Fortunate Son (29 page)

Seán stepped into the portal, brandishing his sword. “Stop! This is madness!”

A man burst from the shadows, threw his forearm across Seán's face, bending his neck back, exposing his throat. Dagger touched skin. “Stay back!” the man growled, “or I'll cut you open!” Though Seán was facing the arched ceiling, he forced his eyes down to see the back of the dagger. Beyond it, Bailyn and Higgins were holding each other off, each making his point known.

“There's no reason for this,” Seán tried. “Let him be.”

“Drop yer blade,” the man behind him demanded. Seán's cutlass clanged to the floor. “And the dagger,” he added. Seán pulled that blade from its sheath, letting it fall as well. The sweaty hold relaxed and Seán lowered his chin, turning to glare at the man. One of Richard's troopers, no doubt. “What do ye say we let these two lovebirds have their dance?” the man sneered. His dagger was inches from Seán's throat. Seán noticed other men just outside, beyond Bailyn and Higgins. More of Richard's men, guarding against unexpected worshipers.

In an instant, Higgins lunged forward. Bailyn parried, a blur, sidestepping, his rapier grazing Higgins's forearm. Blood trickled from the wound, but Higgins didn't seem to notice; he was intent, heaving like a wild beast cornered. He circled, pulling his dagger with his left hand. Bailyn laughed. “Ye'll need that, Higgs.”

“Whatever is necessary,” snarled Higgins. After another flurry of lunges and parries, attacks and counterattacks, both men were beginning to sweat. Then an opening appeared and Higgins thrust his weapon hard. Bailyn jumped back, but not in time, and Higgins's blade sliced his shoulder, blood immediately soaking the cloth.

“Jaysus Christ!” Bailyn shouted. He grit his teeth and lunged back again. Higgins parried but Bailyn's attack was a feint, and now Higgins's side was perilously exposed. Bailyn's rapier plunged through Higgins's stomach in one deadly instant, sending blood spurting from his back where it emerged. Higgins staggered backward, his eyes wide with shock. Bailyn jerked his rapier free, then drove it forward again with all the strength of his fury. The tip found the careening form, piercing ribs and chest. Higgins fell in a quivering heap, his hands still grasping his rapier and dagger. As blood streamed from his chest, back and mouth, he curled his body, moaning through a gurgle, as if the stone floor were cradling him, holding his blood.

“Goddamned traitor,” Bailyn hissed, wheezing. He leaned over and spat on Higgins, then kicked him in the head, though the man was clearly dead. One of Bailyn's men came to him, helping him with his coat. Bailyn turned to Seán with a sneer. “Ye know, Kennedy, for a moment there, I thought ye might've forgotten who ye serve.”

“Ye're a sick animal,” Seán shot back.

“So what of it?” Bailyn said, laughing. “Eh?”

“Yer day will come. I swear upon it.”

Bailyn stepped over Higgins's body, approaching Seán, breathing heat in his face. He stopped, then suddenly kissed Seán on the cheek. “Don't forget, Kennedy, ye're one of us now. Always will be. So don't be getting yer own mind.” He gestured toward Higgins's body. “Ye can see what happens.” He peered down his nose, looking Seán over like a butcher surveying a hog. “But then go ahead, why don't ye? Ye'd make a good corpse too.”

Seán slowly shook his head, glaring.

“Go on, mourn for this piece of shite. If ye must,” Captain Bailyn continued. “But ye best be at Dunmain House within a fortnight.”

“Why so?”

“Pray Lord Anglesea forgives yer impudence. Ye'll need my petition on yer behalf.”

“Ye can both go to straight to hell.”

Bailyn smiled, then motioned the man to release Seán. Freed, Seán picked up his cutlass and dagger. Bailyn stepped into the daylight, his men following, and disappeared. The rector and another man were behind Seán now, trembling something about getting the constable.

Seán stared down. The cold portico was eerily quiet. Numinously so. He had seen men killed before, at sea. Even some who had died more violently. But this was different. This he would never forget. This gruesome scene demanded retribution. He owed it to Higgins. He owed it to James. With one act he would revenge this murder. And redeem himself.

