Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [348]
“Because …” he hesitated a moment, “there is something I never told you.”
So, it was coming at last. She felt a coldness, a sinking sensation. Did she want to hear it? Half of her wanted to stop him. Her throat was dry.
“What?”
“On Corpus Christi day, last year, I borrowed a large sum of money from her.”
“On Corpus Christi?” She stared at him.
“Yes. You may recall,” he went on quickly, “that Richard had caused us great expense in London. I was embarrassed for money, worried. More worried than I wanted you to know. It was our friend MacGowan, seeing me looking rather glum in Dublin one day, who suggested she might be able to help me. So I went to see her for a loan.”
“She makes loans herself? Without her husband?”
“She does. You know our Dublin women have more freedom than even the London women do. I discovered she makes quite a few. She usually consults the alderman but not always. In my case, because I felt embarrassed, she lent me the money privately. There’s a written agreement, of course, properly drawn up, but so far as I know it’s private between myself and Dame Doyle.” He paused. Then he gave a small laugh. “Do you know why she made the loan? She remembered Richard. That time she took shelter at this house. ‘He’s a sweet boy,’ she said. ‘He must be helped.’ And she gave me the money. On very easy terms as well.”
“On Corpus Christi day?”
“I went to see her. She was quite alone, apart from an old servant. The rest of the house had gone to see the plays. And she gave me the money there and then.”
“When will it have to be repaid?”
“It was due after a year. I thought I could manage it. But after we lost the Church estate … She’s given me another three years. Generous terms.”
“But it’s her husband who got our land.”
“I know. ‘Your loss has been our gain,’ she said to me. ‘I can hardly refuse to extend your loan after that, can I?’ ” He shook his head. “She has treated us—me, if you like—uncommonly well. My crime, Margaret, is that because I was ashamed, I concealed it from you. If she had been killed the other night, the loan document would have been found in her papers, and Doyle might have come after the money. I don’t know.” He sighed. “Anyway, it was time I told you. Can you forgive me?”
Margaret gazed at him. Was this the whole truth? She had no doubt about the loan. If her husband said there was a loan, then there was one. The story about Corpus Christi was probably true, also. But was there more to it than her kindness and her liking for Richard? Wasn’t there still something between this woman, who had always despised her, and her husband?
For if there was not, then she had sent Sean O’Byrne to attack her, and caused the death of his boy for nothing. Nothing at all.
“Dear God,” she said, in sudden doubt. “Oh dear God.”
For Cecily, the month of September brought a new and awkward decision. Two days after MacGowan’s return from Fintan O’Byrne’s wake, the city changed its mind. Perhaps it was the increasingly urgent news that an English army was about to arrive, or that the citizens were tired of billeting Fitzgerald’s troops, or a perception amongst the council members that Silken Thomas’s rule lacked conviction; but whatever the reasons, the city turned.
The first Cecily knew was when one of the children ran up the tower stairs looking frightened. Then she heard bangs and shouts in the street. Looking out, she saw a party of Fitzgerald’s gallowglasses beating a hasty retreat through the western gateway. And close behind them followed a huge angry tide of people armed with spears, swords, axes, staves—whatever they could get their hands on—flooding out through the gate. They caught and killed dozens of Fitzgerald’s men. If Silken Thomas was offering to save Ireland for the one true Church, they didn’t seem to care. “Heretics,” she called them furiously. But Silken Thomas was back outside Dublin now, and though he put the city under siege again, he couldn’t get back in. Within days, Silken Thomas and the aldermen agreed to