“That you rose from your birthing-bed at sea and drove a score of Turk raiders from your ship with your sword, laying a curse on each as you went.”
Almost right. “I had an arquebus full of nails and broken pottery,” she says. “Most wonderful for discouraging a boarding party. But the only curse I laid was upon the man serving as captain on my ship, lazy bastard that he was.” Couldn’t even do without her long enough to let her drop a baby in peace!
Breathing hard, Sidney falls into step beside her. “Why do you support the rebels here?” he says. “You, a good member of the English Church!”
She stops so quickly her foot skids in the mud. “The English Church? What nonsense is that?”
“‘Tis well known,” says Sidney, stopping a few paces ahead. “You divorced Richard Bourke! The Irish Church does not countenance divorce, but the English Church permits—”
“The English Church permits me nothing,” says Grace. “I married Iron Dick under the old law, the Brehon law of my land and I dismissed him under the same law. Your English Church means no more to me than the Church of Rome.” He wants to know about her? Let him learn! “You English—all of you can rot. The old ways of Ireland will live on long after your England is nothing more than another province of the Spanish Empire.” She thrusts her thumb between her first and second fingers and raises her fist at Sidney. “That for your English Church, and that for your queen!”
His face goes pale under the sunburn, and his hand drops to the little pigsticker of a sword at his side. Grace shows him a smile, and puts her hand to the hilt of her heavy cutlass. Let him draw against her. Let him try his fancy footwork and his clever French fencing in this mud!
Slowly, Sidney’s hand lifts from his sword. His eyes narrow, and he takes a deep breath. “I see I have offended you,” he says. “I cry your pardon, lady.”
Diplomat indeed. And perhaps not so stupid as his soggy ruff makes him look. Grace makes him wait, her hand still on the cutlass, until she sees real fear in his eyes. Only then does she sniff, and nod. “Rough words are no more than foul air,” she says. “I give you my pardon if you will give me yours.”
“Gladly,” says Sidney, and makes to keep going up the hill. Only now they are surrounded by the cold grey of the mist, and it’s hard to tell even which way ‘up’ might be.
Something looms ahead; Grace stretches out her hand to touch a wall. It is like no other: a little rough, like stone beneath her fingers, yet seamless. Unlike the rest of the island, the wall has no mud on it at all. It has the grey-white colour of limestone on its sides, but on the top—which is no higher than her waist—the thickness of the wall glows with the uncanny light of sea phosphor. Sidney lumbers up to stand beside her, and drags his finger across the top of the wall. It comes away glowing, and he sniffs at it with distaste.
“Slimy,” he says, shaking his hand. “And it smells of the sea. What is this?”
Grace points. “There,” she says. A gap in the wall perhaps the width of a door. She moves closer and sees beyond a wide, flat, open place, clean and free of mud. More of the mysterious wall-stone, except here it has become a floor. How can this be?
There is a hum in the air, a strange, wordless music made by what must be a voice. But is it human? The timbre is all wrong, throaty, broken, like the sea-wind through the rigging of a ship. It comes and goes like a song half-forgotten. Grace pauses. Sidney moves close to her once more, and this time she is truly grateful not to be alone. They leave trails of mud behind them as they move farther into the walled space and the mists that fill it. Grace draws her cutlass, as much for the comfort of its weight in her hand as anything else. Sidney looks at her, and wordlessly draws his own blade.
And now the voice changes, forming—are they words? It’s a deep voice, a man’s voice, and it almost seems to echo here where there is no roof and the walls are only half-built. Grace looks around, but there’s nothing to see except the swirling grey of the fog, and the strange blue-green light of the walls.
“Who’s there?” she calls.
And yes: words. She can hear them clearly, almost understand them. They sound familiar, as though she knew them a long time ago. The taste of them is Irish, but not the way she knows it—maybe an older, more pure kind of Irish. Why does she think that?
“Speak up,” she cries, this time in Latin. “Make yourself known.”
“Oh,” says the deep voice, close enough now that she shies back. “It is the tongue of the Roman traders. This I have.” A shadow moves in the mist, coming near. The greyness swirls and parts, and the blue-green light grows in streaks across the floor until Grace can see a tall, lean man in some kind of robes. “A sword?” the voice is amused. “Ah, but it is iron. I cannot have that.”
