And indeed, in 1793 the government in London, now at war with a French Republic, and fearful of trouble in Ireland as well, had begged the unwilling Irish Parliament to do something to keep the Catholics happy. The resulting legislation, however, had been less than it seemed.

"But it was a travesty," John MacGowan burst out in reply. "Every man with enough property to yield forty shillings may vote. I may vote myself. And what good does that do me? None at all- since no Catholic may sit in our Parliament. I may vote, but only for a Protestant. And since the majority of constituencies are still controlled by a handful of Protestants anyway, nothing will change at all. They gave me the right to join a guild as a full member also- as long as the existing Protestant members invite me in. The thing was designed to make us think we had something, and to give us nothing. It was a mockery, a swindle."

"And now," Patrick added, "the Troika have gone to work on King George. The word from London is that he has now privately vowed never to let any Catholic into Parliament."

It had to be said that King George III of England, as usual, had meant for the best. But just as he had conceived it his duty to hang on to the American colony, he had now been persuaded, by cunning FitzGibbon, that his coronation oath, which obliged him to uphold the Protestant faith, also meant that he must deny political representation to the Catholics. Once he believed he had given his word, nothing would ever persuade honest King George to change his mind. It was one of the Troika's cleverer moves.

"And if that is what the king vows in private, his government in public has shown itself just as determined. When once a viceroy came here-Lord Fitzwilliam, a decent man as it happens-who wanted to meddle with the Troika, he was recalled at once."

"So if nothing can be done," Deirdre remarked, "why is it you're here?"

Patrick looked at her seriously. His voice became quieter.

"A little over a year ago, Wolfe Tone was arrested for agitating. He was thrown out of the country. He went to America-to Philadelphia. The home of Benjamin Franklin." He paused a moment. "There he made many friends: men of importance who had taken part in the American War. He also came to know the representative of the French government. Most people suppose that he is still in America. But he is not. Like Benjamin Franklin, he has gone to France-Revolutionary France-to see whether they will now help Ireland as they helped the Americans before."

"And will they?"

"We have no idea. But if they do, we must be prepared. If such a thing is done, it must be done quickly and effectively. The larger and better organised the rising, the less the bloodshed need be. The United Irishmen have already shown what it means to act together in brotherhood. I believe all Ireland will rise. We shall have an Irish republic. There will be freedom of religion, as there is in America and France."

"And what in God's name has this to do with Conall?" she demanded.

For the first time, Conall spoke.

"I am to organise this area, Deirdre. From here all the way down to the border of Wexford. In fact," he continued gently, "I started many months ago."

"You devil!" She turned furiously upon Patrick. "Can you leave none of us alone? Do you wish to destroy us all?"

But Conall was shaking his head.

"You do not understand, Deirdre. It was not Patrick who asked me to do anything." He smiled, perhaps a little sadly. "It was I who asked him."

She stared at him.

"Your travels . . . ? With my grandfather's verses? They were all for this?"

"No, Deirdre, I'd have done that anyway. But it was a useful excuse to move around the region, as well."

Deirdre made a gesture of despair.

"John MacGowan is one of our captains in Dublin," Patrick explained. "And as your two sons there will answer to him, I thought it good that you should meet."

"Our sons too . . . ?" Deirdre looked horrified.

"They both wished it," Conall said quietly.

"How many men have you now?" MacGowan asked.

"Around Rathconan, a dozen. In the whole area, a hundred that I can rely on."

"Who at Rathconan?" Deirdre demanded angrily.

Conall mentioned some of the Brennans and other local families. "Finn O'Byrne is especially eager," he remarked.

"Finn O'Byrne?" Deirdre gave a look of disgust. "He's the biggest fool of them all. And he hates you, besides."

"It doesn't matter." Conall smiled. "He will fight for us because he believes that if we win, Rathconan will be his."

"But why, Conall?" she cried suddenly. "When you've spent all your life avoiding trouble-why would you do such a thing?"

