Fortunate Son Read online

  Behind the peerage, a small gathering of commoners had gathered along Fishamble Street. They too were in dark clothes, though mostly in browns and grays, with no wigs nor swords among them. These were the Catholics, no more welcome than Fynn, particularly at such a noble Englishman’s funeral. Among them was Juggy, soon to be Fynn’s wife. As Jemmy saw her, she caught him with her empathetic eyes. He gave a slight smile, pleased she was there. Beside her was Fynn’s giant cousin, John Purcell, with his wife and their two young daughters, pulled in so close that they were almost lost in their father’s enormous gut. To Jemmy they all seemed lost, uncomfortable. He wished they would just go back to their homes, back to whatever they were doing, back to their happiness. And just past the Purcells was Seán. He was hopping on one foot, tugging irritably at his brown coat. Jemmy watched him, longing to simply step out of the damn procession, cut across the yard and run down Fishamble Street with Seán. To run away. To disappear. Seán could give him that, that most precious of gifts, the gift of invisibility, the gift of vanishing into the Dublin streets.

  The priest’s droning faded in Jemmy’s head. He looked up. There was no rain, no sun—only the low, spit-grey clouds of November clinging to the morning sky. Its hazy light draped the stones of Christ Church Cathedral, engulfing the high buttressed walls, throwing faint shadows across the Four Courts of Justice which adjoined the church’s north side. The march slowed now, approaching the chapterhouse, which joined the Cathedral to the Four Courts. He expected the procession to turn there, to enter the church’s nave through the side door, but instead the priest led the group to the left, toward Skinner Row, toward the far side of the Four Courts. “Where’s he going?” Jemmy whispered.

  Fynn leaned down. “I suppose t’ enter ’round off the lane. No doubt these nobles can’t squeeze their arses through that transept.”

  “‘Tis the long way, ‘round the courts.”

  “Aye, so ‘tis, Seámus,” Fynn said, addressing Jemmy by his Irish name. To Fynn Kennedy, Jemmy was not Jemmy, not James, not Jimmy, not barely an Annesley, not the Baron of Altham and certainly not the Earl of Anglesea. He was Seámus. And that was that. Seámus he had been since birth—Seámus he would remain. Their bond had formed over the years at Dunmain House in Southern Ireland, where Fynn had served as the Annesleys’ stablemaster. But that service ended upon their move to Dublin a year prior. Fynn had been summarily turned out without even the bother of a fictive explanation. According to Juggy, it was because Lord Anglesea had overheard Fynn teaching Irish Gaelic to Jemmy. They had all denied it of course, Jemmy the loudest. But the truth was he had learned much more Gaelic than just his own name. He was now fluent in the illegal language.

  The priest paused to adjust his peruke wig, now flopped across his slumped back, then resumed recitations from the Book of Common Prayer for the Anglican Church of Ireland: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave….”

  As the group moved along Skinner Row, Jemmy looked up at the court building. He and Seán had often played here in the passages and the churchyard. They had sat on the stone steps leading up from Christ Church Lane watching the comings and goings of the high-wigged solicitors, chained criminals, justices of the peace, and other curious-looking people. But he had never paid much mind to the old court building itself. Nor had he ever thought it odd that it was built on the cathedral’s grounds. Stretching up above him, the court’s tall narrow windows were cracked and moldy, most threaded with lead latticework, the track marks of numerous repairs and fragile attempts to keep out the rain. Squinting his sea-green eyes, he noticed the parapet along the roofline was crumbling in places, the grey sky seeping through the eves.

  Once inside the church, the procession continued into the drafty nave to where the coffin was laid on a stone table before the closed chancel screen, below the pulpit with its imposing canopy which appeared to rise out over the people. The clergy turned and waited silently for the laity to slide into their pews. Jemmy picked a pew in the center of the nave, scooting down the long wooden stretch until he came to the outer edge. Fynn eased in beside him, patting him firmly on the knee. The priest had climbed the rounding stairs and was now wobbling in the pulpit. “I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep….”

