‘There was a Bristol boat in the harbour, seen it on my way out. Captain was a Devon man and took us aboard there and then. Five shilling for our passage back to England and no questions asked.’
By this time the child’s breathing was giving cause for concern. The captain’s wife and Will had stripped off its clothes, uncovering first the torque and then the sex of the child. It had taken a bit of readjustment for Will the bachelor to realise he had burdened himself with a girl, but it had become unimportant in the fight to save the child’s life.
‘The which we did, though you wasn’t intent on it,’ he said. What had weighed on him was that he had not gone back to say goodbye and thank you to the doctor who had saved his life. ‘Wasn’t possible,’ he said. ‘The soldiers was on the look-out for ye, more for the torque than anything, I reckoned. And good man though he was, he’d like have betrayed you.’
Suddenly he put out his hand and touched Barbary’s arm. ‘Don’t you go back there, now, not after all the trouble I had getting you out.’
Barbary could safely promise him that. It wasn’t a question of going back, anyway, not when she still couldn’t remember having been there in the first place. Will’s recital had done nothing to nudge her memory. The woman hanging at the back of her mind was still a dark shape in darker shadow. ‘So you can’t tell me if I am who they say I am?’
Will shook his head. ‘They’ll say anything.’
They walked back towards the ironworks, Will more lively than she’d ever known him. Her debt to him was greater than she’d dreamed; he hadn’t just taken her in, he had saved her life and risked his own to do it. She knew she ought to feel more grateful than ever, but she wasn’t. What she felt was illness; every time the subject of Ireland came up, some new and awful knowledge accrued to her. She had been healthy until touched by that leper hand; now everything was diseased. The process of disorientation begun last night by the O’Neill had been completed by Will so that her own self was unfamiliar to her. ‘Who are you?’ she screamed to it, so suddenly that the yell animated Spenser into a twitch of the ears. Who was that child who had crawled into Will Clampett’s boat? Why had it been escaping from English soldiers with an Irish torque round its neck?
She couldn’t remember. The fog wall between the woman she was now and the child she had been was as thick as ever. No part of Will’s story had touched a responding memory. It had touched something – she was twanging with a vibration of horror, sick with it – but the fog remained impenetrable. And she was glad of it. She didn’t want to remember.
God Almighty. Suppose she was this missing Irish heir? Suppose Lord Burghley and Walsingham had accidentally got it right and she was this O’Flaherty? Well she couldn’t be. She was female. They’d got that much wrong, so maybe they’d got it all wrong. She was convinced they’d picked her out of the streets because she fitted the role they wanted her to play in Ireland, not because they were sure they had the right person.
‘Battle the watch, Barb.’ Take it calmly. She was no worse off now than she had been when she thought she was a Hollander rescued by Will from the Lowland wars. All right, it looked now as if she was a Paddy, rescued from the Irish wars. But what difference did it make? The real Barbary, the one she had become since she was old enough to remember, was still the same, formed by Will and the Order, still belonging to the dear, crime-ridden streets of London, still English, still a loyal subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
Survivor that she was, Barbary thrust away mind-destroying discomfort in order to keep her mental feet on solid ground. She rejected the disconcerting O’Neill as too alien to have any validity. She made herself try and forget the new, vulnerable Will Clampett she had just listened to as an aberration, reinstating him as he always had been. That glimpse he had given her of an England which was as barbarous as the Inquisition, that was, well, that wasn’t the England she knew. So what if it killed defenceless foreigners? Foreigners deserved it for not being English in the first place.
She clawed herself back into the familiar, using time as if it were sand, brushing it back to cover the nastiness revealed by one of its slips. She piled it over the most terrible enlightenment of all, that those dear, crime-ridden streets of London were no longer home to a mind that had been stretched by the learning, poetry and books the Sidneys of Penshurst had given her.
She took a deep breath and felt better. She’d go back. She’d find a way to become Barbary of the Order again. Back to the Pudding and normality. Somehow she’d take Will and Cuckold Dick and dive into that happy underground where this new and troublesome situation couldn’t touch her, back to the world of good, honest conying.
She was still puzzling over how this was to be achieved when she arrived back at Penshurst, and found that her future had already been decided.
