Fortunate Son

by David Marlett

  Seán didn’t stop. “‘Tis bitting me! ‘Tis killing me!” He kept thrashing.

  “Stop, will ye! Take in some air! ‘Tis gone!” Jemmy suppressed a grin.

  Seán was panting, his round face pink, blue eyes wide. “Jumped on m’face!”

  Jemmy helped him up. “‘Twas nothing Seán. Nothing.”

  “Nay, ‘twas something big!” His hands wriggled over his head and chest. “Ye see it?”

  “Perhaps just a little—” His mouth creased into a grin.

  “‘Twas nasty with big teeth! Fangs! Fangs, Jemmy! I saw ‘em, I did!”

  Jemmy was fighting back tears of laughter, struggling to keep control. It was nearly unbearable—Seán’s terrified face and one orange centipede running scared.

  “It had a million legs, it did!”

  That was it. Jemmy roared with laughter, stuttering, “I’m sorry, Seán. Did m’best. But I counted only seventeen!” Then the dam broke and he dropped to his knees, lurching forward to the ground, giggling hysterically. Sean stopped and stared, totally confused, which only made Jemmy laugh harder. Finally Jemmy settled, feeling the cut under his chin. “So? Did ye bring me some food this mornin’?”

  “Da wouldn’t let me,” Seán mumbled.

  “Why not?” Jemmy soured rapidly at the thought of no breakfast. His jaw may have ached a bit, but his stomach burned.

  “Said ye’re being mule-headed to stay here. Said there’s no reason to stay away from him. Ye aren’t protecting nobody out here, least not yerself. Said ye should come back t’ Mr. Purcell’s.”

  “I don’t care what he says,” Jemmy blurted. Silence hovered and they sat in it, motionless, watching a man canter his horse across the far end of the green. The beast’s snorts steamed in the early air. “If I’m there at Purcell’s, that fathead Richard and his men will come. I know it. I’ll stay hidden till this is gone.”

  Seán pulled himself to his feet. “‘Tis not going t’ just pass, I don’t think.” He walked a few paces to the creek bank. Swollen gusts whipped the leaves above, and a few wrens and yellow-winged hammer birds began to fill the morning with warble and echoing song. “I miss Dunmain.”

  “Aye,” said Jemmy. They were thinking of the Annesleys’ country estate in southern Ireland, the land where both he and Seán were born, where they had played the first ten years of their lives. Seán was born in the servants’ quarters, the son of the stablemaster. Jemmy was born in his mother’s bedchamber, one of the twenty-eight rooms of the lavish Dunmain House. Jemmy longed for the rolling green hills, the forests, the long stone fences, the random ruins and ancient abbeys lying in wait to be discovered. But he did not miss the house. The immense, cold house held a trove of bad memories—his father beating him, his mother leaving.

  “Jemmy!” Seán blurted. “Look at this!”

  As Jemmy stepped beside Seán, his eyes followed Seán’s outstretched finger down toward the creek. Lying half-exposed in the slick clay was a human skull, peering back at them, peering up into the world, neither entering nor departing, the crown cracked slightly, polished white by water and sun. “M’soul!” Jemmy whispered, staring into its dark eye sockets. “Who do ye think it is?”

  “Probably Friar O’Conner.” Seán smirked. “After a night of ale. ‘Tis begob.” Jemmy’s smile rolled into a chuckle, imagining the old, fat friar falling drunk into the creek. But the skull just stared back. Sean became serious and whispered, “Da says there’s bones of Celtic giants buried in Dublin. All ‘round us.”

  “Ye think this is one of Cuchulainn’s knights?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Perhaps, Seán,” whispered Jemmy, “‘tis Cuchulainn himself.” Both boys plopped down on the bank, smiles dissolving, bright eyes warily returning the solemn stare of the great mythic giant.

  “Nah,” Seán said, recovering, shoving Jemmy. “Can’t be. ‘Tisn’t big enough.”

  “Ye never know. Maybe ‘tis.” The skull made Jemmy feel strange, knotting his stomach. The stone image of the woman in Christ Church flashed in his mind—the bright effigy bursting upon him, white-hot light, then gone. Rolling to his back, he stretched his lanky legs across the grass and surveyed the living green rippling overhead. Flashes of distant cyan and white-blue glinted through the calico canopy, dropping down in wispy slants of gold that illuminated the boys below. Closing his eyes, he soaked the light in, the soothing coolness. Soon he began absently humming a tune that he loved, that haunted him. He could hear his mother’s delicate voice caressing him with it:

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight;

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but Lady Greensleeves.

