Putting his mouth close to Hugh's ear, Fenwick desired him in a whisper to push on, so as to get if possible to the other side of the force which they saw encamped. Hugh obeyed, and they again crept stealthily forward, now almost upon hands and knees; pushing aside the boughs, creeping under dripping entanglements, forsaking the path entirely and getting coated with mud and slime from head to foot; wriggling, sliding, clambering, up hill and down hill, over a thousand invisible obstacles.
When in this way they had advanced with great difficulty for more than two hours, they again paused, this time quite close to where the greater number and closeness of the red dots showed that the headquarters of the rebel force must be collected. No watch, as far as they could make out, seemed to be set, and certainly no sentries had challenged them. To all appearances, the entire rebel camp slept profoundly; even the sounds they had at first heard having by this time almost absolutely subsided. After remaining in their new position for about a quarter of an hour, Fenwick again made a signal to Hugh to turn, and they once more silently retraced their steps one behind the other, this time making their way as rapidly as possible across country in the direction of where they had left the men.
Fenwick had seen quite enough to make him sure that the number of the rebels was largely in excess of even the highest number that had been reported to Drury. With this conviction in his mind, his present object was to return to Kilmallock as rapidly as possible, feeling certain that for the royal army to attempt to dislodge the enemy, with all the advantage of position and local knowledge in the favour of the rebels, would be an act of nothing short of lunacy. His mind being full of this conviction, every moment now seemed to him an hour, and he kept urging Hugh in a whisper to go faster, faster still; regardless of their own exhaustion and of the all but impassable condition of the ground they were travelling over.
By dint of good luck, Hugh succeeded in keeping in the right direction. At the end of three or four hours' hard walking, they again found themselves at the clump of trees where they had left the soldiers. Having collected them, the whole reunited party set off at a brisk pace and about four o'clock in the morning arrived safely at Kilmallock, so far undisturbed and in undiminished numbers.
Chapter XXVII.
They found it in all the bustle and confusion of an early start. Weary of inaction, with a sick man's desperate longing to do something, Sir William Drury had made up his mind to lead an expedition himself that very day against the rebels, although his ghastly face and fever-shaken limbs showed only too plainly how unfit he was to carry out anything of the sort. He insisted upon taking the Earl of Desmond with him, so that he might assist at the defeat of his kindred. In vain, Malby remonstrated against this last piece of folly. No argument was of the slightest avail. The Lord Justice would go, and he would take the Earl of Desmond with him. All that Malby could obtain was that before actually entering the dreaded and dangerous “Black Wood,” some attempt should be made to force the rebels to advance out of it into the less hopelessly entangled portion of the forest.
They got into marching order outside Kilmallock, where there was a little more space for the troops to deploy. Only a very meagre garrison was left behind to guard Kilmallock. Even the soldiers who had just returned being ordered to join their comrades and retrace the path they had that moment traversed. Fenwick being now in attendance on Sir Nicholas, Hugh Gaynard found himself, much to his own disgust, thrust into the ranks and had to march along, limping and footsore, with the rest. That agreeable sense of importance and fast coming distinction which had carried him along so pleasantly while he and Fenwick were alone had by this time quite evaporated. He was desperately tired for one thing. The intense fatigue of his long walk, combined with the multitude of bruises and scratches which he had received in his efforts to pierce the wood, seemed to be only now making themselves felt. His sensations were exactly like those of some over-driven cart horse, whose one wish in the world is to fall down between the shafts and then and there drop peaceably asleep.
Hugh Gaynard heard a load gasp at his elbow. Looking round, he saw the veteran Peter Bots, with a ghastly wound which nearly divided his head in two, rolling over and over on the ground in the last agonies. He himself was struck in the left arm, and the wound bleeding fast, added to his sense of confusion as to what really was going on around him. All he knew was that he was being pushed back somewhere by force of numbers; next that he had got off the track and was stumbling about over brakes and briars. Then for a while, he was alone; then again, he was in the middle of a crowd; this time a crowd of long-haired, bare-armed men, shouting “Ubbaboos” in Irish at the very tops of their voices.
For the foe was no longer invisible. Rebels in parties of twenty, thirty, and fifty were showing themselves now in all directions. With yells of triumph, they came out of the wood; springing over the plaited boughs or creeping out from below them; falling upon the soldiers; killing the fugitives; whooping and cheering like maniacs. The English officers were in worse case even than their men. Weighed down in many instances by heavy armour, they were utterly helpless to resist their light-armed and nimble-footed antagonists. They were swept apart; they were tripped up by tree roots; they were entangled amongst boughs and undergrowths, and once fallen, their fate was scaled. The rebels fell upon them and poured over them, like some overwhelming human tide. There was a naked skean at every English throat, and few of those who got into the fatal “Black Wood” that day ever struggled out of it alive.
