"You'd best stay out of this part of the city, sirra," one of the constables warned her captor. The crowd from whom Caitlyn had hoped for so much was drifting away. Taking on a single foolish Englishman was one thing; bringing the full wrath of the hated Orangemen down on the heads of kith and kin was something else again. Caitlyn could understand and even shared their reasoning. The English were butchers, and their wrath if their constables should come to harm would be terrible. Irishmen through- out the city would be made to pay, some most likely with their lives.

"I will in future. Thank you for your assistance." Her captor slid that deadly-looking rapier back into its deceptively fancy scabbard, nodded in a friendly fashion to the constables, and moved away, dragging Caitlyn behind him. With the constables looking after them suspiciously, she had no choice but to go with him without a fight. Nothing he could do to her would be worse than her fate if they took her up. Not even if he were the devil himself… Caitlyn shivered, remembering those strange light eyes. Where no one could see, she formed her fingers into the sign that warded off evil and immediately felt a little better.

In moments, the gentleman had pulled her around the corner onto the Bachelor's Walk, which ran alongside the River Liffey. The passersby here were very different from those in O'Connell Street. These well-dressed pedestrians were of the Protestant Ascendancy, the hated ruling class brought over from England and set firmly into place by the bloody butchery of Oliver Cromwell (curse the name) some hundred years before. To them, the Irish were heathen peasants of inferior culture and intellect, barely above the beasts in the fields. They were the enactors of the hated Penal Laws, which denied Irish Catholics virtually every human right. Under their rule, an Irishman in his own land was forbidden to own land, receive an education, vote, hold public office, practice his religion-and, worse yet, was forced to pay a yearly tithe to the Anglican Church. They were colonizers of a once-free land, butchers, oppressors. Any Irishman worth his salt hated each and every one from birth to death. Caitlyn was no exception.