The Irish Princess by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

blazed above him, throwing dancing lights.
    “Where is the constable?” I asked him. “I am the last Fitzgerald here of the family he is pledged to protect, serve, and obey, and I must speak to him.”
    “I’ll send word soon,” he told me, frowning. “Now ’tis not the time.”
    “It is the time!” I insisted, not backing off. “It may be past time.” I didn’t give a fig if this man was now loyal to Christopher and not my father or even to Thomas. “I demand that you call my foster brother here at once.”
    Christopher must have heard my raised voice, for in full body armor—but no longer in Fitzgerald livery—he clattered down the stairs toward us, his sheathed sword scraping the curved stone wall. His shadow cast by the torches loomed long over me.
    “I’ll not have you unsettling the ceremony being prepared upstairs,” he told me, and pointed with his mail-encased right arm down the steps the way I’d come. “Look at it this way, Gera. You’ll be leaving here and seeing your mother and the others soon, no denying it. Everything’s arranged. We’re to be pardoned, the earl too when they find him, though I warrant he’ll be cooling his heels in England for a time. I’ve arranged it all, and I’ll remain in command of Maynooth.”
    “And you believe them?” I demanded, hands on my hips. “After they’ve been trying to blow us to bits, you believe them?”
    He put one foot up on the stair above where he stood just as Thomas had on the dais the day Father passed the control of Maynooth and the Pale to him. I could tell Christopher’s choler was up, for a telltale vein beat in his forehead. He gritted his teeth. I knew he wanted to cuff me down the stairs, but I didn’t blink an eye, however much I was forced to look up at him. He said, his voice mocking, “Since you be a saucy meddler in men’s affairs and a military field commander now, think on this. Are they wanting to consume more time, money, and munitions? The Gunner is an old man now, and ill too.”
    “You’ve seen his face? You met with him? Did you really let Gerald go, or did you hand him over too? Everyone knows the English like hostages for surety.”
    “Now it’s reminding me of a howling woman you are, mourning at someone’s funeral, when I’ve saved the day for all of us. If the earl had arrived with troops, it might have been different. Now get below, and I’ll be sending for you when I make plans for your departure to England.”
    He pointed again as if I were Wynne, who stood beside me growling low in his throat. For one moment I wished the wolfhound would spring at Christopher, but I took the dog’s collar and pulled him back down the stairs. Our foster brother had become someone I didn’t know, someone lusting for power and control, just as Mother had said of King Henry.
    I reveled in the fact that the English tyrant must be distraught that he had a second daughter but no legitimate son, only a bastard by one of his mistresses, a Bessie Blount—which showed the Irish what a lecher Henry Tudor was, gossip said. Worse, six years ago that son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, had been but ten when he’d been named viceroy of Ireland, with Skeffington as deputy. And the ultimate insult: Rumors had been about that King Henry would name his bastard son king of Ireland, an outrage and a sham, Father had said. And after all these years, with no strong son to inherit his throne, perhaps King Henry lusted even more for power and control, and that was why he wanted to subdue our Ireland. But I must write down what came next at Maynooth before I lose heart.
    It was the wee hours of the morning, a dark and rain-swept one, according to the same garrison guard who now stood at the bottom of the stairs to our cellar sanctuary. Even the walls of the castle, I thought, seemed to weep. How had it all come to this so soon, Father dead, Thomas who knew where? Mother and my brothers and sisters far away . . .
    We heard trumpets