Illinois Labor History Society
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Mining History Association
Museum of the American Railroad
National Automobile Museum
National Museum of American History
Nevada Historical Society
Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations
San Francisco Museum and Historical Society
Seventh-day Adventist Church
Smithsonian Institution
Socialist Party USA
State of Colorado–State Archives
Union Pacific Railroad Museum
University of Colorado-Boulder
University of Colorado-Denver
University of Denver Sturm College of Law
University of Idaho
University of Idaho College of Law
University of Texas School of Law
Western Museum of Mining & Industry
And it is with deep love and gratitude that I thank my parents, Robert and Carolyn, and my children, Meredith, Caroline, Kathleen, and Jack, for their unwavering love, uplifting support, and enduring patience. My cup runneth over.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Marlett is a historical novelist, award-winning storyteller, Moth story champion, professor of story and law, and an attorney. In 2014, his first historical legal thriller, Fortunate Son, was well reviewed and rose to #2 in historical fiction and #3 in literature and fiction in Amazon’s rankings. He has been published in a number of magazines and was Managing Editor of OMNI Magazine. The father of four, a graduate of Texas Tech University and The University of Texas School of Law, David currently lives in Manhattan Beach, California.
www.davidmarlett.com
Also by David Marlett
Meet James Annesley, son of 18th Century Ireland. Though you may have never heard his name before, his story has already touched you in profound ways. Now, for the first time, novelist David Marlett brings that incredible story to life.
Stretching from the dirty streets of Ireland to the endless possibilities of Colonial America, from drama on the high seas with the Royal Navy to a life-and-death race across England and up the Scottish Highlands, from the prospect of a hangman’s noose to a fate decided in the halls of justice, Fortunate Son is a powerful, relentless epic. Here nobility, duels, love, courage, revenge, honor, and treachery among family, friends and ancient enemies abound. And at its center is the most momentous trial in Irish history – the trial of Annesley v. Anglesea from which our modern “attorney/client privilege” was forged, and our concept of a “jury of one’s peers” was put to the test.
Carefully researched, vividly evoked, and lovingly brought to the page, Fortunate Son is an unforgettable work of fiction based on fact, one that will resonate deep within you long after you finish it.
Here is an excerpt:
James Annesley, twelve years old and now the Baron of Altham and Earl of Anglesea himself, slowly followed, studying the path before him. A gust whipped his black hat and he snatched it back, covering everything but his tail of hair. He glanced across the crowd of no fewer than three hundred gentlemen and ladies shuffling along, awash in their black linen suits, heavy silk dresses and respectfully short ruffles. The women were suitably dour, a collection of black gloves and matching crepe handkerchiefs, hair pulled high under dark bonnets of silk. He could see the eyes of the men, a mass peering from under silver-ribboned cocked hats, white wigs and furrowed brows. They were fixed on him like the luminous piercing eyes of black cats, studying him, judging him.
A woman in a full veil was standing apart from the others, fidgeting. For a moment Jemmy thought she might be his mother—but of course she was not; this woman was too short, too heavy. Besides, his mother would not be there. Although his gaze dropped back to the path before him, he was too late to see the upthrust edge of a flagstone. His toe caught it and he stumbled, one foot across the other and down, smashing into the legs of the rear pallbearer. The man’s knees buckled, he lost his grip, and the coffin shifted violently back. Thud! The sound echoed from within the coffin as the bearers struggled to keep it from hitting the ground. Jemmy sprang to his feet, his freckles lost in blush, imagining his father imperiously jostling about inside the box. As the bearers recovered their grips and solemn composures, the priest slowly proceeded forward, never hesitating in his recitation: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth....”
Regaining composure, Jemmy focused on the back of the coffin. His father was finally dead, killed just two days ago, crushed by a runaway coach. He had heard it was murder— “A blood-damned, godless Catholic killed him!” But it could have been anyone. Who had not hated Arthur? Everyone had their reasons. Some had tried before. Even Jemmy—or at least he had thought on it. The man had been vile—a meanness that had enveloped Jemmy for so long that he was now calm, relieved the rage had been silenced under the booming hooves of six horses. The storm of the man had ended, the thunderclaps subsided, the torrential rain now dry. Relief. That coolness he felt in the hollow of his stomach was a certain contentment, the settled knowledge that the evil was gone, never to return.
