Tags:
Fiction,
Literary,
Historical fiction,
General,
Historical,
Great Britain,
Ireland,
princesses,
1509-1547,
Great Britain - History - Henry VIII,
Clinton,
Henry,
Edward Fiennes De,
Elizabeth Fiennes De,
Princesses - Ireland,
Elizabeth
retort and said, “Since you have new come from London, have you heard word of my Fitzgerald uncles in the Tower or my brother, Thomas, Earl of Kildare?”
“You’ve been attainted, all of you,” Lord Grey said with a dour look, though mayhap that was ever his expression.
They both looked down at me so haughtily I did not admit I couldn’t fathom exactly what that meant. I knew our family name was tainted with what had happened. I suddenly pitied their little daughter for having parents who were so cold that an icy breeze seemed to blow from them. And since this woman was King Henry’s niece, I knew now what the Tudors must be like.
I swallowed my pride and forced myself to say, “I know my mother would be honored to receive you, my lord and my lady. Can you not come to the house for refreshment and talk to her of London and the court?”
“Not when we’ve been cooped up at Whitehall and Richmond for weeks on end,” Lord Grey said. “But do tell her she should keep a better eye on such a pretty maid—more than one guard and one other woman at least with you at all times, and not one deaf and dumb. Now you’ve cost us two fine stags, but I’d wager you will cost other stags much more than that over the years, eh, Mistress Fitzgerald?”
His wife laughed as he spurred his horse away with the other men in pursuit. For one moment more, the king’s niece frowned down at me, then galloped away too. With her swarthy skin and manly jowls, she was not an attractive woman, but I warranted that with her royal blood, she was a catch for any man. Her mother, Mary, King Henry’s sister, had been so beautiful that she’d been called “the Tudor Rose.” She had once been the queen of France, wed to an old, sick man. But when he died, she’d married a man she desired, Charles Brandon, now Duke of Suffolk, a great friend of the king. So how, I thought, had the great love of two no doubt handsome people created this plain, rude, and frowning woman?
Pulling Margaret along and with Fulk Bates this time walking at my side, I hied myself back toward redbrick Beaumanoir. Bates did not scold me for heading toward the forest. Perhaps he pitied us for how we’d been treated or felt sad that our name had been tainted on top of all our other trials.
“At least, at last, my Gera, you cannot say you have seen no one of importance,” Mother said the moment we went in through the side door. “The gardener sent word to the house of the approach of the Greys and said they were speaking with you. I was most disappointed they did not stop here, but they are mad for the hunt.”
I realized that Cecily and Edward must still be at their lessons. But Mother had evidently seen us coming back to the manor and rushed downstairs to greet us, for she was flushed and out of breath. “I intend to ask them directly for help, for it seems . . . it seems,” she stammered, flourishing a letter I saw was not in her handwriting, “that your uncle Leonard has been pressed by debts incurred in the Irish insurrection and has seen fit to strip Maynooth of its furnishings and sell them to recoup losses.”
“No!” I cried, balling up my fists at my sides. “Everything we had? I hope that doesn’t mean Wynne! The library books too?”
“But they have searched high and low for The Red Book of Kildare,” she went on, ignoring my outburst. “He asks if I know where it could have gone or been hidden. Dear God in heaven, if they find that, they will have the list of all our precious goods, our rental records, and the names of our kin and retainers. Oh, where could it have gone?”
“I believe it was hidden somewhere on the grounds,” I told her.
“But who knows where? Would Gerald?”
I shrugged. I had never lied to my mother before and tried to tell myself it wasn’t really such a lie because I had hidden the book on the grounds—these grounds, Lord Leonard’s very grounds, under a big yew hedge out by the fishpond full of trout. I
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