Flight of the Eagle (6 page)

‘I'd be sorry for disturbing you, Captain Duffy,’ she said, obviously unrepentant for catching the young officer in his underwear. ‘But me father thought you'd be liking some hot water to wash up with.’ Patrick blushed even more when he realised the girl was staring unashamedly at his groin. ‘Thank you, Miss …?’

‘Miss Maureen Riley,’ she replied as she set the bowl down on the bed. ‘Bernard Riley would be me father.’

‘Thank your father for me then, Miss Riley, for the hot water.’

‘To be sure it was a
pleasure
, Captain Duffy, to bring the water to your room,’ she said provocatively. ‘And if there'd be anything else I … my father can do for you, it would be a pleasure.’

Patrick smiled at the young girl's open manner that verged on brazen. She was not beautiful, but pretty, in her plump and healthy appearance: flawless skin with a touch of red in her cheeks and raven hair tied back in a bun. Buxom but with a slim waist over broad hips.

Patrick had no illusions as to what she meant by
pleasure.
Here, in his room, stood the contradiction to the stifling mores of the Irish church. ‘I will certainly keep your offer in mind, Miss Riley’ he said with a twinkle in his eye that would have been accepted by the young publican's daughter as serious flirting. Miss Riley was unaware of her own sensuality, however, and most likely would not have known what to do if Patrick had pressed the offer.

‘You'd be going to visit George Fitzgerald with Father O'Brien today?’ Maureen said, more as a statement than a question as she glanced curiously around the spartan but clean room.

‘And at what time would that be?’ Patrick countered facetiously.

‘I don't know that,’ she replied innocently, missing his gentle sarcasm. ‘But I suppose that would be after midday as Father O'Brien has things to do until then.’

‘Well then, I suppose I should get on with ensuring I'm ready to go with him after midday,’ Patrick said as a hint for her to leave.

Although Maureen was forward she was not obtuse and she gave him a parting smile as she turned with an inviting swirl of her dress to leave the room.

As priest and soldier strolled along the country lane to George Fitzgerald's house Patrick was beginning to feel ill at ease with the idea of visiting his paternal grandmother's brother.

He knew the story of the elopement of his grandmother with his grandfather and how her father had threatened to kill the Papist upstart who had taken his beautiful daughter from his hearth. Such threats were taken seriously in a clannish land where memories of grudges never died.

The brisk walk was helping to clear his head and the summer's day was spectacular. The two men were an incongruous pair: the tall, broad-shouldered Patrick Duffy and the smaller priest who hurried to keep up with his long, measured, soldier's stride.

They came adjacent to the small dome-shaped, tree-covered mound Patrick had first viewed from the window of his hotel room. ‘The hill? It doesn't look as if it belongs here,’ he commented.

Eamon stopped to stare up at it. In the distance beyond the hill lay the unusually placid but cold Atlantic ocean. ‘I think it was man-made. Possibly a burial mound for a great king,’ he said as a tiny breeze caused his black cassock to flap around his legs. ‘I think it even predates the Bronze Age. Mister Fitzgerald and I have often discussed an exploratory dig on it.’

Patrick did not see the figure until it moved. He shaded his eyes against the unfamiliar glare of the summer's sun low on the horizon. It was mid-afternoon and, without the cloud covering to keep in the heat of die day, die coming night promised to be crisp and clear. His training as a soldier in observing distant movement stood him well and he was able to focus on the figure. It was distinctly female. Even from die distance he could see the long auburn tresses flowing around her shoulders. On either side of her stood two huge shaggy grey hounds.

‘It looks as if there is someone on the hill watching us Eamon,’ Patrick observed casually.

‘Has she hair the colour of fire?’ the priest replied, and Patrick turned to him with a questioning expression.

‘You can see her?’

‘No,’ Eamon answered quietly. ‘But it must be Catherine Fitzgerald. She often haunts that queer place.’

‘She has hair the colour of fire,’ Patrick echoed as he turned to stare across the field at the girl. But just as he turned she disappeared along with the two hounds, into the trees. ‘Ah, she has gone now,’ he said with just a trace of disappointment.