  Immediately next to the end of Jemmy’s pew was a black marble tomb shaped in the effigy of a medieval warrior. He studied it, cocking his head to read the inscription: Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, STRONGBOW, 1176. And beside Strongbow’s tomb was another one, though much smaller. Silently, he read the faint letters inscribed in its base:

  O graceless son, who left thy sire,

  Amid the battle’s din;

  And the same moment, turned thy back

  On Country, Kith, and Kin.

  ‘Tis his son there, the one he cut in half for running away from battle! He knew the story well but had never seen these tombs. The small one wasn’t short because it held a child; it was short because it held only half a man, a young warrior killed and forced to lie forever beside his father, the very man who had sliced him in two. Suddenly a dreadful idea came to Jemmy as he stared at his own father’s coffin, panic paling his face. Glancing over, he saw the reassuring glimmer in Fynn’s narrow eyes. Please God, let them bury me next to Mr. Kennedy. Or anywhere so long ‘tis far from this cathedral, far from Da.

  The tombs of Strongbow and his half-son lay in the bay of a stone arcade that ran the length of the nave. Toward the top of the nearest column the stone arched up and over and down to the next column. Looking up, Jemmy saw the lower arches supporting higher levels of stone arches which in turn were hoisting the high vaulted ceiling—pushing it back to God, curving it out into the open air, denying gravity, tempting fate. The house of serendipity under the ceiling of castigated chance. The priest coughed slightly mid-phrase. Jemmy leaned close to Fynn. “Did he know Da?” he whispered.

  “Who, lad?”

  “The old priest.”

  Fynn shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps so.”

  A cold breeze drafted across his feet. He watched the ancient man, studying the movement of the thin lips. “…shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall….” After the prayer, a cool, echoing silence fell through the cathedral, interlaced with an occasional cough. No weeping. Not even a sniffle. But was he supposed to cry? He clenched his teeth, trying to feel sad. Was he lacking something, some care? Was he devilish, cold hearted? Was he just like his father? A devil? A gargoyle of a man. Did the priest know that man in the coffin had been a devil? Was his father still a devil, even after death? Maybe he should yell at the priest: You’re burying a devil, don’t you know! Maybe his father should be buried outside, not in the crypt of this cathedral, not below where Jemmy now sat. He had been to church a few times since they had moved to Dublin, but always to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the dean at St. Pat’s, Dean Jonathan Swift, was much different than this codger. Dean Swift told them how loving and caring Christ was. Jemmy looked again at the coffin. There lay mortality. There in that mahogany box lay his father, wrapped in death clothes, his fat head pushed against the coffin end. If Dean Swift was right, if Christ did die for everybody, was his father in heaven now, devil or not? Jemmy chewed his bottom lip, glancing away, up, anywhere. Dean Swift told stories about Lilliputians too, didn’t he? Were Lilliputians in heaven? Or did they go to some other heaven, a much smaller one?

  Retracing the arches down to the tops of the massive supporting pillars, Jemmy’s wide eyes found others looking back. Circumscribing the summit of each column was a series of faces with deep-carved, stone eyes—forever beautiful, staring blankly at the nave people. A man in pensive gaze, an old man wrinkled and withdrawn, another much younger, frozen on the verge of speaking. Then he saw her. Almost directly above him was the face of a beautiful maiden, her head wrapped in a death shroud. Or was it a scarf to ke
ep out the cold? Different from the others, her eyes were closed. The others were all peaceful men, noble faces, the old, the young, all with open eyes, all looking right back at him. And the lady’s face was graceful, not threatening or warning, yet her closed eyes bothered him. Why couldn’t she look at him? Did she not want to see the people there, not want to see him? She was welcoming yet still hidden. Was she dead or just sleeping? Suddenly, in his mind, the carving began to transform, swelling, trembling, struggling and flexing against its stone bindings. Then it became a living face—the face of his mother. Tears welled in his eyes as he silently pleaded, Mother, where are ye? Where are ye? As quickly as she had appeared, Mary Sheffield faded back to grey stone, the flesh hardening, the eyes closing. She was gone.

  “Seámus.” Fynn touched Jemmy’s shoulder, whispering. “Seámus, m’boy, ‘tis time for ye t’go. Up t’ the altar.”

