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  Conor was given the job. He climbed onto the old plow horse bareback and galloped from the Upper Village in the early mists. Its hoofs thundered in the day on the cobblestones of the diamond. He pulled up before the house of lan Cruikshank, hitched the nag, approached the door, sucked in a deep breath, then boomed the knocker. The doctor's wife opened the door.

  "It's my ma. She's having trouble delivering and Mairead O'Neill sent me to fetch the doctor."

  "Who is it?" lan Cruikshank called from the top of the landing.

  "One of the Catholic children from the Upper Village. What's your name, son?"

  "Conor Larkin and my daddy is Tomas and my ma is Finola."

  "Aye," the doctor called down. "Go to the stable, Conor, and saddle up the black mare."

  *

  "Oh, God bless you, Doctor," Mairead said, whisking him directly to the bedroom. Liam and Brigid crept back to the cottage terrified by the presence of the doctor.

  "Is Ma going to be all right?" Brigid whined.

  "She'll be grand. We've had these little problems before, nothing of a serious nature," Tomas comforted. "Now get you back to the O'Neills' kitchen and fix us up some scroggins."

  Bad news in Ballyutogue had neither to be seen nor smelled nor heard. It drifted in, felt on the winds, and as the sense of it grew, neighbors gathered about the Larkin cottage apprehensively. Some of the women attempted to make Tomas feel better by relating their own harrowing experiences at giving birth.

  The shrieking from the bedroom intensified. Tomas cleared the cottage, save for himself and Fergus, and while Fergus prayed he thickened himself into fogginess.

  For three years after their marriage Finola had been barren. Although it was difficult to provide for them, children continued to be the measure of a farmer's wealth and no greater disgrace could befall a woman than that of the sterile curse.

  Finola spent every waking moment in prayer begging the favor of pregnancy. She consulted the village pishogue, the wise woman, who prescribed the peeling of ash rods, breaking potatoes at the fireplace, the correct passing of salt and all the other rituals not only to bear children but to keep the fairies from exchanging bets for a fairy child.

  At the end of the second year Finola traveled to four different holy wells and on another occasion slept for two nights in a mountain cave said to have been the bed of Brigid, and swore to name her first girl after the blessed saint.

  The first child was stillborn.

  In the third year of the marriage she made the awesome pilgrimage to Crough Patrick, walking a hundred and fifty miles to the sacred mountain in County Mayo. There she joined tens of thousands of the devout in an all-night climb to the summit where Patrick had cast the snakes out of Ireland.

  The trek up was made barefooted in the company of peasants and nuns and beggars and priests seeking favor or relief from daily suffering as they reasserted the depth of their faith. Stumbling along the route and dropping for prayer at the stations, she arrived with the dawn with bleeding feet and repeating in a fanatical frenzied stupor her desperate petition for children.

  Finola Larkin was rewarded by a miracle, the healthy birth of Conor. Brigid and Liam were to follow later only after enormous difficulty between miscarriages and yet another stillbirth.

  It was frighteningly far into the day when a haggard lan Cruikshank emerged from the bedroom. "You've a son," he said.

  Tomas listened intensely but heard nothing. A sensation of fright invaded him. "Why doesn't he cry?" Tomas whispered.

  "He's very small and very tired."

  "My wife?"

  "She's very tired too. I should like to speak with you, man."

  "Aye, come have a color of tea. You must be done in with hunger."

  "The tea will be fine and perhaps a spot of whiskey."

  "Aye, aye, come along."

  Fergus already had the pot going. He plumped up the fire and disappeared. After a wash-up, Dr. Cruikshank took a creepie opposite Tomas at the fire and stirred his cup wearily. "The lad has problems," he said.

  "What's wrong, Doctor?" Tomas thumped hoarsely.

  "He came early, as you know, with lots of difficulties. He's fluid in his lungs. Mairead O'Neill is fixing some warm stones to lay under him. You are to keep everyone away, even the children."

  "What are his chances?"

  "Fair. Perhaps you might want to send for the priest to say last rites, just in case."

