Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  Nearly related to Queen Elizabeth and specially favoured by her; married to an Englishwoman and an important figure at the English court and in the realm at large, it is all the same as an Irishman, and only as a considerable Irishman, that he stands out with any particular vividness before our eyes. It is when we come to consider his relations with his rival and arch-enemy Desmond that the anomalies of his position become really dramatic. His mother had been the daughter and heiress of the late Earl of Desmond, and on his father's death, she had married her cousin, the present earl, so that the two rival earls stood to one another in the relationship of stepfather and stepson. That poor woman was now dead, worn out with the endless struggle between sons and husband, but another Lady Desmond — the niece, this time, instead of the mother of Lord Ormond — had taken the task in hand and stood there, wedged between the upper and the nether millstone, helpless to avert a doom, which she at least had had no hand in bringing about.

  For the end, so often threatened, so long postponed, was nearly reached now. After all his doublings and windings; after his promises to both sides; after his innumerable inconsistencies, hesitations, follies, shifts, the Earl of Desmond stood before the world of Ireland a ruined man. The Damoclean sword of proclamation still hung suspended above his head, but the thread which supported it was wearing through fast, and nothing could now avail to hinder it from falling. Even the surrender of the Legate Saunders would only have retarded that end. His heir had already been surrendered, and the sacrifice had proved of no avail. His doom in short was absolutely sealed. The hatred that had grown and swelled since the first Butler and the first Geraldine met face to face in Munster, was in a fair way of being ended now. His enemy stood in the very gap; had come down to the province for no other purpose than to see that his impending ruin was made complete; that the hated rival house was crashed, beyond all possibility of its ever being set upon its feet again.

  So far, one would have said, Lord Ormond at least ought to have been a happy man, and yet there were bitters in his cup also, as well as sweets. The sense of being eternally under hostile criticism was like gall and wormwood to a temper never exactly of the mildest. To say that he had many enemies would be to understate the case ridiculously. It would be very much more accurate to say that every English official and officer in the whole country was his enemy, and that nothing but the Queen's personal friendship enabled him to hold his own in it for five minutes. Even his Protestantism was roundly asserted by those who served under him to be nothing but a mere veneer; that he was at heart inclined to the old religion and was always ready, if not to favour, at least to show a certain amount of leniency to those who practised it.

  A case of some little interest in this respect occurred a few days after the feast. Another Desmond castle upon the banks of the Shannon had meanwhile been captured, Ormond's men this time taking their share in the assault. From the report of an eye-witness, it does not seem to have been a very perilous undertaking. Two priests who, being captured sitting quietly inside the castle, were brought before the general, who with some of the other officers was holding a rough and ready court-martial in a hall upon the second floor.

  The castle, not being of any great size, this hall, although its chief apartment, was nothing but a medium-sized flagged apartment, lit by a single unglazed window, or rather slit. As a result, most of the light which reached it came not from above, but up the stone-stairs leading to the bottom of the castle stairs; which were at present encumbered with wounded soldiers, dead rebels, burnt straw, broken weapons. Up these crowded stairs, the two priests were hustled by the soldiers who had captured them and were dragged before the general. One of them was a stolid-looking young man, evidently a peasant, the other was a very old man, lean as a wolf, with a wrinkled, but still massive face, dark eyed, keen, and intellectual looking. His cassock was in rags, his scanty white hair was dishevelled by the rough handling he had sustained, yet there was about him an air of inborn dignity, which nothing seemed to touch. He glanced around him without the slightest sign of fear or even of discomposure.

  Lord Ormond, who was seated upon the only chair the castle afforded, started and uttered a loud ejaculation as his eyes rested on the elder priest. The recognition was evidently mutual, and if the Earl looked haughtily at the priest, so, at least equally haughtily, did the priest look at the Earl.

