Read Online The Irish Princess by Karen Harper - Free Book Online

loose over the falls, and I try to snare it on the far side so we can get clear to Dublin town to find an Irish ship to England. Or we go on foot from here, first to Leixlip Castle, hoping to learn whether my uncle or some retainer of his we can trust is in the area and can assist us. And,” I said, getting to my feet and shaking out my skirts, “I think we need to go on foot. With our village put to the torch, there may be women on the roads now anyway, or those put out of their houses by the quartering of English troops.”
    “Thinking clear you are, milady. All right then, off we go. May Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid be our guides.”
    I knew the path from the falls to the castle, for we had visited here many a time and played about the grounds. Leixlip Castle somewhat resembled Maynooth, a gray stone structure, but it perched on a rocky outcropping of limestone in the wide valley. It too had a crenellated tower, but a round one, and not so high as ours.
    Though I was tall for my age, surely a mere girl mingling with some local folks to overhear what had happened here would not be overly suspicious. But we went not twenty strides toward the castle gate when I saw that the English soldiers were here too, though not the swarms of them we’d seen outside Maynooth. Their horses were bigger than our Irish breeds, and that gave them away, as well as the horrid pennants flying from the castle walls. In place of the usual crimson-and-white Fitzgerald banners, I saw green-and-white pennants with Tudor roses and some sort of mythical beasts.
    “Beasts, all of them,” I muttered.
    “What’s that, milady?”
    “Best go back to calling me something else hereabouts. Call me Shauna.”
    At least other Irish were about, some pulling carts, evidently provisions for the castle. When we approached the guarded gate to the castle’s inner courtyard, I walked slowly past as my bravado evaporated. I could not let them take me or my precious book. But then I saw a face I knew, a rhymer who had been at Maynooth but whom Father had loaned to Uncle James, since he liked the epics of the Irish past so dearly. Liam, I think. Liam the rhymer.
    “Magheen, go talk to that man there with the green cap. See if his name is Liam, a rhymer, and what he can tell you about Uncle James. But tread carefully. If Christopher sold out, who knows who else has done the same.”
    “Aye, I remember him, a bawdy one with the kitchen maids, he was,” she muttered. While she sauntered after him, I stood against the outer castle wall and watched her talk earnestly to him. To my disappointment, without so much as a glance my way he walked toward the path she and I had come up from the river. Taking her time, though I was so impatient I could have screamed, Magheen strolled back my way.
    “It wasn’t him?” I demanded, crestfallen.
    “Oh, ’twas, and don’t you be telling me Saint Brigid be letting us down again,” she scolded. “It seems since your uncle didna take direct part in the rebellion nor put up a fuss when the English demanded use of his castle, they merely turned him out and took over. He’s sent his family to relatives in Meath, but he’s secretly living in that very forest by the falls we just came through, though deeper in, at his hunt lodge, and Liam knows the way.”
    I sucked in a sigh of relief. So easily accomplished? Had the tide turned for me? But what dreadful news I had to tell Uncle James. I beat down my anger that he’d handed this area over to the bastard English, but he had no armaments with which to fight, and we’d heard he’d pledged all his men to Thomas’s army.
    “Will Liam take us there now?” I asked. “Do you think what he said can be trusted?”
    “Do we have a choice?” she countered. “Come, then.” She began to whisper even more, so I almost had to read her lips. “He’s awaiting us just off the path to the falls, and I tell you again, Lady Gera of Kildare, that Saint Brigid of Kildare is holding her