. ‘In Charles’s world power is confined to the king. The fact that a belief in the divine right of kings is not shared by his subjects does not appear overly to concern him. Nor that it creates animosity against him in parliament. The people, as represented by parliament, have the divine right to rule.’

‘Yes,’ said Lucius. ‘I see now why you are pessimistic about the future.’

‘I fear it may be an uncertain and perhaps dangerous world we are passing on to your generation, young Master O’Hanlon,’ Sir Patrick said.

‘We can handle it, sir,’ young Master O’Hanlon declared with commendable self-confidence.

‘A lad of spirit, Lucius.’

‘And intelligence. And already an accomplished horseman. The horse is the first love of his life.’

‘Wait but two or three years, Lucius, and see what fire a pretty lass will spark in that ardent young life.’

‘There is nothing uncomely about a horse, Sir Patrick,’ said Redmond.

‘Ah, I think we have struck tinder in this lad’s heart. What would a comely wench not accomplish?’

‘What comely wench would be attracted by one so careless in his dress?’ Lucius turned to his great-nephew. ‘The sleeves of your jerkin are soiled, Redmond.’

Redmond inspected the elbows of his tunic. They did indeed bear the green maculations from contact with grass. He blushed guiltily and raised his goblet of wine as if to conceal the evidence that his face revealed.

‘Have you been fighting again?’ His great-uncle looked at him sternly.

‘I stopped a fight from happening,’ Redmond replied with the acumen of a diplomat.

‘That would appear to be a laudable exercise,’ said Sir Patrick. ‘Do not regard your great-nephew with such censure, Lucius. An element of rowdiness is one of youth’s defining characteristics. As yet unburdened with the obligations of householding, which they will have to assume on marriage, young men have a reputation for...what shall I call it? ... irresponsible behaviour. It is only natural, Lucius.’

‘Not with the consistence with which this young man gets into fights.’

‘I am sure that he could be worse.’ The Baronet Acheson appeared determined to defend the young O’Hanlon. ‘A youth of my acquaintance—also a pupil at Richmond School, coincidently—walks with his cloak flung over his shoulder like a ruffian. A mere sixteen years old, he stays out late when his father is away from home and he once—but only once—came home drunk and was sick before he went to bed. His disciplinarian father has chided him severely for corrupting the maids of the house by his idle talk and carriage.’

‘I cannot voice such complaints against Redmond.’ His great-uncle looked with a certain pride at the young man. ‘He knows that if I were ever to be apprised of such behaviour on his part, I would ship him back to Ireland forthwith.’

‘That should temper his youthful penchant for getting into trouble.’ The second Baronet Acheson turned towards the young man. ‘How much longer will you study at the Richmond School?’

Redmond glanced at his great-uncle. ‘Three years, sir, if my relatives can thole me for that long.’

‘For that long, Redmond, and for as long as you wish to stay with us after that.’

‘If you return to Ireland, Redmond O’Hanlon, and are looking for employment,’ Sir Patrick began, ‘come and see me in Markethill. I could use a young man of your undoubted abilities.’

‘Thank you, sir. I shall bear that in mind.’

‘I trust you will overnight with us, Patrick.’

‘Alas no, Lucius. But thank you for your kind offer. I have promised to lodge this night with a relative of my wife near the village of Reeth: Sir Humphrey Grimstone. Perhaps you know of him.’

‘Sir Humphrey? Oh yes, I am well acquainted with that gentleman. His is a large estate and a fine big house. You will be well entertained there. Please convey my felicitations to him and to his wife.’

‘I shall of course.’ Acheson pushed his goblet towards his host. ‘Now if I may be so bold as to make the request, I should enjoy another measure of that delectable French wine.’

TWO

‘Redmond, Redmond, my boy, let me look at you.’ Loughlin O’Hanlon held his son by both hands on his shoulders and looked him up and down, from his long dark-red locks to his green breeches and flat black shoes. ‘Katherine, come and see your son. Home from England and dressed like an Englishman.’

Redmond’s mother came in from the scullery, drying her hands on a cloth. She paused momentarily, then rushed to embrace her son, several inches taller and broader than when she had last set eyes on him. ‘Oh, Redmond, Redmond, Redmond.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘I can hardly get my arms around you, so big you have grown.’

‘Sit down, son,’ his father said. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’

‘Thirsty.’ Redmond sat at the old familiar table.

‘You will drink a mug of ale?’

‘That I will, father. If you will join me.’

‘But of course I will.’

The family spoke Irish together.

Redmond glanced around him. Nothing had changed, except his father. Loughlin O’Hanlon had aged a score of years to his son’s five. His hair was turning grey, his face more lined than that of a man of fifty-three years, his shoulders more stooped. Rightful heir to the castle at Tandragee, the ancient O’Hanlon seat of the Barony of Orior, Loughlin had lost all but the land he now farmed as a tenant of the St John family in the townland of Aughantaraghan in County Armagh. Until the time of the Plantation, the O’Hanlons were among the most notable Gaelic clans of Ulster. For half a millennium the chief of the O’Hanlons, The O’Hanlon so-called, was Lord of Orior. Since the early reign of Queen Elizabeth, the status of the O’Hanlon dynasty had drastically diminished. Through stages of confiscation during this period, the ancestral lands were lost to the English crown, and English and Scottish settlers replaced the former owners. Almost three decades ago Tandragee Castle, the former O’Hanlon seat of power, was lost to the incoming St. John family of Bedfordshire.

