Page 18 of The Pirate Queen

“Hate me all you like,” he says. “Behave as the heathen you are. But you will hang and I will take everything you have built.”

“And forfeit the life of your brother?”

He stills.

“You didn’t catch my men. They still have their orders.”

Bingham looks back to the window. Nods. “Eóin has a brother, correct? If anything happens to mine, I’ll bring”—he studies Grace for a moment—“Merrick? That’s his name, correct? Your second son? I’ll bring Merrick here myself and make you watch him dangle from the gallows before I put the noose around your own neck. And what will you have then, Grace? Two dead sons. It is time for your surrender. You have gambled and lost.”

“Merrick is not so gentle as Eóin,” she says. “I would think twice about lying in wait for that particular O’Flaherty. He is a man like his father. And while his life is his own to defend, I can assure you that my men will skin John alive if I am not returned to them.”

“Your men are going to die. Merrick is going to die. You are going to die. I can think of nothing that will bring me greater pleasure.”

“So you’re a brute as well as a liar?” she asks.

“Believe me, I speak the truth.”

“But not when you send letters of safe conduct and a false appeal for truce?”

He laughs. “It is not my fault you are fool enough to fall for such an obvious ruse.”

“All my life I have been told that the English are sophisticated, that I ought to bend my knee to my betters. To accept my fate. But you are nothing but a steaming pile of shite, Bingham. A thief and liar and murderer. And so cowardly you cannot even do the deeds yourself. Do you sleep better at night knowing the blood drips from your brother’s hands instead? We have already established that yours are soft.”

They were only children when they met. And this bitch still angers him the same way she did all those years ago.

“You dare speak like this to a man?”

She snorts. “You are no man.”

The force of Bingham’s hand against her mouth snaps her head to the side. He thinks the blood sprouting from the split on her bottom lip is almost pretty. Like the poppies that grow along the verge in Dorset. He watches it bloom, watches three bright petals slip down her chin. He is transfixed as she licks the blood from her lip and draws it into her mouth. Then her cheeks hollow and she spits a bloody wad directly into his eye.

Bingham in his clean white shirt, his lavender soap. He blinks at her. Stunned. Disgusted.

“I have waited forty-nine years to return that favor,” she says.

The only kindness Grace receives in the following weeks is that the guards remove her chains. She is free to wander the small cell, to stretch and eat and use the chamber pot. It has been seven years since she last found herself in the Bermingham Tower, after the collapse of the first Desmond Rebellion. By comparison, the Lord Deputy had treated her like an honored guest. Bingham has no such compunction. She is at least fed daily, unlike many of the prisoners kept in the dungeons below. Grace has food, and a window that provides sunlight and fresh air. Not to mention something to watch during the long tedious days while she awaits her execution. Richard Bingham is taunting her with those gallows in the courtyard below.

The irony is not lost on Grace. Her life has been shaped by two Richards: Bourke and Bingham. One she loves, the other she hates, and all the decades of her life have done nothing to blunt either feeling.

Sometimes, in the early morning, a goldfinch comes to rest at the stone ledge outside her window. He tips his red head at her, puffs his chest, flutters those black-and-yellow-mottled wings. When he sings, it reminds her of the night that Richard Bourke first took her to bed, how the firelight streaked across the floor of his chamber. How a goldfinch sang to them in his window the next morning. She has not seen the bird in three days. She has not seen Richard in three years.

Grace thinks of the hills surrounding Rockfleet Castle. The brisk cold streams that cut paths into the peated hills and empty into the bay. She thinks of bathing in those streams. The way the frigid water made her gasp when it hit her skin. Grace has not bathed in over a month. They bring only enough water to drink. Whatever drops are left she offers to the bird at her window.

Today, the goldfinch has been replaced by flying ants, the scourge of August. There is a swarm above the courtyard, a hazy buzzing irritation. The males are too slow and too stupid to catch their queen. They bumble into her cell and she swats them away from her face. At least the stone walls offer a reprieve from the heat, and she rests her cheek against them.

Grace always thought she would die at sea, that some wave would overwhelm Niamh and pull her to the depths. Or that a blade would finally come too close, drive too deep. Fists. She had considered fists, when her husband was alive. God knows he used them on her often enough. But never once has she considered rope. It seems such a stupid way to die—the fate of those foolish enough to be captured.

A key turns in the lock and her door rattles open. Bingham stands there grinning, flanked on either side by his guards. He is a small man and behaves like it. Pugnacious and vengeful. Always trying to find a higher step to stand upon. Too scared to come alone. He is dressed neatly, like he’s been to church. Hair washed. That pointy beard trimmed and oiled. A ruffle at his neck.

“Hello, Grace,” he says.

She sits very still. “Bingham.”

“There is something I would like to show you.”

Grace does not stand.

Bingham is too pleased with himself. It makes her uneasy, suspicious that her time has run out.