They were quiet while they digested it all. Again she was sure they were communicating, but it wasn’t out loud.
‘This necklet as you call it,’ it was the hoarse whisper of Grace O’Malley, ‘have you got it on you?’
‘Yes.’ She took it off and held it through the bars. A hand, Red Hugh’s, took it from hers and passed it down the line. There was a long, low moan from Grace O’Malley’s cell. ‘It is the torque. It’s Maire ni Domnall’s own royal torque. The child is who she says she is. And me thinking they were all drowned dead. Mother of God be praised for her mercy. She’s given me back me granddaughter.’
Squinting through, Barbary saw a hand stretching out as if desperate to touch her. ‘Oh, my child’s child.’
She reached out her own hand as far as she could. ‘Grandmother!’ As sweet a versing as she’d ever done. She felt the old triumph, mixed with something else she didn’t have time to analyse.
The men were still holding back, still questioning, but their suspicion was shaken by Grace’s muttered prayers of thanksgiving.
‘What for were you arrested?’ asked Red Hugh.
‘They were so angry after the accident, when they found I was female. The Lord Deputy said the queen wanted me executed, but he’s not a cruel man.’
‘Kindness itself, the bastard,’ said Red Hugh.
‘He put me in the charge of a man called Edmund Spenser until my leg mended.’
‘The clerk who pretends to poetry?’ It was Conn O’Hagan, who pretended to poetry himself. ‘An English poet, and isn’t that the contradiction in terms.’
Why didn’t they shut their pipes while she concentrated. There was still a long way to go. ‘Sort of house arrest,’ she continued, ‘while they made up their minds what to do with me. But I was so lonely and miserable. Mistress Spenser treated me as a servant. My only relative in the world was the grandmother I’d not seen. She’d take me in, I thought, give me a home, if she was free. So soon as my leg was well I started loitering around the Castle, asking questions, trying to find out where they were keeping her to see if I could get her out.’
A triumphant cry came from Grace’s cell. ‘There speaks the true O’Malley. Ah, me own child’s child. Me brave girl.’
‘Shhh.’ She’d woken up the keeper. He swore and flung an empty tankard at the cells. ‘Cut it, you Irish bitch.’ They had to wait until he’d grumbled himself back to sleep.
‘I would have too,’ Barbary said quietly, ‘if they hadn’t arrested me, suspecting what I was planning.’
‘Would have what? Got your grandmother out of here?’
‘I think so. There’s a keeper, the one that brought the breakfast…’
‘He’s new.’
‘Is he? Well, he’s a rogue. I recognised him. I’m sure it’s the man. It was in London and he was being whipped at a cart’s tail.’
Ignorant savages that they were, they’d think London as small as Dublin; everyone acquainted with everyone else. ‘I was going to put the bite… I was going to threaten to expose him if he didn’t help me get Grandmother away.’
‘Ah, the brains of me darling girl.’
‘Granuaile.’ They were warning the silly old cow not to wake the keeper again.
‘But what if he is a rogue?’ came the soft whisper of O’Hagan. ‘They’re all rogues. Have you not met their clergy, Mistress O’Flaherty? They must be lovely gentlemen when they start out from England to bring the light of the new faith into our darkness. But a terrible thing happens when they’re halfway across the Irish Sea. Sure, the bad sea fairies spirit them away and replace them with loose-living, drink-swilling crap-hounds. Now isn’t it unkind of the fairies to do that?’
The man was touched in the head. She’d met butterflies with more concentration. It was Red Hugh who got the point: ‘If the bastard’s a rogue, he’ll be open to bribe.’
Barbary relaxed for the first time that night. They were caught. She’d got them. In the pot with parsley. She slid down the door to sit with the relief, listening to them taking over.
‘What’ll we bribe him with?’
‘The torque, man, the torque. He’ll not reject gold.’
‘Ah, now, must I give up me poor dead daughter-in-law’s torque to a Saxon?… I’ll do it. Next time he comes on duty.’
‘I’ve got to sleep,’ Barbary called gently. ‘Goodnight, Grandmother. God keep you.’ God keep the treasure.
‘Goodnight, darling girl. I’ll have you in me arms soon.’
‘Is there anything we should ask Mistress O’Flaherty before she sleeps. Art, you’ve not commented on the plan. Have you a question?’
Art’s voice came faintly: ‘Ask her where she got that hat.’