Patrick thought this was uncalled for. So, by the look of it, did MacGowan. Conall seemed to read their thoughts.

"No," he said quietly, "she is right." He paused a moment. "It is true that, seeing the foolishness of my father, I have always taken care not to make the same mistakes. I have never drunk more than a little; I have kept my thoughts to myself. I have made furniture, as well as I know how, for men I despise, and taken their payments politely." And now a certain edge came into his voice. "In Dublin, I was treated like a dog at school by Protestant boys who had neither my intelligence nor my education; as a man I have seen my fellow countrymen held in subjection by these same bigots and fools. And I have hated them all. But hatred is useless, and revolt is a crime, because, unless it has the means to succeed, it is stupid. So I said to myself: 'Wait. Wait a lifetime if necessary. But wait until the time is ripe.' And for many years I thought that I should never live to see that time. But now I think it may have come. And if every carving and every piece of furniture that I have ever made should need to be destroyed, as we burn their houses down, I should say: 'Light the fire and burn them all,' and say it gladly."

"Oh, Conall." His wife shook her head. "I hope to God you may be right. For if you're not, we shall all be destroyed."

"Then you will help us?"

"I am your wife, Conall." She sighed. "Just one condition I make."

"Which is?"

"Never ask me if I believe."

After leaving Rathconan, Patrick took MacGowan to Glendalough, which the Dublin man had never seen before. They also took note of the hamlets they passed. Patrick was pleased with the day. Though Conall and his men up in the mountains could only be marginal to any action, he was proud that he had an organization in place up there. "Besides," MacGowan pointed out, "you never know whom you may need." At the end of the day, they made their way down to Wicklow town, arriving there at nightfall.

The next morning, they inspected the place. Conall had warned them that his two sons-in-law there had no interest in the cause, but Patrick already had a merchant in the town who had volunteered, and he gladly took them round.

Like most Irish towns of the time, it had a barracks with quite a full garrison: Protestant officers, Catholic men. They seemed well-disciplined and quite smartly turned out. "We've tried to persuade some of the troops to join us-secretly, of course," the merchant informed them. "But no luck so far." Nonetheless, he informed them, he had twenty good men in the town. By midmorning they had parted from him and started back towards Dublin.

They were both rather cheerful. Patrick certainly felt that they were making good progress in Wicklow. A month ago, he had been down in Wexford where his old friend Kelly had told him: "The gentry here are absolutely split into two parties, but many of us, including myself, are with you." In other parts of the island, however, that lay outside his own remit, especially in Munster and Connacht, little progress had been made. "We shall all have to work hard so that Ireland is ready," he remarked to MacGowan, "if the French do agree to come."

Yet whatever the uncertainties both men, for their different reasons, could express confidence. MacGowan's reasons were practical.

"The Ulster men are formidable," he observed. "They are the backbone at present. But if a proper military force arrives from France-I mean ten thousand men or so-then I believe the effect upon our Catholic population would be incalculable. Up to now, any protest has been crushed, and they have no hope. But once they see the French-we'll have a hundred thousand men the next day. Even the whole English army would find it difficult to move about the island with every man's hand turned against them. We'd harass them and wear them down, just as the Americans did."

Patrick's reasons were vaguer, yet perhaps even more strongly felt. It was not so much the Catholic generality in whom he placed his trust, important though they were. It was the involvement of his own, Old English class that moved him.

