by C R Dempsey
C R Dempsey
Uprising
Two kingdoms, one wedding and the hangman’s noose
First published by CRMPD Media Limited 2021
Copyright © 2021 by C R Dempsey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
C R Dempsey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-914945-00-7
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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For Mena and Maya
Contents
Acknowledgement
1. The river
2. The prisoner
3. Sanctuary
4. The promise
5. Back at the castle
6. The cry of the Maguire
7. Derrylinn
8. Return to Tirconnell
9. March on Enniskillen
10. Second siege of Enniskillen
11. The crossroads
12. Ford of the biscuits
13. Hunting for rabbits
14. The tale of an axe
15. The Reunion
16. The Bargain
17. The Spy
18. Back on the island
19. The Pale
20. The veterans of Dublin
21. Escape to Wicklow
22. Becoming his own man
23. Departure
24. Raids in Connacht
25. Return to Wicklow
26. The gift
27. The forest
28. Clontibret
29. The offer
30. A sort of homecoming
31. Connacht opens up
32. Reunion on the lake
33. Mullabrack
34. A time for peace?
35. A phoney war
36. Kilmaine
37. New Year’s eve
38. New Year’s resolutions
39. New Year’s Day
40. Who is the O’Cassidy Maguire?
About the Author
Also by C R Dempsey
Acknowledgement
Thank you to all my friends and family and all those who have helped.
Special thanks to: Mena - endless patience and support, Eoin - sounding board, inspiration, advice, answering random WhatsApp messages etc., Richard Burnham - support and advice, Justin Moule - support and advice.
Cover by Dominic Forbes
Editing by Mark Empy
1
The river
Eunan tumbled from the tower. Water exploded around his head. The pain, the pain! Water invaded his mouth. Panic! A light flashed above him, ripples left on a blue skin.
“Must swim towards the light!”
He flapped his arms but still sank, slowly, slowly. Panic! Water conspired with maternal memories to drown him in spirit, body, and mind. The survival instinct kicked in. What was weighing him down? He felt for his waist. The throwing axes. He would need them. He kicked as hard as he could. His lungs were shrinking. Panic! He kicked and flapped at the same time. Propulsion! He swam towards the light. He kicked and flapped again. He broke through the skin. He spat out the water from his mouth and bit the air. Lungs inflated, he slipped back into the water once more.
The tumultuous torrents propelled him towards the bow of one of the English assault boats. Eunan used his experience gained by growing up beside a lake. While his aquatic abilities saved him, his flailing arms and bobbing head became unwanted companions of the battle debris, trying to float away and make their escape. Bullets from the English boats pursued his flailing arms and rasped through air and water until they buried themselves in the river bed.
Eunan saw the lights and heard the shouts of angry men. He realised where he was, took a breath and dived into the murkiness, and swam under a boat. He hid until his breath betrayed him, a weak, so-called friend. He propelled himself forward, kicking against the bottom of the boat.
He swam as covertly as he could, peering over his shoulder to see if the English soldiers’ attention had settled elsewhere. Enniskillen gave Eunan a parting farewell gift, for its blaze distracted the soldiers long enough to provide him with a brief opportunity to escape. The bitterness of parting sunk Eunan’s heart to the pit of his chest. So many men had died horrible deaths, yet he, possibly the least deserving, still lived. Yet it may have been for a reason. He endeavoured to carry on, if not for his own sake, then for the memory of his dead comrades who would want him to live and avenge them. He turned from Enniskillen to make good his escape. Too late! The bow of a boat rammed straight into the side of his head! He lost consciousness. The bow drove Eunan’s body beneath the hull and discarded his body to float downriver with the other debris.
* * *
Odin sat and stoked the fire. He positioned himself where Eunan’s father once sat as if he were him. He gazed outward over Upper Lough Erne, and he wished he was not there, as if he were Eunan. The village burned around him. Flames licked and kissed the houses, trees, and grass. Any love that may have once resided there instantly became ash. A circle of stakes surrounded Odin’s fire, and skewered onto each stake was the head of one of Eunan’s friends or relatives who had died in the village’s various destructions. But Odin held the best for himself as he poured his mead into Eunan’s mother’s skull until it overflowed its sides. Odin picked it up from the temples and downed its contents. Loki and Badu emerged from the fire and sat down beside Odin. Loki picked up the skull of Eunan’s father and Badu, the small and delicate skull of Eunan’s sister. Odin poured and they drank.
“How bodes war and chaos?” Odin asked.
“Our host lives, but our blood flows out onto the river, and we don’t know whether he will meet death,” replied Badu.
“His time will come, but not yet. The bad blood still gushes through his veins. There is much entertainment for us to enjoy yet!”
The Norse gods laughed as they slammed their skulls together and toasted once again. Fire devoured the village.
