Hugh and Minna were siblings. They shared the same mother. Hugh was the elder by just over a year. He was named after his father, Hugh Byrne, a drunken lout whose behaviour eventually led to his wife killing him.
Hugh Byrne’s wife, Sarah, was a beautiful woman. Tall and straight and dignified, with long hair, black as night, framing a high cheek-boned face and bright piercing eyes. The sole detraction from this face was its nose, which was a little too narrow, and twisted slightly to one side. It was a face that life could turn shrewish and peevish, or powerful and commanding. In Sarah’s case it would be the latter. She contained a deep silence, like a great motionless lake that would drown anyone who disturbed it, and life’s petty features left her unmoved.
She was married at twenty to
