Laws in Conflict (6 page)

In one corner of the room a group of prettily dressed girls, in stiff brocaded dresses, and with matching hoods set on top of their long hair, hung over a harpsichord, where a slightly older girl was lightly touching the keys and singing a low, plaintive melody.

‘This is my wife Cecily,’ said Valentine as the girl at the harpsichord stood up and came towards them. ‘And these are my daughters, Anne, Elizabeth and Catherine.’

Cecily murmured a greeting to Mara. She looked hardly older than her three stepdaughters and seemed happy to rejoin them while Valentine took Mara on a tour of his magnificent room.

He was entertaining company, she thought. He had a story to tell of each item that he had collected. She listened, but she was more interested in James Lynch, the mayor. From time to time she glanced over at him, but there was little other than a faint shade of boredom to be read from his face. Margaret, on the other hand, seemed to be fond and proud of her brother, hanging on his arm and prompting him to tell stories about the Turkish boat which had sold him his rugs and the Spanish town where he had found an exquisite tapestry of a unicorn.

‘Once I saw it, I had to have it,’ said Valentine enthusiastically, gazing fondly at his treasure.

‘Didn’t bother asking the price, I suppose,’ put in James Lynch quietly, looking with disdain at his brother-in-law.

‘Who could bother about a price for a thing as beautiful as this?’ Margaret spoke quickly. Her face when she looked at her husband was defiant and, somehow, angry.

‘Were you brought up here, Margaret?’ asked Mara, hoping to dissipate an awkward moment between husband and wife. ‘What a lovely place it is.’

‘On this spot, but in a much smaller place – Valentine is the one who knows how to make money. My father imported skins and leather but that was not so successful with a countryside in the hinterland full of cattle,’ said Margaret. Her voice was full of pride when she added, ‘When Valentine took over the business he started to import salt from Portugal. No one had thought of doing that before so it has been a huge success.’ she lowered her voice and whispered in Mara’s ear, ‘I’m hoping that he will agree to taking Walter under his wing.’

Every topic of conversation came back to Walter almost immediately, thought Mara with a suppressed smile. She looked across at Valentine who, having shown his treasures, was teasing Jane Bodkin about having Hugh as her new young man – he had even brought a flush of colour to the old lady’s thin cheeks. Yes, Walter would probably get on better with his uncle than with the sour, thin-faced father.

Nevertheless, thought Mara as she accepted a seat on the embroidered cushioned seat in front of one of the two windows beside Margaret, James Lynch is the man that I must turn my attention to. Valentine Blake, his expenditure and his personality, all that is really of no interest to me; it’s James Lynch that I need to woo if I am to rescue an unfortunate countryman of mine from the cruel and unjust courts of Galway.

Mara furtively scanned the forbidding countenance of the Mayor of Galway, while listening to Margaret’s stories of Walter’s good nature and love of his mother with an attentive face and half an ear. What were his interests? she wondered. How can I open up conversation with him?

‘And your husband, James, what is his business?’ she asked when eventually she managed to find an opening.

‘Coal and fish,’ said Margaret merrily. ‘You must come and visit us, Mara. I can guarantee that you will never be cold and we don’t always have to eat fish!’

‘And Walter is not so interested in coal and fish,’ queried Mara, looking across at the handsome young man. He was chatting in a friendly way to Fiona. Fiona, of course, was a beauty who turned all heads, but he didn’t seem as interested in her as his uncle, Valentine, who was still eyeing her with an appreciative smile.

A moment later Mara saw why Walter was not impressed by Fiona.

The oath of allegiance to the king of England to be administered to all who live in Ireland:

‘I become faithful and true ligeman unto kyng Henry the viith kyng of England and of Fraunce and lord of Irland of lif and lym and erthly worship and feth and trought. I shall beer unto hym as my soveraigne liege lord to lyve and dye agentst all maner creatours so god help me and his seyntes.’

T
he steward had just announced the next guests, the Browne family. Valentine, his wife and his daughter went forward to greet them. Mara studied the newcomers with interest. Philip Browne had an amiable face – the usual dark hair and white skin of Galway people – his wife very much darker – this must the Spanish wife – one boy who looked like his father and another who looked as though he had come from southern Spain with the dark, almost Moorish colouring of that region.

