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  Fortunate Son

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  THE STORY PLANT

  Studio Digital CT, LLC

  PO Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2013 by David Marlett

  Jacket design by Barbara Aronica Buck

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-159-2

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-077-9

  E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-078-6

  Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by US Copyright Law. For information, address Studio Digital CT.

  First Story Plant Printing: February 2014

  For my father,

  le do ghrá agus inspioráid

  Acknowledgements

  Go Raibh Maith Agat Go Léir

  I am so very grateful to a number of people for their support, encouragement, editing, attaboys and assistance throughout the years of my researching and writing of this novel. I begin by thanking Thomas Haack, without whose singular vision, courage, and support my writing career might never have launched. Thank you Tom for rolling the proverbial dice. Tá tú mo bhuíochas ó chroí. In that same vein, I am warmly indebted to my steadfast friend and backer, Wesley Davis, for his unwavering encouragement and assistance. A Prionsa I measc na bhFear.

  I am grateful to my parents, Dr. Robert and Carolyn Marlett (tá mé mac ádh),and my brilliant children, Meredith, Caroline, Kathleen and Jack. An t-aer unseen faoi bhun mo sciatháin. Their love and encouragement sustain me more than they will ever know. I am grateful to Michelle Wisk Marlett (mo cara móide) for her patience, support, and faith in my dedication to seeing this through. I am appreciative of Ruth Miller who tolerated early drafts and attended at least one research expedition with me through England, Scotland and Ireland. And I am also grateful to my literary agent, the incomparable Jane Dystel; my visionary publisher, Lou Aronica; and two thoughtful and highly skilled editors, Joanne Starer and Sue Rasmussen.

  In addition, I thank Aidan Quinn, Josh Kesselman, John Davis, Mitchell Maxwell, Vincent Bugliosi, and David English for their unique contributions toward the completion of this work.

  I am indebted to a host of people in Ireland, Scotland and England who were vital in my research. A specific thank you to Ann and James Conway and their children for graciously hosting me in the famous and historic Dunmain house in County Wexford, Ireland. Further I appreciate the support of the staff of Christ Church Cathedral (Dublin, Ireland); Library of Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland); National Library of Ireland (Dublin, Ireland); Irish Legal History Society (Dublin, Ireland); University College Dublin School of Law, Roebuck Castle—An Coláiste Ollscoile, Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin, Ireland); John F. Kennedy Arboretum (County Wexford, Ireland); The British Museum (London); National Museum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth, England); Royal Historical Society (London); The Historical Association (London); The Seldon Society—University of London, School of Law at Queen Mary (London); Historic Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland); Highland Folk Museum (Newtonmore, Scotland); West Highland Museum (Fort William, Scotland); The Stair Society—The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Law School (Edinburgh, Scotland); The New Ross Chamber of Commerce (New Ross, Ireland). I am specifically indebted to the staff of The Kennedy Homestead (New Ross, Ireland) for the insight into the early pre-American Kennedy family and their association with the Annesleys of County Wexford.

  In the United States, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of institutions and organizations, including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg, VA); Colonial National Historical Park (Yorktown, VA); Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, VA); Mariner’s Museum (Newport News, VA); Historical Society of Delaware (Wilmington, DE); Maryland Historical Society’s Museum and Baldwin Library (Baltimore, MD); Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; Cornwall Furnace (Cornwall, PA); Lukens National Historic District and Brandywine Iron Works (Coatesville, PA); Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); Library of Congress (Washington, DC); Harvard Law School Library (Cambridge, MA); The Museum of Printing History (Houston, TX); and The University of Texas School of Law (Austin, TX).

  I specifically wish to express my appreciation for the Jamail Center for Legal Research at the Tarlton Law Library at my alma mater, The University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas. I am indebted to that institution and its premier faculty for my introduction to the study of law and legal history, for my introduction to this case, for having the ancient trial transcript in their extraordinary law library, and for not having better security such that I was able to get locked in the stacks overnight, reading the amazing transcript and meeting the incomparable James Annesley.

  Tá súil agam gur féidir linn a bheith t-ádh a fhoghlaim a fírinneach atá againn a is iad.

  PART ONE

  Ireland

  1727

  Aide me, o justice! Be my guide, o truth!

  While inspirited by the love of you, most amiable virtues,

  I attempt to paint the distresses of helpless injured innocence: to trace the mysterious windings of deep deceit;

  the cruel paths of lawless avarice and wild ambition;

  to show how fatal to their posterity variance between the wedded pair may sometimes prove; and how attentive villainy from thence may form the most successful projects.

  The story I have to relate is full of wonders—all the passions are concerned in it—I have to treat of strange unnatural persecutions—accumulated sufferings—numberless dangers—miraculous escapes.

  O may my words have energy to give each incident a true descriptive force to warn the gentle generous soul with alternate pity and indignation, and make the guilty, tho’ ever so great in power, and wealth, and titles, start at the reflection of himself.

  — Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, James Annesley, 1743

  Chapter 1

  Alice Bates, examined — “I knew Lady Anglesea at Dunmain in 1714. She was then with child. I went to pay her a visit and when I came to the dining room door, Lord Anglesea met me and slapt me on the back and said, ‘By God, Ally, Moll’s with child!’ I also knew her to be with child by seeing her pretty big. I wished her joy on being with child, and she thanked me in presence of his lordship.”

  — trial transcript, Annesley v. Anglesea, 1743

  Every man has three names:

  One his father and mother give him,

  One others call him,

  And one he acquires himself.

  — Anonymous, 17th Century

  Sunday, November 16, 1727

  Lord Arthur Annesley, the Sixth Earl of Anglesea, was slopped. He had been sitting alone at his oak table in the dark back corner of the Brazen Head Tavern since half-past ten that morning. Now, nearly five in the evening, he could hear fresh rain blowing across Dublin’s Merchant’s Quay, tapping the tavern’s windows, dripping heavy in pools along Bridge Street. He was floating, his white wig askew, his fat fingers tracing the blood groove of his gold-hilted rapier lying on the table. “He’s mine, he is,” he muttered to no one. “B’god, James is mine! So he is. She’ll never take him to England.” He glanced up with his one eye, the other having been long ago shot out by his wife’s cuckolding suitor. “My son’s mine,” he boomed. “Damn you all!” A violent cough overtook him until finally he lowered his chin, rivulets of perspiration trickling
down his brow.

  “‘Tis well known, me lord, James is yer son,” the tavern keeper offered. “Would ye like another?”

  “Ney!” Arthur shook his head, muttering, “No more boys.”

  “Ach nay, me lord—would ye like another pint?”

  “Ha! Ney, Keane. Best be on m’way.” He stood shakily, steadying himself on the dark wall, sheathing his rapier.

  “Well den, g’night sire,” the keeper said, gesturing with his bar towel.

  Arthur tapped the wrinkles from his blue Italian cocked hat. “Keane?”

  “Aye, m’lord?”

  “What be the cure….” He stumbled sideways, trying to buckle his sword sash. “What be the cure for a hangover? I’ll wager you don’t know.”

  “Sleep, most likely,” Keane answered, moving across the small room, delivering a dram to a large man sitting alone. “What do ye think, sir?” he asked the man.

  “I have no reckon,” the man muttered, his Scottish brogue rumbling low. “Leave me be.”

  “I suppose a pinch o’ snuff might do ye, Lord Anglesea,” Keane guessed, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “Ney, goddamn you, Keane!” His words a lather of grumbled mush, his arm a terrier in a fox hole, fumbling through the twisted coat sleeve. He spun, shoving his hand through. “I knew you didn’t know, you damn thievin’ Irishman. ‘Tis t’ drink again!” He staggered backward to the door. “That be the cure, b’god!”

  “Aye, me lord,” said Keane. “So I’ve heard.” Now the Scotsman was standing too.

  “T’ drink again!” Arthur bellowed, throwing his arms up. “T’ drink again, ‘tis all you need!” Turning, he careened through the doorway, along the rickety boardwalks, lurching into the muck of Bridge Street. “‘Tis all I need!”

  A large hackney coach pulled by six horses was crossing the Father Matthew Bridge, gaining speed in the pelting rain. The horses snorted against the driver’s whip as he yelled from the box, his cloak flailing in the wet wind. “Up with ye curs! Now! Up! Up!” Again and again he cracked the long leather across their backs. The loud roar and stirring commotion of the coach and six easily cleared traffic from the bridge, opening a wide swath up Bridge Street beyond, like a plow cleaving mud. When the horses reached the quay on the far side of the River Liffey they were pulling so hard and running at such a blaze that all four wheels left the ground before crashing back to earth to spin in the slurry sludge. Galloping past the Brazen Head Tavern, with nostrils flared and eyes mad wide, they would not and could not stop for anything in their path.

  Against the whir of voices the ale had loosed in his head, Arthur heard charging hooves, people shouting, and through the stinging rain, he saw a maniacal blur rushing him. But he couldn’t move. A black surging wall, yet he stood, stammering something about God. Finally one step toward the side, but it wasn’t enough—the violent impact threw him back and down. Twenty-four hooves thundered over him, snapping his right leg like straw, driving it into the thick mud. Another hoof trampled his gut, his ribs shattering. Instant fire. Then the coach hit him, the splinter bar catching his chin, the front axle crushing his larynx, cracking spine, whipping his head into the path of the rear wheels which slammed over him, mashing his face into the filth and black ooze.

