Then Sir Richard Dudley remembered he was not alone. Tucking the handkerchief back inside his cuff, he returned to his desk and sat frowning for a moment or two before looking up at Eugene Brennan.
‘What exactly is it you wish to discuss with me?’
‘Death, disease and official apathy,’ came the prompt reply.
Sir Richard Dudley leaned back in his chair and gave out a loud exasperated sigh.
‘Mr Brennan, I am leading a Treasury Commission investigating army expenditure. Others have responsibility for Ireland – but I doubt whether they have a fathomless sack of money from which to draw unlimited sums to feed out-of-work Irishmen.’
Eugene Brennan pulled his chair closer to the baronet’s desk and faced him across the polished width.
‘I am not begging for money, Sir Richard. I am asking only that you acquaint yourself with the true facts of the situation here in Ireland and pass them on to Sir Robert Peel.’
‘Oh? And what are the “true” facts – as you see them, of course.’
‘The facts are here for everyone to see, Sir Richard. Your soldiers have reported them – so, too, have the constabulary, the Poor Commissioners and anyone else who has travelled outside Dublin. Ireland is dying, her people suffering from starvation and disease. Unless aid is forthcoming, the Government in London will be directly responsible for the death of a million men, women and children. We need food and doctors – and we need them immediately.’
‘Come now, Mr Brennan. You are not addressing one of your meetings, appealing to the emotions of an Irish mob. I asked for facts and you have responded with emotional claptrap. You will need to do better than that if you expect me to exceed my authority by telling the Prime Minister what he should be doing for Ireland.’
Eugene Brennan pulled a tied sheaf of papers from a pocket and threw them across the desk to the other man.
‘There are your “facts”, Sir Richard. Gathered at first hand by the members of my association throughout the length and breadth of the country. You will find all the “facts” there relating to the dead, the starving and the diseased. All written in so simple a language that no official could possibly misunderstand a single word. The “facts” will shock you, Sir Richard, as they should shock Sir Robert Peel. But they cannot convey the misery or the suffering of a small child who has no food and no hope for the future. There are thousands of such children, dying and with no one to care. That is something you need to go out and see for yourself, as I have on all too many occasions. Facts and figures are necessary, Sir Richard, but they tend to make you forget you are dealing with flesh-and-blood people. People with the same needs and feelings as you and I – and Lady Caroline.’
‘Ah yes, Lady Caroline.’
Sir Richard Dudley’s fingertips met in front of his face as he gazed speculatively at his uninvited visitor. On a personal level, Sir Richard Dudley did not give a damn for the Irish peasants. They were an ill-mannered and evil-smelling people. If the famine winnowed them out, it would be to everyone’s advantage. Much of the Irish problem would disappear with them. It would certainly make his official task easier.
A drop in the population would mean keeping fewer soldiers in Ireland to hold them in check. There would be a substantial saving in army expenditure. On the other hand, if Eugene Brennan’s documents provided conclusive proof that the situation was as serious as he stated, then official action would have to be taken. By choosing the right moment to submit a report to the Prime Minister, he, Sir Richard, could take much of the credit for such action, thereby gaining considerable political prestige.
‘It would appear that the future of Ireland has been placed in the hands of the Dudley family. Have you no others you can call upon, Mr Brennan? I seem to recall a fisherman who was in London to raise money for the starving Irish. Is he no longer interested in such a worthy cause?’
‘Liam McCabe is still working hard for the cottiers’ cause but he is a working fisherman and needs to spend much of his time at sea. At least, that is his present way of life. I have other plans for Liam.’
‘Indeed? Am I permitted to ask what they are?’
‘I intend that he shall become a Member of Parliament.’
Sir Richard Dudley was startled. ‘A Member of Parliament – a fisherman?’
‘Liam is an exceptional man. He has his own boat, not a curragh, but a fine wooden boat, and has established an inland market for the sale of his catches. He is not just another fisherman.’
‘So it seems. He lives at Kilmar, I believe. Not very far from Inch House.’
