“Yes, yes, friend Maelcho,” he said one afternoon, when his cough was less troublesome than usual. “Yes, yes, friend Maelcho; yes, yes, poor, big Maelcho — dying, dying! Ah, it is a fine thing, a very fine grand thing, I can tell you, friend Maelcho, to be dying. When you live, when you do not know how long you may have to live; ah! then the days stretch out before you — such long days, and so full of hunger, and of cold, and of all sorts of trouble. You rack your poor head; you say to yourself, 'Should I do this, or should I do that, or how will it be if I do so?' You worry it! Dear dear, how you do worry it!”
He stopped to rap his own shaven crown with an air of amusement. “Poor head! poor, silly, old head!” he went on, looking up at Maelcho and laughing. “But when you know that you are dying quickly — quite quickly, friend Maelcho — when you know that in a little while, a very little while; in two days, perhaps, or three days, you will be off away, out there — out of it all — then you sit at ease; then you rub your hands; then you say to yourself, 'Ha! ha! my good brothers, now you go and see to this and that; now you worry your poor heads; now you ask yourself how this and that is to be done! No more of such work for Michael Galbraith! Brother Michael Galbraith is taking his holiday! Brother Michael Galbraith is going home! Brother Michael Galbraith is standing outside of a door that is opening slowly, very slowly, but soon it will be wide enough, and then he will dart through.'”
He stopped to cough and lay back a minute, then went on, though with more difficulty.
“And the best of it all, friend Maelcho, the best of it all, poor big friend Maelcho,” he whispered confidentially, “is, that no one can stop you. The more they try, the less they can. You could not stop me, and the brothers could not stop me, and all the strongest men in Ireland, and all the Queen's soldiers, with their swords and guns, couldn't stop me. The more they tried, or the worse they used me, the quicker I should go. Phew! Phew! I away like the birds when you try to catch hold of them. And the hunger, and the cold, and the rest — all helping, friend Maelcho, all helping! Helping! Off! Away!”
He clapped his hands suddenly together and looked up at the lane of blue sky above his head with an air of mischievous triumph.
Maelcho listened like a child, understanding after a fashion, not exactly the words, but still something. Even in his best days, religious teaching had practically had no meaning for him. “Going to Heaven,” for instance, meant going to some country where, his master first, and all the greater Geraldines afterwards in due order, would be lords and chiefs, just as they had been in Munster; chiefs under the special charge of the Pope and the saints, no doubt, but certainly not where any inferior person could dream of being upon an equality with them. If not very open upon this side, his mind, or rather his instincts, had been open enough on another. He was an idealist, as all his race are; it was in his blood, as it is in the blood of everyone of them. Born clansman, too, and practically serf though he was, the idea of freedom, of getting away somewhere into the open — “Phew! Away!” — as the little monk said, had always been a favourite one with him and of late had returned to him often, only in a new fashion. He had felt it about all these dead creatures — dead men, dead women, dead children, dead animals — of which he had recently seen so many. They were free; they were out of it; they had got into some country where nobody could do anything more against them; they had even triumphed after a fashion, the only fashion in which it was open to anyone to triumph in those days in Ireland. These dumb notions of his, coming back to him now from the friendly lips of the little monk, took hold of his mind and filled it. They did not exactly disperse the clouds, but they remained there in spite of them.
There was no time for any more such talks, for two days after Michael Galbraith died suddenly, so suddenly and so peacefully, that the brothers had hardly time to be summoned to his side before the end came. He died in the nick of time, too, with an appropriateness which he himself would have chuckled at. The brothers were actually still gathered around the bench upon which his body lay, when a terror-stricken messenger ran in to tell them that their hiding-place was discovered; that soldiers from the nearest military station were then on their way to it and would be there for a certainty that evening.
It was a very trembling band that remained staring at one another, after the messenger, having told his tale, had torn frantically away down the ravine and disappeared. Maelcho, who was a little way back from the rest, stood listening to their talk, turning his piteous eyes from one speaker to another: not fully understanding what they said, yet managing in his own way to pick up the sense of it. He understood that they were debating how to keep the soldiers from following at once upon their track. If they found the cave empty, they would certainly be after the fugitives without a minute's delay, whereas, if even one monk was found there, it would cause a delay, and the rest might escape. Death, bloody and speedy — or perhaps not so very speedy — would assuredly be the lot of the one that tarried, and it was just the realisation of this fact that was blanching the cheeks and loosening the knees of the brothers. The younger monks especially looked hard at one another. There was not a coward amongst them, or they would not have been where they were, but misery and starvation, instead of making death seem easier, made its approaches — as often happens — appear only the uglier and the more unfaceable. The work of selection, too, was ghastly and daunted them. Who was to go, and who was to stay, and how was that choice to be made?
By a common impulse, they turned and looked at Brother Michael, as he lay there, his white face serene and cheerful, as it had always been, and even a faint pucker of his habitual air of amusement lingering about the comers of his mouth. Then they turned again and confronted one another; each man reading his own thoughts written out plainly in his neighbour's eyes.
