The Irish Princess (27 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
Henry nodded, and his mouth crimped in the slightest hint of a smile. “Will you summon your brother Gerald home for your wedding then?”
That shocked me anew. “I have been told he moves about a great deal, seeking a fine education, so I would not know where to send to invite him.”
“Ah, a pity. Well, do your best with that, for we would like to meet him, and what more auspicious occasion than a wedding linking his sister to a dear friend of the king of Ireland.”
I almost screamed out,
You murderer! You are not the king of Ireland!
But I repeated what was sadly the truth. “Your Grace, I’m not certain how to send him word, though I would love to have him here on my special day.”
You murderer! You are not the king of Ireland!
But I repeated what was sadly the truth. “Your Grace, I’m not certain how to send him word, though I would love to have him here on my special day.”
He didn’t believe me the first time or the second, of course. He almost look amused at our little joust as he said, “Tell him, should you get some inkling of his wanderings, that he should bring
The Red Book of Kildare
with him and much will be forgiven. My Irish representatives need the names in it for proper taxation; that is all.”
The Red Book of Kildare
with him and much will be forgiven. My Irish representatives need the names in it for proper taxation; that is all.”
I knew he lied, just as Uncle Leonard had when he invited my uncles to Dublin to forge a truce. At last the king loosed my wrist. My hand tingled as blood rushed back into it. I thanked God and Saint Brigid that distant Beaumanoir had that precious heirloom book buried under a hedge. The manor had been forfeit to the crown, so my sisters had moved into Bradgate to be reared with Lady Jane Grey and her sisters. After all these years, only I and Magheen, who detested Henry Tudor too, knew where
The Red Book of Kildare
lay.
The Red Book of Kildare
lay.
“Well,” the king said as I rose and curtsied, “Sir Anthony is a lucky man. Lady Gera, I would like you to stay on at court to serve a special woman who is coming to live among us at my bequest, Lady Latimer, Katherine Parr, a lovely and proper widow. She has said she would like to have both my daughters with us too. You, of course, know the Lady Mary well, but resemble more the Lady Elizabeth, flibbertigibbet that she is, so perhaps I will put you in my youngest girl’s household.”
“Yes, Your Grace. I would be happy to serve the lady Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth of England, the unloved Anne Boleyn’s girl, was beloved by the masses. And though I’d heard the king mistrusted Elizabeth’s demeanor because her mother, so he claimed, had been a flirt and a whore, Mary had expressed some affection and admiration for her half sister. She had told me that the girl was a serious scholar, hardly a ninnyhammer like Cat Howard, however much the king now seemed to trust no young woman.
As for Lady Latimer, Katherine Parr, the rumors I had silently scoffed at could be true: The king intended to take a sixth wife. But I had also heard she had beseeched him to make her his mistress and not his wife, just the opposite ploy of the two Howard family queens. Wise woman, Katherine Parr, I thought, not wanting to take on such a dangerous marriage, but perhaps there was a second reason, so court tittle-tattle said. She had been courted by and was quite smitten with the roguish, handsome Tom Seymour, a naval man too, one of Queen Jane Seymour’s brothers, the uncles of Prince Edward.
How stupid and arrogant of Henry Tudor to think that any woman could want him for himself now, I fumed, gazing at the bruise on my wrist as I curtsied again and walked away. Without knowing Katherine Parr, I forthwith felt a certain sisterhood with her. She too knew to tread carefully at this court. And if she wed an old man but loved a dashing, younger sea captain, I understood her to the very depths of my being.
On July 12, 1543, Henry Tudor wed Kathrine Parr, Lady Latimer, at Hampton Court Palace. The king’s three children were in attendance, and I could see each from the side pew in which I sat next to Anthony. Prince Edward, for once without his long-faced, bearded uncle Edward Seymour hovering over him, perched proudly in the front pew. Needless to say, his other uncle, Thomas Seymour, who had avidly courted today’s bride, was at sea and not expected back to court for a good long time.
Edward Clinton was also busy making a reputation for himself in the fleet. Or, when not at sea, visiting his family at Kyme and getting more children on Ursula. I heaved a silent sigh and forced my attention back to Bishop Gardiner’s reciting of the marriage vows I soon enough would exchange with my betrothed. The king had decreed our marriage would be at court also, with himself in attendance, but I still could not quite fathom it all.
