The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (18 page)

In my mind, my men and I coasted the shores of Africa’s bulge and I watched through the spyglass to find the stone pillars that Diego Cão had erected as signposts on his six-thousand-mile voyage south. Or like Bartholomeu Dias, find the Cape of Good Hope by chance, after a thirteen-day gale. If I was lucky I might persuade the crews to do what Vasco da Gama had done—leave the reassuring coastline, and allowing the southeast trades to belly his sails, and guided only by the stars and his instruments, head into the heart of the mid-Atlantic, finally to bear east round the Cape and north to India, land of spice and silk. I was comin’ to believe that these were not impossible dreams. That we could go adventuring as no other Irish before us had gone.

We ’d not been at sea a month when I found myself rushing to the rail to heave my guts out. I was pregnant, and that was a rude shock, I can tell you. Sure I’d been sharin’ a bed with Richard Burke, but I thought I was far past childbearing age, a grandmother and all. The crew were delighted, for it gave them fuel for their teasing, and the larger my belly, the sharper their jibes. “No need for a milk cow aboard!” they’d cry.

“We ’ll use Grace for an anchor!”

I, on the other hand, was most unhappy. For Jesus’ sake, I’d just regained my freedom, and had no desire for a whimpering child at my breast, especially Richard’s child. If the little creature proved anything like his father, I was bound to loathe it entirely. There was no chance of sailin’ to India now, for I would not put the babe in danger, and wished it to be born in Ireland.

But the journey, more modest than my grandiose dreams, was more than pleasant. I found a new factor in Lisbon who was wild for my tanned hides and gave me a good price. We made prizes of several vessels—French, English, Flemish, even a Venetian galley, and our holds were soon piled high with rich booty.

Then, halfway up the coast from Cadiz, just south of Lisbon, we were beset by such a sudden and violent hurricane of wind that before we could brace ourselves, the seas had raised mountainous high. As they broke, the white spray comin’ off them looked like nothin’ so much as
snow
on their moving slopes. Sight of the other ships in the fleet was lost, all except a glimpse here and there between the waves. Our decks were awash, so we pumped and bailed, hoping the squall would go as quick as it had come. But still the winds mounted, screaming somethin’ terrible, and men began to pray for themselves and their cousins in the other boats, and so did I—to Jesus and the goddesses of Ireland and the great gods of the sea.

Then, as a strange answer to our prayers, we were struck by a monster wave that in the space of a breath swept over the deck entirely and set us all a-swimming. When we came to our senses, we saw it had raked us so violent like that it’d snapped the mainmast and bowsprit, and washed them overboard, bower anchors and several forward cannon with them.

Someone called from below that a gaping hole had opened in the side of the ship, and the sea was pouring in. I rushed below to see the disaster with my own eyes. The water was icy and waist deep, and me with my swollen belly waded slow and clumsy to the trouble. Several men tied by their waists with long ropes, and fighting the sea beating over ’em through the open hole, with hammers and canvas were nailing the cloth over it. Others were manning the pumps. They were doin’ their best, and no need for orders, so I shouted my prayers for success into the roaring chaos and started back to the deck.

In truth I thought we were lost, that the Fates had decided that on this day, in this ocean, I and the O’Malley fleet, and Richard Burke ’s unborn child, would meet their end. But of course I was wrong. The winds died very sudden like and it fell calm, as though our prayers had taken a wee while to reach the ears of the gods, but once heard were deemed worthy.

Looking down they thought, “Well, somethin’ better be done quick or we ’ll lose those O’Malleys and O’Flahertys, and it’s not their time to go just yet.”

The snowy mountains of water vanished and now I could see my fleet. All five of the other ships had survived, though well battered they were, trying to limp toward the
Dorcas
as best they could with missing oars and masts and rudders and ripped sails. Lucky that most of ’em were galleys, so at least we were not altogether bereft of propulsion.

My cabin was half destroyed, but I’d learned from Owen that the things one valued most should be stored in the highest place, and so my maps and rutters and instruments were saved, and even the blue dress that I’d stowed in a chest on a high shelf.

