Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  “Kreshnik, they are waiting.” Grigor had come for her.

  “I am ready.” Nora put her sword back into its sheath and made to walk towards the inner court.

  “Wait, boy. I have something for you.” Grigor took a parcel from inside his tunic, and unwrapped a glistening dagger.

  Nora’s mouth fell open. “But that is yours.”

  “Given to me by my father and passed down through every generation before from father to son.”

  “I am not your son.”

  “No, but you are fearless, as I always hoped my son would be. This belongs to you now. Know that no man who ever wielded this dagger has died from a wound inflicted by an opponent.”

  “I am honoured.” Nora swallowed the lump that had grown in her throat.

  “Do not make me regret giving it to you, Kreshnik. Go out there and show those Turkish dogs what an Albanian mountain lion can do.” Grigor slapped her roughly on the back and gripped her shoulder as they walked away from the horses and into the inner court.

  The pasha and his janissaries sat upon a raised dais at the northern end of the court. Groups of knights from all over Albania, Macedonia and Serbia flanked the other sides. Besjana stood amongst the Kelmendi knights as Nora pulled her helmet over her head and marched forward into the centre of the court.

  The ranks of Turkish janissaries across from them opened and a tall man with shoulders twice as wide as Nora’s walked forward and stopped a few feet before her. He pulled a long, curved yatagan—favoured sword of the janissaries—from his waistband that looked as if it weighed as much as Nora’s entire armoured body. She felt fear rake its icy fingers up her spine but she stubbornly shook it off. She knew better then to be swayed by outward displays of brute strength. Her opponent might weigh three times what she did but she had the dagger, her speed, and her cunning. She gripped the dagger hilt tightly as the spectators began to jeer and laugh at the sight of so slight a boy up against the Turkish giant. The drums stopped.

  The moment the pasha barked for the duel to begin, Nora found herself leaping sideways as the huge Turk lunged at her with his yatagan. He was quicker than she had anticipated and he only took a moment to recover his balance. He lunged for her again but she deflected his blow with her eagle-crested shield. The impact reverberated around the court and knocked her to her knees, but pulling out her dagger, she jabbed him in the side, before rolling out of the way as he went down. The Turk grabbed at his wound and growled as his hand came away bloody. He cursed in a language she couldn’t understand, then pushed himself off the ground and advanced on her again.

  Nora raised her shield as he swung at her but the shield, made of wood with only an iron plate attached to the front, splintered in two and the blow of his yatagan knocked her backwards onto the ground. She tried to roll but the Turk pinned her down with his boot before grabbing her about the waist and lifting her over his head. The crowd erupted into laughter as he spun around with her held up as if she were a straw puppet.

  “Put me down you filthy ox!” Nora pummelled at his head with the butt of her dagger. His curved golden helmet deflected her blows at first but she found his temple and the Turk crumpled to his knees. Nora wasted no time; wrapping her legs about his neck, she squeezed as hard as she could, cutting off his air.

  The Turk fell to his side but his neck was so thick and muscled that she couldn’t apply enough pressure to completely cut off his breath. He reached for her again, grabbing the bottom of her tunic and flinging her across the arena, still holding her breastplate, which tore at the fastenings and came away. Nora landed on the ground, the wind knocked out of her. Her clothes had come away and she was left in nothing but the bandages she had so expertly wrapped around her chest that morning. Trying desperately to catch her breath she rolled and began crawling away from the Turk.

  “Kreshnik!” Nora heard Besjana’s scream from the side.

  Nora could hardly focus her eyes. She felt the Turk’s blade slice down her back, cutting away the bandages. He leaned down and whispered something; his tone was enough to communicate his lewd intent. She tried desperately to clasp the tattered fabric to her chest as she was plucked from the ground by her ankle and held upside down, exposing her female chest to every pair of astonished eyes in Rozafa castle.

  “Enough!” the pasha yelled as he rose from his seat.

  Nora’s opponent froze with her still held mid-air. While his attention was levelled on his master, Nora sank her dagger into his bicep. The Turk bellowed, dropping her to the ground again.

