Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [257]
Tom entered the church and, after genuflecting, made his way towards the altar. A little to one side there was a wooden screen behind which a prie-dieu afforded a private place to pray. Here Tom sank down on his knees, and for several minutes he was lost to the world in prayer—so that he hardly heard the church door open. Nor did he look up. If someone else had come to pray in the silence of the little church, he had no wish to disturb them. He remained where he was. A few moments passed as he heard the faint scuffling of soft leather shoes on the floor. It seemed to him that there were two people near the door, but because of the screen he could not see them and, presumably, they could not see him either. Then he heard a voice.
“I was trying to find you down by the shore.”
“You saw the lookouts?”
“Of course.” This voice, it seemed to him, was a girl’s. The other belonged to a man. They were speaking in Irish, but he understood them well enough.
“You have a message for me from O’Byrne?”
“I have. He is not coming to Dalkey.” The girl’s voice again.
“I see. And if not Dalkey, where?”
“Carrickmines.”
“When?”
“In a week, there will be no moon. It will be then. In the dark. Towards midnight.”
“We’ll be ready. Tell him that.”
There was the sound of feet on the floor, and of the church door opening. Then the sound of its being closed.
Tom kept very still. As soon as he had heard the name O’Byrne he had felt a stab of cold fear. You never knew what those people might be plotting. And you didn’t want to know. People who heard too much, people who could turn into informers, had a way of disappearing. Ten years ago, he remembered, a fellow at Dalkey had got word of some trouble brewing and informed the authorities. One of the O’Bymes had died as a result. A week later, they had fished the informer’s body out of the sea—without a head.
So as the rest of the conversation reached him, he wished he could vanish into the floor. If they—whoever they were—moved farther into the church and discovered him, what would they do? He had felt a sense of panic running through him; a clamminess had spread across his brow. Even after the door had closed and the church returned to silence, he was still shivering. He remained for some time, still on his knees, listening.
At last however, he looked cautiously round the screen. The church was empty. He got up and went to the door. Slowly he opened it. No one was in sight. He stepped out. His eyes searched for a sign of the couple he had overheard. They seemed to have vanished. They were not in the churchyard, nor when he reached it did he see them anywhere in the street. He went back and locked the church door; then he started to make his way towards his house. Still there was no sign of them.
He was halfway along the street when, glancing at the track that led across the common towards the south, he caught sight of the girl, her long dark hair streaming behind her, running like a deer. That was her, the messenger, without a doubt, on her way back towards O’Byrne. He had a sudden, foolish instinct to rush after her, but realised it was useless. He looked around for a sign of her companion, but there was none at all. He must certainly have been one of the Dalkey men. But who? Was the man there, in one of the homesteads, watching him at this very moment?
Slowly and thoughtfully Tom Tidy went along the street. When he got home, he attended to his six cart horses. After they had been fed and closed in their stalls for the night, he went into his house, took a meat pie from his larder, cut a large slice, and put it on a wooden platter on his table. He poured