  Jemmy wiped his hot cheeks with the back of one hand as he stood, slipping into the aisle. He reluctantly walked to the front. Behind him he heard deep murmurs, but no distinguishable words. As he stopped at the coffin, a clerk took his arm, leading him to one side. People began to course by, men unknown to him, greeting him as the new Earl, calling him lord, saying things in memorial about his father, a man they had surely never known.

  *

  Thirty minutes later, the eight bells of Christ Church Cathedral began their dirge, shaking the brisk Dublin air. Emerging up from the crypt, Jemmy walked up and out, into the light, beyond the stone columns, past the cold faces, through the door of the south transept, and out into the churchyard. The throng of the elite, the spectators, stood about, clustered in dark little pockets of self-appointed supremacy. To Jemmy they were more like clumps of black peat. The sun had broken through the grey sky at last, and Jemmy squinted trying to spot Fynn.

  “James Annesley!” a voice thundered.

  “Aye?” Jemmy looked up, shielding his eyes from the brightness.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing here, knave?” The man was advancing on horseback, two other horsemen close behind.

  “What business do ye have with the lad?” Fynn was at Jemmy’s side. Jemmy could now see the man, mounted high, haughty and proud, the angular face scowling down at them. He saw the man’s gold cravat, cropped wig, blue three-corner hat. Nothing dark, no mourning clothes. The only black was in those eyes.

  “My business is none of your concern, stable boy,” the man growled at Fynn. “Remove your nasty heretic arse from this holy yard.”

  “B’God ye’d best declare yerself, if ye wish t’ survive yer tongue!”

  “A challenge!” The man spun his spirited mount on the churchyard turf, the hooves spattering wet clumps of mud on Fynn and the people crowded around.

  The big Irishman, John Purcell, charged, brandishing a walking stick. “Get yer English arse down!” His guttural boom reverberating off the stone walls. Just as quickly, the other two Englishmen spurred their mounts toward him. Shouts and neighing erupted in Jemmy’s ears. He stepped back from the commotion, seeing the glint of a steel scabbard, hearing the ring of a blade slipping free. Silence descended. Everything stopped. Except the bells which continued their tolling far overhead. Fynn was once again beside Jemmy, John Purcell was being held back by the tip of a rapier, and Seán was standing wide-eyed on the far churchyard wall.

  “Now,” began the man. “Now that you’ve closed your Catholic gobs, I’ll speak t’ the young runt.” Infused with anger, a hint of brogue slid through the man’s efforts to maintain his English composure.

  Juggy stepped forward, clasping Jemmy by the elbow. “What do ya want with the young lord? He’s just buried his father, so he has. Tis that not enough? Or didn’t ya know?”

  “Aye, so he’s just buried his father.” The man smirked, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But what do you know of it?” His lips curled to a grin. “I am the corpse’s brother.”

  “Richard Annesley,” Fynn said, reciting the name flatly.

  “M’da has no brother,” Jemmy said. “He—”

  “Aye, but he did, Seámus. He did indeed.” Fynn was slowly advancing. “So Richard, where’s yer black beard? Or aren’t ye hiding behind no more?”

  “Stand back!” Richard drew his pistol, cocking it. “Stand back, Irish cur!”

  Fynn stopped, then raised his arms, smiling. “Wouldn’t want t’ be upsettin’ ye. Ney. That wouldn’t do—now would it? Considering how upset ye must be over the loss of yer dear brother.” Richard shifted in his saddle, but kept his aim steady. “Let me think on this,” Fynn continued, now feigning contemplation. “If I be right, ye’ve come t’ claim the title and property of the Earlship for yerself. Aye?” He turned, patting the rump of the horse beside Richard. “And this here must be the arse of Captain Bailyn.”

  Bailyn jerked his horse around. “Get yer b’deviled hand off m’horse!” He spat at Fynn through two crooked yellow teeth. His thin face was pale, unshaven, smallpox scarred.

  Fynn smirked. “Good God, Bailyn, ye’re more ugly than last we saw ye.”

  Richard motioned Bailyn back. “Kennedy, the boy is a bastard. Ye know ‘tis so.”

  “I am not!” Jemmy burst.

  “Ye say he is, do ye?” said Fynn. “Of course ye do.”

  Juggy stepped in front of Jemmy. “So whose child ya say he is?”

