Read The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell for Free Online

“interrogatory,” and neither Elizabeth nor the Gnome seemed inclined to apprise him of its mysterious contents.
    Neither would he give them the pleasure of begging to be informed.
    Elizabeth was silent as they followed her toward the Privy Council Chamber. Essex sensed that her mind was working at a most acceler-ated rate.
    “Robert, bring me a copy of her answers,” she snapped at Cecil.
    “Yes, madam.” Without another word the Gnome peeled away from them and disappeared back the way he had come.
    Essex and Elizabeth reached the Privy Council Chamber and the guards flung open the double doors.
    “Will you see her, Your Majesty, or have her arrested?” Essex finally asked. He was becoming more and more irritated. An “interrogatory.” Her “answers.”
    Elizabeth did not deign to reply. He persisted. “Grace O’Malley has the distinction of having transported more shiploads of Scots mercenaries to Ireland to fight the English than anyone else in history.” “Sometimes the Scottish Gallowglass fight on our side,” Elizabeth argued with infuriating calm.
    “The woman is a traitor many times over, Your Majesty. A known cutthroat!”
    “She is indeed. But our Philip Sidney thought enough of her to continue a long correspondence, from the time of their meeting in Ireland till his death. And her answers to my questionnaire have piqued my curiosity. Despite her reputation I believe she has something in her character to recommend her. I wish to see such a woman with my own two eyes. See what she is made of.”
    Elizabeth saw Essex’s frustration growing, and obliged him. “She recently asked me for several favors.”
    “Favors? From a known rebel?”
    “I replied with an interrogatory of eighteen items. She responded in early July.”
    “But—”
    “You will have the Presence Chamber readied for an audience,” Elizabeth interrupted, irritation growing in her voice. “And see if my Irish cousin, Tom Ormond, is about. I know he ’ll wish to be present.” Essex stood unmoving, entirely bemused. The queen’s temper was rising.
    “Robin, listen to me now,” she said, fixing him with a look of grave intensity. “You have been so preoccupied with your military obsessions and your Bacons and your Farm of Sweet Wines that you have not been paying attention.”
    “Your Majesty, I object! I have been paying very close attention to your business and the business of state.”
    “Yes, you have. My domestic agenda. But what of my foreign policy?
    What of Ireland? You know nothing about the rebellion there. You shy away from the subject, as most men do, because the very thought of that savage country makes your blood run cold. When you do think of Ireland, you’re reminded of all the Englishmen who’ve died there. Were ruined there. Your father, for one. Your brother-in-law, Perrot, for another. But you don’t think about my Ireland. My problem.
    “Did you know, Robin, that the last act of my mother’s betrayer, Cromwell, was to talk my father into taking control of the Irish nobility?
     
    His “Surrender and Regrant” policy was either the most brilliant idea he ’d ever conceived, or the most boneheaded. Who knows, perhaps Thomas Cromwell was the first of Ireland’s victims. He died by the ax not three years after the program’s conception. My father paid it halfhearted attention. It was a distant problem in my brother’s reign, and even in my sister Mary’s.
    “But distances have shrunk, my sweet man, ever since the Spaniards began their bloody conquest of the world, and Ireland is suddenly at my back door! Philip has dangerous papist allies there—confounded Irish aristocracy! There ’s one and only one amongst them—Tom Ormond—
    who knows the true meaning of loyalty. The lords of that unfortunate land blithely swear their fealty to my governors one day, then slaughter my troops the next. I send colonists there, soldiers and horses, and they die of disease or battle or go insane. The Irish