The Irish Princess (34 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
The stranger who arrived that evening at Chelsea was not the future Lord High Admiral, Edward Clinton, but it meant upheaval for me anyway. He was my son-in-law’s man, sent from Byfleet, where my lord Anthony had suffered a stroke, and I was to head home at first light.
What the physician called the palsy paralyzed Anthony’s left side, his leg, arm, and face, so he stayed abed and needed tending. He spoke in a slurred way, though I soon could understand him, even when others could not. His son and heir came and went, though Mabel often stayed for weeks. Anthony preferred to be taken care of by his longtime body servant, Clemmet, but he liked to have me sit with him while he mumbled on so much about the past I feared he had merged it with the present. He was his royal master’s man to the end indeed.
He was ever in a fret over his being shuffled aside since the king died. Though he was seventy years of age, and the court and times had changed, he found it so hard to let go. Sometimes he said he heard the king calling him. He had nightmares he had received a royal summons but could not find his way to the king through the mazelike corridors of this or that palace.
When word came in the autumn of 1548 that the dowager queen Katherine had died in childbed bearing Seymour a daughter, it was another blow and break with the past for both Anthony and me. “So many gone,” he whispered when I told him the sad news. “So much changed . . . and not for the best . . . the old ways and days . . . much better. Why, when the king and I were young . . .”
At least I learned that, through letters to each other, Katherine and Elizabeth had managed a distant reconciliation. My warning to Elizabeth had gone for naught: Katherine had caught her husband kissing the girl and ordered her away. Sadly, on Katherine’s deathbed, racked with fever, the dying woman had accused her husband of poisoning her so he could have the princess for his wife.
And so I strove to be a good wife, but, God forgive me, though Byfleet Manor and its grounds comprised the property to be left to me from Anthony’s properties in his will, I still hated the place. It was quite new, soundly built and comfortable, near the river with apple orchards and knot gardens, but the memories of losing my sons here and being told by a physician I would never bear another child made the place seem dark and cold to me.
It was in bleak December, nearly a year after the king died, that our peace there was shattered by a visitor. I had long given up my heart’s desire that I would ever see Lord High Admiral Edward Clinton again, especially in what seemed to me to be my endless exile from court and the seats of power. After writing several petitions to the Privy Council asking that the Earl of Kildare, Gerald Fitzgerald, be pardoned and allowed to visit me in England, I had also given up on any important person visiting from London or the court. I feared I would turn into my mother, a rural recluse, writing letter after helpless, hapless letter to save the Fitzgeralds.
So I was especially surprised when Magheen gestured to me from the hallway outside Anthony’s room while he slept one mid-December day.
“It’s starting to snow, but that didn’t stop our visitor,” she told me in a whisper, then gestured me farther down the hall.
“It’s not news about Gerald and Collum, is it? I’m not sure I shall ever forgive you for keeping word of their whereabouts from me all those years.”
We had been over that before, and she ignored it. “ ’Tis the Earl of Warwick with two guards,” she said.
I gasped. He was always just Dudley to me, even when he’d risen to be Viscount Lisle and then the Earl of Warwick. “Dudley?” I blurted. “Here? To see my lord? Oh, that will cheer him, that someone of import still cares ab—”
“To see the Lady Browne—in private.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
January 20, 1549
“N
ow, don’t fuss,” Magheen told me, “but I ordered hot cider and meat pies for his lordship, and not with the poison you probably would have included.”
ow, don’t fuss,” Magheen told me, “but I ordered hot cider and meat pies for his lordship, and not with the poison you probably would have included.”
“Not until I find out what he wants, as he’s flying high with power these days.” I had never told Magheen or anyone that I had tried to kill the king with Dudley’s dagger, but she well knew that our visitor was second on my list. “Still,” I whispered as we darted into my bedchamber so I could don something more presentable than a plain day gown, “it could be word about Gerald. It must be!”
And it was, though couched in typical Dudley terms as the two of us sat in the solar downstairs and began a verbal wrestling match with holds and turns, feints and flips, the likes of which I’d not seen since my uncles used to show off for all of us in a grassy ring at Maynooth.
Dudley, Earl of Warwick, but no doubt aiming even higher, began with some small talk that set my teeth on edge. I wanted to order the wretch off my property, but I worked the conversation around to asking if he had seen my petitions about a pardon for my brother and permission for him to be granted safe return from France.
“Indeed, I have, well-written letters too, Lady Gera. What is his first name again?”
“Gerald, Eleventh Earl of Kildare,” I said, keeping calm, though I knew he was baiting me.
“Since the Act of Attainder against your family, my lady, he is not recognized as earl in this realm. But I have much influence with the council and could see championing your concerns and requests to them.”
“I would be very grateful. But at what cost?”
“Ah, a lady who knows how to come to the point. Very well. Let me get to the real reason for this visit. The princess Elizabeth has been placed under house arrest on her rural property of Hatfield House and her closest servants and confidantes, including her governess, taken to the Tower and questioned.”
“To the Tower? For what reason?” I asked, trying to keep my voice in check, for I feared I knew the answer to my own question.
“She has been accused of planning to overthrow her brother and his government with the help and firepower of the king’s uncle, Thomas Seymour,” he said, confirming my worst fears. He stopped and took a slow sip of heated cider, then put the mug down on the small table between us as if we were yet talking about the Byfleet River icing up. I tried to stay calm, but I fear my voice betrayed my agitation.