How the scattered and demoralised fragments of his own detachment straggled back to Kilmallock, Hugh Gaynard would have been puzzled afterwards to say. At the roll call that night, the number of the gaps was found to be frightful, nor was there even the faintest hope that those who failed to present themselves then would ever again be seen alive. Amongst those who were missing was poor Sergeant Bunce. He had last been seen trying to rally some of his lambkins about a quarter of a mile from the edge of the “Black Wood,” and it was surmised that he must have been killed during a wild rush of Kerry men which shortly afterwards overflowed all that part of the forest. Two old and seasoned captains, Captain Price and Captain Herbert, were found to be amongst the slain, as well as over three hundred soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers. Worse than the actual loss in killed and wounded was the wholesale demoralisation produced by the affair. Malby's Connacht men had disappeared bodily and were known to have gone over to the rebels, while it was more than suspected that many of the other native troops were only watching their opportunity to do the same. Upon the English troops, the effect was hardly less disastrous. The new recruits were dismayed and panic stricken; the older soldiers sulky and ashamed; both alike grumbled openly and continuously.
Of the many sufferers by that unlucky day's expedition the greatest sufferer was the man who was undoubtedly responsible for the whole affair. For poor Lord Justice Drury that affray in the “Black Wood” was the end, not only of this campaign, but of all campaigns. A few days later, he was forced to allow himself to be carried away in a litter to Waterford to die, leaving the further conduct of the campaign in the hands of Sir Nicholas, as next in command. The condition of the royal army, indeed of the entire country, might at that moment have been fairly described as desperate. Ireland was like nothing so much as some waterlogged and unmanageable vessel, plunging about in an angry sea, with a more or less mutinous crew, its only responsible commander just fallen overboard, and all but a derelict in the trough of the waves.
Chapter XXVIII.
Everything that was planned and done daring the next few weeks was planned and done by Sir Nicholas Malby, and by Sir Nicholas Malby alone. Vested with full power by the departing Deputy, he flung himself like a giant upon the task. His energy was astonishing. Although large, his authority was in the nature of things only temporary since it hung upon the life of a man over whom death was literally hovering, and the chief thing therefore was to make the most of it. And make the most of it unquestionably he did. Wa
rned by the recent disaster, he carefully avoided the woods; out-generalled and out-manoeuvred the younger Desmonds into meeting him in the open; fell upon them and some two thousand of their galloglasses at Monastery Nenagh and defeated them with heavy slaughter, an affair in which amongst a number of other rebels, the gallant fighting Jesuit, father Allen, fell with his sword in his hand. Without a moment's loss of time, Malby marched upon Askeaton. The castle was too strong to be taken without artillery, but he burnt everything up to its walls — Lord Desmond and the Legate looking on, it was said, helplessly from the windows — destroyed the town; spoiled the whole country round about; slew every Desmond clansman he could lay his hands on and finished off by making a ruin of the abbey, as well as of all the family effigies in its churchyard. More he might have done and probably would have done, but at that moment the expected bolt fell. Drury had died at Waterford, and every appointment he had made in Ireland died with him. The soldiers under Malby's orders had accordingly to be dispersed into villages, there to remain in garrison “upon their own guard,” and away went Sir Nicholas and his own men to Connacht to see after his neglected governorship there.
By the end of October, Sir Nicholas was back again, his quarters being fixed for the time being in one of the castles upon the bank of the Shannon, which had not long since been taken from the Desmonds, Captain Peters, Lieutenant Fenwick, Hugh Gaynard having returned to Munster along with him.
Although his credit stood higher than ever, Malby's position was much less satisfactory to himself than it had been a month earlier. A considerable figure had in the meantime stepped upon the Irish stage, one that for the next few years was destined to fill it largely. Thomas Earl of Ormond, better known to his contemporaries as “Black Thomas,” had been three years in England upon his own affairs, but had now returned, bringing with him the Queen's commission as Lord General of all her forces in Munster, consequently of those under Malby as well as others. Between these two men there was no great liking, they had always admittedly been “smale friends.” Both were aware however that it was to their interests to let that fact drop into abeyance for the moment. Sir William Pelham, the new Lord Justice, was expected daily down from Dublin, and meantime it devolved upon Ormond and Malby to keep the rebels moving. The first thing that was necessary was for them to meet, and it was agreed that Malby's present quarters should be the scene of that meeting.
The castle was not exactly the sort of place most men would have selected to give a dinner in! Its basement was choked with disabled soldiers, the last few weeks having produced “grate sicknesses.” Its battlements were garnished with the heads of its late occupants. The country round had been stripped of food up to the river's bank. There was not a stick of furniture of any sort in the house, not so much as a bench that anyone could sit upon. Malby however was not the man to be put off by such trifles as these. If the thing had to be done, the thing should be done handsomely. If the Lord General was coming, the Lord General must have an entertainment, and he took his measures accordingly.
When the Lord General rode up, followed by his men, all was in readiness. Sir Nicholas's soldiers fired salvoes; Sir Nicholas himself and his officers stood bowing in a row; the board smoked with heavy eatables; the Lord General was conducted in state to the central room of the castle and seated — not as guest, that would not have been etiquette — but as host at the head of the board; Sir Nicholas sat beside him, the other officers were ranged along in due order, according to degree, and the feast began.
