The Rebels of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd Page B

defied all reason. He placed a silent curse upon them all. He certainly had no wish to engage in conversation with Tadhg; on the other hand, if he refused to reply, it might make the creature angry.
    â€œI am Doctor Simeon Pincher, of Trinity College, Dublin,” he said reluctantly.
    â€œOf Trinity College?” An Englishman and a heretic, therefore. But a scholar, perhaps, all the same. “You’d be learned, I dare say,” he ventured, “in Latin and Greek?”
    â€œI lecture in Greek,” Pincher said firmly, “in logic and in theology. I preach at Christ Church. I am a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.” He hoped this impressive list might reduce his unwelcome companion to silence.
    Tadhg might have little use for Englishmen and heretics, but he was impressed. This was a gentleman and a scholar, a learned man who had come all the way from Dublin to pay his respects to a leading O’Byrne. Courtesy was due. He lay there in silence, wondering what he should say to such a distinguished person. And as he did so, a further thought occurred to him. Here was an important man of learning sharing a bed with him, and no doubt imagining that he, Tadhg O’Byrne, was a poor sort of fellow. He owed it to himself to let the stranger know that he, too, was a person of some account. Not his equal in learning, to be sure, but a gentleman like himself at least.
    â€œAnd you wouldn’t know, I don’t suppose, who I might be?” he suggested.
    â€œI suppose not,” sighed Doctor Pincher.
    â€œYet it’s myself,” Tadhg announced proudly, “that is the rightful heir to Rathconan.”
    The effect of this statement was highly satisfactory. He felt the doctor’s body give a small start in the bed.
    â€œBut I understood that Brian…”
    â€œAh.” Now Tadhg bent to his theme. “He has it. That he has. But has he the right to it?” He paused to let the question establish itself in the surrounding dark. “He has not. It’s myself that is in the senior line, you see. His family took it, but they’ve no right to it. Their claim is false,” he ended triumphantly.
    The fact that under the very law, that ancient Irish law and custom, which he so ardently defended, Brian’s ancestors had been rightfully chosen and his own rejected, the fact that as a good Irishman he had no claim to Brian’s position whatever and that any good Irishman would have told him so in no uncertain terms, and the even more astounding fact that it was only under the English law, not the Irish, that the claim of the eldest son had any particular significance—all these facts had miraculously been dissolved in the blackness of the night, or rather, they had been hastily buried underground by Tadhg, like a criminal burying a body.
    â€œSo you mean,” Pincher sought to clarify, “that Brian O’Byrne does not in fact possess a clear title to this property?”
    â€œHe does not. Under English law.” He did not like to say it, but he knew that this would be the way to impress a Trinity College man. “Under the king’s law, he’s no right to it at all. It’s myself who is the rightful heir.”
    â€œThat,” said Doctor Pincher, “is very interesting. I think,” he added after a short pause, “that I should like to go to sleep.”
    And Tadhg O’Byrne, having made his point to his own satisfaction, was contented enough to fall into unconsciousness, which he did immediately. But Pincher did not sleep. He had no wish to sleep just yet. Instead, he lay there thinking. The information he had just received, if correct, was highly significant. Not, of course, that the disgusting wretch lying beside him would ever derive any benefitfrom it. God forbid. But if the kindly young man who had welcomed him to his house had any sort of defective title to the property, there were legal ways in which he might be