Chapter Eight
The people loading themselves, their families and possessions onto the ships in Bristol harbour were the undertakers. They were also coopers, masons, farmers, blacksmiths, bakers, brewers and carpenters, but their common denominator lay in their undertaking to hold Crown lands in Ireland of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
By creating an English shireland out of Munster’s wilderness they could own more land than the squires they used to serve, and they were making a lot of noise about it. The quaysides dinned with shipmasters explaining at the tops of their voices that there was no room in their holds for the cisterns, beds, cauldrons, sheepdogs, milch cows, mattresses and portraits – and in one instance a senile grandfather lying comatose and ready in his coffin – and with the undertakers equally forcibly maintaining they wouldn’t leave them behind.
Commissioners’ agents moved through the crowds quantifying the milk and honey that awaited the undertakers and giving them conflicting reminders that ‘the better sort of Irish are very civil, hospitable, of good faith and bodily constitution’ but that none of the settlers were to marry or employ them.
From the upper window of the Golden Hind tavern the Lord Treasurer of England looked down on the chaos with concern. ‘I had hoped to see more gentry, some younger scions of our nobler houses taking up the enterprise.’
‘Shit scared,’ said the man beside him. His voice was as big as the rest of him. It rattled the inn’s pewter mugs hanging on their dresser hooks. People on the quayside stopped quarrelling to look up. ‘We’ve made such a urinal of Ireland as no gentleman will even piss in it.’
Lord Burghley tried not to look pained. Sir John Perrot was an embarrassment, but a necessary embarrassment. There had been no Lord Deputy of Ireland since Grey on his latest tour had been recalled in disgrace and, with many misgivings, Elizabeth had been persuaded to send Sir John to take up the post. He knew Ireland and for some reason the Irish liked him, as they liked all eccentrics; or perhaps, thought Burghley, because he is unique in liking them.
He proclaimed, loudly, that he was the bastard son of Henry VIII. With his red beard and girth he looked the image of the old king, and possessed all his father’s appetites. He was crude in his habits and language and made the queen’s eyes glaze over by persisting in addressing her as ‘sister’, which was as nothing to what he called her when she crossed him. But he was unorthodox and generous and if anybody could heal the scars left by the Desmond Wars – a task Lord Burghley feared was impossible – he could.
Already he was booming his policy to the young man who stood beside him. ‘No peasant henceforward to be called a churl, no churl to be called a serf or receive unchristian punishment from his master. Eh, my young lord, what about that? You Irish lordlings have done as much harm to your own people as we have. Shall we turn the Irish peasants into good English franklins and yeomen? Root out old oppressions, eh? What say you?’
‘Gawd help us, Sir John,’ said Barbary in broad Cockney, ‘you’re taking all the fun out of lordship.’
She got a slap on the back that nearly knocked her out of the window. ‘Ha, ha,’ roared Sir John, ‘I like you, young O’Flaherty. We can do busines
s together.’ He turned to the fourth member of their party. ‘What say you, Sir Richard? Shall we bring humour to Ireland, eh? No oppression where there’s laughter, what say you?’
Sir Richard Bingham’s lips didn’t suggest acquaintance with laughter. From the look of them the only event he’d found funny was the death of his mother.
Barbary didn’t think she and Sir Richard were going to get on. Yet soon, when the tide turned, she would be embarking with him and Sir John for Dublin, and from Dublin she and Sir Richard would be travelling across Ireland to the west where he was the Lord President of Connaught, and where she was supposed to begin her career as a leader of the western clans. In a pig’s eye, she thought.
She hadn’t intended getting as far as this even, but the summons from Lord Burghley had arrived on Penshurst’s threshold in the shape of a secretary and two men-at-arms. Less than an hour later she was on her way to Chatham to catch the boat which had brought her to Bristol where the fleet for Dublin was waiting to sail. Her packing had been done for her; what little time she’d had at her disposal had been taken up with goodbyes and thank yous and last-minute advice from Sir Henry Sidney.
She’d been moved by Sir Henry’s farewell present to her: a clinking purse and the pony, Spenser, ‘though God trust the Irish do not take him as an example of English horseflesh’.
