The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (7 page)

FIRST YOU SHOULD know about Owen O’Malley. Know how I loved him. Adored him. I worshiped the boards he walked upon, my father, for had Owen not burned with that great fearsome soul, had he not loved me so peculiarly, I can promise you I’d not be sittin’ here this night, eye to eye with the very Queen of England, she as hungry for my story as a starvin’ man for a meal. Indeed, there ’d naught be a story a’tall. Here is the truth, and no one would argue it: Owen O’Malley did nothing less than save his daughter from the hell of oblivion—the fate of a mere Irish wife—and delivered her to the wide ocean of freedom. For that I am grateful and eternally bound. For that I owe him my very life.

He was a large man, tall, and broad at the shoulders, handsome and dark. I do remember when his hair was still pure black and hung about his shoulders like a thick fur cape. A fringe of it crossed his wide forehead, here and there curlin’ down below his deep brown eyes, eyes set far apart that flashed, or gleamed, or twinkled—dependin’ on his mood. His hands were large and callused and he used them to tell a story, sometimes tuggin’ at the full black beard that covered the whole of his prominent jaw. He had lungs like bellows, which he needed to shout his orders over the howlin’ wind and crashin’ of waves on deck. Aye, he had a wild appearance, and was so powerful that when he walked, the very ground would shake beneath his feet. ’Twas easy to see why they’d clapped him with all the monikers they did—“Black Oak,” “The O’Malley,” “High Chieftain of Connaught,” “King of the Western Sea.” He was all those things, and there was no one in the wide world like him.

You’d think from that description that the man was a brute, an animal.

But he was kind, as kind a man as I have ever known. That bellowing voice could be soft as a whisper when he put me on his knee and drew me in close to weave me a tale. The muscles in his arms, hard as iron, were as comfortable as any mother’s embrace. And the thing of it was, Owen O’Malley loved me every bit as much as I loved him. This was very odd, a man lovin’ his daughter to distraction. ’Twasn’t done, you see. Fathers naturally loved their sons, and only after the boys had received their share of affection did the girls get any a’tall. But Owen never did anything the way he ought to have done, only the way he saw
fit
.

And I was the apple of his eye—thick black curls and bright dark eyes, round ruddy cheeks and, like him, a mighty pair of lungs that could wake the dead.

My mother always claimed ’twas on account of my resemblance to Owen’s mother that he loved me so. Black-eyed Maria from Spain, who my grandfather, Dermot O’Malley stole away from the warm lazy hills of her father’s Andalusian vineyard to come to western Ireland, where the wind howlin’ down off of Scotland is so freezin’ cold that even the cows cry.

Of course Owen was of the sea, by the sea, for the sea. ’Twas the mother of all life, he said, the only place that wisdom was revealed. The truth was more practical. The sea meant
freedom
to Owen O’Malley, a passport to foreign lands, exotic destinations, the warm sun of Spain in the dead of Irish winter. When I glimpse him now in my mind’s eye, it’s at the helm of the
Dorcas
, his favorite ship, the wind lashin’ his face and hair, causin’ his heavy cloak to cling on one side to the tall mast of his body, and flap like a broken sail on the other. He was a human wind vane, and I would always know the directions of the breeze just from the sight of him.

There were lessons I learned from Owen O’Malley—to treat kindly with your crews but brook no complainin’, nor warfare within, for these men were clan and therefore family. “Without,” he used to say, “are the enemies, the monsters, and we will lose everything if we fight between ourselves.” Indeed, Owen’s code extended to his family on land as well—to his castles, his booleys, the
septs,
and the whole of the O’Malley territories. Sure there were lapses. Crimes of passion. Crimes of drunkenness, thievery, and youthful rape. But the cattle raids that were the curse of the clans all over Ireland and caused the greatest death and misery were absent in his reign. For he had sworn covenants with the neighbors on every side of him—the O’Flahertys to the south in Connamara, the Lower Burkes to the north in Mayo, and the Thomases to our back—

so my childhood was one of peace and tranquility.

Bless my father. Bless his soul for that.

My mother, well, my mother, God love her, she tried. Bein’ married to a man as strange and stubborn as Owen O’Malley was one thing. But havin’ me for a daughter on the top of it dearly tried her good nature.

