Dublin (58 page)

  "Perhaps there will be more. The King of England is behind this business."

  "Henry? He has given permission. That is all.

  Henry has other things to think about." He shrugged.

  "Irish kings have been hiring fighting men from over the sea for hundreds of years. Ostmen, Welshmen, men from Scotland. Some stay, others go. Look at Dublin. Half my friends are Ostmen. As for these," he glanced back towards Wexford, "there aren't enough of them. By next year most of them will be dead."

  "I was thinking," Gilpatrick ventured, "that Peter might like to meet Fionnuala."

  This was greeted with such a long pause that Gilpatrick was not even sure if his father had heard, but he knew better than to press the matter; so for some time they continued on their way in silence. Finally his father spoke.

  "There are things you do not know about your sister."

II

  "You aren't going to do anything stupid today, are you?"

  Fifteenyearold Una glanced at her friend nervously. It was a warm May morning and it ought to be a perfect day.

  "Why would I do something stupid, Una?" Her green eyes wide, innocent, laughing.

  Because you usually do, Una thought; but instead she said,

  "He really means it this time, Fionnuala.

  He'll send you home to your parents. Is that what you want?"

  "You'll look after me."

  Yes, thought Una, I always do. And perhaps I shouldn't. Fionnuala was loveable because she was funny and goodhearted- when she wasn't quarrelling with her mother-and somehow when you were with her, life seemed brighter and more exciting, because you never knew what was going to happen next. But when a man as kind as Ailred the Palmer ran out of patience…

  "I'll be good, Una. I promise."

  No you won't, Una could have screamed. You won't at all. And we both of us know it.

  "Look, Una," Fionnuala suddenly cried.

  "Apples." And with her long, dark hair flying behind her, she was running across the little marketplace towards a fruit stall.

  How could Fionnuala behave the way she did?

  Especially when you (considered who her father was. The Ui Fergusa might long ago have ceased to be a power in the land, but people still looked up to them with respect. Their little monastery on the slope above the dark pool had been wound up some while ago and the chapel converted into a small parish church for the family and their dependants; but as head of the family, Fionnuala's father, Conn, was the priest and was much respected. With his ancient position and his ancestral lands in the area, he was treated with courtesy by the King of Dublin and by the archbishop equally. With his tall, stately presence and his dignified way of speaking, Una had always held him in awe. But she was sure he was kindly. She couldn't imagine him mistreating Fionnuala. How could Fionnuala think of doing anything to let him down?

  Her mother, admittedly, was another matter. She and Fionnuala were always fighting. She wanted her daughter to do one thing; Fionnuala wanted to do something else. But Una wasn't sure she blamed the mother for the constant rows. "If I were your mother I'd slap you," she'd several times told her friend. Two years ago, however, the friction in the household up by the little church had become so bad that it had been agreed that Fionnuala should reside during the week with Ailred the Palmer and his wife. And now even Ailred had had enough.

  Una sighed. It would be hard to imagine any nicer people. Everyone in Dublin loved the rich Norseman whose family had owned the big farmstead out in Fingal for so long. His mother had come from a Saxon family who'd left England after the Norman conquest and she had given him the English name of Ailred; but she was blue-eyed like her husband, and Ailred looked just like his red haired Norwegian ancestors. He was generous and kindly. And he was religious.

  The Irish had always made pilgrimages to holy places. There were many holy sites in Ireland. If they went across the seas, they might journey as far as the great shrine of Saint James at Compostela in Spain. But a few, a very few, had gone all the way on the perilous journey to the Holy Land, and if they reached Jerusalem they would enter the Holy City holding a palm. Upon their return, such a pilgrim would be known as a "Palmer." Ailred had done this.

  And God it seemed had rewarded him. As well as the big farmstead in Fingal, he had other lands.

  He had a loving wife. But then their only son, Harold, had gone on pilgrimage, it was said, and never returned. Five years had passed. No word had come; and his unhappy parents had finally accepted that they would not see him again. Perhaps it was to compensate for this loss that Ailred and his comfortable wife had started a hospital on a piece of land he owned just outside the city gate where the ancient Slige Mhor came in from the west. As a pilgrim he had often seen such places, where the sick could be tended and weary travellers could rest; but until now there had never been such a facility at Dublin. He and his wife spent much of their time there nowadays. He named it the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist.

  But despite all this activity, Una suspected that Ailred and his wife were still lonely. So perhaps it was that reason as well as their natural kindness that caused them, when Fionnuala's father was lamenting his difficulties with his daughter one day, to offer to take her into their home.

