Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  The messengers had not themselves seen the invaders, for they had left Dingle before they arrived, but they had spoken to many who had seen them and had actually witnessed their landing. There had been a violent quarrel, it was reported, immediately afterwards. A number of the citizens of Dingle had been seized by Sir James and carried away with him as hostages. He had other prisoners also — English sailors captured out of ships — but what number they could not tell. One thing seemed to be certain, and that was that the whole company had marched away the day before to the other side of the peninsula and were then encamped in the bay of Smerwick.

  Over this news a great crying out arose, some of the O'Flahertys crying one thing and some another, for though under the orders of Muredagh, there was no approach to discipline amongst them. Old and young alike yelled their hardest, threw up their arms in air and cried. The younger men were wild to fight, wild for plunder, wild for doing of some sort; good fighters, but sorry soldiers. Sir James Fitzmaurice would have his work cut out if he enlisted them.

  Muredagh alone took no part in all this. When the yelling had a little abated, he drew half a dozen of the older men apart and told them in brief terms that unless the Earl of Desmond had joined the rising, or unless the Spaniards had really come in force enough to do without him, back they would all have to return to Connacht, since neither Morogh Na d-Tuagh nor Cormac Cas had the least idea of wasting strength and losing men upon doubtful enterprises.

  The younger men were not told this. Their business was to fight, and, for the rest, they had to do as they were bid. Next morning, a couple of curaghs were left behind by Muredagh's orders with a dozen men, amongst whom were Hugh Gaynard and the young fellow, Eonach, who had been told off to guard him. The rest all put out to sea and having rowed round Brandon Point, disappeared quickly behind the big cliffs.

  It was a day of sousing rain, though with hardly any wind. The men left behind gathered round the fire, over which the morning's food had been cooked, and lay there grumbling on the sand, waiting for the return of the boats. It was nearly six o'clock before the first of these was seen advancing slowly over the grey surface. Then one after the other the whole number came in sight, creeping round St. Brandon's great sea-wall over the oily swell. Rain was still falling slightly, but the sky had by this time cleared, and the curtain of clouds was beginning to lift.

  The men looked sulky and discontented as they landed from the curaghs and pulled them one after the other up upon the beach. Muredagh stalked on alone, his brows drawn down so that they almost hid his eyes. Hugh, who happened to be in his way, glanced up at him as he passed and instantly guessed that something was about to happen. What was it? Were they all to return to western Connacht? Had they come all that way for nothing? A sudden resolution rushed over him. Come what would, he would not go back to Glen Corril. Back to the miseries of his life there? Back to be a slave amongst savages for perhaps the rest of his life? Never! Better die first.

  Most of the new-comers had gathered round the fire, where they now stood streaming from head to foot like seals. Several of the men flung themselves down stark naked upon the hot sand by the fire, rolling over and over, so as to warm themselves while their clothes were drying. Seeing them occupied, Hugh looked cautiously around in search of a hiding-place. If they were about to start at once, his only chance of escape was to hide himself before the general muster came. He soon perceived where that chance lay.

  The curaghs had been pulled right up on the sand. Brandon Bay is famous for its sands, but it happened that just at this point there were a good many loose rocks stretching out in all directions into the sea. Watching his opportunity, when all were otherwise occupied, Hugh slipped down to the edge, ran a little way out into the water, got behind one of these rocks and waited eagerly. Muredagh was not far off, talking to some of the older men, his face scowling under its grizzled thatch. He was pointing to the north and gesticulating, evidently issuing his orders. Sweeping his arms round him with a scornful gesture, he pointed to where they had just been, next to the boats, and finally again due north. Clearly his orders were being given for an immediate start.

