The Pirate Queen

by The Pirate Queen (retail) (epub)

  The ferry was a raft with two thick nets attached to either side of the base and stretching up to ropes which looped through pulleys set into stanchions on both banks. On the far bank was a ferryman’s hut, but in its owner’s absence passengers pulled themselves, hand-over-hand, across what was normally a narrow part of the river. Now the rains had caused it to overflow, and the jetty on their side was washed by enough water to make the mules nervous about stepping onto it, and even more about boarding the swinging raft. They all had to haul on the ropes to counteract the smooth, weighty pull of the current. The cart swayed, Priscilla cried, everybody shouted and prayed, and eventually, somehow, they were across.

  They said their goodbyes. O’Hagan was going back immediately. The weight of knowledge that he might be killed inhibited what they wanted to say rather than released it, and they had their separate responsibilities; he must find the Irish lines before daylight went, just as she and Dick had to get to the cove or let the Order spend the night in an open cart. So the moment was transient, its importance slipping helplessly away from them in a cold, rainy kiss. An impotent ‘Look after yourself’ and he had stepped back onto the ferry. ‘I’ll see you at the boat,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll see me here. The day after tomorrow.’

  They hauled at their end of the ropes until he was safely on the opposite bank, and then pulled the raft back to their side. He waved once, but the intensity of the thin, tall figure as it splashed along the bank leading upriver showed that its mind was occupying itself on other matters than the group that watched him go.

  ‘Come on, Barb. Soon be black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots.’

  They got on the cart in silence, except for Dick’s oaths at the mules, who were getting grumpier by the minute. To lighten their load she got down to walk with the older children and found Sylvestris walking beside her. He was taller than she was now and had spoken very little since leaving Kinsale and she had a sudden realisation of her own impertinence in overriding his wish to become a priest. Using O’Hagan as her instrument she had manipulated him as if he were just another cony. The boy was no longer a boy, he had been her tower of strength through terrible years and she had treated him as if he were in the grip of an adolescent obsession. She would do it again if she had to, but she was sorry for having had to. She took his arm. ‘I’m an interfering old woman,’ she said.

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m sorry if O’Hagan forced you to come with us. What did he say?’

  He looked at her, surprised. ‘He didn’t force me. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to enter the priesthood and that if I did he would respect my decision.’

  It made her blink. Without consulting her, O’Hagan had risked giving her son the benefit of making up his own mind. ‘And?’

  ‘And I decided not to.’ He frowned. ‘I suppose I’d wanted certainty.’

  She could sympathise; there’d been as little of that about as of everything else in the last years.

  ‘But talking to Father Dermot, he was too certain. He said God willed the death of Treasa and all the others, the Pope was infallible, all Protestants were heretics, everybody who didn’t belong to Holy Mother Church would go to hell. I listened to him and it was like hearing my father talk. He said all Roman Catholics would go to hell, the Church of England was the only true church. Just the same, only the nouns were different. They’d both taken out a monopoly on God.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And I decided that whatever God was He was bigger than that.’

  She should have trusted him. She had the sense of admiration and loss that comes to mothers when they realise their children have gone beyond them. ‘Or She is bigger than that,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  But she didn’t have the energy to pursue it. The foreland was miles of deserted, wind-blown grass and they trudged on in silence, tranquillised by fatigue, while seagulls hovered above their heads in an effort to make way against the wind and gave up, to be swept off towards the east. Cuckold Dick’s swearing was becoming more ferocious and she knew that if he’d been taking bets on whether his boat would still be where he’d left it after all these weeks the odds would be long. He’d only been to the cove by boat, never overland, and was using guesswork to find the track he’d seen leading down its hill. He told Sylvestris to put a new candle in the lantern, but the light decreased their ability to see through the murk, so he put it between his feet again. At last Sylvestris spotted a grassless patch between some trees, and they’d found the track. Fergal and Fergus got out of the cart to lead the mules down, Fergus holding the lantern high. They could smell sea somewhere out in the blackness. A difference in the sound of hooves and wheels told them when they’d reached sand. The other boys got out to help pull the mules towards a defined blackness on a rise to their right. ‘Welcome to Dick’s ken,’ said Cuckold Dick. The cottage was damp, cold, empty and stank of animal. ‘The lads’ll be tucked up cosy on the boat somewheres out there,’ Dick said. Nobody believed him.