The horses were rounding the last turn, a rattling rumble onto the straight. Even from a distance, James could see the dirt and sod exploding from the cannonade of hooves, the jockeys' elbows pumping as they whipped their mounts, the horses' heads bobbing rhythmically, ferocious nostrils, eyes blazing through a rushing storm of chestnut and brown, flashes of bright orange, red and blue, an unyielding mass of flesh shaking the earth.

“Come on, Packet! Come on, boy!” yelled Mackercher, his eyes fixed down the track.

James leaned into the white rail, shouting, “Go Dover!”

Beside him, Laura was screaming, “Dover! Pick it up, Dover!”

“Packet's the one,” Mackercher called over the roar. “He's in the lead!”

“Dover's there!” James was shouting louder now. “Look at him go!”

“Packet will hold!”

“Come on, put yar heart in it!” Laura was jumping up and down as the thunderous wave of horses closed in on the finish line.

“Dover's passing!”

“Come on Packet, don't let that English rogue take ya!”

“Dover!”

The horses shot by in an enchanting blur, the ground tremoring, the spectators pivoting to see them go, shouting, clenching their fists, throwing hats into the cool indigo sky.

“He won!” James grabbed Laura, picking her up, spinning her. “He won!”

“Aya, he von!” Laura said, her eyes sparkling, her beautiful mouth laughing. She kissed James on the forehead. “What a fine horse that Dover is.”

“Ah, you two,” grumbled Mackercher. “Packet had the field till he lost his courage.”

“Better luck on the point stakes,” said Laura. “Aya, Mr. Mackercher?” She gave him a teasing smile.

“Apparently, Miss Johansson,” he said, tipping his hat, “I'm in need of yar counsel.”

She gave a coquettish turn. “I'd be glad to assist, sir.”

“Don't coddle the old man,” James scolded with a chuckle.

Mackercher frowned, mockingly serious. “Miss Johansson knows how to treat elders.”

“Ye'd think ye'd know pity from polish, at yer age,” James said.

“Never mind him,” Laura said, taking Mackercher by the arm. “He doesn't know swift from slow. Didn't put a shilling on Dover till I did.”

“Aha!” Mackercher turned back, smiling. “Ya said
you
picked that horse.”

“Well I did pick it. After she did. No less true.”

Mackercher slapped him on the back. “Ya're a sly fox. First ya let yar bride gamble in the open day, then ya hide behind her skirt!”

James laughed. “Let her? Nay. She's a mind of her own, as ya know.”

“That she has.”

Laura reached between them, grabbing Mackercher's hand. “And my mind now is for you, Mr. Mackercher, to escort me to the vinning post. Don't ya be concerned—we'll keep appearances. We'll tell them all the vinnings are yars.”

“Then I must take my leave, Lord Annesley,” said Mackercher with a perfunctory bow. Letting the young beauty lead him away, he grinned back triumphantly.

James laughed, calling after them, “She knows who has the guineas.”

“And how to choose a horse, b'God,” Mackercher replied.

Laura smiled at James, then blew him a kiss. “And a husband. See ya in a bit, aya?”

“Go!” He grinned, brushing them away. “But mind ye bring my
vinnings
as well!” Three of Mackercher's Highland guards followed close behind the two of them, the remaining four staying with James. James watched Mackercher and Laura stroll away, through the crowd, arm in arm, her blue dress gliding over the trampled sod. He loved to see her happy. As clearly she was. Especially now, with a wedding date set. And he hadn't seen Mackercher in better spirits in over two months. Not since Higgins was buried.

The morning after the murder trial, James and Mackercher had been urgently summoned out to the street in front of their London inn. There they found Higgins's bloody body abandoned under a rotten horse blanket in the back of a hay wagon. A threat from Richard, most likely. Or a warning by some unknown ally. Yet perhaps, the deliverer simply hoped Higgins's body would be properly buried, not stolen away for surgical experiments. Regardless of the intended message, finding the corpse got them underway. Within the hour James and Laura were in route to Ireland, along with Laura's aunt, Madam Kristin, and accompanied by nine Highland guards. Mackercher promised to leave within a day; bound for Glasgow to bury Higgins. Then he would travel on to Edinburgh, where he planned to hire attorneys to assist in the impending trial against Richard. And there too he would recruit more Highland guards to accompany them all in Ireland.

