The castle of Malahide lay on the far side of the ancient Plain of Bird Flocks, on land that adjoined the rolling fields upon which, centuries before, Harold the Norseman had gazed out from his farmstead. On the northern edge of the estate, where a small river flowed to the sea past some fine oyster beds, stood the busy little village of Malahide. Down its eastern flank lay the open sea. The estates of the gentry in Fingal were not large—most ran to hundreds rather than thousands of acres—but the Malahide land was good and the estate was valuable. The castle was set in pleasant parkland sprinkled with fine old oaks and ash trees which gave the place a stately air. For a long time it had been only a bleak defensive tower; but two decades ago, the Talbots had added several features, including a great hall, so that it had become a more impressive and domestic building. In front of the main entrance stretched an expanse of open grass. To one side was a walled garden. As they approached, the light on the stone gave the castle a pleasing look of softness in the afternoon sun.
A large company had already gathered. It was warm and they had set up trestle tables outside heaped with sweetmeats and other delicacies. Servants in livery were serving wine. As she looked around, Margaret could see numerous faces she recognised—aldermen and royal officials from Dublin, gentry from various parts of the region. “The flower of Fingal,” her father murmured, before adding, as if they had all come there for her benefit, “take your pick.”
If she had felt a little daunted by such a crowd of important people, she was glad to see several young people she knew, including her former friend the St. Lawrence girl; so that in no time she found herself engaged in easy conversation. She was conscious also that she had attracted some attention. When she moved, several male heads turned. Her mother had been right: the combination of the green silk with her red hair was working well. A distinguished old gentleman even came over to compliment her—one of the notable Plunkett family, her friend told her.
The banquet in the castle hall was a splendid affair. The hall was packed. Her father was seated some distance away from her, but she had cheerful young people for company. Three fish courses were served. There was roast beef turning on a spit, venison, pork, and even swan. She knew only a little of wines, but she could tell that the French wines being served were of the best. She had never been to such a sumptuous affair before, but she took care to remember her father’s advice, “Taste everything that is offered, but take only a tiny portion of each. That is the way to enjoy a great feast.” There were so many guests that there was not room for dancing, but there were pipers and a harpist playing. When the sweet courses were being served, Edward Talbot, in whose honour all this was done, stood up and made a charming speech of welcome. He was in his early twenties, with an oval face and finely drawn features. Margaret thought he looked pleasant and intelligent. His hair was brown with a trace of ginger in it and was already thinning; but she decided that the fine, domed forehead it revealed would make him, if anything, more attractive as he grew older. Once he sat down, however, he was hidden from her view, and she did not catch sight of him again.
At the end of the banquet, she was reunited with her father. It was still light outside, and entertainments were to be provided by a troupe of dancers. Some of the company gathered in front of the castle to watch, others split into groups and walked about. When her father asked her if she had seen the walled garden and she said she had not, he took her round the side of the castle to a gate in a wall and led her in.
If monasteries had their cloisters for gentle exercise and contemplation, the medieval manor house had its walled garden. The garden before Margaret now was laid out rather geometrically, with low, clipped hedges and, here and there, leafy arbours where gentlemen and ladies might sit and enjoy the enclosed quiet and read, and talk, and flirt. As they entered, Margaret smelled the sweet scents of lavender and honeysuckle. At one end of the enclosure was a herb garden. At the other end, the whole wall was covered in climbing roses. There were paths between the clipped hedges. In the centre was a little lawn strewn with wild strawberries and a single pear tree whose unripe fruit hung from its branches like pale green gem-stones. There were several other people there who, respecting the garden’s peace, spoke in low tones. Turning towards the herb garden, they walked quietly down a path.
“You are a great success, Margaret,” her father murmured, with satisfaction. “People have been asking who you are. Indeed, one gentleman already has asked if he may talk to you, and that is why I brought you in here.” He smiled. “He’s a little older than I should have liked, but there’s no harm in your talking to him. Make a good impression and he will speak well of you. You would do that for me wouldn’t you?”
