The Irish Princess

by Karen Harper

  “Not nearly enough. But you did once promise me that when we next met—and that was months ago—you would tell me all the truth. Perhaps this time then.”

  My pulse was pounding so hard I could barely hear his low voice in the wind. “Why,” he went on, “are you out unchaperoned to watch the queen, or do you have a tryst with someone else? Sir Anthony Browne, perhaps?”

  “You, Captain Clinton, are the spy!”

  “I keep abreast of court events even when I am away.”

  “I suppose your lord and master, Lord Dudley, writes you all. I said, let me go,” I repeated, surprised he still held my wrist as I tried to pull free.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Irish.”

  “I will scream—English!”

  The wretch dared to chuckle. One-handed, he untied the cape he wore. In the rising wind, which had made it flap like raven’s wings behind him, I was surprised he took it off, for the night was getting colder.

  “I admit I’m stalling for time,” he said as he draped it open over one arm, “but I’m trying to reason out the best way to get us both away from here so that, when the queen’s adultery—”

  “It was but a kiss and a—”

  “Grow up! I’d wager Kyme Castle that Culpeper’s been bedding her—at her invitation—at least during this jaunt through the shires. And John Dudley says she keeps Frances Dereham with her at all hours dictating letters with only Rochford around—and Cat Howard’s known Dereham for years. As for Jane Rochford, she’s been poisoned by hatred ever since the Boleyns fell, and I won’t have you endanger me or mine, or turn into the risk-her-neck fool the queen’s become when she’s had everything she ever wanted—except maybe someone to really love.”

  “You are risking your precious reputation—mayhap your own marriage—to be out here with the Irish rebel like this. I don’t take it lightly that some of those guns you’ve been tending are the ones that were used to batter my home castle. And don’t think you can get off by saying you rue the day.”

  “I’m starting to rue this day. Talk about taking a risk. But for some mad-as-a-Bedlamite reason, I’ve felt drawn to you ever since I saw you captive on that ship from Ireland to England, the very day you helped me decide to go to sea. Gera, I pray you’ll someday forgive me for this, but you’re going to have a little accident and go home with me.”

  “What? I—”

  It was all I got out before he swirled his cape at me, over me, then put his hand over my mouth, forcing the material partway in as I opened it to scream. He hefted me into his arms, however hard I kicked and thrashed, and carried me up and over the hill. Go home with me, he had said. Home to his castle or his manor house?

  He laid me down on the ground; I heard him ripping the ties from his cape. He tied my ankles together, then my arms down at my sides. When I tried to suck in a breath, I was so undone I could barely get air.

  “Stop fighting,” he said, and squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I fetch myself a fresh horse, since I was leaving anyway.”

  So calmly spoken. Was he helping me and himself, or the king from learning his royal wife was cuckolding him—yes, cuckolding the king of England! I knew not how long I struggled, even tried to roll away so Clinton could not find me when he came back, but it was futile. It seemed an eternity that I lay there, writhing, cursing him.

  I heard a horse snort. “I’ll loose you as soon as we are away,” he said, and picked me up in his arms. He set me across a large saddle, then mounted behind me and spurred the horse away. I was both panicked and, God forgive me, thrilled.

  But I would be missed. Though I had told one lady who shared my tent that I would be in late, surely they would set up a hue and cry for me, at least in the morning.

  Clinton soon untied and unwrapped me, then just pulled the cloak back around my shoulders over my shawl. Indeed, my struggles and anger had made me quite warm enough. I sucked in sweet, cool air and looked around.

  No hills now, for the land lay flat, much like my own Kildare. Looking like a ripe peach balanced on the horizon, a full moon was rising. It bathed us in enough light to see the dirt lane, though I supposed he could have followed it in the dark, since this was near his home.

  “They will find me missing,” I told him while my shoulder and hips bounced against his hard body as we rode along.

