Page 42 of The Pirate Queen

Grace folds herself onto her knees. Struggles to gain her balance as little spots float before her eyes. A candle. He’d lit a candle inside the tent. The flame dances as her vision blurs. She sees it in triplicate, imposed over her husband’s face.

“Richard Bourke knows that you’ve killed Walter. It will be your throat next,” she says.

“You told him!”

“No.” Not technically, at least, she thinks. “Were you fool enough to think you’d get away with it?”

He clenches his teeth. Growls. “O’Flaherty women know better than to speak to their men in such a way.”

“I am no O’Flaherty. I am an O’Malley, and I will remain an O’Malley until I die.”

There is no law of marriage in this country that requires her to take her husband’s name. So she didn’t. It was a small act of defiance when she’d been married off against her will. If she’s to live under a man’s name, she chooses her father’s.

Grace runs a trembling hand along her boot as she struggles to her feet.

“Best you stay down where I want you. Best you lift your skirts for me before I rip them off and bend you over.”

“No,” she says again, and when she shakes her head, the throbbing makes her eyes water.

But this time when Donal O’Flaherty lifts a hand to strike her, Grace puts the point of Richard’s dagger beneath his chin.

“I said no.”

“You cannot—”

Grace presses the blade into her husband’s skin. Enough to draw blood, to get his attention.

“I am done,” she tells him. “Find somewhere else to sleep.”

Matriarch, 1586

“The Devil’s Hook”

Grace is fifty-six years old

Bingham kills them all. Every single one of her husband’s kin. Men, mostly, but a handful of boys as well. Once a week, until the middle of September. Always after church, when he is dressed in his Sunday best. Bingham claims martial law—as though half-starved men in dungeons pose any risk at all. There are no hearings. No trials. Just a parade through Dublin and a long drop at the end of a rope. Grace looks each of them in the eye before that trapdoor falls. She tries to give them what courage she can. None cry. None beg for mercy.

Every week she is marched into the upper yard of Dublin Castle expecting to see one of her children. But it never happens. And the longer Bingham takes to find them, the better her odds of winning this game they’re playing.

The smells of summer and sawdust have been replaced with the faint hint of turning leaves. Speckled-wood butterflies have replaced the bird at her window. It rains most afternoons and there is a creeping chill in her cell now, an unwelcome dampness to the stone. Her lungs feel wet. She coughs at night. There is a new persistent pain in her back. There are bars on her window, but no glass. She is at the mercy of the elements.

It is Sunday, yet again, and Grace wonders who he intends to hang today. She worries that her time has finally run out. When the knock comes at her door, she does not have the heart to look. Nor does she answer, because he will walk in regardless.

The scrape of a key and the groan of old hinges and there he is, smiling as usual.

“You have a visitor,” Bingham says. “I believe you know Richard Bourke?”

Her heart should not leap the way it does. She knows better. But her body responds to that name and her eyes shift to the doorway nonetheless.

Too many Donals. Too many Richards. Why is her life plagued by extraneous men appropriating the names of those she loves? This one is welcome, though not the man she wants to see.

“I do not know this man as Richard Bourke,” Grace answers as she rises to her feet. She is ashamed to be found in this condition. So dirty and unkempt. She brushes the filth from her dress. Tries to smooth her hair.

“But you do know him?” Bingham asks.

She sighs. “Yes, though I have always called him Hook.”

The man who stands beside Bingham is young. Not yet forty, and not nearly so handsome as his namesake. But every bit as dark with all that black Bourke hair, that wild beard. He is dressed the part of The MacWilliam too, and she knows that must hurt his pride. Hook prefers warrior’s garb.