“Prepare ta board!” Grace yelled, pulling out her long sword. “Stay tight! Watch yer swingin’ arms. Remember how we fight, lads!”
Four dozen of Grace’s men raised muskets toward the ship, as several others prepared planks to drop over onto the English deck. It was a well-orchestrated maneuver they had done dozens of times.
“Cover yer arses, boys!” Grace cried. “Now!”
The four-dozen men shot their muskets just as Grace and a group known as “the Firsts” leapt on the planks and disappeared onto the deck of the other ship. The Firsts were brutes on board the Malendroke, intimidating in both size and ferocity. They paved the way for the next group of fighters to storm aboard.
Quinn, Patrick, and the other Seconds were right behind them as smoke billowed from various damages to the English ship. Grace’s men proved far superior to the Englishmen, whose captain had been killed by one of the first cannon blasts.
The fighting was short and sweet; the English’s second-in-command surrendered without ever having drawn his sword. The English were as soft as the Irish had heard and, when defeated, easily gave up the cause.
As Grace interrogated the man in command, Quinn and Connor, along with two dozen other men, went below from the aft cargo hold of the deck to see what booty they had just captured.
The men below had more fight left in them, but not enough to fend off Captain O’Malley’s crew. After the first eight Englishmen were run through, the rest set down their weapons and surrendered.
Connor stopped so quickly, Quinn ran into him.
“What is it?”
“I think I’ve died and gone ta heaven.”
Pushing him out of the way, Quinn saw barrels and barrels of whiskey. “For crying out loud, Connor. It’s just whiskey.”
“Not just whiskey, Callaghan, Irish whiskey. Look!” Connor pointed to a group of barrels that had the symbol for Galway on them. “And these bastards stole it from our people.”
“Galway... ” Quinn murmured, stepping closer.
Her home.
“And look! Here are some from Dublin.”
Quinn peered closer, her heart beat picking up slightly. “Connor––”
“Aye, lad, these English pillaged and plundered an Irish ship.”
Connor had more to say, but Quinn had stopped listening. Instead, she began examining all of the crates and barrels tucked away against the side of the hold.
“No.” Quinn murmured softly as, peering around one barrel, she saw the familiar stamp that belonged to Shea’s family. “This can’t be.”
Rising, she stormed over to an Englishmen and punched him in the face. As he stumbled over and fell to the floor, Quinn was on him, a dagger pressed to his neck. “Where did ya get this whiskey?” she demanded in English.
“Bugger off.” He punched her, breaking open her eyebrow once again.
Quinn kept one hand on his neck and pulled the knife away. She promptly sliced off his ear. He howled like an animal, clamping his hand to the side of his head.
“The whiskey. Where the bloody hell did ya get that whiskey?”
The man cursed as blood poured down his jaw and neck. “Ya cut me fuckin’ ear off, ya bloody––”
With another swift movement, Quinn sliced off his other ear as well. The man howled and cursed her, both hands now covering where his ears used to be.
“Callaghan, yer bleedin’.”
Quinn ignored Connor and the blood running from her eyebrow. She placed the tip of her bloody dagger inside the man’s nostril. “I’ll whittle ya into tiny pieces if ya don’t tell me where ya nicked that whiskey from, ya bloody bastard.”
The wounded sailor spat in Quinn’s face. She promptly sliced through his nostril.
Blood flowed like a red fountain from his nose as he struggled to get out from under her. “Yer daft! Help me! Somebody!”
“Pieces, ya good-fer-nothing coward. Bit by fuckin’ bit, I’ll cut ya ta pieces. Where. Did. Ya. Get. The. Whiskey?” Quinn held the tip of her dagger to his eye, ignoring the blood trickling into hers.
“Callaghan, he can’t tell ya ennathin’ if ya kill him!”
“There’s plenty of others, Connor. I’ll whittle through ’em all if I have to, but someone is gonna tell me what I want ta know.”
Connor knelt down next to her. “He’s not gonna give ya ennathin’. Ya’ve maimed him fer life. Let me talk ta him.”
