The Irish Princess (47 page)
Read The Irish Princess Online
Authors: Karen Harper
Tags: #Ireland, #Clinton, #Historical, #Henry, #Edward Fiennes De, #General, #Literary, #Great Britain - History - Henry VIII, #Great Britain, #Elizabeth Fiennes De, #Historical Fiction, #Princesses, #Fiction, #1509-1547, #Princesses - Ireland, #Elizabeth
Q. You also divide the year into time in Ohio and time in Florida. Does that change in setting have an effect on your work?
A. I can manage to lose myself in writing a book whether there are maple trees or palm trees outside my office window. However, I always write my historical novels in Ohio, because that’s where my Elizabethan-era library is. Still, my husband is continually appalled by the books and stacks of research I take to Florida each year so I can work on a contemporary book. Fortunately, I’m an early riser and can get some writing done before the business or beauty of the day takes time or tempts me to go outside.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION1. Even in the early scenes of this novel, it is obvious that female children are valued less than male children. How is Gerald treated differently from Gera during the threat to their family? Are there hints that Gera might have made a better leader for the family than her brother? And is this pro-male bent still evident in modern families?
2. Gera is forced to leave her homeland and live in a country whose king she despises. What do you think keeps her desire for revenge alive for so long?
3. In some ways, Gera is a typical Irish rebel. Is she just lucky not to get caught in her rebellion, or does she choose her rebellions wisely?
4. Gera feels a connection to Elizabeth Tudor that goes beyond the similarity in their appearance. What do you think they have in common, and how are they different?
5. Can you think of a modern-day equivalent to the autocratic power Henry VIII wielded over his subjects, who were vulnerable to made-up charges of treason and summarily executed?
6. Gera falls in love with and weds Edward Clinton, a man she detests earlier. Does she really hate him for a while, or is she lying to herself? Is it a good idea to marry a man who has family ties, loyalties, or interests that are at odds with yours?
7. Some of the best novels have a central character who has a strong story arc; that is, the person learns and changes a great deal during the novel. Is Gera’s swing from hater of the Tudors to friend of Mary and Elizabeth believable? Should the sins of the fathers be visited upon their children, or will those children be completely free from the errors and prejudices of their parents and other family members?
8. If you’ve read other novels set during this period, how does Karen Harper’s portrait of well-known figures differ from the way they’re depicted in other novels, and even plays and movies? For example, compare Robert Dudley, Jane Grey, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, Thomas Seymour, and Henry VIII’s many wives.
9. Discuss Gera’s response to her inability to have children as compared to the attitudes of other childless women in the novel. At a time when a woman’s worth was often based on her ability to produce healthy children, especially males, and when child mortality remained high, discuss what impact childlessness might have had on these women’s lives. How have attitudes changed since then?
10. In wartime even today, many married couples face long periods of separation. What effect does this have on a relationship, especially if the woman is the one left behind? What do Gera and Edward do—and what can modern couples do—to keep their relationships vital and strong?
11. Gera was recorded as being sent by Elizabeth Tudor to the Tower for “plain-speaking to the queen,” but she was quickly recalled. As much as both of these women must have hated and dreaded the Tower of London, this says a lot about them. Gera, when she does lie, for example about the location of
The Red Book of Kildare
, words her answer so “it wasn’t quite a lie.” Are we sometimes Geras in that respect today? Where is the line between always telling the truth and softening it or bending it a bit in relationships with family and friends? Is telling the blatant truth always the best way to go?
The Red Book of Kildare
, words her answer so “it wasn’t quite a lie.” Are we sometimes Geras in that respect today? Where is the line between always telling the truth and softening it or bending it a bit in relationships with family and friends? Is telling the blatant truth always the best way to go?
12. It is interesting in historical novels to see a woman who desperately wants to do something she cannot, because of the strictures of that day. For example, Gera would obviously love to command a ship of her own, or to step in to represent and run her family. Women became shopkeepers or printers at this time, for instance, only because they were widowed or orphaned and had to keep the business going after being left it by a male family member. Are there any such barriers left today, now that we have women soldiers, pilots—even sailors on submarines? Are there still no-females-allowed-or-approved careers in our modern world?
13. Gera has a deep love of Ireland and, later, Lincolnshire and Sempringham. What makes people feel passionately attached to certain locations? Is it just because we were born or reared there? What memories and ties to places (not just where you were raised) emotionally bind you to particular locations? Happy memories? Beautiful scenery? Some deep, inner longing?
Please read on for an excerpt from Karen Harper’s novelTHE QUEEN’S GOVERNESSAvailable from G. P. Putnam’s Sons in hardcover and coming from New American Library in paperback in August 2011.
May 19, 1536
I
could not fathom they were going to kill the queen. Nor could I bear to witness Anne Boleyn’s beheading, but I stepped off the barge on the choppy Thames and, with the other observers, entered the Tower through the water gate. I felt sick to my stomach and my very soul.
could not fathom they were going to kill the queen. Nor could I bear to witness Anne Boleyn’s beheading, but I stepped off the barge on the choppy Thames and, with the other observers, entered the Tower through the water gate. I felt sick to my stomach and my very soul.
The spring sun and soft river breeze deserted us as we entered the Tower. All seemed dark and airless within the tall stone walls. We were shown our place at the back of the small elite crowd. Thank the Lord, I did not have to stand close to the wooden scaffold that had been built for this dread deed. I had vowed to myself I would keep my eyes shut, and, standing back here, no one would know. Yet I stared straight ahead, taking it all in.