There hadn’t been a moment when she could have escaped, and with Will Clampett still a hostage for her good behaviour she didn’t dare to. Her comfort was that Sir Henry’s regard for his cannon master would oppose any harm to him. There’d been no time to say goodbye to Will, but Philip had promised to explain to him on her behalf.
There hadn’t even been time to decide what to do about Cuckold Dick. They’d discussed it as they rode together to Chatham. ‘You’ve been a prize to stay this long, Dick. Time to go back to the Bermudas.’
‘Don’t like the thought of you alone among the Irish, though, Barb.’
‘I won’t be for long. I’ve got a plan.’ She’d only just thought of it.
‘You’re a one for the plans, Barb,’ said Dick admiringly. ‘What?’
‘Pirate. I’ll go for a pirate. With all the sweeteners I got from them who wanted me to treacle the queen, and Sir Henry gave me five guineas, I’ve got enough gelt to buy into a ship. I’ll con more out of Burghley before I’m older, see if I don’t. Then when I get to Dublin I’ll cut off, get a passage back to England, pick up Will and cross the Channel before they know it. Join the Sea Beggars, maybe. Will’s an asset, see. With his knowledge of cannon, any privateer’d be glad to take us.’
She was working it out as she went along, but she was charmed by the logic of the idea which would solve all her confusions. She might even afford her own boat; she knew enough sea dogs in the docks of London to make up a crew. It could be done. This supposed grandmother of hers in Ireland was a pirate, so there was a precedent for a woman captain. The seven seas. Mermaids. Be her own woman, sail her own boat. For the first time since she’d left the Bermudas she experienced the cherubims. They’d never come to her at Penshurst, but now as she sniffed the salt of the Kent coast she heard music and saw again a mental image of the strange galley standing out to sea, waiting for her. Again a voice commanded: ‘Hug Adam, shun Eve.’
Cuckold Dick was silent, bumping like a sack of turnips on his trotting horse. ‘No call for expert crossbiting in the pirate trade, I suppose, Barb?’
‘Hardly any.’
He nodded. ‘And so much as crossing the Fleet bridge gets me seasick.’
She was touched that he was even bothering with excuses. ‘I’ll be right, Dick. And so should you be, with all that money you conied out of Penshurst. No, you go on back to the Upright Man.’ She hadn’t meant the thought to depress him but could see it did; Abraham was an unpredictable master and Cuckold Dick had lived soft these past months. Yet she knew the thought of Ireland depressed him even more. It depressed her.
‘Well, but, Barb,’ Dick said, ‘I’ll come along as far as Bristol. Always wanted to see the West Country.’
‘You hate the country, you liar.’
‘Well, but.’
They had finally said goodbye a few minutes ago down on the quay. She could see him from the window, loitering furtively by some bales, waiting for the ship to sail so that he could wave it out of sight. She wished he’d go. Sir Philip Sidney, Will Clampett and Cuckold Dick, she thought, as disparate a trio as could be found in a month of Sundays, but it wrenched her to leave each one.
Lord Treasurer Burghley had met her on the quay. ‘There have been events,’ he told her. ‘Also it seemed advisable that you should travel with the newly appointed administrators of Ireland since they will be the two men most nearly concerned with furthering our plans.’
‘I’ll need money,’ said Barbary bluntly.
The Lord Treasurer knew no Irish agent who didn’t. Ireland ate money. The Pyrrhic victory of the Desmond Wars had alone cost Elizabeth half a million pounds, as she pointed out daily. Still, the rapacious clans would be more likely to accept this young man as their leader if he returned to them showering gifts. ‘This should cover travelling expenses,’ he said. ‘This’ was a nicely heavy purse. ‘And the queen has graciously provided a chest of trinkets wherewith you shall reward various of your people for their duty to her.’ Tawdry trinkets at that, he thought, some of the least tasteful gifts made to Elizabeth to mark her visit to boroughs and guilds, but they’d probably delight the natives.
Barbary smiled beautifully at him.
‘I have put it in the care of Sir Richard Bingham, who will account to Her Majesty for every penny, as you shall account to him.’
Barbary’s smile had weakened. Now that she’d met the man, she abandoned hope for the chest. As soon try to cony a rat trap out of its cheese.