  His one eye fluttered open, stinging, but he couldn’t breathe. To one side he saw muddy boots and spurs—some standing, others moving away. His bloody mouth sagged, convulsing for air. He felt warmth trickle from his ears. Life abandoning him. Then, between the clamoring shouts and splashes, he heard the massive bells of Christ Church Cathedral begin their solemn peal, announcing the time. He stopped moving, and there in the shadows of his mind he saw James, no more than five, standing on a rocky hill, laughing, the sea air tousling his auburn hair. Suddenly James sprinted off, through an emerald field, clambered over a low stone fence, then raced on, away, toward a man who was waiting, watching—a man Lord Arthur Annesley, the Earl of Anglesea had never been.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Henrietta Cole, examined — “My mother and I, being invited to Dunmain, went there about the spring of 1714. While I was there Lady Anglesea was with child, but she received a fright and miscarried. The fright was occasioned by my lord, Lord Anglesea, being in a great rage at some saucers being brought to the table contrary to his express orders, upon which he threw the saucers into the chimney just by my lady, who was seated at the upper end of the table. During the night my mother called up by Charity Heath, her ladyship’s woman, who told her that Lady Anglesea miscarried that night. I saw the abortion in a basin next morning. Charity Heath must have seen it, because she was present. My mother said that, if Lady Anglesea was so easily frightened, she never would have a child. Lord Anglesea said it was her own fault.”

  — trial transcript, Annesley v. Anglesea, 1743

  But know, thou noble youth,

  The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

  Now wears his crown.

  — from Hamlet, William Shakespeare, 1601

  Two days later the birds fell silent in the churchyard of Christ Church Cathedral, leaving only the heavy steps of shiny boots and shoes amidst the light clanking of silvery mourning swords and the rustling of somber fabric. Led by the priest and the cross, the clergy began a slow procession from the lich-gate at the churchyard’s north end. Behind them, six men covered in dark grey frocks filed forward, lifted the mahogany coffin from its table and joined in step.

  James Annesley, twelve years old and now the Baron of Altham and Earl of Anglesea himself, slowly followed, studying the path before him. A gust whipped his black hat and he snatched it back, covering everything but his tail of hair. He glanced across the crowd of no fewer than three hundred gentlemen and ladies shuffling along, awash in their black linen suits, heavy silk dresses and respectfully short ruffles. The women were suitably dour, a collection of black gloves and matching crepe handkerchiefs, hair pulled high under dark bonnets of silk. He could see the eyes of the men, a mass peering from under silver-ribboned cocked hats, white wigs and furrowed brows. They were fixed on him like the luminous piercing eyes of black cats, studying him, judging him.

  A woman in a full veil was standing apart from the others, fidgeting. For a moment Jemmy thought she might be his mother—but of course she was not; this woman was too short, too heavy. Besides, his mother would not be there. Although his gaze dropped back to the path before him, he was too late to see the upthrust edge of a flagstone. His toe caught it and he stumbled, one foot across the other and down, smashing into the legs of the rear pallbearer. The man’s knees buckled, he lost his grip, and the coffin shifted violently back. Thud! The sound echoed from within the coffin as the bearers struggled to keep it from hitting the ground. Jemmy sprang to his feet, his freckles lost in blush, imagining his father imperiously jostling about inside the box. As the bearers recovered their grips and solemn composures, the priest slowly proceeded forward, never hesitating in his recitation: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth….”

  Regaining composure, Jemmy focused on the back of the coffin. His father was finally dead, killed just two days ago, crushed by a runaway coach. He had heard it was murder— “A blood-damned, godless Catholic killed him!” But it could have been anyone. Who had not hated Arthur? Everyone had their reasons. Some had tried before. Even Jemmy—or at least he had thought on it. The man had been vile—a meanness that had enveloped Jemmy for so long that he was now calm, relieved the rage had been silenced under the booming hooves of six horses. The storm of the man had ended, the thunderclaps subsided, the torrential rain now dry. Relief. That coolness he felt in the hollow of his stomach was a certain contentment, the settled knowledge that the evil was gone, never to return.

  But where one weight was gone, now another hovered, waiting to be assumed. Jemmy was the new Earl of Anglesea, the English owner of over fifty thousand Irish acres, four thousand more acres across in England, a member
of both the Irish and English Houses of Lords—he had no idea what that meant for him. Where should he go? How to act? Could he remain friends with Seán, the son of Fynn Kennedy, a Catholic laborer? And what of Jemmy’s mother? Could he now go live with her? Even on to England? She had not come to him in over two years—would she want him? He watched his shoes glide back and forth. Why didn’t she come to this funeral? Even just for him. Yet, if she had, what would he say? He didn’t want to talk to her or anyone else. Except Fynn Kennedy who now joined in step beside him.

  Nothing felt more right. Though his father was lying in that coffin, the only man who had ever treated Jemmy as a son, who had ever loved him, was walking by him now, upright and proud, wigless hair tied back, jaw set, crescent eyes warm, one big hand on Jemmy’s shoulder. Even though Fynn was Catholic, Jemmy knew the man would remain by him today, no matter the aristocratic grumbling it caused. The warm hand on his shoulder gave him strength, as if chain armor, as if it were the hand of Sir Lancelot on Sir Galahad’s shoulder, the hand of valor, strength. Although Fynn’s son, Seán, thought Sir Lancelot was the best knight, Jemmy knew the best was Sir Galahad—the young one, the only one who had found the Holy Grail, found it glowing in the belly of a ship. He wished he could find something like that. Another wind-burst snapped his state away, and he returned to the bleak churchyard, the cold people.