  “What are ye going t’do?” asked Seán. At that moment, like the aimless tune adrift, an indifferent emperor moth floated gracefully over their heads. Jemmy watched it, enchanted. It was a brilliant apparition, gliding, flicking its wings, disappearing as magically as it had arrived. Seán pressed on, breaking the spell, “Will ye go away with yer mum, now that—”

  “What’ll I do?” Jemmy grinned. “I’ll put that skull on a stick and chase Juggy with it!”

  “Ye know I wasn’t talkin’ about the skull. I meant—”

  “Juggy’d forgive me. She’d beat yer measly arse, but she’d forgive me.”

  “Ye’re a wee prick, ye are!”

  Though Jemmy was only twelve, soon to be thirteen, he understood why the local men teased him about Juggy. Joan Landy, “Juggy,” once the Annesleys’ kitchen maid, had wet-nursed young Master James. Some of the cruder men had implored him to recount the experience, at which he would bolt away. Nevertheless, he loved Juggy like a mother and knew she treasured him in return. Indeed she showed him more concern than anyone else did, except maybe Fynn. She laughed with Jemmy, teased him, listened to him when he needed to talk. And though he adored Juggy, he knew his mother, Mary, flatly despised her, referring to her as “Madam Mack.”

  Juggy grew up with her brother, Daniel Mackercher, in an Edinburgh orphanage. When she was older she moved to London to serve the estate of Jemmy’s maternal-grandfather, John Sheffield, the First Duke of Buckingham, working in the bowels of the Duke’s new palace which he had only recently constructed. There she was taken in by the Landys, also serving the Duke. Hungry for a family to call her own, she took their surname, leaving Mackercher far behind. When Arthur and Mary were married, Joan Landy came to Ireland as part of the Annesley household. She had served them ever since. As far back as Jemmy could remember, a prattling of “lil’ Scotty lass” tales and “Miss Juggy” stories had been bandied about. The one he heard most was when Juggy first arrived in Ireland, how she had been seen secreting about with his father. He was not sure what “secreting about” meant, but no doubt that was why his mother hated her so much. Perhaps it was the same “secreting about” rumored between his mother and a tanner named Palliser—his father sliced clean the man’s ear, who in turn took out Arthur’s eye. He would ask his mother, thought Jemmy. Someday. When he saw her again. If he ever did. No, he would ask Juggy. Juggy would tell him the truth.

  “Ach.” Seán’s voice was tight. “Will ye be going away with yer mum, or won’t ye?”

  Jemmy sighed, rolling his eyes. There was no escaping Seán when he had an unanswered question, especially about Jemmy’s mother. Seán’s mother was Margaret Kennedy, the “matron saint” who had died giving birth to Seán. Juggy had been Margaret’s closest friend, and Jemmy often saw Juggy cry at the mention of the dead woman. “Tell me, Jemmy!” Seán would not let it go.

  “Tell ye what?”

  “Ach! Ye bloody well know! What I keep askin’ ye! Are ye going t’ England? Are we t’be friends no more?”

  “I don’t know where she is, Seán.” Jemmy felt his face flush as he conceded to the question. “I don’t think she wants me with her. ‘Tis been two years.” He clambered to his feet, took a few paces, then picked up a small rock and be
gan tossing it between his hands, shifting its weight from side to side, faster and faster. “Besides, she’s probably already gone.” He threw the rock at the skull, missing it. Then he snatched another stone and took careful aim before letting it fly. It hit just above the eye sockets and bounced away. Moving to the bank, he flumped down and found more pebbles to throw. One after another, slowly and deliberately, he tossed them, knowing all the while that Seán was still standing, watching him, confused. “Once, twice, thrice. Once, twice, thrice.” Jemmy faintly counted his lofted shots. The small stones produced a hollow melody as they hit the ancient forehead then plopped into the shallow trickling stream and dark clay beyond. “Once, twice, thrice. Wants. Two eyes. Through ice. Eh?”