It was a bad night. She kept waking to bouts of uncontrollable shaking which was mainly the cold, but also nerves. It had gone very easy. Too easy? No, they were conied. But why, now they accepted her as one of themselves, did they persist in talking to her in English? She’d told them her Irish was rusty, as it still was a bit. But there was something…
The day keeper was Cuckold Dick. She winced when she saw him; it was too soon, it would look too pat. It wasn’t what they’d arranged. Something was wrong, or, more likely, he didn’t want her to stay in these conditions any longer. As it was, there was no chance for Red Hugh to put the bite on because there was activity in the room nearly all day. An intruder had been spotted in the Castle, down by Store Tower where they kept the arms. The place was in an uproar with the search for the man; keepers, guards, soldiers pounding up and down the stairs, thumping along the leads of the roof, shouting, calling into the cell room of the Bermingham Tower to have a warm by the keeper’s brazier and swap the latest rumour. Their breakfast was overlooked, and Barbary had to bite her lip to stop herself moaning from the cramps in her stomach.
‘Are we to have nothing to eat?’ Red Hugh shouted at Cuckold Dick.
Dick, very properly, shouted back: ‘Fuck off, Irish.’
By the afternoon things had quietened down. It was then that O’Hagan and Red Hugh began their bite. For amateurs they did well; a layman’s version of the hatchet and pap routine, just like Burghley and Walsingham had put the bite on her; O’Hagan the pap, Red Hugh O’Donnell the hatchet. And a nasty hatchet. ‘You’re a convicted rogue, so you are, and if your own English don’t have your balls, there are Irish who will.’
O’Hagan: ‘Leave the poor man, Hugh. If he does us this favour, he’ll be paid with gold, and no one to know where he got it.’
Dick was a credit to his profession; defiant, then surly, then whining. She was proud of him. Yes, well, he supposed he could get a rope, but he’d want the gold first.
‘After. When we see it hanging outside our window.’ O’Hagan was suddenly forceful. ‘And we want it now.’
‘Now?’ Dick showed genuine alarm. This wasn’t the plan. He didn’t like it. Barbary didn’t either.
‘Now,’ Red Hugh shouted. ‘Don’t you speak your own fucking language? Undo these locks and go and get it now. Better still, take it up on the roof and tie it to a crenel. And tie it tight.’
‘They’d know it was me…’
‘Ach, tell them the intruder attacked you. Blame it on him. Do it.’
‘The night keeper. He’ll be coming on duty in a minute.’
‘I’ll attend to the night keeper. Do it. My cell first.’
Dick fumbled with the keys at his belt and went to Barbary’s cell door, the typical, stupid warder held to routine. As he opened her door there was a shave of a second while his eyes met Barbary’s. His said: ‘Let them out and we’ve lost control.’ Hers replied: ‘Leave them in and we’ve lost the treasure.’
He moved off down the line to unlock Red Hugh and the man came out of it like a bull, his long, carroty hair and beard surging with the force of his movements. ‘Give me the keys. Go and get the rope. Hurry.’
‘Get his boots first,’ called Grace O’Malley.
Obediently, Dick leaned down and began takin
g off his boots. Red Hugh pushed him onto his backside and pulled them. He tore the ring of keys off Cuckold Dick’s belt and rushed to Grace O’Malley’s cell, fumbling with the lock and dancing with impatience on his big, prehensile bare feet. ‘Get the rope,’ he shouted over his shoulder. Dick went out.
Grace was saying, ‘Hurry, hurry.’ O’Hagan was clutching the edges of his squint and shaking the door, gripped by the panic.
Grace was loose, a big woman with long hair striped like a red and grey badger. She took the keys and control from O’Donnell. ‘Stand to the door. He’ll be here in a minute.’ She took no notice of Barbary, concentrating immediately on O’Hagan’s cell. Barbary crossed to the keeper’s table and picked up the rush-holder – she’d be in charge of the light at least. O’Hagan emerged, another tall man. Were they giants, these Irish? Their shadows crossed and re-crossed like the branches of wind-whipped trees. Nobody came out of Art O’Neill’s cell, and Grace and O’Hagan went into it to see to him.
‘Hush now.’ Red Hugh was crouching by the door to the steps leading up from the lower floors. They could hear footfalls coming up. The latch lifted and the night keeper came in with whatever passed among gaolers for a merry quip on his lips. It was never finished. Red Hugh grabbed the man by the shoulders and knocked his head against the door jamb with a force that damaged both.
