The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (39 page)

A sudden commotion of many horses on the Strand outside Essex House announced the arrival of the Lord Lieutenant’s officers. Francis Bacon stood to go. The men embraced, then held each other at arm’s length, a world of futures—many of them terrifying—swirling between them.

“God speed, Robert. Bring us a great victory.”

“I will. I promise it.”

Bacon moved out the door and closed it gently behind him. For a too long moment Essex stood staring at the door, at nothing at all, his mind suddenly and altogether devoid of thought. Only a shout from one of the soldiers on the Strand brought him to his senses.

“Not a good sign,” he whispered to himself. Then he turned back to his wooden traveling chest and finished packing.

...AND I THEREFORE name Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, as my Master of Horse!”

There were shouts and several sincere “Huzzahs!” amongst Essex’s mounted officers, their horses stamping and snorting in the road in front of Essex House. Robert had, on the one hand, been thankful there ’d been no tearful farewells with his family, but wondered, on the other, how it would feel to know that your mother or wife was truly sorry to see you go off to war and perhaps your death. But he had been unaccountably cheered to see the bright faces of his officers as he ’d strode out amongst them and taken his horse. These were all men who, upon hearing that Essex had been named as leader of the Irish Expedition, had come forward clamoring to fight under him.

Now Southampton, his face flushed with shock and delight at the recent announcement, trotted up beside Essex and smiled broadly. “When did the queen rescind her prohibition of me as Horsemaster?” he asked.

“She never did,” Essex answered with an even gaze at his friend.

Southampton’s smile evaporated. “I don’t understand. You simply defied her?”

“I did.”

“You’re mad, Robert.”

“I’m afraid I may be,” said Essex who, with a stiff wave above his head signaled his officers into formation. “Ride next to me at the head,” he told Southampton.

“You know how desperately I wanted the post, but this is no way to begin your commission.”

Essex laughed. “The truth is, there is no good way for me in Ireland.” He lifted his chin and gazed up at the sky. It was clear blue and the sun bathed them in delicious warmth. “But look, today is a perfect day.

You’ve received your commission, and I am leaving behind a world of difficult women. Is that not something to celebrate?” Southampton’s smile returned. “To Ireland,” he said, giving signal for the officers to move out.

“God help us,” said Essex, a hope and a prayer—both of which he rather doubted.

INDEED THE DAY had continued with its perfectly sunny weather as Essex and his officers joined the regiments that had been awaiting them in London. They’d been mustered from towns and villages in the east and south, and would be met at the western port of Holyhead by the Welsh contingent, and troops marching in from the north.

While the rank and file had not been provided with uniforms, some who were veterans of the Netherlands war had donned whichever pieces of their old gear that were not in tatters. Every man carried a weapon and, thought Essex with some pride, the cavalry looked strong and splendid.

For five miles along the road northwest out of London, crowds had gathered in great numbers to cheer the army on its way. Children sat atop their fathers’ shoulders waving to the brave soldiers marching off to war. Women were throwing kisses, and people were crying out, “God save your Lordship, God preserve your honor!” Only then had Essex allowed himself to hope that perhaps the Irish Expedition was not a doomed enterprise. That as the Almighty had assisted the English fleet at Gravelines, so too would he provide Essex with a decisive victory against Tyrone.

But the thought had scarcely crossed his mind when a very real shadow fell across his face. Looking up he was startled to see that the bright day had suddenly filled with black, roiling clouds. He felt the first soft drops of rain fall on his cheeks, but a moment later the heavens opened and the sky was rent by thunderbolts, these sending the crowds fleeing to safety across the sodden fields.

The cavalcade of soldiers, drenched and bedraggled, now marched through the dreary, deserted countryside and Essex, looking back at his troops, was overcome with wretchedness. It was not, however, until the rain hardened into egg-size hailstones that crashed down upon the queen’s army, bloodying both men and animals, that the Lord Lieutenant’s gloom turned to a sickening dread. How much clearer a portent of evil could have been given than this?

Robert Devereaux could think of none.

