The Virgin's Spy (15 page)

A
ilis Kavanaugh was not a woman lightly given to trusting any man—and Englishmen not at all. She had learned that lesson in the hardest way possible twelve years ago in Kilmallock. That said, as the days of his imprisonment at Cahir Castle grew to weeks, she watched Stephen Wyatt thoughtfully.

He was generally patient, and when he lost patience at his confined situation, he was neither cruel nor harsh. He seemed to grasp the necessity of being locked up. He answered the questions put to him with only the slight hesitations that might be expected of any man unsure of his future in enemy hands.

Most intriguingly of all, he spoke Gaelic.

Not fluently, by any means, but in a lifetime of rubbing up against the English in Ireland, Ailis had found few not born here who troubled. It made sense if you were an Anglo-Norman lord like Ormond or Desmond to learn the language of the estates you ruled—but Stephen was not one of those. When asked why he'd bothered, Stephen had said simply, “It seemed only fair. We expect travelers to France or Spain to speak the language—or at least Latin as a last resort. Why not Ireland?”

“Because England does not consider us a separate nation. We are their vassals, and as such our language is inferior.”

“I thought, Hibernia Hibernescit.”

Ireland makes all things Irish. “Where did you hear that?” she asked suspiciously. He'd been here just short of a month now, and they had progressed to the point where she would visit with him seated in the chamber poor Father Byrne had sacrificed to the prisoner, with the door open and guards within sound of her voice. She was not afraid of Stephen Wyatt. But she was growing increasingly curious.

For a heartbeat, he hesitated, and there was a flicker of pain in the way his eyes tightened at the corners. “I heard it from a woman. An Irish woman.”

“The Irish woman put to death by your company for a traitor?” she asked bluntly. He had not told her that story directly yet—that had come through Father Byrne, who had borne the brunt of early weeks of questioning their prisoner.

To her surprise, he corrected her. “The Irish woman put to death for nothing more than being unhappily in my company. Her name was Roisin.”

Something in the way he said it, the pain that was still raw when touched, told Ailis that this, at the very least, was the truth.

“So when you protested, you were beaten for your insolence. And when you continued to rail at your commander and at general English policy in Ireland, you were put out into the wilderness to starve.”

“Or to land with the Irish Catholic trash whose company I craved. So said my commander.”

“Lots of Englishmen use Irish women. Why were you different?”

She didn't think she'd faltered in her tone, but something sharpened in Stephen's eyes, as though he could guess at how she had once been used. “Bedding the girl was not my crime. Refusing to believe that every word out of her mouth from the moment we met was a lie? That was my sin. I believed her innocent of treachery.”

Stephen leaned forward, hands clasped and arms resting on his legs. He looked deadly serious, as though he needed to impress her with whatever he said next. “And even if I was wrong—even if Roisin was using me for reasons of her own—she did not deserve to die for it. Ireland was her country, far more than it is mine. It does not take a scholar to see what damage we have wrought here. I was already beginning to think that we English are not as interested in controlling Ireland as we are in razing it—and all its people—to the ground. Simply because we can.”

“That is what kingdoms do,” she reminded him sharply. “Assert their power wherever possible. Because England cannot fight France or Spain, it uses Ireland as an outlet for its aggression. All we have ever wanted, for four hundred years, is to be left alone.”

Stephen sat back, thoughtful. “Unfortunately for you, England is not the only power eager to use Ireland for its own purposes. With the English queen's divorce from King Philip, the Spanish must be looking to Ireland to drive a wedge into a Protestant kingdom they despise.”

That was verging entirely too close to secrets he could not be allowed to discover. Ailis changed the subject, with an abruptness that might have dizzied a less focused man. “Tell me why I should keep you alive.”

“Because my own people wanted me dead. And because you have no interest in doing English dirty work for them.” He twitched a smile, there and gone again, then said, “No, sorry, this is not the time for lightness. Why is it, in the time you've had me here, no one has asked me what I might know about English forces and plans?”

She answered truthfully. “We wanted to get a sense of what sort of pressure might be necessary—and if your answers would be worth expending that pressure.”

“You might simply try asking.”

“How could I know that you wouldn't be setting us a trap?”

“You don't, not the first time. But being duly cautioned by your own highly developed sense of self-preservation, you can take precautions not to be caught unawares. And when the first information I provide proves useful, you might be more willing to trust me the second time.”

Englishmen lie. It was a truism Ailis had learned from the time she was old enough to walk. She wanted to believe Stephen—which in itself was a warning. When was the last time she'd cared whether a man told her the truth? In the end, it was all about assessing risk. Did the risk of Stephen lying outweigh the benefits that would accrue if he were telling the truth?

There was only one way to find out, as he had so astutely highlighted. She must ask, and risk at least one action on whatever he told them.

“Very well, Stephen Wyatt,” she said in Gaelic. “Tell me something useful that I can use against the English you claim to so despise.”

Two weeks after he told Ailis when and where she would find the Earl of Ormond's men patrolling into Munster lands, Stephen was released from his confinement in the priest's chamber. The guard who motioned him out gave no explanation, so Stephen was left to follow thinking mordantly, Either she's decided to trust me or she's decided to execute me. It almost didn't matter which, as long as he was free of that spartan priest's chamber.

