Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [289]
“Oh, Father,” she cried in frustration, “for God’s sake find me a boy in Dublin who will love me as I am.”
And truly at that moment, and when she went to bed in secret tears that night, this was all that Margaret wanted. But when she awoke, refreshed, the next morning, she felt a new sense of rebellion. The proud Talbots might not want her, but she’d show them.
II
1518
It was an unusual sight. Women—about a hundred of them, waiting down by the crane house on the waterfront. Not just ordinary women: many of these were fine ladies, richly dressed, laughing and chattering on a bright September morning.
The crane house was a solid, unlovely, two-storey building that served as a customhouse, from which there projected a massive timber structure whose grinding cogs and squealing pulleys allowed heavy cargoes to be lifted from dockside vessels and weighed. It stood roughly halfway along the extended waterfront. To the east, having advanced with continued rebuilding many yards into the river now, lay the old Wood Quay. To the west, on the reclaimed land that ran towards the bridge, the riverside was known as Merchants Quay. And though the crane was a surly-looking thing, and a chilly breeze had now begun to blow along the waterfront, the women were cheerfully ignoring the cold. For after all, this was a special occasion.
The Riding of the Franchises only took place once in three years. At dawn that morning, the mayor of Dublin, resplendent in his robes of office and preceded by a man carrying the city’s ceremonial sword, had left Dame’s Gate in the east, and riding out past the Thingmount and the old Viking Long Stone, made his way along the Liffey estuary towards the sea. Riding behind him came the twenty-four aldermen, the members of the common council, and a large party of local gentlemen—almost a hundred riders in all. At the seashore, the water bailiff had hurled a spear into the water, to symbolise the city’s rights over the Dublin coastline. Then they had set out to ride round the city boundaries.
This was a huge circuit. For the city’s authority—excepting the big Liberties, mostly belonging to the Church—stretched far out beyond the city walls, and in places was marked now by gateways and tollbooths on the approach roads. Their course took them firstly down the coast, almost halfway to Dalkey; then they turned inland, across to the village of Donnybrook, on past the environs of Saint Stephen’s and the Liberties by Saint Patrick’s, and after that still farther westwards to the hamlet of Kilmainham, some two miles upstream from the city, where the mayor could take the horse ferry across the Liffey. North of the Liffey, the boundary followed a huge arc which passed a mile north of Oxmantown, crossed the Tolka stream, and continued up the coast by the old battlefield of Brian Boru at Clontarf and even a mile beyond that.
It was past noon. The procession, having ridden a total distance of over thirty miles, was returning through Oxmantown and would shortly cross the bridge back into the city. The wives were starting to catch sight of their husbands now. Silk handkerchiefs were being waved. There was laughter. And nowhere did the company seem gayer than in the group around a small, Spanish-looking woman, dressed in a gown of rich brocade with a fur collar to guard her from the wind.
Margaret was waiting at some distance from this group. She knew few of the city women more than slightly. She did not often come into Dublin; there was always so much to be done on the farm. She was dressed in good cloth, of which she had no reason to be ashamed; and with a growing family to think of, she wouldn’t have let her husband give her an expensive, fur-trimmed gown even if he had offered. She turned to a woman standing nearby.
“That Spanish-looking