The Irish Princess Read Online Free PDF

knees so—”
    “Don’t talk like that! The Tower’s a hellhole of torture and cutting off more than legs. No, I must go to my brother, leave the children safe at his country house in Leicester; then at court I can—”
    “You must not take your children out of Ireland, away from Maynooth. The king would surely like to get his hands on them too, just to keep Father and me in line. I say you should not even go, and I’m the one in command now. Action needs to be taken here, though, to show them that they can’t cow us. I’ve ordered Christopher Paris to double-provision the castle and set up more guard posts, lest the English send an army looking for me or even little Gerald. I trust them not—any of them.”
    “Thomas, please do nothing rash. Calm negotiation, that’s what’s needed, not some sort of defiance your father would be blamed for, please!”
    I leaned against the wainscoted wall in the corridor, my legs shaking, tears dripping off my chin, my stomach ready to heave up the buttered biscuits and blackberries I’d overeaten in the village. I slid down the wall and huddled there, my arms clasped around my bent knees, pretending Father was hugging me like he did the last night he was here.
    Magheen found me and tugged me away to my room, where we told Cecily and even Margaret about Father, through acting him out being locked in a room and pacing there. I played Father’s part, pretending to stroke my beard and frowning until I was certain Margaret understood. But, by Saint Brigid, I did not understand, except that I was on both Mother’s and Thomas’s sides. To get Father back, we should sail to England, ask the king nicely for his release, then, if he refused, storm the Tower of London to rescue him, all of us together: Thomas, my five strong uncles, and those loyal to the Geraldines.
     
    It was a wretched winter, waiting, hoping, praying. Mother pleaded with the king by letter through her brother Leonard, while Thomas fumed and cursed and rode about the Pale with a growing band of men, stopping at Maynooth now and then to confer privily with Christopher Paris.
    We were desperate for word from London, though we did hear that King Henry’s wife, Anne Boleyn, had not fulfilled her queenly duties any better than her predecessor, Queen Catherine of Aragon. For the Boleyn had been delivered not of the desired son, but of a girl, Elizabeth. So I shared with that princess of England a first name, and had Father been crowned king here as he should, I’d have shared her title of princess too. I was fiercely glad the English king was disappointed in her birth, for, like me, she was not one to hold the promise of future power.
    Then too, word came once that Father was dead, but—thank the Lord—it was but rumor. Still we heard he was gravely ill in the dank, dark Tower, coughing up blood, while we all felt guilty for enjoying the splendid tower house he had made for us. Father’s declining health convinced Mother she should go to England in the spring of 1534 to visit and intercede for her beloved husband, no matter what Thomas said. She was defiant and nothing could convince her else. She planned to take her children with her and leave us at her brother’s estate, called Beaumanoir, but the week before her departure both Gerald and I fell gravely ill.
    ’Twas feared we had the dreaded smallpox. Mother called to me from out the door of my chamber, lest she catch the pestilence, which would keep her home. Gerald was in another room, both of us tended by villagers who had survived that oft-fatal scourge. Physicians were summoned, and we were dosed. I knew naught of all this until later, for my fever was so high I was out of my mind. When it was certain we had some sort of spring sweat and not the pox, Magheen tended me, and Collum stayed with Gerald. I was barely strong enough to hug Mother farewell when she left for England with Margaret, Edward, and Cecily, with promises that Gerald and I would join her