Wearily she said: ‘What happened to Don Howsyourfather?’
‘His loving would have held me back, with a war on,’ said Grace, ‘so I returned him to Spain where he wouldn’t get damaged. Maybe I’ll get him back when it’s all over. Or maybe I’ll get another one prettier.’ Grandmother and granddaughter looked carefully at each other. Grace had saved Don Howsyourfather from being caught up in the hell that Ireland had become. Perhaps, after all, thought Barbary, it was better as it was. O’Hagan would be safe in Spain. ‘You’re no fool, are you, Granuaile?’
‘Fools go under. Will we go and get the guns now?’
A trap within a trap within a trap. ‘What else can we do?’
* * *
When they’d discussed the matter during Barbary’s convalescence at Dungannon, the O’Neill’s strategy for war if it were forced on him would, he said, resemble all his dealings with the English. ‘No pitched battles. We’d not win. Hit and run, stay unseen, so they’ll think the trees are killing them. Lead them like marshlights into the bog and watch it suck them down.’
For years he’d been supplying clans all over Ireland with small arms and getting instructors, most of them taught by the English themselves, not just to shoot accurately but to shoot accurately on the run. His greatest weapon was the English contempt for the Irish soldier who, propaganda had it, was an inefficient coward. Where English propaganda got it right was that the Irish invariably ceded a held position, not because they were cowards, as the English believed, but because they lacked cannon or, if they had cannon, couldn’t use it. O’Neill’s own knowledge of ordnance was sketchy. ‘Consult Will Clampett,’ he said. ‘I want guns powerful enough to breach a ten-foot wall, light enough to float over bogs and willing to skip up mountains.’
But there had been no time for Barbary to consult Will. She knew that the O’Neill intended to use Will to set up his own foundry for larger cannon, therefore her job was to supply manoeuvrable pieces. She had primed the Bumboy to negotiate with the cannon master at Panningridge accordingly. It had been a needless exercise. The cannon master had indeed fallen for the Bumboy, and his money, but he couldn’t fulfil a special order in the time she had given him. She would have to content herself with pieces creamed off from the legitimate government order. In effect, she’d have to take what she would get. And that had turned out to be four robinets which, though carriage guns, were light, twelve two-and-a-half to three-pounder falcons – ideal for the O’Neill’s purpose – and a saker, a six-pounder, needing a team of oxen to drag it.
When the wagons bringing the consignment to Tilsend had creaked out of a dawn mist along the causeway, she’d taken one look at the monstrous shape pinioned by ropes to one of them and said: ‘Take it back.’
Despite the impenetrable Wealden accent of the leading wagoner, she gathered from the number of four-letter words expressed in it that he wasn’t prepared to do so. Carrying that lot through uncharted Kent forest had not, it appeared, been enjoyable. As it was, all he wanted to do now was dump the guns in her courtyard, get his money and return whence he came. It took four-letter words of her own to persuade him to proceed with his train to the buildings which had once been the monastery’s grange and sheep-shearing barn. They stood on the hilltop above the chalk steps that led down to the inlet’s jetty from which the monastery’s lay brothers had sent their corn and fleeces by ship to London markets.
Her idea had been to hide them under the bales of straw which half filled the grange. But there could be no hiding the saker. They managed to get it inside and left it there in the charge of Walles, Cuckold Dick and Winchard until her return from London with Grace O’Malley. Her constant fear was that Rob would come back to Tilsend before the guns could be got away. Cecil had said he wasn’t due back for another two weeks, but a week of that had already passed.
Just manoeuvring the saker through the grange’s great double doors had presaged some of the difficulties entailed in getting the thing into the hold of Grace’s balinger. On the return trip down the Thames Barbary’s mind, already sore from O’Hagan’s letter and the O’Neill’s betrayal, had grown tired wrestling with the problem of gantries, cranes and winches, the tide, the weather, weights and waterlines.
Now, as they stood in the doorway of the grange and looked at the dinosaur within, her grandmother lifted some of her worry. ‘Sure, it’s no problem. I’ve piloted bigger buggers than that. Did I tell you of the time I piloted the dome of Akbar’s mosque?’
