Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  “Spawn o' Satan! Ha'lujah! Glory to God! Amen!” he exclaimed, the ejaculations rising at intervals, like minute guns, as he advanced over the grass. He was passing the group of recruits when he caught sight of young Gregory Gibbs in the midst of them. Coming up to them, shook his fist full in the young Yorkshireman's face.

  “'Twar you, I mind me now, 'twar you, for I saw you plain! I saw you, Gregory Gibbs, wi' these very eyes of mine I saw you. You were driving the rebels afore you a while back, and as I looked to see them fall and bleed. When I looked again, I saw that you were smiting them but wi' the flat o' your sword! wi' the flat, I say ! I saw it, and I will proclaim it; before kings and before principalities, and before powers; before angels and archangels; before Raphael, and Michael, before the Lords Justices of Ireland, and before all the Captains of the Hosts of Heaven! I will disgrace you and will bring you to nothing. Your body shall be scourged with rods, and your soul shall be committed to the flames of hell. Answer me that, Gregory Gibbs. How dare you smite down the enemies of God wi' the flat o' your sword?”

  Brought suddenly face to face with this entirely new version of his day's guilt, Gregory Gibbs' face became a mere mirror of contending emotions.

  “'Twere nobbut owd men, an' women-folk, an' bairns, an' soch loike!” he mumbled, in a tone of self-defence. “Ta flaat o' a men's sword is killin' enow, and more nor enow, for women-folk an' bairns, ony daay i' the week!”

  “Women and bairns! Snakes and vipers! Women and bairns! Devils, cockatrices, and the seed of cockatrices!” exclaimed the preacher, raising his voice louder and louder, and waving his arms around him like the spokes of a windmill. “What have you to do with women and bairns or with questionings and parleyings, or with dividing and subdividing the work of the Lord? What were the young of the Amalekites but women and bairns? What else, I ask you, were they? And how spoke the Lord of them by the mouth of the prophet? 'Slay me them,' said he; 'slay me every one of them, from the rising up of the sun. Let not one of them escape, not even to the youngest.' I charge you, Gregory Gibbs, with being a Saul, and a Hittite, and a Jebusite, and an Amalekite, and an enemy of the Lord, and a false man, and a danger to the camp, and a traitor to the Queen, and an unnatural bad comrade to your own friends!”

  And the preacher stalked away over the grass, lifting his voice up at intervals as he went, the sound of it being brought back upon the wind, as he got further and further away.

  The group of recruits, left behind, looked at one another rather sheepishly, as if asking what they were to think about the matter now. Some of them appeared to be still inclined to take Gregory Gibbs' view, namely, that the youth and sex of rebels did make a difference when it came to killing them upon a large scale. The majority however were now all for the preacher's standpoint, which at least contained the unanswerable statements “that rebels were rebels,” and “orders were orders,” and that the only safe thing for a soldier was to have no private conscience of his own upon any subject.

  They were still sitting in the same place, when another, and this time a more startling incident occurred. Out of the vague apparently; out of the sea, or the sky, or the river, on to the green space before them, a man suddenly descended like a thunderbolt. Who he was no one knew, but all could see what he was like. An enormously tall man, taller than the very tallest soldier present, clad in the Irish fashion and with the rags of a long green cloak hanging down from his shoulders. His brown face was shadowed with a great tangled glibbe, which was fast turning grey, and below this glibbe, a pair of prominent greenish eyes shone with a very strange and a very wild light.

  Stopping in front of the group, he glanced distractedly to right and left, then all at once rushed up to the nearest of the recruits and took him violently by the throat.

  “Where?” "Where?” he cried. Then after a moment to take breath — “Where?” “Where?” he began again.

  It seemed to be literally the only word he knew. Losing hold of the first man, he rushed up to Gregory Gibbs, who was just beyond. Taking him also by the throat, began shaking him violently backwards and forwards, exactly as a big dog shakes a little one — “Where?” “Where?” “Where?” he kept on reiterating, varying the accent but never the word; saying it over and over with the sort of persistent violence with which a starving man cries out for bread, and for bread only.

  The young Yorkshireman was so taken by surprise, that he simply stared at his assailant without resisting.