  Tomas' face tightened. "The bastards always get into your bedroom one way or the other," he said. "They're there on your wedding night after having played games with the poor woman's head, using every trick possible to choke them on fear and guilt. They use everything but reason. Even on the deathbed it's fear over love. Fear goes right into a woman's womb so ridiculously you have to wash away the sins of a day-old child."

  "Don't you think you ought to put your own feelings aside, man? That woman in there's been through a terrible ordeal. What would it do to your marriage if you denied this?"

  Tomas stood and shoved his hands into his pockets and stared glumly to the throng of black-kerchiefed women outside.

  "What are you going to do?" Dr. Cruikshank pressed.

  "Get the bloody priest! It always comes back to it, there's no escaping." He trudged to the door and flung it open. "Conor!"

  His son was close at hand. Tomas closed him inside. "Slip out through the byre and say nothing to no one. Get Father Lynch."

  "Ma?" Conor quivered.

  "The baby."

  Tomas put a new brick of turf on the fire which needed none at all and mumbled about sending a dressed lamb down to the doctor as payment.

  "I want to ask you some questions about your wife's health," lan Cruikshank said.

  "Has she had difficulties before?"

  "Aye, all the births came hard. She's lost four by miscarriage and two to stillbirth."

  "Has she ever consulted a doctor about this?"

  "A doctor? There was no doctor between here and Derry before you came. The only thing we have an ample supply of is priests and the only advice she ever got was to pray."

  "I'm afraid her problems can't be remedied by prayer."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Does she have unusual swelling during pregnancy? I mean to say, enlargement around the ankles and a puffing up about the eyes?"

  Tomas nodded.

  lan Cruikshank grunted and leaned up near the fire, looking to and from Tomas a number of times. "We had a serious problem in there today, Tomas. I think we'd better talk about it." He held out his whiskey glass for a refill, popped it down and sighed uneasily. "As you know, I come up to the Upper Village on numerous occasions. There was a particular delivery a time back that became a case of either losing the child or losing the mother. The woman demanded hysterically that I send for Father Lynch. Tomas, the priest forced me to save the child and let the wife go on religious grounds. She was the mother of five. I had no choice with him hovering nearby. Do you know who I'm talking about?"

  "Meara O'Malley?"

  "Meara O'Malley," the doctor repeated.

  "Oh, Jaysus, I didn't know . . . poor soul."

  "We had the same situation in there today. Your wife doesn't know about it. When I realized what was happening I put her under for a few moments. I told Mairead O'Neill that it was Finola or the child. Actually, she had already guessed it. Mairead agreed with me that we were going to save your wife and she's sworn to carry the secret to her grave." Tomas buried his face in his hands as the doctor tried to console him. "She's to have no more children," he said at last, "it will kill her."

  *

  Tomas Larkin's immense hand gently drew back the swaddling clothes about the newborn. He seemed no bigger than a titmouse, all purple and gasping for life.

  "Ah, look at the lad, wee Dary Larkin," he said, "another spade for the bog."

  A crazy look spread over his wife's face, eyes rimmed in red and skin chalky and hair disheveled. "Never," she rasped.

  Tomas took he
r hand and kissed it. "Finola love, the wee one is in danger but I know for sure we'll pull him through. As sure as I'm sitting beside you, the lad will live to grow a beard. Only now there's a bit of a problem, and under the circumstances it would do no harm to see that he has last rites."

  She wailed pathetically, refusing to take comfort from her husband.

  "He will be all right," Tomas repeated to deaf ears until he gave up.

  Her weeping stopped. "We're paying for the sins you've brought on this house," she said. "There is a curse on us because of the blasphemies against the Church. God is punishing us!"

  Tomas dropped his head on the bedside, the door groaned open. He looked up. Father Lynch assumed his best grim posture for the moment of death and made his way in. The gravity of the situation forced him to conceal the inner flush of victory that God had scored over Tomas Larkin.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was poor little that could be done with the grotty gray stone exterior of Hubble Manor but renovation of the interior was launched with typical Weed fervor. After a two-month inventory, expendables were hauled out to the delight of recipient museums, workhouses and churches. The south wing, which contained most of the servicing facilities, was assaulted with no less fury than that with which the army of James II had attacked during the Williamite war. It was reduced to a shell with rotted timbers and plasters carted off in a trainload.

