Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  This was news to Hugh. There had been a good deal of unwonted stir in Connacht of late, he knew, and Cormac Cas bad been incessantly backwards and forwards between Glen Corril and Aughnanure, but what it had all betokened, he had not known and dared not ask. Would there really be a general rising that summer? He lay still and meditated, looking down at the valley, his eyes passing instinctively over its bogs and pools, towards where, though out of sight, the little town of Galway lay, the spot which had been the haven of his thoughts for many a day past.

  It was getting late in the afternoon, and the cows had been mostly collected, and were standing in a cluster, their lean sides shining in the slanting streaks of sunlight, so that every bone appeared to be tightly outlined. The wife of Flann-na-Pus was standing beside them, her brown legs, naked to the knees, giving her the effect of some grotesque figure in terracotta several degrees above life size. A few of the cows were still wandering about over the bog or cropping a scanty meal from the tussocks. Half a dozen slatternly-looking girls, with their hair tumbling down their backs, were whooping and hurrooshing after these stragglers. The edges of the black bog-holes showed prismatic gleams in the setting sunlight. A little lake, immediately below them, danced and sparkled all over its pale blue surface.

  As Hugh sat there, the red rays seemed to be growing longer and longer, and more and more slanting. They fell upon the grey rocks upstanding here and there; upon the small half-choked streams and tiny streamlets meandering like lace-work in every direction over the brown surface. Presently, they fell upon two figures advancing at a rapid pace down the side of the nearest mountain and coming directly towards them. He looked hard at these, wondering who they could be, for strangers were scarce in Connacht. They were not women, yet they wore petticoats. Who were they? And what were they coming for?

  They advanced so rapidly, that he could soon see them quite plainly. Two brown figures with ropes round their waists and bare heads, throats, and feet, a couple evidently of mendicant friars, the only visitors from the outside world that ever made their way into these solitudes. One was tall, the other short, and both were hurrying along over the rough ground as if they had not a single instant to lose.

  Hugh pointed them out to Flann-na-Pus, and they sat on the heather watching the two strangers draw nearer and nearer, the light illuminating their shaven crowns and falling upon the stiff woollen folds of their habits. At the same moment, a party of young men, warned probably by a scout of their approach, appeared over the ridge of the hill nearest to Glen Corril and began to descend into the valley.

  With a squeak of anger and a wave of his crooked hand to signify that Hugh was to follow him, Flann of the Mouth sprang up and waddled as rapidly as he could over the rocks and across the bog at the bottom, eager to be the first to intercept the friars and learn their news. But all three groups reached the centre of the valley almost precisely at the same moment.

  One of the friars Hugh had seen before. He was a big, heavy-jawed man, intended by Nature to be very fat, but kept by hard living and constant trotting in the condition of an over-driven ox. The other was a much younger man, a stranger to himself, and a perfect skeleton to look at, emaciated and sickly-looking to the last degree, but with the fiery eye of the enthusiast; a passionate eagerness seemed to breathe through every inch of his attenuated frame. Seeing the young men from the glen come up, he suddenly paused and springing upon a knoll which raised him a few feet above the ground, broke, before anyone else had time to speak, into a wild flood of Gaelic, waving his arms up and down above his head as he did so, like a scarecrow.

  “Up! up! up!” — that was the burden of his cry — “The moment has come! The yoke of the tyrant is broken. God has given ear to his saints, and Ireland is to be set free. The Spaniard is on the seas! The English Jezebel is trembling in every limb; speedily she will bite the dust and go to her proper place. Up! up! up! The kings of the Earth are afoot. The snorting of their war horses is heard in the land. The sword of the Righteous is raised! The Great Captain, even the greatest of all the captains, Sir James Fitzmaurice of Desmond is upon the waves. With him are coming men of war in their thousands, with him also are coming holy priests and men of God sent by our father the Pope. The most holy and reverend Legate, Dr. Nicholas Saunders, is coming! Victory and success are certain, have been assured! Visions have been seen in the sky. A pious nun has twice dreamed that a wolf had been delivered of a lamb. Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered! Let every man who loves his faith, let every man who calls himself an Irishman, make ready. Let him not lie down in his bed, neither eat, nor drink, nor take any rest, until the blood of the Just has been avenged and the Island of the Saints swept clear from the foot of the Infidel. Up! up! up!”

