Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  As he looked at it, Hugh dimly remembered that he had heard tales amongst his uncle's men of some place amid the mountains to which the O'Flahertys were said to resort when hard pressed, and which was supposed to be guarded for them by enchantment. He had no time to think about that or anything else however then, for almost before he had begun to consider what to do next, there came a sudden descent of wild beasts, or what seemed to him to be wild beasts. A dozen enormous dogs, long-backed, of a brindled-grey colour, wiry haired and wolfish looking, came rushing upon him, with their mouths open, not barking honestly, but yelping in a low, blood-curdling fashion.

  Hugh drew his dagger and stood upon the defensive. What could one dagger do, though, against a dozen wolfish beasts? He was giving himself up for lost, and in another few minutes would doubtless have been pulled down, when a woman suddenly appeared upon a knoll a little in advance of the double line of huts, who, seeing what was afoot, shouted to the dogs, brandishing at the same time a long stick which she held in her hands. The pack obeyed her, retreating, however, only a little way and remaining in a semicircle across the path, licking their lips and growling suggestively, their very coats standing erect with anger and suspended longing.

  Hugh looked at his deliverer, and when he saw her, he wondered afresh, not knowing what manner of woman she was. Evidently she was a “savage” — that is to say, a native — but she was quite a different variety of savage from any he was acquainted with — quite different, for instance, from the wives and daughters of his uncle's “churls” or “peasants,” who lived huddled outside the castle courtyard. This was a tall woman of thirty or perhaps forty years of age, dressed in a garment of yellowish flannel, which came below her knees, and over which hung a big red cloak, draped as men's cloaks were then draped and fastened at the throat by two metal brooches, which glittered as she moved. Her arms were bare, as was also her head, which was covered with a mass of black hair gathered into a knot above her forehead and hanging loosely down over her back. Her eyes were very dark, with an odd gleam in them, which struck Hugh immediately. She stood upon her knoll with the air of one who expects instant obedience.

  With the stick in her hand, she made a sign to him to approach. He did so, expecting nothing less than to be pulled down by the dogs. Those amiable beasts made way sullenly, then closed in, following him closer and closer, till he felt their hot breath in unpleasant proximity to the calves of his legs. Suddenly, the woman upon the knoll uttered a call, and as if by magic, a dozen new figures appeared upon the scene, creeping like ants out of the low doors of the wattled huts, which till then had seemed uninhabited, and running down the glen towards them. Before Hugh had time to see clearly what was happening to him, he was surrounded. Dozens of eager hands were laid upon him. His dagger was plucked from his side; his cap twisted off his head, one of his shoes was off in a twinkling, and half a dozen hands were busily stripping him of his clothes. Another minute would have found him standing stark naked upon the rocks.

  Before this climax was reached, however, he had plucked up his spirit again. Tired and outnumbered as he was, the pride of race rose. He was not going to let himself be robbed and stripped in this fashion with impunity. Most of his assailants he now perceived to be half-grown lads of his own age or younger, active-looking creatures, brown as the bogs at his feet, with long tangled “glibbes” over their eyes. Several were practically naked, others had scanty woollen rags tied round their waists, while a few wore shirts, belted in and hanging down to their knees. There was not a single grown man amongst them, though a few quite old men were following, who, being slower in their movements, had not reached the spot before his younger assailants had nearly finished stripping him of his clothes.

  Hugh selected his antagonist, the biggest of the boys, an especially shock-headed young rascal, with a small turn-up nose and two twinkling black eyes like those of a stoat, and before this young gentleman had realised what was happening, the stranger's fist had made acquaintance with his nose, and down he went like a rabbit, head over heels, head over heels, over and over, and over and over, until he gathered himself at last amongst the dead ferns and nettles at the bottom of a hollow, where he remained squatting upon his heels and looking up at his antagonist with a snarl of angry astonishment, which showed his white teeth from ear to ear.

  There was an instant outcry on the part of the crowd, and some of the smaller of the boys drew back, but an old man who had just come up, and who carried a big club in his hand, ran forward and aimed a blow at Hugh's head, which would promptly have made an end of him, but that the woman in the red cloak shouted again in a peculiar tone, upon which the man with the club paused, the rest also standing still and looking at her, evidently waiting to see what order she was about to give.

  Thereupon, she descended from her knoll and walked slowly over the grass till she came in front of Hugh Gaynard, the crowd about him making way as she advanced. Here she paused and looked hard at him without speaking, her eyes closing, and then again opening suddenly, as the eyes of owls and other night-birds do. At last, she addressed him. She spoke Irish in a voice which had a sort of rippling cadence in it, though the words were harsh and guttural. Luckily for him, Hugh knew Irish, which Anglo-Irish children of that day picked up from their servants. The language he now listened to was different from any he had ever heard before, less mixed up with English words and more flowing. In answer to her questions, he told her who he was and where he had come from, how his uncle's castle had been attacked and burnt by the De Burghs, how he had been brought across the lake, how he had been walking since the middle of the night before, and how, to sum the matter up, he was simply starving.