  Whoever had been last in the cottage had conscientiously laid in dry tinder and logs, and they got a fire going which showed two bare cots, an equally bare cupboard, some stools and a fox which spat at them and bolted out of the door. ‘No food,’ said Nanno.

  ‘Brought it with us. Peter, you go and rummage under the cart. You’ll find a cauldron of stew a-hanging underneath it. Gill and Fergal, there’s a hut round the back should have some hay in it. Put the mules in there and rub ’em down. Spread the cloaks out to dry, girls. Where’d you put them cups you had, Barb?’

  She stirred herself from immobility caused by fatigue and admiration. ‘Where’d you get the food, you old scobberlotcher?’

  ‘Told Don Aguila’s cook where he could find the last barrel of whiskey afore Don Aguila did.’

  When they’d eaten, they settled down to sleep, uncomfortable but warm, with their stomachs full of part of O’Hagan’s horse.

  Dawn showed sleeping children, rain coming through a broken window, and Cuckold Dick standing at the open door, looking out. ‘No need to stir, Barb,’ he said. ‘There’s no boat.’

  She squeezed herself carefully out from between Priscilla and Dorren and joined him. It wasn’t so much a cove as a sizeable bay formed by high hills on either side and with mist and cloud bringing the horizon close. Rain was dimpling sand and water alike. ‘I wonder what happened to ’em,’ said Dick. ‘They was good lads.’

  She put her arm round his shoulders. ‘There was no sense in them staying,’ she told him. ‘We always knew that.’ With a bit of luck, the crew had sailed back to England before they got captured by the Spanish or requisitioned by the English. Oddly, she was less concerned than he was at their own position; they were in a limbo anyway until the battle was decided. Her mind had needed a night’s sleep to absorb the fleeting enchantment of the day before and had now lodged it there, where nobody and nothing could take it away. What her dreams had been about she couldn’t remember but they’d been more beautiful than any she’d ever experienced. And she felt better; loving and being loved was definitely good for the health. ‘They’re not going to wet our bib, are they?’

  ‘No,’ he said, less sure.

  ‘Let’s go fishing.’

  In its short years the Order had never done anything for the fun of it. Trapped between battle lines and sea, with no rescue in prospect, with rain falling, its members had the nicest morning they could remember. They took the pins out of Barbary’s wedding dress, found some line curled up on a shelf in the cottage, discovered more abandoned on the beach, and used shells to scrape for bait.

  Barbary’s illusory well-being faded as the day went on; she kept hushing the Order so that she could listen, driven mad by the unceasing sibilance of the rain. Would she hear guns, with the westerly wind taking the sound away from her? He’d said they’d start the attack today or tomorrow. The future might be being decided right now, hers, his, Ireland’s, and she was spending the time putting worms on bent pins and waiting, with a crick
in her neck from looking up at the cliffs behind her.

  Cuckold Dick was looking in the opposite direction. He sat on a rock, refusing to fish, and stared constantly out to sea, wiping the rain out of his eyes. ‘I keep thinking The Barbary’s out there somewheres,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking I see something.’

  Bless him, he’d been through enough. ‘We’ll get away, Dick. When O’Hagan comes back we’ll get away somehow. Time we were going in to get dry.’ The tide was out and mist was obscuring the entrance to the bay; there could be nothing out there but cormorants, and even they would be having a problem with the visibility.

  George, who was Cuckold Dick’s admirer and rarely left his side, squeaked that he could see something too. ‘So can I,’ said Nanno. ‘Something.’

  She concentrated until her eyes watered. There was an impression that some areas of the mist were more dense than others, but it cheated any definition, and her sight wasn’t as good as it was. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Listen.’

  She recognised the creak of oars, lots of oars. ‘Get into the rocks.’ She ran to pick up Priscilla. Whoever this was might be as harmless as they were, or might not. The Order had survived by its ability to hide, fast; within seconds the beach was empty and so silent that some godwits and oystercatchers, frustrated from their feeding routine, came back, did aerial acrobatics, and settled down to such sandhoppers and lugworms as the tide had uncovered.