12

THE JOURNEY TO IRELAND had been hellish. A ferocious tempest had tossed Essex and his troop ships around the Irish Channel for days. Finally, beaten by waves the size of small castles, they’d limped back to the English port of Holyhead. Many of his soldiers had been ill with dysentery, and the apothecary Essex had hired—the man he ’d secretly hoped would be the savior of “England’s Savior”—had died before the expedition had even begun.

His own health had alarmed him from the start. He ’d been shaken by severe chills, as if a great hand had grasped the back of his neck and shaken him out like a wet rag. A moment later his skin would scorch beneath his clothing. There ’d been a constant nausea twisting his guts, and without warning his bowels would turn watery.

Worse yet, a vagueness regularly overcame him, like blunt fingers pushing at his brain. It was the most important command of his career, and yet it took all his strength to keep up appearances for his officers and men, convince them that he was fit and capable of leading. There were other fearful demons to battle—wrenching self-doubts, memories of Elizabeth’s deceit and ill will, and the legion of his enemies at Court, already scheming on the wide-open field of his absence.

Without warning Essex would again feel well. His mind would clear, and strength would flood into his limbs. He would call Chris Blount and Southampton to his rooms and parade himself before them to fire their confidence. ’Twould not do for them to see him so wretched. Then the next bout of sickness would lay him low. For days they languished at Holyhead, Essex seething with worry. Only heaven knew what outrages Tyrone was perpetrating in Ulster and Munster. The downpour at Isling-ton had indeed proven an ill omen, and if circumstances continued unfolding as they had since then, the Irish Expedition would prove an unmitigated catastrophe.
He must get to Ireland!

Though the skies still threatened, Essex ordered the captain of the
Sea Devil
to make ready for departure. The voyage, he announced with grim determination, must under
any
circumstances be made. The very future of England depended upon it.

The
Sea Devil
had struggled for days on her crossing, plagued from the beginning by ill winds that seemed determined to keep the ship from making landfall. Even Christopher Blount, a man of exceedingly strong constitution, was green and nauseous, and when the vessel finally docked at Dublin, he fell to his knees and kissed the ground.

The day after their landing, despite his infirmities, it became necessary for Essex to rise to a most important occasion—the receiving of the Sword of State from the Irish Privy Council, as well as its report on the state of Ireland. When the new Lord Lieutenant entered Dublin Castle ’s Privy Council Chamber, he found that the room itself reflected the ambivalence felt for this country by the Englishmen and Irish-English lords who ruled her. It was dreary, the once lustrous paneled walls having been allowed to rot in many places, and the smell of putrid rushes was tolerated rather than addressed. Fear was palpable. A plot to seize the castle by rebels had been discovered less than a week before its carrying out. And it was understood that the whole of Ireland had been left vulnerable by leaving the country without a viceroy for a full eighteen months after Lord Burgh’s death, and eight months after the battle at the Yellow Ford.

Today’s occasion was so somber as to be grim, for only the day before—the same as Essex’s arrival—the longtime Lord Treasurer, Henry Wallop, had died, and the rest of the Irish Privy Councilors, wearing black, were mourning him. Perhaps its most illustrious member and the most experienced in war, Black Tom Ormond, was absent. Ormond was, the disappointed Essex was told, campaigning feverishly in Munster.

Indeed, news of the rebel was not good. And the Lord Lieutenant, upon seeing the makeup of the Council—for the most part aged nobles, sour-faced officials, and purse-lipped clergy—reminded him of how desperately he wished for Christopher Blount to be sitting amongst them.

“I begged Her Majesty to grant me this one favor,” he said to the men of Blount ’s appointment, with no attempt to hide his sarcasm, “but I must have spoken in a language that was not understood, or to a goddess not at leisure to hear prayers.” There was a shocked silence all round at his criticism of the queen, and not one man cracked the faintest smile at his wit. With an inward groan Essex insisted that the reports begin.

