Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [15]
What would they do without her, she wondered?
“Would you be sorry if I left you to get married?” she had suddenly asked.
They had looked at each other again.
“You’ll be going sooner or later,” said Ronan.
“We’d be all right,” said Rian. “You could come to visit us,” he had added, encouragingly, as an afterthought.
“You’re very kind,” she said, with bitter irony, but they didn’t see it. There was no use, she supposed, in expecting gratitude from boys of that age.
When she had questioned her father about it later, he had been terse.
“He didn’t offer enough.” The marriage of a daughter was a careful negotiation. On the one hand, a handsome young woman of noble blood was a valuable asset to any family. But the man who married her would have to pay the bride price, of which her father would receive a share. That was the custom of the island.
And now, with his affairs in the state they were, Fergus had evidently decided he must sell her. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised. That was the way things were. But even so, she couldn’t help feeling a little hurt and betrayed. After all that I have done for him since my mother died, is that really what I am to him? she wondered. Just like one of the cattle, to be kept as long as needed, and then sold? She had thought he loved her. And indeed, she reflected, he probably did. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she should be feeling sorry for him, and try to help him by finding a suitable man.
She was good-looking. She had heard people say she was beautiful. Not that she was so special. She was sure there must be dozens of other girls on the island with soft golden hair, a red and generous mouth with good white teeth like hers. Her cheeks, as the saying was, had the delicate colour of foxgloves. She had pretty little breasts, too, she had always considered. But the most striking feature she possessed was her eyes, which were the strangest and most beautiful green. “I don’t know where they come from,” her father had told her, “though they say there was a woman with magical eyes somewhere in my mother’s family.” No one else in the family or anywhere near Dubh Linn had eyes like that. They might not be magical—she certainly didn’t think she had any special powers—but they were much admired. Men had been fascinated by them ever since she was a child. So she’d always felt confident that, when the time came, she’d be able to find a good man.
But she wasn’t in a hurry. She was still only seventeen. She’d never met anyone she wanted to marry; and in all likelihood, marriage would take her far from the quiet estuary at Dubh Linn, which she loved. And whatever her father’s problems with his debts, she wasn’t sure she should go away at the moment, leaving her father and her brothers without a woman to run the house.
The festival of Lughnasa was a traditional occasion for match-making. But she didn’t think she wanted a husband. Not this year.
The rest of the day had passed quietly. She asked no more questions, because there was no point. Her father at least seemed cheerful: that was something to be grateful for. Perhaps, with luck, he wouldn’t become involved in any quarrels, and would fail to find her an acceptable suitor. Then they could all return home safely and in peace.
Late in the morning they came to a hamlet in a clearing where her father knew the people; but for once he did not stop to talk. And soon after that, as the Liffey curved away to the south, the track began to rise from the narrowing river plain onto higher ground, taking them westwards. It was towards noon, reaching a break in the trees, that they came out onto a broad shelf of peaty heath, dotted with gorse bushes.
“There,” her father pointed to an object a short way ahead, “that’s where we’ll rest.”
The midday sun was pleasantly warm as they sat on the grass and ate the light meal she had brought for them. Her father drank a little ale to wash down his bread.
The place he