Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [255]
But then another thought occurred to him, and he frowned. There had been trouble down in Munster recently, and the Dublin authorities had been concerned enough to send troops. There was a new O’Byrne chief now, and seeing the English forces occupied elsewhere, he had taken the opportunity to move into several small forts down the coast. It was cheeky, but Walsh reckoned that the Irish chief would probably get away with it. At least for the moment. Was this a prelude to another attack on Carrickmines? In Walsh’s opinion, that would be ill-advised. The people in Dublin were already nervous. A couple of weeks ago, they’d sent a squadron of horsemen over to camp at Dalkey, in case any attempts were made to sneak up the coast. At the first hint of trouble from the hills, there’d be further squadrons coming out to Carrickmines—quite apart from the fact that the place was far too strong now for O’Byrne to break into. All the same, you could never tell. Was it possible that his little cousin was lurking by the rabbit warren for a more sinister purpose? Was she looking for troops? Was she noting the state of the walls and the castle gate? If so, she hadn’t concealed herself very well. He would be sorry if his young kinswoman were careless about such things.
Or was there something else going on? His eyes searched the slopes. Were they up there already, waiting to sweep down as soon as the little girl ran back or gave a signal? He scanned the hills. He did not think so. The girl was moving away now. Which way would she go?
The falcon on his wrist was getting restless again. With a single sweep, he let her loose and watched her rise, magnificent and watchful, into the summer morning sky.
Tom was on his way to church when he passed her. He usually went there in the afternoon, but today he was an hour later than usual because one of the fishermen had insisted on talking to him until long after the Angelus had sounded farther down the valley.
She was a pretty little thing. Long black hair. He had never seen her before. She had been loitering by the track that led across the common from the shore. As he had passed her, she had stared at him with the strangest green eyes.
Tom Tidy was a small man. His sandy moustache and pointed beard made a little triangle which the slope of his shoulders thrust forward. There was a quiet determination about him, yet also a hint of melancholy, as though God had required him to plough a furrow which, as it turned out, had no end. Tom Tidy might not be impressive, but you could always rely on him. Everybody said so. Why only the other day, when he had been paying his rent at the diocesan office, the archbishop himself had come in and said, “If there’s one man I know I can trust, Master Tidy, then that man is you.” Master Tidy, he had called him: a title of respect. That had made him blush with pride.
Tom Tidy had always gone to church every day when he still lived in the southern suburb of Dublin. After his children were married and he had lost his wife of thirty years, and wanted a change, the archbishop’s bailiff, who was looking for reliable tenants, had offered him very good terms to move down to the fishing village of Dalkey.
And Dalkey was pleasant enough. Situated on a shelf of bare ground between the high hump of the bay’s southern headland and the sea, it consisted of a single street with a little church and plots of land on which homesteads and gardens were laid out. Such a homestead was known as a messuage. Tom Tidy’s plot was of average size—thirty yards of frontage, running back forty yards. But he also had the right