The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (8 page)

Come the foul weather—and the foul weather would always come—

there would be more lessons, these taught in a sterner voice, for these were lessons of life and death. I learned how to smell a storm on the way, the signs in the sky, on the wind, on the water. Even by the birds and fish.

When the wind howled and waves were moving mountains, threatening us every moment with destruction, Owen would take me below and lash me to his bed so I’d not be tossed about and injured. Later, when I was older, he ’d allow me topside, but lashed me to a fat mast, for he knew that if the sea ever claimed me in this way—if he were not also killed by the storm—he ’d surely be killed by my mother.

My father at the wheel had the look of a Fury, black mop of hair clingin’ wet to his skull, eyes blazing, spitting curses that he should be forced to do battle with his old friend the sea. I’d watch the brave sailors manning the decks, waves breakin’ over ’em, time and time again.

Owen’s courage and the steady hand of Providence would always protect us, and it was in those terrible storms I lost all fear of the water and came to see it as my home. You could say I was bred to the sea, and though there were times in my life when I was kept from her, the saltwater was always there in my blood.

Like I said, ’twas my father who taught me to fight. He ’d carved a couple of wooden swords—mine he ’d made to fit my small hand. He was skilled as a swordsman, but the size of him, and the passion with which he wielded his blade made him a deadly force to reckon with. Not havin’

Owen’s size I at least inherited his passion and became an able fighter, surprising more than a few men who crossed their swords with mine.

When we ’d dock in the foreign cities, I’d go down to my father’s cabin, open the cupboard holding my belongings, and strip off the garb of a cabin boy. I’d give myself a good scrub, wash the salt from my hair till it shone black again, and put on a pretty gown, likely somethin’ Spanish that my father’d bought me on the last trip, that I’d now grown into.

Owen’d take my hand and march me down the plank into town. He was so proud with me by his side. We ’d go round to the homes of the factors who purchased his goods for selling at a higher price. These were great villas filled with gorgeous wares and oddities from every corner of the world. There were the long teeth of elephants that I marveled at, skins of African horses with black and white stripes, tapestries from the east, bolts of silk in fabulous colors I never knew existed. There were walls full of weapons of every shape and size, curved scimitars and short daggers with jeweled handles. As I wandered round, peeking at these treasures, I could hear my father striking his deals with the factors. He always got the best price for his goods, hides and tallow, cloth and fish.

The more he made the more he ’d have to spend on wine—that commodity for which he was best known—to import back to Ireland.

But lest you think my whole childhood was spent aboard his ships or in exotic lands—though I would have been quite content had that been the case—the better part of my time was spent in Connaught, in one of my father’s castles near the sea, or in Clare Castle on an island of the same name.

Mind you, these were not castles as
you
know them, but four-square, storied keeps. They were built hundreds of years ago by O’Malley chieftains for strongholds against their enemies, and were truly impregnable.

Nothin’ but big gray stone boxes, you would think to see them. Tiny slits for windows—narrow as a skinny lad turned sideways—and only one door of the heaviest oak, girded with iron. The ground floor was a stable in winter, the second an armory, the third a storehouse and larder.

’Twas only on the topmost floor that the family lived, and in close quarters, to say the least. We were luckier than most, for Owen would bring back from his travels all manner of lovely things for my mother to outfit the place. Turkey carpets to warm the floor and cover the always damp stone walls. Draperies of heavy velvet, fine leather chests, and carven cupboards.

The winters in my father’s castles were a struggle for me, and I braved the weather, except at its fiercest, to be out of doors. For the great stone towers, surely the best in western Ireland, and even the
bawns
—the stone courtyards around them—were like prisons to a girl who knew the freedom of the sea. Whenever she could get her hands on me, my mother plied me with instructions on proper womanhood. I’d run a house or many houses of my own when I was grown and married, she insisted, and needed to learn the making of butter and buttermilk and candles.

How to spin and how to weave and how to doctor. I was interested in none of it, and I’d drive her mad with my inattention, or worse, my sloppy attempts at the given tasks. Invariably I would burn the oatcake—a near impossibility for anyone with half a brain. My mind would wander out the window to the near neighbors in their thatched cottages of wood and stone, to fields where the cattle grazed, but mostly to the gulls flyin’ past, remembering how on my father’s ship we would race with the birds through the waves . . . and I would overchurn the butter and ruin it.

