The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “Is it an oath you’re wanting?” Walsh enquired.

  “It is,” O’Byrne replied easily.

  “And what kind of an oath should that be?” asked Walsh.

  “Of loyalty to Lord Thomas.”

  “Of loyalty?” Walsh’s face clouded. “I hardly think,” he said with some feeling, and drawing himself up to his full height, “that Lord Thomas would wish to compel an oath from me who has so freely given his loyalty to his father the earl all these years.” He gave O’Byrne a look of gentle rebuke. “You offend me,” he said with quiet dignity.

  “There is no compulsion.”

  “You come here with armed men.”

  “I will tell the Lord Thomas that you gave the oath freely,” O’Byrne answered smoothly, “if that will satisfy you.”

  It did not seem to satisfy Walsh, for he looked seriously displeased. Going to the door, he asked his wife to call all the men into the hall at once, and stood by the door until they were assembled. Then with a glare at O’Byrne, he went swiftly to the table, slammed down his hand upon the Gospels and declared: “I swear on the Gospel the same love, respect, and loyalty to the Lord Thomas Fitzgerald that I have always given, and still give, to his father the Earl of Kildare.” He picked up the Gospels and handed them back to O’Byrne with finality. “I have sworn, which given my known affections I should never have been asked to do. But I swear gladly all the same. And now,” he added with some coldness, “I bid you good day.” He indicated with a brief bow that he wished O’Byrne to leave.

  “It’s not enough,” said Sean O’Byrne.

  “Not enough?” It was not often that William Walsh became angry, but it seemed that this was about to happen. Some of O’Byrne’s men were looking awkward. “Have you come here to insult me?” he cried. “I have sworn. I will swear no more. If the Lord Thomas doubts my loyalty—which he does not—then let him come here and say it to my face. I have done.” And with a furious expression he started to stalk out of the hall.

  But O’Byrne placed himself before the door.

  “The oath requires that you swear loyalty to Lord Thomas,” he said evenly, “and also to the Holy Father, and also to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles of Spain.”

  This triad had been carefully devised. Once you had sworn to it, there could be no going back to the English king. As far as King Henry VIII was concerned, once you had given that oath you had sworn to treason, for which the fearful penalty was to be hung, drawn, and quartered. For those who understood its implications, the oath was awesome in its finality.

  But Walsh was so heated now that he was scarcely listening.

  “I’ll swear no more,” he shouted. “Let the Lord Thomas come here with a thousand men and I’ll offer him my own head to cut off if he doubts me. But I’ll not be treated like a villain by you, O’Byrne.” He gave the man from the Wicklow Mountains a look of contempt, while he himself had gone red in the face. “To you I’ll swear nothing. Now leave my house,” he shouted in fury.

  But Sean O’Byrne did not move. He drew his sword.

  “I have already killed men better than you, Walsh,” he stated dangerously, “and burned down houses bigger than this,” he added, with a glance towards Margaret. “So,” he concluded softly, “you have your choice.”

  There was a pause. Walsh stood very still. Margaret watched him anxiously. Nobody said a word.

  “I do it,” Walsh said, with infinite disgust, “at sword point. You are witnesses,” he looked round the men gathered there, “at how I have been treated by this man.”

  Moments later, at the table, O’Byrne administered the oath, and Walsh, looking dignified and contemptuous, with his hand on the Gospels, repeated the words tonelessly. Then the patrol left. It was not until they were safely out of sight that Walsh spoke.

  “I’m glad Richard was down in Dublin today,” he remarked. “I hope he won’t have to take that oath.”

  “I was afraid for a moment that you wouldn’t,” said Margaret.

  “I was trying not to,” her husband explained. “The oath I swore voluntarily, to support Lord Thomas as I had his father, was harmless enough. Kildare, after all, was the king’s deputy in Ireland. But I’d already heard about this new oath of theirs, and I knew what a terrible thing it was. The reference to the Emperor is the worst part. It’s treason pure and simple.” He shook his head. “If he wasn’t going to let me get out of it, then I had to have witnesses that it was extracted from me under compulsion. That’s why I called everybody in. It’s not a complete defence, but if things go badly for Lord Thomas, it might save my neck.”

