Page 117 of The Pirate Queen

Young Richard steps forward. “No, Granny. That’s my right.”

Grace thinks of Hook in Dublin several years back, laughing about how he’d name his youngest daughter after his own mother, a woman who stayed put and told bedtime stories to his children. And God, she has never wished to be that kind of mother, that kind of grandmother, more than she does in this moment. What would a gentle life have looked like?

She clears the lump of grief from her throat.

Blinks back a rush of sudden, unwelcome tears.

Then nods.

Gutty takes the sheriff by the hair and yanks his head back. Then her grandson steps forward and raises his father’s scythe. His cut is neither clean nor artful and he does not kill the man on his first try. It takes a second, harder swipe to get the job done, and soon enough Bingham’s sheriff lies dead in a bloody heap.

“I want the credit,” Young Richard says, panting, “for killing ’im.”

It isn’t pride that Grace feels deep within her chest, but hollowness. She is tired of having to fight—for her family and for her life—but she is relieved that this grandson of hers is able to do the necessary thing.

“You may have every drop of it,” she says. “And I will tell your da that you did a far better job than I did the first I was told to kill a man.”

Within moments, the entire camp is quiet. All the English are dead. And her men look to her for their next move.

“To Doona,” she tells them. “I must warn my Spaniards.”

Captain Mendoza and his Spanish sailors leave Doona Castle before sunrise. Grace sends them with the Murray twins southward to Achill and her lands around Castle Kildavnet, where they will wait for her. It is a dangerous game, this, playing both sides of the issue. She has made promises to Walsingham and the Ulster chieftains. She’s gambled her life with both. Grace also sends a message to Hook. She orders Finn to tell him that Bingham is hunting their accomplices in Mayo.

It takes almost four hours for her war party to make their way back to Mulranny. The men she left behind are not yet halfway done with the grisly deed of burying villagers when they return, bloody and exhausted.

“Go in shifts,” she tells them. “Half of you sleep, the other half dig graves. Figure it out amongst yourselves.”

Niamh is still where Grace left her, listing at low tide, and for one desperate moment she considers crawling into the bed in her cabin. Then she abandons that temptation and sinks to the base of a stacked-stone fence. She drops her forehead to her knees and surrenders to a moment of profound exhaustion.

“Gráinne?”

She looks up to find Gutty with his new shadow—Young Richard—near his elbow.

“What now?” he asks.

She’s been pondering that very thing since they left the sheriff and his guards dead in the woods. “We finish this awful business,” she tells him, “and then we go after Bingham.”

It took a month to gather the chieftains. Grace sent her most trusted men with messages about the massacre in Mulranny and Bingham’s illegal commission. By the time late March ushered in its torches of pale cherry laurel and soft draping willow, she had readied Rockfleet to receive a group of men so hell-bent on murder that she was forced to hide her whiskey lest they descend into violence on the spot.

The Erris Bourkes arrived first. Then the Bourkes of Corraun, Burrishoole, and Tirawley. All the O’Malley’s chieftains came next—Donal included—then the Clandonnells, followed by Clangibbons. The true surprise, however, arrived in the form of The O’Flaherty, the very man who supplanted her late father-in-law, and therefore her husband and son, as chieftain at the command of the English queen. Murrough O’Flaherty crossed Lough Corrib and traveled all the way north, at the head of five hundred soldiers. He came even though Bingham holds his son prisoner at Athlone Castle east of Galway.

Though Grace hosted the council—and joined the war—she does not lead it. It was Bourke lands that were violated and Bourke chieftains who now marshal the rebellion. She is happy to let them—her skills are better used at sea. So Grace sails for the Aran Islands now, a cluster of three large drumlins that sit perched at the mouth of Galway Bay. Whoever controls these islands controls the shipping route into Bingham’s territory.

The sea is smooth this morning, the air still, as though holding its breath. Grace stands with Ultan atop the cabin deck as the striated westerly cliffs of the Aran Islands come into view.

“Fecking O’Flahertys,” Grace mutters. “The English wouldn’t have control of those islands if not for them. Eejits. Squabbling over castles again. Tried to take Killeany from the O’Briens, so the English queen took the Arans from them last year to stop the fighting.”

Ultan has heard this rant before, so he just nods. Grace has a special hatred for the inhabitants of the Arans, as an entire company of English soldiers now control Galway Bay. All her pirating efforts in the area have been effectively thwarted.

Caoimhe and the Róisín Dubh flank Niamh in these early dawn waters. Their hulking shapes are a comfort to Grace. Caoimhe, short and fat, like a mother hen. And the Róisín Dubh, long and wicked, like a Turkish blade. Still, whatever lookouts might be on Inishmore will have difficulty spotting them this time of day. It is overcast and threatening rain. They glide forward in soupy gray mist.

“Once we take Inishmore, the others should be easy. Neither Inishmaan nor Inishmere is heavily fortified,” Grace tells Ultan. “And the O’Neill castle on Inishmere is used only as a lookout.”

Ultan nods, quiet as usual, but she can see him squinting. She waits for the question she knows is coming. “You still think it best to go through Gregory’s Sound? To make a direct attack?”

They had discussed whether to come in from the north, but she thinks it best to strike hard and fast. “We cannot give them time to rally. Most of the garrison are still abed. They aren’t expecting us. And we have twice the men.”

There are four hundred soldiers spread across the three ships. Her personal army of two hundred, along with one hundred Gallowglass and her Spaniards. She has promised Captain Mendoza to ferry his men back to Lisbon in exchange for their swords and fury on the Aran Islands.