The two arch rebels, Tyrone and Red Hugh O’Donnell, were, of course, the worst of their problems. Ulster was entirely under their control—hostage to the rebels—and all other provinces in the country had been overtaken by them or their cohorts. They were both of them charismatics, one from the old school and the other from a younger generation. They excelled in drawing a vast array of disaffected chieftains into their confederation. The great fear—one that plagued the Council every day and in their dreams—was the coming of Spanish reinforcements to the cause. Already the rebels had received shipments of arms from Philip to the most disastrous effect—the Yellow Ford.

In Munster Tyrone had installed a young Desmond, kinsman of Gerald, and Munstermen had rallied round to fight alongside him. And an English-born patriot named Richard Tyrell, now one of Tyrone ’s best captains, was tearing through the south as well. The plantations had fallen—their elaborate structure having collapsed—and all the settlers routed in the space of one bloody day the previous autumn. English Munster was, for the moment, quite dead. In the absence of a governor after Drury’s death, Ormond had taken command of what troops remained and was struggling valiantly, but with little success, against Tyrone and his invading army.

“I toured the south after the uprising,” said Archbishop Loftus, his face pinched with annoyance. Loftus was the greatest of the councilors—Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor, and Archbishop of Armagh. “It struck me then how right Her Majesty had been when she ’d ordered that when the plantations in Munster were undertaken, the Irish race should be altogether excluded from the province. Had we listened, and not hired the savages as farmhands and servants, we would never have lost those farms.”

“ ’Tis my understanding,” said Essex, “that without the hard work of the natives there would never have
been
plantations. What Englishman would travel to this place unless he was a landholder? Would he stoop to menial work? I think not. The Irish were our slaves, and at the first opportunity they rose up against their keepers, their oppressors.” Loftus and the others stared at Essex as though he ’d grown horns on the top of his head.

“That is no excuse for the atrocities they rained down upon their masters,” said Sir George Carey. “The rebels have burned and looted settlers trying to run for their lives. They were stripped and robbed and some slain. I saw a gentlewoman, raped and naked, both her nostrils slit, wandering in a daze along the road. I saw bodies of mutilated planters rotting alongside their cattle in their burnt-out fields. Irish children enjoyed bowling with the severed heads of murdered Englishmen!”

“Dublin and the Pale are, for the most part, secured,” insisted the creaking old Earl of Kildare. He was perhaps the only Irish nobleman besides Tom of Ormond unquestionably loyal to the Crown. “But you must realize that the Pale constitutes but one twentieth of Ireland. The rest, all the cities and towns and countryside, have been retaken by Tyrone and O’Donnell and their minions.” The chamber door, on screeching hinges, opened and a young, fair, and very handsome man entered.

“Forgive me my tardiness,” the man said to the group in a voice both forthright and confident, and suddenly Essex felt a desperate desire that this bright-eyed youngblood—whoever he was—might perhaps be one of the Council. “My Lord.” The stranger bowed low to the Lord Lieutenant. “I am Conyers Clifford, Governor of Connaught.”
Ah
, thought Essex,
a soldier.
He liked the man immediately.

“You’re in perfect time, Clifford,” said Essex. “I’ve heard the news of Munster. How goes the effort in the west?” Conyers Clifford did not care to sit, rather he strode round the Privy Council Chamber as he spoke, as sure and graceful as he was attractive.

Essex smiled to himself, wondering what Southampton would make of this fine figure of a man.

“Connaught was in a shocking condition when I assumed the gover-norship. I do not wish to demean my predecessor’s character, but Richard Bingham’s methods guaranteed failure. He should have known that more than any of Ireland’s chieftains, those of the west country had remained free the longest, and therefore would resist our yoke even more fiercely. Instead he was brutal beyond comprehension. Of course the more violently he moved against them, the more agitated they became.

Slaughter and pillage were his answer to their further resistance.

“On my arrival I found the land and the people utterly ravaged.

Famine, plague, starvation. As though they’d not suffered enough at Bingham’s hands, they were dealt the final indignity when Red Hugh O’Donnell, an Ulsterman, attempted to usurp the power in Connaught.

They are a proud people, but they became confused by the issue of loyalties. Whatever enemy might come at them, English or Irish, many of them are now prepared to fight to the last man, the last breath. On the other hand, they do not hesitate, when it suits their purposes, to make a public show of surrender to the Crown.”