‘Did ye hear the English have hanged Owen O’Flaherty?’
‘Oh?’
From behind his place at the back of Barbary’s chair, Manus whispered: ‘Herself’s eldest. Your father.’
‘Oh.’ She couldn’t remember him. Somewhere in the shadows of her mind was a man who sang of his prowess in battle. Perhaps that was him. She’d never know now. The English had done a good job in orphaning her.
Grace seemed to be taking it well. But then loss was to be expected in Gaelic society. Very few of these chieftains round the table had achieved their position without assassinating someone with a better right to it. Grace’s husband, Donal-of-the-Battles O’Flaherty, had murdered Walter-the-Tall Bourke, a candidate to the MacWilliamship, to oblige his sister, who was Walter’s stepmother and wanted the title for her own son. Nobody seemed to have minded too much.
Barbary whispered to Manus: ‘What happened to my grandfather?’
‘Donal of the Battles? Ach, the Joyces killed him.’
‘Oh.’ For all their disregard for life, which they took in the firm belief that they sent their victim to a better one, they were innocent as the dawn. To them the English were merely another clan with nasty habits. What they regarded as a purely ritual submission to Elizabeth had entitled the Queen of England to regard herself as their Ard Rí, but High Kings had come and gone in their long history without making much difference. Nor had Elizabeth made any difference. Her troops still couldn’t penetrate Connaught in safety. Her father had ordered the abolition of monasteries, but monasteries still flourished. The monk Grace had hung from his heels did not exist as far as the English were concerned; the title to his monastic land was marked down as belonging to a certain James Garvey Esq., a worthy English undertaker. But James Garvey Esq. had never dared visit it, and its monks still chanted their Cistercian rule within its walls, acknowledging only the Pope. The O’Malleys upheld them, and occasionally persecuted them, as they had since the early saints built their beehive cells on the hillside of Knockmore a thousand years before.
And despite their continual warring, perhaps because of it, these chieftains and their people lived in balance. They never hunted another species to extinction, they replanted what wood they cut down. The English word ‘landowner’ had no translation into Irish because they did not understand the concept. Land was shared by even the meanest member of the clan; something everybody occupied temporarily. Assassination was private enterprise, but it was also a sin and they did penance for it, there was no such thing as a legal execution. A murderer must compensate his victim’s family under a law which also gave very considerable rights to women. Irish society, in its own particular way, was harmonious.
And they were proud of it. Instead of questioning Barbary on her knowledge of England, its plans and the disposition of its forces, the chieftains courteously ignored that she’d ever been there, as if she’d been abducted by savages and it would be bad form to expose her shame.
The sun was setting out to sea and for one moment coloured everything, animate and inanimate, into saffron. The sheep and horses on the hillside, the hill itself, the water of the harbour and the cottages above it, the men’s beards and jewels, the harps of the poets, Grace’s hair and face, the glorious chalices on the table, all were washed in a dying gold. Barbary wanted the air to solidify so that these people could be preserved in its amber. They had so little time left before they and their strange culture disappeared for ever. The thought, and the whiskey, brought tears to her eyes. She had found her home, and it was doomed.
‘Did ye hear of me marriage and divorce to Richard-an-Iarainn?’
She looked blearily at her grandmother. ‘Tibbot’s father?’
Grace nodded. ‘Iron Dick.’
She tried to concentrate. ‘And had he?’ she asked.
Grace O’Malley stared at her and then, for the first time, made physical contact with her granddaughter; she slapped her on the back and laughed until the tears fell down her face.
From then on the relationship eased. They stood together on the quay in the dark and watched the chieftains rowed unsteadily back to their ships by torchlight, their calls and the music of their harpers echoing back across the water.
‘Tibbot-ne-Long didn’t come,’ said Grace as they went up to her tower room for a nightcap. It was a statement of fact, not a request for sympathy. Informing this woman that her son had tried to kill her granddaughter was more than Barbary had been able to find it in herself to do. Grace’s anger that he had kidnapped her had been considerable enough; as punishment she had sent a force to Rockfleet to ‘fine’ some of Tibbot’s cattle and horses into her own herds. Barbary settled herself in a coil of rope and said, truthfully: ‘He’s a strange one.’
