Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  Chapter I.

  It was nearly six o'clock upon a July afternoon in the year of grace 1577, and Hugh had been walking all day — in fact, ever since the middle of the night before.

  Ahead of him, serpentining through the hungry waste like some black, half-congealed river system, lay the bogs, more bogs, always bogs, their squelching surface starred with grim little pools, now and then widening into lakes. Right and left and on every side, the wolfish mountains of Connacht rose, shutting out the prospect, shutting in despair upon the soul of the wayfarer, who, without a guide, without a compass, without an idea where he was going, with evening coming on and nothing to eat but a handful of bilberries, toiled along, his legs coated with peat slime, his clothes bedabbled with scraps of sphagnum; weary to death and more than half tempted to throw himself down upon the first moderately dry spot he came to and try for a while to forget his troubles in sleep.

  Hugh Fitzwilliam Gaynard was a stout, well-grown lad. Still he was only fifteen, and his plight was really a very deplorable one. The night before he had gone to bed in his uncle's castle of Cargin, upon the other side of Lough Corrib* — Lough Orbsen it was then called — and had fallen asleep on his heather crib in the topmost turret, with the moon shining in on him through the glassless window. He had slept soundly at first, but had been disturbed towards morning by unpleasant dreams. He had dreamt that he was out hunting badgers with Christy Colkeen, the under-huntsman, in the big fir-wood, when all at once an immense beast, twenty times the size of a badger, with a huge red mouth and black bushy tail, had flown at him, roaring hideously. Its poisonous breath was full upon his face, and he was upon the point of being devoured, when he was suddenly shaken awake by old Morogh, his uncle's seneschal, who pulled him out of bed and dragged him, half-clothed and stupefied, down the winding stone stairs to the bottom of the castle.

  (* Lough Corrib - Irish: Loch Coirib - is a lake in the west of Ireland.)

  Hugh thought that he must certainly be still asleep, for nothing was as it had been when he had gone to bed. Doors were broken down, there were red lights everywhere, excited tongues of flame were darting here and there into the rafters and catching at the bundles of dry rushes. The stairs felt slippery under his feet with a revolting slipperiness. There was a stinging smell of gunpowder in the air, and prostrate figures lay about at every angle of the stairs. All of a sudden, the moon, which had been shining in through the slit-like windows, dipped and went out behind clouds. It seemed as if something had met its view too ugly for it to go on looking at it a moment longer.

  One glimpse Hugh had caught, and only one. It was a glimpse which he felt quite sure no rubbing would ever get off his brain again. The great door, studded with iron nails, leading into the hall, was half open as he passed it, and instinctively, he had glanced in. It was full of armed men, all wearing the short brown leather coats and red badges of the De Burghs. There were dead bodies about the floor, the bodies of his uncle's serving-men. Nearest to the door lay poor, good-natured, red-headed Christy Colkeen, whom he had been dreaming about, his honest mouth wide open, his innocent, sheepish face white and distorted, his eyes tamed hideously back in the agony of his last glance. At the upper end, just where he was in the habit of sitting, tied to one of his own stone pillars by the arms and legs, with a rope round his neck, his forehead streaming with blood from a cut which nearly divided it in two, Hugh saw his uncle: Sir Meredith. Young Hubert de Burgh, the youngest of the Earl's two sons —the so called Mac-an-Iarlas — was standing right in front of him with a look of satisfaction upon his handsome, girlish face, stroking down a dainty moustache with one finger and smiling pleasantly as he eyed his prisoner. For this was a grudge of many years' standing. Had not Sir Meredith been invited to Connacht by the De Burghs themselves, who had given him this castle of theirs of Cargin to keep? And had he not in spite of this dared to oppose, and even, on more than one occasion of late, to defeat them? Verily, it was a piece of presumption for which he was about to reap a hot and a bloody return.

