The captain of the gate appeared to be somewhat dazed with the size of our company, which numbered more than thirty swords, spears, and battle-axes, and he arranged his men in a line as we advanced. Saluting my mistresses with grave punctilio, he informed us that Sir Nicholas was lodged at the house of the Mayor of Galway, where for the time he held his court. But, he said, as he stood resting the point of his drawn sword upon the ground, orders had been given to admit into the town only the lady Grace O’Malley, her women, and not more than a few of her people.
When I protested against this, he replied that the Governor was very strict; and as for himself, he was merely a soldier whose duty was to do what he was bid.
My mistress, as he spoke, flashed on me a glance of quick intelligence; then she turned with a brilliant, compelling smile to the officer.
“Sir,” cried she with animation, looking with her dark, lovely eyes into the eyes of the Englishman, “you speak as a soldier should. But here”—and she waved her hand round her company—”are not more than a few of my people, as it were. You think that we be too many? Nay, sir, ’tis not so. Is it not fitting to do as much honour as I can to the Governor? And the more of us the greater the honour done him?”
And she smiled again upon the officer, who was a young man and a gallant, to his undoing. While they were thus engaged in parleying—they conversed for some time, but what further was said I did not hear—we had pressed within the gate and filled up part of the street beyond. Having gained this position, I had no thought of retreating. The captain, noting our bearing, and partly won over by Grace O’Malley’s woman’s wiles, partly making a virtue of necessity, for we could easily have overpowered his men, again gravely saluted.
“Be it as you wish, lady,” he said; and so we passed on up the Street of the Key.
It has been my lot to see of great cities not a few, but, though I had scant reason to love the place, not many, I will say, that were finer or more handsomely built than Galway was in these days. She was now at the very height of her prosperity, and laid claim to be second in the kingdom to Dublin alone, and proudly vaunted her superiority over her ancient rival Limerick.
As we marched up the Street of the Key, the ladies magnificently attired in our midst, and presently entered the High Street, the tall spires of the church of St. Nicholas of Myra—the patron saint of mariners, who hath ever been most favourable to me—rose in front of us; while the storehouses of the merchant princes of the city—the Lynches, the Martins, the Blakes, the Kirwans, and others whose names escape me—encompassed us with vast buildings of dressed stone on every hand.
On all sides were signs of abundance and wealth. And small wonder; for there was hardly a port of France or Spain—nay, of all Europe—whither the ships of Galway did not go. Her traders, ever unsatisfied, had even sailed out beyond the Spanish Main to the Indies.
But it must be remembered that Galway was not an Irish city, but an English—where it was not Spanish. The strong walls and towers which belted her in were not more for defence against an enemy who might attack her from the sea, than against the Irishry who dwelt beyond her gates. And keen and bitter as was the hatred between Englishman and Spaniard, that between the Englishman of Galway and the Irishman, whose home was in the country, was keener and more bitter still. The day was not to close without a proof of this.