The Silver Highways

by Malcolm Macdonald

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

When Mary Flinders sets off on a journey that will take her from the quiet Irish countryside to the bustle of London, she has little idea of the new life about to begin. Protected on the way by the good natured navvy Steam Punch, on arriving in London she nevertheless soon falls under the sway of the captivating Lord Tottenham, who quickly introduces her to the more sordid delights of city life. But it is with silent engineering genius Matt sullivan that Mary finds both true love and a successful business partner. Basing their talents and fortune on England's rapidly developing canal networks, Mary and Matt become a willing part of the adventurous times. Duels, races and tests of courage between both aristocrats and common men alike - all play their part in this tale of adventure and romance in 18th century England.

Release date: October 10, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 496

Sample

I WISH I WAS A LADY FAIR,” she sang, “to lie twixt sheets of silk. For ’tis a cruel and winter air …”

It was, in fact, a grand morning in May. A warm south-west breeze blew steadily up from Kilfenora carrying flocks of thin, small clouds that did nothing to hinder the sun. She sat on Poulaphuca moor, upon the warm stone of the Oul’ Kinnel, facing north, and sang her sad song, thinking all the while how good life was. She watched the pale cloudshadows ramble up the sides of the distant hills, the Moneen Mountains to her left, the even higher Turlough Hill to the right. Where else but in County Clare would the hills be raised higher than the mountains – and the gentry brought lower than the peasants!

She hugged her knees to her chin, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun as it soaked into her back. Actually, life wasn’t all that good. This place was a bit of a prison; her father, who really was in gaol, was in a way much freer than her – free to read all he wished, to write prospectuses of his lovely, ridiculous notions. For all his confinement, he was still The Flinders of the Barony of Inchiquin in County Clare. He still led the life of a gentleman. Yet the world would call her the free one – free to tend the goats, cut the turf, till the soil, carry the produce to market … free to slave from sleep to sleep.

She sighed. How could a land as wide, as high, as open as this, be so imprisoning? Yet it was. If she stayed here, she’d become just like the rest of them, nothing for supper but dreams – and breakfast from the leftovers. She had to get away before this poverty had its tendrils around her soul. But where was “away,” and how did anyone get there?

The beauty of the scene diverted her thoughts; on a day like this you could almost love it – the vast, blue-grey domes of barren rock that rose a thousand feet and more out of the sparse bogs and the meagre valleys that ringed their feet. In winter they seemed brooding and sullen, as if they’d like to give one good heave and shake off the rash of little cottages that dotted their lower slopes, flaunting their limewashed walls. Those pinpoints of white often seemed to her like little cries of astonishment that survival was even possible in this grim, beautiful land, which demanded so much and yielded so little in return.

When men first came to Ireland they must have wandered as far as the country that surrounds this waste of naked rock, the good, soft country where Kinvara and Gort, Corofin and Ennistimon now stand. Who would then have ventured farther? Only an eejit. If ten thousand times ten thousand giants had fought in battle, and if their dead had been turned to stone, then this was their battleground and resting place. And that was the best of the land, in the foothills. On the mountains themselves, on those great, bald, limestone skulls, nothing could grow, except where the frost and rain had scoured deep cracks in the surface; there, where blown soil and the dung of goats and rabbits could lodge, there and there alone did a sparse, outlandish, outcast vegetation take root. Who would leave those gentle lowland acres and settle here instead? Only eejits like the Flinderses.

“Poor I may be yet I’m honest …” She began a new song, a virtuous song, to complement her wishfulness.

Down below, at the foot of the slope beneath Poulaphuca, she saw the figure of a man. A wandering monk. He was walking toward her, not on the new road but on the road built in olden times, which vanished in the moor where a saint had once hurled a bit of a rock in a fight with another saint. Not that she believed those papist superstitions.

“Mary! Mary!” From away to the west she heard her mother call her home. She gauged the length of her own shadow among the heather and saw that it was time to bring in the goats for milking. “Coming!” she shouted.

Where in God’s name were the creatures, anyway?

Ten idle minutes later the question was answered as they came leaping up onto the moor, driven ahead of the man she had seen. Now she saw he was no wandering monk; what she had taken for his cowl was, in fact, a small wheelbarrow, strapped to his back. He was a common labourer. When he was almost nigh she made out other details – a pick and shovel tied across the barrow, a billycan dangling by its handle, a bundle of clothing to cushion the hard edges.