The only joy I had in land-bound winters was my education. I learned my Irish letters quickly from my mother who, bless her soul, defied tradition and kept me home, rather than fosterin me out at the age of seven like most children. She taught me numbers too. And I could read by the time I was six. But ’twas at the Abbey of Murrisk that I received my wider education—the Latin—which my father had insisted I should get. The monks there tutored me, and though they were kind and finally grew to love me, they thought it mad to teach a little girl the likes of the Roman language. What good would it do me? they often asked my father. To tell the truth, Owen never offered much in the way of an answer, for it was
his
abbey, built by
his
ancestors, and the monks were there by his leave, under his protection. So they did as they were told and taught me Latin and tried their hardest to instill their religion in me. Their frustration on this last account was boundless, for my father was not a religious man in the Catholic sense, and my mother was an unapologetic pagan.

I thought a lot about Jesus Christ. Thought he was a great man who died a terrible death for our sins, but I kept in the deepest regions of my heart a love of the old goddesses of nature, and the warrior goddesses who were, to me, more heroic and exciting than Jesus was any day.

The summers were a sight better, for we moved—the lot of us—out-doors to my father’s booleys. These were makeshift structures, long and narrow, and thatched with rushes, built new each year and set in the midst of our upland pastures amongst our herds. Aye, we lived with our animals, somethin’ the English could never fathom. But it was a marvelous thing, livin’ so close to the land with the very beasts that were so great a source of our wealth. ’Twas very green and the weather soft, and the booley house smelled of fresh rushes. The women would spin and weave. And sometimes we ’d hunt with our hounds, or hawk with our falcons.

There were more serious days, when the Brehon judges would come round on their circuit of Connaught to hear the civil suits, and cases of crimes committed in my father’s territories. ’Twas our ancient Gaelic law that they practiced—the very one that the English and the Christian Church so abhorred and wished to destroy. They could never understand the leniency with which we punished our thieves and murderers.

The English like to flog a man to ribbons, cut off his hands, his head, rip out his very bowels for such offenses. And the Spanish Inquisition with its insane tortures and burnin’ people alive—quite unfathomable. Under native Irish law we demanded a payment of compensation that was equal to the crime, and paid to the family by the criminal—punishment enough. Or he lost his civil rights, became what we called an outlaw.

That was much more sensible, we thought, than common vengeance.

And the Church’s views on marriage were nothin’ short of ridiculous.

It had to be celebrated in public, and the marriage was
permanent,
for mercy’s sake. We preferred to do things more clandestinelike, for marriage, after all, is a personal affair. And after a year, if the man was not up to his wife ’s standards, she could boot him out the door. Say, “I divorce you!” and he was gone, just like that. Canon law did agree with native law in one respect. It said that a woman could own property. Nice, you say. Sure, so the woman could leave her property to the Church!

Hypocrisy, pure and simple. And the feckin’ clergy—they made whores of all women who would lay with a man she lusted after. What sense is there in that?

Most congenial, the booleying life, though never as exciting as the sea.

Sure you’ll be wondering, with all these cheerful stories, about the pirating, the profession of which I am a justly notorious member.

Indeed, I learned it from Owen O’Malley, who was himself a pirate of great renown. I have a memory of him, on a day when a shipful of Turkish pirates had tried their best to overcome us. There ’d been a moment of confusion when nobody knew who was boarding who, or on what boat the battle would be waged. Then I caught sight of my father, somethin’ I will never in my whole life forget. He was standin’ high on the rail, his sword outstretched, his black hair whippin’ in the wind. He was raving like a Fury, roaring a thousand oaths, and his men, borne up by his passion, with their cutlasses, pistols and swords, overswarmed that Turkish ship with their own cries and curses that curdled my very blood. He was a true pirate, Owen O’Malley was, though he plied the trade more of necessity than love, for he loathed the loss of his clansmen to violent death. But that was the price that his freedom demanded, and that was the price he paid. He
was
an opportunist though, exploited the finer opportunities when they went sailin’ past his nose. He never could resist seizing a ship for a fair prize.

