The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan Page A

know Mayo,” Cooper repeated stubbornly. And he had spent an entire afternoon riding here, to be insulted by a Papist ignorant of the county. Prudence and discretion in a county governed by the hounds and pistols of the gentry, the loaded whips of the middlemen, the clubs of the peasantry.
    “You are a magistrate, Captain Cooper, and so are your friends, and the magistrates of this country have more power than I would once have thought possible. Use it, and keep your Tyrawley Yeomanry out of the matter. The last thing needed at this moment is the dragooning of the county by red-coated Protestants.”
    “Protestants, is it?” Cooper asked, seizing happily upon the word. “Now we have it out in the open at last.”
    Moore sighed. “I will not lecture you upon morality or law. It would be a waste of breath. You said that you would welcome my advice and you shall have it. Parts of this island have been in rebellion, and the danger is not yet past. The French may make another effort. We have been most fortunate in Mayo, and we should protect our good fortune. You must deal with these Whiteboys, of course, but it would be most unwise to inflame the countryside. I am quite certain that this is the advice which Dennis Browne will give you.”
    “What advice?” Cooper said, the irritation squeezing him like the choker of his uniform. “To sit quietly until I go into ruin, and am swept away off my own land?”
    “I am certain that your affairs are not quite so desperate,” Moore said. “You have time enough to act quietly and within the law. Must this county be turned upside down in troubled times because one landlord is heavily mortgaged?”
    “By God,” Cooper said, stung again by Moore’s insufferably cool manner, “and to think that I came here out of the goodness of my heart, to draw you in a bit into the affairs of the county.”
    “That was kind of you,” Moore said. “I take such part in county affairs as your laws permit to me.”
    “Those laws,” Cooper said, his anger at last bursting its dam, “are here for the very proper purpose of keeping Papists in their place.”
    “Just so,” Moore agreed. “I am in my proper place. Moore Hall. And I wish the countryside around me to be as tranquil as possible.”
    Cooper puffed out his cheeks, and then expelled the air in a gesture of baffled defeat. What did this man know, with his blue ceilings decorated with naked white goddesses, of the problems a poor man faced, squeezed between the cabins and the mortgage brokers, and no place for him to turn?
    “Come now,” Moore said. “It is foolish of us to lose our tempers. Let us discuss this a bit more, while you sample another glass of sherry.” He slipped his watch from his pocket, snapped it open, and studied the time.
    “ ’Tis little enough the two of us have ever had to discuss,” Cooper said with dignity. “And we have less now than ever before.” He rose up, and smoothed his scarlet coat. The action soothed him; authority leaked from the wool into his fingertips. “I had best be going now. It is a long ride.”
    Moore lifted his glass, and Spain burst upon his tongue. About one thing Cooper was right: Spain was far distant from here. He looked through the window towards the lake, and tried to picture the blazing sun upon winding streets of white walls and ochre walls. “Do nothing rash, Captain,” he said, without turning his head. “Be careful.”
    “I shall take care,” Cooper said. “You may depend on that. We have been taking care of this county for a good many years now, and we know what must be done.”
    Moore leaned towards him suddenly, his lips thin and the blue eyes glittering. “Do you? Has this land no other resource of governing but the whip and the cudgel, no other form of justice than a peasant’s bloody back and a greasy sovereign in the hand of an informer?”
    Amazed, Cooper stared at Moore.
    “The whipping post and the lash and the gallows, those are your laws,”