“Come home! Come home!” she called to the animals, not taking her eyes off the man. They pranced and trotted past her, putting her between them and the stranger before they turned to watch with wise and goatish curiosity.

“That’s a grand day,” he said in Irish, halting about a dozen paces off. He was old, more than thirty, with a rugged, kindly face.

“God be praised,” she replied mechanically, also in Irish. “Where are you from?”

“From Gort.”

“There’s more work there than here.”

“Would you be knowing a Mary Flinders?” he asked.

“I might,” she said. “And then again, I mightn’t. If I did, who is it wants her?”

“Steam Punch, ma’am. So they call me.” He strolled over until he was at her side, where he turned his back to the Kinnel and rested his burden upon it. He gave out a great sigh. “God be praised!”

“That’s a fierce burden,” she told him.

“It puts beef in the belly and wool on the back.”

“And by God it’d want to! The weight that’s in it.”

He sized her up. “I have word for Mary Flinders from England.”

“England is it? Who would she know there?”

“A bold young lad by the name of Ignatius Murphy.”

She frowned, then gave out a great laugh.

“You have two grand sets of teeth,” he told her.

“Ig-naaa-tius is it! Could that be Con Murphy in his Sunday best? Ignatius, would you ever stop!”

From the inner reaches of his coat he drew forth a letter. As he was on the point of handing it to her he said, “I’m to ask you to describe some mark or feature of the man.”

“Of Con Murphy?” she asked truculently. “The biggest thing about that one is his own opinion of himself.”

Steam Punch laughed in agreement, but shook his head, asking for more.

“His face was opened by a knife,” she said. “Hasn’t he a scar here” – drawing a finger down her brow – “and a white blaze in his eyebrow where it crosses, and just the tip of it on his cheek.”

He handed her the letter. It was in English, of course; Con was a Leinster man. She read a line or two – Dear Miss Flinders, How are you? Well, here lam in London. The man who carries this letter will tell you … – and folded it inside her bodice. “Let’s bring these goats home before they ramble again. You’ll sup with us?”

“Gratefully. That’s a longer walk from Gort than I thought now.”

“It’s that land for you – it promises a mile and it gives you two. If it did the same with the corn, we’d all be rich.”

“Isn’t it the truth.” He shouldered his burden again and went to stand between the goats and the road. She circled them on the other side, gathering them into a tighter bunch, squeezing them homeward.

“Even the English don’t want it,” she went on. “Sure you could walk all day and never rest your eyes on a landlord house.”

“Praise God for a little mercy.”

“The English or the O’Lauchlins, there’s a poor enough choice for you.”

He spat crosswind, away from her, agreeing without words. The goats darted and stood, darted and stood, never certain whether they were being driven or were going voluntarily. “How many acres have you?” he asked.

“Oh God, a fair few,” she replied.

“Is it just yourself and the oul’ woman?”

“Did Con Murphy tell you about my father?”

“He said he’s in gaol for debt.”

“For dreaming! I have three brothers. One’s in Ennis, one’s in Liscannor, and one is ploughing a salt furrow somewhere between here and here-again.”

“A fisherman?”

She shook her head. A certain reluctance seemed to overcome her. “Ship’s officer,” she said at last.

“Well,” he said in surprise, looking her over carefully, as if he thought he might have missed something about her. “And the other two, then?”

“Michael, the one in Ennis, he’s a court clerk. And Jimmy’s a bailiff and bookkeeper.” They had reached the lip of the hill. She paused and stared down into the valley, over the backs of the goats as they tumbled down the paths ahead of her. She raised her arm and pointed at a grim-looking stonewalled farmhouse nestling among some wind-bent sycamores and ash trees. “Didn’t you know?” she asked ironically. “Didn’t Ig-naaaa-tius tell you? My father is The Flinders of the Barony of Inchiquin in County Clare. We’re gentry!”

“That’s where you got the reading and the writing,” he said evenly.

She laughed. “You’re a practical man, Mr. Punch. They’re like hen’s teeth in these parts.”

“The father in Ennis Gaol and the son a clerk of the court …” he said.

She led the way down the kindest of the paths. “He wants for nothing,” she said. “For some men liberty’s more ruinous than gin.”

“So,” he said, “when you go to England …”

She turned to him in astonishment. “Why in God’s name would I do that?”

His momentum, what with the slope and the weight on his back, carried him into her. For a moment they teetered, like a pair of lunatic dancers, and then just managed to regain their balance. She laughed. “To England?”

