Page 34 of The Pirate Queen

She laughs. “And how would you remember?”

“I did a lot of mopping up behind you, didn’t I? I don’t think you kept your breakfast down at all that winter. And then you swelled up like a toad.” She sees that gap between his teeth as he flashes a rare smile. “Same as now.”

Gutty hands her an oatcake and she takes it from him, then reaches out with her empty hand. He laughs, giving her another.

“I am not swelled up.”

He puffs out his cheeks and makes a show of waddling. “And I am not an orphan.”

If she wasn’t so hungry, she’d throw an oatcake at his head. So Grace swats his shoulder and then she’s off, ready to explore.

It is no surprise that Donal O’Flaherty has chosen to set their camp directly in the middle of the chaos. She would expect nothing less of her husband. He needs to be the hub of every wheel, and these are his ancestral lands, after all. His father—The O’Flaherty—lives but a few miles north, in Aughnanure Castle. No doubt he will honor them all with his presence today. He will bless the games with a speech and she will find somewhere else to be.

The title and the castle will pass to her husband once his father is gone, and then she will live here too, even farther from Clare Island and all that matters to her.

Grace cuts a line through the center of the camp, avoiding the hill to the north, where the O’Malleys lie, and the sprawling Bourke encampment to the south.

The drums are closer now, and she can feel a shift in the crowd. She hears whispers and watches people lift onto their toes, straining to see.

That boom-boom-booming ceases with a final bang, and then a roar goes up from the crowd all around the open field. Grace elbows her way forward until she can see a throng of men and boys, fifty or more, huddled in the center of the clearing. Each holds aloft a long stick of curved oak. Chanting and stomping are followed by a raucous shout, and a small leather ball shoots into the sky. The players launch themselves after it.

“Oh,” she says. “Hurling.”

The woman next to her laughs. “They’ll all be bloody by nightfall.”

“Or concussed,” Grace snorts.

“Missing half their teeth as well,” the stranger adds.

Grace grimaces, running her tongue along her own teeth, then shifts back into the crowd. It is tradition to open the games with hurling, a stick-and-ball game that will take the entire day, and a pound of flesh from every player. They will run themselves mad, chasing that ball, then trying to balance it on the flat end of their sticks. The hurley and slíotar. They will chase and tackle and trip one another the entire time. Taking and giving blows with the hurley while defending the slíotar with their lives—just in the hopes of getting it to the goal and scoring a point. Whatever skill is involved seems little more than brute force to her, and there are other games she would rather watch, besides.

The camp is bustling in every direction. There are card games: maw and spoil five. Board games: chess and fidchell. Footraces and horse races. Rope pulls and wrestling. Archery. Stone throwing. The longer she wanders, the more she sees, and soon the sun has passed its zenith. She is hot but never has a chance to grow hungry, for all the bread and fruit and sweets pressed into her hands by other women. They see her waddling through the camp and pat her belly. Pat her cheeks. Pat her bum. What great fortune, they say, to expect a báb in the autumn. It’s good luck, they say. Here, you look thirsty, take a drink.

And so Grace wanders until her feet hurt, until she sees a clearing with a row of logs where she can sit and rest. The logs are arranged on a gentle slope above the open field, a natural amphitheater. She lowers herself to a log in the back row and asks the old man beside her which event is next.

He points at a stump in the middle of the clearing and the target painted on its center. “Knife throwing,” he says, and rubs his palms together with glee.

“Your favorite?”

“Tá. Before I was lamed.” He pats his right thigh, and she looks down to find that limb withered and bent unnaturally to the side. There is a large gnarled walking stick beside him.

“How?” she asks.

“ ’Tis always a horse, isn’t it?”

“Seems to be. Though we only blame ourselves, and never them.”

He laughs and she sees the story in his eyes. “Tá. Is never the horse’s fault.”

“That’s why I always give mine the same name,” Grace tells him. “Enbarr.”

“Was the sea god Manannán’s, wasn’t it?”

“Tá,” she says, thinking of all three horses she has loved.

The old man is wrinkled and bulbous. Scarce on teeth yet abundant in mirth. “Sure, I can’t wait for that O’Flaherty pup to get what’s coming,” he says, nodding at the target. “Is long overdue.”

Grace startles, but he takes her look to be a question.