Dublin (110 page)

  When Cecily Tidy heard what was going on, she ran quickly from the western gate up toward Skinners Row. For there, in the broad precinct of the Cathedral of Christ Church, and observed by a crowd that included Alderman Doyle, a bonfire was burning. It was not to warm the poor folk of that area, to whom the monks gave food and shelter every day.

  Nor was it part of any midwinter celebration. It had been gathered and lit on the orders of no less a person than George Browne, the Archbishop of Dublin who, only minutes before Cecilys arrival, had been outside to make sure that its flames were bright.

  The purpose of the archbishop's fire was to burn some of the greatest treasures in Ireland.

  When Cecily arrived, two small carts, accompanied by half a dozen gallowglasses, had just pulled up beside the fire. The two clerks who now began to unload them had just returned from a tour of some of the suburban churches. One of them carried a hammer and chisel. His colleague, at that moment, with the help of one of the soldiers, was manhandling a small but somewhat heavy wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin onto the fire. The statue's crime, to merit such punishment, was that it had been prayed to.

  "Dear God," murmured Cecily, "are we all to be made Protestants?"

  The views of Archbishop Browne of Dublin had not always been easy to follow. Appointed by King Henry, during his first year in Dublin he had done nothing. His main contribution in the last eighteen months had been to insist that his clergy should lead prayers for King Henry as Supreme Head of the Church. Browne was, after all, the king's appointed man, and the Irish Parliament had passed the necessary legislation.

  "Yet the fact that legislation has been passed,"

  Alderman Doyle gently informed the English bishop one day, "does not necessarily mean that anything is going to happen."

  "I assure you, Sir, that when the king's will is known and his Parliament has proclaimed it, there can be no resistance of any kind," Browne had retorted.

  "Orders must be obeyed."

  "That may be so in England," the alderman had answered courteously, "but in Ireland you will find that matters are arranged differently. Above all," he cautioned, "do not forget that the English gentry of the Pale are very devoted to the ancient forms and customs of their faith."

  And so the new archbishop had discovered. The gentry might, under the threat of fines, have passed the legislation; the clergy might even have taken a cursory oath to the king. But in practice, most of the time, nobody bothered with the royal prayer. When he protested, "My orders are not obeyed," even a fellow bishop, who knew the territory better, counselled him wisely: "I wouldn't worry about that too much, Archbishop, if I were you." But Archbishop Browne did worry. He preached the supremacy in every church he visited. And merchants like Alderman Doyle, or gentlemen like William Walsh, listened but were not impressed. He thought them sluggish or disreputable. It did not as yet occur to him that they, who were neither, thought he was rather stupid. And perhaps it was because of his growing frustration that the reforming archbishop had turned his attention that winter to a new campaign.

  If there was one aspect of the Catholic faith which angered Protestants, it was the practice, as they saw it, of paganism in the ancient Church.

  Saints days were celebrated, they said, like pagan festivals; relics of the saints, genuine or fake, were treated like magic charms; and the statues of saints were prayed to like heathen idols. These criticisms were not new: they had been made within the body of the Catholic Church before; but the weight of tradition was heavy, and even thoughtful, reforming Catholics might conclude that by such celebrations and venerations, properly guided, the faith could be made strong.

  That King Henry VIII of England was a perfect Catholic could not be in doubt: for he said so himself. But since his Church had broken away from the Holy Father's, then it must show itself to be better in some way. The English Church, it was claimed, was Catholicism purified and reformed. And what was the nature of this reform? The truth was that nobody, least of all Henry himself, had much idea. The ordinary laity were told to be more devout, and Bibles for them to read were placed in churches. Few good Catholics found this objectionable. The practice of indulgences-time off purgatory for a payment to the Church-was clearly an abuse and was to be stopped.