He had always thought himself a self-contained, controlled man, but confinement—however light—had worn on him, turning his thoughts back in on themselves. He'd tried to break the cycle by reciting poetry, composing letters in his head to his family that would go unwritten for the indefinite future, and obsessively checking and further embellishing his cover so that by the time he was released, he could almost believe he was Stephen Wyatt. Wynfield Mote, Tiverton, the estates of Somerset, the memories of court and family—all shoved far beneath the surface.

Ailis waited for him at a table in a small chamber off the Great Hall, over which she leaned, studying a map. She wore her usual outfit of scarlet broadcloth kirtle with bodice, her linen smock finely blackworked. Father Byrne was next to her, a kindly looking man for all his asceticism, and the captain of her guards, a distant relative named Diarmid mac Briain, glaring balefully at Stephen. His heartbeat sped up. If the Kavanaughs had lost men on this raid, his fate was sealed.

Every man there waited on Ailis—and Stephen thought she knew and used that to perfection. When she straightened, studying him without speaking, he was rather forcibly reminded of Queen Elizabeth, another woman who ruled using every advantage she held. Not excluding her femininity.

He declined to ask, and finally, with a ghost of a smile, Ailis spoke. “Your information was correct. We took Ormond's patrol by surprise and came away with half a dozen horses and a not insufficient store of food. Not a great battle, but pricking the English here and there is a strategy we have long embraced.”

“None injured?” Stephen asked coolly.

“Not among us,” she answered, just as cool. “Ormond's men took some injuries.”

He could only pray none of those injuries were great or fatal. The Earl of Ormond had not struck Stephen as a greatly patient man; his willingness to abide by Walsingham's instructions would probably not outlast serious cost to his own men.

“Well,” Ailis said after another long silence, “you have passed your first test. There will be others, and not always set out on your terms. But for tonight, I thought you might enjoy eating with the household. At night, I'm afraid, I will continue to lock you in. You understand.”

“Perfectly.” When their eyes met, Stephen felt a spark leap between them.

If Ailis felt the same challenge and response, she did not show it. “Diarmid or one of his men will be watching you, but you are otherwise free among the public spaces of the castle.” Then, with real laughter in her voice, she suggested, “Beyond the hall is a makeshift schoolroom. There is at least one member of my household who has been consumed by curiosity about our unexpected English guest. Perhaps you might quench that curiosity to a degree.”

Stephen took the suggestion as an order, which it had been, and did his best to ignore the Irish guard tasked with following him. Through the hall, a space elegant in its lines and clean medieval feel, to a door left ajar at the base of a tower. The schoolroom, as Ailis had termed it, was round and with only small windows set high near the ceiling. There were two tables in the chamber, one piled high with books and ledgers and heaps of paper and ink, the other a study space where two children sat together working.

No,
Stephen corrected himself as he got a better look,
one child and one young woman.
He knew their names and some of their history from Walsingham—that is, Stephen Courtenay knew those things. Stephen Wyatt did not, and so he said courteously, “Forgive me for intruding. I was told there was someone here who wanted to meet me.”

The child flew out of her seat and planted herself in front of Stephen. Even if he hadn't known who she was, he'd have been able to guess, for she was a miniature of Ailis. Black braids swung past her shoulders, and her light green dress showed the snags and stains of a child who liked playing outdoor games. “My mother let you out!” she exclaimed, as though Stephen had been a horse confined to pasture.

“If Ailis Kavanaugh is your mother, then yes, she let me out.”

“I'm Liadan,” the girl declared. “I'm eleven years old and someday I will lead Clan Kavanaugh like my mother. And this is Maisie.”

She spoke in staccato bursts of enthusiasm, her braids bouncing as she moved. Behind her, Mariota Sinclair Kavanaugh rose with a little more restraint but an equally wide smile. Standing, she was only an inch taller than the eleven-year-old.

“We are glad to finally meet our mysterious guest,” Maisie said. Her sober attire as a widow contrasted sharply with her obvious youth. She had turned sixteen a month before her husband's death, but the overwhelming impression as Stephen greeted her was calculated intelligence. She spoke Gaelic much more fluently than he did, though with a slightly different accent than the native Irish.

Then she switched to English. “I am very glad you have come, because Liadan needs to practice her English and she does not trust mine, seeing that I am Scots.”

Liadan pulled a face, but obediently said in very good English, “That is an excuse. Mostly we just wanted someone new to talk to. Have you ever been to London?”

From there, the interrogation was conducted with rapid force and with dizzying changes of subject that left Stephen mildly amused and thinking that maybe this was Ailis's secret weapon in disarming prisoners. He admitted to having been in London and even to having seen Queen Elizabeth—at a distance, on a festival day. He told them about the supposed household he'd grown up in, the illegitimate son of a carelessly affectionate knight who'd let him be trained as a soldier. While he and Liadan batted words back and forth, he noted that Maisie watched them both with a benign expression that suggested either idiocy or careful masking of attention. He favored the latter. Probably she had been tasked by Ailis with listening for inconsistencies in his story compared to what he had already told the other interrogators.