Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [298]
“It is pride that is causing you to behave as you do,” Father Donal was saying to him now. “The terrible sin of pride.”
He was not only a princely O’Byrne; his ancestor who had been given Rathconan had noticed the dark-haired, green-eyed little girl who used to run errands for his father down to the harbour at Dalkey or the fort at Carrickmines. He’d fallen in love and married her. Sean knew that the blood of Walsh of Carrickmines had flowed in her veins, and even the blood of the half-remembered Ui Fergusa of Dublin, too. For as part of her meagre dowry, she had brought into his family an ancient drinking skull with a gold rim—a strange and fearsome memento of that clan’s princely past. Was he proud of his descent from all these rulers of the land? Certainly. And did this make him think he had the right to every woman he could find? No, the priest was wrong about that.
It had been greed, when he was younger, that made him chase after women. Simple greed. He knew it very well. Wasn’t every woman proof that life was being lived to the full? If he had sometimes gone from one to another, two in a day, he was like a man at the banquet of life, seeing how many of the dishes he could taste. It was greed. And vanity. He had a reputation to keep up. “Sean O’Byrne of Rathconan. Ah, he’s a devil with the women.” That’s what they all said about him. He was proud of his reputation, and he wasn’t going to give it up—not as long as he could still get the women. And then, of course, there was one thing more. Perhaps it came as you grew older, but it seemed to Sean that it had been there from the beginning. Fear of death. Wasn’t every woman proof that he was still young, still alive—not wasting a single one of the precious moments of life remaining? Yes, that was it. Live to the full before you die, before it’s too late.
As for the girl, she wasn’t bad. Brennan’s wife. Brennan had been a tenant for five years now, farming a part of Sean O’Byrne’s land. His little house—it was hardly more than a hut, really—lay on the other side of a small wood about half a mile away down the slope. Brennan was a reliable sort of man, paid his rents on time, was a good worker. Like many such tenants, he had no security; under Irish law, O’Byrne could turn him out any time he wanted to; but good tenants weren’t so easy to find, and Seań had been glad enough to have him, even if he was a dull, ungainly sort of fellow. Strangely enough, Sean had never taken much notice of Brennan’s wife until the previous year. He supposed Brennan must have kept her out of sight down in the hut. But then one evening at harvest time, he had noticed her alone in a field and gone to talk to her.
She was a pretty little thing. Broad faced. Freckled. She smelled of farm, of course, but there was another, subtle scent about her, something in the quality of her skin. By the autumn, that scent, and everything else about her, had become an obsession with him. Before winter began, she was his. But he’d been careful. He’d never had a woman quite so close to home before. He was sure that his wife had never seen them. Whether Brennan had any idea about the affair, he wasn’t sure. The girl said he didn’t know. If he did, he was certainly giving no sign of it. Afraid of losing his tenancy, probably. As for the girl, she seemed willing enough; he supposed she must be bored with Brennan. Of course, it might be that she was only keeping him happy because he had power over them, but he preferred not to think of that. She and her husband would be down at their hut now, unaware of the shameful interrogation taking place at the entrance to the tower house.
“It isn’t true,” he said to his wife, ignoring Father Donal entirely. “There’s nothing more to say.”
He wondered why his wife should have chosen to attack him now. The Brennan girl was too close to home, he supposed: that would be it. His wife’s eyes had a steady, fixed look, as though she’d made up her mind about something. But what? Was there pain concealed