He was twenty six when they put him on the ship. The son of a tailor from the town of Loughan, just outside Derry, with eyes gray as winter water and a nose broken by a club he had taken at seventeen in a fight over pamphlets and flags. He was not a hero, however much people later like to speak that way of the dead, the imprisoned, and the exiled. He was an educated, furious young man who had learned Latin from a priest, how to sew buttons from his father, and how to hate the empire from everywhere.

That summer of 1803 Ireland already smelled of defeat before it lowered its eyes enough to admit it. The attempts, the oaths, the whispers, the names passed from house to house in low voices, all of it had set people’s blood on fire for a little while, but the empire had heavier boots and more patience. In the pubs, the alleyways, the damp cold rooms, men and women spoke of freedom the way hungry people speak of bread. As something simple, earthly, necessary, and at the same time distant.