“When was youth ever held a reason for sparing the O'Flaithbertach? At what time were the tender years of his children accounted a cause that they should not suffer or be put to death? How many years is it since the De Burghs, even the De Burghs, the Darcys, the Lynches, and other men of eastern breeding came from beyond the great lake and destroyed seven villages of Connacht, even all the villages from Lough Ahalia to Bunnahawn, which is beside the sea, and did burn all they found therein and destroyed the year's produce, driving away the cattle and spoiling all that they could lay their hands upon? Twelve years? Nay, it is not yet twelve years, nor will be till the summer and autumn are gone by. And what else did they? What did they to the wives and to the children of those that they bore the chief grudge against; even to the wives and the children of the three sons of Fogartach who had spoiled their lands? They called their horsemen together and they cried, 'Now we shall see sport!' They seized the young children and the horsemen made play with them. They tossed the innocents from one to another and caught them upon the points of their swords. When the sons of Fogartach returned, there was a black heap for their houses and a red heap for their wives and for their children. Of what after this are the O'Flaithbertach made, and what sort of blood flows through their veins, that the word pity should be spoken in their hearing? Let the blood of the young of the stranger people atone for the blood of the young of the O'Flaithbertach, so that their spirits may have rest in the ground, and the moaning of their cries cease to echo and torment our ears.”
Another yell arose at this, louder and more murderous than before — a blood yell this time, the yell of the pack which not only desires its prey but sees it within its grasp. The ring of faces around Hugh closed in closer and closer, every man elbowing forward so as to be nearest to him. It seemed as if all the hate, all the loathing, all the desire for vengeance of the one race against the other had become concentrated and epitomised upon this specimen before them. That he was only a boy, and that he had come there of his own accord, that he was not a prisoner of war in any sense, counted for nothing. There he was, and five centuries of blood-feud stirred in their veins as they looked at him.
With a whoop, the two young men who had plucked him out of the hut and who still kept nearest to him flung back their long sleeves, at the same time drawing their skeans from the sheaths at their sides. The newly cleaned blades shone whitely in Hugh's eyes. He shut them and tried to say a prayer, but could remember none, only a dim picture of himself in a small white shirt at somebody's knee rose up for an instant before him like a ghost. And then assuredly he would have tasted death and known the secret of all secrets without further delay, but that the woman Beara, who had left the circle for an instant, at that moment returned, holding something carefully wrapped in a fold of her dress. What it was and what she did with it, Hugh never knew. What made the spell so effective remained a mystery to him. All he knew was that she made her way rapidly through the circle which barred him in and drawing her hand from under her cloak, touched him twice for a moment with something small and hard, once on the top of his head and once in the very middle of his back.
Whatever it was, the effect was instantaneous. The crowd fell back, terror written upon every face. It seemed as if something had been done that made him dangerous to meddle with — something supernatural, a spell of some sort employed that none durst cross. The very men who had been pressing most prominently forward were now the most anxious to retreat. The two young fellows who had clutched him a moment before and bared their skeans, dropped him precipitately and disappeared somewhere in the back ranks of the crowd.
Over Cormac Cas' face a gleam of fury passed, and he glanced at his daughter with a snaky look in his dangerous eyes. Even he made no effort, however, to approach the prisoner, nor yet to desire any of his men to do so. For full five minutes, Hugh lay there quite alone in the middle of the ring, not a soul approaching him, the women clutching up their children and retreating in all directions, as if the very ground on which he lay had become perilous. At last, at a signal from her mistress, the big hench-woman Ullach, the wife of Flann, came stumbling forward from where she had been squatting, paddled across the bare space and stood a minute, awaiting further orders. Then, at a second signal from her mistress, she picked up the prisoner in her brawny arms and dragging him awkwardly over the grass, got him back to the door of the hut from which he had been taken. Here, pushing the door open with her knee, she thrust him forward over the threshold. The next minute, he heard the door clap behind him and found himself once more in the darkness of the wattle enclosure, illuminated only by the streaks of light which stole here and there through the chinks.
Chapter VII.
