The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (5 page)

Shite! She looked ridiculous. What in the name of God was she doing in
an English gown?
Grace grabbed her wool chieftain’s cloak from its peg and threw the long, sleeveless garment over one shoulder. The
brat
was a soft sea green and well worn, but the brown fur that trimmed it was still thick and beautiful. And it was Irish, by God. Traditional. With a sudden inspiration she flung open the studded leather chest on the shelf above her narrow bed. The solid-gold brooch she removed from it filled her entire hand and was heavy as a rock. The design, she thought with satisfaction, was clearly Spanish. It shouted out its origins—King Philip’s Treasure Fleet from the New World. Aye, thought Grace as she fastened the cape together at one shoulder, leaving her bodice partially exposed, let Elizabeth be reminded of the Spanish presence in Ireland. Let her squirm a bit.

She reached again into the chest and considered a pair of Egyptian gold ear bobs. There was something pagan about the style—to the stilted English eyes, she thought, even barbaric. She smiled as she put them on. Sure the meeting was an important one, but there was no reason she should not amuse herself at her enemy’s expense. Now the image that peered back at Grace satisfied her. Perhaps she wasn’t terrifying, as the reputation preceding her was bound to be, but she was striking, even distinguished.

This occasion, she thought, was long overdue. All the other great clan chiefs of Ireland knew the Queen of England personally. “Black Tom Butler”—known as the Earl of Ormond here—was treated as family, and spent as much time on English soil as Irish. Gerald Fitzgerald, God curse his blighted soul, the queen’s so-called earl of Desmond, before his misbegotten Munster rebellion had spent seven years in the Tower of London, all the while his wife Elizabeth’s confidante. And then there was The O’Neill. Raised in Sir Henry Sidney’s English country house, Hugh O’Neill had surrendered to the queen and, after helping to put down the Desmond rebellion, had assumed the earldom of Tyrone.

He ’d treated with the English on many occasions, but had broken most of the treaties he had made. His loyalties, despite outward appearances, had always been very clearly with Ireland.

What would her father think to see her gotten up like the dog’s dinner for this occasion? He would think it momentous to be sure, though he ’d caution against any hint of groveling. After all, he ’d never groveled to the queen’s father. Whilst all the other chieftains had succumbed to King Henry’s nonsense—surrendering their allegiance to England, giving up the old ways and the Brehon laws, to be given in return their very own lands back to them, and an English title that everyone knew was phony as the year was long—Grace ’s father had refused to budge. ’Twas a clear fake, this Surrender and Regrant program, for all knew full well how reviled were her countrymen. To the English they were savages.

Scum. White monkeys. “The Wild Irish.” The policy, Owen had lamented, had appealed to the worst in the clan chiefs’ natures. Had wreaked more havoc with Ireland than any could remember. But Owen O’Malley had clung steadfastly to the old Gaelic ways and refused to add a title to his name.

Grace had herself, many years before, allowed her husband to submit to Henry Sidney, but it had been for expediency’s sake. And she had never taken an English title. In fact, she thought with a small smile as she pushed open her cabin door, she ’d not even taken her husbands’ names after she ’d married. Grace O’Malley she ’d been born, and Grace O’Malley she would die.

She was ready to meet the queen, she thought as she climbed to the deck, already bathed in evening shadows. She had come with a purpose and meant to have her way, no matter what it took. Lives were at stake here, and she would accept nothing short of success.

THE AUDIENCE had been hastily thrown together, but the gathering in the Presence Chamber, decided Essex, was a distinguished one nonetheless. He ’d rounded up the Earl of Ormond and sent frantic and no doubt mysterious messages to Southampton and Francis Bacon to attend him at Court immediately. They were just now taking their places with the other courtiers along one wall of the wood-paneled chamber, as Elizabeth’s waiting ladies took theirs along the other.

Katherine Bridges was amongst the women, coyly attempting to catch his eye, but he only answered with a brief nod before turning back to the business at hand. It would be unseemly, he knew, to appear to be flirting with his mistress so soon after Elizabeth’s admonition to seriousness.

The queen, seated on a small throne, was looking altogether severe, though Essex knew there was excitement seething beneath the chilly facade. Leaning down to whisper in her ear, his hunched back grotesquely exaggerated in this posture, Robert Cecil appeared a living gargoyle. How, wondered Essex, could she bear such a creature so close to her?