If the great ducal house of Leinster had been the patron of the Catholic cause in Parliament, it was no less a person than the old duke's handsome younger son, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who had now emerged as leader of the cause in Dublin. He had been profoundly affected by the ideals of the French Revolution. "All men are equal," he would remind his friends, "the duke and the street sweeper, the Protestant and the Catholic. And all social systems which deny such an obvious truth will sooner or later be swept away." And he practised what he preached. He'd stop in the middle of a Dublin street and talk to some modest labourer with just the same, simple honesty with which he'd have spoken to a noble lord. He cut his hair unfashionably short; and in his manner of dressing, you might have taken him for a modest Paris tradesman rather than an Irish aristocrat. Seeing Patrick's unusual household with Brigid the peasant girl, he had taken him for a member of his own class who shared the same egalitarian outlook. "It's up to us, Patrick, to take the lead," he had once confided in him. "I feel better, having you by my side." And even if some of Lord Edward's ideas seemed a little too radical to Patrick, he warmed to the aristocrat's noble idealism.

Two weeks ago, Patrick had chanced to meet him at his cousin Eliza's house. Taking him to one side, Lord Edward had confided: "Patrick, I'm going to make my own approach to the French, to back up Tone. Between our two efforts, I'm sure we shall persuade them. But I beg you, not a word to anyone yet." If this confidence-and the fact that he had a slight family connection with the great aristocratic dynasty-gave Patrick a certain snobbish delight, the idea that they were fighting side by side for the cause of the Irish people was imbued, in Patrick's mind, with an almost mystical quality.

Not that his religion was intense. Brought up by a physician father of liberal outlook, and coming of age when the French ideas of rational enlightenment were all the rage, it wasn't surprising that Patrick's religion was kindly rather than devout. If Wolfe Tone and the Ulster Presbyterians, who were now so important to him, privately thought of their Catholic allies as medieval obscurantists, Patrick would not entirely have disagreed. "I believe that the world must have been created by an eternal, all-encompassing being that we call God. And Christianity expresses the divine nature. But I don't believe much more than that," he once confessed to Georgiana. "So I suppose I'm what people nowadays call a Deist."

"So are most of the clever men I know," she replied with a smile, "Catholic or Protestant."

This in no way prevented him from going to Mass or making his confession-and certainly not from fighting for justice for his fellow Catholics in Ireland. Yet if he had no interest in visiting the holy well of St. Marnock, as his grandfather had still done, when he thought of himself and Lord Edward fighting for the ancient Catholic cause, he felt that he was fulfilling a sacred trust, and he experienced a sense of rightness, as if this was what his ancestors, and no doubt the deity Himself, had destined him to do.

They were ten miles from Dublin when they met Hercules, in the company of Arthur Budge, riding towards them.

It was many years since Hercules had spoken to his cousin. Even when Patrick had come up to him before the parliamentary debate of '92, he had not said a word in reply. But now, seeing him coming from Wicklow, together with that cursed Catholic merchant John MacGowan, he did not hesitate.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded roughly.

"I'm after taking Mr. MacGowan to see Glendalough," Patrick answered with a bland smile. "Did you never go there, Hercules? It's a lovely spot. St. Kevin's hermitage may still be seen."

Hercules looked at the two men with disgust.

They were all the same, these Catholics, he considered. Insinuating and deceitful. Jesuits to a man. He would never forget that John MacGowan had pretended to be a Protestant so that he could sneak into the Aldermen of Skinners Alley. Once a liar, always a liar, as far as Hercules was concerned. As for Patrick, his loathing for his Catholic cousin had only grown down the years. If as a young man he had been jealous of the love his own mother felt for Patrick-her preference for his cousin, he'd sometimes suspected-by the time his grandfather had left Patrick the legacy, it had become clear to him that his cousin was only preferred because he practised the Catholic arts of manipulation. Dishonesty: that was all it was. As for Patrick's attempt to persuade him to change his convictions before that parliamentary debate, it had been contemptible. Did the devious Catholic really imagine he would be swayed by these hypocritical appeals to his better nature-from a man who, himself, had been living in sin with his concubine for years? No, Patrick was nothing.

But what was he doing here? This tale about Glendalough was obviously a lie, intended to taunt him. But what did it conceal?

