For a moment, Margaret hesitated. While the groom had gone to the kitchen, it was normal enough in an old-fashioned house like this for a guest to sleep in the big hall. But upstairs in the one formal bedchamber, Margaret and her husband had a large and handsome canopied bed. It was the most valuable item in the house and Margaret was proud of it.
“Not at all,” she said. “You’ll come upstairs and sleep in the bed.”
It was a well-appointed chamber. Last year, William had received a fine tapestry hanging in lieu of payment for some work he had done, and this graced one of the walls. As Margaret put the candle on a table, the great oak bed gleamed softly and Joan Doyle remarked what a fine bed it was. As she always did, Margaret let down her hair and brushed it, while the Dublin woman sat on the bed and watched her. “You’ve wonderful hair,” she said. As Margaret got into one side of the bed, Joan Doyle undressed, and Margaret again noted with admiration that she had still kept her figure only a little plumper than it must have been when she was a young woman. Then she got into bed beside Margaret and laid her head down. It was strange, Margaret thought, to have this pretty woman lying so close. “You’ve excellent pillows,” Joan said, and closed her eyes. The sound of the falling rain came softly from the window, as Margaret closed her eyes, too.
The huge bang of the thunderclap in the middle of the night was so sudden and so loud that they both sat bolt upright together. Then Joan Doyle laughed.
“I wasn’t asleep. Were you?”
“Not really.”
“It was the wine. I drank too much wine. Will you listen to that storm?” The rain was falling in torrents now, in a steady roar. There was a blinding flash from outside; a crash of thunder seemed to shake the room. “I shan’t be able to sleep now,” sighed Joan Doyle.
They started to talk again. Perhaps it was the strange intimacy of the darkness, as the rain poured down and the thunder continued to crackle and rumble round the sky, but the conversation became quite personal. Joan spoke about her children and her hopes for them. She also described how she had been trying to help young Tidy and Cecily. “I tell you,” she declared, “I had to give that girl such a talking-to.” And so evident were her kindness and her good intentions, that Margaret wondered: was it possible that she had misjudged her in the past? Their quiet conversation continued almost another hour, and the Dublin woman became quite confidential. It seemed she was worried about her husband. She hated all the politics of the city, she told Margaret. “I don’t so much mind that the Fitzgeralds want to rule all our lives,” she said, “but why do they have to be so brutal?” The Talbot they had killed the previous year had been a good man of whom she was fond, she explained. Whether this was a gentle reproach for her earlier remark, Margaret wasn’t sure, but Joan went on. “Stay out of it all, I’m always begging my husband. You can’t imagine the hateful, ridiculous rumours. And they’re spread by busybodies who don’t know the harm they cause, or spies of the English king. Do you know the royal councillors suspect any man who visits Munster for any reason? All because Lord Desmond is suspected at present on account of some foolish business he had with the French. Can you believe it? My husband had to vouch for an innocent man only the other day.”
She paused and then patted Margaret’s arm. “You’re better off not to be involved in such things out here,” she said.
And it was then, perhaps because she decided that she could trust this Doyle woman after all, perhaps also she thought that, if need be, the alderman might provide her own husband with a similar protection, and perhaps even because that last remark suggested that Doyle’s wife supposed she wasn’t worldly enough to know about such things, that Margaret now confided, “Oh, but we are involved.” And she told her about William Walsh’s visit to Munster. “Only you must promise not to tell a soul,” she begged her, “as William would be furious if he knew I’d told you.”
“He’s very wise,” Joan assured her. “I shan’t even tell my own husband. What a foolish world it is,” she sighed, “that we should have to keep these secrets.” She was silent for a while after that. “I think,” she murmured, “that I could go to sleep now.”
The sun was up when they awoke. The storm had passed; the day was clear. Joan Doyle was smiling contentedly when, thanking Margaret warmly and embracing her, she took her leave. As she rode out of the yard she turned to Margaret one last time.
