Read Online Dark Rosaleen by OBE Michael Nicholson - Free Book Online

haggle.
    ‘Will ye split the pound?’ demanded the buyer.
    ‘I will not.’
    ‘Will ye give him to me then?’
    ‘I told you three pounds.’
    The buyer walked off.
    ‘You’ll be back,’ the seller shouted as men around him berated him for his obstinacy. The third man then ran after the buyer, seized his hand, pulled him back and smacked the buyer’s hand against the seller’s. They split the pound, the sale was made. The buyer took out his scissors and clipped his mark on the cow’s rump and the three men went off to celebrate the sale at one of the steaming, crowded pubs.
    Kate heard the sound of a hunting horn and at the far end of the market she saw Ogilvie. He was elegantly dressed with a black top hat, a pink hunting jacket and riding breeches of white broadcloth above his polished black knee boots. Blue ribbons were tied to his mare’s tail and neck. He rode at the head of a long line of men who walked hesitantly, awkward and morose as if they were being led to a funeral. Behind them she saw his own bully-boys, broad and heavy men, with a blunderbuss over their shoulders and a shillelagh in their belts.
    He was pleased to see her. He clapped his hands above the top hat and shouted above the din. ‘Kathryn, my dearest girl. What an exceptional honour. Your father promised me you would come but I didn’t dare expect to see you.’
    ‘I’ve never been to an election before,’ she shouted back. ‘Like your tumbling gangs, I suppose it’s something I ought not to miss.’
    He was grinning. ‘Kathryn, don’t be sour with me, not on a day like this. You might regret it. Tomorrow I will be a parliamentarian and I could have you transported to the other side of the world for insolence.’
    ‘Tell me what is happening, Edward. Who are these men behind you?’
    ‘My tenants. Freeholders who’ve come to vote for me. Not that they are very free, nor do they have much of a holding. But they are beholden and that’s what matters. Remember the hanging gale? They do and I don’t let them forget it.’
    He turned and stood in his saddle. He looked down and laughed at them. They did not look up.
    He said, ‘They’re not over fond of me but they’ll give me their cross or they’ll be out on their backsides. No vote, no tenancy. It’s a simple electoral choice.’
    ‘It’s blackmail.’
    He stood in his stirrups and spoke loudly, as if he wanted to hear himself speak, to listen to his own words, knowing that they could sound one way in the mind and yet sound quite different spoken aloud.
    ‘It’s nothing of the sort, Kathryn. Remember you’re in Ireland. Who do you think they would vote for if they weren’t obliged to vote for me? They’d go for one of their own and then what would we have? A Parliament of papists. Don’t call it blackmail. If the English want to keep this country, you must accept that what is happening here today is democratic and nothing less.’
    Kate said, ‘This is their country, Edward. It’s their future.’
    He laughed and raised his hat as he passed the paupers’ tents, mocking them. ‘The poor do not worry about the future. They worry only about today. Tomorrow is far too far away. And it is not their country. How often have I told you that land belongs to those who own it and my father owns this?’
    As the procession of tenants passed through the market square, the crowd jeered and threw mud at them, ridiculing them for their subservience, shouting that they were following their Protestant master like sheep to the slaughter. Some of the mud hit their targets and a tenant voter broke line and began fighting. Ogilvie turned his horse. There was a crack of his whip over their heads. The crowds fell back, cowed, and the line of tenants shuffled on.
    Kate was too ashamed to look at them. She felt their eyes on her. Honest, hardworking men, forced to march and vote for a man who held them captive. Ogilvie was talking to her again.
    ‘Don’t fret, Kathryn. The land is bright