The Pirate Queen

by The Pirate Queen (retail) (epub)

  Barbary felt one, hard as stone. ‘You can try.’

  Up the hill, past the castle entrance, was where the town’s half-timbered town hall had once stood in the middle of the street. Nothing was left of it, even its rubble had been cleared away, and on the site had been erected a large platform. Soldiers were in evidence everywhere though she’d seen no sign of baggage carts or tents, so presumably they weren’t going to set up camp. More worrying was the large crowd of Irish men, women and children which milled around the platform with the look of herded cattle. ‘They rounded us up,’ a woman replied to her questioning. ‘Free ale, they said, and no harm to us, but I’m not liking it.’

  Barbary wasn’t either. Was Elizabeth adopting the late Master Spenser’s final solution to the Irish problem and beginning a programme of genocide? She looked round desperately, but the Order had dispersed among the crowds. God, what had she brought them to?

  She stopped panicking. Living like a rat for so long, she’d forgotten that she was in a privileged position with either side; if necessary she could command whoever was in charge of these soldiers to transport her, and the children, to Mountjoy, saying with perfect truth that they had mutual friends at court. He might raise his eyebrows at her number of children, but she could say they were English refugees she’d saved from the massacre, as indeed many of them were. She’d rather not spend too much time in English company, where Sylvestris’s conversion to the Catholic cause, to say nothing of Gill’s hatred of English soldiers, would get them all into trouble sooner or later, but it would do as a short-term escape route.

  Anyway, there wasn’t going to be a massacre. Tuns of ale were being lifted onto the platform and tapped. Soldiers knelt, offering a drink from iron cups to the bewildered queue, like priests administering the sacrament of wine at a Mass. Anyone with a beaker of their own was having it filled. Barbary rummaged among Priscilla’s blankets and brought out two of the cups she’d packed for the journey. A jocular soldier filled them for her. ‘There you are, missis, drown your sorrows. There you are, young ’un, that’ll bring the roses to your cheeks.’

  ‘What’s it for?’ she asked him.

  ‘What for, what for? ’Cause we’re your friends, missis. We’re the best friends you Irish got. I bet bloody Tyrrell never give you no ale, did he?’ She shook her head. ‘There you are then. Now you go and drink it and we’ll have a nice surprise for you after.’

  With Priscilla holding the cups, Barbary pushed the handcart to the side of the square where some booths were being set up, and sat down. ‘Drink up, pigsney, it’ll do you good.’ It was fine ale and it did them both good.

  She tried to work out what was happening. Presumably the political and military situation had become so finely balanced that, somewhat late in the day, the English had decided to try and win the hearts and minds of the common Irish. ‘Do you think a cup of ale’ll do it?’ she asked Priscilla, who grinned back at her, coughing. ‘I don’t either.’ After drinking nothing but well water for so long, the ale was making her light-headed. And the sun had come out for once, giving a mellow September glow to red and brown cloaks alike, taking the pallor out of the Irish faces and ageing the ruins around them into interesting relics.

  Nanno and Peter strolled past her, Peter whistling. All clear? Barbary whistled back. All clear.

  Both of them were thirteen. Nanno’s Irish parents had starved to death in the first winter after the uprising, Peter was a massacred English settler’s son. Nanno had organisational ability, had become their cook-general. She was looked up to by the others, among them those who, in their great need, disregarded that it might have been her mother and father who’d orphaned them.

  Barbary settled herself into the begging posture, one leg crooked flat on the ground, the other knee raised, and began the spiel of the mendicant. ‘Have pity, sorr, I’m kilt for want of food for me and me little ones.’ She might get a penny or two, but above all she gained protective colouring; the square was filled with other beggars, mostly women and children, with nobody taking any notice of them.

  Things were happening on the platform. An English officer with a plume in his hat had climbed onto it, while soldiers hushed the crowd. He had a carrying voice. ‘Good people, I am Captain Price, representative in this place of Her Gracious Majesty, Our Gracious Majesty, Your Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. I am here to bring to you your true lord, the Earl of Desmond.’

