The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(52)
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.
There would be none. Stephen was flawlessly prepared and beginning to enjoy himself. Liadan finally stopped questioning and, with a crease between her brows, remarked, “You are nicer than I thought you’d be.”
“I don’t suppose you have any good opinion of Englishmen. I don’t blame you.”
“My father’s an Englishman,” she said, unexpectedly. Though Stephen knew that much, he didn’t have to feign surprise at her easy admission. “Father Byrne says I should not want to kill him for it, because then how would I have been born? But I think I should at least like to slap him for what he did to my mother.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Stephen replied carefully. “Not all men, of any country, are good men. I am sorry that Ireland has had to learn that lesson over and over.”
“Liadan,” Maisie said abruptly, softened by a smile, “go and see how long before dinner.”
When the girl had vanished, after bestowing an affectionate hug on the previously stone-faced guard standing in the open doorway, Maisie stepped in front of Stephen and tipped her head up. A long ways. She was a foot shorter than he was, her heart-shaped face bland and unremarkable save for the intensity in her gray eyes. The linen wimple covering her hair had slipped a little and he could see that her hair was astonishingly pale, reminiscent of silver gilt.