  So he stood and preached, like another Peter the Hermit, crying aloud his message in the wilderness. The speckled cows lifted their horned heads to stare at this figure, waving its arms so excitedly in their midst. Ullach, the wife of Flann-na-Pus, opened her eyes and stared with just the same air of bovine perplexity. The young men who had come down from the glen gazed too, blank bewilderment written upon their faces, peering up at him from under their uncombed “glibbes.” With Hugh Gaynard it was different. A stir of excitement passed through him, and a flood of hope began to beat in upon his brain. He did not fully understand what was going to happen or even care much, except so far as it affected himself, but hope had awakened, and his pulses began to beat like sledge-hammers. He stood still, however, and made no sign. Flann-na-Pus alone was equal to the occasion.

  Pushing the young men impatiently aside, he advanced and in a pompous squeak invited the two friars to mount with him to the glen above. His master, Cormac Cas, he said, was at present absent, but himself and Beara, the daughter of Cormac Cas, would attend to their wants and give ear to their honoured words. It was not fitting that the discourse of wise, pious, holy-living, all-for-God-deserting men should be uttered to those who had no understanding. Let them speak their message in his own ear, also in the ear of Beara, and in the ear of Cormac Cas and of Muredagh, the son of Cormac Cas, and it would be done and accomplished as they desired.

  The advice was felt by everyone to meet the occasion. The younger friar came down from his knoll. The older one, who had seated himself upon a stone, got up; the cattle were collected together, and the whole party began to mount towards Glen Corril. The monk who had preached, and who was called Brother Eoghan walked along amid the group of mountaineers like a man half drugged, his eyes rolling, his feet stumbling over the rough ground, his lips still muttering the words of that message with which his whole soul appeared to be charged. He was a singular specimen of a very singular type. Liable to be hanged like so many mad dogs whenever and wherever they were caught, the begging friars were still the only missionaries, the only teachers, the only friends of the people then and for many a day to come in Ireland. Whatever in the way of religious instruction was given there, was given by them, and by them alone. They taught, they married, they buried, they christened. Where no one else came, they came. No impediments could keep them out, no threats hinder them from coming. How they lived; how they contrived to get across sea and land, to appear unexpectedly in the most remote spots and to disappear again, uncaptured, no one knew. They were everywhere — in deserted shrines and broken-down churches, in roofless chapels and desecrated abbeys, in the towns under the very noses of the authorities, in solitary islets far out in the stormy Atlantic. The whole secret history, the entire underground policy of Ireland, lay in their hands, was conducted, managed, carried on, exclusively by them. Never having acknowledged any head save the Pope and the superior of their own order, the Act of Supremacy,* which had not at first greatly affected the higher ecclesiastics, had made outlaws of the begging friars at a blow. For the last forty years, a price had been set on each of their heads. Like migratory birds, they came and went, sometimes in flocks, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. Their brown habits were familiar objects in every hut and shelling, no mat
ter how remote or how inaccessible. In the depths of the forest, where no official had ever set foot, in the pathless middle of the bogs, in the centre of hostile camps — no spot was too difficult to reach, no spot too hazardous for them. Especially when any new rising was on foot, they appeared by dozens, swarming out of their hiding-places, preaching, encouraging, chiding backsliders, comforting the sick, persuading everyone. Once more, in that fatal summer of 1579, a stirring time was at hand in Ireland, and, as often before, the stormy petrels had gathered at the signal and were everywhere heralding the coming storm.

  (* An Act of the Parliament of England (1534) under King Henry VIII declaring that he was 'the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England.')

  That night, messengers were sent flying all over western Connacht and into the province beyond. To Ballynahinch, to Gno-Beg, to Gno-More, to Leenaun; high and low, far and near; to the scattered herdsmen living upon the slopes of Maumtrasna and the Devil's Mother; throughout the Joyce country; throughout the whole of that thinly-peopled land of stones and lakes, men were being told to be ready the instant a summons reached them.