  And then there was the question of pagan rites, idols, and relics. were they acceptable or not? Churchmen whose reformist views had a Protestant flavour were sure these were abuses. The king, whose mind seemed to change like the wind, hadn't told them they were wrong; and so Archbishop Browne could believe that he was doing not only God's but, more importantly, the king's will when he announced,

  "We must cleanse the Church of all these popish superstitions."

  There was quite a collection of relics in the carts.

  Some, like the fragments of the cross to be found all over Christendom, might not be genuine.

  An object belonging to one of the Irish saints, however, was quite likely to have been preserved down the centuries for pious veneration. Having got the statue on the fire, the two clerks were turning their attention to these. On the cart next to the pyre, amidst the reliquaries and jewelled boxes, lay a skull with a gold rim, a vessel of some kind. An English soldier had taken it from the home of an insolent apprentice with blazing green eyes. The soldier didn't know exactly what it was, but his orders were to burn anything that stank of the pagan, idolatrous past, so he'd thrown it in with the rest of the swag. The gold could be worth something, anyway. The green-eyed apprentice protested vehemently that the skull was a family heirloom and had tried to fight him for it before the soldier had drawn his sword and the young fellow reluctantly let him past.

  Cecily stared in horror. If anything was needed to prove the true nature of the heretic king and his servants, surely this was it. She felt a wave of fury at their impiety and of despair at the thought of such terrible loss. She gazed at the crowd.

  Wasn't anyone going to do anything? She had long ago given up hope for most of the Dubliners, but it was hard to believe that no one was even saying a word.

  Yet what was she doing herself?

  Three years ago, she would, at the least, have shouted at the clerks and called them heretics. She'd gladly have let them arrest her. But since the failure of Silken Thomas's revolt, and her husband's return to his family in the tower, something had changed in Cecily Tidy. Perhaps it was that she was older, or her children were, or that she now had another on the way; perhaps it was that she did not want to upset her hardworking husband or that she simply could not face the stress of a quarrel with him anymore.

  Whatever the cause, though her religious convictions had not changed in the least, something had died in Cecily Tidy. Even faced with the destruction of all that was holy, she wasn't going to make a scene. Not today.

  Then she caught sight of Alderman Doyle. He was standing in the crowd with his son-in-law Richard Walsh, watching the proceedings with the greatest disgust.

  They might have had their differences in the past, but at least he was a figure of authority. And he could not approve of what was happening now. She went over.

  "Oh Alderman Doyle," she said.

  "This is a terrible sacrilege. Cannot anything be done?"

  She hardly knew what she expected him to say; but then, to her great surprise, as he looked down at her, it seemed to Cecily that in his eyes she saw a look of shame.

  "Come," he said quietly, and taking her by the arm he led her towards the two clerks with Richard a few steps behind them. The gallowglasses looked as if they might intervene, but one of the clerks, recognising Doyle, said, "Good morning, Alderman," and the soldiers fell back.

  "What have you here?" Doyle asked.

  "Relics," one of the clerks said blandly. His colleague at that moment was chipping at a small gold reliquary encrusted with gems. "Some of them are tough to open," he remarked as the other, having successfully prized the lid off, threw a lock of saintly hair into the fire where it instantly flared up.

  "The casket?" Doyle enquired, pointing to the gold reliquary that had just been so rudely opened.

  "It's gold for the king." Even as he said so, Cecily observed that the fellow with the chisel had just detached one of the gems from the lid and calmly dropped it into a leather pouch that hung from his belt.

  "The Church must be purified," the clerk remarked to the alderman. And if Cecily was astonished by the coolness of his effrontery, she need not have been. For it was thus in parishes all over England, too.

  While the desire of many honest Protestants may have been to purify their religion and come into a closer communion with God, the Reformation was turning into one of the greatest campaigns of public and private looting that had been seen in many centuries.

  "They desecrate the shrines, Cecily," Doyle quietly remarked, "but it's the gold they want, you see."

  And white-faced Cecily for the first time had a new and more accurate insight into the true nature of King Henry VIII and his followers-not so much as heretics, however that might be, but as vulgar thieves.

