The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  What would the Fitzgeralds do? Everyone was watching young Silken Thomas and his five uncles. There had already been one furious quarrel with Archbishop Alen over the Church estates. Before May was out, the young Fitzgerald heir had been up in Ulster talking to the O’Neills, and down in Munster, too. There was no sign of the Gunner yet. Would the Fitzgeralds bide their time or start stirring up the provinces right away? The measure of the danger, for Margaret, was the day late in May when her husband arrived at the house carrying an arquebus, gunpowder, and shot. “I bought the gun off a ship’s captain,” he explained. “Just in case.”

  So how was it, in the middle of all this uncertainty, that William Walsh found time and energy to pursue his affair with Joan Doyle?

  Margaret could hardly believe it, yet this was what he seemed to be doing.

  There had been several occasions, since his return with Richard, when she had guessed that her husband might be seeing the alderman’s wife. In early May, he had gone into Dublin with Richard and then—she only discovered later—sent Richard on an errand into Fingal for two days. The same thing had happened the following week, when he had dispatched Richard to Maynooth and a nearby monastery. How could he use their own son to provide his cover, she wondered? But it was no doubt the Doyle woman who’d suggested it, she thought in disgust. If there was any doubt in her mind about what was going on, however, it was dispelled in early June.

  A ship had arrived in Dublin with news that the invalid Earl of Kildare had been executed in London. The Fitzgeralds were beside themselves. “It may not be true,” Walsh pointed out. He went into Dublin anyway, to find out more, taking Richard with him. Two days later, Richard appeared back at the house.

  “Silken Thomas has just been summoned to London. We still don’t know what’s happened to Kildare,” he told Margaret. “Father says you should hide anything valuable and prepare for trouble. We may even need the arquebus.” Nobody in Dublin knew what was going to happen. Even the king’s men in Dublin Castle seemed in the dark, he reported. “I told Father he should discuss the situation with Doyle,” Richard went on confidently. “He’s got the best judgement. But we can’t,” he said regretfully, “because he’s away in Waterford all this week.”

  “Away all week?” Without meaning to, she allowed her voice to rise almost to a shriek. He looked at her, surprised.

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing.” So that was it. She saw their game. It had all been arranged. The Doyle woman had known her husband would be away. Joan Doyle had made a fool of her yet again, and sent her own unsuspecting son to her with the message. What was she supposed to do? Send Richard back? Risk his discovering the truth? The woman’s evil cunning passed belief. But still nothing had prepared her for what came next.

  “I’ll tell you a strange coincidence, by the way,” Richard said. “Father and I found out this morning.” He smiled a little sadly. “Do you know who just took up the lease on that Church land we surrendered? Alderman Doyle. Still,” he added philosophically, “I suppose he can afford it.”

  Doyle? It took a moment for the full implication to sink in. But then, gradually, it seemed to Margaret that she understood. Wasn’t this exactly what Joan Doyle had done before? First she had lulled her into a false security, the night of the thunderstorm, and then used the information she had so foolishly provided to strike at the family. Now she had deliberately set out to seduce William while her own husband, who was no doubt close to Archbishop Alen, stole away the Walshes’ land. Was there no limit to what she’d do to destroy them? Poor William. She even felt sorry for her husband now. What was any man, after all, in the hands of a really determined and unscrupulous woman? Joan Doyle had seduced and duped him just as viciously as she’d duped Margaret herself before. At that moment, she hated Joan Doyle more completely than she had ever hated any human being in her life.

  She saw it all. Even now William, clever though he was, probably didn’t realise that he had been betrayed. The Doyle woman would have had an explanation for everything: you could be sure of that. He was probably making love to her at that very moment, the poor fool.

  That was when Margaret knew she was going to kill her.

  MacGowan was standing with Walsh and Doyle in front of the Tholsel when the business began. It was the day after Walsh had sent his son back home; Doyle had arrived from Waterford that morning. They had just been discussing the political situation when the commotion started.

