by Karen Harper
“Scotland?” I asked. “France or even Ireland?”
“We’re keeping this all in the realm of allegory,” he told me. He touched my arm, sending a tingle up it as if I were some green girl who had never been wedded and bedded. “You’ll both recite some high-flying rhetoric, which the king loves, the sort that would have made the Earl of Surrey proud. It will be such a fine show that I have my two sons here for it—wait until you see how little Henry, whom you bounced once on your knee, has grown. He’s thirteen now and his brother Edward is eight, but the two girls and young Thomas are home tending their mother. . . .”
Cold reality smacked me in the face. Edward had two sons here in London. He had five children by Ursula to add to his three daughters by his first wife. And I . . . I was barren and would always be bereft for my losses.
I blinked back tears as he told us more about the performance of the so-called water nymphs, but I remember naught else about his visit that day but that I adored him, much to my shame and peril, and he belonged to everyone but me.
“Gera, you look strange.” Mabel’s voice interrupted my agonizing as we waited for our cue to caper out from behind the curtain to begin the pageant. I was quite certain I had picked out Edward’s two boys, seated in the crowd directly behind the king. All five of Dudley’s healthy sons were also in that second row. “Are you quite all right?” she asked. “Are you ready to go on?”
“Yes,” I told her, told myself too, “I am ready to go on.” I took her hand for our entry at the edge of the dock, where the king and his court were assembled under a golden canopy. I kept glancing at Edward’s Defiance approaching on the Thames to take on the other ship.
In our pure white satin gowns trimmed with golden ribbons with long, trailing trains and with our hair flying free, the two of us flitted out before the assembled king and court and began to speak our piece. Wishing Elizabeth or even Princess Mary were here—but seeing Dudley in the front row right next to the king—I began my lines first, gesturing grandly:On the bright, broad Thames, see the vessel of the king.
Who shall dare attack it, for the Lord High God will bring
Victory to England, peace and bounty to our land.
But now, we view in battle the power of royal command.
Mabel began her four lines as the brisk breeze flipped our tresses in our faces and flapped our skirts almost as smartly as the battle banners above the king’s pavilion. He smiled and clapped, even cutting off Mabel’s last words. Dudley dared to wink at me as if we were in collusion for something.
Behind us, as we scurried out of the way, both ships—the Defiance, all bedecked with Tudor bunting and banners, and a smaller ship—came closer to each other in the curve of the river. Sailors aloft in ratlines or clinging to furled shrouds began to gesture and shout at one another. “For England and Saint George! For England and King Edward!” echoed across the stretch of river. Cannon shots boomed and echoed as cannonballs flopped in the river with great white splashes.
As Mabel and I darted off, out of the observers’ line of view, I turned to look at the Defiance. What a lovely, exciting time I had enjoyed on it. Pure show though all this was, I delighted to see Edward standing near the prow with sword upraised as if to spur the royal sailors onward. The two ships began to pass with a great fray and two more cannon blasts. As they barely missed each other, men leaped from deck to deck, fighting with clanging swords or in mock hand-to-hand battles as some sailors grappled the two ships tight. My eyes stayed on Edward, all clad in Tudor green, as he began a sword fight with the black-clad captain of the other ship. And then it happened.
I tripped on my train, tumbled off the dock, and fell bum-first into the Thames with a splash equal to that from a cannonball. I heard Mabel shriek just before the cold water smacked me, and I went under, all wrapped in strangling skirts and train. I did not know how to swim but shoved the sodden satin away and instinctively clawed upward through the roiling current.
I choked and sputtered as my head broke the surface, unable to kick, but flailing hard to stay afloat. I heard voices—shouts as I was dragged away by the river current. I bumped into a dock post, slippery and slimy, though it was at low tide, and clung. I held on for my very life.
“Rope! Ropes or a ladder!” someone shouted from above, followed by a huge splash near me. Had they thrown down a ladder?
