Black Wreath

by Peter Sirr

  ‘It’s done. I’ve sent Grady to find a good knife man. There’ll be no more mistakes.’

  * * *

  When someone tries to kill you once, you do everything you can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So James left Phoenix Street and went back to an old haunt, the Phoenix Park, not as a robber this time, but as a guest of Jack Darcy. It was a strange feeling, as if he had gone backwards in his life, but he knew his uncle’s men wouldn’t find him here. There would be time to think, and plan.

  ‘We’ll have to go to him,’ Jack said.

  ‘I know,’ James said. You can only hide for so long, he thought.

  * * *

  Richard Lovett and his wife came back from their evening in the theatre. It had been a good show, and there had been drinks and diverting company afterwards. Now it was time to retire for the night.

  ‘Go upstairs,’ Lovett said. ‘I’ll join you shortly.’

  He went to the library for a night-cap and so didn’t hear anything untoward. Even if he had been directly behind her, he still would not have heard anything, because although Miss Deakin’s mouth opened and her eyes widened in fright no sound escaped her throat. In the end, gripping the banister tight, she stumbled down the stairs and into the library, mouthing silently at her husband and pointing with her finger in the direction of the bedroom.

  Lovett bounded up the stairs and into the room. There, on the bed, was a large black wreath. He wheeled around and shouted for his man.

  ‘Grady! Get up here now!’

  At that moment, two figures stepped from behind the heavy curtains.

  ‘Grady is otherwise engaged, you’ll find,’ the first figure said. ‘Along with the rest of your men.’

  ‘Hello, Uncle,’ the second figure said.

  ‘You!’ Lovett said. ‘Do you know the penalty for breaking and entering?’

  ‘The same as the penalty for murder, isn’t it?’ James said evenly.

  ‘You mean to murder me? Is that what the wreath means?’

  ‘And don’t you think I would be justified? How many times have you tried to kill me?’

  Richard Lovett snarled.

  ‘I’m not like you,’ James said. ‘I don’t like killing people. I don’t believe in murder.’

  His uncle looked relieved.

  ‘A black wreath was hung on the door of my father’s house when he was pretending I was dead. So I like to think of it as a calling card, to remind you I’m still alive.’ James fished in his pocket for a document. ‘There is something else,’ he said, handing the document to his uncle.

  ‘What’s this?’ Richard Lovett said.

  ‘Read it,’ James said.

  ‘… one Richard Lever, together with his wife Constance, indentured for seven years, in charge of Captain Thomas McCarthy, of the vessel George bound for Philadelphia …’

  Lovett looked up. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Those are your new names. Richard and Constance Lever. Richard is a labourer and Constance …’ James looked over at Miss Deakin, an angry red flaring though her powder. ‘Constance doesn’t do much really. But with training she might make an excellent scullery maid.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Miss Deakin spluttered.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Richard Lovett said.

  ‘I’m very serious,’ James said. ‘You need to learn a little of the world, and so this is my gift to you. When you return to Dublin, we can meet again in the courts and settle the issue of my inheritance – if it is still at issue. Of course I can’t guarantee that you will return – it’s a tricky business. I couldn’t have done it without the help of great friends.’

  ‘I hope you don’t suffer from sea sickness,’ Jack Darcy said. ‘I hear it can be a terror.’

  ‘The captain might help you,’ James said. ‘You know him, after all. He’s the same captain you gave me to. His orders are different now, though, and he knows better than to disobey them.’

  ‘You’ll never get away with this,’ his uncle shouted. ‘As soon as we arrive, we will make ourselves known. You only have to look at us to know what we are.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said James said. ‘That brings us nicely to the next part.’

  Darcy went to the curtain and emerged with a large sack which he now emptied onto the floor. A jumble of shoddy looking clothes spilled out.

  ‘What’s this?’ his uncle said.

  ‘Clothes fit for a labourer and a maid. You’re right about people judging you by what you wear. You’ll find it’s probably best not to insist on your nobility. Not everyone will think it’s funny, and it takes very little to cause offence. Believe me, Uncle, I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I will not be seen dead in this outfit,’ Miss Deakin said. She was shaking with indignation.