  Margaret looked at her husband with admiration.

  “I didn’t realise that was what you were doing,” she said. “You act very well.”

  “Don’t forget,” he said with a smile, “that I’m a lawyer.”

  “But do you really think that Lord Thomas will fail?” she asked.

  “When the Fitzgeralds fight the Butlers it’s one thing,” he replied. “But when they make war on the King of England it’s another. We’ll have to see how it turns out.”

  That night, as she fell asleep, Margaret found two sets of images coming into her mind. The first was of Sean O’Byrne with his sword, threatening her husband who, she realised, was the finer and cleverer man. The second was of her brother as she imagined he might have looked, sword in hand, as he went into battle against the Tudor King of England. She slept badly after that.

  If Tidy had supposed that finding the new accommodation in the tower might bring greater harmony to his family, by that August he decided that it was the worst thing he had ever done in his life.

  In early August, Silken Thomas returned to Dublin, to find the gates closed. He demanded admittance. The mayor and aldermen refused. He told them he would attack, but they weren’t impressed. So Silken Thomas had to sit outside the walls.

  The siege of Dublin that followed was a desultory affair. Fitzgerald hadn’t enough troops to rush the walls. He burned some houses in the suburbs, but it did no good. And even if he had been able to cut off all the supplies to the city, the aldermen had already seen to it that there were enough provisions within the walls to last for months. Young Lord Thomas could only make a show of force from time to time and hope to frighten the Dubliners into changing their minds. And this was what he was doing one morning in August when Alderman Doyle came across to inspect the defences at the western gate.

  The instructions to the guards at the western gate were simple. The gate itself was double barred. They were not to provoke Fitzgerald and his men, but if attacked, they were to respond with arquebus and bows from the battlements. Just before Doyle arrived, Tidy had seen from one of the tower windows that Lord Thomas and about a hundred horsemen were approaching the gate, and he had gone down to make sure the sentries were aware. As a result, he found himself standing beside the alderman on one side of the gate as Lord Thomas reached the other, and heard quite clearly as the young lord called out to anyone on the battlements or behind the gate who could hear, that if they did not soon open the city to him, he would be forced to bring up his cannon. “Even with what the Spanish envoy gave him, and his own supplies,” Doyle calmly pointed out to the men standing round, “I know for a fact that he hasn’t enough powder and shot to take the city. It’s an empty threat.” And it seemed that Fitzgerald was to get no reply at all, when suddenly another voice was heard. It came from a window somewhere up in the tower.

  “Is that the Lord Thomas himself?” A woman’s voice, calling down. It was followed by a pause, and the sound of horses wheeling about. Perhaps Fitzgerald’s men thought someone was going to take aim at him. But Tidy knew better. He froze. The voice belonged to Cecily. A moment later, to his even greater astonishment, the aristocrat replied, “It is.”

  Was it true, Cecily called down, that he would defend the Holy Church against the heretic Henry? It was. He didn’t deny the Mass? Certainly not. But now Tidy thought he could hear a trace of humour in Fitzgerald’s voice
when he asked if she was the woman who had cursed King Henry at Corpus Christi last. She was, she replied, and she’d curse Lord Thomas and his friends, too, if they denied the Mass.

  “No friends of mine, I promise,” he cried. And why was he being kept out of Dublin, he demanded genially. Was he not welcome?

  “You’ll be welcomed by all except a few heretic aldermen,” she called down, “who need to learn a lesson.”

  Until this moment, Tidy had been so surprised that he hadn’t moved. He’d known how Cecily felt, of course. As the events of that spring had unfolded, she had told him just what she thought of the excommunicated English king. But he had begged her to keep her thoughts private within the home, and though she had seemed rather moody of late it had never occurred to him that she would do anything like this. He glanced at Doyle, his best patron, who had just been called a heretic. The alderman’s face was growing dark.

  He raced into the tower and up the spiral stairs. Breathless, he burst into the upper room from which Cecily was calling down to Lord Thomas’s men that they’d find a warm welcome if they broke down the gate, and dragged her away from the window. She struggled, and he struck her, once in anger and the second time in fear—because he thought she might start again—much harder, so that she fell, bleeding, to the floor. Hardly caring, he dragged her to the door and down the stairs to the lower chamber where there was no window that looked out from the wall. Then he locked her in there and went down to the gate again to apologise to Doyle. But the alderman had gone.

