These were brave words, almost too brave, as it proved, for they were hardly out of his mouth before James Fitzmaurice rose in his stirrups. He was rather a short man and already growing elderly, while the Burkes were a trio of young giants. The wretched beast he bestrode was broken down and lame of three legs, while theirs were still fresh and unjaded. He was travel-soiled, he was desperately weary, and his only followers were a priest, a youth of no account, Hugh Gaynard by name, and a dozen or so of ordinary Kerry followers. If all the best picked spears of France and Spain had been at his back, he could not have advanced more boldly, could not have looked more emphatically the leader.
“Out of my path! Out of my path! Curs, drones that ye are,” he thundered. “Hide yourselves quick, lest I smite ye with the flat of my sword! Out of my path while I ride on to tell all Ireland that the Burkes of Clanwilliam have grown into old women, and slugs, and peasants!”
He rode straight at the three Burkes, not to fight, but to sweep contemptuously past them. It was rather an impressive sight in its way, as he came sweeping along, the low sun shining upon his famous yellow doublet, but the two calivers had by this time been again lowered and were pointing directly towards him as he advanced. They were in hands unused to handling them, and it may well have happened that they went off before those who held them had clearly determined what they were about to do. There was an almost simultaneous “crack, crack!” and in a minute, the place was full of smoke and the smell of gunpowder. When this had cleared away, Sir James Fitzmaurice was still advancing alone on horseback down the middle of the path. He was reeling back in the saddle, however, and one of his hands was clutching desperately at his yellow doublet.
A spasm of consternation ran along the entire track. The Burkes turned, as if to flee, seized by sudden terror, like culprits unable to face what they had done. Before Theobald Burke, who was still the nearest, could get his horse round, Sir James, however, was upon him. Not one word this time, good or bad, did he say, but rode at him with lips shut and sword uplifted. The young man hardly attempted to defend himself. He sat staring, like some dummy warrior, upon his horse, and the point of his kinsman's sword was at his very throat before he even remembered to put up his shield.
When he did so, he might as well have tried to pat it up against the lightning. Before the lookers-on could draw two breaths, Sir James's sword had cut down his guard. Once, twice, the blade had descended, first upon the mitre-like helmet, next upon the leather jerkin. Another minute, and the big fellow had rolled from his saddle, had fallen heavily to the ground and lay there, bleeding like an ox, while Sir James's sword was threatening the next brother.
By this time, the mess had grown general. Both sides rode madly at one another. On both sides there was a general slashing of swords, a general stamping and rearing of horses, a general yelling of undistinguishable war-cries without order or sequence. The Burkes gave way, retreating down the track; the Geraldines followed them, but not far. Sir James's remaining strength had all gone in that one wild burst. He was bleeding desperately from the wound in his chest. When his assailants once more faced about, they saw that he, too, in his turn had fallen from his horse and lay upon the ground. Dr. Allen, who had slashed away for the moment with the best of the Geraldines, had also dismounted and was kneeling beside him upon the heather.
A sudden lull seemed to set in. The Burkes looked back, the Geraldines looked forward, but neither thought of renewing the struggle. After a momentary examination of the wound, the Jesuit lifted a white face and, bending his head again, began praying fast and low for his friend's soul.
No one moved; all stood staring blankly at those two figures upon the heather, at those two white faces so close together. It was one of those events which seem impossible to believe in until they actually come to pass, which seem to paralyse by their suddenness. In its inconsequence, in its tragic absurdity, it might have stood as a sort of embodiment of all Irish disasters. That the blow should have come from a friendly hand, from a hand that, at any rate, had always hitherto been reckoned friendly, seemed to add the just needed touch of monstrousness to the entire incident.
That something of this sort was Sir James's own feeling was clear, for the confession, which he was in the act of painfully murmuring into his friend's ear, was suddenly interrupted by a cry, torn seemingly from his very heart, it broke out so suddenly and so violently.