But Walter Lynch had eyes for only one person in the family party. He left Fiona abruptly.

Catarina Browne was looking even more beautiful than she had done when Mara had met her on The Green. She was dressed in an elaborate Spanish gown made from red silks and satins and trimmed with the same colour of velvet, each individual cloth bearing its own shade. The effect was of a shimmering sweep of intense red light and the rosy glow seemed to be reflected in the adoring face of the boy who stood before her, carrying her hand to his lips in a courtly gesture.

‘My little Scottish primrose has been abandoned by your son for the Spanish rose,’ murmured Mara in Margaret’s ear. Fiona had tossed her blonde head and turned back to the other boys, giggling with Aidan over some silly joke.

‘Walter’s been in love with Catarina since he was five years old,’ said Margaret. She tried to sound apologetic, but a smile of pride and triumph curved her lips. ‘It will be a good match. Philip Browne is a very successful merchant and Catarina will have a fortune from her mother. The Gomez family from Cadiz,’ she said settling into a comfortable gossip mode, ‘is fabulously rich. There was no heir for years and Philip Browne hoped that his son might inherit the Spanish fortune through his mother, but when David was ten years old Señor Gomez married again and had a son – Carlos. He, of course, will be a very rich young man,’ she said enviously, ‘but Isabella has her own fortune and that will be for Catarina.’

‘Is this the first visit that Carlos has paid to Galway?’ Mara thought that the hopes of an alliance between young Walter Lynch and the well-endowed Catarina might not work. The girl seemed to be paying more attention to her cousin Carlos than to him and when she did address a remark to Walter, it seemed to be made in a rather condescending fashion. Boys and girls, brought up together, did not always marry. Carlos did not have the shining beauty of Walter, but, although probably only a year or so older, he had an air of authority, of experience, and, of course, the glamour of his Spanish gold to set him up as a serious rival.

None of my business, thought Mara and with a murmured excuse to Margaret, she got up to inspect a flamboyantly decorated wall-hanging of Spanish leather, which was displayed quite near to the cushioned bench where James Lynch was sitting, and then, when he made no move to her side, she gave up the pretence and sat down beside him.

‘So much to see here in the city of Galway,’ she said. ‘I was admiring your very fine walls earlier when our host took me up to The Green.’

The mayor looked at her suspiciously. ‘We have to maintain them well,’ he said stiffly. ‘We are surrounded by a hostile people.’

‘And then this very fine harbour,’ said Mara, ignoring his attempt to start an argument.

‘Talking about the harbour, James, just as we were passing on our way into here, there was a very fine ship from Spain arriving,’ called out Philip Browne, rather rudely interrupting an anecdote about Walter’s babyhood which Margaret was relating to him and his wife. He crossed the room, studied the mayor’s face from under his eyelashes as he added maliciously, ‘Plenty of taxes for you, my friend. I’d say that there was as much as a hundred tuns on board.’

Mara absorbed this with interest. A hundred tuns meant about two hundred thousand gallons of wine. The tax on this must be absolutely enormous. James Lynch, however, showed just a placid satisfaction.

‘Good,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘So that’s arrived. That means we can get building.’

A splendid place like Valentine’s palatial residence, wondered Mara, but then, almost as though the strange man sitting beside her had read her thoughts, he said to her abruptly, ‘I want to build a grammar school for the town. They have them in all the major towns in England – they even have one in Dublin. This will be built beside the church and will educate the sons of the merchants and will have free places for ten poor, but deserving, town boys.’

‘And will be known as the James Lynch Foundation,’ said Valentine. His tone was teasing and Mara thought he might be revenging himself for some of his brother-in-law’s remarks earlier. It was obvious that there was little love between them. Not a likeable man, James Lynch. Philip Browne, also, was eyeing him with a look of dislike.

‘Not James Lynch anything,’ said the mayor stiffly. ‘This school will be named the St Nicholas Grammar School and it will take boys up to the age of fourteen. They can progress from there to a university in England, or a law school, or into a trade in the town.’

