But it was Jane O'Byrne who answered Father Lawrence.

"We are with Sir Phelim, of course."

O'Byrne said nothing. Father Lawrence smiled.

"You are loyal to your family. But there is a higher authority than the family. I mean Holy Church."

"Not everyone agrees with the Nuncio," Jane remarked.

"He is harsh," Father Lawrence acknowledged. "But unfortunately, he is also right."

Archbishop Rinuccini had not been in Ireland long before his clear Latin mind saw the weak logic of the Old English position. "For a start," he pointed out, "King Charles is a heretic whom nobody trusts. Secondly, he is never going to give you what you want."

Since its formation, the Confederation had evolved quite an impressive list of demands that included not only the freedom to practise the Catholic religion, and equal legal status, but the return of many Catholic lands. They also wanted the Irish Parliament to be independent. In effect, Charles would be king of a separate country. "We know we won't get all we want," the Old English party told the Nuncio.

"You won't get any of it," he'd replied. "King Charles would like to use Irish troops against his enemies. But he can't grant your Catholic freedom, because his own Protestant Parliament will never let him. Your entire position rests upon a fallacy." Yet since a Protestant Parliament would give them even less than the king, they countered, what were they to do? "Sever your connection with England," he told them. "You've no alternative." And who would protect them from England after that? they had demanded. For the English Parliament would always see an independent Catholic Ireland as a threat. "You will defend yourselves," he ordered. "But help will be forthcoming. From France, or from Spain. From Rome itself."

They were the Old English of Ireland, they reminded him. Their families had been loyal to the English monarchy for centuries. "This is hard for us."

"If you are Catholics," the Nuncio had replied, "your faith will come first."

Now, backed by Owen Roe O'Neill, the Nuncio had taken over the Supreme Council. He was even threatening to excommunicate anyone who opposed his uncompromising view. The Old English, and Irish moderates like Sir Phelim, were still refusing to go along with him. The Confederation was split.

"And what does he want in the end?" Jane demanded. "Are we to drive every Protestant out of Ireland?"

"The Protestants of Ireland are a mixed group," the Jesuit replied. "There are men like my cousin Doyle, who has no strong religious feelings, and who would probably change back to Catholicism as easily as his father turned Protestant. There are the planters, some of them strongly Protestant. At the end of the day, they are adventurers. They'll either grin and bear it, or they'll sell up and leave. As for the government men at Dublin Castle, they are the most strident." He smiled. "But my guess is they'd run like rabbits." He paused. "The real problem is elsewhere."

"You mean Ulster."

"I do indeed. The Scots. They are another matter entirely. Look at the mighty Covenant they made in Scotland. They are implacable for their faith. They would not tolerate an English Prayer Book; they will surely never tolerate a Catholic government. The others will crumble, but the Presbyterians of Ulster will not."

"We'll have to drive them out, then?"

"I think so."

"Where would they go?"

"Back to Scotland perhaps. Or to America."

Father Lawrence left them after that. When he had gone, Jane O'Byrne turned to her husband.

"When I think of all that you owe my kinsman-the friendship and promotion he has given you-I hope you do not think of deserting Sir Phelim." Her eyes were fixed upon his in a hard stare. She was not afraid of him in the least.

He said nothing. He had always done as he pleased with women before. To be nervous of his wife was a new experience.

Nor did Brian O'Byrne make any move in the weeks that followed. Christmas came, and the month of January. Owen Roe O'Neill had gone to winter quarters anyway, so there was nothing to be done.

It was in the month of February, when he was up at Rathconan, that the news came.

"Lord Ormond has handed Dublin over to the English Parliament. He's leaving Ireland." He gave the news to his wife himself.

"But that's impossible. Ormond is the king's man."

"He's the king's man still. But he feared he couldn't hold Dublin. He's gone to King Charles. They hope to gather more forces and return. Meanwhile, the English Parliament men are sending troops over to strengthen the garrison."

"The Parliament men have Dublin?" The Puritans?

Sir Phelim and the Old English, it seemed, had miscalculated.

Jane O'Byrne looked at her husband with a new uncertainty in her eyes.

"So what will become of us now?"

As Doctor Pincher considered the world in the Year of Our Lord 1647, he knew that God's Providence alone had allowed him to live so long, and he was grateful. When Dublin was handed over to the English Parliament, he was seventy-five, and one of the oldest men in the city. Considering his age, his health was good. Perhaps, he thought with some secret pride, I shall outlive them all. He was determined, at least, to live to see the Protestant cause triumph.

