After her near drowning, Mary was coming up for air again. She watched her brother, fascinated. He hadn’t exactly lied—their father certainly liked to call his bets investments, and he had good days and his bad days all right. The fact that somehow Sean had implied that the old man was on Wall Street, without quite saying it, she could only admire, as she would the dexterity of a pianist. As for saying “We’re still here,” it was a masterstroke. Of course they were still here, or they wouldn’t be sitting at this table. But it could mean, and surely would be taken to mean, that the family fortune had never been lost, and only improved upon. Her brother hadn’t finished, though.

“But above all, like Jerome and Belmont and so many others, my father was a sporting man. Loved the races. Loved to bet.” He glanced across the table and looked Mary straight in the eye. “He had his own racehorse, his greatest pride and joy, called Brian Boru.”

It was all she could do not to choke. She looked down at the table. That terrible old fighting dog, kept in their stinking lodgings, had been transformed, as only a true Irishman can transform things, into a racehorse, swift and sleek.

“And when he died,” Sean continued, “the remains of that horse were buried with him.”

“Really?” Lord Rivers was most appreciative; English aristocrats liked sportsmen and eccentrics. “What a splendid fellow. I’d like to have met him.”

Sean still wasn’t done yet. “Not only that, but the family priest it was who buried them both.” And he sat back in his chair and gazed benevolently at them all.

“Magnificent,” cried His Lordship and his son together. Style, eccentricity, a high-born disregard for the respectable, and a churchman who knew better than to make a nuisance of himself: this Mr. O’Donnell was clearly a natural toff, a man after their own hearts.

“Did the priest really bury them both?” Lady Rivers asked Mary.

“I was there, and it’s true, the priest buried my father with Brian Boru.”

There wasn’t a word of a lie in it.

Later, after the Rivers family had left, Mary and Sean went into the drawing room together, and sat down to review the evening.

“I need a drink,” said Mary.

He fetched it. She nursed the brandy for a while.

“What are you thinking, Mary?” he asked.

“That you are the devil himself,” she answered.

“Not true.”

“Brian Boru.”

And then she laughed, and laughed. And laughed, until she cried.

Ellis Island

1901

SALVATORE CARUSO WAS five years old when he came to Ellis Island. It was New Year’s Day, 1901. The day was icy cold but clear, and over the snowy landscape all around the wide waters of the harbor, the sky was crystal blue.