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barked at each blast at first but now, brave stalker of game though he was, he kept close to me and whimpered. The early, defiant cries from our castle garrison of “A Geraldine! A Geraldine!” had become more sporadic and finally silent as our supplies of powder and cannonballs dwindled.
    Christopher had been dead wrong about the guns not reaching where we women had been living high in the tower. Amidst rubble, dust, and the acrid smell of gunpowder from a direct hit, we had lugged what foodstuffs and bedding we could salvage to the dim, dank cellars. Yet even down here, the rumbling of cannon seemed to shake our very bones while our nearly one hundred men fired back. During the day, even Gerald, guarded by Collum, sat with us women, waiting, wondering what would happen next.
    Though but thirteen years, Gerald was feeling the burden of being the heir of Silken Thomas, the rebel 10th Earl of Kildare. Christopher had informed us more than once that he had orders from Thomas to help Gerald escape to safety through the tunnel if the castle walls were in danger of being breached. At least the fact that Gerald was still here made me feel better.
    “I think,” Gerald said, rising to his feet as if that would make us heed his words the more, “I should be able to parley with the English in my brother’s place, or at least help fight.”
    “I am constable here,” Christopher announced, appearing behind us before we saw him. “And I outrank the heir or the absent earl right now; there’s no denying it. We are cut off by an impressive force, if I do say so meself. I had not fathomed the might of the English king to send so great an army and armaments against us. Perhaps we be more important to him than we had learned to think,” he added with a bit of a swelled chest. “But, Gerald, I shall be sending you off straightaway when it gets dark, or the earl might have my head, and I hope to find a way to preserve it and all we have left. Collum, best be packing some things for the lad, as you’ll be going with him to my kin in Donore till the coast be clear of the English and we can spirit you away to the continent.”
    “Clear to France or Italy from whence the Fitzgeralds came?” Gerald asked, looking awed, while my stomach twisted to think of being separated from him. I saw Magheen and Collum exchange a quick look. As far as I knew, they had never been parted and, like my parents, were a love match. But neither said one word in protest.
    “Will I not go too, and with Magheen?” I asked, jumping off the barrel and standing next to Gerald to face Christopher, who shook his shaggy head.
    “’Tis enough of a gamble, two escaping into the night when we’re surrounded, but not four—and not two females to slow them down. The English be wanting to get their hands on the earl and the heir, Gera. Should they ever take Maynooth, you’d be but sent to your mother; I am certain of it.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand and stalked out before I could argue further.
     
    That very night Christopher’s plan—the part of it he had admitted—came to fruition. Gerald donned a shepherd’s hooded cloak and carried a staff and a pack of food on his back, and Collum much the same, though he had a knife and a matchlock pistol. Gerald waited at the door to the tunnel while Collum said a quick farewell to Magheen. I tell true, I had not shed tears since the bombardment of Maynooth began, but I cried now, silently, for my dear guardians’ and my parents’ separations, and for my being parted from Gerald. For as I have written here afore, though Gerald and I had our spats from time to time, we had forged a friendship too.
    “I will see you when I can, Gerabeth, when things simmer down a bit,” Gerald promised, blinking back tears and holding tight to my hand. He was trembling, just as I. “Christopher is going to put out the word I have the pox and have been sent away to be tended at an undisclosed site to avoid panic.”
    How