The fleet had rowed within shouting distance of the
Dorcas,
and we called to one another our losses. Twelve men had been killed. Our stores of provisions and water were all but destroyed, most by seawater, but some by rats. ’Twas found that the little devils had gnawed off the tops of the jars of biscuit and bread, eaten them, and with no way of escaping, had died in the jars. The hen coops with all their birds had been swept off the decks of all but one of our boats, and the poor remaining fowl were bedraggled and half dead. What with the damage to the ships themselves, we ’d been much disabled by the storm, and the coast of Portugal was nowhere in sight.

When, six days later, the mate called from the crow’s nest that he ’d spotted land we all fell down on our knees and gave thanks to Jesus for savin’ us, though they added a blessing for me, their captain, who had also had a hand in their salvation. It took near two months in Vigo to careen the ships, repair, and provision them, and by the time we were ready to sail, I was burstin’ the seams with Richard Burke ’s baby. We made haste for home so the child could be born there, but that was not the way ’twas to be.

We were two days out of port, hugging the coast of northern Spain, in the Bay of Biscay, when I was brought to bed. Lucky for me, Seamus O’Flaherty had found love in Vigo—a young prostitute named Margarita, with raven hair and violet eyes. He ’d stolen her from her brothel and brought her aboard the
Dorcas
the night before we ’d sailed, and I’d kept her in the cabin with me, there bein’ no place with Seamus in his quarters with the other men. She proved a lovely girl and, happy for me, a midwife of sorts. She said she ’d delivered three whores’ children and they’d all lived.

She was good to her word, Margarita was, for I surely would have died and the child too, had it not been for her skilled hands. The boy chose, like I had done before him, to be born feetfirst, his little arms outstretched like Christ on his cross. These would have torn me apart entirely had the girl not reached inside and pulled the wee limbs down.

When young Theobald Burke—“Tibbot” for short—let out his first wail with lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows, I heard a great cry go up from outside my cabin door and knew the crew’d been there all the time, perfectly quiet, waitin’ for the good news.

Then the strangest thing happened. Margarita placed the clean and swaddled babe to my breast and all at once I felt a rush of joy like a great wave overtakin’ me. I’d not felt such a thing at the births of my other babes. I looked on Tibbot’s face, red and wrinkled like a little monkey, and I fell in love—just like that. That he was Richard Burke ’s son no longer mattered, nor that I hadn’t wanted him a’tall, nor that he ’d nearly killed me on the way out. There was somethin’ unexplainable in my heart, which was just about bursting. Within hours Molly the parrot was cooing sweetly, and so it was I heard the softness that had come into my
own
voice.

There was celebratin’ on the deck that night, and from the sound of it, most of the crew were in as drunken a pickle as can be imagined. I’d sent Margarita topside for a night with Seamus, and I fell asleep with my boy snuggled to my heart.

I awoke, to my horror, to the sound of commotion on deck, and no celebration, this. There were shouts, a woman’s scream, running feet, and last the sound of sword on sword. We ’d been boarded, that was for sure—and for the first time in my life I lay paralyzed, torn apart at the middle, with a helpless babe in my arms and a crew above me, best that I could tell, in a drunken stupor.

Just then the door flew open and I beheld my mate, face white as Flanders linen, and half his arm gone from his body. “Turks!” he cried, and fell in a dead heap.

Well, what could I do? I crawled out of my bunk with Tibbot, who was screamin’ blue murder. I quick wrapped him in a blanket and made for the galley, stowing him in a drawer with pots and pans, worried that the first place the Turks would plunder would be the captain’s cabin. I cursed God then for havin’ to leave my child like that—perhaps to go to my death, and he, if captured, to his own. Or worse, a life of slavery. A terrible pain in my lower parts sliced through me, but there was no time for it. Grabbin’ a sword I made my way down the hall and up the steps to the deck.

Thank Jesus it was light—just after dawn—and I could see the mayhem goin’ on, the air filled with grunts and shrieks, the sharp clanking of metal on metal. My crew was gettin’ the worst of it, those damned Barbary pirates—all strangers to drunkenness—completely sober, while the Irish were fighting leaderless without me, and hungover in the extreme. I had to do somethin’, and I had to do it fast.

Standing still unnoticed in the doorway I searched, desperate in the chaos, for their captain. With Mohommetans, he was always the most richly dressed, with a tall, feathered turban on his head. I spotted the turban first and the back of his fine silk tunic—he was fighting on the deck with two of my men, wielding his sword with terrible fierceness. I stepped out into the mornin’ with no thought in my head but to rally my crew and save the ship. I strode across the gore-slick boards, fights on every side of me, cryin’ out for the Heavens to hear, “Your captain’s on deck, and with God is behind you!”

