Page 76 of The Pirate Queen

“She isn’t your friend, Donal,” Aisling says.

He steps backward, boots in one hand, latch in the other. He pulls the door shut and it closes on his mother with a click.

“She’s the only friend I have,” he whispers.

Grace doesn’t know what to say, so she asks the first question that comes to mind. “Where’s Éamon?”

Donal shrugs. “Didn’t come home last night. Doesn’t come home most nights.”

“Would she have done that if he—”

“No. He would have beaten her for it. Then he would have beaten me for trying to stop him.”

“Does Da know?”

“He would kill Éamon for setting a hand on me. And if Éamon dies, there’s no one left to feed my mother. We make do.”

Grace sees Donal bracing himself for a wave of pity, but then he gasps.

“You’re bleeding.”

She lays a hand to her neck, then looks at the smear of blood on her fingers. “Not much.”

“I am sorry.”

“You can’t stop her from hating me.”

“No,” he says. “But I should have stopped her from hurting you.”

Donal bends over to tie his boots. The dog comes to press its wet nose against his hand. He kneels and rubs its ears, its belly. He whispers kind words into its ear, then pulls a bit of dried meat from his pocket and feeds the big hairy mutt.

“What’s its name?”

“Bran.”

“Why’s he tied up?”

“Éamon hates him. Says he’s tired of seeing Bran run around the village.”

“Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Nothing is fair,” he says, sounding much like their father.

They stand together looking at the dog, and she thinks Donal might cry.

Grace kneels, then slides a hand under her skirt, along the outside of her left leg, and draws out Cook’s old knife. She lifts Bran’s rope, looking for the place he’s gnawed. Then she begins to saw roughly so the rope frays, so it looks to be the work of teeth instead of steel.

The dog doesn’t know he’s free. He just sits there, watching her with those sad eyes while she unties the rope around his neck. She hands it to Donal. “When we get to the tower house, burn this.”

“What about Bran?”

“We’ll take him to the byre. Keep him with the sheep. He can earn his keep there.”

The sun is up now, and drops of dew are bright in the cobwebs that line the hedgerows, little crystalline palaces built by the garden spiders and orb weavers that live amongst the leaves.

“Why did Da send for me?”

“I don’t know,” she says.