Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [270]
Half an hour later the Dublin MacGowans were surprised when Tom Tidy returned and informed them that he would not be staying after all. By late afternoon his wagon was trundling back past Harold’s Cross. And there were still some hours of daylight left when, to his horror, Michael MacGowan saw Tom Tidy coming up the street and, running out towards him, received from his happy face the news.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying here.”
“You can’t,” MacGowan blurted out. But Tom had already driven past.
That evening, as the dusk was falling, Michael MacGowan did all he could to persuade his friend to leave again. “What is the necessity,” he demanded, “of putting yourself in danger for no reason at all?” But he got nowhere. Tom was adamant. As a result, MacGowan spent a sleepless night. Before dawn, he went to his yard, mounted his horse, and rode out of Dalkey. As he rode through the grey predawn, the words of a secret conversation he had recently had were echoing, coldly, in his ear.
“He must leave, MacGowan. Or else …”
“I realise that,” he had replied, “but I’m not going to kill him, you know.”
“You will not be asked to do it, though the O’Byrnes might,” the voice of the other had calmly replied. “Make him leave.”
They came into Carrickmines during the night. It was cleverly done. They did not come in groups, but singly, leading their horses through the darkness with sacking on their hoofs, so that they should neither be seen nor heard. Nor were they, for even the stars were hidden behind a blanket of cloud. In this manner, at dead of night, the Dalkey squadron, Harold’s men, and all the rest—a total of sixty horsemen and as many foot soldiers—passed through the gates of Carrickmines and vanished inside like so many ghostly warriors into a magic hill.
When dawn arose, Carrickmines looked exactly the same as before. The gate was shut, but that was not unusual. Corralled inside, the horses sometimes made a little noise, but the thick stone walls trapped these sounds within. In the middle of the morning, Walsh appeared on the walls with his falcon. He loosed it into the sky where it flew for some time before returning. That was the only movement seen that morning at the castle of Carrickmines.
It was in the afternoon, when he had gone up onto the wall alone, that Walsh thought he saw the girl concealed amongst some rocks a little way to the south. Unless she had been there the night before, he was sure she could not have any idea that Carrickmines was full of soldiers. After a short while he went down again. To make everything seem normal, he opened the gates and let a cart, driven by one of his men, leave the castle and creak across to a neighbouring farm, returning later with some provisions. In the meantime, the gate was left casually half open, and two of his children went out to play. They practised hurling until the cart came back, jumping on it as it went in through the gate, which was still left ajar for some time after it was inside. He knew that the dark-haired girl must have observed all this, because when he went up onto the wall as the children came in, he had seen her watching carefully from another vantage point some way farther up the slope.
In the early evening, however, when he went up again, he could not see her and concluded that she had gone.
“I am sure,” he said to Harold when he had descended, “that they will attack tonight.”
There was something strange about Dalkey today. Tom felt it from