The Irish Princess by Karen Harper

grass and white oxeye daisies, I remembered crossing the Irish Sea, standing at the prow of the ship with Lord Edward Clinton, the king’s man. On this warm, late-autumn day, the shade of the tall oaks in the forest beckoned me. I turned to Margaret, pointed at the opening in the fence, and said, “That way.”
    She shook her head and made the signs for, “Mother, no,” but I kept going. I knew she and Bates would follow. If he ordered me back, I was not in a humor to heed him, for I was desperate for diversion. The forest ahead of us adjoined the two Grey properties. Farther on lay an alabaster stone quarry, the recently vacated Grace Dieu nunnery, and a priory, one that, I’d heard, had fed nearly one hundred peasants last year during a drought.
    That merciful act reminded me of some of the charity our own family had extended to Irish cotters and villagers in terrible times. But now, with the Geraldines out of Ireland, we feared struggles for power would mean our poor people could have their crops ruined and towns raided. Irish families like the O’Donnels, the Butlers, the O’Briens, and the Desmonds resented not only one another but the occupying English soldiers, and the wild Gaelic chieftains were always out to plunder what they could.
    Feeling trapped here, like a dog in a kennel, I heaved a huge sigh. I had not even seen any of the places near Beaumanoir, let alone the royal court in London, which was my true aim.
    We evidently startled a family of rabbits, for they bounded off. No, they were hopping at us and past us, not away, and I soon reckoned why. Through the ground I felt then heard hoofbeats, a goodly number of horses, and the yipping of hounds. Someone must be hunting nearby.
    Two stags with full racks of antlers lunged from the trees. At least six riders exploded behind them. Rather than leaping the stone fence, the two stags bolted through the opening I was heading for, and the riders funneled through after them as if they would mow us down.
    Bates shouted something I could not discern. I pulled Margaret behind me, then waved my arms over my head and screeched like a banshee. The first stag barely missed us as he tore past, his eyes wide in his frenzy. The second veered away, running along this side of the fence. The barking pack of hounds rushed past, one knocking into my skirts, then bouncing off as they pursued their prey.
    But the man and woman leading the hunt party reined in, as did their five liveried servants. I did not need to read the colors or the crests to know who they were. Henry and Frances Grey, the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorset, to use their proper titles, had returned from London. When Mother heard that, she would be in a fret about how long we should wait before paying them a visit.
    I glanced over my shoulder to be sure Bates was all right. Then, as those who were our kin and yet our betters looked down on us from their lofty heights, I pulled Margaret into a deep curtsy beside me. I had not yet met the Greys, for they had been away at court since I’d been in England. They seemed a bit mismatched, she so stocky and he so thin. A rhyme I’d learned as a child pranced through my head: Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. And so between them both, you see, they licked the platter clean.
    He said to her, “Not the sort of deer we were wanting to catch, eh, my dear?”
    She snorted a laugh, then muttered, “It’s the mute Geraldine girl and the one who went missing.”
    “Yes, my lady,” I said, squinting into the sun to look up at them and rising slowly from my curtsy. “This is Margaret, and I am Elizabeth, called Gera.”
    “She’s a beauty,” Lord Grey said, pointing at me with his riding crop. “Would that our Jane would turn out so well but be properly behaved. Such a shame about the rest of them.”
    I assumed he meant my family and felt insulted that they spoke of us as if they were assessing horses to be bought or sold. I stemmed a sharp