  It was only a glimpse Hugh caught, for old Morogh held him in a grip of iron and though he kicked and struggled as hard as he could, pulled him down the stairs, putting a hand over his mouth at the same time to hinder him from crying out. Only one glimpse, but it was one that lasted him all his life long. He had not loved his uncle Meredith particularly, not having had any special reason to love him, still — to see him so! The shame was stinging; the rage stifling! Again and again, he tugged at Morogh to get free, but the old fellow's grip was like a steel vise. Before he fully realised what was happening, he found himself huddled down the steps into a boat. Morogh had pushed it through the sedges, which gave way with a crisp, rustling noise, had clambered in behind him, taken up the oars and was rowing rapidly out across the lake.

  Hugh kept pinching himself to see whether he was not asleep. Should he not wake up presently, he wondered, and see Christy Culkeen polishing his uncle's armour or cleaning the perches of the hawks in the court below? Old Morogh was always a surly animal, and now he kept muttering and cursing in an undertone in Irish, throwing his head back now and then towards the shore they were leaving. Each time the flames spurted into the air, a grimace of satisfaction crossed his wrinkled face, and he chuckled audibly as he plied his oars.

  Hugh was a shrewd boy, old for his age and practical to a fault, and it crossed his mind even then in the wild confusion of the moment whether old Morogh could have had anything to say to letting the De Burghs into the castle. How else had they got in, without even the dogs giving notice? How had they contrived to open the small postern door in the outer wall, which was always locked at night, and the key kept under his uncle's hand? Only Morogh could have got at that key. Could it have anything to say to the death of young Brian, Morogh's grandson, who had been killed a few months before through Sir Meredith flinging a silver flagon at him while he was waiting at supper in the great hall? The accident had troubled Hugh himself at the time, for the boy had been his only playmate. No one else had taken any notice of it, and no inquiries naturally had been made into the matter. The boy's grandfather had looked a trifle sulky for a while and had cast ugly glances at Sir Meredith under his brows when that knight's back was turned, but it had never occurred to anyone — least of all to Sir Meredith himself — that any inconvenient results could follow from so trivial, if regrettable, an act of petulance.

  It was a long row across the lake for one pair of arms, and those old ones. The moon had come out again and was fitfully lighting up the grey shores and up-jutting points of rock, which showed here and there like bits of undissolved metal above a half-molten surface. Then it vanished suddenly, leaving the rower to find his way as best he could through the glimmering darkness. At last, they reached the further or western Connacht side of the lake. No sooner had they done so than Morogh, who had not uttered a word all the time he had been rowing, motioned the boy to get out. Hugh obeyed, but his foot had barely touched the shore, when, without a syllable of warning, the old fellow turned the boat suddenly round and shot into deep water, took to his oars again and slowly rowed away, leaving Hugh standing there staring after him, the only living thing upon all that solitary shore.

  Blankly staring, he watched the boat as it slowly disappeared, the white gleam of light upon the wet oars twinkling and twinkling, growing fainter and at last going out. Then he turned and stared down the long winding stretch of lake, wasting away southward into a mist of dimness. Lough Orbsen might that night have been some great untravelled ocean, where never sail had fluttered, never boatman plied an oar. The shadowy shore upon which he stood seemed to stretch away to all infinity, lost, formless, void. Scrolls of grey mist were travelling across from the side from which he had come, hanging lazily here and there in limp folds upon the surface. Were they only mists, Hugh wondered, or were they part of the smoke which rolled from his uncle's castle?

  Mechanically, he turned and walked on a little way. The ground here became part of the lake in flood time and wa
s very rough and studded with big tussocks, from the tops of which waved tall tufts of reddish grass. Suddenly, he stopped short. It had all come over him with a rush. He realised now that he was alone, absolutely alone in all this cold grey world; absolutely alone under that remote, indifferent-looking moon! Alone in a savage country; without a roof to cover him or a friend to bid him God-speed; without kith or kin, without food, resting-place, or money; his life saved, but himself turned adrift — flung off like a useless servitor or a masterless dog. With a cry of despair, he tossed himself down upon the ground. What did it mean? And why should it have happened to him — him, Hugh Gaynard, of all people?

