They were such a loving couple, the tall red-haired Norseman and his quiet, grey-haired, motherly wife. Una guessed what a blow the loss of their son, Harold, must have been; she never mentioned the subject and nor did they. But once, as they were folding blankets in the hospital, the older woman smiled at her gently and said, “I also had a baby daughter, you know. She died when she was two; but if she’d lived, I think she would have been just like you.” Una had felt so touched and honoured. Sometimes she would pray that their son would return to them after all; but of course he never did.
Una loved the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist. It contained thirty inmates at present; the men in one dormitory, the women in another. Some were elderly, but not all. They cared for every kind of sickness there, except lepers whom no one would come near. There was plenty to do feeding and nursing the inmates, but above all Una loved to talk to them and listen to their stories. She was a popular figure. Fionnuala’s reputation was different. She could be funny when she chose. She would flirt harmlessly with the old men and make the women laugh. But it was not in her nature to work very hard. She might surprise and delight the inmates by suddenly appearing with a delicious fruit tart; but as often as not, in the middle of some tedious chore, Una would find that her friend had vanished, leaving her with all the work to do. And sometimes, if something had annoyed her or if she thought Una wasn’t paying enough attention to her, she would suddenly have a temper tantrum, throw down the work she was doing, and rush away to some other part of the hospital where she would sulk. On these occasions, Ailred the Palmer would shake his long red beard, and his kindly blue eyes would look sad, and he would turn to Una and say, “She is good-hearted underneath, my child, even if she does foolish things. We must all try to help her.” But Una knew very well that, though they certainly tried, it would be her own efforts which generally brought Fionnuala round.
The last few months had tried even the Palmer’s patience. And this time the problem wasn’t temper tantrums, though Fionnuala still had those. It was men.
Fionnuala had always looked at men, ever since she was a little girl. She would stare at them with her large green eyes, and they would laugh. It was part of her childish charm. But she was no longer a child; she was almost a young woman. Yet still she looked at them, and it was no longer the wide-eyed gaze of a child. It was a hard, challenging stare. She stared at young men in the street; she stared at old men in the hospital; she stared at married men in the market in front of their wives, who were ceasing to be amused. But it was a visiting merchant who was residing in the hospital after breaking his leg who first complained to Ailred. “That girl’s making eyes at me,” he said. “Then she came and sat on the end of the bench where I was sitting and opened her shirt so I could see her breasts. I’m too old to play games with girls like that,” he told the Palmer. “If I hadn’t got a broken leg, I’d have reached over and slapped her.”
Last week there had been another complaint, and this time Ailred’s wife had heard about it. Una had never seen that kindly woman so angry.
“You ought to be whipped!” she cried.
“Why?” Fionnuala had answered calmly. “It wouldn’t stop me.”
She had nearly been sent home there and then, but Ailred had given her one more chance. “There must be no more complaints, Fionnuala,” he told her, “of any kind. If there are,” he had promised, “you will have to go home. You cannot come here anymore.”
That had shaken Fionnuala. She had been very quiet and thoughtful for a day or two. But it hadn’t been long before her usual spirits returned; and though she took care not to cause any complaints from the men they encountered, Una could see the flash of mischief back in her friend’s eyes.
The market where the two girls now found themselves lay just inside the western gateway. In recent generations, the old ramparts from the days of Brian Boru had been extended westwards and they had all been rebuilt in stone. Besides the cathedral rising over the thatched roofs of the city’s busy clusters of timber-and-wattle houses, there were now seven smaller churches. Across the river on the north side of the bridge an extensive suburb had also arisen. The Norse-Irish kings of Dublin now ruled over a walled city quite as impressive as most others in Europe.
