Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [317]
“That doesn’t make it true,” Tidy snapped. But she knew he’d heard the stories, too. And when a rumour came to the port that the Emperor might invade the English kingdom and seek help in Ireland, she irritably remarked, “Let him come, I say.”
“Dear God don’t even think such things,” he cried in horror. “That would be treason. How can you say such wickedness?”
“Wickedness?” she retorted. “And is it wicked of poor Queen Catherine to refuse to deny her wedding vows and the Holy Father, and to make herself a heretic like King Henry’s whore?”
For it seemed to Cecily that she saw the matter very clearly. She imagined the poor queen’s pain. Didn’t Tidy think of that? She saw the cruelty of the English king. Did such things count for nothing? Not in the harsh world of politics. The unhappy queen in England was being put upon, just as, in her insignificant way, she had been put upon that day years ago when she’d been so stupidly arrested. It was all the same thing, the tyranny of men who would never be happy until they forced every woman to submit to their foolishness. She admired the queen for standing up for the truth and for her rights; and she admired, certainly, the few like Thomas More who had the courage of their convictions. But as for the rest of the men, whether in England or in Dublin, who thought they knew everything, she saw now that behind their pompous bluster, there lay only cowardice. And it was painful to think that her husband was no better than the rest of them. As the years of these stormy events in England went by, therefore, in her heart—though she never admitted it to her confessor and scarcely even to herself—she loved her husband less.
It was soon after this last conversation that Cecily began to want a new house.
Their lodgings lay outside the city walls in the Liberty of Saint Patrick and consisted of a workshop and two rooms. They had been happy enough there, but the rooms were not large and were overlooked by everyone else in the little courtyard; the children were growing, and so it was not unreasonable that Cecily should one day tell her husband, “We need more space.” During the last two years, Tidy had become aware of Cecily’s occasional irritation and dissatisfaction, but he had never quite known what to do about it; so he was only too glad of the chance to do something that would apparently make her happy. He started to look for something at once. But after a month, he had still not found anything that seemed satisfactory, and he was wondering what to do, when one day as he and Cecily were walking into the old walled city, she suddenly remarked, “I wish we could live in one of the towers.”
There were numerous towers nowadays in Dublin’s city wall; each century seemed to have added a few. There were gate towers at the five big entrances in the outer wall, not counting the various river gates along the waterfront. Besides these, there were numerous small towers at intervals between the gates, some of which were habitable. A number of these gates provided lodgings, mostly for city functionaries of some kind, but some were let to craftsmen.
“It would be nice to look out on something, instead of being overlooked,” she sighed.
“If you had one of those towers, do you think you would be happy?” he had asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I believe I should.”
“I shouldn’t think there’s much chance,” he said; but secretly he set to work to secure one if he could, applying to Doyle himself for help. It would be a wonderful way to surprise and delight her.
The months that followed had been particularly trying. Several times he heard that there might be a tower becoming available, but each time it proved to be a false report. He was so determined to