  How long he lay there be could not have told, but at last, he lifted his head and looked about him. He had only been to this side of the lake twice before in his life, both times for short excursions and with his uncle's men. Once at his entreaty, they had taken him with them, when, in revenge for certain cattle that had been stolen, they had gone to destroy some villages lying a few miles from the edge of the lake. The men of the village, as it chanced, had been away, but the villages had been burnt all the same, and the women and children scattered or killed. On their way back, they had been met by two or three dozen of the fighting men of the tribe, half-naked fellows, with matted hair tied with thongs over their eyes, and spears and skeans* in their hands. There had been a fight, and his uncle's men had won and had killed half a dozen or more of the savages, and promptly cut oft their heads — for the heads of such two-legged wolves were worth money — and had tied them to their saddles; ghastly trophies, which swung to and fro, Hugh remembered, and shed gory drops upon the ground and upon the horses' flanks all the time they were riding home.

  (* Double-edged daggers.)

  What lay upon the other side of those hills he saw before him, he had not a notion. It might have been peopled by goblins, or ogres, or men with eyes in the middle of their forehead, for anything he knew to the contrary. It was not De Burgh land or the land of anyone civilised or even half civilised. It belonged, he believed, to the “Ferocious O'Flahertys,” the terror of the rest of Connacht, for the destruction of whom hourly prayers were offered by all pious people upon the eastern bank; against whom the burghers of Galway had set up a graven petition over their western gate; scourges of the human race; possibly cannibals; at all points pagans; given over to heathen practices; believers in the powers of earth and air; a terror even to the wandering friars, the only denizens of the outside world who ever voluntarily set foot amongst them.

  Perceiving that he could not lie where he was for ever, Hugh at last got up with a groan and started off to walk — he did not in the least know where. The moon was beginning now to slide behind the hill-tops towards the horizon, and a sickly greenish light was commencing to dawn. Gradually as he walked, the day grew light about him; curlews and plover started with shrill cries out of the heather; small white moths uncurled their roughed-up wings and rose in clouds from the stones. The sun even presented itself for a while, but, feeling apparently that it had made a mistake, presently retired behind a wall of cloud, now and then opening a window.

  All that day, Hugh walked, he did not know where, he did not know why, except that the further he got from the Mac-an-Iarlas, the better he supposed it would be for him. It was getting towards the end of the summer, and the bilberries were ripe. He gathered handfuls of them from time to time and ate them as he went. But a man, and still less a growing boy, cannot exist comfortably for long upon bilberries only, and so his stomach soon began to inform him. The walking, too, was bad. The bogs were a mere jelly in some places, in others broken into lumps as big as small haycocks, with black squelching depths between them. Towards the afternoon, weary to death of struggling through this lower ground, he determined to make a push for the hills. He climbed along a sort of ridge, which brought him to the foot of one of the mountains at a place where a narrow pass opened suddenly above him. Here he stopped and looked up.

  Over his head in all directions, he could see more masses of stone, all loose, and all more or less weather-worn and scratched. It looked a grim place in Hugh's eyes, like some ogre's den, strewn with the bones of dead men, only that the bones were all of stone. They were ranged in long rows upon either side, some of them grey, some of a pale reddish colour, with crystals of feldspar standing out like broken teeth over their surfaces. There was something extremely daunting in the look of that fierce little mountain glen. It looked like a place that would harbour wild beasts or worse things even. Presently, Hugh reached a sort of col of rock from which another lateral valley branched, and up this too, he clambered till he reached the summit. Here he paused and looked about him.

  He was now on the top of a pass, cut like a sword-gash through the middle of the range. Between the jagged edges of this gash he could see a new valley over the shoulder of the next hill, with more bogs and more loughs,* and more streams connecting these loughs, and more mountains, rising one behind the other; but of houses or even cabins, of any tokens of habitation, he could see no sign at all.

  (* Lakes.)

