Page 46 of The Pirate Queen

Grace goes up the ladder and Gutty follows and once she’s over the gunwale, she watches Hook row himself back to Saoirse.

Grace nods to the Murray twins and the taciturn bastards nod back, looking utterly bored.

Ultan doesn’t greet her either. Doesn’t embrace her. But her first mate does look her over, head to foot, assessing for illness or injury. Seeing none, he nods. “The weather is turning,” he says. “Might take a week to get home.”

“We aren’t going home just yet,” she tells him.

Today, standing on the deck of Niamh in the bright sun, she realizes he is old. That she is old too. They have grown old together, on this boat. His face could be a map, for all the lines drawn there on his leathered skin. What little hair he has left is silver. Grace wonders if that is how she looks to him, if the geography of her years is as evident on her own face.

“Where to, then, Captain?” Ultan asks.

“To visit an old friend.”

Gutty, Ultan, and the Murray twins keep close to Grace as they approach the gates of Howth Castle. The regal Norman fortress sits on the other side of a fortified wall, the pale stone towers rising three stories above them. They had rowed down the River Liffey into Dublin Bay, then around Howth Head keeping an eye out for scouts but hadn’t seen any, and now Niamh is docked at the pier half a mile away with the rest of her crew on board to guard.

“Are you sure about this?” Ultan whispers into her ear.

He and Gutty flank her while the twins walk one in front and the other behind. Each has their hand on the hilt of a dagger, eyes searching for danger.

“Do I stink?” she asks.

He wrinkles his nose. “Bad enough to make an onion cry.”

Grace laughs. “Then yes, I am sure about this. Trust me.”

On her other side, Gutty snorts. “We did trust you. The last time. And look where that got us.”

“It must have been terrible for you,” she says dryly, “not being locked up in Dublin Castle.”

“That’s not fair,” Ultan says. “The boy’s been beside himself all these months.”

“Forty-eight years old, wrinkles deep as a fecking fjord, and they still call me a boy,” Gutty grumbles.

The castle gates are open and guards stand on either side, eyeing them warily as they approach in a defensive formation.

“What business have ye?” the first guard asks.

Grace offers him the bright flash of a ready smile. “I am here to see Lord Howth. Is he in residence?” When the guard simply glares at her without responding, she adds, “Sir Christopher St. Lawrence.”

“Which one?” he asks begrudgingly.

“The elder. Though I am quite keen on seeing the younger as well. It has been ten years.”

The first guard looks them up and down, assessing their disreputable state. He frowns, then opens his mouth to send them away, but is elbowed by his companion.

“You know the orders,” the other guard says.

“Who may I ask is calling?” the first demands.

“Tell Lord Howth that Grace O’Malley has come to make good on his promise.”

The very fact of her name has both guards snapping straight, chins lifted, eyes sharp.

“Please wait here,” the first tells them, then turns on his heel and nearly bolts for the wide steps that lead to the castle entrance.

Grace leans forward and looks through the gates. “I have never seen the courtyard before. It’s bigger than I expected. I didn’t get so far the last time I was here,” she says to no one in particular, taking in the great square expanse with a gravel path and cut grass. Rosebushes line the inner walls, still boasting a flurry of blooms, all of them pink. It smells of a perfumery and she is grateful for the distraction from her own stench.

“It’s really you?” the second guard asks.