  Crouched behind his boulder in the water, Hugh kept close and watched what was to happen. At a call from their leader, he saw the younger men leave the fire and come up. Apparently an order was given to launch the boats, for thereupon there ensued a violent outbreak of tongues. Furious voices rose in the air; arms were brandished; fists clenched. They were overborne, however, as usual, by the stony immovability of Muredagh. He stood stock-still amongst them, frowning impassively, his glance turned now upon one and now upon another. Their voices faltered by degrees, till at last, with an air of sulky acquiescence, they all turned to the sea and began to prepare for an immediate start.

  Hugh kept close. He was up to his waist now and ready at any moment to duck underneath if there seemed a chance of his being seen. He was chilled to the bone, but that was nothing. Go back he would not. He would drown where he stood first.

  It was now past seven o'clock, and the rain had quite ceased, a dazzling gleam of sunlight, as often happens in the south and south-west, having come to crown a wet day. The sun was going down, naked and gorgeous, towards an horizon, coloured red to receive it; the wet edges of the sand were faithfully repeating every tint overhead. The line of loose rocks, behind one of which Hugh lay concealed, stood out like a succession of small craggy mountains, each with an ink-black shadow behind it. The O'Flahertys were now collected upon the edge of the shore and beginning to push the curaghs seaward, for the tide was nearly full. If they were going to take advantage of it, there was no time to be lost.

  Peeping from behind his rock, Hugh watched the work going forwards. When the boats were nearly all launched, the men once more gathered round the fire and began to eat a hasty meal, grumbling to one another. The water rose higher and higher; it was up to Hugh's neck now, but he never budged an inch. He knew that it was not until when they were starting that he would be missed, and that his perilous time was therefore still to come. Cautiously, he peered round to see what his chances of escape were. They were not good. It was only along the edge nearest to him that the shore was much littered with rocks. Further on the bare stretches of sand began again, flat at the edge, rising inland into low mounds or hillocks covered with thin bent. To the south, a few grey peaks of rock showed at Caher Point, but westward he could again see the smooth sweep of the bay, with the islands they had passed the day before at its mouth.

  At last, the men had finished their food and, still growling, began to get into the curaghs in the same order as before. Then, and not till then, as Hugh had guessed, he was missed. He heard his name uttered by Muredagh in a brief angry tone of inquiry. The young fellow, Eonach, in whose charge he had been left, looked about him, at first merely with an air of blank surprise, then with a sudden expression of abject terror. Next, at a brief order from Muredagh, there was a general scattering of the groups gathered at the edge of the sand, and a score of figures began to race here and thither, evidently in search of him.

  Hugh was by this time clinging to the seaweeds which grew on the rock and only just able with the tips of his toes to touch the bottom. Beyond his own rock was another, not quite so large, already submerged, and further on, another and another, some still high, but most of them only showing their tops above the water, the green waves curling over them and leaving them streaked with foam. All, like his own, were fringed with a fringe of seaweed.

  Suddenly, he ducked his head, for steps sounded close at hand. When he lifted it up again, the steps had passed on, but a curagh was now right in front of him, and the men in it, by Muredagh's orders, were striking the rocks and water in all directions with their oars. A second curagh followed the first, and in this stood Muredagh himself. Hugh caught a glimpse of his scowling face and of the ashen one of his nephew Eonach beside him. Then he ducked again quickly, and only just in time, for an oar came with a crash upon the water, so near to him that had his head
been a few inches higher, it must have been shattered like an eggshell.

  The oar passed and came crash down again a few yards further to the left. Hugh got his nose a little above the surface, took a gulp of air and went down again. The other men who had not got into the boats were gathered now upon the beach, which was covered with loose stones. Choked and dazed, the water filling his nose, eyes, and ears, Hugh dimly heard an order shouted. What the words were he did not hear, but the meaning was plain enough, for the next minute it seemed to him as if the sky were raining stones on top of him. One big lump struck him under the water, then another and another. He was bruised and battered all over. Plainly, if this was to go on, the game was over; he was sped.