  The sun, which had been hardly visible all day, was now getting low. And as he stood there, a strange sight became visible across the mountains. It was only a sunset, but then it was a sunset such as occurs not once in a year, often not once in many years, a sunset which turned every mountain top to pale crimson and every little lough to a lake of pure opal. Overhead, too, were more lakes — lakes of rose madder, and lakes of amber, and saffron, shores of pearl or snow white, and ridges of shining gold running out for the saints to walk upon. In the very heart of all, there was a small green bit, which was like the Spirit of Peace, looking down upon so sadly troubled a world. It was a sunset to make mean things noble and costly things ridiculous, a sunset that seemed to humble a man down to the very dust, and yet to lift him clean off his feet with excitement and exultation. Even Hugh Gaynard — sick, cold, hungry as he was, least imaginative, too, of mortal boys as he was — even he opened his mouth in astonishment, wondering what it meant, and if the end of the world had come. When, however, the show was over, and the mountains had faded to a blackish grey; when the sky itself had grown discoloured, and all the bars of gold had become common lead, then he flung himself down disconsolately upon a stone, feeling as if he had lost another friend, and as though Fortune the jade had played him yet another of her ugly venomous tricks.

  Suddenly as he lay there, a sound came to his ears. It was not the distant running of water or the shrill cries of birds overhead, for those he had been hearing all day. This was quite a new sound, a faint but distinct “Ba-aa, ba-aa, ba-aa-aa,” coming over the rocks. He started up. Just above where he had been lying, there was an opening in one part of the mountain wall, which he had not observed before. It might be only a crack; it might be the mouth of a new valley. He got up and moved towards it.

  To his surprise, he found it to be a regular staircase, so narrow at the mouth, that it was invisible until he was quite close to it, cut seemingly out of the living rock and nearly perpendicular. He hesitated a moment and then began to climb it. It opened out after a while, showing ledges above and on either side deep in grass. Upon this grass, a number of goats were feeding. One big old he-goat with an enormously long white beard walked slowly towards the top of the staircase and remained there, stamping with one foot upon the ground as if for a signal.

  “Where there are goats,” thought Hugh sagaciously, “there are men!”

  He pushed on accordingly with a little better heart. For about a quarter of an hour he went climbing on and on, wondering what he was coming to next. The staircase narrowed and then widened, and then narrowed again, and presently he did come to something — something that made his heart leap into his very mouth.

  It was an extremely odd place in which he stood. He was looking through the hole of a trapdoor, or rather of a trap without any door. For some little distance beyond the mouth of this trap, the ground was deep in loose stones, while upon either side of him the cl
ip walls rose so close, that by stretching out a hand, he might have touched them, and so steep, that nothing was able to find root-hold on them, save here and there a patch of bedstraw or a stray tuft of yellow saxifrage, where a little soil had lodged. Over his head more loose rocks stood perched upon ledges, seemingly in the act of toppling over. It was about as wicked and unpleasant-looking a place as could well be imagined, suggestive of nothing so much as a trap, laid out by nature and assisted by art — a place into which if a man once stumbled, he was not at all likely ever to emerge alive.

  Nor was this all Hugh saw. For before him he perceived that the glen suddenly opened into a long narrow trough or valley, looking like a green saucer in the middle of the mountains — a saucer full of rich grass, upon which not only goats, but also cattle and sheep were feeding. More than this, he saw a long line of black wattle huts, a regular village of them, stretching down on either side of the valley, with a wide trampled space between them answering to a village street. Beyond these again, at the end of the valley, rose what at the first glance he took to be a castle or a big fortified house at any rate. Looking closer, he perceived that it was only a rock. It was a very curious looking rock though, quite unlike any rock he had ever seen before. To begin with, it was enormously big, towering at least thirty feet in air and probably three or four times that size round the widest part of the base. It stood up quite loose from the rest of the ground and was only partially supported underneath by another and a smaller rock, which was of a different colour, being greyish or bluish, whereas the upper one was of a bright pinky red and shining. The strangest point of all about it was that the upper part was covered with a pattern of white scrawling tracery, which ran up and down exactly like some sort of cabalistic handwriting, while below, striking obliquely across the lower part from about ten feet or so above the ground, there swept a broad, startlingly blood-red stain. Both these marks were in reality only the handiwork of a perfectly harmless lichen, but to Hugh Gaynard, they appeared to be plainly the record of some bygone tragedy, some vast act of-vengeance perpetrated in unknown times and by unknown men, possibly not by men at all, but by demons or giants, who had made a stronghold for themselves and hidden it away here in the very heart of western Connacht.