Thus in the inky depths of a warm night, on the fifteenth of June, at Drogheda, north of Dublin—James Annesley returned to Ireland, Laura at his side. He never forgot the moment. He felt stolid, stepping onto the creaky pier, leaden yet unwilling to linger on the docks for long. From Drogheda, a hackney coach carried them to the Huntsman Inn in Kildare, about thirty miles from Dublin. They had stayed there ever since.

He was uncomfortable in Ireland, yet found few words to form his feelings. Laura strolled long walks with him, trailed closely by Mackercher's guards. But they talked mainly of insignificant things, never about his Ireland, his childhood. Tense at first, they eased into an understood rhythm of distance and careful silence. For the most part, he thought there was nothing of importance remaining to be told. He had never been to Drogheda as a lad. Never to Kildare. His father once promised to take him to the Curragh to see the horse races, but never did. Sure he knew the trees, the smells, the people, the sounds, the night sky, but what did that matter? Nothing about Ireland enthralled him, charmed him, made him think of quaint stories to tell her, fond memories once lost. To James, his boyhood was Seán, his Ireland was Fynn, and he refused to talk about either.

He wondered if he would feel different when he went to Dublin in a couple of months. He would be there for the trial. Would he hate Dublin? Would he hate Seán all the more? He ran the place across and through his mind. Copper Alley. The old butchery. Frapper Lane. The Annesley house. The taverns. The River Liffey. Anglesea Street. Temple Bar. Christ Church. St. Stephen's Green. The skull. The castle walls. None of it mattered. All of it mattered. Only the trial mattered. What if he didn't win? What if he didn't become the Earl? After all this, it was a maddening thought. But he held it. What would he do then? Yet, what if he did win? Did he want Dunmain too? It was the Kennedy's. He already had plans for that. But what of Dublin. The properties there. The memories there. Answers eluded him.

Seán was ever-present on his mind. He knew Seán had disappeared after the murder trial, but it was of no concern. Let him rot, he thought. Seán's image would come, sometimes as a boy at Dunmain House or in Dublin, or as a young man in the Royal Navy. Or he would see them hiding in Dublin. Or them in Yorktown. Bristol or Scotland. But then always came London: his friend in the witness box, betraying him. He tried to shake those memories away.

In July, he began writing his memoirs, of sorts, at the behest of London's
Gentleman's Magazine
. They had sent a fraternal, matey correspondent with ninety guineas and an adulating plea. James had agreed, albeit reluctantly. The writer added much fantasy to the Colonial portion, fearing the story needed charisma, what with all that James wouldn't allow—James told much, directly wrote many of the passages, but held back on most personal matters, keeping those for himself. Laura was private, not for the masses to read upon. And nothing was to be written of Seán or Fynn. It was too difficult, too overwhelming, too private. Besides, if he told anything of them, he would have to tell how they ended. And that was something he simply would not do. “Keep it about the Colonies,” he thus told the writer. “Make it up, if you wish. Whatever might best sell,” he instructed, which was disingenuous as he actually wished no one would read it. And so when it was finished, it became a story of James in love with Indian maidens mixed with passages of truth about Richard and his childhood. He disavowed it quickly.

Mackercher arrived in Ireland that July, a month after James and Laura. He brought three barristers, two solicitors, four servants, and seven more Highland guards. He too moved into the Huntsman Inn, along with several other attorneys and guards. The rest of the entourage was settled at Kildare's Blue Crow Inn. Mackercher also brought fifteen pounds from the Sheffield family, for James, along with a cursory note from James's great-aunt instructing him that the Duke of Buckingham advised James never to admit the Sheffields gave any assistance in the matter, that they had in any way contributed to his cause. If such was to become found in the London papers, it would be vociferously denied. But, that said, in the happy instance of James's much anticipated victory, he was beseeched to “please come for a grand visit among peers.”

