The Irish Princess

by Karen Harper

  England’s people began to call their queen Bloody Mary for her religious persecutions and the fact that she and her Spanish husband, Prince Philip, spent much English blood on Philip’s war against France, one that my husband was forced to help fight and came out of quite the hero. But through all the things I detested Mary for, there is something for which I praised her. She permitted Gerald and Mabel, now the Earl and Countess of Kildare, to return to Ireland in the autumn of 1555. I was distraught to see them sail away without me, especially since Magheen and Collum went too, planning to live the rest of their years there. Gerald took with him the precious Red Book of Kildare, for the lists of loyalists and properties within would serve him well.

  Edward, home on a brief leave, put his arm around me as we waved their ship out of London harbor and out of sight. “I swear to you, we will go too, as soon as we can manage,” he promised.

  I wiped my tears and sighed. “I’ve been saying and praying that for over twenty years now, but it may never be. I vow, but the queen means to keep me a hostage here for Gerald’s good behavior. I must see Kildare and Maynooth again! Gerald and Mabel will need material goods and funding to rebuild and refurbish there, and I could help with that.”

  “Patience, Gera. After the queen bears this child she carries, she will be so happy she will let you go and me with you.”

  But there was no child for the queen. Twice she suffered false pregnancies as her health plummeted. Prince Philip, by then King of Spain at his father’s death, left and returned, then left again—for good. Mary’s heart as well as her health was broken, for she adored him.

  During the rest of Queen Mary’s reign, Elizabeth and I corresponded again, for we had long patched up our quarrel in the Tower. How dare a mere prisoner in the Tower argue with a visiting washerwoman?—she had recently written from her refuge at Hatfield House in the country.

  When Mabel and Gerald had been gone two years, he sent Mabel back to court to ask the queen for funds to help rebuild his lands and power base, but Mary was heeding no one then. Ill, morose over Philip’s desertion, shamed by her two false pregnancies and the loss of Calais in France, the last European foothold the English had held for years, Mary was in no mood to help the Geraldines or the Irish. But I had not given up on returning my family to leadership there, so we could help our poor people who had been ridden roughshod over. Gerald and the Irish needed not only funds but hope for the future. With no help from Queen Mary, and with Gerald’s weak position, I would have to find a way.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH

  THE NAVAL DOCKS ON THE THAMES

  April 1559

  The queen was dead, and this time, “Long live the queen!” Elizabeth of England, my friend, took the Tudor throne when Mary died of stomach tumors in November of 1558. Edward was again Lord High Admiral, and I became one of the twenty-five-year-old queen’s ladies. But still I was passionate above all else to return to Ireland, at least for a visit, for things were difficult there. In the void left by the Fitzgerald absence, other families had taken over some of our lands, people, and power.

  At last, I saw the way to help not only Elizabeth but also the Fitzgeralds. Queen Mary’s former, elderly Lord High Admiral, Lord Effingham, had not had the experience nor the stamina to chase pirates from our coasts, but Edward and his captains did. The only problem was that he was stretched too thin, building up the queen’s navy, which had been greatly ignored since King Henry’s death and which might be needed if the Spanish came calling. Meanwhile, the tricky French had to be kept appeased and literally at bay.

  So one time when my lord was at sea, along the Scottish coast aboard a new ship, and when one particular pirate dared to defy the queen’s and Privy Council’s orders to cease and desist taking French ships as personal prizes, I went down to the royal docks at Wapping to speak with Mason Haverhill, who had been ill but was now much recovered. He was aboard the Defiance, which, despite being overhauled and patched up, was beginning to show her age, but then, weren’t we all?

  “You don’t mean it!” he cried when I told him my plan and presented him with the piece of parchment signed by Elizabeth R. herself, and a second paper granting me permission to use the admiral’s old ship—the latter missive I must admit I had cobbled together myself from another document Edward had signed. Before I could answer, Master Haverhill added, “Forgive me, milady, but I almost forgot whom I was speaking to. Of course you mean it.”

