“Are you sure the rest aren’t yours, Niamh?”
“No, not at all. Honestly, Morgana, look at those jewels! Those
gowns are certainly from Flanders, as are my own, but they were
obviously made for a queen!”
Again that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach nagged at
Morgana as she viewed the riches, and not for the first time she
recollected that Flanders was indeed owned by Spain. “Spain again,”
she muttered.
“What did you say?” Niamh giggled.
“Oh, er, nothing, just thinking aloud.” Morgana shook her head, as
she led the guests up the stairs to visit her father.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The rest of the day passed in a whirl of activity as Morgana
supervised the laundry, took turns scrubbing shirts, and prepared
the animals the men had caught for supper whilst out hunting. There
were several fine pheasant, and some rabbit and squirrel. Ruairc
helped her skin and clean them while they sat side by side at the
large table in the kitchen.
“There’s also a deer outside, but we’ll leave him to hang in the
stables for a few days, and then we can preserve some of it, and eat
the rest.”
“In that case we should also do some fishing and kill a few of the
pigs, if we are going to get the smokehouse started up,” Morgana
remarked, as they discussed their plans for the rest of the week.
Suddenly she glanced up and saw Ruairc staring at her. “What’s
wrong, have I got dirt on me or something?” she asked. She rubbed
her faced and smeared blood on her cheek.
“You were perfect until just now, when you blooded yourself. No, I
was just thinking how much I wanted to kiss you,” Ruairc answered
truthfully. The gleam in his emerald eyes left Morgana in no doubt
of his desires.
“Really, Ruairc, not in the kitchen!” she scolded as a servant went
past.
“If we were married,
a stor
, I would kiss you senseless any
time I had a yearning to. I seem to recall that in the past you
never had nay objections,” he murmured seductively.
“The frivolity of youth,” Morgana answered coolly, and turned her
eyes back to the squirrel she was skinning.
“In that case, may you never grow old.” Ruairc smiled, and planted a
featherlight kiss on her ear which sent shivers down her spine.
“Ruairc, you promised,” Morgana sighed, even as she leaned against
him and revelled in the warmth and strength of his large muscular
frame.
“I know, but you make it awfully hard for a man to keep his good
intentions when you're so warm and affectionate, if only you would
allow that side of yourself to show a bit more. You don’t have to be
strong all the time, Morgana, not with me, you know.”
Morgana sat up straight as more people entered the kitchen and gave
them appraising looks.
“But I can’t afford to look weak in front of the clan right now
either, not when we came so close to losing Father.”
“He’s looking very well today, thanks to you.”
“And thanks to you as well. If you hadn’t brought those things from
Aunt Agatha, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“It’s my pleasure. As I said, Morgan was the father I never had.
There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the Maguires. I owe no
loyalty to my family, not after they cast me out over Conor’s
mysterious death. Such hypocrites! Secretly they were delighted that
your family seemed to be falling apart, but they said I had ruined
any chance of a friendly alliance between the two families, and
stripped me of everything,” Ruairc recalled bitterly. “But none of
that compared with my grief over losing you, Morgana, you must
believe that.”
Morgana decided to turn the conversation away from such a sensitive
issue, so she observed thoughtfully, “But now that you are
disinherited, Ruairc, your fortunes must be precarious, for all your
talk of how well you are doing under the Earl of Kildare. I hear
he's very headstrong, and quite determined to be the Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland despite all the arguments he has had with King Henry of
England in the past.”
“It's true, I’m afraid. The Earl does have some Irish allies, but
the Anglo-Irish in the Pale resent him because of the heavy taxes he
imposes upon them,“ Ruairc explained as he helped Morgana cut the
rabbits and squirrels into smaller pieces for stew.
“The Earl practises coign and livery, whereby he gets all of his men
lodged and fed on the lesser tenantry under the pretext of keeping
the peace, and imposes the most outrageous terms called cess.”
“Cess?” Morgana echoed with a frown.
“He uses the landlord’s carts when they need them most, around
harvest time, to show his power. Even if the landlords are allowed
to keep their carts, no cart can travel anywhere in the Pale without
paying exorbitant tolls.
“The situation is made even worse by the fact that under the same
terms, the Earl takes labourers of the land for works of his own in
Dublin, or worse still, for his many castles and estates.
"Because of this, for the rest of the Pale, the harvests have to be
gathered in later or over a longer period of time. You yourself know
the weather is so unpredictable that any delays can be costly.
“I feel sorry for the English under his yoke, I really do. But at
the same time, he is the chief lord in the land, especially since
the Desmond clan has fallen into decline, and the king never liked
Piers Butler anyway. You know he refused him the post of Earl of
Ormond in the end, and gave him the title of the Earl of Ossory
instead,” Ruairc explained.
Morgana nodded, and said, “And of course, we all know who got the
earldom. None other than Thomas Boleyn, though at the time no one
could have dreamt that his daughter Anne would one day be queen.”
“Well, for a time Henry was having an affair with Thomas’ wife, and
then moved on to the eldest daughter Mary. He was showing the
Boleyns favours long before he ever met Anne, the youngest daughter,
who was raised in France. But now they have a stranglehold on the
policy makers in England. And I know so far she had only managed to
produce a daughter, Elizabeth, but rumour has it Anne could well be
pregnant again.”
“The emperor, Charles V won’t be too please to hear that,” Morgana
remarked as she browned the meat in her cooking pot, and then
started to chop onions and vegetables.
