The Crafters Book Two (6 page)

“Beautiful,” whispered Maeve. “I’ve never seen a big city before.”

In Dublin, they took rooms at The Royal Inn, a block away from Trinity College and only a short walk from Dublin Castle. After they were comfortable, Eben asked the innkeeper to send for a dressmaker and tailor. He used the names suggested by D’Arcy.

In short order the room was busy with dressmakers and tailors, showing samples of cloth, measuring, and giving detailed information: “ ... Lady A always has her gowns sewn by my shop ... Lord B has all his clothing made by my tailors rather than in London ...”

The choosing took hours, the measuring hours more, and there were complaints when Maeve ordered that at least one outfit be ready for the levee at Dublin Castle on Friday. The suggestion of a bonus stilled the complaints.

The next day the innkeeper found a lady’s hairdresser. In a few short hours Maeve’s beautiful red hair was arranged in the latest fashion.

On Friday they took a carriage to the castle, where D’Arcy had arranged that they be presented to the Lord Lieutenant’s court. Actually there was only a deputy for Lord Portland. The new Lord Lieutenant was expected some time in early 1782. The castle appeared run-down, but the great hall was well-lit and crowded. All eyes turned when Maeve entered on Eben’s arm.

“May I present Henry Grattan, barrister, advocate for Irish legislative independence, John Fitzgibbon, M.P. for Dublin University, Lord Shannon—one of the leaders of the kingdom, Edmund Burke—a friend of you Americans ...” In a few hours they met almost all of importance in Ireland.

“This young man is Theobald Wolfe Tone, a student at Trinity College.” The young man bowed to Eben and kissed Maeve’s hand. When he left, Maeve shivered. “There is death following that poor young man,” she said.

That night all the young officers and dandies wanted to dance with the beautiful Mistress Crafter. When Eben finally reclaimed her, he whispered in her ear, “I am envied by every man here, and rightly so. You are the most beautiful woman in the room.”

On the trip back to Cookstown Maeve said, “You must learn the Irish—the Gaelic—I will teach you.” The words sounded strange to Eben at first but he told his teacher, “I learned Latin and Greek at Harvard College so I will learn the Irish.”

Maeve mixed her language lessons with stories of the ancient kings and heroes. “ ... King Conoor was King of Ulster, he was at war with Queen Maeve and her husband, King Ailill of Croohan. Conoor’s men were all stricken with a weakness and the whole kingdom was protected by one young warrior, Coo-hullin.” Maeve recited parts of the ancient poem,
The Cattle Raid of Coolee.
She told of the Knights of the Red Branch, the story of the beauty, Dierdre, her elopement with a handsome young man, the anger of King Conoor, and his cruel revenge. She repeated songs and stories about Finn MacCool and his warrior band, the Fianna.

When Eben asked, Maeve told stories about the Faerie Folk, about the Sidhe, “It’s spelled S-i-d-h-e, but in the usual perverse Irish way it is pronounced
Shee.
I don’t know why.” She told of her own ancient people. “We were few in this island when the Gaels, the Celts, landed. We survived by blending in, at times by being invisible. It was only that which saved us. About thirty years ago a foul churchman near Cork City accused my parents of witchcraft. It was then that they came north to Ulster and Tyrone. My father found the hill fort and became a tenant of the Earl of Tyrone.”

At home, there was unpacking, planning for furnishing and excitement in July, when the wagons delivered the tables and chairs, and all the rest of their purchases. One great case confused Maeve. “What is that?” she asked.

“A surprise,” said Eben.

When it was opened, Maeve cried out, “A piano!” It was placed in the south-facing room that Maeve selected as the parlor where guests were to be entertained. “There,” she said after it was placed and replaced a dozen times. “It looks right there.”

Guests arrived, people they had met in Dublin. Mr. Richard Sheridan M.P., on his way to Enniskillen, stopped to see the “lovely Mistress Crafter” and her husband.

“After we met you at Dublin Castle,” said Maeve, “we saw your play,
The School for Scandal,
at the Dublin Theatre. It was very wonderful. I even saw some of the ladies I met in Dublin who seemed very like your characters.”

“I hope they did not recognize themselves,” he said, and laughed.

Maeve seemed to have the gift of making guests feel at ease. When Harry Henry Grattan visited, he spent hours talking about a true parliament for Ireland. It became common for important Irish leaders to stop at the Crafters’ home whenever they were in the area. Eben assured Maeve that she was the reason.