No, a man had jumped in feetfirst. Despite the water and hair in my eyes and my frenzy to keep my head up, I recalled Edward’s note, Keep your head up, Irish. How I wished my rescuer would be him, but I knew it could not be.
John Dudley surfaced near me with a huge gasp for air. With two powerful strokes, he swam over and seized both the dock post and me. “Must you always . . . be so much . . . trouble?” he demanded as two ropes made of fine, twisted Tudor bunting dropped next to us, then a third. “Hell’s gates, girl—don’t struggle. I’ve wanted to tell you all along that . . . you and I can help each other . . . if you just don’t . . . fight me!”
He was the last man on earth I wanted to touch me or help me, but I had no choice. And I heard what he said, though I had no breath to answer. I warranted I looked like a drowned cat when I was ignominiously pulled up and applauded by the king and court—or perhaps Dudley’s rescue of me was. So I made a mess of things that day. The incident enhanced Dudley’s reputation as hero and savior. And, sadly, a Fitzgerald once again became the talk of the court instead of Sir Edward Clinton, Lord High Admiral, for the water festival he had worked so very hard on.
Back in our chambers in the palace, Mabel insisted I go to bed to get warm, but she soon shocked me by bringing Edward Clinton right into my bedroom when he came to see me, and then, though she left the door open, she went out into the other room.
“Gera, are you all right?” he asked, bending to take my hand, then perching on the side of the bed, which sagged under his weight and almost toppled me into him. “I saw what happened, but couldn’t get in to help.”
“To help me again, you mean, as you have before. But, from where you were, you saw me fall? You were fighting that other captain.”
“I should have been, as I was to be the victor,” he told me, looking a bit sheepish as he loosed my hand and rolled up his sleeve to show me a black-and-blue mark on his wrist. “I had Mason Haverhill cast as the villain, and we’d practiced our duel. But I should not have been trying to watch a water nymph—which hardly fit the tenor of a military battle, anyway, but which I added to the plans just to see you—and then you turned into a mermaid, fortunately one Warwick rescued.”
“He did. I actually thanked him.”
“So he told me. He rather thought it was some sort of victory.”
“But you added our parts just to get me here to court?”
“Guilty. Of that and much more. Mermaids oft lure sailors to their destruction, you know.”
“I am so sorry I made a mess of things.”
“You did, but what is new about that?” he asked with a sigh. “That’s what I expect from my Geraldine, but she’s still worth the cost.”
He was regarding me so intently I began to blush. I’d been freezing since I fell in that river, but I felt warm now. “I thank you too for putting up with a bitter woman all these years,” I added.
“Bitter—not you. The taste you leave in my mouth is of spice, which I quite favor over sugar.” I could tell he wanted to seize me, and here I lay in bed with him so close.
“But . . .” he said, shaking his head and frowning as his voice trailed off.
“But you need to take your sons and head home to tend your ill wife.”
“Yes.”
“Dudley—I mean Warwick—told me. You must take care of her. I did see your sons—very handsome. Your heir looks a good deal like you, and the other boy more like your wife.”
As if for the first time he realized he sat on my bed, he stood suddenly. “They say, Gera—that is, Warwick says—your brother Gerald will be guaranteed safe passage home soon, since the in
vitation to return was evidently not enough for him, or someone he harkens to, who must not trust Warwick and the council—on which I sit too, remember. If I can—if I don’t have family commitments—I will try to see that Gerald stays safe. I will hold the Privy Council to it.”
“I would be so grateful. You have risen far, Edward, perhaps as far as I fell today. Oh, I pray that wasn’t a prophecy or warning for the Fitzgeralds’ future, not after what we’ve all been through!”
He nodded and started to say something else, but then just bit his lower lip for a moment. He had crossed his arms and thrust his fists under his armpits as if to keep his hands controlled. But the intensity of his gaze made me feel he could see through my covers, as if he ripped them from me and touched me everywhere.
“Take a care not only for your brother but for yourself too, Irish,” he said, and suddenly uncrossed his arms and bent to tip my face up for a kiss—quick, strong. “And don’t do something foolish, like confront Warwick or the king—or marry in haste.”
