Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [299]
“You deny it?” Father Donal cut in. “Do you seriously mean us to believe that?”
There had been one or two times when his own absences had been unexplained, and when Brennan had come looking for the girl. Once, just once, his wife had seen him with his arm round the girl, but he had explained that away. There was nothing they could prove. Nothing. So why should the tall, bare-boned priest be giving him the accusing eye in the doorway of his own house?
He’d been good to Father Donal. In a way, they were lucky to have him there. Unlike many of the priests in the smaller parishes, he was a man of some education, something of a poet even. And he had taken proper orders: he was able to administer the sacraments. But also, like many priests in the poorer Irish parishes, he was forced to work for his living as well. From time to time, he would go out with the fishermen at Dalkey, or one of the other harbours in the region, to earn some extra money. “Saint Peter himself was a fisherman,” he would growl. And like many priests in the Irish Church, he had a wife and several children. “Down in the English Pale, you couldn’t do it,” Sean O’Byrne had remarked to him on more than one occasion. “It has always been the custom in the Irish Church,” Father Donal had replied with a shrug. And indeed, it was said that the Holy Father himself was aware of the custom and did not choose to make an issue of it. Sean did not know whether a marriage ceremony had ever been performed between the two, and had never asked. All he did know was that he was good to Father Donal’s children, gave them little errands to do, and helped to keep them fed.
So it hardly seemed right that the priest should be taking this stern moral tone with him about his own shortcomings now.
“Are you ready to swear to it?” Father Donal’s eye was piercing him from under his iron brow. It was disconcerting. And then suddenly Sean thought he understood. Was the priest offering him a way out? Perhaps that was the game. He glanced at his wife, silently watching. He must answer, now, to his watching wife.
“I am indeed,” he said without a blush. “I swear it on the Blessed Virgin.”
“Your husband has sworn,” the priest declared to Eva O’Byrne. “Will that satisfy you?”
But she had turned her face away.
She couldn’t look at him. Not just then. It was too painful.
Sometimes, when she looked back, Eva blamed the trial marriage for the problems in her life. It was not uncommon, outside the English Pale, for couples to live together for a time before committing to formal marriage. Her father hadn’t approved, but Eva had been headstrong in those days; she had gone to live with Sean O’Byrne. And they had been the happiest and most exciting months of her life. If only, she thought, I’d paid more attention to studying his character and less to the joys of our love life. Yet how could she have felt otherwise, when she thought of his splendid, athletic body, and his skilful caresses? Even now, after all these years, his magnificent physique had hardly changed. She still wanted him. But the years of pain had taken their toll as well.
When had he first started to stray to other women? At the time their first child was born. She knew such things were not uncommon. A man had needs. But she had been terribly hurt at the time. Was it her fault that he had continued to stray ever since? For a while she had supposed that it might be, but as the years went by she had decided that it really wasn’t. She had taken good care of her appearance. She was still attractive, and her husband clearly found her so. Their married life together was entirely satisfactory: she supposed she should thank God for that. And above all, she had been a good wife. The land they had left at Rathconan was only just enough to keep them. The chief of the O’Byrnes might be their