  He had not been seen, however, and his assailants were evidently stoning blindly, for the rain of stones passed on, and the next rock beyond him was now the target. Standing up in the curagh, Muredagh directed the proceedings, scanning the water closely in all directions. Luckily for Hugh, there was quite a line of rocks at this point, and it was against the further of these that the rain of stones was now chiefly directed. By this time, too, it was rapidly getting dark, so that only the shapes of the masses were defined, and his chance of escape was bettering every minute. He made shift to crawl a little nearer to the shore, hoping to find some ridge upon which he could perch. But he was presently carried right off his feet and swept away on the current, clinging desperately to the weeds with his hands, but his whole body being drawn up to the surface, so that, had there been more light, he must infallibly have been discovered.

  He got back to his former place, but not without some splashing. Luckily, the chase was now slackening. Muredagh was bent upon starting without delay, and at another shout from him, the men left the upper beach and got into the remaining curaghs. After a little more delay, the whole fleet of forty-five mustered in the bay and began to move towards its mouth.

  Once more, Hugh heard Muredagh's voice, and this time it was followed by a loud cry, and after the cry by a groan — a groan that could have, he knew, but one significance. The sound lent wings to his feet, as he staggered blindly through the shallow water towards the shore and flung himself face downwards upon the sand. Peering up a minute later, though without daring to lift his head, he could see that the whole fleet of curaghs had drawn together and were rowing rapidly away towards the north-west. From where he lay, they were so massed together as to seem like one object, a large, dark object in the middle of the wide, grey-satin paleness. About a hundred yards behind the last of the curaghs, another equally dark but very much smaller object was to be seen tossing about upon the water — an object which bobbed helplessly to and fro like a strand of seaweed and appeared to be floating momentarily nearer to the land.

  Chapter X.

  Hugh looked west. Here St. Brandon's great headland rose, sucking up all that was left of the daylight. At his feet, the long low waves swept sulkily in, and the shingle turned and rumbled dully. The black lump beyond also turned over once or twice, rolling in upon the top of the waves and approaching not far from where he stood. With a very sick sensation gnawing at his stomach, Hugh turned and began tramping on along the seashore.

  He was so numb from his long bath, that he could hardly keep upon his legs. His feet felt dead, so that the ground might equally well have been sand, rock, snow, or cotton-wool for anything he could tell to the contrary. How was he to find this Geraldine camp, and what chance was there of his being well received if he did find it? Would it not be better, he wondered, for him to strike across the mountains to Dingle upon the other side of the peninsula? No, he felt a tolerable conviction that he should fare even worse there; that he would be knocked down in all probability and killed as a “foreigner” before he could get a hearing, so he kept on along the same side of the coast as before.

  All night, he walked along the cliffs, stopping now and then from sheer exhaustion. Once, when he had stumbled over an invisible tussock and fallen at full length, he lay there for a while and so snatched a few miserable mouthfuls of broken sleep. It was still quite dark, perhaps two o'clock in the morning, when he came to a halt on the side of a very abrupt ridge which ran right across the way in which he was going, cutting his path in two and obliging him to climb it. It seemed a terrible height, and he was so tired, but he got to the top of it at last, and from there looked over at what lay beyond. Around him now upon three sides towered the mountains. A sickly crescent moon had risen, but it was so smothered in clouds, that it gave hardly any light, and it was only after looking closely for some time that he could make out the shape of anything that lay below him.

  What helped him most to do so was a smouldering glow, apparently that of a fire at the last point of extinction, which shone dimly upon the ground a few hundred yards below where he stood. An odd feature about it was that it took a crescent-like shape, almost exactly the same as that of the moon above his head. He was still staring at it and wondering what it could mean, when a fragment of uncharred wood suddenly flared up. He distinctly saw a number of feet and legs, mostly naked ones, which appeared to be strewn about in all directions between him and the fire. Hugh stared again, wondering still more profoundly. That there were bodies in connection with the legs seemed probable, but whose bodies were they, and what were they doing there in the heart of the mountains?

