“ ’E better ’adn’t.” Gracie stopped all pretense of attending to the shawl she had in her hands. “There’s terrible things ‘appenin’ ter all kinds o’ people, old women and children, not just men as can fight. Maybe them Fenians an’ the like is wrong, but they wouldn’t a bin there if’n it weren’t fer us bein’ in Ireland when we got no place there in the beginnin’.”
“There’s no point in going back to the beginning, Gracie,” Charlotte said levelly. “We probably shouldn’t be here either. Who should? The Normans, the Vikings, the Danes, the Romans? The Scots all came from Ireland in the first place.”
“No ma’am, the Scots is in Scotland,” Gracie corrected.
Charlotte shook her head. “I know they are now, but before that the Picts were. Then the Scots came across from Ireland and drove the Picts out.”
“Where’d they go to, then?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe they were almost all killed.”
“Well, if the Scots came from Ireland and took over Scotland”—Gracie was thinking hard—“who’s all in Ireland? Why don’t they get on wi’ each other, like we do?”
“Because some of the Scots went back again, and by this time they were Protestant and the rest were Catholic. They’d grown very different in the meantime.”
“Then they shouldn’t oughta gone back.”
“Possibly not, but it’s too late now. We can’t go forward from anywhere except where we are at the moment.”
Gracie thought about that for a long time before she conceded it as Charlotte was about to go out of the door.
Charlotte met Pitt at the bottom of the stairs and was caught by surprise at how pleased she was at the start of admiration in his eyes when he saw her. She felt a heat in her cheeks. He offered his arm, and she took it as she sailed into the withdrawing room.
Dinner was again uncomfortable, but eased in some part by the addition of Piers and Justine, which gave everyone something to talk about other than their own interests, or trivia, which were embarrassingly meaningless.
There were too few of them at the table to separate all those between whom there was friction. It was a hostess’s nightmare. There was order of precedence to consider. People might be insulted if one did not. If there was no title or office to dictate, then there was age. And yet one could not sit Fergal either next to or opposite Lorcan McGinley, nor could one sit him close to Iona, for reasons which were excruciatingly clear to some and quite unknown to others. Similarly, one could not sit Kezia near to her brother. The rage still simmered in her only just below the heat of explosion.
Carson O’Day was the savior of the situation. He seemed both able and willing to conduct agreeable conversations with everyone, finding subjects to discuss from areas as diverse and innocuous as designs of Georgian silver and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Padraig Doyle told amusing anecdotes about an Irish tinker and a parish priest and made everyone laugh, except Kezia, a failure which he ignored.
Piers and Justine had real attention only for each other.
Eudora looked a trifle sad, as if she had just realized the loss of something she had thought she possessed, and Ainsley appeared bored. Every now and then Charlotte observed an expression of anxiety in his eyes, a difficulty swallowing, a moment to steady his hand. He would miss something someone had said to him, as if his mind were elsewhere, and have to ask to have it repeated. It must be an appalling responsibility to be in charge of such a conference as this. The burden of succeeding at the impossible had broken both greater and lesser men than he.
And if he was also afraid, he had good reason. There was still the threat of violence which perhaps only he and Pitt really understood.
No one had mentioned the Parnell-O’Shea divorce. If there had been anything of it in the newspapers, it was not referred to.
They were rather more than halfway through the removes—a shoulder of lamb, stuffed beef in pastry, or cold pickled eel with cucumber and onions—when the quarrel began. It was Kezia who started it. All evening she had been barely suppressing her anger. She spoke civilly enough to everyone else, and she ignored Iona as if she had not been there. Her rage was for her brother.
He made a rather sweeping statement about Protestant ethics.
“There is much of it that is personal,” he said, leaning forward a little across the table, speaking to Justine. “It has to do with individual responsibility, direct communication between man and God, rather than always through the intermediary of a priest, who, after all, is only mortal, and fallible like all human beings.”
“Some more fallible than others,” Kezia said bitterly.
Fergal colored very slightly and ignored her.
“The Protestant preacher is merely the leader of his flock,” he went on, fixing his gaze on Justine. “Faith is of the utmost importance, simple and utter faith, but not in miracles and magic, in the redeeming power of Christ to save souls.”
“We believe in hard work, obedience and a chaste and honorable life,” Kezia said, staring at Justine as if no one else had spoken. “At least that’s what they say.” She swung around to Fergal. “Isn’t it, my dear brother? Chastity is next to godliness. No unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of heaven. We are not like people of the Church of Rome, who can sin from Monday to Saturday as long as they tell the priest all about it on Sunday, when he sits in his dark little room behind a grill, and listens to all your grubby little secrets, and tells you to say so many prayers, and it’s all washed away—until next time, when you’ll do the same thing all over again. I’ll wager he could say it for you, he’s heard it so many times—”
“Kezia …” Fergal interrupted.
She ignored him, fixing Justine with blazing eyes, high spots of color in her cheeks. Her hands, holding her knife and fork, were shaking.
“We are not like that at all. We don’t tell anyone our sins, except God … as if He didn’t already know! As if He didn’t know every dirty little secret of our dirty little hearts! As if He couldn’t smell the stink of a hypocrite a thousand miles away!”
There was a hot silence around the table. Padraig cleared his throat, but at the last moment could think of nothing to say.
Eudora gave a little moan.
“Really …” Ainsley began.
Justine smiled, looking straight back at Kezia. “It seems to me that the only thing that matters is whether you are sorry or not. Whom you tell is beside the point.” Her voice was very soft. “If you see that what you have done is ugly, and you no longer wish to do anything like it, then you have to change, and surely that is what matters?”
Kezia stared at her.
It was Fergal who spoiled it. There was a flush of embarrassment on his fair cheeks, but also of self-defense.
“The idea that you are accountable to someone other than God, that any human being is in a position to judge you, to forgive or condemn—”
Kezia swung around in her seat. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She laughed harshly, her voice rising out of control. “Nobody is fit to judge you. For God’s sake, who do you think you are? We judge you! I judge you, and I find you guilty, you hypocrite!”
“Kezia, go to your room until you have calmed down,” he said between his teeth. “You are hysterical. It is …”
His words were lost as she flung back her chair, picked up her half-empty glass and threw the dregs in his face. Then she rose to her feet and ran from the room, almost bumping into a maid, coming in with fresh gravy, who moved out of the way only just in time.
The silence burned with embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” Fergal said unhappily. “She is … very … nervously disposed at the moment. I’m sure she will be profoundly sorry tomorrow. I apologize for her, Mrs. Radley … ladies ….”