‘A strange girl,’ Eamon commented as they turned away to continue their walk to the Fitzgerald house. ‘She is a love child. Poor girl was born out of wedlock.’ He paused, slightly embarrassed as he remembered the rumours he had heard after mass that morning. Even the breadth of the oceans that divided Australia and Ireland could not hold back gossip. It was rumoured Patrick himself was the result of an illicit union between Catholic boy and Protestant girl.

A silence fell between the two men for a short time. They both realised what had brought the absence of conversation until Patrick broke the embarrassed silence with a question. ‘Who are her parents?’

‘Her mother was George Fitzgerald's daughter Elspeth. God rest her soul. Her father, well, no-one knows as she never did say. She died just after Catherine's birth. George raised her.’

If ever there was a woman who could make Eamon forget his vow of celibacy it was Catherine Fitzgerald. Barely sixteen, she exuded a sensuality he had never before encountered. ‘Ah, but she is a wild one,’ he sighed. ‘She is neither Protestant in practice nor of the True Faith. In fact it is said she is not even Christian but a pagan believer of the old ways of Ireland.’

There was something else Eamon could not quite understand but which disturbed him further. Something beyond the realms of all his religious training. He remembered the stories of the Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of war, death and procreation. And Patrick? He would be the handsome Irish hero Cuchulainn. It was a strange thought which he shook from his head.

Patrick was distracted by the flight of a raven that rose out of the fir trees on top of the hill where the girl had disappeared. Eamon was able to see the young man's eyes follow the flight and he shuddered. Had not the Morrigan turned into a raven and flown from Cuchulainn when they met? The warm mid-afternoon sunshine suddenly had a chill to it.

The two men continued to walk past apple orchards and raspberry bushes until they saw the imposing Fitzgerald manor before them. A huge stone house with many rooms, windows of stained glass and ivy covered walls, it was the house of established Irish gentry of considerable power and old wealth.

‘Captain Duffy, your presence in the village has caused quite some speculation,’ George Fitzgerald said, as he eyed with just a hint of hostility and suspicion Patrick standing beside Eamon. ‘Some say you have come to resurrect the damned Fenians in these parts. That you come in the disguise of one of Her Majesty's officers in a Highland regiment.’

‘Speculation breeds on ignorance, Mister Fitzgerald,’ Patrick replied coolly, his eyes fixed on the man who had been brother to his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzgerald. ‘I am
indeed
an officer of the Second Highland Regiment and no sympathiser to the Fenians.’

Eamon O'Brien shifted uncomfortably. It was obvious that old hatreds did not diminish with time and that the tall, gaunt man absorbing the heat from the gentle flames licking at the logs in the huge open hearth still held bitter memories. Had it been a mistake to bring Patrick Duffy to meet his distant relative? ‘Captain Duffy is on leave from his regiment which may be sailing soon to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum, George. He has also served with Sir Garnett Wolseley at Tel-el-Kibir,’ the young priest said to break the icy chill that had descended between the two men in the confines of the old library. He glanced from one to the other and could see they were men of equal standing: the squire of the Duffy village proud and straight; the young Australian erect and arrogant. But the mention of Patrick's military campaigns softened the animosity in the old man.

George Fitzgerald gestured to the old, well-worn leather chairs of his study. ‘My only son was killed while serving as a captain during the Kaffir wars at Isandhlwana, Captain Duffy,’ Fitzgerald said sadly.

He continued to stand with his back to the fire and made no further comment on the matter of his son's death. Patrick knew that some memories did not welcome elaboration and cast a cursory glance around the study.

It was a sombre place crammed with leatherbound books. In the dim surroundings with only a shaft of light illuminating a square of faded carpet at the centre of the room, it was hard to discern the subject matter of the volumes that lined the glass-covered shelves that reached to the ceiling. In the nooks of the library were stuffed birds: owls, pheasants, and an eagle with its wings raised, beak agape as if preparing to defend itself. On a wall was a sepia photo of a handsome young man in the dress uniform of a British infantry regiment, smiling enigmatically at all who entered the room. Patrick presumed it was a daguerreotype of the old man's son as the similarity between the two men was plain to see. ‘I am sorry to hear of your loss, Mister Fitzgerald,’ Patrick replied with genuine sympathy. ‘I wish I had met your son.’

