Maurice had been in the market for less than an hour when he heard the news. A merchant he knew came up to him. Looking worried.

"They've arrested thirty people. And can you believe it? One of them is Lord Maguire."

A parliamentary leader. The plot might have miscarried, but if a man of that importance was involved, then the business must be serious. And Maurice had just begun to question the merchant further when he saw his mother, accompanied by one of the servants, hurrying towards him.

"Maurice," she told him urgently, "you must come home at once."

He had never seen his mother look so distraught before. There was little time upon the way, but she told him what he'd been accused of. "Tell me it's not true," she begged. How could he explain?

"It's true," he said. Yet strangely, she hardly seemed to hear him.

"It's me your father will blame," she cried with a sad shake of her head-which made no sense at all.

"Oh, you and Father would never have done such a thing," he said with some bitterness. "I know that."

"You know nothing," his mother snapped, and spoke no more until they were home.

His father was white with anger. His eyes were blazing. But the eyes of the old Dutchman were even worse. They gazed at him silently, but with an awful, pale blue certainty that, before his family and before Almighty God, he stood accused and guilty. Maurice cast his eyes down before them.

"You have been paying court to this gentleman's granddaughter." His father's face was tight with suppressed anger. "Without our knowledge. Without any reference to me. Or to you, Sir." He turned to old Cornelius van Leyden.

"It is true, Father."

"That is all you have to say?"

"I should have spoken to you."

"But you deceived me, because you knew very well what I should have said. Do you not see the disgrace you have brought upon yourself and upon us all? And worse by far, do you not understand the terrible wrong you have done to this gentleman and his family, not to mention his granddaughter herself? Do you not see the wickedness of it, Maurice?" The Dutchman might be a Protestant, but it was clear that Walter had already conceived a respect and liking for old Cornelius van Leyden, and that he was hugely embarrassed as well as angry. "How long has this been going on?" his father demanded.

In fact, it was not so long. Maurice had encountered Elena several times in Dublin the previous autumn, but it was only in the spring that they had started walking out together. They had kissed. Matters had gone a little further. He had hesitated to go beyond that. Marriages between Catholics and Protestants might not be uncommon in his class, but it depended on the family. If Elena had been the daughter of Doyle, whose Protestantism was entirely pragmatic, and who wouldn't have cared much what church his daughter's children belonged to, then things might have been different. But the van Leyden family were as sincere in their faith as Walter Smith and the Walshes were in theirs. It had been Elena who had been less bashful, more eager to experiment than he. For much of the summer, however, she had been away in Fingal, and they had only had the opportunity to meet a few times.

"We became friends in the spring, but we hardly saw each other all summer." In so far as it went, this was true.

"How far has this matter gone?" Cornelius van Leyden's voice was quiet but insistent.

Maurice gazed at the floor. How much did the old man know? How much had Elena told him?

"Not too far." Cautiously, he allowed his eyes to lift and observe the two men. He saw that his father was about to ask him what he meant, but then thought better of it.

"You will wait outside, Maurice," his father said. "I shall speak to you later."

As soon as the door had closed behind his son, Walter Smith turned to Cornelius.

"No words can tell my shame, Sir, for the wrong my son has done your family."

"The girl was at fault also," the old man said simply. "It was ever thus."

"You are generous."

"If there had been a child . . ."

"I know. I know." Walter groaned. "I give you my word, he shall never come near her again. He shall also keep silent about the matter," he added meaningfully.

"It would be best." The old Dutchman sighed. "Were we of the same faith, our conversation might have been different."

It was true, Walter thought, that if only the girl had been Catholic, she might have made an excellent match for his son. But there was nothing to be done about it, and soon afterwards, old Cornelius van Leyden went upon his way.

Alone with his son, Walter Smith did not hold back. He accused Maurice roundly of seducing the girl. It was bad enough that she came from a respectable family; that they were Protestant only made it worse. "What will they think of us?" he cried. Had matters gone further, he pointed out, had she conceived a child, there would either have had to be an impossible marriage, or Elena would have been ruined. Maurice was lucky not to be cast out of his family forever, he went on. "To think that your mother and I . . ." he began; but then, suddenly remembering Anne's behaviour with O'Byrne, he fell silent and threw up his hands in despair.

"You are never to see her again. Swear to me."

"I swear," said Maurice reluctantly.

And Walter Smith might have had more to say, but just then, from outside, came the sound of the great bell of Christ Church ringing out, not as it usually did, in a sonorous manner, but with a wild, urgent clamour. Tidy must have been hauling on the bellrope with all his might and main. Turning to the door, they both rushed out into the street.