Then again, he realized, this was not the first time she had taken a fancy to a warped, disfigured man. The queen had been engaged for eight years to the French dauphin. The Duke of Alençon—she ’d called him “my frog”—had been short, pockmarked, and misshapen, and although the long engagement had most certainly been for show, she had truly seemed fond of the little troll.

The tall double doors were pulled open, and with a trumpet fanfare that Elizabeth had expressly requested for her unusual guest, the rebel woman Grace O’Malley strode into the chamber.

Indeed, thought Essex, she was
striding
. He ’d seen no other woman but Elizabeth use such a forceful gait, exude such a presence. Grace was tall—perhaps a hand taller than the queen—but whilst Elizabeth was straight and as thin as a rail, her visitor, he could see, was full-bodied, with rounded breasts topping the square-necked bodice. Despite her obvious strength there was a willowy quality about the woman, a gracefulness, as though she were quite at home in her body, as an animal might be. Her face had once been darkly beautiful. He imagined her at twenty, at the height of her womanly charms, saw her with a cutlass clutched in her hand, fighting on the deck of her pirate ’s galley. Astonishing, thought Essex, a feminine sea captain!

“Quite the picture,” whispered Francis Bacon as he moved up beside Essex. “I owe you a favor for this invitation, Robert.” He was greedily devouring the richness of the scene with his eyes.

“I’ll want your opinion when it’s done. Come, stay close to me. I want to get nearer.”

As the O’Malley woman approached, the queen suddenly rose from her throne. Soft gasps were heard round the chamber, as this action strayed mightily from protocol. The rebel was stopped in her tracks at the sight of Elizabeth, and the queen, her eyes planted squarely on her audience, took the two steps down and met her guest in the center of the dead-quiet room.

Elizabeth raised her hand to be kissed, indeed was forced to raise it as high as she would for a tall man. Without hesitation Grace took the queen’s hand and touched the fingers gently with her lips. But she did not lower herself into the expected curtsy.

“Your Majesty,” Essex heard the woman say in fluent Latin, “I would drop to my knees, but my joints would protest it.” Elizabeth cocked her head to one side, both with surprise that the audience was to be conducted in Latin, and the realization that, with her first sentence, Grace O’Malley had challenged her authority. All subjects, despite their age or infirmity, bowed or curtsied to the queen. No excuses were tolerated.

Elizabeth recovered her wits the next instant, choosing gracefully to ignore the slight. “We welcome you to England,” she said. “Come, meet my men.” One by one Elizabeth made her introductions. Only the Earl of Ormond knew Grace O’Malley—his countrywoman—and Essex heard her say to him with more than a hint of irony, “You seem altogether too at home in this place, Thomas.” When she approached them, Essex and Bacon—in unison—bowed low to the queen.

“The pair of you remind me of your stepfather and his brother,” she said to Essex. “The earls of Leicester and Warwick were my beloved Fric and Frac.” As they rose Elizabeth said in the Latin she knew both understood perfectly, “Meet Grace O’Malley, our loyal subject from the west of Ireland. Mistress O’Malley, my lord the Earl of Essex. . . . And a very clever lawyer named Francis Bacon.”

“Your father was Walter Devereaux,” Grace said to Essex, more a statement than a question, and stared searchingly into his eyes.

“He was,” replied Essex, taken completely off guard. Both knew of his father’s bloody deeds in Ireland. And it was strangely unsettling to be reminded of them by this forthright woman.

“Let us walk,” Elizabeth suggested to her guest. Before turning away from them, the queen signaled Essex with her eyes that he should follow.

As the two women walked and talked quietly, their heads tilted toward each other, Essex and Bacon quietly observed and listened.

“ ’Tis extraordinary,” Elizabeth began, “to have in our midst so famous a pirate.”

“There is another pirate in the room more famous than myself,” Grace replied. To the queen’s questioning look she answered, “Yourself, Majesty.”

Essex could feel Elizabeth pause at the impudence of the statement, but the queen did not miss a step.

