The Faithful Heart

by MacMurrough, Sorcha

  Morgana drew back abruptly, and finished cutting her father’s hair. “We shall see, Father,” she said quietly, and then left him while she went to her own room to fix her clothing before her friends arrived.

  After a hasty wash, she put on a royal blue tunic with matching hose, and hung her sword around her waist again.

  Then Morgana went to the study, and began to try to make sense of the entries in the accounts book. For many months there were no figures at all, so she went to consult her father.

  “I do not wish to pry, Father, but I will really need some idea of what wealth we have contained in your old strongbox.”

  “There’s nothing left, nothing at all,” her father replied sadly.

  “You mean that apart from the things under this roof, we have nothing?” Morgana gaped.

  “Bluntly put, but essentially correct. No harvest, no calves, hardly any lambs, so no food or hides or leather goods, no winter stores, and no wool. Moreover, nothing worth trading,” Morgan summed up succinctly.

  Morgana was thunderstruck. They had always been so prosperous. To be nearly destitute in less than two years was nearly unthinkable.

  But she glanced at her father’s crestfallen face, and knew it was pointless to either chide him or ask any further questions. At least she had the treasure and money, and would also have the proceeds of all the household luxuries she had sent to Armagh with Sean for food and supplies. She would just have to manage somehow.

  “Well, in that case,” Morgana said with a reassuring smile, “I shall start a whole fresh page. I will do an inventory of all we have in the house, and all in the storage rooms and outbuildings. When Ronan comes with the money he has minted for us, we will pay him, and then make entries for those things in our book.”

  “I must say you're taking all of this very well. Aren’t you angry with me for being a foolish old man?” Morgan asked ruefully.

  Morgana shrugged. “Two years ago I was a foolish young woman, Father. Time has passed, things have changed. We can’t look back, we can only look to the future.”

  Kissing her father on the brow, she left the room, and started her inventory on the upper floor of the house.

  She recorded every piece of furniture, every cushion, every sheet. She was just finishing the second floor when she heard a shout to signal that Ronan’s ship was approaching the jetty.

  Morgana lifted the skirts of her gown high as she skipped lightly down the stairs to greet Ronan and Niamh. She was delighted to see the carts laden with vegetables and grain and farming implements and seed being rolled off onto the dock. She even saw a new millstone and a bull also.

  “Owen!” she called to her friend, who had come out of the stables to see what the commotion was all about. “Ring the belland show everyone in the village what has arrived. And tell them to go the kitchens, where there is freshly baked bread and new milk for all.”

  A huge cheer went up as the provisions were brought into the castle precincts.

  Morgana silenced them all with a wave of her hand to declare, “Tomorrow I am going to market, so if there is anything else you wish me to purchase, tell Owen here and he will write it down. The day after tomorrow, we will begin the ploughing and planting, and this fine young bull here is going to meet some of the ladies.”

  A good-humoured chuckle went up all over the courtyard, and one man shouted, “God bless you, Morgana!”

  “Here, here!” several people cried in unison.

  Ronan looked at her admiringly.

  “You’ve done your father proud, you know, even if he is too stubborn to say so,” he remarked in her ear.

  “Thank you for saying so, Ronan. And you’ll be pleased to know that Father and I are friends now.”

  “Good, it’s about time. You were always too like one another to get along when you were younger. But the impetuosity of youth gives way to patience and tolerance,” Ronan said with a wink.

  “Well, this is certainly a fine greeting, with the entire Maguire clan coming out to greet us. I feel like visiting royalty,” Niamh laughed, as Morgana led her to the great hall and summoned Mary to take her to where the gowns had been laid out.

  Niamh and Mary packed up a dozen of the dresses, but Morgana frowned.

  “Are you sure the rest aren’t yours, Niamh?”

  “No, not at all. Honestly, Morgana, look at those jewels! Those gowns are certainly from Flanders, as are my own, but they were obviously made for a queen!”

  Again that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach nagged at Morgana as she viewed the riches, and not for the first time she recollected that Flanders was indeed owned by Spain. “Spain again,” she muttered.

  “What did you say?” Niamh giggled.

  “Oh, er, nothing, just thinking aloud.” Morgana shook her head, as she led the guests up the stairs to visit her father.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The rest of the day passed in a whirl of activity as Morgana supervised the laundry, took turns scrubbing shirts, and prepared the animals the men had caught for supper whilst out hunting. There were several fine pheasant, and some rabbit and squirrel. Ruairc helped her skin and clean them while they sat side by side at the large table in the kitchen.

  “There’s also a deer outside, but we’ll leave him to hang in the stables for a few days, and then we can preserve some of it, and eat the rest.”

  “In that case we should also do some fishing and kill a few of the pigs, if we are going to get the smokehouse started up,” Morgana remarked, as they discussed their plans for the rest of the week.

  Suddenly she glanced up and saw Ruairc staring at her. “What’s wrong, have I got dirt on me or something?” she asked. She rubbed her faced and smeared blood on her cheek.

