Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [194]
“I dare say,” his father remarked, indicating the nunnery, “that I should put your sister in there.”
“They wouldn’t keep her,” Gilpatrick replied with a smile.
If only his wayward sister were the subject for discussion. That would have been easy. The real business of the day, however, had still not been mentioned; and they had walked out onto the old graveyard and were almost at the Thingmount before his father finally brought it up.
“It’s time your brother married,” he said.
It seemed such a harmless statement. Until the previous year, Gilpatrick had been blessed with two brothers. His elder brother who had been married for some years lived several miles down the coast and farmed the family’s great tract of land. He had loved his farm and seldom came up to Dublin. His younger brother, Lorcan, who had helped on the farm, was still unmarried. But at the start of the previous winter, after getting chilled on his way back from a journey into Ulster, his elder brother had taken a fever and died, leaving two daughters with his widow. She was a pleasant young woman and the family loved her. “She’s a treasure,” they all agreed. She was only twenty-three and clearly she should marry again. “But it would be a terrible pity to lose her,” as Gilpatrick’s father had very truly said.
And now, six months after the sad event, a solution had presented itself that promised to be satisfactory to everybody. Last week, his younger brother had come up from the farm and spoken to his father. An understanding had been reached. All the parties were agreeable.
The young man was to marry his brother’s widow.
“I couldn’t be happier, Gilpatrick,” his father said. “They’ll wait until the year has passed. And then they will marry with my blessing. And yours, too, I hope.”
Gilpatrick took a deep breath. He’d been preparing himself for this. His mother had told him about it two days ago.
“You know very well that I can’t,” he now replied.
“They will have my blessing,” his father repeated sharply.
“But you know,” Gilpatrick pointed out reasonably, “that the thing is impossible.”
“I do not,” Conn replied. “You know yourself,” he continued in a conciliatory tone, “that they are perfectly suited. They are the same age. They are already the best friends in the world. She was a wonderful wife to his brother and will be to him, too. She loves him, Gilpatrick. She confessed it to me herself. As for him, he’s a fine young man, sound as an oak. As good a man as ever his brother was. There can be no reasonable objection to the marriage.”
“Except,” Gilpatrick said with a sigh, “that she is his brother’s wife.”
“Which marriage the Bible allows,” his father snapped.
“Which marriage the Jews allowed,” Gilpatrick patiently corrected. “The Pope, however, does not.”
It was a much disputed passage. The book of Leviticus actually enjoined a dutiful man to marry his brother’s widow. The medieval Church, however, had decided that such a marriage was against canon law, and throughout Christendom such marriages were forbidden.
Except in Ireland. The truth was that things were still done differently in Christendom’s north-western corner. Celtic marriages had always been fluid affairs, easily dissolved, and even if it did not quite approve, the Celtic Church had wisely learned to accommodate itself to local custom. The heirs of Saint Patrick had not withheld their blessing from the four-times-married Brian Boru who was their loyal patron; and to a traditional Irish churchman like Conn, such canonical objections as this question of the brother’s widow seemed like nit-picking. Nor did he feel any sense of disloyalty to his church when he remarked a little sourly, “The Holy Father is a long way away.”
Gilpatrick looked at his father