The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(18)
Speaking of good-looking men…how is Matthew doing in Anabel’s service? Conscientious, of course. He would hardly be Harrington’s son if he were not. I am glad he, at least, is with you. It must pain Kit to be left out of the investiture—though it was more or less his choice. Have you heard from him? I’ve had one—annoyingly brief—letter. Our brother seems to be mostly intent on avoiding Eleanor Percy, who appears to have taken up residence at Kilkenny Castle as though staking a claim to the Earl of Ormond. I wonder how the queen feels about that!
Lucie
In the end, Stephen had to resort to using all his birthright and position and family and royal connections to keep Oliver Dane from wresting every last Irish woman and child from his hands. He couldn’t reasonably expect to hold onto the eight men among the prisoners and had hoped the chance to hang those—especially the engineer, Captain Julian—would satisfy Dane. But the man seemed almost as obsessed with slapping down Stephen as he was with destroying Irish rebels.
“Rebels?” Stephen had scoffed when Dane accused him of aiding the enemy. Casting a calculated, contemptuous eye over the thirteen women and two boys, he added, “If you are afraid of such, Dane, then you should not be in the field in Her Majesty’s service.”
It had very nearly come to blows then. It was only stopped, Stephen hated to admit, by Harrington’s intervention, which consisted mostly of laying a hand on his dagger hilt and moving within arm’s reach of Oliver Dane. Harrington might be well into his fifties, but Stephen had never met another man able to match him for sheer physical intimidation.
Dane had retreated then, and attempted to enlist Pelham’s aid in the matter. But Ireland’s Lord Justice, well aware of the Courtenay family’s reach, had declined to intervene. At first light the next morning, Stephen and his men rode away from Carrigafoyle with the fifteen prisoners. Their destination was Kilkenny, where current intelligence placed the Earl of Ormond in residence. It seemed safest to get the prisoners into the hands of a local lord capable of resisting Dane and who also had a vested interest in keeping Ireland stable. What Ormond did with the women and boys then would be an Irish affair. As for himself, Stephen wanted nothing more than to go home.
But go home to what? He pondered the question as they made their way back across the ravaged landscape of Munster. No doubt Queen Elizabeth would be pleased by Carrigafoyle’s fall, but she would also correctly assess the future dangers arising from the cruelty of her soldiers. No one knew Philip of Spain better than his former wife; Elizabeth would know how far he might be willing to go to placate his current wife. Mary of Scotland would press for retaliation of the cruelty in Ireland. Would Philip grant it? If he did, if Spain committed greater forces to Ireland, then England would require more men and weapons as well. Stephen had no other skills—what else could he do but fight?
Fight…or immerse himself more thoroughly into Walsingham’s murky world of intelligence and lies. Stephen had proved himself quick and clever while embedded in Mary Stuart’s English prison. He had gained the Scots queen’s trust, even affection, and she had never guessed until the last that he had been spying on her. So it seemed he did have other skills: the ability to lie convincingly, to twist the trust of the gullible against them, to hide his true face behind a convincing mask. Yes, all that had been done in the interests of England. But that didn’t stop him feeling guilty at being good at it. Dominic Courtenay couldn’t tell a convincing lie to save his life—as evidenced by his past. Why was Stephen so conflicted? Wasn’t he eager to prove himself apart from his name and birth? Why did the thought of proving himself a good spy feel second best?
But second best or not, Stephen thought he mightn’t even mind that as long as it kept him out of Ireland’s battles.
Their progress was excruciatingly slow. At the end of the third day, they’d gone barely thirty miles and Stephen’s frustration had him snapping at his men. Harrington, always so careful not to overstep his bounds, also knew when and how to intervene. He got Stephen on his own and cautioned neutrally, “There’s no way to move faster than ten miles a day with the prisoners walking.”
“I know. You’ll smooth things over with the men?” Stephen asked abruptly.
“They understand.”
“It’ll take us nearly two weeks to reach Kilkenny at this pace. And I don’t…” Stephen rolled his shoulders, feeling the tight pull of tension. “The danger increases the longer we’re out here.”
“I agree.”
To know that an experienced soldier like Harrington could also feel the dread that seemed to seep out of the very ground and air steadied Stephen and made it possible for him to make a decision.
“We’ll split up,” he announced. “Mount the prisoners, and that still leaves us two dozen men on horseback to ride with them. The rest of the men will march behind. Without the women slowing them down, they can make nearly as fast a time as we can. That should cut our trip to Kilkenny down to four days, five at the most.”
Harrington nodded in agreement, possibly approval. “You want me with the other group?”
“No. I need you. Put Lewis in charge of those marching and see to the disposition of the horses. I’ll let the women know.”
The de facto leader of the small band of prisoners was only a few years older than Stephen, a wary redhead named Roisin. She wasn’t the oldest of the women, nor the most hostile, and perhaps it was her even temperament that led the others to defer to her. When told they would ride from here, she studied Stephen briefly before asking, “You feel it, don’t you?”