The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Within a month, the Gunner set out. Word came that he had taken back one of the castles Fitzgerald had seized, at Trim. Still more ominous came the news that two of Thomas’s five Fitzgerald uncles were cooperating with the Gunner. As she looked out of her window after hearing that, it was hard not to feel a sense of dismay. How was it possible, she wondered, that there could be such treachery? But when she prayed, she knew she must keep faith, and so she told herself to have patience.

  And indeed, in the winter months, there was reason to hope. The winter was cold and wet. The Gunner retired to Dublin and stayed there, and soon complained that he was unwell. Cecily would see him occasionally, riding through the streets with his escort. Instead of the brisk military man he had been, he now looked pale and haggard. His troops were suffering, too. There were desertions. Better yet, Silken Thomas was back in the strongholds the Gunner had taken earlier. Most important of all, around Christmas Cecily heard that the Spanish were sending ten thousand armed men. Once they arrived, the Gunner would be gone.

  January came, cold and dreary. The English troops were being sent out now to key garrisons around the Pale; but there was no action. Still Silken Thomas waited for the Spanish soldiers, but no word of them came. One day, in February, at their meal in the main room, Tidy quietly remarked, “You know what people are saying now. The King of Spain has other things to think about. He’s going to leave Silken Thomas twisting in the breeze.”

  “So you say,” she answered dully. It wasn’t often they even spoke, nowadays.

  “A ship came into port yesterday,” he continued calmly. “From Spain. There’s no sign and no word of any soldiers to be sent over here.”

  “The enemies of the Fitzgeralds will say what they will say,” she countered.

  “You don’t understand.” He gazed at her evenly. “It’s not their enemies saying so. It’s their friends.”

  That night there was a fall of snow. When she looked out of her window in the morning, gazing towards the interior of Ireland, she saw only a dismal, white silence.

  But the real blow came in March. The Gunner had finally bestirred himself to launch a proper campaign. Boldly, he had gone to Maynooth, the mighty Fitzgerald stronghold. Even with his artillery, Cecily imagined, he’d be held up by that huge fortress for weeks. Then, after no time at all, the news came.

  “Maynooth has fallen.” It was her husband who came all the way up to her tower refuge to tell her.

  “The Gunner took it?”

  He shook his head.

  “He’ll claim he took it, of course,” he said. “But it was some of Fitzgerald’s own men who betrayed him and let the English in.” Then he went back down the stairs again.

  That night, after watching the sunset, she could not sleep, and sat staring out at the gleaming stars until, at last, they faded before the cold, harsh dawn from the east.

  It was in April, when Silken Thomas was already a fugitive, moving down into the marshes, that Cecily went to see Dame Doyle. It had not been easy to approach the house of the alderman who had sided so gladly with the heretic King Henry; but his wife was different, and she trusted her.

  “I can’t go on like this,” she told the older woman. “I don’t know what to do.” And she explained all that had passed between her and Henry Tidy. But if she expected sympathy, or that Dame Doyle would offer to mediate, she was disappointed.

  “You must go back to living with your husband,” Dame Doyle told her bluntly. “It’s as simple as that. Even,” she added quite severely, “if you don’t love him.” She gazed at Cecily thoughtfully. “Could you bring yourself to love him,” she asked her frankly, “enough?”

  It was what Cecily had been wondering herself.

  “The trouble is,” she confessed, “I think he doesn’t love me.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “It’s what I believe.”

  “Perhaps,” Dame Doyle said more kindly, “you should give your husband the benefit of the doubt. Marriage is like religion, in a way,” she gently suggested. “It requires an act of faith.”

  “But that’s not the same at all,” Cecily protested. “For about the true faith I haven’t any doubt.”

  “Well at least you could hope,” Dame Doyle remarked with a smile. And seeing Cecily still looking uncertain, “My child, you’ll have to rely upon charity then. Be kind to him. Things may get better. Besides,” she added shrewdly, “you’ve said yourself things can’t continue as they are. The plain fact is, you’ve nothing to lose.”

