The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

man in Kilcummin, and you did not earn that respect with a cudgel.” It was not flattery. A quiet, clear-headed young man and a good farmer. They respected his learning, and they remembered that he was one of the old O’Donnells.
    But their talk moved then to the Aeneid . O’Donnell had a decent seminarian’s knowledge of Latin, but not the faintest notion of what the Aeneid was like as a poem. Translate thirty lines a day, and stop at the thirtieth, wherever you might find yourself. What was it that men like O’Donnell found to love in the Latin? Perhaps the sentences built like good fences, every word solidly in place, and each one giving strength to all the others. A marvellous language. Language of mystery and miracle, it brought Christ to earth, placed His body upon man’s tongue.
    When Hennessey came to summon him to the west room he was loath to go. What had bleeding cattle to do with the far moon, or the notes of a violin, or Aeneas cast up on Dido’s shore, a kingdom burned behind him and a kingdom yet to be built, but now a queen amorous and pious. Troy flaming like the bonfires of Saint John’s Eve.
    “You are one of us now, Owen boy,” Hennessey said, clapping him on the shoulder. “That letter had a blade to it like a knife.”
    “I am like hell,” MacCarthy said. “I told you that I was not.”
    “Sure Duggan only wants you to have a drink with us. You would be wise to keep in with Malachi. He will rule the barony.”
    “The magistrates rule the barony,” MacCarthy said. “The magistrates and the yeomen.”
    “Cooper has spent the last two days riding up and riding down to the other landlords,” Hennessey said. “He will have them frightened out of their wits. He even went to the Papist landlords.”
    “Landlords have their own religion,” MacCarthy said.
    In the west room they were gathered around Duggan, all of them standing, Quigley and O’Carroll and nine or ten men, a few in their thirties, but most of them far younger. Some were farmers, and some were labourers. What business had spalpeens in a quarrel between farmers and landlords? The room was heavy with their smell. O’Carroll handed him a large tumbler of whiskey, and Duggan greeted him, unsmiling.
    “You are a man of your word,” MacCarthy said. “You have begun a Whiteboy war in this quiet corner of Mayo.”
    “The Whiteboys of Killala,” Duggan said. The pompous title stuffed his mouth. “We will protect the people of this barony against Protestant landlords.”
    “A religious war, is it? You have grown more ambitious.” Fine whiskey, the colour of a pearl, with fire buried within.
    “Sure what else has it ever been?” one of the spalpeens asked. Eighteen or nineteen, and shaped like MacCarthy himself, long arms and heavy sloping shoulders. We are a tribe of our own, MacCarthy thought, bodies shaped for the spade. He began to speak, but changed his mind.
    “Well can he tell us,” Duggan said, nodding to the spalpeen. “He is one of the poor people driven out of Ulster last year by the Orange Protestants. Himself and all his people, with their cabin burned behind them.”
    “I am sorry,” MacCarthy said to the lad. “You have had a hard time of it.”
    “It could happen here,” Duggan said. “We all know that.” He rolled his bullock’s eyes towards the others, and they nodded.
    “Worse could happen,” MacCarthy said.
    “Or better,” Hennessey said. “Drink up, lads.” He moved his jug towards them. “These lads are just after taking the oath, Owen. You would do well to take it yourself. The schoolmaster should be with the people.”
    MacCarthy drained his tumbler, so that it would be empty and waiting when the jug came to him.
    Quigley craned forwards his bald moon of a head. “The schoolmaster in Kilcummin has taken the oath.”
    MacCarthy watched the whiskey fill his glass. “The Kilcummin schoolmaster is an ignorant dirty man who is a disgrace to learning. He was driven out of Ballintubber