  “Whar what? What do you want?” he gasped at last.

  “Where?” “Where?” “Where?” The man in the green cloak relaxed his hold for a minute and stood gazing at him with those eyes which seemed to express so much more than he knew how to get out in words. At last, passionately and like one who summons all his powers for some supreme effort — “The children!” he cried.

  The soldiers around set up a loud laugh, one in which some compunction mingled with a good deal of sheer unmitigated brutality.

  “There be childer enow, an' you call such little naked devils childer,” said one of them.

  “'Cept they be mostly smoothered by this, i' yon cavey sort o' a place yonder,” said another.

  But Gregory Gibbs knew now what the man who had clutched him wanted, and his face at once assumed that expression of horror-stricken guilt which it had worn all day. Turing his head, he pointed silently behind him, then hung it down as before over the grass and seemed to be intent upon fastening one of his shoes, the leather tongue of which had got loose.

  Words were unnecessary. The man in the green cloak suddenly darted away and the next moment had disappeared in the direction in which the young Yorkshireman had pointed. There came a roar from the ruined village behind them; a roar which startled every soldier present; a roar which seemed to be hardly human, so loud was it and so menacing. Another moment, and before anyone present had fully realised what was happening, the man in the ragged green cloak, who had been with them before, was back in their midst again.

  This time, guided apparently by sheer instinct, he made his way straight up to Dan'l Drax. Without a weapon, without even a stick, with nothing but his bare hands, he flew upon him; seized him by the head and with his two hands twisted it completely round; then flung him, body and limbs together, in an ugly confused heap, yards away over the grass, where he subsided with a dull crashing noise upon the ground.

  Gregory Gibbs was his next victim. Him he took round the waist, and lifting the young Yorkshireman off his feet, he tossed him violently behind him, as he might have tossed a log of wood. Then, rushing up to the next man, he took him by the throat and began throttling him, and so effectually, that his face turned black, and his eyes began to start out of his head.

  But the soldiers had now begun to rally from their first surprise. A rush was made for the bills and calivers, and a dozen of the former were aimed simultaneously at the assailant. It was not easy to get at him without injuring his present victim. From every direction, other soldiers were to be seen hurrying to the spot, all eager to have a share in killing the big rebel. The man fought like an enraged buffalo. Four or five times, he shook off all his assailants and might even have escaped, but that no such idea seemed to occur to him. No sooner did he let go one foe than he charged another; always with the same silence; always with the same overwhelming strength and violence. In the end, he was overcome by sheer force of numbers. A well-aimed blow from a bill descended with a crash upon his skull, and he fell to the ground, with a fall that was almost like that of some forest tree.

  The combat thus ended, and the foe slain, there was time to look into the list of casualties. The chief victim of the fray was evidently Dan'l Drax. His Irish wars were over and done with, there could be no question about that! He lay upon his back; his neck doubled up sideways; his lank hair streaming backward; his mouth open, as the last yell had left it; his teeth set and showing in a ghastly grin. It was only too clear that the enemies of the Lord had prevailed, and that Dan'l Drax would never fight or preach aga
in.

  Some of the officers had by this time come up, attracted by the noise. Orders were being given to make sure that the rebel was dead and to take the preacher's body away and bury it. Before this could be done other officers however had arrived on the scene, bringing orders from head-quarters that the soldiers were to get ready as the march was about to be resumed.

  Immediately, all was hubbub and confusion. The men ran here and thither, some to collect their goods, others to snatch a mouthful of food. While the rest were thus occupied, Gregory Gibbs alone remained still standing in the same place and still staring before him, his face the picture of discomfort and perplexity. First he looked at Dan'l Drax, whose body was at that moment being carried off, hanging limply between a couple of the soldiers; next, he turned and looked at the apparently equally dead body of the rebel who had killed him, and, each time he did so, he shook his head, with an air of bewilderment and self-reproach.

  Chapter XXXI.

  But the slayer of Dan'l Drax was not dead, although it would have been quite the best thing for him if he had been. Maelcho the seanchaí came back to life very, very slowly, with wounds enough in his body to ensure most men's deaths, but apparently not enough to ensure his.