  “As the Lord High Admiral’s wife?”

  “Ah, no, I mean I almost forgot I was talking to the Irish Geraldine, who has done so much for the Tudor queens and ruler of Kildare County from afar, so the admiral says.”

  “Does he now? Then let’s put out early on the morrow—and, if you don’t mind moving your things out of the captain’s cabin for me . . . The Defiance is still seaworthy, is she not?”

  “Oh, aye, milady. Seaworthy and ready as ever, only you’re not meaning to commandeer her like a pirate yourself and steer her home to Ireland, are you?”

  “No, Master Haverhill, not yet, at least. I suppose my husband warned you of that.”

  He shrugged and grinned crookedly. He’d lost weight in his illness, but his ruddy color was returning from when I’d seen him last at our London house when he had come for dinner. He actually saluted as I turned and started down the gangplank, for I had much to do—for my husband and for Ireland.

  IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL OFF PLYMOUTH HARBOR

  I knew a screaming scandal would ensue when word reached my enemies at court about my plan—perfectly legal—to use what was called the Lord High Admiral’s prerogative, that is, his power to catch and claim for himself any pirate’s prize. I kept telling myself that Edward was stretched too thin trying to catch pirate ships, so he could use my help. And the queen was especially bent on stopping Englishman Martin Frobisher, whose attacks on French ships were playing havoc with Her Majesty’s attempts to maintain peace with France. Years later, Elizabeth ignored and abetted English privateering vessels that harassed our Spanish enemies, but the time was ripe for what I dared. The only problem would be dealing with my husband, a fact I did not share with Master Haverhill, for Edward would be no doubt livid I had done this without his express permission and risked my limb and life to do so.

  I wore no hairpins, proper hood, or pretty female cowl today. My long russet hair streamed free like a Fitzgerald battle banner. Despite how it shocked Haverhill and the crew, I had donned men’s hose and trunks for climbing the ship’s rail and had thrust a matchlock pistol in my belt. This particular pirate had given Elizabeth fits for months, so she had actually signed the paper I had shown Haverhill. Despite our spats, we mutually admired each other. She knew I was up to the task.

  The Defiance bucked the channel wind and tidal current as we patrolled the coast prowling for our prey, the pirate Martin Frobisher, who was out for nothing but his own profit, and at great cost to the queen’s reputation, as if she could not control her own seamen. He had caused lawsuits and diplomatic chaos, though, God knows, no love was lost between England and France any more than between England and Spain. But the queen wanted peace with France, so I was hoping, so to speak, to kill two birds with one stone: please the queen and help gather funding for my family in Ireland.

  “Milady, you needn’t stand out in the elements,” Haverhill called to me as I stood amidships, peering into the devil-black dawn. I could barely make him out near the beakhead as the ship lumbered up and down. “I can summon you from the cap’n’s cabin if we espy them,” he assured me. “Our intelligence on Frobisher’s movements may be wrong. The sea spray will turn you to a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife.”

  That comparison perversely amused me, because she had been punished for looking back. I wanted to look not only back but forward to Ireland, and Edward had promised more than once that we would go there. If I could pull this off without getting his ship—or his wife—damaged or destroyed, he would have to plead with the queen to let us go for a visit, because
Elizabeth would owe me a favor—again.

  “Would the Lord High Admiral be huddled in his cabin now?” I scolded Haverhill, ruing my sharp tone the moment the words were out of my mouth.

  “Point taken. Aye-aye, milady!” he replied crisply, and turned away with his spyglass again, though it must do him little good in the low-lying pall of fog.

  Despite the rocking deck, I stood steadily, legs spread like a man, but with a knot in my stomach at what I dared. Overhead the sails strained, pregnant with the wind. The rigging thrummed a dissonant sound, like phantom Irish harpers tuning their strings.

  The heady feel of command coursed through me, for at last, whatever my duty to others, I finally steered the helm of my life. Surely, naught worse than what I’d survived could happen to me now.

