Flight of the Eagle by Peter Watt Read Free Book Online

confines of the old library. He glanced from one to the other and could see they were men of equal standing: the squire of the Duffy village proud and straight; the young Australian erect and arrogant. But the mention of Patrick's military campaigns softened the animosity in the old man.
    George Fitzgerald gestured to the old, well-worn leather chairs of his study. ‘My only son was killed while serving as a captain during the Kaffir wars at Isandhlwana, Captain Duffy,’ Fitzgerald said sadly.
    He continued to stand with his back to the fire and made no further comment on the matter of his son's death. Patrick knew that some memories did not welcome elaboration and cast a cursory glance around the study.
    It was a sombre place crammed with leatherbound books. In the dim surroundings with only a shaft of light illuminating a square of faded carpet at the centre of the room, it was hard to discern the subject matter of the volumes that lined the glass-covered shelves that reached to the ceiling. In the nooks of the library were stuffed birds: owls, pheasants, and an eagle with its wings raised, beak agape as if preparing to defend itself. On a wall was a sepia photo of a handsome young man in the dress uniform of a British infantry regiment, smiling enigmatically at all who entered the room. Patrick presumed it was a daguerreotype of the old man's son as the similarity between the two men was plain to see. ‘I am sorry to hear of your loss, Mister Fitzgerald,’ Patrick replied with genuine sympathy. ‘I wish I had met your son.’
    George Fitzgerald nodded stiffly and Eamon could see that some of the icy animosity towards the grandson of the man he had sworn so long ago to kill was slowly thawing. Old Fitzgerald was appraising his distant relative in a fresh light almost akin to respect. ‘Is whisky and soda your preferred drink, Captain Duffy?’ the old man asked as he made his way across the room to an open roll-top desk crowded with sheaths of loose papers. ‘I know it is Father O'Brien's.’
    ‘Whisky straight thank you, Mister Fitzgerald,’ Patrick replied.
    George Fitzgerald shuffled papers aside to find a newly opened bottle of fine Irish whisky and reached for the soda bottle on top of a bookshelf. He topped two crystal tumblers with the aerated soda water and passed one to his not altogether unexpected guests. News had spread fast from the village of the arrival of Patrick Duffy and George knew it was inevitable that they should meet.
    It was rather ironic that the young man who now sat in his library bore the same name as the man who he had vowed to kill for the taking of his younger sister almost a half century earlier. She, the beautiful young daughter of a proud line descended from the Anglo-Norman invaders of the English King Henry II of the twelfth century.
    Fitzgerald resumed his place before the hearth and raised his glass. ‘The Queen,’ he intoned. ‘God bless her.’
    Patrick responded to the toast. ‘The Queen.’
    He noticed that the priest raised his glass in the gesture of the toast but said nothing. ‘Eamon silently toasts the expulsion of the British Crown from Ireland,’ Fitzgerald said with a hint of mirth plucking at the corners of his mouth. ‘We have often discussed the idea of a Republican Ireland and on many points we agree.’
    Patrick was surprised at the old man's view and, as if reading his puzzled thoughts, Fitzgerald added, ‘I am an Irishman, Captain Duffy, with as much claim to this land as Father O'Brien. Possibly more of a claim as Father O'Brien has spent most of his life in England. But I suppose, had he not spent his time travelling and being educated in foreign lands, then we may have not been able to reason as we do as educated and rational men.’
    Patrick nodded politely. Somehow his exposure in his early years to a staunch Irish Catholic family had not prepared him for a Protestant Irishman declaring his Irishness.
    ‘Captain Duffy has expressed an interest in