They had waited for the order to take Essex to the Tower. It hadn’t come. Essex vanished into the country and Elizabeth did nothing. Nobody could believe it. He couldn’t survive this. But he did, had. After a hideous month, he was back at court as charming, and apparently valued, as ever. As usual it was the onlookers who suffered, and one of these was Barbary. Like so many people before her, she’d thought she’d got the queen’s measure; having once told the queen the truth she continued to speak it, pressing Bingham’s atrocities, the need for a kinder hand on Ireland’s helm. But the queen had turned on her suddenly: ‘God’s blood, Boggart, I am sick of your Irish plaguing.’
Since then she had not been invited to any court occasions. And now here she was, at the Elf’s urging, accompanying an Irish pirate to court to translate that pirate’s plea for mercy. We’ll both end up in chains at Wapping, she thought.
A courteous, chirpy Mr Secretary Cecil met them at Whitehall Yard, and if he noticed that Barbary was sweating, he didn’t mention it.
The heterogeneous mass that was Whitehall Palace extended from Scotland Yard to Cannon Row and inland from the river to deep countryside. People rash enough to refuse a guide had been known to wander about it for days. The Elf hopped along at Grace’s side, to Barbary’s relief treating her grandmother as an honoured visitor and not a captured warlord, indicating architectural and historical points of interest. Grace behaved well; not too impressed but inclining her head graciously.
They had to wait at the entrance to the hall where Elizabeth was receiving. The hall itself was so vast that from where they stood in the doorway the group of people around the queen’s chair at the other end looked as if they had been constructed to a smaller scale than human. A single monotonous voice which might have been clarity itself down there lost its lower register as it travelled back along the tapestries to the doorway so that it came to them in cheep-cheeps.
‘The Venetian ambassador,’ Cecil explained. Nervously, Barbary wondered if the man was doing Venetian bird impressions.
At last the cheeping stopped and the queen’s High Steward came up the hall to escort them into the presence, sweeping his ivory staff so that its point clicked on the marble with every step. They followed him, becoming dwarfed by the immensity of the avenue that led through the gold and silver tapestries. They were still ten yards away from the queen when there was an interruption. Essex. He came swirling before them, accompanied by two of his acolytes, and barred their advance. ‘No Irish savage shall near Her Gracious Majesty without I am satisfied for her safety,’ he shouted. ‘Search the pirate.’
He was showing off to the queen. That was the nice thing about Essex, thought Barbary, when he acted the fool he did it without prejudice to sex or rank. Then she thought, oh Jesus, is Grace armed?
‘Search her,’ shouted Essex again, and one of the acolytes, Sir Gilly Merrick, moved in on Grace with outstretched hands. Then he doubled up, yelping, clutching his testicular area where Grace had kneed him with a movement so fast Barbary hadn’t seen it. When she caught up and transferred her gaze from the gasping Sir Gilly to Grace, her grandmother was smoothing down the front of her gown. ‘Tell young Cuchulainn there,’ she said, tilting her head at Essex, ‘if he wants to. try it I’ll cure his hiccups as well.’
Barbary said nothing. The man was out of control, reaching for his sword as he had done against the queen. ‘My lord.’ Voices were shouting warnings, the loudest of them Elizabeth’s own. Barbary watched the other acolyte, Essex’s secretary Henry Cuffe, hang onto his master’s sword arm, whispering. There were times when the insanity that lurked in the caves behind the earl’s beauty came rearing into the daylight and this was one of them. If she’d had her Clampett with her then she’d have produced it. The only thing that could stop this monster was a bullet. But there was one thing else: the high, insistent voice of Elizabeth. ‘For shame, my lord. For shame.’
For a moment he was petulant and white, and then he allowed himself to be led away. He would retire for days now, ill.
Shaking, Barbary looked around. The courtiers were showing horror; genuine horror on the part of the Essex adherents, pleasurable horror if they belonged to the anti-Essex party. The earl had done it again.
She looked at the queen, and nearly collapsed with relief. Elizabeth was laughing. This was better than bear-baiting. The royal humour favoured the prat fall, and if the prats being fallen on belonged to a young man who mesmerised her to a point where she resented her own enthralment, so much the funnier. The queen wiped her eyes. ‘Tell the old woman that if she does not intend to kill me she may approach.’
