Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [292]
“My husband says that the time to secure an inheritance is before someone dies, not after,” Joan had replied. “He’s a terrible man,” she continued with a laugh. “Do you know what he says?” And now, to imitate the alderman’s voice, she spoke more loudly. “The disinherited have only themselves to blame.”
It was these last words that Margaret heard, as Joan laughed and turned to look at her.
If people usually hear what they expect to hear, then every expectation Margaret might have had was now fulfilled. There was no doubt in her mind: she had heard what she had heard. This rich little Dublin woman, whose family had stolen her own poor father’s inheritance, was mocking her to this group of women, insulting her in public. Well then, she thought, let her mock me to my face.
“Tell me,” she calmly intruded on the conversation, “how would you feel if you were disinherited yourself?” And with that she gave her a cold, unyielding stare.
Joan Doyle did not return this gaze, though she certainly looked at Margaret. She thought it perhaps a little rude of this stranger to butt in as she had, and she seemed to be wearing rather a long face for such a festive occasion. But it wasn’t in Joan’s nature to criticise. And there really was no question, she thought, that this severe-looking woman had the most wonderful hair.
“I don’t know,” she answered simply. And then, thinking to lighten the other’s apparently solemn mood with a cheerful compliment, she went on with a laugh: “I’m sure I could bear it if I had your hair.” She had no sooner said it than she was distracted by one of the other women pointing out that the riders were on the bridge and that her husband was waving to her. By the time she turned back again, the red-haired woman was gone. She asked her companions who she was, but none of them knew.
She was to learn, however, the following month.
If there was one thing the English of the Pale were proud of, it was their religion. They had their language, laws, and customs, of course, and these were important; but after three centuries of living side by side with the Irish on the island, what could the English point to as the one important thing which held them together as a community and proved their superiority to even the best of the natives? What gave them the moral high ground? The answer was simple.
The English knew they were superior because they were Roman Catholic.
The native Irish were Catholic, too, of course. But outside the Pale, in the great native hinterland, everybody knew that the Celtic Church was much as it had always been. Divorce was allowed, priests married, monasteries were run by local chiefs—in short, the native church was still tolerating those degenerate practices which the Pope had asked the English to clean up when they first invaded the island. To the English in Ireland, the thing was clear as day: true Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, was only to be found within the English Pale.
Indeed, of all the kingdoms in Christendom, none was more loyal to the Pope in Rome than the kingdom of England. In Germany, or in the Low Countries, the heretical Protestants, those followers of Luther and others who threatened good Catholic order, might be tolerated. But not in England. Young Henry VIII and his loyal wife, Catherine, the princess from Spain, would see to that. The King of England detested Protestants; he was ready and willing to execute them. The English in Ireland, therefore, could truly claim, “We are the guardians of the Roman faith.”
But one thing, in Ireland, had for a long time been missing. The Church was the repository of culture and learning; the higher priesthood were nearly always educated men. But Ireland had no university. Ambitious young men thinking of the priesthood had to travel to Paris or Italy—or, more usually, to Oxford or Cambridge. And in 1518, a first step was taken to correct that situation.