  He’d got the attention of the crowd, and puzzled it. Barbary heard the buzz as people questioned each other. Had the English captured James FitzThomas FitzGerald then? Why was this feathered Saxon proclaiming a man whom the O’Neill declared an ally and the queen declared a traitor? A voice with a nice mixture of boldness and humility shouted: ‘Pardon, your worship, but is it the Hayrope Earl you’re meaning, for we thought you had no liking for the man?’ Whirr, whirr went the Irish in agreement. James FitzGerald was their Hayrope Earl, who rode with Tyrrell against the English.

  ‘Nor have we.’ Captain Price’s high accent cut the air above the crowd’s head. ‘That man is a false earl and a renegade. No, no, good people. I am here to give you your true earl, the son of Gerald, Earl of Desmond.’

  A trumpeter standing at the back of the platform blew a fanfare, but it wasn’t necessary. The name was a fanfare. The crowd drew in a deep breath and roared it out: ‘Gerald.’ Munster had been his earldom and for fifteen years the man had embroiled it in rebellion against the English until his head had been cut off in 1583. No matter that he’d been as cruel a lord as the English themselves, he’d been their own, his seneschal a MacSheehy, his bastards begotten on Munster women, and by his rebellion and death his peccadilloes were washed away, leaving his memory clean for the imprint of a legend. Though he was being superseded by the Great O’Neill, he had a special place for them, his Geraldines. And he was come again in the shape of his son.

  There were merchants with the soldiers, watching the crowd as intently as the crowd was watching Captain Price; taking the first opportunity they’d had to see what pickings were to be found in the Blackwater Valley.

  Barbary looked around for the Order. Now for action. If she’d told them once, she’d told them a hundred times: ‘A public event is what a man’s watching who’s not watching his purse.’ The Order in London had made its best filches at processions and hangings. If they were distracted by this earl-whoever, she’d been wasting her breath. Like a mother duck seeing her ducklings take to water, she watched Dorren, Gill’s young sister, look trustfully up at one of the merchants. He looked down at her, smiling, before returning his attention to the crowd. She cut his purse so fast even Barbary missed the movement. The child had little enough reason to smile at any man, but she’d done it.

  Another fanfare rang out. Captain Price pointed to the ruined doorway of St Anne’s Protestant church. ‘Behold, good people, behold the queen’s Earl of Desmond.’

  What they beheld was a thin, hunched man in his thirties who snickered as the crowd’s eyes turned on him, and who needed some urging from those about him to sidle out of his doorway to the platform. Barbary, who’d just seen Seamus botch a filch on a merchant who hadn’t noticed, flicked a glance at the earl as he was lifted up, glimpsing a pallor so deep it looked green. ‘We used to call that complexion a Fleet Flush,’ she confided in Priscilla. She looked up again. ‘My God. It’s him.’

  Up on the platform, his head down to look at some notes on a page before he made his speech, was her old companion from the Tower, the pudding-puller.

  Barbary beamed. What a day. So they’d let the poor little devil out at last, hoping he’d lead his father’s people back to Elizabeth’s fold. Unless he’d improved, he couldn’t lead a lamb to its mother.

  ‘GoodpeopleofMunster,’ he said. Captain Price whispered in his ear, and the earl raised his drone a decibel or two. ‘GoodpeopleofMunster… um, I come among you today… ah, as an assurance and a sign that, um, the ancient title of this, um, province…’

  Barbary lost
interest. Her ducklings were coming back. She kept her head down as a purse dropped into her lap. She closed her knees and shifted, patting Priscilla’s blanket straight. Two coins. The blanket needed straightening again. A nice handkerchief with another coin wrapped in it.

  In the crowd an English merchant who’d just been relieved of his purse watched the child who’d taken it dance prettily away towards a beggar woman squatting next to a handcart. He followed her.

  The Irish were being patient with their earl. ‘Sure, any minute he’ll be knocking the seven divils out of ’em,’ Barbary heard one woman say.

  ‘And I want you to, um, come and give thanks to God with me.’

  Certainly, they’d go anywhere with him. But why was your man shambling off towards the Protestant church?

  Three buttons dropped into Barbary’s lap from George’s hand. Good boy. She closed her knees on them quickly. A pair of boots strode into her field of vision and stopped. She kept her head lowered and whined: ‘Me and the little one are kilt for want of food, good sorr.’ The boots were hard, brown leather; she’d seen a hundred like them in her time, beadles’ boots, watch boots, the boots of authority. They tilted as their owner sat down beside her: ‘You ain’t half given me trouble, Barb.’

