The Irish Princess

by Karen Harper

  If the so-called Fitzgerald rebellion and Father’s loss were not enough to grieve us, it soon became clear that the arrival of the English army showed who was truly for the Irish cause and who was not. Despite Thomas’s army numbering seven thousand, his siege of Dublin Castle, where many loyal to England were holed up, failed, mostly because many of the so-called Anglo-Norman families of the Pale took one look at the English might and were only too happy to stay neutral or even loyal to England.

  Thomas’s main force was made up of family members, retainers, and tenants of our lands and those kin loyal to them. In short, it was most of those listed in The Red Book of Kildare, which had been moved for safety’s sake out of its silver box in the library and hidden with several sacks of silver coins in an empty vat in the wine cellar below the great hall. At least the inland Gaels, whom Father had managed to keep in line, delayed “the Gunner” Skeffington’s army with their raids. Thomas’s forces fought the king’s invaders too, but the Irish loyal to him kept falling back in a hard-fought campaign through the bitter winter and into the spring of the next year.

  As I was approaching my eleventh year, Magheen said I seemed much older. I tried to take on the mistress’s duties in the castle, copying things I’d seen Mother say and do. But then, in mid-March it was, from the top tower rooms we saw the English army swarming toward Maynooth like a plague of black ants.

  It was just skirmishes and light arms fire around Maynooth at first. Sometimes Thomas, who knew the area far better than the invaders, still sneaked in and out at night by a tunnel that connected the wine cellar to the river near where we had hidden our boat. He had recently ordered the tunnel redug, for it led to the river water supply that had helped the castle survive a siege in the fourteenth century, before the inner courtyard well was dug.

  But when the English army encircled the castle, Christopher told us he had blocked and obscured the river entrance and Thomas came no more, though we knew he had gone to raise reinforcements to defend Maynooth. Christopher was fully in charge now, even of the garrison here that owed allegiance to Thomas. I could see Christopher reveled in his power, despite the dangers. He ordered Gerald and me about much more than Thomas ever had. But at least we had some firepower to fight back, guns and ammunition Father had seen fit to bring here from Dublin Castle.

  I felt deserted and scared, but I was also a Fitzgerald and kept my head held high. I was helping my half brother and three of my uncles, who were commanding the Irish troops, I told myself. During those days when our tutors and most of the castle musicians had fled and I hadn’t seen Mother for so long, Magheen was my teacher, and I became more Irish, more fiercely independent, and, however terrified, more bold.

  “I’ll be telling you, your mother wouldna approve of you wearing your hair loose all the time, that she wouldna,” Magheen scolded me one day while we worked side by side, making beds. “Nor are you wearing the proper petticoats, and your skirts drag.”

  “Magheen, just take a look at how we’re living,” I said with a sweep of my arm around the room. We had moved the living quarters for the castle’s women to the top tower room, for we hoped cannon fire could not reach us here. Our wool-stuffed mattresses on the floor were cheek by jowl, and we had extra foodstuffs piled everywhere. Outside, sheep, cattle, and horses had been brought into the inner courtyard, and the smell of them drifted clear up on the breeze at times. The castle’s fine furniture had mostly been made on site in the rooms below, since the staircases were too narrow for them to be carried up or moved. I told myself and others we were doing our part to live a bit crudely, for weren’t our Fitzgerald forces sleeping on the ground?

  “I just wish I knew what was going to happen next, and I wish I could help fight,” I told Magheen as I leaned my elbows on the narrow window ledge, looking out over the lawn and fields where the siege cannons were being set up.

  “Stuff and nonsense. Women don’t fight—at least that way.”

  “I would like to find a way. Won’t Thomas attack them from the rear before they start pounding us to pieces? And are my uncles safe?”

  “Did you never tell her of the prophecy then?” Sinead, one of the chambermaids, who was helping, asked. “About the ship to England?”

  “What ship? What about a ship?” I demanded, rounding on Magheen. I loved ships, and my dearest delight was to sail in one of any size. “Have you heard something of an escape that Gerald and I weren’t told?”

  “No, my colleen. Just a prophecy from the old days, nothing to fret for, and Sinead can just learn not to flap her lip, that she can.”

  “If it’s just a story, no harm in telling me,” I insisted. “You know I love the old tales.”

  “By Saint Brigid!” she muttered, but she gave me an answer anyway. “Just that someday five earls will be carried to England in a cow’s belly and never return.”

  “In a cow’s belly? Though my uncles be earls in their own regions, Thomas said last time they are being careful never to be together these days so they cannot be rounded up like cattle—in a cow’s belly, indeed!”

