The Virgin's Spy

by Laura Andersen

  “Such a delight!” she trilled in overdone rapture. “To have three such handsome men in attendance tonight. Nora and I could never have dreamed such good fortune.”

  She had her daughter by the elbow, holding on to her as she might a horse prepared to bolt. Nora was objectively as lovely as her mother but had none of Eleanor’s instinct for presenting herself. She usually looked either shy or bored. Today, however, there was a stain of colour on her cheeks and she spoke without being urged.

  “It is a pleasure to see you again, my lord.”

  Ormond’s gaze slid sideways, for she was not addressing him, but Brandon Dudley. Brandon was too well-practiced a courtier for Kit to tell if he was merely being polite when he answered, “The pleasure must always be mine.”

  From the way Nora lit up when Brandon spoke, it was clear that if it was up to her, Stephen Courtenay was not the earl she would be trying to land. It unaccountably cheered Kit, though he doubted his brother had ever looked at Nora Percy with anything like personal interest. Perhaps he just liked being reminded that not everything in the world revolved around Stephen.

  “I must see to the men,” Kit said before Brandon could beat him to it. The Earl of Leicester had an expression of well-bred forbearance, but what protest could he make? It was Kit’s duty to see after such matters. And if he managed to avoid dining with the nobles later, all the better.

  “Such a pity.” Eleanor pretended to pout. “If only your brother were here in your stead.”

  If only he were, Kit thought grimly as he escaped the now-cloying chamber. He had nothing against Nora Percy, and wondered if her mother were setting her sights on Brandon as a possible replacement in case Stephen proved reluctant. Or even Ormond—the man was vigorous despite his age, and despite his long solitude would surely be eager to get legitimate children on a young wife. And Nora was the queen’s niece. It made her attractive, despite her difficult mother.

  As Kit strode through the noisy, busy courtyard in search of the Earl of Leicester’s men, a closed carriage clattered in through the gates. In the immediate absence of Ormond, Kilkenny’s steward—in his red Butler badge marked with three gold cups—hurried to greet the new visitors.

  “Who is it?” Kit asked curiously of one of the clerks who looked slightly less frantic than the others in sight.

  “Scots girl, granddaughter of William Sinclair in Edinburgh.”

  Kit nodded, for everyone knew the name. William Sinclair owned one of the largest banking and merchant concerns in Europe and was at least twice as wealthy as Queen Elizabeth. Or he had been—for the old man died earlier that year.

  “What’s she doing in Kilkenny?”

  “On her way to marry old Finian Kavanaugh. Lord Ormond is to remind her that Scots money best not be used to finance Irish rebels. No worry, really. Her brother gave her a dowry, but not enough to tempt Kavanaugh into open fighting. He’ll get sons on her and that’s all.”

  The steward handed out a lady from the interior of the carriage. She was small, almost a child in size, and she looked up at the steward with a tilt to her head that had something of a child’s curiosity in it. After greeting the steward, she cast a glance around the courtyard and faltered slightly at seeing Kit.

  Seeing her hesitation, the steward must have decided it indicated interest, for he at once led her toward Kit.

  “Lord Christopher Courtenay,” he said to the girl as they neared. “Youngest son of the Duke of Exeter, here briefly from Dublin in the company of the Earl of Leicester. Mistress Mariota Sinclair.”

  “Maisie,” she corrected. “What an illustrious guest list I have come upon! I am quite abashed.”

  Kit bowed to the girl, who must have been nearly a child in age, as well as size. If she was more than fourteen he’d be surprised. Not a beauty, either, though she had good cheekbones and arched brows over wide-set gray eyes. There was a glint of fair hair from beneath her hood. And despite her words, she did not look at all abashed.

  After a few banal words of welcome, Kit made his escape, determined more than ever to keep with the men tonight. Better to eat in the stables than sit at a table with ambitious earls and cunning women and child-brides.

  Poor child. He wouldn’t wish an Irish marriage on any girl outside this island. He spared a moment’s pity for Maisie Sinclair, then cleared his head of her with a shake and followed the clerk to the lodgings set aside for Brandon’s men.