The tall man waves his hand gently, and the air moves. Grace glances at her sword, and the blue-green light has flared along the blade. A new light at her side and a distinctly English curse tells her Sidney’s blade is likewise afflicted. The light is eating her blade, pitting it, turning it to rust before her very eyes. In a very few heartbeats the good steel blade decays to nothing, leaving her with a brass handguard and a couple of pieces of wood wrapped in leather.
“That’s a fine trick,” Grace breathes. “I’d be keen to know how that was done.”
“The sea eats iron,” says the man. “Ask the sea how it is done.” He gestures again, and the blue-green light creeps up the half-finished walls, filling the place with an eerie radiance. It’s enough to see clearly, even with the damnable fog, and Grace studies the tall man with interest.
He looks back at her, calm and unflustered, out of eyes so dark as to be nigh black. His skin is pale, as is his long hair that is caught up with a fillet of gold at his neck. There’s a strange look about him: drawn, lean…fey. The word wells up from her memory, and Grace tries not to tremble.
The tall man—and is he a man, or is there more to this story?—cocks his head and nods. Evidently he’s seen enough of Grace, for he turns away. “Off with you,” he says. “You may return when I have raised my hall. I will send for you presently.”
“Your pardon, gentle sire,” says Sidney, and damn him but his voice is firm and steady. “I am the knight Philip Sidney of the court of Elizabeth, Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Will you give me your name?”
The tall creature—there’s a queer certainty in Grace’s belly now; it’s not a man before her, no—turns its head and regards Sidney. “You know me not? How can you mistake the King Below the Sea?”
Grace draws a breath, and sidles back. Suddenly she misses the darkness of the fog.
Sidney shakes his head. “I know of no such title. I have met the kings of France and Spain, and travelled the continent, but never have I heard of the King Below The Sea.”
“The Argives called me Poseidon, the earth-shaker,” says the tall one. “The little men whose tongue we share; to them I was Neptune, and they gave me a great three-pointed spear.” He turns his gaze on Grace. “And you, with your hair of copper and fire. You have forgotten the old tongue of your people, who called me Manannan mac Lir.”
“Tales for the nursery,” snaps Grace before Sidney can speak. She wills her voice to be bold, but in her belly there is a weight of fear such as she has not known. “You can make pretty lights, and you can rust a blade. So much I have seen, and no more. You are no god, no Child of Danu come back from forgotten times.”
The thing that calls itself by ancient names looks deep into Grace’s eyes. She can’t turn away. Is she looking at it? Is it looking into her? She can’t tell where one begins and the other ends, and who knows what may have come of it save that Sidney’s hand falls on her arm and she wakes with a start, averting her gaze.
“Are you all right?” Sidney’s grip is firm and warm, a wonder and a marvel after the cold depths in which she has swum. She wants to drag him closer, warm herself against him, but instead she pushes him gently back, and takes a deep breath.
“I’m well enough
,” she says. “But that one…” she gestures without looking at the tall creature. “He is more than he seems.”
“He seems a great deal to me already,” says Sidney. “How shall I call you?” he calls to the thing. “What name do you prefer?”
“How do you style a king in this tongue?” says the other. His tone is gentle, almost ruminative. “No. Titles are for courts and battlefields. Here I will be as I was: call me Manannan mac Lir, returned to reclaim for the Tuatha de Danann all that is properly theirs.”
“And what is that?” says Sidney, unease in his voice. Grace is already moving, backing towards the gap in the walls. Are those walls higher? They are! This creature and his blue-green light—he’s building a palace around them, even as they speak.
Manannan mac Lir inclines his head slowly. “Everything. We will rule over these lands as we ruled before. When I have raised these walls and rebuilt the gate once more, the others will come: the Lord of the Lightnings, the Master of the Silver Hand, the Greatsmith, the Lady of Sorrows—all the High Ones.” He raises one long-fingered hand, and sketches figures that glow briefly in the dense mist. His angular face is softened now, lost in memory. “Even as time flows in my world, it has been long since I walked in this place. It is…good.” He glances sideways at Grace and Sidney. “You doubt me,” he says. “You, woman—you would destroy me, if you could.” His chuckle is deep, like the thunder of waves on a distant shore. “Behold! Here is the power of the King Below The Sea.”
