The Irish Princess

by Karen Harper

  “By fairies?” I exclaimed. “We call them the little people, and they do all sorts of mischief if we don’t appease them. I take it the fen people are tough and stubborn, living independently away from the crown’s reach—at least, usually.”

  “Ay. Prideful and independent to a man—and woman. In short, you would fit in fine here, Irish. But I want to show you my future home.”

  I thought it a shame they would leave old Kyme Castle, that is, until I saw Sempringham Manor even half built. Ever careful to be certain that no one would see me walking unaided yet, on a pair of crude crutches Kyme’s carpenter had quickly made I hobbled about behind Clinton on a tour of the vast place. He helped me get around piles of cut stones and lifted me up to another level when necessary. I thought we played our parts well, but in my heart I began to play another part: that I was his lady and he was showing me our future home.

  A gatehouse and an inner courtyard of pale gray, the very hue of Maynooth stone, were mostly completed. A suite for family and separate rooms for guests overlooked both a distant green river with rowboats in it and gardens yet to be planted. I saw fishponds laid out by string and stakes in the ground, a place for a grassy bowling alley. We walked through the foundations of both privy rooms and public ones and a great hall for banquets, receptions, or dancing, or for retainers to come with their requests and problems, much like at Maynooth.

  “You have not said much,” Clinton—indeed, I believe I began to think of him as Edward that day—observed. “Do you not feel well, or are you having second thoughts about our plan?”

  It had become “our” plan now, to keep us both safe from the wrath of the king when—if—Cat Howard came tumbling down. We were quite alone now, even amidst the hubbub of workers and the nearby presence of our companions. Alice was watching men hoist a stone aloft with a winch and pulley, and his guards were momentarily elsewhere.

  “In truth, my lord,” I told him as the two of us stood at the bottom of the grand staircase that, so far, climbed only to blue sky, “I am in awe and a bit envious. It is all so lovely, so very much like what I hold dear. All of it, your new manor house, Sempringham and Kyme—Lincolnshire in general, Edward.”

  “Then I am pleased and honored,” he said, almost choking on those words in his emotion, much as I had barely gotten my thoughts out. His eyes glistened.

  Standing in a shaft of sunlight, he took my hand. I pressed his too. So rapt were we, gazing at each other, that we ignored Alice coming closer and clearing her throat and the fact that one of my crutches fell to the ground. It was then I knew I loved Edward Clinton, but that was of no account, for I must continue to hate him too.

  I must admit, as excited as I was to go to sea, I regretted leaving Kyme and Lincolnshire in mid-August to head back to London and then onward from there to Hampton Court, to which the royal entourage would return in early October. Edward told Ursula he would be back in time for their child’s birth. I thanked her sincerely for her kindnesses to me and Alice and gave a hearty hug to little Henry, who had begun to call me “Dee Jar,” the best he could do with Lady Gera.

  On an early August morning, we started out, Edward, Alice, and I and one guard, Simpson, in a craft not much larger than the canvas naomhóg from my childhood days at Maynooth. We rowed the narrow Kyme Eau, then unfurled the sail in the wider River Witham, which twisted and turned its way through fenland and then hills toward the sea. Late that afternoon, I saw a town in the distance.

  “Is that Lincoln?” I asked.

  “I see you need more instruction in the lay of the land here,” Edward said with a tight grin. “Lincoln’s inland and farther north. That’s Boston, on the waterway called the Haven, and it will take us right to the wash and then the sea.”

  “I never heard of Boston, but then you would be a stranger in my land to all but Dublin, I wager.”

  “Will you take me on a tour of it someday?” he said, his voice lower than before.

  “If you help to get me home—home to Ireland,” I whispered back, and heard Alice force a cough and clear her throat as whenever we spoke only to each other.