  So that night, after putting the children to sleep in the main room, Cecily went down to the workshop and suggested that Tidy should join her in her refuge above.

  The old man arrived at Rathconan on a fine day at the end of August. He was a brehon, he informed Eva, a man skilled in the old Irish laws and an adviser to the Fitzgeralds down in Munster. He had come from Maurice’s parents with a message that must be delivered only to the boy himself and to Sean. As they were away with the cattle up on the mountain pastures, she sent one of the men to fetch them while, with the proper show of respect to the old man, she set out a flagon of ale and some refreshments for him in the hall where he said he would like to rest. Until Sean and Maurice arrived, she could only guess as to what the nature of the brehon’s business might be.

  One possibility, clearly, concerned the Fitzgerald family. When his garrison had betrayed him at Maynooth, Silken Thomas had escaped and gone to rally the Irish chiefs who were loyal to his family. The Gunner might hold some strongholds and possess most of the artillery, but he only had a few hundred troops and he wasn’t well himself. The English force could be worn down and destroyed.

  But the Gunner had the power of England behind him. The Irish chiefs were cautious. Silken Thomas was still saying that the Spanish would come; but weeks passed and there was no sign of them. Silken Thomas was learning the bitter lesson of power: friends are the people who think you will win. “At least people up here are loyal to the Fitzgeralds,” Eva had remarked to Sean one day; but he had only given her a wry look. “Some of the O’Tooles and our own O’Byrne kinsmen are talking to the Gunner now,” he told her. “He’s offering good money.” By midsummer, Silken Thomas was hiding out in the forests and bogs like a warrior chief from times gone by.

  But he wasn’t an ancient Irish chief; he was rich young Silken Thomas. If the Gunner was sluggish, the Fitzgerald heir was starting to lose heart. And a week ago, when one of his aristocratic English kinsmen, a royal commander, had found him miserably encamped down in the Bog of Allen and promised him his life and a pardon if he gave himself up, he had agreed to do so. The news had reached Rathconan three days ago.

  So now, though it was hard for Eva to believe, it seemed that the power of the mighty house of Kildare was fading away like the sound of pipers disappearing over the hill. And if Kildare’s power had collapsed, what would that mean for the Desmond Fitzgeralds in the south? Uncertainty at best. Perhaps the southern Fitzgeralds would want their son Maurice safely back with them?

  She hoped not. Since the death of Fintan, young Maurice had been such a tower of strength, helping Sean and giving her his quiet affection. You couldn’t keep a foster son forever, of course, but she couldn’t bear to part with him just now. Not yet.

  Sean and Maurice arrived at the house early in the evening. Sean greeted the brehon respectfully and having sipped a little ale, sat in the big oak chair in the hall, looking rather impressive. Maurice sat quietly on a stool, gazing at the old man curiously. Eva sat on a bench. Then Sean politely requested the brehon to state his business.

  “I am Kieran, son of Art, hereditary brehon, and I come on behalf of the lady Fitzgerald, mother of Maurice Fitzgerald, foster son of Sean O’Byrne,” he began in a formal manner that signalled the seriousness of his business. “Would you confirm to me,” he turned to Maurice, “that you are that Maurice Fitzgerald?” Maurice nodded. “And that you are that same Sean O’Byrne?”

  “I am,” said Sean. “And wh
at is your message?”

  “For some years, Sean O’Byrne, this Maurice has lived in your house as your foster son.” He paused, eyeing Sean, it seemed to Eva, a little severely. “But as you also know, this young man has a greater claim upon you.”

  Sean acknowledged this odd statement with a gracious inclination of his handsome head.

  “And under the ancient usages of Ireland,” the brehon continued, “I’m to tell you, Sean O’Byrne, that his mother the lady Fitzgerald is now calling upon you to admit your responsibility in this matter and to make the proper provisions.”

  “She names me?”

  “She does.”

  Maurice was listening to this dialogue with utter astonishment. Eva was staring at the old man with a look of horror on her pale face. Only Sean seemed quite at ease, sitting in his big chair and nodding quietly in recognition of what the brehon was saying.

