The Hidden Spaniard

By Theresa Lynn

Spring 1998 –

Norah, an American woman journalist, currently adrift in her life, heads to Belfast, Northern Ireland to cover the unfolding Peace Accords. In addition, she is also unravelling a family legend.

In another spring, 410 years past, Spain prepares the greatest naval fleet ever assembled. Europe is abuzz with rumours of an invasion to unseat the “English Jezebel”, Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1588s Celtic Ireland, a 15 year old pagan girl is an apprentice seamstress earning her way and experiencing history’s surprises as a shipwrecked, Spanish Soldier is washed ashore on a local Irish beach.

“The truth must become a legend to survive,” it has been said. Did any Armada shipwrecked survivors leave any descendants in Ireland? Quite possibly.

What history has downplayed, due to a collective Irish guilt, may indeed be the truth.

Religion, magick and politics intertwine in this tale, as the omission of the historical truths are finally revealed.

A 16th century event has echoes to our current era, when history is hijacked by the victors.

Yet, eventually, “The truth will out.”

Even if that truth arrives centuries later.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398466975

Theresa Lynn

A voracious reader from an early age, this author has worked as a stringer and correspondent for newspapers in both Maine and Massachusetts. In addition to writing work, she has been employed as a Registered Nurse, and an Educator. Currently, she is working on completing a second novel, a contemporary tale about her Baby Boomer generation. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, she lives with her husband, John and their ruling cat, Nemo.

Book preview

About the Author

A voracious reader from an early age, this author has worked as a stringer and correspondent for newspapers in both Maine and Massachusetts. In addition to writing work, she has been employed as a Registered Nurse, and an Educator.

Currently, she is working on completing a second novel, a contemporary tale about her Baby Boomer generation.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, she lives with her husband, John and their ruling cat, Nemo.

Dedication

In memory of my maternal Irish Grandmother, Sarah Lally Conway, who told me the stories!

Copyright Information ©

Theresa Lynn 2023

The right of Theresa Lynn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398466968 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398466975 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Introduction

Spring, 1998

To say that she was dissatisfied with her current life’s progression, would be a vast understatement. Where’s the newness? Where is that bright spark that motivates or inspires one? Norah asked herself, as she sat, watching a full moon.

I need change. I feel like a burnt ash on a slow, floating wind.

On this cold March evening, it seemed that wind of change was taking an enormous time to appear. Missing from her life right now was that youthful exuberance of a new experience. The thrill of learning and accomplishing a new skill or completing a task well done was lacking. Memories returned, contemplating this moon, of, how thrilling it was the first time she went on a Ferris wheel, or lit a campfire or went out for a ride in a motorboat.

She stood, outstretching her arms and legs into the shape of a pentacle. Goddess, I need forward momentum. Change! As I ask, so mote it be!

Two days later after her full moon, invoking ritual, she was shocked when Jim, her editor at ‘The Oracle’, the alternative weekly newspaper where she worked, casually asked, Hey, Norah. Aren’t you of Irish descent?

Yes, and I’ve family there too. Remember when I went on vacation two years ago to attend my cousin’s wedding?

Right, I remember now.

Why the sudden interest in my Irish heritage, Jim?

Would you like to cover the Anglo-Irish Peace Accords in Northern Ireland? The negotiations are coming to an end and there will soon be an agreement. The Oracle’s readership has a large Irish population of subscribers. A weekly paper can devote more coverage to the Peace Accords compared to a daily paper. So, how would you like to go over and cover this event?

Are you serious, Jim?

Yes, I am. One hundred percent serious.

And, I can sweeten the deal for the paper. I’ve got Irish citizenship.

You’re a dual national? I didn’t know that.

Sometime, in that long away time, I plan to retire there!

Great, then I’ll set the wheels into motion.

I’ve needed something to look forward to.

Norah?

Yeah?

Just come back.

She laughed.

In Flight

Looking out of the airplane’s window, the world below seemed unchanged, but everything about Norah’s life was different on this flight, from her previous one, two years back. She was single now and flying over alone.

The pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker reminding passengers that since this was an evening flight the lights were to be dimmed. Norah was still awake, too excited now to sleep. All around her, the other passengers were alternating between sleep and wakefulness. Yet, she was completely awake.