They worked to improve their farm methods, they added to the cattle herd, they bought a fine Arabian stallion to improve their horses, and Eben studied the published works of the Dukes of Norfolk on ways to improve the land.

“We need a better water supply; the springs to the west of the house are not enough for all our livestock,” Eben said early in the fall.

“Why not put a well halfway up the hill?” asked Maeve.

“On the hill?” asked Eben.

“Of course,” Maeve answered, “I can see water less than twenty feet down. You’ll have to dig a series of ponds down lower on the hill, the upper fenced for us, the next for the horses, and at least one or two more for the cattle.”

“You can see water below ground? Another Talent?”

Eben had his tenants dig four pools. Then, on the hillside he supervised the digging of, first, a pit eight feet deep; then a long iron bar was pounded deep into the ground with heavy mauls. When they reached a dozen feet, they extracted the bar; water followed. It flowed downhill to the new pools. In less than a week the pools were filled with pure clean water. Eben piped water from the top pool into the kitchen area. “Running water, better than Buckingham Palace!” he exulted.

Late in November one of their guests told of General Cornwallis’ surrender to the Americans at Yorktown in October. Maeve asked, “Any regrets?”

Eben said, “No, for I’d not have found you. I am glad that the Colonies have a chance to be free.”

In April, 1782 Maeve quietly announced, “We are going to have a son. He should be born by November.”

“A son, you are sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Maeve. “Another gift.”

In August there was news that the restrictive Poyning’s Law was repealed by the English Parliament, giving Ireland some freedom in legal matters. “That law was passed in 1494,” Eben remarked. “No wonder the Irish politicians were restive.” A short time later, a relief act was passed that gave Roman Catholics in Ireland some rights to education. “Unless people have the same rights as in England there will surely be an American-type revolt.”

On November 30, 1782, a son was born to Eben and Maeve Crafter. “We’ll call him Sean,” Eben said, “after your father, Sean, and my father, John; after all, Sean is the Irish for John. He will be Sean Andrew, for today is the feast day of Saint Andrew.”

Maeve smiled. “Himself will be pleased with a grandson to spoil.” She was right, for Sean O’Dowd came with an ivory teething ring for the first day, and was properly proud when baby Sean grabbed his finger in his little hands and wouldn’t let go.

“Strong he is, like all the O’Dowds,” crowed old Sean. The tenants, too, admired the new baby. The women brought little gifts they had knitted. Bridgit Burke sewed a linen gown and embroidered roses on it in fine red silk thread. Joe Burke carved a jointed wooden puppet with cords that moved its head, arms, and legs. It became young Sean’s favorite toy; he’d chuckle when it was moved over his cradle in an Irish jig.

In early spring Henry Grattan arrived bearing gifts for the Crafter heir. “You know, Crafter, you should be active in politics. We are going to have a real Parliament soon in Ireland if only we can be patient enough with the donkeys in Westminster. Oh, by the bye, our English agents are to meet in Paris with the Americans to draft a treaty of peace.”

Eben thought of his America, a free nation, and he was glad.

Grattan was followed by a string of Irish gentry who liked Crafter and his pretty young wife.

Every year they spent at least a month in Dublin for theatre, for dances, for shopping, and Maeve said, “gossip.” They missed May of 1785, for on the 3rd their daughter was born. “A red-haired queen, she is,” said Crafter. “And a beauty like her mother. Shall we name her after the beauty in your story, Dierdre?”

“I’d like that, yes,” said Maeve. At the christening she was named Dierdre Charlotte Crafter.

If her grandfather had spoiled young Sean, he outdid himself with Dierdre, saying, “After all, a man has a right to favor a granddaughter a bit if he wants.” By the time she was two she was riding in front of him on his horse; by five he had given her a pony of her own.

Eben was more evenhanded. “You spoil them both,” Maeve complained, “but it doesn’t seem to hurt.” Maeve, of course, was as guilty as her father and Eben.

The Crafters worked hard to enhance their estate—putting up glass walls for a south—facing conservatory, improving their lands with lime and fertilizers, rotating crops on their own lands and tenant lands, and most important in Eben’s mind: planting trees as windbreaks and holders of the soil.

The work was noticed by neighbors; indeed, Eben was asked to address the new Royal Irish Society in 1790.

