Merciless Reason (22 page)

But you didn't even leave her that, did you? Nate thought as he read this last passage. He felt sick to his stomach as his father's words confirmed what had happened to his mother. Edgar had obviously felt some pang of conscience. Just over a year later, he had brought his wife back home. Not to live among the family, but to be imprisoned again, in a fortified room in the attic, above Edgar's rooms. On some nights, when the hallways were quiet and the wind blew across the top of Wildenstern Hall, Nate remembered how he and his siblings could hear the barely audible sounds of screams from the attic.

In her final days, Miriam Wildenstern had gone completely and utterly out of her mind.

Sitting in that dark, cold stable with the horses looking curiously at him, Nate put his head between his knees and cried for his mother.

XXIII

SOME FIERCE DANGEROUS EVENTS

HENNESSY, THE OLD HEAD GROOM
—and her husband's former lover—was the only person Daisy could trust to take her to the secret meeting. But even with the reins in his expert hands, the carriage ride from the Wildenstern estate to Dublin seemed to take forever. She could have used the family's train, whose private tracks joined the Great Southern and Western Railway, to carry the train into Kingsbridge Station in Dublin—a much faster journey than the one she was taking. But it was an obscenely decadent way for just two people to travel to the city, and there was something calming about taking the slower route by carriage. Daisy needed as many calming influences as she could muster. And this way, she was spared from having to converse with any of the boorish relatives who might have been tempted to come along for the train ride.

Starting early in the morning, before most of the family was up, she and Hennessy traveled through the villages of Woodtown and Ballyboden, towards Rathfarnham and on through Rathgar and Rathmines, then into the city itself. Passing through some of the rougher areas, she spotted words scrawled on walls in chalk or even paint: “Long live the Highwayboy!”

Through her windows, Daisy saw the lowest, most wretched hovels built of turf and mud and straw squatting out among the fields. Closer to town, there was less of that, though it could be argued that the poor in the tall, over-crowded, filthy tenement buildings had it even worse than their rural counterparts. Many of these buildings were owned by the Wildensterns, and Daisy knew full well that the few taps in those hellholes gave out contaminated water, and the gutters on the streets in some areas ran with human sewage. Diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlatina, smallpox, typhoid and cholera were rife. Dublin had the highest rate of death by disease of any city in Europe. Its death rate was on a par with Calcutta in India. With horrible overcrowding, epidemics were common. Whole families might live in a single room of these buildings … and, of course, the Irish were famous for their large families.

Daisy had started a scheme to improve sanitation in the Wildenstern properties and keep the buildings themselves better maintained. She had been shocked to discover that some structures were on the verge of collapsing after years of neglect and cost-cutting. But she was struggling to find the money for these projects now, with Gerald siphoning off huge sums for his private research. The Wildenstern family had massive resources, but like an enormous ship it took a lot just to keep the company moving. If it lost momentum, it could easily end up on the rocks. With all the short-sighted greed of the family's more stupid members, and with Gerald's complete lack of concern as he bled the business dry, rot was setting into the North American Trading Company and its Irish assets. The Wildensterns were in increasing danger of going broke.

It was a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Brutus. The medieval ogre was not the complete ignoramus that Daisy had expected: On the contrary, the meetings she had had with him concerning the business had convinced her that the ancient Wildenstern was a man of keen intellect. Gerald had clearly coached him well, and Daisy was also convinced that Brutus's contemporary education had included a thorough reading of Edgar Wildenstern's journals. She had managed to read a few herself, before Gerald had ‘confiscated' them. There was a definite pattern of thought that she recognized in Brutus—a ruthless clarity and an uncompromising belief in discipline. Perhaps he could indeed enforce his rule over the family, just as Edgar had. Soon, it might not matter to Daisy. The plans she was laying had the potential to change everything. But so much rested on the hope that Nathaniel—who must surely be close by now—could somehow draw Gerald's attention away long enough to put those plans into action.