When trial preparation began in earnest, James was grateful for the flurried activity. Though the focus was on proving his identity, proving his mother, he could nevertheless lose himself in it, the strategies, the legal machinations, the lawyers' discussions, the endless meals and bottomless drams. Witnesses came by the hundreds, though most liars. The newspaper accounts made James's story well-known and people streamed into Dublin from all over southern Ireland, seeking out Mr. Mackercher to claim they knew James as a lad. Each, regardless of their credibility or sobriety, venerated James, promising conclusive evidence that Mary Sheffield was indeed the mother. Most wanted money for those truths they felt so morally compelled to passionately impart. The greater the “truth,” the higher the price. And so it went.

Those witnesses taken seriously were whisked off to Kildare. There they were hidden from corruption, flip-flopping, and any form of chicane resignation. The others, the clearly false witnesses, the boldest liars, were handled graciously, given a shilling, a firm handshake, and a perfidious promise to be called upon to testify—a tactic hoping they would not peddle a different story to the opposing forces, Richard's legal team, which had formed ranks on Dublin's Anglesea Street, in one of his hulking estates. Richard's claim, that James was the son of Joan Landy, was public knowledge, and a steady stream of liars plied their trade shuffling from one camp to the other and back again. Yet none concerned Mackercher as much as Charity Heath, well known to be Richard's lead and most damning witness. They had to be ready for her. To offset her lies, to discredit her, even the most spurious were considered.

They had been at the Curragh races for nearly two hours and James agreed with Mackercher: it was good for the soul to get out, to get some air, even if only for a day. He smiled, leaning on the railing, watching the young jockeys easing their horses through cooling laps. The Irish sun warmed his face. The smell of heather and horses balmed his senses. He was glad they had come. He glanced over to the race house, the grey stone building clothed in ivy where Mackercher and Laura disappeared. High on the upper end wall was the large posting board. In front of it was a redheaded boy on a long rickety ladder, chalking the prior race's results and the odds for the next one. James studied the odds between a mare named Yesterday's Bliss and a gelding called Borrowed Hope. Just then the boy abruptly stopped writing and turned to the west. He seemed to be peering into the distance, away from the racetrack, then pointed in that direction and yelled something to the people below.

“What's he saying?” James asked a guard nearby.

“Who, yar lordship?”

James pointed. “That lad there, on the ladder.”

“Can't hear him.”

“English…sod, something,” said another guard.

The wind shifted and the boy's voice came clear. “Soldiers,” announced James.

“Red coats?” asked another guard, straining to see. “What business would they have?”

“I don't know,” James muttered. “Let's not stand here.” He moved into the thick crowd, making his way to the building. Mackercher needed to be told. Laura needed to be away from here. Something was wrong. As he neared the building, the redheaded boy came down and a short man took his place.

“A squadron, ‘tis!” the Irishman shouted. “The bleedin' Newbridge infantry!”

Spectators began retreating, shouting for others to follow, heading for their horses and wagons. James realized most of them were Catholics, always nervous about any show of English force. He kept moving, assuming his Highland guards were close behind. Suddenly a gun blast erupted inside. Then screams, followed by a rush of people through the massive main door, forcing him back. “Laura!” he yelled before someone knocked him down. He scrambled to his feet, looking for the guards. Only one—fifteen feet and fifty people away. To his left he spotted a smaller door into the race house, with only a few people emerging from it. He ran there, shoving a man aside, stepping over another, and pushed his way inside. He froze.

Laura had her back to the gaming window and in front of her was Mackercher, glaring at a man who was yelling feverously in Mackercher's face. “Damn yer Scottish blood!” the man bellowed. “You're a damnable maggot if ever I smelt one.” James thought he recognized the voice. He crouched, reaching under his coat for his dirk. Whatever was happening, whoever that raging man was, all that mattered was Laura, getting to her, getting her out of here. The man was still shouting. “For Christ's sakes, James Annesley is nothing more than a shoeboy, an imposter who should've been hanged in London. Indeed, mark me, Mackercher,” he slurred slightly, “James won't leave Ireland, not alive. Piss on your lawsuit. I'll have you in chains.”