* * *
Water no longer flowed over Eunan’s face. He awoke, half spat, half vomited. The pain of both smooth and jagged hardness penetrated his body. He opened his eyes to a blurred outline and a mouth that made no sound. His senses gradually recovered.
“Eunan?”
2
The prisoner
Seamus was confused. All he could see of the man who stood before him was chain mail, a helmet, and a sharp axe. But where there should have been a face was leather, embedded by round holes for eyes, nose and mouth. Confidence exuded from the man’s every stride, and intimidation from every hole in his mask. Seamus raised his axe.
“I am an old and experienced Galloglass, prepared to fight to the death. Whoever comes before me had better be prepared to die if they take me on!”
“Oh, I’m ready to take you on alright! Don’t you recognise me, Seamus?”
Several more men emerged from the stairwell and stood behind the masked man. Seamus squinted. The fresh faces were vaguely familiar.
“I’ll make you an offer, far more generous than the offer you made me,” continued the man. “The captain of this castle has already surrendered. If you surrender now, my boys and I won’t chop you up and feed you to the fishes. Well, not just yet. Do you want to die a sen
seless death or take your chances with me?”
Seamus looked at the man in the mask and his henchmen and estimated he would not get out alive. He made up his mind.
“I like a man who is willing to negotiate, and a Galloglass is always willing to take a risk.”
Seamus threw down his axe. Two of the men who had emerged from the stairs grabbed Seamus by the arms and hauled him over to the masked man. The man stared into Seamus’s blank face.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Seamus did not react.
“’Tis always better if you know who you’re negotiating with!” and the man removed his helmet and handed it to one of his sons. He revealed a leather mask, which was a lattice of neatly stitched together brown leather strips. He undid the string at the back of the mask.
His face was a patchwork of pink and scarlet, volcanic fissures of pain that melted into each other, the eyes hollow, their bags slid down to his nose that bled across his face. Even Seamus winced as he tried to pick which colour patches were the rawest. Seamus may have once known who he was, but he did not recognise him now.
“I preferred you with your mask on, as I’m sure did your former lady. Why are you showing me your face? Why not skip the courtship and kill me?”
“Because you did this to me!”
Seamus looked at him sceptically and tried to remember. He came upon a guess.
“Shea Óg O’Rourke?”
“It took you long enough, but you didn’t stay to admire your work when you did it!”
“Well, there’ll be no one doing any admiring until you put the bag back on your head. I told you, you should have pledged.”
The shaft of Shea Óg’s axe burned with friction.
“I’d smash your skull right now if you weren’t worth the bounty the English captain is willing to pay for bringing the leaders to him alive.”
“I like a man whose pragmatism can make a mere morsel of his morality!”
“After telling the English about you, I’m sure I can get paid and smash your skull in all at the same time.”
“You can save your tall stories for the whores when you try to bargain them down from doubling their price because of your face.”
One swift blow to the stomach from Shea Óg had Seamus gasping for air.
“You won’t be so smart when you see what’s in store for you. Bring him down to the courtyard.”
Shea’s sons administered blows to the body and head to ensure Seamus’s compliance. They dragged him down the stairs. Seamus opened his eyes again when they threw him to the ground. In the corner of the courtyard, the Irish soldiers who had surrendered sat under the English guns. In another corner, their wives and children crouched, crying out for the protection of their fathers and husbands or, failing that, for the mercy of the English. The English soldiers and their Irish allies collected the rebel dead and wounded from the castle in two piles. Nonchalance ruled their allocation, for each pile was to be cast into the river from the castle walls as a warning to potential rebels that may be planning to resist in the lower lough.
Captain Dowdall stood in the centre, a totem to victory. His uniform was a little dusty but nothing compared to the blackened, blood-stained uniforms of his men. The soldier buzzed around him, returning for his approval when they had completed the latest task in the destruction of the rebels.
Seamus was groggy now from the beatings administered Shea Óg to him and the bruises to his lower body as they dragged him down every stair and over every obstacle. Shea Óg saw his chance. His sons threw Seamus in front of Captain Dowdall, and a random bucket of slops dumped upon Seamus to encourage his revival.
“I caught this renegade on the roof swinging his axe.”
“Why are you bothering me with him? There are quicker ways to get him off the roof than to drag him down!”
“I apologise, captain, but I’m here to collect my reward.”
“I pay the same for bodies. Why do you drag this breathing ‘Mac’ and ‘O’ before me to make your claim?”
“Don’t you recognise him?”
“Who’s he supposed to be?” Dowdall shrugged.
“One of William Stanley’s most trusted men! An officer and a confidant of that foulest of renegades.”
“Well, this would be a grand prize for the Lord Deputy. If only we could verify it was true. Do you have any proof or plan to run away once the coin settles on the palm of your hand?”