People were running by. There seemed to be a general panic. Walter stopped an apprentice and demanded to be told what was going on.

"It's war, Sir," the young man cried. "The whole of Ulster has risen. And they're on their way here."

Though the news of the revolt in Ulster was certainly disturbing, and though within weeks it would spread across all Ireland, at no time in the months that followed did it ever occur to Walter Smith or any of his family, or anyone they knew, that one of the great watersheds of Irish history had just been passed. For centuries to come it would be portrayed as either a mass, nationalist uprising of the Catholic people against their Protestant oppressors, or else as a wholesale massacre of innocent Protestants.

It was neither.

On October 22, the Irish gentry of Ulster began a series of coordinated operations. In the absence of any trained commander, Sir Phelim O'Neill had assumed the leadership. He had, after all, the blood of the old High Kings in his veins. The aim of the rising was quite limited. Having decided that neither the Irish nor the English Parliaments would ever give them the security for their lands or the concessions to their Catholic faith as matters stood, Sir Phelim and his friends had decided to put pressure on the government by taking over the province and refusing to budge until some concessions were granted. Well aware that if the Scottish settlers in Ulster were harmed, the mighty army of the Covenanters might come over from Scotland to punish him, O'Neill had given strict orders that the Ulster Scots were to be left alone.

But it didn't work. Sir Phelim O'Neill was not a soldier. A few small inland towns let him in, but Ulster's strongly defended ports were all in the hands of tough Scottish Presbyterians; he led his men up to their walls, but the citizens weren't impressed and he couldn't take a single one of them. Worse, out in the countryside, he couldn't control the people or even his own troops. Soon bands of looters were roving the land. Quite often they were helped by O'Neill's ragtag troops. Falling on Protestant farmsteads-English or Scots were all the same to them-they looted, stripped, and, if the people resisted, they frequently killed them. Nor was it long before Protestant settlers sallied forth from their walled boroughs to take their revenge in a similar manner. There was no single massacre; but day by day, week after week, there were scenes of scattered chaos and killing. Protestant deaths mounted: hundreds, a thousand; still it continued and spread beyond Ulster. The settlers, some of them stripped even of their clothes, were soon straggling into the ports to leave for England, or making their way south to the safety of Dublin, fifty miles away.

Meanwhile, the Justices in Dublin hastily called upon the head of the mighty Butler dynasty, the rich and powerful Lord Ormond, who, thanks be to God, was a member of the king's Protestant Church of Ireland, to take command of whatever forces the government could muster to deal with this terrible threat.

All through the month of November, the refugees were streaming into Dublin. And it was no surprise that some of them should seek sanctuary in the great cathedral of Christ Church. Still less was it surprising that they should find a ready welcome from the verger's wife.

Tidy's wife had never been busier. If one of the cathedral clergy should see a cluster of children's faces staring unexpectedly from the window of some underused lodgings in the precincts, or suddenly come upon a family camping by some old tomb in the crypt, and should ask the verger, "Is it really necessary, Tidy, for these people to be in the cathedral?" Tidy would only sigh and answer, "I can't stop her, Sir." And since every Protestant in Dublin was united in outrage at what had been done to the godly folk in the north-and Christian charity should in any case have stifled any criticism- there was really nothing to be done. Nor could they very well complain at the substantial bill that the verger submitted for ringing the great bell for several hours when news of the rising had first come.

In all these ministrations, besides, the Tidys had one powerful champion.

If people had formerly considered Doctor Pincher an eccentric, if young Faithful Tidy had even thought the old man was going mad, nobody thought so now. Hadn't he warned of the Catholic menace? Hadn't he believed a Catholic conspiracy was brewing? He had. And now he was revealed as a prophet.

Doctor Pincher emerged into his new role like a swan. Every day he came to Christ Church, where he was received by Tidy's wife as a hero and taken to see the new arrivals. His thin, inky-black figure strode among them, but to each one he would bend kindly and say: "Take heart. I know what it is to suffer for the cause." He was especially gratified one day when a grim Scots Presbyterian declared: "The fault was our own. It was a judgement of God upon us for taking the Black Oath."

In the middle of November, the doctor even preached in the cathedral again, to a congregation swelled to capacity with Ulster refugees. Once again, he took for his text the words, rendered so timely now: I come not to send peace, but a sword.

But there was no need for him this time to warn his congregation of the Catholic menace. They knew it all too well. His theme, on this occasion, was more inspiring. If their suffering had been terrible, he told them, they should not despair. For had not Our Lord declared: "The Son of man must suffer many things"?