Margaret O’Malley never knew what to make of me. ’Twas a constant fight, my upbringing. Once I was out of nappies, Owen wanted me with him wherever he went—riding to the boundaries of his territories, hunting fallow deer. But most of all on his ships. His great compulsion was that I should come to love the sea as he did. And he was not disappointed.

Perhaps it was the tender age at which I walked the boards, toddled them, really, but I never did fear the wide ocean nor the fearsome winds nor even the mountainous waves. They and my father’s fleet were as natural a home to me as the green rolling hills of Murrisk or the bogs of Clare Island. My first and favorite memories were of Owen standin’ me on a crate before the wheel to reach it, he urgin’ me to “steer” the ship while of course he stood behind, eye on the horizon, his own huge hands holdin’ her steady.

My poor mother. She argued with her husband and argued to no avail. Concerns that I’d grow up unfit for a good wife and mother fell on deaf ears. And all her attempts to teach me the womanly skills were ignored. That’s not to say she taught me nothing. She was, even more than my father, a keeper of tradition, of everything Gaelic. If Owen forced me into learnin’ at the monastery how to study Scripture, how to read and write in Latin—for that was the universal language of trade—

my mother imbued in me the old ways, the ancient religion, worship of the goddesses of water and war.

We were a small family, just my mother and father, my brother, and me. You might think Donal Piopa would have coveted the affection my father lavished on me, but from the beginning he was a child unto himself. ’Twas strange how purely satisfied he was with his own life. He cared nothing for the sea, and while he gave my father all the respect due him, he never strived for the sea nor any livelihood it afforded. He took pleasure from the land and the great herds of cattle which, along with my father’s maritime ventures, constituted our family’s wealth. He saw to the beeves and the sheep and the small Irish horses, lovin’ to ride across the rocky hills and marshes, keeping the boundaries of the Murrisk barony safe from intruders. And his character therefore developed fiercely, in the O’Malley tradition, though not as a seafaring man, but of the land. Later, in the rebellion, he became a great warrior, and that was why they called him “Piopa”—Donal of the pipes that the Irish played in battle.

My father was full of appreciation for my brother, that he never raised a stink about his favorite bein’ his daughter and not his son, and for findin’ his own way in life. I loved my brother too, and remember most fondly the times we ’d ride out together in the summer, hunting with our great hounds, animals so mighty one could, by itself, take down and kill a full-racked fallow deer in the blink of an eye. Like everyone else, Donal thought me an odd child, but he rarely teased me and never abused me, and for that I was altogether grateful.

How do I describe the territories of the O’Malley clan? ’Twas water as much as land in the first place, the rivers and lakes amidst the inland fastnesses—rolling hills and bogs on the mainland, Crough Patrick where the sainted man himself ascended to its peak for his fast of forty days. And most important Clew Bay, wherein the family’s slew of islands and sandy reefs lay. The largest, Clare Island, where the castle of my childhood summers stood guarding the inlet to the bay; the small isles without—Inishturk, with its great cliffs and wild boars that roamed the windswept highlands; Inishbofin, with its tight-necked harbor and castle too; Inishark, a mere rock in the ocean; and Cahir, the holy place where none but holy men lived in stone huts. And of course there was the wide Western Sea beyond, which the O’Malleys claimed a part of as their own. Whosoever should wander into those waters were wise to know that. Fishing fleets from England, France, the Low Countries, even Spain, paid my father well for the privilege of fishing there. And ’twas to him they came when they wanted their vessels piloted safely along those treacherous shores.

Galway was the closest town of any size or import, the heart of trade for Ireland, and in those days England too. But the city fathers of Galway were a spineless lot, scared of their own shadows, and built great walls round about them to protect the citizens from the likes of us. Their laws were made to keep us out—O’Malleys, O’Flahertys, Burkes—we all were kept from doin’ our business there. The truth is, the city feared us, shat themselves with terror at the thought of their country neighbors.

A sign that hung above the gate of Galway City told it all. “From the ferocious O’Flahertys, good Lord deliver us.” Have you ever heard of anything so lame as that?

The sea was our home but the land sustained us too. In my youth the pastures were green and rich, supporting our vast herd, the farming tracts large in their bounty. There was never a man, woman, or child who wanted for food. There were great forests, dark and mysterious, where my brother Donal and I would go to scare ourselves, pretendin’ the monsters and wicked fairies who lived there were out for our blood, and we ’d battle them with our wooden swords, whose use I had learned from my father.