  “I commanded you to stop!” The pasha grabbed Nora by her cropped hair and dragged her across the ground. Another of the janissaries snatched the eagle-crested dagger from her hands.

  “You are a woman!” The pasha’s voice was a mixture of horror and awe as he took in the tight buds of her breasts.

  “You knew that already, didn’t you?” Nora was brazen in her reply.

  “I had my suspicions.” His eyes travelled the length of her dirt-covered body.

  “What trick is this?” Grigor joined them in the middle of the court, his eyes bulging at the sight of Nora’s exposed breasts.

  “This is your daughter, Grigor!” Besjana ran forward to shield Nora’s nakedness, throwing her fur cape about her. “This is the girl you abandoned at the monastery. She is a braver creature than any man within these walls.”

  “You did this!” Grigor’s shock turned to rage as he confronted his sister. “You lied to me all this time, Besjana? This is why you hid Kreshnik in the mountains.” He grabbed her and shook her roughly.

  “What choice did you give us?” She tore her arm from his grip. “I turned her into a boy so that she could live.”

  “And live she shall. She is under my protection now,” the pasha declared loudly. “No one will hurt this woman.”

  Grigor bristled. “She is my daughter and I will do with her as I wish.” He leaned in threateningly but the janissary held him back from the pasha.

  “She is much more than your daughter now, Grigor. She is my champion.”

  “Your champion?” Nora wheezed, still recovering from the the duel.

  The Pasha nodded. He turned to the crowd. “It will be known throughout all the Ottoman Empire that Kreshnik Kelmendi—”

  “Nora, my name is Nora.”

  “So it is.” The pasha smiled upon her. “That you, Nora, a woman, have shown more courage than any man I have ever met. I honour you.”

  The words she longed to hear. Finally she could be her own true self.

  “And as the finest woman I have ever beheld, I ask you to become my wife.”

  There it was. He didn’t want to honour her; he wanted to own her. Always the same with men: ownership, enslavement, possession.

  “You cannot have her!” Grigor erupted.

  “I am the pasha and I take what I want. She is my reward from Allah for all my days spent in this place of savages and infidels.”

  “We do not recognise your Allah. This woman is a Catholic and my daughter. Under the laws of our land you cannot have her.”

  “If you do not give her to me, I will burn all of Malsia to the ground.”

  “I belong to no man, and I will not see Malsia burned for the sake of pride and lust,” Nora interrupted.

  “Then you will become my wife?” The pasha’s eyes narrowed to greedy slits.

  “Come to Malsia in a month’s time and you will receive exactly what you deserve for all your efforts, my lord.” Nora gave the pasha her most winning smile. “But I want my dagger back.” She held her hand out, regal and demanding.

  The pasha motioned for his janissary to return the dagger to Nora. “Anything you wish, my lady.” His eyes travelled over her.

  “My wish is to return home, my lord. I am injured. You must excuse me so that I can rest and prepare for your arrival.” She bowed to the pasha, and without waiting for his reply, walked back towards her horse, still tethered in the ou
ter ward.

  “I will be there, Nora of Kelmendi. I look forward to our next meeting,” the pasha promised.

  Besjana and Grigor followed her from the inner court as the other Kelmendi knights made their horses ready to leave Rozafa.

  “First you lie to me and then you defy me to marry that Turkish dog?” Grigor grabbed Nora’s shoulder and spun her around to face him.

  “He’s not a Turk, he’s a Bosnian.” Nora’s voice was dry.

  “Which is even worse. He is a traitor to his own people.”

  “Let’s talk about betrayal, shall we, Father?” She drew the word out.

  His face dropped. “I am not proud of what I did, Nora. But you cannot marry my enemy to spite me.”

  “I am not marrying him.” She laughed dryly as she pulled herself up onto her horse, refusing Besjana’s assistance.

  Grigor’s brows knitted together. “You invited him to Malsia in a month’s time to get what he deserves.”

  “He will.” Nora winked at her father as she pulled the eagle-crested dagger from her waist and kissed the blade still wet with Turkish blood. “He will get exactly what he deserves, and that is my promise.”