Sir Richard was saying: ‘I have faith the Irish will respond better to fear than to humour, Sir John.’
‘You would,’ said Sir John, rudely. He turned away from the window to the table which was piled with food. ‘Shall we eat, gentlemen? What say you to a last breakfast? Who knows when we’ll see its like again. Report gives that there is starvation even in Dublin.’
‘The report is true,’ said the Lord Treasurer. ‘Most unfortunate. The Irish are saying that if the English can’t feed them, what is the use of submission? It has led to further rebellion.’ He turned to Barbary. ‘I fear the authorities have had to restrain your grandmother. She is awaiting trial in Dublin Castle.’
‘Grace O’Malley in prison?’ said Sir John Perrot, spraying pieces of capon. ‘She’ll not like it. A fine woman. I was there when she came with her clan to tender their allegiance. The O’Malleys were the last to do so, what about that? A hellcat to conquer but a fine woman for all that. Fine pair of tits.’
Purse went Sir Richard’s lips. ‘If she swore allegiance to the Crown and has since rebelled, the slut should hang.’
A ham bone slammed on the table with a force that made its crockery skip into the air. ‘God’s balls, man,’ shouted Sir John. ‘Is the noose your remedy for everything? Enough to hanging. There’ll be no more of it.’
The Lord Treasurer closed his eyes. It happened every time, whoever was chosen. If the administrators of Ireland had spent as much energy on fighting Earl Desmond as on fighting each other, the war wouldn’t have lasted a week.
To his relief an interruption arrived through the door at that moment, a woman trailing luggage, a toddler, a depressed-looking girl servant, and domestic problems. Was this the right room? Were they the right gentlemen? A trunk with her best bed linen of finest weave was missing. Servants nowadays. The baby had but recently recovered from the quinsies; she herself was again in an interesting condition and therefore would they promise her the ship would not go up and down too much. Her husband would express his gratitude when they got to Dublin. Who was he? But they must know Master Edmund Spenser, recently appointed Deputy Clerk to Munster? And a rising poet. The queen had personally praised his
work, had she not told them of it?
Barbary had never encountered someone of such physical insignificance who could so agitate the very air as Machabyas ‘Maccabee’ Spenser. She was very little, brown, with downy black hair on her top lip, and the chaos she exuded kept people around her constantly off balance. But there was a vulnerability to her which brought protection from the well-mannered. The Lord High Treasurer of England set her a chair while the Lord Deputy of Ireland relieved her of the child to drip best ale into its mouth from his own fingers. Only Sir Richard was unmoved and unmoving, except for a thinning of the lips when Mistress Spenser invited him to stop over at ‘Spenser Castle’ on his journey to the west.
‘A castle, madam?’
‘Indeed, Sir Richard. Three thousand acres that march with our good friend Sir Walter Raleigh.’ If she was hoping to impress them with the connection, she was disappointed; as usual the name of the queen’s latest favourite evinced a distancing in his competitors.
While the knights were engaged with Mistress Spenser, Lord Burghley drew Barbary outside onto the landing. ‘One last matter, my son, on which Her Majesty has asked me to command you. It may be that, indeed it is known that, the clan O’Malley has amassed some sort of treasure. Doubtless piratically gained from Her Majesty’s high seas. It should be clearly understood that this treasure is the property of the Crown and must be returned.’
Perhaps Burghley saw the reflection of gelt flickering in Barbary’s eyes, for he put a warning, arthritic hand on her shoulder. ‘Sir Richard has been apprised of it and will assist you in its recovery. We have offered your grandmother a pardon in exchange for details of the treasure’s whereabouts but so far she has refused to divulge them. Sir John will permit you access to her in prison and you are to gain her trust as her heir, telling her she will escape the gallows only if she passes the secret on to you.’
‘And will she? Escape the gallows, I mean?’
Lord Burghley shrugged. ‘Under Sir John’s regime of moderation it seems that she will.’ The grip on Barbary’s shoulder tightened. ‘Remember that we hold your pledge of Master Clampett for your good behaviour and that you have the queen’s love. Aid her in this matter of the treasure as in all else, and you shall not be the loser.’
The Pirate Queen Page 17