The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan Page B

Moore said, spitting out the words, “whatever may be the statutes which they enact up in Dublin. It is small wonder that your brutes of peasants murder your agents and tumble their bodies into the bog. And you have the insolence to seek my assistance in your filthy plans.”
    “Are you mad?” Cooper asked. He meant the question. The abrupt change from Moore’s manner of icy indifference was bewildering. He had been a fool to take Kate’s advice, which had provided Moore with an opportunity first to taunt him with cool ironies and then to rant at him like a Presbyterian minister.
    “Perhaps I am,” Moore said, regaining control of himself with an effort. “To have sat here listening to your foolishness.”
    “And I was foolish to have come here,” Cooper said.
    “You mustn’t forget this,” Moore said, handing him the Whiteboy letter. Clownish churl. Whoever had written that letter had a gift for phrase. A most curious document indeed. He walked Cooper to the door, as though they had exchanged only pleasantries, and bade him a polite farewell. Cooper was speechless with indignation.
    Mounted on his chestnut gelding, Cooper rode glumly down the avenue. Leafy rowan trees flung dappled shadows in his path. They were all alike, Fogarty, Moore, twisting, clever men who could always get the best in words over a blunt, plain-spoken Protestant. He rehearsed speeches that he might have made, withering Moore into silence, but gave up the effort. What kind of Papist was he at all, with his elaborate manners and his English speech? What kind of a gentleman could he be, the son of a huckster who smuggled wine ashore at Kilcummin strand in the old days? It would do him good to have such words flung in his face, a man who could never sit on the bench of magistrates or hold the King’s commission. Ach, much would it bother him, with his fine house and his vast acres and his quarter-million pounds. Old Joshua Cooper would have put him in his place. Cooper’s spirits lifted slightly at the thought of old Joshua, and he remembered the face in the portrait, a hard, capable soldier who had beaten all the Moores to their knees, all the Papists.
    Moore, standing on his balcony, watched the small, dumpy figure in its uniform of resplendent red. Exactly the kind of small man who could create large trouble, a very specimen of the type. A sceptic in spiritual matters, Moore had prided himself in London upon his indifference to sectarian divisions. It was different here. Beneath his contempt for Cooper’s foolish swaggering had glowed a hot coal of anger. How dare this improvident farmer set himself above me, he had found himself thinking at one point. And now, as he watched Cooper’s receding back, the coal was still warm. Ill-bred vulgarian, spawn of some Cromwellian trooper, history had given him licence to crow over this dunghill of a country. Clownish churl: admirable phrase. He turned his back on Cooper and left the balcony.
    But not even at dinner that night was he allowed to forget Cooper’s visit. John came late to table, and still in his riding clothes, the neckband loose, and with his loose yellow hair falling about his forehead.
    “In Father’s day,” he said as he picked up his napkin, “a man like Cooper would never have been a guest in this house.”
    Moore glanced up from his soup. “You are mistaken there. Father was a politic man, far more so than either of us. And when he was a young man, before Spain, he had to be very wary of such fellows. They ruled the roost. Things are a bit better now.”
    “They may seem better,” John said.
    “Whiteboys have been busy in Kilcummin. As a landlord I was gratful for the information.”
    “Whiteboys?” John asked, startled. “Is he certain of that?”
    “Quite certain,” Moore said. “He brought me their letter; it was the usual bombast, better written than most. They are not—” He broke off, and waited until Haggerty had served John’s soup and had left the