“I’m sorry you don’t like the Talbots,” she said with a smile.
It was ten more days before William Walsh returned from Munster. Margaret was glad to see that he was looking pleased with himself.
The business had gone well. He had met the Earl of Desmond at the monastery without incident. “Unless I was followed,” he remarked, “I shouldn’t think anyone knows I saw him at all.”
She told him of Joan Doyle’s visit, leaving out any mention of their conversation about Munster, and he was amused. “Doyle’s wife is a good woman,” he said, “and Doyle himself is more powerful than ever. I’m glad that you should be friendly with her.”
He remained for several days at the house before going into Dublin one morning.
He returned late that evening. As soon as he entered the house, she knew something was wrong. He ate his meal with her alone, looking thoughtful but saying little. But at the end of the meal, he asked her quietly, “You didn’t tell anyone I was down in Munster, did you?”
“Munster?” She felt herself go pale. “Why would I do that? What has happened?”
“It’s very strange,” he answered. “You know there was a chance I might be offered a seat in the Parliament. I was talking to one of the fellows in the office of the royal council about it today, and he as good as told me not to bother to apply. I’d hoped for quite wide support, you know. Men like Doyle as well as the Fitzgeralds. But according to this fellow, Kildare has commitments to other people now—which is a way of saying that he doesn’t want to support me. I asked around and I got the impression that something has been said against me.” He shook his head. “Even Doyle, whom I do trust, looked awkward and said he didn’t know anything. But just as I was leaving, he gave me a strange look and he said, ‘Dublin’s so full of rumours at the moment, none of us is safe.’ Those were his very words. And the only thing I can think of that could be held against me is if someone heard about this Munster visit and started a rumour. Are you sure there’s no one you can think of?”
Margaret stared at the window. There was still a little light outside. The glass panes formed a faint, greenish rectangle.
It was Joan Doyle. It had to be. She must have told her husband.
Had she done so innocently, in confidence? Or had she done it with malice? Margaret remembered her parting words: “I’m sorry you don’t like the Talbots.” Yes, that was it. She had got the information with which to damage the Walsh family, and she was letting Margaret know she remembered the insult and that she was her enemy. And suddenly now the thought came to Margaret with a cold, sinking feeling. The story the Doyle woman had told about the man going to Munster. Might she have made it up? After the little awkwardness with Richard about his father’s whereabouts, had Joan Doyle guessed it was William’s journey down into Munster that the family was hiding? With all her sweet words during the night, had the Dublin woman just been fishing for information?
“No,” she said. “There isn’t.” She was ashamed of the lie. But how could she tell him it was she herself who was the cause of the rumour? How would he ever forgive her? She supposed the Doyle woman had probably foreseen that, too.
“I shall never find out,” Walsh said sadly. “When these people decide not to talk, you could be asking questions of a grave.” He sighed. “Silence.”
“Perhaps,” she said, without much hope, “they’ll change their minds about the Parliament.”
“Perhaps,” he said. She knew he didn’t believe it.
And so all Margaret could do was to think of Joan Doyle and wonder when, and in what form, she could have her revenge.
/> Eva O’Byrne didn’t say a word when her husband came home. She had prepared everything with the greatest care.
Tomorrow would be Michaelmas, the twenty-ninth of September, one of the main days of the Church calendar for the settling of accounts. She couldn’t help smiling to herself at that coincidence. It was so appropriate.
During the morning, she had walked down to the Brennans’ place. Brennan was out in the field with his cattle, and she saw him glance curiously in her direction. His wife was standing by the door of their hut. She had a broad face, freckled skin; her eyes, Eva considered, looked dishonest. She was a pretty little slut, she thought, hardly worth her attention. There was a three-year-old boy playing in the dirt at the girl’s feet. The thought suddenly crossed her mind that the child could be her husband’s. She looked at the little boy sharply but couldn’t see any likeness. Then she shrugged. What did it matter? She said a few words of no consequence to the girl. More important, she wondered what the hut was like inside. It had been bare enough when she had last been in there some years ago, but she couldn’t really see from outside. She let her eye wander over the field that ran down the slope. It was good land. After a few moments, she nodded to the girl and walked back towards the house. The Brennans must have wondered why she had come. Let them wonder.
