“What kind of business?”
“There are no funeral homes on Bofin, and Owen’s body was taken there. I have to go to the funeral parlor in Cleggan to make Owen’s funeral arrangements.” On the walk to the hotel they had decided to call him by his first name instead of the very long title of Great Grandfather O’Flaherty. “Because of your accident, I made the decision that we would take the ferry in.”
“The ferry! But, Mom… our vow… I’m not scared. Let’s get right back into the Cailín Mo Chroí. If we rode a ferry, Nanny would be very disappointed.”
“Nanny would be more disappointed to hear that I nearly lost her grandchild to the Atlantic because of our stupid vow.”
“Our vow is not stupid. It’s the way of our family, and I refuse to take the ferry,” Meg said defiantly. “Besides, our family is protected by the fairies. They won’t let anything happen to us.”
“What are you talking about?”
Meg told her mom about what she had felt when she was being swept out to sea and then explained to her everything Trout had told her about the selkies. Meg had expanded on Trout’s theory in her own mind and was convinced that her great grandmother was a selkie that had returned to the sea to keep watch on her family, like their banshee.
“Selkies…You are really losing it, Meg. The hypothermia must have frozen part of your brain. Nanny kept in touch with her mom up until she died.”
“Maybe she didn’t die? Nanny said that Owen never even told her of her mother’s death, and that she had to find out about it from the neighbors. And Trout told me she just disappeared one day. Maybe Owen had discovered her hidden skin and she fled back to sea and he made up the story of her dying to cover it up.”
“Perhaps I should have left you at home. I think this has been way too much for a little girl like you to take in.”
Meg looked up with pleading eyes, “After all we have been through you still don’t believe me?”
“Selkies or not, we are taking the ferry into Cleggan.” Meg could tell her mom’s mind was set by the stern look she gave. She could also see a trace of fear in her eyes, something she never had seen in her mother. “Either you come with me on the ferry or I will leave you with the Davins. I am not taking the sailboat.”
“I made a vow and I don’t plan on breaking it,” Meg defiantly told her mother.
“Fine,” Shay threw up her hands. She looked down at Meg for a long time waiting for her to give in but Meg wouldn’t budge. It was their first real argument. Meg stood her ground. She was not going to break her vow and set foot on a motorboat. She knew her mother was scared after what had happened the day before, but Meg was just fine and not scared at all because she knew she was being guarded by the fairies. Shay was not going to back down either, and she didn’t say a word to Meg as they walked to the Davins’ house. She asked if Meg could stay with them for the day, and they said yes. They then walked Shay back down to the pier, and Meg watched in disbelief as her mom boarded the ferry for Cleggan.
As the ferry cruised out of the harbor Meg saw the Cailín Mo Chroí tied up next to a large, luxury motor yacht in the bay that must have been the one owned by Mr. Woods or, The Digger, as Trout called him. The yacht was gorgeous with two levels, tinted windows, and a large afterdeck for swimming—it towered over the small sailboat.
Meg stood on the dock, arms folded, giving her mother the best look of disappointment she could muster until the ferry had disappeared from view. When it was gone Declan walked them down to a beach where his currach was sitting on the sand. Meg asked Declan if it would be okay for Trout to give her a tour of the island. Declan said it was no problem since he needed to go out fishing anyway. Trout liked the idea of being Meg’s tour guide around Bofin.
17
The Island of the White Cow
“The first thing you need to know is how the island got its name,” Trout began. His father had left to go fishing, and he and Meg were still on the beach. “Thousands of years ago, there was these two fishermen who got stuck in a fog. They rowed about for a couple of hours and found themselves on a misty island that they never knew existed. Now, they had been fishing mackerel all day and were starved, so they lit up a fire on the beach to cook some food.”
Meg loved they lyrical way Trout talked. He spoke with a musical cadence and rhythm that complemented his heavy Irish accent.