  By August 17 the combined forces of Oliver Dane and Stephen Courtenay had arrived in Shannon and they could see Carrigafoyle standing defiantly on the small rock in the estuary. They made separate but adjoining encampments several miles off to await orders from Pelham. They’d had reports as they marched that two Spanish ships had landed five hundred men a week ago who were now in the fortress along with the local Irish. Including women and children—a development Stephen did not like at all.

  But Dane merely grunted at the news. “Don’t get squeamish on me. Irish women are not like ours. They’ll cut your throat as soon as look at you. It’s the women they send to torture their prisoners. If they’re holed up with their men—well, that’s their choice and they must stand by it.”

  In Stephen’s opinion their choices had been few, for he had traveled through a wasteland to reach here. The earth looked as though it had been salted and burned, to ensure that no crops could grow this year or any year in the near future. The few Irish they’d seen were gaunt and hollow-cheeked with hunger.

  Dane noted Stephen’s unease and seemed equal parts surprised and amused by it. “Don’t get me wrong, Courtenay. Before she slits your throat, she will give you pleasure you’ve never dreamed of. Bed an Irish girl—the right Irish girl—and you’ll never be contented with a polite Englishwoman again. But in the end, best kill her before she kills you.”

  It was getting harder and harder to respect the man from whom he must take orders. Stephen jerked his head in what could charitably be called a nod and stalked off to his own tent. Only the tiny part of him that still responded to every situation with mordant humour noted that perhaps part of his irritation was actually the lack of women. Not necessarily to take to bed—though he wouldn’t have said no, whatever his father’s counsel—but simply as part of his life. Raised by an involved and clever mother, with two sisters who could rival any woman in Europe for wit and learning, accustomed to a court ruled by a queen of uncommon intelligence and strength…well, slogging through the razed fields and sullen populace of Ireland was only made worse by the lack of feminine company.

  His mood did not improve the next morning when summoned for a meeting with Dane and William Pelham, Lord Justice of Ireland. Pelham had been tempered by Ireland, a rigid man made harder by previous failure and the impossible task he’d now been given. His high forehead sloped back to close-cropped hair, his fierce mustache and beard bristling with restrained nerves.

  “English ships under Admiral Winter’s command sailed into the estuary yesterday. If Spain were serious about supporting the rebels, they’d never have drawn off their own ships. But they have, and with Winter on the water, Carrigafoyle will not last more than three days.”

  “Bombardment begins tomorrow?” Dane asked, as casually as if inquiring about dinner.

  “Yes,” Pelham said curtly. Stephen had the impression that the Lord Justice resented having Dane here, perhaps because the man had greater experience in Ireland even though Pelham outranked him. When the fighting ended, Pelham would answer for the results to the queen, while Dane remained in Ireland and expanded his own lands as a result of the English troops sacrificed here.

  Stephen cleared his throat. “Where will we be positioned?” he asked neutrally, as though addressing both of them. It was the kind of tactic he’d learned, not from his plainspoken father, but from his more politically subtle mother.

  “My men will form the first landing parties,” Pelham answered. “Once we’ve established a hold on the island, they can be relieved or reinforced as needed. Captain Dane, your me
n will pour across when the walls begin to collapse. Lord Somerset, your force will guard the perimeters to ensure no one comes at us from behind.”

  Dane’s next question surprised with its apparent randomness. “No sign of any Kavanaughs coming to fight?”

  “From Carlow Castle?” Pelham asked with slight surprise. “No. Just like the Earl of Desmond, they’re keeping their peace and sitting it out as long as they can manage. Finian Kavanaugh’s no fool—he’s arranged to get himself married tomorrow as a reasonable excuse not to commit to anything just now.”

  “Hoping for new heirs?” Dane’s neutrality seemed forced. It was the first time Stephen had ever heard him sound stiff, and he wondered what interest Dane had in the Kavanaughs.

