The Irish Princess (10 page)

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

But I wasn’t to be cowed. “We came to you in peace at your invitation!” I screamed at him. “We are related by marriage and blood! Stop it! Let them go!”

My English uncle did not even deign to answer but, with a jerk of his head, had me carried away, thrashing and shouting. I was shoved back into the room where I was to have feasted—or be poisoned, I knew not—while the male Fitzgeralds were as doomed as my father had been—no doubt as Thomas would be. When the guard seized the other two knives from the table and slammed the door on me, I could not help myself. Cursing with every vile word I had ever heard my father or Thomas use, I threw dish after dish of food and Venetian glass against the door, then beat my fists upon the walls and fell to sobbing so hard I could barely breathe.

Later, much later, the guard opened the door and stepped in, nearly slipping in the mess I’d made on the floor. “Aye, milord, she seems ready to listen now,” the man announced, and Uncle Leonard stepped past him into the room. His boots gritted through broken glass as he entered. I sat in the far corner from the door, a heavy pewter candlestick in my hand like a battle mace.

“Put that down and grow up, girl,” he said. “Some things are not fair, but it’s the way of the world.”

“The way of the king of England and those who serve him, perhaps.”

“Judas priest, do you not think your father and uncles fought underhanded when they had to? Do you think Gearoid Og Kildare or Silken Thomas just asked for power and it was given them—or that whoreson foster brother of yours who gave Maynooth over to Lord Skeffington? But I am sorry that you had to see all that—and act like a strumpet when you must learn from your mother to be a lady. It will take you much farther in life.”

“I don’t want to go to a land where your king rules.”

He snorted and sat down, both warily and wearily, I thought, across the table from where I sat with the candlestick, a pitiable weapon against him and his men.

“Elizabeth,” he said, sitting up a bit straighter and resting one arm on the empty table as if to prop himself up, “your maid will be here soon and you are sailing tomorrow and will be delivered to your mother and siblings, where I hope you will learn to be a good influence on them all and they on you. With your remarkable beauty and pluck—properly controlled, of course—you will do well in great Henry’s England.”

I wanted to curse great Henry, England, and this man, but, as I had reasoned out before, honey might catch more flies than vinegar. Sometimes I truly wearied of everyone remarking on or reacting to my physical form and face as if there were naught beneath all that. Yet both Magheen and this man had suggested I could use my fair countenance as a weapon over the years, maybe to climb high, maybe to reach the king and his family so I could finally have justice for my kin and country.

“I am not a monster, my girl,” he went on, though his frown made him look like one. “I am a widower who would like to wed again. I am a good brother to your mother and enjoy having her children about my home. I care deeply for your fatherless family and want you to rise high, as befitting the royal heritage from which we descend. But let me add one thing, should you yet want to gainsay my orders.” He sat forward in his chair and pointed a thin finger at me like a threatening schoolmaster.

“You did, you know,” he said, “attack the royally appointed deputy of Ireland with a knife in your hand, so I could make a fuss over an attempted murder charge and leave you here in a cell awaiting trial for, oh, who knows how long? That would be one alternative to your not wanting to go to England.”

I hated this man, my uncle. He had dashed my fervent hopes for help and healing. But I knew when I was beaten—at least for now. I dropped the candlestick on the floor, where it thudded dully onto the sweet rushes strewn there.

“Good,” he said, smacking his palm on the tabletop. “King’s orders that the Fitzgerald men come to London for questioning and, hopefully, your half brother, Thomas, too, when he sees the futility of holing up like a trapped animal in the middle of a wood, just as I hear you and your uncle James did. Oh, yes, we are fully aware of where Silken Thomas hides within his moat and entrenchments. You know,” he went on as he rose and went to the door, “I rather fancy a woman with spirit, but not when she gainsays me, and it’s the same with Henry Tudor, so remember that. I’ll send Alice for you again. She’ll take you to a room, where I suggest you and your maid get a good night’s sleep when she arrives.”

Was he insane? After all that had happened here today, let alone since Thomas threw down the sword of state in the Irish Parliament and cursed the king? I wanted to say something dreadful to him, but nothing seemed bad enough—or safe enough, now that I had pretended to capitulate so I could learn how to play a woman’s game. I was not yet grown, but maidens were contracted to wed at my age, though they were not bedded. Maybe I could eventually seduce or wed someone I could convince to help me kill the king.

“And, Elizabeth,” he said just before he rapped upon the door for it to be opened by the waiting guard, “don’t think for a moment that you can get word to Thomas or any other rebels that your uncles can be rescued from here. The five of them are going to England on the morrow too, earlier than you. At break of dawn they are sailing like precious, sent-for cargo in the hold of a ship called the
Cow
.”

I gasped.
Five earls . . . in the belly . . . of a cow . . . upon the sea . . .
But that silly superstition ended,
never to return again.
For the first time in my life, I fainted.