But where one weight was gone, now another hovered, waiting to be assumed. Jemmy was the new Earl of Anglesea, the English owner of over fifty thousand Irish acres, four thousand more acres across in England, a member of both the Irish and English Houses of Lords—he had no idea what that meant for him. Where should he go? How to act? Could he remain friends with Seán, the son of Fynn Kennedy, a Catholic laborer? And what of Jemmy’s mother? Could he now go live with her? Even on to England? She had not come to him in over two years—would she want him? He watched his shoes glide back and forth. Why didn’t she come to this funeral? Even just for him. Yet, if she had, what would he say? He didn’t want to talk to her or anyone else. Except Fynn Kennedy who now joined in step beside him.
Nothing felt more right. Though his father was lying in that coffin, the only man who had ever treated Jemmy as a son, who had ever loved him, was walking by him now, upright and proud, wigless hair tied back, jaw set, crescent eyes warm, one big hand on Jemmy’s shoulder. Even though Fynn was Catholic, Jemmy knew the man would remain by him today, no matter the aristocratic grumbling it caused. The warm hand on his shoulder gave him strength, as if chain armor, as if it were the hand of Sir Lancelot on Sir Galahad’s shoulder, the hand of valor, strength. Although Fynn’s son, Seán, thought Sir Lancelot was the best knight, Jemmy knew the best was Sir Galahad—the young one, the only one who had found the Holy Grail, found it glowing in the belly of a ship. He wished he could find something like that. Another wind-burst snapped his state away, and he returned to the bleak churchyard, the cold people.
Behind the peerage, a small gathering of commoners had gathered along Fishamble Street. They too were in dark clothes, though mostly in browns and grays, with no wigs nor swords among them. These were the Catholics, no more welcome than Fynn, particularly at such a noble Englishman’s funeral. Among them was Juggy, soon to be Fynn’s wife. As Jemmy saw her, she caught him with her empathetic eyes. He gave a slight smile, pleased she was there. Beside her was Fynn’s giant cousin, John Purcell, with his wife and their two young daughters, pulled in so close that they were almost lost in their father’s enormous gut. To Jemmy they all seemed lost, uncomfortable. He wished they would just go back to their homes, back to whatever they were doing, back to their happiness. And just past the Purcells was Seán. He was hopping on one foot, tugging irritably at his brown coat. Jemmy watched him, longing to simply step out of the damn procession, cut across the yard and run down Fishamble Street with Seán. To run away. To disappear. Seán could give him that, that most precious of gifts, the gift of invisibility, the gift of vanishing into the Dublin streets.
The priest’s droning faded in Jemmy’s head. He looked up. There wa
s no rain, no sun—only the low, spit-grey clouds of November clinging to the morning sky. Its hazy light draped the stones of Christ Church Cathedral, engulfing the high buttressed walls, throwing faint shadows across the Four Courts of Justice which adjoined the church’s north side. The march slowed now, approaching the chapterhouse, which joined the Cathedral to the Four Courts. He expected the procession to turn there, to enter the church’s nave through the side door, but instead the priest led the group to the left, toward Skinner Row, toward the far side of the Four Courts. “Where’s he going?” Jemmy whispered.
Fynn leaned down. “I suppose t’ enter ’round off the lane. No doubt these nobles can’t squeeze their arses through that transept.”
“‘Tis the long way, ‘round the courts.”
“Aye, so ‘tis, Seámus,” Fynn said, addressing Jemmy by his Irish name. To Fynn Kennedy, Jemmy was not Jemmy, not James, not Jimmy, not barely an Annesley, not the Baron of Altham and certainly not the Earl of Anglesea. He was Seámus. And that was that. Seámus he had been since birth—Seámus he would remain. Their bond had formed over the years at Dunmain House in Southern Ireland, where Fynn had served as the Annesleys’ stablemaster. But that service ended upon their move to Dublin a year prior. Fynn had been summarily turned out without even the bother of a fictive explanation. According to Juggy, it was because Lord Anglesea had overheard Fynn teaching Irish Gaelic to Jemmy. They had all denied it of course, Jemmy the loudest. But the truth was he had learned much more Gaelic than just his own name. He was now fluent in the illegal language.