  “Seems likely. The only heir he has now is a niece who refuses to marry. The new bride is young enough—and rich. A Sinclair from Edinburgh. We’ll have to keep an eye on Kavanaugh, see if his wife’s money seems primed to outfit a force of gallowglass.”

  As Stephen walked away to prepare his men to move out, his mind spun with possibilities. For Finian Kavanaugh was a name he knew, one dropped to him in a letter from London. And any name dropped by Francis Walsingham, however apparently casual, was a name to look out for.

  —

  The wedding of Finian Kavanaugh and Mariota Sinclair occurred beneath lowering skies that occasionally spit rain and, even more occasionally, let through fitful hints of sun. But the party was as raucous as if the weather were perfect, for the Irish had never given much account to the skies. One took pleasure when one could in this world, and did not wait for the world to return the favour.

  Ailis Kavanaugh, Finian’s niece and, through a long toll of death and misfortune, her uncle’s only heir, helped make ready the bride. Not that there was much to it—the Scots girl was as straightforward in her dress as in her speech, and seemed to survey the world from a vantage of perfect equanimity. An unexpected quality in a girl of only fifteen; odder still in this staunch Protestant foreigner being married off to an Irish clan chief more than four times her age. Maisie, as she had cheerfully told all to address her, might have been only a fool, of course—but Ailis, who was not a fool, had caught the sparks of steel in both her mind and her spirit in the three days she’d been here. A girl, perhaps, but the woman would be one to reckon with. As was Ailis herself.

  “Will I do?” Maisie asked her intended’s niece, nearly ten years older than herself, and stood with unusual stillness while Ailis studied her. Most people squirmed when Ailis studied them. It was a talent of which she was proud.

  Maisie was quite a bit shorter than Ailis, just above five feet, and nearly as slim as a boy. Wide cheekbones and a strong chin, her eyes the gray-blue of the winter seas. Her only truly beautiful feature was her hair, a unique shade like silver gilt, which fell straight nearly to her waist. Her dress was blue silk, its fineness owing more to its weight and colour than any decoration. But then, Maisie came from the wealthiest trading family in Edinburgh—she knew how to judge her audience. She was being married for her money, but she would acknowledge it discreetly, not flaunt it in front of the proud Irish Catholics who would consider her, at best, a necessary evil.

  And so Ailis had been prepared to consider her. But to her surprise, she had found that there were aspects of Maisie Sinclair she almost liked.

  “You will do very well,” she declared, and Maisie lit up in a smile that combined surpassing sweetness with a healthy dose of mischief.

  “I want to look just like you when I’m married!” The exuberant cry came from Ailis’s daughter, an eleven-year-old who would have thrown her arms around her new-claimed friend if Ailis had not stopped her.

  Maisie laughed. “I’m afraid there’s not much hope of that,” she told the child. “And all the better for you, Liadan. You are the very image of your mother, and any woman in the world would sell her soul to look like either of you.”

  “But you don’t have a soul.”

  “Liadan!” Ailis exclaimed. “What a wicked thing to say.”

  “It’s what Bridey said,” Liadan insisted, not at all repressed. “Bridey said Protestants haven’t souls like us.”

  “Bridey is a superstitious old woman,” Ailis snapped.

  “Never fret,” Maisie intervened, and there was an impish hint to her smile as she summoned Liadan to hold her hands. “Protestants may lack many things in the eyes of Catholics, child, but souls we have. Besides, I was educated in France at a convent. I have heard enough Catholic prayers to work some sort of grace even on my Protestant soul.”

  With that sense of unwilling admiration the Scots girl had wrung from her all week, Ailis admitted that her uncle was getting much more than he’d bargained for in Maisie Sinclair. Finian Kavanaugh believed he’d be able to wheedle more money from her brother, with Maisie simply a means to an end.

  Ailis had believed the same. She might have to readjust her own plans in light of who this girl had turned out to be.

  —

  For two days Carrigafoyle was savagely battered by English guns from both land and sea. At the end of the first hour, Stephen thought he would run mad from the roar. At the end of the first day, he couldn’t understand why the outpost had not yet surrendered. But by the end of the second day, the guns had become merely a fact of life. He could hardly recall a time that he hadn’t woken and slept and eaten and stood guard without the roar and rumble of heavy artillery.

