Page 95 of The Pirate Queen

Hook’s ship is docked in her usual spot near the front steps of Burrishoole Castle. Saoirse. The ship so beloved that he named his youngest daughter after it. Grace is still bitter.

There are watchfires on the battlements and at regular points along the curtain wall, but no cry goes up from the guards when they pull alongside the dock.

“Who goes there?” someone calls.

“You know well enough or you’d have sent a warning shot by now,” Grace responds. “Recognized Niamh, didn’t you, Richard?”

Young Richard Bourke, Hook and Margaret’s eldest son, steps into the torchlight. “It was you I recognized first, Granny. Couldn’t quite see if it was Niamh, what with all her new stripes.”

After her shipwreck in Ulster, they’d spent three months making repairs. Niamh had so many strakes replaced along her sides that half of her paneling is now a lighter color. It’s all oak, but the new boards are a pale golden while the original have a dark patina. Grace has been told the ship now resembles a strange kind of horse found on the African continent. Something called a zebra.

“Shall I wake the others?” Young Richard calls from shore.

“No need. It’s only your father I must speak with.”

Her grandson’s face is mostly hidden in shadow. She can only see the bridge of his nose and his freckled cheeks where two dimples erupt beside his mouth. “He’ll murder you for waking him,” he says with delight.

“He is welcome to try,” she laughs.

Grace disembarks as Young Richard runs into the castle. After a few moments, Commander Mendoza joins her on the dock.

Above them, the privy chamber window rattles open. A dark head fills the space and a low voice asks, “Gráinne?”

He’s immediately interrupted. “Mam? What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get your husband’s attention, Margaret. Now send him down before we wake all of Mayo.”

Several moments later her son-in-law—Devil’s Hook, The MacWilliam of clan Bourke—storms out the front door of the tower house tying his trews. Margaret trails behind in her leine, tugging a blanket over her shoulders, laughing. That girl has been laughing since the day she was born, and if she wasn’t so pretty, Grace might think Hook had married her for the laughter alone. What man can resist such a merry woman?

Margaret throws her arms around Grace and kisses her cheeks. Her soft breath smells of claret—her daughter has been enjoying her birthday present this evening.

Hook crosses his arms over his bare chest. “I know you did not come all this way in the dead of night to hug my wife.”

“No,” she says, then nods toward Mendoza. “I came to deliver one hundred shipwrecked Spaniards.”

“Bingham will know within a day if the rest of those men disembark.”

“I do not mean them to.”

“Then where will you put them?”

“We will take them into Blacksod Bay, to Doona Castle.”

Hook looks at Grace. Then Captain Mendoza. Slowly he nods. “ ’Tis a good plan. But why bring them here first?”

“Because my hold isn’t just full of Spaniards. I’ve got their salvaged cargo as well. And I need you to sell it.”

“You would have me at odds with Black Tom as well?”

“I would give you the means to continue funding your rebellion. Now get dressed and get on board. We’ve a long journey tonight and we need to discuss exactly how we intend to commit treason by harboring these men from the English.”

Maiden, 1543

“Terra Marique Potens”

Grace is thirteen years old

She hasn’t been to Galway in five years. So a day in the city had felt like a small miracle. Grace and Donal and Ultan left the quay at noon and passed beneath the Spanish Arch into the merchant district, looking in shopwindows and eavesdropping on passing conversations. Keep an eye on your sister, Eóin had ordered, as usual, and Donal kept close to her side. They wandered all afternoon through narrow cobblestone streets, admiring the array of stone buildings mixed in with their wattle-and-daub neighbors. The crooked roofs and leaning walls. They’d gone to see St. Nicholas Collegiate Church, and she had stood in the doorway tracing her finger over the animals carved around that arch. She loved the dragon most, and she can still feel its shape pressed into her palm.