  His friend was now sitting beside him. “Our codes.”

  Jemmy raised a finger. “Wants—”

  “All be clear,” Seán interjected, then paused. “Don’t guess it’ll mean yer Da’s not around.”

  “Thank the gods.” Jemmy added his middle finger to the other. “Two eyes,” he said, pronouncing it like ‘twice’, “’tis me warning yer half-wit head to look about.”

  “Ach, sure.” Seán elbowed Jemmy.

  “And through ice,” Jemmy exclaimed, raising three fingers. “We stand together. No matter the bastard.”

  Seán got to his feet. “Had we been at the Boyne, t’would’ve been our signal. Through the thick of it!” He thrust three fingers into the glowing air, as if commanding his men up the grisly hill of that most celebrated of Irish battles.

  “True,” said Jemmy with a smile. He returned to stoning the river. Much to his growing annoyance, and as much as he tried, he could not make the flight of the pebbles follow a consistent path. One would fall into the stream with a splash, then be washed clean and glide down the way. Another would veer to the left on its descent and land splat in the muck of the far shore, then slip from sight, swallowed in the ancient clay and silt. He became obsessed with the rock-casting, but it was futile. Only smaller and smaller pebbles remained, and they were increasingly unpredictable. As fate embraces chaos, order was not to be grasped, and the bitter issue about him leaving was still lingering, distastefully unresolved.

  “So, what are ye goin’ t’do?” Seán asked, as if on cue. He turned in a big circle, surveying the common green. “Ye can’t rightly live out here. Anyway, Da said if ye want any more food ye’ll have t’ come back t’ Purcell’s.” He started peeling bark from the oak that swelled over them like a colossus. “Besides, out here isn’t much hidden.”

  “‘Tis a fine place t’ hide from that bastard Richard,” Jemmy growled, standing and gathering his waistcoat. He warily watched two old men with a milk cow amble through the park, guiding the animal across a small rickety footbridge, then out through the north gate. Jemmy turned and walked the other way.

  “Where ye going?” asked Seán, surprised.

  “T’ get breakfast. Ye not coming?”

  Seán trotted to catch up.

  Chapter 4

  Mrs. Dorothy Briscoe, examined — “I cannot charge my memory if Lady Anglesea was a second time with child. Lord and Lady Anglesea came to Dunmain after Queen Anne died. I do not remember her ladyship being with child. I had the smallpox when Queen Anne died, and my mother came to New Ross upon my sickness. (Did you ever hear that Lady Anglesea was with child?) Indeed, I can’t tell, but I might, for Mrs. Heath tells me a hundred things about my own family which I am an entire stranger to, and an honest, worthy woman she is as ever lived by bread.”

  — trial transcript, Annesley v. Anglesea, 1743

  Richard Annesley, younger brother to the Earl, was a man of whom it may be said, without any danger of being too severe, that he had all the vices centered in his composition: He was proud and mean at the same time—vain-glorious yet avaricious—ungrateful for good offices—revengeful for even imagined injuries—treacherous when trusted—mischievously inquisitive when not so—without the least spark of honor, pity, or even common humanity—incapable by nature of doing any good, and qualified by an extreme subtlety for all kinds of evil.

  — Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, James Annesley, 1743

  That same morning, Richard Annesley, the self-proclaimed peer, stood in his nightshirt, observing from his bedroom window, grinning imperiously as the cold floor chilled his feet. Lowering his gaze, he saw little people and their little horses moving along Anglesea Street below, parting the morning fog of Dublin’s Temple Bar. The street was named in 1659, in honor of his grandfather who had built Temple Bar—a development of homes, shops, taverns, shipping docks, and even the Parliament Building itself, which towered over it all, pigeons fluttering about its crowning roof. Below that he could see the building’s sweeping array of columns, its majestic courtyard. Now that he was Earl he might build a new house, a mansion, a palatial residence. He smirked. Perhaps he would build it alongside the Parliament Building, snug against the law. That would erase all doubts. Then take a wife, some high-browed British bitch, some aristocratic daughter. No. Later. That can wait. Besides there were plenty of fields open now for his plow. He would return to Dunmain House, in County Wexford, the seat of Anglesea power, precisely where he belonged—away from these factors with their spotted hands outstretched, and the blue bloods of the pale, white-gloved, come to inspect both the manner and the ware.