The sword of Christ, he reminded them, divided the elect from the damned.

"Ye are the salt of the earth," he cried. "Ye are the light of the world." A quiver of grateful recognition passed through the congregation. "Be glad, therefore," he admonished them, "for your suffering."

The Catholic idolators might wield the sword and seek their blood. But in due time, the sword of Christ should strike them down.

"The unrighteous shall perish, and we, God's chosen, shall be brought into Israel, and there we shall build a new Jerusalem," and now the doctor's voice grew in strength so that, despite his age, it thundered, "from which we shall never be driven out again, no, not in a thousand years."

It was, by universal agreement, one of the finest sermons ever heard.

During this period, the Catholic forces of Sir Phelim O'Neill were laying siege, without much success, to the port of Drogheda, fifty miles up the coast from Dublin. The Justices in Dublin, meanwhile, were still taking Depositions from anyone who could give them evidence of who was behind the original plot. Informers were coming forward regularly, though it was hard to know how much of their evidence was true and how much invented. In the last week of November, the Dublin administrators did manage to send out a force of six hundred poorly trained troops to relieve Drogheda. Two days later, however, the news came back: "The Catholic rebels have smashed them."

It was time for the Justices in Dublin to take more serious measures.

It was at this juncture that Tidy's wife witnessed a curious meeting. She was taking Doctor Pincher to visit a family lodged in Dame Street when they saw Father Lawrence Walsh coming towards them. She expected the two men to ignore each other; but after the triumph of his recent sermon, Doctor Pincher was in no mood to avoid anyone. He began to reprimand the Jesuit from ten paces.

"I am surprised, Priest, that you show your face in the street after the evil that you papists have done," he cried.

"I do not condone the killing of innocents," Father Lawrence calmly replied. But Pincher took no notice.

"O'Neill and his friends are traitors. They'll pay with their lives," he announced grimly. "And you, too, Priest. You, too."

"Yet I hear," Father Lawrence mused, "that Sir Phelim is acting with the king's support."

Nothing about the Ulster rebellion was more infuriating to the Protestants than this. Partly to confuse the opposition, and partly to induce the loyal Old English Catholics to join him, Sir Phelim had announced that he was acting on the king's behalf. He had also produced a written commission to prove it. The document was a forgery, as it happened. But was the king capable of using this Catholic army against his own Protestant Parliament? Nothing was more likely, in Doctor Pincher's estimation. He gave Father Lawrence a look of pure hatred.

"Do not imagine that I am ignorant, Priest," he answered bitterly. "All over Europe you papists have been planning this for years. You would convert or kill us all."

Father Lawrence regarded him dispassionately. In a sense, what Pincher said was partly true. Holy Church meant to recover Christendom. For a generation and more, brave souls in Ireland, many educated on the continent, had patiently awaited the chance of deliverance. Outside Ireland's shores, Irish soldiers in Europe's Catholic armies, the huge network of priests and friars, and watchful Catholic rulers had all looked for an opportunity. Over the years, Father Lawrence could remember a dozen hopeful plots and plans, some plausible, some absurd. To his certain knowledge, the plan to take Dublin Castle had originated on the continent. But in his own estimation, none of these dreams, and none of the vague promises of help from overseas would ever materialize until there was a Catholic army with a proper organization and plan, on the ground, in Ireland itself. That was why, the moment he had received hints of what Sir Phelim and Lord Maguire were planning, he had shown such an interest. For the first time, it had seemed to him, there might be a realistic chance.

Faced with Pincher's accusation, however, he gave no ground at all.

"I am surprised at what you say," he replied blandly. "For as far as I can see, Sir Phelim O'Neill, who proclaims his loyalty to the king, asks only for a promise that the lands of loyal Catholics will not be stolen and that the Graces, granted long ago, should be honoured. True, he has occupied Ulster to force the government's hand. But where did he learn that trick-if not from your own friends the Scottish Covenanters?" There was nothing that Pincher could say to this. It was well known that Sir Phelim had already stated, "It was those Scots who taught us our ABC?" And Father Lawrence could not resist gently asking: "Or would you call the Covenanters traitors, too?"

Pincher could only scowl. But he was not going to let the Jesuit get the better of him.

"I know a traitor when I see one, Priest, and I see one now. No doubt your brother is another. Your whole family is a nest of vipers. But be assured, it will be crushed underfoot."

Father Lawrence turned. There was no point in continuing the conversation.

After he had gone, Pincher stared after him with loathing. And the doctor had almost forgotten Tidy's wife, when he heard her voice beside him: "I know the Jesuit is wicked, Sir, but I am sorry all the family are traitors." Pincher glanced down at her and saw there was no trace of irony in her words.