‘Boots,’ called Grace from Art’s cell.
O’Donnell dragged the keeper by his collar into the centre of the room and dropped him. ‘Gag and tie him,’ he told Barbary, ‘and take his boots.’
She dropped down by the unconscious man and tied his hands lightly with his own belt. He wouldn’t be waking up for some time, if he ever did. Cony-catcher’s law: no violence. They hanged you for violence. Carefully she tied her handkerchief across his mouth, making sure his nose was unobstructed. His breathing was terrible. She began struggling with the man’s boots.
‘The rope’s here already,’ called Grace. She was still in Art’s cell.
Barbary blinked. That was quick work on Dick’s part. It was only seconds since he’d left the room. Wouldn’t they suspect that he’d had the rope ready? Still fighting to get the keeper’s boots off, she glanced across the room. There was a movement in Grace’s empty, open cell. A white division to the small window. A rope had come down and was hanging outside it. Two ropes? Dick was overdoing it. What was happening?
She left the keeper and went to the door of Art’s cell. They were putting Dick’s boots on the feet of a man slumped against the shelf. Grace was carefully tying a blanket round him. ‘Can you make it, Art, do you think?’
The man nodded. ‘Don’t leave me behind.’
O’Hagan stretched. ‘I think I’d better go first,’ he said. ‘Me cold, you know. I can’t stay in this draught any longer.’ The bastard would be gabbing at his own funeral, but he was brave. Whoever went first had to be brave.
‘You,’ Grace was addressing her, ‘get all the other blankets and throw them down. Carefully. We don’t want them in the river.’
Barbary nodded. She went into O’Hagan’s windowless cell, grabbing the blanket, then into Grace’s. She’d left the rushlight behind. Moonlight was coming in through the window, shining on the rope, outlining the cleft of the window. Voices babbled behind her, but in here it was silent.
Barbary stopped; her eyes were on the window and the rope. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t. Mother, I won’t.’ She was a child but the child had knowledge of the future now. With the benefit of adult perspective it looked out into the darkness, knew the insupportable agony awaiting it at the foot of the tower and knew that it was better to stay here and die than go through that loss again. It had died out there, died from grief.
O’Donnell came into the cell with the rushlight, swearing because she hadn’t thrown down the blankets. She didn’t hear him. He held the light to her face. ‘For what are you crying? This is no time. Afraid? Are you afraid? Jesus God, wait there. I’ll get your blanket.’
He came back and threw the blankets out of the window, leaning out. ‘Are you down, Conn?’
A voice came from a long way below: ‘I’m down. Will you hurry?’
O’Donnell reached for Barbary and pulled her to the window. ‘Out.’
‘Mother,’ screamed Barbary. ‘Mother.’
‘Will you hush your noise? I’ll get Granuaile.’ He pushed Barbary out of his way, so that she fell to her knees by the shelf. He put the rushlight by her. ‘A fine time to want your mother,’ he grumbled, and went out.
She could hear them in another time and another space helping Art through the window and onto the rope. ‘Oh God,’ she prayed, ‘God help me. Give me back my mother.’
He didn’t do that, He did something else. Through the wall of the cell He sent her the ship of the cherubims. It floated indomitable and dearly familiar on the stone sea, its oars moving in the swaying rushlight. A heavy hand fell on her shoulder and a voice said: ‘Get up, girl. This is no time to be afraid. Follow me down.’ It wasn’t the voice that had falsely moaned from Grace’s cell. This was clear, familiar, like the ship. It was the voice that had said: ‘Hug Adam. Shun Eve.’
The ship faded so that only its skeleton was left where Grace O’Malley had scratched its shape on the wall. The rusty nail she had used to score it into the stone lay by the rush-holder.
Barbary’s head whipped round and saw her grandmother’s face at the window, her big hands round the rope. ‘Follow me down, girl. Don’t be afraid.’
Obediently, she got up and went to the window. ‘Yes, Grandmother.’ She watched Granuaile’s badgered head moving down and down. To her right, O’Donnell and his friend were both on their rope, Art supported by the casket of Red Hugh’s big body and arms.
‘Now, girl.’ The familiar voice floated up to her. ‘Don’t be afraid. Follow me down.’