  The creaks became louder. Barbary gave Cuckold Dick her cloak and Priscilla to hold, took off her cartridge belt and began priming the Clampett. ‘There’s too many of them, Barb,’ he whispered.

  ‘Just in case.’

  The boats came in with the eeriness of a manifestation, invisible one minute, then an outline, then solid shape. Ten long curraghs, each of them crammed with about thirty men, some in full armour, some with helmets, some without, some in ancient leather cuirasses and caps. As they grounded, they leaped out and unloaded the boats of their arms, as assorted as their dress: pikes, arquebuses, slings and swords. For a military unit they lacked uniformity, but as sailors they were experts; they had rowed against an outgoing tide with effortless precision, yet they let the boats drift unsecured behind them as they waded up onto the beach. They formed up into untidy ranks. Their leader was a huge, grandiose man who carried an ornamental helmet to match his ornamental armour, but still wore a high, plumed hat.

  ‘Who’s he remind you of?’ Barbary whispered.

  Cuckold Dick was being teased by a memory, as she was. ‘Somebody.’

  The man’s voice ran richly along the beach: ‘Gentlemen, we join the final battle,’ and then, with less confidence: ‘Ail we’ve got to do is find it.’ The accent was unmistakeable.

  Barbary handed Dick the Clampett. ‘Shoot him only if necessary.’ Nobody had better cause than she did to know the man was untrustworthy, but she was drawn into making contact because he belonged to a period when she’d been happy. Anyway, she was curious. Stiff with crouching, she hobbled along the beach, whistling to the Order to stay hidden. The man in the plumed hat saw her and didn’t recognise her. ‘Ah, a crone. Where’s the battle, my good woman?’

  She waved towards the cliffs. ‘Keep north until you cross the river, English on your right, Irish on your left. Uncle Tibbot.’ When he peered at her she peered back so that he could see her well. He hadn’t changed one jot, though there was even more of him than there had been; a greedy, insecure boy still looked through his eyes over their debauched bags. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘Where’s Grace O’Malley? Is she out in the bay?’

  ‘Do I know you?’ His face changed. ‘Madam, I really cannot stand here clacking to beachcombers. I have a war to win.’ He drew his sword as if the enemy were only a hundred yards away and he was about to charge. ‘On, men.’

  They shambled off after him, more like mummers who cantered around on May Day than an army. She was unoffended. He’d known her; the lack of recognition had been his way of punishing her, though for what she wasn’t sure; she hadn’t proved the threat he had once suspected her to be, but perhaps the mere fact that his mother had shown affection for her had been enough to set jealousy simmering in the dark stew of Tibbot-ne-Long’s brain. It had been nice to see him, partly because the meeting had been so peculiar and, for a moment, her mind had been diverted from anxiety, but mostly because he’d left her so many boats. Cuckold Dick and the Order were already dragging them up above the tide mark. There was a cry of triumph from Peter, who was waving a loaf of bread – somebody in Tibbot’s army had left their provisions behind.

  Chattering with excitement, the Order gathered in the cottage with the day’s booty: the loaf, seven sea trout, a flounder and four crabs. There’d be fish stew tonight. She began answering their questions about Tibbot when Dick, standing by the window, said: ‘I’m seeing it and I don’t believe it.’ Everybody rushed to join him. Barbary looked and, like Dick, didn’t believe. Her head swam; undoubtedly some great jester in the sky was laying on an entertainment, attempting to take their minds off the lunacy of war by providing the ludicrous. Coming out of the mist of the bay was an enormous washtub and standing up in it, propelling it by planks of wood, were Grace O’Malley and Cull.

  Barbary raced down the beach, splashing through the shallows as the thing grounded, tipping its occupants out onto their hands and knees. Barbary hugged first one and then the other. Cull hugged her back. Grace O’Malley said: ‘Get off.’ They were less surprised to see her than she to see them. ‘We thought if Whiskey Dick found you he’d be bringing you here,’ explained Cull. He picked up a leather bag and swung it over his shoulder.

  Barbary had a hundred questions, but the most urgent seemed to be: ‘What the hell are you doing in that washtub?’

