The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

common enough here in the past.”
    “You misunderstand me,” Moore said. “This is written with considerable eloquence. Listen. ‘Clownish churl, you count your cows in children’s lives.’ ”
    “That is me,” Cooper said. “Am I to admire insults as eloquence?”
    “‘Let all churls take warning from Cooper. The people of Tyrawley have stained with their sweat the acres they till. When the sun rises up they are before it at their labours, and the white moon keeps its watch upon their poverty.’ That was not written by a ploughboy.”
    “Of course it was not,” Cooper said in exasperation. “Any of twenty hedge schoolmasters in the barony could have written it. Proper bastards those schoolmasters are.”
    “Yes,” Moore said, pleased. “That could be it. It has the stiffness of a translation.”
    “There used to be laws against schoolmasters, and good laws they were. What business have Papist peasants learning to read and write?”
    Anger, like chips of ice, flecked Moore’s mild blue eyes, then vanished.
    “This could indeed be a serious matter,” he said. “Am I to take it that you have ridden all the way to Ballintubber for my advice?”
    “Not exactly. Or rather, yes, we would be most happy for your advice, but it is your assistance we need.”
    “And by ‘we’ I take it that you mean Gibson and Saunders and the others in your neighbourhood?”
    “That is it. The small landlords of Kilcummin and Killala. We have had Whiteboy trouble before, years ago, and we know how to deal with it. It is the goodwill of Dennis Browne that we need now.”
    Moore passed the tips of his fingers across his forehead. “I don’t understand this at all, Captain Cooper. If it is Dennis Browne you need, you should be talking to him and not to me. But why do you need Browne? If there are popular disturbances in Tyrawley you should report this to General Hutchinson in Galway City.”
    “This is not a task for Hutchinson’s soldiers. We can deal with these lads, if we are given a free hand.”
    “Surely that is a matter for the magistrates. You are a magistrate yourself, are you not? And Gibson?”
    “We are, to be sure.” Cooper was beginning to doubt the wisdom of Kate’s advice. Moore was apparently a very slow-witted man, his brain bogged down in his books. “And we have no wish to act beyond what the law would allow.”
    “A most commendable attitude on the part of the magistrates, if I may be allowed, as a Papist, to comment on such matters.”
    Or that was it, perhaps. Scratch a Papist deep enough and you came upon some gnawing ambition or other. A seat in Parliament or on the bench of magistrates. Anything and everything that was forbidden to them by law.
    “It isn’t a sectarian matter at all,” he assured Moore in what he believed to be a conciliatory manner. “This is Whiteboy trouble, and we both know what that means. Once we have a few of these rogues tied to the cart’s tail, and a few ribbons cut out of their backsides, we will be close to the bottom of things. And the matter will be over before it has properly begun. That’s the way.”
    Moore stared at him incredulously. “And that is what you mean by a free hand. Do I understand you correctly? You have come for help so that you can turn your yeomen loose upon the peasants of the barony?”
    “Not your help exactly, Mr. Moore. But you stand in very well with Dennis Browne. Everyone knows that the Brownes and the Moores have been friends time out of mind.”
    “You foolish man,” Moore said.
    “Perhaps you are the foolish one, Moore,” Cooper said. He was stung less by the sudden, unexpected words than by the casual manner of their utterance. “You don’t know Mayo yet.”
    “I know enough to be appalled,” Moore said. “And so would Dennis Browne be, unless I greatly misjudge him. So would be any man of prudence and discretion. Have you discussed your ideas with George Falkiner? He seems a sensible fellow.”
    “You don’t