Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [279]
“I’ve a message for you.”
“You’ve nothing to say to me,” she cried back defiantly.
“You’ll take a message to O’Byrne,” he answered. “Tell him,” he thought quickly, “tell him that my wrist is healing, but that I’ve nothing to show for my trouble.” He hadn’t planned any such message—he’d thought of it on the spur of the moment—but he was pleased with it. Then, before the girl could make any further response, he turned his horse’s head and rode away.
It was a week later that, coming out of the castle soon after dawn, he found half a dozen kegs of wine had been left during the night just outside the gate.
He smiled to himself. So that was the game. Dalkey was only just down the road from Carrickmines. Perhaps it was time, he thought, that the Walsh family started to take more of an interest in the place.
EIGHT
The Pale
I
IF HISTORIANS WISH to designate a date to mark the ending of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492 would seem a reasonable choice. In British history, convention has usually selected 1485; for in that year, the long feud now known as the Wars of the Roses between the York and Lancaster branches of the royal Plantagenet house was brought to an end when Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, was killed in battle by Henry Tudor. Under the new Tudor dynasty, England entered the world of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the age of exploration.
But in the western island of Ireland, a better date must surely be just two years later, in the year 1487. For on May 24 of that year, the city of Dublin witnessed an event unique in Ireland’s history, and whose long-term repercussions were to be profound: the Irish set out to conquer England.
The crowd outside Christ Church Cathedral was large. The great men of Ireland were all inside, as were most of the local gentry.
“I wish we could go in, Father,” said the red-haired girl. “Weren’t we invited?”
“Of course we were. But we got here too late,” he replied with a smile. “We’ll never get through the crowd now. Besides,” he added, “this is better. We shall see the procession as they come out.”
Margaret Rivers looked at Christ Church eagerly. Her freckled face was pale with excitement, her blue eyes shining. She knew her family was important. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but she knew it must be true, because her father had told her. “And you, Margaret, are going to be a great success,” he would tell her.
“How do you know, Father?” she would ask him.
“Because you’re my special girl,” he’d reply, as she knew he was going to, and she would feel a little rush of happiness. She had three brothers, but she was the only girl, and she was the youngest. Of course she was his special girl. She wasn’t quite sure what she had to do to be a great success, but earlier that year, on her eighth birthday, her father had announced to the whole family: “Margaret will make a brilliant marriage. To a man of wealth and importance.” So she had supposed that success must be something to do with this.
She knew her father was a wonderful man. Sometimes she had seen her mother cast her eyes up to heaven when he was speaking; she didn’t know quite what it meant, since her mother never said; but then her mother was subject, sometimes, to strange moods.
The nuns always treated her father with the greatest respect when he visited the old convent. There were only seven of them, and one of these was deaf, but it seemed their lives were entirely in his hands. “Where would we be without you?” they used to say. Her father looked after all their affairs, managed their extensive lands, and advised them so that they never had to worry that their abbey’s large endowments would fail to support their few and modest needs. “We know we can always trust your dear father,” one of the faithful nuns remarked to little Margaret one day. “Your father is a gentleman.”
A gentleman. Their house in the suburb of Oxmantown might be no different