“By a Burke, Allen! Think of it, father! By a Burke! My God, that it should be by a Burke! Why, my own wife is a Burke! Man! man! think of it!” and he clutched at the Jesuit's arm in a spasm of agony.
The Geraldines looked at one another, awe-stricken, with the eyes of men who ask themselves whether they are awake or dreaming. Then they turned and looked hard at the Burkes, but no one lifted a hand. Father Allen's voice rose again in a rapid Latin murmur. Once again, Sir James's voice rose audibly in the absolute stillness.
“No, no, father! Not for me, for Ireland, for Ireland, father!” he said, in a whisper, made sharp by pain.
Whether he meant that the Jesuit was to pray for Ireland, he did not explain. His face had changed extraordinarily in the last few minutes. All the energy and bronzed vigour had gone out of it, and it had grown suddenly wrinkled and very old.
“Madmen! Madmen!” he presently muttered. “Priests and madmen! Nothing but priests and madmen left! No luck for Ireland! No luck, my God!”
The Burkes had at last made up their minds what to do and had simply ridden away. Theobald's body had been picked up from the ground and laid in front of one of the galloglasses, the second brother, who was also badly wounded, being at the same time supported on his horse by a follower on either side. Whether they went for additional aid, or whether mere shame and a sense of discomfort drove them from the spot, there was no explanation. They went, leaving the wretched garrons, which had been the cause of the whole affray, quietly nibbling at the blades of grass that sprouted here and there between the heather.
It was growing late now, but the light seemed to have rather quickened than grown duller. Another sunset was preparing to light up the land with its reds and its yellows. Another sunset glowing with promises for the morrow; another background, fit for the march of conquerors and heroes.
Sir James had finished his confession and now lay back, half-supported by Dr. Allen. It needed but a glance at his face to see that not this only, but every other task of his, everything that he might have been sent into the world to do, was over and done with also. His toils, his conspiracies, his adventures, his treasons, his heroisms, they were all over; the whole game was played out, and nothing remained but to say good-night as speedily and as modestly as might be.
A new thought seemed to strike him, for he pulled Dr. Allen's head down and spoke a few words peremptorily in his ear. They were too low for even Hugh Gaynard, who happened to be nearest to him, to hear, but the Jesuit's answer reached him clearly.
“No, James, no! They shall not. I swear it to you. I will cut it off with my own hands sooner.”
Satisfied apparently by this assurance, Sir James once more lay back. His face had by this time grown so ghastly that Hugh instinctively averted his eyes from it. Suddenly, the dying man's own eyes, which had been closed, opened, and he glanced round him quickly and inquiringly.
“The children! Listen, father! Tell Maelcho! Tell him …” he muttered.
But the message got no further. A violent rattling tore his chest. Twice, the last time with a terrible strain and struggle of his whole body, he tried to rise from the heather, stretching out his arms as if to reach something just beyond their grasp. Then came a sharp quiver, such a quiver as a boat gives when a wave strikes it. His hands opened and shut spasmodically, his body seemed to collapse, and he fell suddenly backwards into Dr. Allen's outstretched arms. The next minute, the only Desmond Geraldine worthy of the name, the only leader who could even hope to make an Irish rising anything but a ghastly failure, the only Irishman whose name carried the slightest weight outside
of Ireland, the only man upon the rebel side with a head to plan, a hand to execute had gone to his account. From that moment, the rising of 1579 stood doomed.
Chapter XIX.
The breath was hardly out of James Fitzmaurice's body before his little company had become scattered to all the points of the compass, each man escaping as best he could without regard to the rest. One point had been attended to: his last wishes had been carried out; the ugly butcherly job duly accomplished, and Dr. Allen carried away under his cloak a ghastly trophy — all that remained of his friend which he could save from inevitable outrage. With this in his charge, his plan was to ride direct to Holycross, where he proposed to deposit it. Taking with him accordingly half a dozen of the best armed and best mounted of the Geraldines, he dismissed the rest, the result being that in an incredibly short space of time the whole of the party had become what a string of beads is when its thread breaks. In less than half an hour after Sir James's death, Hugh Gaynard found himself with a single running kern at his heels, having got back, he hardly knew how, into the forest, the rest of his party having in the meantime melted away and disappeared.