‘He does.’
Eugene Brennan was not happy with Sir Richard Dudley’s sudden interest in Liam.
‘I met this young man in London. It was only a brief meeting, of course, but I could not fail to observe that the clothes he wore were hardly suited to fishing. They were extremely well tailored, as I recall.’
‘Thank you, Sir Richard. They were made for him by my own London tailor. I thought them necessary. Liam addressed a number of meetings while he was in London. He could hardly be presented dressed in an old jersey and fisherman’s boots. They are not the clothes for a future MP.’
‘But more appropriate for your cause, I would have thought. To show the people a real, live, poor Irishman.’
‘The poor of Ireland don’t dress in rags because they enjoy it, Sir Richard. Given the opportunity and the money they would dress as well as you or I.’
‘I do not doubt it – and of course this Kilmar fisherman had the opportunity to dress well, did he not? I understand he collected a great deal of money for the famine relief fund.’
Eugene Brennan rose to his feet, suddenly angry.
‘Are you suggesting that the relief fund has been defrauded? By God, sir, I wish there was a witness present. I would take you to court for such a slanderous remark.’
‘Do sit down again, Mr Brennan. I am accusing you of nothing. Your honesty is not in question. I was talking about the Kilmar fisherman. It is not difficult to understand the temptation for him. He was in unfamiliar surroundings, meeting people far above his own social status. He, not unnaturally, felt the need to improve himself – by buying new clothes with some of the money he had collected. Who can blame him? By his own efforts he was bringing in more money than he had ever seen before. He undoubtedly felt he was entitled to a share in such good fortune. Quite understandable – but hardly the actions of a future Member of Parliament.’
Sir Richard Dudley held up a hand to silence Eugene Brennan before the red-faced MP could splutter an angry reply.
‘Hear me out, Mr Brennan, and think carefully of the purpose of your visit here before you make a hasty reply.
‘This Kilmar fisherman has ideas above his station in life. He took money from the famine fund to buy the things he felt he needed to achieve his foolish ambitions. It would hardly help you, or your cause, to sponsor him as a Member of Parliament. It would be more to your credit, perhaps, to bring him to justice.’
Sir Richard Dudley leaned forward eagerly, bringing his face close to Eugene Brennan. ‘I promise you that if you have your young fisherman indicted for misusing the famine fund, Mr Brennan, I will view your request to me most favourably. Most favourably indeed. Is that understood?’
‘But why? Why Liam?’ Eugene Brennan was dumbfounded.
‘Let us just say that I have an intense dislike of young men who do not accept their lot in life. I have an orderly mind, Mr Brennan. I am made unhappy when things – and people – are not in their correct places.’
The baronet picked up some papers from his desk and began looking at them. ‘Now, if you will please excuse me, I have much work to do.’
The old politician rose to his feet and moved slowly and thoughtfully toward the door, his bemused mind trying to grasp the full implications of what Sir Richard Dudley had just suggested.
‘Mr Brennan….’
Eugene Brennan paused, his hand on the door-handle.
‘Your country
men have put their trust in you for a great many years. Many of their lives depend upon your swift action. Do not keep them – or me – waiting for too long.’
Eugene Brennan walked out through the gates of Dublin Castle a troubled man, but the baronet’s motives no longer puzzled him. He remembered the glances that had passed between Liam and Lady Caroline when they were in the same house in London. They were very different from the cold look Lady Caroline had given her husband when she swept from his office not half an hour before.
Sir Richard Dudley’s orderly mind was not so much concerned with putting Liam in his place as with trying to bring Lady Caroline back to hers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the Wicklow mountains, Jeremy was taking his task of watching Eoin Feehan very seriously. It was not difficult to maintain his observation without being seen; he knew the area well. The gang of cut-throats with whom he had once been involved had used these same hills.