‘We were robbed of our land and saw it handed over to Scots and English servitors,’ Loughlin O’Hanlon often bemoaned, ‘and all because O’Hanlons fought beside the Great O’Neill against that barren heifer Elizabeth.’

‘Not all of the O’Hanlon lands were lost,’ said Katherine.

‘Ten O’Hanlon families were allowed less than three thousand acres,’ her husband pointed out. They had obviously held this discussion before. ‘Some received more than three hundred acres, some less. Poor compensation for a family that owned a whole barony. Remember that O’Hanlon country spread over a whole barony in Armagh and stretched into the counties of Down and Louth and even into Monaghan.’

Still muttering under his breath, as he was wont to do, Loughlin brought two pewter mugs of ale his wife had brewed and sat beside his son at the scrubbed, bare, wooden table in the kitchen. His wife moved to her chair by the fire. She was a short, rotund woman with fine, reddish hair; a round, kind face; and eyes as green as emeralds. Her soiled dress, loose and flowing, was of linen dyed saffron. Second daughter of Anthony Fleming, a relative of Christopher Fleming, eighteenth Baron of Slane, Katherine Fleming was educated by Dominican nuns in their convent in the Boyne valley near Drogheda. Encouraged to change her name to Caitríona after her marriage to Loughlin O’Hanlon at the age of sixteen, the spirited Katherine refused.

‘I was given the Christian name of Katherine in a baptism performed in the sight of God by Father Conor O’Brady,’ she steadfastly maintained, ‘and Katherine I shall forever remain.’

‘How are Hugh and Ardall and the girls?’ Redmond asked.

His father, taking a drink from his mug, did not answer right away. And even when he placed his mug on the table he hesitated before he replied. ‘Hugh and Ardall are hard-working farmers like myself. You can see them this evening when they come in from the ploughing. Hugh has six years on you, Redmond. Time you took a wife, I would say. Hugh has three children now. Young Dara must be twelve or so; Mėabh, a sweet girl, a year or so younger; and Loughlin, my namesake, a spirited young varlet only seven years old.’

‘Obviously your favourite.’

‘He reminds me of you when you were that age,’ his father said. ‘A fearless little imp. A future firebrand I would say.’

‘And Ardall?’

‘Ardall has two, both babies.’

‘Five grandchildren,’ Katherine said proudly from across the room.

‘Hugh is a bitter man, Redmond. You would not know your oldest brother now. A sour-faced ranter he has become. He ploughs the land as if venting his anger on the earth itself. He piles stone on a wall as if smashing an enemy’s skull.’

‘He will not accept the loss of O’Hanlon land to foreign intruders then?’ Redmond said.

‘Never. And I worry that he will speak out of turn in some alehouse in Newry.’

‘And get himself killed,’ said the laconic Katherine.

‘It is not only the loss of O’Hanlon land that eats at Hugh.’ Loughlin O'Hanlon wiped his mouth with the back of a gnarled, brown hand. ‘He also believes that the intention of the Scots and English sent over here is to wipe out the Roman Catholic religion; that their role in Ireland is to exterminate Papists.’

‘He has become enthralled by Rory O’More,’ Katherine declared.

‘And that worries me,’ her husband said with a frown.

‘Why?’

‘Rory O’More is a trouble-maker. A rebel. A young man of your age, Redmond, but with an anger in him like that in your brother Hugh.’

‘And what about Art?’ Redmond’s next question. ‘What is he doing?’

‘He is a rake and a cardsharp,’ Katherine replied before her husband could speak.

Her husband ignored her. ‘Art has left us, Redmond. I believe that since he turned thirteen or fourteen he never felt that he really belonged in our family. He works as a coffin maker in O’Sheel’s business in Markethill, not far from the Achesons’ castle. He has befriended O’Sheel’s son, William, and beds his daughter, Meabh.’

‘He refuses to marry her,’ Katherine added.

‘Why?’

‘She is five years his senior,’ his father replied.

‘She is a strumpet,’ said Katherine.

Loughlin pulled more ale from his mug, wiped his mouth again and forced a smile. ‘But to get back to you, my fine young Redmond O’Hanlon. Did you win yourself a young woman in England? Did you find them pretty over there?’

‘Some. But none who would come away with me to Ireland.’ He drank from his cool pewter mug. ‘Girls are not admitted to the grammar schools. Nor to the universities.’

‘Girls have a right to an education,’ Katherine declared. ‘To deprive, them of learning is a sin.’

‘You need not go to a school to find yourself a woman, Redmond,’ Loughlin said. ‘Serving wenches are notorious for granting their favours to any man who’d have them.’

‘Do not be putting such notions into your son’s head,’ Katherine chastised. She was busy with her sewing needle now.

