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    ‘He spoke to me this morning; told me that he would be here, but I haven’t seen him since.’ Rhona looked bewildered, her fair eyebrows drawn together in a frown and her grey eyes full of anxiety. ‘I thought all was settled,’ she said in a low voice.
    ‘He’s made a fool of you; he’s not going to accept me as his son after all.’ The boy, Peadar, looked sulkily angry. He glared at Mara as if it were all her fault. His dignity had been badly hurt, she guessed, so resisted the temptation to frown and just nodded politely. Boys of that age were very sensitive, she knew and she felt sorry for him.
    ‘This matter can easily be dealt with on the next judgement day – there is no hurry about it. It’s after all a private matter and just a courtesy custom for the kingdom to be informed,’ she said soothingly. ‘But now we are all going to climb Mullaghmore Mountain for the Bealtaine bonfire. We hold it here every year on the eve of the feast. The bell from the abbey will sound at midnight and then the fire will be lit. Perhaps you and your mother would like to come, Peadar? Hugh, you could do with some help in carrying wood, couldn’t you? Peadar will go with you and Shane. Where is Shane?’
    ‘He’s talking to that English man, Brehon,’ said Aidan. ‘Come on, Peadar, you come with us.’
    Mara waved them away and turned to Rhona. ‘He’ll be better in the company of other boys,’ she said. ‘Otherwise he will just spend the evening wondering if his father has let him down. Will you come, also? You will enjoy it.’ She spoke cordially but was somewhat distracted by searching for Shane. ‘The Englishman’ that Aidan referred to must mean Stephen Gardiner, but what was he talking or interrogating Shane about?
    ‘There they are, over there.’ Rhona pointed in the opposite direction to where Mara had been looking. The Englishman had, like Fachtnan, used one of the flat stones as a desk. He was seated on another stone and, quill in hand, was making notes while Shane, perched on the table stone in front of him, seemed to be busily talking.
    Mara moved quickly and was near them in a moment. Shane was in full flow, speaking fluent English, describing to Stephen Gardiner the studies that he and his fellow scholars undertook.
    ‘And you study Latin, also, is that right?’ the Englishman asked and then before Shane could answer he continued, ‘ “
Arma virumque cano
.” Do you know what that means?’
    Shane smiled with a slight look of disdain as he fluently continued the quotation from Vergil’s first book of the
Aeneid
. ‘ “
Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit, litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram
 . . .” ’
    ‘Don’t show off, Shane,’ said Mara, seating herself beside him on the flat stone and looking down at the book filled with exquisitely written notes. ‘You are interested in what my scholars study?’ She raised her eyebrows in a query to the young stranger. Who was he? And what was he doing here in this Gaelic kingdom? And why had Garrett invited him? She turned back a page and grimaced at some sketches of shock-headed men with exaggeratedly huge moustaches, entitled ‘
the wilde irishe
’ in English. Turlough, her husband, had often said that he did not trust Garrett and now she wondered whether he was right. What was this Englishman doing, staying with a Gaelic chieftain in the heart of a Gaelic kingdom?
    ‘Who are these notes for?’ she asked bluntly when he had not replied to her first question. The book must be at least half full.
    ‘For my master, Cardinal Wolsey,’ he said, finishing off his note and then shaking some fine dry sand from a small canister over the page. He looked up and smiled engagingly at her.
    ‘And who is Cardinal Wolsey?’ she asked tartly, annoyed that he had interrogated one of her scholars without asking permission.
    Stephen Gardiner looked at her