  No doubt she saw the warning signs in me, recognizing them from her own dilemma with Lord Leonard when he was wed and she first began to adore him—that was what she had told me recently. She said she was so torn by her loyalty to her dying mistress, his wife, Eleanor, but so drawn to him and he to her. And, I thought, as I watched the silhouette of the town with its church tower emerge from the distance, perhaps it was what poor Cat Howard felt: torn between loyalty to the old, fat, ill king and a growing passion for her lover or lovers.

  I must be careful, I scolded myself, not to fall into the same trap that had ensnared the queen. I must not let my growing desire for Edward Clinton, a married man and a king’s man, overthrow me and my quest for justice against the king and John Dudley.

  “Boston used to be called St. Botolph’s Town,” Edward was saying. “It’s a huge wool exporter, but most ships are getting too large to approach it, else I would have put the Defiance in here rather than left her at the mouth of the Ouse. We’ll have to sail a bit of the wash to get to her and my men.”

  “The Defiance. I like that name.”

  We shared a swift smile and soon were out into the vast expanse of the tidal harbor called the wash. “I timed this for high tide, or we’d be stuck aground, even in this little boat,” he told me, pointing at the narrow beaches we passed. “At low tide there can be three miles of beach here. Except for the tides, it’s often dead calm, but when a gale blows up, it can turn to raging water in an instant.”

  “Kind of like court life,” I observed. “Hours of boredom and then a big blast—perhaps what is coming soon.”

  “Exactly. When you live in a place where people need to make their own pleasures, trouble is on the horizon. That’s why I like the sea. Your skills can take you far, but a greater force to be reckoned with is always just over the next wave, and that is the challenge and the reward of it all.”

  “Like that day we met and the storm came up when it was already rough,” I said. I was recalling not only our first sail together but the wonderful times I had sailed with my father in Dublin Harbor or along Ireland’s coast, watching the sailors, learning what I could about the tides and winds, but—small girl that I was then—never able to steer.

  He only nodded, his lips pressed tight together as if to stop from saying more. And then I noted something else about the waters of the wash. It was so flat and calm, you could see forever, clear back into the Lincolnshire fens we had left but that now appeared so close. Sometimes I thought I saw a ship or a hill, but then it all disappeared.

  “Mirages,” I said, and Alice nodded.

  “I thought I was seeing things too,” she agreed, as she came back to sit beside me, and Edward moved more into the prow. “And,” she whispered to me, “I am going to pretend some of the things—the looks, at least—I’ve seen between you and his lordship weren’t there either. I said I wouldn’t tell you, but on our ride from the progress to Kyme, Sir Anthony told me that he hoped you would consider him as a suitor—so there it is.”

  “So there it is,” I repeated, and turned away to study the shifting horizon.

  As night fell, we climbed a ladder to board Captain Clinton’s three-masted ship, the Defiance. I thought she was a real beauty, and all too soon, I knew what it meant to throw caution to the winds. A breeze had sprung up the moment his ship’s master, the bluff Mason Haverhill, turned the prow toward the channel and the waves kicked up.

  The sails filled with wind power, the rigging began its muted thrumming as the ship strained southward and the crew leaped to follow orders both on deck and above. Hoping Alice fared better than Magheen had at sea, I did not want to go down to the captain’s cabin with her, so I stood amidships, both hands on the leeward rail.

  “Remember to limp at least once in a while,” she had told me. “That supposed leg injury wouldn’t heal completely by now, would it?”


  But at this moment, I didn’t know and didn’t care. I braced my feet a bit apart on the bucking ship in a bracing breeze, and how desperately I wished I could turn pirate, and command captain and crew to sail clear ’round the south of England to Ireland.

  After a while, looking as salt-coated as I must be, Edward came to me and said, “Would you like to steer her? It’s not easy going, but I think you can manage. Then I must insist you go below with Alice so my cabin boy can feed you and you two can get some rest before dawn, when we’ll be in the Thames.”

  “Oh, yes. I would love to steer.”

  I leaned on his arm across the deck as we climbed a few steps and approached the man who held the big wheel. “Cap’n, milady,” was all he said with a stiff half bow as he stepped away to let Edward take the wheel.