At the sound of a woman’s voice shouting above the mêllée, that captain turned and looked at me. He was a thin, hawk-nosed creature, not overlarge, but quick and wiry. He stared in disbelief at the wild-haired female in her shift, but he saw the sword in my hand and with a cry to Allah came flyin’ at me. ’Twas only my equal speed in turning away that left his blade stuck hard in the mast. I lunged in that moment of opportunity, but he ducked low and quick lunged back at me with a smallsword.

I could see him shocked and cursing that I was a woman—a
female infidel
—meetin’ him thrust for thrust.

Thus we fought, my advantage a full sword and an upsurge of a mother’s protective passion. His, prodigious skill and a man’s greater strength. ’Twould have been fine had he not swiveled, retrieving his sword from the mast. Now he was doubly armed, and as I fell back under his assault I struck my head on the lintel of the door above the stairs going below. I tumbled down the steps, cryin’ out as my ribs cracked, the breath knocked out of me. I’d lost my sword and ’twas all I could do to crawl to my cabin, hopin’ to make it there before that pirate captain followed me in. The door was still open from my hasty exit, and as I crossed the threshold on my hands and knees I heard his footsteps clompin’

down the stairs. A gun was stored in a cabinet ’neath my bed, and I caught a glimpse of Molly, her head cocked sidewise as she eyed my frenzied attempts at opening the warped drawer.

I heard a laugh then, for the damn turbaned Turk was standing in the doorway lookin’ down at the pathetic sight that was me—a crazed woman, naked under a bloodied shift, just cryin’ out to be raped. He dropped his longsword and, keeping the short one in hand, undid his breeches, at the same time movin’ across the threshold and into my cabin.

Well, that was when it happened. That small green demon from Hell exploded off her perch, all beak and claw and flapping wing. She went straight for the face, Molly did. He never knew what hit him, but his shrieks were wonderful to hear, and by the time he ’d regained sense enough to wrench the parrot off his face, she ’d taken out his eye. She was busy biting the hands that held her, and I knew the pirate ’s shock was wearin’ off, so I quick wrenched open the cabinet and grabbed the blunderbuss. I heard Molly screech once before I turned and fired point-blank, blowing a great gaping hole in the Turk’s chest. Well, the recoil from that hammered my poor belly somethin’ fierce, and then the dead Turk fell hard and heavy on top of me. I blacked out from the pain and, dead to the world, never came to till the next day.

I awoke to the feel of Tibbot gnawin’ at my nipple, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself cleaned up and snug in my bunk. The first thing I saw was Molly’s empty perch. It all came back to me and the sight wrenched a sob from my throat. I’d like to tell you why that parrot saved my life, for I thought she hated me. And in truth I’d not been altogether fond of her. But she was a hero nonetheless and was buried at sea with honors like the rest of our mates. Twenty-two of us were lost and we mourned them, but all agreed ’twas a blessing that Seamus O’Flaherty had been one of the dead, for his sweet Margarita had been taken by the Barbary pirates, and now faced a terrible fate. Sad and sobered and shorn of our profits and treasures, the fleet sailed home.

The Ireland I found there was one I had never known, torn apart by rebellion and famine and plague. And the English had come in their numbers. Soldiers and settlers swarmed like locusts over the land—people who despised us, believed us to be wicked and filthy and godless.

They began, with great enthusiasm, stealing that which had been ours for a thousand years.

I’d like nothing more than to place the blame—all of it—on England ’s back, but that would be unfair, for ’twas the Irish chiefs themselves, petty and squabbling and disorderly, who gave our enemies so great an opportunity. They had hated Gerald, the Earl of Desmond, coveted his enormous wealth and lands in Munster, and cheered his fall and imprisonment. But this allowed for Carew’s armies and plantations to take hold in the south, made the blighted Englishman bold.

Peter Carew was a horse ’s arse, ignorant and mindlessly cruel. His first mistake was filling his army’s ranks with
bonaughts,
the lowest of the low of Irish society.
Bonaughts
are mercenaries and so will fight even against their own, but these men were worse. Scum, outcasts of their clans, drifters, entirely uncontrollable under anyone’s command.