The rest of the morning she had spent with her children. Seamus, her eldest son, had gone out with his father. There were five others, a boy and four girls. She loved them all. But if she had a favourite child—which she would never admit—it would be Fintan. Five years old, he looked very much like her: the same fair hair; the same blue eyes. But above all, it seemed to her, he thought the same way as she did. Straightforward, honest. Trustworthy. She had spent an hour telling him stories about her own family in the Midlands. He loved to hear about her side of the family, and she always reminded him, “They are your people, too, as well as the O’Byrnes.” He had told her the day before that he’d like to visit her family. “I promise I’ll take you there one day,” she had said; and then added: “Maybe soon.”
The friar from Dublin had arrived early in the afternoon. She had seen him approaching and gone out to meet him.
“You have brought it?”
He had nodded. “It is here.” He had tapped a small bulge under his habit.
Like most people on the island, whether in the English Pale or the Irish heartlands, Eva revered the friars. Father Donal was a good man, and she respected him. When she received the sacrament from his hands, she had no doubt that the miracle of the Mass was accomplished; when he heard her confession, gave her penance and absolution, the fact that he was himself a husband in all but name, and a father of children, did not trouble her in the least. He was a fatherly man, he was learned, he carried the authority of the Church within him, which by itself was fearsome. His rebuke, also, had that same, unanswerable moral authority. But the friar was something special. He was a holy man. His thin, ascetic face was not unkindly, but it contained an inner fire. He was like a hermit, a desert dweller, a man who had walked alone in the terrible presence of God Himself. His eyes, when they fixed upon you, seemed to cut through to the truth like a knife.
It had been back in the spring, when he was leaving in the morning on his way to Glendalough, that she had first sought his advice. His words then had been kindly, but not encouraging. It was while he was away in the mountains that she had conceived her inspired idea, however, and when he had passed through again, on his return, she had come to him in private and made her request. Even then, it was only after much pleading that he had finally agreed to help her.
The friar had spent the afternoon with Father Donal, while Eva, helped by her children, had made preparations for the evening.
She was proud of her home. In most respects, the tower house of O’Byrne was not unlike that of Walsh. The modest stone stronghold had a hall in which most of the activities of the household took place. Though there were separate larders and storerooms, Eva cooked over the fire in the centre of the floor, in the traditional manner, rather than in a kitchen; but she and Sean O’Byrne had their own bedchamber—a concession to the modern fashion which Sean’s father would not have troubled with. The O’Byrnes spoke Irish. The Walshes spoke English, and because Walsh was a lawyer, educated in London at the Inns of Court, that English was of a high standard. But the Walshes would have been perfectly comfortable speaking Irish in the O’Byrne’s house. Walsh wore an English tunic and hose; O’Byrne wore his shirt and cloak and usually preferred his legs bare. Walsh played the lute badly; O’Byrne played the harp well. Walsh had a small collection of printed books; O’Byrne possessed a hand-sized illuminated Psalter and could recite poetry with the visiting bards for hours. Walsh’s eyes, through reading by candlelight, were a little weak; O’Byrne’s were keen. But the meal that Eva now prepared for her visitor, the fresh rushes she spread on the floor, and the big platters and beakers her daughters placed upon the table were no different to those that Margaret Walsh would have used. As she looked round this domestic scene, with her children and the two servants all so fruitfully engaged, she hoped very much that the evening would be successful. She would be sorry, indeed, to leave all this.