If Hercules was suspicious of the two Catholics, it was not surprising. The fear of the suppressed Catholic majority was so endemic in governing circles that almost anything a Catholic did might be seen as evidence of a conspiracy of some sort. When tensions between Protestant and Catholic textile workers had flared up in Ulster, and the Catholics had formed groups they called Defenders, to protect themselves against Protestant mobs, the government had seen it as a conspiracy. As a result, the Defenders had spread, and turned into just the sort of disruptive secret society that the government feared. Before that, down in County Wexford, some rural disturbances against the high tithes and other exactions made by the clergy had soon been denounced as another Catholic assault on decency and order. The charge was absurd, but despite the fact that his own family estate was in the same county, and he should have known better, Hercules had chosen to believe it.

In the last three years, however, the usual fear had turned to alarm. The Catholic Defenders seemed to be spreading and merging with the United Irishmen. Wolfe Tone and his friends were clearly up to something-but what? The Castle men weren't sure. Would revolutionary France try to foment trouble in Ireland? Quite likely. But nobody could find any clear evidence. FitzGibbon and the Troika did not intend to wait meekly for something to emerge. They took action. In every barracks, military men were drilled. A series of raids on suspect United Irishmen served to frighten many of their friends. Landowners were told to be vigilant. New justices of the peace were appointed and given extra powers of search and arrest.

It was exactly this process that had caused the two men to undertake their present journey. Hercules was going to Wexford. None of the family had been down to Mount Walsh since the previous year, since his parents had decided to spend this summer in Fingal. And though his easygoing father had assured him that the Wexford countryside was quiet, Hercules had decided to go to see for himself. As for Arthur Budge, his journey was more official. His father had been urging him for some time to return to Rathconan and run the estate, and now he had also asked the government to appoint Arthur as local magistrate in his place. It was as a justice of the peace, therefore, with stern injunctions to watch out for trouble, that Arthur Budge was now on his way to spend a month at Rathconan. As they were on terms of friendly acquaintance in Dublin, Arthur had invited Hercules to accompany him and spend the night at Rathconan upon his way.

Having parted from Patrick and MacGowan, Hercules turned to his companion.

"I hate those men," he remarked. "If they had their way, Ireland would be plunged into chaos."

"You fear chaos," Budge replied grimly. "But don't forget, I fear something worse."

"What is worse than chaos?"

"Catholic rule. Remember, a century ago, when King James brought Catholicism back to Ireland, it only took months for the papists to start taking over everything. It can happen again, and it could be worse. If the Catholics come into power, they'll throw every Protestant settler off his land. We Budges will be lucky if we escape naked with our lives."

"And what about their allies, the Protestant Patriots, and the Ulster Presbyterians?"

"They will lead the Catholics to victory, then they will be overwhelmed by them. It is inevitable." He grunted. "You think you are fighting for order. But I know I'm fighting for my life."

"Don't worry," said Hercules quietly. "We'll destroy them."

Patrick was glad to get back to his family. The household of Patrick Walsh and Brigid Smith was unusual, but it seemed to suit them both. The pretence that she was his housekeeper had been quietly dropped as time went on, but in its place had been substituted something else.

She had taken to the stage. The old Smock Alley Theatre had closed now, but the Crow Street Theatre, well-placed off Dame Street just halfway between the Castle and Trinity College, was a large and lively place which catered to an audience of all classes. Brigid's slim figure, her dark hair and green eyes, had created quite a stir when she first appeared there; her voice, when she had learned to project it, had a pleasing resonance; and she had shown an unexpected talent for comedy. She was a popular performer, and her appearances were all the more attended because they were occasional-for she always put the needs of her children first. There were four children now: two boys and two girls, the eldest thirteen, the youngest three.