Hennessy drove the carriage to Leinster House, the family's Dublin residence, a large mansion on spacious grounds in Merrion Square. For most of the day, Daisy played the part of a rich socialite, meeting some ladies for coffee and cream scones in the lobby of the Gresham Hotel on Sackville Street before heading off for a spot of shopping in some of the city's most fashionable boutiques. Hennessy followed a few steps behind, carrying a growing pile of boxes and packages.

She returned to the townhouse late in the afternoon and retired to her rooms, telling her maids that she wished to rest and did not want to be disturbed. It took her less than fifteen minutes to change into some unremarkable, positively drab clothes, including a bonnet and veil to hide her face. She left her bedroom through a secret door concealed behind a painting and followed a hidden passage to the servants' entrance to the mansion, where Hennessy was waiting for her, also dressed in ordinary street clothes. They walked with Daisy's arm through Hennessy's, as if they were father and daughter, making their way down Nassau Street, past Trinity College.

Walking along the wide avenue that was Dame Street, they steered off into the narrow cobbled streets of Temple Bar, an area near the river that had started down the slow path to decay. Daisy looked casually around, then turned abruptly past a young boy leaning against the wall. She stepped through an anonymous-looking doorway and descended some stairs. Hennessy, believing he should have gone ahead to ensure the way was clear for his mistress, hurried after her down the narrow staircase.

The pub that they found themselves in was dark, smoky and almost empty. The tables were long, rough, unfinished wood with benches either side and stools at either end. The bar appeared to serve stout or whiskey and little else. There was a myriad other peculiar and unpleasant smells present in the air, and Daisy did her level best to avoid trying to identify them. Women were not normally permitted in such a place, and she thought it was just as well. They might be overcome with the urge to open some windows and call for a mop and a bucket of soapy water.

Apart from the tables, benches, stools and the odd chair, there was little in the way of features in the room. But hints of nationalism could be seen around if one looked closely. A small print of Daniel O'Connell hung on the wall to one side of the bar. A rather romantic and poorly rendered painting of the pirate queen, Grace O'Malley, hung near the door. Daisy cast her eyes over the image of the woman aboard a ship at full sail, as she had done on earlier visits. She felt a certain kinship with the unconventional warrior woman.

There were only five men in the room; three were sitting at one table under one of the low windows that ran along the outer wall at street level, the other two sitting at the table nearest the door. All five men stood up as Daisy and Hennessy walked in.

“Good afternoon, your Grace,” one of the three said, tilting his head in way of a bow. “Delighted you could join us. Can we offer you anything to drink?”

“Good afternoon, Mister Duffy. A cup of tea would be lovely,” she replied, confident that if Eamon Duffy provided her with a cup of tea, its quality would be more than adequate, no matter what the surroundings.

She took off her bonnet and veil and gave him a smile, holding her right hand out as he always insisted she should. He took her hand and kissed her knuckles in an old-fashioned, chivalrous gesture. She suspected he harbored feelings for her, but he was too discreet to let them get in the way of their business.

“You have been injured,” he observed with concern, glancing down at the bandaged fingers on her left hand.

“Trifling wounds,” she said in a tight voice. “Pay them no mind. It was a silly thing—I caught my fingers in a door.”

Duffy was a square-shouldered man with greying hair framing a face that had a hard look about it, but inspired trust. He had a no-nonsense manner and the self-assurance of a man who had built his business from the ground up. He was also a leading figure in the nationalist movement—the Fenian rebels who caused the British so much trouble. Nate had worked with him years before to help keep the peace on the Wildenstern estates, and now Daisy had taken over the role. But neither of them were looking to avoid trouble this time.

“We were worried you might not be able to make it,” he said to her as he ushered her over to the head of the table under the window and provided her with the best chair the place had to offer. “Your cousin's ‘secret police' have eyes and ears all over the city. My people tell me his surveillance of you is growing more constant, your Grace. Especially now that there is word that Nathaniel Wildenstern is coming home.”

Daisy caught her breath, feeling her pulse quicken, but tried to hide her excitement under a mild expression of interest. The warm flush in her cheeks told her she was failing miserably.

“And is that word reliable?”