Doesn’t he just fancy himself, with all his wonderful titles? Grace bites her tongue, holding back the words she wants to throw in his hateful face. But what is he doing now? He opens his arms, and just like throwing back a curtain the mists part and the sun streams in all golden. They’re high on the hill in the centre of the island, and below Grace can see the muddy tracks she and Sidney left, all the way down to her galley on the new shoreline. And beyond it, in the little bay—there’s the Sprite, with Captain Runyon and his damnable cannon, waiting for word of his borrowed diplomat. Beyond that, the wall of the mists, thickening now, drawing together, spinning and reaching and rising to the sky—
“Waterspout,” Grace cries in her own tongue, forgetting that her lads cannot possibly hear her from this distance. “Ware the waterspout!” She turns to Manannan mac Lir, and in her finest Latin she begs: “Please! Those men have done nothing to you! Spare them!”
But the creature seems lost in some kind of ecstasy, his face turned to the sun, his hands upraised as he sings in that broken, half-wild voice, crying words that tug at the far edges of Grace’s understanding. The waterspout rises, curving and dancing like a great grey serpent, a beast of obscene appetite ready to eat her little boat and the men who depend on her, and without a sword, without a gun, Grace readies herself to leap at Manannan mac Lir, to claw the eyes from his face and sink her teeth into his throat though the doing of it be her end…
“My lord,” says Sidney, his voice cool but sharp as he steps between Grace and the master of the sea-spout. “There is no need.” A desperate edge creeps into his voice. “If you destroy our ships, you will lose the gifts I have brought from distant lands across the great ocean. Gifts fit even for a king of such power and might as yourself.”
Slowly, mac Lir turns his head. “Gifts?” he rumbles. “You said nothing of gifts.”
“Oh yes, my lord,” Sidney says. “My queen’s astrologer John Dee foresaw your coming. Great Elizabeth herself bid me bear gifts as tribute, that you might look with favour upon her English rule.” He moves closer, and settles his half-cloak more neatly upon his shoulders. And is he suddenly taller? Grace can’t fathom the change in the man. Where’s the spindly boy she mocked? Who is this calm, assured courtier? Where did he come from?
“If you will but give me permission to return to my vessel,” Sidney continues, “I will bring here treasures such as even you have not seen, O King. And you will judge the truth of my words, and see for yourself the value of the good will of Queen Elizabeth and her kingdom of England.”
For a long moment, the King Under The Sea is still, as though listening, and Grace holds her breath. The great waterspout curves and sways like a Turkish dancer, and she can see the lads running this way and that on the muddy shore, seeking shelter. Then mac Lir’s arms fall, and the waterspout melts away in a heartbeat, leaving nothing but ragged edges of cloud.
The sun is bright and hot.
“Yes,” says mac Lir. “You may bring your gifts. But be swift. Soon enough the gate will be open once more. I would show the others the bounty of these distant lands of which you speak.”
“I thank you, O King,” says Sidney, and damned if he doesn’t kneel there on the stone floor, bowing his head. Grace watches him, and then realises that mac Lir is watching her, not the diplomat.
What does he want?
Mac Lir frowns. Grace feels her belly turn cold. “Ah,” she says. “Gifts.” She drops to one knee in imitation of Sidney. “Oh, yes,” she says. “I too bear gifts for you, great king. Here in Ireland, naturally, we knew of your coming even before the English, and so the bounty I bring is all the greater.” Her mouth keeps moving. What is it saying? She has absolutely no idea how to carry this off. Gifts? What does she have on her little galley that can match whatever this rich nobleman has brought from across the seas?
She’ll think of something.
“Go, then,” says mac Lir. “I have much to do.” He turns away from them, resuming his weird and tuneless song, and once more the mists enclose the new, half-grown walls.