With this change in role had come a change in status. Dublin society was genial. Even in the greatest aristocratic houses, the atmosphere was far more easygoing than in the proud mansions of London. In the public assemblies at such places as the Rotunda Gardens by the lying-in hospital, the fashionable world mixed freely with merchants and tradesmen. If she wanted to go about in her own right, as a beautiful and talented actress she would find a friendly welcome in many places; and if she happened to be a gentleman's mistress-well, such things were to be expected in people connected with the stage. More problematic, however, was her connection to Patrick. The difficulty for the respectable residents of Dublin's Georgian terraces and squares was well summed up by Georgiana: "People feel that they can't invite her as his mistress, and she can't go as his wife." In the convention of the time, it would have been easier if she were safely married to someone else.

As it happened, this hardly mattered, because Brigid had little interest in visiting people whom, for the most part, she secretly despised. Georgiana herself would visit her from time to time, and she liked her. She had her own friends whom she saw as she pleased. And if Patrick was asked to dine in this house or that, she was glad that he should go without her.

At first it had suited Patrick very well to have her as his mistress. If he had withdrawn politely from the courtship of two women, either of whom would have been a good marriage, it was not only because he had become obsessed with the green-eyed servant girl. Something within him had also rebelled against the bonds of matrimony. Perhaps it was only the normal selfishness of the bachelor; but perhaps, also, he was drawn to something beyond-a need for larger spaces, wilder shores-that the love of this strange girl from the mountains could satisfy in a way that the companionship of the others never could. His love affair with Brigid had been passionate, and still was. He had seen her transformed from a lonely girl to a confident beauty with a public face. Their children were handsome, and she had brought them up wonderfully.

"Do you not think, after all these years, that for the sake of the children you should marry Brigid?" Georgiana had occasionally taxed him. Yet to his surprise, when he had finally made the offer to Brigid, she had laughed at him and refused.

"People in Dublin tolerate me," she answered. "But they always remember who you are. To your friends, I'm still the servant girl whose father's a carpenter up at Rathconan. They'll never accept me as your wife. I'm better off as I am. Besides," she smiled, "as things are, Patrick, I'm always free to leave you and take the children back to the mountains if I want." And because of the streak of stubborn pride in her, he knew she meant it, every word.

So now, after his children had finished climbing over him affectionately, he gave her an account of his journey with MacGowan, and told her privately what had passed between himself and her parents.

Though Brigid had always been aware, in a general way, of his activities for the United Irishmen, there had been no need to tell her all the details. With the way things were progressing now, however, he felt that he ought to warn her that the business could become more dangerous. "At some point," he explained, "it's likely that we shall be issuing arms." She listened to him carefully, and when he had finished, she only asked him one question.

"Do you truly believe in what you are doing, Patrick?"

"Yes," he answered, "I do."

"Don't forget to give me a gun when it starts," she said. That was all.

Georgiana's party took place early the following week. It had been arranged at short notice after she and her husband had come into Dublin earlier than expected. Like his father before him, Lord Mountwalsh had made it plain that, in his genial way, he intended to have an active old age, and some legal business had drawn him back into the city. Since he liked to entertain people at the house on Merrion Square, she had made it her business to discover quickly who else was back in town, so that she could find some congenial company for him.

As the morning of the party arrived, she felt pleased with the company she had invited. There would be her daughter Eliza Fitzgerald and her husband, a couple of political men, both of moderate opinions, an amusing lawyer, a clergyman from Christ Church, and one of the Talbots of Malahide-all with their wives. Patrick was invited, alone; also a charming old gentleman who resided on St. Stephen's Green, named Doctor Emmet, and a few other old friends. Twenty people would sit down to dine in all.

She had asked old Doctor Emmet for a particular reason. While Hercules was down in Wexford, his wife and two sons had remained up at the old estate in Fingal. His elder son William, however, had wanted to come into Dublin with his grandparents. As he was about to go to Trinity College for the first time that autumn, Georgiana had thought to ask Doctor Emmet to bring his own youngest son with him to the dinner, since the boy had already been up at Trinity for several years. Her husband, who knew a number of the professors at Trinity, had already reported, "They say he's a quiet, studious boy, with a talent for mathematics-well-liked, but as he lives at home with the old doctor, he doesn't get involved in any of the wilder parties." Young Emmet would be a nice, quiet young man for her grandson to know, she thought.