  ‘Would you like to be seen dead in what you’re wearing?’ Jack asked mildly, stretching his sword to her throat. ‘I can easily arrange it.’

  And so, a little later, a labourer and a scullery maid left the house of Lord and Lady Dunmain in the company of several strong men, to set off for a life they would never have imagined, let alone chosen.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Jack Darcy said as they took their leave of the captain and stepped onto the quay. ‘He could come back sooner than you expect. It’s not too late to run him through.’ Darcy fingered the hilt of his sword. ‘No one would object.’

  ‘No,’ James said. ‘I’ll give him the same chance he gave me. Whatever happens next, the gods can decide.’

  * * *

  ‘Now we can all begin,’ James said, surveying his friends. He, Harry and Sylvia were standing on the quay near the Custom House watching ships take on supplies.

  ‘I used to love standing here,’ James said. ‘I thought the world began here.’ He waved at the ships. ‘Adventure, exotic places, real life.’

  ‘And now?’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Now I see that this is real life, to be here with you and Harry.’

  The gangplank of one of the ships had been raised. There were shouts and whistles, and the ropes that secured the vessel to the quay were cast off and hauled back on board. The name George was inscribed on the wood.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go to sea again,’ James said as he watched the George move slowly downriver.

  The further the boat got from the quay the more he felt his lungs swell with new life. They all watched it, and no one spoke again until it had gone out of sight on its way to sea.

  ‘Now we can begin,’ Sylvia said finally.

  ‘Amen to that,’ Harry said.

  Author’s Note

  I came across the story behind Black Wreath by accident. I was looking for information about eighteenth-century Dublin for an article I was writing and one of the books I read was Maurice Craig’s Dublin 1660–1860, which told the real-life story of James Annesley. I found I couldn’t get the story of my head and so I sat down one day and wrote the opening chapters of what became Black Wreath. Something about a boy abandoned in the dangerous Dublin of the 1700s, fighting for his life, struck a chord and I soon found myself immersed in his world, reading everything I could on the subject. James Annesley, who became James Lovett in the novel, was born in 1715 in County Wexford, the son of the fourth Lord Altham, who was every bit as nasty a piece of work as Lord Dunmain in the novel. He concealed his son’s existence so that he could sell his inheritance, just as in the novel, and his uncle Richard, who assumed the title after his father’s death, really did sell James into indentured servitude. He was shipped to Philadelphia and spent thirteen years effectively as a slave on harsh plantations. The real James managed to escape to Jamaica where he enlisted as a sailor on a British ship and made himself known. He finally made his way back to Dublin, where he sued his uncle in what became one of the most famous legal cases of the time. Although he won his case, his uncle put every possible legal obstacle in his way for seventeen years. When the real James died, in 1760, his uncle still held on to both the
title and estates. My James is a bit luckier.

  Some writers of historical fiction stay very close to the events they’re writing about, but I found as I wrote that other characters and actions jumped into my head and demanded attention: Jack Darcy and his gang, Harry Taaffe the shoeboy, Sylvia Purcell, Doctor Bob, Red Molly. Harry was inspired by a drawing of a shoeboy in eighteenth-century Dublin by an artist of the time, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, which I pinned above my desk. The city of Dublin is one of the most important characters in the book and another great source of inspiration was John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin, which I taped to my wall and gazed at, following James’s progress through its twisting streets and alleys with names like Cutpurse Row, Murdering Lane and Gallows Road, wondering what would happen to him next.

  About the Author

  Peter Sirr lives in Dublin. He is a prize-winning poet as well as a critic, essayist and translator.

  He has published eight collection of poetry with The Gallery Press, including The Thing Is (2009), winner of the Michael Hartnett Award, and Selected Poems (2004).

  For many years he was Director of the Irish Writers’ Centre and was also editor of the national poetry magazine, Poetry Ireland Review. He is a member of Aosdána. He is married to the poet and children’s writer Enda Wyley.

  Black Wreath is his first novel.

  Copyright

  This eBook edition first published 2014

  by The O’Brien Press Ltd,

  12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland.

  Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777

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  Website: www.obrien.ie

  First published 2014.

  eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–712–4

  Copyright for text © Peter Sirr 2014

  Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design © The O’Brien Press Ltd

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  Cover image: iStockphoto

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