  The real council of war, however, met at Aughnanure, upon the banks of Lough Corrib, where Morogh Na d-Tuagh O'Flaherty sat in consultation with his son Muredagh, his Ollamh, Cormac Cas, and a select body of the clansmen. Was the message true? Was the long-meditated Spanish descent really come off at last, or was this only one of many phantoms which had gleamed for a minute, to end in blood, smoke, misery, and much exercise of the office of the hangman? How many Spaniards would Sir James Fitzmaurice, if he came, bring with him? Above all, would the Earl of Desmond himself join the rising? These were amongst the questions debated in Aughnanure. Morogh Na d-Tuagh was in no slight dilemma. Barely a year had passed since he had been knighted for his services against the De Burghs. Was he to imperil this newly-won character for loyalty? The two friars were carefully examined; other friars arrived to corroborate the great news, but still Sir Morogh hesitated. The risks were so great; the perils to be incurred so tremendous; the failures had already been so many; their results so ghastly and so unforgettable.

  At last, Cormac Cas advised, and his master accepted a compromise. It was a risk still, but it was not so desperate a risk as open rebellion. A body of O'Flahertys were to be sent to join Sir James Fitzmaurice whenever he should land in Kerry, but they were to be sent secretly. There was no particular difficulty about this. Thirty, forty, even fifty curaghs* starting by night or at early dawn from any of the endless land-locked bays of Connacht, who would trouble their heads as to where they went, or who would so much as notice that they went at all? Even if seen from Galway, what should it be but the ordinary fleet of fishermen going out to meet the shoals of mackerel or herring before they entered the bay?

  (* Coracles - small rounded boats made of hides stretched over a wicker frame.)

  Cormac Cas undertook that the whole arrangement should be secret. The band sent was to be largely recruited from his own part of the tribe and was to start from Cloch Corril itself. Sir Morogh was to take no visible part in the matter, rather was to be seen prominently occupied in quite another direction.

  So it was settled, and so finally it was carried out. Soon, from every side of Connacht young men began to flock to Glen Corril. Big Joyces originally from Wales, but long since become Connacht men; MacGonroys from Gno-More, O'Mailleys from the Owles, O'Flahertys of Arde, MacDermots, O'Gonnors, O'Hallorans — they came in parties of eight or ten and were accepted or rejected by Muredagh, who was appointed leader in chief of the expedition.

  For Hugh Gaynard, it was at first a time of agonising suspense, so great was his terror of finding that he was to be left behind. For him the expedition meant escape. If he missed this chance, who could say whether one would ever come in his way again? Happily for him, Cormac Cas considered that on the whole the risk of sending him was less than the risk of leaving him behind with only women and children to guard him. He was to go; but he was to go under strict watch and ward. One of the younger men, a grandson of Cormac Cas, was specially set over him, whose life was to answer for his escape. He would be under the vigilant eye, too, of Muredagh, and woe betide him if he attempted to evade it! At the first symptom of any such purpose, a knife between his ribs, or else a stone round his neck, and a drop overboard would make it perfectly certain that no secrets of the O'Flahertys would leak out through his means.

  Chapter IX.

  For the next fortnight Glen Corril was filled from morning to night with the noise of hammering and grinding. Every spear-head, every skean, every dart was sharpened. Now pikes were fashioned. By the beginning of July, the men were all collected and ready to begin their march to the coast.

  Two hundred and ten stood mustered in all — tall fellows, fleet of foot, hard of hand, keen of eye. Their arms were for the most part pikes or wolf-spears, with the usual supply of knives to fling and slash with. Muredagh and a few of the chief men carried calivers,* but the greater number were armed only with home-grown weapons.

  (* An early form of hand gun, a variety of the arquebus.)

  They started late one evening and walked all night. There was a moon, but it was thickly covered with clouds. A heavy mist had curdled up and filled all the hollows with a creamy, solid-looking vapour. In some places, huge fleecy creatures seemed to be hiding between the ridges, in others, white dragons or griffins to be crouching in act to spring. It was like walking through some beleaguering host of monsters, come down to take possession of the naked ghostly country.

