In the Shadow of the Assassin

By David Mulholland

April 7, 1868, Ottawa, Ontario, Dominion of Canada

Around 2:30am., following a late night sitting in the House of Commons, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, MP for the riding of Montreal West, is waiting for Mary Ann Trotter to open the locked door of her Sparks Street Boarding House when someone comes up behind him and sho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Dec 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781772573923

David Mulholland

David Mulholland was born in Kingston, Ontario and raised in the Ottawa Valley town of Arnprior. He moved to Ottawa in 1970.Mulholland began his writing career as an advertising copywriter in private radio. He went on to work as a researcher, story editor, and occasional interviewer for CBC Public Affairs television; a general-assignment reporter and music reviewer for the Ottawa Citizen; a syndicated country-music columnist; a part-time stand up comedian with Yuk Yuk's; and a speech writer for a number of departments in the federal government.During those years, Mulholland wrote fiction when time permitted. In the spring of 2001, he began devoting full-time to writing a novel. The result is McNab, published in October 2006. Duel, his second novel of dramatized history, was published in October 2009. Chaudiere Falls, published in November 2016, is his third. In the Shadow of the Assassin, his fourth. He is currently working on a book of short stories based upon characters in the Ottawa Valley.

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Tuesday, April 7, 1868,

Ottawa, Ontario, Dominion of Canada

It’s shortly after six, the sun still working its way over the horizon. I swing the door wide open and I’m about to fire up my forge when I hear a rider approaching. I watch him pull up on his chestnut, practically fall off the horse, and come running into my smithy.

McGee is dead!

It doesn’t register right away. It should have, but there’s a shooting or stabbing almost every night in the Lower Town market. The Fenians have been threatening him for years. They want Ireland out from under British rule. We all do. Mr. McGee was one of them. Once. Or was he? It’s complicated.

You mean?—

Yes! Thomas D’Arcy! My visitor strokes his greying beard; there’s a questioning look in his eyes.

But what’s the question? Does he want to know if I’m surprised? Or does he want to know … I blurt out, when?, the obvious question, the safe one.

Last night. This morning. The House sat until after two. Shot in the back of the head. He pauses, I watch as he catches his breath. At Mrs. Trotter’s where he … Everyone knows when he’s in Ottawa the member for Montreal West lodges at Mary Ann Trotter’s Boarding House on Sparks Street.

Fenians? I look away, turning my attention back to my forge.

Maybe. I don’t know. Probably. They said they’d get him.

While we inhale the crisp, early morning air and watch a baby mouse skitter across the floor and out the door, I think of the next obvious question: How did you?—

I was coming up Elgin, on my way to The Russell, a man came around the corner off Sparks; the look on his face … I knew something … he said McGee was at Mrs. Trotter’s door, it was locked, he was waiting for her to open it. Blew the back of his head off.

My visitor, a brakeman on the Grand Trunk, says he has to get to work, the mare needs shoeing, he’ll leave her with me. It takes just a few minutes to walk from my Metcalfe Street shop to Wellington and over Sappers Bridge to the train station on Rideau.

I fire up the forge and heat the iron. It’s routine. It shouldn’t be. But only now is the news … my brain, flooded with a heavy weight. The man whose life, whose contradictions, whose many contradictions have been an obsession for me … almost an obsession for most of my life … His relentless passion for Ireland’s independence, our Catholic rights, Catholic education, his dedication in bringing about our new Confederation … Yes, The Traitor, some call him, our youngest Father of Confederation …

Dead.

I heard shock in the brakeman’s voice. But anger? I didn’t hear any anger. Maybe he doesn’t trust me? With us Irish, it’s who’s a Fenian? Who’s loyal to the Crown? Loyal to Victoria, Britain’s Queen. And now Queen of our new Dominion, not yet a year old. It’s complicated. My thoughts go back to the beginning.

Not the 12th century! That’s when Anglo-Norman lords invaded my homeland. Some trace our persecution as far back as the 5th century! No, I mean my beginning!

I remember, at least I think I remember, hearing old folks tell stories about one of our many struggles for independence. Hardly ever would the stories be the same! So, how reliable …?

I do know I was born in 1829, in the village of Howth, County Dublin, Leinster Province, close to the city of Dublin, only child of a blacksmith and his bean chéile. A wee family, as the Scots say. Roman Catholics we were. Papists, the Protestants called us, when they were being polite.

I was christened Patrick. Father called me Pat, sometimes Paddy, if he was teasing; Mother, always Patrick. Tis a fitting name for a Byrne, a common name in County Dublin.

Father had little schooling; Mother, none at all. Ma told me Grannie said school was a waste of time for girls; she taught Ma her household duties. When she got strong enough, Ma said she helped in the field, if needed.

What lessons Da learned, he learned in secret, in a Hedge School; a school hidden by hedges, illegal at the time, because the Brits’ Penal Laws from 1695 forbade we Catholics from attending school. The schools weren’t removed from the laws until 1782. That’s when Westminster passed what it called the Roman Catholic Relief Act.