  A rustle behind him drew him to turn. Buried in the bed linens slept an English beauty, breathing softly. He watched her. She was a servant, a chambermaid, but not one from his stable of thirty-seven. No, Charity Heath was the ladyservant of Lady Mary Sheffield, his infamous sister-in-law, the banished, outcast wife, the recent widow. Richard had first seen Charity—this slender vixen nestled in his bed—two weeks earlier, from the foyer of Delaney’s Clothier on St. James Street. For the past month, his men, Captain Bailyn and Patrick Higgins, had taken turns spying on Mary Sheffield’s home from that clothier, watching for James to come slinking back to his mother. When Richard joined them briefly one day, he saw Charity step from Mary’s house and climb aboard a small cart. He was captivated in the instant. Yet it was not just her graceful beauty that beguiled him. What intrigued him most was how she might assist his cause. Within the hour he had followed her, introduced himself, and was charming her, snaring her in his web. Bedding her was just a benefit of his ignoble efforts, the spoils of a successful hunt. Now she lay there, her brown hair swirled stormily across his pillows, the blanket rising and falling with the rhythm of her breath. He watched for a moment, smirking, wondering what Mary must think about her servant’s overnight absence. Moving to the edge of the bed, he gently shook her arm. “Charity, my sweet, ‘tis morning.” Though the words were kind, they were laden with disapproval. She groaned softly and opened her eyes. “Ye must return soon,” he added.

  She whispered. “Do you wish for me to go?”

  Her bare shoulders mellowed him. He slid on top of her and nodded. “I’ll miss ye.”

  “So you’d have me believe.”

  “What have ye told Lady Sheffield, of yer going and coming?”

  She pushed him off, rolling over, straddling him, the blanket falling from her bare shoulders. “Have I told her of us?”

  “I know I can trust ye. I was—”

  She squeezed him between her thighs, silencing him. “‘Tis my choice to be here.” She bit him playfully on the nose. “And if your intentions are….” She paused, then smiled mischievously. “If they are as I suspect, soon I’ll have no need to return to her service.” Her eyebrows arched to the silent question. To which he gently felt her breasts, then roughly flipped her onto her back, kissing her hard.

  A soft knock resonated from across the room. “Lord Anglesea?” the butler inquired, his voice muffled through the thick wood door.

  “What is it?” snapped Richard.

  “M’lord, Captain Bailyn and Mr. Higgins are downstairs for ye.”

  “Put them in the parlor. I’ll be there directly.”r />
  “Very well, m’lord.” The butler’s footsteps faded away.

  Richard huffed. “I must go.” He swung his feet off the bed.

  *

  Charity studied him as he dressed. She knew she was beautiful, tall and slim, similar to Mary in many ways. But could she be a gentlewoman, the wife of an Earl? She had served Mary since they were both fifteen, vicariously acquiring the habits and customs of polite society. In fact, Mary had kept her in such good dress that it was not unusual for Charity to be mistaken for gentility. But she wasn’t. Her father had placed her in the Duke of Buckingham’s service so she could help support her family. When Mary’s mother died, Charity was there by Mary’s side, supporting her. When the Duke then married Princess Catherine, who was the same age as Mary, the new Duchess took no time to expel Mary from Buckingham Palace. Charity left too, remaining the faithful lady-in-waiting to Mary. She had remained Mary’s closest confidante ever since.

  Nevertheless, Charity was lonely, having never married, having kept a hope kindled that a society gentleman would save her from a life of servitude. Years passed and no such gentleman came, only a few seedy requests for fanciful affairs which she usually accepted, hoping to massage them into more. Now it was Richard, the Earl of Anglesea. But this was different, she could sense it—he wanted to marry her. Didn’t he? He needed a wife. And he was nothing like his hateful, dead brother, Arthur. Though she had disliked Arthur for being such a drunken monster, she had despised him more for never bedding her. God, and Mary too, knew Arthur had had many other women. So how was she that different from them, from Mary? What could Mary give a man that she could not? She was just as much a gentlewoman as Mary ever was, especially considering Mary’s own vices. At least she had Richard now. He would elevate her to the same position Mary had held, till late. She smiled, watching him finish. Thank God for that coach on Bridge Street.