  All night they walked, first across the nearer mountains, then over a line of lower hills, till they came down to the sea beyond. Here they found a fleet of curaghs awaiting them, thirty boats in all, into which they got, six or eight men to each boat, according to size. Before the light had fully flushed the bay, they were already half way across it and steering steadily due south.

  Slowly, the morning broke, and with it came heavy rain. The sea was absolutely calm. A few curaghs carried sails, but no one thought of spreading them. Hugh had been put in Muredagh's boat, and an oar placed in his hands. He had never been in a curagh before in his life, nor for a long time in a boat of any sort, so that the act of rowing was strange to him. The man who had been selected to guard him, a big, freckled-faced young fellow, called Eonach, sat immediately in front of him. Young as he was, he was already a giant in build. The muscles of his naked arms rose and fell, as he swept the surface of the water, as mechanically as if part of some invisible machinery. Hugh tried to imitate him, but his hands blistered before he had gone a mile, and next, the skin began to peel and hurt horribly. His arms, unaccustomed to the work, seemed to burn as if hot lead had been run through them. Still, he would not give in, dared not if he would. Every now and then, the dark menacing face of Muredagh glanced round at him for a moment, then slowly turned away again to his own oar. It was like the touch of the lash to the galley slave, and Hugh tugged doggedly on, his teeth clenched, and his back bowed.

  The first point they touched at was Killeaney, in the island of Arranmore, for in those days Sir Morogh O'Flaherty was lord of all the Aran Isles, and the islanders were bound to furnish him with men and boats at need. Eight curaghs had been promised, and eight were ready with their due complement of men. With these they embarked again, and at Inisheer, the least of the isles, they stopped once more, and three additional curaghs joined the fleet. Only at Inishmaan they did not stop, because the landing there is bad. Instead, the men of Inishmaan came out to sea in four curaghs to meet them, with eight men in each curagh, and waited in the South Sound till they drew near. They might just as easily have joined at Inisheer, but this they did not choose to do, for there was great jealousy then, as there always has been, between Inishmaan and the other two islands.

  After this the long procession of boats kept on and on, always due south. Forty-five curaghs they numbered now, with three hundred and twenty men on board. It was very like some flock of unusually big cormorants paddling slowly
away over the shining surface, the tall black bows raised high over the water like so many beaks. Soon, the Hag's Head was left behind, and Liscannor Bay, and still they paddled steadily south, past the point soon to be known as Porta-na-Spaniag or Spanish Point, the last grave of the fated Armada, still on and on, till the craggy nose of Loophead gradually came into sight.

  Here the night began to close in. Having rounded the point, they slipped along the low shores of the Shannon and palled the boats up, where they lay for the night, keeping close to them and not daring to light any fires, lest the O'Briens, who ruled there, should come down in force upon them, and blood be spilt before the right time.

  Next morning they were out again betimes and off, stiff enough many of them, for the night had been cold, and the wind cutting. It was a hard pull across the wide mouth of the Shannon, with stream and tide both against them, but they got across at last, and past Kerry Head, keeping outside the Magharee Islands, and so into the wide-mouthed sweep of St. Brandon's Bay. They were not far from their destination now, so that it was decided to make a short day of it. Having put in again to shore, they dragged the curaghs up over the sand so as to be out of reach of the tide. There was no fear of a surprise here, for they were already in the Desmond country, so that fires were lit, and the men were able to dry themselves and cook their food in peace.

  When the food had been eaten, a couple of men were despatched by Muredagh across the isthmus to Dingle, where they were to find out whether a landing had actually taken place, and, if so, where Sir James Fitzmaurice then was, with what force he had come, and, above all, whether the Earl of Desmond himself had taken the field or not. It was eleven or twelve miles over the pass to Dingle, and, as the men had to proceed cautiously, they were allowed eight hours to go and come back again. They returned in less time, however, and with great news. Sir James Fitzmaurice had undoubtedly landed three days before. With him had come the Pope's Legate, the illustrious Dr. Nicholas Saunders, attended by many priests and monks. A number of Italian and Spanish soldiers had also come, and armed with golden swords and other weapons of war. Maelcho and other Irish who had gone to Spain with him had also returned and had all landed at Dingle in great state, the Pope's banner being carried above their beads, and the townsfolk looking on.