Sarah, without a backward glance, rode alone up to the cordon, smiling broadly at the two uniformed men on duty. In her best voice she bid them a good afternoon. Titus could hear her every word distinctly, even though he and the lads were several yards away and safely out of sight around a corner. He hoped to god she wasn’t ‘over ladling the syrup’, as the saying went.

“Miss Catherine Meara, by invitation of Lord Drogheda. Isn’t it a beautiful day for it, gentlemen?”
“You’re on the wrong road so miss,” came the reply from one of the men. “That party must enter from the Dublin Road.”

Sarah had dressed in Grace Quinn’s best riding clothes at Grace’s insistence. If the plan was to work, it was essential that Sarah look at her most enchanting, as well as every bit a lady of means. Titus, who judged people less by their apparel than most, had to agree with the ladies however that they had pulled off a remarkable transformation when the modified attire had been modelled for his approval the previous evening. Sarah had certainly looked the part of the landed gentlewoman, but now could she complete the disguise in the matters of speech and mannerism? He moved nearer to where she approached...

“Aha!” Quinn slapped his shoulder. “I never thought I’d hear myself congratulate my own son for lying his head off! But well done! Get your breath back now and tell us everything when you’ve the wind to do so.” He eyed the field in the distance where Robert Cuffe and his men guarded the exits. “Now let’s hope Cuffe outranks Drogheda’s men. We’re all in Quare Street if Mr Brennan isn’t forced to open his coffers!”

This was something that hadn’t occurred to Titus, knowing Cuffe as a confidante of Arran himself. But of course that meant little in these circumstances and in this location....

There was something macabre and distasteful about dressing up for a ball in the clothes of a man who lay grievously wounded, and those of a wife who stood vigil by his sickbed. Yet it was Grace herself who assisted Sarah into her gown and even spared the time and effort to run an eye over Titus too. The suit of clothes he wore was Quinn’s, and when Titus remarked with a smile that it was rather ornate for Quinn’s tastes, Grace replied that he had returned from England laden down with crates of similar ‘spoils of war’ – as Quinn had phrased it – and had told Grace that she should go through the...

He took a pace back, intending to ask Sam to turn around and go home, but even as he drew breath his instruction was interrupted by the sound of another carriage pulling up hurriedly at the brazier, its two horses whinnying loudly as they were arrested sharply by their driver with a loud “Whoa!” and a violent tug on the reins. The sentry, who had been standing very much in the way of the approaching carriage, jumped backwards with a start, and before he had time to recompose himself and ask the identity of this guest in such a hurry, a booming voice came from within. “Sir Humphrey Jervis and my...

Cuffe’s party, with its prisoner, had already left. Mrs Wilson’s carriage could be heard on its way down the dark drive, and Sam had readied their own carriage near the doorway. Without exchanging a word, Titus and Sarah climbed aboard and Sam set off.

Back at Quinn’s farm, Grace, who had heard the carriage approach, was waiting for them in the doorway. They ran to her asking about Quinn, fearing the worst, but Grace smiled and shook her head. “No, no, the old bull is living yet, don’t fret! He’s been asking to see you Mr Perry as soon as you get back.”

Titus thanked Grace...

The journey to Armagh, once Drogheda had been left behind, was a revelation to Titus. Much of the land on the eastern seaboard of the country, ancient tillage and grazing terrain that stretched right into the boggy interior of the island, had been handed over wholesale to Cromwell’s followers and soldiers after the Great Rebellion. But pockets of the old Catholic ownership still existed, and one of the largest of such pockets was the huge territory west of Dundalk and south of Armagh, where Cromwell’s writ had met the obstacle of small farms whose freehold had been long established and over which...

The innkeeper arrived to clear their table. When he recognised Titus he smiled. “Oh, Mr Perry, it’s yourself. I believe we may have located your friend – the tall old soldier you asked about?”
“Oh?” Titus had been startled out of his thoughts by the innkeeper’s interruption. “Thank you. Where is he?”
“Well Robert McGann who brings me my milk every other day says he saw the man in question yesterday, out by the old abbey grounds. Says he got talking to him, thinking the poor old divil was lost. There’s naught but a ruin in that field now. Said he was up from Dublin and McGann recognised...

