The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “Oh, Tom,” called the impudent one, “you have some fiery women in Ireland.” She could hear that he was a little drunk, but that was no excuse. And when he made her a mocking and insolent bow, that only infuriated her more. Why should the foreign fop think he could be condescending to her just because this was Ireland and she was only a woman? “Are we heretics, then, in England, Madam?” he taunted her.

  “Since your new queen,” she emphasised the last word with contempt, “is a heretic, you may all be so,” she snapped.

  “A hit, Tom, a hit,” the young lordling cried. He clasped his hand to his heart. “I am hit.” He staggered to one side as though wounded. The people around, instead of watching the play, were turning to look at him. But now, switching abruptly from this comedy, he gave her a dangerous stare. “Have a care, Madam, before you accuse the queen of heresy. The king is Supreme Head of our Church.”

  “Not of my Church, Sir,” she answered bitterly. “The Holy Father is Head of my Church, thank God,” she added with fervour.

  Technically, this was still true. As the matter of King Henry’s supremacy had not been brought before the Irish Parliament, it was not yet the law in Ireland, and Cecily could correctly say that she answered to the Pope. She stared at him angrily. Was there something effeminate about this fashionable young man with his sudden changes of mood? Her look became contemptuous. He saw it.

  “Why, Madam,” he called out so that all around should hear, “I believe you do speak treason.” He almost sang the last word. It hung, horribly, in the air. Even Cain and Abel on their stage paused for a moment to glance towards her nervously. But Cecily was by now so angry that she did not notice.

  “I would rather be guilty of treason than deny the true faith and the Holy Father,” she cried out. “As for you,” she shouted, “you’ll rot in Hell beside King Henry!”

  The play stopped. Everyone turned to look at her, the woman who had just condemned the king to Hell. Outraged though she was, Cecily knew that she had gone too far. This was dangerous territory, the borderland of treason. But even worse than the stares of the crowd was the look on the face of the man who was now striding towards her.

  Tidy’s face was as pale as his costume. But his eyes were blazing. He had MacGowan at his side. He came bursting through the crowd. He was still dressed as Adam with the preposterous fig leaf bumping round his midriff. He seized her by the arm.

  “Are you mad?” he hissed.

  For the young aristocrats, it was all too much. For them, at least, the dangerous tension of the moment was broken.

  “Adam!” they called out. “Oh Adam! Look to your wife!” And then, catching the idea from each other, all together, “Oh foolish woman, what have you done?”

  Tidy did not say anything. Taking his wife by one arm while MacGowan took the other, he led her away, while the youths called out, in mock solemnity, “Treason. Off with her head. Treason.” He didn’t pause until they had reached the city gate.

  So this was the special day. He had planned it all so carefully. After the plays were over, he’d been going to lead her into the city and, on a pretext, take her to the western gate tower where Alderman Doyle was to meet them and deliver them the keys to their new abode. And then he was going to watch her face as she looked round her spacious and airy new lodgings. How joyful she would be. What a perfect surprise. A perfect day. All planned.

  “You cursed the king, Cecily,” he said miserably. “People will say we are traitors. Don’t you see what you’ve done?”

  “He denied the Mass,” she said bitterly.

  “Oh Cecily.” His eyes were full of reproach.

  “You know who they were?” MacGowan spoke now, in a quiet voice. “They were English friends of young Lord Thomas. He was with them.” He paused, and seeing Cecily had not yet understood, “Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, the heir of the Earl of Kildare.”

  “Kildare’s son?” Tidy cried in dismay.

  “Then they shouldn’t have spoken as they did,” said Cecily defensively.

  “That may be so,” MacGowan allowed. “But they are young bloods who’d been drinking. It was all in jest.”

  Tidy shook his head.

  “Now Kildare and the royal councillors will hear that my wife has cursed the king,” he said miserably. And though he said nothing more, at that moment he was frankly thinking: I wish I had married someone else.

  It was with a heavy heart, and without any smile of pleasure, that late in the afternoon, he took Cecily to the tower apartment and, showing her the splendid accommodation asked her, “Do you think that you could be more contented now?”