“I will do as you please, Father,” she said pleasantly, for she wanted, at the least, to make him happy.
“Stay here, and I shall go and find him,” he said, and made his way out of the gate.
Margaret was quite content. She went down to the herb garden and began to inspect it. She started to see how many different kinds she could count, and was sufficiently engrossed not to notice that anyone was coming up behind her until she heard a soft cough. Turning round and expecting to see her father, she instead found herself facing a young man whom she recognised at once as Edward Talbot.
“You like our herbs?”
“I was counting them.”
“Ah.” He smiled. “How many can you name?”
“There is thyme, parsley, of course, mint, basil, nutmeg …” she named a dozen or so.
“And what about that one?” He pointed, but she shook her head. “It came,” he explained, “from Persia.” It was extraordinary what he knew. He went along the bed, showing her herbs from France, from Africa, from the Holy Land and far beyond. Herbs she had never heard of, herbs whose history he knew. But he showed his knowledge with such humour, intelligence, and enthusiasm that, rather than being overwhelmed, she found herself smiling with pleasure.
He asked her who she was, and Margaret was able to give him enough information about her family and her kinsfolk in Fingal for him to discover that she was related to several people he knew. “Perhaps we are kinsfolk, too,” he suggested.
“Oh no, my family can’t make any such claims. We’re not grand at all,” she was careful to say. “As for myself,” she smiled, “my parents tell me that my only asset is my hair.”
He laughed and answered, “I’m sure you must have many others.” Then, gazing at her hair with the same careful observation that he had applied to the herbs, he thoughtfully remarked, “It is very fine. Quite wonderful.” And almost forgetting what he was doing, he raised his hand as if to run it through her hair, before checking himself and laughing. She wondered where else this conversation might be going when, at that moment, her father reappeared at the gate and came towards them.
He was alone. Evidently he had not found the man he was looking for, but he was smiling as he came up and she explained to Talbot, “This is my father.”
She was pleased to see how politely Talbot greeted her father and how well-informed, in turn, her father seemed to be as he asked the young man some questions about his time in England, which Talbot seemed delighted to answer. The two men had just started an interesting discussion when Margaret observed that a fine-looking lady, who had entered the garden while she and Edward Talbot had been discussing the herbs, was now coming rapidly towards them. She was wearing a white-and-gold damask gown which, with each step she took, made a little hiss upon the path.
“Ah, Mother,” said Edward Talbot. And he was about to introduce Margaret when the lady turned to Margaret’s father, and coolly demanded, “This is your daughter?”
The lady Talbot was tall. Her face was strong. Her grey eyes seemed to look at the world from a great height.
“Yes, my lady. This is Margaret.”
Margaret now found herself the object of an aristocratic stare: that is to say, the lady Talbot looked at her in exactly the same, dispassionate way as she would have observed a
n item of furniture.
“You have very fine hair.” Though technically this was a compliment, her tone suggested that she might have added: there is nothing more to say about you. She turned to her son. “Your father is looking for you, Edward. There are guests from Dublin Castle you should attend to.”
With a polite bow to her father and a smile at Margaret, Edward Talbot left them. The lady Talbot, however, did not move. She waited until Edward had left the garden and then, turning to her father as though Margaret was not even there, she addressed him with the greatest coldness.
“How many of your kinsmen did you use to secure an invitation here today?”
“I believe several of my kinsmen are known to you, my lady.”
“You came here to show off your daughter to the world.”
“I am her father, my lady. What else should a father do?”
“I agreed to your being invited, though by rights you should not be here.” She paused. “I agreed to let your daughter and her hair be seen.” She paused again. “And I did not agree that you should come here so that your daughter could try to insinuate herself with my son. You have abused my trust.”
