Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  She opened her eyes again, and the first thing she saw was a white speck down by the wood path. Her heart beat. She looked again: it was Tamburlaine come back. He was coming quietly on and up, feeding as he came. A piercing whistle came from below: she looked, and there was Murrough whirling his arms and pointing.

  Sabia got up and ran lightly down the hill. The horse came on as before, affecting not to see her. He was shining with health and freshness. He seemed to cast white lights about him as he moved. The sweep of his tail, the waving locks upon his neck, the roundness of his haunches, the light of his eye told of his recovered strength.

  Sabia ran to him. He let her come while pretending not to see her. News of his master: that was what he wanted. Sabia threw her arms round his neck, calling him a hundred names of love. The horse smelled her dress, let her pat his neck a while, then began moving on and up as before. Sabia went by his side, stopping while he fed, then going on with him. Straight up the hill he came, and Sabia with him, till she reached her old seat. There she sat down, full of joy to watch him.

  All the people were out watching him too, shading their eyes with their hands and gazing upwards. For a time, he stood feeding on the short sweet grass, then moved about uncertainly, snuffing the air and getting sideways nearer to the door of the hall.

  The girl's heart leapt up in expectation; was he going in of himself? Here was something better for Estercel than a pailful of herb teas. For a while, he seemed to forget himself in feeding again. Then suddenly, he raised his head and went leisurely to the door of the hall. Standing there, he whinnied softly as he was used to do every morning when Estercel was at Ardhoroe. Sabia thought he had an answer from within, for he whinnied again. Then after a little hesitation, he went slowly in, his hoofs clattering on the stone, his great white sides shining strangely in the dark door space.

  She flew from her place, round the house to the small side door and up the tiny stairs to the hall gallery. On the stairs, she cast off her shoes and crept forward still as a mouse and looked below.

  There stood the great horse, looking more vast and huge than ever before, at the side of the recess. Sabia could not see the bed as he was between, but the horse's head hung low, and round his stooped neck she could see an arm and catch the murmur and flow of words and the sound of a sobbing breath. Then silence, while the hand and arm moved slowly up and down caressing the horse's shining neck.

  Suddenly, she heard a well-known word of command given in a strong voice and twice repeated. Obediently, the horse began to go down on his knees. Then to Sabia's horror and amazement, she saw the sick man's head rise up and his arm come about the horse's neck. And there he was, dressed only in his long loose shirt of homespun wool, crawling, though he groaned for weakness, on to the horse's back. She never waited to see more. She flew from the gallery down the little stairs, calling:

  “Nurse, nurse! Michael! Tamburlaine's going off with him again; he's taken Estercel! Call Owen, call Michael!”

  She cried like mad. But when she got round the house, there was the horse going sedately in the sun, and Estercel upright on his back, gazing about him with his hollowed eyes, half-strange like an owl in the daylight. Gentle as a sheep, the horse walked around while all the world ran up the hill to look at the miracle. Many an eye dropped a tear to see the emaciation of the young man, the long thin legs that hung down, the cropped head, the hollow cheeks. But there was a something in the half-smile on his face, in the high look of him, that rejoiced them all.

  “It's a resurrection!” said Nurse Phaire. “He'll have done with me now. I've lost my pet.”

  Estercel leaned down on the horse's neck and spoke in his ear. Softly, the creature paced along till he came to their favourite hollow on the hillside where they used to lie together. Then he went down on his knees, and twenty hands at once helped Estercel from his dangerous perch. He refused to go indoors, so twenty more fetched his mantle and thick woollen coverings and made him a soft and pleasant couch in the sun. There he laid down his head and slept, exhausted; slept for hour after hour while the faithful Tamburlaine lay still on the grass beside him, his neck stretched out, his heavy head lying on the grass by his master's hand.

