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could by whatever means possible. Poverty tore away what decency had been beaten into her as a child. An illiterate but pretty eighteen-year-old, she soon learned that a smile and a willingness brought in more money than selling flowers on Sackville Street or at the gates of Phoenix Park. Local women set up brothels and enticed country girls like Sheenagh with a room and a meal; and Mrs Sullivan’s establishment, down here in the Monto district, Gloucester Road, was a favourite for those officers stationed in the various barracks around Dublin. For three years she had plied her trade under Mrs Sullivan’s roof and learned enough to make better use of what she saw and heard.
    Whores were as invisible as servants to most of these young smart officer fellows, and they assumed idle chat about who was doing what and where meant nothing to the girl they fondled while the music played and the sour whiskey loosened tongues into indiscretions. But information was worth something to the foolhardy and desperate men caught up in their own subversive plans for some kind of utopia. Let them have the gossip, let them be the fools they were; sooner or later enough of them would find that utopia lay at the end of a rope.
    Yet Sheenagh knew that she had strayed into dangerous territory and if anyone blabbed then she’d be the one facing the hangman’s noose or a Fenian’s knife. A man had paid her – a man who had been more than generous in the past – and whispered what it was he needed her to say to the ‘dynamiters and boys with the guns’. She’d gambled that those desperate men would never be caught when they attacked the garrison. More fool her. Sooner or later one side or the other would trace the information back to a common whore. Time to make a run for it, she had told herself after a cold night of regret counting her money, shoving as many clothes and shoes as she could into a carpet bag. The Royal Irish were shipping out, and so would she.
    ‘Sheenagh!’ one of the girls called down the stairs after her. ‘Where the devil d’ya think ya goin’? Get yourself back up here before Mrs Sullivan finds out. She’ll set her lads on ya.’
    Sheenagh turned to her friend. ‘No money to be made here, Kath. The soldiers is where it’s at and they’re all going far from home.’
    The girl looked nervously over her shoulder: the music and singing would only muffle their voices for a while longer. ‘You’re not goin’ to bloody Africa? Sheenagh, they’re feckin’ heathens out there.’
    But her friend was through the back door and gone.
    ‘Sheenagh!’
    The music stopped; the applause and cheers rose up the staircase. Kathleen O’Riordan had a night’s work ahead of her, but in the instant of seeing her friend escape she wondered where she’d got the kind of money needed for a steamer ticket.

C HAPTER F IVE
    In the officers’ quarters of the Royal Barracks the cavalry men’s rooms were spartan but comfortable enough. The wooden floors and panelled walls barely reflected the light from the oil lamp on the small table by the window that overlooked the parade ground. Beside the single cot where Claude Belmont’s mess dress of the 21st Dragoons was laid out, a pair of polished riding boots stood next to the wall hook from which a cavalry sabre hung in its scabbard. Upside down on the floor lay a gleaming saddle, its leather buffed to a rich sheen. Behind it, standing rigidly to attention, was an orderly, thumbs pressed down the seams of his trousers, chin slightly raised, ensuring his eyes did not fall on Belmont’s face. Belmont, half-dressed, braces over undershirt, sipped brandy from a silver hip flask. Moments earlier he had thrown the saddle to the floor. He looked at the orderly. Sweat stains marked his armpits; his hair spiked at the crown of his head from an army barber’s shears. There was no doubt in Belmont’s mind that the rank and file, with their lack of ambition or desire to improve their lot in life,