Dublin (91 page)

  "My husband's very cautious," she was saying,

  "especially about the English. He says"-and now it seemed to Margaret that the Doyle woman glanced sideways to make sure she was listening-"he says that if people get into trouble with the Tudors, they have only themselves to blame."

  That same little phrase: the identical words she had used before about the inheritance. Was it possible that the woman could be so vicious, so low as to make a cruel reference to the loss of her brother?

  Margaret looked at the two men. Neither of them had noticed anything, but then they wouldn't. Wasn't this exactly the trick that this dark little woman had played before? She was smiling, too, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and turning to her.

  "You really do have wonderful hair."

  "Thank you." Margaret smiled back. I see through you, she thought, but this time you've gone too far. If it was war the Doyle woman wanted, she would get it.

  As she and her husband moved away a few minutes later, Margaret murmured, "I hate that woman."

  "Really? Why?" Walsh asked.

  "It doesn't matter. I have my reasons."

  "I thought," he unwisely remarked, "that she was pretty."

  Sean O'Byrne's face remained very calm. That was his way. But he wasn't pleased. A damp March breeze ruffled his hair. He glanced up at the pale blue sky, then stared at their accusing faces: how superior they thought themselves.

  As it happened, the accusation was true. He'd slept with the girl. But they couldn't possibly know. That was what annoyed him. They were accusing him on the basis of suspicion and of his reputation. And as far as he was concerned, that made it unfair. In fact, it was intolerable. In the curious mind of Sean O'Byrne, that made them more at fault than he was.

  Not that he could really blame his wife. God knows, he'd given her enough to complain about, down the years. And he probably shouldn't resent the friar, since the friar was a good and holy man who, so far at least, hadn't said a word. The priest, however, was another matter. In a little place like this, people needed to stick together.

  Sean O'Byrne never forgot that he was of princely blood. Four generations ago his forebear, the younger son of the chief of the O'Byrnes, had been given some desirable lands on the eastern side of the Wicklow Mountains. Much of that inheritance had gone by now; the portion which remained was called Rathconan; and Sean, who was known as O'Byrne of Rathconan, loved it.

  He loved the small, square stone tower-four storeys high, one room per floor-that had once been the fortified centre of his family's local rule and was now, in truth, no more than a modest farm. He loved the tufts of grass that grew everywhere from its crumbling masonry. He loved to look out from its roof at the great, green sweep down towards the coast. He loved the gaggle of farm buildings where his untidy children were playing at this moment, and the tiny stone chapel where Father Donal administered the sacraments. He loved his few fields, the little orchard, the pasture where he kept the cattle, which were his main occupation, in winter; and above all, he loved the open ridges of the hills behind where, in summer, he drove his herds and where he could wander, free as a bird, day after day.

  He loved his children. The girls had grown up strong and were turning into beauties. The eldest was dark, her younger sister fair. Both had their mother's blue eyes. He'd already had a few offers for the dark one.

  "You'll hardly have to give more than a token dowry to see them well married," a neighbour had said to him recently. He was pleased to hear that and hoped that it was true. His only concern was his eldest son, Seamus. The boy was a good worker, and he knew his cattle. But he was sixteen now and Sean could sense that he was restless. He had the idea that he should give him some responsibility, but he didn't yet know what. His little son Fintan was only five. There was no need to worry about him yet.

  Sean also loved his wife. He'd chosen her well.

  She was an O'Farrell, from the island's Midlands, out past Kildare. Cattle country. A fine, upstanding, fair-haired woman. He'd wooed her and won her in the old-fashioned way; and treated her in the old-fashioned way ever since. And that was the trouble.

  "It is pride that is causing you to behave as you do,"

  Father Donal was saying to him now. "The terrible sin of pride."

  He was not only a princely O'Byrne; his ancestor who had been given Rathconan had noticed the dark-haired, green-eyed little girl who used to run errands for his father down to the harbour at Dalkey or the fort at Carrickmines. He'd fallen in love and married her. Sean knew that the blood of Walsh of Carrickmines had flowed in her veins, and even the blood of the half-remembered Ui Fergusa of Dublin, too. For as part of her meagre dowry, she had brought into his family an ancient drinking skull with a gold rim-a strange and fearsome memento of that clan's princely past. Was he proud of his descent from all these rulers of the land? Certainly. And did this make him think he had the right to every woman he could find? No, the priest was wrong about that.

  It had been greed, when he was younger, that made him chase after women. Simple greed. He knew it very well. Wasn't every woman proof that life was being lived to the full? If he had sometimes gone from one to another, two in a day, he was like a man at the banquet of life, seeing how many of the dishes he could taste. It was greed. And vanity. He had a reputation to keep up. "Sean O'Byrne of Rathconan. Ah, he's a devil with the women."

  That's what they all said about him. He was proud of his reputation, and he wasn't going to give it up-not as long as he could still get the women. And then, of course, there was one thing more. Perhaps it came as you grew older, but it seemed to Sean that it had been there from the beginning. Fear of death. Wasn't every woman proof that he was still young, still alive-not wasting a single one of the precious moments of life remaining? Yes, that was it. Live to the full before you die, before it's too late.

  As for the girl, she wasn't bad. Brennan's wife. Brennan had been a tenant for five years now, farming a part of Sean O'Byrne's land. His little house-it was hardly more than a hut, really-lay on the other side of a small wood about half a mile away down the slope. Brennan was a reliable sort of man, paid his rents on time, was a good worker. Like many such tenants, he had no security; under Irish law, O'Byrne could turn him out any time he wanted to; but good tenants weren't so easy to find, and Sean had been glad enough to have him, even if he was a dull, ungainly sort of fellow. Strangely enough, Sean had never taken much notice of Brennan's wife until the previous year. He supposed Brennan must have kept her out of sight down in the hut. But then one evening at harvest time, he had noticed her alone in a field and gone to talk to her.

