Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [311]
“I shall never find out,” Walsh said sadly. “When these people decide not to talk, you could be asking questions of a grave.” He sighed. “Silence.”
“Perhaps,” she said, without much hope, “they’ll change their minds about the Parliament.”
“Perhaps,” he said. She knew he didn’t believe it.
And so all Margaret could do was to think of Joan Doyle and wonder when, and in what form, she could have her revenge.
Eva O’Byrne didn’t say a word when her husband came home. She had prepared everything with the greatest care.
Tomorrow would be Michaelmas, the twenty-ninth of September, one of the main days of the Church calendar for the settling of accounts. She couldn’t help smiling to herself at that coincidence. It was so appropriate.
During the morning, she had walked down to the Brennans’ place. Brennan was out in the field with his cattle, and she saw him glance curiously in her direction. His wife was standing by the door of their hut. She had a broad face, freckled skin; her eyes, Eva considered, looked dishonest. She was a pretty little slut, she thought, hardly worth her attention. There was a three-year-old boy playing in the dirt at the girl’s feet. The thought suddenly crossed her mind that the child could be her husband’s. She looked at the little boy sharply but couldn’t see any likeness. Then she shrugged. What did it matter? She said a few words of no consequence to the girl. More important, she wondered what the hut was like inside. It had been bare enough when she had last been in there some years ago, but she couldn’t really see from outside. She let her eye wander over the field that ran down the slope. It was good land. After a few moments, she nodded to the girl and walked back towards the house. The Brennans must have wondered why she had come. Let them wonder.
The rest of the morning she had spent with her children. Seamus, her eldest son, had gone out with his father. There were five others, a boy and four girls. She loved them all. But if she had a favourite child—which she would never admit—it would be Fintan. Five years old, he looked very much like her: the same fair hair; the same blue eyes. But above all, it seemed to her, he thought the same way as she did. Straightforward, honest. Trustworthy. She had spent an hour telling him stories about her own family in the Midlands. He loved to hear about her side of the family, and she always reminded him, “They are your people, too, as well as the O’Byrnes.” He had told her the day before that he’d like to visit her family. “I promise I’ll take you there one day,” she had said; and then added: “Maybe soon.”
The friar from Dublin had arrived early in the afternoon. She had seen him approaching and gone out to meet him.
“You have brought it?”
He had nodded. “It is here.” He had tapped a small bulge under his habit.
Like most people on the island, whether in the English Pale or the Irish heartlands, Eva revered the friars. Father Donal was a good man, and she respected him. When she received the sacrament from his hands, she had no doubt that the miracle of the Mass was accomplished; when he heard her confession, gave her penance and absolution, the fact that he was himself a husband in all but name, and a father of children, did not trouble her in the least. He was a fatherly man, he was learned, he carried the authority of the Church within him, which by itself was fearsome. His rebuke, also, had that same, unanswerable moral authority. But the friar was something special. He was a holy man. His thin, ascetic face was not unkindly, but it contained an inner fire. He was like a hermit, a desert dweller, a man who had walked alone in the terrible presence of God Himself. His eyes, when they fixed upon you, seemed to cut through to the truth like a knife.
It had been back in the spring, when he was leaving in the morning on his way to Glendalough, that she had first sought his advice. His words then had been kindly, but not encouraging. It was while