“I’m very sorry, sir. But I forgot to tell ye dat dis arrived for ye earlier.” He held out a tray on which sat a thick letter, smudged and slightly bedraggled from transport.
Gage tensed, already anticipating the contents, but he thanked the butler and sent him away before addressing it. He flipped the missive over in his hands, examining all the sides. “Blasted letters,” he grumbled, breaking the seal with a great deal more force than was necessary.
I recognized the handwriting as being his father’s, and suspected he’d written to castigate us for not reporting our progress and findings as quickly as he wished. I knew Gage had sent him two letters already, one of which had expressed his fury over his father’s failure to share pertinent details of Miss Lennox’s presence at the abbey. However, there was no way of predicting whether either or both of those had yet arrived in London.
I began to sink back into my chair, but something on Gage’s face arrested me. His initial annoyance had shifted to apprehension.
“What is it?”
He lifted another small tightly folded square which had been wrapped inside the first, breaking this seal more carefully. “My father. He’s forwarded a letter from my grandfather.” His gaze flicked up at me before returning to read the page. “My mother’s father.”
I blinked in surprise. Though he’d spent a considerable amount of time with his mother’s family when he was young, while Lord Gage was away at sea captaining a ship for the Royal Navy, I knew that Gage had not seen his grandfather since his mother’s death fifteen years prior. Their correspondence was almost as infrequent.
“It’s my cousin Alfred.” His pale blue eyes lifted to meet mine. “He’s missing. My grandfather says he went for a walk on the moors one day and never returned. He’s simply . . . vanished.”
I wasn’t familiar then with the dangers of Dartmoor. With the treacherous landscape of shifting bogs that could swallow a man whole, with the unpredictable weather which could shift in an instant, or the strange creatures which roamed its tors. I didn’t know of the shadows which cloaked Langstone Manor, his grandfather’s estate. Shadows which reached out to touch every life who intersected with its foreboding halls. But I would be. And life as Gage and I knew it would prove never to be the same.
HISTORICAL NOTE
A great deal of research went into this latest installment of the Lady Darby series, and it’s always fun to share just what is fact and what is fiction. Many of the details of Rathfarnham, Ireland—the buildings, the roads, the waterways, the graveyard—were situated much as I described them, taking into account the difficulty of relying on mere descriptions and maps from around 1831. The three notable exceptions are the layout of the abbey grounds and its proximity to The Ponds, which were slightly altered to suit the story; Eden Park, which is listed on maps, but I could not find any definitive information on the property; and the Constabulary Barracks, which I placed at the location of the Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks built several years later.
Many of the buildings in Rathfarnham had fascinating histories, some of which I used, and some I didn’t. Rathfarnham Castle truly did have tunnels running from its property to the old Protestant Church in the graveyard, and to a point to the west which is now part of a golf club. There are rumors that there was also a third tunnel leading to the Yellow House. These were built to protect the family and soldiers during the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century. There are a number of other intriguing facts about that castle. Such as its connection to the Hellfire Club, and the skeletal remains of a young woman found in the hollow walls in 1880. She was purportedly a young maiden who was locked in a secret compartment during a ball while her two suitors dueled for her affections, killing each other and taking the secret of her location to their graves. Some of the current cushions on the furniture are supposed to have been made from her silk dress.
The Priory was indeed the home of the Currans, and witnessed the tragic death of twelve-year-old Gertrude, whose father buried her in the garden with the exact epitaph listed in the book. The story about Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran is also true, though there is no evidence that Emmet’s remains were buried on the Curran property. Several poems have been written about Robert and Sarah’s doomed romance, including a short story by Washington Irving titled “The Broken Heart.” The Come Here to Me! blog at comeheretome.com posts lots of absorbing historical tidbits about Ireland, including a wonderful entry about the Priory’s history.
Loretto (now spelled “Loreto”) Abbey, Rathfarnham, proved to be an enthralling place to research. I did my best to describe the nuns, the students, and the running of the abbey in that time period, though there were many gaps in my research I could not fill. Much of my information came from the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Irish Province of the Loreto Sisters Archives. They had a wonderful depth of information on some of the early sisters of that abbey, including Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball. Most of the nuns I have utilized in the story were actual historical figures, with the exception of Mother Mary Fidelis and Miss Lennox. I was even able to weave in some quotes pulled from Mother Superior Mary Teresa’s letters. A book which shed some light on the abbess was The Life of Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball: Foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Henry James Coleridge. I also enjoyed reading Abbey Girls by Mary and Valerie Behan, a memoir written by two sisters who attended the abbey school in the 1960s, to give me somewhat of an inside perspective on what it was like to live there even 130 years later.
Miss Lennox is a fictional relative of the Duke of Wellington. Supposing that the duke’s first cousin once removed, Lady Harriet Kerr, did not die, but instead lived to marry a man with the last name Lennox and produced a child, also named Harriet, who is the Miss Lennox from the story.
Many of the details I shared about the 1798 and 1803 Rebellions, and Rathfarnham’s connection to them, are true, as well as the secret societies of the Ribbonmen and the Orangemen. The Orange Order still exists today, and still marches on or around July twelfth every year. Though after the violence which erupted in 1831, these parades were banned by Parliament the following year for a short period. The clashes between Catholics and Orangemen, particularly in Ireland, continue to this day, with some markedly historic incidences.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 was indeed passed after a fraught campaign, and one of the chief reasons Prime Minister Wellington and his government did so was to avert open rebellion, though, of course, I have oversimplified the matter. Regardless, there was still a strong opposition and prejudice against Catholics throughout the United Kingdom. It would be many years before they were truly granted equality, but this was a great stride in the right direction.
The Tithes War lasted from 1830 until 1836 throughout Ireland. Much of it truly was a passive and nonviolent protest, punctuated only periodically with violent clashes. The first two skirmishes mentioned in the story, in County Kilkenny and Bunclody, County Wexford, did result in injuries and deaths. However, organized protestors’ tactics were overall effective in costing the government “a shilling to collect tuppence.” This resulted in the government suspending collections and eventually amending the law, though it was not completely repealed until 1869. For those interested in more information about the political situation in Ireland during the mid-nineteenth century, I recommend reading Ireland 1815–1870: Emancipation, Famine, and Religion by Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Tomás O’Riordan, which contains excerpts from historical letters and legislation.
The colorful anecdotes I shared about Lord Anglesey, who was then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, are quite true, at least according to him. He was an interesting character, to say the least.
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ath Draws Near
As Death Draws Near Page 35