  “You were perfect until just now, when you blooded yourself. No, I was just thinking how much I wanted to kiss you,” Ruairc answered truthfully. The gleam in his emerald eyes left Morgana in no doubt of his desires.

  “Really, Ruairc, not in the kitchen!” she scolded as a servant went past.

  “If we were married, a stor, I would kiss you senseless any time I had a yearning to. I seem to recall that in the past you never had nay objections,” he murmured seductively.

  “The frivolity of youth,” Morgana answered coolly, and turned her eyes back to the squirrel she was skinning.

  “In that case, may you never grow old.” Ruairc smiled, and planted a featherlight kiss on her ear which sent shivers down her spine.

  “Ruairc, you promised,” Morgana sighed, even as she leaned against him and revelled in the warmth and strength of his large muscular frame.

  “I know, but you make it awfully hard for a man to keep his good intentions when you're so warm and affectionate, if only you would allow that side of yourself to show a bit more. You don’t have to be strong all the time, Morgana, not with me, you know.”

  Morgana sat up straight as more people entered the kitchen and gave them appraising looks.

  “But I can’t afford to look weak in front of the clan right now either, not when we came so close to losing Father.”

  “He’s looking very well today, thanks to you.”

  “And thanks to you as well. If you hadn’t brought those things from Aunt Agatha, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “It’s my pleasure. As I said, Morgan was the father I never had. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the Maguires. I owe no loyalty to my family, not after they cast me out over Conor’s mysterious death. Such hypocrites! Secretly they were delighted that your family seemed to be falling apart, but they said I had ruined any chance of a friendly alliance between the two families, and stripped me of everything,” Ruairc recalled bitterly. “But none of that compared with my grief over losing you, Morgana, you must believe that.”

  Morgana decided to turn the conversation away from such a sensitive issue, so she observed thoughtfully, “But now that you are disinherited, Ruairc, your fortunes must be precarious, for all your talk of how well you ar
e doing under the Earl of Kildare. I hear he's very headstrong, and quite determined to be the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland despite all the arguments he has had with King Henry of England in the past.”

  “It's true, I’m afraid. The Earl does have some Irish allies, but the Anglo-Irish in the Pale resent him because of the heavy taxes he imposes upon them,“ Ruairc explained as he helped Morgana cut the rabbits and squirrels into smaller pieces for stew.

  “The Earl practises coign and livery, whereby he gets all of his men lodged and fed on the lesser tenantry under the pretext of keeping the peace, and imposes the most outrageous terms called cess.”

  “Cess?” Morgana echoed with a frown.

  “He uses the landlord’s carts when they need them most, around harvest time, to show his power. Even if the landlords are allowed to keep their carts, no cart can travel anywhere in the Pale without paying exorbitant tolls.

  “The situation is made even worse by the fact that under the same terms, the Earl takes labourers of the land for works of his own in Dublin, or worse still, for his many castles and estates.

  "Because of this, for the rest of the Pale, the harvests have to be gathered in later or over a longer period of time. You yourself know the weather is so unpredictable that any delays can be costly.

  “I feel sorry for the English under his yoke, I really do. But at the same time, he is the chief lord in the land, especially since the Desmond clan has fallen into decline, and the king never liked Piers Butler anyway. You know he refused him the post of Earl of Ormond in the end, and gave him the title of the Earl of Ossory instead,” Ruairc explained.

  Morgana nodded, and said, “And of course, we all know who got the earldom. None other than Thomas Boleyn, though at the time no one could have dreamt that his daughter Anne would one day be queen.”

  “Well, for a time Henry was having an affair with Thomas’ wife, and then moved on to the eldest daughter Mary. He was showing the Boleyns favours long before he ever met Anne, the youngest daughter, who was raised in France. But now they have a stranglehold on the policy makers in England. And I know so far she had only managed to produce a daughter, Elizabeth, but rumour has it Anne could well be pregnant again.”

  “The emperor, Charles V won’t be too please to hear that,” Morgana remarked as she browned the meat in her cooking pot, and then started to chop onions and vegetables.

  Ruairc picked up a knife and began to help her. “Nor will the French be pleased. They would have been perfectly happy if Henry had married into the French royal family, divorce or no divorce, but they consider his marriage to Anne Boleyn a serious affront. Henry is going to find himself more and more isolated in Europe now, and there is great unrest at home. The king was hoping he could count on Kildare to keep things running smoothly here. But the Earl’s arguments with the council over money, and particularly with Skeffington as Henry’s appointed clerk of the council, have caused serious problems,” Ruairc confided.

  “What is this man Skeffington like?” Morgana asked, fascinated by the whole new world of political intrigue Ruairc had experienced first hand in Dublin.

  “Ruthless. He loves playing one magnate off against the other. He is skilled as a warrior, and I think he would like nothing better than an all-out campaign to subdue these upstart Irish lords once and for all.

