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Madam!’
    ‘Goodness, what manners!’ said Nancy.
    To Gerald’s surprise, she linked an arm through each of theirs and asked, ‘Well, what are we going to do? I have to be back in an hour so I can’t stand around here dawdling.’
    Gerald glanced over at Jacques, fully expecting to be dismissed, but it seemed that his friend had undergone a slight transformation. His dark eyes sparkled in a way that Gerald had never seen before, while his expression, so bright and full, was free of its usual sulkiness. In fact, Jacques looked years younger and gazed at Nancy as if she were the sun making an unexpected appearance on a drab winter’s day.
    ‘But what would you like to do, Mademoiselle?’
    Nancy scrunched up her face, and Gerald thought he might venture an idea: ‘I would be grateful if you would direct me to the bookseller?’
    She squeezed his arm and proceeded to walk the two friends forward. ‘Of course. This way, mind how you go. There’s cow dung everywhere.’
    Unfortunately Gerald was so busy feeling shy that he skidded on a stinking pile, ending up with it clinging to his feet. The other two teased while watching him do his best to scrape the mess off against a nearby rock.
    The bookseller’s shop was a large, dark, misshapen roomthat held an impressive amount of books and scrolls. A couple of dusty windows let in little light so the owner had provided two dusty oil lamps. Altogether, there was just enough light to see the names of the books that sat either pressed together on wooden shelves or piled in tottering towers that Gerald warily tip-toed by, not wanting to be the clumsy clod that knocked one over.
    In the centre, on a table, a large book of maps lay open, inviting customers to have a look. Jacques turned the pages carefully, to find a detailed map of France, showing Nancy the town where he came from, and so on. Gerald peered over his shoulders to admire the intricate gilded lines of a country laid bare for all to see. He and Jacques had already decided that when all this trouble was over he would accompany his friend back to France.
    There were no booksellers where Gerald came from, in Offaly, while there had been one or two in Dublin, but that city, with its universities and students, intimidated Gerald so much that he had found himself quite unable to walk into them.
    It turned out that Nancy knew the bookseller; he was a friend of her father’s, and she proudly introduced her friends to him.
    Mr Patrick Mahon was, as one might have expected, completely absorbed in a book as the trio made theirentrance. With his bushy grey hair and tiny spectacles that barely stretched across his face, his slightly bulky figure and smooth hands that had never farmed nor built a wall, the bookseller reminded Gerald of his tutor Father Nicholas.
    ‘Ah, welcome my boys. Soldiers, I see.’
    Gerald smiled. Since he and Jacques were in uniform one would have had to have been blind not to know that they were soldiers. Naturally they had received a lot of attention on the streets outside, mostly positive – depending who was looking at them. The children gawked and pointed, some even calling out to them: ‘Can we come with you when you go fighting? We could hold the flags and polish the guns. Go on, let us! Can we watch you kill the Williamites? Can we?’
    By way of reply, they received nothing more than a dark scowl from Jacques, while Gerald ignored them completely.
    Of course the people of Drogheda knew there was a battle coming. There were soldiers everywhere, though Gerald and Jacques remarked that there wasn’t much to the new recruits – hardly any of them owned a musket, while none they had spoken to had had any previous battle experience.
    Furthermore, some of their uniforms were decidedly shabby and ill-fitting. A young corporal from Dublin, whose too-small jacket barely allowed him to put his twoarms down by his side, explained to Jacques, ‘They told me this was all they had and that there was no