The Irish Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

soon. I was grief-stricken to see them go. Yet if she could free Father, it would be worth anything.
     
    But two months after Mother left, about the time when Gerald and I thought Thomas would send us and the McArdles to England, our world shifted again. Thomas, unbidden and unbridled, stomped into the Irish Parliament in Dublin and sealed all our fates. June 11, 1534, it was, a dread day, though we foolishly cheered, “A Geraldine! A Geraldine!” at first when we heard what our bold brother had dared. Our uncles came to tell us that Thomas had ridden into Dublin with a force of nearly eight hundred foot soldiers and a hundred and twenty horsemen who sported green silk fringe upon their helmets, a favorite flourish on our half brother’s garb. And for that, Thomas was forever after called by the nickname Silken Thomas.
    Word of the next events came to us from various messengers or from one of our uncles riding in to confer with Christopher. Striding into Parliament, Uncle James said, Thomas had thrown down the Sword of State and, because of King Henry’s attacks on the Catholic Church in England and his divorce of Queen Catherine, declared the English king a heretic who did not deserve Ireland’s allegiance. And he had defiantly proclaimed, “I am none of King Henry’s deputy. I am his foe. I will render Ireland ungovernable unless the Earl of Kildare is sent back to us forthwith!”
    Instead, God help us, the king of England sent an army of twenty-three hundred men under the command of Sir William Skeffington, a hated former lord lieutenant of Ireland. Because he had been lately in charge of King Henry’s armaments, he was known as “the Gunner.” Though I was yet still young, I could reckon one thing in this tightening noose of events over which I had no say or control: If someone called Silken Thomas had to fight someone called the Gunner, who would be the victor then?

     
    14 December 1534
     
     
     
    My dearly beloved children Gerald and Gera. I deeply regret to share dreadful news that your father has passed on to a better life two days ago. It was of natural causes, my brother assures me, and my lord has been buried within the walls of the Tower in a small church called St. Peter in Chains. I shall think of Saint Peter and Saint Patrick greeting my beloved at the gates of heaven, though nothing comforts me. At least I was allowed to visit and tend him in his last days. At court, I desperately tried to plead his cause. And, of course, he took all of our love with him and knew we would carry on and support Thomas, now 10th Earl of Kildare.
    Children, I fear your sire, my dear lord, lost heart from his imprisonment and from fretting over the current rebellion in the Pale. I have asked again, in letters both to the new earl and to your uncles, that you two be smuggled out of Ireland, if it comes to that, and sent to me and safety at your uncle Leonard’s estate here in Leicestershire. Edward, Margaret, and Cecily send their love and miss you sorely too. Uncle Leonard says we all are welcome here. He sends his regards and deepest regrets to you.
    This letter must be sent by secret means, so I pray it reaches you before word of your sire’s passing. I am devastated by my loss but will go on for all of you.
     
    Your mother, Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kildare
     
    I burst into tears when Christopher Paris read the letter to us. He too looked grieved. “I feared such,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I’d be sending you both to your mother today, that I would, but the new lord won’t allow a bit of it.”
    Gerald and I, both crying, held hands. “Thomas—I mean, the earl—won’t let us leave?” Gerald asked.
    “Too dangerous, he says. Then, too,” Christopher added, his voice taking on a sort of mocking tone, “says he, ‘Now that I am Ireland’s uncrowned king, we can’t have the Irish prince and princess fall into the English king’s hands, now, can we?’ After all, anything happens to