Hugh Gaynard remained in Glen Corril, an enforced visitor, kept because it was impossible to send him away. There was nothing to be done with him except to keep him or to kill him, which last would have been done surely, if not swiftly, within the first few days of his arrival, had not Beara, the daughter of Cormac Cas, chosen to befriend him. Whatever may have been the charm she used, it was not only effective, but it was lasting. From the moment she had touched him to the hour of his departure, no hostile finger was ever again laid upon Hugh. If he was not well treated, at least he was not ill treated. He was simply tolerated, with the rather contemptuous tolerance.
It was not an exhilarating life, yet it was not quite so bad perhaps as it seemed at first sight. At fifteen, moreover, a boy is an adaptable animal, even a young Anglo-Irishman, brought up to regard himself as a sort of Heaven-descended being, lord of a whole world of serfs and inferiors. There were no serfs in Glen Corril, for all were equal under the strong hand of Cormac Cas, who, though nominally but the Ollamh of Morogh Na d-Tuagh, was practically absolute as far as his own branch of the tribe was concerned, with the power of life, death, and everything else in his hands.
An amusing life it certainly was not. The sons, grandsons, nephews, and grandnephews of the Ollamh were the pick and pride of the Clan O'Flaherty, but they were hardly entertaining companions. Their faces for the most part wore an expression of saturnine gloom. Sitting listlessly, each man in the shadow of his own hut, his eyes would slowly follow the movements of the clouds or remain vacantly fixed for hours at a time upon the bogs, without the slightest variation of expression. In one direction their minds were open enough. Terrors, bodiless but appalling, were as the very breath of their being. Not one of these brawny, big-limbed men would have been persuaded for any earthly consideration to go down alone to the plain at night. The Nameless was always there, an abiding presence, formless but hideous. The Invisible wandered eternally over the land, and invariably it was a malevolent invisibility.
Upon Hugh Gaynard, used to living in a strong castle, behind substantial barriers of stone walls, these terrors had comparatively little hold. He was too practical a person to be superior to his century, and therefore was superstitious enough probably in his own way; but this was not his way, was quite foreign to it, and he was a long time in even coming to understand it.
A few fixed epochs broke upon the monotony of existence. The chief of these was the 24th of June, St. John's Day, a festivity celebrated in Connacht long before the name of the great Baptist had ever been heard of in it. Piles of wood were collected for weeks beforehand, bonfires lighted upon all the peaks around, a great heap of furze and heather stalks lit in the glen itself, and through or over this heap of burning stuff, the whole tribe, women as well as men, took their turn in leaping.
The first time Hugh saw the ceremony, it began by scaring him; next, it filled him with a curious tingling excitement; finally, a contagious insanity gained possession of him, and he too rushed down the glen and leaped through the blazing pile, the flames of which sprang up at him, singeing his legs as he passed. The younger mountaineers, usually stolid to impassiveness, seemed to have gone suddenly crazed. One young fellow stumbled and fell backwards into the middle of the pile and lay there half smothered. The others never paused, however, but rushed yelling over him, scat
tering the fire like demons, throwing it at one another, playing with it as though it were an element to which they belonged. The face of Cloch Corril flushed a deeper red than usual; the whole valley looked like a bowl of ignited spirits set in the pitchy lap of the mountains. Next day, the whole community had relapsed into its usual air of blank stolidity and vacuity.
Physically, they were a fine race, the men especially. The weakly ones had so poor a time of it, that they usually gave up the attempt to live at a very early stage of existence. All the work except fighting was done by the women. From morning to night they were grinding corn, dragging water from the stream, herding cattle, driving them to pasture, digging turf in the bogs or bringing it up on their backs to feed the stack of winter fuel. One woman, Beara, was exempt. She was not a mere woman at all in tribal estimation: in her father and brother's absence, she was the virtual leader of the encampment and arbitress of all points of dispute.