  It happened so fast. That was what astonished him. The first shouts from the gate that a body of men was approaching had scarcely died away before the clattering and jingling and drumming of hoofs began; and as the three men pulled back into the doorway of the Tholsel, the huge cavalcade of riders, three abreast, came past—there were so many that it took several minutes—followed by three columns of marching men-at-arms and gallowglasses. MacGowan estimated more than a thousand men. In the centre, accompanied by twelve dozen cavalry in coats of mail, rode the young Lord Thomas—not in armour but wearing a gorgeous green-and-gold silk tunic and a hat with a plume. He looked as blithe as if he were partaking in a pageant. Such was the style, the confidence, and the arrogance of the Fitzgeralds.

  Arrogant it might be, yet carefully calculated, too. Having ridden through the city and then clattered over the bridge to the hall where the royal council was meeting, Silken Thomas calmly handed them the ceremonial sword of state which his father, as Lord Deputy, had in his keeping, and renounced his allegiance to King Henry. The gesture was medieval: a magnate was withdrawing his oath of loyalty to his feudal overlord. Not only was the English king losing his vassal but the Fitzgeralds were now declaring themselves free to give their allegiance to another king instead—the Holy Roman Emperor in Spain, for instance, or even the Pope. There had been nothing like it since Lord Thomas’s grandfather had crowned young Lambert Simnel and sent an army to invade England nearly fifty years ago.

  It only took an hour before all Dublin knew.

  MacGowan spent the rest of that day with Walsh and Doyle. Though well-informed, both men had been taken by surprise at Silken Thomas’s radical move, and they looked shaken. Seeing them together, MacGowan could not escape a sense of irony. The grey-haired, distinguished-looking lawyer and the dark, powerful merchant—one tied to the Fitzgeralds, the other to the Butlers—were opposites in politics; Doyle had just taken over Walsh’s best land; as for Walsh’s dealings with Doyle’s wife, MacGowan still wasn’t sure what Doyle knew about that business. Yet whatever reasons these two men might have had to fall out during all these years, here they both were, still courteous and even cordial towards each other. Until today, when young Silken Thomas, whom they hardly knew, had provoked a crisis so serious that it would probably lead to civil war. Would they now be forced into deadly opposition? Perhaps it was this same thought which caused Doyle to sigh, as they parted: “God knows what will become of us now.”

  Yet the remarkable feature of the next two months was how little seemed to happen. Having made this point, Silken Thomas and his troops didn’t linger in Dublin. First he withdrew across the river, then sent out detachments all over the Pale. Within ten days they reported that no one was offering any resistance. The countryside was secure.

  But not Dublin.

  “I can’t think why Fitzgerald let us do it,” Doyle confessed to MacGowan. “Perhaps he just assumed that we wouldn’t dare.” But while the Fitzgerald troops were busy securing the countryside, the city fathers quietly closed all the Dublin gates. “It’s a gamble,” Doyle confessed, “but we’re betting on the English king.”

  Were they right? It wasn’t long before news came back that the Earl of Kildare was still alive. He hadn’t been executed, although as soon as King Henry had heard of the revolt he had put the earl in the Tower. MacGowan suspected the earl probably approved of his son’s actions. Kildare was a dying man, but King Henry was clearly rattled. His officials at court were denying that there was any trouble in Ire
land at all. As for the Gunner, who should have been rushing to Ireland with troops and artillery, he was showing no sign of wanting to take up his post at all. Meanwhile, a Spanish envoy had arrived, given Lord Thomas supplies of gunpowder and shot, and told him that Spanish troops would follow. This was exciting news indeed. If people had suspected his declaration in Dublin had just been a bluff, the usual Fitzgerald troublemaking to force King Henry to restore them to office again, the news from Spain put matters in a different light.

  “With Spanish troops,” young Lord Thomas told his friends, “I can remove Ireland from King Henry by force.” And soon afterwards he issued a startling proclamation. “The English are no longer wanted in Ireland. They must get out.” Who was English? “Anyone not born here,” Fitzgerald declared. That meant King Henry’s men. Everyone could agree about that. Archbishop Alen of Dublin and the other royal servants hastily locked themselves up in Dublin Castle. In a fine gesture, Silken Thomas even turned out his young English wife and sent her back to England, too.