  It was then, that very moment, and I can even recall what I was looking at—Magheen swatting Sinead out of the room—that the first cannon blast against Maynooth battered all I had ever held dear.

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  March 22, 1535

  “If Lord Thomas doesna come with more troops soon,” Magheen muttered, “Maynooth will be rubble.”

  “You must not say or even think so,” I protested from my perch on a wooden barrel where we all huddled in the cellar below the great hall. “Thomas—the earl—said the castle withstood a long siege a hundred years or so ago.”

  Collum said, “Not against King Henry’s new artillery, overseen by the Gunner. And not with no reinforcements on the horizon.”

  “We must all be brave,” Gerald put in, trying to keep his voice steady. It had not yet lowered to a man’s tones and sometimes came out reedy and shrill. “Thomas will surely come with an army and make them leave us be.”

  The crash of cannonballs had tormented us day and night, nigh on a week of it. My wolfhound, Wynne, had barked at each blast at first but now, brave stalker of game though he was, he kept close to me and whimpered. The early, defiant cries from our castle garrison of “A Geraldine! A Geraldine!” had become more sporadic and finally silent as our supplies of powder and cannonballs dwindled.

  Christopher had been dead wrong about the guns not reaching where we women had been living high in the tower. Amidst rubble, dust, and the acrid smell of gunpowder from a direct hit, we had lugged what foodstuffs and bedding we could salvage to the dim, dank cellars. Yet even down here, the rumbling of cannon seemed to shake our very bones while our nearly one hundred men fired back. During the day, even Gerald, guarded by Collum, sat with us women, waiting, wondering what would happen next.

  Though but thirteen years, Gerald was feeling the burden of being the heir of Silken Thomas, the rebel 10th Earl of Kildare. Christopher had informed us more than once that he had orders from Thomas to help Gerald escape to safety through the tunnel if the castle walls were in danger of being breached. At least the fact that Gerald was still here made me feel better.

  “I think,” Gerald said, rising to his feet as if that would make us heed his words the more, “I should be able to parley with the English in my brother’s place, or at least help fight.”

  “I am constable here,” Christopher announced, appearing behind us before we saw him. “And I outrank the heir or the absent earl right now; there’s no denying it. We are cut off by an impressive force, if I do say so meself. I had not fathomed the might of the English king to send so great an army and armaments against us. Perhaps we be more important to him than we had learned to think,” he added with a bit of a swelled chest. “But, Gerald, I shall be sending you off straightaway when it gets dark, or the earl might have my head, and I hope to find a way to preserve it and all we have left. Collum, best be packing some things for the lad, as you’ll be
going with him to my kin in Donore till the coast be clear of the English and we can spirit you away to the continent.”

  “Clear to France or Italy from whence the Fitzgeralds came?” Gerald asked, looking awed, while my stomach twisted to think of being separated from him. I saw Magheen and Collum exchange a quick look. As far as I knew, they had never been parted and, like my parents, were a love match. But neither said one word in protest.

  “Will I not go too, and with Magheen?” I asked, jumping off the barrel and standing next to Gerald to face Christopher, who shook his shaggy head.

  “’Tis enough of a gamble, two escaping into the night when we’re surrounded, but not four—and not two females to slow them down. The English be wanting to get their hands on the earl and the heir, Gera. Should they ever take Maynooth, you’d be but sent to your mother; I am certain of it.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand and stalked out before I could argue further.

  That very night Christopher’s plan—the part of it he had admitted—came to fruition. Gerald donned a shepherd’s hooded cloak and carried a staff and a pack of food on his back, and Collum much the same, though he had a knife and a matchlock pistol. Gerald waited at the door to the tunnel while Collum said a quick farewell to Magheen. I tell true, I had not shed tears since the bombardment of Maynooth began, but I cried now, silently, for my dear guardians’ and my parents’ separations, and for my being parted from Gerald. For as I have written here afore, though Gerald and I had our spats from time to time, we had forged a friendship too.

  “I will see you when I can, Gerabeth, when things simmer down a bit,” Gerald promised, blinking back tears and holding tight to my hand. He was trembling, just as I. “Christopher is going to put out the word I have the pox and have been sent away to be tended at an undisclosed site to avoid panic.”

  How foolish to think our people—and our enemy too—would not panic when he came up missing, I thought, but I said only, “I wish you were being sent to our uncles or kin, not to Christopher’s family.”

  “Collum said the same, so mayhap . . .”