“As soon as they lit the coals the mist lifted and they saw this woman walking down the beach whippin’ on a white cow. Then all of a sudden, the cow turned to stone and the lady disappeared.” Trout paused and opened his eyes wide for dramatic effect.
“White cow… Boffin, Bo… Finn? I have a white dog back home in America that my mom named Finn. She said it meant white in Irish, so Bo must mean cow, Island of the White Cow, Inish Bo Finn, Inishbofin.” Meg beamed with pride at her ability to piece together some Irish words and figure out their meaning.
“You’re a regular Irish speaker, aren’t ye,” teased Trout.
“Trout, why don’t you speak Irish here on Bofin like they do in the Aran Islands?”
“Do ya see those ruins on that island across the harbor?”
Meg looked across and saw the remains of an immense stone fort on top of a rock overlooking the harbor.
“Have ye heard of Cromwell?”
“Yes. My mother told me about that awful man on our way here.”
“That’s Cromwell’s fort. The English were garrisoned there during his war. It was also a prison where they kept all of the Catholic priests they didn’t kill on the spot in the rest of Ireland. Priests were outlawed and hunted, you know. It’s high tide now but beneath the water in the harbor is a rock called Bishop’s Rock. Of all the priests they had imprisoned here, there was only one bishop, so they decided to do something special to him, because he had fought them so. They rowed him out and chained him to the rock at low tide and rowed back to watch from the fort. The tide came in until he was under the water and drowned.” Trout looked as angry as if he had been there to watch the atrocity himself. “Cromwell’s men stayed here on the island long enough to kill the Irish language from the Bofin Islanders… We had to speak their language or die…” He paused for a second, then looked at her with a sudden twinkle in his eye. “And jaysus, it’s a hard language to speak, anyway,” he said to lighten the mood. Like the ever-changing weather on the island, Trout could go from gloomy to sunny in an instant.
“Can we go out to the fort?”
“Not now, with the tide up we can’t get there on foot. We’ll do our side of the island, the West Quarter. And besides, I want to show you some Irish ruins.”
Meg and Trout walked up from the beach past many small, brightly painted cottages and green fields with sheep grazing. Inishbofin was about three and a half miles long and almost two miles wide. It was hilly like the shore it faced. The harbor divided the island into two primary areas, the West Quarter where Owen’s cottage was, and the North East. Trout told Meg there were two main roads on the island—the high road and the low road—the high located on the hillier western side and the low running through the harbor. These roads were the main arteries of the whole rugged and beautiful island. The wind whipped their jackets as they walked up the low road. While they walked, they talked about their families and school and how they both loved the sea. Meg and Trout had a lot in common, and for the first time in her life, Meg felt as if she could make a friend.
Every now and then they passed an abandoned house with the windows boarded up and walls falling down. Trout told her that the hard life of an islander had chased many families off the island. Inishbofin had as many as a thousand people living here at one time but the number had dwindled down to about two hundred. Trout’s family had been on the island since it was founded, as far as he was concerned. And he told her that his father continued to lobster with a traditional currach to please the tourists, even using oars during the tourist season. Fishing for a living had died out on the island only to return with the influx of t
ourism. His father’s “traditional” lobsters were a regular fixture on the posh hotels’ menus. Trout told Meg that, for a long time, eating shellfish had been hated by the islanders because it was considered famine food, but that now that sentiment was changing. Just as the hatred of the English had disappeared with the end of the troubles in Ireland, eating shellfish was becoming more acceptable. In the “new” Ireland, long-held notions and objections were melting away.
It was after Bofin’s big tourist season, so Meg and Trout were alone on the road except for the sheep and some cows that were allowed to walk anywhere they pleased. The road rose up and they turned back towards the harbor and walked out on top of a flat rock covered in vegetation and a tumbled pile of stones that Trout called Dun Grania. Meg looked around at the much less impressive ruins of Dun Grania as Trout told her that the sheltered bay had always been an important shipping harbor because of its protection and deep anchorage.
