Red Hugh

by Lisson, Deborah;

  At last, with the light fading, the young man called a halt. Hugh almost sobbed with relief as they lowered Art to the ground. Art groaned, and lay for a moment without moving before raising himself awkwardly on one elbow. ‘Where are we?’ he mumbled.

  ‘We’re after stopping for a bit of a rest,’ Hugh told him.

  Art eyed him anxiously. ‘I’m too heavy for you. How far have we to go? – I’ll wear you out.’ His eyelids fluttered and he flopped back to the ground, as if the short speech had exhausted him.

  Hugh’s stomach knotted. ‘Don’t talk like a fool, man. Why, we are no more than a cock’s crow from Glenmalure – and Fiach mac Hugh waiting there to feast us like kings, with food and whiskey and the finest feather bed you ever slept in.’ He looked to their guide, hoping for confirmation, but the young man said nothing.

  Art gazed at both of them. ‘It’s a poor liar you are, Hugh Roe O’Donnell. Look at yourself – corpse-white and staggering like a poisoned dog. Another hour of this and we’ll both be ravens’ meat.’ He jerked his chin at their guide. ‘Tell him, lad.’

  The young man hesitated. ‘He has the truth of it,’ he admitted at last. ‘Glenmalure is just below us, but it’s a rocky road down the mountainside and then the full of the glen to walk to Ballinacor. The way it is, you’ll be lucky to make it yourself, unaided.’

  ‘But we can’t just leave him here.’ A terrible suspicion wormed its way into Hugh’s mind. He knew it was unworthy – was it himself to be poisoned by Henry mac Shane’s cynicism? – but it would not go away. ‘We can’t abandon him,’ he protested.

  ‘Did I say we would? Look, there’s a bit of a cave over there, under the ridge. Help me get him in there, out of the weather and then we’ll decide what’s to be done.’

  Between them, they hoisted Art to his feet and half dragged, half carried him to the ridge. It was a walk of no more than a hundred paces, but it left Hugh gasping and staggering. As he finally ducked his head beneath the overhang, his legs buckled and he pitched forward, dragging the others down with him. His head hit the ground. He heard Art cry out, but the sound seemed to come from a long way away. It was some time before he became aware of his surroundings again.

  The guide was hovering over him. ‘Hugh! Hugh Roe – can you hear me? Are you hurt? Are you able to walk?’

  Hugh wasn’t sure. He dragged himself into a sitting position, but his head throbbed and the effort left him breathless. He thought about standing up – about walking – but even as his mind rehearsed the motions, he knew they were beyond him. ‘I’m done in,’ he confessed. ‘I haven’t it in me to take another step.’

  Now it was the guide’s turn to panic. ‘You must’ he insisted. ‘I’ll help you, we’ll rest along the way, I’ll carry you if I have to. Didn’t I promise Fiach mac Hugh I’d bring you safe to Ballinacor? What will I tell him and I returning without you?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Hugh wearily. ‘That we could go no further and sent you to fetch help.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Someone has to go – we’ll all be dead and we lying here much longer – and alone you’ll have a better chance.’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know …’ It clearly went against all the young man’s training to leave them, but Hugh had the truth of it and in the end he had to give in. With many promises and anxious backward glances, he set off on his own for Ballinacor.

  Night fell and a vast, cold emptiness settled over the mountain. The fugitives huddled together for warmth. At first they talked a little – trying to keep each other’s spirits up – but soon Art fell asleep. Hugh was left to face the night alone. The dark hours passed slowly. The wind shifted and reached with icy fingers into the little cave – in reality, no more than a shallow recess beneath the rock-shelf. Hugh wrapped his arms round his aching body and thought longingly of his thick, warm mantle, back in the Bermingham Tower. Despite all his efforts, his mind kept returning to his abortive flight of twelve months ago. It is all happening again, he thought despondently.

  By now the whole garrison would be out hunting him. He could imagine the hue and cry; and, as his ears strained for any tell-tale noises on the wind, he realised there was one terrible difference between this time and the last. When Hugh O’Toole had left him in the mountains twelve months ago, he had been torn between the fear of capture and the fear of death. This time it was only discovery he dreaded. Death held no terror – already his body felt like a dead thing. But capture …! If they did not hang him and put his head up on a spike, they would throw him back into that stone coffin beneath Dublin Castle – and this time it would be forever.

  Gradually, the sky lightened and Hugh realised that it must be day. A day no better than the last – the wind was still howling like a stepmother’s curse and driving gusts of snow into his pitiful little shelter. Art had not stirred. Hugh wondered should he wake him – he knew that men who fell asleep in snow often failed to wake at all – but his companion looked so peaceful, so blissfully unaware of his surroundings; it seemed too cruel to drag him back to reality. He pressed himself closer to Art’s body, hoping the contact might somehow impart a flicker of warmth to both of them, and continued to wait.