  “I seldom steer her myself,” he said, “but it does give one the ultimate feeling of power.” He nodded that I should come closer. I did, ducking my head under his arm to stand between him and the wheel.

  “But in the dark, isn’t it more dangerous?”

  “Of course, but we know the area and use our navigation devices. And, as I’m still fairly new to this, I rely on my excellent ship’s master and crew. Put your hands on the protruding ends of the spokes.”

  “Oh, it pulls.”

  “And turns the rudder at the aft of the ship.”

  He put his hands above mine on the same spokes, and it seemed to me we steered together. Waves and wind, kings and kingdoms be damned, we steered into the darkness together.

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH

  HAMPTON COURT PALACE

  October 16, 1541

  “Oh,” Mabel Browne, Sir Anthony’s daughter and my dearest friend, whispered to me as the king entered the Chapel Royal with the queen on his arm, “he’s so big, and she’s so small!”

  “In his eyes, we are all small by comparison,” I told her, both annoyed and amused by the reaction of her first glimpses of the king and queen.

  “Hush!” Sir Anthony said as he sat down in the pew on my other side. “Before the service begins, His Majesty will make a speech.”

  I was impressed with how Anthony—for I was to call him by his Christian name now—always knew intimate details of the king’s actions and plans. And I must admit, I was impressed that he had produced such a dear girl as Mabel. In the brief month I had known her—for her father had ordered her sent to court to keep me company until the king’s progress returned—she had quite filled the hole in my heart from missing Margaret, yes, and Cecily too. At age thirteen, Mabel was really a bit too young to serve as one of the queen’s ladies here, except for the fact that Catherine Howard loved to surround herself with young people, so Anthony had hopes she would be allowed to stay. I did too, however much I suspected he had actually sent her here to be sure I had a second chaperone besides Alice.

  Blond and blue-eyed with a pert face and charming laugh, Mabel had cheered me immensely. Like me, she came from a large family, though, in her instance, that meant she had seven older brothers and two older sisters. If I ever wed Anthony Browne, I could not fathom being suddenly stepmother to so many, most older than I.

  Although I had told Mabel much of my family and of Ireland, I had omitted the passion for justice and righteous revenge that drove me, and that I knew of Cat Howard’s secret, illicit passions. If Mabel told her father, that might be just like telling the king. Not only had I seen the wisdom of not ensnaring myself in the king’s wrath, but I didn’t want her involved in any dangerous scandals. Edward Clinton had warned me that he expected a large-scale investigation, with the queen’s lovers perhaps even being tortured for information when everything exploded.

  Although Mabel was petite, lively, and, compared to me, looked delicate, she loved nothing more than to take brisk walks with me along the Thames (once my leg was “healed”), hallooing at passing crafts and picking late wildflowers.

  When—if—I wed Anthony, I would think of Mabel not as a stepdaughter but as a younger sister, and I knew she would get on famously with Margaret when she came to live with me, and with Cecily if she visited too.

  Ignoring her father’s warning for silence, Mabel whispered to me, “Cat Howard is like a cat indeed, sleek and preening, almost purring.”

  Everyone hushed as the king seated the queen. Then, legs apart like a behemoth bestriding the world, leaning on his carved, bejeweled cane, Henry Tudor turned to address his assembled courtiers. This was not a normal Sabbath service but a hastily assembled thanksgiving gathering on a Sunday evening. Four-year-old Prince Edward, living with his household in the countryside, had just recovered from a bout of quatrain fever so severe that the king had panicked he might not survive.

  I slanted a glance at Mary Tudor’s profile. Would the king let a woman rule if he lost his heir? Rumors said that, since his young queen was not yet with child after an eighteen-month marriage, he might reinstate Mary and Elizabeth in the line of succession.

  But it turned out that the king also meant to give public thanks for something else too. I recall almost precisely what he said that day, for the irony of it struck me so hard I did not know whether to cry silently or scream aloud. I pictured myself standing in the rapt congregation and naysaying what he claimed about the queen—with proof of what I had seen—but I sat like the rest of them, staring at the massive man before us who commanded all our fates.