  “The Pasha, the Girl and the Dagger” by Havva Murat

  GRANUAILE

  Dirk Flinthart

  He’s a sorry sight, is her hostage: skinny and sallow. Hardly more than a boy with a patchy growth of beard, his neck all adam’s-apple and soggy ruff. And why’s he wearing a ruff to sea anyhow? Who’s to impress with court fashion on a little brig plying the coast off Connacht?

  Grace sniffs, and spits, gobbing into the stinking mud they’re both standing in: she in her tough sea-boots, him in his hose and fine silver-buckled shoes, the eejit. He blinks, and lifts an eyebrow, but says nothing.

  “A fine morning to you,” she essays in clear Irish, but his sunburned face stays blank. Does he not speak the tongue of her land? And his father no less than the Lord Deputy of all Ireland, or so says that queen of theirs, that Elizabeth in her stony britches far and away in London.

  He grunts and coughs at her, then whines a little through his beak of a nose. His face is expectant, like a dog under the table. Those were words? English, then. Bastard tongue that it is. And she has none of it. But there’s always the scholar’s way…

  “I am Grace O’Malley,” she says in the Latin trained into her by old Fiach the harper. “Captain of the Gull and chief of the captains of Connacht. Is it the knight Philip Sidney that I address?”

  Both the lad’s eyebrows lift. “I am he. You speak Latin?”

  Well, there’s a damnfool question. She ignores it. “Does your father know where you are?”

  He bridles. “I am my own man. I am a diplomat and a courtier to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of England, Scotland, Wales—and Ireland,” he finishes with a smirk.

  Grace leaves the bait in the mud, where it belongs. “Well, diplomat,” she says, “I’m pleased you accepted my invitation to come ashore.”

  “Invitation!” The smirk disappears. “Your blackamoor crept upon our vessel in that damnable fog, carrying a keg of powder and a lighted match! Captain Runyon nigh to threw me overboard in his hurry to appease you!”

  “Oh, yes, Achmed,” Grace chuckles. “He’s a Mussulman, you see, and someone has told him he will go to a heaven full of willing virgins if he can just take enough infidel Christians with him. Some day he’ll get to put his match to the keg, I suppose. Until then—well, he’s most powerfully persuasive, isn’t he?” She frowns. “Now, what are we to do with you?”

  Sidney pulls himself up. “I have come to negotiate terms. Your galley is drawn up on the shore. Captain Runyon has your range with the cannon on the Sprite. You cannot leave this island without his permission. What are you willing to yield?”

  Oh, and isn’t he a lovely lad, though? So confident and full of himself. Grace pretends to glance away and tugs at her heavy jerkin so it opens a little. If the lad is anything like his father, a glimpse of her bubbies should distract him well enough. “Yield?” she says, pouring a little honey on her voice. “Your ideas are amusing, but you have the matter backwards. See, while I have the son of Sir Henry Sidney here, your Captain Runyon won’t risk a single shot. So all I must do is remain in your company until my galleys come to find me. Can your Captain Runyon and his little guns destroy my entire fleet? I think not, seeing as how your father and half your English navy has been trying without success for some years now.” She crosses her arms, mindful of the way she lifts her tits and there, yes, his eyes flicker down and away, and now he doesn’t know where to look, does he?

  “I, ahhh—” He looks at her again, then up to the blue sky above, his face reddening still more. “What proof have I that your fleet will come?”

  “Proof? Well, they know I am here,” says Grace. “I told the lads I would come and see this mad new island, the talk of the Connacht fisherfolk.” She makes a grand gesture, sweeping her hand at the pile of mud and rock sticking up out of the grey-green sea. “But three days gone, and this was open water. Then came the mists, and then the currents that spun in a gyre, and all of a sudden this new land breasts the waves. The fisherman who braved it first spoke to me of strange lights on the hill at the centre, and swore the sun turned him in a circle when he tried to make landfall.”

  Sidney blinks and meets her gaze. “That’s interesting,” he says. “Do you have a—a lodestone of way-finding on your ship?”