  “Gentlemen, I know this fellow well,” Lord Ormond then said, addressing the rest of the officers. “I have known him for years, in fact, all my life. He was the chaplain and confessor of my unhappy mother, the late unfortunate Countess of Desmond. A more dangerous firebrand, a more rooted and persistent foe of the Queen's Grace, does not breathe at this moment in Ireland, nor one whose mind is more set upon persecution, were his opportunities in that respect equal to his desires. There is no need, gentlemen, to trouble you with any detailed examination in his case. I condemn him at sight. Let the order for his execution be made out at once. He has burdened the earth and her Grace's patience too long.”

  “And I, also, have known you long, very long, Thomas Earl of Ormond,” replied the old priest, breaking silence and speaking not loudly or passionately, but with a shrill denunciatory ring in his voice which made it vibrate and tingle sharply through the hall. “I have known you too well, sir, and too long! I have known a bad ungrateful son to a most tender and indulgent mother! I have known a hard usurping kinsman! I have known a renegade from his church and a cruel scourge to his native land. The soil of Ireland rejects you, Thomas Earl of Ormond, as the floor of the courts of Heaven will one day reject your thrice miserable soul!”

  Sir Nicholas Malby, who had been watching Lord Ormond's face with some attention while this denunciation was going on, at this moment leaned over and whispered a word in his ear. Apparently, the proposal did not meet the Earl's approval, for he frowned and shook his head emphatically.

  “Useless, sir, I tell you, perfectly useless,” he said aloud. “I know the man well. His stubbornness is proverbial; his devotion to what he considers the interests of his church notorious. You might rack him to pieces; you might literally singe his whole carcass till there was not an atom of it, and you would get nothing out of him; I tell you, nothing!”

  Malby however continued to press his point, whatever it was, and it was evident that he was supported by the general sense of the rest of the meeting. There was something about the manner of nearly every officer present which seemed to sting and irritate Lord Ormond uncontrollably, for, with a vehement gesture of anger, he suddenly started up from his seat.

  “Have your own way, gentlemen! have your way!” he exclaimed. “I leave you free, only, mark you, I will have no hand or part in the matter!” And he left the hall abruptly.

  The result of this conversation was revealed to Hugh Gaynard a little while later in rather a singular way. He had been waiting for Fenwick in the outer hall and was beginning to wonder what had become of him, when he suddenly came out of one of the smaller rooms or cells which opened from it, with a step quite unlike his usual deliberate one. His face was deadly white; all its delicate contours violently contracted, as if by some illness or violent emotion. He went straight up to the window and leaned out. A violent spasm passed through his frame, and the next moment he was exceedingly sick.

  So sudden and so unexplained an emotion on the part of one usually so self-contained naturally aroused Hugh's curiosity. Hastening over to his side, he begged to know what was amiss.

  “My training, sir, my training, I suppose,” Fenwick replied calmly. “Or perchance, to speak more frankly and less pedantically, my stomach!” he added, wiping his lips with a delicately laced handkerchief.

  “Blood,” he went on after a minute, “no matter how spilled, is, I thank Heaven, of no more account to me than so much water, but there are other things of which I cannot as yet boast as much, and amongst them are hot irons and frizzling human flesh — and one of them an old man too!” Again a spasm crossed his face, but controlling himself wit
h a violent effort:

  “The two priests are being tortured in there!” he added, pointing calmly towards one of the lower doorways.

  Hugh's cheek too paled for a moment, and a look of horror crossed his face. He was not, however, one of those persons who set up to be wiser, more humane, or more enlightened than their age. Priests, he was aware, had occasionally to be tortured, whenever it was thought likely that they would have important information to give. At the present moment, the precise whereabouts of the Legate Saunders was of immense importance for the government of Ireland to know. That such measures were much to be regretted, he felt quite sure of, as well as that he himself would have found the greatest difficulty in giving such an order, especially if he had been called upon personally to supervise its execution. Cruelty was as abhorrent to him as it is to any other perfectly normal human being, and the only thing to be done, he felt, when such incidents came unfortunately within your knowledge, was to think about them as little as possible. This he accordingly resolved to do, and with his usual practical good sense at once set about doing. The result was that his cheek quickly regained its usual colour, whereas Fenwick — immeasurably the harder, the colder, and the less humane man — was made thoroughly ill by what he had seen, as was shown for days by his uncontrollable nervousness and rapidly changing colour.