And to see his nephew well settled.

Soon after the start of the war between King Charles and his Parliament, Barnaby Budge had written to say that he had taken up arms against the king and joined the Roundheads, as the Parliamentary army was nicknamed. Some time later, Barnaby had written to tell him about the new force that was being formed-a model army filled with godly men, ready to train themselves to new heights of discipline. Led by their generals, Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, this New Model Army had soon swept all before it. Subsequent letters had described their military actions, and Doctor Pincher had experienced elation and also some fear.

"I pray that God may deliver my nephew to us safely," he confessed more than once to Tidy's wife, to which she had comfortingly replied, "Oh, Sir, I'm sure He will."

During that year of 1647, the signs were certainly encouraging. Parliament sent battle-hardened troops and seasoned commanders to Dublin. The Confederate forces in Leinster and Munster were now driven back; and when Owen Roe O'Neill made a move towards Dublin, he was soon chased away. Equally gratifying, the Protestant city authorities had made life so unpleasant for them that several prominent Catholic merchant families, including that of Walter Smith, decided to leave. Pincher chanced to meet Smith on the day of his departure, and asked him where he proposed to live now.

"With my brother-in-law Orlando Walsh," Walter replied. Though Ormond's Protestant troops at the Walsh estate were under the control of the Parliament men in Dublin now, the arrangements protecting Orlando had still been continued. "At least your Protestant troops will protect us," the merchant remarked wryly.

Only one development caused Doctor Pincher concern. It was something which he would never have foreseen, and it took place in England. It worried him so much that he wrote to Barnaby about it.

"The army," he began, "seems to forget that it is the servant of government, not the master."

There was no question that Doctor Pincher was right. The Puritan army, having fought their way to victory, had grown impatient with the Presbyterian gentlemen of the English Parliament, who sat in comfort and were still trying to strike a deal with the fallen king. "Put him on trial," they demanded. They had swept into London and overawed the citizens; and Oliver Cromwell had sent one of his most trusted young officers, Joyce, to grab the king and transfer him to army custody. If King Charles in prison was still nominally king, and Parliament still sat, it was the army which was really taking charge.

But what shocked Pincher were some of their other views.

If King Charles's Church, with its bishops and its ceremonies, seemed no better than papism to most Puritans, one might argue about what should replace it. But one thing was certain: there must be order. The gentlemen in Parliament and the solid London merchants now favoured an English version of the Presbyterian Church. Instead of clergymen, each congregation would choose its elders, and they in turn would elect a central council, whose authority would be absolute. This would be the new, national Church.

But while they had been risking their lives together, turning the world upside down, the army men had been discussing such matters, too, and they had come to quite different conclusions. They had had enough of the Parliament men. If they could fight the authority of an anointed king, why should they bend the knee to Parliament? "By what authority," they demanded, "would a Parliament tell us how to worship God? God speaks to every man directly." So long as they were godly and not papist, the congregations should be free to follow their own consciences and set up independent chapels in any manner they liked.

Such doctrines were infectious. Pincher discovered it one morning when he encountered Faithful Tidy. He had been a little disappointed that since leaving Trinity College, the young man had scarcely ever come to see him; but as Faithful was now assisting the Chapter Clerk, they met from time to time. The Parliament men in London had already made clear that they intended to legislate a Presbyterian Church for Ireland, too, and Pincher was glad to hear it. For if those army fellows were given their way, he remarked to Faithful, there'd be chaos-a breakdown of all religious and moral order.

"Yet when you think of it," Faithful had answered easily, "isn't that just what the Catholics said when the Protestants challenged Rome's authority?" He shrugged. "What's the difference?"

Pincher stared at him in stupefaction.

"The difference, young man," he thundered, "is that we are right."

Since leaving Trinity, Pincher thought, young Faithful was getting impertinent. But Pincher was profoundly shocked that he should even think such a thing.

Some of the civil ideas of the army men were just as bad. One group of these insolent fellows had started a new and hideous argument. According to them, all men were equal. Levellers, these villains called themselves. Their ideas varied, but they wanted all men to have the right to choose their government, and some of the most extreme were even questioning the right of men to own private property. So appalled was Doctor Pincher by what he heard that he even wrote to Barnaby about it.