  Grace thinks, and realises she knows no Latin word for ‘compass’. Did the Romans not have them, then? “Why would I need such a thing in my own waters?” she replies. “I could no more lose my way hereabouts than you in your lady’s cunny.” The jape is salty, but who cares what some little snot of an English nobleman thinks? She’s Grace O’Malley. Already the English call her the Pirate Queen, the mother of all revolt and discontent in Ireland. A fig for their goodwill. She looks slyly at Sidney. “You…have known the company of a lady by now, have you not?”

  “Mother!” It’s probably not the word he meant, but she has him off-balance, and he’s struggling with his Latin. “I have one-and-twenty years. I am a member of the English Parliament!”

  Grace laughs.

  Sidney adjusts himself. “Our lodestone spun in circles when we came through the mists, chasing after you.” It’s a stab at returning to the original subject, then. “When the fog grew light, we thought we were escaping. Finding this island and your galley was a surprise.”

  “And to us,” Grace admits. “We thought you would break off when we entered the fog. Only a madman would chase Grace O’Malley through a Connacht sea-fog. Is your Captain Runyon a madman?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Sidney. “We meant to break off, truly. The currents hereabouts are…”

  Grace nods. “It is true,” she agrees. “We found them likewise. Yet here we now are. What next?” She turns, and looks up the island towards the low peak in the centre, somehow still wreathed in the mysterious fog that surrounds the island, yet leaves most of it uncovered. “Look there!” she says, as a greenish light flickers from somewhere within the little cloud, like summer lightning.

  “I’ve never seen the like,” says Sidney. “This—this stinks of witchcraft.”

  Grace allows herself a real belly laugh. “I’ve met witches by the dozen, and not one could raise so much as a fart on demand, let alone lift an island from the waters.” She sniffs loudly, and hauls one foot from the muck. “Stinks of sea-bottom to me.” She glances at Sidney. “Nevertheless, I came here to learn what I could, and it seems to me that yon hill is likely the place for an answer. Best you stay here with my lads, Philip Sidney. I’d not like to tell your father I lost you to some magic cloud of lightnings.” He won’t leave her, though. She knows that already. She turns to the hilltop, slogging her way through the mud and sure enough, there’s the sloppy sound of young Sidney hobbling after.

  “Captain Grace!” It’s Owain, slick-tongued Owain whose badgering brought her to this misera
ble mudhole in the first place. “The bet was that you’d climb the hill alone!”

  Without looking back, she calls: “He’s an Englishman, Owain. How much more alone must I be?” The chorus of guffaws from the rest of the crew is answer enough.

  The hill is steep, and the footing is treacherous. Everywhere it’s black slime and dead kelp, festering in the sun. Fog around the island, fog at the centre, yet not so much as a breeze in this open space in between? She looks upwards, catches sight of another flicker of light in the curling grey mists, and suppresses a shiver. It wouldn’t do to let the lads see that, oh no. Hard enough to be their captain and a woman. Her reputation is worth more than gold. As long as people tell stories of mad, bad Grace O’Malley, the merchantmen she overtakes pay their tithes meek and quiet, just the way she likes. It’s a lot easier to win battles when your enemies are too scared to fight. But sometimes you have to remind folk why they should be scared. And so here she is: walking all but alone into the mysterious fog. They will watch, and they will remember, and when they talk of this day the scariest thing on the whole island in their stories will be she, Grace.

  The blue-green light in the cloud is close, now, and the mists are cold and yes, she is almost grateful for the company of the English idiot. Who is close behind her, she can hear. Perhaps those lightweight shoes carry less mud than her big, sturdy sea-boots?

  “Is it true what they say of you?” Sidney is panting, a little out of breath.

  “How should I know?” says Grace, trying to keep her own voice even. “What do they say?”

  “That you hunted and killed the murderers of your lover, Hugh de Lacey, for one,” Sidney says. “Personally, I mean.”

  “They say that, do they?” That isn’t how she recalls it. She had something like six-score bravoes with her when she attacked the MacMahons. And sure, they’d murdered her Hugh—but didn’t she get her fine castle at Doona in the bargain? Folk liked to remember romance and revenge, not good tactics and strong sense. “Anything else?”