  “By then I will have a shepherd there to tell them that he found a red-haired woman unconscious at the bottom of a hill and sent her in a cart to Kyme Castle, his lordship’s home. And that she has a badly sprained or broken leg and hit her head, so she doesn’t recall her name or place—at least for now. Ursula and I will take you in, then get you back to London much recovered when the progress returns. And if you choose to gainsay that story later, you are a fool and will suffer the consequences, and, of course, bring me down too, if that is your wish.”

  “You cannot do all that!”

  “I am doing all that. If the queen has been so suicidal in her actions, someone else will come forward to tell on her. You will get your wish to see the king suffer and not be ruined in the process.”

  “But—”

  “Quiet. We’re at the shepherd’s house, a good man, one of my retainers. I’m going to have to take you off the horse so you don’t ride away from me.”

  He reined in by a small stone cottage, half timbered with a thatched roof, dismounted, then lifted me down. Holding my hand instead of my wrist, as before, he tugged me into the tiny front yard and sat me on a settle, then raised a hand to knock on the door, even as it opened. “Oh, yer lordship,” came a man’s voice.

  Clinton went in. I could hear the buzz of men’s voices through the open door. A blond woman with hair so light it looked white in the moonlight came out with a cup of cider for me and perched on the end of the settle as I thanked her and drank gratefully. “We’ve some cheese if you like,” she said.

  “No, this is fine. I thank you.”

  “Milady Clinton be glad for guests.”

  I had time only to nod as Clinton strode back out and we were off again, even as I saw the shepherd with a crooked staff striding back the way we had come, a black-and-white dog at his heels. So easily accomplished, Clinton’s mad plan?

  When we were mounted again, I was so nervous I had to say something. “Here I am being swept away to your castle. My sister Cecily would love this, for she’s daft about chivalric stories of heroes rescuing beset ladies from evildoers.”

  “But this tale is real. I am taking you to Kyme, though I’d rather Sempringham were finished to show you. Perhaps I shall show you anyway, my pride and joy.”

  He meant the house he was building, of course, but he’d made it sound as if I were his pride and joy. In truth, I had not had time to reason out how I would have used my information about the queen’s infidelity to bring down the king’s pride and joy. An anonymous note? A public announcement to shame him before others? Oh, yes, I’m sure Clinton was right that I would have been blown away in the blast of the king’s disbelief and rage. But the sad thing was, no matter what, Henry Tudor would survive and thrive as he had in the past, and I did not want that. I wanted him to do more than suffer. But I reveled in the fact that the man who must fancy himself beloved by all women would be devastated by his own passions again.

  “Perhaps they will send my maid to tend me,” I told him, not wanting to admit I might owe him a great deal for spiriting me away.

  “If so, I hope you can trust her, else I’ll have to really break your leg and knock you in the head to make it all seem the truth.”

  I knew he was jesting. My father had oft done that to lighten a terrible moment. “Yes, I believe I can trust Alice now,” I told him. “But I’m sure your wife will not like playing hostess to two strange women.”

  “Ursula will do what is best for me and her family.”

  “Meaning the Dudleys too? I have no desire to help the Dudleys.”

  “John Dudley would love to have the Howards, including the pompou
s, poetry-spouting Earl of Surrey, brought low again, and if—when—Cat Howard falls . . .”

  “I see.”

  I really did see things from more than just my viewpoint now. I must learn to reason out all the different sides, the struggles for power and revenge besides my own, so that I could play my cards better, perhaps use other people to get my way. Sir Anthony, loyal to the king to a fault, but, I would wager, willing to take on a beautiful young bride, rebel past or not. Even John Dudley, Lord Lisle, loyal to the king only to the extent he could rise in power and profit his own family. Surrey and his father, the Duke of Norfolk, out for their own family’s elevation. But Edward Clinton—what did he hope to get out of this? Just that I would not name him as a corroborating witness if I ruined the queen? Or more?

  In starlight I first beheld Kyme Castle. It sported a tall tower of light gray stone, three floors stacked with narrow windows, and a crenellated roof standing sentinel over the scattering of other buildings. It looked so much like Maynooth that I nearly burst into tears.

  “A tall tower,” I said. “My home castle was built that way against the raids of the fierce Celts.”