Reaching into the coin pocket of her blue jean skirt, Norah pulled out a very, old silver coin. On one side is a worn word, ESPAGNE. On the opposite side, barely visible, is the image of a sailing ship. The letters ARMDA are visible, as is the date, 1588. The bottom section of the letter 5 is missing.

My heirloom.

On this flight, there was no one to tell her where to go, what to do, nor any endless questions from another person to answer. Solo! Free! Unattached! Space and time to do what she wanted, and all that was expected from her, was to file a daily story on the progress of the talks.

The flight from Boston was full, with other media people covering the unfolding event. Most of the Irish passengers were young, like the New Ireland.

Belfast, Northern Ireland, was her ultimate destination; it was a city accustomed to twenty-five years of upheaval. The inhabitants desperately wanted a peace treaty that would put an end to the seemingly endless bloodshed. Unsure of what the future might bring, Belfast, like Norah herself, had both endured and survived changes.

The past year had been a tumultuous one for her. Norah’s marriage had ended, yet, she and Richard had remained friends, which was more than some of her friends could say. Too many couples, married around the same time as Norah and Richard, were divorced as well. Bad astrological karma that season, she reasoned.

Honey, her mother had said after the divorce was finalised, take the money and run. Sound advice. So, she took her share of the settlement and banked it, figuring to take her time making decisions about her future.

Two years ago, she and Richard came to Ireland for her cousin’s wedding and stayed for a week; they both had loved the country completely.

Since that trip to Ireland, she had been having a continuously repeating dream in which she had lived in Ireland in another, ancient time. During this flight, that feeling of déjà vu seemed to return.

I’ve lived here before, in a vastly different era, she said to herself as she fell asleep at the beginning of the five-hour flight.

Padraig, the ghost-husband of her dream, reappeared. The dream reoccurred more frequently now in this past month since she knew that she would be traveling to Ireland. In her subconscious, she knew him intimately, could see him as he had been, somewhere back in the time of the sixteenth century. Strong feelings emerged sending an accurate description of him in her mind’s eye as they had been before, strolling through fields, discussing crops and rain, making love in a rocky alcove to the right of their kitchen when a rare private moment was available.

Padraig was unique for his time, learned, a solicitor, yet always, for the people. Unafraid neither of controversy, nor to speak his mind, burdened as he was with huge emotions and visionary thoughts.

Tall, direct, a Gaelic speaker with black curly hair and brown eyes, he was noticed and well sought out in his district.

A tolerant man, he was the step-father to Bridghid, the love child of his now wife, Mairi and her Spanish lover, Alonzo. We had many sons but only two daughters, Norah recalled; they were named after the Celtic Mother Goddesses of the Old Religion, Bridghid and Grania. So, the memories and the story now begin…

The pilot’s voice over the plane’s loudspeaker dragged Norah from her historical reverie.

Ladies and gents, we will now be making our descent into Shannon… Norah looked out the tiny oval window at the exquisitely shaded green quilt – that was Ireland.

Coming home, she said out loud.

Thank you for flying Aer Lingus!

Clapping broke out when the plane’s wheels touched Irish soil.

In addition to covering the Peace Accords, which was her main objective for this travel, Norah wanted to research the family legend of the Black Irish, which had been a part of the family lore since Elizabethan times.

Throughout her childhood, her maternal grandmother had always referred to Norah as the, ‘Black Irish one!’

Gram, I’m not black! nine-year-old Norah had protested.

No, you’re not black, girl. But you have the olive skin, like me and a minute in the sun and you have a tan. It is a gift from that surviving Spanish Armada soldier, after the devastation of the shipwrecks off the Irish coast in the autumn of 1588.

Norah knew the story by heart, at least the most popular part of the legend, since the time she was a fifth grade student and the Armada was studied in school.

During the reign of the English Queen, Elizabeth I, the Spanish King Philip II decided to invade England. Philip sent 130 ships, the largest floating flotilla that the world had ever seen. In late July to early August 1588, the Spanish were defeated by the English use of fireships at the Battle of Gravelines.