  Soon he began to feel drowsy himself. The pain of coldness had faded, leaving his body like a dead weight— something that no longer belonged to him. The snow, the wind, the hard, rocky ground — they all seemed unreal and very far away. Dimly he remembered he was supposed to stay awake, but he couldn’t recall why. What did it matter? It was so much easier to let go. To lie here beside Art, to close his eyes and give himself to the darkness. To drift, to float, to let it run over him and carry him away …

  He is drowning in Lough Swilly. The dark bubbling waters close above his head and thick weeds tangle his feet and draw him downward. He sinks unresisting—how peaceful it is to die. But he is cheating. It is not supposed to end like this. He has obligations. But what are they? — he tries to remember them, but they float somewhere in the back of his mind and he cannot hold on to them.

  Figures move round him in the water — pale, naked figures. Voices whisper to him.

  ‘We died for you, Red Hugh, son of O’Donnell. Will you leave us unavenged?’

  ‘When Hugh succeeds Hugh … the last Hugh shall be Árd Rí of all Ireland and drive all the foreigners out.’

  ‘You were not born to die in an English prison.’

  What do they want of him? They cling like cobwebs and he tries to shake them off. Ghostlike they fade. But then comes another voice – one he has never heard before. ‘Where are the champions of Ulster?’ it demands, echoing a question he once asked himself, on a night so long ago in Rathmullen Castle. ‘Where are the champions of Ulster? Has the hero-light died in the heart of Ireland?’

  The reproach strikes to the very core of his being. Shamed, he kicks out, snapping the weed-fronds about his ankles, and thrusts himself up through the icy water. His head breaks the surface. He draws in the full of his lungs of air. The wind lifts him. Then, all at once, the waters have become a field of grass, a meadow strewn with white flowers, and he lying on it. A stranger is looking down at him – a tall figure wrapped in a long, green cloak.

  The stranger’s face is shadowed by his hood. He smiles – Hugh can feel the smile, even though he cannot see it. The man’s hands move to unclasp a great, silver brooch at his throat. Fine, long-fingered hands they are, with skin translucent and pale as watered milk, and the bones seem to float in them like fronds of seaweed. Hugh stares, troubled by something that is not quite memory. I should know this man, he thinks, though he is sure he has never set eyes on him before.

  With a fluid motion, the stranger sweeps off his cloak and tosses it, outspread, towards Hugh. It floats downwards, covering his world in a mantle of warm, green darkness.

  ‘Sleep, son of O’Donnell. Sleep and live.’

  It is the voice that called him from the waters – a gentle voice, but one of unchallengable authority. Hugh sighs and surrenders trustingly to i
ts command.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, man. He’s frozen – stiff as an icicle.’

  ‘And I tell you he’s still breathing. Here, try this and see will it rouse him.’

  The voices drifted down to Hugh out of a fog. Hands touched his face. Something wet trickled into his mouth. His mind stirred to life. Ale, it registered. Drink, swallow. But his body had forgotten how to obey.

  ‘You see,’ said the first voice. ‘It runs straight out again.’

  ‘Keep trying.’ Another set of hands fumbled at Hugh’s shoulders, shook him, gently at first, then with growing urgency. ‘Hugh, Hugh Roe, open your eyes. We have you safe, you can’t die on us now.’

  Die? What on earth were they talking about? Of course he could not die. The stranger had laid a geas on him. ‘Live,’ he had said. But Hugh needed sleep. Could they not see that? Didn’t they understand? ‘Leave me be,’ he tried to tell them, but as he moved his jaw, a trickle of ale ran down the back of his throat and he had to swallow. He choked and spluttered and was forced to gulp twice more, then his eyes opened and he saw he was lying on the mountainside again. The snow was blowing in his face, and his head was cradled on someone’s arm. A ring of faces was looking down at him.

  He blinked in bewilderment.

  ‘Christ and all his saints,’ cried one of the onlookers. ‘He’s alive!’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said the man holding him. ‘Sure, it’s more than a bit of a blizzard it would take to finish off an O’Donnell. They breed them as tough as old bullocks up there in Tír Chonaill.’

  ‘My sorrow that the other had not his stamina.’

  The other! Memory came back to Hugh in a rush. ‘Art?’ he croaked. ‘Art!’ He struggled weakly in the arms of his rescuer.

  ‘Easy, lad, easy,’ said the man. ‘I’m sorry. We are after doing everything we could for your friend, but …’

  ‘Art? Where is he? I want to see him.’

  The man pointed and Hugh rolled his head to look. Art lay on his back in the snow, calm and remote as a marble statue. His face stared up into the sky.

  ‘Art! Ah, Jesu! Art, wake up!’ Hugh flung himself out of the cradling arms and tried to crawl to his friend, but he hadn’t the strength. His arms gave way. He collapsed in the snow, scrabbling uselessly with outstretched hands. ‘You killed him,’ he babbled, hardly knowing what he said. ‘You killed him! Henry mac Shane was right. Why did we ever trust you?’

  Hands lifted him, bore him away, wrapped him in a cloak to stop him struggling. ‘Will you get that corpse out of sight,’ a voice ordered sharply. ‘Can’t you see it upsets the lad?’