“She’s but fifteen,” I said, “and he is . . . how old?”
“Old enough to defy his brother, the Lord Protector, and the Privy Council, old enough to wed the dowager queen with reckless abandon, old enough to store up arms for no good purpose in Seymour House in the heart of London, and certainly old enough to be arrested for treason four days ago when, fully armed, he tried to take the young king as his prisoner. I do take your point about who would be mostly to blame for their liaison. But my point is that, since you were sent to the Chelsea household at the time Elizabeth and Seymour were there together—”
“I was there barely a week, until my lord took sick.”
“But, I hear from a good source, long enough to become quite a favorite with the princess—perhaps a confidante, eh?”
I stared him down as I had before. I suppose I should have presented a more hospitable disposition to him, but would he not have thought I was putting on a show? Yet that was exactly what I decided to do. Years ago, before I knew Elizabeth, I would have leaped at the chance to bring a Tudor down, but not now, not her. Like me, she had enemies at court, and this vile opportunist was obviously one of them, this man who would be ecstatic to ruin both Elizabeth and me if it suited his own ambition. I had no doubt that, if Dudley knew I was aware of her passion for Seymour and that I had spoken to her about it but had told no one else, he would have had me in the Tower for questioning.
“My lord,” I said, still not blinking an eye, “all I can tell you is that Tom Seymour was an affectionate host to everyone, and it is true, as you no doubt know, that he cuts a swashbuckling figure with the ladies. But I have heard the princess say more than once that she does not wish to ever wed, so I cannot help you with damning evidence against her. I even heard her say she wanted her royal brother’s approval, and I am certain she was loyal to him.”
“Loyal to her brother as you are to yours?”
“Blood is thicker than water, they say. Yes, of course I am yet loyal to my brother—both of them—and to my sisters too.”
“Let us not have another go-round on all this. Perhaps I have not made my position plain enough, a position which can help or harm, irreparably, your brother Gerald’s position with the council and the king. I need you to testify that Elizabeth Tudor, young though she is, was in collusion with Seymour to bring her brother down, push her sister Mary out of the line of succession, and rule England with Seymour as her consort.”
“Ridiculous! I know not what Seymour had in his head, but I know nothing of the kind about Her Grace.”
“Even though I would be willing to lend my full weight to help bring your brother Gerald back to England under, shall we say, a truce for things past?”
I supposed I wavered a long moment then. My deepest desire was to return Gerald to Ireland, and this would be a huge step in that direction. But to be championed by John Dudley? And to have to trust him? I knew he was mentor to the man I would always secretly love, so there must be some good in him. But I saw much good in Elizabeth. God help me, I saw myself in Elizabeth of England.
“Well?” he prompted, leaning forward across the small table toward me. “Even if you know very little, that could seem much if presented with persuasive words.”
“I regret I cannot help you and seem therefore unable to help my very innocent and deserving brother, my lord, at least at this time.”
“Then I must tell you that you are in luck anyway, Lady Browne, a Geraldine! a Geraldine! to your very core. The council has decided to consider a pass for Gerald Fitzgerald to come for a visit, though when I cannot say.”
“Oh, that is wonderful news!” I cried—and almost cried indeed as tears welled up in my eyes. But I realized that this man had misled me too. What he had tried to bargain for my help was already going to happen. I was so tempted to tear into him, but I had been around enough to know to play the game for Gerald’s advantage, and for poor Anthony’s too.
“I ask one small favor, my lord,” I dared, fighting to keep my tone civil. “Not for me or my brother but for my lord Anthony, who, as you know, served our king’s father faithfully for years.”
“Say on,” he said as he stood.
“He much misses being about the court, all the heady events from the days he served his king. If you would be so kind as to spend a few moments with him, bring him news of the day—even if it is about Seymour’s foolhardiness—I would be grateful. I believe you counseled me once to be loyal to my English family, and we spoke about how family matters to both of us.”
“I would be honored and could do no less for an old soldier and servant of the crown—and for a woman with a backbone of steel—steel like in a dagger I once had,” he said, and bowed stiffly to me. “I would swear I left it on a table outside the dying king’s chambers, but somehow it ended up in his bed. If you would lead the way to your husband’s bedside, Lady Gera.”
So he would not see the surprise on my face, I quickly turned away to lead him from the room. “Perhaps you were so distressed that day, my lord, you did not realize what you did or didn’t do,” I threw over my shoulder.
Did he know? How much? A formidable foe indeed. I wanted to slap him, to push him down the stairs as he followed me up to our second floor. But I was now doubly afraid of him, and—I must admit—a bit in awe of him too. The snake beckoning to Eve in the Garden of Eden, that was what he was, charming, clever, but deadly.
At least he did me a favor that day, spending an hour with my lord, as if an earl and member of the Privy Council had been sent purposefully to report to him.
I made certain Dudley and his men were fed a hot meal again before they set out, grateful he did not ask for them to spend the night under my roof. Donning a cloak and gloves against the cold, I went out to see them off from our small, cobbled courtyard slick with snow.
He surprised me by taking my hand before he mounted. I was grateful for my gloves and his, for I could not bear for him to touch me. It frightened me how he read my mind at that moment, for I had told myself not to ask about Edward’s family or his new position as Lord High Admiral, but he said, “I recall you visited the home of my niece Ursula and her husband during the great northern progress. She’s been quite ill with breathing problems, you know, a sort of lung fever.”
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