  “There, port side, Master Haverhill!” one of the sailors aloft shouted. “Could be Frobisher’s privateer! Ay, the Gerfalcon , the Gerfalcon for a certain!”

  As I turned to squint through the thinning fog, the ship’s name echoed in my head. I heard again the Fitzgerald battle cry the day my people fought for their very lives, for Ireland’s freedom: “A Geraldine! A Geraldine! ”

  I pushed the past away and ran to the leeward rail. Our ship had cut the Gerfalcon off, taken its crew by surprise as they tried to slink into the harbor with their booty—yes, towing the bare-masted prize of a French merchantman behind them. That, I wanted too. If I took Frobisher, his booty was mine by queen’s command and Lord High Admiral’s prerogative.

  I had told Haverhill to use no deceptions, no promises of pardons or counterfeit invitations to a parley. Use the truth, lay it on the line, then fight if one must—that had always been my privy motto, for I’d seen the horror and havoc that deceits and lies could breed. So he used his voice trumpet, his tinny words echoing over the human hubbub from both vessels.

  “Halt and be boarded! In the name of the queen of England and Lord Admiral, stow sail and be boarded or be damned by firepower!”

  They began to slow; unless tricks or treachery were in store, they were ours now. Frobisher’s crew no doubt carried small firearms, but why should he order them to fight? He’d been to prison twice for privateering and had been merely fined and soon released. No Execution Dock at Wapping for him, for the queen knew raw talent and courage when she saw it, lowborn or highbred. It was what had saved me more than once.

  The Defiance thudded into the privateer’s hull; our men grappled it to us with hooks and ropes. The Lord High Admiral’s armed sailors clung to the shrouds and lined the deck for boarding the captured vessel. I was suddenly reminded of the river festival Edward had presented on the Thames for the young king, and I told myself to be careful I did not fall in.

  On both English ships, canvas flapped like cannon shots as men shortened sail. The mainsail directly over my head rattled and thundered as it sheeted home. Only then did Master Haverhill say to me, with a little bow, “If you’ll wait right here, milady, I’ll have Frobisher disarmed, bound, and brought to you.”

  “I will give him a chance to surrender first,” I told him. “I’ve seen too many fine fighting men bound and shamed. I came not only to capture the privateer, but to board it.” Holding to a rope with my free hand, I climbed lithely over both rails to the Gerfalcon’s main deck. It was easier than mounting an Irish palfrey.

  Frobisher looked exactly as he’d been described to me, brawny and a bit wild. With size, swagger, and stance, he dominated the men around him. At least he’d had the sense to sheathe his sword, and I saw he and his crew had put their pistols on the deck.

  “You! You, here?” He gasped and pointed rudely as I faced him down, hands on my hips. He glared at me. When I did not so much as blink—such disarming stares from the queen oft made someone blurt out his guilt—he plunged on: “Oh, for a moment, I thought it was the queen herself, but I know who you are. Had it not been an admiralty ship, I would have fought to the last man,” he boasted, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back cockily on his heels.

  “You are an unlicensed privateer and freebooter, Master Martin Frobisher,” I accused in my strongest voice, intentionally not addressing him as captain. “After being twice warned by the crown to cease and desist, you are yet causing discord with the sovereign nation of France, which endangers English royal policy. I arrest you in the name of the Lord High Admiral, the council, and the queen.”

  “I have papers—a license—a commission to capture French prizes,” he protested. “The Frenchies are the ones up to no good, not me.”

  “I expected you to cobble up an excuse. A license signed by whom?” I demanded, my dander up now at his thinking he could hoodwink a woman—although one who had forged a paper of her own but yesterday. “Your blackguard first mate? A tosspot in a tavern? Some poor doxy from the Plymouth stews?” I shouted.

  “In faith, you’re wide of the mark. ’Tis a pass signed by a Huguenot leader,” he blustered, knowing full well, I warrant, that he had not one sea leg to stand on.