Of all her grandchildren, she loved young William the best. She didn't want to admit it, but all the family knew. And so she was especially glad that it was he who carried her own dear husband's name. As a baby he had strongly resembled Patrick; but as so often happened with children, his face had changed as he grew up, and now, at fifteen, he was starting to look just like old Fortunatus. So strongly did he bring back the memory of the dear old man she had been so close to that, more than once, catching sight of the boy that summer, she had caught her breath and then, to hide her sudden emotion, been forced to turn away. But in particular, it was the boy's generous nature that she loved. Once, when still a young boy, he had encountered some youths hurling stones at a stray puppy in a Dublin street, and without a thought for himself, he'd bravely driven them off, rescued the animal, and taken it home. The dog had been devoted to him ever since. The previous summer, when his younger brother had been sick for several weeks, William, who loved to be active, had sat with him every day by the hour, reading to him, playing cards, and keeping him amused. The doctors said the young fellow's recovery was largely due to his elder brother.

The only moment of doubt she had experienced about the party, however, had been on William's account.

"Can I invite old Doctor Emmet?" she had consulted her husband. "He's the most harmless of men, but he was always a Patriot. And what about Patrick? What would Hercules say about his son meeting people he hates at our house?"

But Lord Mountwalsh had been firm.

"Our house has always been a place where people of any persuasion are welcome, as long as they express their views with courtesy," he pointed out, "and we shall not change for Hercules. Besides, young William is going to encounter people of every kind of opinion at Trinity. As for Patrick, Hercules may not like him, but of course William should meet his cousin once in a while."

On the morning of the party, however, he complained that he had slept badly and felt unwell, and Georgiana had asked him if he wanted to cancel it.

"Not at all, my dear," he had announced stoutly. "I shall take a cure. I shall go to Mr. Joyce's Turkish Baths."

If the English town of Bath had become fashionable for setting up a spa on the site of an old Roman baths, Dublin now had a Roman bathhouse of its own-except that, in the modern fashion, it was called a Turkish baths. The colourful entrepreneur who had set it up had been a Turk, wonderfully named Doctor Borumborad, whose thick beard and oriental robes had caused quite a stir in Dublin-until he had finally abandoned the disguise and revealed himself as a Mr. Patrick Joyce from Kilkenny. His baths had continued to flourish, however. They contained the usual steamy rooms and a magnificent plunging bath. Having been persuaded by a friend to try it once, Lord Mountwalsh had become quite a patron of the establishment, and the management were always delighted, naturally, to receive a visit from him. By early afternoon, they had returned him to her looking rosy-cheeked and contented.

"And now, my dear," he announced cheerfully, "I shall enjoy our party."

And he certainly did. As the guests arrived that evening, it pleased her so much to see how delighted he was to greet them. Patrick he greeted with particular affection. And it was clear that he was also rather proud to show off his young grandson, whom he insisted on keeping by his side as the guests arrived, and then as he made his way round them all again as they assembled in the parlour before the dinner.

Doctor Emmet, grey-haired but sprightly, had duly obliged and brought his youngest son with him, and once young William had finally been disengaged from his grandfather, she brought the two boys together.

It was interesting to observe the two of them together. Her grandson was actually the larger of the two, for Robert Emmet turned out to be a small, somewhat swarthy fellow, with a mop of black hair and small eyes that seemed to look out on life with a quiet but sharp intensity. Standing beside him, her grandson, with his friendly, open countenance, reminded her of a broad-faced gun dog beside a dark terrier. Robert Emmet seemed to be talking to her grandson pleasantly enough, however.

Elsewhere in the room, her guests were all conversing happily. She had observed Patrick greet her daughter Eliza and Fitzgerald warmly, and talk to several of the other guests. Now he was deep in conversation with Doctor Emmet.