Page 182 of The Pirate Queen

Fools. Damned fools, every one of them. She had warned her men not to leave the safety of their enclave in Southwark. Warned them not to drink in taverns where their accents would be noted and their occupation questioned. Her men were three days dead before anyone knew they were missing.

“What a foul city,” Grace mutters.

She knows this is a message, a warning from the man who rents a private office above the tavern at the mouth of this alley. A way of letting her know that he is in control of her fate and that he will take her appointment when—and if—he is damn well ready.

Well, she is tired of waiting.

Behind her, the man steps out of the shadows and closer to her.

“Poor luck for us to be here, ain’t it, Gráinne?”

Ultan comes to her side, pipe smoke drifting into the air between them. It is a welcome respite from the stench of brine and sewage that fills the alley.

“A reminder,” Grace says, her gray eyes focused on those swaying bodies. “This is what Her Majesty does to pirates.”

“Elizabeth didn’t string up those boys. This was Butler’s doing.”

She turns away from the gibbeted men, looks up at the tall clapboard buildings that surround her. They lean over the alley like drunken soldiers blocking out the darkening sky, and she half expects them to topple over. It would not be the first time a drunkard caught her off guard.

“Has he taken dinner yet?” she asks.

“Soon. He sends for the serving wench at eight o’clock.”

It has taken Ultan the better part of a week to track Thomas Butler, the tenth Earl of Ormond, to these rented rooms on Wapping Street, to learn his habits and report back to Blackfriars, where the Irish lord has kept Grace sequestered in his home all this week. Every day since her arrival, she has unsuccessfully petitioned for an audience. Every day she has been told the earl is busy with state business and will call for her tomorrow.

Ultan sets the pipe to his mouth again. “And will he be seeing us?”

“He has no choice. I’ll not bury Tibbot or Donal because Butler is loyal to the wrong crown.”

“And if we’re stepping into a trap? What if he intends to collect the bounty on your head?”

“He’s had a chance to do so every night this week while I slept under his roof,” she says. “And besides, five hundred pounds means little to a man like Butler.”

The Town at Ramsgate is a nondescript tavern serving dockworkers and local merchants, though Ultan has assured Grace that more than one gentleman has wandered through its doors today. Every one of them dressed like commoners, to avoid suspicion. Such men move differently through the world: if you pay attention, you will find them everywhere. Poor men skulk, rich men swagger.

No one pays any mind as they enter the tavern. It has low ceilings and dark walls. Narrow but deep, stretching to the end of the alley. Battered tables and a salty barkeep who loves nothing more than insulting the staff. To hear him tell it, the potboy is a cuckold, the cellarman a guzzle-guts, and the barmaid a purveyor of the French disease.

The lanterns are lit and the patrons half drunk. No one looks up as she and Ultan navigate the crowded room and take up residence at an empty table near the back.

When the serving wench rushes by, Grace reaches for the girl’s slender wrist. “There is a man upstairs,” she says. “Has he called for dinner?”

The wench is twelve at most—and slim in the way that suggests she’ll never have much of a figure. She is neither fair nor plain, and the end of her nose turns up too high. Likely the girl will remain invisible throughout her life. No small mercy in a job such as this.

“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout a man,” she says.

Grace drops a pence into the wench’s apron pocket. “No doubt he’s paid you to say just that. But I mean him no harm. And I pay better.” She smiles. “I only want one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“To deliver his meal.”

The wench looks at Grace as if she might have poison in her pockets, then glowers at Ultan. She extends her own hand and receives another coin. It, too, goes directly into her apron, with a small clink this time.

“He canna know I let ye.”

“I will tell him you are a stupid girl, easily tricked, though clearly the opposite is true.”

Most women have no defense against flattery, even if disingenuous. This girl is not stupid. But neither is she clever. Coin is her language.