Grace goes, and Sidney goes with her.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
All the way down the hill, sliding through the filth, he wants to know about Manannan mac Lir and the Tuatha de Danann. Grace wants to save her breath, to think, but there’s no other way to shut him up, so she tells him stories. Fragments. Pieces of childhood tales. Nuada of the Silver Arm. Lugh of the Bright Spear. The Morrigan, raven-queen of war.
When she was small, she loved the old songs and stories. She remembers begging Fiach the Harper to sing of Cuchulainn and his battle at the river ford. She recalls the long chants, the beautiful, intricate lays of poetry, and she shudders. Now she has seen one of her childhood stories in the flesh, how many more might there be? Were there really Fomorians, flesh-eating giants? Balor of the Evil Eye? And all their bickering, their battles and their vengeance-taking. How do simple, mortal humans fare when gods make war on each other? The stories are full of heroes, sure, but they say little about the smaller folk, and Grace is increasingly sure that she’s likely to be smaller folk in the eyes of a creature like Manannan mac Lir.
Sidney, though—he’s cock-a-whoop. So sure of himself, he is, and why not? The Sprite was taking him to see his father before Captain Runyon changed course to chase Grace in her galley. Like a dutiful son, not seeing his father for some years, young Sidney has brought gifts. Wonders of the new world: tobacco, the red man’s weed. Something called coca, bought from Spanish merchants—a marvellous tonic to health and digestion. Another thing, a bitter powder called chocolatl, used as a restorative drink. And fine French Brandy, and pepper and spice from the Orient, and silks…oh, yes, the boy has planned well for his father. Only now he’s the more excited, seeing his chance to make an alliance with a supernatural being and save all England from foreigners everywhere.
Grace is less excited. Her galley—the Gull—is not so well supplied. She has fine whiskey, of course, and plenty of it, but none of the exotic marvels Sidney can offer. Perhaps she should just brain the lad when they’re halfway back up the hill? Say he ran away, pretend his gifts are hers? She shoots a glance at Sidney, babbling happily to himself about the Spaniards meeting their doom in the teeth of mighty English waterspouts, and sighs.
It would be like kicking a puppy.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
The return trip is, if anything, worse. Sidney has two men with him now, each carrying a heavy trunk. Grace has only Lars, t
he mad Icelander who is afraid of nothing except earwigs creeping into his head while he sleeps, and Lars carries her single trunk with ease, despite the mud. None of the others would come, for now the walls of Manannan mac Lir’s new palace rise high amidst the fog, and the ghostly blue-green glow is all too clear in the evening twilight.
Sidney is full of plans and excitement. He will show the Tuatha de Danann the wisdom of a partnership with England. They will want the rich Continental lands for themselves, of course, but in exchange, they will grant freedom to the English isles. And Ireland, he’s quick to add. Then together, the allies will wrest power from Spain and France and Rome, and a golden age will follow with de Danann power and English acumen working together.
“So you do not think them gods?” says Grace. They are nearly at the palace by now, and it is indeed a grand thing, all curves and arches and white spires aflame with the sea-glow. A marvel in the near-darkness. Sidney’s sailors mutter to one another in their horrible language, and Grace thinks they are unhappy to be here. Lars, though, marches stolidly onward, her trunk on his broad shoulder. As long as there are no earwigs, Lars is as happy as a gloomy Icelander ever can be.
“Not so,” says Sidney. “’Tis true this Mack Leer has much power, but what of it? Have we not powers the ancients would have marvelled at? The compass? The telescope? Our clocks? Our cannons and guns?” He nods confidently. “We have wise men and astrologers, alchemists and mathematical philosophers. What this Mack Leer knows, we can learn. In time we will deal with him and his people as equals.”
His accent is horrible. Grace tries not to wince. “Make sure you keep calling him ‘king’,” she says. “We don’t want him angry enough to raise another of those waterspouts.”
At the foot of the walls, Sidney’s men put down their two trunks. They will go no farther, the pair of them, no matter what he says. Grace watches as he waves his arms and grunts at them, enjoying Sidney’s discomfort and embarrassment. Then she signals Lars, and they enter the cavernous building.
Cranky Ladies of History Page 26