Page 162 of The Pirate Queen

A deep drumbeat of fear begins to pound in his chest. He’s a wife in there, and a new baby. Neither of whom he’s seen.

“Gráinne!”

At first he thinks it’s the wind, but then he recognizes her voice. Yet it isn’t coming from the other side of the door. It’s coming from above.

Richard takes three steps backward and looks up. Gráinne is standing at the ramparts, a thick blanket draped around her shoulders. Her hair is down and heavy across her chest. He can see nothing of her form, but her face looks stricken. Skin paler than usual. Deep, dark circles beneath her eyes.

“What are you doing up there?” he asks.

“I slept through Winter Solstice,” she calls down, and her voice catches on the wind. It sounds like an echo of the woman he knows.

“I know, mo ghrá. I was at Castle Bourke. I…” He understands what she’s saying. Winter Solstice.

“Your mother came to see me. She was quite insistent about what would be required of me as your wife.”

That drumming of his heart grows louder, a crashing wave in his ears.

Gráinne continues. He can hear the tremble in her voice. “Today is three hundred and sixty-six days since we wed.”

“No. Ignore my mother. Don’t do this. Let me in, I—”

“We had a trial marriage,” she reminds him.

“And we have a child as well! A son. Tibbot, they tell me. Let me see him, Gráinne. Please.”

“You may see him all you like,” his wife says. “I would never keep him from you.”

He stands there watching her, this flaming meteor in the sky. He listens as her words fall on him like pelting hail.

“Richard Bourke, I divorce you.”

Matriarch, 1593

“Tibbot”

Grace is sixty-three years old

It is the first of May, a stunningly clear morning that finds Grace on a rise above the castle, cutting sprigs of honey-scented hawthorn blooms from the hedgerow. She loves these small white flowers, loves that they bloom only after the bush has put on its foliage, like a woman dabbing perfume after donning her gown. She loves the long rambling pasture hedges that look like jade silk, the way they shimmer and curve. She is reaching for another sprig when a clamor arises behind her. Shouts and whistles. Grace turns back toward Rockfleet and sees the unthinkable: English warships have entered Clew Bay.

Grace pays no mind to her shears or basket. She drops them both—blooms spilling across the ground—then picks up her skirt and runs. She curses the ravages of age, the stiffness in her knees that prevents her from hitting full stride. Grace has lived far longer than either of her parents, than many people she has known. But still she hates the indignity of being stuck in a body that will no longer follow the commands of her mind.

There are twelve ships. Two galleons and three carracks—those are evident enough with their hulking size, undeniable threats filling the horizon. But the rest are smaller. Galleys and pinnaces, smaller supply ships. They’ve all passed Clare and slid toward the Inish islands. She can see four of the smaller, more nimble galleys peel off the fleet and tack hard toward Rockfleet Bay, using both oars and sail. They look like sleek dark arrows on the water’s surface.

Grace has heard nothing from Merrick in the three years since she left him tied to the post at Bunowen, but the damage was already done. Her absence that day gave Bingham the opportunity he needed. And while Rockfleet was still standing when she returned, most of her followers had fled, their livestock taken, and her enemy gained a foothold in her own territory. Now he has blocked her only path of retreat as well. For the first time in living memory, the English can move through the treacherous landscape of her western coastlands. They can pursue her at sea.

As usual, Niamh is kept close to Rockfleet, docked right at her front steps, a chick tucked beneath Grace’s wing. She is guarded, impossible to attack without bringing the English ships in range of her own defenses. So it is only Caoimhe and the Róisín Dubh left at anchor in the bay. Unprotected. Visible. She watches as the English galleys drop their skiffs into the water, as those little boats strike hard for her ships.

“No.”

She is breathless, her chest heaving, her joints screaming, when she arrives at the tower house. Even if she could reach Caoimhe and the Róisín Dubh in time, she is outnumbered. Fifty Englishmen swarm across her ships, like ants in a nest of newly hatched robins. Spreading. Spoiling. She can see their small dark bodies climbing the masts, cutting the sails.

“They’re pouring tar,” Gutty tells her, his gaze on Caoimhe. He shakes his head in dismay. “They’re going to burn the ships.”

No sooner have the words left his mouth than Caoimhe’s sails bloom bright with flame. The Róisín Dubh’s go up moments later. Gutty could not sound more pained had she put her boot to his groin. He doubles over, hands on his knees, cursing. And there is nothing she can do to stop the carnage. Her servants and soldiers rush from castle and byre, watching black smoke coil into the sky. They watch the decks ignite. They watch the English sailors dive from her boats and return to their skiffs. Row away.

“This is Bingham’s doing,” she tells him.

“Has he not crushed us enough?” Gutty asks.