When Sean O’Byrne came home, he was rather surprised to find the friar and Father Donal at his house. But naturally, they must be given hospitality; and the household gathered for the evening meal in a good humour. The harvest might have been ruined, but Eva had provided delicious oatcakes, a watercress salad, blood pudding, and a meat stew in the visitors’ honour. The friar blessed the food, and though he ate sparingly, he tasted everything out of courtesy to his hosts and accepted a little of the wine that Sean offered. He took a particular interest in the children, especially Seamus, the eldest boy. “You are becoming a man,” he told him seriously, “and you must take on the responsibilities of manhood.” Only when the meal was over did the friar indicate that he would like to have a private conversation with the two O’Byrne parents.
Eva watched her husband. If he looked slightly surprised, she could tell that he had no idea what was coming. Perhaps he’d forgotten how he swore his innocence before the two men that spring. Knowing him, even that was possible, she thought wryly. When the children had left them and the four of them were alone, the friar began to speak.
He spoke very softly. They must both understand, he told them, that the sacrament of marriage was not just a matter of convenience for the better ordering of society. “Here in Ireland,” he remarked, “the inviolate nature of marriage and the importance of chastity have not traditionally been regarded as absolute requirements. Yet that is a pity. For if we follow the teachings of Our Lord, they should be. Above all, even if we fail to achieve these high standards, there must between two married people be an understanding and a respect for each other’s feelings. We may have to ask forgiveness of each other, but husbands must not scorn their wives, nor wives their husbands.” He looked at Sean severely. “To humiliate the one we should love is a greater crime than to be unfaithful.” He spoke with such quiet authority that even Sean could hardly complain.
Yet the friar himself had originally counselled her not to pursue the matter, when they had discussed it in the summer. “Your husband has sworn an oath,” he had told her, “and you would be wise to accept it.”
“Even when I know it is a lie?” she had asked.
“Perhaps, yes,” he had answered frankly, and given her a little lecture on her duty humbly to submit to these trials. “God may be testing you,” he explained. But she had been unable to accept this counsel, even from the sa’intly friar.
“It’s the humiliation,” she had burst out, “the scorn of his lie that allows him to continue sleeping with that girl almost in my own house. It’s too much,” she had cried, “I can’t bear it anymore. He does nothing but lie to me, and if I try to pin him down, he just slips away, leaving me with nothing. Something has to change.” She had looked at the friar desperately. “If he goes on, I won’t answer for what I mi
ght do. Perhaps,” she added with a wild menace, “I’ll put a knife in his heart while he’s asleep.” And as he looked at her in horror, she had repeated the threat. “Even if I go to Hell for it,” she swore. Only then had he reluctantly agreed to consider her request for help. “There is one thing I could do,” he had suggested.
As she looked at her husband now, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. He must have some idea, by this time, what was coming, and no doubt he was already preparing his usual defence. But there was one thing he didn’t know.
“Your tenant Brennan,” the friar began, giving Sean a hard look, “has a wife, with whom you …”
“I have already sworn as to that,” Sean cut in, quick as a flash.
“I know you have.” The friar raised his hand. “But you may wish to reconsider. It would be a terrible thing, Sean O’Byrne, to have the sin of a false oath upon your conscience, when all you need to do is ask forgiveness of this woman,” he indicated Eva, “who loves you and is ready to let bygones be bygones. Can you not see,” he went on urgently, “that your cruelty is hurting her?”
But if Sean did see, he wasn’t admitting it. His face was set stubbornly.
“I have sworn,” he said, “to Father Donal here.”
“So you wouldn’t object to swearing again, to me?” asked the friar.
Did her husband hesitate now, just for a moment? It seemed to Eva that he did. But he was cornered.
“I’d swear to the bishop himself,” he declared angrily.
“Very well.” Reaching into his habit now, the friar drew out the small parcel.
“What’s that?” asked Sean suspiciously.
Slowly and carefully, the friar unwrapped the cloth that had been wound around the small wooden box, blackened with age, which he placed upon the table. Reverently, he took the lid off the box to reveal, contained within it, another box, this one made of silver, its top encrusted with gems.
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