This was no time for Arabian reminiscences. ‘It’ll take some getting along a gangplank.’
‘Gangplank me arse,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll drop it into the hold.’
‘How? Toss it?’
‘There’s an overhang to your inlet. Put a winch on the top of the cliff and lower the bastard down.’
Cull and the Irish crew went up to the headland with the Order men to look. Grace was right. Some hundred yards along the cliff edge from the outbuildings was an overhang. From here the swell of the rise behind them hid the house. Only the Light was visible, looking like some gawky, helmeted sentinel. It was a calm, hot day, and by lying flat on their bellies they could see down into the water some thirty feet below them where the white sea bottom gave it the colour of a chalky emerald. There was a rock-free basin there, certainly wide enough, and at high tide deep enough, to take a ship of the balinger’s size. After a long discussion involving tide and the balinger’s draught when fully loaded, it was decided to load the guns right away. Barbary was driven by an urgency that made her restless. It was noon already. They could load the lighter guns this afternoon from the jetty and be ready to lower the saker from the cliff when the tide was at its peak, even though by then it would be dark. ‘There’ll be a moon. We’ve got flares. Let’s get on, before some shingle-tramper surprises us,’ she said. Revenue men made irregular patrols of the Kent coast, which was where a large proportion of the country’s smuggling took place.
They began work at once. One by one the falcons and robinets were trundled to the top of the steps where the barrels were dismantled from their carriages, the carriages from their wheels, and each piece carried separately down to the jetty and stacked for the Irish sailors to carry on board. The falcons needed three men per barrel, the robinets four. The steps became smooth as ice under the wear of their boots, and they had to fix a winch at their top.
All the time the heat made the cast iron almost unbearable to handle. Sweat, flies and the glare from the sea blinded them when their hands were too full to wipe their eyes. The marshes on either side clicked with stridulating insects like a million ratchets, bees buzzed in the sea-pinks on the chalk.
Barbary drove herself and everybody else like a slaver. All the light in the world seemed concentrated on this headland and what they were doing; how long could it be before someone spotted them doing it? She kept glancing round, unable to rid herself of the idea she was being watched, but apart from some sheep and the occasional sail out in the estuary, there was nothing to see.
Walles and Cuckold Dick were not good at hard labour, hard labour being what they had joined the Order to get away from, and they had to be shouted at. It was Winchard who won her heart that day, Winchard who carried on like an uncomplaining ox, except for the periodic mention of his dislike of flies, Winchard whose great hands blistered and went on carrying. Winchard, she thought, a pearl among men, a lamb in wart-hog’s clothing, a dependable man. Winchard wouldn’t believe the first lie he was told and go off to Spain… She tried to bring her brain under control. It would soon be dark and they had yet to get the saker into position.
Twice she went up to the house to fetch something for them to drink. She began winching up some water from the well to pour over her sweating body, but the winch made such a noise in the silent courtyard that she stopped, as if somebody might hear it. Was that a creak in the house? She went in, but nobody was there. She went down to the cellar to fill some jugs from the ale barrel.
The bad state Lambert had l
eft the house in hadn’t been improved by the occupancy of Winchard, Walles and Dick while they awaited her return from London. Before she’d gone she’d paid off the remaining servants and sent them away. Had they come back to spy on her? Were they watching her now? On her way out she stood and looked round the courtyard again, as swallows ricocheted across its cobbles picking up insects from the ordure. Nothing.
Earlier that day Grace had asked her, nonchalantly: ‘Are ye coming back home with us?’ And she’d said: ‘Yes.’
It would be going against the O’Neill’s wishes that she play the spy for him in England, but, once she’d delivered the guns, she owed O’Neill nothing.
She’d done her best for Ireland, but she’d sickened of intrigue, Mr Secretary Cecil’s, the O’Neill’s, her own. She would get away from this stifling place back to clean, green Connaught, however war-torn and starving it was.
Above all, she must be away before Rob came back. She’d betrayed him, not by her adultery with O’Hagan, but by using his house for his enemies. He was still, after all, her legal husband.
