Read Online Lucinda Sly by Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé - Free Book Online Page B

lied. ‘There was a few pounds coming to me from a man who bought a horse from me. We had a drop of whiskey inLangstrom’s to seal the bargain.’
    ‘Hum,’ was all Lucinda said, pretending to be disgusted and letting him know that she still remembered the day they first met on the side of the street.
    ‘I understand that you don’t like drink,’ Sly offered, ‘but believe me I had too much to drink the first time we met. That won’t happen again.’
    ‘I hope not,’ Lucinda warned him.
    The attorney offered the document to Lucinda.
    ‘Read what is written in this document,’ he advised her, ‘and, if you are satisfied that everything is in order, sign your name or make your mark where I have made a cross.’
    Lucinda pretended to read the document, but she had had little education in her youth. Then she took the pen in her hand and signed it. Sly signed it after her without so much as reading one sentence. They thanked the attorney and walked towards the door. When they were out on the street they both stopped. Sly was first to speak.
    ‘Yes, now,’ he cleared this throat, ‘that’s the most important thing discussed and set right. I suppose we should go to the minister and fix a date for the wedding.’
    ‘We should,’ Lucinda agreed. ‘And we each will have to get a witness. I’ll ask my next-door neighbour, Mary Joy. She is a member of the Church of Ireland like myself.’
    ‘I’ll ask your son, Thomas,’ Sly informed her. ‘All my neighbours in Oldleighlin are Catholics and they hate anybody sympathetic to the Crown. Isn’t it usual for the couple to tie theknot in the woman’s local church?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Lucinda replied.
    ‘You can go to the minister and fix a date and I will see you at the market next Thursday,’ Sly said.
    ‘And what will happen if the date doesn’t suit you?’ Lucinda questioned him.
    ‘Any date will suit me,’ Sly assured her.
    ‘Right,’ Lucinda smiled. ‘I’ll be shortening the road home and I will have news for you on Thursday. We won’t make with a big day’s drinking out of it, Walter Sly, but maybe the four of us will have a few quiet drinks after the wedding. We’re too long in the tooth for that.’
    Sly ripped the reins for her and helped her into the cart, then he drew a swipe of his crop across the horse’s flank and he trotted off down the road.
    Sly stood until Lucinda and her horse had disappeared from sight at the bottom of the street. ‘A good day’s work,’ he was thinking to himself. Then he headed for Langstrom’s …
    Lucinda Singleton and Walter Sly were married on the third Saturday of August, 1831. There were very few people in the church apart from Thomas Singleton and Mary Joy who were standing with the couple and half a dozen or so of Lucinda’s neighbours who were curious about what kind of man she was marrying. It was a simple service without even a flower on the altar. The service began on the stroke of midday. They were standing outside the church door half an hour later, a newly married couple.
    They travelled by horse and trap to Carlow town where therewas a meal waiting for them in Fitzgerald’s Hotel. Their meal was boiled pork with potatoes, green cabbage and turnips. Lucinda was very impressed as few people would have had such fare before them in those times.
    Thomas did most of the talking during the meal, telling the other three how difficult a policeman’s life had become during the previous few years. The tenants of smallholdings in the west of the county were getting agitated and threatening the landlords because their rent was rising every year. According to the tenants, with every improvement they made on their holdings the landlords would raise their rent a shilling or two every quarter. If a family was being evicted from their land, the farmers of the parish would gather outside that family’s house and chase off the bailiffs. It was the policemen’s lot then to evict the family. That gave