  All the time he was speaking, she kept on looking at him, her eyes closing for a second and then opening again widely. At one moment, a gleam of sudden ferocity crossed her face, but after a while, it relaxed again, and a less ferocious look came in its place. At last, she turned away and gave some order, of which he did not catch the words. Immediately afterwards, he was seized by a dozen pairs of hands and pulled, pushed, driven along the glen, between the double row of huts, at every door of which as he passed new faces — all of women, children, or very old men — presented themselves, laughing and displaying rows of white teeth with delight at the sight of the prisoner.

  At last, those who were pushing him paused before a but, into which they forced him, head foremost, through the narrow opening. The hut was so small, that he could barely stand upright in it, and its floor so uneven, that he stumbled and fell as he was being pushed in. Then the door was fastened behind him, by the simple process of pushing a big stone against it, and he was left to himself.

  Chapter II.

  Hugh lay upon the ground just where he had stumbled. There was a square crack at the top of the wall, through which the evening light shone in a clearly defined section. It fell upon one side of the hut, leaving the rest in shadow, save for a few splinters of light which stole between the interstices. The hut was empty with the exception of some very evil-smelling hay in one corner and from the state of the ground appeared to have been not long since used as a sheep-pen. Probably, this was during the lambing season, when the sheep all over western Connacht had to be driven into shelter, not merely on account of wolves, but also on account of the eagles, which bred in thousands amongst the crags, swooping down and carrying off the lambs under the very eyes of their owners.

  Between the wattles of the hut Hugh could catch glimpses from time to time of figures passing outside. Faces, too, kept pushing themselves against the sides of his prison. From the height to which these faces reached, it was plain that they must be those of children or boys, probably some of his late assailants, whose ringleader he had sent flying down into the nettly hollow. Others, again, came lower still and were evidently those of quite small children. He could hear them all chattering shrilly to one another, as they twisted their heads backwards and forwards so as to try to catch a glimpse of him. It was a long time, no doubt, since anyth
ing so exciting had happened in Glen Corril.

  Hugh lay like a log. Pride forbade him to give them the satisfaction of hearing him cry or complain. Prisoner though he was, a Gaynard was still a Gaynard, and he was not going to make a show of himself for the amusement of a pack of gibbering savages. He gnashed his teeth in silence, however, and his hands clenched themselves in the darkness. He was half mad by this time with hunger and exhaustion. His throat burned, his temples throbbed, noises buzzed in his brain. He felt for his dagger — the one consolation of his day's wanderings — but it had been taken from him. His hunger was appalling. It seemed to him that unless food came soon, he must begin to gnaw his hands or eat the leather of his one remaining shoe. Presently, a new figure came to the side of the hut, and through a crack in the wall, Hugh caught a glimpse of a small face, while at the same moment a couple of tiny fingers began to push themselves between the wattles. He was on the point of striking at them when he perceived that they held something in their grasp, something which, on looking closer, he saw to be a small triangular fragment of bread. It was black, coarse, and very uninviting-looking; all the same, it had a superlatively enticing aspect to a boy who had eaten nothing better than berries for the last twenty-four hours. Against his will, he crept nearer and nearer to the particular spot in the wall where the bread was. Pride was great, but hunger was greater. His stomach cried for a truce — at any rate until its claims were satisfied.

  Now he was close to the spot; now he could smell the delicious oaty smell of the bread. His hand went up as if by compulsion; his fingers expanded, and he stretched them to take the bit of bread. The instant he touched it, however, there was a start back, and the coveted morsel disappeared from his reach, leaving him frantic with rage and deferred longing. It was only for a minute. The broken fragment reappeared and this time was held firmly, though the fingers which held it gave a start and a tremor as they met those of the prisoner. Hugh ate his fragment, which but seemed only to make his hunger the sharper.

  Another fragment appeared, this time a trifle larger, which again he took in the same humiliating fashion. He had never seen a caged monkey, or his sense of degradation might have been even sharper. There had once been an eagle kept in a wooden box under the castle wall, which he and Christy Culkeen had been in the habit of feeding in much the same fashion with scraps of meat or offal.

  When six or seven fragments of the oaten bread had been eaten, the supply appeared to come to an end. The fingers disappeared for the last time, and a pattering of small feet was heard toddling away down the path. The other children had apparently tired of their pastime, for Hugh heard no more of them. He sat upon the hay, his ears sharpened with hunger. No one came near him. The night grew darker and darker. There was hardly any light now. The moon delayed rising; the buzz and stir of the little encampment around him gradually died away. There was no wind to speak of, nevertheless it was beginning to grow intensely cold; a nipping air stole in through the innumerable crevices of his cage; the wild cry of owls sounded from far away in the depths below. It seemed to Hugh as if he were hung up somewhere from the very sky. It was all so dim, so bleak, so high apparently above the rest of the world.