‘Fostered by the English,’ said Grace in explanation. ‘His father’s doing. I was against it. No good ever came from the Saxon.’ She looked speculatively at Barbary. ‘And in the end didn’t they use him as hostage? That I had to go and submit to prison?’
So that was why Grace had landed up in Dublin Castle. To save her son. Tibbot hadn’t seen fit to mention it.
‘For all that, he’ll get the Lower MacWilliamship,’ Grace said, ‘or I’ll know the reason why.’
The guests to the feast had brought the news that MacOliverus, the Lower Macwilliam, he who had sent Barbary into Tibbot’s hands, had been killed in a hunting accident. One of the biggest chieftainships in Connaught was up for grabs. If Tibbot wanted it – and his mother was backing him – Barbary felt sympathy for anyone standing in the way.
She yawned. She was tired but reluctant to interrupt this new intimacy her grandmother was showing her. Ever since she’d passed the test, she had basked in Grace’s acceptance, but not in Grace’s confidence. Only tonight had there been a thaw; perhaps it was because she’d made the old girl laugh with her dirty joke.
‘And until I can see what’s what with the MacWilliamship,’ said Grace, ‘I’ll not be sailing to get the O’Neill his guns.’
Ah. So that was it. Implicit was not only Grace’s ambition for her son, but a distrust of the O’Neill, and Barbary, and a war not of her choosing. ‘No good ever came from the Saxon.’ It was time to teach her grandmother the facts of life.
But first. ‘I brought you some presents,’ she said and retrieved from her travelling case a box of tobacco and the whale-ivory pipe Raleigh had given her.
Grace picked up the pipe and studied it. ‘And where do I stick this?’
Barbary grinned. ‘There’s a joke to that in England.’
‘There’s a joke to it here,’ said Grace.
Barbary filled the pipe, lit it, pulled, coughed – she couldn’t take to the habit, although she’d tried – and handed it to her grandmother. Grace didn’t say thank you, ‘I burn me weeds on rubbish dumps,’ but she didn’t cough. She sat back in her chair, her fingers curled about the pipe as if they’d fallen into accustomed grooves, drawing on it as naturally as a baby sucking mother’s milk. There was a sense of encounter; Paris had set eyes on Helen, Hannibal on an elephant. It was love at first puff.
‘Now, look,’ said Barbary. ‘If the English conquer Connaught and Ulster, there won’t be no MacWilliamship.’ She began to paint the wide political picture. She used words like ‘banding together’, ‘common enemy’, ‘patriotism’, and saw them swirl away out of the window with Grace’s pipe smoke. She was lyrical on a united Ireland under the leadership of the O’Neill, of Gaelic children being born to freedom. ‘And that’s why O’Neill wants cannon,’ she finished.
‘How much?’
‘Very much. I told you.’
Grace spat. ‘I mean, how much will he pay?’
‘Pay? You don’t pay for your own survival.’ She went into it all again.
Grace smoked and listened and at the end of it said: ‘Is that what they taught you in that Order of yours?’
‘It’s what I learned since.’
Her grandmother nodded. ‘It’s horse-shit. If the O’Ne
ill wants guns transported, he pays for it. The English paid me two hundred pounds for similar services rendered. I’d need as much from him.’
Barbary blinked. ‘You served the English?’
‘I did.’
‘I thought you said no good came from the Saxon. Didn’t they put you in prison? Trine your own son?’
‘No reason not to take their money.’
‘It was O’Neill got you out of prison.’
‘No reason not to take his either.’
Barbary sank back in her chair. ‘You baffle me.’
‘Do I now? Well, you’ll learn.’ Grace looked sideways at her granddaughter. ‘Tell the O’Neill two hundred pounds and I’ll think about it. But not till harvest.’
Barbary jumped. A voice, the voice of Don Howsyourfather, had sounded sleepily from behind the curtains of the great bed. ‘Do you come to bed, my little apple?’ Startled in her belief that sex petered out at thirty, and even more by the thought that her grandmother was anyone’s little apple, Barbary said goodnight to her. Grace nodded, still finishing her pipe.