Suddenly, as he rode along, a sound like the distant blowing of a horn reached him through the trees. At that sound, the kern behind him stopped and squatting beside the trunk of a tree, put his ear down to the ground. Turning to look at him, Hugh perceived his eyes to be rolling wildly, evidently under the influence of some fresh alarm. Before there was time to ask what it was or what the sound they heard meant, the fellow had suddenly glided through the underwood like a stoat, had wriggled through an apparently impassable mass of bushes, dired head foremost into a coppice of oaks and was rapidly disappearing from sight. With a shout, Hugh sprang from his horse and tried to stop him, but soon found the task a hopeless one. Art as well as Nature had apparently been at work to make that bit of the wood as impenetrable to ordinary heads and limbs as a stone wall. In two minutes, the kern had disappeared, and even the sounds of his footsteps and the swish of the boughs over his head had become inaudible.
What was Hugh to do now? He had never been in this part of the country before and had not a notion in what direction the various all but invisible tracks he saw led to. That Sir James had been making his way through the county Limerick and intended crossing the Shannon somewhere below Lough Derg and thence proceeding to Connacht, he knew well enough, but there was no guidance in that. Sir James was dead, and all that he had intended to do had died with him. The Desmonds and their affairs were nothing to Hugh; that point was quite clear to his mind. He was once more upon his own account, once more his own man and must make his own way as he best could. As for returning to Kerry, nothing could be further from his thoughts. From the whole of this native plotting and scheming, he stood entirely aloof; he wanted to have nothing to say to it and to know nothing about it. What he did want to know was how to find some new opening for himself, as well as, in the first instance, to escape from this detestable forest, which seemed only to get deeper and more entangled with every step he took. Neither desire was to be satisfied evidently in a hurry, and the end of his deliberations was, that, after wandering about for some time, and getting more and more entangled as the darkness deepened, he at last gave up the matter in despair and, tying his horse to a tree, flung himself down upon the ground, and so, foodless, fireless, and disconsolate, he presently fell asleep.
He was awakened some hours later by a distant noise and by a light striking across his eyes. The night was coal-black; not a star twinkled; not a hint of moonlight showed anywhere; but away to the east, there shone a red glow, which seemed to be rising steadily and getting brighter. What was it? The trees threw their branches across it, and now and then a startled bird rose for an instant. The whole forest seemed to be starting and creeping. There was that sort of stir and movement in it, that sense of sudden unrest, which, coming in the deep dark night, stirs the senses eerily.
Hugh got up and, leaving his horse behind him, walked towards the glow. Before he had gone many yards, he was entangled afresh in the undergrowth; briars, invisible in the darkness, stretching out at every inch a long detaining claw. He was held by them, clutched at by thorns, struck at by branches, almost throttled by clogging leafage of all sorts, still he managed by patience and much wriggling to make a little way.
Presently, as he got nearer, the meaning of the glow began to reveal itself. It was not in the wood, he found, but in some clearing of which he had not even suspected the existence before he fell asleep. The clearing must have contained houses, too, for it was not trees that were burning, but something lower, something also very much more inflammable. Now and then, a red spray of fire would fly into the air like a rocket. Above the crackling of the flames and above the brushing sound of his own footsteps, he could hear other sounds; shouts and shuffling of feet, bursts of laughter, occasional firing of guns, mixed with groans, and now and then a sharply uttered word of command.
Suddenly, high above the rest there arose a woman's scream. It was not a wailing, pleading scream, but a sharp, incisive one — a scream wrung from the very soul. Only sheer physical anguish of some sort could have drawn forth that cry. Hugh came to a pause. Should he push on, or should he turn back? To push on seemed the only hope of escaping from the forest, the only hope, too, of finding food. Curiosity also impelled him. Upon the other hand, that long, wailing shriek had a remarkably deterring sound. What could be going on over there? he wondered. Murder of some sort, clearly, but murder of whom and by whom?