Though not as big as the market where the slaves were sold down by the waterfront, the western market presented a lively scene. There were food stalls of every kind: meat, fruit, and vegetables. And there was a colourful collection of people crowding the place. There were merchants from northern France: they had their own church, called Saint Martin’s, that overlooked the old pool of Dubh Linn. There was an English colony from the busy port of Chester that lay due east across the Irish Sea. The Chester trade had been increasing in recent generations. They had a Saxon church in the middle of the town. The Scandinavian sailors had their chapel, called Saint Olave’s, down by the waterfront. And there were often visitors from Spain or even farther off adding brightness and colour to the marketplace. Even the native population were a very mixed people now: huge burly fellows with Nordic red hair and Irish names; Latin-looking men who would tell you they were Danish—you could speak of Ostmen and Irishmen, Gaedhil and Gaill, but the truth was that you could hardly tell one from the other. They were all Dubliners. And they were proud of it. There were at this date between four and five thousand of them.
Fionnuala was standing by the fruit stall. Una watched carefully as she followed after her. Was Fionnuala flirting with the stall holder, or the people close by? She didn’t seem to be. A handsome young French merchant was strolling towards the stall. If Fionnuala made eyes at him, Una supposed it wouldn’t matter. But as the young man came close, it seemed to her that for once Fionnuala wasn’t taking any notice. Una gave a little prayer of thanks. Perhaps Fionnuala was going to behave herself today.
For several moments after she saw what Fionnuala did next, Una didn’t understand. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. All that Fionnuala had done was to stretch out her hand and take a large apple from the stall, inspect it and put it back. There was nothing strange about that. The young Frenchman was speaking to the stall holder. For a few moments, Fionnuala hung around by the stall, then she moved away. Una caught up with her.
“I’m bored, Una,” said Fionnuala. “Let’s go down to the quay.”
“All right.”
“Did you see what I got?” She looked at Una and gave her a slow mischievous smile. “A nice juicy apple.” She reached into her shirt and drew it out.
“Where did you get that?”
“From the stall.”
“But you didn’t pay for it.”
“I know.”
“Fionnuala! Put it back at once.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“For God’s sake, Fionnuala! You stole it.”
Fionnuala opened her green eyes wide. Usually when she did that and made a funny face it was difficult not to laugh. But Una wasn’t laughing now. Someone might have seen. She had a vision of the stall holder rushing towards them, of Ailred being called.
“Give it to me. I’ll put it back.”
Slowly and deliberately, her eyes still wide in their fake solemn look, Fionnuala raised the apple as if she were going to hold it out to Una; but instead of proffering it, she calmly took a bite. Her mock-serious eyes were fixed on Una.
“It’s too late.”
Una turned on her heel. She walked straight over to the stall, where the stall holder had just finished speaking to the Frenchman, and took an apple.
“How much for two? My friend’s already started hers.” She smiled pleasantly and indicated Fionnuala who had followed her over. The stall holder smiled at them.
“You work at the hospital, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Fionnuala gazed at him with her large eyes.
“That’s all right. Have them for nothing.”
Una thanked him and led her friend away.
&n
bsp; “He gave them to us.” Fionnuala gave Una a sidelong glance.
“That’s not the point and you know it.” They walked a little farther. “I’m going to murder you one day, Fionnuala.”
“That would be bad. Don’t you love me?”
“That’s not the point either.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You don’t know the difference between right and wrong, Fionnuala, and you’ll come to a bad end.”
Fionnuala didn’t answer for a moment.
“I expect I shall,” she said.
It was fortunate that Fionnuala’s father was unaware of her behaviour, since it might have spoiled a very pleasant morning. For at the same time that the two girls were leaving the marketplace with their apples, that eminent churchman was walking at a dignified pace towards the hostel where his son Gilpatrick now lived. His mood was serious, because there was important family business to discuss. But the business was not unpleasant, the morning was fine and sunny, and he was looking forward to seeing Gilpatrick. As he came in sight of his son, therefore, he raised his stick in a solemn but friendly greeting.
The hostel of Saint Kevin’s was a small fenced enclosure containing a chapel, a dormitory, and some modest wooden buildings, which lay only two hundred yards south of the family’s ancient monastery. It belonged to the monks of Glendalough, who used it when visiting Dublin, and Gilpatrick had often resided here in the last two years. He was standing at the gateway and now, seeing his father approach, he moved forward.