"These Levellers," his nephew wrote back, "are dangerous and ungodly men." They would be dealt with, Barnaby assured him, in due course. But every report reaching Dublin suggested that the number of Levellers was increasing.

And if Doctor Pincher was alarmed by the radical spirit of the Roundhead army, he was not alone. All over Britain, as that year progressed, people were beginning to ask: did these soldiers recognise no authority but their own? Was power only to be maintained by the sword? "Are we to exchange King Charles's tyranny for an even worse one?" In Scotland especially, the Presbyterians looked at the army's religious independence and did not like what they saw.

In Dublin, Doctor Pincher spent an uncomfortable winter, afflicted with chilblains. The spring of 1648 came, but still he felt depressed.

And then an astounding series of events occurred. All over England, people started rising for the king-not because they liked him, which they didn't, but because they had no wish to be ruled by the army. Even some of the ships of the royal navy mutinied. In Scotland, one of the great lords was gathering a Royalist army. Lord Ormond, with the help of the queen, who was in Paris, and King Charles's son, a gangling but cunning youth also called Charles, had agents active in Ireland. For the Catholic Confederation, Lord Inchiquin now declared firmly that he was for the king. Within a month the Supreme Council had met, voted out the Nuncio, and declared for King Charles also. Only Owen Roe O'Neill held out. It seemed that the Civil War was about to be fought all over again.

So distressed was poor Doctor Pincher that twice in one week he took to his bed, to be ministered to by Tidy's wife, who brought him healing broth.

Only a letter from Barnaby gave him any comfort.

I am with General Cromwell now. He is not only our finest commander, but a wise, kindly and godly man. He is strong in the Lord. And he will deal firmly with the Royalists and the levellers alike, I promise you.

Though he had heard a good deal of this rising general, Pincher had not been especially impressed. The man sounded solid enough. A Member of Parliament who had turned soldier, Cromwell had inherited large estates and was a wealthy man in his own right. As a rich squire, Cromwell would have no patience with the social ideas of the Levellers. But his religious ideas were less clear. He had grown so close to his men that Pincher was not sure he was a Presbyterian at all. Certainly, he'd lent his name to one pamphlet which had argued for religious independence. Pincher had read it with disgust.

As the weeks went by, however, Cromwell's generalship could not be disputed. As the main Parliamentary forces ground down the Royalist risings on the eastern side of England, Cromwell stormed up the west, from Wales to Scotland, and every opponent he met was smashed by the iron hammer of his battle-hardened troops. By autumn, it was all over. The Roundhead army had won.

And now the army had had enough. Sweeping down into London and finding a large part of the Presbyterian Parliament men still trying to negotiate with King Charles, they kicked them out and announced: "We'll try King Charles after Christmas."

In January 1649, the trial took place. At the end of the month, they executed him. In the weeks that followed, the monarchy and the hereditary House of Lords were abolished, a Council of State was chosen, and England was declared a Commonwealth.

It was an extraordinary business. To execute a king, with all the forms of legality: such a thing had never been done before. The world was turned upside down, and Pincher was not at all sure he liked it. But he also noticed before long that Cromwell, who increasingly dominated the Council, was taking quite a conservative line. He'd even been reluctant to execute the king, according to Barnaby. Sound Presbyterian gentlemen were being brought back into the Parliament; the army radicals were being quietly ignored. Having given them the head of the king, Cromwell was returning England to a state of normalcy. Perhaps, Pincher dared to hope, Cromwell could provide a godly order in Ireland, too.

For at Easter that year came the letter from Barnaby that Doctor Pincher had been living for.

Cromwell is to come to Ireland. He will come this summer. And I shall be coming with him.

Several parties of men had arrived at the camp that day. From his position on the slope, O'Byrne observed the small group of horsemen as they came up the track below, but he paid them no special attention.

The August sun was hot on his face. It was midafternoon. In the distance lay the walls and steeples of Dublin. To the right, clearly visible through the slight haze, he could see the soft blue waters of Dublin Bay. Here on the slopes of Rathmines, a few miles south of the capital, thousands of men were waiting, just as they had waited all day before. They were waiting for Cromwell. O'Byrne turned to the young soldier standing beside him.

"Go and see who those men were that just arrived," he said. He didn't really care, but the youth had been getting restive and it would give him something to do.