  His life since we left him in prison can be put into a very few words. When at Lord Desmond's request the Seneschal of Imokilly had hurried off to join the three Desmond brothers in their raid upon Youghal, he had let loose any prisoners that he happened to have, and amongst them Maelcho. There was no longer any object in keeping him. The camp at Smerwick was broken up; Sir John of the Pikes had other and more important matters by that time to think of; there was no alternative, therefore, except to free him or to kill him. The notorious ill-luck which followed those who laid violent hands upon bards or people of that sort had ensured Maelcho against the latter fate.

  It was the mere ghost of the stalwart seanchaí who had gone down into the cave that was drawn up again. The ghost of his mind, even more than the ghost of his body. Turned loose, he had been bidden to go where he would, but there had been no mind left in the man to tell him where to go. Instinct had sent him drifting back into the neighbourhood of Dingle. Here the change in everything his eyes rested on had stung his mind for a moment into a sort of galvanised life. Staring dully into every face he met, he had read terror in them all, and their terror had gradually awakened his own. Then desperately, and like a madman, he had rushed here and thither, seeking those whom he had left, seeking, but never finding. He had rushed through the whole desolated country, hard upon the track of the destroyers, and in this way had arrived at this particular village.

  Happily for Maelcho, he at present remembered nothing about it. Heaven had interposed a screen between him and it, and his own worst misfortune had become his best and his only friend. A long interval passed, but at last he lifted up his head and looked about him. The place was utterly silent now; the soldiers had all gone and were by this time miles away. He gazed vacantly around him, no idea of where he was penetrating to his mind. Was he still in his prison upon the cliff? He put his hand up to his head and drew it back covered with blood, which he gazed at blankly, not remembering how he had come by the wound; then he looked vacantly around him at the trampled grass. Dan'l Drax's body had been removed and buried, but some of the broken bills and other traces of the struggle still lay about over the ground. Maelcho looked at them all without the faintest shadow of recognition. Everything was a blank, alike within and without: a dull formless blank, across which dim images of pain and horror seemed now and then to pass.

  At last, there came a sound of shuffling feet. It got nearer and nearer, till it was now quite close to him. He lifted his head and uttered a cry. The feet shuffled hastily away again, and dead silence once more set in. Maelcho lay perfectly still; he was too weak from loss of blood to stir. After another long interval, the sound began again, this time upon the further side of a low lace-work wall which crossed a portion of the grass. Again, he uttered a cry. After another delay, a terrified face pushed itself suddenly between a couple of loose blocks of stone; a bloodless face, with staring eyes, apparently half idiotic, and moreover appearing from its position to be decapitated.

  Maelcho stared at the face, and the face stared back at him through the hole in the wall. Another few minutes passed, and then, satisfied apparently that he was alone, a half naked, shivering figure scrambled forward inch by inch, pausing every now and then. Maelcho continued to stare at it. He knew it, and yet he did not know it; it belonged to the past, to that submerged and forgotten world which had existed before his imprisonment.

  It was Duagh o' Cadhla, one of Sir James Fitzmaurice's two red-headed kern, looking twenty years older than he had done six months before, shrank to half his former bulk, his features fallen in, his whole aspect that of a man driven absolutely mad by terror.

  A name quivered upon Maelcho's lips, “Duagh! Duagh!” he muttered doubtfully.

  Duagh started, and his white face grew if possible whiter.

  “Who calls Duagh? Who calls Duagh o' Cadhla? My God, who are you that knows poor Duagh?” he whimpered helplessly.

  Maelcho lifted himself a little, and this time it was his own name that trembled equally doubtfully upon his lips. Duagh caught the sound and started back; then advanced; then retreated again; terror and curiosity struggling alternately in his face.

  “Maelcho? There is no Maelcho. Maelcho is dead, dead, dead! Maelcho the seanchaí is dead!” he muttered tremblingly.

  He crept a few yards nearer, till he could peer down at the prostrate figure, still muttering and mumbling to himself as he did so.

  “Maelcho? There is no Maelcho. Maelcho is dead, and Sir James is dead, and the lady is dead, and the little lady-girls are dead; all are dead, dead, dead!”