  Grace O’Malley took a cutlass and a pipe out of the tub and put both in her belt. She shook her fist towards the cliffs and, presumably by extension, towards her son: ‘Forced to the indignity, so I was. That young bastard took every bumboat from off me fleet, the Devil fly away with him. This was the only bugger that would float.’ She turned and waved her fist at Barbary: ‘And not one word from you about it, either.’

  ‘You’ve got your fleet out in the bay?’

  ‘I have. And every decent O’Malley from the Two Owels aboard it.’ She began striding towards the beach, snatching her heavy, wet skirts away from her legs. She was thinner and there was no red left in her hair, but apart from that she showed no sign of age. She kicked the impeding water away from her like a man booting his way through a dog fight.

  Cull, on the other hand, had become an old man since Barbary saw him last, as if he’d taken on the burden of Grace’s ageing as well as his own. ‘Herself’s leaving, Barbary. I think she’s leaving Connaught.’ Saying it was so terrible that his eyes screwed up and his mouth widened like a baby’s. He began to sob. ‘She’s brought her people with her.’

  ‘Cull.’ She took his arm and led him towards the shore.

  The Order was staring at Grace as at some geriatric Venus who’d risen from the foam on a domesticated and very Irish form of seashell. Grace ignored them. ‘Is there transport, blast ye?’ she demanded of Cuckold Dick, who told the twins to go and fetch the mules. ‘And where’s me weed?’

  Dick swallowed. It was Barbary who said: ‘We had to give it to Mountjoy to get through the English lines. Where are you going, Grandmother?’

  Grace nodded her head towards the cliffs and Tibbot. ‘After him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To give him a mother’s blessing,’ snarled Grace. ‘Why else?’

  Barbary glanced at Cull, who shook his head. She made up her mind and took Cuckold Dick, Sylvestris and Cull to one side. ‘I’m going with her.’

  ‘But where’s she going, Barb? And why?’

  She had no idea why, and in this mood Grace wasn’t going to tell her, but it was towards the battle. ‘I was going anyway. I promised O’Hagan I’d meet him at the ferry when it was all over, an
d I might as well go in her company as any other.’

  Sylvestris shook his head, but Cuckold Dick blew out his cheeks: ‘I’d back her against Irish, English and Don combined,’ he said. ‘If we got to go, we got to.’

  ‘Not we. Me.’ She took off her cloak, wriggled out of the cartridge belt and handed it to him with the Clampett. ‘I want you and Sir Stayon here to take the Order, get them into the curraghs and paddle out to the fleet – it can’t be very far off. Whoever wins or loses this battle, Ireland’s going to be no place to bring up the Order, not for a long time.’

  She was impatient that they looked doubtful; couldn’t they see that Grace O’Malley was a miracle and that they weren’t likely to be vouchsafed another? They had to get away from this place, all of them. ‘For God’s sake, we’d agreed we’d go in Dick’s boat, what’s the difference if we go in Grace O’Malley’s?’

  She looked at Cull and he nodded: ‘Sure and there’s room a-plenty. Tibbot paid for a one-way passage for him and his men, he said nothing about a return journey. But you’d better ask Herself.’

  Dick sighed. ‘The difference is, Barb, we don’t know where she’s sailing.’

  ‘We didn’t know where we were going to sail.’

  Grace was disputing with one of the mules which, remembering its labour of the day before, was showing a disinclination to be ridden. ‘Hold still, you shit-rumped, scab-bellied bastard till I mount ye.’ Cull made a stirrup with his hands and they heaved her up.

  ‘After the battle, Grandmother, where are you and the fleet going?’

  The mule tried a circle and got a thump in its flanks that dissuaded it from doing any more. ‘Where the wind takes us,’ Grace said. Barbary looked at Cull for help and he shrugged back that he had none.

  ‘Will you give us all passage?’

  ‘Who’s all? I need to be off with your questions.’

  Barbary indicated the crowd about her. ‘And O’Hagan. After the battle.’

  ‘Is the O’Hagan in the battle now? And me thinking he was in Spain.’ For the first time she seemed to notice that she was being stared at by a large number of children. ‘Where did you find all these grawls? Well then, I’ve no time to argue, but it’s an imposition and we’ll be seeing about their passage money after.’