Free Dublin by Edward Rutherfurd Page B

clear of the estuary already. But it was the smaller island which charmed her most.
      It was only a short way from the shore. You could row out to it quite easily, she supposed. It had a sandy beach on one side and a heathery little hillock at its centre. But on the seaward side there was a small, rocky cliff which had been cleft, leaving a sheltered gap between its face and a pillar of standing stone, with a pebble beach below. How intimate it seemed. The island was not inhabited and had no name.
      But it looked so inviting. She found it fascinating and would sit on warm afternoons, gazing at it for hours.
      Once she had taken her father up there, and if she returned late after a long ramble, he would usually smile and say, "Well, Deirdre, have you been looking at your island again?"
      She had been there this morning, and had returned in an irritable mood. She had been caught in the rain shower-but that was nothing. The thought of her marriage had depressed her. She hadn't met the man that Goibniu and her father were proposing yet; but whomever she married, it would mean leaving these beloved shores.
      For I can't marry the seabirds, she thought sadly.
      And then, on her return, she found that one of the two British slaves had foolishly cracked a barrel of her father's best wine and lost more than half the contents. Her father and brothers were out, otherwise the slave could have expected a whipping, but she cursed him roundly by all the gods. It had irritated her still further that, instead of apologising or at least looking sorry, the wretched fellow, hearing the gods invoked, had fallen on his knees, crossed himself, and started mumbling his prayers.
      On the whole, buying the two western British slaves had been one of her father's better ideas.
      Whatever his shortcomings, he had a wonderful eye when it came to livestock, whether animal or human. Many of the British in the eastern half of the neighbour island couldn't speak anything but Latin, she had heard. She supposed that after the centuries of Roman rule, this was not surprising.
      But the western British mostly spoke a language very similar to her own. One of the slaves was large and burly, the other short; both had dark hair, shaved close as a mark of their slavery. And they worked hard.
      But they had their own religion. Soon after they arrived, she had discovered them praying together once and they had explained that they were Christians. She knew many of the British were Christian, and she had even heard of small Christian communities on the island, but knew little about the religion. A bit concerned, she had asked her father about this, but he had reassured her.
      "The British slaves are often Christian. It's a slave's religion. Tells them to be submissive."
      So she had left the burly slave mumbling his prayers while she went indoors. Perhaps in the peace and quiet of the house her mood would improve. Her hair had become tangled in the rain. She sat down and started to comb it.
      The house was a good, solid dwelling-a circular structure with clay-and-wattle walls, about fifteen feet in diameter. Light came in through three doorways which were open to let in the fresh morning air. In the middle of the interior was a hearth; wisps of smoke from the fire filtered out through the thatched roof above. Beside the fire was a large cauldron and, on a low wooden table, a collection of wooden platters-for though they had once done so, the islanders did not use much pottery. On another table near the wall, this e family's more valuable household possessions were kept: a hand some, five-handled bronze bowl; a quern for grinding grain; a pair of dice, rectangular in shape with four faces, that you rolled in a straight line; several wooden tankards banded with silver; and, of course, her father's drinking skull.
      Deirdre sat there combing her hair for some time. Her immediate irritation had subsided. But there was something else,