Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [256]
Though it looked and almost was a tiny town, Dalkey had no borough charter. It was a part of one of the archbishop’s great manors. The archbishop was the feudal lord; his bailiff collected the ground rents, the feudal prise tax on the fishermen’s catch, and certain other dues. For almost all offences, the inhabitants would be summoned to trial at the archbishop’s court, for which his bailiff would select the juries. In short, the Irish settlement of Dalkey was organised in a typically English manner.
Tom Tidy paid three shillings a year for his holding, which totalled three acres. From this base he operated a small carrying business, taking goods from the little harbour into the local farmsteads or into Dublin. His homestead was one of the larger ones. The thatched dwelling house was modest; but behind it was a substantial yard with a long barn where he kept several vehicles: the cart for carrying fish, the big wagon for the great casks of wine and barrels of salt, and another for bales of cloth and furs. He also brewed some ale which he sold in the locality and for which he paid the bailiff a small tax on each brewing. Business was occasional. Some days he worked, some he did not. The slow pace of Dalkey suited Tom, the widower, very well.
There were thirty-nine burgages in Dalkey, though as some of them had been joined, the number of burgesses was actually less. Most of the burgesses, however, did not live in Dalkey. Landowners and Dublin merchants took the burgages and then sublet, often in smaller parcels to lesser folk. Tom Tidy, therefore, was one of the more important people in the place. Indeed, the position of head man, or reeve, being open at present, the bailiff had told him, “Although you haven’t been in Dalkey long, Tom, we’re thinking of appointing you.”
It was the shoreline that had given Dalkey its name. Some way out from the beach, a small island and a line of rocks had suggested the Celtic name of Deilginis—which meant Thorn or Dagger Island—which Viking settlers had later converted to Dalkey. No great river from the interior came down there, so that for most of its life it had only been a fisherman’s hamlet. More recently, however, Dalkey had acquired a new significance.
The sandbars and mudflats of the Liffey estuary had always been a hazard to ships, but since the days of the Vikings, the activities of the port had added to the silting up of the river, while the squat medieval cogs, with their broad beams and deeper drafts, found it harder to negotiate the Dublin shallows, even though they usually hired pilots to guide them in. Nearby were other havens with deeper waters. The little port at Howth on the bay’s northern peninsula was one; down below the southern point of the bay, Dalkey was another. For the island acted as a natural harbour wall to protect any ships that came in, and the place had excellent deep water—eight fathoms even at low tide. Merchant ships with deep drafts would often unload there—sometimes all their cargo, sometimes just enough to lighten the vessel—so that they could then negotiate the Dublin shallows. Either way, it provided extra employment for the people of the settlement, including Tom Tidy.
After passing the girl, Tom went another fifty yards before he stopped. There was no vessel in the little harbour at present. The fishing boats, he happened to know, were all out. So why was that girl coming along the path from the water? There was nothing to see down there. What was she up to? He turned to take another look at her, but she had vanished.
The little stone church of Saint Begnet’s stood on the northern side of the street. Beside it was a graveyard and the priest’s house. The last priest had died that spring and a temporary curate had been coming over from