Da said he, his brothers, and my Granddad worked their modest acreage. But he did not take to farming; a nearby smith taught him the trade. My parents did learn to read, had a great love of books, especially about our tragic past. I was a curious lad and took to reading early on: John Curry, John Lanigan, and other history writers. I learned much about our struggles. At Ma’s insistence, I attended a Hedge School. Teachers told me I had a good way with words. Mostly, I taught myself, as did Mr. McGee. (He had a natural eloquence I envy.) When I was old enough to wield a hammer and squeeze the bellows, I began helping Da in our smithy; I knew it was my calling.

Living here, free, with the right to vote, as I did in our first Dominion election last fall, it still gets me roiled up that for many years at home we were not free, had no right to vote, no right to be elected to Parliament. Not only we Catholics, but also Presbyterians; they had come from Scotland. Non-conformists, the British called them: they refused to convert to the Church of England. From the history books I learned that in the 1790s it was these non-conformists who wanted an Irish Republic, who organized the support of poor Catholics; enthusiastic support; anything to rid them and us of absentee landlords who cared not a whit for their tenants. Ah, but many well-to-do Catholics did not want us to be an independent nation; they’d have been satisfied with the right to vote and to sit in our Parliament in Dublin.

Prime Minister Pitt offered a compromise: he would dissolve our Parliament and allow its members to sit at Westminster. This was not looked upon with favour; not until 1800 when distress and disturbances in Belfast and Dublin threatened insurrection. To make sure there were enough votes in the Dublin House, the Brits appealed to political principles, which are easily changed to suit the politician’s ambitions. Westminster bribed them by offering titles. Enough accepted to get the Act of Union passed.

But why did poor Catholics support the union? Because the Prime Minister had promised emancipation: they’d be free to vote and sit in Parliament.

They should have known.

The ink on the act was barely dry when wealthy English Protestants convinced George the Third, their king, that his oath prevented him from granting Catholic emancipation. He vetoed the bill. The Prime Minister did the honourable thing and resigned. My forebears still had no rights; they were still no better than serfs.

We youngsters would hear our elders talk about this betrayal and our seemingly never-ending risings, especially 1798, and the near worship of men revered as martyrs; men such as Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, both Protestants. Yes, many the occasion we Catholics banded with Protestants in another failed attempt to rid us of British rule.

But my pals and I had other interests. We’d hurry after our chores so we could play games, mostly football, even if a hard rain was falling. When we matured—our bodies if not our brains—we added chasing girls to chasing the ball. I had some talent for both, but mostly football. Danny, my best pal, had more talent with the girls. We envied him.

In 1843, the year I turned fourteen, some of us caught the fever. Not the usual sickness, some caught that, too. Twas the feverish passion of Daniel O’Connell, the barrister from County Kerry who’d been trying for years to get the Brits to repeal the union.

What is it with the Brits? They strut around as if they’re something special; as if their shit doesn’t stink; even some of the Catholic ones. As Da used to say: They be after puttin their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. It took years of trying, but in 1829 Mr. O’Connell—they called him The Liberator—finally got them to pass the relief bill that gave us Roman Catholics more rights. Da said the Brits knew if they didn’t give us more freedom, thousands of Catholics—and the Protestants who supported us—would rebel. We’ve rebelled more often than Irish hares fornicate! And we’ve gotten screwed every time!

Ah, but the Brits didn’t want us to have too many rights! Hard to believe, but they feared for the survival of their Anglican religion. Such nonsense. The Church of England had been around since 1534 when Henry the Eighth, their king at the time, started it because the Pope wouldn’t annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. I looked up paranoia. It’s from the Greek; I thought maybe the word had been invented by English Protestants.

In 1828, the people in County Clare, whose land was worth at least forty shillings—that’s what it had to be if you wanted to vote—elected Mr. O’Connell to the British Parliament. Well!, the election of a fiery Catholic Paddy scared the bejasus outta the Brits. So they added a clause to their relief bill that said a Catholic could take his seat only if he was elected after the bill became law. That made Mr. O’Connell’s election invalid! Then they passed another act that said only people whose land was worth at least ten pounds could vote! The poor folks who’d voted for Mr. O’Connell lost their right to vote!

He knew what they were up to and decided to show everyone what hypocrites they were. He ignored the clause that made his election invalid and went to Westminster to claim his seat. The Speaker had to recognize him; the House voted to make him take the old oaths, or he couldn’t take his seat. One oath said Catholic worship was impious and idolatrous. He refused to take it and left the House.

Now they were in a pickle. County Clare had to have a member, so George the Fourth issued a new writ. By then they’d come to their senses: they didn’t waste time and money opposing him: he was returned and took the new oaths. He didn’t have to swear that Catholics were heretics, but he did have to promise not to undermine the Church of England.

So in 1843, a naïve lad of fourteen, I joined Mr. O’Connell’s National Repeal Association and went with my Da to his meetings. Thousands attended, certain we could force the government to