‘Pointless waste of money – ten free places. How can the town afford to keep this going? You won’t be mayor for ever, you know, and you will leave a burden on your successors and their children. Valentine, do you approve of this absurd business?’ Philip Browne sounded so angry that the two young men and the four girls at the top of the room, stopped talking and turned around to listen. The law scholars politely turned to look out of the window at the back of the room.

‘I’ve told him that,’ said Valentine, smiling good-humouredly, ‘but let’s not think of it now.’ He picked up a small bell of chased silver and rang it. A man, dressed as a steward, appeared and bowed towards the mistress of the house, murmuring something.

It was, however, Valentine, who ushered everyone into the dining room, seating Mara beside himself, and Fiona on his other hand, and sending the angry-looking James Lynch to sit beside the amiable Cecily. In a few minutes all were seated around a long table spread with a purple tablecloth which showed off the elaborate silver plates, silver knives and silver drinking goblets.

Both young men, Walter and the Spanish boy, Carlos, drank fairly heavily throughout the meal. They were placed on each side of Catarina, which perhaps had been rather tactless of the host. Mara was sorry that this was not an informal household where when the meal was announced people moved to sit beside who they chose to talk to. Mara had wanted to place herself next to James Lynch, but had to make do with his wife Margaret who was on her other side – and she was the better talker of the two.

However, when Valentine’s wife, Cecily, claimed Margaret’s attention for a moment, Mara immediately took the opportunity of leaning across the table to address James Lynch.

‘Tell me some more about your grammar school,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Nothing much to tell; we have to get the building up before any plans for the teaching are made.’

‘And you will have no difficulty with the town council?’

Once again he shrugged, a look of faint amusement in his eyes this time. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They will do what I suggest.’

And he cast a challenging glance across the table at Philip Browne.

Not a man to cajole or establish a relationship, she thought. However, as a lawyer, she was trained into taking different approaches to a problem. She had tried being friendly; now she would try a different tack.

‘I had a very interesting afternoon in Lawyer Bodkin’s chambers,’ she began, trying to make her voice sound authoritative and intellectual. ‘He was kind enough to lend me his law books. It was fascinating to pick out the differences between your law and ours.’

‘Your law,’ he queried with an ironic lift of his eyebrows. His thin lips were twisted into a sneer. The pause he made and the puzzled tone of voice were all deliberately affected, thought Mara. She said nothing, just gazed steadily at him and after a moment his eyes dropped. ‘Oh,
brewone
law,’ he said, deliberately mispronouncing the word, and when she still kept her lips closed, he looked at her with an air of curiosity.

‘Yes,’ she said sweetly when she judged that sufficient time had elapsed, ‘of course, here in Galway you are rather cut off from the rest of the west of Ireland, are you not?’ And she saw with satisfaction how his face darkened. She had evoked the familiar nightmare for the dwellers of the city state of Galway. There were about three thousand people with English names and English lifestyles, living inside its strong walls, but outside those walls were millions with names prefaced with an O’ or a Mac who, though denied the opportunity, according to one of the statutes, “to strutte nor swagger through the streets of Galway”, were nevertheless an ever-present threat. From across the table she saw Lawyer Bodkin look at her with slightly widened eyes.

But I’ve done the right thing, though, thought Mara. This is a hard-hearted, self-satisfied man. Not a man to be appealed to. Not a man to take compassion on poor old Sheedy who had lost his wits and who stole a pie because he was starving. No, this was a man to be threatened.

‘I think we have an acquaintance in common,’ she continued, looking challengingly at Mayor Lynch. ‘The Lord of Clanrickard is a great friend of my husband.’ And if that reminded him of Ulick Burke’s last daring raid on the Lombard Street in the heart of the city, well that might be all to the good, she thought as she turned back to Margaret again.

‘You must see the Shrove Tuesday celebrations tomorrow evening, Mara,’ the latter was saying. ‘I would ask you to supper at our place, but it is so much more fun to go out on to the town streets. Your young people will love it. We’re hoping that the weather will keep fine. The whole of the city is like one huge fair – lanterns everywhere and food cooked at every street corner.’ She sighed heavily and added, ‘But my husband does not like that sort of thing, so these days I stay at home and just look out from the top windows.’