‘Well,’ asked Barbary of the moon as she went down the slope outside the castle to the house overlooking the harbour which Grace had given her for her own, ‘why shouldn’t the old masterpiece niggle at her age if she wants to?’ If the Queen of England could still pull in lovers, why not Grace of the Ships? Power, that aphrodisiac which attracted beautiful women to authoritative men, however old, was as effective when the sexes were reversed.
And how had Grace got that power? By being the complete survivor, eschewing patriotism, sentiment, principle. The only weakness she had, and the one that had put her into prison, was love for her son.
Barbary addressed the moon again. ‘Bloody love,’ she said. ‘What good is it?’
The harbour that had been saffron an hour or so ago was emptied in a moonlight with the soft shine of pewter. The sea patted the edge of the sand invitingly. Taking off her shoes and stockings, she went for a paddle, in the need to become immersed in the elusive, wonderful night. Tiny waves washed longings back and forth, to have been in this place for ever, to stay for ever in this place, for this place to have for ever. For another bed with a man in it, in another tower, in another part of Ireland, in another time.
* * *
‘It’ll take time,’ she told Cuckold Dick. ‘Even if O’Neill pays her for carrying his guns, Herself won’t leave Connaught just now with the MacWilliamship at stake. I’ll talk her round eventually. Until then, Dick, my old herring, it looks as if we’re in the pirate trade.’
Dick said nervously: ‘It can’t be that bad, can it, Barb? It’s only the Order with seaweed.’
But it wasn’t.
Chapter Seventeen
The Hollandish carrack was equipped each side with four demi-culverin, having sacrificed artillery for cargo space. What she lacked in guns she made up for in speed, manoeuvrability and sheer cheek. Probably because English patrols of the Channel had cramped her style, she’d arrived off Galway the previous week and crippled two merchantmen bound for Bristol, relieved them of their freight and sent them to the bottom. Now, having escaped the wrath of the English navy stationed at Galway, she was sailing north to find pickings in other waters. Grace O’Malley’s waters.
Barbary was ordered aboard the Grace of God. ‘It’ll be a grand experience for ye,’ said her grandmother. ‘I’ll mince those Dutchmen into dog vomit.’
‘Grand’ was not the word Barbary would have chosen. While appreciating the theory that Grace O’Malley’s credibility depended on reducing foreign piracy along her own coastline, she suspected she was not going to enjoy the practice. But at this stage she was less afraid of battle than of offending her grandmother. The deck lifted easily under her feet as Grace of God swept out of the Sound under full canvas into the sunlight of a fine, blowing day. For once Barbary’s spirits failed to rise to the ship’s joie de vivre.
She wished Cuckold Dick was with her, but two days ago his piratical career had ended before it started. They’d been aboard the galley, one hour out from Clare and bearing down on a naive little Scottish merchantmen whose captain had not seen the necessity to call in and pay ‘pilotage’ to Grace O’Malley. Dick was explaining to Cull why he, Dick, was not feeling so well. ‘Gawd, Cull,’ he said, ‘but I was foxed last night.’ ‘Fox-drunk’ was an Order phrase and Dick translated it literally. Grace, standing on the galley’s poop, froze. Cull swore. The stroke oars stopped rowing, and a ragged shock wave spread along the banked rowers so that oars struck out at all angles while the galley floundered.
Grace O’Malley turned slowly to Dick. ‘What did he say?’
Cuckold Dick moved to safety behind Barbary. ‘I only said I was drunk last night, Barb.’
Cull shook his head: ‘Your man said the word.’
‘What word? What’s he done?’
Grace rasped: ‘Return galley.’ The starboard oars dipped, turning the galley back the way she had come, her crew all the time looking fit to kill at Dick. ‘And indeed,’ Cull told Barbary later, ‘without he was a friend of yours, he’d have been over the side. It’s the Devil’s luck to mention the little red gentleman on board a Connaught ship.’
‘Fox, you mean?’ She knew sailors were superstitious but this was ridiculous. Cull covered his ears.
Grace watched the Scottish merchantman pass unmolested along her coast with the air of one seeing her children eaten. Nobody explained, possibly because they didn’t know, why mention of a fox was fatal to marine enterprise in Connaught, but Dick was banned from the fleet.