This was so breathtaking that, for a moment, neither father nor daughter said anything. But it was so unfair that Margaret could not help bursting out: “I never spoke a word to your son, until he came up to me.”
The stony grey eyes were upon her again. Was there a faint hint of recognition there now?
“That may be true,” the lady conceded. She turned back to Margaret’s father. “But perhaps you know more than your daughter.”
Margaret glanced at her father. Was it possible that he had somehow arranged the meeting? Had he gone out, not to find an older suitor but to send in Edward Talbot? Faced with the lady Talbot’s cold accusation, Margaret was so glad that he did not blush or bluster, but remained very calm.
“I did not bring my daughter here in order that either of us should be insulted,” he replied quietly.
“Do not bring her here again, then,” the lady Talbot answered curtly. She turned to Margaret. “Find yourself a merchant in Dublin, Miss Red Hair. You do not belong in the castle of Malahide.” Then she swept away.
Neither Margaret nor her father felt much like talking as they returned home. The evening sun was still casting long shadows on the Plain of Bird Flocks as their cart rolled across its empty greenness. If Margaret wondered whether the lady Talbot’s accusation could be true, it was not something she wanted to ask her father. It was he, in the end, who broke the silence.
“It’s not our family that made her speak like that. I am a gentleman you know.”
“I know.”
“It’s because I am poor, Margaret, that she treated you like that.” He spoke bitterly, but he hung his head in shame. She put her arm round him.
“Thank you for what you tried to do for me, Father,” she said gently. “You’re a wonderful father.”
“If only I were.” He shook his head. “I had not meant you to discover the harshness of the world,” he said miserably. “Not like this. I had hoped …” He trailed off. Feeling his body sob, she was not sure whether to keep her arm round him or not, but she left it where it was.
“It’s not important,” she said after a while. “Not really.”
“It is to me,” he murmured, then fell silent again for a little while, until his shoulders had ceased to heave. “Those Talbots are not so fine,” he muttered finally. “They say they’re mixed up with the Butlers. They’ll probably come to grief. We’d do better to look at the Barnewalls.” He seemed to brighten a little. “They, you know, are your distant kin.”
“Oh, Father,” she cried in frustration, “for God’s sake find me a boy in Dublin who will love me as I am.”
And truly at that moment, and when she went to bed in secret tears that night, this was all that Margaret wanted. But when she awoke, refreshed, the next morning, she felt a new sense of rebellion. The proud Talbots might not want her, but she’d show them.
II
1518
It was an unusual sight. Women—about a hundred of them, waiting down by the crane house on the waterfront. Not just ordinary women: many of these were fine ladies, richly dressed, laughing and chattering on a bright September morning.
The crane house was a solid, unlovely, two-storey building that served as a customhouse, from which there projected a massive timber structure whose grinding cogs and squealing pulleys allowed heavy cargoes to be lifted from dockside vessels and weighed. It stood roughly halfway along the extended waterfront. To the east, having advanced with continued rebuilding many yards into the river now, lay the old Wood Quay. To the west, on the reclaimed land that ran towards the bridge, the riverside was known as Merchants Quay. And though the crane was a surly-looking thing, and a chilly breeze had now begun to blow along the waterfront, the women were cheerfully ignoring the cold. For after all, this was a special occasion.
The Riding of the Franchises only took place once in three years. At dawn that morning, the mayor of Dublin, resplendent in his robes of office and preceded by a man carrying the city’s ceremonial sword, had left Dame’s Gate in the east, and riding out past the Thingmount and the old Viking Long Stone, made his way along the Liffey estuary towards the sea. Riding behind him came the twenty-four aldermen, the members of the common council, and a large party of local gentlemen—almost a hundred riders in all. At the seashore, the water bailiff had hurled a spear into the water, to symbolise the city’s rights over the Dublin coastline. Then they had set out to ride round the city boundaries.
