"You've no choice, Skye lass. Padraic is my heir with his father gone, and wee Deirdre after him. I’ll not let you take them from me!" For a brief moment he felt sure afid strong again.
"Old man, you'll not stop me from whatever I choose to do!" Skye O'Malley declared. Then she rose from the settle and stormed from the room, not seeing his tired shoulders slump forward, defeated by the knowledge that she would leave him if she chose, taking his only grandchildren with her.
He coughed deeply and, turning, spit a clot of black blood into the pewter basin on the table. The blood had been coming up for several weeks now. His instinct told him that he did not have a great deal of time left to live. Until now it had not worried him particularly, for his son had been a strong, wise man, mature for his years. Now, however, Niall was dead, and his only living male heir was six weeks old. The babe was strong, but anything was possible. If the child died before reaching his majority the English would eat up his holdings as they had so many in the past several years. They might anyway.
Where had the time gone? the MacWilliam wondered. It only seemed a short time ago that he had been a young man in his full vigor, ready and eager to bed a hot-blooded wench. Now he was but a broken old man, clutching his faded memories and shattered dreams about him like a tattered cloak; his thin white hair lank upon his bony shoulders.
The MacWilliam sighed sadly. God help Ireland-for surely no one else would. The Irish stood quite alone, England to one side of them, the open sea on the other. In a way it was their own fault, for they had no one ruler to rally them, but rather a thousand petty, bickering chieftains, each jealously guarding his own holding, and each making the alliances best suited to himself, not necessarily to Ireland. It was no wonder that the English with their one strong ruler could overcome the Irish. Irishmen, 'twas true, would not be conquered by war, but rather by their own weaknesses.