“Sure isn’t it all set forth in that letter? And haven’t I a draft for five guineas for you, payable in Ennis? I thought you read it all.”

She clutched his arm in disbelief. “To London? Con Murphy wants me … he’s given you five guineas …” Hastily she pulled out the letter and read it.

Indeed, Con wanted her to come to London, had loved her from the moment he saw her – blether blether … a whole page of lovewords she’d read later in private. No one had ever sent her a love letter before. He had worked his way into a position of trust with Lord Tottenham, heir to the Marquis of Enfield, had saved, could afford to keep her in a manner beyond even her father’s dreams, all that unfortunate misunderstanding with the army now forgotten and done with … no more running … would send this and five guineas for the journey by the hand of Steam Punch, a navigating man, trust him with your life. Sent from Mother Redcaps, Camden Town, this 14th day of February, 1789.

“Is he a gentleman now?” she asked.

He looked at her askance. “Something less honest than a rogue, I’d say.”

She folded the pages with care. “And who is Mother Redcap? Was it herself penned this letter, for I’m sure Con hasn’t the writing?”

“’Tis an alehouse in a village outside London.”

“God, I hardly know the man,” she burst out.

But she already knew she was going to London. Chances like this didn’t come ashore on every tide. As to marrying Con Murphy, well, that was another matter entirely. You could plan your life too much; that was her father’s downfall – he never stopped his scheming and dreaming.

Steam Punch asked, “How did you chance to meet that man?”

She looked at him warily. They resumed their walk down the hill. “Did he not tell you?”

“Not in three words. I fancy he killed a redcoat?”

“It was a perfectly ordinary streetfight,” she assured him. “That’s where he got that scar.”

“He’s a fierce man to cross.”

“The captain told my brother Michael he was glad to shed the man, the soldier. He was nothing but disorder on two legs. One of the king’s bad bargains, he said. They didn’t search out Con Murphy above six hours.”

“Did you shelter him?”

She nodded. “For a week or two, while the cut healed. It was the other man’s fault.”

As they came to the farm gate she asked, “Who’s Lord Tottenham?”

“A man to be feared, they say.”

“And what does Con do for him?”

“He’s a prizefighter, the best.” Reluctantly Steam Punch added, “Among other things.”

SHE MILKED THE GOATS before she brought Punch indoors. She thought, as she worked.

London! What would that place be like? Grand people being carried around in their chairs … lords and ladies as thick as you’d want them, drinking tea and chocolate, giving out Secret Signs with their fans, subscribing their names to all the new books, killing with a glance, languishing at balls … oh, doing every sort of grand thing altogether.

Did the prospect not frighten her, just a little? Begod, it did not. To tell the truth, she couldn’t wait.

“London,” she said, casually. “Would that be far?”

She had seen it in the atlas, of course, but since she’d never travelled more than twenty miles from Poulaphuca, the span of a hand across the engraved page meant nothing.

“With your five guineas,” Punch said, “you could get passage out of Galway to Cork for a crown, and from Cork to Wales for seven shillings or to Bristol for eight. Your fares the whole way would be a pound, and it would take you a week. Ten days at the most.”

“Is that the way you’ll be travelling?”

He was silent. She looked up at him, wondering if he’d heard. There was a remoteness in his eyes, a strange flatness in his voice as he answered: “It was. But I had … business in Gort that consumed the fare.”

“I’ll pay for you so,” she said gaily, not wanting to attempt the journey alone.

“You will not! I’ll leg it and catch what work I may along the road. There’s the new canal to Carlow, now.”

“Then I’ll leg it too, by God!” She laughed. “And with what’s saved I’ll buy some pretty fashions in Dublin. Will we pass through Dublin?”

“We will, of course.” He nodded. “What’ll the oul’ woman say?”

“Good riddance, I should think. She can set the farm and go over to Liscannor. They’ve need of a dame school there.”

The last dribbles fell into the pail. She rose and looked around the lean-to. “They’re better housed than ourselves,” she said. “Come away in and you’ll see.” She paused and added, “My mother only has the English, or so she pretends.”

They drove the goats out through the gate, letting them wander back onto the moor. Punch hoisted two full pails, leaving her the third, half filled, to carry.

“You never drink it all,” he said. Now he spoke English, too.

“We sell the cheese in Ennis and so purchase my father’s vittles for the week. And I’ll tell you now – there’s not a happier man in the whole County Clare, so there isn’t.”

