Page 19 of The Pirate Queen

He sighs, realizing she won’t go willingly.

“Bind her hands. Then bring her.” He motions to the guards behind him, and they step forward and lift her from the bed by her arms. Some jangling of chains and shackles, and she is bound again.

Grace can smell the human exertion on them, the sweat and strain of common men. Unlike the guards, Bingham smells like a gentleman, like linen and soap.

“ ’Tis Sunday,” Grace says. “You mean to hang me when you should be at church?”

“I just left the chapel. And the vicar has approved my endeavors. You will find that God is on my side.”

“God would not know you if he were standing just beside you in that very door.”

When the guards haul her forward, Bingham sniffs. Wrinkles his nose. She has always been taller than him. Three or four inches, enough that he must look up.

“You reek,” he says.

“Send your complaints to my host. I have not been offered a bath.”

Or a comb. Or a change of clothes. A pillow. Blankets. Bingham intended to humiliate her and he has succeeded. But in doing so, he also punishes himself. She does indeed smell, as her mother used to say, ripe. Bingham pulls a perfumed kerchief from his pocket but thinks better of putting it to his nose when she smirks.

“Take her to the servants,” he says. “Make sure they scrub her from head to foot before you bring her to the courtyard. We have time.”

The guards watch.

In all of her fifty-six years, only two men have ever seen her naked. Until today. Grace has no defense other than to pin them with a steely glare as the maids strip her clothes off and throw them into a pile, as they yank a comb through her tangled hair.

She insists on removing her own boots, on setting them to the side. For now she still has the dagger. If Bingham intends for this to be her final day on earth, that knife is her last hope. And she dare not play that hand just yet.

The maids do not bother to heat the water in her tub. But she isn’t afraid of the cold. It is no different than ocean or stream, lough or river. The water is bracing. Familiar. She glares at the guards as bucket after bucket is poured over her head, breaking her gaze only to rub the soap from her eyes.

“Better?” one maid asks the other.

“Good enough. Scrub ’er, ’e said. An’ we did. Let ’im do it next time if ’e wants.”

These girls are not yet twenty. Pockmarked but buxom. Little beauty to speak of. Yet they have figures that do the work for their faces. A hard life. This or the scullery, and they have better odds upstairs, where they might catch the eye of a guard. No doubt it has occurred to them that all women look the same in the dark.

At last, the guards turn away. Avert their eyes. They study the floor, no longer able to meet Grace’s unrelenting stare. It would have been easy enough for them to wait outside the door. But they are curious. News of “that woman from Connaught” has spread through the castle.

Grace steps out of the tub and the maids rub her down with rough towels. Dress her in unfamiliar clothes, but let her alone to lace her boots. The blade is still there, a familiar weight against her calf. They comb her hair again and leave it loose and damp around her shoulders. It is wild, curling in all directions, but softer too, streaked with silver. Fire and rain, Richard called it, the first time he noticed the change.

There is a knock at the door and the guards tell her that it is time, to put her wrists out.

“Is that bleeding necessary?” she asks, looking at the shackles. “Where have I to go?”

“Bingham’s orders.”

“And you’re afraid of women too, I take it? Worried I’ll overpower ye on the stairs?”

“Not likely,” he snorts, but the tip of his nose is pink from embarrassment.

He grabs her hands and fits the shackles to her wrists again, though not as tight as before, and at her waist instead of behind her back. The bracelets of raw skin ache immediately.

“This way,” he says.

The guards lead her through the door and down the hall. Two flights of stairs and then another door into the open courtyard, where the humming crowd has gathered.

She blinks against the sudden assault of sunlight. Her eyes water and when they clear she sees the mass of people. Two hundred, maybe more, crammed into the upper yard, straining to see the gallows. Men with small children on their shoulders. Women on tiptoe, pointing. There is something in the air, a frenetic energy. An excitement. She feels the humming along her skin, like a rash. Like bees ready to sting. The bloodlust of a public hanging.

Grace clenches her jaw. Lifts her chin. She tugs at the shackles and is pleased when her hand slides lower into the cuff. It will hurt, but it’s possible.