  Joy wrenched her, loosening the fear and loneliness of years. She didn’t turn or look or say anything, just stayed as she was and sobbed like a baby.

  Cuckold Dick sat quietly while she cried herself out. ‘Bib’s a bit wet meself,’ he said, wiping his eyes, ‘but we better go, Barb.’

  Gasping, she quieted Priscilla who’d become distressed and was yelling, ‘Baa-baa.’

  ‘Baa-baa’s all right, pigsney. Don’t cry.’

  ‘Who’s the kinchin?’ asked Dick. ‘Bit big for a cart, in’t she, Barb?’

  ‘She’s touched.’ Her injuries when they’d found her as a baby indicated that somebody had bashed her head against a wall. She was four years old and said nothing but Baa-baa. ‘There’s lots of them, Dick. Oh, Dick, old scobberlotcher, how’d you find me?’

  ‘Followed my purse. That little mort took it beautiful, same style exactly as when you were a younker, Barb. Hello, Dick, I said, she’s been taught by the Order or I’m a Dutchman.’

  ‘You glimmed her, though.’

  ‘Well, one professional to another that was, Barb.’

  They were talking for the sheer pleasure of hearing each other speak, but they were beginning to be drowned out by the crowd, which was getting disillusioned and angry. The pallid earl was standing on the steps of St Anne’s church, irresolutely trying to gesture for the Irish to follow him, soldiers were urging them more forcibly with the butt end of pikes, but they weren’t moving. They’d have followed his father into hell – they had – but if the son thought to get them into a Protestant church, he could think again.

  ‘You’re no son of Gerald’s,’ somebody shouted. ‘Go whistle a jig to a milestone.’ A woman was singing the old song: ‘Unless that you turn a Roman you ne’er shall get me for your bride.’ And somebody else yelled: ‘There’s a Roman hell for you, my Protestant boy.’ These were from the courteous; the less polite were looking around for missiles. A ball of horse dung landed at the earl’s feet. A stone-hard damson just missed his nose. He shrieked and retired.

  Captain Price was ordering his men to push the crowd back. He had the look of a man who’d been acting on some superior’s idea that he’d known wouldn’t work.

  ‘They’ll riot any minute,’ said Dick. ‘Let’s go. Where’s the rendezvous?’

  ‘The old castle, west on the other bank. See you there.’ She whistled the call-in as Dick disappeared, but in a commotion getting louder and louder, few of the Order could hear her and the rest were getting carried away with their own success. She managed to struggle through to Sylvestris and told him to contact the others.

  As she pushed Priscilla over the bridge, ten of the Order passed her without a sign. She looked back to where a cloud of dust and shouting indicated that the riot was in full swing, but one by one the rest of the Order was emerging out of it. ‘What a day, Priscilla,’ she said, and Priscilla smiled.

  She introduced Cuckold Dick to the Order as, in twos and threes, it announced its arrival by a whistle and slipped into the shell of what had once been O’Callaghan’s hall. Outside on the river bank the grass was touched into yellow by the setting sun, some moorhens clooped in the reeds. Occasionally, a sound like a faint cawing came upriver on the evening breeze to tell them that there was still disturbance in Mallow.

  ‘Sylvestris you know. This is John Hapgood. Priscilla you’ve met. Barnaby, Seamus, Coughlin, Aileen, George, Orlaith – Orlaith, this is the gentleman whose purse you cut – Benen, Harry, Mary, Peggy, Tabitha, Fergal and Festus – they’re twins – Nuala, Percy, Alsander, Clodagh, and up there is John Smith.’ She tried to see them as Cuckold Dick must be seeing them; dirty faces, ragged, all ages from four to fourteen, all heights, all thin, some remembering their manners and some scowling. She saw just the richness of diverse personalities, different forms of courage and ways of coping with what had happened to them, the proportion who’d survived. Just as clearly she remembered the faces and names of those who hadn’t.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ said Cuckold Dick, insincerely. ‘Bloody hell, Barb, I know you said a lot, but this is overdoing it.’

  ‘There’s four more to come.’ She looked up to where John Smith was clinging like an ape to some ivy. ‘Any sign, John?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘They’ll have trouble fitting in the wagon.’