"There can be no truth in a papist," he muttered irritably.

Any day now. It would be any day. For Orlando Walsh, awaiting the birth of his child, his house was now a private haven-specially blessed, and quite apart from the angry sounds of the world, which seemed far away, almost unreal, and hardly important anymore.

There had been no difficulty with the pregnancy, no alarms. His wife was healthy, and he had no doubt the child would be born healthy, too. Had he, once or twice, wondered whether the baby might not turn out like little Daniel? Not really. Whatever God gave, he would accept it gratefully. But in his own mind he was sure that, after so many years of faithful waiting, God's gift to him would be perfect in every way.

"If it's a girl, I think we should call her Donata," he said to Mary. Donata: the one given. "And Donatus if it's a boy," she said, to which he readily agreed.

At the start of December, several small Catholic foraging parties raided Protestant farms in Fingal. They wanted provisions, but when some of the farmers resisted, there were some scuffles and a few people were hurt. At Orlando's estate, however, everything was quiet.

On the second day, a man he knew slightly from Swords came by with a message. "We've got to defend ourselves, Orlando Walsh," he announced. "The men in Dublin won't do anything for us." It was true that during the whole of the last month, the men in Dublin Castle had ignored most of the Fingal gentry. Orlando hadn't been surprised. He knew the mentality of the government's Protestant servants. "We're Catholic, so they don't really trust us," he mildly remarked. "That's all it is."

"And they can't defend us, either," the man from Swords declared. "Or won't. The only force the government has sent out so far was smashed. We can expect nothing from that quarter, and we've farms to protect. That's why you have to come with us." A party of gentlemen from the area were planning, he told him, to meet with some of Sir Phelim's men. Given his wife's condition, Orlando explained, he couldn't come; but he agreed that the parley was probably sensible. "With luck, as we're mostly Catholic, Phelim O'Neill and his troops will agree to leave us in peace," he told Mary.

On the third day of December, he received a summons from the Justices in Dublin. It seemed that they were taking an interest in the Fingal landowners after all.

"They're calling us all to meet in Dublin," he told Mary. "In five days' time." He saw the anxious look on her face. "I shan't go if the baby's not born," he promised, and saw her look of relief. He wasn't inclined to go anyway. He had no wish to be involved in their military operations, either, if he could avoid it.

It was midafternoon on the fourth day when Doyle arrived. He was looking grim.

"You must both come to Dublin at once," the merchant told him.

"Mary can't travel in her condition, and I don't want to leave the estate when everything is so uncertain," Orlando explained. But Doyle shook his head.

"You don't understand the mood in Dublin," he declared. "The castle men are in a state of panic, and the city's being stirred up by men like Pincher." And when Orlando mentioned that he knew some of the Fingal gentry had gone to meet Phelim O'Neill's men up at Tara, Doyle almost exploded. "No, you don't know. You know nothing, Orlando. Do you hear? The very fact," he went on more quietly, "that they came to you at all places you under suspicion." Orlando had received a short letter from Lawrence describing his passage of words with Pincher, but until now he had not supposed that the old man's threats and talk of treason should be taken so seriously. "Come to Dublin," Doyle urged him, "and prove your loyalty. Otherwise you will be under suspicion." It annoyed Orlando that anyone would seriously question his loyalty, but he still didn't see that he could leave at present.

"Tell the Justices," he replied, "that I shall come to the meeting in Dublin if my wife is safely delivered of her child."

"I shall tell them," answered his kinsman, "and I pray that the child comes in time."

The next morning, the gentleman from Swords came again. He was in a hurry and did not even dismount. "It's been agreed," he cried. "We're joining with Phelim O'Neill."

"In rebellion?"

"Not at all. That's just the point. Every Catholic gentleman in Ireland will come together in a grand league and proclaim our loyalty to the king. There's to be a big meeting at Swords on the eighth of December, three days from now. I'm going round every estate in the area to spread the word. Mind you're there."

"But that's the same day we're all supposed to be in Dublin," Orlando objected.

"You can ignore the damned Protestants in Dublin," the Swords man cried impatiently. "Stick with your own."

"I shall come," Orlando told him also, "if my wife is safely delivered of her child."

"And what," Mary asked him when he told her afterwards, "if the baby has come before then?"

"I shall go to neither meeting," Orlando said quietly. It seemed to him the safest thing to do.

Two days later, a servant arrived from Doyle with a letter begging him to come to Dublin at once, without delay. He did not go. That night, Mary went into labour.