  After an initial grunt of dismay, Lord Roger settled back and enjoyed it as he enjoyed everything about his wife. Caroline displayed all the organizational skills and drive of her martinet father and this was enhanced by exquisite taste. Even the cost of it was softened by an increasing number of mergers with Sir Frederick, who demonstrated tangible gratitude for his daughter's happiness.

  She skimmed off three of the best architects from the firm that had built Rathweed Hall and put them under indefinite contract over a staff of talented underlings. A new master plan was overlaid on the south wing. In poured a legion of workmen, craftsmen, artisans, artists, and purchasing agents to scour London and the Continent for furnishings, materials, artifacts and art.

  The south wing was anchored by a new kitchen of monstrous proportions designed by Sir Frederick's top naval architect, a prototype of the finest afloat on the Weed ocean liners.

  Satelliting the kitchen, the south wing was pieced back together with modern stables, coach house, tack house, mews, hothouse, potting shed, wood store, coal store, poultry room, silver safe, pastry room, bake room, scullery, four pantries and larders, two refrigerated rooms, wild game room, smoke house, gun room, still room housekeeper's office, knife room, shoe room, brushing room, china room, butler's pantry, under-butler's pantry, luggage room, dairy, linen room, wine cellar, liquor room, fish room, and a mammoth boiler and mechanical room also of marine construction.

  A maintenance section was constructed containing a woodwork shop, upholsterer's shop, draper's shop, carriage shop, blacksmith forge, marble worker's shop, art studios and a sewing room employing a dozen seamstresses. The balance of the south wing contained twenty suites and rooms of living quarters for such higher-ranking servants as the chief chef, head coachman and maintenance overseer. Most of the other live-ins were scattered about the Manor in the proximity of the master quarters. Balance of the hundred and fifty staff, gardeners, gamekeepers, grounds keepers stable hands and domestics were either cottaged away from the manor house or lived in Ballyutogue.

  With work on the south wing in full swing, Caroline retained Victor Lessaux, student, associate and disciple of Viollet-le-Duc, the world's foremost master of castle restorations. Lessaux was charged with returning the Long Hall to its ancient glory and he in turn imported the necessary stone masons wood carvers and stained glass artisans. The partially destroyed wrought-iron screen covering the vestibule was proving to be the most difficult restoration. Lessaux convinced Lady Caroline that it should wait until last, when the rest of the hall was done. She reluctantly agreed, for she knew the screen was an enigma to the French master and decided to give him all the time possible to solve its mystery.

  The junior architects and decorators drew up plans for suite-by-suite remodeling of the major living quarters in the north wing, plus some thirty rooms in the central wing, which consisted of the main parlors and drawing rooms, morning room, winter garden, music room, game rooms and formal dining hall. The library alone remained the single area left intact.

  All of the newest in building materials were tested. Central heating, unheard of in that part of Ulster, was installed in master's areas complete with hot water boilers. In an imaginative and daring stroke that set even Sir Frederick gasping in disbelief, Caroline ordered lighting by electricity, the first in all of Ireland, generated on the grounds.

  Housekeeping had become ordinary without a regular lady of the Manor during Lord Arthur's self-imposed exile at Daars. Cooking had never been anything but ordinary. The entire staff was retrained by experts brought over from London for the chore and a premier French chef and two assistants were contracted for from Paris.

  As Caroline plunged into Londonderry's anemic cultural life, she pressed Lessaux to speed up work on the Long Hall. In Londonderry she guaranteed the lease on a dormant theater, refurbished it and booked in a number of concerts, plays, lectures and even music hall variety shows. Every troupe and virtuoso who came to Dublin and Belfast now traveled to Londonderry. Often as not a private performance was also given in the Long Hall.