“As the princess Elizabeth and Jane Grey always say, I shall not wed.”
“There are negotiations going on right now to marry the princess Elizabeth to a foreign prince, and Jane Grey may well wed one of Warwick’s sons, so that’s the way of it. Arranged marriages for them when the other sort would be so much more agreeable . . . enjoyable . . . worth waiting for.”
He turned away abruptly and strode for the door. I meant to tell him I would pray for his wife, but he was gone in a trice without looking back.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, my mother used to say. In the autumn of 1551, nearly a year after my infamous swim in the Thames before the king’s court, so much was given and taken.
In September of 1551, I was stunned to hear that Ursula Clinton had died of her lung malady. I sent Edward a condolence note by messenger to Westminster, where the Privy Council most often met, but I heard nothing in return.
I should not have been surprised to hear that the king had given the Earl of Warwick the vaunted title of Duke of Northumberland, one of the highest peerage positions in the land. King Henry’s death had spared the life of Surrey’s father, the Duke of Norfolk, but he was wasting away in the Tower. The last of the Seymour brothers was dishonored and no longer Lord Protector, so Dudley was now the most important power in the realm, with great influence over the young king. At last I came to realize I might have to deal with the devil Dudley, because the Lord gave me a miracle at last: My brother Gerald was coming home.
We received word from France that he would be sailing to England and, thanks to Dudley, alias Northumberland, I was permitted to come to London to greet Gerald when he landed at Deptford, where the water pageant had been staged.
Of course, I took Magheen. I invited Cecily but she was in childbed; my other brother, Edward, was on duty for the Greys nearly on the Scottish border; Margaret didn’t want to go out into public “with all those big people” she didn’t know, she signaled to me with a flurry of hand gestures. So Mabel went with Magheen and me. We stayed with Mabel’s friends in town, then went down to the royal docks at Deptford on a sunny, warm-for-November day in 1551.
We had been told the name of the ship we were awaiting was the Goodspeed. I regretted it was not the Lord High Admiral’s Defiance, but I vowed to let nothing ruin this triumphant day. My family was still under an Act of Attainder, and Gerald might not be recognized as an earl, but once we were together we would find our way back to prominence in Ireland!
At last, as they say, my ship came in. With its sails all furled, but for on the mainmast, it picked its way through smaller traffic in the busy Thames and put in at the dock, where we women awaited while our guards and horses were back on the bustling wharf. The Goodspeed was bigger and bulkier than the Defiance and boasted a figurehead that looked like an etching I’d seen of Aeolus, Roman god of the winds, with his hair and robes blown back.
My eyes skimmed the railing for a man who could be Gerald, sixteen years away, sixteen years more grown. Magheen began to screech and jump up and down. Yes, yes, I saw Collum, leaning over, waving madly. Why, he had gray hair and looked a bit stooped, and he was finely dressed. And that tall young man beside him. Of course—it was Gerald, smiling, pointing at us. I was so overwhelmed at first, no words would come.
“Welcome, welcome to England!” Mabel called out as the ship bumped the dock and sailors swarmed down ratlines.
Gerald leaned over the railing, smiling at me—or was it at Mabel? No matter. I shouted up my greetings to him in Irish, and he yelled right back in the best brogue I had heard in years, calling me, “Gerabeth! Gerabeth!” to which I answered, “A Geraldine! A Geraldine!”
I began to cry. Chains rattled, the gangplank slammed down, and we rushed up it. Gerald hugged me so hard I thought my ribs would break. He spun me about as Collum and Magheen huddled together, arms entwined amid the bustle of the crew securing the ship. My brother’s face was no longer thin, but angular. He sported a small beard. And his voice was so low, a man’s voice—well, of course it was, I told myself.
“Oh, Gerald, now we’ll be able to fight for Ireland together!” I cried when he set me down.
“But carefully, warily. I must make allies here besides my own family, dear Gerabeth!”