  “What responsibility?” Eva broke in. “What provision?” A sudden panic added a sharpness to her voice. “What is it you’re saying?”

  The brehon turned towards her. It was hard to tell what expression was in his face, which seemed as old as the hills.

  “That your husband, Sean O’Byrne, is the father of this boy.” He indicated Maurice. “The lady Fitzgerald has named him. You did not know?”

  She did not reply. Her face was entirely white; her mouth formed into a small O, from which no sound emerged. The old man turned to Sean.

  “You do not deny it?”

  And now Sean was smiling. “I do not. She has the right.”

  It was the law and custom in Ireland that if a woman named a man as the father of her child and it was acknowledged, then the child was entitled to make claims upon the father, including a share of the father’s estate when he died.

  “When?” Eva found her voice at last. “When was this known?”

  Sean did not seem in any hurry to reply, so the old man answered. “It was admitted privately between the parties when Sean O’Byrne came down to ask for Maurice as a foster son.”

  “When Maurice first came here. He brought Maurice here because he was his son?”

  “That would be it,” said the brehon. “The lady Fitzgerald’s husband did not wish to embarrass himself or his wife at that time, so once he had been informed of the matter, he agreed that Maurice should go with his father as a foster son. But as he’s not wanting to provide for him now, Sean O’Byrne is named.”

  “You are my father?” It was Maurice who spoke now. He was very pale. He had been watching Eva; now he turned to Sean.

  “I am.” Sean smiled. He seemed delighted.

  “But why?” Eva’s voice was a cry of pain. She couldn’t help it. “Why in God’s name would you have your own son by another woman to live in my house all these years, under my very nose, and never a word to me about who he was? You watched me look after him and love him like my own. And it was all a lie! A lie to make a fool of me. Was it for that you did it, Sean? For my humiliation? In the name of God, when I think of the good wife I’ve been to you, why would you do such a thing?” She paused, staring at him. “You were planning this for years.”

  And now, as he looked at her with the blandest of smiles on his handsome face, she saw, also, a little gleam of angry triumph in his eye.

  “It was you who brought the friar here and made me swear upon the Saint Kevin.” He paused and she saw his fingers close upon the arms of the oak chair as his body leaned forward in the seat. “It was you that humiliated me, Eva, in front of the friar and the priest,” his voice was rising in suppressed fury, “in my own house.” He threw himself back in his seat. Then he smiled. “You’ve done a good job looking after my son. I’ll say that.”

  And in a terrible, searing flash, Eva understood as she had never understood before the vanity of a man, and the long, cold reach of his vengeance.

  Just then, Maurice ran out of the hall.

  Sean and Eva ate in silence that night. The brehon, having gone to visit Father Donal, had sent word that he would remain with the priest and his family until his departure early in the morning. Maurice had gone to the barn to be alone. Though Eva had asked him to come back in, he had requested, politely as always, that he might be allowed to remain alone with his thoughts; and so, after giving his arm an awkward but affectionate squeeze, Eva had left him there.

  Sean had already announced that he would be going up to the high pasture again in the morning. The two of them sat—he apparently satisfied, she in stony silence—until at last, when the meal was done, she remarked to him: “I shall never get over this, you know.”

  “You will in time.” He had an apple in his hand. He cut it into four pieces with his knife, leaving the seeds in, and ate one of the quarters, swallowing the seeds. “What’s done is done,” he observed. “You love him anyway. He’s a fine boy.”

  “Oh, he is fine,” she acknowledged. “It is amazing to me only,” she added bitterly, “that someone so fine could be your son.”

  “Do you think so?” He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, it would seem that with his mother I could make a finer son than I could with you.” And he picked up another piece of the quartered apple.

  Her head went forward. The pain of the cruel words was so great, it was like a dagger stabbed into her stomach. She thought of Fintan.

  “Do you love anybody?” she asked at last. “Other than yourself?”

  “I do.” He let the words dangle like a bait before a fish in the stream, but she had wisdom enough to turn away.