  “I believe I could,” she answered. “Yes, I do.”

  But he wondered if it was true.

  By the time that the Tidys were inspecting their tower, Margaret had arrived home. She had waited over an hour outside Doyle’s house, seen Joan Doyle finally go out, followed her down towards the Dame’s Gate, and then lost sight of her. In the end she had given up and returned home.

  William did not arrive until late in the evening. He looked pleased with himself. He said he had dined in the city, and he seemed to have drunk a good deal. Saying he was tired, he went up to the chamber and fell asleep.

  The next day he spent quietly at the house. The day after, he had business in Dublin, but was back by early evening. And so for two weeks life continued in the usual way. Was he having illicit meetings with Joan Doyle in Dublin? She couldn’t be sure. At least once, after spending the day in Dublin, he returned and made love to her in the usual way. So what did it all mean? Had something happened on Corpus Christi day in Dublin? Assuming it had, was it being repeated? Margaret found it hard to believe that it wouldn’t be. Yet what was she to do? Share her husband with Joan Doyle until their affair ended? Confront him with something she couldn’t prove? Wait? Watch? She had not known that uncertainty could bring such pain.

  Two weeks later he went into Dublin early and returned very late at night. A week after that he was away in Fingal for a few days. There was nothing unusual in these absences, but now all his movements had taken on a new significance. And Margaret hardly knew what she might have done next if, during the month of August, he hadn’t come in looking concerned one day and told her, “The monastery needs me to go down into Munster again; but I hardly know if it’s wise.”

  “You should go,” she said, “at once.”

  He was gone for three weeks. When he got back, he was so busy that she hardly thought he could find time for an affair.

  And besides, during his absence she had made one change in her own lifestyle. She had started going into Dublin.

  She did not follow any set pattern. Some weeks she mightn’t go at all. But from the end of that summer, she would ride in to visit the markets and return later in the day. In the city, walking past the Doyle house in Skinners Row, or picking up a casual conversation at a market stall, it was easy to find out the whereabouts of the Doyles; so that when in October William had to spend several days in Fingal, she was able to ascertain that Joan Doyle was safely in her own house and nowhere near William. It was an imperfect check, but it was something. In November, the Doyles both went to Bristol and remained there almost four weeks. Nor, she thought, did William and the Doyle woman meet in December. As Christmas approached, it seemed possible that the affair, if indeed it had begun, might have been abandoned. She could even suppose that the whole business might have been a figment of her imagination.

  So it was in quite a cheerful mood that, just a few days before Christmas, she accompanied William into Dublin to attend a winter banquet given by the Trinity Guild.

  It was the usual, good-humoured city celebration. A splendid company attended, city fathers in their robes and liveries, gentlemen from the Pale, many of them members of the Trinity Guild or freemen of the city. But the particular interest of the banquet was whether the head of the Fitzgeralds would attend.

  It had not been a surprise to anyone when, during the autumn, King Henry had yet aga
in summoned the Earl of Kildare to London. Everyone knew that the king was still smarting from the way that the Fitzgeralds had forced him to give them back the Lord Deputy’s post, and you could be sure that the Butlers were supplying the English court with information to use against him. While Kildare had sent polite excuses to the king, he had muttered to his friends that he would take his own good time before he went to England again; and to remind the English monarch that the Fitzgeralds were not to be trifled with, he had coolly removed the king’s cannons from Dublin castle and put them in his own strongholds. For the last few months Kildare had remained calmly in Ireland while Henry was left fuming.

  But recently Walsh had heard that Kildare was unwell. Injuries he had received on campaign had returned to trouble him. He was said to be in great pain, then seriously unwell. “I wondered if it was a pretended sickness, an excuse for not going to England,” Walsh told Margaret, “but the word is that the earl has suffered a real decline.” And indeed, instead of coming to the banquet, Kildare was sending his son Thomas to represent him instead. The Kildare family was large: the earl had no less than five brothers. “But if anything should happen to the earl,” Walsh pointed out, “it’s Thomas and not his uncles who will succeed to the title and the lordship. Few people in Dublin knew very much about the young man, except that he was a fashionable fellow who had appeared with some English fops who got drunk at the last Feast of Corpus Christi. “Silken Thomas, his friends call him,” the lawyer said with some disapproval. But like the rest of the gentlemen of Dublin, he was quite curious to take a look at him.