  On the other side of the sleeping man sat Sabia, her needlework between her hands, but her mind very little occupied with it. She was busy making pictures out of the future and the past. She looked at the sleeping man beside her with a new kind of awe. This was not the old Estercel nor ever would be again. She saw it when he smiled. She had seen it when he was on the horse's back, and his head and face were held up against the sky.

  Meantime, Father Machen had arrived from Dungannon. He had come riding in, one man only with him, and he had had a great welcome. While Estercel rested and slept below, the priest had a fine lunch in the hall. All ran to wait on him and to tell the news. He was a broad, sensible, red-faced man with a great appetite for conversation and a sound sense that enabled others to profit by it. He made Owen sit to the table while he ate. Nurse Phaire stood at his left hand and served him and poured out all the news which Owen left her, which was not much.

  When Estercel awoke, he found the priest sitting beside him, knowing all his story and a good deal more besides. Strange and bewildered he was at first, but when the old nurse had brought him a basin of strong broth and propped him up, head and shoulders, he made shift to talk a little.

  “Where's my horse?” he said, looking about him.

  “I sent him off with himself,” answered the father. “He's nothing but a heathen, though he's a white one. Would you have him listen to the counsels of your priest?”

  The young man smiled, but continued to look about him uneasily.

  “Well, but where is he?” he said again.

  “Having a feed of oats down below with Michael. He went off quite content directly the oats were mentioned to him.”

  Estercel seemed satisfied and laid down his head.

  “Well,” said the father cheerily, “isn't the weather beautiful, and isn't it a fine thing to have you out of doors like this, on the road to your health?”

  “That's gone,” said Estercel. “I'll never be the same man again. Look at my hands. They nearly wrenched them off me.” He held them up and showed the twisted swollen joints.

  The priest examined them. “They'll soon be better,” he said. “That's a small thing. Be thankful they didn't take them off entirely. And they left you the nose on your face and your two ears. Faith, I think you've good reason to be thankful.”

  But Estercel did not even smile, his heart was too bitter. “There's no thankfulness in me,” he said; “I'm turned a heathen, father; the same as my horse. God and the saints and the Mother may be of some use when they are in Heaven, but they're none that I can see here below. I made a fool of myself once praying and crying on them to help me, and I'll never do it again.”

  “But you were delivered,” said the priest. “Suppose you were to tell me how?”

  “I believe it was through the repentance of the person that trapped me into the prison,” he answered.

  “Well, and what about that repentance?” he answered. “The changing of the heart, what is it but the work of God?”

  Estercel considered for a moment. “You won't get round it that way,” he said. “There was many a poor fellow left in that prison that'll die there for all his praying, die between four stone walls.”

  Even as Estercel spoke, something of the horror that had weighed on him rose and passed. At the same time, the rosy comfortable look left the priest's face. Strong stern lines that had been graven there seemed to start out, revealing another man. It was that man that spoke now, spoke not from doctrine but from the depths of his soul.

  “That's true,” he said, “I don't deny it. I prayed fast enough when they lashed my back to ribbons and hung me and left me for dead, and I never had an answer to those prayers yet. But for all that, I don't deny the goodness of the Almighty. He strengthens the soul, that's what He does; ay, feeds it wit
h His sweet bread and wine. He's the sunlight and all to me. Anyway, I've given Him my soul to keep.”

  Estercel stretched out his hand, and the priest took it gently and held it between both his. The bitterness that had held him both waking and in his dreams began to melt away.

  “Tell me one thing,” said the priest; “what about that woman (they say she is a great beauty) that entrapped you, according to Owen? Are you letting your mind dwell upon her?”

  “Why would I do that?” said Estercel. “I have no quarrel with her now. She did me a bad turn, but she repented of it and came herself to get me out of the prison.”

  “Well, indeed,” said the priest; “I thought it was Owen got you out. So they're saying at all events.”

  Estercel laughed. More than once when they had thought him asleep he had heard Owen expatiating.

  “They're saying,” went on the priest cautiously, “that the young woman we're talking of has been seen about Ardhoroe.”