When he returned home from Dublin, he told Maeve, “I see trouble. It’s in the air as it was in Boston when I was young. I met young Wolfe Tone; he and others are organizing to make a free country, like America or revolutionary France.” Months later, Crafter’s worries proved well-founded. Tone wrote a tract, “Argument on Behalf of the Catholics in Ireland.” This was followed by the founding of the United Irishmen, first in Belfast, then Dublin. Many of the leaders hoped to bring Crafter into the movement. He refused with, “One revolution is enough!”

Many things changed in Ireland. By April 1792 Catholics were allowed to practice law, in 1793 parliamentary franchise along with civil and military rights. By 1794 Catholics were allowed to attend Trinity College.

In 1795 there was greater turmoil: The United Irishmen had been suppressed in Dublin: earl Fitzwilliam became Lord Lieutenant in January and was dismissed in February.

In May, the Belfast United Irishmen invited Eben to an underground meeting; he again declined.

In June, Wolfe Tone stopped in Cookstown to talk to the Crafters and say farewell. “I will sail first to America, then go to France for help. The French Republic is our final hope.”

Maeve implored, “Leave Ireland if you must, but, never return.”

“I must, Mistress, for I want to see Ireland free.” Tone left and was later reported with a French fleet that entered Bantry Bay in the far Southwest to foment rebellion in December. They were driven off with small losses.

In 1798, young Sean Crafter started the spring term at Trinity College. He had been taught Latin and Greek by his father, and tutored by graduates who were sent out of Dublin by worried parents who wished to keep their sons out of trouble—trouble that seemed all pervasive. Sean was taught Gaelic by his mother, grandfather, and all the tenants on Crafter lands.

Eben worried in late March when Dublin United Irish leaders were arrested and martial law imposed. He sent an urgent message to his son to stay away from all politics.

Word came to Cookstown that there was open rebellion in May in Lienster and the capture of County Wexford by the Rebels. They were cruelly put down by General Gerard Lake; the leaders court-martialed and hanged.

In August the French landed a force in Killala Bay west of Sligo; with Irish allies they defeated government forces at Castlebar on the road to Galway. The Rebels fought “... for France, for Ireland, and for the Blessed Virgin.”

The Rebels were decimated at Ballinamuck in County Longford by militias from Down, Armagh, and Kerry. The troops were led by the new Viceroy, Lord Charles Cornwallis, with General Lake as second-in-command. He accepted the surrender of the French and waited for the next foray.

It came in November when a French naval force was trapped in Lough Swilly, the great Sea Lough that pushed deep into Northern Donegal. With the French was Wolfe Tone. Tone wanted to be treated as a soldier. When that was refused, he committed suicide rather than be hanged. Maeve said sadly, “I saw death on that poor young man. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.”

In early March 1799 Joe Burke, Paddy Ryan, and a dozen other tenants came to Crafter, hats in hand. “They’re gonna court-martial at least twenty young lads from your estate, Squire, including my son, Fergus, and Paddy’s youngest, Liam. Can you help, Squire? They’s to hang if nothing be done.”

Eben rode at once to Dublin and the Vice-Regal Court. He sought audience with the Marquess Cornwallis. When Crafter was admitted, he saw a tired old man with a pot belly that seemed to go with his old-fashioned uniform and the heavy, out-of-date, horsehair wig, powdered as if it were decades earlier, and slightly askew.

“I know of you, you were with Arnold after that affair about West Point. I often wondered what happened to you. I saw Arnold a number of times in London ... a bitter, bitter man. Now, Crafter, what may I do for you? Everyone who comes wants something. Crafter ... Crafter, do you have a son at Trinity College?”

“Yes, my lord, his name is Sean,” said Crafter, wondering what trouble Sean was in that Cornwallis would know of him.

“My daughter Anna, er—ahem, my natural daughter ... I have acknowledged her. Well, she has found your son to be a most delightful young man, and I admit he is a charming rascal. Neither is seventeen yet, but he has asked for her hand.”

“My lord?” said Eben, a bit confused.

“There can’t be a large dowry, for I still have daughters to marry off; I have also promised to dower my brother William’s youngest. You know of him, of course. The Admiral leads the Channel Fleet blockading the French.”

“I don’t know, my lord. My son is too young to marry. It would make sense when he finishes his degree at Trinity.”