Every evening he waited, hidden well back from the track that came down through thinly wooded slopes from the mountains to Rathconard. Most nights Eoin Feehan came along the track, looking neither to left nor right, seeming to be in such a hurry to reach the town that it was all Jeremy could do to keep up with him without giving himself away. Yet when the fisherman reached the small town he did nothing more sinister than enter an inn and sit by himself, drinking steadily for two or three hours.
At the end of the evening, Eoin Feehan would put down his pewter pot, wipe his mouth on his sleeve, and make his way out of the inn without a word to anyone.
On the first few occasions, Jeremy was so curious that he never allowed Eoin Feehan to move from his sight, but when the routine was repeated without variation every evening he became bored. While the fisherman was at the inn drinking, he began making forays of his own.
Rathconard was not a large town, although it was being used increasingly as a stopover on the road between Dublin and the south-western bays of Bantry and Kenmare. The inhabitants had not grown used to the need for locking doors. For a boy of Jeremy’s talents, housebreaking was a simple matter. He found a house where the occupants were temporarily absent, opened the door, walked in, and helped himself to anything of value.
So easy was this unlawful source of income, and so predictable were Eoin Feehan’s evening activities, that Jeremy became both greedy and careless.
Not far away from the mean back-street tavern frequented by Eoin Feehan was a much larger coaching inn, used by the passengers of many of the cross-country coaches. Jeremy happened to be passing this main-road inn one evening when two coaches drew up. From them alighted a large party of well-dressed men and women. Jeremy was particularly impressed by the jewellery displayed on the fat fingers and wrists of one of the older women. As one of the men handed her down from the coach, the rays of the sinking sun touched her hands and the light scattered in a hundred directions.
Jeremy had never before seen so much jewellery on a single hand. Here were the pickings of a lifetime.
It was not difficult for him to discover which rooms the party were occupying. The rooms were brightly lit, and the laughing and chattering could be heard through wide-open casement windows from the street below.
Jeremy waited outside the coaching inn for almost an hour before, with his nose pressed against the glass of a downstairs window, he saw the party being escorted to a table sagging with food and wine.
In the dusk it was an easy matter to shin up to the low roof of a lean-to stable and thence to a narrow ledge running across the front of the inn only inches below the upstairs windows. From here Jeremy was able to step into one of the rooms occupied by the wealthy coach party.
It was an untidy room with clothing strewn about haphazardly and part-full glasses perched upon bedside tables and mantelshelves. It appeared that the occupants of the room had felt the need for celebration.
Jeremy’s attention was immediately directed to the small pile of rings and bangles on the dressing-table, half-hidden by a clutter of small perfume-bottles, brushes and combs. By sheer good luck, he had entered the room of the bejewelled woman, and she had obligingly left her rings and bracelets here for him.
But capricious luck deserted the young thief at the final moment. Even as he reached out a hand toward the heap of gems, the door from the adjoining room opened suddenly and a startled man’s voice exclaimed, ‘What the devil are you doing here?’
Jeremy grabbed at the jewellery and, grasping what he could, dived for the door leading to the passage outside.
He reached it and had it open when a hand seized his collar from the rear. The man who had entered the room might have been taken by surprise, but his reaction was fast enough. He held Jeremy in a tight grip, and had he walked the boy in front of him down the stairs to the landlord he would have secured the arrest of the young thief immediately. Instead, he turned Jeremy to face him, the better to see his face.
‘So, you young villain, you’ve been caught. Now I will—’
Jeremy did not wait to hear what the stranger had planned for him. The jewellery was clenched in his right hand, and he brought the closed fist across in a punch that would have done credit to Nathan Brock. It landed squarely on his captor’s nose.
Releasing his grip, the man took three unsteady backward steps across the room before sitting down with a hard bump.
Before the man could recover, Jeremy was away along the corridor, a cry of ‘Stop, thief!’ ringing out behind him. On the narrow inn stairs he bowled over an old man and then careered between startled guests in the lounge and bar below. Seconds later he was outside and running headlong through the window-lit streets of Rathconard.
