Free The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell

ships were nothing short of a miracle. What other little girl in Ireland—or the world, I used to think—was blessed with such excitement and adventure? Even the fishing expeditions in local waters were amazing. The rush in your chest the moment a fair wind took the sails, the ship speedin’ across the waters. Sometimes you felt as thought you were in flight, racing with the sea birds. ’Twas magnificent, truly magnificent. And where else could you stand amongst so many big, strapping men at congenial work, smell the salt air, behold the workings of a fine ship, sails flapping, the noise of the tackles and winches hauling nets crammed with wriggling silver fish? The best part was, the sailors put me to work as soon as I was able. Taught me all the nautical knots, and my nimble little fingers were soon better than any-body else ’s at fixing a broken net or a snagged line. I came to love the smell of pitch and wet wood. Indeed, life onboard was a sight fresher than the air inside our castle rooms.
    My mother never knew that the moment we put to sea and were out of her sight, I’d rig myself in boy’s clothing—woolen breeches, a linen shirt, short jacket waterproofed with wax, my long hair braided and tied up close to my head and covered with a cap. Like all the men I went barefoot on the slippery deck. Truly, a ship was no place for a girl, so I would become for all intents and purposes a boy. Margaret, God bless her, would have died of mortification had she known.
    Sometimes we ’d head north for Scotland, and ’twas on those trips I first met the great Scots clans and their chieftains—the MacDonalds, the MacSweenys, and the MacDowells. These were the fierce men I’d later ferry across to Ireland to fight with us against the English. The Scots Gallowglass are hands down the best fighters in the world—perhaps because they’re all a bit off their heads. But in later years they remembered little Grace, a tiny sailor standin’ on deck by her da, so proud.
    But nothin’ compared to the long trips south to Portugal and Spain.
    Oh, the feel of the air and the water turnin’ warm, the great chill of Ireland left behind, days of bright sun on the sea. There was somethin’ delicious about such a day, my father takin’ me aside for a lesson in pilotage.
    He ’d haul out a big chest he kept in his cabinet and unroll a map of the coastlines from Ireland to Africa. Then he ’d take me up on deck and we ’d survey all within our sight. Much of the time we traveled not far from the shore, except a dash out of sight of land, across the Bay of Biscay. Owen would point to a hill or promontory, then stick his finger on the map and say, “There she is, and farther on down is the mouth of the such and so river, and here is a safe landfall.” And I loved that, knowing what we were seeing with our eyes was actually a point on one of my father’s maps. ’Twas nothin’ really, but for a child it felt a small miracle.
    He had rutters too—maps of the sea floor—and these he made me study with great care. For there were rocks and shoals and shallows that, unaccounted for, could sink a ship. So by the age of twelve I knew the ocean below and its currents, as well as the myriad points along the coast. My favorite of the fabulous sea creatures were the gray whales, which we would spot when they rose themselves from the water to a considerable height, only to crash down again with such great weight and force that no matter how many times I saw the animals, I marveled at them.
    Come the foul weather—and the foul weather would always come—
    there would be more lessons, these taught in a sterner voice, for these were lessons of life and death. I learned how to smell a storm on the way, the signs in the sky, on the wind, on the water. Even by the birds and fish.
    When the wind howled and waves were moving mountains, threatening us every moment with destruction, Owen would take me below and lash me to his bed so I’d not be