The armies waiting to confront Oliver Cromwell as he sailed to Ireland were a strange collection. For a start, they were partly Protestant. Overall command was in the hands of Protestant Lord Ormond, who had returned to the island now on behalf of the late king's son. The troops he had gathered at Rathmines today contained a large number of Old English Catholics, but many Protestants also. Also in the Royalist coalition, Lord Inchiquin the Irish Protestant had added his forces from Munster. And up in eastern Ulster, the coalition had been joined by an army of Ulster Scots who, as Presbyterians, had declared themselves the enemies of the religious independents of Cromwell's army. Only the main army of native Irish had failed to join the coalition, because Owen Roe O'Neill was still holding out, in splendid isolation, in western Ulster. Altogether, Lord Ormond had over fourteen thousand men.

And the coalition was formidable. They had already boxed in Owen Roe O'Neill up in Ulster. The Parliamentary garrison in Dublin was now pinned down again. And Lord Inchiquin had surprised everyone by sweeping up from the south and taking over the fortified port of Drogheda, the gateway to Ulster, and then nearly all the Ulster strongholds except Derry. Just recently, a squadron of Royalist ships had come to Ireland's southern coast, where, together with the local privateers, they hoped to harass Cromwell's fleet.

Ormond had chosen his position well. If Cromwell landed in the south, Ormond blocked his path to Dublin. If Cromwell's fleet sailed into Dublin Bay, their ships would be in range of the artillery that Ormond had placed on the coast nearby.

Yet as Brian O'Byrne gazed down at the camp on the slopes below him, he had only one question to ask himself: why was he here?

He scarcely knew. His wife and son were with her family, in the relative safety of Ulster for the moment. He'd been up at Rathconan only days ago, and wished he were back up there now, skulking and trying to stay out of trouble. There was nothing fine about war: he'd seen enough to know that. If he had to fight, he'd sooner have been with Owen Roe O'Neill. But he'd made too many commitments to the Confederates and his wife's relations now. He must fight with them, even if his heart wasn't in it.

Nor was the reluctance only on his side. For the greatest opposition to the coming of Cromwell to Ireland had already come from another quarter entirely: Cromwell's own troops.

It was the Leveller element, of course. But this was just a matter of radical individuals: whole companies, entire regiments of his iron-willed model army, had refused to serve in Ireland. Cromwell had threatened, he had cajoled, but his faithful English soldiers would not come. They had refused for several reasons. Some had demanded their back pay; others wanted political reforms in England. But the most powerful argument advanced, which came from soldiers in all ranks, was the most astounding.

"A man's religion is a matter of personal conscience," they said. "Why should we force the Irish to be Protestants?"

Nobody had ever heard such an argument before. Rulers, from personal cynicism or for political reasons, might sometimes tolerate other religions within their realm-though, of course, a Catholic king would know that his Protestant subjects were bound for hellfire, just as the Protestant communities knew the same about the Catholics. But no political body, since the days when the Roman Empire had made Christianity the state religion, had ever supposed that a man's church could be a purely private matter, of no business to anyone but himself. The idea was shocking both in its novelty and its blinding simplicity. And even to a sympathetic army general like Cromwell-who was disposed to allow that the Protestant revelation might be celebrated in different ways by the congregations- to suggest that the great evil of Catholicism could be treated as if it were just another godly sect, and that the great divide between Catholic and Protestant could be ignored, was anathema.

But although Cromwell and his fellow generals had moved swiftly to crush the Leveller mutinies, he was still obliged to allow numerous companies of English soldiers to go home, because they could not see why the Irish should be forced to be Protestants.

And as O'Byrne gazed sadly at the encampment below, and considered the blood that had been shed during even his own short life in religion's cause, he shook his head and allowed himself to wonder whether, perhaps, those heretic English mutineers might even have had a point.

The young fellow he had sent to check on the new arrivals came riding back.

"A party from Fingal came to join us. All Catholics. I heard one was a Dublin man named Smith."

"Smith?" O'Byrne's face creased into a smile. "Did you say Smith?" His sadness was forgotten. "It's young Mwirish," he cried happily, and began to ride down the slope.

So he was greatly surprised, having ridden through the camp, to find himself face-to-face not with Maurice at all, but his father.

Something had happened to Walter Smith. He had changed. Not to look at. He was still the same stout family man with balding grey hair that he had been before. But something had happened to him, and he was changed within. That was how it seemed to O'Byrne as they sat by the campfire that evening.