  “Lord High God,” he began. I bowed my head with the rest, but peeked at my enemy through slitted eyelids. He stood, not with bowed head, but gazing upward toward the ornate blue ceiling with its golden stars and gilt angels. “We are grateful for the salvation of our dear Prince of Wales, Edward Tudor, beloved by all. And for safe journey on our progress to the north of our realm to calm the once ruffled waters there. And I render thanks to Thee, O Lord, that after so many strange accidents that have befallen my marriages, Thou hast been pleased to give me a wife so entirely conformed to my inclinations as her I now have.”

  I closed my eyes tight and bit my lower lip hard. He did deserve this wife, but not for the reasons he believed. The murderer of the Fitzgerald men was also a bedswerver with a gargantuan appetite for women and wives, and he had met his match in Cat Howard. Justice for his own adulteries, at least, if not for his persecution of the Geraldines.

  I was not only partly appeased but also astounded he did not yet know of his queen’s betrayal. Had no one yet discovered it, or had he not been told? Edward Clinton had been so sure the queen would be found out. What a spider’s web, one that I yet longed to tear apart. I told myself that if it didn’t come out soon, I would somehow send a note to the Privy Council. It would have to be anonymous, since the day Edward and I parted at the royal dockyard in London, I had made several promises to him.

  I pictured that scene again as Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the king’s chief cleric and close confidant, began his sermon. In my mind’s eye I sat not here, but stood clasping Edward Clinton’s hands in farewell at the top of the gangplank of the Defiance a fortnight ago. Then, I was trying to ignore Alice’s hovering rather than the closeness of Anthony Browne as he now reached over onto my lap to hold my hand.

  “I have missed you, Gera,” Anthony murmured, but I heard other words, another voice.

  “I shall miss you, Irish,” Edward had said that day on the deck of his ship.

  “I could almost say the same, English.”

  We shared a quick smile. “Gera,” he plunged on, turning his back to Alice and speaking quickly, “you promised me the night you tried to steal my papers from the king that you would tell me all the truth next time we met. This isn’t really the next time, but I want your promise you will not be the one to betray the queen, whatever her sins.”

  “I do promise that—as long as it comes out another way, and soon.”

  “It will. You must learn patience.”

  “I have been forced to learn that and so much more.”

  “And about Sir Anthony. A union with him would be a pr
otection to you, the best that you could have, except to wed some country lord who could keep you under lock and key in his castle.”

  It was a tease, of course, yet he looked most serious. No other privy moments so intense had passed between us beyond that precious day we visited his new manor house and I had wished that he were building it for me. Without putting it into words or actions, we had somehow acknowledged our mutual passion that day, then kept it at bay thereafter. Though I hated to admit it, I had come to see that Edward, however loyal to his damned mentor, Dudley, and his horrible king, was a man of honor.

  “You believe I need protection?” I had asked him. “Have you heard something else of late that may endanger me or mine?”

  “Only that I have seen your strong backbone and manly courage.”

  “Manly courage?”

  “Ay. I know the heir to the Fitzgerald earldom is in hiding, but you have the heart and stomach for the fight—perhaps with words and not weapons—that you have vowed to make for the Geraldines someday.”

  I was awestruck at first. This man understood me. He saw the fallen battle banner I must resurrect. “But my brother Gerald has the dedication and courage too!” I protested, before I realized Edward might be leading up to inquiring whether I knew where Gerald was. Had all of this rescuing of me been too smooth? Had he—Ursula too—befriended me to learn Gerald’s location and plans? No, no, I could not help but believe the best of him.

  He held up a hand to halt the rest of my protest. “Back to my point. I worry that if you wed Sir Anthony, it could be your shield and buckler but your downfall too. Once you are that close to His Majesty through one of his most trusted, intimate friends, you must not think you can get away with something rash or dangerous, even if you ferret out some weakness of the king you can exploit through your connections or your allure. Promise me you will not take risks that way.”