I watched Mary Tudor, now aged twenty-seven and sad she had no suitor, who sat beside the five-year-old Edward. Next to Mary, Elizabeth, now nine, was obviously excited not only to be here but also to be in the king’s good graces, for she, like Mary, had suffered her ups and downs through various stepmothers and their sire’s royal whims of who was legitimate issue and who was not. I had heard the girl was never to speak of her mother before the king, and I pitied her, for I knew better than to bring up my father or family at court too.
My eyes returned to the bride, petite and fair, with stunning hazel eyes that dominated her kind face. Twice widowed by the death of elderly husbands and with no children of her own, she was thirty-one and an heiress, one, they said, who like Anne Boleyn before her favored the new learning in religion. Anthony and his family were staunch old-school Catholics like the king, despite Henry Tudor’s having taken the ultimate power from the pope. Dudley and the Clintons, I had seen, were more middle-of-the-road in their religious beliefs, which suited me, for however Catholic I was reared, I thought that believers—even women—ought to be able to read the Holy Writ for themselves and express opinions about it too. Why, even Brigid of Kildare, however pious, had stood up to the old ways when she must.
All that aside, I thought it so admirable that the new queen insisted on the Tudors being a family. It had been announced in a new Act of Succession that the king would reinstate Mary and Elizabeth as princesses in line to rule behind their young brother and his future heirs. I was happy for the king’s daughters, for I liked them both, yet I was tormented again with the question of whether my revenge must extend to them too. The king’s son and daughters had done nothing against the Fitzgeralds, yet their father’s vengeance against my family had not stopped at the death of our sire but had been visited upon his kin and heirs. I was grateful, at least, that my Irish aunts and many cousins had been left alone at home, as long as they kept out of contention for power.
Speaking of heirs, I had recently met the other seven of Anthony’s children, who were all adults. The Browne brood had acted kindly enough toward me, but I believe they tolerated me as something to amuse their father in his later years, like a new pet dog. Out of earshot of his father, Anthony, my lord’s namesake and heir, had told me, “If you bear him children, they will be the same ages as my own, but I warrant they will be good-looking. Just remember, if you hope for a large inheritance someday, the Browne properties will be split many ways, most going to me and my heirs.”
I darted a glance at Elizabeth again, sitting alert, wide-eyed on the edge of the pew. Her household, which I was to be part of when she was here at court, but not if she left for the country again, was meager. Her governess, Katherine Ashley, sat off to the side, her gaze watchful both on the ceremony and her lively young charge.
With the king’s hearty, possessive kiss of the bride, the wedding service ended, and we all repaired to the great hall for the marriage banquet. There was to be dancing too, though probably after the newly married couple took their leave, for the king who had once danced till dawn could barely get up on the dais where the bridal pair sat.
You might know that Surrey, who was strangely not even here, managed to throw a pall over the party. Word came and was whispered down the tables that he had slapped one of the king’s men for disparaging the Howard name and had been sent to Fleet Prison in London. If the king didn’t personally pardon him this time, the law said, he could have the offending hand cut off.
“Haven’t the Howards had enough of losing face and losing heads to not start losing hands—a writer’s hands?” Anthony had groused.
Sitting next to him, I had ended up across a table from Elizabeth, who was so excited she could barely sit still.
“I love weddings, though it’s really my first one,” she told me. “But I shall see many more, and wish I could be at yours, Lady Gera.”
“I would be honored.”
“If you would ask the king, it might help, though I warrant our new mother will put in a plea for me too,” she said, giving me, I thought, a soft-gloved but direct command. She seemed to pick at her food, seeming most enamored of the sweet dishes, especially the jelly fritters and sugary suckets. “So what are weddings like in Ireland?” she asked.
So she knew more than my name and marital status. I wondered what else she had overheard as I said, “I must tell you, Your Grace, as in this country, Irish weddings are of two kinds, the courtly kind and the country kind.”
“And have you seen both?”
“I have. Though my family had many friends in our village and attended weddings—and funerals—there, our own family weddings were more like formal ones here, but with jigs danced afterward, as well as stately pavanes or gay galliards.”