But was there something in his manner, some hesitancy, which suggested he was not as glad to see his father as he should have been? It seemed to the older man that there might be.
“Are you not pleased to see me, Gilpatrick?” he enquired.
“Oh I am. Of course. Indeed I am.”
“That is good,” said his father. “Let us walk.”
They could have taken the roadway south, through the orchards. To the east, crossing a footbridge over the stream, they would have come out onto a large area of marshy meadows, dotted with trees. Instead, however, they took the roadway northwards that followed the gentle curve of the family’s ancient monastic enclosure before it continued, past the dark pool, towards the Thingmount and Hoggen Green.
Walking this route with his father, Gilpatrick thought, was always rather like a royal progress. As soon as they saw his father coming, people would smile and bow their heads with respect and affection, and his father would acknowledge them like a true tribal chief from ancient times.
And indeed, Conn probably had more prestige now than any chief of the Ui Fergusa had enjoyed before. His mother had been the last of the family of Caoilinn who had held the lands at Rathmines. Through his mother, therefore, the two strands of the descendants of Fergus were rejoined, and he inherited the blood of the ancient royal house of Leinster. As well as the family’s ancient drinking skull, his mother had also brought, as her dowry, some of those valuable Rathmines lands. By his own marriage, moreover, to a kinswoman of Lawrence O’Toole, he had allied himself with one of the noblest princely houses of northern Leinster. The Viking settlement might have taken over Fergus’s final resting place and the Church might have encroached upon many of the ancient grazing grounds in the region, but the present chief of the Ui Fergusa could still run his cattle over a huge tract of land down the coastal strip towards the Wicklow Mountains. More than this, the generations of family rule of the little monastery had given the chiefs a sacral role. And although the little monastery had been wound up and its chapel turned into a parish church, Gilpatrick’s father was still the vicar and as such he was, his son thought, that curiously Irish phenomenon, the druidical chief. No wonder his parishioners treated him with a special and tender respect.
Since he was dreading the conversation that was to come, Gilpatrick was glad that, as they walked down the roadway, his father seemed to feel no need to converse. When his father did speak, it was only to make a casual enquiry.
“Did you ever hear from that friend of yours, FitzDavid?”
At first, Gilpatrick had been a little disappointed that no word had ever come from Peter FitzDavid, and as time went by he had almost forgotten about him. Perhaps he had been killed.
The progress of King Diarmait and his foreign troops had been slow. The O’Connor High King and O’Rourke had gone down to Wexford to deal with him; there had been two skirmishes, neither very decisive. Diarmait had been forced to give hostages to the High King and pay O’Rourke a large fine in gold for the theft of his wife. He’d been allowed back into his ancestral lands in the south, but that was all. For a year he’d stayed down there and nobody had heard a squeak from him.
Last year, however, he’d managed to procure another, larger contingent of troops—thirty mounted men, about a hundred men-at-arms, and more than three hundred archers. They included several knights from prominent families that Gilpatrick had heard of, such as FitzGerald, Barri, and even an uncle of Strongbow himself. FitzGerald and his brother had been given the port of Wexford, which probably hadn’t pleased the Ostmen merchants there; and thanks to the mediation of Archbishop O’Toole of Dublin, the High King had agreed to a new deal.
“Send me your son as hostage,” he’d told Diarmait, “and—excluding Dublin, of course—you can have all Leinster.” To which he had quietly added, “If you can get it.” Diarmait had also had to promise that once he’d secured Leinster, he’d send all his foreigners back across the sea again.
But that had been a year ago, and still Diarmait hadn’t ventured into the northern part of the province. “You’ve no friends here,” he was firmly told.
“I doubt,” Gilpatrick’s father now remarked, “that you’ll be seeing your Welshman any time soon.”
