Page 167 of The Pirate Queen

Bingham’s ships are large and powerful. Deadly, even. But they sit deep in the water and weigh untold thousands of pounds. Not so nimble, not so fast. Therefore neither of the carracks that sit beyond Rockfleet Bay takes any notice of Niamh as she skirts the coastline late that night, her sails down and her oars out. Even then, the twenty men aboard are careful not to splash, letting her glide smoothly and silently as Grace calls out her orders with low whistles and gentle whispers. They are dark as night, shadows upon the water.

Their path is most dangerous as they row between the smaller Inish islands that bottleneck Rockfleet Bay, but once they’re past Inishdasky they slip away from the English and dart between the northern drumlins.

As usual, Ultan is at her side on the cabin deck.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to slip by them this afternoon,” she says.

He snorts. “Fat cogs. They move like boulders and sink like stones.” He pats the helm. “No chance they’d keep up with this pretty thing. Once they stopped blocking the way, that is.”

Grace and Gutty had met Niamh exactly where Ultan said she’d be: anchored in a rocky cove two miles west.

“What will you do now?” Ultan asks.

“I will write to the English queen.”

He offers a long, low whistle. “And who will you send with the letter?”

“Oh, have you not guessed our destination yet? I will deliver it to England myself.”

Maiden, 1545

“A Dead Language”

Grace is fifteen years old

Her formal education continues. But she hates these lessons the way she hates being proper and doing as she’s told. What Grace hates most, however, is this priest. Father MacKenna. Everyone at Rockfleet calls him “Father” and so must she—though she has a father of her own, and even Eóin O’Malley doesn’t require her to state it every time she speaks to him. Yet here, in Burrishoole Friary—away from the watchful eyes of Finola and The MacWilliam—he is stricter with her than anyone else has ever been.

Mac Cionaoith, he makes them write in Irish. Then again in Latin. Once more in the old Ogham script. Pictish, her father calls it, though he doesn’t make these letters. Not on paper and not on stone. She’s never even seen him scratch them into the sand down on the beach. She’s never seen anyone write them, but MacKenna insists it is part of their history and they must learn it.

The only language they are not tutored in is English.

“We do not parley with that foreign monarch” was all The MacWilliam said when she asked why they were not taught to read or write the language. “ ’Tis bad enough we have to speak it.”

The English king, known as Henry, is the eighth of that name to sit on his throne. Discontent with the boundaries of his own country, he turned his gaze to their island some years back, and if not for the Irish nobility outmaneuvering him with their passage of the Crown of Ireland Act, they would no doubt already be two islands but one kingdom.

“He lusts for power the way he lusts for a new wife,” The MacWilliam says. “But I’ll be dead before I bend my knee to him.”

Father MacKenna forces Grace to write his name until her hand cramps, until she has to breathe slow and steady and blink back tears of pain.

“Again in Latin,” the priest says once she is done.

Every Monday morning she, Donal, Richard, and O’Flaherty are sent for their Latin lesson at Burrishoole Abbey. It is but an hour’s ride through the fields, then over a narrow stone bridge that spans the inlet to Lough Furnace. She always enjoys the chance to be out from under Finola’s watchful gaze. The lessons, however, are a punishment.

A classroom with only four students. Grace and Donal seated on one stone bench before the chancel, Richard and O’Flaherty on the other. Slates in their laps. Backs aching from MacKenna’s constant reprimands to sit up straight. None of the other young people near Rockfleet are required to be in this dark stuffy church for half the day. They aren’t noble, MacKenna says. She is fortunate, he tells her. She is the daughter of a chieftain; other girls don’t get this education. This punishment. This stupid requirement. When Grace has children, she promises herself, chalk clenched in hand, she will force none of them to learn this dead language.

When Father MacKenna turns his back, Grace braves a sideways glance at her brother. Donal glares at his slate studiously, right hand making marks with his chalk, left hand on his thigh, tapping out the notes to whatever song he’s learning on those pipes of his.

“Ssshhh,” Donal hisses at her.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to. And I’ll be the one who gets the stick.”

She whispers, “That’s only because he knows I’ll hit him back.”

Richard leans across the narrow aisle toward her and interjects, “You won’t hit. You’ll scratch. And only because you can. If you come home with bruises, my mam will kill him. If the rest of us come home with them, my da will give us more.”

Richard is right. Which is why Grace says nothing else. Though she does make a face at him. He rewards her with a wide grin and a quick glance at her mouth.