Thus the time passed on, the days sliding into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years, and still Hugh remained a prisoner in Glen Corril. Of the outside world during this period, he knew nothing. What was passing beyond his rock-walled prison? Who was governing Ireland? What outbreaks had taken place? Who was now Lord Deputy? Who was Governor of Connacht? Who even King or Queen of England? All these were matters which he was driven to guess at as best he could. For the rest, he had food enough, Beara taking care of that. When his own clothes fell to pieces, which soon happened, she gave him a coarse shirt belted in at the waist and hanging to the knees, such as the other boys wore when they wore any clothes at all. The dark hollow, with the great red-streaked boulder towering over it, would look more weird and ominous even than in the day-time. Below him would lie the whole world of bog and lake, ridge and valley, sometimes clear and sharply defined, its endless pools gleaming under layers of thin ice, sometimes yards deep in shrouds of fog. Winds would sweep around his head, or a silence like the silence of the tomb itself would brood death-like over this realm of desolation, cut off from the rest of the world, shut away as it seemed, for ever, behind its impassable barriers of rock.
These midnight soliloquies amid the sleeping tribe formed a growing epoch in Hugh's life. Imaginative he certainly was not. His own interests, and no one else's whether man or goblin, was what he concerned himself with. In this direction, and in this only, his mind was exceptionally active. How to escape in the first instance from his present position, and how afterwards to make a way for himself in the world, this was the whole stuff, the whole tenure of his dreams. That by some means, he did not yet know what, he would escape, would make a way for himself, would be something and somebody, so far he felt positive. It was in his blood. He came of a fine tenacious having stock, strong to will, firm to grasp, clear-sighted and shrewd in everything that concerned its own interest, a stock with the word success stamped in its very integument. Hugh had inherited his full share of that stamp. He would walk up and down under those silent questioning stars, clenching his fists and vowing to himself that he would be heard of yet. Hugh Fitzwilliam Gaynard was not going to be beaten, not going to knock under to fate, not going to spend the whole of his life in a filthy Connacht! No, they need not think it — they — all that vague world of enemies, De Burghs, O'Flahertys, and the rest. He would beat them yet, they should know it, the world should know it, his own kinsfolk, the Gaynards, should know it. The fact stood written, fixed, assured, as distinct in his own mind as though it was already accomplished. And then the cold would become too intense to be endured for a single minute longer, and he would creep back to his prickly lair of ferns and heather, cautiously avoiding the various limbs, strewn, like so many logs of wood, over the floor of the cabin.
Chapter VIII.
It was May, 1579 — a memorable year for Ireland — and in spite of all his sturdy resolutions Hugh Gaynard was still a prisoner in Glen Corril. His hopes of escape had been sickening indeed of late, growing fainter and fainter with disappointment, and were now very sick indeed. All at once, chance befriended him, and hope revived in his breast just when it seemed to be in the very article of death.
He had gone one afternoon, under the charge of Flann-na-Pus, to the second ridge beyond Glen Corril, a ridge overlooking the pool-besprinkled valley at its foot. Flann had been directed by Beara to collect certain cows which had strayed further than they ought to have done and to drive them homewards. The dwarf had no intention of giving himself any avoidable trouble in the matter, however, and therefore had brought with him his wife, also a small flock of ragged assistants. Having arrived at the top of the ridge, whence he could see the expanse below, he ordered them with a majestic wave of the hand to go at once and collect the cows. He extended himself at full length upon the ground, his crooked limbs laid at ease upon the heather, his monstrous head pillowed against a boulder, and a smile of ineffable self-admiration extending his prodigious mouth.
Hugh Gaynard he kept beside him, for Flann-na-Pus was of the order of narrator that loves an audience, and the stranger lad was in this respect more to his mind than the duller witted youths of his own community. Hugh, whose early terror of the ill-favoured dwarf had long disappeared, always gave a careful ear to his discourses, hoping to pick up from them some news of the outside world, for Flann, being generally at the heels of Cormac Cas, knew more than most. Like other illustrious orators of his race, the dwarf's remarks were not always easy to follow, partly because his own achievements filled so large a part of them, partly because he held it incumbent upon his dignity to fill every sentence in proper heroic fashion with all conceivable epithets, appropriate and inappropriate, which he had ever heard his master use or could by any means thrust into them.