“I can go one better than rumor, ma'am,” he said with a smile. “I received a coded telegram this morning. He is in Wicklow as we speak, and hopes to be in Dublin by tomorrow. If all goes to plan, we'll be able to meet up with him and Cathal Dempsey's father tomorrow evening. But where we go from there will depend on you, your Grace. We've investigated a whole host of your family's businesses, but with no luck. Tons of machinery, hundreds of engimals and an orphanage full of children, and we can't find any of 'em.”

“I suggest you try the mines in Glendalough,” Daisy said to him, pulling out a leather folder from beneath her brown shawl and laying it on the table. “And don't be fooled if they look closed off.”

“That makes sense,” one of the other men at the table, a blond fellow with a muscular build and intense eyes under jutting brows, commented to Duffy. “The evictions in the valley—sure, wasn't the place emptied out last year? And remember the talk back then of a sea monster brought up to the docks durin' the night last Christmas? Some say it was carved up in a warehouse on the quays and the pieces carried on wagons into the mountains. A leviathan, they said. Even in pieces, it'd be hard to hide. But turf everyone out of their homes so you have a whole valley and some deep mines to lose it in—transport it in at night and you're laughin'.”

“Under other circumstances, Pádraig, I'd be givin' short shrift to such fairy tales,” Duffy grunted. “But with Gerald Gordon, anything's possible.”

He opened the folder and examined the contents, his thick fingers flicking through the documents. Daisy noticed some words scratched into the wood of the tabletop. The table was constructed of rough, unfinished wooden planks nailed lengthways atop a long, simple frame. In her world it was hard to imagine such an object being considered ‘furniture.' The words, dug into the wood in rough square letters just as a schoolchild might mark their desk, were in Irish: “
Rapparee Go Breath
.” “The Rapparee Forever.” The mysterious Highwayboy was starting to be seen as a nationalist figure, someone the people could rally behind. Whatever about being a celebrated rogue, the boy delinquent would be hard pressed to survive once the British saw him in this new light.

Duffy glanced at Pádraig, and then his eyes lifted up to meet Daisy's.

“It's all here. And
signed
too, I see. I won't ask how you managed
that
, your Grace.”

“No, don't,” she replied. She drew in a deep shuddering breath and let it out slowly. She found she was trembling slightly, and clasped her hands together to keep them still. “So … we move ahead as planned?”

“There's nothing for it now,” he replied, closing the folder and holding it up. “You've set us on the path, your Grace. With the stroke of a pen, you've given us the break we need, stopped the Wildensterns from using their influence in the police against us … and placed yourself firmly in the sights of Gerald Gordon's unholy wrath. It is a cunning plan, and I commend your courage, your Grace. And I hope you're prepared.”

The expression on his face was one of stern compassion. He knew enough about the family to know the price of a Wildenstern woman's defiance. His hand pressed against his belly, as if he had felt a twinge from an old wound.

“I am,” she said firmly, as the image of the steel-framed window in a turret on the roof of Wildenstern Hall passed through her mind. She repeated more quietly, “I am.”

A boy came running down the stairs—the boy who had been keeping watch at the door.

“Someone's coming!” he cried. “I think it's Mister Gordon!”

“Christ! What's he doing, coming down this way?” Duffy snarled, turning to Daisy in alarm. “He must have followed you! If he sees you here with us …”

“In here, your Grace.” Pádraig gestured towards a storeroom behind the bar. He grabbed her bonnet and the leather folder and pushed them into her hands. “Come on, Hennessy! Quickly!”

Daisy and Hennessy hurried behind the bar and into the tiny dark room. Pádraig had only just closed the door behind them when a man came down the steps into the pub. There was a slatted window in the door, and Daisy was able to peer through and get a limited view of the room. It was Gerald. His coming here could not have been a coincidence. Did he know she was still here? Daisy found she was holding her breath and forced herself to exhale and breathe normally. But silently. With the storeroom in darkness, he should not be able to see her through the narrow slats. Even so, she should stay away from the window. But she couldn't.