Grace O’Malley continued. “You’re a pirate by proxy, and every head of state in the world is well aware of it. Drake and Frobisher and Hawkins, everyone knows you finance their ventures. And everyone knows as well that they call their activities ‘privateering,’ but what it truly is, is pirating. What we do not know,” she said with a sly smile, “is what part of their booty ends up in your treasury.” Elizabeth stopped so suddenly in her tracks that Essex and Bacon nearly collided with the two women.

“Have I spoken out of line?” Grace seemed not at all rattled by the queen’s obvious discomfiture. “If I have, you have my apologies, madam. But these are well-known facts.”

Essex watched as Elizabeth’s expression softened suddenly, almost as if she had relaxed into a tub of hot water. Perhaps she had decided to take no offense at Grace O’Malley’s frankness. Everything the woman had said so far, whilst impertinent, had been altogether true. Perhaps, he considered, the queen
liked
Grace O’Malley’s audaciousness.

“I received your petition as well as your answers to my questionnaire . . . ,” said Elizabeth, and stopped before her throne.

Essex wondered if this action had been accidental. But of course it was not. Elizabeth left nothing to chance. She wished to symbolize her authority in this way, rather than using words or tone of voice.

“. . . and I am considering your two requests,” she continued evenly, then smiled. “The idea that the Crown should make arrangements for a pension for yourself—since you hold
us
responsible for the loss of your livelihood—is a curious one, but I have taken it under advisement.

Regarding your second request—the removal of Governor Bingham from your home province of Connaught—this is a delicate situation, you understand.”

“There is nothing delicate about Richard Bingham, Your Majesty.

He ’s a cruel and murdering scoundrel, and he ’s more a liability to you in Ireland than a help.”

“You should know that Governor Bingham has written to me regarding
you
.”

“A complimentary letter, no doubt.”

“He called you ‘a notable traitoress’ and thinks you very dangerous.

To Ireland and to my own best interests.”

“Oh, does he?”

Essex could feel Grace beginning to smolder. He wondered how long the woman could contain the fury boiling beneath the calm exterior.

“He has my son, Your Majesty, in his custody in Dublin Castle.

Richard Bingham is threatening to hang my son Tibbot Burke on trumped-up charges. Did he write you that as well? Did he say his men murdered my gentle son Owen in cold blood, after he ’d given your English troops the best of his hospitality, or that his persecution of my family will never stop until he sees us all in our graves? Did he say that!” Essex found that his hand had unconsciously strayed to the hilt of his sword, his fear for the queen’s safety growing with Grace O’Malley’s outrage. But Elizabeth appeared altogether calm, even sympathetic to talk of Grace ’s sons, and Grace seemed uncaring that the timbre of her voice had risen far above that which was acceptable in speaking to the Queen of England.

“I’ve come here to ask a pardon for Tibbot Burke, Your Majesty.” Grace now held Elizabeth’s gaze with the same intensity as she ’d recently held Essex’s. “You must not let that pig of a man kill my son.”

“Why do you suppose Richard Bingham is persecuting you and your family, Mistress O’Malley?”

“He ’s a woman hater, pure and simple. He most loathes a female with power, sees her as an unnatural creature, an abomination. He said so to my face. I’d wager that in his heart of hearts, your Governor Bingham despises
you
above all women.”

Elizabeth, far from offended, nodded sagely, then with her eyes, requested Essex’s arm to help her up the two steps to her throne. Once she was seated she gazed down mildly at Grace O’Malley.

“We shall consider your petitions with the utmost gravity.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. I am most grateful.”

“Is that all then?” said Elizabeth.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you quite sure you have no other demands?”

“I would call them
requests
, Majesty, never dema—” Before she could stop herself, Grace O’Malley sneezed loudly, just managing to turn her face away from the queen.

Even so, Elizabeth reflexively sat back farther in her throne.

“Begging your pardon,” said Grace, clearly attempting to stifle another sneeze.

Essex stepped forward instantly, holding out to her a fine linen and lace handkerchief.

“Thank you, Lord Essex,” she said, and in the next moment blew her nose loudly and vigorously into it.

At once the room was awash with whispers. Of all Grace O’Malley’s actions and words, this was the most outrageous. One never took such a personal liberty in the presence of the queen.

Elizabeth herself was altogether nonplussed, shocked into silence and further taken aback when, without her leave, Grace O’Malley turned from the royal presence, strode to the fire blazing in the hearth, and tossed the handkerchief in.