Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [216]
The dog. She realised that her father meant the strongbox. This was the moment she had been dreading. For weeks after she had made her terrible discovery, she had wondered what to tell her father. She couldn’t bear to think of the misery and anxiety it would cause if he knew the truth. But the Palmer had been firm with her.
“You must tell him, Una. Imagine if he were to return believing he had this wealth behind him, and then discovered he had nothing. That would be a shock far worse.” So she had sent back a message: “The dog is lost.” And she had not heard from her father since. She had no means of knowing if he was alive or dead.
Despite the fact that he had kissed her, Peter hadn’t really expected to see Fionnuala again. But two days after her visit, one of the soldiers in the yard came into the house to tell him that there was a young lady at the gate who said she had a message for him from one of the priests. Seeing her there, he assumed that she had indeed brought a message from Gilpatrick. His greeting was as formal as it was friendly; and when she asked him if he could accompany her to Christ Church, he politely agreed. He was much astonished, as they entered the Fish Shambles, when she turned to him with a smile and remarked: “I haven’t a message from Gilpatrick, you know.”
“You haven’t?”
“I was thinking,” she went on calmly, “that I might be coming by your lodgings again, when it isn’t so crowded.”
“Oh.”
She paused by a stall, looking at the fruit to see if it was fresh, then passed on.
“Would you like that?”
There could be no mistaking her meaning. Unless she was playing some kind of game with him, and he didn’t think she was, the girl was making an assignation.
“I should like it very much,” he heard himself say.
“I could come tomorrow, late in the afternoon perhaps?”
The men-at-arms, he knew, would be on sentry duty then. The knight with whom he shared the house might be there, but he could probably make some arrangement with him.
“Tomorrow would be convenient,” he replied.
“Good. I must go home now,” she said.
The next day, waiting alone in the house, he had some anxious moments. He didn’t think the girl was a spy. Yet there was no chance that her father or her brother would allow her to lose her virtue for any reason at all. The other possibility was that, behind a demure mask, she concealed a quite different character. For all he knew she’d already slept with half the men in Dublin.
Did he mind? He thought about it. Yes, he did. He was a healthy young fellow with all the sexual appetites of any man his age; but he was also quite fastidious. He didn’t want to be seduced by the town whore. Why, she might even be unclean. Sexual diseases existed, especially in the ports, all over Europe. It was said that there had been more since the Crusades began. Peter had never heard of anyone being infected in Ireland, but you never knew.
Then he told himself that his fears were foolish. She was just an ordinary girl who happened to be the daughter of a priest. But that in itself contained further dangers, which he tried not to think about. As a result of all these doubts, by the time she arrived the next day, he was considerably nervous.
When Fionnuala arrived, somewhat late, it seemed to him that she was pale, and nervous, too. She asked him if they were alone and when he said they were, she seemed pleased but somewhat distracted, as if she was not certain what to do next. He had prepared warm mead and oatcakes and asked her if she would like some. She nodded gratefully and sat down with him on the bench by the bread oven to eat them. She drank the mead. He gave her more. Only when she had drunk that and was starting to look a