  In fact, young Lord Thomas made quite a favourable impression. He had the aristocratic good looks of his family; he was certainly dressed in the finest silk tunic and belt that would have been the height of fashion in the court of England or France, but his clothes were not gaudy; as he made his tour of the company before the meal began, he treated everyone with the greatest courtesy, and after being called across to speak to him, Walsh returned and reported, “He’s young, but well informed. He’s no fool.”

  The banquet was excellent. After they had eaten, the company mingled once more. And it was while she was accompanying her husband round the hall that Margaret suddenly found herself confronted with Joan Doyle. The alderman had just stepped over to talk to Silken Thomas and his wife was standing alone. Seeing the Walshes, Dame Doyle’s face lit up.

  There was no way of escaping her. In response to her greeting, Margaret put on her best masklike smile. The three of them exchanged the usual, meaningless courtesies; then Joan Doyle turned to Margaret.

  “You really should come into Dublin more often,” she said.

  “I come in to the markets sometimes,” Margaret replied quietly.

  “Don’t you think she should?” Joan said to Walsh.

  “Oh, I do,” he answered politely.

  Margaret considered the two of them. The conversation sounded so innocent. But if they were fencing round her, they did not realise how closely she was observing them.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I should at least come in for the festivals.” She nodded, as though to herself. “Like Corpus Christi.”

  Did they, just for an instant, glance at each other? Yes, she was sure they did. Then the Doyle woman laughed. “Corpus Christi was a wonderful day,” she said with a smile to Walsh, who also smiled and nodded.

  They were mocking her. They thought she didn’t know it.

  “As a matter of fact,” Margaret said brightly, “I came in for Corpus Christi this year.”

  There was no mistaking it. Her husband blanched. “You did?”

  “I never told you, did I? Just a sudden impulse. I saw the pageants going along Skinners Row.” She gave them both a smile. “I saw all sorts of things.”

  It was a perfect moment. The two of them seemed stunned into silence. Joan Doyle recovered first.

  “You should have come into the house,” she cried. “We were all up at the window. You’d have had a better view.”

  “Oh, the view I had was fine,” said Margaret.

  She had them. She felt a wonderful sense of power. It was almost worth the pain. She could see them trying to work out how much she knew, whether her remarks were ironic or not. They couldn’t tell. She had them on the run.

  She smiled and took her husband by the arm. “We should pay our respects,” she murmured, indicating a gentleman from Fingal standing nearby, and moved away, leaving the Doyle woman standing alone.

  Yet it was a hollow triumph. For if they were left in uncertainty, their awkwardness had told her all she needed to know about their complicity. They had deceived her before; so they probably meant to do it again. That night she turned to him in bed.

  “So how attractive is Joan Doyle?”

  “You think I find her attractive?” he responded cleverly. He paused, as though considering. “She’s a good woman,” he answered easily, “but I prefer redheads.”

  Over Christmas he was especially loving and attentive, and she was grateful for that. Knowing Joan Doyle’s devious nature, she didn’t even blame her husband so much. She had never thought he would do such a thing to her, but now that he had, her main concern was to bring it to an end. She made no reference to their affair, but she did take care to warn him. “You can’t trust that Doyle woman. She’s two-faced and dangerous.”

  Her feelings for Joan Doyle, however, hardened into a secret, ice-cold rage. She’s been mocking me and cheating me all my life, she thought, and now she’s busy stealing my husband. She wasn’t yet sure what form her defence was going to take, but if Joan Doyle thought she would get away with it, she promised herself, she would discover the meaning of revenge.

  Perhaps it was this state of flux in her own life, but sometimes in the spring of 1534, it seemed to Margaret as if everything around her was changing. There was a sense of instability in the air.

