The Irish Princess

by Karen Harper

  His old self, I thought. That was the self I must censure and attack and make pay. Meanwhile, like anyone given leave to enter the royal rooms, Dudley quickly divested himself of his sword and dagger, placing them on a long table in the hall that held several others. Anthony squeezed my shoulder and kissed my cheek, then motioned to the guards to open the doors again before he led Dudley inside.

  Garments rustled and whispers hissed as the onlookers shifted their attention back to the double doors again. Several of the same people had approached me earlier, hoping I would speak to my husband to arrange admittance to the king for them. Now no one looked my way. Although I had been a part of the Tudor courts for years, I was yet viewed as something of an outsider.

  As a new thought struck me, I lingered for a moment near the array of weapons, including my own husband’s. I had decided against poisoning the king, for I knew naught of such and would have to trust someone else to obtain some. I planned to use a dagger to stab him or cut his throat, then leave it in the king’s own hand, as if he had decided to take his own life, burdened, broken, unable to suffer more. But, lest someone decided to investigate, unable to accept that the king would imperil his soul by suicide—when, in truth, as far as I could see, he had burdened his soul with sins his entire brutal life—I would take Dudley’s dagger and use that.

  In one quick move, I seized Dudley’s fine, shiny dagger clearly marked with the inscription Lord High Admiral, hid it in the folds of my skirt, and strolled away.

  As if my confrontation with Dudley weren’t enough to stoke my courage, hearing sections of the king’s will that day urged me on too. “The crown and the realms of England, Ireland, and the title of France will go directly to Prince Edward—you understand that, of course,” Anthony explained to me as he hurriedly changed clothes in our chambers without summoning his tiring servant. Before I could say aught, he added, “I know you had hopes for an independent Ireland, dearest, but it’s best for it to be under the English ruler’s aegis ad aeternam. As for the throne, only in default will it go to Mary and her heirs, or lastly be settled upon Elizabeth.”

  He was in a rush to return to the king’s side. Though he had said the monarch hardly slept for long, still plunging from alert periods to strange, waking dreams, my lord was exhausted and on edge too. Yet I think he was bolstered by his own self-importance to be so near and dear to the king.

  “The navy now numbers nearly seventy ships, and is in good hands under the Earl of Warwick as Lord High Admiral, as well as others, sea captains like Thomas Seymour—and others,” he repeated, evidently, I thought, so he did not have to use Edward Clinton’s name. “And I,” he said, thrusting out his chest as I helped him don his padded velvet doublet, “am a beneficiary in the will, to inherit three hundred pounds, which I shall use to build myself a fine tomb at Battle Abbey. The king has great plans and designs for his own resting place at Windsor next to Queen Jane. Queen Jane, Queen Jane—when he plunges into one of his non compos mentis stages, he continues to speak to her as if she were alive, the only wife he’s ever deeply loved; he raves on and on.”

  “I cannot believe he did not once feel deeply for the other wives he so brutally set aside,” I argued. “He surely loved Catherine of Aragon in his youth, and Anne Boleyn too, to wait all those years to wed her, to ruin the holy houses and break with the pope. Anne of Cleves was a mistake and poor Cat Howard a disaster, but our current queen has been a loving nurse and loyal helpmeet to him.”

  “The thing is,” he went on, “it’s long been treason to predict or so much as speak of the sovereign’s death, but Anthony Denny plans to broach it to him soon, mayhap on the morrow. He must prepare himself, call in Bishop Cranmer for the last rites. It would be a horror for our liege lord to die unshriven.”

  My husband shuddered as he spoke a torrent of words. I wondered if he saw his future fate in the king’s present predicament. Despite his self-importance, he seemed shattered by his friend’s approaching death. I felt so much the opposite that I had to keep my mouth—mostly—shut.

  “His Majesty can’t even sign his name to documents now,” Anthony went on, “and there are a raft of them. We use the dry stamp, which impresses his signature on the parchment, then is inked in and witnessed by as many of us are in the room.”