  "There will be plenty to keep her busy helping us in the hospital," Ailred had explained. "She'd be like our daughter." And so it had all been arranged.

  On Saturdays Fionnuala returned to her parents" house and spent Sunday with them. But from Monday to Friday she lived with Ailred and his wife and helped at the hospital.

  The arrangement had worked admirably for nearly a week.

  Una remembered so well the day when the Palmer had come to see her father. Fionnuala had been at the hospital only a week. "But it's wrong for the child to be alone in our house with nothing but old people," the Palmer had explained. "We'd like her to have a companion, a girl of her own age but a sensible girl, who could help to steady her."

  Why did everyone always call her sensible? Una knew they did and she supposed it was true. But why? Was it just her nature? Or was it because of her family? When her eldest sister had died while her brothers were still little boys, she had known that her parents had relied on her. In a way, it had always seemed to Una that her father needed her most of all.

  Kevin MacGowan the silversmith was not strong. With his small, spindly body, he was certainly nothing much to look at. And then there was his face: when he was concentrating hard on his work, he would unconsciously twist it into a grimace, so that one of his eyes seemed to be bigger than the other. It made him look as if he were in pain, and she suspected that he sometimes was. Yet within this fragile body lay a fiery soul. "Your father's a strange, poetical fellow," a kindly friend had once said to her. "I only wish he was stronger." Others saw it, too.

  They certainly respected his work. For that was when Una loved to watch him-while he was working. His fingers, slim and bony like his body, seemed to take on a new strength. His twisted face might be tense, but his eyes shone, and he became transformed into something else, something so fine it was almost like a spirit.

  Unaware that she was watching him, he would work on, absorbed, and she would be filled with love for her little father and a desire to protect him.

  MacGowan. The family name had made a gradual transition down the generations. Some scribes would still have written it MacGoibnenn, in the old manner, but it was mostly written and pronounced MacGowan now.

  In the last few years, her father's hard work had brought the family some prosperity. Outside Dublin, men still measured their Us', wealth in cattle. But the wealth that Kevin MacGowan had saved was the little hoard of silver that he kept in a small strongbox. "If anything should happen to me," he would tell Una with gentle pride, "this will see the family through."

  He had planned for his family so carefully. The old church in the centre of Dublin had been raised, some years after the battle of Clontarf, to the rank of cathedral and since then transformed into quite a noble building. Western Europe might be moving to the light and delicate Gothic style of architecture, but in Ireland, the heavy, monumental Romanesque style of former times, with its high blank walls and thick curved arches, was still in vogue, and the cathedral in Dublin was a fine example. With its thick walls and its high roof, it towered over the little city. Officially it was the Church of the Holy Trinity, but everyone called it Christ Church. And it was to Christ Church Cathedral that, at least once a month, Kevin MacGowan would take his daughter.

  "There is the true cross on which Our Lord was crucified," he would say, pointing to a small piece of wood encased in a golden casket.

  Christ Church was becoming famous for its growing collection of relics. "There is a portion of the cross of Saint Peter, a piece of the vest of Our Lady, and there, that is a bit of the manger in which Christ was born." The cathedral even had a drop of the Blessed Virgin Mary's milk, with which she had fed the baby Jesus.

  But even more revered than these sacred objects were the two treasures that every visitor to Dublin came to see. The first was a great crucifix which, like some ancient pagan stone from earlier times, would sometimes speak. And greatest of all, was the beautiful staff that, it was said, an angel had given to Saint Patrick from Jesus Christ himself: this was the famous Bachall Iosa, the Staff of Jesus. It was kept at a shrine to the north of Dublin but was brought into Christ Church on special occasions.

  And as she gazed at these marvels with awe, her father would say to her, "If ever the city is in danger, Una, we shall bring the strongbox to the cathedral monks. In their keeping it will be as safe as are these relics that you see before you." It gave them both comfort to know that their little worldly treasure would be protected by the keepers of the true cross and the Bachall Iosa of Saint Patrick.

  Every day, Una knew, her father carried the thought of that box of silver around with him in his mind like a talisman or a pilgrim's amulet.

  Thanks to his efforts, her father had an assistant now, and her mother had an English slave girl to help her in the house. Her two brothers were healthy, lively boys. There was no reason, therefore, why Una couldn't spend three days a week at Ailred the Palmers hospital which, in any case, was only a few hundred yards from her own home. And before long, she was coming in on Mondays and leaving on Fridays. Since Fionnuala was required to spend Sundays with her parents, this meant that the Palmer and his wife only had to keep her under control for one day of the week which, they bravely declared, was no trouble at all.

  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."