They looked back at the fort. The view from this vantage was much better than it had been from the harbor, and Meg could see why Trout had brought her here. The peninsula the fort was situated on rose up behind the fort to a rocky hill with scattered patches of green grass. The fort walls rose up from a rock that protruded into the harbor.
“Before Cromwell, the fort over there was the castle of a Spanish pirate called Don Bosco. Bosco had allied himself with Granuaile, for whom the ruins on this side of the harbor were named.”
“Who’s Granuaile?” asked Meg
“Who’s Granuaile?” Trout was stunned. “She was the Sea Queen of Ireland, Grania Ni Mhaille, Grace O’Malley, the greatest Irish sea captain of her time. She controlled all the waters of Connemara from her castle on Clare Island just north of here. You haven’t heard of her?”
“No.” But Meg wanted to know more. “A woman pirate?”
“Of course.” Trout then thought twice about his answer. “Well, it depends on who’s talkin’ about her. To the Irish, she was a great female chieftain of the O’Malley clan with a fleet of ships patrolling her seas. But to the English, she was a murderous pirate. It’s all about perspective, ya know.”
“Of course,” said Meg, egging him on.
“She and Don Bosco ran a chain from here to the fort,” he pointed across the water, “and would trap ships that came into the harbor. They would charge them a fee for safe passage. Granuaile knew these waters like the back of her hand and the foreign ships had to pay or be sunk.”
“Sounds like good business. She was a regular tour guide.”
“Smart woman she was… Don Bosco and her made a killin’ for a while but they had a fallin’ out of sorts and Granuaile ended up chasin’ him off the island. Before he was chased off, he supposedly buried a treasure under his castle. They say he had put a Spanish curse on it so that only he could dig it up.
“Long ago, there was a priest on the island who tried to find the treasure. He snuck out to the castle one night and started to look, but as he was digging, he heard a voice speaking in Irish from below the ground that told him to stop. Thinking he heard a voice from hell, he ran away and never returned to the castle.”
Meg looked across the harbor at the ruins. She felt differently about the fort now from when she heard about it the first time. She went from feeling utter disgust toward an oppressive English-ruled fortress to an overwhelming urge to explore an abandoned pirate castle.
“Trout, you gotta get me out to that castle.”
“I guess we could see if me da is back from fishing. It’s startin’ to get a bit foggy and he might’ve come in.”
Meg looked around her and was astonished to see that a light fog had indeed started to roll in off the water. The weather on Bofin was as mysterious as the island itself. She and Trout turned their backs to Dun Grania and made their way back down the low road to the harbor.
18
The Corsairs Castle
By the time the time Meg and Trout reached the harbor, the fog had fully set in and they found Declan Davin on the shore unloading the currach with his other son, Dennis. They had just started down into the water to lift the currach up on the beach when they saw Trout and Meg approaching.
“How’s Trout?” Declan called out.
“Fine, Da. Megeen wants to go and see the fort and the tide’s only just goin’ out.”
“Well, why don’t ya wait till the tide’s out?”
“You know how these Yanks are. Everything has to be right now, and Megeen, after beatin’ the ocean before, tinks nothing can stop her, not even a fog.”
“So what are ye askin’?”
“We just want to row the currach over, and seein’ as you’re not in need of it, I don’t want to disappoint the great granddaughter of The O’Flaherty.”
“Oh ya don’t, do ya? All right, Trout,” Declan said, handing him a line. “And you, Miss Megeen, stay out of the water or I’ll have both of your hides, O’Flaherty or no.”
Trout, in his big rubber boots, walked out in the water and held the boat as Declan lifted Meg into the currach. There was a pair of oars still in their locks and Meg grabbed the ones in the bow while Trout sat aft. She looked down at the oars, noticing they didn’t have a wide paddle blade at the end as Meg was used to. Rather, they were just skinny and thin, for skimming on the top of the water, Trout said. The currach was incredibly light and sat on the water like no boat she had ever been on. The slightest pull of the oar moved it incrementally more than Meg thought it would. Had Trout not been with her, she would have twirled around in circles, but with a little coaching they were soon gliding through the quiet, fog-locked harbor. Although they couldn’t see much through the fog, they could hear the waves on the shore and the clanking of lines and tackle hitting boats somewhere in the mist. They passed the Cailín Mo Chroí that was still tied up to Mr. Woods’s boat and noticed that the huge yacht had a light on in the cabin.