  ‘Wagon? You’ve got a wagon?’ She’d almost forgotten there were other forms of transport than a handcart. ‘With a horse?’

  ‘Two on ’em. But, Barb, the rude licentious is going back to Cork tonight. Why don’t we all travel in safety in their baggage carts?’

  ‘Nanno and Dorren and Peter,’ sang out John Smith.

  Nanno was carrying Dorren and puffing. ‘It’s Gill, Barbary. One of the soldiers patted Dorren on her bottom and Gill stabbed him in the arm.’

  ‘Have they got him?’

  ‘Not sure. He ran away and they ran after him.’

  Barbary’s eyes met Cuckold Dick’s. ‘That’s why,’ she said, ‘I daren’t stay in English company too long. Order, I’m going back. When it’s dark you get into Mister Dick’s wagon and go with him to Kinsale. I’ll join you there.’ She paused. ‘You have got a boat at Kinsale?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Gill swimming the river,’ called John Smith. ‘No pursuit.’

  Gill crawled in, dripping water and weed, and then began posturing. ‘That’ll be teaching the bastard to keep his hands off my sister.’

  Cuckold Dick regarded him for a moment. ‘I’d throw him back, Barb.’

  ‘I know you would, but I’m not going to. Just get us to Kinsale.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Cuckold Dick had been unceasing in his attempts to find her. And so had Grace O’Malley. Busy as she was in trying to keep her people alive in a starving Connaught, she had sent some of her men to Kilcolman to try and find out what had happened to her granddaughter, but whether they got there or not nobody knew. They hadn’t come back. Certainly they had been killed, but how, or why, or by whom, it was impossible to say. The Connaught men had become a few extra butchered carcases in the Munster shambles.

  Such information as Dick and Grace could gather indicated that Spenser Castle was a deserted, burnt-out shell, and that Barbary was probably dead.

  ‘But she wouldn’t give up, Barb. She gave O’Donnell hell for not invading Munster to find you, and she gave O’Neill hell for the same, and then this spring she sails to Spain to give King Phillip hell for not invading so’s to find you. What an Upright Man she would have made, Barb.’

  ‘Spain? Will she see O’Hagan?’

  ‘Such was her intention, Barb. She was due back a month ago, but she’s probably gone to Connaught afore coming here. She still brings
me a whiskey supply when she can, though you’ll never guess what them bloody Kin-Sellers have gone and done, Barb.’

  She couldn’t. She was too tired, just content to sit beside him on the cart and hear him talk as it pulled them south through the Munster countryside.

  ‘Put a port tax on whiskey. I ask you, Barb. Mr Secretary Cecil wasn’t best pleased either, him making a nice thing from the trade. But we got a way round it. There’s a deserted cove with an old cottage in it over the other side of the Old Head of Kinsale eight miles away. I put in there when I’m meeting Grace, though there’s precious little whiskey about. Been bad years for barley.’

  Bad years for barley, she thought.

  Dick chattered on. He hadn’t changed. Even during the siege of Kinsale, he had spent much of his time in attempts to find her.

  ‘Bought a nice ken there now, Barb, prices being rock-bottom. And another boat. Called her The Barbary.’

  Obligingly, he handed her a handkerchief to wipe away her tears.

  ‘And Henry, he’s been trying to find you. Growing like a weed and the image of his pa.’ Both Henry and Cuckold Dick had harassed Mr Secretary Cecil into instructing the Earl of Essex to locate Barbary. ‘And he sent back he’d seen you, Barb, but the pillock never said where, and by the time he’d rushed back to England against the Rome-Mort’s orders he was as crazed as Connolly’s cat. I was there when he tried to raise the city against the queen. Him and his friends rushing about shouting, and us lookers-on not moving, just staring. Pitiful it was. And under questioning ratted on everybody, even his sister what you played cards with.’ Dick sighed. ‘But they say he made a good end, though we wasn’t allowed to watch it. He’d asked the queen if he could be beheaded private, and she gave him that much.’

  Barbary didn’t really care. Essex, the queen, Cecil, they were remote. She gathered, although Dick wouldn’t actually say so, that after this one attempt, Cecil hadn’t bothered himself with the task of discovering what had happened to his one-time agent. Her usefulness had gone. The queen wasn’t interested in the widow of a dead favourite. Her troubles with Essex had taken her mind off everything else.