  "Of course, Henry is so tight-fisted he would never send any soldiers unless there were a genuine rebellion. And even if that happened, in the past he has always bribed the troublemakers with empty titles or grants of land the person would have to fight every step of the way to secure for himself.

  “But I feel sorry for Skeffington in a way as well. Because the Earl of Kildare has married into the Howard family, he has a powerful ally in the Duke of Norfolk, and of course the Howards are cousins to the Boleyns, so all of their stars are in the ascendant. Skeffington can see the Earl’s greed is destroying the very thing he is meant to be protecting, the English lordship in Ireland.”

  “It sounds like a very explosive situation,” Morgana commented as she turned to stir her cauldron.

  “And as if he weren’t in enough trouble already, last year the Earl was accused of suborning some of his clan to murder the Earl of Ossory’s son. Even worse, when he was reprimanded by the king for his heavy-handed behaviour in governing the Pale, he had the arrogance to take all the kings’s arms and ordnance out of Dublin Castle and moved it all into his own fortifications,” Ruairc revealed.

  “Good Lord! What did the king say when he discovered what he had done?” Morgana gasped.

  “He summoned Kildare to court, of course, but the Earl cleverly sent his wife in his stead, arguing that he was too ill to come himself.”

  “Was that true?”

  “To a certain extent, it was. He was wounded a year ago last August by some shot at Birr Castle, which he was helping his brother in law the O’Carroll to defend from the O’Kennedys in Leix. So yes, he is ill, but for all that he hasn’t slowed down one jot in his persecution of the Gaelic Irish lords who don’t pay him tribute.

  “In any case, I think his star is on the wane, and this another reason why I wish to come home. The Earl has finally gone to England to answer the many charges against him, but I fear he may never come back. His son, whom they call Silken Thomas because of his love of finery, is just as much of a hot-head as his father. The house of Kildare will fall one day soon, and I have no wish to be dragged down with it,” Ruairc said firmly.

  “Then you have no reason to go back to Dublin. No matter what happens between us, Ruairc, you know you can always have a home here. I think the Maguire territory is big enough for the two of us.” Morgana smiled gently as she put down her spoon and took his hand in her own.

  “It's kind of you to say so, but we both know I could never sit by and watch you married to another, Morgana,” Ruairc said sadly, his emerald eyes shimmering as he gazed deeply into her violet ones.

  “Well, there is always trading, and the sea then,” Morgana offered brightly. “At any rate, you don’t have to decide upon anything now, Ruairc. Enjoy a few days’ rest, and see how you like being back at Lisleavan.”

  “I would like it just fine if you would slow down and not work like a slave. Or even better still if you didn’t make me work like a slave,” Ruairc teased, as he pushed some stray auburn curls backfrom her forehead.

  “You don’t work, you don’t eat, Ruairc. That’s the new rule at Lisleavan. Who knows, you may find you have unexpected talents as a farmer or blacksmith,” Morgana joked, as she smiled up at the man who somehow always managed to completely captivate her with his magnetic presence.

  “’Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?’” Ruairc quipped.

  His seeming criticism of her ideas broke the spell all to quickly. “We haven’t enough men to feed the remaining people as it is. If the Maguires do return, how on earth am I going to provide for them unless we all lend a hand?”

  “You don’t have to fight with me, you know, Morgana. I’m on your side, remember?”

  “I know, I know, it’s just that it’s not just going to be a struggle for survival it is a battle to adopt new ways, to win over the hearts and minds of the clan to a different system. We have good cause to dislike the English invaders as you well know. At the same time, they have been here since 1169, and I doubt very much whether they are ever going to simply go away. Look at all the men from England your brothers have on their land. Dermot and Brendan aren’t going to want to give up too much of their own territory, and those mercenaries won’t be held in check forever. They will cast a greedy eye on all we have, and move against us.”

  “They could always give the mercenaries the land they stole from me,” Ruairc observed acerbically.

  Morgana shook her head. “Let’s face facts, shall we? Your brothers are in league with O’Reilly, our only other neighbour in the east, and they would never in a million years move against the O’Neill, powerful as they are, and allied with your employer the Earl of Kildare. We
are the most likely target, and I fear it will only be a matter of time before their intentions are clear.”

  “But if Kildare is on the wane? They might attack the O’Neill then,” Ruairc argued.

  “No one ever has successfully, not even the English,” Morgana contended. “No, if Kildare falls, the MacMahons will take advantage of it somehow. There are rich pickings in the Pale, after all. If you will forgive my saying this, your brothers were both raised by the O’Reilly, and I have never encountered a more treacherous man than he.”

  “I would have to agree with you there, “ Ruairc said as he frowned darkly.

  Morgana decided it was about time to change the subject again.

  “There’s no point in spoiling our day sitting with long faces, when the O’Donnells are here. We do have some loyal allies, despite everything. So let’s make plans for our expedition tomorrow, and get this dinner cooked before we all starve to death,” Morgana said in her most cheerful tone, as she began to slice bread into trenchers.