The gardens sloped gently to a small stream, on the other side of which sat the ‘factorium’ to which Cummins had referred. It was a brick-built structure with a fine slate roof, obviously well illuminated within from the many large paned windows along its length. A large barn adjoining it was where the flax was stored. Over the Easter period a stockpile of bundled flax had accumulated outside the main door and an army of workers was toiling to move this mountain into the shelter of the barn. At the opposite end of the main building, where a millwheel revolved slowly above the stream, stood some...

And nor did his mood rally much over the days ahead. It was normal in matters of crimes such as treason for the arrested party to be tried in a place well removed from the area in which the crime was purported to have been committed. Such was the nature of sedition, and the nature of the testimony used to prove it, that it was considered in the best interests of everyone that the trial be conducted in a locality removed from the milieu of deceit and threat in which the seditionist operated, and where his influence might still be exercised over the minds of those who stood to testify against him....

One’s hope with a nightmare is that with one’s awakening, so ends the terror. With a living nightmare such solace cannot be wished for, and then one’s only hope is that it finds its own end in its own time, and that the time is not too far away. One begins not to care whether the ordained end is even bad or good, so great is the wish just for its conclusion. For Titus too, such a wish for it all to end exceeded his fear of how it might, which was gloomy enough. In his fears, Mary would communicate with him, admitting that they had been in error and that her father had been right all along. Their...

Titus rose from his chair and approached the slumped form where it lay on the ground, half lying, and half sitting in the angle of the room. It had bothered him who this poor wretch might be, but given his past experience with the men in the room, he had assumed it was another ‘guest’ of O’Neill’s who was being treated with the same civility with which he had himself when he had met his hosts in Cook Street in Dublin. He had tried to ignore the presence of the man up to now, but it gnawed at his conscience as he sat at the table, and now, in response to O’Neill’s words his conscience came to the...

The weather closed in that night and Titus woke to a day that would not have been out of place in the tail end of winter, when wind and rain avails of its invitation to make even bleaker the territory just released by ice and snow. The air was chill, and even colder when the rain soaked through one’s clothes and was found by the gusting breeze which blew from every direction. He had difficulty keeping his horse from turning back each time they rounded a twist on the Gallows Hill road and met a fresh blast of sleet laden gale, but Bran, who accompanied him on his journey, seemed to relish each flurry,...

Cormac approached the Earl slowly, almost as if the old man might conjure a thunderbolt from the blue and bring it crashing down on his head. Ormonde reached into his pocket and produced a small purse. “I hear that you are about to go into business, sir. Allow me to offer you a token of my appreciation for services rendered a long time ago and which are long overdue payment.”

He handed the purse to the giant, who bowed and thanked him so profusely that even O’Neill smiled at the incongruity of the picture. Ormonde raised his hand. “Come, come, sir. It is not every day a man of my vintage...

There were even more secure grounds for presuming an October trial. As a shipyard owner himself, Barrington was on sociable terms with Joseph Lairde, the shipwright who had been commissioned to construct the hulls. In a recent conversation the man, while revealing nothing with regard to the ship’s design, had freely admitted however that his own part in the project had just been completed. The hulls stood in his yard awaiting the imminent arrival of Bolt from London. Bolt was bringing his own crew, so Lairde and his men were looking forward with equal pleasure to the paid leave of absence that...

The morning saw a return to clement weather, an ephemeral state of things in these parts so Titus decided to make the most of it. He had Ruth Adams rouse Sarah, who arrived downstairs dressed already to travel. She took a seat alone by the front door as if eager to get going, and politely refused Ruth’s offer of breakfast in a dismissive manner that the young girl quite justifiably found offhand. Titus, who observed this while settling his bill with Adams, deemed it best not to intervene. His fears for Sarah’s state of mind the previous night he now knew had been justified, but however he would...