He decided at last to advance, but to advance very cautiously, keeping under cover of the trees and getting near enough to be able to ascertain what was going on before he let himself be seen. The wood was evidently growing thinner, for the network of sticks let more and more of the red illumination pierce through; the noises, too, seemed to be getting louder. He came to a place where a long low tunnel of underwood made a space along which he could pass more rapidly. Stooping nearly on to his hands and knees and peering upwards along it, he was able to make out in some degree what was happening ahead of him. It was not a reassuring sight.
A crowd of figures, black apparently as ebony, were rushing to and fro across the mouth of the tunnel, becoming visible as they passed against the flames, but invisible again as they got into the darkness beyond. Some of these figures were flying, others were in pursuit. Long-handled pikes shone, and now and then the crack of a caliver rang out, discharged evidently at some fugitive who had got beyond pike-thrust. With these indications there could at least be no doubt in Hugh's mind as to who the pursuers were. They were regular soldiers, probably part of the garrison either of Kilmallock or Limerick, then known to be scattered on duty all along the edge of the forest. He went on a little way and again stopped short. The blaze grew stronger; the noise loader. It was now a perfect roar, made up of shrieks and screams, mixed with shouts, oaths, yells; with the falling of wood and the crackling of flames; a roar in which the voices of women, and even as it seemed of children, now and then pierced by reason of their greater shrillness.
Hugh stood irresolute. He would turn back, he thought. Better stay in the wood, better do anything than face what lay out there. As it happened, he was not given the chance. Suddenly, he heard fresh sounds, this time at his back, a sound of rapid steps and of voices speaking English within a few hundred yards of him. Another party of soldiers were clearly advancing directly towards him, along the same tunnel as he stood in. He turned sharp to the left and tried to double back into the wood, but it was thicker here than ever, thick as a quick-set hedge. After struggling to penetrate it, he gave up the attempt and fled along the tunnel, hoping to get out of it at the end and so back into the wood before he could be seen. He was close to its mouth when again voices sounded, this time ahead of him. Evidently, other soldiers had been posted at the mouth of the passage, and he was therefore caught between two fires. He drew his sword in despair, but got no chance to use it. Whether those before or those behind reached him first, he could n
ot have told, but in a trice he found himself overpowered. No questions were asked; no quarter offered. A dozen pikes and bills were struck at him simultaneously. He was stabbed, prodded, struck at, as it seemed to him, all over and from all sides at once. Fortunately, being still inside the tunnel, half the blows aimed at him were intercepted by the branches. Enough reached him, however, to cover him with blood and to convince his captors that he was disposed of. Bleeding and stunned, he was dragged out of the tunnel, pulled a short way across a red dazzling space and tossed on to a heap of something which gave way below him with a dull, sliding movement.
Coming to himself after a quarter of an hour, he managed to lift his head a little so as to look about him. He was lying, he found, upon quite a large heap of corpses, two or three dozen at least. He stretched his hand out gropingly and presently encountered another hand. It was warm still, but limp, unmistakably a dead man's hand. That all in the heap were not yet dead was clear, however, from the heart-rending groans which reached him from the bottom of the pile. He tried to free himself a little and was beginning to get his arms and head clear when two more bodies were suddenly tossed on top of him, flinging him back with their weight and nearly suffocating him. With immense difficulty and a horrible sense of loathing, he managed once more to crawl a little to one side of the heap, so as to be able to breathe. Further than this he dared not go, for the fire had made the whole clearing at this point nearly as light as day. He could see the soldiers running busily to and fro, dragging prostrate figures, tossing the burning logs together, shouting, stumbling against one another in the darkness. One figure especially he noticed, that of a huge brawny man, looking perfectly gigantic in the red light, who seemed to be for ever in the foreground — running, stabbing, howling, leaping, roaring. He might have been the presiding genius of some cannibal war-dance.
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