Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [338]
The siege of Dublin that followed was a desultory affair. Fitzgerald hadn’t enough troops to rush the walls. He burned some houses in the suburbs, but it did no good. And even if he had been able to cut off all the supplies to the city, the aldermen had already seen to it that there were enough provisions within the walls to last for months. Young Lord Thomas could only make a show of force from time to time and hope to frighten the Dubliners into changing their minds. And this was what he was doing one morning in August when Alderman Doyle came across to inspect the defences at the western gate.
The instructions to the guards at the western gate were simple. The gate itself was double barred. They were not to provoke Fitzgerald and his men, but if attacked, they were to respond with arquebus and bows from the battlements. Just before Doyle arrived, Tidy had seen from one of the tower windows that Lord Thomas and about a hundred horsemen were approaching the gate, and he had gone down to make sure the sentries were aware. As a result, he found himself standing beside the alderman on one side of the gate as Lord Thomas reached the other, and heard quite clearly as the young lord called out to anyone on the battlements or behind the gate who could hear, that if they did not soon open the city to him, he would be forced to bring up his cannon. “Even with what the Spanish envoy gave him, and his own supplies,” Doyle calmly pointed out to the men standing round, “I know for a fact that he hasn’t enough powder and shot to take the city. It’s an empty threat.” And it seemed that Fitzgerald was to get no reply at all, when suddenly another voice was heard. It came from a window somewhere up in the tower.
“Is that the Lord Thomas himself?” A woman’s voice, calling down. It was followed by a pause, and the sound of horses wheeling about. Perhaps Fitzgerald’s men thought someone was going to take aim at him. But Tidy knew better. He froze. The voice belonged to Cecily. A moment later, to his even greater astonishment, the aristocrat replied, “It is.”
Was it true, Cecily called down, that he would defend the Holy Church against the heretic Henry? It was. He didn’t deny the Mass? Certainly not. But now Tidy thought he could hear a trace of humour in Fitzgerald’s voice when he asked if she was the woman who had cursed King Henry at Corpus Christi last. She was, she replied, and she’d curse Lord Thomas and his friends, too, if they denied the Mass.
“No friends of mine, I promise,” he cried. And why was he being kept out of Dublin, he demanded genially. Was he not welcome?
“You’ll be welcomed by all except a few heretic aldermen,” she called down, “who need to learn a lesson.”
Until this moment, Tidy had been so surprised that he hadn’t moved. He’d known how Cecily felt, of course. As the events of that spring had unfolded, she had told him just what she thought of the excommunicated English king. But he had begged her to keep her thoughts private within the home, and though she had seemed rather moody of late it had never occurred to him that she would do anything like this. He glanced at Doyle, his best patron, who had just been called a heretic. The alderman’s face was growing dark.
He raced into the tower and up the spiral stairs. Breathless, he burst into the upper room from which Cecily was calling down to Lord Thomas’s men that they’d find a warm welcome if they broke down the gate, and dragged her away from the window. She struggled, and he struck her, once in anger and the second time in fear—because he thought she might start again—much harder, so that she fell, bleeding, to the floor. Hardly caring, he dragged her to the door and down the stairs to the lower chamber where there was no window that looked out from the wall. Then he locked her in there and went down to the gate again to apologise to Doyle. But the alderman had gone.
Cecily did not speak to her husband very much in the days that followed. They both understood what had happened; there was