  “Didn’t you learn your lesson from being captured and imprisoned twice before?” I goaded. I could tell he wanted to insult me in return. At least now that Elizabeth ruled England, no one dared say—to my face, at least—that I was but a feeble female, a fallen Fitzgerald, or an untamed shrew. I was full thirty-six years of age and had swallowed a bellyful of such taunts, though I reckon my fair face and fair sex had saved me once or twice.

  “Martin Frobisher, you are my prisoner, and your ship and the captured merchantman are forfeit,” I declared as my ship’s crew cheered and whistled as if I’d doubled their wages.

  “You’re all privateers too!” Frobisher railed as our men seized him. His face went red as a Kildare pippin; veins stood out on his temple, and spittle flecked his lips. I’d been warned he had a temper by someone who had never seen an Irish temper. “Poxy legal privateers you are, too, that’s all!” he ranted. “You and the queen, peas in a pod, two clever, flame-haired freebooters; I don’t give a fig if you wear masculine garb and sport a pistol today! Unwomanly, brash, and brazen, both of you—and you an Irish wench at that, and they’re pirates to the core and—”

  “I shall be certain,” I outshouted him, “to tell Her Majesty that she has been wrong—wrong to not send you to Execution Dock instead of England’s jails, which you all too soon buy or bribe your way out of, you flap-mouth, base-court cur!”

  I slapped his face and boxed his ears. He tried to kick at me, but two of our men pulled him back. When I nodded, they dragged him toward our vessel to be kept secured. A moment of shocked silence followed from both crews. I stood stunned too. I had actually arrested and struck a man who had defied Tudor might, for doing the very thing that had been my passion for years.

  “Now, won’t that be something to tell the Lord High Admiral when he returns from Scotland!” Haverhill broke the silence. With a gap-toothed grin, he displayed a bottle of wine and a bolt of cloth. As his men hustled back to work, securing our captured vessel and its crew, he made a little bow. He flapped open and draped a length of robin’s-egg blue velvet over my shoulders like a royal robe.

  “I take it your men have already surveyed Frobisher’s booty in the hold of my formerly French ship?” I asked. With a flourish, I flung the end of the velvet up and around my shoulders. At the very least, it was a heady feeling to win for once, to be the one giving instead of taking orders.

  “Silks too,” he assured me, “and ginger and nutmeg, by the smell of the hold, milady. Crates of wine, not even in barrels, all of it in glass bottles, can you believe? And it’s all yours, since you stand today in the stead of the Lord High Admiral for his rightful perquisites and in high favor with the queen—so’s I hear, that is.”

  “You heard true, Captain, but one never knows which way the wind blows with Her Majesty. That bottle and more are yours, for your fine service, but not until we have all three ships safely in the Thames. The queen, of course, must have Frobisher’s privateer ship for her navy. His crew you may rele
ase later, if they are willing to sign onto legally licensed vessels, but the captured French one is mine.”

  I didn’t say so, but much of the wine and the sumptuous French fabrics was not destined for London but for Ireland, or at least the profits from their sales were. And my ship, the captured French prize, I would rename the Pride of Kildare, and sail her home with Edward someday soon.

  DUBLIN HARBOR

  May 6, 1559

  When I had sailed away from Ireland twenty-four years ago, I had met Edward Clinton on the ship. And today, going home, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, steering my own ship, the Pride of Kildare. We were laden with money and goods to help rebuild Maynooth and help the Irish recover from years of persecution. I was laden, as Surrey had once put it, In ship, freight with remembrance. Of thoughts and pleasures past . . . And of so much grief and pain. But not today. Today was just for joy.

  Our puppy, Erin, was full-grown now, pacing on deck as if she were excited to be back too. Alice and Margaret had come along, but they were still belowdecks. Dawn was barely breaking, and we’d made better time than we’d expected. Though I’d gone to bed for a few hours, I had hardly slept at all. Now Edward moved to stand behind me, his hands over mine on the spokes of the great wheel as we guided the ship together into the crowded harbor.