And she was uneasy about the guns. In her brain beat Mabel Bagenal’s words: ‘He kills people.’ O’Neill had betrayed her. He’d betrayed his best friend, O’Hagan. Who knew whether he wouldn’t scruple to use these guns not in defence of the Irish way of life, but against some clan that annoyed him. ‘He kills people.’ O’Neill killed people. These guns killed people. ‘What else can I do?’ she asked aloud. Trap within a trap within a trap. Well, this was the last trap this cony would get caught in. She would go home.
She took the jugs down to the jetty and was cursed by Irish and Order alike for bringing cider, not ale. She hadn’t noticed.
It took all of them, roped like mules, to pull the saker up the rise. There was a moment of terror as they neared the overhang when the thing threatened to roll on into the sea, dragging them with it. Somehow they brought it to a halt and pegged its ropes into the ground. The ropes creaked, but held.
It was dark by now and the moon hadn’t come up high enough yet for them to dismantle the gun by its light. Barbary sent Cuckold Dick and Walles back to the manor to fetch flares.
Grace and the crew went to get the balinger ready. With no wind, they were going to have to sweep the ship from the jetty to the basin.
They’d just gone when the two shapes of Walles and Dick appeared out of the darkness behind her. ‘There’s glims up at the house, Barb,’ said Dick quietly. ‘Shingle-trampers.’
‘How many?’
‘Couldn’t see. Enough.’
She thought hard. Caught in the act of smuggling guns aboard an Irish boat, not even Cecil could save them from execution; nor would he want to.
‘Coming this way, Barb,’ said Dick, gently. She could see for herself the glow of flares advancing towards the rise.
‘Get down to the ship,’ she said. ‘Tell Grace to get the sweeps to pull her out into the estuary, far out. She can drop you further up the coast.’
‘What about you, Barb? And this bugger.’
‘It’s going over. Run.’
Dick wouldn’t leave her. She screamed: ‘I’ll be safe as long as I don’t have to explain away you lot. It’s my house, remember? Run.’
They ran. Barbary ran, towards the overhang. She could see the mooring light on the balinger which, thank God, was still by the jetty. She waited until she heard the pounding of the Order men’s boots on the jetty. Good. She ran back to the saker and began pulling up the pegs that roped it. One of them was stuck deep. She pulled and pulled, glancing behind her. The flares were over the rise, she could hear men calling to each other. Would they see the saker outlined against the lighter dark of the sky? With luck their flares would blacken anything outside the range of their light.
Got the swine. She ran round the other side of the gun, kicking out the rest of the pegs.
And the saker didn’t move. She ran round to the left wheel and shoved. She felt a tremor, but the swine stayed where it was. She pushed again with everything she had and reluctantly, with desperate slowness, the saker shivered, then moved, gathering speed, heading for the overhang with the ropes around it flailing a desperate goodbye. She saw the back of its carriage rise in a huge, saucy kick as its front end tipped, then the ground opened at her feet. The weight had been too much for the overhang and part of the cliff followed the saker into the sea. She threw herself backwards, clutching at grass. There was too much pounding in her ears to hear the crash of chalk and iron against water, but she saw the white of spray, felt it on her face.
With nothing to obstruct her view she could now see the balinger, drawn by its sweeps, like a coach dragged by mice, roll as the shock wave hit it. But it was clear of the jetty and moving, though hideously slowly, out to sea. Thank God, Dick had persuaded Grace to be sensible.
Somebody kicked her. ‘Got you, you bastard. Stand in the name of Queen Elizabeth. God bless us, it’s a woman!’
‘What you been smuggling, you slut?’
She lay in a circle of flares, dazzled, but one of the figures said: ‘Jesus,’ and she turned her head to the voice.
‘Hello, Rob,’ she said, and fainted.
When she came round she was still on the ground. The shingle-trampers were trying to make sense of what was happening by questioning Rob, who was answering in the short, weighted sentences of a very angry man. ‘I told you. I have been abroad on the queen’s business. After I reported to Her Majesty, I came here. This is my home. I saw men on my jetty loading guns aboard a ship. They were too many to tackle alone. I rode to fetch you.’
‘You told us your wife had been kidnapped.’
