Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [314]
But if Sean O’Byrne was thanking God, he did not show it. As the friar put the lid back on the dark little box, he sat sullenly staring at the table, saying not a word. In the end, it was Eva who spoke.
“The Brennans go. Seamus can take over their place.”
Sean turned towards her and gazed, fixedly, at her face.
“I will decide about that,” he said.
“You can decide what you like,” she answered. “But if the Brennans stay, then it’s me who’ll be leaving, tomorrow.” She meant it, and he could see it. She’d thought it all out. She’d take little Fintan and the youngest girl with her; the older ones could stay. There wasn’t much Sean could do about it. Anything was better than staying here with Sean and the Brennan girl mocking her every day.
The silence that followed was broken by Father Donal.
“It would be good for Seamus to have that land,” he remarked.
There was a pause.
“I should lose the Brennans’ rent.”
“The land might still be worth more to you,” the priest observed.
“The Brennans will have to go,” O’Byrne said finally, as if by saying it he was recovering control of the situation. “They’re tenants-at-will, you know. They can be told to go at any time.” He glanced at Eva, who quietly nodded. “They’ll be told we need the farm for Seamus.”
The next day, the Brennans were sent away. The explanation given was that their place was required for young Seamus. Whether Brennan believed this or not was unclear.
He might have done. For just as O’Byrne himself occupied a small portion of the wide territories of his princely ancestors, so, all over Ireland, as one generation succeeded another, these smaller holdings were being subdivided amongst the descendants until even their humblest tenants might find themselves turned out to make way for one of the family’s many heirs. O’Tooles, O’Byrnes, even the mighty O’Neills—it was always the same. “Every damned Irish cottager seems to think he’s the descendant of princes,” the English would sometimes complain. The reason was that many of them were.
So the Brennans left in search of another place, and young Seamus O’Byrne made himself a home in their hut, and Eva repaired her dignity.
Before he had left, the friar had given the couple some good advice. “It’s the right thing that you’ve done,” he told Sean. “You’ve a fine wife and I hope you’ve the wisdom to see it. And you,” he turned to Eva, “have a fine husband. Remember that now and honour him.”
In the weeks and months that followed, she had done her best to take his advice, and to make herself agreeable and attractive to her husband in every way she knew. It seemed to work. He became quite amorous, if not exactly affectionate. And God knows, she thought, one might as well be grateful for that. During that winter and far beyond she had no cause, she thought, to regret what she had done.
It did not occur to her that in the mind of Sean O’Byrne, only one thing had happened on the day that the friar brought the relic. He, Sean O’Byrne of Rathconan, a prince among men, had been tricked and humiliated by her in front of the priest. He had had his position usurped. He wasn’t the master in his own house. That was all that he knew; but he said nothing.
NINE
SILKEN THOMAS
1533
THE YEARS that followed her marriage should have been happy for Cecily; and in a way they were. She loved her husband. She had two pretty little girls. Tidy’s business was thriving: he made some of the best gloves in Dublin; MacGowan and Dame Doyle recommended him to all their friends; he already had a boy apprentice in the workshop. He had also become a busy and rising member of his craft guild; on feast days, Cecily would watch him go off dressed in the guild’s bright livery, so pleased with himself that it was touching to see. And, of course, he had the freedom of the city.
“Your husband is making quite a name for himself,” Dame Doyle remarked to her with a smile when they met in the street one day. “You must feel very proud of him.”
Did she? She knew she should. Wasn’t he everything a good Dublin craftsman