Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(54)

Preston frowned at her words, heard two of Isabella’s sentences once again in his head: It is not his plan, it is ours. And I dare not tell him of it. Implying that the truly ignorant cog in Maria Anna’s machination was not Preston, but O’Donnell himself.

And he felt the oblique implication strike him so hard and so suddenly that the room seemed to tilt momentarily. Had O’Donnell’s apparent defection been planned? Had he been maneuvered into it so that he was then a properly situated, yet unknowing, piece of some larger stratagem?

He looked quickly at Isabella, who was looking intently at him. He did not see canniness; he saw—

Love. Maternal love. Intense, irrational, desperate. But why would she do such a thing to O’Donnell, unless it was—?

To save him. Of course. Now it made sense. And suddenly Preston saw how, since the arrival of the up-timers and their library’s revelation of the duplicity of the Spanish in regard to their Irish servitors, the grand dame of European statecraft had realized that in order for her cherished god-child to survive—and thrive—she would have to shift the game board so that he could weather the change in fortunes.

Yes, there was no doubt about it. It was clear enough that, in the days before the up-timers, she had, every step of the way, protected him, groomed him, got him a knighthood. Of course, then Father Florence Conry had almost ruined it all with his hare-brained proposal to invade Ireland. But whereas the priest had envisioned a force jointly led by the Earls O’Donnell and O’Neill and the predictable co-dominium that would arise in its wake, Madrid had embraced a different solution. Philip was no fool, and he had the benefit of the count-duke of Olivares’ advice, to boot. So Philip had summoned young O’Donnell, knighted him in an order more prestigious than O’Neill’s (which had been Isabella’s intent), but then chose him to lead the Irish expedition alone. It was a politically prudent choice, one which Isabella had not expected, probably due to O’Donnell’s youth and his clan’s less storied name. But the Spanish king and his counselor had seen the qualities, and restraint, in the younger man that would make him both a more capable general of armies and a more capable revolutionary orator than his mercurial peer, O’Neill.

But, since the invasion never came off (largely derailed by Isabella herself, as Preston recalled), the only lasting effect of all this maneuvering was that it ensured that the already difficult relationship between O’Donnell and O’Neill became as bad and bitter as it could be. It hadn’t helped that, in addition to simply choosing the younger over the older, Philip and Olivares had made their assessment of Hugh’s superior qualities well known at court, and thereby, throughout Europe.

So Isabella had saved her godson from the disastrous invasion, just as she had taken pains to ensure that he was college-educated, naturalized, knighted, and furnished with a tremendously advantageous marriage. All done to both ensure his success, and ensure his survival. A target of English assassins since birth, the higher Hugh O’Donnell’s station became, the more pause it gave to those who sent murderers across the Channel: were they plotting the death of a renegade member of the Irish royalty, or an immigrated Spanish gentleman? The former was an affair of no account, but the latter could easily become an international incident, and was therefore best avoided.

And having thus protected and provided for her charge, Isabella of the up-time history had died in 1633, presumably satisfied that she had seen him safely married with a title and land. But within the year, those plans had come undone, here as there. His wife having died without producing surviving issue, he lost more than his love; he lost the land and titles that had been her dowry. In that world, with his godmother dead, he had had little choice but to do what he might as the colonel of his own tercio. That he had recruited and commanded well there no less than here, that much was clear. But there, Fernando had evidently inherited Philip’s utilitarian attitudes toward the Irish, and had spent them like water. Which was sadly prudent, Preston had to admit. After all, as the opportunity to reclaim Ireland became an ever-thinner tissue of lies, the Spanish masters of the Wild Geese feared that they would be increasingly susceptible to subornation by other, rival powers. And so the last of them were sent to Spain, and then to their destruction in putting down the Catalan revolt that began in 1640.

But what about in this altered world, where Hugh had no future with Spain and none in the Lowlands either, unless it officially broke with Madrid? What place for O’Donnell? Indeed, Preston realized with a sudden chill up his back, what place for the Wild Geese, for Ireland? And evidently, the old girl Isabella had hatched a scheme to correct some, maybe all, of these problems. But it was a scheme so deep, and probably so devious, that it had to be kept from one of its primary executors: Hugh Albert O’Donnell.