  No information of any sort was able to be extracted from either of the priests, both of them remaining absolutely mute, the younger one with all the stolid apathy of a peasant, the elder one with something of the rapt and upborne aspect of the martyr, who feels that such pangs are but the prelude of what is to come. The formalities being thus accomplished, there was nothing to do but to make out the order for their execution, which was accordingly fixed for the same evening at sundown.

  One more interview after this took place between the Earl of Ormond and his late mother's chaplain. It had been a busy, bustling day, but towards sundown there came a moment of relaxation. A good many of the officers, including Sir Nicholas and the Earl himself, had collected in a small guardroom, near the entrance of the castle, where there was a low window and window ledge, and were standing in this window, laughing and chatting together, when the two priests passed on their way to execution.

  The younger one showed no signs of the ordeal he had undergone, but the elder priest was quite unable to walk and had to be carried in a litter by a couple of soldiers. So much movement was going on at the time and so much running to and fro in front of the castle, that this part of the ordinary afternoon proceedings might have passed unnoticed. But one of the soldiers, who bore the litter, by some clumsiness jolted up against another soldier, who was carrying fodder, the result being that both were shoved up against the walls of the castle, and the litter in which the elder priest lay got pushed nearly on to a level with the shoulders of the group of officers, who were lounging over the ledge of the guardroom.

  Roused by the jolt, the old priest's eyes, which had been closely shut, at this moment suddenly opened, and he looked about him. At first, his gaze was merely the vacant and unlocalised gaze of a man newly wakened out of a swoon, who does not precisely know to which world he has returned. After a moment, however, it regained clearness, and his eyes rested full upon Black Thomas, as he stood there, close above him, visibly the leader of all that brilliant company, a ray of late afternoon sunshine gleaming upon his armour and upon the wine-cup which Smolkin the page was at that moment handing him.

  Lifting himself a little from the litter, with a sudden effort the old priest plucked out his recently mutilated right hand, which till then he had kept carefully concealed under his robe and held it for a moment palm upwards full in the Earl's face, then pointed with it significantly and ecstatically, straight up into the sky above their heads.

  “An old man's hand, my Lord!” he said very quietly. Then he passed on, upon his way to be hanged.

  Chapter XXX.

  After this, the campaign grew dull for a time, and produced no very marked results upon the royal side. The chief event of the hour was that the Earl of Desmond was duly proclaimed traitor, with all the formalities, a price being put upon his head, a free pardon offered to all who would desert from him, with other details, important, but unfortunately long-winded. The newly made rebel disappeared silently one night from the neighbourhood of Askeaton, melting away apparently like a cloud. The next news which reached the royal camp was that he had stolen across the country, and that he and his brothers, with the aid of their friend the Seneschal of Imokilly, had fallen upon the town of Youghal; had taken it by storm; slain its citizens; sacked it and seized possession of all its stores.

  This was rather a serious matter. The Lord General's curses were especially loud, for Youghal was unpleasantly near to Lismore, and Lismore was upon the very verge of his own Palatinate. Cork was for the moment the most serious point of peril, and messages flew to Sir Warham St. Leger, who was in command there, ordering him upon his allegiance to keep the rebels from its walls. He replied, with some justice, that Lord Ormond had better come and hold Cork himself, if he wanted it held.

