Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [350]
“He’ll wait at Maynooth. The Fitzgeralds still have all their strongholds. He’ll wear the Gunner down, and when the Spanish troops arrive, they’ll kick the English out of Ireland forever.”
Within a month, the Gunner set out. Word came that he had taken back one of the castles Fitzgerald had seized, at Trim. Still more ominous came the news that two of Thomas’s five Fitzgerald uncles were cooperating with the Gunner. As she looked out of her window after hearing that, it was hard not to feel a sense of dismay. How was it possible, she wondered, that there could be such treachery? But when she prayed, she knew she must keep faith, and so she told herself to have patience.
And indeed, in the winter months, there was reason to hope. The winter was cold and wet. The Gunner retired to Dublin and stayed there, and soon complained that he was unwell. Cecily would see him occasionally, riding through the streets with his escort. Instead of the brisk military man he had been, he now looked pale and haggard. His troops were suffering, too. There were desertions. Better yet, Silken Thomas was back in the strongholds the Gunner had taken earlier. Most important of all, around Christmas Cecily heard that the Spanish were sending ten thousand armed men. Once they arrived, the Gunner would be gone.
January came, cold and dreary. The English troops were being sent out now to key garrisons around the Pale; but there was no action. Still Silken Thomas waited for the Spanish soldiers, but no word of them came. One day, in February, at their meal in the main room, Tidy quietly remarked, “You know what people are saying now. The King of Spain has other things to think about. He’s going to leave Silken Thomas twisting in the breeze.”
“So you say,” she answered dully. It wasn’t often they even spoke, nowadays.
“A ship came into port yesterday,” he continued calmly. “From Spain. There’s no sign and no word of any soldiers to be sent over here.”
“The enemies of the Fitzgeralds will say what they will say,” she countered.
“You don’t understand.” He gazed at her evenly. “It’s not their enemies saying so. It’s their friends.”
That night there was a fall of snow. When she looked out of her window in the morning, gazing towards the interior of Ireland, she saw only a dismal, white silence.
But the real blow came in March. The Gunner had finally bestirred himself to launch a proper campaign. Boldly, he had gone to Maynooth, the mighty Fitzgerald stronghold. Even with his artillery, Cecily imagined, he’d be held up by that huge fortress for weeks. Then, after no time at all, the news came.
“Maynooth has fallen.” It was her husband who came all the way up to her tower refuge to tell her.
“The Gunner took it?”
He shook his head.
“He’ll claim he took it, of course,” he said. “But it was some of Fitzgerald’s own men who betrayed him and let the English in.” Then he went back down the stairs again.
That night, after watching the sunset, she could not sleep, and sat staring out at the gleaming stars until, at last, they faded before the cold, harsh dawn from the east.
It was in April, when Silken Thomas was already a fugitive, moving down into the marshes, that Cecily went to see Dame Doyle. It had not been easy to approach the house of the alderman who had sided so gladly with the heretic King Henry; but his wife was different, and she trusted her.
“I can’t go on like this,” she told the older woman. “I don’t know what to do.” And she explained all that had passed between her and Henry Tidy. But if she expected sympathy, or that Dame Doyle would offer to mediate, she was disappointed.
“You must go back to living with your husband,” Dame Doyle told her bluntly. “It’s as simple as that. Even,” she added quite severely, “if you don’t love him.” She gazed at Cecily thoughtfully. “Could you bring yourself to love him,” she asked her frankly, “enough?”
It was what Cecily had been wondering