  “Ah, m’lady,” Richard began. “I’d think you’d be the Betty t’ answer that.” Juggy’s face tightened, her cheeks growing red.

  “Damn ye!” Fynn erupted. “I’ll not stand for yer insults against the lady or the lad.”

  “Lady, say you?” Richard spurred his horse sideways, placing his pistol against Fynn’s temple, knocking off Fynn’s hat. “I told you, maggot, step away.” As Fynn took one deliberate step back, Richard grabbed Juggy by the collar, dragging her to his saddle, pressing her smooth face against the leather. He leaned down to her ear, his eyes and pistol still aimed at Fynn. “As you’re aware, I speak true when I say the knave is the son of a whore. Aye, Mistress Mackercher?” He released her with a slight shove.

  As Juggy stumbled back, Jemmy charged. “Ye’re not my uncle! I have no uncle!” Just as he bolted by the third horseman, the man kicked out a spur, slicing Jemmy’s right cheek, knocking him to the mud. He clutched his jaw, blood streaming through his fingers. Juggy was to him but he was already on his feet, backing up, refusing her, glaring at everyone.

  “Now hear me, all of ye!” shouted Richard, straightening in his saddle. “This bastard boy goes by the name James Annesley, claiming to be the son of the widow Mary Annesley, once Lady Anglesea. But as you all well know, my brother was a drunken whoremonger and this boy is but a whore’s son. He is a charlatan. An imposter and a liar. I am Lord Richard Annesley, the one and true Earl of Anglesea. And so help me, I’ll hang the one of ye who says otherwise.” He pointed his pistol at Jemmy. “Starting with you.”

  Jemmy stared back, eyes narrowing.

  Chapter 3

  Catharine MacCormick, examined — “Lady Anglesea miscarried about six weeks after her coming to Dunmain. I heard it from Mrs. Charity Heath, her woman, who said that her ladyship would be as fruitful a woman as any, but for ill-usage by his lordship. About two months after I heard that Lady Anglesea was again with child. I was told so by Mrs. Heath, who mentioned to me, with a great deal of pleasure, that she had good news, that my lady was certainly with child again.”

  — trial transcript, Annesley v. Anglesea, 1743

  Alas, my Love! Ye do me wrong

  To cast me off discourteously;

  And I have loved ye so long,

  Delighting in yer company.

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight;

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but Lady Greensleeves.

  — “Greensleeves,”Anonymous, 1581

  Misty fog, aglow in the morning’s half-light, settled over St. Stephen’
s Green, the vast open land on the western edge of Dublin. In a remote corner a meandering creek murmured along, slicing through a pale meadow, dividing trees—trees which sheltered the moist grass and the damp rocks which had tumbled from stone walls overgrown with ferns. It was early, yet the blackbirds were already beginning to fuss and caw. Time crept by, as had the five months since the funeral dirge that continued to play. Jemmy was sitting against one of those enormous oaks. He was focused, his mouth agape, the pink scar etched along his right cheek pointed to his hands where he was trying to count the legs of an orange centipede—he had not made it past seventeen. He would get the poisonous creature to cling to a small stick, its crittery back coiled into a tight ball. Then he would start counting. But whenever he would get to about seventeen, the vermin would uncurl, crawling quickly to the other end of the stick. With no desire to hold the thing, he would quickly invert the stick and begin counting yet again. “Ah, ye little turd,” he whispered as it touched his hand, spawning a cold shiver. Hearing the sound of someone approaching, he peered around the trunk. It was Seán ambling toward him, carelessly swatting bushes with a sapling stick. “Seán!” Jemmy stood, his filthy wet clothes sticking to him. “Look at this!” Just then the centipede raced across his hand and up his arm. Jemmy shouted, flinching, whacking his chin with the stick, hurling the creature high into the tree.

  “M’God! Get it off me!” Seán was immediately screaming. “Get it off me!”

  Jemmy raced around the giant oak to see Seán writhing on the ground, kicking and swatting at the empty air, demon-possessed, wild-eyed and scared. “What’s at ye?” Jemmy shouted. An orange flash tumbled from Seán’s waistcoat, scurrying for cover under the leaves.