A few miles further down the road Lynam hurried back to them and told them that he suspected an ambush ahead. He had seen furtive movements in the hedges and had glimpsed some horses tethered riderless in a thicket of trees off the road. He recommended they leave the road and cross the low hill to their right, which he was nearly sure would bring them back down to a cattle-track and so to the main Dublin road again. Titus, who had thought such dangers behind them, was deliberating what to do when the need for a decision was taken from him. The ‘ambush’ was advancing in full view up the road towards...

Titus lost no time in getting the two letters to Arran, though it was with some relief that his trip to the Phoenix Park quarters did not occasion him meeting the man in person. He had had rather enough of the Butlers for the moment and trusted none of them to let even a simple task, such as receiving their mail, pass without transforming it deviously into some other purpose to the detriment of the messenger. He was beginning to think that duplicity had so long been in their nature through political necessity that it had now become so ingrained in their constitutions as to be employed at all times,...

But such matters receded to the back of Titus’ mind as the summer progressed. For now, it seemed, his usefulness to the country’s great players had come to an abrupt end. As the days, and then weeks, passed by without interference from the policy makers he found himself, to his immense relief, once more a mere mapmaker. More importantly he found himself once more a private man, and as time progressed, a happier man for it. He had stayed with the Quinns for a few weeks, glad to see Quinn himself recovered from his gunshot wound, and was more than happy to assist his old friend around the farm until...

But in the meantime the Dublin summer had progressed – a hot summer by local standards – and one that saw Titus and Sarah slowly integrate themselves into the social milieu of the city’s high season. Theatre goers and concert devotees became ever more familiar with the sight around town of the tall English mapmaker and his beautiful companion, who they quickly learnt was the ‘protégée’ of Imelda O’Carolan. As Sarah’s poise was honed with her ever growing confidence, and her wardrobe expanded to meet the demands placed on it by invitations for them both to attend dances, dinners and charity balls,...

Robert Cuffe, when asked by Titus to use his connections in providing a mode of transport northwards that kept the mapmaker free from malevolent vigilance, had secured him his berth on The Unicorn at short notice and had excelled himself in the process. This fleet vessel, when compared to the cargo vessel Corinthian that had transported himself and Flitch to Ireland a mere five months ago, though it now seemed an age, was like contrasting an albatross with a seagull. She was a ship-of-the-line fourth rate, not yet baptised in battle and looked it too, her timbers gold-red above the water and not...

The impasse was thankfully broken by the captain. Bramall interrupted with a low cough. “I might be of assistance here. Harbourmaster Forbes has advised me to advance our departure lest we risk more damage through foul weather to The Unicorn, which he regards as his own property and me a rather foolhardy and careless guardian of it, no less. We sail therefore tomorrow evening, once the chandler has fulfilled my order. Might I make a suggestion? It would, I believe, suit Mr Burke to take to the high seas himself. In fact I am sure of it. Might we not arrange so that you both meet on board and discuss...

London, once it gets into the blood, is like the most potent spirit or the most insidious drug. Soon one develops a dependency on its presence, often even as one loathes oneself for that same enslavement to its heady aroma, which promises much but delivers little, save often a path to one’s own ruination. Even in the depths of his despair in Armagh, Titus, on finding by chance some copies of the Gazette broadsheet in Adams’ inn left by a previous guest, had found himself transported for a while from his woes, hungrily devouring news and gossip from the city with which he had parted company so willingly...

But his experiences over the last few months had taught him nothing if not to distrust apparently tidy solutions to thorny problems, and he had to admit that this one was all too neat indeed. Besides, if the deed had been perpetrated by hot headed youths in a fit of rage driven by a simple, if insane desire to avenge a brother’s death by killing an eminent Catholic as reprisal, then there were elements to the murder that just did not add up. The knot used to tie the noose still figured large in Titus’ own assessment of the crime. Could a young saddler know how to use it? And even if he did, could...