Page 23 of The Pirate Queen

She looks up at her father. “It doesn’t have to be my friend for it to be mine.”

It could be the motion of the boat—the wind has picked up, and the ropes are groaning all around her—but she thinks Eóin stumbles back a step in surprise.

Gráinne never asks to go to the cabin. Not when the wind howls in earnest or when the rain begins to hammer the deck like stinging needles. Not when Niamh lists portside or when sheets of water stream off the sails and down the back of her dress. She doesn’t cry and she doesn’t beg, even though Eóin sees her small body shiver in the cold and her lips turn blue. She holds to that rope as though it is the only thing tethering her to this world. But she does it with a wild grin on her face.

He has never been more afraid in his life.

And not because this damn storm is blowing a hooley.

It is little more than bluster and rage—a bit of ocean, showing off on command. He is grateful that his instincts were correct. They’ll all be wet enough to rust by the time night falls. But no harm will befall anyone on board Niamh today. They call this Mother Nature, but they are wrong. Oh, not about her being female. That’s true enough. Nature is a right cruel bitch. But she isn’t your mother—she’s an old lover and she intends to make you pay for your indifference. Bed her once and she’ll punish you for the rest of your life.

Eóin O’Malley, Chief of the Name, is afraid because his daughter is not. And he’s wagered everything on this. He needs her to be a noblewoman. He needs her to stay ashore and build his family name, to give him grandchildren. What he doesn’t need is for her to take after him. That he wants from Donal. And why wouldn’t he? Isn’t that what sons are for? But no. The boy sits five rows back, crying like a pup. And don’t tell him it’s the rain streaming down his son’s face. He knows the difference between rain and tears. The boy is weeping and the girl is laughing and Eóin—damn it—has only one option left.

“Make it worse for her,” he tells Sivney once he’s left Grace in the prow.

The first mate spits his disgust. “She’s only a wee thing.”

“A stubborn wee thing who is not scared enough.”

“I do wonder where she gets that from?”

“Her mother, no doubt. For I still have every ounce of the fear I was born with.” Eóin turns his glower toward Sivney. “You’ll do it. Or I’ll toss you in the drink myself.”

Sivney spits again, then roars at the men, “Manannán is in a foul mood today, lads! He must be in want of a song!”

Laughter and hooting. Then, somewhere midship, a deep baritone voice rises above the wind with a bawdy limerick.

A rooster residing in Spain

Used to diddle his hens in the rain.

“I give them a bloody

Good time when it’s muddy:

which keeps them from getting too vain!”

The deck is flooded with whistles and hoots and the kind of beer garden jaw he’s heard only in taverns and back alleys. But still, it’s not enough.

“They’re holding back,” Eóin says. “Make it worse.”

Sivney looks scandalized now, but he’s been given his orders. And if his offering doesn’t make Manannán blush, it does make Eóin shift uncomfortably as he watches his daughter’s bright hair whip in the wind:

Should a fellow discover some night

A girl’s body in bed, it’s all right.

He should think it good luck,

And accept the free fuck—

He will bugger her too, if he’s bright.

One after another, the men on board Niamh call out the dirtiest limericks they know. But Gráinne never cries—not when the sky darkens to a menacing slate, or when the chalk-tipped waves crash against the bulwarks. She does not turn from her place in the prow as they sail like hellions into the dusk.

Eóin promised not to let his daughter die. And she’s not been in any real danger since they set out from Clare. But she is freezing and hungry and shaking like a reed in the hissing, spitting wind. So he picks her up and carries her toward the cabin. He grabs Donal on the way for good measure, and neither of them argues.

Niamh is long and slender and shallow. Eóin has gotten the most out of her, even though the Spanish shipbuilders told him it wasn’t possible. One hundred sixty-four feet long and twenty feet wide, with two floors below deck. He needed her shallow and agile to navigate the islands and sounds of Clew Bay, but he also needed to transport his wares not just to Galway, but to England, Spain, and Portugal as well. He needed space. And he got it. Enough for men and goods. Below main deck is the galley and berth—large enough for two hundred men standing, or one hundred in hammocks. And below that, not tall enough for a grown man to stand, is the cargo hold. Nary a square inch to spare, so packed is it with barrels of fish and tallow along with piles of deerskin and hundreds of bolts of frieze cloth. There’s no space to turn around in the hold, nor any room to breathe.