  He ventured after a while to creep a little way down the ridge, following a sort of heathery trough, the side of which would conceal him from those below. Apparently no watch of any kind was kept by the people that lay around the fire, for he was able to creep on and on, inch by inch, until now he could see quite plainly that a crowd of people, including not a few women, lay in a circle, all with their feet turned towards the fire, like the spokes of some gigantic cart-wheel. Beyond these, he could make out what was no doubt a herd of cattle, some lying down, others moving to and fro, but all bulking so large and shapeless in the moonlight, that but for their movements he would have taken them for rocks.

  A dull regular noise, as regular as the thud of surge upon a beach, rose from about the fire. It was the snoring. It seemed odd to stand there and look down upon all those human creatures lying so exposed and helpless at his feet. He might have cut all their throats, he reflected, and walked away, and no one would have been a bit the wiser. By this time he had guessed that he was looking at one of the great peripatetic herds of cattle or “bodies” which, with the herdsmen belonging to them, wandered habitually to and fro the country, seeking fresh grass wherever they could find it and for the most part camping in a new place every night. To make that guess a certainty, he presently stumbled upon a great keg, bound about with leathern thongs and full to the top of sweet new milk, the result evidently of the last two or three milkings. This was indeed a godsend, and he put his head down to it as he might have done to a pool and drank deeply again and again, the delicious, sustaining stuff seeming to penetrate every vein in his body and to fill him with a new sense of life and encouragement.

  After he had drunk as much as he could, he crept a little nearer to the fire and, not meaning to stay more than a few minutes, presently fell despite himself into a heavy doze, the result of his weariness, combined with all the milk he had just swallowed. He opened his eyes once or twice, believing that he was walking on and fully intending to do so. The moon overhead seemed to be blinking at him, and the pale crescent of fire, with all the naked feet pointing inwards, to be shifting and floating along with him as he went.

  Suddenly breaking through his dreams came loud shouting and a rushing of feet, which was a real rushing of real feet. The whole silent circle suddenly sprang into life, shrieking and yelling at the utmost power of their lungs, the men seeking hastily in the dark for sticks and other weapons with which to defend themselves. And Hugh heard the bellowing of cattle and loud thumps of sticks, now upon men's heads, now upon the backs of beasts. An immensely big man, a giant seemingly, in a long green cloak, the leader doubtless of this new band, rushed towards him, brandishing somet
hing. And either that something or some other something came crash down upon his skull, and he fell like a log beside the fire and lay there.

  Chapter XI.

  When he came to himself, he was still lying on the ground and still near a fire. It was not the same fire, however, as he soon saw, neither was it the same place. Indeed, though stupefied by the blow on his head, he had been dimly conscious that he had been lifted up and carried away somewhere, though by whom or where he did not know. Now as he came to himself, he discovered that the long night — the longest he had ever spent — was at last over, and that the daylight had returned again.

  The fire near him was a newly-lit one, and a man sat beside it tending it with pieces of stick which he took from a stack at his side. Presently, this man rose in search of some logs, of which he brought back several in his arms. As he crossed the space between Hugh and the fire, Hugh saw that he was enormously tall, several inches over six feet high, and that he wore a green cloak which covered him from head to foot. At once flashed across his mind that it must be the same man he had seen in the night, and who had appeared to be the leader of the band that had carried off the cattle.

  After depositing the logs, the man came over to where he lay and stood looking down at him. Then, muttering something under his breath, he suddenly whipped out a knife from a sheath at his side and cut the rope that bound Hugh's arms and legs. This done, he picked him up as he might have done a baby and laid him down again on the ground, a little nearer to where he had been sitting. Having examined the hurt on his head, he put a sop of something wet and soothing to it and then returned to his attendance upon the fire. Hugh lay still and tried to remember what had befallen him, but his brain still swam, and his head caused him so much pain, that the mere attempt to think seemed like a new hurt.