Unfortunately, for the Spaniards, a perfect storm, ‘A Protestant Wind’ blew their ships off course and England was never invaded. However, twenty-four or more vessels were shipwrecked off the western coast of Ireland. Men and debris were scattered over the Irish beaches. The survivors who reached Ireland and were not captured or murdered by their English captors are the basis of the Black Irish legend. A few Spaniards, who were aided by the sole Irish man or woman, stayed long enough to create their progeny from whence the legend originated. Norah was compelled to research that era in order to finish her novel, ‘The Progeny’, which she had been writing for what seemed like eons. The Elizabethan era was one of political intrigue, plots, scandals and intermarriages and all told a fascinating historical time. Norah remembered her gram’s storytelling, for she was an excellent seanchaí.

You see, Gram explained, Ireland and Spain were both Catholic countries. England was a Protestant nation, with a religion that was created by the earlier King Henry VIII, father of Queen Elizabeth I. When Henry VIII established his own religion, the Church of England, he was excommunicated by the pope. From that point on, England and Spain were both religious and political enemies.

Gram, you know your history well.

It was always my favourite subject in school. I could never fathom the arithmetic nor cared to. History is full of people and how interesting their lives were. It shows, what people suffered under unjust rulers and what goals they struggled towards. Those English took away too much freedom from us Irish and any nation that they conquered. Someday, England will be supreme no more!

You hate the English.

Yes, I do. As a child, I was not allowed to learn how to read, write, or speak either Irish or Gaelic. And, many an Irish lad gave his life for England during the Great War. But all that kissin’ arse to the Brits began to change in 1916, thanks to that same generation of Irishmen.

So, you left Ireland.

Aye, when I was seventeen, I left home and farm. Never and forever to see my parents and many of my brothers or sisters again.

In 1911, I took a steamship with my sister Annie. It was a long time at sea before finally we landed in Boston.

Norah recalled the lessons of Irish history that she had learned from Gram. As the eldest of three children, Norah was babysat by her grandmother because her mother was busy with her twin brothers.

During these history lessons, she learned of the legend of the Black Irish.

Shannon airport was not very crowded on this spring day; after all, most of the action in Ireland was now taking place in Belfast.

With her Irish passport in hand, Norah cleared customs easily, picked up her rental car, drove carefully on the left side of the road until she came to the Bed and Breakfast where she had reservations. Her plan was to stop and see the family, stay two days, then head to Belfast and the Ulster Museum to view the contents of one of the Armada ships, the ‘La Girona’, which had been discovered, salvaged and now had a permanent home at the museum.

On the way south after the conference, she would stay with a Lynn cousin, but now, on the way to the north, she was staying in Galway with her Thompson cousins.

The Thompson farmstead was as she remembered it. Up on a hill, two buildings stood beside one another. Family houses, a father’s and a son’s, stood as they had been since the family had moved, not by choice but by eviction by the British authorities from Tourmakeady over one hundred and fifty years earlier.

No one was about. No car was there, only Sunny the black and white Border collie-sheep dog cross. The animal approached Norah warily.

Been a while, Sunny, hasn’t it? Looks like everyone is out!

The dog wagged her tail and Norah patted her. The sun had come out intermittently during her drive into the West and now the rays of sunshine were becoming more brilliant.

Norah felt a small peace overcome her, as she sat on Irish soil, next to the stacked peat with Sunny half on her lap. Peace, which had been so elusive since the divorce, returned.

C’mon, Sunny, let’s check this old place out.

Together, she and Sunny took a walk around the farm. Yellow daffodils were in full bloom outside the gate which separated the lawn area from the livestock. She opened the wooden gate entering into the lands of her forefathers. The cattle shed, which was part of the original homestead, was the building that her grandmother had grown up in. The worn paths were a series of C and S shaped curves leading to a second gate. A sudden movement caught her eye when six hens strutted in front of her to inspect the intruder. Cattle began stirring inside of the stone pound staring at her unexpected arrival. Eight cows of mixed breeds stared back at her; among them were Friesians and Limousins.

Hello, all! ’Tis grand, that you’re keeping this old place up, girls!

So, grand to see you again, Norah! Anne