Suddenly, a deep voice — one with which they were hardly acquainted — rose from the shadowy corner of the cave.
“Go, my brothers,” it said; “go! go! We will stay — he and I — only he and I. Go! Go!”
The monks all started and turned simultaneously to the spot where Maelcho was standing. Then a wave of relief shot through the cave, and the eyes again met one another, but this time they were the eyes of men reprieved. No hesitation was felt about accepting the offer. To have shown any would have been regarded as impious, seeing that so unlooked-for a deliverance could have been designed only by Providence itself. The details were quickly settled. If the big, half-witted seanchaí was to remain in their place, it was quite clear that he must be made to appear like one of themselves.
One of the tallest of the monks rapidly stripped off his own white gown; a heavy white cucullus was folded round Maelcho's shoulders, and a cowl drawn close about his grizzled glibbe. In a twinkling, the fighting clansman had become to all appearances mild brother so-and-so, just a dull-witted monk, like any other. This transformation made, there was no further reason for delay. With barely a word of farewell, with just a faint feeling of compunction, which perhaps choked back that utterance, the monks gathered up their few valuables — their one or two relics, their few church necessaries — and stealing down the wet ravine, disappeared silently one by one. Only one of them — Brother Malachi, the oldest of the whole community — paused at the corner and lifting up his wrinkled hands, held them aloft for a moment in an attitude of benediction. Then he, too, turned, and toddled after the rest.
A good many hours passed, after the sound of their sandal-shod feet had died away in the ravine, and still the soldiers delayed. Maelcho sat upon the ground, huddling his unfamiliar white clothes clumsily about him. Now and then, he would lift his eyes to the shrouded form beside him or higher up again to where a little train of pink clouds was passing slowly along the lane of sky. The bushes sprouting from the cracks had turned yellow and hung like faded flags from the sides of the cliff. For hours the silence remained unbroken. The dead monk with his smiling face; the narrow strip of sky overhead; the pools reflecting the line of clouds; these appeared to make up the
whole world, so far as there was any world visible.
It was nearly dark before the silence was at last broken by a sound of footsteps; at first heard far off and deflected by all the twists and turns of the passage, but coming steadily nearer. Tramp; tramp; tramp; tramp, like some steadily approaching tread of doom. Had Maelcho been as he once was, he would long before this have piled up every stone in the passage, would have heaped rock upon rock and sod upon sod, would have mounted to the top and would have died, when die he must, with a last good taste of fighting in his mouth. So changed was he, that such an idea never even occurred to him. The fighting instinct seemed to be dead in him; as dead as in the dead monk beside him. He simply sat and waited for them to come and take him. The soldiers were turning the last corner, and the blue and red of their uniforms had begun to shine in the pools, when the wooden cross which had been laid against Brother Michael's breast, suddenly slipped from its place and fell to the ground. Maelcho quietly stooped down and picking it up, hid it in his own gown.
It was a great disappointment to the soldiers when, upon rushing down into the cave, they found, instead of twenty monks, only two, and one of those two a dead one. Happily for the brothers, it was too late for further pursuit that night. Other prisoners had been taken in the course of the afternoon, which had caused a considerable delay. After a short consultation, it was decided to spend the night in the cave and to start as early as possible next morning with their prisoners, of whom there were six already, Maelcho making the seventh.
It was not till they were actually starting the following morning that it was discovered that the one monk whom they had succeeded in catching was, after all, an impostor. Then a little rough handling sufficed to displace the cowl, showing no tonsured head, only the ordinary tangled glibbe of a kern. The discovery naturally produced an explosion of wrath on the part of the soldiers, and, but for the positive orders they had received that all prisoners were to be brought in alive that day, the sham monk would undoubtedly have expiated his deceit then and there. He was driven along under a rain of blows, which never ceased all the time they were marching back to the camp.
It was a long, troublesome march, the tracks through the woods being even more obscure than usual, owing to the masses of dead leaves and withered bracken which covered them. Maelcho was tied to a lad, who seemed to be an idiot, for his mouth remained continually open, and every time he had to turn, he uttered a short foolish laugh, something like the bark of a dog. At a sudden turn in the path, they came upon a party of women and children sitting in a hollow, just where the soldiers and their prisoners would have to pass. Seeing them, the women shrieked wildly and, picking up their children, fled precipitately. One little creature — hardly more than a baby — was overlooked in the confusion and remained sitting alone in the centre of the track, its small brown toes stretched to the comfortable sunlight. Maelcho, who happened to reach it first, tried to push it aside, but at the approach of his roped hands, it drew back and staggering to its feet, tottered a few paces; then, with a baby cry, half of fright and half of anger, it fell down into a cushion of ferns and heather, just out of reach of the party tramping by.
The soldiers laughed, and one of them pointed his bill at it, but only by way of a joke. The clean steel shone brightly in the sunlight within a few inches of its face, but the baby did not seem to mind it. Probably, it was a full month since it had seen naked steel so close to its eyes before, for after a momentary start and wince, it began to laugh, the round speedwell-blue eyes looking up out of the small brown face, as if pleased by this glittering object so suddenly presented to their notice. And with that they passed on and left it sitting by itself and still laughing, amongst the withered bracken.