There were loads of vessels in the local waters of course, comin’

from everywhere to trade in Galway City or on their way to Scotland, and the ones that paid him proper tribute he left alone. The others were fair game—a French sloop laden with wine and brandy, a Netherlands carrack with a load of Flanders linen. The other of his favorite marks were the English “privateers.” He found the whole notion laughable, really—merchants, or merchant adventurer families, who wished to profit from seafaring, not simply goin’ about their business like men, makin’ their way however they could and be done with it. No, they had to be thought
gentlemen,
honorable gentlemen. So they’d get a paper signed by their monarch—their “letter of marque,” which, for Jesus’

sake, gave them the title of privateer and
permission
to steal another man’s cargo. Worse, they had to hand over a portion of their hard-won booty to the king. Equally daft was your English League of Cinque Ports. Was it not established to protect the English Channel from pirates? It was. But in no time a’tall it had degenerated itself into a right league of cutthroats who protected their own ships and attacked everybody else! The whole thing was so mindbogglingly stupid to Owen O’Malley that he took the greatest delight in relievin’ the English of their cargoes every chance he got.

His fleet was large, and dependin’ on the hand of Providence in any given year, consisted of between twelve and twenty ships of every variety. Some had been in the family for generations, custom-built for us, others taken as prizes. So there were carracks and cogs and roundships thanks to the English and Dutch and French. These, with their huge hulls, we used for huge cargoes. But the Venetian galleys—now these were
fighting
ships—long and sleek and low, and they boasted both sails and oars. That was the key, the oars. A nimble galley could dance a jig round a cog or a carrack, all the while keepin’ safe from her broadside cannon, and firin’ at will.

So the galley was my father’s ship of choice for pirating. It goes without sayin’ that we were expert sailors and kept the lateen sails in perfect condition, but the beating heart of the galley were the oarsmen. All clan and no slaves, they were the toughest men I ever had the pleasure to know. Arms like oak limbs and big, handsome chests that you couldn’t take your eyes from. Thirty rows of sweeps, six men deep on an oar.

’Twas the greatest livin’ machine on earth, the galley was.

And my father was the greatest pirate.

One summer I remember best, I was twelve, no longer a girl, not yet a woman. My mother was in a state, naggin’ me to put on my Spanish gowns and act like a proper woman of my station, but of course I refused.

This particular year Gilleduff O’Flaherty and his family came to our booley for a visit. ’Twas strange and wonderful, the two sea kings so out of their element on land, comin’ together like two jolly giants, great bear hugs and backslaps, good-natured curses and laughter all at once. But there was talk of our two families bein’ joined in matrimony—me to that truculent rascal Donal O’Flaherty. I whispered to my mother that if I were forced to marry the snot-nosed little thug, I’d do as Brigid of Kil-dare had done when pressed to marry—thrust her finger into her eye, pullin’ it from the socket till it dangled from her cheek. Marriage, I thought. Me, a married woman. Impossible! And wife of a chieftain at that, for the truth was, my intended was
tanaist
of the O’Flaherty clan.

This meant that—as tradition dictated—when the current O’Flaherty chieftain died an election would be held by the
septs
for the title. It so happened that Donal’s father, Gilleduff, was not the high chieftain, but Gilleduff ’s brother, “Donal Crone” O’Flaherty, was. So the election of young Donal, while in this case expected, was never a foregone conclusion.

We Irish were alone, of all countries, in this way of choosing our leaders.

Everywhere else in the world ’tis a firstborn son who’s heir to the title—in England, your primogeniture—and no questions asked. But
tanaistry
was how the Irish chiefs were made, and it had always served us well.

Aside from wishin’ the ground would open up and swallow me whole to save me from Donal O’Flaherty, I remember a fierce debate that my father and Gilleduff had one afternoon sittin’ over the roast at the long booley table. They were talkin’ of King Henry the Eighth’s “Surrender and Regrant” program, a topic of unrivaled possibility for disagreement—a rare bounty for two men who’d give their right arms for a good argument.