by Karen Harper
While rain rattled against the window and thunder rumbled, we three girls sat before our bedchamber fire that evening. Cecily read aloud to us from The Romance of the Rose, one of several books she had sneaked into her travel trunk when she’d left Maynooth. Wouldn’t it be something, I thought, if the books she’d squirreled away and The Red Book of Kildare were the only volumes saved from that vast library—and by the young women of the family, not the men? Speaking of which, Edward had just stomped out, pronouncing the romance was drivel, for it was about the attempts of a courtier to woo his beloved. So I was surprised when our brother burst back into the room.
“Two riders have come in fast!” he announced. “I heard it down the stairs when they told the house steward they are clear from London, and something about a rebellion! And Mother’s down there too!”
“Our rebellion?” I asked him, but he darted out again, evidently to eavesdrop more. I left Cecily reading to herself, as Margaret only looked at the painted pictures, and followed my brother to where he was crouched by a carved balustrade at the top of the stairs. I peered carefully over but could not see much of the two visitors.
“You mean this isn’t Bradgate?” A man’s raised voice carried clearly to us. “The storm is so bad on the north road, all muck and mire, so we had to cut westward. I had hoped we could shelter here, then go north. I’ve important missives from Lord Cromwell and the king.”
That news alone would have been enough to make me topple down the stairs, but the speaker’s voice nearly jolted me from my perch. It could not be. Surely other men had deep, raspy voices. This speaker was upset and annoyed, not calm and kind.
“I must catch a glimpse of them,” I told Edward, and, feetfirst, slithered down several steps to peer beneath the banister. Uncle Leonard’s elderly steward, Master Hemmings, was explaining that this was another Grey residence not far from Bradgate. Mother chimed in with some sort of explanation, but her voice was weak compared to the others, and I could catch little of what she said.
“Oh, Lord Leonard Grey’s home,” the visitor who was doing all the talking replied. I could see only his booted legs, wet and mud caked. And, hanging from one shoulder, a sopped leather satchel was held tight to his hip with one big hand. “We must have lost our bearings in the storm,” he explained. “I went on Lord Leonard’s ship to Ireland and returned with it. So the Fitzgerald family resides here, and you are the Countess of Kildare. I hear your brother has not yet returned from Ireland.”
It was he, Lord Edward Clinton! But on a special mission for the king and Cromwell. I strained to hear whether he would mention my name. No doubt he had forgotten the young woman he had talked to, seemingly in earnest, that day at sea. But what were those papers he had mentioned, and how greatly would it harm the king’s cause if they were stolen or destroyed? Would the loss of them help someone else’s rebellion succeed?
“You must stay the night,” Mother said, her voice rising a bit. “And if you would please take missives back to His Majesty and Secretary Cromwell from me, I would be so grateful.”
“I am actually in service to Lord John Dudley, but he serves Cromwell and the king. Yes, I would do that for you, though my return to London may be delayed with this rebellion near my home.”
I must be careful, I thought, if I sneaked downstairs when all were asleep and stole the royal letters, not to harm Mother’s too. Or would she hand them over just before they left? Their voices were fading. I strained even harder to hear, going down another step.
Master Hemmings spoke: “Yes, the weather is so beastly, you must stay. I will call for hot food and bathwater. We will bring bedding in here for you by the fire and see that your horses are fed and watered.”
Lord Clinton: “I am grateful. We would appreciate a chance to get dry and fill our bellies with something hot. Rain or not, I’ll be on my way at daybreak, for I have papers to urge my Lincolnshire neighbors to stand firm against a peasant rebellion. The king calls it the Northern Rising, but the enemy insists it is the Pilgrimage of Grace.”
“A religious rebellion?” Mother’s voice finally rang out clearly.
I could not hear Lord Clinton’s answer, only the hum of his voice. He must have turned away, gone into the solar. I turned to scramble back up the stairs but bumped into my brother, who had sidled down behind me. I’d been so intent on the men below, I had not heard him.
