Page 74 of The Pirate Queen

Maiden, 1541

“The Test”

Grace is eleven years old

It is morning, just past sunrise, and Grace sits near the fire with her parents. Tendrils of peat smoke drift around her feet and she has the warm sense of comfort from being at home on a chilly day. Cook sent one of the serving girls up with milk and toast, sausages and boiled eggs. The sky is clear, but it looks to Grace as though it might storm later. Something about the haze along the horizon feels heavy to her. A sad eye, ready to weep.

Her parents are talking about the English king again—and the way he goes through wives like chamber pots—but Grace is distracted by the water out in Clew Bay. It is clear and blue, but it seems to her that the slow, lapping waves are hitting the beach in a strange way, coming in sideways.

Their talk of the English fades away and they all eat in contented silence for some minutes until Eóin turns to Grace and says, “Go get your brother.”

Brother.

Not Donal, which is how he always refers to the boy in Maeve’s presence.

Stunned, she looks at her mother. Eóin follows suit and Maeve’s knitting needles grow still.

“He’s at home. With his…with Aisling,” Grace says.

“I know where he lives.”

Maeve’s voice is tight, rigid, the warning clear. “Eóin…”

“You heard me, bird. Go get him.”

Maeve sets her knitting aside, then stands, but Eóin holds out a hand to stop her.

“She’ll go alone,” he says. “ ’Tis time.”

“Time?” Maeve snaps.

Grace watches something pass between them, some unspoken marital shorthand. The kind known only to men and women who have been one flesh long enough to share minds as well as bodies.

Eóin grabs Maeve’s hand, tugs her back down so she sits on the bench beside him. “If she can’t do this, she can’t do the rest.”

Grace looks from one parent to the other, head shifting back and forth as they speak. She has no idea what they mean.

“It isn’t fair, Eóin. Not to me. Not to her.”

“Fair has nothing to do with it. Not from this day forward. She can learn that from me, or the world will teach her. But she’s going to learn it either way.” He turns to Grace. The smile he offers is weak. “Now. G’wan, get him.”

Grace swallows her last bite of sausage and scoots away from the table. “Where shall we meet you?”

“Bring Donal here.”

Now it is her turn to stare. Not once, that she can remember, has Donal ever entered the privy chamber. The kitchen and hall below, yes, most every day. But never their family quarters. It is an unspoken rule.

Maeve frowns. Pushes her plate away. Wipes her mouth. She leaves the table this time, swatting Eóin’s hand when he reaches for her.

Grace would like to search her mother’s face for an explanation, a bit of wisdom, but she is facing the fire now, her back stiff. So the girl slips away, down the stairs, through the Great Hall, and down again into the kitchen. Cook calls after her as she runs out the door, something about rolls fresh from the oven and does she want one, there’s new butter as well, but Grace doesn’t respond.

She pauses on the front steps, her attention snagged on a sound like horses running in the distance. But the fields are quiet this morning and the road that leads into the village is empty, so she shakes her head and moves on.

She is barefoot, her skirts whipping around her ankles, small cold stones digging into the hardened leather of her feet. Only the high pale arches remain soft, and Grace yelps when a fallen hawthorn twig tears at her skin. She slows, limping the last few steps into the village. There is a hint of autumn in the air, a turning, like old leaves gone wet.

She has been sent alone.

To her brother’s house.