The merchant had not been especially pleased to see O'Byrne, though he must have known that the Irishman might be in Ormond's camp. He appeared to accept O'Byrne's presence as another fact of nature, like the weather, in an existence which, after a lifetime of seeking order, he had now ceased trying to control. And so when, out of courtesy, O'Byrne had invited him to eat at his tent that evening, Walter had nodded briefly and answered: "As you wish." So now, as they ate, O'Byrne gave him a good account of the military state of affairs, the strength of the various parts of Ormond's forces, and the likely tactics if they engaged Cromwell's army.

That afternoon, Ormond had decided to place a forward battery right down at the mouth of the Liffey. But the battery would be dangerously close to the Dublin defenders, and as dusk fell, he prepared to send a large contingent, some fifteen hundred men, to secure the position first, under cover of darkness.

"It's an excellent move," O'Byrne told Walter, as they saw the men gathering to leave. "A battery there could wreak horrible damage on Cromwell's ships if he tries to sail into Dublin."

For his part, O'Byrne was eager to learn the latest news of his friend Orlando, of young Maurice, and of the household in Fingal where the Smith family was still living. Walter confirmed that young Maurice was now running the family's business affairs, although trading was not easy. He was often impatient, and had wanted to come and fight with Ormond; only the fact that the family needed him had kept him at home. Anne was well, but suffered from a stiffness in her joints. The person who had been most ill at ease, it soon became clear, was Walter himself.

O'Byrne could imagine it. Walter did not say so in so many words, for neither of them wished to refer to the matter that lay between them, but O'Byrne could imagine it all too well.

The barn, the outbuildings, the house itself, all filled with Protestant soldiers. That would have been bad enough. But to be crammed in close, as a permanent guest in his brother-in-law's house-no matter how much Walter and Orlando liked each other-must have increased the strain. And then, to be sharing rooms each day with a family that included the simple boy, Daniel, the ever-living reminder to all of them-except Maurice, who knew nothing-of his humiliation . . . For myself, thought O'Byrne, I couldn't have borne it.

But borne it Walter had, month after month, because he was a good and decent man; until at last, having done all he could for them and knowing that the coming of Cromwell was the one mighty threat to all their lives, he had taken his decision. Putting his wife in Maurice's charge at the Walsh estate, and telling them that he was going on business into Connacht, he had quietly ridden down to take up arms, for the first time in his life, as a soldier in the army of Ormond. And so this solid, peaceable family man, well past his sixtieth year, had walked secretly out of his family's lives, and in some strange way he seemed to be free. I wonder, thought O'Byrne, if he means to return?

And as he listened to the merchant, and reflected upon the innate decency of the man, and the fact that it was he himself who had brought all this misery upon Smith, O'Byrne, besides feeling guilt and shame for what he had done with Anne, found himself suddenly struck by the realization, quite common in those who have played the game of adultery, that they have more affection and respect for the husband they have wronged than for the wife they stole.

How strange, O'Byrne considered, as he poured them both more wine, that this fellow, who has none of our looks-those had gone to Maurice-is nonetheless my kinsman, more Irish than English. And he's come to fight at my side, though God knows whether he knows how to use a sword. He'll be butchered, of course, when the fighting begins. But that is his choice. He drank his wine and fell a little quiet.

And perhaps he had drunk too much, but later that night, when the fire had burned down to glowing embers, and Smith rose to depart to his own tent, O'Byrne suddenly took him by the arm and softly cried, "Don't seek your death here. There is no need." And as the merchant slowly shook his head: "You're a far better man than I am, Walter Smith. You're worth ten of me."

But the merchant did not reply, and walked away in the darkness.

Since he awoke at dawn, and was higher up the slope, O'Byrne was one of the first to notice. For a short time he imagined that they had concealed themselves; but as the sun began to rise, and his keen eyes scanned the coastal position selected for the cannon, he became increasingly alarmed. The troops who had left during the night were not there, nor anywhere else that he could see. Fifteen hundred men had disappeared.

News spread through the camp. Soon people were staring out, eyes against the sun. Where were the troops? Had they marched into the secret halls under the mountains, like the shining heroes of Irish legend? Sometime around eight o'clock the answer became clear, as the long column appeared in the distance, making hurriedly for the coast.