Redmond thought of Kate Luscombe, a teasing maid in the household of his great-uncle. She had fled from the cheerless, east-London house of her older brother who offered her to his friends for their sexual gratification. Aware of her husband’s reprehensible behaviour towards his own sister, his kindly wife saved housekeeping money and gave Kate enough for the coach to York. To acquire more money Kate sold her hair to a wig maker; hair which, she informed Redmond, ‘was very lovely both for length and colour.’

‘Why York? Did you know anyone there?’

‘I wanted to get as far away as I could from the stench and putrid air of London. I had the address of a distant cousin in York. My parents were both dead, but I well remember them. With my father’s spirit and my mother’s beauty, I knew I could succeed anywhere. I had luck on my side too. A midwife travelling on the same coach to York said she would give me an introduction to the house of a wool merchant called Marsham who lived in Richmond, fifty miles away.’

‘My great-uncle’s niece is a midwife in York. She was in London on some family matter. Sarah Gladwell is her name.’

‘She it was. She gave me a letter of introduction, and so I came here to serve your great-aunt who is very good to me. I am industrious in my duties and ingenious with my needle. I have experience in other more familiar matters too.’

Her coquettish smile and the seductive gleam in her merry, hazel eyes sent shivers coursing through the susceptible body of the seventeen-year-old Redmond O’Hanlon.

‘I want to remove your stigma of virginity,’ she had said, when Redmond first crept to her bed.

As they lay in panting ecstasy, Kate Luscombe whispered, ‘Are you being truthful when you say that that was your first?’

‘Yes, truly, it was.’

‘Then you are a natural-born lover. I have never achieved such ... pleasure with any man before.’

If Kate had achieved the same sexual gratification as Redmond had, he could appreciate her pleasure. ‘We must do this again,’ he said.

They did, many times. But in less than a year Kate Luscombe found a husband in York, a young man of good family, into whose large, half-timbered house within the walls of the city she moved with her new husband.

His father broke into Redmond’s thoughts. ‘What will you do now, son, with your English education and dress?’

‘I met Sir Patrick Acheson in Richmond. He requested that I go and see him about employ-ment on my return to Ireland.’

‘Then I have disappointing information to pass on to you,’ his father said sadly. ‘Sir Patrick died on the sixth day of October last. His half-brother, Sir George Acheson, has succeeded him as the third Baronet.’

‘Then I shall ride to Markethill tomorrow and talk to Sir George.’

‘The Achesons are Scottish planters,’ Loughlin pointed out in a severe tone of voice. ‘They own land they have no right to. Your joining the Achesons will not go down well with your brothers and sisters.’

‘Especially with Hugh,’ said Katherine.

‘I have but little choice,’ Redmond argued. ‘The English and the Scots hold all the best livings in the land. I have no desire to waste an education in the fields or turf-bogs.’

‘Nor will you in Markethill. The Achesons cleared the land of native Irish and brought families from Scotland to farm it. As an Irishman you will not want to be seen associating with the Achesons.’

‘You will be treated as a traitor,’ Katherine said.

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On a fine, early-spring morning, the sun not yet clear of the tops of the forest trees, Redmond O’Hanlon rode his brown stallion with the white tail and blaze towards Cloncarney, the site of Acheson’s castle, around which the town of Markethill was growing. Scatters of snowdrops and crocuses speckled the grass, and bluebells spread carpets below the trees. Much of the land was bog, but O’Hanlon remembered every mile from his youthful explorations on this same horse when he and the horse were both young colts. Embarr, he sometimes called the stallion, the name in Irish mythology of the heroine Niamh’s magical horse that could cross the sea and the land without touching the water or the ground.

I should like to breed horses one day, Redmond thought as he rode between the densely crowded trees. The finest horses in the land. No, the finest in the world. Each one a Bucephalus of which Alexander himself would be justly proud.

He took delight in the fresh, clean air and the earthy scents of the forest. Against the soft background drumming of his horse’s hooves rose the singing of the birds: blackbirds, robins, thrushes; sometimes the wild, flute-like cry of a curlew; and occasionally the flapping of herons’ wings as the stilted birds rose from one of the ponds. His mood rose like the birdsong to one as close to ethereal ecstasy as God allowed mortals to experience.

The sun had risen free of the treetops when Redmond came in sight of the tall castle that marked the site of the burgeoning hamlet of Markethill. Around the core of the stone-built, rush-thatched cottages of the Scottish planters stood an array of humble, circular, post-and-wattle huts erected by the native Irish. Following directions from his father, Redmond rode his horse to one of the larger buildings, dismounted, and left his horse to graze. The large door of the building stood wide open. Inside, four men worked at benches on which lay coffins at different stages of completion and in varying quality of finish. The smell of sawed lumber and the sounds of hammering, sawing and buffing filled the interior of the building and drifted out into the street where townspeople went about their business. Along the back wall of the building fresh lumber was stacked, and a number of finished coffins stood upright like guardsmen.

As Redmond’s figure blocked some of the sunlight streaming through the doorway, the nearest worker looked up. ‘Well, well, well, what do we have here? Young Redmond O’Hanlon, all dressed up in his English finery.’ The man approached, his