“That it will be, General. And every manjack of us in the Irish Brigade is willing to shed his blood to bring about that glorious day.”
“If we plan well enough it will be the British blood that will be shed. Now, enlighten me about your country. All I see before me is a map of an island. I ask you to populate that map with people, to tell me of their cities and their history. All I know is that this history is a violent one.”
“Violence! Invasion! Where do I begin, for it is a history of murder and deceit in the past — and the particularly vile existence of the Plantations in the present. The English have always been a plague on Ireland, but it was that monster Cromwell who fell on this country like some demon from hell. The clearances began, clearing the Irish from their own homes. Took off the thatched roofs of the cottages, his Roundheads did, turned the population of Ireland out of their homes and onto the roads. There are no gypsies in Ireland — but there are our tinkers. The descendants of those Cromwell made homeless, Irish doomed to roam those muddy roads forever. Yet to never arrive.”
Lee nodded and made some notes on the papers before him. “You mentioned the Plantations. Surely you do not mean sugar or cotton plantations?”
“Not those. I mean the turning out of Roman Catholic Irishmen from their homes in Ulster, to hand these vacated premises over to Protestants from Scotland. An enemy tribe implanted so cruelly in our midst. You can tell it by the names! Every city in Ireland has a location, a portion of that city that is named Irishtown. Where those true Irish live who were turned out of their homes.”
“Then your planned rebellion is a religious rebellion. Catholic Irish against the English and their Protestant allies?”
“Not a bit of that. There has always been a Protestant presence in Ireland. Some of her greatest patriots have been of the Protestant faith. But, yes, there are hard and cruel men here in the north, here in Ulster. I remember one of the bits we had to memorize, drilled into us by the priests in school. It was an Englishman who said it, a famous man of letters. ‘I never saw a richer country, or, to speak my mind, a finer people.’ That’s what he said. But he went on — ‘the worst of them is the bitter and envenomed dislike which they have to each other. Their facti
ons have been so long envenomed, and they have such narrow ground to do battle in, that they are like people fighting with daggers in a hogshead.’ Sir Walter Scott himself said that, as long ago as 1825.”
Meagher walked over and touched Belfast, drew a circle around it with his finger. “They are right good haters, they are. They hate the Pope in Rome, just as they love that plump little German lady who sits on the throne. A hatred that has lasted for centuries. But you shouldn’t be asking me — I’ve never been north myself. The man that you should talk to is the doctor in our Irish Brigade. Surgeon Francis Reynolds. He is from Portstewart in Derry, right up north on the coast. But he studied medicine in Belfast, then practiced there for some years. He’s your man if you want to know about the doings in Ulster.”
“Is he reliable?” Lee asked.
“The stoutest Fenian among us!”
Lee scribbled a quick note as he spoke. “Special consideration then for Belfast and the North. Consider consultation with Surgeon Reynolds. Now — what about the British military presence in Ireland?”
“Usually there are twenty to thirty thousand British troops in the country at any one time. Their biggest concentration is here, in the Curragh, a high plain south of Dublin. Plenty of soldiers there, mixed up with the sheep farmers. There has always been occupying troops stationed there since time began — but now they have brick buildings and an offensive permanent presence.”
“And elsewhere?”
“In Belfast of course. And Dublin, in the Castle, Cork in the south and more here and here.”
Lee joined him before the map. “Roads — and trains?”
“Almost everything runs out of Dublin. North to Belfast. Then the other trains go south from Dublin along the coast to Cork. Going west from Dublin across the Shannon to Galway and Kerry. Ah, and it’s a lovely coast there, the flowering bogs, the blue rivers.”
Lee looked more closely at the map, then ran his finger along a line of track. “You didn’t mention this line,” he said. “This track doesn’t connect with Dublin.”
“Indeed not, that’s the local line connecting Limerick with Cork. The same as this one in the north between Derry, Coleraine and Belfast.”
Meagher smiled, his eyes half-closed, seeing not the map but the country he had been cruelly exiled from.
Would the dream of freedom, dreamt by the Irish for centuries — would it finally be coming true?
Brigadier Somerville trotted his horse down the center of the road. The beast was lathered with sweat even though he had walked him most of the way, with only an occasional trot where the surface was flat and firm. It was the damnable and eternal heat. He passed a company of Sepoy troops digging an irrigation ditch beside the road. Men more suited to this climate than we would ever be. There was a group of officers up ahead grouped around a trestle table. They turned as he approached and he recognized their commanding officer.
“Everything going to plan, Wolseley?” he asked as he dismounted. He returned the officer’s salute.
“Doing very well since you left, General.”
Colonel Garnet Wolseley, Royal Engineers, was in command of the building of the road. He pointed to the raw earth of the cutting and at the smooth surface of the road below. “Been grading up to a mile a day since we got some men back from the defenses. Took longer than expected to revet the guns. The defenses are as good now as they ever will be. Then, of course, it takes far fewer troops to man them than it did to build them. With the road in good shape we can quickly move troops to defend points under attack.”
“Heartening news indeed.”
“I sincerely hope that I am not presumptuous in asking how the bigger plan is proceeding? With my nose buried in the mud here I know little of the world outside.”
“Then be cheered that everything proceeds just as planned. The transports are being assembled now in ports right around the coast of the British Isles. Even as the last troops depart from India. The Intrepid, sister ship of Valiant, is off the ways and being outfitted for battle. When all is ready we strike…”
He stopped and cocked his head at the distant rumble of gunfire. “An attack?” he asked. Wolseley shook his head.
“I doubt if it is a major one. From the sound of it, it is one of their probing efforts. They are seeing how well we are defending a particular section of the line.”