#rockfleetcastle

The Pirate Queen

 All I hear today is the soft bleating of sheep on the green hill across the bay, but on a summer day like this in the late 16th century, the noises would have been numerous – cows bellowing, horses clopping on cobblestones, carts creaking, kids laughing and shouting, a blacksmith hammering…the noises of everyday life in a bustling village.

I am here to research a novel about the legendary Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley (a.k.a. Gráinne Ni Mháille) and was hoping a local friend’s connections will come through with a key to see inside the fortified tower. They don’t come through and the door remains firmly locked. But, maybe that’s for the best because my imagination has filled in the rooms of the four-story castle where Grace ruled her clan and settled after an illustrious career captaining her fleet of galleys up and down the coast of Ireland and beyond. I see colorful tapestries on the walls, furs on the flagstone floors, winding stone stairways, bricks of peat burning in a fireplace…

I stand on wave-smoothed rocks and imagine her on the rooftop battlements looking out to sea and thinking of all the loved ones she’d lost, the enemies she fought in battle, the face of the Queen of England (Elizabeth I) whom she accidentally offended by spitting into the fire as they sat together in Greenwich Palace. The two women were powerful rulers at a time when women were only valued for their housekeeping and childrearing abilities. I imagine the two had a lot in common. I hope they bonded over their shared challenges.

Looking at the tower keep today, and the peaceful surroundings, one would never know that such an impressive and feared woman once walked this shoreline and slept behind those walls. I sit in the silence and whisper a promise, “I’ll remember you.”