Page 33 of The Pirate Queen

“Rained last night,” he mutters. “Hard to walk in this stew.”

Then he’s off and Grace is following, easier now that she only has one child to lug.

“And what about you?” she asks.

“What about me?”

“Do you have any bábs of your own?”

He glances over his shoulder. Gives her a devious grin. “I amn’t married,” he says.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

He turns away and Grace can’t see the expression on his face. He shakes his head and pats Eóin’s leg. “No bábs for me. Not yet.”

Eóin looks down at her from his perch on Richard’s shoulder, his eyes wide unblinking moons. Confused but happy. Once they are out of the muddy slop, Richard pretends to stumble and wobbles Eóin in his arms, like he’s about to drop the boy on his head. But then he rights himself and laughs. Bounces Young Eóin just a bit on his shoulders and her son grins in delight. Begs him to do it again. And so they make their way up the slope toward a large grouping of brown tents at the wooded edge.

Grace sees her mother first; then her father comes around from behind the tent. Pauses. Lifts a hand to shield the sun from his eyes. Then he’s striding toward them, arms spread open.

“Daideo!” Eóin screams and he’s on the ground now, running toward his grandfather.

But where is Richard?

Grace turns in a half circle looking for him, only to find that he is already marching back down the slope. She opens her mouth to call after him, to thank him, but thinks better of it at the last moment. But he raises his arm without looking back and flicks his wrist in a half wave, as though he can feel her gaze and her intent. Little Margaret is scooped out of her arms, and she is pinned between her parents in a crushing hug.

It isn’t the wild landscape of Clare Island, but it is as close to home as she has been in years. And if not for the ache she feels watching Richard march down the hill, she would be utterly content.

It rains in the night, but the skies are clear by morning and Grace wakes to the sound of drums in the distance. And then she hears the fife, followed by the agonized wheezing of pipes joining the fray.

So the games begin.

What time is it now, anyway? She sees the glow of sunlight through the tent, higher than expected. Grace cannot remember the last time she woke after sunrise. The children are with her parents in the O’Malley camp—she could not have pried them loose had she wanted to—and, given the look of her bedcovers, her husband never returned to the tent last night. Well enough. She didn’t want him pawing at her anyway, not that this swollen belly gives him much encouragement these days.

No doubt her husband has been out carousing with his dissolute cousin Rory. They behave more like brothers, always scheming or fighting. Her husband, at least, is not so ugly as Rory, with his mean eyes and potbelly. She has always found Rory to be the kind of man who ogles and thinks you don’t notice. It will be a happy trip if she does not speak with him at all.

Grace looks down at what little she can see of her lap. She thinks three months, maybe less, before the báb arrives, and then sleep will be gone again for another year, burned away like mist at sunrise.

She yawns. Stretches. Then begins the cumbersome process of dressing herself. Boots first, as always, and she sees that Cook’s old kitchen knife is tucked in safely.

Richard is here.

The thought settles as she works the comb through her hair. It doesn’t matter, she has to remind herself. He is not yours, he has never been yours.

When she pushes through the flap of her tent, she finds the lakeshore in chaos. Campfires everywhere. The smell of oats and bacon and last night’s dinner reheated in iron pots. By the looks of those around her, last night’s drink is still heavy in their stomachs. Grace steps back as a man stumbles across her path, then curses as another bumps into her from behind.

The entire western shore of Lough Corrib is littered with tents, from the water’s edge up the hill heading toward Moycullen. The fields are muddy and trampled; the spectators more so. She has never seen so many dirty, happy children in her life—chasing one another with sticks, eating their breakfast as they run.

The air smells of rain and cookfires, stale whiskey, and burdock that has been crushed underfoot. Grace spins in a small circle looking for Gutty. And there he is, sweating over the coals as he throws another turve of peat onto the flames.

“Hungry?” he asks.

She pats her belly and feels a small bump of greeting against her ribs. “The báb is, at least.”

He tilts his head. “A boy?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You look the way you did with Young Eóin.”