Glendalough Fair Read Online Free PDF Page B

or humility.
    “Don’t think I’m ignorant of how long this has been going on,” Colman said, his voice a menacing calm. “Don’t think I don’t know how often you’ve fornicated with that little bastard.”
    Failend glared at him. “If you were man enough, maybe I wouldn’t have to look to other men for satisfaction,” she spat, but she knew she had missed the mark. Colman was too wealthy, too powerful and too old to be much bothered by attacks on his brusque efforts in bed.
    She had been a virgin when they wed, of course, four years past. Her father was not a poor man. He was one of the more prosperous merchants in Glendalough, one of the aire déso, a Lord of Vassalry, an important man, but nowhere near Colman’s standing. He saw the marriage of his daughter to Colman mac Breandan as a way of greatly elevating his family’s position, not just in the monastery town but in all of that part of Ireland and beyond.
    Colman had hundreds of head of cattle and received a hundred and fifty more each year from the clients over whom he was lord. He owned forges and breweries and half a dozen ships that carried his goods to England and beyond. He made generous contributions to the church. He was respected and powerful. He was an ideal husband, his age, appearance and occasional mendacity notwithstanding.
    Failend, young and knowing nothing of the world, had not been opposed to the marriage, and any revulsion she might have felt at the thought of laying with Colman she dismissed as a natural fear of losing her maidenhead. Her wedding night was as painful and unpleasant as she imagined it would be, but she told herself it would get better as time went on. And it did, though not by much.
    The first year passed and Failend, maturity thrust upon her, found herself growing restless and increasingly curious about the wider world. Through the judicious use of shouting and the withholding of favors she convinced her husband to take her with him as he made a tour of his holdings beyond Glendalough. For weeks they traveled the country around. Failend enjoyed nearly every moment of it, but it did not sate her restlessness. Quite the opposite. Her curiosity grew, and with it a craving for something she could not quite define.
    More years passed and Failend decided that the missing thing she was looking for might be a lover, one with more patience and skill, with less hair on his body and more on his head than her husband possessed. So she found one, and then another. Then Louis de Roumois, best of the lot. And that satisfied her. Somewhat. But she knew it was not all she was looking for.
    The thrill she had experienced with this current ugliness, her husband and Louis, the brandished weapons, was closer to the mark. It took her thoughts back to the time when she and Colman had been set on by bandits during one of their journeys through the countryside. It had not been any great affair. In the life of a real man-at-arms she imagined it would hardly have warranted mention. But to her, innocent of such things, it might as well have been a great clash of armies.
    They had spent the night at an inn at a crossroads, the sort of place where the shadows and the smoke were welcome because they hid whatever else was lurking in the dark corners. They left at first light, riding on horseback. Colman never traveled with less than a dozen men in his guard, but that morning five of them had been delayed over some matter, Failend could not recall what. Sent to collect some overdue rent, she thought. With those men left behind their party consisted of only eight riders alone on the road, and one of them clearly a woman. It was probably those small numbers that had given the robbers the courage to fall on them when they did.
    They came out of a stand of trees set back from the road. They came running, with clubs and axes and one man with a sword raised high, ten of them she thought, though she had been far too panicked to count. The guards drew their