The Irish Princess (20 page)

Read The Irish Princess Online

Authors: Karen Harper

Tags: #Ireland, #Clinton, #Historical, #Henry, #Edward Fiennes De, #General, #Literary, #Great Britain - History - Henry VIII, #Great Britain, #Elizabeth Fiennes De, #Historical Fiction, #Princesses, #Fiction, #1509-1547, #Princesses - Ireland, #Elizabeth

BOOK: The Irish Princess
3.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
But everyone, even me, was excited, for the entire court was going on a summer progress out of hot, sweaty London on a visit to the north. The king’s ulcerated leg was much improved, even though he now walked haltingly with a cane. My former mistress, Mary Tudor, was going along, though not the king’s younger children, Edward and Elizabeth. Except for last yule, I had seldom seen Anne Boleyn’s daughter after that first moment we’d come eye-to-eye.
“I’ve heard,” Alice whispered as she brushed flecks of something off my brocade peach-hued double sleeves, “that His Majesty is so eager to be certain the northerners stay cowed that he’s ordered huge pieces of artillery to be brought by sea and river to meet us in the north. And,” she added with a smug smile, “your old friend Lord Edward Clinton is in charge of getting the pieces there by ship, some of the very same guns, so gossip goes, that were used to assault your Irish castle back when.”
I gasped. Why did it ever seem that each thing I heard of Captain Edward Clinton made me hate him more? “Back when,” I spit out, but caught myself before I blurted out the rest:
Back when is the present and the future to me.
Perhaps, I thought, on this progress where the entire court would be living in tents each night, at least when manors or castles were not nearby, I could somehow get close to the king. But what to say then, what to do to hurt him?
And now I must contend with Edward Clinton, whom I had assumed would not be on the progress, even if it would pass through his home shire. If only I could also find some way to bring him and Dudley down, but Dudley, now named Lord Lisle, with more advancements on the horizon, sometimes went to sea too. He was staying behind with several others to oversee royal business in London while we were away.
I sighed and watched the excited Cat Howard continue to ooh and ahh over each gown presented before her. Her little lapdog peeked out from the hem of the growing pile of brocade and satin gowns. How I missed Wynne already, to have been reunited with him and then to leave him so soon, the story of my life somehow. But it gave Margaret something to do, for now she cared for Alice’s midgets and my mammoth dog. Whom did I have to care for, whom I really cared for? I thought, feeling sorry for myself amidst all this fervid anticipation.
When the queen excused us, I went out into the Privy Gardens with their great, splashing fountain. On the other side of the high wall ran the Thames, and boatmans’ cries oft echoed here. It was my favorite place in the king’s favorite London palace, a haven for me. Running splashing water—boatmans’ cries . . .
“Forgive me, Lady Gera, for following you outside, but is it not a lovely day?” a man called to me.
The sun was in my eyes at first, but I recognized the voice. It was Sir Anthony Browne, the king’s longtime master of the horse, an intimate of the Tudor tyrant. Sir Anthony was nearly sixty but in good physique for his age, much better than his corpulent comrade the king, who was a bit younger. He was widowed, with a brood of adult children who were probably older than I, so at first I’d given no thought to the fact that he seemed to seek me out, for many did.
But since I had been back at court—especially since I had finally accepted that it would give me greater access to the king if I were with one of his comrades—I had taken to smiling at Sir Anthony. Mother, may God rest her soul, would be pleased I was finally harkening to the advice she’d given me the last day we were together. An older, powerful, wealthy man, she had said—yes, but at what price to me?
“It is indeed beautiful, my lord,” I responded. “I thought you would be so busy preparing all the horses we will need for the progress that I would not see you until we were en route northward.”
He smiled like a schoolboy who had been given a yuletide sweet, and offered his arm, which I took so that we strolled the gravel paths among the blooming rosebushes together. “I hope so much time in the saddle will not tire you, Lady Gera. My condolences again on the loss of your mother.”
No thanks to your friend the king for making her life a misery
, I longed to spit at him, but I said only, “That means a great deal from one who recently lost his wife.”
“Well, not so recent that I have not picked up the reins of my life again. My family is all grown, you see, and wed, but for my youngest, Mabel, who will soon come to court. I am sure she will appreciate new friendships here, if you would be so kind.”
“Of course, if you don’t mind her friend coming from a rebel past,” I said, unable to completely play the simpering maid. I had best get a reading right now of whether Sir Anthony was sent to keep an eye on me for someone else or for his own pleasure.
“My dear,” he said, stopping and turning toward me, “you are here at His Majesty’s court, so obviously that past, which is no fault of your own, is no impediment to your future. I know all that Irish sadness is behind you, and so much brighter lies ahead. I shall look forward to riding off and on with you on our journey through the northern shires and, dare I say, our journey of life.” Then he added hastily, “Here at court.”
He bent to kiss my hand, surprising me by turning it palm up before he did so. I studied him anew: Anthony Browne was an agreeable enough looking man, brown hair, with flecks of gray, brown eyes, brown beard and mustache, even brown garments today, though finely made ones. The other times we had talked, I had thought his bluff speech and manner a sort of brown too—bland and plain. But he had surprised me today, and the touch of his lips lingering on my palm was pleasant. As for that remark about life’s journey, perhaps there was some potential here for closer proximity to the king through at least a friendship with Sir Anthony Browne.
 