Slowing withdrawing the dagger, Quinn wiped the blood from her face. “I just want ta know the ship they stole this from. If he gives us that, I’ll let him live. Otherwise, he’s a dead man.” Quinn leaned over toward the sailor’s bloody face. “A dead man.” She continued looking at the barrels, but she didn’t know what she was looking for... some sign of Shea? Something? Anything?
Slowly, she rose, her eyes straying across the cargo. Left. Right. Left. Up. Down.
Then she found it.
The date stamp the whiskey had been shipped from the O’Brian estate: the day before Shea had been taken.
“Sons of bitches!” Quinn spun around and took three strides toward the Englishman when she was intercepted by Patrick.
“Calm yourself.”
“Outta my way, Paddy.”
“I will not. You must calm yourself. The captain is handling this, and you are a bloody mess. You face is awash in blood.”
Quinn wiped the blood from her face and looked down at her hand with her one good eye. It was covered with blood—hers as well as the Englishman’s. “Fine. She can handle it up top, but I am handling it down below.”
“No, you are not.”
“Paddy, those barrels––”
“I know what they are, and I know what you want done, but you need to let the captain do her job.”
Before Quinn could reply, Connor knocked the sailor in the head and stood up.
“Well? What did he say?”
“He said they took it from a Turkish ship... a corsair... almost three weeks ago.”
“Where was it headed? This ship? Where was it headed?”
“He believes it was headed ta Portugal.”
Quinn’s blood ran cold. “Slavers?”
Connor nodded. “Corsairs are blood-sucking bastards, Callaghan, who trade in human cargo. If these took this off a corsair, they’ll be doublin’ back fer it, ta be sure. Corsairs never forget an insult. Ever. Sorry I couldna get much more.”
Quinn inhaled deeply. “Actually, my friend, that was exactly what I wanted ta hear. Now I know which direction ta head.”
“Head? Ya don’t wanna mess with slavers, Callaghan, no matter what the reason.”
“Actually, Connor, it’s the other way around. They better not get tangled up with me.”
***
Grace has turned us around just when I had my hands on a possible recent location of Shea. Her father always wrote the date on the barrels before they were shipped out to prevent anyone from suggesting he sold them uncured whiskey. He even had us do so as children. Those barrels had been brought to the village docks by Shea and her brothers, then that meant Shea was, most likely, grabbed by a corsair, just as Grace had said. After speaking with Connor and Murphy about it, I learned that the corsairs often did business with the Portuguese slavers who were so proficient at their hideous job.
The only problem is that she’s turned us around and is heading back home.
The information Grace procured from the now-deceased crew of the English ship is that the English successfully engaged the corsairs off the coast of Wales and took this load from them. The question on everyone’s mind is: Why were the English hovering off the coast of Wales? Are they spying? Are they planning an attack? It made Grace nervous enough to return home.
She said the English queen was determined to line her pockets with Irish gold at the expense of Irish blood and that she wasn’t going to stand by and watch “that bastard woman take pieces of Ireland.”
So we are heading to the eastern coast to help secure the ports there and to send t
he English ships to the bottom of the Irish Sea. We will also return the Irish whiskey that was stolen or bought—or who knows what—by those corsairs.
Finding Shea will have to wait.
I am not at all pleased by this turn of events but have no choice in how we proceed or where we go.
All I can do is bide my time.
***
That night, below deck, Patrick finally convinced Quinn that she needed to do something else besides fret over those barrels. He suggested she play a friendly game of cards to get her mind off of everything.
She and Fitz joined a game of Maw with five other men who still had some coin in their pockets. The cards, though terribly soiled, were still in good enough condition to play, but Quinn made a mental note to buy more next time they hit land.
There was no such thing as friendly card game or a friendly anything on a pirate ship. Men played to win. Always. So Quinn suggested Maw instead of Honors and Ruff, a team card game that had previously sent two men to Murphy to be sewn up when things became a bit heated. The men agreed to Maw, and so far she’d managed to keep them relatively calm.