Elizabeth was sitting in a chair by the corner of a massive marble fireplace surrounded by her ladies and several men. Barbary saw the Earl of Ormond was among them, no doubt to check on her translation of what Grace might say. She was wearing a dress that must have taken an army of seamstresses years to make, black satin crisscrossed with thousands of seed pearls. Her ruff was diamonded and diamonds were stitched into her orange wig. As usual when Essex was around, her bodice was open almost to the waist, showing the loops of her breasts.
Grace’s bow was no lower than she would have given to one of her fellow chieftains on the Connaught shore, but Elizabeth was so amused that she ignored the lack of obeisance. She had decided to treat Grace as an ignorant old fisherwoman, and Barbary prayed Grace wouldn’t spoil the indulgence.
‘You have injured one of my courtiers, to say nothing of killing some of my ships, old woman. Would you now kill me?’
Barbary translated.
‘No.’
‘For God’s sake say something else,’ begged Barbary. ‘She expects compliments.’
‘The crone is overwhelmed,’ said Elizabeth over her shoulder. ‘Come, Boggart, ask what she thinks now that she meets her Ard Rí face to face.’
‘She wants to know what you think of her.’
Grace considered. ‘The dress is good,’ she said, ‘but she must be whipping her dressmaker for cutting it too small to cover her tits.’
Barbary glanced at Black Tom Ormond, the only other Irish-speaker in the hall. Both these women were his kinswomen. Would he betray Grace by intervening with an exact translation, or betray Elizabeth by keeping quiet? At the moment his mouth was curved, but shut. She swallowed, prayed for inspiration and found it in the memory of a song the galleymen had sometimes sung as they rowed. ‘Were it not that full of sorrow from my people forth I go,’ she said, ‘By the blessed sun, ’tis royally I’d sing thy praise, Great Queen.’
Grace understood a little of it and sniffed. Lady Mary Howard, only just back in favour and watching her chance to stay there, moved forward and proffered Grace her handkerchief. ‘Tell her that civilised people blow their noses on this. We don’t sniff.’
Grace blew her nose on the laced cambric, then threw it in the fire.
‘No, no,’ said Lady Mary, wriggling with pleasure. ‘Tell her, then we put it in our pocket.’
‘Tell her that where I come from we don’t keep soiled linen on our persons,’ said Grace.
The queen was smiling again as Lady Mary retired hurt. Was it instinct, wondered Barbary, or sheer luck that Grace was offending all the right people today?
‘And what about my ships, old woman?’
‘Ah well, d’ye see,’ said Grace, ‘tell Herself that I’m just such a one as she is. The O’Flaherty bastards wouldn’t give me me dues. I was cast out into the world’s sea in me shift. Either I drowned or I swam, so I swam. If it was her ships I sank it was nothing personal, and you can give her me apology. I never fired on one that didn’t fire on me first. Tell her I sank Spanish alongside hers, and if she’ll take Bingham off me back it’s only her enemies I’ll fight in future. Tell Herself that.’
Barbary told her. Word for word.
Elizabeth stopped patronising. She leaned back in her chair, her long fingers tapping its arms, suddenly grim. ‘Does this pirate equate herself with our majesty?’
‘Differe
nt spheres,’ said Grace, ‘and we survived in our each, though the men tried to stop us.’
‘Omnia venalia Roma,’ quoted Elizabeth.
‘Quis nisi mentis inips oblatum respuit aurum?’ answered Grace.
Elizabeth’s head came forward like a pointer’s. ‘Nascimur pro patria.’
Grace nodded. ‘Mallem non esse quam non prodesse patria.’
Barbary was redundant. The two women were in conversation, mouthing Latin platitudes at each other, Grace with less fluency than the queen, but without the need of an interpreter. Barbary moved away and joined the Earl of Ormond. ‘How in hell did Granuaile learn Latin?’
‘We are not ignorant, Mistress Boggart, despite a general view to the opposite.’