  How, I thought, I’d love to get my Irish hands on that dry stamp, on his will in general, and free Ireland from English rule, ad aeternam, as Anthony had put it.

  “Well, I must go back to him, my dear. He wants peace and quiet—only one man at a time before he sleeps this evening, and we’ve even moved him to his back rooms, where he’s retreated for years when he wants to really be alone.”

  “As if,” I whispered, half to myself, “death could not find him there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. My woman’s whims are of no account when it comes to the import of your service at this extraordinary time.”

  “Just so. I shall be off then, for I must ask if His Grace meant to leave Bishop Gardiner out of the will. Oh, so many details, so many requests. After all, Gardiner performed the marriage service for the king and queen. I’m sure His Majesty will reinstate him. I don’t see why it always has to be Bishop Cranmer he turns to, except that Cranmer’s been ever willing to go along with any shift in the royal winds. He is still at his house at Croydon, not allowed to so much as come to the palace yet to give the last rites.”

  He pecked a kiss on my cheek and was out the door. When he returned, I knew he would fall into a deep sleep, but I could not even spare the time to wait for that. I wrote him a note saying I had gone out for a walk in the winter gardens. I did that whatever the weather, just to escape the suffocating feel of this place. But I would be waiting on the other side of the secret door to the king’s back bedchamber, listening for when he was alone and all was silent. In their pride of being the king’s closest friends, neither Anthony nor the king’s other cronies had used the secret door lately, but always the public one. I guessed that few others even knew of the back way in, and Anthony had no notion I was aware of it and had once been inside the royal inner sanctum.

  I gripped my hands together and pressed them to my lips with my eyes tight shut to steel myself for what was to come. After years of longing for justice and revenge for the Fitzgeralds and Ireland, it was finally time to risk all, to risk my very life. I had no children to leave motherless. Even if I were discovered and arrested for regicide, Anthony would be protected by his position. I had my sister Cecily’s promise that she would take Margaret and Magheen into her and her husband’s household should anything happen to me, a vow she’d made when my life was nearly lost during my first son’s birth. Dear Mabel would have to do without me, and my brother find a way to return to Ireland on his own.

  I could bear up to it if I were caught, I told myself. I would speak out for Ireland and the Fitzgeralds much as Surrey had defended his own cause so eloquently at his trial. If I must, I could die the way he would on the morrow, the way my uncles had. I could face the Tower, that very place my father had passed from this world. And Edward . . . My regrets would go no further. He was far away and would not warn or rescue or stop me this time from doing what I must. But how I would have loved to see him and Ireland again.

  I pulled a shawl of finest lawn from my coffer and laid Dudley’s dagger in a pocket I had sewn for my own weapon. I wrapped the shawl around me, then over that my warmer furred one. I sniffed hard and shook my head to cast off self-pity and stepped out into our withdrawing room. I had told Magheen and Alice I intended to wait up alone for my lord this night. I could carry no candle, no lantern. Surely there would be a light in the king’s bedchamber at the end of the dark passage.

  But I was barely two steps from our chamber door when Anthony came running toward me. “He snapped at me to get out!” he cried, and pulled me back into our rooms. Tears tracked clear down to his trembling jowls. “He told me, ‘Hold your peace!’ He said, ‘I remembered Bishop Gardiner well eno
ugh and of good purpose left him out my will for his lately troublesome nature.’ Oh, I am undone! What if His Grace never summons me again, after all these years as boon companions? What if he cuts me out of his will and the elaborate plans for his state funeral too?”

  “Be calm, my lord,” I urged as he closed the door behind us and began to pace. “He knows of your friendship and good service to the crown. He sounds astute—in his own mind tonight.”

  “He yet comes and goes, but I was appalled. I . . . I am so exhausted.”

  “You must rest. You said the next day he oft forgets what came before. All will be well if you just get some rest yourself, my lord.”

  I coerced him to lie down and, despite his agitated state, he was soon snoring. I left the note to him that he had not seen and tiptoed out again. It was barely dusk: It seemed we all lost track of hours and days, waiting for the king to die. This was Surrey’s last night on earth, hopefully the king’s too.