  And if many people had been sympathetic to Lord Thomas’s cause, during the summer their feelings were strengthened by events in England. All Christendom knew that King Henry had been excommunicated. Spain was talking of invasion; even the cynical King of France thought Henry a fool. But now, in the summer of 1534, the Tudor king went further. Brave men like Thomas More had refused to support his claims to make himself, in effect, the English pope; now, when the English order of friars likewise refused, Henry closed their houses and started throwing them into prison. The holy friars: the men most loved and revered in Ireland, inside and outside the Pale. It was an outrage. No wonder then that Silken Thomas now declared to the Irish people that his revolt was in defence of the true Church as well. Envoys were sent with this message to the Hapsburg Emperor and to the Holy Father. “My ancestors came to Ireland to defend the true faith,” Fitzgerald declared, “in the service of an English king. Now we must fight against an English king to preserve it.”

  At the end of July, Archbishop Alen made a run for it and tried to jump on a ship leaving Ireland. Some of Fitzgerald’s men caught him, there was a skirmish, and the archbishop was killed. But nobody was shocked. He was only a royal servant wearing a bishop’s mitre. The friars were holy men.

  As August began, it seemed to MacGowan that young Silken Thomas might get away with it. The city was in a curious mood. The gates were closed by the council’s orders, but since Fitzgerald was out at Maynooth and his troops widely scattered, the small doors in the gates were open for people to pass in and out, and life was proceeding almost as normal. MacGowan had just been on his way to visit Tidy in his gatehouse when he chanced to meet Alderman Doyle in the street, and pausing to talk, expressed the opinion that Dublin would soon be forced to welcome Lord Thomas with his Spanish troops as its new ruler. But Doyle shook his head.

  “The Spanish troops will be promised, but they will never arrive. The Emperor will gladly embarrass Henry Tudor, but open war with England would cost him too much. Lord Thomas will have to manage alone. He’ll be weakened also by the fact that the Butlers are already using this opportunity to get favours from Henry. Fitzgerald may be stronger than the Butlers, but they can undermine him.”

  “Yet King Henry has difficulties of his own,” MacGowan pointed out. “Perhaps he can’t afford to subdue Lord Thomas. He’s done nothing so far, after all.”

  “It may take time,” Doyle replied, “but in the end Henry will crush him. There’s no doubt in my mind. He’ll fight, and he will never give up. For two reasons. The first is that Lord Thomas has made a fool of him in the eyes of all the world. And Henry is deeply vain. He will never rest until he has destroyed him. The second is more profound. Henry Tudor now faces the same challenge that Henry Plantagenet faced nearly four centuries ago when Strongbow came to Ireland. One of his vassals is threatening to set up a kingdom of his own just across the western sea. Worse, it would become the platform for any power like France or Spain which wishes to oppose him. He cannot allow that to happen.”

  It was clear to Eva that Silken Thomas had given her husband a new lease on life. Sean O’Byrne had been slowing up a bit in the last year or two. But since the revolt began, he’d been looking ten years younger. Almost like a boy. The chance of action, a fight, excitement, and even danger—she supposed that the need for these things was as deeply ingrained in her husband’s nature as the need to have children was in hers. It was the thrill of the chase. Most men were the same, in her opinion—at least, the best ones were.

  Sean O’Byrne wasn’t alone. The excitement had spread throughout the communities in the Wicklow Mountains—a sense that something was going to change. No one could quite say what. The rule of the Fitzgeralds wasn’t so light. The O’Byrnes and other clans like them had no illusions that they would be allowed to sweep down into the Pale and kick the Walshes and the rest of the gentry off their ancient lands. But once the English king was removed from the scene, a new freedom of some kind would inevitably be born. If the Fitzgeralds and the Walshes had been English Irish up to now, henceforth they would be Irish, and so would Ireland.