We. She looked up at him. He was watching Grace with something like tired pride. He had always thrown in his lot with the English, he’d fought more of Elizabeth’s battles against his own countrymen than any of the men she’d put in charge of Ireland, yet one word in defence of those countrymen, one act of mercy, and he’d been castigated as a traitor. Time and again he had been downgraded, only to be called back to sort out the mess his superiors had caused and could no longer handle. Here at court he heard anti-Irish jokes and racism pour from those who had never been to the country as unthinkingly as the air came from their lungs.
‘Well, she put Essex in his place.’
‘She did, Mistress Boggart, though Essex was less concerned with showing Her Majesty how he can deal with the barbarian Irish than showing her that Cecil can’t. That little exercise was directed against Mr Secretary.’
‘What’s he want the Irish appointment for?’
‘He doesn’t. Even Essex isn’t that lunatic. He just doesn’t want any of Cecil’s men to get it.’
The queen had stood up now and the two women were walking together, Elizabeth glittering, Grace matt like a seal.
‘What’s happening?’
He listened. ‘I gather Granuaile is suggesting they sail away together to the New World where they will subdue the natives and carve out a dual empire, England and Ireland being too small for their combined talents. She overlooks the fact that our Glorious Maritime Majesty has never actually been to sea.’
At the far end of the hall where other petitioners and envoys were impatiently silting up the doorway, the two women turned, Elizabeth listening as she hadn’t listened in years. One of the thousand facets of which she consisted was at that moment seeing herself leading a ship-borne invasion of a new continent. She had no intention of doing so, but she was enchanted by the idea, and that the female by her side should think her capable of it. They’re both pirates, thought Barbary. They have options which nobody else is ruthless enough to take.
‘Will Grace get her to recall Bingham?’
Ormond shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. Bingham is not the problem.’
‘He’s a problem to us in Connaught.’
He looked down at her. ‘I don’t know if you are aware of it, Mistress Boggart, but I was the one indirectly responsible for sending you to Ireland.’
‘You were?’ She was surprised.
‘And my responsibility in that regard urges me to give you one piece of advice. Don’t go back. Forget that country. Renounce it. Live in peace with your husband, breed children. And never go back.’
Elizabeth and Grace passed them, still talking. Elizabeth ignored the courtier who held the back of her chair and stepped up onto the dais, leaving Grace alone at its foot. She moved to stand before the throne and raised her voice. ‘Let it be known that Mistress Grace O’Malley has persuaded us that what she did against us was out of force of circumstance and not malevolence.’ The adventurous moment had passed, and she was queen again, dispensing mercy on an old woman who was, in fact, exactly her own age. ‘Lord Lieutenant Bingham will be recalled and put in the Tower for the answering of many wrongs done against Mistress O’Malley and her people.’ She looked grandly down at Grace. ‘Go, good old woman, and use your remaining years to prosecute my enemies as you have promised.’
Grace bowed and, to Barbary’s relief, moved away backwards. Elizabeth smiled them out of the hall.
‘Aren’t I the clever one?’ said Grace O’Malley.
* * *
At Deptford there was an uncomfortable incident when the Ballast Master came aboard as they waited for the tide, demanding to know why a ship that had come upriver laden – Grace had brought hides to sell on her own account and more whiskey for Cuckold Dick – was returning downriver empty and without ballast, since to do so would make her dangerously light, not to mention depriving the Ballast Office of a toll. He was unimpressed by Grace’s passport, which had been signed by Elizabeth herself. ‘You still need ballast.’
‘Tell the bastard we’re loading guns further down,’ called Grace in Irish.
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Barbary. To the Ballast Master she said: ‘We’re picking up a cargo of corn at Tilbury given by Her Majesty to the starving people of Connaught.’ The corn was going to cover the guns. ‘Also whiskey,’ she added after a thought.
‘What’s whiskey?’ asked the Ballast Master.
He was helped ashore an hour later and they went on their way.
‘You’re too damn full of yourself,’ Barbary told her grandmother. ‘Just because you’ve got the Queen of England eating out of your hand.’
‘Haven’t I though,’ crowed Grace. ‘Now there’s a woman understands the piloting trade.’
