Page 80 of The Pirate Queen

Mother, 1565

“The O’Malley”

Grace is thirty-five years old

The sun is a bloody disk dropping toward the horizon when Clare Island comes into view. A cry of relief goes up from the handful of O’Flaherty farmers and cottiers who spent the voyage on deck. Most, however, have chosen to hide below, crammed in amongst The Mary Fortune’s purloined cargo.

Grace is amused by those who dislike sailing. Who mistrust the ocean. Who toss their stomachs after mere moments on board. Murray, as usual, is one of them.

“I’ve never understood why you hate this,” she tells him, then turns her face to the sky and throws her arms wide.

“It hates me,” Murray says, then grinds his teeth together. He curses as they crest a wave. “Unnatural, isn’t it?”

“What could be more natural than the ocean?”

“Staying on land. Where we belong.” He shakes his head. “The sea isn’t meant for us, Gráinne.”

“Why?”

“Tastes bad. Too big. Countless things in there that want to kill me.”

“Nothing wants to kill you, Murray.”

“I can feel the damn thing plotting my death right now.”

If he wasn’t so utterly seasick, she would have thought he was trying to be funny. But this voyage—same as all the others Murray has undertaken at her command—has left him miserable, and she would banish him belowdecks if that didn’t make his nausea worse. So he loiters on deck, useless, irritating her with his gagging and moaning.

But now they are almost home. These familiar waters settle her mind, ease the tightness in her chest.

Beside her, Finn laughs suddenly.

Grace is so startled by the sound that she turns to him.

He scratches at his chin, still chuckling. “What was it you told the crew of The Mary Fortune when we boarded her on Lough Corrib?” he asks, patting the gunwale like some affectionate father. “That they could keep the ship, the cargo, or their lives?”

“You think it funny? They certainly didn’t laugh.”

The poor inexperienced crew of The Mary Fortune had thrown up their hands in surrender and let themselves be bound and taken below. Only once they’d made it through Galway Harbor had Grace brought them back on deck, where they’d been released and the whole lot of them dove into the water and swam for shore.

“Why give them a choice?”

“ ’Tis what my father does,” she says with a shrug.

Grace turns back to the dark hulking form of Clare Island and shifts the tiller so they begin their tack around the northwestern shoreline. The sandstone and shale cliffs look like jagged teeth rising from the sea, ready to snag any errant ship and chew it to pieces. Perhaps Murray isn’t so strange in his distrust of sailing, after all.

“Had you taken a ship before this one?” Finn asks.

“Never taken, only boarded. And not for many years.”

“Then how did you know it would work?”

“It always works,” she says, then thinks of something her father told her during that first raid. “As long as you’re willing to follow through.”

“So if they had chosen the ship or the cargo?”

Grace shrugs. “ ’Tis a good thing they opted for their lives.”

The Mary Fortune is a decent vessel, though fat and shallow. Meant for hauling cargo across vast stretches of open water instead of nimbly maneuvering the tides, sandbars, and scattered islands of western Connaught. It has taken twenty hours to make the voyage from Bunowen. And while Grace is thankful for the great lumbering whale, it feels strange to be at this helm. Ill-fitting. Like wearing someone else’s boots. But, she thinks, with a few modifications, it will be a fine addition to the fleet.