Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [249]
“You have grown hard with the years, I see,” the priest said sorrowfully.
Peter turned his horse’s head and slowly wheeled round. The interview was over. He’d had enough. He wanted to kick his horse into a trot and leave his former friend standing. And rude though this would have been, he might have done it if, just then, he hadn’t seen a woman coming across the green towards them. For now, instead of moving off, he stared.
Fionnuala. There was no mistaking her. It was nearly twenty years since they had parted, but even in the distance he’d have known her at a glance. As she came up, she gave Gilpatrick a brief nod.
“They told me you’d be here.”
“I did not know you were in Dublin,” the priest began. He seemed a little put out. “Do you remember my sister, Fionnuala?” He turned to Peter.
“He remembers,” she cut in quietly.
“I was explaining to Peter that our brother …”
“Has been a fool.” She looked straight at Peter. “Nearly as great a fool as his sister once was.” She said it simply, without any malice. “They told me you were meeting him,” she said to Gilpatrick. “So I thought I’d come up to Dublin, too.”
“Unfortunately—” Gilpatrick began again.
“He’s turned you down.” She transferred her gaze back to Peter. “Haven’t you, Welshman?”
The years had been more than kind to Fionnuala. If as a girl she had been lovely, thought Peter, there was only one way to describe her now. She was magnificent. A brood of children had left her body lithe, but fuller. Her hair was still raven black, her head held proudly, her eyes the same astounding, emerald green. At ease with herself and all the world, she looked exactly the Irish princess that she was. And this is the woman, thought Peter, that in different circumstances I might have married.
“I’m afraid that I have,” he admitted with a trace of awkwardness.
“He’s been dispossessed,” she suddenly cried out. “We have all been robbed of the land we have loved for a thousand years. Do you not see that, Welshman? Can you not imagine his rage? We were not even conquered. We were deceived.” She stopped, and then in a lower voice continued, “You do not care. You owe him nothing.”
He did not reply.
“It is to me that you owe something,” she said quietly.
The two of them gazed at each other, while Gilpatrick looked puzzled. He couldn’t imagine why the knight should owe his sister anything.
“You are enjoying good fortune now, Welshman,” she went on bitterly. “But it was not always so.”
“It is usual to be rewarded for twenty years of service,” he pointed out.
“Your English king has rewarded you. But it was I, like a fool, who caused you to be noticed when I gave you Dublin.”
“It was yourself you gave to me. Not Dublin.”
“You betrayed me.” She said it sadly. “You hurt me, Welshman.”
He nodded slowly. Every word of it was true. He noticed Gilpatrick looking mystified.
“What is it you want, Fionnuala?” he asked at last.
“My brother still has two daughters to find husbands for. Leave him on his farm at least until they’re wed.”
“That is all?”
“What else could there be?”
Did she, he fleetingly wondered, wish that she had married him? Or could she only hate him now? He would never know.
“He must pay his rents,” he said.
“He will.”
He pursed his lips. He could imagine the future trouble his tenant would probably cause him. There would be years of sullen looks and anger. How could it be otherwise? Perhaps Fionnuala would be able to keep her brother in order, perhaps not. One day, no doubt, it would end with his kicking her brother off his ancestral land. That was just the way of things. But he supposed he could live with the fellow until these last two daughters had gone to their husbands with suitable dowries.
“You ask nothing for yourself,” he remarked. “Will your own daughters not be looking for good husbands? English knights perhaps?” For if they look like you, he thought to himself, that might not be impossible.
She