  A sudden flash, a sudden intense agony of remembrance burst for a moment across Maelcho's brain, and, with a cry of fury he attempted to spring from the ground. Duagh sprang nimbly backwards, terror written anew on his face, and he held out his hands, as if to ward off an attack.

  “'Tis he! 'tis he! 'tis Maelcho mac Murglas! Maelcho and no other man,” he cried. “He has come back! The grave has given him up, the grave into which all the rest have fallen. Listen to me then since it is you; listen to me! Oh man returned from the grave! It was not Duagh's fault, no no, it was not Duagh's fault. Duagh did what he could, but what could Duagh do, or what can any man do more than God gives him to do? The Queen of England's soldiers came; they came in hundreds and thousands! We had hidden them in the cave yonder; yes, in the cave with the other women and children, and in the innermost part of all, in the safest part of all. Could we do more than that? What more was there for us to do? What more could we do, say, Oh man returned from the grave? How could we fight? We were only a few men — nine, ten, twelve of us — and some young boys. I broke through the soldiers, and I escaped; I was out yonder in the fields, away, safe from them all. Suddenly, a cry came to me, a cry out of the air. 'They have found them!' it cried. 'They have found the lady and the little lady-girls, and they are killing them.' I went back, Maelcho; by my soul, I went back; before God and the holy angels, I went back! But by that time it was all smoke and flames, and soldiers; nothing but soldiers, and smoke, and flames. They were setting fire to everything, and they were killing everything; the dogs, the chickens, the sows in labour, everything! What was I to do? Say, Maelcho, the son of Murglas, what was I to do? Three soldiers ran at me with guns; I had no gun, I had only a pike. I flung down my pike, and I fled, yes, fled, and they after me; and they fired and I fell, and they thought that I was dead, so they turned back. I was not dead, though I too thought that I was dead, for I had wounds in every part of my body, and it is dead I feel myself now, dead, and more than dead … Oh my God, and it is dead he is too, so he is; dead out and out this time!” he exclaimed, as, on looking suddenly back, he saw that Maelcho had once more fallen to the ground; the wound in his head had reopened; his face was bloodless, and he lay there to all appe
arances a corpse.

  Duagh remained crouching beside him upon the grass, staring down at his white face, starting at every sound and glancing from time to time over his own shoulder, as if scared by the very clouds moving slowly overhead. There was nothing apparently to scare anyone now, for the place was absolutely deserted. There was nothing to be seen, and nothing to be heard save the ripple of a small stream hard by, and now and then a dull falling noise, as some half burnt piece of wall, rolling over, crumbled to pieces upon the ground.

  A wild desire was twitching at the kern's limbs, a wild desire to escape, to get away somewhere, he did not himself in the least know where. It was a desire that was just then driving the whole population of the province mad; sending them scampering here and thither like panic-stricken animals; out of one temporary refuge into another, no safer and no better; forcing them to race and race, up hill, and down hill, till they fell and died from sheer exhaustion. That impulse to run, run, run, was in Duagh o' Cadhla's bones and was urging him not to stop; was urging him to get away, no matter where, so long only as it was away from where he then was. A contrary impulse, however, was also at work within him; an impulse hardly less strong, one that had come down to him through dozens, perhaps hundreds of faithful generations. There was one office which he knew that he must fulfil before he ran away; an office that must not be left undone; that he durst not leave undone, though the very hosts of hell itself were at his heels. Shaking like a leaf, he accordingly left the open grassy space and crawled back over the wall and across a further space of open ground, until he got into the burnt village, and through it again until he reached a low mound which rose just beyond it.

  It was a small earthen rath,* and at its base lay the mouth of a tunnel or narrow underground passage, dating back from the most primitive times and still used by the villagers as a storehouse or a refuge in case of need. It had proved cruelly faithless to that last office, now when the need had been so desperately great. Such of the women and children of the village had crowded in here. Stones had been rolled to the mouth of the tunnel, and an attempt made further to conceal the entrance with bushes, but the pitiful ruse had been detected only too easily. The stones had been pulled away, the bushes fired; more bushes and more piles of wet sods had been heaped on, and all who had not rushed out at the first surprise, had perished in the suffocating smoke.