Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [296]
“Slightly,” said William Walsh, with perfect truth. Then with a quiet smile, he added: “Malahide’s a long way from where we live.”
And now, with her ready little smile, Joan Doyle turned to Margaret.
“You wouldn’t want to go out there, I’m sure.” She turned back to the rest of them. “All that way up in Fingal.”
It sounded so harmless. No one but herself, Margaret realised, could know what the Doyle woman really meant. “I know all about you,” she had said. And how slyly, now, she was humiliating her with this knowledge. She clearly knew that Margaret’s family came from Fingal. The Talbots must have told her how they’d sent Margaret packing when she was a young woman. The bitter memory of it still cut deep after all these years. And now the alderman’s wife had decided to taunt her with it under the guise of friendly conversation. The viciousness of the dark little woman almost took her breath away.
But nobody else had noticed anything, and a moment later the conversation moved on to the new college, and then to Kildare himself.
“I have to say,” Walsh told the alderman, “that the earl has been very good to me.” Indeed, it was partly as an expression of loyalty and gratitude that he had made a point of coming to Maynooth with his wife that day. “For it’s thanks to him,” he explained, “that I’ve just got to farm some good Church land.”
If the English of the Pale were proud supporters of the Church, the Church in turn was good to them. As a lawyer, William Walsh looked after the business of several religious houses, including the house of nuns whose affairs Margaret’s father had turned over to him some years before his death. Another way that the Church could reward the local gentry was to lease Church lands to them at very modest rents. The Walsh family—solid gentry who had supplied several distinguished churchmen down the generations, too—were good candidates for such treatment; but it had been a friendly word from Kildare that had recently ensured William Walsh the lease of a monastic farm at a rent that was almost laughable.
Margaret well understood that by informing Doyle of this, her husband was skilfully letting the alderman know two things: first, that he had the favour of Kildare and was loyal to him; and second, that he was actively engaged in acquiring wealth. Doyle seemed impressed.
“Do you think of standing for Parliament?” the alderman enquired.
Though the Irish Parliament was supposed to represent the whole island, in practice nearly all of its thirty or forty members came from Dublin and the nearby Pale. Parliament’s power might be limited by the English king, but there was prestige in membership.
“I think of it,” said Walsh. “And you?” There were several rich merchants in the Parliament.
“I, too,” Doyle agreed, and gave Walsh a look which said: we’ll talk further.
During this exchange, Margaret had watched in silence. She knew how hard her husband had worked for his family—it was one of the many things she loved about him—and she was glad to see him having some success. She had nothing in particular against Doyle. If only his wife had been someone else.
The conversation moved on. The two men were discussing the king. She was not paying close attention but she heard the Doyle woman say to her husband, “You should tell him the story you just told me.” And the alderman started to relate the tale about the two councillors that the king had executed. “These Tudors are quite as ruthless, perhaps more so, than the Plantagenets ever were,” she heard him say. As he said it, she found her mind carried back to that fatal expedition in her childhood, when the Irish gentlemen had so unwisely invaded England and Henry Tudor had killed them all. And suddenly, for the first time in years, the youthful face of her brother John rose up before her—that happy, excited face, before he had gone to his death—and she felt a wave of sadness pass over her.
She hadn’t been listening. The Doyle woman was talking.
“My husband’s very cautious,” she was saying, “especially about the English. He says”—and now it seemed to Margaret