Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [341]
“Indeed, I’ll go and see if he will speak with me,” he suggested, “straightaway.” And asking MacGowan to look after his wife, he hurried off.
MacGowan spent nearly an hour with Margaret Walsh. The men had stopped shooting over the walls, so they walked round the outside of the castle. They discussed the political situation and she gave him a detailed account of how Sean O’Byrne had forced her husband to take the oath. It was clear to MacGowan that she shared her husband’s caution. “We were always loyal to Kildare,” she remarked, “but that foolish oath was going too far.” It was when she asked what business her husband was engaged upon now, that he paused. Walsh and the alderman were civil, but he wasn’t sure what Margaret’s feelings about the Doyles were, nor how much of Joan Doyle’s dealings with her husband she might have discovered. So he contented himself with saying, “He’s doing me a favour, trying to help some people in there.” He indicated the castle. “You’ll have to ask him.” She looked thoughtful, but seemed quite contented. After a little while, however, she looked up brightly and remarked, “I expect that’ll be Alderman Doyle. My husband likes him, you know, and his wife is quite a friend of mine.”
“She is?” It wasn’t often that MacGowan was taken in, but on this occasion he was. And supposing that it might look strange if he withheld the information, he briefly told her what the errand was. She seemed delighted.
Shortly after noon, Walsh reappeared looking pleased.
“I told your wife what you were doing,” MacGowan told him quickly. “So you’ve no need to explain.”
“Ah.” Did Walsh look awkward just for an instant? If so, he recovered at once. “I was able to persuade him,” he announced with a smile.
“How did you do it?” asked MacGowan with frank admiration.
“My husband is not a lawyer for nothing,” said Margaret, linking her arm affectionately through his. “When is she to leave the castle?” she asked.
“Tomorrow evening at dusk. Not before. You’re to conduct her quietly out of the city through the Dame’s Gate,” Walsh informed MacGowan.
The lawyer and his wife had left after that to return to their estate; and MacGowan, having sent in a message to the alderman telling him of the arrangements, had gone gratefully back to his house. It was a piece of providential good fortune, he considered, that the gentleman lawyer should have chanced to come by when he did.
So the grey merchant could find no explanation for the strange feeling that came over him that evening when he thought about Dame Doyle. There was something about the arrangements he didn’t like. He didn’t know why. An instinct. A sense of unease. These were dangerous times.
Well, he told himself, he must escort her to Dalkey, whatever the danger, since he had given Doyle his word and Doyle, as well as being a friend, was a powerful man. But he resolved to take extra precautions.
At dawn the next morning, leaving word for her sleeping husband that she had gone into Dublin and would return that afternoon, Margaret Walsh set out from her house. But she had only gone a short distance out of sight when she wheeled her horse round and, instead of going towards the city, headed south towards the Wicklow Mountains.
The threat of the Gunner and his English troops might concern the people in Dublin, but to Eva O’Byrne it hardly seemed to matter. To those who dwelt in the hills, the slow rhythm of cattle raising in the high and silent places was hardly impinged upon by the ebb and flow of the rival ruling clans down the generations—except when these provided the occasional excitement of a cattle raid. The government of the Pale would change from time to time, but it seemed to her that this underlying pattern of Irish life would always remain the same.
And wasn’t this exactly the case now? The quarrel between Silken Thomas and King Henry might be about profound issues across the sea; but for the O’Byrnes it