Page 205 of The Pirate Queen

Bingham clears his throat and turns in a half circle to address both the Queen and the men gathered. He extends his arm, spreads the fingers of his right hand as though onstage, like this is his soliloquy.

“I thank you for the opportunity to defend my good name. And I am honored to have served so long as a soldier and now as Governor of Connaught.” He sets his hand over his chest. “A most sacred duty, one that I have sought to perform with the utmost integrity. But please, do not be fooled by this woman in her silk dress. Grace O’Malley is little more than a pirate, a scourge upon the coasts of Ireland these last forty years. She is a criminal. And her children are all criminals—every one of them. Murderers. Treasonous. Leaders of rebellion. I have done no more than the law requires to keep the peace in Connaught. It is she who has troubled that peace, constantly. As to these lands she claims I have confiscated, they were not hers to begin with. They belonged to her husband—Richard Bourke—now deceased. As a widow, she has no legal rights to that property. And as a woman, she has no right before God or the law to rule as chieftain. Yet she persists in doing so—”

Grace interrupts. “I have never heard any part of Your Majesty’s law that allows a governor to order a man’s eye cut out while he still lives, then have him stabbed in the heart twelve times. Yet that is what he had done to my Eóin.”

Oh, these pretty clothes and pretty manners. And they call her a heathen. At least Grace has never pretended to be something she is not.

Bingham gasps. Feigns mortal offense. “I dare any person to prove an instance where I have ever used such violence. I have always—thank the Lord—been guided by my Christian faith while going about my duties, and I have never sought a man’s blood beyond Her Majesty’s requirement of me.”

Grace is surprised at the emotion that wells in her throat. “I would ask Eóin for his rebuttal. But he is dead.”

“What record have we of this Eóin O’Flaherty’s death?” Elizabeth asks Burghley.

“The details of his wounds are as she describes,” he tells the Queen, “though motive is impossible to determine, given the governor’s denials.”

“Bingham has already sworn that he will hang my brother and son,” Grace argues. “He will no doubt do so upon his return to Athlone, should you not spare them. I beg clemency on their behalf.”

“Her brother stabbed one of my soldiers in the heart before his own company. And her son is, even now, inciting the northern clans to join with the Spanish in another attempt at overthrowing Your Majesty’s rule in Ireland. You simply cannot mean to free these rebels, Your Majesty.” This last accusation earns Grace a sideways glance from the Queen. Bingham notices and presses his advantage. “It would not be the first time this brigand threw in her lot with the Spanish. It’s known that she harbored over one hundred shipwrecked Spaniards after the Armada.”

Now they have crossed into dangerous territory. Grace is careful with her response, careful with her face as well.

“Bingham speaks of proof.” Grace rolls her eyes. “He demands it when the record itself is clear as to his own crimes. But he drifts into fiction whenever he speaks of me. If he has proof of these claims against me, let him show it! Bingham never found so much as a single Spaniard on any of my lands. Though he came in person to look for them.”

“Because she hid them!”

Elizabeth raises her hand, palm out, to silence Bingham. It has a miraculous effect that Grace envies. If only she could shut the mouths of men so easily.

“The governor is correct that there is no custom in Irish law that allows for a widow to claim one-third of her husband’s lands and property after his death as you have done, Mistress O’Malley,” the Queen says.

“Those were the written terms of my first dowry. They were also those agreed to by my second husband. The former was refused to me upon the death of Donal O’Flaherty. And the latter was systematically stolen by Bingham. I ask for nothing more than what was promised me.”

This clever Queen of England, this monarch who has outsmarted every man that would seize her power, grins at Grace now, offering a full view of those infamously stained teeth. It is unnerving. Powerful. “But that is not all you have asked for,” she says, “is it?”

Grace will not shrink back, not with Bingham puffing his chest. Or with Cecil peering at her with that rheumy, calculated gaze. “ ’Tis my desire,” Grace tells the Queen, “that I should be allowed to continue my former activities by land and sea, without restriction. That my brother and son be set free forthwith. That Bingham return Rockfleet Castle, with its surrounding lands, and end his relentless pursuit of me. I ask that he be removed from his position as Governor of Connaught.”

“You cannot mean to entertain such audacity!” Bingham snorts. “I have faithfully served the crown.”

Grace has paid little mind to the room throughout this conversation. But she sees these men whispering and murmuring now. Leaning closer. Feasting on this drama. No doubt it will be the talk of the court for the rest of this week. That bold, crass Irishwoman who demanded too much of the Queen. Grace returns her focus to Elizabeth, gauging what she might decide.

For some time the Queen sits, quietly clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she ponders. “Lord Burghley?” she finally says.

He steps forward.

“Has the governor provided any proof of his claims toward Mistress O’Malley’s imprisoned kin?”

“Only what he has communicated here.”

They are surrounded by men and arguments and demands. But the two women consider each other. It is Grace who speaks first this time, in Latin once more.

“We are not so different, you and I,” she says.

That earns her a wry smile from the Queen. “How do you imagine?”

“We both know how to survive.”

For a moment, just the flutter of an eye, Grace sees it: the vulnerability, the exhaustion of a woman who has defied the odds for six decades. They draw a breath at the same time. Release it. Recognize themselves in the other.

Grace offers a half smile. “Please do not force me to bury another son.”