Hugh Gaynard, although his position was daily bettering, had not yet reached a point where he would be privileged to take his place amid such a company, and his duties were therefore chiefly confined to handing round the wine-cup and seeing that the soldiers who carried the trenchers did their work properly. His principal coadjutor in this task was an impish-looking lad of some fourteen years of age, who answered, appropriately enough, to the name of Smolkin, and who was the Earl's chief page, and as it presently appeared, a prime favourite of his.
The talk ran upon the impending proclamation, then hanging over the Earl of Desmond by a thread, and upon the point of descending. Those five hundred and seventy thousand acres of solid land, about to be confiscated, whetted the appetite unspeakably and were gloated over in anticipation by every faithful subject present. “Black Thomas” seemed to be in an unusually amiable mood, although the scowl for which he was famous never entirely left his brow. Suddenly, in the midst of these matters of grave discourse, the decorum of the table was broken in upon, and the attention of the entire company diverted to Smolkin the page, who, in the exercise of his function as cup-bearer, had — apparently intentionally and out of pure urchin mischief — upset the greater part of the contents of a flagon he was carrying over the bald crown of the excellent but irascible Captain Peters. No little merriment arose amongst the younger officers over this incident, and no little rage, naturally, on the part of the victim. The Lord General seemed so little disposed however to take the part of the captain against the page, that the matter had to be passed over, and the ill-used Peters was forced to smother down his oaths and wrath as he best could, while the offender proceeded placidly to fill up his master's wine-cup.
A little later, possibly by way of explaining his unaccountable leniency in this matter, Lord Ormond himself led the conversation back to the delinquent.
“I prize yon graceless imp, gentlemen,” he said, nodding towards Smolkin, who had prudently remained not far from his elbow — “because he was the page and, despite his years, the faithful follower of Henry Davells, the best, bravest, kindliest gentleman that ever came to this land, and moreover the foulest murdered.”
“True indeed, my Lord,” replied Sir Nicholas Malby. “I knew the gentleman, to my loss, only slightly, but have ever heard that he was, as your Lordship says, of a right noble and worshipful carriage, although also that he was somewhat too soft and easy towards those of this country's breeding.”
Black Thomas glanced for a moment at the speaker with a cold straight stare, as if wondering whether it had escaped Sir Nicholas's memory that the Lord General himself was after all “of this country's breeding.”
“He was more, sir, than you have said, very much more,” he replied emphatically. “He was the host and harbourer of every man who lacked entertainment. No man ever yet craved something at Henry Davells' hands that he did not straightway receive it tenfold. For myself, I have good cause to rue his loss, and so has all my house. What he was to me, that was he, and more too, to those unnatural Desmonds, through whom he got his death.”
“It shall be written in their blood yet, never fear, my Lord,” Sir Nicholas said confidently.
“Aye, aye, my Lord,” shouted the younger officers in chorus. “Their skins shall pay for it!”
Lord Ormond seemed to be following out some train of thought of his own, undisturbed by these exclamations, for he sat looking down at the board before him, and once or twice he clenched his hands, as though some habitual subject of reflection were absorbing him.
“Foul! Never fouler or more devilish deed was hatched or perpetrated,” he said presently, with a slow and rather peculiar intonation in his voice. “I will own to you, gentlemen,” he added, lifting his head, and looking round at the circle, “I will own that I would gladly not think of this matter at all till I can find myself at the sword's point with the villain, or, better still, till I can see his carcase swinging out, head downwards, against the sky. May God do so to me, and more too, if John of Desmond die not yet, by the worst, the slowest, the most ignoble death that ever gentleman born made end by!”
After this observation, the other officers held their peace. Their efforts at objurgation had been well meant, but paled ridiculously, and they were quite aware of it, beside the slow concentrated hatred which breathed in those words. The result was that no one spoke for a few minutes, and it was Lord Ormond himself who presently resumed the conversation.
“Yonder lad, gentlemen,” he said, po
inting again to Smolkin, “was lying at his master's feet, as it might be here,” indicating a spot on the ground beside the board; “Henry Davells and the Provost-Marshal were sleeping in one bed, the accommodation of the house they lay at being but small. Of a sudden, there came a noise without, and in rushed this cursed villain, John of Desmond. 'How now, son,' said good Henry Davells, lifting himself up upon his elbow and looking at him. 'No son of yours,' quoth the bloody-minded miscreant and with that ran at him, sword in hand, for to slay him. Seeing this, young Smolkin here sprang up from where he lay and ran to meet the monster. 'Will you kill my master?' says he. 'Aye, I will, and you too,' says the other. 'Not so,' says the younger Desmond, who was just behind him, 'I know yon lad well. Go your way, Smolkin, you shall have no harm of us.' 'Nay, an' you kill my master, you shall kill me too,' says he and with that ran in upon their swords like a very hero.”
“This, I take it, is the lad's own account, my Lord,” Malby put in, glancing with a smile to where Master Smolkin stood close by, his eyes fixed upon his master, listening evidently with all his ears to this tale of his own exploits.
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