The Blood Upon the Rose by Tim Vicary Page B

always been shiftless, and the land was needed for pasture.
    ‘But he has gone to fight in the war!’ Catherine's mother had said. ‘For God's sake, he has gone to fight for the English, poor man - does he not get paid for that?’
    Ferguson had shaken his head. ‘He may have said that, my lady, but it was a lie. I've enquired, and no Irish regiment has any record of him. He's done a bunk, that's what it is - fled to some new fancy woman in the city, no doubt.’
    ‘And does that mean you must throw his wife and children on the road?’ Catherine had asked. ‘Is it their fault that they have a shiftless father? Is that Christian mercy?’
    ‘It's the law of the land, young lady. Rent must be paid, and this estate must be run at a profit. That's what your father appointed me to do, and it's in your interests not to interfere.’
    Catherine remembered how he had glanced from her to the fine oil paintings on the library wall. Paintings of her grandparents and great-grandparents; the people who had owned this house since Cromwell's days. She remembered the sneering look on his face. And where would you be, miss, without the likes of me? the look said . No fancy clothes, no fine house, no pony. Is that what you want?
    But then the bubble of his arrogance had been burst. Lady O’Connell-Gort, Catherine’s mother, had spoken, in a tone no one had heard from her for years. ‘Where are the mother and children now?’
    ‘How should I know, my lady?  On the road to Galway, perhaps.’
    ‘I want them found and brought back here.’
    ‘But ...’
    ‘And you will rebuild their house, and restore them to their home. Do you understand?’ Catherine's heart had sung. This was how she remembered her mother before her illness, and what she wanted her to be like again. A proud strong lady, ruling the estate in her own right, like a queen.
    ‘I am sorry, my lady, but I answer to Sir Jonathan, not you.’
    ‘That is my land. It is part of my inheritance. If you do not do what I say I shall have you dismissed.’
    The row had gone on for some time, and had led to a bitter exchange of letters with Catherine's father. It was true that Sir Jonathan had said his wife was incapacitated by nervous illness; but he had not obtained a medical certificate to remove her legal partnership in the estate, and so, to Catherine's surprise and delight, her mother had won. Only, by that time, the poor family had disappeared, and Ferguson claimed they could not be found.
     
     
    Sean was uncertain how he felt about the story. Part of him felt great anger at the plight of the poor Irish family. It might so easily have happened to him; it had happened to many of his ancestors, he knew. People who had starved in the great famine, or been crammed into the holds of the emigrant ships, which had left Ireland's ports every year until the start of the war.
    Another part of him was intrigued at the thought of Catherine as a young girl, growing up privileged and wilful on the west coast of Galway. He had not consciously thought about her childhood before; somehow it increased his tenderness for her. She had not been the ordinary spoiled rich girl, surely.
    ‘So what happened then?’ he asked.
    ‘I found them myself.’ Her face in the firelight of the pub was flushed with the memory.
    ‘And you a thirteen-year-old girl? How did you do that?’
    ‘I got on my pony and rode to Galway. A priest helped, too.’ There it was. She had been difficult, determined, contrary even then. And I nearly killed her, he remembered.
    ‘Where were they?’
    ‘In the most filthy place I had ever seen. A line of rotten shacks in the back streets, with mud on the floor and an open sewer running between them. I picked a baby out of it; he was eating fishbones and potato peelings that his mother had thrown there.’ She sipped her beer reflectively. ‘The woman wasn't very pleased to see me, either. She spat at me and told me to go away. I started crying. But then I got the