Grace O’Malley clearly regarded me as a younger brother, and never lost a certain air of protection in her dealings with me. To her I remained always in some sort “a little boy, a child,” whose life she had saved—although I was one of the biggest men in Ireland.
Eva O’Malley, who was two years younger than I, had tyrannised over me when I was a lad, and now that I was a man she mocked at and flouted me, dubbing me “Giant Greathead”—I say “Greathead,” but in our language Greathead and Thickhead are the same—and otherwise amusing herself at my expense. But in her griefs and troubles it was to me she came, and not to Grace, as might have seemed more natural.
“Ruari!” she called, and I waved my hand to her in greeting. As I went into the hall she met me.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, “for I wished to speak to you before you saw Grace.”
“Yes?” I asked, and as I noticed the freshness of the roseleaf face I marvelled at it for the hundredth time.
“Grace has made an end of her mourning,” she went on, “and her purpose now is to go to Galway to see the Lord Deputy, if he be there, as it is said he is, or, if he be not, then Sir Nicholas Malby, the Colonel of Connaught.”
I could have shouted for joy, for I was weary of forced inaction while the fine weather was passing us by, and all the harvest of the sea was waiting to be gathered in by ready hands like ours.
“Glad am I, in truth, to hear it,” said I heartily. I was not fond of Galway, but I was anxious to be again on the waters, and who could tell what might not happen then? There had been no fighting for a long time, and the men were lusting for it, hungering and thirsting for it—only biding, like dogs in the leash, for the word. And I was of the same mind.
“But listen, Ruari,” said Eva. “Is it well that she should go to Galway? To my thinking there is a very good reason against it.”
“Indeed,” said I, surprised. “What is it?” As I have declared already, I had no special liking for Galway—and the sea is wide.