They rowed a ways farther, and through the fog they could see the ruins of the castle looming on top of its rocky home. Beyond that, they barely saw a lighthouse that guarded the harbor entrance. Since the tide was going out, the ghostly specter of Bishop’s Rock rose out of the water like an evil presence pointing to the clouds. Trout pointed it out to her, and just the sight of it made the hair on Meg’s arms stand on end. They rowed past the rock and soon pulled into a small cove with a beach. Trout jumped out and helped Meg get on shore. They pulled the currach up in the beach as high as they could, then tied a rope to a large rock above the waterline.
“What was that back there, Trout? All the Yank stuff. And my name is Margaret, not Megeen,” Meg said indignantly.
“I got us the boat, didn’t I? And us callin’ ya Megeen is something nice. It’s like callin’ ya Little Meg.”
“I thought that was Meg Beag in Irish.”
“Maybe out on the Aran Islands. Not here,” Trout said with a smile.
“I guess you’re right. Sorry.”
“Not to worry. Just stay close and watch where ya step.”
They walked up a well-worn path over a rocky hill passing a few grazing sheep who barely acknowledged their presence. From the top of the hill the fog had temporarily obstructed what was probably an amazing view. Fog has a certain magic of its own—Meg could hear the waves lapping the shore and sea birds cawing from some hidden place but was not able to see any more than the contrast of the green down below and the silvery-grey mist that surrounded them. Trout led her down the hill and they were soon able to make out the ruins that lay below. The stone fortress rose out of the mist the closer they got to it.
It was much bigger than it seemed from afar. The stones of the fort perched precariously on the rock at the mouth of the harbor appeared as if they could be easily pushed into the water. Towering over them, the walls rose up from the green grass in a jumbled mass of stone and cement. They entered the grey walls through the Spanish arch, as Trout called it, which was a large, carved stone that was perched on other larger rocks that held up a wall of stone and mortar. The fog th
at enveloped them added to the mystery of the ancient ruins that surrounded them.
“Before the Spaniards built this castle there was a fort here. The rock below us is a perfect spot to defend the harbor entrance.”
They walked through the structures that were enclosed within the fort. Wall after wall of roofless buildings blended themselves into the grey sky. Meg found the smell of the sea and the moss-covered rocks amid the grass intoxicating. She had never set foot in something so old and her imagination was reeling. There were openings in the walls both high and low that must have been used for defending the castle. Meg and Trout looked out a small window opening to the fog-shrouded bay. In her mind, Meg was able to envision a chain strung over the water and a boat trapped in the harbor.
How incredible it must be, Meg thought, to live among such amazing ruins. But Trout didn’t seem to be the least bit impressed. Meg supposed that when you live next to something like this castle it eventually becomes just a pile of rocks you take tourists out to. Sunlight streaming through the fog gave the entire place an eerie look. The mist was like a silk veil that, if pulled back, would reveal a thriving pirate castle from the past. Trout and Meg walked between more stone walls and made their way into a courtyard that was situated in the center of the castle.
“So where did the priest dig for the treasure?” Meg asked.
Before Trout could respond, a man’s voice pierced the mist. “That’s just an old folktale,” he said, startling them. The voice came from the direction of the Spanish arch where they had first walked in. Trout and Meg jumped at the sound but, Meg recognized the strange accent. Al Woods stepped into the courtyard.
“The Digger,” Trout whispered.
“His name is Mr. Woods, Trout.”
“You can call me Al.”
“Just Al?” asked Trout.
“Alonzo if you wish.”
The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle Page 10