They rounded the bend in the roadway above the pool and gazed down to the old burial ground. It was, Gilpatrick thought, a pleasant prospect. For if in former times the waterside site of Hoggen Green had been starkly bare, the spirits of the dead, perhaps, almost too free to wander as they liked, the Church had now placed its own sanctuaries beside the place, enclosing the spirits, as it were, with invisible barriers so that, if wander they must, they would have to go eastwards, past the old Viking stone and into the Liffey’s waters to be carried, no doubt, on the ebb tide, out into the long draw of the estuary and the open sea. To the left, just across the pond from the city wall, stood the small church of Saint Andrew’s, attended by a sprinkling of timber houses. To the right, a little above the Thingmount, lay the walled enclosure of the city’s only nunnery; and on the bankside of the Liffey, on reclaimed marshland, a small Augustinian friary.
“I dare say,” his father remarked, indicating the nunnery, “that I should put your sister in there.”
“They wouldn’t keep her,” Gilpatrick replied with a smile.
If only his wayward sister were the subject for discussion. That would have been easy. The real business of the day, however, had still not been mentioned; and they had walked out onto the old graveyard and were almost at the Thingmount before his father finally brought it up.
“It’s time your brother married,” he said.
It seemed such a harmless statement. Until the previous year, Gilpatrick had been blessed with two brothers. His elder brother who had been married for some years lived several miles down the coast and farmed the family’s great tract of land. He had loved his farm and seldom came up to Dublin. His younger brother, Lorcan, who had helped on the farm, was still unmarried. But at the start of the previous winter, after getting chilled on his way back from a journey into Ulster, his elder brother had taken a fever and died, leaving two daughters with his widow. She was a pleasant young woman and the family loved her. “She’s a treasure,” they all agreed. She was only twenty-three and clearly she should marry again. “But it would be a terrible pity to lose her,” as Gilpatrick’s father had very truly said.
And now, six months after the sad event, a solution had presented itself that promised to be satisfactory to everybody.
Last week, his younger brother had come up from the farm and spoken to his father. An understanding had been reached. All the parties were agreeable.
The young man was to marry his brother’s widow.
“I couldn’t be happier, Gilpatrick,” his father said. “They’ll wait until the year has passed. And then they will marry with my blessing. And yours, too, I hope.”
Gilpatrick took a deep breath. He’d been preparing himself for this. His mother had told him about it two days ago.
“You know very well that I can’t,” he now replied.
“They will have my blessing,” his father repeated sharply.
“But you know,” Gilpatrick pointed out reasonably, “that the thing is impossible.”
“I do not,” Conn replied. “You know yourself,” he continued in a conciliatory tone, “that they are perfectly suited. They are the same age. They are already the best friends in the world. She was a wonderful wife to his brother and will be to him, too. She loves him, Gilpatrick. She confessed it to me herself. As for him, he’s a fine young man, sound as an oak. As good a man as ever his brother was. There can be no reasonable objection to the marriage.”
“Except,” Gilpatrick said with a sigh, “that she is his brother’s wife.”
“Which marriage the Bible allows,” his father snapped.
“Which marriage the Jews allowed,” Gilpatrick patiently corrected. “The Pope, however, does not.”
It was a much disputed passage. The book of Leviticus actually enjoined a dutiful man to marry his brother’s widow. The medieval Church, however, had decided that such a marriage was against canon law, and throughout Christendom such marriages were forbidden.
Except in Ireland. The truth was that things were still done differently in Christendom’s north-western corner. Celtic marriages had always been fluid affairs, easily dissolved, and even if it did not quite approve, the Celtic Church had wisely learned to accommodate itself to local custom. The heirs of Saint Patrick had not withheld their blessing from the four-times-married Brian Boru who was their loyal patron; and to a traditional Irish churchman like Conn, such canonical objections as this question of the brother’s widow seemed like nit-picking. Nor did he feel any sense of disloyalty to his church when he remarked a little sourly, “The Holy Father is a long way away.”