Grace O'Malley, Princess and Pirate. Machray Robert
I’m afraid—you know he sees with other eyes than ours.”
And she said this with such evident terror that inwardly, but not without some dread, I cursed the “Wise Man,”—a certain Teige O’Toole, called “Teige of the Open Vision” by the people, who counted him to be a seer and a prophet. He was certainly skilled in many things, and his knowledge was not as the knowledge of other men.
As she stood beside me, wistfully, entreatingly, and fearfully, I pondered for a brief space and then I said—
“I will go and speak with Teige O’Toole, and will return anon,” and forthwith went in search of him.
I found him sitting on a rock, looking out to sea, murmuring disconsolately to himself. Straightway I asked him what it was that he had to say against Grace O’Malley’s intended visit to Galway, but he would vouchsafe no reply other than the awesome words which he kept on repeating and repeating—
“Darkness and blood; then a little light; blood and darkness, then again light—but darkness were better.”
Whereat I shuddered, feeling an inward chill; yet I begged of him not once, nor twice, to make plain his meaning to me. He would not answer, so that I lost patience with him, and had he not been an aged man and an uncanny I would have shaken the explanation of his mysterious words out of his lips, and, as it was, was near doing so.
Rising quickly from the stone whereon he had been sitting, he moved away with incredible swiftness as if he had read my thoughts, leaving me staring blankly after him.
What was it he had said?
“Darkness and blood; and then a little light!”
Well, darkness and blood were no strangers to me.
“Blood and darkness; then again light—but darkness were better!”
I could make no manner of sense of it at all; but I saw the meaning of it plainly enough in the years that followed.
I felt a gentle touch upon my arm, and Eva was by my side.
“Grace wishes you to go to her at once,” she said. “O Ruari, Ruari, dissuade her from going.”
“I will do what I can,” I replied; but I knew beforehand that if Grace O’Malley had settled what she was to do, nothing I could urge was likely to change her purpose.
Slowly I went into her presence.
“Eva has told you,” she said, “that we set out at once for Galway.”
“Yes,” I answered, “but I pray you to consider the matter well.”
“I have considered it well,” she replied; “but say on.”
“Is it a necessity,” I asked, “that you should go to Galway? Are there not many more places in Ireland for us to go to? Is not the north open to us, and the west, with plenty of Spanish merchantmen and English trading on the broad waters?”
“All in good time,” said she, smiling at my eloquence.
“Here,” said I, emboldened to proceed, “here you are among your own people, on your own land, and no one will seek to molest us. But in Galway—everything is different.”
“That is it,” she said earnestly. “That is the very reason—everything is different there.”
She stopped as if in thought.
“Listen, Ruari! My mind,” said she, “is made up to go to Galway to talk over our affairs with the English governor.”
So this was the reason.
“You say I am safe here,” she continued, “but am I? Word was brought me only yesterday by a trusty messenger from Richard Burke, the MacWilliam, that my father’s old-time enemy, Murrough O’Flaherty, is whispering in the ear of Sir Nicholas Malby, the Colonel of Connaught—perhaps into the ear of the Lord Deputy himself, for I hear he is expected about this time in the city—that my father was an enemy of the Queen, Elizabeth, and that I, his daughter, am sure to follow in his steps.”
“Murrough O’Flaherty!” cried I, “is he not content with his own wide lands of Aughnanure?”
“Content,” said she. “Such a man is never content! Then this insidious whisperer goes on to hint that I am only a young woman, and that my father has left no heir. It is plain enough, is it not, what he means?”
“Sir Nicholas Malby,” said I, “is reputed to be a just man and a good soldier.”
“A just man—perhaps, who knows! That is why I am going to Galway. I must make clear my right and title to my father’s possessions.”
“Right and title,” I exclaimed, and unconsciously I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword.
She saw and interpreted the action.
“Our title-deed,” said she, “has been that of the sword——”
“And so shall it always be,” I broke in.
“In one sense, yes,” she assented; “but we live in times of change, and things are not as they were. All the chiefs and lords of Ireland are now getting a title for their lands from the queen. Even my father did something of the sort. If I go not to Galway to put forward my claims it will be said that I am disloyal and a traitress.”
“So,” I said, “it may be an evil to go, but it is a worse thing to stay here.”
“Yes,” she answered; “but I have other reasons. It is not that I put so much trust in a piece of parchment, signed and sealed, although I see no harm in getting it. Ruari, I have purposes that reach far beyond Galway, and Connaught even, and for the present I deem it not well openly to incur the enmity of the English.”
This speech was beyond me, so I held my peace until I remembered what the “Wise Man” had said; but when I mentioned it she replied that she knew of the matter, and though it troubled her, it would make no difference to her plans.
Then she fell to brooding and thinking, as was her way, whereupon I left her to get the ships ready for sea even as she wished.
So, before another day was passed, the three great galleys drew away from the shelter of Clare Island, and, speeding before a fair wind, made for the south. Grace and Eva O’Malley were on The Grey Wolf, Tibbot, the pilot, was in command of his dead master’s ship, The Winged Horse, while I was on my own vessel, The Cross of Blood.
We took a great company with us of nearly one hundred and fifty men, including a band of arquebusiers, besides bards and pipers, and a priest on each ship. The priests were not much to my liking on shipboard, but Grace would have them. Both Grace and Eva brought of the finest of their garments, all made of rich Spanish stuffs, so that they might appear before the Governor as befitted their rank. I myself took with me two full suits, also of Spanish make, and such as were worn at courts, that I might not appear unworthy of my mistress.
As the wind was steady, the black cliffs of Achill, with the mass of Cushcamcarragh and the dome of Nephin behind them, soon grew distant in our wake. The glowing cone of the Holy Hill of St. Patrick, a wonder of light and shade as beam of sun or shadow of cloud fell upon it, sank behind us.
And on we went through a sea of silence, whereon we saw never another ship; on past the grey or green islands off the coast, until the wind dropped at sunset. Then the rowers bent their backs and knotted their muscles over the oars, and so drove the galleys up the long, narrow arm that is called the Bay of Killery, until we found anchorage under the mighty shoulders of that king of mountains, the lonely Muilrea.
At early morn, before the sun was up, albeit a far-off tender flush had sprung up, like something magical, upon the western rim of the world, the dirl, dirl, dirl, and the clamp, clamp, clamp, of the oars, as they smote the groaning pivots on which they swung, was heard, and the galleys went foaming out from the bay, the spray rising like a fine dust of gems from under the forefeet of