Page 90 of The Pirate Queen

A boy, perhaps four years old. Richard bends down and picks him up. Confusion must register on her face, because he clears his throat and says, “My son, Edmund.”

Richard has never mentioned a son in any of his letters. The grief hits her first. Then anger. Then a sadness so deep she thinks that it must be connected—on some level at least—to the loss of her father. There is no other explanation for so many emotions all at once. And they must be racing across her face, because Richard’s eyes seem to follow them and his expression falls.

Grace forces herself to smile but it does not reach her eyes. And what reason does she have to be upset? Theirs was a romance that never had any real chance to bloom. Twenty years she has been off doing what was required of her. She had no right to think he would wait for her. And if he has a son, it means that he also has a wife somewhere in this crowd. But Grace does not have the heart for that introduction. Not today.

“I see that you have been busy as well,” she says, then shifts away from him and moves toward the endless line of mourners. One look over her shoulder, one nod of dismissal. “Richard.”

Matriarch, 1588

“The Spanish Armada”

Grace is fifty-eight years old

She has been dragging bodies off the beach since dawn. Thirty-seven drowned men. It’s the living Spaniards that are cause for concern, however. Just over one hundred wary, waterlogged sailors, some of them injured, others ready to fight their way off Clare Island.

“They think we’re going to kill them,” Finn mutters as they drop the body of a squat man onto a patch of blooming sea spurrey. The dark foliage spills directly from a crevice in the rock, its delicate pink flowers scattering beneath the weight of the Spaniard’s corpse.

“We might yet,” she confesses.

“Might? Gráinne, we can’t let them—” Finn stops himself. Frowns. “Not with Bingham sniffing around.”

Grace studies the man at her feet. She has always thought that the drowned look surprised, their eyes frozen wide, as if it never occurred to them that the sea might swallow them whole.

Word had arrived in the night that the wreckage of a great square-rigged merchantman emblazoned with the name El Gran Grin had washed up on the shore a mile south of St. Brigid’s Abbey. Bodies were strewn as far as the eye could see, or so claimed the messenger. He must be nearsighted, because Grace thinks this a low number of casualties given the size of the Spanish ship.

“It’s a beast, Gráinne,” her messenger had said. “I counted twenty-eight guns.”

The long-rumored Spanish Armada had indeed set sail for England earlier that summer. They’d left Lisbon in July, rounded the Bay of Biscay, and entered the English Channel a week later. Skirmishes along the coast through early August. They’d been headed for Calais, to join forces with the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands. From there they had planned to launch a crushing attack on England. But the Spanish were caught unawares by English forces and scattered. They never reached London, never unleashed the planned assault. The entire Armada—almost one hundred and thirty ships carrying thirty thousand men—retreated into the North Sea to regroup. After rounding the northern coast of Scotland near the Orkney Islands, they turned southwest along the Irish coast, where they aimed to give England a wide berth, then return to Spain. But fate had other plans. And doesn’t Grace know how that feels? To be at the helm, to be certain of a destination, only to have the sea itself turn against her. Well, the Spanish, mighty though they are, were no match for Manannán and the storm he unleashed upon them. For a week now, word has spread of nearly three dozen ships wrecked along the Irish coast, from Ulster all along Connaught and into Munster. Already, they are calling the storm “the Protestant Wind.” And now she has all these damned Spaniards spluttering and coughing up seawater on her beach, looking at her men, waiting to be run through with a sword.

That would be the easier path. Bloodier—certainly—but easier.

When Grace agreed to the terms set forth by O’Neill and O’Donnell, she never once considered that the Spanish would wash up on Clare Island. El Gran Grin must be at least sixteen hundred tons. Like a great, fat tortoise, she squats broken and battered on the rocks, the tide licking at her exposed ribs. Men hang dead from the rigging, from the gunwale. Cargo scattered. Crates and barrels floating on the water, smacking against the ship, bobbing their way ashore.

She hears a man crying, another praying. Somewhere down the beach, a harsh laugh echoes off the rocks, the crazed kind of hysterics known only to those who have cheated death.

Grace stands observing the melee, hands on her hips, disapproval drawing her brows tighter as a man in a padded velvet doublet and breeches watches her with interest. Silk hose and leather boots. A soaked waist-length coat and a morion helmet. Their captain, she thinks.

Another few minutes and here he is trudging through the sand, two soldiers at his heels. He stops in front of Grace and she is mildly pleased to note that she must tilt her chin upward to meet his dark eyes. Even more pleased to see that they are warm and brown, with a heavy fringe of lashes. He is handsome, and he knows it. There was a time when she would have warmed to such a face, perhaps even taken pity or—in her weakest moments—taken interest. But Grace has long since learned her lesson with shipwrecked men. When his smile fails to have an obvious effect on her, he schools his expression into a look of deference.

He bows slightly, then taps a finger to his chest. “Comandante.”

She mimics the gesture. “Capitán.”

“Español?” His face brightens.

She holds her thumb and forefinger in a small pinching gesture and shakes her head. “Un poquito.”

“Mi nombre es Don Pedro de Mendoza.”

She smiles at this parley. “Gráinne Ní Mháille.”

“Amiga?” he asks, and there is a hopefulness in his tone that makes her wince.

Her lips tighten into a hard line. She shrugs.

“Gráinne!”

Grace turns to watch Gutty jog down the beach toward them. He arrives at her side, panting. He wipes a sleeve across his brow and glares at Commander Mendoza. “What are you doing?” he demands.