As the sixth hand was dealt, Quinn said to no one in particular, “What can ya tell me about these corsairs?”
“Thems that took from our people are dead men. I kin tell ya that much, lad,” said a man everyone referred to as One Eye because of the patch he wore. “The captain doesna abide by no pirates comin’ into her seas and takin’ what belongs ta her folks.”
“That be the truth. Captain’ll kill enna man who sides with the bitch Elizabeth.”
Quinn looked over at Fitz, a man of a few words and a stone face. “So why aren’t we going after them?”
Murphy cleared his throat. “They’re sea dogs, Callaghan. They don’t have a quarrel with Ireland... well, they didn’t until they took that whiskey. They’ll steal ennathin’ from ennaone. They don’t single us out.”
“But them English rat bastards,” One Eye added, “Thems are a wee bit too interested in our land. We oughta sneak in at night and start cuttin’ them throats. That she-bitch just keeps sendin’ her people ta live on our land. It isna right.”
Quinn laid a card down, knowing it was the wrong one. If there was one thing she’d learned playing cards with these men, it was that winners chatted more than losers. “She does seem ta despise the English queen.”
“Captain is just as much a queen as Elizabeth,” Murphy said, “so she wants ta send that woman a little message that the Irish aren’t willin’ roll over like the Scots are gettin’ ready ta.”
Quinn watched Fitz rake in the pot without so much as a grin. “The old ways of our people are slowly dying, Murph. I’m not so sure there’s much we can do about it.”
Another man spat on the floor. “Them clansmen who took English titles like ‘earl’ and ‘lord’ should've been drawn and quartered. We are clansmen, plain and simple. No title other than chieftain works fer me and mine. Lord? Pfft. I’ll call no man lord.”
Quinn flinched. Her father had been one of those titled people—but for reasons that had less to do with clanhood than it did with safety.
“It was bad enough when Henry made hisself king a’ Ireland, but now his bastard daughter is changin’ our way a’ life.”
“And Grace will not abide by it.”
Quinn picked up a new hand of cards and looked over the top at her opponents. A sense of pride filled her chest as her eyes moved from face to face. It wasn’t just Grace these men followed, but what she represented: the rebellious nature embedded in the spirit of so many Irishmen who only wished to retain their way of life in the face of a changing world.
“What a’ ya,” One Eye said to Quinn. “Where do ya stand?”
Lowering her cards, Quinn spoke her truth. “To be honest, fellas, I’d follow Grace O’Malley ta meet Satan himself if she asked me, no questions asked.”
“To the captain!” One Eye cheered, holding out his whiskey.
“To the captain!”
***
The British ships Grace was chasing slipped through the Irish Sea and skirted around the Hebrides, where she lost them. As the Malendroke sat still in the water for the first time in days, Grace paced in front of the dozen or so men she’d called to the deck. Her brusque manner told them all they needed to know about her temperament.
The wind had died down some, so her voice carried even louder than usual as she puzzled out her strategy aloud.
“They’re workin’ with those bloody Scots,” she growled, taking long strides across the deck. “If she gets her hooks into Scotland, she’s gonna be knockin’ on our door even more so than she already is.”
Quinn and Fitz stood still. Innis bowed his head. Connor wobbled slightly, having had far too much of the Irish whiskey claimed from the English ship. One Eye kept looking at the faces of the other men as if trying to ascertain where each stood on the matter.
“Sailing into the Hebrides is bad business,” Fitz muttered. “Especially if them Scots is sidin’ with ’Lizbeth.”
“Think she’ll go?” Quinn whispered out of the side of her mouth.
Innis shook his head. “Live ta fight another day. What we need are Scotsmen on this ship who can help us navigate better. Captain O’Malley knows that, but she won’t risk it.”
Sure enough, Grace ordered an about, but she seemed none too pleased about it. “God damn it ta hell, boys. That is the last time we’ll get thrown off course by these damn islands. What we need are galloglaigh warriors, and that’s exactly what we’re gonna get.” With that, Grace strode to the captain’s quarters, leaving all of the men whispering to each other.