‘Well, obviously she has not. This is my wife.’ It cost him something.
Oh, Rob, she thought. You missed a trick there. Too honest for your own good. You could’ve done an Amy Robsart. Let the shingle-trampers hang me.
Then she woke up properly. No, he couldn’t, could he? He’d already been to London, seen Elizabeth, who would have mentioned her. She was official. What he hadn’t known was that she was here at Tilsend; nobody had known. She’d told Cecil she was going to visit Penshurst. Rob was having to protect her because anything she did would reflect on him. A queen’s favourite couldn’t have a criminal for a wife.
‘I tell you I returned to find my house empty and my, my wife gone, and men loading guns – I thought they were guns – at the jetty. Which was why I rode for you. Obviously, it was a mistake. I’m sorry.’ The apology was a spit, almost more than he could bear. ‘You can go now. It was a mistake.’
‘Mistake, was it? There’s a ship down there all right. She’s moving under sweeps, but she won’t move far, not in this calm. We can get launches from Rochester and go after her.’
Barbary pulled herself up. ‘That is my grandmother’s ship,’ she said in her best court English. Grandmother was a respectable word. She needed respectability. ‘Why should you go after her?’
‘’Cause he saw guns.’ The leading shingle-tramper, a big man, nodded his head towards Rob. ‘Gun-smuggling’s penal, grandmother or not.’
‘It was timber.’ What a marvellous liar she was. ‘She’s transporting timber to my husband’s estate in Ireland.’ She turned to Rob. ‘It was for you, Rob. You always said you wanted English oak furniture at Hap Hazard. Remind you of home.’ She stared at him, willing him. Would he back her? He was staring at her too, loathing her. ‘I expect it looked like guns,’ she was jabbering frantically. ‘We had the trunks mounted on wheels. That’s what made you think it was guns. I expect they looked like gun barrels.’ Come on, Rob. Let Grace go. You’ve gone this far.
She heard him groan. He was no actor. He’d never fitted into the Order. But his lips moved. ‘Might have been timber,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ asked the chief shingle-tramper.
She saw Rob make up his mind. He was trapped. A gun-smuggling wife would ruin him. ‘I said it must have been timber,’ he said loudly, ‘I made a mistake. I’m sorry, gentlemen.’
<
br /> They weren’t satisfied. ‘What was that wunnerful great crash as we come up then?’ Oh God, if they looked over, would they see the saker sticking up?
‘Part of the cliff gave way,’ she said. The chief and a couple of his men went to the edge. She peered with them. The moon was casting light now. The sea was as flat and black as silk, but there was still froth floating on the basin and, here and there, pieces of chalk like geometric fish.
‘Does that,’ said one of the men to his chief. It was an eroding coast.
‘I know.’ He still wasn’t happy. A hero of the Armada was telling him one thing and his smuggler-catching instinct was shouting something else, even if he couldn’t prove it. But if he sent boats after Grace, he’d catch her, Barbary knew. The balinger’s crew couldn’t sweep her far.
They discussed it among themselves for an age. But nobody fancied riding back to Rochester to get boats out on what might prove a fool’s errand. Eventually, they turned landwards towards the house. She couldn’t walk, her legs had melted with relief and fatigue. Rob grabbed her arm and pulled her along, not from kindness. He hated her, she could feel the hate in his grip.
Back at the house the men paused outside the door, not welcoming the thought of the journey back to Rochester in the dark, waiting for the hospitality they had a right to expect. Rob gave them none. And that was another reason for hating her; his house was too shameful to entertain even these petty functionaries. Rage pulsated in him like a bull pawing the ground. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, yanked her inside the door and shut it.
There was a single lit candle on the table next to the bowls still holding Helen’s dead roses. Barbary limped over to the table and leaned on it. Behind her she heard him shooting the bolts on the door, then his boots advancing across the tiles. Her head was yanked back and he hit her across the face. ‘Where’s Helen, you bitch?’ Her head snapped to one side and another whack snapped it back. She tried to run away from him, but his hands kept finding her and hitting. Only the Upright Man had ever beaten her like this. Rob was the Upright Man. He’d got used to beating people.
The Pirate Queen Page 54