The Irish Mistress: The Pomegranate and the Falcon

Prologue

Summary

And that man happens to be King Henry himself! But while her family pushes her to accept his advances, Erin is hesitant to accept and tries to keep not only her honor but the friendship with the queen. But then the Queen asks the young girl for her help and Erin must decide which is more important. Her pride and honor? Or her friendship with a woman who's only crime was not giving the King a son and heir?

Prologue

Spring 1522

"Erin! Erin Mccullough!"

Damn it! She would get up this early to come looking for me I thought irritated that my usual morning trips to my mare, Dannsair, had been interrupted by my aunt.

It was still early morning and a fog lay thick and cold, surrounding the whole of my village--my tuath--making it hard to see in the predawn darkness. I had been on my way to visit my beloved Dannsair, the mare my uncle had sent to me last month along with a dozen other horses, for my birthday last year. Besides Dannsair, there had been six other riding horses, six stallions and six broodmares, and a dozen warhorses for his campaigns against the Protestant Irish.

Something that my father was grateful for, my mother feared for, and my aunt detested with a passion.

I looked around, trying to find a place to hide. I couldn't go into the rath for she would surely know to look there. I settled on the old oak tree that grew alongside the rath and climbed it as a squirrel would climb to escape danger.

I had just settled on the uppermost branch when my Aunt Laurel came through the fog, like a ghost or a spirit. I quieted my breathing in case she was trying to listen for any sound.

"Erin where are you? I know you're out here!" she called.

Yes we both know I'm out here but I'm not stupid as to answer you I thought with just a hint of pride that I had long outgrew my fear of her. While she had been my father's only younger sister, our relationship was one of fear and animosity between us. She was fifteen years my senior, unmarried and would never marry due to her old age and temper. Unlike the other women and girls of the tuath, Laurel detested the work and rules of a woman; she would roll her sleeves up her lien and tuck her skirts up so that she could walk faster.

My father used to say that if she was a man she would be one of the fiercest warriors he could ever have. As it was, she was only a woman with a man's temper and she often took her anger and frustrations out on me. It probably doesn't help that today was the day that I would be leaving the tuath--in truth I would be leaving the country of my birth, Ireland--to live with mine uncle, her second-eldest brother--until he could get me a place in Queen Katherine's household. Though this arrangement was certainly not my idea and it certainly wasn't either hers nor my mother's.

No, this idea was hatched between my father and uncle as a way to seal a deal between them, as brothers, so as to secure a political alliance for my father to fight the Protestant Irish and for my uncle to have me and to be able to secure a marriage as my legal guardian. And so at the age of five, I found myself with a governess who taught me how to read and write, mathematics, geography, and many other things that a daughter of a Grand Duke would know.

Not that this arrangement had its perks but I has soon myself as the scamallach of the tuath. And at five years old, I found it very frightening and sad that those who were outside my small family hated me for going above my station.

"Oh Erin . . . come on out! I just want to talk to you . . . to spend some quality bonding time with you before you leave us. After all, once you set foot on that ship to England you won't be able to come back to us ever again!"

If I had been younger I might have believed her for her voice was softer now, more gentle. But I knew better. She was hoping that her soft voice would draw me out so that she could possibly beat me or God knows what else before returning to her bed as if nothing had happened. She had done it once before. Last year when I had gone on an errand for my mother. She had followed me to the next village and then, on my way back, dragged me off the road and then beat me so hard that I had to literally drag myself back home.

My father had been furious with her and, if it hadn't been for me pleading with him to let her stay, he would have sold her to a brothel. As it were, it did not stop him from punishing her with a whipping and then tossing her to some of his men who had fought valiantly in his most recent raid. They had been hungry since then and her cries and pleas for them to stop still echoes around the tuath.

Even after what she had done to me, I still feel pity for her when the men were done which had last the whole night and only my father had slept that night. Laurel had come back slowly bleeding and unable to speak or move with being in pain. But my father wasn't done with her yet. He forced her to do the work of three girls who were given a day of rest and he made it known that if anyone touched me, be it man, woman or child, they were suffer the same fate.

Even though I had been the one to keep her from being sent to a brothel, her feelings of resentment toward me hadn't ended that day.

I peeked out between the leaves to see Laurel march toward the doors of the rath and stomped into the large circular structure to look for me. She didn't light the lanterns or candles--my father would have been furious at the waste of wax--and I took this time to climb carefully out of the tree and silently made my way back toward my home. I would not be able to see Dannsair today until we were about to mount up for the journey to the city of Dublin where a ship bound for England was station. Needless to say, I was sad to leave my mother behind but I was even more afraid of the journey.

I was afraid of the stories that I'd heard from passing men who had told my father and mother about shipwrecks and such. But Queen Katherine of Aragon had made such a trip when she had set sail from Spain to England and she was the same age as I was at the time and with no family except for the ladies she'd brought with her. And, if she could make such a journey, then I could for I had someone at least to greet me who was family to me.

I made it back to my home and snuck into my bed, pulling the blankets around me so as to ward off the chill that the fog had brought. I only had three hours until it was time for my mother and my most recent governess to get me ready for my trip to England and then, my journey to an unknown fate would begin.