  “This was for defense against the Danes and then the Normans years ago. It serves us well enough, but I intend to make my seat at the new manor at Sempringham, not far from here.”

  The horse’s hoofbeats echoed as we rode over a wooden bridge above a moat. He called out to the gatekeeper. A portcullis guarded the entrance, but it was up, and half a huge wooden door opened for us as if by magic. As we rode into a cobbled courtyard, again I blinked back tears, for, even in the arms of my captor, one of my English enemies, it seemed so strangely like coming home.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

  I still hated the king and told myself I detested Edward Clinton, but I quickly learned to love Lincolnshire. Ursula Clinton was kind too, despite the late hour, as she came out of their suite of rooms to greet me. Though surprised to hear our tale, she saw the import of our news about the queen.

  “Shall I write to my uncle?” she asked her lord. She was quite pretty in a pale, wan way and, to my surprise, her stomach bulged with a second pregnancy that even her loosely wrapped night robe did not hide. She had long, honey blond hair parted in the middle and a spray of freckles across her nose. Her eyes were dove gray with high-arched brows, and her lips and nose were thin.

  “We can’t trust this to pen and paper or a messenger,” he told her. “I’ll tell your uncle soon enough, if all hell doesn’t break loose first. Queen Cat and that stupid, vindictive Rochford,” he added, giving me a quick glare, “have managed to doom themselves.”

  “Highborn or low, a man should be able to trust his wife and she him,” Ursula said, not looking at me, but I took her message. When I had the chance, I would find a way to assure her that her husband meant naught to me.

  Lady Ursula Clinton’s own maid, rousted out of bed, tended to my needs that night with a bath and a clean night rail, a pretty one with ruffles, no doubt Ursula’s own, for she loaned me a gown in the morning. I was quite resigned now to Clinton’s plan and hoped they would send Alice to me with my own clothing. In Alice’s private mourning, she might prefer to be away from the king and court. But I fell asleep late that first night thinking of Magheen and how she was longing yet for Collum, off in Italy with Gerald, who must come home to Maynooth . . . must come home here to Maynooth, where I slept safely in the tall tower, must come home to the place of our future and our dreams. . . .

  I sat bolt upright in bed. Midmorn sun streamed in a narrow window. My heart almost thudded out of my chest. Where was I? Oh, yes, sequestered in rural Lincolnshire because I held in my hand a secret that would convulse the king’s cavalcade and the king himself. Here, with Edward Clinton, his wife, family, and people, where I could not let him know that I had missed his voice and his touch and his damned advice, here in Lincolnshire.

  Alice indeed was sent to me, delivered personally, to my surprise, by Sir Anthony Browne and two armed guards, so Clinton’s shepherd had played his part well. And so, the hour Sir Anthony was with us in the sunny solar at Kyme Castle, I played the invalid with a wrapped, elevated leg and a slightly dazed expression.

  “I’ll send a physician from Lincoln the moment we arrive to set that leg,” he promised. “It must be set right. Wouldn’t do to have a beautiful young woman limping after it was healed.”

  “I thought it was broken at first, my lord,” I replied, grateful he hadn’t dragged with him one of the royal physicians who tended the king’s leg. “I believe now it is only a bad sprain. Yet I still feel a bit light-headed from accidentally knocking my head. I might topple off a horse—and don’t wish to be jolted about in a cart,” I added, trying to outthink him.

  “No, no, that would never do. How kind of Lord and Lady Clinton to keep you and then send you back to us in London, and now you’ll have your maid too. I shall miss you on the way and look forward to seeing you back at Hampton Court when we return from York in October.”

  I had noted how relieved Sir Anthony looked when he saw that Ursula Clinton was indeed in residence, with a toddler named for the king in leading strings upon her lap. And perhaps he had delivered Alice promptly to me so that I would have not only a nursemaid but also a chaperone. After all, in what he had called the brute shires, who knew what could happen to a maid, especially one he had his eye on?

  He leaned down to kiss me soundly on each cheek and held my hands in his overlong before he bade me farewell. Clinton went out with him, where, Ursula reported, they were huddled in earnest conversation in the courtyard.

