Dublin by Edward Rutherfurd Read Free Book Online

considered. But the most striking feature she possessed was her eyes, which were the strangest and most beautiful green. "I don't know where they come from," her father had told her, "though they say there was a woman with magical eyes somewhere in my mother's family." No one else in the family or anywhere near Dubh Linn had eyes like that. They might not be magical-she certainly didn't think she had any special powers- but they were much admired. Men had been fascinated by them ever since she was a child. So she'd always felt confident that, when the time came, she'd be able to find a good man.
      But she wasn't in a hurry. She was still only seventeen. She'd never met anyone she wanted to marry; and in all likelihood, marriage would take her far from the quiet estuary at Dubh Linn, which she loved. And whatever her father's problems with his debts, she wasn't sure she should go away at the moment, leaving her father and her brothers without a woman to run the house.
      The festival of Lughnasa was a traditional occasion for matchmaking. But she didn't think she wanted a husband. Not this year.
      The rest of the day had passed quietly. She asked no more questions, because there was no point. Her father at least seemed cheerful: that was something to be grateful for.
      Perhaps, with luck, he wouldn't become involved in any quarrels, and would fail to find her an acceptable suitor. Then they could all return home safely and in peace.
      Late in the morning they came to a hamlet in a clearing where her father knew the people; but for once he did not stop to talk. And soon after that, as the Liffey curved away to the south, the track began to rise from the narrowing river plain onto higher ground, taking them westwards. It was towards noon, reaching a break in the trees, that they came out onto a broad shelf of peaty heath, dotted with gorse bushes.
      "There," her father pointed to an object a short way ahead, "that's where we'll rest."
      The midday sun was pleasantly warm as they sat on the grass and ate the light meal she had brought for them. Her father drank a little ale to wash down his bread.
      The place he had chosen was a small earthwork ring beside a single standing stone. These stones, either single or in groups, were a regular feature of the landscape-placed there, it was assumed, by ancestral figures or by the gods. This one stood quite alone, about the height of a man, looking out over a wooded plain that stretched away, westwards, to the horizon.
      In the great silence under the August sun, the old grey stone seemed, to Deirdre, to be friendly. After they had eaten, and while the horses grazed nearby, they stretched out in the sun to rest a little while. The quiet snoring of her father soon told her that he was taking a nap, and it was not long before Deirdre dozed off herself.
      She awoke suddenly. She must have slept awhile, she realised, as the sun had shifted its position.
      She was still in that hazy condition of having been jolted through the veils of sleep into a too bright consciousness.
      As she glanced at the sun hanging over the great plain, she experienced a curious vision.
      It was as if the sun were a spoked wheel, like that of a war chariot, strange and menacing. She shook her head to dispel the last mists of sleep and told herself not be foolish.
      But for the rest of that day, and while she lay trying to sleep that night, she was unable to rid herself of a vague sense of disquiet.
      It had been late morning when Goibniu arrived.
      His single, all- seeing eye surveyed the scene.
      Lughnasa: a month after the summer solstice, the celebration of the coming harvest, a festival where marriages were arranged. He liked its patron god-Lugh the Shining One, Lugh of the Long Arm, the magician master of every craft, the brave warrior, the healer.
      People were arriving at Carmun from every direction: chiefs, warriors, athletes from tribes all over the island.