“And elsewhere?”

“In Belfast of course. And Dublin, in the Castle, Cork in the south and more here and here.”

Lee joined him before the map. “Roads — and trains?”

“Almost everything runs out of Dublin. North to Belfast. Then the other trains go south from Dublin along the coast to Cork. Going west from Dublin across the Shannon to Galway and Kerry. Ah, and it’s a lovely coast there, the flowering bogs, the blue rivers.”

Lee looked more closely at the map, then ran his finger along a line of track. “You didn’t mention this line,” he said. “This track doesn’t connect with Dublin.”

“Indeed not, that’s the local line connecting Limerick with Cork. The same as this one in the north between Derry, Coleraine and Belfast.”

Meagher smiled, his eyes half-closed, seeing not the map but the country he had been cruelly exiled from.

Would the dream of freedom, dreamt by the Irish for centuries — would it finally be coming true?

Brigadier Somerville trotted his horse down the center of the road. The beast was lathered with sweat even though he had walked him most of the way, with only an occasional trot where the surface was flat and firm. It was the damnable and eternal heat. He passed a company of Sepoy troops digging an irrigation ditch beside the road. Men more suited to this climate than we would ever be. There was a group of officers up ahead grouped around a trestle table. They turned as he approached and he recognized their commanding officer.

“Everything going to plan, Wolseley?” he asked as he dismounted. He returned the officer’s salute.

“Doing very well since you left, General.”

Colonel Garnet Wolseley, Royal Engineers, was in command of the building of the road. He pointed to the raw earth of the cutting and at the smooth surface of the road below. “Been grading up to a mile a day since we got some men back from the defenses. Took longer than expected to revet the guns. The defenses are as good now as they ever will be. Then, of course, it takes far fewer troops to man them than it did to build them. With the road in good shape we can quickly move troops to defend points under attack.”

“Heartening news indeed.”

“I sincerely hope that I am not presumptuous in asking how the bigger plan is proceeding? With my nose buried in the mud here I know little of the world outside.”

“Then be cheered that everything proceeds just as planned. The transports are being assembled now in ports right around the coast of the British Isles. Even as the last troops depart from India. The Intrepid, sister ship of Valiant, is off the ways and being outfitted for battle. When all is ready we strike…”

He stopped and cocked his head at the distant rumble of gunfire. “An attack?” he asked. Wolseley shook his head.

“I doubt if it is a major one. From the sound of it, it is one of their probing efforts. They are seeing how well we are defending a particular section of the line.”

Bugles were sounding and a regiment of Gurkhas was assembled. They trotted briskly off towards the sound of the guns. Somerville spurred his horse in their wake. The firing grew steadily louder until the thunder of the guns was joined by the sound of shells screaming above their heads. He drew up by a company of red-coated soldiers standing at ease. One of them was ordered to hold his horse as he dismounted. The captain in command saluted him.

“Just cannon so far, sir. We are returning their fire. It’s not the first time that this has happened. But if they do commit troops we are right here in support. Their general is a stubborn man. He tries to wear us down with his constant battering. Then, if he feels that there is a possible opportunity, he probes forward with his troops.”

“You have a bulldog of an opponent out there. The American papers are full of it. Ulysses S. Grant, the man who never fails.”

“Well he is going to fail here if this is the best he can come up with.”

“I sincerely hope that you are correct, Captain. I think that I would like to see for myself how the attacks are faring.”

The captain led the way up the steep path towards the summit of the defenses. Cannon roared close by on both sides.

“Best not to go too far,” the captain said. “Their sharpshooters are most deadly. But you can see clearly from the embrasure.”

A gun fired from a pit nearby. Sweating gunners, naked to the waist, heaved it back so they could reload.

“Hold your fire,” Somerville ordered as he stepped past the gun to peer through the opening in the wall of logs through which they were firing. There was little enough to see down the glacis. Just a band of matted, dead vegetation — and then the jungle. A cannon fired from concealment, though the cloud of smoke betrayed its position. The ball hit the angled soil outer wall and screamed away overhead.

Somerville smiled. Everything was going exactly to plan.

Before the beginning of the Civil War, Allister Paisley had been close to starvation far too often. He had stepped off the immigrant ship from England in 1855, less than ten years earlier, feeling an immense relief when he first trod on American soil. Not that he really liked his new home — in fact he rather detested it. Certainly he would never have voluntarily crossed the ocean to settle in this crude and grubby land. It was the bailiffs who were just a few steps behind him that had prompted his unplanned emigration from Britain’s shore. Something of the very same kind had happened some years earlier in Scotland, which he had left hurriedly for much the same reasons he had fled England. What the offenses were remained known only to himself, the authorities, and the police. He had no friends to confide in — nor did he want any. He was a bitter and lonely man, a petty swindler and thief, who could not succeed for any length of time even in those unlovely arts.

His first bit of luck in America came when they were disembarking from the ship. He had climbed up from steerage into the cold light of day and, for the first time, had found himself almost separated from his equally penurious and foul-smelling fellow passengers. In the confusion on deck he had managed to mingle with the better-dressed passengers, even getting close enough to one of them to lift his pocket watch. The cry of thief sounded behind him — but by then he was safely ashore. By instinct he found his way to the slums of lower Manhattan, and to the pawnshop there. The uncle had cheated him in the exchange, yet he still had enough of the grubby banknotes and strange-looking coins to drink himself to extinction: at this time drinking being his single pleasure and vice.

Again a benevolent providence had smiled upon him. Before he was too drunk to render himself unconscious, he became aware that the man seated near him in the bar had stepped out of the back door to relieve himself. Paisley had dim memories that the stranger had pushed something under the bench when he had sat down. He shuffled sideways on the seat and felt down under it. Yes, a case of some kind. At that moment no one appeared to be looking in his direction. He seized the case by the handle, rose and slipped out the front door without being detected. When he had turned enough corners, and put some distance between himself and the drinking establishment, he paused on a rubbish-strewn bit of wasteland and opened the case.

Fortune had indeed smiled upon him. This was the sample case of a traveler in patent medicines. The principal medicine was Fletcher’s Castoria, a universal cure for childhood diseases and other ailments. The proud motto displayed on every label read “Children cry for it.” As well they might, since it was principally alcohol laced with a heady amount of opium. Paisley became an instant addict — but he did have the sense not to drink all of it, since this sample case was to be the key to a new life.