“Good,” Edward whispered, frowning. “If the king has an uprising on his hands in the north, perhaps it will take his mind off destroying the Fitzgeralds for theirs in Ireland.”
I had never shared my own pilgrimage of rage with my family, for they would have tried to dissuade me. “I’m going to bed,” I added, “and I’m glad they’ll be gone in the morning.”
“Heave to,” Edward whispered, almost shoving me ahead of him up the stairs. “Here comes Mother.”
When we rushed back into the room where Cecily had been reading, Mother came quickly in, wiping her eyes. I could only hope Cecily didn’t ask where we’d been.
“I had such hopes the visitors below had brought a message from the king himself, saying everyone was pardoned,” Mother told us. “But I have an opportunity at least to write the king a letter, delivered by a northern lord. It will have to go north and then back to London, but that young man has vowed he will at least see it is delivered, God be praised!”
And, I vowed silently, God be praised if I could somehow sneak downstairs tonight and destroy those letters. Anything I could do to support rebels against the king—even if it meant someone who had once been kind to me would suffer for the loss of his letters—I would gladly do. Exiled and nearly imprisoned as I was here in the heart of England, I had found something I could do to strike back.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
I lay in bed that night listening to the rain, Margaret’s heavy breathing, and the beating of my own heart. My fear I’d drift off to sleep and miss sneaking downstairs was unfounded, for I was alert and tense. And I had a plan.
It would be foolish to try to steal Edward Clinton’s papers, since he would know someone in the house took them and might blame Mother. But if they were ruined—smeared with rainwater, which surely could have seeped in during his wet ride—they would be no good to him or to the king. And with the vile weather, perhaps he would even escape some of the blame.
So when the great house fell silent, as far as I could fathom with its normal creaking of floors and the patter of rain on the windows, I slid out of the bed I shared with Margaret. Fortunately for my late-night foray, Magheen did not sleep in my room now but shared one with two other maidservants down the hall, or she would have come instantly awake. From a small table beside the bed I took the pewter cup with drinking water in it, surely enough to ruin whatever royal missives awaited downstairs. Did those papers from Cromwell and the king command arrests, imprisonments, beheadings of the rebels? Perhaps Lord Clinton and his northern neighbors were to seize fathers from their families or hunt down their heirs as if they were stags to be hounded to death.
I had not dared to keep my clothes on or take the time to don them now, but pulled a dark cloak about my linen night rail. I knew the solar well, but I prayed a candle or lantern burned low there so I could see my target. I could hardly be stumbling about in the dark while two men slept on the floor. And I prayed Lord Clinton and his companion were so exhausted that they slept the sleep of the dead.
Barefooted, holding the cup of water, which trembled in my hand, I crept down the wide staircase, nearly jumping out of my skin each time one of the treads creaked. Wan light silhouetted the dark door of the solar where the sun spilled in so sweet and warm most mornings. Surely the two men were not up this early or awake this late.
Saint Brigid, but the door was actually ajar! Without opening it farther, putting one eye to the two-inch crack, I peered in. A lantern sat on the far table where once in a while we took our breakfast. Both men—dark, sprawled forms—lay on bedding before the hearth, so I would not need to traverse the entire length
of the solar. But I thought of something then: What if the leather satchel, which I assumed held the missives, was under Lord Clinton or somewhere on his person?
But fear, even if I risked much, could not hold me back, not after all I’d seen and suffered from the Tudor king.
Yet I hesitated. If I were caught, could it make things go worse for my uncles or Thomas, or even Gerald if they caught him? For all of us here? But what could be worse than an Act of Attainder, which had already been declared against the Fitzgeralds? It was now or never.
My pulse pounding, I pushed the door inward so I could slip through. It did not squeak. I blessed the rain, for its noise covered my footfalls. Which big body here was Clinton’s? Oh, yes, that rakish, raven dark hair, mussed now by sleep and not sea wind, while his slightly smaller companion was blond. But no leather satchel in sight.
Then I saw it, hanging by its strap on a chair, which was also draped with drying garments. Everything looked shades of gray in the flickering hearth fire, near which stood two pairs of big boots. Holding my breath, I shuffled toward the satchel and lifted it from the chair but a few feet from the sleeping men.