Not until he had turned four or five corners did Jeremy stop running. He thrust the stolen rings deep inside a pocket and looked about him. He would not be safe until he reached the mountains, but for the moment he needed to get off the streets.
Realising he was close to the inn where Eoin Feehan was drinking, he made his way there. Slipping inside the smoke-filled back-street inn, he bought a portion of fish-pie, the serving-girl insisting upon sighting his money before passing the food across the rough wooden counter. His heart still thudding from his recent exertions, Jeremy pushed his way through the crowded room toward the table where he had last seen the Kilmar fisherman. To his astonishment he saw him talking earnestly to a uniformed soldier with corporal’s stripes on his sleeve. English soldiers were not popular anywhere in Ireland, and while Eoin Feehan and the corporal talked two more soldiers sat nervously nearby, their backs to a solid wall and eyes constantly on the move, unable to understand much of the talk about them.
Slipping easily between drinking Irishmen, Jeremy worked his way closer to Eoin Feehan’s table and finally sat down beside the smoking fire in the huge fireplace only a few feet away.
Squeezing between a drunken old woman and her daughter, who was viewing each man who entered the room as a prospective customer, Jeremy was almost back to back with the corporal. Both women grumbled irritably, but Jeremy pretended not to notice and within seconds they settled down again.
‘… you just do your part and leave the rest to me,’ the corporal was saying in a low voice. ‘And none of your tricks, or you’ll not live long enough to regret them.’
‘I’ll do whatever you say,’ said Eoin Feehan hoarsely. ‘If anything goes wrong, it will be no fault of mine.’
‘Nothing had better go wrong this time,’ hissed the corporal. ‘I wouldn’t fancy your chances if I spread it around that you ordered me to kill your own brother.’
Eoin Feehan blinked nervously about him, his eyes bloodshot from drink and smoke from the listless fire. ‘I didn’t know it was Sean when I told you….?
‘There’s them as wouldn’t put too fine a distinction on who you thought it was,’ retorted the corporal. ‘Just you keep that in mind and let me know of anything you think I ought to know about. Remember, if you hear nothing more from me, be sure you are not with the others on the night of the next
full moon. You’d better come down here again for a few more evenings yet; I may want to speak to you again.’
The corporal straightened up on his stool and his back bumped against Jeremy. ‘Now we’ll have a last drink together and then you’d best be on your way. Your countrymen don’t look too kindly on those who drink with soldiers.’
Corporal Garrett laughed loudly at Eoin Feehan’s discomfiture, but Jeremy had heard enough to put his escapade of such a short while before from his mind for the moment. Kathie’s suspicions had been fully justified. Now he had to get to her and tell her what he had just learned. He stood up to the accompaniment of more grumbling from the women on either side, but before he could push past them a voice from the doorway shouted, ‘There he is! Stop, thief!’
Looking up, Jeremy saw the man he had punched on the nose pushing his way toward him, accompanied by a tall-hatted constable.
There was a door on the opposite side of the room and Jeremy knew it led to a yard behind the inn, but before he could make his escape in that direction a strong hand gripped him by the arm and the corporal’s voice said, ‘Not so fast, my lad.’
Jeremy struggled and tried to lash out with his fists, but the corporal was tougher than Jeremy’s previous captor had been and the two soldiers were quick to come to his assistance. One of them twisted Jeremy’s arm cruelly behind his back and he let out a cry of pain, forced to give up the unequal fight.
‘Here you are, sir,’ said the corporal, releasing a hand to touch his high-crowned cap to the man from the coaching inn. ‘It’s a good job me and my men was here to catch this young villain for you or he would have been out of that back door and away, for sure.’
‘Thank you, Corporal. I am much obliged. Much obliged indeed.’
The man reached inside a waistcoat pocket with thumb and forefingers. Extracting a golden guinea, he handed it to the fawning soldier.
‘Why, thank you, sir. I wasn’t expecting such generosity, I’m sure. What has this young rogue been up to? That’s if you don’t mind me asking, sir.’
The Music Makers Page 21