The Irish Princess by Karen Harper Page A

began to smell fresh air. And from the lack of all light, I saw grays emerge. Could we be at the river entrance? Already the dark journey seemed eternal, but it had just begun.

 
    CHAPTER THE FIFTH
     
    T hough dawn was just pearling the sky when we emerged from the tunnel, at first it seemed midday to us. Blinking at the brightness, as Magheen started down the path I whispered, “No! We’ll take our boat.”
    “But they used barges to drag supplies up the river,” she protested as she turned back. Like me, she kept her voice low, fearful someone would spring at us from behind the big beeches or the shrubby wood beyond.
    “But that was before the siege, and now they are intent on their bloody work at the castle. It will be faster to float to Uncle James at Leixlip, if he’s still there and not under siege too, but they must have wanted Maynooth above all.”
    Indeed, the English must be concentrated at Maynooth, for no one walked the river path at this early hour, and we children’s naomhóg awaited under the newly sprouted willow boughs. It saddened me to see the double sets of oars we had used and the tiller Gerald had steered. I carefully placed The Red Book of Kildare in the boat’s belly before we shoved the craft into the river and clambered in. As ever, the current took us away. Sitting side by side on a wide seat, Magheen and I rowed together to go even faster.
    With tears in my eyes, I saw Maynooth’s tall silhouette swallowed by the fog. The sedgy banks of the Lyreen, the familiar fields, the few crofts and cots between the castle and the village seemed to rush past. Despite our speed, I felt stunned, mired in the unreality of it all as if my feet were stuck in a bog. But I needed to think—think clearly!
    “We should both lie down in the boat when it goes past the village,” I told Magheen. “English soldiers may still be there, or someone may recognize us and call out.”
    We pulled our oars inside and lay in the bottom of the boat, staring up into the mist as the spring sun ate slowly through the fog. It was but four miles northwest to Leixlip, then twelve beyond that to Dublin, if we needed to go that far.
    What to do? Though Magheen was much my elder and had been my nurse and guardian, I was the Geraldine, the one who needed to make adult decisions now. Should we stop at Leixlip and inquire for Uncle James? Father had a town house in Dublin, but that could be ruined or overrun by the English. If we could get our boat past the small waterfalls near my uncle’s estate, we could reach the point where the Liffey burst into Dublin Bay. But with the English fleet anchored there, could we find safe passage to Uncle Leonard’s estate in the English shire of Leicester? And once we were across the Irish Sea, how would we travel to Beaumanoir, which lay not on the water, but almost in the heart of enemy England?
    As we passed under overhanging tree boughs and saw the familiar swallows and kittiwakes going our way too, the sky grew ever brighter. I imagined I smelled the gorse-scented air of early spring, though we were barely past mid-March. I pictured the glens near the Lyreen and the Liffey with golden furze breathing out its clove scent, my favorite out-of-doors aroma. I fancied I smelled peat fires from the village, for I wanted to take every memory of Maynooth and Kildare County with me and—
    Magheen sat straight up in the boat. “Do you smell that on the breeze?” she demanded, craning to look back toward the village. “Smoke. A fire. The brightness we just passed. The village is burning! The English bastards have put it to the torch! Antragh, Antragh! ” she kept keening, rocking with her head in her hands. “Too late, too late!”
    Our boat swept on, but I could see she was right, for gold and orange flames slashed into the early morning sky behind us. Magheen’s sister and her family—all those she and Collum knew and loved. The market square, the shops, the houses of wattle and thatch.