  The check was for the moment complete. Arrangements had to be made. Victuals as usual had failed to arrive at the right time. Two vessels, the “Elizabeth” and the “Bear of London,” were both of them long overdue, but neither had appeared, while the “Gift of God” had run upon the rocks. The result was that “meath and dring” were as usual in arrears, and the men's tempers none the better thereby. Pelham had to hurry up to Dublin to seek for supplies there; Ormond dashed off to his own Palatinate; Malby hovered about between Thomond and Galway, trying to keep the Burkes and other marauders in check. At last, however, all was in readiness. Two thousand fresh men had meanwhile arrived from England, bringing with them — a very important matter — two months' victualling. Ormond came back from Kilkenny, Pelham flew down from Dublin to meet him, picking up the scattered English garrisons as he came, and the work of “annoyance” began in earnest.

  They met not at Adare, but at Rathkeale, a little further to the west. Here they separated, the Lord Justice taking the land side, the Earl of Ormond keeping to the river bank, both undertaking to clear the country as it had never been cleared before. Not since Ireland was an island, had there been so clean, so little slurred, or hurried a clearing. Four hundred slain upon the first day; four hundred and fifty the second; and so on, in a steadily rising scale. No partiality was shown either. If the cabins were not spared, so neither were the castles of the big men or the lesser houses of the middle folk. The year so far had been an unusually dry one. Fire proved on this occasion to be extremely effective. The soldiers had only to toss their brands into everything they saw in order to insure a blaze, the conflagration, once started, racing undisturbed here and thither across the country.

  All with whom we are acquainted on the royal side belonged to that division over which Lord Ormond commanded, consequently their line of march lay directly along the river bank. Day after day, they marched beside the broad waters of the Shannon, and day after day, their track was discernible in a long black, locust-like trail behind them. By the middle of March, the weather suddenly turned bitterly cold; furious showers of snow and sleet descended; then the sun would dash out again fantastically, sending forth wild wintry shafts, like some inquiring finger of light, flying down from the sky to see what was going on in this poor forgotten corner of God's earth;. Under these various conditions, the work of destruction went on uninterruptedly. By the third week of the month, the army had got nearly to the mouth of the Shannon and was about to march into Kerry, in order to deal with the villages there in the same fashion as those in Limerick had been already dealt with.

  It chanced that at the next village at which they stopped some additional interest was awakened by a report that the wife and other belongings of the dead arch-traitor Fitzmaurice had found harbourage there. Care was taken that they should certainly not escape. Amongst the men under Captain Peters' orders, Dan'l Drax, the preacher, was especial
ly commended by his superiors for the pious ferocity with which he endeavoured to “give religion and the gospel free course,.”

  All the soldiers were not equally energetic. Some of them, especially amongst the new recruits, incurred no little blame for the half-hearted manner in which they carried out the orders confided to them. By four o'clock in the afternoon, the village had practically ceased to exist, and the soldiers were straggling about in groups or sitting here and there over the ground, chatting and comparing notes upon the incidents of the day. It had not been a hard one, and, as there had been no resistance, there were naturally no casualties. Food, too, was just then unusually plentiful. In one of the groups, which chanced to consist of some of the recently enlisted Yorkshire contingent, the faces of the men might have been said to wear a shamefaced and hangdog air. Upon Gregory Gibbs' innocent boyish face, this expression was particularly marked. He had seated himself sulkily upon the ground, turning his back to the rest and swearing openly, when spoken to.

  “Happen there had been a mensful o' foighten men, aa tell ee, aa would say noight!” he suddenly burst out. “But the de'il blaast me black, Tam Tucket! Nobbut owd men, an' women-folk, an' bairns, an' babbies amost! Babbies! Be those the soort o' hands to be sent out smootherin' babbies wi', Tam Tucket, aa ax you?” holding out a pair of immense fists and looking up over them for a minute, with a face which seemed to be balancing between sheer rage and a still more ignominious and unsoldierly desire to cry.

  As if to counteract this exaggerated way of looking at matters, Dan'l Drax, the preacher, at this moment came into sight, stalking along past the various groups of soldiers sitting or standing about over the ground. His hair hung, wet with perspiration, about his ears, his yellow bilious face shone with the ecstasy of the fanatic, and he lurched and reeled from time to time, like a man drugged or drunk: