"I refuse to recognise these proceedings, and I refuse to take your oath."

"Then you shall be expelled, Sir."

But if these, and a dozen others, were frightening spectacles, there was one that was pitiful.

He was only a little fellow, not five feet tall. His name was Moore. His mother was the widow of a poor shopkeeper, and for her son, therefore, the college meant a way out of the mean streets of poverty. Most of the undergraduates, being people of means, rather despised this sort of student, who often had to perform menial tasks about the college to defray expenses. But many felt a mild curiosity: had this timid boy really joined the United Irishmen? Not so far as anyone knew.

But Moore was guilty of another crime: he was a Catholic.

Until five years ago, he would never have been admitted to Trinity at all. But when the British government had finally pressured the Dublin authorities to make some concessions to the Catholic community, FitzGibbon, much against his better judgement, had admitted a few Catholics into Dublin's university.

The poor little fellow stood before the tall Vice Chancellor. He was trembling with fear, and who could blame him? Towering over him, FitzGibbon took the Bible, held it out, and ordered him to take the oath. William wouldn't have blamed the boy if he'd done so. The thing was meaningless. Moore surely hadn't anything incriminating to tell FitzGibbon, anyway. Take the oath and be done with it, he prayed under his breath. But Moore was shaking his head.

Something like a smile had appeared on FitzGibbon's face. Was he amused? He pushed the Bible into the boy's right hand, but Moore snatched his hand away and put it behind his back. FitzGibbon considered him, as a cat considers a mouse it has caught. He pushed the Bible at the boy's left hand. Moore snatched that away, too, as though the holy book was infected. Both his hands were behind his back now. He was defenceless. But he wouldn't give in.

All around the hall, even amongst a few of the Yeomanry, a feeling of sympathy for the plucky little fellow was starting to grow.

FitzGibbon was still regarding him, his head cocked to one side. Now he thrust the Bible at his chest. The boy backed away. Again. The boy edged back farther. Again and again: the Vice Chancellor and the little Catholic moved across the stage, the tall man making thrusts with his Bible, as the boy retreated before him. Finally, Moore was trapped with his back to the wall, and the Vice Chancellor either had to make him eat the holy book or desist. Some of the Yeomen were laughing. But William did not laugh. He was not even afraid. He felt only a rising tide of disgust.

"Sit down, Sir."

FitzGibbon returned to the table and put down the Bible. Then he called out another name.

"Mr. Robert Emmet."

Silence.

"Mr. Emmet."

Silence.

"Mr. Emmet is not here?" FitzGibbon did not seem surprised. "We have ample evidence of his conspiracy." He paused and gazed at the Bible. A thought seemed to strike him. Having so far dealt only with recalcitrants, perhaps he thought it was time to call up someone cooperative. He gazed over the audience.

"The Honourable William Walsh." He looked straight at William. "Mr. Walsh."

William came towards the platform slowly. He could feel the eyes of the entire college upon him, and he could guess what their thoughts might be. Some, people who knew him, might be wondering if, despite his discretion, he had been led by Emmet into the revolutionary cause. Many more would assume that, as the son of Lord Mountwalsh, he must be close to the authorities. No doubt they imagined that this was prearranged, and that FitzGibbon had called him up to denounce someone. William took his time, because at this moment he hadn't the least idea what he was going to say.

But now he was on the stage, and FitzGibbon was looking towards him, though not with any threatening appearance. Indeed, as he approached, William thought he detected from FitzGibbon's fellow judge a faint but courteous inclination of the head.

"Mr. Walsh." FitzGibbon seemed to be addressing the audience rather than himself. "You have heard a number of members of this college refuse to take the oath that has been offered. And there has, in each case, been a reason why they will not do so: namely, that they are, and can be proved to have been, involved in treasonable activities. But these are, if I may so put it, the bad apples in the basket. There are many members of this college-by far the majority, I should say-who are sensible and loyal fellows. They can have no possible reason to object to an oath that only commits them to abhor treason and to expose traitors, should they discover any in their midst. I shall now proffer you the Scriptures, Mr. Walsh, and ask you to take this simple oath." And with a smile, he picked up the Bible and held it out, in a pleasant manner, towards him.

And still William did not know what he would do. He gazed at the book.

After a moment, seeing that he seemed to hesitate, FitzGibbon frowned, in puzzlement rather than in anger. He nodded towards the book, as if William had forgotten what he was about.

"Place your hand on the book," he said quietly.

Still William did not move. Strangely, he was not afraid. He was only wondering what he was going to say. Just for a second, he saw a flash of dangerous anger in FitzGibbon's eye. Then he knew.

"I cannot take the oath, my lord." He said it calmly, but clearly. Even the college porters at the back would have heard him.

"Cannot, Sir?"

"The oath, my lord, is not one that any gentleman could take."

"No gentleman, Sir?" The Vice Chancellor's voice was rising, partly in anger, partly in sheer confusion. "I myself, Sir, should be proud to take the oath," he cried.

"Then your lordship is not a gentleman," William heard himself declare.

There was a gasp around the hall. FitzGibbon stared at him in stupefaction. Then, slamming the book down upon the table with a bang that almost shook the rafters, he shouted: "And you, young man, we shall see what you shall be. Infamy! Infamy! Sit down, Sir, for you shall never sit in this place again."

That day, about twenty members of the college were expelled. Before he announced their names, the Vice Chancellor explained to the assembled students what this expulsion would mean. They need not suppose, he told them, that the nineteen were denied attendance at the Dublin university only. Letters would go to every place of learning in England and Scotland as well, to ensure that they were denied admittance to those places also. All hope of a professional career was now closed to them, therefore.

The expulsions, which naturally included Robert Emmet, had all been planned in advance, and, in the opinion of FitzGibbon, they were necessary. But to these was added the name of an unexpected traitor, William Walsh. For the young aristocrat who had so unexpectedly turned against his class and so dreadfully humiliated him, the Vice Chancellor reserved a particular fury and venom. And he did not mince his words when he wrote to Lord Mountwalsh that evening.

Georgiana could scarcely believe it. She had been back in Dublin for less than a month when her grandson came to her door. She had heard about the expulsion the evening it had happened and had hurried round to Hercules's house at once; but she had found only her daughter-in-law, who told her that Hercules had just received a letter from FitzGibbon and had left for Trinity College in a fury. There was nothing to do but wait until the next day, and she had planned to go to the house in St. Stephen's Green again. But before she could do so, young William had come to her door to tell her that he was homeless.

If FitzGibbon had been furious, the anger of Hercules surpassed all bounds. If the Vice Chancellor thought William had betrayed his class, Hercules told his son, "You have betrayed me." And if FitzGibbon expelled him from Trinity College, Hercules was still more implacable. "You will not return home. You may walk the world alone. You are no longer my son," he told him. Indeed, before the day was out, Hercules had even instructed the family lawyer to discover whether there was any way that William could be stripped of his right to inherit the family title. Even his wife, who loved her son and hoped to see a reconciliation, was just as shocked as her husband, and considered that any father was justified in acting in such a way. As for William's younger brother, he was told that William had committed a crime so terrible that it must never be spoken of.

So he came to live with Georgiana. She received a note from Hercules asking her to turn the boy out since, he explained, her misplaced kindness might be construed as disloyalty to himself, but she ignored it. In a way, she was glad to have William in the house. She loved his kind and honest nature, so like her dear husband, and his looks so like old Fortunatus: it was as if she had got both of them back. And she could see that the boy loved her, too. As for his feelings for his parents, he said little, but he did once reveal: "I love my mother, but she only follows my father." And of Hercules, he'd said: "I love my father, because he is my father. But I do not really like him." To this she said nothing. What could she say?

But the young man also frightened her. What was she to do with him? At the best of times, she might have been uncertain. But at a time like this? The authorities had struck, but they clearly did not think they had removed the threat. More troops seemed to be gathering in Dublin. Local Yeomanry companies were being formed in every part of the city. In Merrion Square, some of the residents were setting up their own group. Not one of these elderly gentlemen seemed to be under sixty. As they patrolled the square, they mostly seemed to be drinking tea or making use of their hip flasks. Two of them were even carried round by their dutiful servants in sedan chairs. But they were all armed with swords or duelling pistols. And if this was a comical aspect of the city's preparations, many of the other military patrols were a great deal more fearsome.

Clearly, if the Yeomanry were preparing for action, so were their opponents. The United Irishmen might be invisible, but everyone sensed their presence. The tension was growing. And what, in all this, did her wayward grandson mean to do? He had insulted FitzGibbon, but had he been seduced into the United Irishmen? She asked him directly.

"No," he told her. "But I'd support them against men like FitzGibbon and my father."

"You mustn't go and do anything foolish, William. I forbid it," she told him. But to this he made no reply.

What should she do? Lock him in his room? She hadn't the power to do it. Two weeks, three weeks went by. He gave no trouble. He kept her company. Sometimes he would go out-to see friends, he told her-and be gone for many hours. But she had no idea what he did. By the third week in May, the city seemed like an armed camp before battle. The tension was unbearable.

Then one morning, something special seemed to be happening. The patrols were moving about the city with a new urgency and purpose. By noon she heard that a blacksmith had been caught in the act of making pikes. All that day and the next, the searches continued. They were going from door to door. She found one excuse after another to keep her grandson from going out. Then, like a thunderclap, came the news.

"Lord Edward Fitzgerald is taken." Confused details followed. He was wounded, in jail, dying. As soon as he heard, young William rushed out of the house. There was nothing she could do to stop him.

It took a few days for the details to emerge. The young aristocrat had been betrayed. He'd been taken in his hiding place in the Liberties; there had been a scuffle, and he'd tried to defend himself. Shots had been fired; he'd been badly wounded. Meanwhile, the searches had gone on. A cache had been found at Rattigan's timber yard in Dirty Lane. "They've taken all the furniture out of his house and burned it, to teach him a lesson," she heard. Someone else had been flogged. Were the revolutionaries going to counterstrike? Young William was out for hours each day, and she'd no idea where he was. She tried to question him, but he was evasive. Two more days passed. The curfew was being rigidly enforced now. Nobody could be on the streets after nine at night. On May 23, William seemed unusually excited. He went out early in the evening but did not return. The curfew passed. Not a sign of him.

Georgiana paced her room. There was nothing she could do, but she couldn't go to bed. Hours passed. Midnight came. And then she heard the drums, close by. They were beating the Yeomanry to arms in St. Stephen's Green.

And all over the city. It was starting. Soon, there was banging at the door, and she ran down to it herself. There she found one of the old gentlemen of the Merrion Square patrol. He was carrying a lamp. A pair of duelling pistols were stuck into his belt and he was looking pleased as punch. "Close up your shutters," he cried. "It's begun now. And it'll be the devil of a fight, you may be sure."

"Where?" she called after him.

"You'll see it from your high windows right enough," he called back. And having hastened to the top of her house, she saw from the window that fires were breaking out on the foothills to the south.

At dawn, the same old gentleman called by again.

"They've stopped the mail coaches," he told her. He seemed delighted. "There'll be risings all over Ireland. Not a doubt of it."

Two hours after the curfew ended, young William appeared. He offered no explanation of where he'd been, and she didn't want to ask. He went to his room to sleep. Half an hour later, she was with Hercules. "You must take him back," she begged. "I cannot answer for him, and I don't know what harm he may do himself."

But Hercules was obdurate.

"It's too late," he answered. "He is dead to me."

It was only then, in desperation, that she turned to the one person to whom she guessed the boy might listen.

Brigid had hesitated only briefly before deciding: she would go with him, whatever the consequences.

The boy had been a surprise, though.

When Georgiana had come to Patrick for help, Brigid had thought it unnecessary; but Patrick had been understanding. "She is his grandmother, she loves him, and she feels she cannot help him. The responsibility is too much for her. I don't blame her for seeking my help at all. And she may be right. The boy will probably listen to me." He'd agreed to go round that afternoon.

His plan, which he had not told Georgiana, had been a little harsh and somewhat devious, but necessary. "I'll take him over to our kinsman Doyle," he told Brigid. "Then we'll throw him in the cellar, which can certainly be locked. Doyle can keep him there until the business is over, one way or the other." Unfortunately, when Patrick had suggested this plan, old Doyle had refused. "He says it's too much trouble," Patrick reported. So they would just have to do what Georgiana wanted-which was to take the boy down to Wexford with them.

He had warned Georgiana that there would be risks. He had even confessed to her that he was a United Irishman. But this did not seem to surprise her.

"You will know how to keep him from harm's way," she had said. "You could take him to Mount Walsh. If you are going to Wexford, that should suit you rather well."

For Brigid and Patrick, the weeks since she had taken Lord Edward to the Liberties had been hectic as well as dangerous. Meetings had been arranged, instructions delivered. The whole structure- damaged, but still functional-of the United Irishmen had been contacted from that bare room in a squalid alley; and miraculously, she and Patrick had never been discovered. By the middle of May, the decision had been taken: the rising would take place on the twenty-third.

Not that Patrick had been in favour. "It's madness to begin without the French, he'd told her. But though trusted, he was not one of those who made the final decision, and Lord Edward and some of the others were obsessed with the idea. The wheels had been set in motion. By the time of Lord Edward's capture, it seemed that the rising was destined to go ahead anyway.

The plan was grand-Dublin would be taken, and all Ireland would rise. But the coordination was still weak. The Ulster organisation, after being pulverised in the previous months, was still acting separately. The disruption of the mail coaches the night before had been intended as a signal-when the mail failed to arrive in various towns, the people there would know that the rising had begun. But the Wexford coach had got through. At dawn that morning, it had been agreed that Patrick should go south the following day to do what he could to see that the groups he had set up proceeded in good order.

Taking his kinsman down to Mount Walsh would actually provide him with an excellent excuse to travel, and Georgiana promised to furnish him with a letter that day. "If you stay at Mount Walsh," she added with a wry look, "you could protect my house from your friends. I'd be sorry if the library you created should be burned down."

When Georgiana had departed, he turned to Brigid.

"I have to go, you know."

"I know." She smiled. "But I'm coming with you." And although he argued against it, she would not be denied.

That afternoon, Patrick went to see young William. Once he had explained the role that he and Brigid had played with Lord Edward, and told William that he wanted him to accompany him in an important mission to the south, the boy was only too anxious to come. They all set off the following morning.

She didn't have to go with him. She'd hesitated to leave her children: they'd always come first with her before. But she had spent the better part of her lifetime with this kindly, idealistic, and slightly self-centred man. Perhaps it was a deep and primitive instinct that prompted her, as women had done through the ages, to follow her man into war. But whatever the cause, after all they had been through recently, she knew that, for better or worse, this was the time when she must be at his side. "Shouldn't you look after the children?" he asked her. "No," she answered simply, "this time I'm looking after you." She left her children in the care of her richer brother, at his house off Dame Street.

They were all three well-mounted. They were challenged once, at the city's southern outskirts. But upon learning that they were members of Lord Mountwalsh's family going to secure the estate, the Yeomanry officer let them through with only a warning to be careful along the road. There was trouble to the west, he informed them, all the way through Meath and down through Kildare, and the military was already out in force in those counties. "But take care," he cried, "Wicklow and Wexford will be next."

They saw some burned buildings along the way, but little evidence of any organised rising. At one village, they were gleefully told the landlord had fled. A few miles farther, a small group of local Yeomanry informed them proudly that the rebels in the vicinity had been crushed. Taking the road up into the mountains, they saw fewer people and less sign of trouble.

They reached Rathconan late that afternoon and went straight to Conall's cottage, where they found Deirdre, Conall, and Finn O'Byrne. Brigid admired the easy way that Patrick asked William to see to the horses while the rest of the party went into the cottage. As soon as they were inside and out of earshot, the men began to confer urgently. Conall quickly confirmed what they'd suspected. There had been confusion. Wexford was still waiting, uncertain what to do. Down on the coastal plain, the rebellion was proceeding southwards piecemeal, parish by parish. "I thank God you're here," Conall continued. "Old Budge is alone at the big house. Arthur Budge went down to Wicklow and his brother Jonah has been out with his Yeomanry down by the coast. My fellows are all ready. We can take over Rathconan within the hour. If this fellow had his way," he indicated Finn O'Byrne, "we'd have done it already. But I've been holding them back until I was sure the rising had truly begun."

"You did right," Patrick confirmed.

"But it's started now." Finn's eyes were shining with excitement. "I'll have the men ready in a minute. The weapons are all close by." He gave a grin in which joy and malice were perfectly conjoined. "We'll have old Budge's head on the end of a pike in time for him to watch the setting of the sun." He nodded with huge satisfaction. "We'll warm ourselves tonight with the burning of his house."

It seemed that if Finn still believed that his family were the rightful heirs of Rathconan, they could do without the house.

But Patrick shook his head.

"That's not what is needed. Not yet. If we took it, Finn, we'd not be able to hold it. Even Jonah Budge with his Yeomen would probably overcome you, and God knows what other reinforcements his older brother would bring against you. It would all be to no purpose. You must wait," he told them "for the general rising. When Wexford has risen, that is the time to take Rathconan and to tell all the other villages to rise. Meanwhile," he pointed out, "if the Budges think the place is quiet, so much the better. When the time comes, you will take them by surprise. Do not move," he instructed, "until I send you word." He looked at Finn firmly. "It would be a pity to be killed for nothing."

Finn looked disappointed, but he held his peace.

The family and young William ate together quietly that evening, and lay down to sleep at dusk. At dawn they left. Before they departed, Brigid had a brief but earnest conversation with her mother, after which Deirdre kissed her. Their journey was uneventful. They reached Mount Walsh that night.

It was strange to be back in the great house where she had once been a servant. She still knew some of the people working there. When young William had retired to his room, she and Patrick went to the library where they had first met. They lit some candles and perused the collection.

"Not enough plays," she remarked.

"There's Shakespeare."

"No Sheridan."

"You are right. When this business is over," he hesitated only for an instant, "I'll rectify the omission."

"Please do."

"My life began here, Brigid, when I met you."

"Mine, too."

It was eleven o'clock when they finally retired. They were only sleeping lightly when they were awoken by the flickering of torches outside and the sound of hammering upon the main door. Still in his nightshirt, Patrick ran downstairs with Brigid behind him. Young William and several servants were also gathering in the hall. From outside came a voice.

"Come out or burn."

"What is it you want?" cried Patrick.

"To burn down the house of the infamous Lord Mountwalsh," the voice called back. "You'll not be harmed if you come out."

Patrick told them all to stand back, then turned to one of the servants.

"Open the door," he said. "I'll talk with them."

It did not take him long to talk them round. They were United Irishmen, about fifty of them. They weren't local, but had come from some miles away. On their way to a great muster tomorrow, they had thought to turn aside and burn the house which they understood belonged to the hated Hercules.

"It isn't his," he told them. "It belongs to his mother, who's a Patriot. It's she who sent me here." And he gave them a quick account of who he was and the purpose of his journey. It wasn't difficult for him to prove the truth of what he said. "The house stands for our cause," he explained. "It shouldn't be touched."

The leader of the group did not seem entirely pleased. To judge by his accent, he came from Ulster.