For, despite my distance of some twenty feet from it, the straw-strewn scaffold with its wooden stairs going up seemed to loom above me. How would Anne, brazen and foolish but innocent Anne, stripped now of her title, her power, her daughter and husband, manage to get herself through this horror? She had always professed to be a woman of strong faith, so perhaps that would sustain her.
I yearned to bolt from the premises. I nearly lost my hard-won control. Tears blurred my vision, but I blinked them back.
The crowd hushed as the former queen came out into the sun, led by the Tower constable Sir William Kingston, with four ladies following. At least she had company at the end. Anne’s almoner was with her; they both held prayer books. Her eyes looked up and straight ahead; her lips moved in silent prayer. I thought I read the words on them: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”
Before she reached the scaffold, others mounted it as if to greet her: the Lord Mayor of London, who had arranged her fine coronation flotilla but three years ago this very month, and several sheriffs in their scarlet robes. Then, too, the blackhooded French swordsman and his assistant, who had come from France. Anne’s head jerked when she saw her executioner.
The woman who had been queen of England hesitated but a moment at the bottom of the steps, then mounted. She wore a robe of black damask, cut low and trimmed with fur and a crimson kirtle—the color of martyr’s blood, I thought. She had gathered her luxuriant dark hair into a net but over it wore the style of headdress she had made fashionable, a half-moon shape trimmed with pearls.
I saw no paper in her hand, nor did she look down as her clear voice rang out with words she had obviously memorized: “Good Christian people, I am come hither to die according to law. Therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused.”
I knew such contrition was part of her agreement with the king’s henchman Cromwell. It was also the price she had to pay for having me here today. I could hardly bear it. Yet, for her, I stood straight, staring at her. Betrayed and abandoned, if she could face this, I could, too.
“I come here,” Anne went on with a glance and a nod directly at me, though others might think it was but to emphasize her words, “only to die, and thus to yield myself humbly unto the will of my lord the king.”
Damn the king, I vowed, however treasonous that mere thought. No man, not even the great Henry Tudor, had a right to cast off and execute a woman he had pursued and lusted for, had bred a child on, the little Elizabeth I knew and loved so well. The terrible charges against Anne had been trumped up, yet I dare not say so. I wanted to scream out my anger, to leap upon the scaffold and save her—but I stood silent as a stone, struck with awe and dread. But then, since no one stood behind us, I dared to lift my hand to hold up the tiny treasure she had entrusted to me. Perhaps she could not see it; perhaps she would think I was waving farewell to her, but I did it anyway, then pulled my hand back down.
“I pray God to save the king,” she went on with another nod, which I prayed meant she had seen my gesture, “and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler or more merciful prince was there never. To me he was ever a good and gentle sovereign lord.”
Shuffling feet nearby, nervous shifting in the crowd. A smothered snort. I was not the only one who knew this was a public sham and shame. No doubt, she said all that to protect her daughter’s future, the slim possibility that, if the king had no legitimate son and Catholic Mary was not fully reinstated, Elizabeth could be returned to the line of succession—for the poor three-year-old was declared a bastard now. I swore silently I would ever serve Elizabeth well and protect her as best I could from such tyrannical rule by men. At least Anne Boleyn was going to a better place.
Again, I longed to close my eyes, but I could not. When had the terrible things I had borne in my life been halted or helped one whit by cowering or fleeing?
Anne spoke briefly to her ladies, and they removed her cape. She gave a necklace, earrings, a ring, and her prayer book away to them, while I fingered the secret gift she had given me. She gave the axman a coin and, as was tradition, asked him to make his work quick and forgave him for what he was bound to do.
She knelt and rearranged her skirts. She even helped one of her trembling ladies to adjust a bandage tied over her eyes. Huddled off to the side, her women began to cry, but, beyond that, utter silence but the screech of a seagull flying free over the Thames. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out jerkily, as if I would fall to panting like a dog.
To bare her neck, Anne held her head erect as if she still wore St. Edward’s crown as she had in the Abbey on her coronation day. Then came her hurried, repeated words: “O Lord God, have pity on my soul, O Lord God, have pity on my soul. . . .”
I wondered if, in her last frenzied moments, she was picturing her little Elizabeth. I sucked in a sharp sob of regret that the child would never really remember her mother. At least I had known mine before she died—slain as surely as this so someone else might have her husband. That cast me back to my mother’s death, vile and violent, too. . ..
“O Lord God, have pity on my soul, O Lord God, have pity on my—”
The swordsman lifted a long silver sword from the straw and struck in one swift swing. The crowd gave a common gasp, and someone screamed. As Anne’s slender body fell, spouting blood, the executioner held up her head with the lips still moving. Horror-struck, I imagined that, at the very end, she had meant to shout, “O Lord God, have pity on my daughter! ”
April 4, 1516
“God have mercy on her soul. She’s gone,” my father told the two of us. “Dear Lord God, have pity on her soul.”
“Mother. Mother! Please, please wake up! Please come back!” I screamed again and again, throwing river water on her face, until my father shook me hard by the shoulders.
“Leave off!” he demanded, his forehead furrowed, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. We knelt in the thick grass by the rushing River Dart, where her body had been laid out, covered by her friend Maud Wicker’s wet apron, for her own clothes had nearly burned away. When I still shrieked as loudly as the gulls on the river, he commanded, “Enough, Kat!” Unlike Mother, he had seldom used the pet name I’d had since I couldn’t pronounce my own when I was still in leading strings. That sweet, little comfort almost steadied me until he added, “You’ll learn to accept much more than this, so bear up, girl!”
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