Ruairc picked up a knife and began to help her. “Nor will the French
be pleased. They would have been perfectly happy if Henry had
married into the French royal family, divorce or no divorce, but
they consider his marriage to Anne Boleyn a serious affront. Henry
is going to find himself more and more isolated in Europe now, and
there is great unrest at home. The king was hoping he could count on
Kildare to keep things running smoothly here. But the Earl’s
arguments with the council over money, and particularly with
Skeffington as Henry’s appointed clerk of the council, have caused
serious problems,” Ruairc confided.
“What is this man Skeffington like?” Morgana asked, fascinated by
the whole new world of political intrigue Ruairc had experienced
first hand in Dublin.
“Ruthless. He loves playing one magnate off against the other. He is
skilled as a warrior, and I think he would like nothing better than
an all-out campaign to subdue these upstart Irish lords once and for
all.
"Of course, Henry is so tight-fisted he would never send any
soldiers unless there were a genuine rebellion. And even if that
happened, in the past he has always bribed the troublemakers with
empty titles or grants of land the person would have to fight every
step of the way to secure for himself.
“But I feel sorry for Skeffington in a way as well. Because the Earl
of Kildare has married into the Howard family, he has a powerful
ally in the Duke of Norfolk, and of course the Howards are cousins
to the Boleyns, so all of their stars are in the ascendant.
Skeffington can see the Earl’s greed is destroying the very thing he
is meant to be protecting, the English lordship in Ireland.”
“It sounds like a very explosive situation,” Morgana commented as
she turned to stir her cauldron.
“And as if he weren’t in enough trouble already, last year the Earl
was accused of suborning some of his clan to murder the Earl of
Ossory’s son. Even worse, when he was reprimanded by the king for
his heavy-handed behaviour in governing the Pale, he had the
arrogance to take all the kings’s arms and ordnance out of Dublin
Castle and moved it all into his own fortifications,” Ruairc
revealed.
“Good Lord! What did the king say when he discovered what he had
done?” Morgana gasped.
“He summoned Kildare to court, of course, but the Earl cleverly sent
his wife in his stead, arguing that he was too ill to come himself.”
“Was that true?”
“To a certain extent, it was. He was wounded a year ago last August
by some shot at Birr Castle, which he was helping his brother in law
the O’Carroll to defend from the O’Kennedys in Leix. So yes, he is
ill, but for all that he hasn’t slowed down one jot in his
persecution of the Gaelic Irish lords who don’t pay him tribute.
“In any case, I think his star is on the wane, and this another
reason why I wish to come home. The Earl has finally gone to England
to answer the many charges against him, but I fear he may never come
back. His son, whom they call Silken Thomas because of his love of
finery, is just as much of a hot-head as his father. The house of
Kildare will fall one day soon, and I have no wish to be dragged
down with it,” Ruairc said firmly.
“Then you have no reason to go back to Dublin. No matter what
happens between us, Ruairc, you know you can always have a home
here. I think the Maguire territory is big enough for the two of
us.” Morgana smiled gently as she put down her spoon and took his
hand in her own.
“It's kind of you to say so, but we both know I could never sit by
and watch you married to another, Morgana,” Ruairc said sadly, his
emerald eyes shimmering as he gazed deeply into her violet ones.
“Well, there is always trading, and the sea then,” Morgana offered
brightly. “At any rate, you don’t have to decide upon anything now,
Ruairc. Enjoy a few days’ rest, and see how you like being back at
Lisleavan.”
“I would like it just fine if you would slow down and not work like
a slave. Or even better still if you didn’t make me work like a
slave,” Ruairc teased, as he pushed some stray auburn curls backfrom
her forehead.
“You don’t work, you don’t eat, Ruairc. That’s the new rule at
Lisleavan. Who knows, you may find you have unexpected talents as a
farmer or blacksmith,” Morgana joked, as she smiled up at the man
who somehow always managed to completely captivate her with his
magnetic presence.
“’Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?’” Ruairc quipped.
His seeming criticism of her ideas broke the spell all to quickly.
“We haven’t enough men to feed the remaining people as it is. If the
Maguires do return, how on earth am I going to provide for them
unless we all lend a hand?”
“You don’t have to fight with me, you know, Morgana. I’m on your
side, remember?”
“I know, I know, it’s just that it’s not just going to be a struggle
for survival it is a battle to adopt new ways, to win over the
hearts and minds of the clan to a different system. We have good
cause to dislike the English invaders as you well know. At the same
time, they have been here since 1169, and I doubt very much whether
they are ever going to simply go away. Look at all the men from
England your brothers have on their land. Dermot and Brendan aren’t
going to want to give up too much of their own territory, and those
mercenaries won’t be held in check forever. They will cast a greedy
eye on all we have, and move against us.”
“They could always give the mercenaries the land they stole from
me,” Ruairc observed acerbically.
Morgana shook her head. “Let’s face facts, shall we? Your brothers
are in league with O’Reilly, our only other neighbour in the east,
and they would never in a million years move against the O’Neill,
powerful as they are, and allied with your employer the Earl of
Kildare. We are the most likely target, and I fear it will only be a
matter of time before their intentions are clear.”
“But if Kildare is on the wane? They might attack the O’Neill then,”
Ruairc argued.
“No one ever has successfully, not even the English,” Morgana
contended. “No, if Kildare falls, the MacMahons will take advantage
of it somehow. There are rich pickings in the Pale, after all. If
you will forgive my saying this, your brothers were both raised by
the O’Reilly, and I have never encountered a more treacherous man
than he.”
“I would have to agree with you there, “ Ruairc said as he frowned
darkly.
Morgana decided it was about time to change the subject again.