  They remained in silence for as long as it took him, at his calculated leisure, to eat the other two quarters of the apple.

  “He must go,” she said.

  “You’re a great one for throwing people out of my house,” he remarked. “Is it my own son you’re wanting to be rid of now?”

  “He must go, Sean. You say that I love him, and it’s true. But I can’t stand it. He must go.”

  “My son will stay in his father’s house,” he replied with finality; and with that he got up and went to bed, leaving her sitting in the hall, wondering what she should do. She sat there all night.

  Did she really want him gone? She thought of all that Maurice had meant to her. Certainly none of this was the boy’s fault. How must he be feeling now, out there in the barn, thinking about the deception that everyone had practised upon himself all these years. Was she re-enacting the business with the Brennan girl, insisting that he go? Wasn’t it just the same battle with her husband’s will? Wasn’t it the same, all over again, except that now he had increased the pain and the humiliation? Now he had even made her love the boy, the cause of her pain, and then poisoned that love. Oh, he had been clever. You had to give him that. He’d made her drain a bitter cup.

  And that was why she couldn’t bear to have Maurice there anymore. It seemed to her, as the dawn broke, that she had no way out.

  But a few hours later the decision was taken out of their hands by Maurice himself who, for the first time in the years he had been with them, quietly but firmly refused to obey the man that he now knew was his father. He told them he wanted to leave.

  “I will visit you often, Father,” he said, “and you, too, if I may,” he added to Eva, with a gentle look of sadness in those wonderful eyes of his, so strange and emerald green.

  “You needn’t go, Maurice,” she cried. “You don’t have to go.”

  But his determination was absolute. “It’s for the best,” he said.

  “Where will you go?” Sean asked him, a little heavily. “To Munster?”

  “To see the mother who betrayed me and her husband who doesn’t want me?” He shook his head sadly. “If I see my mother I might curse her.”

  “Where, then?”

  “I have decided, Father,” he said, “to go to Dublin.”

  MacGowan was most surprised when Maurice arrived at his house. And he was even more astonished when Maurice told him his story. It wasn’t often that the grey merchant discovered a long-standing secret, ho
wever intimate, that he didn’t already know.

  “And you’re asking me to take you on as an apprentice?” he confirmed.

  “I am. I’m sure that my father—Sean O’Byrne, that is—will pay the apprenticeship fee.”

  “No doubt.”

  “If you would consider me.”

  MacGowan did consider, but he had no need to do so for long. It was clear to him that with his knowledge of life with the O’Byrnes and his courtly education and manners, the young man would be the ideal grey merchant, welcomed beyond the Pale and in the best Dublin circles, too. He could go far, MacGowan thought, farther even than I.

  “There is a problem,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  “Your name.”

  Maurice Fitzgerald. What a name to possess. There would be a splendid dash, even effrontery in a young grey merchant owning such an aristocratic name; but given the present political climate in Dublin, it might be unwise.

  “The name of Fitzgerald might put you in some danger now,” he said.

  “It’s not my name anymore,” Maurice answered with a wry smile. “You forget that I’m an O’Byrne.”

  “So you are.” MacGowan nodded thoughtfully. “So you are.” He paused. “That also, in Dublin, could be a problem.” He smiled sadly. “It’s too Irish.”

  Given the young man’s character and manners, he would probably overcome any prejudice in time. But nonetheless, to advertise oneself as the son of Sean O’Byrne—the Irish friend of Fitzgerald, who had tried to kidnap the wife of Alderman Doyle—was not, he gently pointed out to Maurice, the best way to begin. “And you’ll want the freedom one day,” he predicted. “Be sure of that.”

  “In that case, since to be truthful with you, I feel more like an orphan than any man’s son, and I mean to make a life of my own, I’d be glad enough to take another name. I really don’t care.” The young man stared at MacGowan for a few moments and then smiled. “Your own name, for instance. MacGowan in English would be Smith.”

  “It would. Near enough.”

  “Well then, if you’ll have me as an apprentice, let me be Maurice Smith. Would that do?”