My eyes teared up again to hear the pet name he and Father had called me by when we were young. I introduced Gerald to Mabel, who was blushing madly as he looked her over. So there we stood, Magheen and her beloved, loyal Collum; Gerald, who could not take his eyes off Mabel and she him; and I, suddenly, strangely alone for one moment amidst the ado of the crew setting things to rights.
Alone, that is, until I saw the man striding toward us on the deck, whose gaze snagged mine and burned into me to, as ever, make me feel I was at sea with racing, rocking waves shaking me to my very core, my hair and gown blown back with abandon like the figurehead of the ship.
“I did not expect . . . expect you to be here,” I said as Edward Clinton took my hand and raised it to his lips for a long kiss.
“This vessel had to do, as the Defiance needed a bit of patching up.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Gera, when I heard your brother was to be brought here from France, I pulled rank and brought him home myself. I knew how much it could mean to you and your Ireland.”
“I am sorry to hear about Ursula, that the children lost their mother.”
“Thank you. My two oldest boys are in the service of Northumberland’s household, and the others are with my cousins at Kyme Castle.”
“Is your new Sempringham Manor not finished?”
“It is, but I thought it best not to move Ursula or the children there from Kyme. I wanted Sempringham to . . . to start over.”
“To start over,” I repeated as if I were a parrot.
“It seems everyone out here is momentarily distracted,” he said. “Would you have a glass of wine in my cabin, and then we’ll pour for everyone and have a toast to a fine future?”
I nodded, and we turned away.
“Gerabeth,” Gerald called to me as I started down the steps into the companionway, “why did you not tell me that England has maids far fairer than those in France and our Ireland?”
“Because,” I called back over my shoulder, “I wanted you to come back and meet my dear friend for yourself.”
“I could have told him just the opposite,” Edward said below in the dim companionway as he pushed his cabin door ajar. “However beautiful and alluring English maids are, there’s nothing like an Irish rebel lass—if you’re game for high adventure.” His voice was raspy; he seemed suddenly out of breath.
He closed the door to his small captain’s cabin behind us, and I was instantly in his arms, crushed in his embrace, our mouths moving together, drinking each other in. I know not which one of us had moved first to the wild embrace and kisses and explosion from years of longing, our own reunion. I only know it was as inevitable as it was impossible, the Irish Geraldine girl and
the English lord, the man I had met the very day I’d left my Ireland.
But now there was no past, almost no future. Only the now as Edward and I leaned against his cabin wall, pressing together. I could not breathe, did not want to breathe apart from him ever again. Linking my arms around his neck while he grappled me to him with hard hands on my waist and bottom, I returned his wild, deep kisses, until his mouth roamed lower, trailing fire down my throat. He pulled the ties of my cape awry and kissed and licked the dark hollows between my breasts, tugging one of my sleeves off my shoulder as if he would undress me there. My skirts flattened out between his body and the wall. As he nipped at my bared shoulder, his knee thrust between my legs nearly lifted me from my feet. If he had claimed me there, standing, I would have welcomed it.
“This—and more—is what I’ve always wanted from you,” he said in a gasp as he looked dazedly into my eyes, my head thrown back against the wall, my hair tumbling loose. “But I want to savor every moment of our first time—in a bed, not in a rush, not when we have guests hovering. We have to . . . to both keep our heads—Damn, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
“I adore you,” was all I could manage in the whirl of my desires.
“That’s all I need to know—for now,” he rasped, still panting, and looking as flushed as I felt.
“For now,” I whispered, reaching out to smooth his hair I had mussed. For the first time in all the years I’d been in England, in a strange way, I almost felt I had come home.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH
Edward escorted Mabel and me back to Byfleet, for Gerald was to reside in quarters in London that Dudley had arranged for him. I was grieved Gerald was not staying in the palace, where he might have access to the king and his council, but was relieved he was not assigned to Dudley’s household. I also was thrilled to hear that the deed of Maynooth was restored to Gerald, though he was not to go there and did not have his title returned—yet.
