Page 156 of The Pirate Queen

She feels the first unmistakable urge to push just as Niamh shudders. They have been rammed broadside. Grace pushes her head against the wall. Closes her eyes. There is a point, right at the back of her skull, where one of the ridged wallboards presses hard against her scalp. It is not pain, not like she feels elsewhere. It is a compass, a North Star. All her focus goes to that one point of pressure as she closes her eyes and listens to the chaos on deck. Grace has boarded countless ships. She can imagine the scene on deck easily enough. The Algerian corsair has come along the starboard side, has hit them near the bow. Grappling hooks now. A heaving to draw the ships together. A wave of corsairs spilling onto Niamh’s deck.

She grinds her teeth together.

Grabs the back of her knees and pulls them toward her chest.

Groans but doesn’t scream.

She cannot let these invaders know there is a woman on board at all, much less a vulnerable one.

For years, Grace has led her men. She has spent more nights at sea than on land. They have boarded ships and taken cargo. Taken lives. If they do not know how to defend Niamh by now, they never will. The hardest thing she has ever done as their captain, however, is let them do it on their own.

She bears down and feels the shift within her body as she holds her breath. A movement. A slide. And real fire now, the kind that tears and burns between her legs. Her fingernails dig into the soft flesh behind her knees. Tomorrow—if she makes it to tomorrow—she will have scratches at best, gouges at worst.

She pushed for two hours with Young Eóin.

One hour with Margaret.

Half that with Merrick.

Grace thinks she has a quarter of an hour before this báb arrives.

But, even in this, she is caught off guard.

She pushes.

Then she pushes again with all her body, she feels that push even in her little fingers and earlobes. Then there is a whoosh followed by blood and water and a small head with hair as fine as tufted wool emerges from the cleft between her legs.

How is she supposed to do this, there is still belly in the way, little ability to bend over any farther. Her long arms can barely reach around her own bulk, but then she is pushing again, utterly against her will, and there is one shoulder, then another.

She hears screaming. It comes from outside her, beyond the squinty red-faced báb covered in waxy vernix. It comes from on deck.

Men are dying.

Screaming and cursing.

The clang and rattle of cutlass, dagger, and sword. She had not heard the fighting begin with all the ringing in her own ears. But now it is plain enough. Small pistol fire. A single shot here and there, with no time to reload. Maybe six in total. She can’t tell. They all sound like the pounding of blood through her head. A few seconds more and it’s only metal on metal. Fists. Howls. Words thrown about in a language she doesn’t know. Sometimes guttural, sometimes a warbling howl.

Grace grabs the baby by its shoulders and pulls it from her body.

A boy.

And a Bourke at that, large and proud and showing himself off already.

Squalling. Crying. Breathing, thank God.

Grace pulls the slippery, bloody body against her chest. Pants. Curls in on herself once more as the remaining residue of birth is expelled from her body on a final contraction.

“Hello, Tibbot,” she tells him in a whisper. “ ’Tis scary just now. Give me a moment.”

The fighting on deck has shifted closer to her cabin door. Someone is thrown up against it. She hears the long screech of one blade sliding against another. The fleshy thump of a fist hitting a face. A cracking—either of wood or bone, she can’t tell.

Grace lays the baby on the bed between her legs. She lifts her dagger and, with a trembling hand, cuts a strip of linen from the end of her leine. Ties it as close and as tight to the baby’s navel as she can. Then she saws through the wiry cord with two quick slices of her blade.

Richard’s blade.

Tibbot is crying now, gulping air into his lungs for a bellowing scream. But she cannot put him to the breast. This is no time for tenderness or nurturing.

His lungs sound clear enough. Nothing caught or wet, and though her instincts scream at her, though her body resists, Grace scoots away from him.