Free The Rebels of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd Page B

father. People had come from all over that part of Wicklow and beyond: O’Tooles and O’Mores, MacMurroughs and O’Kellys. And, of course, O’Byrnes: O’Byrnes of the Downes, O’Byrnes of Kiltimon, O’Byrnes of Ballinacor and of Knockrath; O’Byrnes from all over the Wicklow Mountains. All had come to pay their last respects to Toirdhealbhach O’Byrne of Rathconan and to welcome his handsome young son Brian into his inheritance. And scarcely one of them had taken the least notice of Tadhg O’Byrne, who was, by universal acknowledgement, of no account.
    â€œLook at that.” Tadhg was staring so bitterly at young Brian O’Byrne that he didn’t even know if his wife was still listening. He didn’t care anyway. “There’s a boy,” he sneered, “that sleeps in a feather bed.”
    If Brian O’Byrne was twenty years old, a good height, fair-haired and handsome, Tadhg was even prouder of his own appearance. He was thirty-four now. His hair was dark and fell in thick ringlets to below his shoulders in the traditional Irish manner. For the occasion, he had changed his usual saffron-coloured linen shirt for a white one, belted at the waist; and he wore a light woollen mantle over his shoulders. Many of the other men wore dark jackets, out of respect for the occasion, but Tadhg would never bother with a jacket. Most of the men wore trews or woollen stockings, but as the day was warm, he had left his legs bare. His feet were stuffed into heavy brogues. He might have been a shepherd or a workman.
    And there was his young cousin, the young chief, heir to Rathconan, which should have been his: young Brian with his fair hair cut short, his black embroidered doublet and breeches, his silken stockings and his fine leather shoes. He even wore a golden ring. All of which caused his kinsman Tadhg to spit and mutter:
    â€œEnglishman,” and “Traitor.”
    This was somewhat inaccurate. The clothes, as such, would have been worn by a gentleman in many parts of Europe, including every native Irishman’s hope, the most Catholic kingdom of Spain. And several of the richer and more important Irish gentlemen at the wake were similarly dressed. Whether they usually dressed this way out of a general sense of what was fashionable in England, France, or Spain, or whether to make themselves more acceptable to the English administrators in Dublin would have been hard to say. Certainly, the English administrators themselves would not have assumed that the adoption of English manners was any guarantee of friendliness towards the English crown. “Several of those infernal Irish rebels in the time of Queen Elizabeth had even been to Oxford!” they remembered with disgust. But such subtleties were lost upon Tadhg. “Englishman,” he hissed. And in his heart was only a single thought: one day I’ll pull him down.

    It was a notable gathering. Young Brian felt a justifiable pride—not just that so many great men had come from far and wide to pay their last respects to his father, but that they had come with such obvious affection; and he, in turn, felt full of love for them all.
    Above all, he loved Rathconan. It was always the same, unaltered since the days of his great-grandfather Sean, a century ago: a modest fortified house with a square stone tower, not in the best of repair, that looked down from the slopes of the Wicklow Mountains towards the distant blue haze of the sea. The untidy cluster of farm buildings nearby was the same; so was the little chapel where, in Sean O’Byrne’s day, Father Donal had celebrated Mass. Even the descendants of Father Donal were still there. One was a priest himself, though unlike Father Donal, he had no wife and children, for few priests lived in that old Irish way now. His brother, on the other hand, a scholar and a poet, hired himself out very successfully as a teacher to families in the area, which