As they went indoors her mother, who was scalding the pans at the range, said, without turning round, “Did you get wet? I’ll take the skin off you.”

“It isn’t even raining. This now is Mr. Steam Punch, so it please you. He’s come out from Gort, bound for London – and he has news of – guess who – Ig-naaa-tius Murphy!”

Punch, already fairly sure he was among heathens, searched nonetheless for a bowl of holy water; finding none, he began a wary search of the room for other marks of faith. But there were no saints, no holy pictures, no crucifix. Instead, he found Mrs. Flinders’s eye fixed sharply upon him.

“Ye have some grand oul’ shticks of furniture, ma’am,” he said to explain his scrutiny.

She smiled, not deceived. “And divil a horn nor tail among us. Come in, come in.” She took the pails from him and carried them to the range. “You’ll have the thirst on you after such a walk?”

“I was wondering was there any danger of a drink,” he agreed jovially.

The woman nodded at her daughter, who went out across the yard and returned a short while later with a stoneware cruse of poteen.

Punch grinned at the pair of them and gulped the fiery liquor as if his life depended on it. He chased it down with mild ale, the brewing of which was one of Mary’s tasks. The women sipped their portions, savouring every drop. They ate bread and their own make of cheese, and potatoes mashed in goatsmilk.

“Steam Punch?” Mrs. Flinders said. “Now that wouldn’t be your baptismal name?”

“Indeed it is not, ma’am. ’Tis a navigator’s name I got in a fight I ended in glory. That was in me fightin’ days.”

“And when were they?”

He winked encouragingly. “You may rest aisy, Mrs. Flinders. I’m not your man for a brawl. And this year’s fight is fought and won.”

“That was a bold man who took on you.”

“Was!” he chuckled at the emphasis.

“And your real name?”

The humour left him. “Moore, I was baptized. Declan Moore.”

The women exchanged sudden, knowing glances. “From Gort, you say?” Mrs. Flinders went on. “Are you that Moore?”

He nodded. His troubled eyes flickered between them and the cruse.

“Fill your cup so, Mr. Moore,” the mother said earnestly. “We’re sorry for all your trouble. That was a terrible, terrible thing.”

“It was, ma’am. I’m obliged.”

“To return home to such a woeful occasion!” Mary said. “Did they get word of it to you on your journey?”

“Divil a breath of it until I arrived.”

“The mother and six children!”

He nodded and drained his glass.

Mrs. Flinders went on: “I always said those cottages were ripe for such a tragedy. The straw thatch does be so quick to fire. And when you think of all the good reed thatch there’d be in Castle Lough …” She shook her head and refilled his cup. “That’s from Doolin, now. Ireland’s best.”

Mary took her chance. “He’s brought us word from Con Murphy, who wants to marry me,” she said. “He’s sent five guineas for me to come and join him in London. Punch will bring me there he says.”

“Marry you!” Mrs. Flinders exploded. “That soup-Protestant! In case you need reminding, my girl, we have been Protestants since …”

“He’s as good a Protestant now as ever he was a papist,” Mary interrupted. To Punch she added, “Saving your presence.”

He agreed: “There’d be little rejoicing in either fold at the return of that stray sheep.”

She turned back to her mother and said in a more conciliatory tone, “I wouldn’t be obliged to marry the man if I didn’t want to. If we leg it to London, I’ll have the most part of his money intact to hand back to him. And what we spend on the sea crossing I could soon make good.”

“Out of what, pray? Dreams and nightmares! You’re a Flinders right enough.”

“I can read and write. And cast up an account. I have a little Latin. I can sew. I can speak and act as dainty as any Miss Pale out of Dublin. I can recite after Dryden and Pope and Shakespeare. I can sing and play the harp. And if I carry letters from Reverend Pearce and from the justiciary in Ennis, wouldn’t the daughter of The Flinders of the Barony of Inchiquin in County Clare soon be in the way of paying back a few shillings to the like of Ignatius Murphy!”

“Would you ever listen to her!” Mrs. Flinders beseeched the ceiling. “She’s that clever, she’d herd mice at a crossroads.” She scooped up the breadcrumbs and rolled them into a ball, which she popped between her lips. “Dreams!” she added scornfully.

Punch watched them in fascination. He saw that, for all her apparent scorn, the mother was proud of her daughter’s way-wardness; yet the daughter could not see it.