The priest paused to adjust his peruke wig, now flopped across his slumped back, then resumed recitations from the Book of Common Prayer for the Anglican Church of Ireland: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave....”
As the group moved along Skinner Row, Jemmy looked up at the court building. He and Seán had often played here in the passages and the churchyard. They had sat on the stone steps leading up from Christ Church Lane watching the comings and goings of the high-wigged solicitors, chained criminals, justices of the peace, and other curious-looking people. But he had never paid much mind to the old court building itself. Nor had he ever thought it odd that it was built on the cathedral’s grounds. Stretching up above him, the court’s tall narrow windows were cracked and moldy, most threaded with lead latticework, the track marks of numerous repairs and fragile attempts to keep out the rain. Squinting his sea-green eyes, he noticed the parapet along the roofline was crumbling in places, the grey sky seeping through the eves.
Once inside the church, the procession continued into the drafty nave to where the coffin was laid on a stone table before the closed chancel screen, below the pulpit with its imposing canopy which appeared to rise out over the people. The clergy turned and waited silently for the laity to slide into their pews. Jemmy picked a pew in the center of the nave, scooting down the long wooden stretch until he came to the outer edge. Fynn eased in beside him, patting him firmly on the knee. The priest had climbed the rounding stairs and was now wobbling in the pulpit. “I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep....”
Immediately next to the end of Jemmy’s pew was a black marble tomb shaped in the effigy of a medieval warrior. He studied it, cocking his head to read the inscription: Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, STRONGBOW, 1176. And beside Strongbow’s tomb was another one, though much smaller. Silently, he read the faint letters inscribed in its base:
O graceless son, who left thy sire,
Amid the battle’s din;
And the same moment, turned thy back
On Country, Kith, and Kin.
‘Tis his son there, the one he cut in half for running away from battle! He knew the story well but had never seen these tombs. The small one wasn’t short because it held a child; it was short because it held only half a man, a young warrior killed and forced to lie forever beside his father, the very man who had sliced him in two. Suddenly a dreadful idea came to Jemmy as he stared at his own father’s coffin, panic paling his face. Glancing over, he saw the reassuring glimmer in Fynn’s narrow eyes. Please God, let them bury me next to Mr. Kennedy. Or anywhere so long ‘tis far from this cathedral, far from Da.
The tombs of Strongbow and his half-son lay in the bay of a stone arcade that ran the length of the nave. Toward the top of the nearest column the stone arched up and over and down to the next column. Looking up, Jemmy saw the lower arches supporting higher levels of stone arches which in turn were hoisting the high vaulted ceiling—pushing it back to God, curving it out into the open air, denying gravity, tempting fate. The house of serendipity under the ceiling of castigated chance. The priest coughed slightly mid-phrase. Jemmy leaned close to Fynn. “Did he know Da?” he whispered.
“Who, lad?”
“The old priest.”
Fynn shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps so.”
A cold breeze drafted across his feet. He watched the ancient man, studying the movement of the thin lips. “...shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall....” After the prayer, a cool, echoing silence fell through the cathedral, interlaced with an occasional cough. No weeping. Not even a sniffle. But was he supposed to cry? He clenched his teeth, trying to feel sad. Was he lacking something, some care? Was he devilish, cold hearted? Was he just like his father? A devil? A gargoyle of a man. Did the priest know that man in the coffin had been a devil? Was his father still a devil, even after death? Maybe he should yell at the priest: You’re burying a devil, don’t you know! Maybe his father should be buried outside, not in the crypt of this cathedral, not below where Jemmy now sat. He had been to church a few times since they had moved to Dublin, but always to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the dean at St. Pat’s, Dean Jonathan Swift, was much different than this codger. Dean Swift told them how loving and caring Christ was. Jemmy looked again at the coffin. There lay mortality. There in that mahogany box lay his father, wrapped in death clothes, his fat head pushed against the coffin end. If Dean Swift was right, if Christ did die for everybody, was his father in heaven now, devil or not? Jemmy chewed his bottom lip, glancing away, up, anywhere. Dean Swift told stories about Lilliputians too, didn’t he? Were Lilliputians in heaven? Or did they go to some other heaven, a much smaller one?