‘No, she doesn’t. And she wouldn’t understand you picking up guns, either. She thinks you’re going to fight the Spanish for her.’
‘And don’t I need guns to do it? Not all that art-ill-ary will go to the O’Neill. She’s getting Bingham off me back and for that I’ll sink all the Spanish she wants, and the Hollanders, and the—’
‘The Hollanders are on her side,’ pointed out Barbary.
‘Ah well, you can’t have everything.’ Grace was in fine form.
It was a hot day and apart from a fitful breeze in its flapping sails, the ship’s progress depended solely on the tide. Traffic going upriver had come to a stop, but the two women leaning on the gunwale to watch it experienced the illusion that a frieze painted to represent the world’s shipping – there was even an Arab dhow – was moving gently past them.
‘Ah well,’ said Grace, ‘it’s time to give you the letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘Come down to the cabin.’
‘It’s from O’Hagan, isn’t it?’
‘Keep her centred, Cull,’ said Grace.
‘I got her up, I’ll get her down,’ called back Cull.
‘Is it from O’Hagan?’
The cabin was warm and its open window allowed in the reflection of sun on water to waver over the bulkhead. Grace opened a familiar box and gave Barbary a small roll. The seal was unrecognisable; a ring had stamped into it so hard that it had gone through to the parchment, spattering the wax. The same anger had distorted the scrawl of the short sentences.
‘The O’Neill says you have returned to your husband to save your soul and mine. Could this salvation not have waited two more days? Were you afraid I would not let you go?
‘As it is, take your English soul. I take mine to Spain, and God have mercy on them both.’
It was dated from O’Neill’s palace at Dungannon, two days after she’d left it. Even as O’Neill had been telling her O’Hagan was on the sea for Spain, he’d actually been on his way to join her.
Grace’s arm stopped her before she got to the cabin steps. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know.’ Catch him, that’s all she thought. Catch him before he goes. But he’d gone. He was already in Spain by now. The letter was nearly three months old. The fury and hurt in it were ancient now, for him. Not for her.
She stared up at her grandmother. ‘He tricked us. O’Neill tricked us. He lied to me and he lied to him. Why didn’t you tell O’Hagan why I went? I was saving you. You, not my soul. I don’t give
a damn for my soul. Only him.’
Grace caught her hands in one fist. ‘Stop it.’ She forced her down onto the cot. ‘Stop it now. I’d gone from Dungannon before O’Hagan arrived. He gave the letter to Katty. I found it among her possessions.’
Barbary went on staring, as if Grace held relief from her misery. ‘He tricked us.’ They hadn’t suited his purpose. Love hadn’t suited his purpose. ‘O’Neill lied to us.’
‘Sure and he lies to everybody,’ said Grace, comfortingly. ‘He’s promised me more money than he’s ever put down on the nail. Wipe your eyes for the sake of God. It’s only a man.’
‘He tricked us.’ She wanted to bawl to alleviate the pain, lie down on the cabin floor, drum her heels and bawl like a calf. ‘I saved the bastard’s life and he tricked me.’
‘He’s the grandfather of all trickery,’ said Grace. ‘I thought you’d known that.’
That lovely thing they’d had. She was in agony to think O’Hagan believed she’d returned to England voluntarily. O’Neill’s lying disregard for them both… ‘I’ll see the bastard dead before I get him his fokking guns.’
‘If it’s him you’re getting them for,’ said Grace calmly, ‘I should.’
The reflected wavelets danced uselessly against the wood of the bulkhead. Barbary hammered her fists on the cot edge in her helplessness. God damn them all, what could she do? Of course the guns weren’t for the O’Neill. Never had been. Her grandmother was right. They were for shapes hanging in a dawn in a Munster forest. And she would supply them to a man who had versed her with a brilliance that put him high in the Order’s role of honour. His lie to her had been clever, but his lie to O’Hagan, that she had gone back to save his soul and hers from the sin of adultery – what adultery? what soul? – had been a perfection of the verser’s art, lancing into her lover’s damned bloody conscience. But the O’Neill would get his guns because he was all that stood in the gap to save his people, O’Hagan’s people, her people, from annihilation.
The Pirate Queen Page 53