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admiring Walter. As a mother herself she guessed that would be a more valued remark than a mere exchange of flattering remarks about clothes. Margaret was richly dressed with a hood embroidered with pearls and an exaggeratedly wide skirt made from expensive brocade; the clothes, even in the streets of Galway, were worthy of remark, but the praise of her son brought a glow of pleasure to her powdered cheeks.
    ‘My Benjamin,’ she said half-laughing at herself, but beaming proudly at the youngster. ‘You must know, Mara, that Walter is the youngest of my children. Nine girls, one after the other, all of them married, and I thought I had finished breeding, but then came the son. You can’t imagine what I felt.’
    ‘My son is only eighteen months old, but I think I can imagine how proud you are of your son,’ returned Mara, touched by the woman’s open affection for her handsome boy. The father, too, despite his cold manner, was keeping a careful eye on his son and appeared to be mentally comparing him to the law school scholars who surrounded him and were chatting with various degrees of proficiency in English.
    ‘You must come out on The Green and practise some jousting,’ Walter was saying. ‘Did you bring your swords?’
    ‘He’s such a gentle boy,’ said his mother indulgently as her son was excitedly regaling the law school scholars with his tales of daring while walking backwards down Quay Street in front of the boys. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ she added with a fond smile as he took from his belt a very handsome dagger, its ebony handle embossed with silver, and waved it in the air, miming the action of stabbing someone in the chest. ‘You should have seen him yesterday morning when he discovered some boys stoning a kitten. He climbed after it right up to the roof of St Nicholas’s, ruined his hose and his second-best jerkin, carried the little thing down and brought it home. He found a box and lined it with sheep’s wool and fed the kitten with milk until its sides bulged. It’s beside the fire in the kitchen at our castle at this very moment and it looks as if it will stay there for ever – if it was anyone other than Walter, the cook would give notice and leave, but he can do no wrong in our servants’ eyes. You should have seen him with tears in his eyes, putting ointment on the little thing’s cuts and bruises!’
    ‘That was kind,’ said Mara appreciatively. She thought that young Walter Blake would get on well with Fachtnan, who was also a gentle and kind boy. From behind her she could hear the heavy, sombre tones of the mayor discussing market rights with Lawyer Bodkin. ‘I suppose your husband is proud of him also,’ she ventured.
    Margaret sighed. ‘They are so unalike,’ she confided. ‘Of course, Walter is a “Blake” through and through. Takes after my family. I’m a Blake, you know. And you wouldn’t believe it; every single one of my nine girls was a Lynch from the moment they opened their eyes. Always knew the right thing to do. Never spoke without thinking. All made good marriages, too.’ She sighed heavily and then called out merrily, ‘Mind your steps, fool boy; your uncle is right behind you.’
    Valentine Blake looked quite like his sister Margaret. He was a plump man, richly dressed, good-looking, but lacked the amazing burnished beauty of his nephew. He, too, was fond of the boy and was playfully shaking him by the shoulders as he turned a smiling face towards his guests.
    ‘I shall have to call you Mistress Mara,’ he said with amusement when Lawyer Bodkin introduced her carefully as ‘my lady judge’. ‘I can’t possibly address a young and beautiful woman as “judge” when it brings such an image of fusty old men to my mind.’
    ‘Well, call me “Brehon” and then there will be no complications,’ invited Mara. She eyed him severely. She was not willing to surrender any part of her status in deference to the views of the anglicized inhabitants of