Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [283]
For when the boy king was crowned in Dublin, it was Kildare himself, head of the Fitzgeralds and, as Lord Deputy, King Henry Tudor’s own representative and governor on the island, who had led the treasonable business. The Butlers, on the other hand, had stayed loyal. Yet Henry had forgiven Kildare, while the Butlers had received no great reward for their pains.
“The Fitzgeralds have the most territory. They’re intermarried with so many gentry families, and with the greatest Irish princes as well, that they can call on more men and more favours than any other clan,” her father told her. “Moreover,” he explained, “though the Butlers’ power is huge as well, their territory lies between the two Fitzgerald earldoms—Kildare on their northern flank and Desmond in the south. If the Fitzgeralds want to, they can squeeze the Butlers,” he made a gesture with his two hands, “like a pincer. So you see, Margaret, of the two great English lordships, Fitzgerald is the natural one to govern. And if the English king tries to ignore them both and send his own man to govern, they would soon make life so difficult for him that he gives up.”
And during the rest of her childhood, this was exactly the political pattern that Margaret was to see. Even when Henry sent over his trusted deputy Poynings—who bluntly told the Irish Parliament they could no longer pass any laws without the Tudor king’s approval, and even arrested Kildare, who was sent to London—the Fitzgeralds made it so difficult for him to govern that before long even Poynings gave up. And back in England, when he was told, “All Ireland cannot govern Kildare and his Fitzgeralds,” Henry Tudor, that supreme realist, calmly observed, “If all Ireland cannot govern Kildare, then Kildare had better govern Ireland,” and sent the head of the Fitzgeralds back as his Lord Deputy again.
“It’s Kildare who rules in Ireland, Margaret,” her father told her, “and always will be.”
Margaret was thirteen when she learned that her father had been cheated. It happened quite by chance.
It had promised to be an uneventful morning at Oxmantown. Her father had been at the house with no particular business to do that day, when a neighbour had come by to ask if he was going across the river to watch the fun. “Did you not hear,” he explained, “that a group of Butler’s and Fitzgerald’s men are having a fight over by Saint Patrick’s?”
“What about?” her father asked.
“Who knows? Because they’re Butlers and Fitzgeralds.”
“I suppose I may as well,” said her father. And he certainly would have gone without Margaret if she had not begged him to let her come. “If there’s any danger,” he told her firmly, “you’ll have to go straight home.”
When they got to Saint Patrick’s, they found a crowd gathered outside. They seemed in a cheerful mood, and their neighbour, who went ahead to find out what was happening, soon reported that the fight was now over and the rival groups, both in the cathedral, had agreed to a truce.
“There’s only one problem,” he explained. “The Butler men are on one side of a big door and the Fitzgerald men on the other; but the door is locked and no one has the key. And until they’ve shaken hands neither side intends to move from the place where they are, on account of their mistrust.”
“Do they mean to stay there forever, then?” asked her father.
“Not at all. They will cut a hole in the door. But it’s a mighty door, so it will take some time.”
It was just then that Margaret saw the little girl.
She was standing with her mother, not far off. She might be five years old, Margaret guessed, but she was tiny. She was dressed in a bright patterned dress; her eyes were dark, her olive-coloured features finely drawn and delicate. She was the neatest little person that Margaret had ever seen. One glance at her mother, a small, elegant Mediterranean woman, explained the child’s looks at once. She must be Spanish.
“Oh, Father,” she cried, “can I go and play with her?”
It