  Estercel smiled. “They'll say anything,” he said. “Any foolery is enough to content them. They must talk about something.”

  “That's so,” said the priest. “Well, and I've something in my pocket for you now, something that will make you the proudest man in Ireland today.”

  Out of his leather satchel he took a large square letter tied with a silken cord and sealed with a great seal bearing the arms of Tyrone. Estercel's face lit up with joy.

  “Tyrone's seal!” he cried. “Oh, is it himself that has written to me?”

  There were but two or three lines inside thanking the young man for the good performance of his commission, his staunchness in keeping silence, and Tyrone's hope that he would soon be restored to strength and ready to serve his country in the time of danger that was drawing near. Only a few lines, but they were written with all the energy which sent every word of Tyrone's, written or spoken, straight to the mark. Gold, nor jewels, nor anything in the world could have been as welcome to Estercel. He had never thought of himself as deserving thanks. Rather he had been eating his heart out with rage at having been made a fool of by a young woman and that under the eyes of all men. The blood in his veins seemed to sweeten as he read and re-read the letter.

  That night he refused to return to his bed in the hall: the walls of that recess were painted over and over with the memory of his torment, the very air of it seemed to hold the dissolving pictures that he dreaded. So they found him a clean shed below in the haggard and made him a couch on the fresh straw. By the door Tamburlaine lay down, and his dogs beyond, and six men to watch, sleeping turn and turn about. The women had lost their care.

  For Estercel, the night was an ecstasy. One day had given him back freedom and the open sky and his life before him to live: his horse and the praise of a great leader. The confession of his pain and the words of the priest had somehow drawn the thorn and the bitterness from his heart, had given him back the friendship of that Someone whose whisper runs along from star to star, who speaks profound things to the soul. In the dim twilight of the June night, he would lift up his letter. There was just light enough to see the large seal black on the parchment. From there, he looked out to the stars across the shapes of men and the huge quarters of Tamburlaine who lay by the door. He heard a whisper of Owen's.

  “Ay, she'll miss him tonight. She'll surely seek him towards morning, the red devil. It's a good thing we have him down here among us again.”

  Chapter XXIX. - How Tamburlaine was Punished

  The women had lost their care; the men had got Estercel among them again. The rapidity of his recovery was something extraordinary. He made new blood every day. His flesh healed and became sound. Muscles and sinews regained their power. The cropped hair and the beard began to grow, a chestnut brown. The grey pallor of his face gave way to the colour of the health that is got from wind and sun. He had been but a fortnight on his feet when men began to speak of him as of a leader. There was a depth of the eye, a government of the lip that told of thought at work within. His words were not many, they were few and simple, but they were always clear and always had a meaning.

  The men respected him for the strong fight that he made with his weakness. At daybreak that very first morning, he was on to his horse's back and away. They followed him and brought him back and fed and rested him; but soon he was off again in spite of them. His horse was his favourite companion. With him he found what he needed: affection and silence. Under the open sky with the free wind on his face, he needed to think over all that he had seen and felt and suffered. As soon as he could sit on his horse easily, without giddiness or fear of falling, he went up on to Slieve Gallion. From the rock's side he could look out over the tumbled beauty of the land: forest-filled glens, streams narrow and broad, rounded green woods, fair pastures with a thousand flowers, lovely in themselves, a spread banquet for the herds. Most of all, his eye sought out the dwellings of men, while he thought of their wars and their fierceness, their cruelties and their sufferings, their goodness and their tender hearts. He pondered too on the difficult laws of God which govern all, so entangled in their operation, so hard to trace out, so little understood. For the first time, he questioned and considered his own joy in battle. Having suffered, he began to know what he inflicted. “I must fight, and I will fight,” he said to himself. “But I will endeavour not to make a pleasure of it.”