Amidst the happy hubbub, as if I needed more reasons to detest the king, on May 27, 1541, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was beheaded for championing her rebel family, especially her son Cardinal Pole, who had criticized the king. Luckily for Cardinal Pole, like our dear Gerald, now Earl of Kildare, he was living abroad, out of the king’s clutches, though word was the king’s minions were trying to track him and arrest him too. The executed countess had been a close confidante and governess of Mary Tudor when she was but a child, and I could imagine how Mary mourned her loss. This king thought nothing of executing women who got in his way, let alone men—a warning to me, but one I could not afford to heed.
For dire word came to the court from Ireland that Henry Rex had been declared not lord of Ireland, as was tradition, but its king.
On June 13, but a few days before we set out on the progress, under great duress, the Irish Parliament met to formally declare and proclaim the king’s new title and power over the Irish. In a great company of Irish ecclesiastics and nobles, including the earls of Ormond and Desmond, the O’Brien and the O’Reilly—all at one time or the other allies or rivals of my father—everyone had been forced to give their approval. Of course, with the Fitzgeralds out of the way, or so everyone thought, the Irish were forced to accept this king and his heirs in perpetuity, as, I believe I later heard the decree was pompously worded, “Forasmuch as Your Majesty has always been the only defender and protector under God of this realm.”
Again it was stated in Dublin that day, as in the Act of Attainder against my family, “The blood of the Geraldines is corrupted toward the Crown of England.” On and on with outrageous lies and insults, forced on a free, proud people. None of the good things our family had done to raise the level of living, to help educate and prosper our beloved people, were so much as mentioned.
The very night before the court set out on the progress to flaunt the king’s power to his own subjects, I sneaked into the chapel and, before the altar on my knees, vowed to myself and God—Saint Brigid too—that the so-called king of Ireland would not find a defender and protector to keep him from Fitzgerald justice through me!
 
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
 
D
espite all I had seen perpetrated on the Fitzgeralds, Ireland, and the king’s own people, I did not fully grasp the awesome might of the Tudor king until that day the court set out from London. The great royal progress to the north, as it was called even years after, assembled and snaked its way northward, a massive, portable display of people, property, and power, with me in the midst of it.
One thousand marching armed soldiers led the way, followed by eighty archers with drawn bows. Then, finely arrayed with gorgeous trappings on their mounts that Sir Anthony had prepared, rode the king, queen, and his closest nobles—I rode behind the queen at the back of that group. Next came our servants, including Alice, mounted or in carts, then wagons drawn by huge draft horses carrying two hundred tents, followed by five thousand packhorses laden with tapestries, clothing trunks, and plate for the three hundred courtiers. And to think that when we Fitzgeralds had ridden out in the sweet Irish summers to survey our lands and greet our people, we had gone with but twelve guards, one Geraldine banner, and hunks of meat, bread, and cheese in our saddlebags!
But that was not all. More lumbering wagons and carts with food, staffed with enough servants to handle four months of meals in field kitchens, brought up the rear. They would be needed when we were not entertained at manor houses or castles. Along the way, the king and his men would hunt deer, and fish and fowl would be provided, enough to feed an Irish army on the move.
When I had heard the stops our huge entourage would make en route, I was disappointed we would not visit Edward Clinton’s holdings of Kyme Castle or his new manor house I had heard he was building at some place called Sempringham. We would pass very nearby and go through Lincoln itself, the seat of his power in Parliament—so close but yet so far. It was only curiosity that made me want to see his lands, I told myself, for I was eager to take in every day’s vistas and villages.
Although I loved being out in the countryside, away from London, the roads were so crowded with gawkers that we might as well have been prancing down London’s busiest fairways. Only some of the guards and soldiers marching before us were mounted, but dust was always our companion. At least the weather was quite good, with rains only at night, drumming on our tent roofs through the midland shires, even as we passed quite close to Leicester and Beaumanoir. Hours in the saddle, as Anthony Browne had warned, and cots at night made me stiff by day, for only the king and queen slept on down mattresses each night in their separate tents.
We traversed more or less twenty miles a day, with all the stops for food and comfort. Endless hurrahs and “God save the king!” rang in my ears on this tour to what I’d heard both the king and Anthony Browne called the “brute shires.”
But it did indeed begin to feel we were in the north when the temperatures dropped at night and the winds picked up, especially beyond Grimsthorpe Castle as we entered Lincoln-shire, Clinton’s home area, nearly two-thirds of the way to our destination of York. Grimsthorpe was a vast edifice owned by Charles Brandon, the organizer of this progress. After a comfortable single night there in real rooms in real beds, we pushed on and camped again in tents on a grassy plain surrounded by gentle hills.
The buzz in the cavalcade that day had been that Lord Edward Clinton’s men would soon join us, after sailing the channel and coming up the great River Ouse with artillery for the king to flaunt in Lincoln and York. There bad feelings about the Northern Rebellion still seethed, though it had been put down five years before. So of course I was tense too, wondering if I would have to face Clinton again—and with some of the very guns that had blasted my beloved Maynooth and had convinced the traitor Christopher Paris to surrender our stronghold.
But far more disturbing news was the word that had come with the daily London messengers and quickly spread about the camp: When my uncle Leonard Grey’s trial for dereliction of duty and treason had gone against him, he had cast himself on the mercy of the king. (The mercy of this king, the fool!) Thinking his holdings and life would be spared for the good services he had done the crown, he admitted he was guilty—and had been beheaded, a familiar fate for those I was kin to by now.
Despite how he had betrayed us Fitzgeralds and deserved to die for that alone, I grieved for the man who had taken my family in and had brought me Wynne. At least, I grieved for his being so stupid as to trust this king—and, of course, I grieved for Alice too, who had loved my uncle even when she knew he planned to wed another. But so far, she was holding it all in.

Other books

The Heir by Ariana Rodriguez
When Shadows Fall by Paul Reid
Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas
DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO
The Echolone Mine by Elaina J Davidson
Immortal Dreams by Chrissy Peebles
A to Z Mysteries: The Bald Bandit by Ron Roy and John Steven Gurney