  Late one evening Caroline showed Roger the first set of completed drawings for a nursery in the north wing, her way of announcing her pregnancy. After the initial bouts with morning sickness she blossomed as though she were on a sacred mission of carrying a messiah in her belly. Considering her free-spirited past, few would have thought the idea of her mothering an heir would bring such a high sense of fulfillment. She reveled in the role. She didn't say so much to Roger but for the first time she was on a parity with her father . . . his equal . . . doing something inside her body that Sir Frederick could not accomplish.

  Roger accepted the pregnancy without much ado. It was something that was bound to come along in due course. Sir Frederick proved the bell ringer, the exalted one. First flashes of joy were taken over by periodic panicking over his daughter's health. His concern brought him to Hubble Manor on fortnightly visits, thinly disguised as business. He fooled no one.

  His concern deepened as she kept working at full speed into her sixth month. His latest visit found Caroline's boudoir converted into an office filled with floor plans, rotating foremen, samples of materials, cost sheets, payrolls and screaming French chefs. She wore thick practical eyeglasses as she pored over her paperwork, barely acknowledging her father's non-stop grousing. Sir Frederick, scarcely one to conceal an annoyance, became so blatantly obvious she was given no choice but to clear the air.

  "Come on, Freddie, out with it," she said, noting he stormed in from Belfast on the brink of a roar.

  He reached for a cigar, remembered her condition and replaced it in his jacket. She reached across the desk, took it from his pocket, unpeeled it, bit off the end, lit it and handed it back to him.

  "You shouldn't do that, Caroline," he chided, snuffing it out immediately.

  "Why not?"

  "It's not good for the baby."

  "Oh, Freddie, poppycock."

  He grumbled, fishing about and jacking up his courage. "As a matter of fact," he began, "I had a chat with Dr. Chadwick a time back. Just happened to run into him at the Patrician Club, mind you. Obviously he asked for you and this led to . . . well, your condition. He quite agrees that all this activity of yours could prove quite harmful."

  Roger caught the tail end of it as he entered the boudoir, bent over and kissed his wife's cheek. On the surface it seemed that Sir Frederick had little support for his argument, for Caroline had never looked so radiant.

  "In another few weeks you'll be in your seventh month. You just can't go about climbing thirty-foot ladders and crawling through thos
e awful tunnel ways on your hands and knees where they're laying . . . pipes!" He turned to Roger for support. "Can she, Roger?"

  "It seems that Caroline can't get her fill of sweaty workmen," he answered. Roger would have liked to add that pregnancy had blown the lid off his wife's wellhead of erotica and he might do well to keep her in that state permanently.

  Weed caught their exchanges of endeared glances and gestures. "You are disgusting, the both of you." He rubbed his hands together and, in an old Weed trick, framed a question in such a manner that there could be only one answer, a foregone conclusion. "At any rate, you'll be off to a good private clinic in London shortly. Matter of fact, I had old Chadwick look into a few and . . ."

  "Freddie," Caroline interrupted.

  "Well, of course you are doing the final lap in London."

  "The baby is going to be born right here in Hubble Manor," she said with soft finality.

  "But . . . but . . . but . . . have you both gone mad! Roger, surely you're not going to let her push you around like this."

  "Seems I've had as much success in telling Caroline what to do as you have. Besides, I rather like the idea. Ten generations of earls and viscounts have sired some fifty children, and this will be the first one to be born on Irish soil."

  "I can't buy this sentimental horse shit. Caroline is nearly thirty and she's not some Catholic brood mare."

  "The doctor says I'm sound as the pound sterling."

  "Doctor, what doctor? That's another matter I wished to discuss. What possible doctor do you have out here?" he said with voice rising to falsetto.

  "lan Cruikshank, quite a capable chap," Roger answered.

  "Cruikshank, Cruikshank, Cruikshank?"

  "He's loads of experience, Freddie," Caroline said, "delivered most of the babies on this entire side of Inishowen."

  "Well, I've never heard of this Cruikshank chap. Have you inquired into his schooling, his military service, his clubs? Where does this Cruikshank fellow practice?"