Retracing the arches down to the tops of the massive supporting pillars, Jemmy’s wide eyes found others looking back. Circumscribing the summit of each column was a series of faces with deep-carved, stone eyes—forever beautiful, staring blankly at the nave people. A man in pensive gaze, an old man wrinkled and withdrawn, another much younger, frozen on the verge of speaking. Then he saw her. Almost directly above him was the face of a beautiful maiden, her head wrapped in a death shroud. Or was it a scarf to keep out the cold? Different from the others, her eyes were closed. The others were all peaceful men, noble faces, the old, the young, all with open eyes, all looking right back at him. And the lady’s face was graceful, not threatening or warning, yet her closed eyes bothered him. Why couldn’t she look at him? Did she not want to see the people there, not want to see him? She was welcoming yet still hidden. Was she dead or just sleeping? Suddenly, in his mind, the carving began to transform, swelling, trembling, struggling and flexing against its stone bindings. Then it became a living face—the face of his mother. Tears welled in his eyes as he silently pleaded, Mother, where are ye? Where are ye? As quickly as she had appeared, Mary Sheffield faded back to grey stone, the flesh hardening, the eyes closing. She was gone.
“Seámus.” Fynn touched Jemmy’s shoulder, whispering. “Seámus, m’boy, ‘tis time for ye t’go. Up t’ the altar.”
Jemmy wiped his hot cheeks with the back of one hand as he stood, slipping into the aisle. He reluctantly walked to the front. Behind him he heard deep murmurs, but no distinguishable words. As he stopped at the coffin, a clerk took his
arm, leading him to one side. People began to course by, men unknown to him, greeting him as the new Earl, calling him lord, saying things in memorial about his father, a man they had surely never known.
*
Thirty minutes later, the eight bells of Christ Church Cathedral began their dirge, shaking the brisk Dublin air. Emerging up from the crypt, Jemmy walked up and out, into the light, beyond the stone columns, past the cold faces, through the door of the south transept, and out into the churchyard. The throng of the elite, the spectators, stood about, clustered in dark little pockets of self-appointed supremacy. To Jemmy they were more like clumps of black peat. The sun had broken through the grey sky at last, and Jemmy squinted trying to spot Fynn.
“James Annesley!” a voice thundered.
“Aye?” Jemmy looked up, shielding his eyes from the brightness.
“Just what do you think you’re doing here, knave?” The man was advancing on horseback, two other horsemen close behind.
“What business do ye have with the lad?” Fynn was at Jemmy’s side. Jemmy could now see the man, mounted high, haughty and proud, the angular face scowling down at them. He saw the man’s gold cravat, cropped wig, blue three-corner hat. Nothing dark, no mourning clothes. The only black was in those eyes.
“My business is none of your concern, stable boy,” the man growled at Fynn. “Remove your nasty heretic arse from this holy yard.”
“B’God ye’d best declare yerself, if ye wish t’ survive yer tongue!”
“A challenge!” The man spun his spirited mount on the churchyard turf, the hooves spattering wet clumps of mud on Fynn and the people crowded around.
The big Irishman, John Purcell, charged, brandishing a walking stick. “Get yer English arse down!” His guttural boom reverberating off the stone walls. Just as quickly, the other two Englishmen spurred their mounts toward him. Shouts and neighing erupted in Jemmy’s ears. He stepped back from the commotion, seeing the glint of a steel scabbard, hearing the ring of a blade slipping free. Silence descended. Everything stopped. Except the bells which continued their tolling far overhead. Fynn was once again beside Jemmy, John Purcell was being held back by the tip of a rapier, and Seán was standing wide-eyed on the far churchyard wall.
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