  On the first day, Pelham ordered men forward to take the sea wall, but they were pinned down by Spanish guns and boulders hurled at them from above. When the English attempted to raise siege ladders, the Spanish halbardiers flung them back until the sea wall ran dark with spilled blood. Stephen and his men were spared that, at least, for their orders were to stand ready with a company of lances outside the northern wall. That was where the English guns were expected to break through first. Pelham had ordered that none of the rebels be allowed to escape and make their way to the Earl of Desmond, now hunkered down forty miles away in Castleisland.

  The conclusion of the battle was foregone. Even supported by Spanish troops, the Irish rebels could not hope to counter the largest English force ever assembled in western Ireland. There were near a thousand men between Pelham and Dane, and by late in the second day it was reckoned those inside the fortress had taken refuge in the great keep tower.

  On the third day, the western wall of the keep collapsed under several direct hits from the ships’ guns. Oliver Dane led his men inside the walls of Carrigafoyle to end the fighting and flush the survivors out.

  Stephen and his men were charged with rounding up those rebels who managed to slip past Dane. In twos and threes, they could flit through the rubble and smoke and water, but could not long escape men on horseback. Stephen was not sorry when he found Captain Julian among them—the Italian engineer who had built up the keep and led the defenders within. And he didn’t mind taking back the Irishmen. When a man went to war, especially a rebel, he knew the price.

  The women were another matter. Within four hours of the fall of Carrigafoyle, Stephen had under guard twenty-three men, women, and children, the youngest just ten years old. Frankly, he would have let more of them slip away if he hadn’t seen the state of the countryside and knew they’d likely starve if left to their own devices. Better to be imprisoned and fed, he argued to himself.

  It was oppressively silent as they approached Carrigafoyle. After the days of bombardment, there was something ominous about the lack of guns. Stephen could see where the western wall of the tower keep had collapsed and winced. Surely lives had been lost beneath the crushing stone. Wearily, he gave orders to Harrington to quarter the prisoners for now in their own camp until decisions were made about their destination. Soldiers in the flush of victory could not always be trusted, but at least Stephen knew Harrington would keep their men in order and the prisoners safe.

  He rode into Oliver Dane’s camp and found only a handful of men who had suffered injuries. When asked where thei
r commander was, all Stephen got was a jerk of the head in the direction of the fallen keep and a curt, “Finishing off, they are.”

  Finishing off what? Stephen wondered. The keep was in English hands, which meant the whole of the river and its approach to the port city of Limerick was secure. This defeat would be painful—perhaps fatal—to the rebellion in Munster. All that was left to finish was the diplomatic maneuvering to get to the Earl of Desmond himself, certainly nothing that could be accomplished on this battlefield.

  Stephen had never been more wrong.

  He crossed to the island and entered the keep, almost choking on the stench of smoke and rubble and—distinctively threaded through it all—blood. Every sense alert, as though he might be attacked, he kept one hand on the hilt of his sword and stepped cautiously past the outer walls into the courtyard where the rebels had made their final stand.

  It was like no nightmare he’d ever suffered—the only thing his horrified mind could conjure were some of the more dismal ancient depictions of hell. He’d expected death, but what he found was slaughter. Everywhere he looked there were men wearing Dane’s red and gold boar badge, with dripping swords and expressions either grimly purposeful or disturbingly casual. Behind and around them, heaped against walls, huddled in corners, lay the bodies of Carrigafoyle’s defenders, hacked down in the moment of surrender. No, worse than that—in the hours after surrender, when tempers should have cooled and negotiations held sway. Even had the English meant to kill the rebels, these men should still have had a brief trial and been properly hung. But this?

  This was nothing short of murder.

  He might have talked himself into a cooler head—or at least a more prudent response—given time. It was Oliver Dane’s bad fortune to come swaggering up to Stephen while he was still trying to settle his stomach.