  Soon after Christmas there was a heavy fall of snow and the winter weather kept Walsh at home for most of January. In February he made several journeys into Dublin, returning each evening. The situation there, he reported, was uncertain.

  “Kildare is undoubtedly sick. He’s finally going to London, but the word is that he’s only going because he wants to persuade King Henry to confirm his son Thomas as Lord Deputy in his place.”

  The week after Kildare’s departure, Walsh stayed in Dublin for three days, and Margaret wondered if he was seeing Joan Doyle; but when he returned he was looking grave, and the news he brought put all other considerations out of her mind.

  “It’s the lease on our Church land,” he told her. “You know it’s up for renewal this year. I’ve just had Archbishop Alen’s terms.” He shook his head. “It seems,” he added grimly, “that he won’t even negotiate.” The terms were crushing. The rent was more than doubled. “And the trouble,” explained Walsh, “is that as a lawyer and steward myself, I’d do the same in the archbishop’s place. The land is worth what he asks.” He sighed. “But he’s taken away most of my profit.”

  For two days he considered the problem from every angle. Then, finally, he announced, “I shall have to go to London to see Richard.” He left at the start of March.

  They were not the only ones affected in this way. During the coming weeks Margaret heard of several families who were being forced off their Church estates, some of them even kinsmen of Kildare himself. Under normal circumstances, even the Archbishop of Dublin would hesitate to offend the Fitzgeralds, and she wondered what this meant. Meanwhile, the news from England suggested that events there had reached a crisis.

  “The Pope’s excommunicated Henry.” London was secure, but there were fears that there could be risings in the outer regions, especially the north and west, where the traditional loyalties were very strong. It was rumoured, even, that the Hapsburg Emperor might send an invasion from Spain. For all his arrogant bluster, the Tudor king could lose his throne if this came to pass. And then, at the end of the month, William Walsh returned. She would never f
orget the evening he arrived, standing in the doorway, and announced, “I have brought someone with me.”

  Richard. Her Richard. The same Richard, with his red hair, merry eyes, and smiling face, but taller, stronger, even more handsome than when he had left. Richard, the strapping young man, who enfolded her in his arms. If he had felt bitter disappointment at being forced to leave London and return home, he concealed it for her sake. For this, Walsh told her that night, was the conclusion he and Richard had come to when they discussed the business together in London. “We can’t afford to keep him in London anymore. He’ll come and live with us for a while. I can certainly help him get a start in Dublin.” So he was home at last, to stay. Every cloud, she thought privately to herself, has a silver lining. And what, she wondered, was to be done with the Church estate? “I shall give it up,” said Walsh. “In the meantime,” he grimaced, “there’ll be no new gowns for you or cloaks for me for a while.”

  The month of April was mainly devoted to Richard. His father did not leave him at home to be idle. For several days he took him up into Fingal. Then they went down into Munster for ten days. He also took him into Dublin where, his father was glad to report, “He charmed all he met.” Margaret had to admire her husband’s activity. By early May, Richard seemed to know everybody.

  “And who in Dublin has impressed you most?” she asked her son one evening, as they were sitting by the fire together.

  “I think,” he replied after a moment’s thought, “perhaps the merchant, Doyle. I’ve never met a man who knew his business better. And of course his wife,” he added cheerfully, “is lovely.”

  If Walsh was pleased with his son, however, the news he was hearing in Dublin caused him more concern. When the Earl of Kildare arrived in London, he had been courteously received. But in mid-May, a number of his household arrived back in Dublin with the news that his health was failing and that King Henry had abruptly deprived him of his governorship and refused to give it to his son. Even worse: “Can you believe it,” they protested, “he’s sending the Gunner again.” Word also came that several of the Butler clan were to have key appointments in the new administration. But perhaps the most ominous rumour was that the Butlers had given a guarantee to King Henry that they would not support any claims made in Ireland by the Pope. “That can mean only one thing,” Walsh declared. “Henry believes the Spanish will invade.”