Mary did her best to contain her anger. “You’re the dreamer, mother,” she said quietly. “You complain about father’s wild, impractical notions and the way they always strand us in debt, you seek to fill every waking hour with meaningless tasks, but …”

“Dreams, is it!” her mother cried. “What woman after four children the likes of you – not to mention twenty-eight years with such a man as that – what woman I say would have the pick of a dream about her still?” She turned to Punch and said, as conversationally as if she were saying, I’ve run out of sewing thread, “I haven’t a dream left me, ‘dare to God.”

Mary spoke sharply. “Nothing’s ever right for you. You must have this changed, that changed. We need new thatch. The hinge of the gate has dropped. Oh God, there’s a new rathole. The turf was better firing last year. Why are the hens laying smaller eggs – is it to spite us or what? This petticoat is ruined after only five trips to the tub. Lord, I’ll swear the sun isn’t so warming this year as last! You never stop.”

“But it’s all true,” the older woman protested.

“It’s all dreams. You dream of everlasting linen, and hinges that never wear, and a world without the rats … and all the rest of it. Your days are ruined with dreams of what isn’t and what never can be, so you’ve no time left to love what is.”

“Love!” Mrs. Flinders gave out a sour smile; her eyes flickered briefly toward Punch. “She’d argue the cross off an ass’s back.”

“Would you be interested, ma’am, to hear of Con Murphy’s doings over the water?” he asked.

“Scantly.” She jerked her head in Mary’s direction. “He’s that one’s ruin, not mine.”

Mary told her anyway: “He’s working for Lord Tottenham, as a prizefighter, and making good money, and his lordship is heir to the Marquis of Enfield. So!”

“So, indeed! So my daughter’s to become a prizefighter’s moll! Mary you were christened and Moll you’ll die. Don’t look for my blessing.”

Mary clenched her jaw and stared at the ceiling.

“Will you give up the farm?” Punch asked.

“I will not!”

“She thought you might move to Liscannor.”

“Hop from the bakepot into the skillet? Oh no!”

Still not looking at her, Mary asked, “And how will you manage here, alone?”

“Will I be alone? Wouldn’t Peggy Walsh lepp at the chance to put five more miles between Christy Miller and that daughter of hers?”

“Pamela?”

“The same.”

Mary burst into laughter. “I yield, mother, I yield. For twenty years I’ve had Saint Pamela Walsh held before me as the living image of all that’s good and great in the holy estate of daughterhood. And now, before the rain can fill my leaving footprints, she’s to be gaolled in my stead. Lord, I’m well content!”

Punch, seeing the glint of ancient battle in both women’s eyes, now rose and said, “There’ll be much that wants doing, ma’am, I make no doubt of it – ground to till, thatch to mend, and though ’tis early for the turf, sure we might shake a fist at it if this weather but holds.”

He stayed four days. Mary had heard legends of the navigators, the men who built canals, of their prodigious feats of strength and endurance. She might have guessed at their truth from the size of Punch’s travelling burden, or from the massive, rippling muscles that seemed to make up his entire body; but not until she saw him at work over those days did she truly grasp their meaning. Work that would have taken other men hereabouts a week, he managed in a morning. Where they would walk, he ran; where they ran, he flew. He cut a ton of turf (which is five tons of water beside). He set out a half acre of potatoes. And in the evenings, for a desperate want of idleness, he dug new shores, rebuilt walls, tore out old thatch and put in new, cut heather for bedding, rehung the gate … jobs that had wanted such a hand as his for years. He ate his way through an entire goat, not to mention six quartern loaves and all that week’s cheese; he drank half the goats’ yield plus a gallon of kitchen ale each day. And Mary had to take the ass over to Doolin for more poteen. But Lord, wasn’t he worth every gulp and gasp of it!

On her way back from Doolin she cried in at her brother Jimmy’s in Liscannor. He pretended to be appalled that she was even thinking of going off to London. And as for marrying that ne’er-do-well Con Murphy … But she could see, underneath it all, he envied her the freedom she was taking. When he saw he couldn’t shake her he promised with good enough grace to get word to Michael in Ennis, so he’d have the letters from the minister and the justice ready when she passed through. There were tears at their parting.

ON HER LAST NIGHT in the old home, restless at the thought of leaving it, fearful of the world yet excited at its prospects, she rose and went outdoors. The night air was balmy with a gentle southerly breeze; high in the skies above, a full moon was falling among ribs and streets of fine, thin cloud. The farm was profoundly at peace; she wanted to remember it thus.