My hand was shaking so hard I slopped some of the water onto my wrist. Should I take this out into the hall to smear the pages, then come back in? If Lord Clinton had examined the papers to be sure they were dry and then found them ruined in the morning, he would know they were tampered with. Or perhaps he would think the dampness of the leather had seeped into the parchment during the night.
Daring to leave the door ajar, I sidestepped through the opening with the satchel and sat down in the dim hall with my back against the wainscoted wall, where I could catch the meager light from the door. No turning back now. I would have to be quick.
Then a thought struck me, something I had overlooked. What if these important missives bore seals of state? Could I get the water between the pages without breaking the seals?
I opened the satchel and reached inside to find—nothing. My mere sliver of light fattened across my lap and on the floor. I looked up and gasped. A half-naked, sheet-draped man stared down at me.
I tried to scramble up but was lifted off my feet, bounced once, and held in a hard embrace against a muscular, naked chest. I heard the pewter cup tip onto the floor, so his feet must have gotten wet. I still held the empty satchel.
“How nice to see you again, Lady Elizabeth,” Lord Clinton whispered, his mouth so close to my ear his breath heated the shell of it. “Do not scream, or you’ll make this worse—if that’s possible.”
“I was only checking to be sure Mother’s letters she said she was giving you were not overly pathetic or demanding. She’s not . . . not been herself lately.”
“And you were bringing me a cup of water to slake my thirst too? Now hold your tongue.”
“Let me down. Where are we going?”
He elbowed open the door to the dark room across the corridor where Master Hemmings received visitors since Uncle Leonard was not home.
Though it was at first pitch-black in here, in his linen sheet he looked like a Roman ghost in a toga. He left the door to the hallway partly open, so wan light from the solar sifted in. He sat me on the edge of the table, holding me there with his hard hands on my shoulders and his solid thighs against my knees. We were nearly eye-to-eye, so close I could smell cloves on his breath. I stiffened my backbone, but he seemed so big and threatening.
“Now let’s hear it, Lady Elizabeth, the truth,” he ordered.
“I told you. I know Mother wrote letters to give you, and she’s so distraught and desperate lately, I did not want her to beg or say something . . . something amiss.”
“Why did you not ask her what she wrote?”
“I don’t want her to think I believe she’s that way, of course.”
I was amazed how easily I could lie, though I’d been doing a bit of it lately. I usually got in trouble for telling too much of the truth, but here I was with a nearly naked man, alone in the middle of the night. He shook me by my shoulders.
“Listen to me,” he commanded. “Those missives are none of your concern.”
“But my mother is so—”
“I mean the royal missives you were after for some reason I’d not care to contemplate. Some pitiful retribution against His Majesty? We’re all no more than replaceable spokes in the big wheel of state, with Henry Tudor at the hub, and you’d best learn to accept that, Irish rebel blood or not. You can’t stop that wheel, Elizabeth; you can only contribute to its revolving as best you can and so profit from its progress.”
“That wheel grinds people into the dust and mud,” I told him, trying to shake his hands off. “High and low, even his own wives—and your wife.”
At that he shook me again. “Hell’s gates, I am telling myself you are only a maid, a naive but disturbingly comely one at that, so I don’t need to be caught with you here—but then, it would be quite obvious you came to me, wouldn’t it? Stranger things have happened between maids and men, even married ones.”
“Let go of me! I had no intention of any of that. I just wanted—”
“I’m going to let you go back upstairs to a warm bed, but do not try such a stupid trick with any other man who stumbles in here—or especially if you are called to court. Despite your dangerous heritage, I doubt if you’d just be let go next time without some sort of . . . of compromise. Ours will be that you will agree to tell me the truth on all things next time we meet, or I will be forced to summon your mother now and write to your current guardian, Lord Leonard, as if he—and I—don’t have enough on our hands right now.”
