A Most Notorious Woman

By T.D. Edge

"The editorial team save the best story until last; T D Edge's 'A Most Notorious Woman' . . . Edge creates a marvellously larger than life heroine in Grace O'Malley and the story is one of the best of 2009. Outstanding." Suite 101

T D Edge lives in London. He won a Cadbury's fiction competition at age 10 but only did it for the chocolate. When that ran out, he got writing again and published several children's/YA books (writing as Terry Edge) with Random House, Scholastic, Andre Deutsch and others. His short stories have appeared in Aeon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online and Realms of Fantasy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.D. Edge
• Release date: Jul 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465757142

T.D. Edge

T. D. Edge lives in London. He won a Cadbury's fiction competition at age 10 but only did it for the chocolate. When that ran out, he got writing again and published several children's/YA books (writing as Terry Edge) with Random House, Scholastic, Andre Deutsch and others. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines including Aeon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online and Realms of Fantasy. In May 2012, his story "Big Dave's in Love" won the New Scientist/Arc Magazine SF short fiction contest.

Book preview

Table of Contents

A Most Notorious Woman a short story

Excerpt from Bloodjacker

About the Author

Stories by T.D. Edge

A Most Notorious Woman

(a short story)

by T. D. Edge

About A Most Notorious Woman

Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen, ruled the sixteenth century seas. But can she conquer the future too?

Praise for A Most Notorious Woman

The editorial team save the best story until last; T. D. Edge’s ‘A Most Notorious Woman’…Edge creates a marvellously larger than life heroine in Grace O’Malley and the story is one of the best of 2009. Outstanding. Suite 101

T.D. Edge’s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Arc, Penumbra, Realms of Fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Flash Fiction Online.

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A Most Notorious Woman

Copyright 2013 by T. D. Edge

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

Cover Image Copyright 2013 by Ben Baldwin

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A Most Notorious Woman

The most powerful woman in England put out her hand to the most powerful woman in Ireland, and the witnesses held their breath. Quartermaster Harris watched, fascinated, disguised as a courtier.

Elizabeth’s white, oblong, face and black, sharp eyes glinted with what might have been curiosity but could just as easily have been displeasure. She wore white silk, embroidered with pearls the size of coffee beans, under a mantle of black silk shot through with silver threads, the end of her long train carried by a marchioness. Her white powdered chest was mostly uncovered, broken by a gold collar studded with fabulous jewels. Her auburn hair, obviously false, supported a small but ornate gold crown.

Despite the finery and obvious status of the English Queen, her guest captured Harris’s attention—in her mid-sixties, like the Queen, but with a face full of weathered lines. She wore a long saffron leine—a simple robe with billowing sleeves—under a plain green dress and long, woollen cloak. Her naturally red hair, now streaked with grey, was held back by a simple silver pin. A little taller than the Queen, she took the English monarch’s hand and said, in Latin, I am honoured to be invited to your majesty’s magnificent palace at Greenwich, and subject myself to your will.

At this, the tension increased further amongst the surrounding dignitaries, courtiers, ambassadors and servants. For, although the Irish Queen had formally acceded to the English sovereign, it was more than apparent, by her bearing and holding of the Queen’s gaze, that she saw herself as an equal.

After a long moment, Elizabeth’s lips parted in a smile, displaying sugar-blackened teeth. Welcome to my court, Grace O’Malley, she said. I have heard much about you and would now hear the truth from your own lips.

Harris watched Grace proceed to charm the Queen, not least by the simple fact she was also a woman of power in a man’s world. So much so that eventually Elizabeth agreed to all her demands. Grace would return to Connaught a much relieved woman, knowing she could live out her last days in relative comfort, with her