Read Online The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell - Free Book Online

returned and thrust it at the queen. “You might be needin’ to stick that under your arse, and I’d best throw another log on the fire.”
    Elizabeth, bemused, did as she was told, pushing back amongst the cushions till she was comfortable. Grace was suddenly in charge of the evening, the queen a guest in her own apartments. Filling Elizabeth’s cup and then her own, Grace began to speak.
    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