‘Yes, Grandmother.’
She climbed onto the window ledge, held the rope and, swinging out, wrapped her legs round it. Cold air and the necessity to survive brought her wits back. There was a drop of a hundred feet at the end of her toes; she couldn’t see ground, just the black river waiting to take her in. She grinned: ‘You won’t get me. I belong elsewhere.’ She belonged. She was climbing down to her roots, that tough old besom, those men. Irish, after all. A pity, but roots were roots. Where was Cuckold Dick? He was roots, as well. The rope burned her feet and her hands, but she’d clambered enough rigging on the Thames in her time. They wouldn’t wet Barbary’s bib. Irish Barbary’s bib. She would hug her grandmother when she got to her, tell her, get enfolded by the maternity that she’d ached for and hadn’t known she’d needed so badly.
Her feet touched ground, she turned round and opened her mouth and somebody put a gag in it. Her grandmother tied Barbary’s hands behind her. ‘I told you I’d have you in my arms soon, you little whore.’
Above them, her rope snaked down from the crenels of the roof. O’Hagan had a knife, Cuckold Dick’s knife, and cut off a section. Grace O’Malley tied it round Barbary’s waist and then, with O’Hagan, went to help Red Hugh and Art reach the ground. The second rope fell from the crenels.
‘Gggg,’ said Barbary. She tossed her head up and down, like a horse. She arched her body, threw it against Grace’s. ‘Gggther.’
‘Take her,’ Grace said to O’Hagan. ‘I’ll kill the bitch if she touches me again. Throw those ropes in the river.’ O’Hagan’s hands clamped on her shoulders, his breath steaming across the top of her hair. ‘She means it. And a pity to kill a pretty hostage.’
She hit her head against his shoulders, tears of frustration and rage popping from her eyes. ‘I’m attending to that,’ O’Neill had said and of all the fokking, shit-arsed, bloody nights, this was the one he’d chosen to do it. This was his arranged escape, not hers. Some warder was in O’Neill’s pay. But, ignorant of Barbary’s plans, the O’Neill hadn’t thought of telling them that there was a young woman in town whom he believed to be Grace O’Malley’s grandchild. And it was the
truth. She was. She knew it now. She, Barbary Clampett, really was the person she’d told Grace she was. She’d perpetrated the greatest conying of her career, only to find now that it was no conying at all.
They hadn’t believed her. At no point had they believed her. Cony-catcher caught. To them she was a spy, but they’d gone along with her because she would help the escape and be a good hostage. They’d treacled her, that old bugger Grace weeping, and pretending, but in fact refusing to believe that one of the grandchildren she must have grieved over for so many years had been resurrected in the shape of a Cockney girl.
Oh Jesus. What had they done with Cuckold Dick?
They were putting boots on, adjusting blankets. They began moving, O’Hagan putting his knee in her back every time she faltered. Her feet in their socks were gathering ice and squeaked on the frozen top layer of snow. Art was being piggy-backed, his arms round Red Hugh’s neck. They turned west where the river ran on their left, running quietly as if too cold to make a noise. The turret wall loomed silently over them. They reached the corner where she’d been arrested. Where were the sentries? If everything went according to plan, they would all have been re-arrested at this point, taken to Sir John Perrot and all but her – excused because of her youth – condemned to hang. On their way back up to the cells, Grace O’Malley, according to the plan, would utter broken words like: ‘I must die, my child, but you at least can live as a true O’Malley. The treasure is hidden in the…’
‘Will you hold the cow?’ demanded the real Grace O’Malley as Barbary threw herself against her once more. She must warn them. Any moment they would run into the trap she herself had set for them. What a clowning, somersaulting sodding mess it was. Again she threw herself at the woman who had gagged and bound her. She jerked her head to try and indicate where the sentries were. O’Hagan dragged her back before Grace could hit her. They moved on. There were no sentries, although somebody was standing in the shadow of the wall. Red Hugh went up to him. Whoever it was kept his voice down. She could hear O’Donnell, though. He said: ‘Well done. Thank himself for us. What did you do with the day keeper?’ That was Cuckold Dick. She strained to hear the answer. Mumble mumble. ‘Give the man gold,’ said O’Donnell. ‘I promised him. I’ll not break my word to a bloody Saxon.’ She nearly collapsed with relief. Dick was alive at least.
The Pirate Queen Page 23