Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [356]
“You make it sound as if it’s all about money,” she objected.
“I’m afraid,” the lawyer sighed, “that it usually is.”
The subject of money could never be far from Walsh’s mind at this time. Not only was the question of his royal pardon and fine an unresolved issue for many months but there was also the debt to Joan Doyle which remained unpaid. “And yet,” he remarked upon several occasions to Margaret, “these difficulties have also been a kind of blessing.” This was because of the effect they had on young Richard.
For if Richard Walsh had cost his family more than they could afford while he lived as a young gentleman in London, he was only too painfully conscious of the fact now. If he had lost none of his boyhood charm, if with his mother’s dark red hair he possessed the most striking good looks, he was also a tolerably good lawyer and as determined as any young man could be to repay to his family what he believed he owed them, and then to make for himself a fortune in the world. Side by side with his father, he worked assiduously. He himself made any journey that he thought might tire his father; if William at day’s end needed to pore over ancient documents, he’d sit up all night with them so that his father would awake to find the job already done. He sought out new business, covered for William when he was busy in Parliament, learned everything he could about Ireland’s law.
“I have to tell him, sometimes, to stop,” his father said proudly. “But he’s young and strong, these efforts will do him no harm.”
Despite all these efforts, however, the Walshes were so far only able to pay the interest on Dame Doyle’s loan and put a little aside towards the coming royal fine.
If he hadn’t been aware of the transaction before, the alderman himself was clearly aware of his wife’s loan now. Walsh knew this for a certainty one morning when he encountered Doyle on his way to a parliamentary session. He had heard the day before that the alderman’s daughter Mary had just been granted the freedom of the city and so he politely congratulated him on this event, which Doyle received with affability. Then, falling in beside Walsh, the alderman genially murmured, “Here’s the fellow that’s borrowed a fortune from my wife.” Seeing Walsh wince, he grinned. “She told me all about it. I haven’t the least objection, you know.”
It was easy enough for Doyle to be sanguine, Walsh thought a little enviously. As a loyal alderman who’d opposed Silken Thomas, with a wife connected to the Butlers and who’d even been attacked by O’Byrne, the rich merchant was high in royal favour and likely to profit from any monastic property or royal offices that might be going.
“I can pay the interest,” William had answered, “but repaying the principal is going to take a time. I’ve the royal fine to consider, too.”
“They say your son Richard is helping you.”
“He is,” Walsh added with a little flush of pride, and told him of the young man’s efforts.
“As to your loan,” Doyle said when Walsh had finished, “I’d just as soon she lent to you as any other borrower. You’re sounder than most.” He paused. “As to the fine, I’ll be glad to speak to the royal officials on your behalf. I have some credit there at present.” And a week later, encountering him again, Doyle had told him, “Your fine will be a token payment only. They know you’re not to blame.”
When William related these conversations back to Margaret, she greeted the good news with a smile. But she still trembled inwardly. No word of her involvement in the kidnap attempt had ever been heard, so that she supposed that O’Byrne had kept silent or that, if he had told MacGowan, the grey merchant had for his own reasons decided to say nothing. But he could change his mind, or O’Byrne could talk. And hardly a day went by when, in her imagination, she didn’t find herself confronted by the memory of MacGowan’s terrible, cold, accusing eye, or the echo of the last words she had spoken to O’Byrne when he asked her what to do