The Irish Princess (7 page)

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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

BOOK: The Irish Princess
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“And you believe them?” I demanded, hands on my hips. “After they’ve been trying to blow us to bits, you believe them?”
He put one foot up on the stair above where he stood just as Thomas had on the dais the day Father passed the control of Maynooth and the Pale to him. I could tell Christopher’s choler was up, for a telltale vein beat in his forehead. He gritted his teeth. I knew he wanted to cuff me down the stairs, but I didn’t blink an eye, however much I was forced to look up at him. He said, his voice mocking, “Since you be a saucy meddler in men’s affairs and a military field commander now, think on this. Are they wanting to consume more time, money, and munitions? The Gunner is an old man now, and ill too.”
“You’ve seen his face? You met with him? Did you really let Gerald go, or did you hand him over too? Everyone knows the English like hostages for surety.”
“Now it’s reminding me of a howling woman you are, mourning at someone’s funeral, when I’ve saved the day for all of us. If the earl had arrived with troops, it might have been different. Now get below, and I’ll be sending for you when I make plans for your departure to England.”
He pointed again as if I were Wynne, who stood beside me growling low in his throat. For one moment I wished the wolfhound would spring at Christopher, but I took the dog’s collar and pulled him back down the stairs. Our foster brother had become someone I didn’t know, someone lusting for power and control, just as Mother had said of King Henry.
I reveled in the fact that the English tyrant must be distraught that he had a second daughter but no legitimate son, only a bastard by one of his mistresses, a Bessie Blount—which showed the Irish what a lecher Henry Tudor was, gossip said. Worse, six years ago that son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, had been but ten when he’d been named viceroy of Ireland, with Skeffington as deputy. And the ultimate insult: Rumors had been about that King Henry would name his bastard son king of Ireland, an outrage and a sham, Father had said. And after all these years, with no strong son to inherit his throne, perhaps King Henry lusted even more for power and control, and that was why he wanted to subdue our Ireland. But I must write down what came next at Maynooth before I lose heart.
It was the wee hours of the morning, a dark and rain-swept one, according to the same garrison guard who now stood at the bottom of the stairs to our cellar sanctuary. Even the walls of the castle, I thought, seemed to weep. How had it all come to this so soon, Father dead, Thomas who knew where? Mother and my brothers and sisters far away . . .
We heard trumpets overhead, then a shuffling followed by sudden cries, shouts, and running feet. A bit of clashing steel—swords on armor? Our guard ran up the stairs, his armor clanking. Had Christopher at the last decided to resist? I told Magheen to hold Wynne and peered up the stairs again. Our Irish guard was nowhere in sight, but a tall, half-armored pikeman stood at the top of the twisting staircase, his back to me, facing the great hall. I could hear an echoing hubbub. I darted back where the stairs made the turn, pressed myself against the stone wall, and listened. Wan, flickering light from moving torches above made it seem the stone walls and stairs were shaking.
A voice I did not know—not an Irish voice, an old, crackly one I had to strain to hear—was giving orders. I gasped when I took the words in, falling to my knees on the stone stairs and pressing my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming or vomiting.
“Yes, every fourth one of the lickspittle rebel Irish to be executed, the traitor Christopher Paris first!” the speaker shouted. “Hang the bag of Judas silver ’round his neck so he takes it to hell with him. What he has done would sicken any brave soldier, and they’ll all be made example of. We’ll call it ‘the Pardon of Maynooth’ when we write King Henry. Line them up; get it done. Hang him and leave his body there; then behead the others. We’ll show the entire Pale that the king of England means business with traitors—traitors to us and even to their own kind, the damned double-dealing Irish curs!”
Christopher had surrendered the main stronghold of the earls of Kildare into English hands, and yet they meant to execute the constable and one-fourth of the garrison, nigh on twenty-five men? And beheadings? That was what the English king did to enemies in the Tower of London, and now in our tower here.
I heard shouts overhead, protests, armor clanking. Men’s voices cursing, some crying for mercy, perhaps the very sounds of doomed men in hell itself. That man’s words—no doubt “the Gunner” Skeffington himself—were so dreadful that, after the initial shock, they could not quite sink in. Curse the English king!
What of us women, then, huddled in the cellars? When word of this got out to Irishmen, would they not all rise to arms or would they cower in submission? For once, I was almost glad that the women who had been seen and dismissed downstairs were apparently of no account. Perhaps they thought the third Geraldine daughter was also with her mother in so-called civilized England.
Not to panic the women, I went back downstairs and pulled Magheen aside and told her what I had heard. She turned ashen, crossed herself, then walked away to tell the other women only that they must kneel and pray that the earl and his forces came quickly. But once they began to mumble their prayers and I started back for the stairs, she nearly dragged me into the darkest corner of the wine cellar, a separate vaulted area where Gerald and Collum had slept lately.
“Despite what Christopher has done, I am going upstairs to plead for their lives,” I told her, trying to free my wrist from her grip. “Surely they will not hurt a mere girl, and maybe I can shame or stop them.”
“And see all that? At the least, you’ll not let them be taking you too, the murderous wretches. What if they try to trade your life for Gerald’s, or even for the earl’s? They’re heathens, cursed of God. You and I, my child, be going out that tunnel lightning-quick to the village, where my sister can hide us.”
Something struck me then—an awareness, a certain clarity. It was as if I emerged from the fog of childhood, or as if someone had pulled a hood off my eyes so that I could see the sky, to soar like a falcon, for that was Saint Brigid’s sacred bird. Even in my hatred and horror, I saw Magheen was right: that I had to flee, to fly away, not only for myself but for the future of the downtrodden Geraldines.
“Yes,” I told her, amazed at the sudden calmness of my voice despite the great weight upon my heart, “we must flee so we can tell the truth, maybe find Thomas. But we can’t risk going into the village, because Christopher said the English were quartered there. Fetch our cloaks and anything else you can quickly gather. And give me your apron, because I’m going to take
The Red Book of Kildare
with me under my skirts, lest they find it. If they get their bloody hands on that, they’ll know exactly who to hunt down and execute in the entire Pale.”
Looking both proud and terrified, Magheen untied her apron, yanked it over her head, and thrust it at me.
“And fetch Wynne’s leash,” I told her as I started to pry the lid off the vat that held the book.
“Gera,” she said, turning back. “No—from now on ’tis Lady Fitzgerald,” she said, emphasizing each word. She had never called me that before, nor had she curtsied to me when it was just the two of us, as she did now. “But, milady, two women fleeing with their heads covered might make it to your uncle James at Leixlip or to Dublin and find a boat to reach your mother, but not with an Irish wolfhound in tow. Wynne is too protective, a barker, and folks hereabout know he’s always at your heels.”
She spoke truth. Another bitterly hard decision: I must leave Wynne too. Only Magheen and I must go on the run like criminals, mayhap with a hue and cry out for us soon. We had no time to waste, though no doubt all above were concentrating on the bloody executions. Damn Christopher Paris, once one of our family, constable of our castle—a fool, covetous for power, now paying the price.
I tried to tie the apron around my waist in a sling up under my skirts, but I saw the book would bang against my knees, so I bound the crimson-covered treasure to my chest and swirled the cloak Magheen brought me around my shoulders. One bag of coins lay in the vat; perhaps Gerald and Collum had taken the other. I thrust the bag in Magheen’s hand and she put it in our food sack. Clasping the book to me, I led her behind the group of praying women toward the tunnel.
Wynne padded over to me. I bent and, one-armed, hugged my beloved pet around his neck, then for one quick moment buried my face in his thick hair. It was like saying farewell forever to my pretty, pampered past again. “I love you, my Wynne, so much,” I whispered, and choked back a sob, for that was so true of all I was forced to leave behind.
I saw Magheen had summoned Shauna, her own cousin, from the women praying fervently with bowed heads. Magheen must have chosen her to tell the others to keep our secret. Magheen pressed Shauna’s fingers around Wynne’s collar, and I whispered to that alert, eager face, “Wynne, stay. Good lad, stay! ”
Dear God in heaven, how I wished that I could stay and relive my days and dreams here. Magheen pulled my elbow and swept aside the hempen curtain covering the tunnel entrance. We had no time for candles or a lantern and could not risk drawing attention by a light.
It was black as Satan’s soul inside. I had been through here several times, once when all five of us were pretending we were pirates, but we’d had a lantern. Magheen went first as we both felt our way along the damp, earthen length of it. Cobwebs laced themselves across my sweating, tear-streaked face. It smelled more fetid than a bog.
“What if they know about this escape route because of Christopher going out to parley with them?” I whispered. “They might have a guard at the other end.”
“Our only chance,” she said. “Oh, Saint Brigid, spread above our heads your bright cloak for protection.”
I had to keep talking. It helped me beat back the blackness to face my fears. “We may be trapped in here, if he boarded it up again,” I said.
But from this stale, rank place—had it been like this for Father, with his labored breathing and fatal coughing fits in the Tower of London? I wondered—we began to smell fresh air. And from the lack of all light, I saw grays emerge. Could we be at the river entrance? Already the dark journey seemed eternal, but it had just begun.
 