  And last night he had been at supper with his uncle, they two alone at the upper end of the table, the long train of serving men and men-at-arms stretching away in a lengthening line below them to the end of the room. He had not been particularly happy then, still, he had been somebody, a personage, upborne by the sense of his own importance, the first, next to his uncle, in the castle, the representative of those far-away English Gaynards about whom he knew nothing, but as to whose importance he cherished the most fervent and intimate conviction.

  Where were they now, those inhabitants of the castle? That long row of bearded men who had eaten and drunk together so few hours ago. Were they all dead? Had those villains the Mac-an-Iarlas wreaked their fury upon everything and everybody in the castle — upon the drudges in the yard, upon the dogs in the kennel, and the hawks in the mews? And if so, who would there be to avenge them? Who would fight the De Burghs, burn their houses and kill their dogs, and drudges, and hawks in return? No one, Hugh reflected disconsolately; that was the worst of it; so far as he could think of, no one. The Governor of Connacht, Sir Edward Fitton, was tightly shut up in the town of Galway, hardly able, as everyone knew, to do anything for himself. For months past, the Mac-an-Iarlas had had it all their own way, had paid over and over again their ancient grudges, till even their thirsty souls must have been satisfied — burning houses, sacking villages, killing men, carrying off women, revelling in a perfect saturnalia of murder and general jollification. There were very few castles in Galway, save those already in De Burgh hands, strong enough to stand out against them, and of those few, their own castle of Cargin had been one of the last and very strongest.

  Hate is a very sleep-defying passion, but even hate itself yields at last to immeasurable weariness. Hugh's thoughts began, little by little, to grow misty. His vengeance against the De Burghs became mixed with other and less definite matters. It seemed to him that he was falling down somewhere on to a bog or into the sea, he was not clear which. Voices sounded near him, then passed unaccountably away and ceased. Once the hoot of an owl came with a distinct questioning note to his ear, but presently it flew away over the heather, bleating seemingly like a goat. There was a gurgling sound of water falling and falling. He seemed to have got into a basket which had been hooked by someone to a star, and which kept rocking so violently, that each time it swung his feet knocked against the sky, now to the east and now again to the west. It was not a basket, though, he saw presently, but a boat, and Christy Culkeen was rowing it.

  Then Hugh suddenly saw that the lake was full of blood, and that dim shapes were moving to and fro about it — spongy shapes with swollen faces and staring goggle eyes. Out of the crowd of these, there suddenly arose a new face, this time that of young Brian, old Morogh's grandson, who had been killed at supper by his uncle Sir Meredith. It looked exactly as it had looked when the boy was being carried away from the hall and seemed to Hugh to be rising higher and higher out of the water, and the eyes looking reproachfully back at him just as they did then. At this point, he tried hard to escape — he did not know where, but he knew that he did not want to stay there any longer.

  Suddenly, he was awake. Dazzling splinters of light were breaking in through one side of his prison. Compared to the pitch darkness of the other three, it seemed as if that side had become really hot. The blaze of light fell almost in every variety of pattern, a red, jagged, interlacing network of fire. He caught the dazzle of a torch and dropping tears of turpentine over the grass and stones. Two figures were moving about out there, one a very tall and one a very short figure. He could hear them speaking to one another in whispered tones, though he was unable to distinguish what they said or what manner of beings they were. The light grew nearer and nearer. It was in his eyes; it was darting through and through the chinks; it seemed to be everywhere and to be consuming everything. A horrible thought flashed through his brain. Gould they be going to set fire to the hut and to burn him bodily up? It did not seem at all unlikely. People were very fond of burning one another in those days. Had he not often seen his uncle's men, when they were riding along at night, fling a torch into some house they were passing, not knowing or caring who might be inside?

  All at once, the red network broke into a yet broader blaze. The stone which had fastened the door was rolled back, and the light of a large pitch torch threw its dazzle upon the filthy floor. It lit up poor Hugh, crouched, for all his gallant Gaynard blood, like some forlorn dog in a damp corner. It showed every cranny and crevice of his cage. It tossed its fiery flakes all over the earth and grass outside, along the steep sides of the glen, lighting here a stone, there a group of sleepy, bearded goats. It settled finally in a broad blood-red glow upon the face of the great rock which stood in the centre of the glen, the stain upon its base flushing a deeper and more sinister red
than ever in this sudden illumination.

  The next moment, the square of light was darkened again, and darkened by something that to Hugh's excited fancy seemed almost as terrible as fire itself would have been. The door was not more than about four feet high, but it was very broad in proportion; yet the figure which now occupied it stood upright in the entrance, and its shoulders touched the two sides. The face was still invisible, but the red illumination threw the whole outline of the figure into full relief. It was the figure of a monster — of a dwarf and giant rolled in one — a black deformity of apparently portentous breadth and more than portentous ugliness. Above the two shoulders rose a big head, surmounted with a dense thatch of hair which covered it down to the eyes and stood out like a judge's wig. Hardly any neck was visible, only those two monstrous shoulders and a body which, though broader than that of an average man, dwindled down to a meagre pair of legs, from the ends of which two flat, fin-like feet extended at right angles.