“Jigs? I never heard of such, but I would like to see one.”
“I shall teach you,” I whispered to her as Anthony leaned the other way to speak with his friend Lord Denny. “This very night, off in the corner if they let you stay up, for I have not danced a jig in too long. Then, someday, you can decree that an Irish jig be danced at your own wedding.”
She gave a slight shake of her head, then mouthed so quietly I am sure not even her watchful governess, two seats down, could have heard: “I shall never wed.”
My eyes widened. My lower lip dropped. This sprightly young girl—though at age nine, I too had had harsh womanhood thrust upon me—had gone from lighthearted to sober and sad in one moment.
I nodded and changed the subject. She talked that night of loving to ride ponies and loving to read about Caesar’s conquest of Gaul—because she wished that England could conquer the French too, and she thought her father might actually lead the next French expedition. She spoke of the first pretty dress she’d had in months and of translating the book of First Corinthians from Latin into Greek. Of playing leapfrog with her brother and learning to play the virginals.
I was in awe of her. And it answered one thing I’d been agonizing over: I still intended to kill the king, but if I survived that, I would try to work with his heirs through logic and loyalty, to somehow get Gerald home to Ireland.
After the bridal couple had gone off to their marriage bed that night and Sir Anthony decided to sit down following a lively galliard where he’d partnered me, I did teach Elizabeth the Irish jig off in the back corner of the hall, even to the shout of,
“Erin go bragh!”
that Magheen had always added at the end. We giggled through it all, hands on our hips, clicking our heels and spinning about. It made me miss my loved ones again, especially when she gave me a quick hug before she darted off. I wanted to go back to the dancing, but I wasn’t sure what Anthony would say if I partnered someone else, so I just watched from where I was. And heard a voice behind me that almost knocked me to the floor.
“Erin go bragh!”
that Magheen had always added at the end. We giggled through it all, hands on our hips, clicking our heels and spinning about. It made me miss my loved ones again, especially when she gave me a quick hug before she darted off. I wanted to go back to the dancing, but I wasn’t sure what Anthony would say if I partnered someone else, so I just watched from where I was. And heard a voice behind me that almost knocked me to the floor.
“I would ask you to dance, but I’d rather take you sailing.”
I spun to face Edward Clinton. I had forgotten he was so tall, but not that he was so darkly handsome.
“I . . . I had no idea you were here.”
“The weather in the channel was rough, so I arrived late, near the end of the meal. Will you be serving Elizabeth now, or just teaching her rebellious dances and phrases? Imagine, the should-have-been Irish princess daring to teach the off-and-on-again English princess. At least you did not have her shouting, ‘A Geraldine!’ ”
“Would you keep your voice down? And you have been watching me.”
“A favorite pastime. Gera, I am going to sea again, to the north, where we are going to try to settle down the Scots.”
“Better than trying to settle down the Irish, I’d say.”
“However fierce the Scots are, I’d not dare to take on the Irish. But, really,” he said, taking my hands in his as he had when we’d said farewell on his ship, “I wanted to wish you all the best—happiness, a family, safety—with Anthony Browne. I promise I won’t be appearing at your wedding. . . .”
I could tell he had more to say but couldn’t find the words. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. I could have and should have asked about Ursula and his family, but I too went tongue-tied, savoring the moment.
Finally, he said, “I’m being given a command in the fleet.”
“Still on the
Defiance
, I hope.”
Defiance
, I hope.”
“The same. Shall I take you captive so you can steer her clear to Edinburgh for us?”
“Do not . . . do not tease. And Sempringham—how is the manor coming along?”
“I don’t get to see it as much as I want to,” he said, his gaze suddenly devouring me. “But it’s as beautiful as ever.”
“I’d best get back.”
“Ay. Then here’s a kiss for the future bride.” Before I could react, he bent and slanted his mouth over mine in a soft kiss that turned hard and demanding. He did not touch me otherwise but to press my hands he held between my breasts, which tingled. I wanted to leap at him, grapple him to me. I did not care if Anthony, the raving king, and the entire court screamed at us; I wanted to hold him, keep him.
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