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
 
T
hough dawn was just pearling the sky when we emerged from the tunnel, at first it seemed midday to us. Blinking at the brightness, as Magheen started down the path I whispered, “No! We’ll take our boat.”
“But they used barges to drag supplies up the river,” she protested as she turned back. Like me, she kept her voice low, fearful someone would spring at us from behind the big beeches or the shrubby wood beyond.
“But that was before the siege, and now they are intent on their bloody work at the castle. It will be faster to float to Uncle James at Leixlip, if he’s still there and not under siege too, but they must have wanted Maynooth above all.”
Indeed, the English must be concentrated at Maynooth, for no one walked the river path at this early hour, and we children’s
naomhóg
awaited under the newly sprouted willow boughs. It saddened me to see the double sets of oars we had used and the tiller Gerald had steered. I carefully placed
The Red Book of Kildare
in the boat’s belly before we shoved the craft into the river and clambered in. As ever, the current took us away. Sitting side by side on a wide seat, Magheen and I rowed together to go even faster.
With tears in my eyes, I saw Maynooth’s tall silhouette swallowed by the fog. The sedgy banks of the Lyreen, the familiar fields, the few crofts and cots between the castle and the village seemed to rush past. Despite our speed, I felt stunned, mired in the unreality of it all as if my feet were stuck in a bog. But I needed to think—think clearly!
“We should both lie down in the boat when it goes past the village,” I told Magheen. “English soldiers may still be there, or someone may recognize us and call out.”
We pulled our oars inside and lay in the bottom of the boat, staring up into the mist as the spring sun ate slowly through the fog. It was but four miles northwest to Leixlip, then twelve beyond that to Dublin, if we needed to go that far.
What to do? Though Magheen was much my elder and had been my nurse and guardian, I was the Geraldine, the one who needed to make adult decisions now. Should we stop at Leixlip and inquire for Uncle James? Father had a town house in Dublin, but that could be ruined or overrun by the English. If we could get our boat past the small waterfalls near my uncle’s estate, we could reach the point where the Liffey burst into Dublin Bay. But with the English fleet anchored there, could we find safe passage to Uncle Leonard’s estate in the English shire of Leicester? And once we were across the Irish Sea, how would we travel to Beaumanoir, which lay not on the water, but almost in the heart of enemy England?

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