  Gerald raised both reddish eyebrows and put his finger to his lips, as we had so oft done to avoid saying something in front of Cecily that she could tat-tale to Mother. Gerald squeezed my hand before Christopher pulled him away. In the wan lantern light I saw tear tracks glistened on Magheen’s face as she gave a final wave to her husband. She came to me, and we stood arm in arm to see our dear ones swallowed by the maw of that dark tunnel. One of Christopher’s most trusted men, fully armed, led the way, and Christopher himself, stooped down, thrust a cobweb away and brought up their rear.

  About an hour later, I realized with wonderment that the siege guns had gone suddenly silent, as if mourning the loss of not only Father and Mother, my sisters and Edward, but now Gerald too. Despite Magheen, the others around me, and the garrison defending us overhead, I had never felt more alone.

  “Wake up! Gera, wake up!” Magheen whispered, and shook my shoulder. She was on her knees beside me. I ached all over from sleeping on thin straw and floor stones, but I came instantly alert. And realized the guns were still silent on both sides. Bodily and emotionally exhausted, I had fallen into the first solid sleep I’d had in days. Then I remembered—Gerald and Collum were gone.

  “What is it?” I asked, my pulse pounding as I elbowed myself to a sitting position. Wynne raised his big head as he lay beside me.

  “Some sort of truce, I hear. One of the garrison told a cook’tis some sort of arrangement between Christopher and the English.”

  “He didn’t give them Gerald as a hostage, did he?”

  “Sh! I’ll be getting in trouble for so much as warning you, but no, wasna that. A strange man just came through here with a lantern, looking in every corner of the cellars, searching for Gerald, I think, so the English must be searching the castle for him. The stranger said with a snort, ‘Only women,’ and went back upstairs.”

  “You should have wakened me. Maybe it was a man brought in to talk about Christopher’s terms to get Thomas a pardon, and he wanted to see whether Gerald or Thomas was here.”

  She shook her head. “By Saint Brigid, there’s worse news.”

  “What then?” I whispered.

  “’Tis not yet dawn, and the fog’s thick as pudding outside, but’tis said Christopher indeed got Gerald and Collum away, then sent his man with a white flag to speak to the English general.”

  “That’s what I said. He’s found a way to parley with the—”

  “No. He’s invited more than just one of the English in, that he has.”

  “It was a flag of surrender?” I gasped. “To the Gunner?”

  “We’ve let you sleep several hours, but we’ve been praying Thomas gets word and that there’s to be pardons all ’round. But the garrison man told the cook that our braw constable Christopher be taking money for it too, as well as the enemy’s promise that he can remain in command.”

  “Better Christopher than the whoreson English!” I hissed, using one of Father’s curse words. Ignoring Magheen’s gasp at what I’d said, I shoved my feet into my shoes.

  “Wherever are you going? You must stay hidden here.”

  “I’ll not. Only a girl, not the heir, I know,” I said, getting to my feet and pushing past Magheen, who made a grab for my skirt. I could hear Wynne’s claws scrabbling on the floor as he fell in behind me like my shadow. “Stay here!” I ordered Magheen instead of Wynne, and let the dog follow me upstairs. I looked tousled and wrinkled, but I had to know what was going on.

  I climbed halfway up the narrow, twisting stairs to the great hall and, with a sigh of relief, saw a man in Fitzgerald livery on guard there. Torches set in wall sconces blazed above him, throwing dancing lights.

  “Where is the constable?” I asked him. “I am the last Fitzgerald here of the family he is pledged to protect, serve, and obey, and I must speak to him.”

  “I’ll send word soon,” he told me, frowning. “Now ’tis not the time.”

  “It is the time!” I insisted, not backing off. “It may be past time.” I didn’t give a fig if this man was now loyal to Christopher and not my father or even to Thomas. “I demand that you call my foster brother here at once.”

  Christopher must have heard my raised voice, for in full body armor—but no longer in Fitzgerald livery—he clattered down the stairs toward us, his sheathed sword scraping the curved stone wall. His shadow cast by the torches loomed long over me.

  “I’ll not have you unsettling the ceremony being prepared upstairs,” he told me, and pointed with his mail-encased right arm down the steps the way I’d come. “Look at it this way, Gera. You’ll be leaving here and seeing your mother and the others soon, no denying it. Everything’s arranged. We’re to be pardoned, the earl too when they find him, though I warrant he’ll be cooling his heels in England for a time. I’ve arranged it all, and I’ll remain in command of Maynooth.”

  “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.