Page 168 of The Pirate Queen

She tries to ignore him. But she can’t. Not entirely. She can always feel when Richard Bourke is watching her. It makes her neck feel warm.

Grace lifts the chalk with her right hand. It feels like trying to make letters with her teeth. Every bone in her body wants to grab that chunk of white stone with her left hand. She’s done this in her garret room at night. Written with ease with her other hand. The one that feels natural. But she cannot do it here. Never here.

The citeóg are infected by Satan.

So she’s heard her entire life. Every spoon. Every knife. Every chalk and quill and doll has been plucked from her left hand and placed in her right. Once, Maeve tied her left hand behind her back at the dinner table. She was swatted and scolded and trained into obedience before she could speak a full sentence. Now Grace uses her left hand only when she’s entirely alone. Or with Richard.

Her letters are blocky. Rough. Primitive. MacKenna grunts with disappointment when he glances at her handwriting. Then he moves on to her brother.

“Excellent, Donal,” he says.

Grace looks at neither her brother nor the priest. She has seen her letters when her better hand does the writing. They are prettier than Donal’s by half. But she is learning to let others think of her what they will. She is learning to keep secrets. And in the dark soil of her silence, she is gathering bits of knowledge like seed, planting them deep.

“Terra marique potens,” Father MacKenna says loudly at the front of the small church. “What does that mean, Donal?”

“Powerful by land and sea,” her brother recites their motto.

“Write it down on your slates, three times, in Latin. All of you.”

When they are done, MacKenna asks, “What is the O’Flaherty motto?”

“Fortuna favet fortibus,” the young O’Flaherty answers.

“And what does that mean?”

“Fortune favors the strong,” he says, then raises both arms and flexes his biceps.

Grace rolls her eyes.

MacKenna turns to Richard. “And yours?”

“Ung roy, ung foy, ung loy,” he recites.

“Say it,” he snaps, “in Latin.”

“ ’Tis not a Latin phrase, Father.”

There is a smile that Richard uses when he means to cause trouble. It’s not mean-spirited. It is alarmingly handsome, in fact. That smile has crossed his face more than once when he lunges at Grace with a knife. He offers it to MacKenna now and she shrinks back instinctively. That smile can cut.

“This is not a French lesson, Richard. Do as I say or your father will hear of it.”

“My father taught me the motto. In French.”

MacKenna brings the wooden stick down, hard, onto Richard’s hand. Grace flinches at the audible crack.

Richard flexes his fingers but doesn’t cry out.

“In Latin,” MacKenna says.

She can see him deliberate. His brows draw together. His lips form a tight line.

“Ung roy, ung foy, ung loy,” he says again, in Old French.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Three blows with the stick, one for each part of the motto.

And now Richard’s eyes are glassy.