It was near sunset when Caitlyn got her first glimpse of Donoughmore Castle. Mickeen had been forced to halt the cart where the road turned upward to wend its way over another in a series of rolling hillocks. The little man sat swearing at the errant members of a flock of sheep taking their own sweet time to cross the road. Grinning to herself at Mickeen's ire, Caitlyn looked up and saw the Castle. Situated at the top of an emerald hill some three hillocks over, it looked down toward the steep banks and swift- flowing waters of the River Boyne. Its four round stone towers rose in majestic silhouette against the orange- streaked sky. As the cart began to move again and they slogged inexorably closer, Caitlyn could not drag her eyes from its centuries-old grandeur. Clearly the Castle had been designed as a fighting fortress. Round battlements with slits in the stone through which arrows could be fired upon besiegers below crowned the towers. The windows, small and close together, were set higher than three men standing on one another's shoulders could reach. The peaked roof was of slate to repel fire. It was every bit as tall as Christchurch in Dublin, and Christchurch was the most magnificent building Caitlyn had ever seen.

"Cor!" Willie said, as awed as she.

"He lives here?" Caitlyn could not hold back the question.

"His lordship, to the likes o' you," Mickeen muttered, casting Caitlyn a nasty look. Then he added, "Nah. The farm. Though his lordship and his brothers were birthed at the Castle, and their mother died here. As did the old lord, from the Fuinneog an Mhurdair, at the time the Castle was set ablaze."

"The-the what? Fuen… og?" Fascinated, Caitlyn could not respond to Mickeen's surliness with silence as she would have liked. The look the ostler turned on her was disparaging.