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James huffs. “Gods help the poor soul who eventually claims ye for good, then.”
“And yet you never seem to want me far from your backside,” Alex shoots back. “Makes one wonder about your judgment.”
Despite myself, I feel the corner of my mouth threaten to turn. I glance between them—James pale but standing straight, Alex hiding concern beneath his usual irreverence. The weight of it settles in me, quiet and inescapable.
A cold, clear resolve takes hold inside me. We’ve sacrificed more than our place at Trinity today. The futures our families imagined for us are gone now, along with reputations that will never fully recover. I won’t allow that sacrifice to be for nothing.
ENTRY ONE
THE JOURNAL OF A YOUNG DREAMER
Dublin, Ireland, 5 April 1798
Men—friends—countrymen, I shall weather this storm with you.
I promise it to myself, and I set these words down with the certainty of ink upon a page. What we have yielded today, what the Earl of Clare’s summons has cost us, shall not be squandered. They would have me believe that a summons and a threat can make a man small. What they take in fear, we shall answer in resolve.
I speak not only for myself.
I speak for my brother, Thomas, and for every man and woman in this country to whom they say that hunger is the lawful price for another’s comfort. For the tenants bent double on land they will never own, for the weavers shivering in cottages beside idle looms, for the children who grow up knowing more about fear than they do about justice.
I would have an Ireland where a man is not measured by the name he speaks to the Gods, nor the surname he bears like a brand. Where no priest is hunted for his collar, nor a dissenter for his conscience. Where law is not a cudgel struck down from Dublin Castle, but a voice that belongs to us.
An Ireland where we may speak our tongue without lowering it to a whisper, and celebrate our songs, our stories, and our saints without being named malcontents. Where our heritage is carried proudly, not beaten out of us as though it were a stain to be scrubbed from the skin.
A country where we, as Irish peoples, can walk a road without the yeomanry’s gaze on our backs. Where no one person is driven to dream of leaving for France or America simply to feel safe.
They say men like me are dreamers.
But there is nothing dreamy in an empty belly. Nothing fanciful in a mother counting potatoes as though they were coin. Nothing romantic in a nation taught to whisper its hopes in corners because freedom seems impossible in its own home.
I have seen the cost of their order. I have watched peace built upon hunger and silence. I have watched them call it necessary, and I can no longer tolerate it.
If there is to be blood, let it be for an Ireland that shall not beg for the right to exist.
I know not how long this road shall be, nor what it shall demand of me, only that this oath has taken hold of me. It binds my life to this Emerald Isle, and it will forge me into the man I need to become to keep it.
And if I am to be remembered at all, let it not be by the malice of our enemies. Let it be, one day, when Ireland takes her place amongst the nations of the earth.
—Endure, and prevail.
R.
CHAPTER TWO
ROBERT
Sunday, 15 April 1798
Dublin, Ireland
Visitation of the Chancellor
We’ve been living on edge and on borrowed time.
For days now, James and Alex have been crammed into my family’s house with me—an extra mattress shoved into the small back room I used to share with Thomas. Privacy has become a courtesy rather than an expectation.
My mother keeps the house running by force of will alone, tending to meals, linens, and small mercies, while watching me as if I might vanish if she looks away. Worry stretches her patience thin by the day. My father doesn’t speak to me, which is worse.