As he said on our hands, he loosed his hard hold of me but ran his palms and fingers down my upper arms to my elbows, then back up, smoothly, strongly. It was like a comforting caress, only that, but it shot a shiver clear up my spine that almost made me dizzy.
“Do we have a bargain or not?” he demanded, and I had to struggle for a moment to recall what he had just said. Oh, yes, that I would tell him the truth about all things next time we met. I doubted if we would meet again, for I was cloistered here like a nun, and he was heading north to do his vile king’s bidding.
“Agreed,” I said.
He lifted me off the table, making a snatch for his linen toga as it nearly came undone—undone, that was how I felt. I wanted to curse and strike him, but I wanted even more to ask him if he had decided to take service afloat, tell him I was sorry to hear he’d lost his stepson. No! What was wrong with me?
“Ordinarily,” he was saying, “I would insist on something to seal the deal, but not with a mere maid who has so much to learn, and sadly, from someone else.”
What was he talking about? Did he know I would be sent where I would see him again? And sadly, from someone else? Such as whom?
With his hand in the small of my back, he pushed me to the door and out. I darted across the corridor to recover the pewter cup, then lifted the hems of my night rail and cape and darted up the staircase. At the top, I looked back. He was still standing there, watching. The light aslant from the single lantern or the glow of embers from the solar made his eyes gleam as if lit from within.
In the morning, when I woke after a restless night, he and his companion were long gone.
After a long, bitter winter, word came that my uncles had been declared guilty of treason charges and would soon be sentenced. Needless to say, Silken Thomas was chiefly blamed for the Fitzgerald rebellion and was also adjudged guilty. The most we could hope for, Mother said, was that they would all be kept in the Tower as Father had been, but that they would live to be released someday. We hoped and prayed that King Henry and Queen Jane Seymour might produce a son, heir to the Tudor throne—for it was said she was with child. But I only wished for them a son if it would mean the king would be more secure and magnanimous and permit Fitzgerald pardons someday, on the condition, of course, they return to keep Ireland under crown control, as they had for nigh on eighty years.
But a bit of good news: Someh
ow Mother had convinced Uncle Leonard that she could spend a fortnight in his London town house so that she could petition the king and Cromwell for at least a visit to her stepson and imprisoned brothers-in-law in the Tower. After all, she’d been able to visit Father there. Perhaps her deluge of letters finally wore the deputy of Ireland down, or he felt guilty for his traitorous arrest of the five Fitzgerald brothers. But the most amazing thing of all was that Mother was taking Cecily and me with her.
Edward was angered that he could not go, but she felt one of the spares to the heir was better off hidden away in Leicestershire. Though the family had been named in the Act of Attainder, it seemed we women were considered harmless and were free to leave Beaumanoir—if we had permission. Poor Margaret was crestfallen that she would be without me for nearly three weeks, but Magheen vowed to take good care of her. Cecily hoped to visit the booksellers near St. Paul’s Cathedral, so she was in whirls over our journey.
As for me, I had no hopes of getting near the court, especially when I heard we would be staying not at Uncle Leonard’s town house but at Suffolk Place, the city home of Frances Grey’s father, Charles Brandon, which was clear across London from the king’s palaces of Westminster and Whitehall. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk and a close friend to the king, would not even be there, for he was “mopping up the northern rebel problem,” as Henry Grey had put it when he’d ridden in to give Mother permission for our visit. At least perhaps, I thought, if I pleaded hard enough I could visit my uncles in the Tower of London with her, for she said it was but a ferry ride across the Thames or a ride ahorse over London Bridge.
London Bridge—whenever I saw that bridge, any bridge, I vowed it would be a sign for me to pray to Saint Brigid to build a bridge between me and someone at court, someone who would give me access to the king or his family. How dared Edward Clinton call me naive, however Irish, rural, and young I might be, I fumed as we rode with several guards in a pack train past the walls and through the gate of Beaumanoir in July. Despite the beauty of the day, Cecily read a book, even bouncing along ahorse. Fulk Bates was one of our guards, and Alice was attending Mother. And I? I was going to London to find a way to triumph over the Tudors!