  The puzzle of the world was too great for him. His wits failed him. His head sank down on his breast; he folded his hands and resigned himself. With that resignation came the flowing in of a still peace, like the tides of the air or the sea and he troubled no more. Slowly and reluctantly on these days, he would turn to go home for his mid-day meal. He was disgusted with stone walls. He feared the women; he had had too much of them. He was sulky even with Sabia; why, he did not know. Simply, he could not help it. He would just eat and then be off out of doors fearing lest they should catch him and master him again.

  In a fortnight's time, he was hard at work again, at the marching and the drilling and the manoeuvring of his men. Every day they shot at a target and practised running and leaping. In the regiments of the north, swiftness and activity were quite as much regarded as strength. Every day messengers came running from the south, the east, and the west, bringing war news, telling how the cannon and the engines of Essex were battering the castles of the south. With thrill upon thrill, the very air seemed to vibrate, and the winds to carry fear and hope from heart to heart. Great pride the women took in their men: they freely assembled at the sound of the war-pipes and clapped their hands as the lads came by. Here was no hired army, fighting for a wage, compelled by destiny. Here was no miserable crowd of camp-followers, at once destroyers and destroyed. Here were ranks of free-men at the very top of their spirit, with free-women, their mates and their coadjutors, standing to egg them on. At that time one Irish soldier was a match for any two English, and the leaders on both sides knew as much and said so and have left their opinions on record for all to read.

  Wherever the marching and the discipline of the men took place, Estercel and his horse were to be seen; Sabia seldom or never. For some reason, her whole self seemed to have suffered a change. From the moment that she had seen the grey face and cropped head of Estercel raised up against the sky, she felt no longer the same. It was as if some spring in her nature long sealed under the surface had suddenly burst forth. She had looked on a new thing with new eyes. The creature that she had seen there with the high and suffering face did not and could not belong to her. The powers and deities might take him and mend him, for the task was not hers. She no longer desired anything very ardently for herself. Only she wished to get the charm from Estercel's finger, for she was now ashamed of it. Her feeling was something like that of a boy who has hunted a bird and, catching it at last and carrying it in his hand, begins to weary of its ruffled feathers and dim eye and so does not grieve to see it escape to the world of blue air to which it belongs.

  A sense of peace came to Sabia with her renunciation of d
esire. Foolish girlhood seemed to fall away from her, and the woman within had a chance to be. A new dignity and gentleness sat upon her very well. In her simple way, it was as if she confided Estercel and herself both to the operation of the great laws that twist the stars about the sun and knead up the souls of men. Her own work she had by this time begun to know, and she did it with steadiness and goodwill. Young as she was, she was growing to be the mother of her people. One small thing led to another. The sick came to her, and she wished then to see if the counsels given had been followed. The moment that the sudden escape of Estercel had set her free, she began to visit the people in their homes. Everywhere she was received as hereditary chieftainess. Open faces, looks of affection, and a personal reverence accompanied her wherever she went. By a smile and a touch of the hand she could do more than another with armfuls of gifts.

  Sabia was not without wisdom and a certain swift decision of character. When she saw what she imagined was the right thing to be done, she was quick to do it. She went to see the bald child and its foolish mother and gave some attention to the old mother-in-law who crouched in the corner by the fire, a shapeless heap under a blue cloak with a wicked black eye beaming in her head. Having translated to her own satisfaction the bitter glance of the old woman, that very evening she had her removed to the dwelling of another relation to whom an allowance of corn made her a welcome guest.

  About four o'clock in the afternoon of a bright day in July, she was slowly riding homewards on the brown mare Eliza, her dog beside her for a guard. She had been to see the little yellow man and his daughter Bride, for whom she felt both pity and affection. The little man had been overjoyed at her coming, and she had done all that she could to soothe and sweeten his mind. She was very contented as she rode. A sort of dim light from within seemed to be welling up and overspreading all her mind. For the first time, a conception of the sacred life dawned upon her: a life in which the swiftly moving crowd of moments should one and all be illuminated.