  I hurried down the silent, darkening corridor and turned into the narrow servants’ hall. I put my ear to the panel entrance but heard no voice, no movement, so I pushed it inward. Silence. I gathered my skirts close and stepped into its dark depths, closing the panel behind.

  The air in the passage was stale, so it must not have been used recently. It was black as the pit of hell, my fearful flight from besieged Maynooth as a child all over again. But no Magheen this time, no salvation by boat at the end of the tunnel.

  A cobweb wove itself across my sweating face and snagged in my eyelashes. No matter if I kept my eyes open or closed, it was the same deep darkness.

  I went slower, one hand along the wooden wall, one out ahead so I would not bump into the door at the end. A sliver jabbed into my finger, but I ignored it. My hand touched the door.

  I froze, straining to hear. Yes, some strange sound on the other side, like a rhythmic hissing. I pictured a fat, coiled serpent within, the king of England I had so long detested. Snoring—that was it. He slept.

  I pictured the arrangement of the two rooms I had walked through nearly three years ago, the shadows, the silence. Not silent now. As I pushed the panel inward but a crack, I saw wan light, though it nearly blinded me at first. If I were caught inside, I had a new plan, an excuse: My lord was so distressed that the king had scolded him over Bishop Gardiner that I had come in the back way to beg that my husband be forgiven.

  As I took a silent step into the king’s bedchamber, I felt the cold tip of Dudley’s dagger prick my elbow. Truth be told, I had come to kill the king for my people and my country, and for all those he had foully murdered while claiming to be the savior of his people. But if my other enemy’s dagger did the deed and was discovered, let John Dudley suffer for it.

  I moved silently, giving my eyes time to adjust, though there was little enough to bump into but the bed, which dwarfed everything. Finally, I saw that an ornate, lighted lantern stood on a small table across the room. I felt I’d opened a long-sealed tomb: No air stirred, and the stench of the king’s abscessed leg, the very smell of death, sat heavy here.

  He had gone quiet now. What if he were dead already? It would not be enough if he escaped me after all this time! But no, though the snoring had ceased, a sharp rasping for breath resounded from the big, curtained bed. Had he hidden out here like a wounded animal, or was he ashamed to let others see him as he was? Did he really want to cleanse his soul and risk dying alone? Ah, well, a little voice in my head seemed to say, at the end, cobbler or king, we all must die alone.

  Though I knew the king was hard of hearing and curtains closed off most of the huge oaken bedstead, I tiptoed into the small adjoining room to be certain no servant or guard slept there. No one. Just shadows, like dark ghosts from Henry Tudor’s past and mine, those who had been murdered, those who needed justice, even from the grave.

  A single, fat candle burned on the small table here, illumining a short stack of parchment. The candle diffused the sweet scent of expensive ambergris and threw flickering light on the rows of rich parchment-and-leather-scented books shelved on all four walls. Hoping no one would wonder how the obese, crippled king could rise from his bed to lock the door to his more public chambers, I went to it, listened with my ear to the ornately carved and gilded wood, then twisted the key in the lock.

  As I passed the table again, I bent to look at the documents lying there and gasped. In fine script, the king’s will! How I longed to burn it all, at least the parts about the Tudor heirs being bequeathed my Ireland. I pushed the papers aside to get to the back of the document. He had signed it already, or, at least, it had been impressed with what Anthony had called the dry stamp and someone had inked it in.

  I could barely keep myself from taking out the dagger and slashing the king’s precious will into pieces. Instead, I fished out Dudley’s dagger and, as carefully as I could, cut off the bottom inch of the last page that bore the signature. Let them think the king had done that before he did away with himself.

  I bent to stuff the narrow piece of parchment in my shoe, where it crinkled in protest. A thought hit me then with stunning force: Should I be taken and executed, no one would ever know my reasons, my story, my legacy. I should have made a will, or at least a recording of my life’s events. If I survived the day and the king was buried, I would not let my life and loves and reasons for my deeds be buried too. I would write my story.