This was a huge circuit. For the city’s authority—excepting the big Liberties, mostly belonging to the Church—stretched far out beyond the city walls, and in places was marked now by gateways and tollbooths on the approach roads. Their course took them firstly down the coast, almost halfway to Dalkey; then they turned inland, across to the village of Donnybrook, on past the environs of Saint Stephen’s and the Liberties by Saint Patrick’s, and after that still farther westwards to the hamlet of Kilmainham, some two miles upstream from the city, where the mayor could take the horse ferry across the Liffey. North of the Liffey, the boundary followed a huge arc which passed a mile north of Oxmantown, crossed the Tolka stream, and continued up the coast by the old battlefield of Brian Boru at Clontarf and even a mile beyond that.
It was past noon. The procession, having ridden a total distance of over thirty miles, was returning through Oxmantown and would shortly cross the bridge back into the city. The wives were starting to catch sight of their husbands now. Silk handkerchiefs were being waved. There was laughter. And nowhere did the company seem gayer than in the group around a small, Spanish-looking woman, dressed in a gown of rich brocade with a fur collar to guard her from the wind.
Margaret was waiting at some distance from this group. She knew few of the city women more than slightly. She did not often come into Dublin; there was always so much to be done on the farm. She was dressed in good cloth, of which she had no reason to be ashamed; and with a growing family to think of, she wouldn’t have let her husband give her an expensive, fur-trimmed gown even if he had offered. She turned to a woman standing nearby.
“That Spanish-looking lady over there: who is she married to?”
“Oh,” the woman’s voice dropped respectfully, “that is the wife of Alderman Doyle. She’s very rich, they say.” She looked at Margaret with some surprise. “Do you not know Alderman Doyle? He’s a powerful man in Dublin.”
Dublin people were proud of their wealth and power. That, after all, was exactly what the ceremony today was about. In the Riding of the Franchises, the mayor and his company were inspecting and confirming the outer boundaries of the city’s extensive land. It was a ceremonial, but also a legal event. And if any other landholder, even the Holy Church, disputed the extent or boundary line of the city’s holdings, they could be sure the mayor would make good his claim, either with a lawsuit or by physical force. Dublin might be onl
y a tenth of the size of mighty London, but it was a major city by any standard and was the key to holding Ireland. For a long time now, the rich aldermen of Dublin had become used to kings of England courting their favour and feeding their pride. The great sword carried before the mayor had been given to the city a century ago by a grateful king after a former mayor had led a successful campaign into the Wicklow Mountains against the troublesome O’Byrnes. The mayor nowadays held the office of Admiral, too, which gave him the right to the royal customs dues from the harbours on the Dublin coast, all the way down to Dalkey and beyond—though the royal officials may have been ready enough to grant these taxes away since they had always had such difficulty collecting the dues themselves.
Even the involvement of the Dublin men in the business of Lambert Simnel the boy king had done them no harm. Indeed, it had only made Henry Tudor more anxious to cultivate good relations with them; and for the last nine years his son, Henry VIII, had continued the same policy. The message from the royal court to Dublin’s leading citizens was clear: “The King of England wants you for his friends.” It was no small thing, therefore, to be the wife of Alderman Doyle.
It was not the first time that Margaret had seen the Doyle woman. She had caught sight of her only two weeks ago.
One of the few Dublin events that Margaret always attended was the Donnybrook Fair. It took place late in August, at the village just a mile south of Saint Stephen’s. Sometimes her husband came to buy or sell cattle there; all kinds of cloth were on sale, with traders from all over Europe; she would usually pick up some delicacies and spices for the larder at home. Then there were the eating booths and entertainments—singers and jugglers, music makers and magicians. “Donnybrook’s my outing for the year,” she would say.
It had been during the fair. She had noticed the woman at once because of her Spanish looks, but she had not thought much about her. Not at first. Only as she was inspecting a stall of medicinal herbs a short time later did she realise that the woman’s face was familiar. But why?