  “He favors you and he’s a powerful man,” she said, looking more relieved than ever, for I knew she had watched her husband and me together like a hawk. “If he asks for your hand, what will you say?”

  “I am not certain, though with my family to help care for, now that my uncle’s lands are forfeit to the crown, I . . . I am not sure.”

  “Is there another who has your heart?”

  “Only my love for Ireland and my loyalty to my brother, the Fitzgerald earl, who is in exile in Italy.”

  She nodded. “The blessings but the burdens of family. I understand, but a woman must take her joys when she can too—a good man, children . . .” she said as little Henry squirmed to get down from her lap and came over to me. “I am sure Sir Anthony would be a good choice for you.”

  “Horsie?” little Henry asked, pointing at the wrapped leg I had propped up on a cushion on a stool. “Ride?”

  “No, Henry. No, no,” Ursula scolded. “You see, he means . . .”

  “I know. It is universal, isn’t it? Well, my boy, as long as the king’s man doesn’t come back in and find me bouncing you on my broken or sprained leg, get on then and take a ride.”

  I helped the rosy-cheeked child up on my leg and bounced him a bit. He giggled with delight, a far cry from his father’s expression when he came back in, though his face softened when he saw me with his little heir.

  “Sir Anthony meant to also say that the queen will miss you, but she will have Francis Dereham write you here from time to time to tell you all the king’s triumphs in the north.”

  “In the brute shires,” I added, “these dangerous places where people dare to speak their minds and rebel. And it’s obvious Sir Anthony doesn’t know one whit of what’s going on in the queen’s bedroom with Rochford’s pandering, so the king must not either.”

  “Yet. Or else your much-enamored suitor suspects but knows better than to be the messenger of such ill news. And, despite your ability to play horsie with our son, I just realized I’ll have to put you in a cart or on my horse if we ride to see the new Clinton manor at Sempringham, because you have told Sir Anthony you dare not ride alone.”

  “And I dare not go along at all,” Ursula bemoaned, patting her belly, “though I’d love to see the progress—actually the progress of the king as well as of our future home. You will take your maid with you, of course, Lady Gera.”

  “Of c
ourse,” Clinton added for me, as he looked out the window toward the Kyme Eau, the stream that passed by and fed the moat. “And then, when it’s time for me to head back to my ship that’s sitting in the wash at the mouth of the Ouse, we’ll go by boat from here, then by ship through the channel to the Thames.”

  I hoped my face did not light when little Henry finally dismounted, for it was not the return of my leg that pleased me so. I did not want the watchful Ursula to know I was thrilled to go to sea again—and with him—so I had to bite my lip to keep from cheering.

  Again, as we rode out two days later, Lincolnshire reminded me so much of the Kildare area around Maynooth. I sat before Lord Clinton in his big saddle as we headed toward his new edifice abuilding there, near the little village of Sempringham, barely an hour’s slow ride from Kyme. I was awed to silence by memories of home that flooded my mind. Thank heavens, Alice’s chatting with two of Clinton’s men and his pointing out certain sights kept me anchored in reality.

  “This is fen country,” he told me, pointing toward the tangle of shallow waters that looked much like the peat-filled Bog of Allen between Kildare and Dublin. The fields of waving, ripe grain, the meadows dotted with cattle but especially with sheep—a wave of homesickness almost laid me low. The little market towns, Sempringham so much like Maynooth, the solitary landscape, the ancient tracks that meandered off the lanes, the rivers running under small bridges—all moved me to silent tears. How had I managed to stay sane away from Ireland?

  I nearly lost my hard-won control when we reined in at the churchyard in Sempringham, and he said, “See that well spouting from the ground?” I did indeed, for it so resembled one near Maynooth blessed by Saint Brigid, one of the holy wells of Ireland, where waters flowed freely from the ground. “It is said,” he explained, “that Saint Gilbert of the Gilbertine order blessed its curative waters. Ha, we should dip your leg—and your head—in it.” I elbowed him for that gibe, but he went on, “Some old folks nearby claim it was dug by fairies.”