  I restacked the papers, tamping them into place. Keeping the dagger out, I trod as quietly as I could back into the bedchamber.

  The king was breathing easier now. I took off my heavy outer shawl and tied it around my waist, lest I would need to flee, for I must leave nothing behind that could be traced. I unwrapped the thin lawn shawl with its pocket now empty of the dagger, for I gripped the steel handle, warm from my own body heat. I pulled the gauzy material of the shawl over my head like a scarf, again in case I must flee, so I would leave naught behind but the dagger and the king’s corpse.

  The bed was not only huge but high. At least it had a three-step mounting stair, which the king, no doubt, or those who lifted him up, had needed. I stepped on the first step and knelt upon the third. I hoped to wake the king, so he knew why he would die. But if he called out for help, would his voice carry clear to his guards or to someone who might be just beyond in his formal bedchamber? Was this gigantic but ill man yet strong enough to stop me? Should I try to gag or bind him with my shawl?

  I parted the bed curtains so I could see within. At first, I thought I saw only a pile of pillows, but the king was propped upon them. I cleared my throat to see if he would move or react. Now or never, I told myself. Let him die in peace, some would say, but I would never have peace that way. Silently, I heard the shouted, futile, but bold words, A Geraldine! A Geraldine!

  I knelt upon the mattress, dragging my skirts and the shawl around my waist. I crawled closer, my fingers gripping the dagger handle so hard that my entire frame shook as I began to lift it. Granted, the smells made me want to flee—his infected leg, sweat, urine, the very scent of death. Anthony had whispered that his skin was turning yellow as old parchment with inner poisons, but all was shades of gray shadows here.

  I held my breath and positioned myself to strike. Then a voice, soft, wheezing, said from the depths of the black bed and the huge, fleshy frame, “You’ve come to bed at last, my dearest love, my angel.”

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

  In the depths of the royal bed, a huge, familiar hand clamped my wrist and yanked me close. “Jane, my dear wife, Jane,” the king whispered.

  I went icy cold. The dagger, clasped in my hand, was trapped near my rib cage, under his huge arm. For a dying man, his grip on my other wrist seemed as strong as it had that night at the gaming table. If I could just free my right hand . . . I must strike now and be away. They said his lucid moments came and went—or what if someone heard him wailing and broke down the locked door to come in? What if, in the morning, he reasoned out who his Jane really was?

  I knew my coloring
was somewhat similar to Queen Jane’s, but he was clearly delusional in one of what Anthony had called the king’s non compos mentis states. My lawn shawl had fallen forward over my face, so I peered at him through a scrim. If he thought I was his dead queen Jane Seymour, perhaps that made him think I was an angel or apparition.

  “I don’t want to die, my love,” he went on, sniveling like a child, “but I want to be with you in heaven.”

  Despite his hallucination, he thought I was a ghost, so he was not in the past but in the here and now to realize Jane was dead.

  “You gave me my son,” he whispered, “and he will rule after me, but I don’t want to die. I’m the king and I don’t want to die-eeee. . . .”

  “Sh!” I crooned. “Hush now, husband.”

  “Jane, my love, I know I’ve changed since you left me, gained much weight. I’ve become a glutton since your death—my only sin, but for lusts of the eye.”

  Was that what the king believed and would claim to his confessor on his deathbed? He thought his only sins were gluttony and ogling women! My hand cramped around the dagger, but I fought to calm myself, to say what I must.

  “Everyone must die, my lord. But I know you must have many regrets besides losing me.”

  Drawing out my words, I spoke in a hushed, wispy voice, hoping no hint of my crisp Irish brogue slipped in. I could not believe my daring, but I had naught to lose, snared against him like this. I must talk my way free and finish my deed.

  Then a new thought struck me. After all, I wanted this man to suffer for what he had done to my people—to his own people. If I simply stabbed him, it would be over, brutally, though he was dying anyway. But what if he thought his angel Jane had come to prepare him for hell? Torment in the time he had left was better justice than a quick, if bloody, death.