And bully for him, thought Barbary. Wish I was. The look-out in the crow’s nest had just yelled ‘Enemy in sight’ at a tiny break on the horizon, and Grace had ordered the cannon run out. In the three hours it took to overhaul the car rack, Barbary reflected on the selectivity of courage; she could be brave, had been brave, in various circumstances, but she didn’t think battle at sea was going to be one of them, especially as she had no function in it. Grace on the quarterdeck was showing all the fear of a woman about to box a small boy’s ears for his impudence; the crew’s anticipation of prize money was obviously greater than their anticipation of death or wounds.
Barbary went down to the gun deck; she might be of use there. Close inspection didn’t improve her confidence. The guns were unbelievable; what Will would have said of the miscellaneous selection of ordnance she didn’t dare think. There was a huge, possibly Spanish, demi-cannon, two sakers of differing bore, a culverin and some falcons. Some of the ammunition was modern, but there were stone balls among it. The powder keg wasn’t being treated with respect; it was too near the guns and because, during the voyage, its three constituents of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal had stratified, Fergal, Grace’s master gunner, was stirring it like a baker.
‘You should’ve got that into cartridges,’ she told him sharply, remembering Will’s methods. ‘You ram that stuff agin the wad too hard and you can grow a beard waiting for it to go off.’
Fergal’s nerves were on edge and he didn’t like women. ‘I’ll ram you, O’Flaherty, if you’re not away from here.’
She left, to find they were overhauling the carrack obscenely fast. Grace had crammed on every bit of sail the galleon could carry. What she had seen below told her, ominously, that Grace would have to get within at least one hundred yards of the carrack if her own guns were to have any accuracy. Perhaps the Hollander would surrender. Perhaps Grace would surrender. Let one of the buggers surrender. Now.
She could see the black pennant of the Sea Devils streaming from the Hollander’s stern as she ran before the wind, the dirty brown of her sails. They were too close, too close, the streaming water of the two bow waves clashing into spray between them.
The carrack had one chance to fire as the Grace of God bellied past her to gain the wind. It took it. Barbary saw flame lick out from the muzzles of the Hollander’s guns, had time to see the puffs of smoke, see the black, round shapes get bigger as they travelle
d at her, hear the rip of torn air, and just time to leap for cover in the canvas locker before they crashed into Grace’s rigging, sending the foremast falling against the main yard. Splinters thudded into the deck like darts.
Men screamed orders, screamed with excitement, with fear, with pain, and above the shocking percussion of both ships’ guns, cracking wood and slapping canvas was an ear-scraping stridor that went on and on.
Barbary burrowed her head into harsh canvas that smelled of salt and lanolin. She could still hear it, feel the shudders of the ship. Even in this cover she felt naked, as if she was hanging from the yardarm with ‘Shoot me’ tattooed across her chest.
Somebody was dragging at her feet. She screamed at them, kicked out and huddled deeper. ‘Sure, it’s not always like this,’ somebody was shouting at her through the racket. She kicked out at the fool, whoever it was. God Almighty, what a time to tell her. As if she’d expose herself to this terror again, this noise, those monstrous black bees humming at her through the air. She could put up with a lot, but never this. She was unmanned, unwomanned. Piracy? They could keep it. Get me out of this, God, and I’ll believe in you. Get me out, get me out…
Hoping against hope, she wriggled round to put her head out of the locker, and shouted: ‘FOX!’ Nobody heard her.
The ship jumped up in the air, followed by sound so massive it blew the lid off her locker. She fought her way under more canvas.
Then it was over, quiet, a few shouts. ‘Drop anchor.’
Drop anchor? She poked her head out into what had reduced itself to calmer chaos. Tangled rigging, tangled men. A crewman was picking bits of wood out of his arm. She crawled out, hugging a sail. The crewman grinned at her. ‘That’ll teach them to come pirating in Herself’s waters.’ She nodded indulgently at him, as to the insane, and looked about.
The Hollander was in worse shape than the Grace. The explosion she’d heard had been one of its powder kegs going up. Part of its side and all of its stern had been blown away. Black-singed men lay still on its deck. Others were being thrown overboard. Lines had been set up to transfer the contents of her hold to the Grace.
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