  Cecily did not speak to her husband very much in the days that followed. They both understood what had happened; there was nothing to say. In front of their children and the apprentice they were quietly civil; when alone, silent. If either was waiting for the other to apologise, the wait seemed to be in vain. Nor did matters improve.

  A little later in the month of August, Silken Thomas decided to send a party to raid the farms in Fingal. For the task he chose a contingent of Wicklow men led by the O’Tooles. When the Irish cattlemen got out of hand, burning down and plundering the rich Fingal farms, a large column of Dubliners, many of whom had property up there, broke out of the city and raced northwards to the Fingal farmers’ aid.

  Cecily saw them returning from the tower. They were streaming across the bridge. She could tell from the way they rode that they were fleeing, and as they crossed the bridge she could see that many were wounded. It was an hour later that Tidy came back to the house with the awful news.

  “There were eighty men killed.” His face was pale as he stared at her solemnly. “Eighty.”

  She watched him quietly. She knew this was the moment for her to say something, to express the sympathy that might break the barrier between them. She knew it, but found that she could not.

  “I’m not sorry,” she said. And she let the ensuing silence fall and remain like an invisible sea, until it had frozen into finality.

  During the days that followed, the city was in shock. There was hardly a family that hadn’t lost a relation or a friend. A growing party in the town was beginning to ask what would happen next. Would Fitzgerald’s troops start killing the people in Oxmantown? Would the O’Byrnes come down and raid the southern farmlands? Doyle and his friends were all for holding out, but even some of the aldermen were wondering whether a compromise with Fitzgerald wouldn’t be wiser. “Let us at least negotiate,” they said. And once they were allowed to do so, an agreement was soon reached. The gates of Dublin would be opened. Lord Thomas and his troops might occupy the city in return for a promise not to harm the inhabitants. Everything would be available to him with the exception of the castle stronghold itself. The royal servants and a section of the aldermen would retire to the castle and take their chances on the outcome of events. It wasn’t what Lord Thomas wanted, but it was an improvement on what he had. So he took the deal.

  “I’m going into the castle with Doyle. He’s taking his whole family with him.” It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Tidy came to give Cecily this news. “So I think we should all go,” he added. “We need to get ready at once.”

  “I’m staying here,” she said simply.

  “And the children?”

  “They’ll be safer with me. Fitzgerald will do no harm to me and the children. It’s you who’ll be in danger if he attacks the castle.”

  “The walls are too thick. They’ve already stocked it with provisions. We could hold out safely in there for years.”

  She gazed at him bleakly.

  “You are afraid to offend Doyle. I’m afraid to offend God. I suppose that’s the difference between us.”

  “If you say so,” he answered. By noon he had left the house.

  And whether her religion had caused her to split from her husband or whether it had only provided an excuse for her to maintain a separation she now desired, Cecily herself could not with certainty have said.

  The siege of Dublin Castle continued through September without success. But as the month progressed, news from England made the business more urgent.

  The English were finally coming. Troops were actually assembling, cannon being taken towards the port, a ship been found. Even the Gunner himself had made an appearance. It seemed that they might really be going to put up a fight at last.

  As MacGowan stood in Castle Street and stared at the grey old castle walls, he felt discouraged. The day was fine; the mossy slates and stones of Dublin returned a greenish glow to the blue September sky. A few yards in front of him, a group of Fitzgerald’s men were shooting arrows over the wall in a gesture that was probably futile—unless anyone inside the castle was stupid enough to stand in their path. But none of this concerned him. What worried MacGowan was how he was going to help the wife of Alderman Doyle. He didn’t want to let her down.

  The previous month, he’d been able to do the alderman a good turn. Doyle had needed a new tenant on the estate he had taken over from the Walshes and the grey merchant had thought of the Brennan family who had once been on Sean O’Byrne’s land and had recently become unhappy with their subsequent tenancy. “You always know everything,” Doyle had said to him admiringly. That had given MacGowan great pleasure. The transfer of the Brennans had taken place just in time for them to get the harvest in—and since they had several strong children now, they had been the greatest help to Doyle. With his present commission, however, MacGowan had been having less success.