  She was a pretty little thing. Broad faced.

  Freckled. She smelled of farm, of course, but there was another, subtle scent about her, something in the quality of her skin. By the autumn, that scent, and everything else about her, had become an obsession with him. Before winter began, she was his. But he'd been careful. He'd never had a woman quite so close to home before. He was sure that his wife had never seen them. Whether Brennan had any idea about the affair, he wasn't sure. The girl said he didn't know. If he did, he was certainly giving no sign of it. Afraid of losing his tenancy, probably. As for the girl, she seemed willing enough; he supposed she must be bored with Brennan.

  Of course, it might be that she was only keeping him happy because he had power over them, but he preferred not to think of that. She and her husband would be down at their hut now, unaware of the shameful interrogation taking place at the entrance to the tower house.

  "It isn't true," he said to his wife, ignoring Father Donal entirely. "There's nothing more to say."

  He wondered why his wife should have chosen to attack him now. The Brennan girl was too close to home, he supposed: that would be it. His wife's eyes had a steady, fixed look, as though she'd made up her mind about something. But what? Was there pain concealed in the cold stare of those eyes? He knew very well there was. She was just hiding it. He had no doubt that he would bring her round again, as he always had before; though he supposed he might have to give up the girl. Well, if it came to that, so be it.

  "You deny it?" Father Donal cut in.

  "Do you seriously mean us to believe that?"

  There had been one or two times when his own absences had been unexplained, and when Brennan had come looking for the girl. Once, just once, his wife had seen him with his arm round the girl, but he had explained that away. There was nothing they could prove.

  Nothing. So why should the tall, bare-boned priest be giving him the accusing eye in the doorway of his own house?

  He'd been good to Father Donal. In a way, they were lucky to have him there. Unlike many of the priests in the smaller parishes, he was a man of some education, something of a poet even. And he had taken proper orders: he was able to administer the sacraments. But also, like many priests in the poorer Irish parishes, he was forced to work for his living as well. From time to time, he would go out with the fishermen at Dalkey, or one of the other harbours in the region, to earn some extra money. "Saint Peter himself was a fisherman," he would growl. And like many priests in the Irish Church, he had a wife and several children. "Down in the English Pale, you couldn't do it," Sean O'Byrne had remarked to him on more than one occasion. "It has always been the custom in the Irish Church," Father Donal had replied with a shrug. And indeed, it was said that the Holy Father himself was aware of the custom and did not choose to make an issue of it. Sean did not know whether a marriage ceremony had ever been performed between the two, and had never asked. All he did know was that he was good to Father Donal's children, gave them little errands to do, and helped to keep them fed.

  So it hardly seemed right that the priest should be taking this stern moral tone with him about his own shortcomings now.

  "Are you ready to swear to it?" Father Donal's eye was piercing him from under his iron brow. It was disconcerting. And then suddenly Sean thought he understood. Was the priest offering him a way out? Perhaps that was the game. He glanced at his wife, silently watching. He must answer, now, to his watching wife.

  "I am indeed," he said without a blush. "I swear it on the Blessed Virgin."

  "Your husband has sworn," the priest declared to Eva O'Byrne. "Will that satisfy you?"

  But she had turned her face away.

  She couldn't look at him. Not just then. It was too painful.

  Sometimes, when she looked back, Eva blamed the trial marriage for the problems in her life. It was not uncommon, outside the English Pale, for couples to live together for a time before committing to formal marriage. Her father hadn't approved, but Eva had been headstrong in those days; she had gone to live with Sean O'Byrne. And they had been the happiest and most exciting months of her life. If only, she thought, I'd paid more attention to studying his character and less to the joys of our love life. Yet how could she have felt otherwise, when she thought of his splendid, athletic body, and his skilful caresses? Even now, after all these years, his magnificent physique had hardly changed.

  She still wanted him. But the years of pain had taken their toll as well.

  When had he first started to stray to other women? At the time their first child was born. She knew such things were not uncommon. A man had needs. But she had been terribly hurt at the time. Was it her fault that he had continued to stray ever since? For a while she had supposed that it might be, but as the years went by she had decided that it really wasn't. She had taken good care of her appearance. She was still attractive, and her husband clearly found her so. Their married life together was entirely satisfactory: she supposed she should thank God for that. And above all, she had been a good wife. The land they had left at Rathconan was only just enough to keep them. The chief of the O'Byrnes might be their kinsman, but like most of the Irish local rulers, he exacted heavy payments for his rule and protection, just as he, in turn, had to pay heavy taxes to the Earl of Kildare. The system might be English in name, but for all practical purposes, Kildare's rule over the O'Byrnes was that of a traditional Irish king. It was she, as much as her straying husband, who made sure these obligations could always be fulfilled each year; she who made sure the harvest was brought in when he was wandering, often as not, with the cattle on the ridges above; she who kept an eye on the Brennans and the other dependents of the place. That was why it particularly angered her that he should have started a relationship with the Brennan woman.

  "How can you be so stupid?" she had stormed. "You have a good tenant, so you go and play the fool with his wife."

  But above all, how could he humiliate her like this, practically in her own house? Nearly two decades of marriage, a loving wife, children-didn't that mean anything to him? Had he no respect for her? It wasn't just the woman she objected to so much. It was the lie that hurt. He knew she knew, yet he could lie to her face.

  Didn't he even realise the profound contempt for her that he was showing? That was why she had persuaded the priest to make him swear: in the hope that, for once, she could force him to tell the truth. She just wanted to break through to him, to make something change.