“See? Ya was worried fer nothin’,” Fitz whispered.
Quinn slowly turned her head. “What makes ya think I was worried?”
“Me father raised me ta learn ’bout folks by watchin’ ’em.”
“Ah. And that’s why yer so good at cards.”
Fitz shrugged. “Good some days, not so good others.”
Quinn stared at the dark little man with his full black beard and dark eyes. He surprised her. “Taking on the English navy is a bit much, even fer the likes of Grace O’Malley,” she said.
“Takin’ on isna the right words,” Fitz replied. “Grace O’Malley, like Black Oak before her, knows how ta rush in, attack, and rush out afore ennaone is the wiser, but she needs help up here.”
Quinn had seen that rush-in-and-away maneuver several times. It was signature O’Malley.
“The captain knows the tides, has everra rock outcroppin’ memorized, and don’t even talk about how she unnerstans the weather, but them Hebrides are a tougher go than what we’re used ta.”
“Aye, and the English have a lot of gold backing them.” Quinn ran her hand through her hair, marveling once more at how short it was.
“Pfft. Gold don’t make a man a better fighter.”
“That’s true, but I, fer one, am glad she is going ta stay back this time.”
Innis looked up at Quinn distastefully. He clearly hadn’t forgotten the beating Fitz had given him. “I think ya may have misinterpreted the captain’s actions, boy.”
“Oh?”
“Aye. She’s not stayin’ back. She’s gearin’ up. Captain O’Malley needs more men fer the fight she has in mind, and once she gots ’em, she’ll head north with a vengeance. Trust me. We’ll be back. And when we return, there will be blood drawn.”
***
After landing in Dublin at daybreak, Quinn borrowed a horse and took off for Galway. Since she rode hard and the dark clouds never followed through with their threat of rain, she arrived in less than three hours, though her forehead ached increasingly with every bounce in the saddle. She rode straight to the barn where she knew she’d find Kennedy, who quickly became flummoxed when she saw Quinn’s battered eyebrow.
“What happened to your face?” Kennedy asked, as she took the reins of Quinn’s horse and lead it to the water trough.
Quinn had forgotten how bad the brui
se around her left eye must be, not to mention the stitching that had busted open. She figured she must look a mess. “It is nothing.”
“Nothing? Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been beaten up. My god, Quinn, haven’t you taken this far enough? Shea is gone. You need to come to grips with that fact.” Gently removing the bridle, Kennedy hung it on a hook. “She could be anywhere.
Quinn dipped her hands in the horse’s trough and splashed water on her face to clean it off. “It saddens me that you have so easily given up on her.”
“Quinn, she could be anywhere in the world by now. She is gone, and we’re never getting her back. But look at you... have you even seen what you look like? Half of your face is bruised. And that cut? I don’t even want to know how you cut your eyebrow in half.”
Quinn sighed. “No, you don’t. I live on a pirate ship. Sometimes, things... get out of hand.”
“Out of hand?” Kennedy’s voice rose. “That’s a tad underplayed, don’t you think?” She pulled Quinn close and examined the rupture. “You need Bronwen. Right now. I refuse to have another conversation with you until you have this taken care of.”
“There’s no time.”
“There is always time. You take my horse and go see her. I’m sure she’s already expecting you. Come back only after she’s seen you. I mean it, Quinn. I don’t want to speak with you if you aren’t going to take better care of yourself. It hurts my heart too much to see you like this.”
Quinn knew better than to argue with Kennedy when she got like this, so she mounted Kennedy’s horse, a white mare a hand higher than the horse she’d ridden in on. “Fine, but you’re coming with me.” Quinn reached her hand out for Kennedy, who grabbed her wrist and mounted behind Quinn, her skirt billowing as she did.
“It has been a long time since we rode like this,” she said, settling behind Quinn.
“Well, hang on better than you did last time. If I recall––”
“Hush and ride.” Kennedy threaded her arms around Quinn’s waist as they rode off the path and into the forest.
The Pirate's Booty (The Plundered Chronicles Book 1) Page 7
