Page 184 of The Pirate Queen

“I have been busy.”

“You have been lying. It doesn’t suit you.”

He sighs and sets his fork down, appetite lost. “And why exactly have you come to my fair city, Grace?”

The smile she gives him would terrify any of the men on her ship. He is unfazed by her expression, but his mouth draws into a thin line of disgust at her words: “I want an audience with the Queen.”

Ultan cannot stand the city house where Gráinne is staying. Cannot stand Thomas Butler or his manners or his lies. Some fecking Irishman. So, while Gráinne waits for an audience, Ultan wanders. Up and down the Thames. Among the docks. Through the alleys. He watches and waits and listens. And every day he goes to Niamh, makes sure she is safe at dock, unwatched.

He might love that ship more than he loves Gráinne, but only just. They have grown old together, the three of them. He is proud of that. And of his long service.

Service, it seems, is the one thing he can offer in this rat-infested city. He’ll be damned if he cannot figure out a way to help Gráinne. So this afternoon he has come back to the Town at Ramsgate, to the Hanging Docks. There’s a worry niggling at the back of his skull, like some bug floating in his ale. And since he’s nothing else to do while they wait, he might as well find that serving girl.

Black Tom doesn’t usually come to the inn until later in the evening. And there’s little chance he’ll do so today, after being surprised last night. So Ultan isn’t worried about being recognized as he settles into a table at the back.

The serving girl finds him soon enough, puts one curious hand on her bony hip. “You’re back,” she says.

“I have nowhere else to be,” he tells the girl.

“What do you want?”

“Whiskey,” he says. “And a favor.”

She takes a step back, her eyes suddenly pinched tight, suspicious.

“Not that kind,” he assures her.

“I stab men who get grabby,” she tells him. She pats her thigh. “I have a blade right here.”

“Good. But you’ll want to keep it in your boot. Easier to reach.”

The girl assesses him, then nods finally, like she thinks this is a good suggestion. “What’s the favor?”

Ultan pulls a small coin purse from his pocket and holds it out.

She makes no move to take it.

He laughs. “There is a man who might come to see Butler. I’d like you to tell me if he does.”

The serving girl shakes her head. “Men go up and down those stairs all the time. How am I to tell one from another?”

“This one,” Ultan tells her, dropping the purse into the pocket of her apron, “will have come from Ireland. He is short and dark and mean. He’ll make his presence known because he cannot help himself. Let me know when he arrives, and I’ll give you that much coin again.”

“And what is his name?”

“Sir Richard Bingham.”

“Bingham will hang my son,” Grace says. “And he will have my brother drawn and quartered.”

Thomas Butler sits at his desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin, waiting for his mulled wine to cool. “And pray tell why this unfortunate set of circumstances requires an audience with the Queen?”

Funny what savage negotiations can be hidden behind the veil of civility. Grace has taken mulled wine most every day of her life, but never as a means of dignifying a dark topic. When discussing death, she’d rather have whiskey.

It has been three days since she ambushed Tom in his private quarters on Wapping Street, but he has finally summoned her to his office at Blackfriars. There is a silver decanter and two cut-glass goblets before them. He lifts the one nearest him. Sips. The wine is black, like his hair, like his sobriquet.

Like his heart, she thinks.

“Bingham has arrested them under false charges.” She takes a sip from her own goblet, then says, “But in Her Majesty’s name. He holds them captive at Athlone Castle, on property confiscated by her crown. This has everything to do with your queen.”