George Fitzgerald nodded stiffly and Eamon could see that some of the icy animosity towards the grandson of the man he had sworn so long ago to kill was slowly thawing. Old Fitzgerald was appraising his distant relative in a fresh light almost akin to respect. ‘Is whisky and soda your preferred drink, Captain Duffy?’ the old man asked as he made his way across the room to an open roll-top desk crowded with sheaths of loose papers. ‘I know it is Father O'Brien's.’

‘Whisky straight thank you, Mister Fitzgerald,’ Patrick replied.

George Fitzgerald shuffled papers aside to find a newly opened bottle of fine Irish whisky and reached for the soda bottle on top of a bookshelf. He topped two crystal tumblers with the aerated soda water and passed one to his not altogether unexpected guests. News had spread fast from the village of the arrival of Patrick Duffy and George knew it was inevitable that they should meet.

It was rather ironic that the young man who now sat in his library bore the same name as the man who he had vowed to kill for the taking of his younger sister almost a half century earlier. She, the beautiful young daughter of a proud line descended from the Anglo-Norman invaders of the English King Henry II of the twelfth century.

Fitzgerald resumed his place before the hearth and raised his glass. ‘The Queen,’ he intoned. ‘God bless her.’

Patrick responded to the toast. ‘The Queen.’

He noticed that the priest raised his glass in the gesture of the toast but said nothing. ‘Eamon silently toasts the expulsion of the British Crown from Ireland,’ Fitzgerald said with a hint of mirth plucking at the corners of his mouth. ‘We have often discussed the idea of a Republican Ireland and on many points we agree.’

Patrick was surprised at the old man's view and, as if reading his puzzled thoughts, Fitzgerald added, ‘I
am
an Irishman, Captain Duffy, with as much claim to this land as Father O'Brien. Possibly more of a claim as Father O'Brien has spent most of his life in England. But I suppose, had he not spent his time travelling and being educated in foreign lands, then we may have not been able to reason as we do as educated and rational men.’

Patrick nodded politely. Somehow his exposure in his early years to a staunch Irish Catholic family had not prepared him for a Protestant Irishman declaring his Irishness.

‘Captain Duffy has expressed an interest in learning more about the history of this county, George,’ Eamon said brightly. ‘No doubt to add to his understanding of the Fitzgeralds and the Duffys.’

Patrick had noticed that the priest used the old man's name in the familiar and guessed rightly they were firm friends – despite the difference on opinion over religion, and Ireland's political future.

‘Then he has arrived at an opportune time, Eamon,’ George replied. ‘I am having a dinner for a few guests tomorrow night. Amongst my guests is Professor Clark who I have been corresponding with about our hill. He feels it may be well worth undertaking a dig.’

‘We saw Catherine there on our way here,’ Eamon said quietly.

Patrick thought he noticed a fleeting shadow of disapproval cross the old man's face. But Fitzgerald made no comment, except to frown. ‘Catherine has probably as good a knowledge of the history of this region as her grandfather and I,’ Eamon added, as if attempting to defend the girl's presence on the strange, dome-shaped hill. ‘She is fluent in Gaelic and somewhat an authority on the old stories of the country. Especially those relating to the Celtic heroes and Druidic customs.’

‘She neglects her French to achieve her fluency in
that
language,’ her grandfather growled as he threw back the last drams of whisky and soda. ‘I fear she has an unholy interest in the myths and towards that purpose she studies the old texts.’

Father Eamon O'Brien had to agree with his friend. The pagan ways of Old Ireland were steeped in savagery with dark sexual undercurrents always present, a licentiousness of the warrior cult where the strongest took all they desired. As if conjuring the old gods by speaking of their existence in the mists of Celtic mythology, Patrick was suddenly aware of another presence in the room.

The pungent smell of dog and the sweeter scent of crushed flowers came to him on the whisper of a breeze. Catherine's barefooted entry into the library had been so silent that the men had not noticed the big oak door swing open behind them.

The two male hounds were impressive creatures, each two and a half feet tall at the shoulder with their long wiry grey coats giving them bulk. Patrick had heard of the legendary dogs of Ireland – the Irish wolf hounds – which had graced the halls of the Celtic kings. He remembered that they had been used to hunt wolves and deer, and the two that had accompanied Catherine certainly looked as big as any deer they might hunt.