Chapter XLI.
In spite of their haste, it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon before they reached the quarters of the officer, just then temporarily in command of this part of the district. There was no village here, but a considerable number of rough plank sheds had been run up for the soldiers, whose main business at present was to watch over the wood-cutting. These sheds stood now by themselves in the middle of quite a wilderness of stumps and fallen trees; all this part of the forest having been already cut down, and its late monarchs lying about over the ground in every attitude of defeat and discomfiture.
Having been taken at a different time from the other prisoners, Maelcho upon his arrival was separated from them and tied up by himself. Probably to save the trouble of watching him, or, perhaps, by way of punishment, he was tied up so tightly and in such a constrained attitude, as to force his body and limbs into unnatural proximity to one another. It was an attitude of which every minute's delay increased the suffering, till it became all but unendurable. He was not kept very long waiting, for the officer in command was no other than Lieutenant, now Captain Fenwick, and as conscientious as ever in the despatch of business. He came out of one of the wooden sheds, accompanied by a younger officer, who had recently arrived from England. Having summoned a corporal and guard, they proceeded to make a tour of inspection.
The other prisoners did not delay them long, being mere peasants, from whom no information of any sort was likely to be obtainable. Accordingly, the two officers presently walked on to where Maelcho lay by himself amongst the fallen trees, his face, distorted by the pain of his bonds, upturned to the afternoon sunlight. While the circumstances of his capture and of his audacious pretence of being a monk were being related, Captain Fenwick kept looking at him, with his peculiar air of alert and keenly observant curiosity.
“Lift him,” he said, with a glance at one of the soldiers.
The man tried to obey, but, having dragged the prisoner to a sitting posture by main force, the tightness of his bonds made it impossible for him to be kept there, and he subsided once more, with a groan, upon the ground. Captain Fenwick began to get a little impatient. The day had been an unusually busy one; many things pressed to be done; he expected Sir Nicholas Malby himself to arrive that evening; there was really no time to give up the whole afternoon to trying a single and evidently quite unimportant prisoner.
“Stir him with your bill,” he said, in his tone of quiet authority. “We must teach the fellow to hold himself.”
The soldier did as he was desired and made a thrust with his bill at Maelcho's side. It was not a very deep thrust, nor was it given with any specially malicious intent, certainly with no more pleasure in the infliction of pain than a boy finds who strikes at a horse when it is struggling to rise. But from the position in which the prisoner lay it, it did inflict a very great deal of pain; so much that it seemed for the moment literally to divide body from soul, to pierce right through the outer shell and casing to the innermost spirit within.
Under the stimulus of this pain, a curious thing happened to Maelcho. His mind, which had strayed from him so long and so far, seemed suddenly to return; all those clouds, by which he had so long been encompassed, to roll back and to disappear. He was awake at last, as he had not been for years past, as he had perhaps never been in his whole life before. With a sudden realisation of what was taking place, he looked up, knowing perfectly where he was, and what had befallen him. He was caught; the end, so long delayed, had come; there was no doubt of that. It was not upon this obvious fact that his mind, however, lingered. Like an arrow from the bow, it flew back to the past, to the old, the well-beloved past. He was once again Sir James Fitzmaurice's seanchaí; he was again with them, with his own little lady-girls. Again he walked beside them; again he played with them; again he heard their prattling voices, and as clearly as he had ever done in his life. The joy of this realisation was so intense, that everything else melted before it, yet it was only part of the curious transformation which had overtaken him. It was a state in which neither pain nor bonds had any further existence. He could not himself have said whether he was in pain or not. He was free, and that was all that mattered; free of everything and everybody, including even his own poor crazy self. It was as though the poet w
ithin him had escaped for a moment from its life-long imprisonment within the serf, the savage, the more or less madman. The prick of the bill had done it! He had won! He had escaped. It was the same sense of freedom, the same sense of escape and emancipation that Michael Galbraith had felt and had talked to him about in the cave. He knew all about it now; he too had got hold of it, and no one would ever be able to take it away from him. He was free! The very sky overhead seemed to be ringing and tingling with the news. He had got beyond them all; beyond his enemies, beyond his master's enemies; beyond their hatred, beyond even his own hatred, for what was there left for him now to hate?
Looking up, he saw the brilliant hazel eyes of the young English commander gazing at him with an expression of curiosity, and he looked back at him with a smile. It was a strange wild smile, one in which that feeling of freedom and exultation shone and pierced unmistakably.
Captain Fenwick drew his head back, as if a wasp had stung him. The look that had met his from under that tangled grey glibbe was the very last he would have expected to see there. Hatred, in its wildest, most frantic manifestations; hatred and an impotent desire for revenge he was prepared to see, and, as a student of fallen humanity, rather interested in seeing. Such a look as this, however, was quite outside the range of his calculations and was therefore annoying.
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