The Irish Princess by Karen Harper

told her, amazed at the sudden calmness of my voice despite the great weight upon my heart, “we must flee so we can tell the truth, maybe find Thomas. But we can’t risk going into the village, because Christopher said the English were quartered there. Fetch our cloaks and anything else you can quickly gather. And give me your apron, because I’m going to take The Red Book of Kildare with me under my skirts, lest they find it. If they get their bloody hands on that, they’ll know exactly who to hunt down and execute in the entire Pale.”
    Looking both proud and terrified, Magheen untied her apron, yanked it over her head, and thrust it at me.
    “And fetch Wynne’s leash,” I told her as I started to pry the lid off the vat that held the book.
    “Gera,” she said, turning back. “No—from now on ’tis Lady Fitzgerald,” she said, emphasizing each word. She had never called me that before, nor had she curtsied to me when it was just the two of us, as she did now. “But, milady, two women fleeing with their heads covered might make it to your uncle James at Leixlip or to Dublin and find a boat to reach your mother, but not with an Irish wolfhound in tow. Wynne is too protective, a barker, and folks hereabout know he’s always at your heels.”
    She spoke truth. Another bitterly hard decision: I must leave Wynne too. Only Magheen and I must go on the run like criminals, mayhap with a hue and cry out for us soon. We had no time to waste, though no doubt all above were concentrating on the bloody executions. Damn Christopher Paris, once one of our family, constable of our castle—a fool, covetous for power, now paying the price.
    I tried to tie the apron around my waist in a sling up under my skirts, but I saw the book would bang against my knees, so I bound the crimson-covered treasure to my chest and swirled the cloak Magheen brought me around my shoulders. One bag of coins lay in the vat; perhaps Gerald and Collum had taken the other. I thrust the bag in Magheen’s hand and she put it in our food sack. Clasping the book to me, I led her behind the group of praying women toward the tunnel.
    Wynne padded over to me. I bent and, one-armed, hugged my beloved pet around his neck, then for one quick moment buried my face in his thick hair. It was like saying farewell forever to my pretty, pampered past again. “I love you, my Wynne, so much,” I whispered, and choked back a sob, for that was so true of all I was forced to leave behind.
    I saw Magheen had summoned Shauna, her own cousin, from the women praying fervently with bowed heads. Magheen must have chosen her to tell the others to keep our secret. Magheen pressed Shauna’s fingers around Wynne’s collar, and I whispered to that alert, eager face, “Wynne, stay. Good lad, stay! ”
    Dear God in heaven, how I wished that I could stay and relive my days and dreams here. Magheen pulled my elbow and swept aside the hempen curtain covering the tunnel entrance. We had no time for candles or a lantern and could not risk drawing attention by a light.
    It was black as Satan’s soul inside. I had been through here several times, once when all five of us were pretending we were pirates, but we’d had a lantern. Magheen went first as we both felt our way along the damp, earthen length of it. Cobwebs laced themselves across my sweating, tear-streaked face. It smelled more fetid than a bog.
    “What if they know about this escape route because of Christopher going out to parley with them?” I whispered. “They might have a guard at the other end.”
    “Our only chance,” she said. “Oh, Saint Brigid, spread above our heads your bright cloak for protection.”
    I had to keep talking. It helped me beat back the blackness to face my fears. “We may be trapped in here, if he boarded it up again,” I said.
    But from this stale, rank place—had it been like this for Father, with his labored breathing and fatal coughing fits in the Tower of London? I wondered—we