  "The king has come to rob Ireland," she burst out at the clerk. But he only laughed.

  "Not at all." He grinned. "He'll rob anyone."

  At just this moment, his friend had started to open another little silver box. This one had opened easily, since it contained a smaller, blackened box inside.

  "What's that?" asked Doyle.

  "Finger of Saint Kevin. Of Glendalough," said the clerk.

  "Give it to me," said Doyle, pointing to the black box.

  "There's a gemstone on it," the second clerk objected, reaching for his chisel.

  "Enough," said Doyle in a voice of such authority that the clerk handed it to him quickly.

  "I can't do more for you, Alderman," he said a little nervously.

  Doyle held the little relic in his hand, gazing at it reverently.

  "The Saint Kevin," he remarked quietly.

  "They say it has great power, you know."

  "You'll keep it safe?" Cecily asked anxiously.

  Doyle paused before replying. His dark face seemed to be contemplating something strangely distant.

  Then, to her great astonishment, he turned and, gazing down at her, placed the little relic in her hands.

  "No," he said. "You will. I can't think of anyone in Dublin who will look after it better.

  Go quickly, now," he told her, "and hide it."

  Cecily had just crossed the street, and had paused to gaze one final time at the great fire, when she saw MacGowan arriving.

  Doyle and Richard Walsh were greeting him. She saw MacGowan stare at the flames. Then he gestured towards the cathedral. She saw Doyle and Richard leaning towards him. MacGowan seemed to be saying something to them, urgently.

  Just then, a soldier casually tossed a yellowed old skull, stripped of its gold rim, into the flames.

  It was two hours later that the news began to spread through Dublin. At first, the thing was so shocking that people hardly believed it, but by evening there seemed to be no doubt.

  The Bachall Iosa, one of the holiest, the most awesome relics in all Ireland-the great, gem-encrusted reliquary of the Staff of Saint Patrick himself-had gone.

  Some said that it had been thrown on the fire in front of Christ Church. Others said that the ancient staff had been burned on another fire elsewhere. The archbishop, faced with a chorus of horror, denied that the sacred staff had been selected for destruction at all; but when people, English or Irish, inside or outside the Pale, considered the archbishop's contempt for what was cherished, and the gold and gems with which the Bachall Iosa was furnished, there seemed not the slightest reason to believe him.

  Nor, in all the years that followed, was the Staff of Saint Patrick ever seen again.

  Some, it is true, hinted that along with other relics, it might have been spirited away to a place of safekeeping-and it is to be hoped that it was. But nobody seemed to know. None of the clergy ever admitted to it. None of the Dublin aldermen, not even John Doyle, had any idea. And if, which is most unlikely, MacGowan knew anything, he remained, as always, silent as the grave.

AFTERWORD

FAMILY NAMES

  The families whose fortunes this novel follows down the centuries are fictional. MacGowan and Doyle are both common names, and their probable derivations are given in the narrative. The O'Byrnes, of whom there are many branches, were prominent in the region, and their activities are correctly reflected. But the individual O'Byrnes in the narrative and the O'Byrnes of Rathconan are invented. The Norse family of Harold was also prominent and the name is still found in the region. Ailred the Palmer and his wife are historical, and founded the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist at approximately the date given in the story, though they are believed to have been childless. I have therefore allowed myself to invent a Viking ancestor for the Harolds, and to trace the line through Ailred the Palmer. Walsh is a common name, and the Walshes of Carrickmines were real. John Walsh of Carrickmines, his ancestor Peter FitzDavid, and all other Walshes in the story are fictional, however. The Ui Fergusa did exist, and are presumed to have been chiefs at Dublin until the coming of the Vikings, but their identity is shadowy. Their distant ancestor Fergus, his daughter, Deirdre, and her lover, Conall are all inventions. Tidy is an English name, but so far as I know, there was never a Tidy family settled in Ireland, and the Tidy family of Dalkey and Dublin is fictional.