  Sean had thrown himself into the business with gusto. There was plenty to do. He’d been out on several patrols down into the southern Pale, ensuring that the country was solid for the Fitzgeralds. As an O’Byrne, with a Fitzgerald for a foster son, no less, Sean was highly trusted, and this gave him pleasure. He’d taken his sons and young Maurice with him. Eva had been a little nervous seeing them go, but there hadn’t been any trouble. Soon, Sean believed, there would be a big raid down into Butler territory. “Just to make sure they keep quiet,” he told her cheerfully. She wasn’t certain what she felt about that. Would he be taking the boys?

  Her boys: she didn’t count Seamus as a boy anymore. He was a family man with his own children now. He’d enlarged the house where the Brennans had lived and built up a cattle herd nearly half the size of his father’s. But Fintan and Maurice were still her boys.

  Some children will look like one parent for a few years, and then come to resemble the other. But not Fintan. He still looked so like her it was absurd. “Could you not have let him take after me in some respect?” Sean had jokingly chided her once. “He is like you.

  He’s wonderful with the cattle,” she replied. “But so are you,” he had pointed out, with a laugh. Fintan’s hair was as fair as it had been when he was a child, his broad face still broke easily into an innocent smile. He had the same sweet nature. And Maurice, too, was still the same boy, handsome and thoughtful, his fine eyes looking distant and melancholy sometimes. “A poetic spirit,” as Father Donal would say. There had been moments when she had felt almost guilty, half afraid that she loved him as much as her own son; but then a glance into Fintan’s blue eyes would remind her, with a little rush of warmth, that however dear Maurice was to her, it was Fintan who was her own flesh and blood, to whom she had given birth, who was her true son.

  It made her smile to watch the two boys together. They were getting so manly—bursting with energy, still a little shy, yet so proud of themselves. She would see the two of them walking together, Maurice slim and dark, somewhat taller, and fair Fintan, as squarely built as a young ox now, sharing their private jokes together; in the evenings, sometimes, Maurice would play the harp, her husband would join him on the fiddle, and Fintan, who had a pleasant voice, would sing. Those were the best times of all.

  The patrol in early August was routine. The previous patrols had toured the areas where some trouble might have been anticipated; now it had been decided to go to the houses of even the Fitzgerald supporters. For Lord Thomas wanted to try out a new oath of loyalty; and Sean O’Byrne had been given quite a broad area to cover. Eva couldn’t say why she should have had a sense of unease about this patrol. There was no reason to expect any trouble. All the men were going: Seamus had come up from his house, Maurice and Fintan were ready to go. But just before they set off, she called out to Sean, “Are you taking all my men away?” An
d giving him a little look, “Am I to be left alone?”

  He glanced at her and seemed to guess her feelings. He decided to be kind.

  “Which one will you keep?”

  “Fintan,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, and regretted it immediately. She saw his face fall.

  “But Father …” he began.

  “Don’t argue,” said Sean. “You’ll stay with your mother.”

  And I shall be blamed, Eva thought sadly; but she didn’t change her mind, though her heart went out to her son as he came and stood by her side, doing his best to smile at her affectionately. As the party drew away, she put her arm round him.

  “Thank you for staying with me,” she said.

  Margaret Walsh was already standing outside her door with her husband when the patrol arrived. There were a dozen riders. The Walsh estate was the third that O’Byrne and his men had come to.

  So this was Sean O’Byrne who was such a devil with the women. She took a good look at him. He was a dark, handsome fellow certainly. She could see that. There was some grey in his hair now, but he looked lean and fit. She saw his vanity and did not dislike it, though she didn’t think she was attracted to him as he greeted William and herself with cool politeness.

  To Walsh’s offer that they should all come in for refreshment, he answered that it was only himself and two of the other men who need detain him inside for a few moments and so, without more ado, Walsh was obliged to go in with them to the big oak table in the hall where, with an official air, Sean O’Byrne took out a little book of the Gospels in Latin, and laying it on the table asked William to kindly place his hand upon it.