‘I offer you my hand and my prayers on the death of your grandfather, FitzGarrett. He was a fine man, and knew his business. A great loss to you all, but a long life well lived is not to be mourned. And how fares your sister? And my sons? She was much affected by her grandfather’s death, I think.’
‘They all arrived safe. My sister has been a great comfort to my grandmother.’
‘Aye? Good girl. Though the old woman has never struck me as much affected by sentiment.’
‘Matthew!’ interjected his wife.
‘I give that as a compliment, woman. Your sex is too much prone to weeping and wailing at the merest thing. Although I think I am right in saying that the women of the Irish do their mourning loud?’
I remembered the hellish noises I had heard in Carrickfergus on the night of my grandfather’s death, and again on the night before his funeral. ‘Yes, they honour the dead in venting their grief.’ I almost thought I saw Andrew smirk again as I said this.
‘Well, well, so your grandfather is buried, and you come away so soon on business?’
Andrew had coached me on the road, and I knew what to say. ‘With no disrespect to yourself, we know there are merchants in Coleraine who would not scruple to wrest my grandfather’s trade from his dead hands, and with the pirates constantly operating along the north coast it seemed as well to re-establish my family’s name and control as soon as was possible.’
‘You do right. And any way I can help you in, so will I do.’ He turned then to his wife, and asked why our places had not yet been set at the dinner table.
‘I had not thought – I had not presumed to. I do not know where the gentleman and his servant are staying, or if they have yet eaten.’
I had been in the humblest cottage, the most austere manse, the sparsest garret, but rarely in my life had I been offered such poor hospitality as in this rich planter’s house in Coleraine.
The blood was running into Matthew Blackstone’s face. ‘Do you tell me you have not asked? Elizabeth, make two more places ready at the table.’
‘But surely,’ said his wife, less able to read her husband’s humour than I was, ‘the servant will eat in the kitchen?’
‘What, are you so dainty, madam?’ Blackstone exploded. He held up two huge, grimy, calloused hands. ‘These hands by their labour have built your fortune and put the lace and pearls at your neck. None of your niceness here. FitzGarrett’s steward will dine at my table.’ He looked at Andrew, whose jaw muscles were twitching, the rest of him motionless, as he stared straight ahead. ‘I daresay you have much knowledge of your master’s business?’
‘Aye, sir, I do,’ replied Andrew, continuing to stare straight ahead.
‘More than I have myself,’ I said.
‘It is often the way,’ said Blackstone. ‘But you should not persist in such ignorance. Only a man you can trust with your life should be trusted with all your business.’
Further enquiries established that we had arranged no lodgings for ourselves in Coleraine: at this, the master of the house was well pleased, and the expected invitation was not slow in being issued. We were given a room at the top of the house. ‘The garret room has no great comforts, but you Irish do not bother yourselves overmuch about comfort, and I daresay you have slept in worse.’
‘Much worse,’ I assured him.
By the time we had washed and changed and descended once more to the parlour, complete darkness had fallen, and more candles had been lit around the room where our host and his family were waiting for us. A brief grace was said, and before I had settled my quandary about whether to cross myself or no, Blackstone was decanting a ruby liquid into the crystal glass in front of me and urging my health. I held it up to him, the light dancing in and out of its many red faces. ‘Slainte,’ I said, before helping myself to a thick slab from the haunch of venison in the middle of the table, and ladling onions, leeks and some crimson jelly onto my plate. Andrew followed my lead, and as the master of the house ate heartily, the ladies ate but meagrely and cast sly glances at my hands, a little surprised, evidently, that I could handle a fork. I wondered just what kind of account Sean had given of himself at his sister’s wedding, and what price I was to pay for it. The lady of the house cast a parsimonious eye on my plate; I smiled at her, and served myself another piece of meat.
‘You will find things well ordered here,’ said Blackstone. ‘Your sister has looked to your grandfather’s interests; there are not many who will have cheated her. She has a better mind to business than many a man.’
‘She would do better to set her mind to a more womanly calling,’ said the mother. ‘She thinks herself above the duties of my son’s wife. She has so little notion of embroidery, or spinning, or the making of preserves …’
‘She was brought up in a houseful of servants, to better things. She has Latin and Greek, and mathematics. She will converse with you in French as easily as in English.’
‘Much good may such learning do in the face of slothfulness.’
‘But it is the nature of the people, Mother, they have such little inclination to industry.’
Her father brought his glass down slowly, and deliberately. ‘I will not have you insult the guests of this house, Elizabeth. Guard your tongue better.’
‘I take no insult,’ I said. ‘Our people have no compulsion to labour when labour is not required. There are higher things.’
‘Perhaps. But you will find me a common man, FitzGarrett, and I have brought my family up to be so too, although their mother would often enough have them forget it. There are many fine things in this house, and will be many finer still in the house I am building on my estate, not ten miles from here, but they have all been won by the grace of God and the labour of these hands he gave me. I have little time for your higher things. There is much work on the plantations, and opportunities too, for men of calibre.’ He appraised Andrew a moment. ‘Are you content, sir, to remain in FitzGarrett’s employ?’
Andrew looked at me, directly, as if it was I who had put the question. ‘I will stay in the employ of the FitzGarretts as long as I am needed, but then I have a mind to invest in a mill, and the linen trade on the Braid.’
‘And I wish you good fortune in it. You may have started life the son of a steward – I myself am the son of a brickmaker – but you could finish it a man of land and means, if you took the right turn. The son of a brickmaker I am, but I have built half the walls of Londonderry, many of the houses within those walls, castles on two plantations and bawns on many more. I will have me a title and see my wife “ladied” before the Lord calls me to that better place. All by the grace and gifts of God and the work of these hands.’
‘If the king does not take it from us,’ said the sly-eyed sister quietly.
‘Hush, girl,’ said her mother.
‘Why should the king wish to take it from you, when you do his work so well?’ I asked.
Matthew Blackstone drained his glass and filled another. ‘Because he thinks we do not do it well or fast enough. The London Companies cannot work the lands they have been granted without granting leases to many of your people. And truth to say, the Irish will pay higher rents than anyone else to get access to the land that they once thought theirs. But this does not conduce to the king’s plans of civilising this province, of spreading the true faith, and the tongue and customs of the English. What is more, it is an arrangement potent of great danger.’ He looked hard at me. ‘I will not dally with pretty words, sir. There are many of the Irish who have not accommodated themselves so well as your grandfather or some of your grandmother’s people have been willing to do, to the king’s arrangements for the tenanting of his land.’