Tiptoeing past the outhouse where Punch was no doubt sleeping the sleep of the justly exhausted, she let herself out by the newly greased gate and followed the little goatpath up to the moor, to the Oul’ Kinnel.

One of the nannygoats came up, sniffed at her, tried to bite, and got a sharp slap for her love. “Don’t imagine I’ll be sorry to leave you,” she told them brusquely.

She would, of course. Or rather – she would and she wouldn’t.

Just like being gentry – she was and she wasn’t.

Or loving her mother – she did and she didn’t.

Or marrying Con Murphy – no, there was no chance of that.

Dear God! What did she want at all?

There was a long silence in her mind, and then the thought occurred to her: She wanted everything to go on being possible for as long as ever it could.

Fame and fortune – that is what folk would say. “Mary Flinders? Sure, didn’t she go over the water to seek her fame and fortune.”

“And did she find it?”

“She was presented to his majesty last week.”

“She has dukes and God knows what else attending on her with offers of castles and marriage, and she won’t say yes and she won’t say no.”

“That’s our Mary right enough!”

Obscure fame was what she really wanted.

And humble wealth.

The thought crossed her mind as she went back to her bed that London might be a million miles from either of those strange commodities.

Next day, at the hour of parting, Mrs. Flinders was plainly determined to permit no vulgar show of emotion before the itinerant Steam Punch. “You may take the ass,” she said when she saw the size of Mary’s load.

“Sure I can buy one in Ennis when I have the draft cashed. I’ll manage fine until that.”

But her mother insisted. As she helped settle the load on the creature’s back she went on, “Would you feel the weight of those books? Is it a famine of paper in London then?”

“They’re to read along the way,” Mary answered grumpily.

“And isn’t the Bible enough?”

“Ah, the print’s too small when you’re walking. It’s just a few pomes and Dean Swift and things. Some of them are for my father, anyway. He’ll be glad of a change.”

“And the harp?”

“I may have to sing for my supper.”

Her mother frowned. “Rather sing to repay the Murphy creature. Never forget that you are one of the quality, my child – of the Barony of Inchiquin. None should buy you for five guineas.”

Mary was gripped by a confusion of feelings – part anger that her mother would not dignify this parting with an open show of loving grief, part tenderness for one so crippled by bitter disappointments.

Her mother stumbled on toward an oblique confession: “You now have all the opportunities I threw away when …” Her voice broke; she forced herself to smile and shooed her daughter away. “Oh, along with you, now! Along with you!”

“I’ll bring your love to my father.”

The humour faded. “Yes. Of course.”

“And I’ll send word what way I can – a letter if I can afford it.”

At last the moment of their parting was too sharp for any artifice of words to blunt. The smiles died completely, leaving an emptiness between them you could touch. It trembled there, in that dwindling space, upheld by the magic of its own surprise: a real emotion between them at last – and when each of them least expected it.

The surprise of the one fed the surprise of the other until at length the tension became so unbearable that only tears could dissolve it. They hung upon each other in awkward astonishment, racked by a grief that frightened them, giving it scope, letting it dissipate.

Mary broke free and laughed, said this would never do, kissed her mother, made all her promises yet again, and then set herself resolutely forth upon the road.

Mrs. Flinders called, “Wait – I’ll go the length of Poulaphuca moor with you.”

They talked of the weather, the fine day it was, the good omens, the last-minute did-you-bring-this-and-that. It petered out to silence as they passed the Oul’ Kinnel; there Mrs. Flinders stopped. Mary’s last view as the trail twisted out of sight was of her mother, sitting on the capstone. They were too far apart for such details to be seen, but Mary knew the tears were in her eyes again.

“Never look back,” Punch said.

Could people just do that? she wondered.

“Would your brothers not pay off the oul’ fellow’s debts?” he went on as they began to step it out.

“They can, of course. And they have, these many times. Sure he’ll get a legacy this month or next, or next year, then he’ll be out again, full of wild new designs to cast his fortune away on.”

Punch, who had heard some of these “wild designs” over the past few days – the noble vineyards, the carriage works, the perfume manufactory said, “There’s a grandeur in it. You have to give him that.”

“Oh yes – strangers love him at sight.”

“There’s a hard streak in you, woman.”

“Wouldn’t there have to be!”

He grinned and nodded a small concession. After a long, easeful silence, he said, “The oul’ woman does be needing him though. You should bring him out and