The O’Flahertys of Connamarra were our neighbors to the south, and our friends. The tie that bound them to the O’Malleys was the sea, for they were an old seagoing clan of great renown, great as the O’Malleys were—their fleet as mighty, their sailors as apt. And they had been so since ancient times. ’Twas written that the High King of Connaught never went out to sea or high sea without the fleets of the O’Flahertys and O’Malleys protectin’ him.

Gilleduff O’Flaherty had been our father’s friend since childhood, they playin’ together in the same wood as we had, even sailing out together once—a journey to the Barbary Coast on my grandfather’s vessel. It must’ve been memorable, for the two were thick as thieves from that time on. Brothers were never closer. ’Twas on that voyage, they liked to say, that they planned the marriage of their children to one another. Swore that if, when they married and sired a girl and a boy, they’d one day join the clans by ties of matrimony. And so while all the other clans in Ireland were raiding and murdering and pillaging their neighbors, our two families, who might have been enemies clawin’ at each others’ throats for the title of “Sea Kings,” were sharing the wealth of it instead. They were two of the wisest men I ever knew.

The times I spent on my father’s ships were nothing short of a miracle. What other little girl in Ireland—or the
world,
I used to think—was blessed with such excitement and adventure? Even the fishing expeditions in local waters were amazing. The rush in your chest the moment a fair wind took the sails, the ship speedin’ across the waters. Sometimes you felt as thought you were in flight, racing with the sea birds. ’Twas magnificent, truly magnificent. And where else could you stand amongst so many big, strapping men at congenial work, smell the salt air, behold the workings of a fine ship, sails flapping, the noise of the tackles and winches hauling nets crammed with wriggling silver fish? The best part was, the sailors put me to work as soon as I was able. Taught me all the nautical knots, and my nimble little fingers were soon better than any-body else ’s at fixing a broken net or a snagged line. I came to love the smell of pitch and wet wood. Indeed, life onboard was a sight fresher than the air inside our castle rooms.

My mother never knew that the moment we put to sea and were out of her sight, I’d rig myself in boy’s clothing—woolen breeches, a linen shirt, short jacket waterproofed with wax, my long hair braided and tied up close to my head and covered with a cap. Like all the men I went barefoot on the slippery deck. Truly, a ship was no place for a girl, so I would become for all intents and purposes a boy. Margaret, God bless her, would have died of mortification had she known.

Sometimes we ’d head north for Scotland, and ’twas on those trips I first met the great Scots clans and their chieftains—the MacDonalds, the MacSweenys, and the MacDowells. These were the fierce men I’d later ferry across to Ireland to fight with us against the English. The Scots Gallowglass are hands down the best fighters in the world—perhaps because they’re all a bit off their heads. But in later years they remembered little Grace, a tiny sailor standin’ on deck by her da, so proud.

But nothin’ compared to the long trips south to Portugal and Spain.

Oh, the feel of the air and the water turnin’ warm, the great chill of Ireland left behind, days of bright sun on the sea. There was somethin’ delicious about such a day, my father takin’ me aside for a lesson in pilotage.

He ’d haul out a big chest he kept in his cabinet and unroll a map of the coastlines from Ireland to Africa. Then he ’d take me up on deck and we ’d survey all within our sight. Much of the time we traveled not far from the shore, except a dash out of sight of land, across the Bay of Biscay. Owen would point to a hill or promontory, then stick his finger on the map and say, “There she is, and farther on down is the mouth of the such and so river, and here is a safe landfall.” And I loved that, knowing what we were seeing with our eyes was actually a point on one of my father’s maps. ’Twas nothin’ really, but for a child it felt a small miracle.

He had rutters too—maps of the sea floor—and these he made me study with great care. For there were rocks and shoals and shallows that, unaccounted for, could sink a ship. So by the age of twelve I knew the ocean below and its currents, as well as the myriad points along the coast. My favorite of the fabulous sea creatures were the gray whales, which we would spot when they rose themselves from the water to a considerable height, only to crash down again with such great weight and force that no matter how many times I saw the animals, I marveled at them.