That afternoon, he had been discoursing upon a theme of which he never wearied — namely, the soul-terrifying diseases and hideous deaths which followed upon the curses and maledictory chants uttered by Cormac Cas. There was no bone in a man's body, he told Hugh, that he could not cause to melt like wax, even like the inside of a rush candle. There was only one other man in the world who could compare with Cormac Cas in this respect, and that man was Maelcho, the son of Murglas, the bard and seanchaí* of Sir James Fitzmaurice of Desmond. Even Maelcho, though he was a great seanchaí — the greatest seanchaí in Ireland — was not half or quarter so good at cursing as Cormac Cas. Many men, it is true, had died when Maelcho the son of Murglas had cursed them, but that was not so much because of the power of his curses as because Maelcho had killed them himself and chopped them up afterwards into small pieces. He was a giant, the only giant left. It was not like a man, but like a tree he looked when he walked, yes, like a forest tree, and it was out of the forests he came in the first instance, even out of the great, dark, wind-haunted hundred-thousand-mile-long forests of Munster.
(* Storyteller)
Hugh had often heard people talk of this famous Maelcho, so he listened to Flann's description with some curiosity.
“How big is he really?” he asked. “Is he so very much bigger than Muredagh the son of Cormac Cas?”
Now Flann-na-Pus unfortunately had never seen Maelcho, only heard tell of him. This he would have died, however, rather than have admitted. He fell back, therefore, upon invention.
“It is not so much the height or the bigness of him, I would have you to know, young Sassenach, not the bigness of his body at all,” he replied in his authoritative bat's squeak. “No, it is the dreadful, grand, horrible, frightful, glorious looks of him, that scares the people so that they give up their lives when he looks at them. Oh, a great man is Maelcho the son of Murglas! I do not deny that, a very great man, only he does not know how to curse; no, he has not got the real bone-splintering, heart-marrow-and-liver-destroying curses that Cormac Cas has, so he has not.”
“And where is he now, this wonderful Maelcho?” Hugh inquired.
Flann darted a suspicions look out of his little eyes as if to ascertain what he was driving at.
“It is with his master he is, where else would
he be?” he replied cautiously; “with his valiant, wise, learned, pious, sword-defying master the Lord James Fitzmaurice of Desmond. That is where he is and where he ought to be.”
“And in what place or county is his master living now, will you please to inform me, Flann, that knows all things?” Hugh asked deferentially, turning his head a little, so as to be able to judge how far the dwarf was telling him the truth or not.
Flann twisted his mouth till it looked like some sort of gigantic gutta-percha cone. He was not sure that it was prudent to speak. On the other hand, the desire to exhibit his own knowledge and eloquence was irresistible.
“It is away yonder in the country of the Spaniards,” he replied pompously, pointing one crooked hand vaguely in the direction of the sea. “In the country of the great, pious, palace-dwelling, navy-commanding, all-the-world-possessing, gold-crown-wearing King of Spain, that is where he is living, young Sassenach, son of ignorance! And it is seeing the Pope, he is too, every day, the sacred Heaven-possessing, every-curse-distributing Pope of Rome, that is what he is doing! For it is the great King of Spain and the Holy Pope of Rome that live together, both of them in the one house, in a great, painted, many-storied, gold and diamond-covered house, the two of them together and all their nobles and gentry along with them. And that is where the valiant, crafty, enemy-defying, glory-crowned Irish knight, Sir James Fitzmaurice of Desmond, is living at the present time, and that is where his seanchaí Maelcho the son of Murglas is living with him.”
Hugh reflected upon this information. That Sir James Fitzmaurice was in Spain he knew already. What he wanted to know was whether there was any likelihood of his coming back to Ireland again.
“It is a grand country, Spain, no doubt, grander and bigger than Ireland,” he observed carelessly. “And it is in no great hurry Sir James of Desmond will be to be leaving it, I am thinking.”
Flann of the Month fell gently into the trap outspread for him:
Enchanting Cold Blood Page 5