  The siege of Dublin Castle had been a lacklustre affair. The feeble efforts in the street in front of him now were quite typical. But even on the better days, when they had brought cannon, troops, and ladders up, the task had been too difficult. For the castle was a formidable obstacle. From the outer wall there was a high, sheer drop down to the old pool, now almost silted up, of Dubh Linn. Its other walls, though they lay within the city, were tall and stout and easy to defend. If Fitzgerald had more ammunition he might have been able to destroy the gates or knock down a section of wall; but as he was still short of cannonballs, he couldn’t achieve this. Nor had he enough troops for a mass assault. Though he had sent a large force down into Butler territory to raid them and frighten them into submission, the Butlers were still ready to attack, and so he had forces dispersed in numerous different places. As for the people of Dublin, they obeyed his orders, but when it came to storming the castle, they did it without much conviction since many of them had friends inside.

  It had been easy enough for MacGowan to send a message to Alderman Doyle. He had just wrapped it round a blunted arrow which he had fired over the wall. The message had asked if there was anything the alderman wanted. It was the sort of communication between the city and the castle that was happening every day. The reply had come attached to a stone dropped at his feet in front of the gate the day before. Doyle was concerned, he told the grey merchant, on two counts. Firstly, with the English probably on the way, he thought it possible that Lord Thomas might mount a more determined assault to try to secure the stronghold for himself. Secondly, his wife was
unwell. He wanted to secure her a safe-conduct out of the castle so that MacGowan could escort her to the greater security of the house at Dalkey. And he was prepared to pay the besiegers handsomely for this privilege. This was what MacGowan had just been trying to arrange.

  The trouble was, Doyle wasn’t the first person to enter a private negotiation of this kind. Rather to his surprise, the grey merchant had been taken into the presence of Silken Thomas himself, where the young aristocrat politely informed him: “I have given enough safe-conducts already. Unless, of course, the alderman cares to pay me with some of the cannonballs which earlier this summer I so unwisely left in the castle.”

  And MacGowan was just wondering what to do next when he saw William Walsh and his wife approaching, and realised that this might be a stroke of singular good fortune. Moments later he had taken the lawyer to one side.

  Fortunately, Walsh was quick to see his point of view. The lawyer and his wife had come into Dublin that day precisely to see for themselves how the siege was progressing. As a Fitzgerald adherent who had nonetheless disliked the treasonable oath, Walsh was anxiously watching events now that the English might be coming. If the Gunner were to prove too strong for Silken Thomas, it would do him no harm, MacGowan pointed out, to have helped Alderman Doyle. “And I should think,” the grey merchant tactfully added, “that you might be glad to do a good turn to Dame Doyle as well.” As a longtime adherent of the Fitzgeralds, he suggested, Walsh might have more luck persuading young Lord Thomas than he had himself. To all this the lawyer readily agreed.

  “Indeed, I’ll go and see if he will speak with me,” he suggested, “straightaway.” And asking MacGowan to look after his wife, he hurried off.

  MacGowan spent nearly an hour with Margaret Walsh. The men had stopped shooting over the walls, so they walked round the outside of the castle. They discussed the political situation and she gave him a detailed account of how Sean O’Byrne had forced her husband to take the oath. It was clear to MacGowan that she shared her husband’s caution. “We were always loyal to Kildare,” she remarked, “but that foolish oath was going too far.” It was when she asked what business her husband was engaged upon now, that he paused. Walsh and the alderman were civil, but he wasn’t sure what Margaret’s feelings about the Doyles were, nor how much of Joan Doyle’s dealings with her husband she might have discovered. So he contented himself with saying, “He’s doing me a favour, trying to help some people in there.” He indicated the castle. “You’ll have to ask him.” She looked thoughtful, but seemed quite contented. After a little while, however, she looked up brightly and remarked, “I expect that’ll be Alderman Doyle. My husband likes him, you know, and his wife is quite a friend of mine.”