“See my face. He did this to me! It was supposed to be a lesson from the Maguire, so Seamus could brag how he deformed me to frighten any other loyal subjects. Well, I had the last laugh. A man came to me who said he knew his handiwork from his time in the Netherlands, and there was a large bounty on his head from the Crown. He said he’d pay handsomely for any information that led to his arrest, more for him alive than for the body. So why don’t you give me a small cut of the reward now, and I’ll send the man to you?”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
“No, no sir! I take you for an astute gentleman who is about to celebrate a glorious victory. If the coward Maguire hadn’t hidden his cattle, you’d be a rich man too. I know you want to make an example of all the rebels, but this one is worth way too much money.”
“I haven’t time for this. You guard the prisoner and get this gentleman with more money than sense to come here and offer the reward. I set sail for Lower Lough Erne by the end of the week. So if we haven’t struck a bargain by then, I’ll shoot this prisoner myself. Be off with you, and when you come back to see me wear another mask. Surely you can make a better one than that monstrosity!”
Captain Dowdall dismissed Shea Óg and called his sergeants over to converse about the reconstruction of the castle. Shea Óg resentfully took his prize. He got his sons to haul Seamus to the camp outside the castle so no one would steal his prisoner from him.
3
Sanctuary
The figure placed Eunan’s head on his knee with such gentleness that Eunan’s water-numbed skin barely registered the movement. He created a cascade of water from his flask onto the palm of his hand and then softly into Eunan’s lips and mouth. Eunan had rarely befriended gentleness and boiled over with mistrust, opened his eyes and brushed him off to fight his fits of coughs and splutters. Rolling over onto his elbows, he wiped his face and looked at his Good Samaritan.
“Arthur!!” he croaked with relief, for in his state, his defensive tension was exhausting.
Arthur paid back his smile with interest.
“The luck was with you when the river took you in her torrents.”
“Luck deserted me long ago if she was ever acquainted with me!” and Eunan lifted himself to his feet.
“You’ve got the affliction of youth upon you, always aspiring after something else but not realising what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
“Enniskillen is gone, my village is gone, Fermanagh is gone. Soon the Maguires will follow!”
“Don’t be so downhearted. Sure, look - you still have your axes!”
Eunan reached for his side pouch, and sure enough, the three axes given to him by Desmond were safely wrapped up inside.
“Now, isn’t that a bit of luck for you; the man who’s got nothing? Sure, when you get back to the war and throw them at someone’s head, you’ll have brains on them too. Why so downhearted? Speculating to accumulate, that’s you! You’re acquiring things all the time. Come on, let me help you up. Desmond is waiting for us in the house on the other side of the island.”
“Desmond is here?”
“Yes, and he’ll be glad to see you. Now come on.”
Eunan’s body was a bag of aches and groans and moved like a man quadruple his age. But Arthur took pity on him, offered him a shoulder and helped him up and off the rocky beach. They climbed the small hill and looked over the lake. Bobbing bodies and debris blighted their view.
“They did that on purpose to frighten us,” said Arthur. “Pushing the bodies from the castle downriver. But it won�
�t work. We know we’re safe out here on the islands.”
Eunan turned away, for he could dwell on his defeat no more.
“We can’t live here forever, but we can for now. Let’s go find Desmond,” and Arthur led Eunan away.
The island was small, and it took them five minutes to cross it. The island was not the first one Eunan encountered as he floated up the lake. Hugh Maguire supposedly occupied Devenish Island. The island was an obvious target for the English, working their way downriver since the island commanded access to the lower lough. However, Hugh Maguire had created a formidable defence. Desmond had chosen somewhere far more discrete; a little hideaway that you would sail straight past unless you had a specific reason to go there.
Arthur led Eunan to a compact cove, surrounded by trees, facing out onto the lake. It was the perfect hideout. Desmond sat on a rock with a large stick pointing over the lake, and its string looped carelessly around so that the end tickled the waves. Eunan’s heart lept. He would have run to greet Desmond, but his legs were jelly and had spent most of their energy crossing the island. All he could manage was to give out a faint croak.
“Come, he’ll never hear that. You need to rest yourself.”
Arthur turned toward Desmond’s back and cupped his mouth.
“Master, come see who has come to visit!” he shouted.
Desmond looked over his shoulder as if this exertion was all the energy he was prepared to spend. That was until he saw…
“Eunan!”
Desmond dropped his stick into the lake to float off into oblivion, and the fish were spared their lives for a couple of hours at least. Desmond hobbled over the smooth stone shore with all the speed his legs and grip of his shoes would grant him. His exertions were not in vain, for the embrace was true, and the words of welcome exuded a warmth rarely expressed by either of them. This time Arthur became the physical crutch for both as the three-legged horse hopped towards the little stone house that was the sanctuary. There were three chairs and a table in the house’s shadows, all donated by the trees of the island. Eunan flopped onto the most comfortable looking of these and Desmond, only momentarily, grimaced as he had the grace to give up his favourite chair for his dearest guest.