PART II

My Maidenhood

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs . . .
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

—HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

A
s our English ship, the
Swiftsure
, bucked the waves, I insisted on tending Magheen myself. I wiped her sweat-damp brow and carried slop buckets, for she was sore stricken with mal de mer. I myself reveled in the tilt and roll of the great, creaking wooden vessel, for it made me feel alive again. Since I had seen my uncles dragged away, I had lived in a sort of shell, but this sea voyage, and now Magheen’s needs, had brought me back to myself.

“Gera—milady,” she whispered with a groan, “grateful I am for your help but I’d best be left alone. I had no notion sailing could be like this—aaah.”

“I’ll not leave you, for you did not desert me when I was—” I began, but when Alice came back in with fresh linens, I stopped in midthought. Though the woman was overseeing the care of both of us, I could not forgive her for locking me in the chamber at Kilmainham while my uncles were penned in like cattle being taken to England in the belly of the
Cow.
And how did I know this woman was not a spy? I saw Alice had also brought another woman with her, who began to care for Magheen.

Alice Stinchcomb had finally explained she was from Uncle Leonard’s household at his estate of Beaumanoir. She had been brought to Ireland with him to accompany me until I was delivered safely to my mother. Through Uncle Leonard’s wife’s long illness, Alice had been her maid. She was a comely woman with shiny black hair, dark brown eyes, and quick, birdlike movements. Perhaps to make amends for her initial treatment of me, she shared tidbits about my family, my mother’s nervous fits, how my siblings’ schooling was faring when, I must admit, my book education had been lacking of late. She thought Cecily “a bit standoffish,” a novel way to put my sister’s snippiness, I thought. My heart softened toward Alice a bit when she told me things she had done to amuse poor Margaret, who missed me dreadfully—that was Alice’s very word for it—dreadfully.

I was surprised Alice was allowed to take her two spaniel lapdogs everywhere she went; my uncle did not seem the sort to have permitted that. Most lady’s maids would not be allowed such, but perhaps they had been the pets of my aunt Eleanor. Posy and Pretty were ever underfoot and, once again, made me miss my Wynne, who could have covered those two little yippers with both front paws.

I had decided that being kind to the spinster—Alice admitted she was nigh thirty with no husband or family—would be good practice for what must come next. I must learn to tolerate, mayhap even cultivate the English so I could earn my way into their trust. That way I could climb the ladder to reach the king or his men—his vile henchman Thomas Cromwell, for example—and find a way to wreak justice for all the Fitzgeralds.

“Magheen just wants to lie there,” I told Alice while the other woman changed the sheets on the narrow built-in bed that was to have been mine. “But I will go stark mad if I don’t get some fresh air.” That was God’s truth and I risked the request, for it had seemed Alice must have orders from my uncle to accommodate me somewhat.

“We can take our guard and go up on deck for a little while,” she said, wrinkling her nose either at the foul air in the cabin or at my request. “Now that we’re out of Dublin Bay,’tis allowed.”

I told Magheen where I was going, but she only moaned and gestured me away again, so I swirled a cloak around my plain blue gown and, with more excitement than I would admit, followed Alice down the companionway and climbed a set of stairs onto the deck. Bates, a brawny guard, the very one, I learned, who had seized me when I attacked my uncle, followed behind us as always.

My spirits lifted, and I sucked in the tang of crisp sea air. I saw what we called a mackerel sky, with rows of clouds like marching men. In the slant of morning sun, the Irish Sea was a restless, rich blue-green topped by whitecaps as bright as the bigbellied sails straining overhead. Aloft, royal sailors in their sky blue shirts clung to ratlines as the great vessel plowed through the shifting waves.

I followed Alice to the railing, and Bates brought up the rear of our little band. I gripped the railing and steadied my stance to take the plunge and roll. The wind ripped back my hood and yanked my hair free. My cloak billowed back as if I had great, flapping wings to fly away.

For one moment, staring out over the vastness of the sea, I almost forgot my troubles, till sorrow sat hard on my heart again. Where, out there, were my uncles? My father had not survived the Tower of London, where they were being taken. Could they? And Thomas. The English knew where he was and how his haven was fortified.

But most of all, I feared for my dear brother Gerald, for I had overheard that the king’s chief minister, Cromwell, had told Uncle Leonard that he must pursue Gerald, boy or not though he be, until he was caught or killed. I must not forget, I warned myself, that whatever pleasures came my way, I was now living among the enemy. And I must ever keep in mind that, since Thomas seemed doomed, my brother Gerald must be helped to return to Ireland and aid our fellow countrymen we all loved.

With Alice and Bates quickly falling into step again, I walked to the other side of the ship and gasped. Indeed we were far out from Dublin Bay. My beloved Ireland was but a thin green line on the western horizon. I sucked in a sob, but stemmed my tears.

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