  Two men lifted Art’s frozen body and carried it away. Hugh watched them. They did it decently enough, but he could tell there was no real sorrow in them. He opened his mouth to yell at them again but his strength had gone. His rage crumpled into grief and he began to cry – a flood of silent tears that poured down his face, scalding his frostbitten cheeks.

  Of the journey down the mountainside, he remembered almost nothing – hands, voices, the swaying motion of the men who carried him, and a dim knowledge of being passed from one shoulder to another like a sack of meal. Then, inexplicably, there was a roof over him; more hands; food and drink; voices again and finally sleep.

  When he woke it was to the pain of frostbite – a pain like nothing he had ever known. It ran through his veins like rivers of fire, crippled him, stripped him of every last shred of dignity and left him threshing on his bed, raving and babbling like a woman in labour. ‘Help me! Put an end to it! Ah, Chreesta, make it stop!’He heard the screaming voice, and knew it for his own, but was powerless to control it.

  Hands reached out to him again. Pressed the rim of a cup against his mouth. ‘Drink,’ ordered a voice and a trickle of fiery liquid ran down his throat. He spluttered, tried to twist his head away, but the hands and voice were insistent. ‘Drink, it will ease you.’ There was no refusing. He swallowed – and swallowed again. His head swam, his mind wandered, the roof seemed to float up to the stars, and the pain dissolved into a red mist that faded into blackness.

  The fire had gone, but a hundred smiths were at work inside his head, beating out horseshoes on his brain. His mouth felt like the inside of a bird’s nest. He opened his eyes, groaned, and shut them again quickly. I’m drunk, he thought in astonishment. How did I ever get this way? Painfully, between hammer blows, he began to dredge up memories – fragments that shape-changed and slipped sideways when he tried to fit them together. Snow, mountains, a journey of some kind. And fear. But what had he to be afraid of? Where was he? Who had brought him here? What on God’s earth was after happening to him?

  If only he didn’t feel so ill. Cautiously he opened his eyes again. He was lying on what felt like a bed of rushes. He saw walls and a ceiling, but they wouldn’t stay still. They bulged and billowed like sails in the wind, till his head reeled from watching them. Dear God, he vowed, let me get well and I’ll never drink again as long as I live. Suddenly his throat muscles went into spasm. The ground lurched beneath him, the walls rushed in on top of him, he rolled over and vomited on the floor.

  Instantly there were people round him – holding him, wiping his face, offering sips of cold, clear water. ‘There,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘There now, it’s all right. It’s over. We have you safe, Hugh Roe.’

  But it wasn’t all right. It couldn’t be. The voice was Róis O’Toole’s. He was back in Castlekevin, trapped again by the swollen river, and Carew and his men coming any minute to seize him and drag him back to Dublin. ‘Róis!’ he screamed, clawing upward, clutching at her dress with crippled hands. ‘Help me, Róis, for the love of God! Don’t let them take me back.’

  ‘Hush,’ she said, ‘hush, you are safe.’ But he would not listen to her.

  Then another face leaned down to him– a man’s face. Strong hands closed over his own. A voice spoke from behind a tangle of black beard. ‘Son, you are safe. You are in Ballinacor and I am Fiach mac Hugh O’Byrne. The devil himself wouldn’t take you out of here and I not giving him leave.’

  Ballinacor! Fiach mac Hugh. Hugh’s battered mind repeated the words silently, over and over, like a prayer, till their meaning finally sank in. It was over. He was safe – safe from the meathook clutches of the English queen and the grim, grey battlements of Dublin Castle; safe from chains and leg irons; from Fitzwilliam’s interrogation chamber, from that hell-hole in the bowels of the castle. He had escaped!

  He wanted to shout, to fling his arms around Fiach and weep with gratitude, but he had no strength in him. He fell back on his pillow. Fiach’s features wavered and dissolved before his eyes. With a garbled croak Hugh Roe slid into unconsciousness.

  Fourteen

  SNUG IN HIS cocoon of safety and too weak to worry about the future, Hugh lay for a week in the little hut to which they had brought him. Róis stayed by his side day and night. She fed him, cleaned him, massaged his stiff and aching limbs and was there whenever the nightmares came, driving them off and soothing him back to sleep again. Sometimes Hugh wondered if she herself ever slept.

  The nightmares were mostly of Art O’Neill. Hugh would be carrying him through the snow, his legs failing, his arms growing weaker from the cold. He would feel Art slip from his grasp, watch helplessly as the man slid towards a deep crevasse, and wake with a howl of anguish as Art plunged over the edge into blackness. Or he would be standing over Art’s body, defending it from a pack of hungry wolves that circled, watching and waiting their moment to slip under his guard and seize their prey.

  He knew what triggered the nightmares. They were the questions he was afraid to ask. What had really happened up there on the mountainside? Not murder – he would never let himself believe that – and yet … You could let a man die – and him so far gone with the cold – without actually killing him. What had really happened to Art mac Shane O’Neill?

  He must put it behind him. Art was gone. Nothing could bring him back again and the truth was something he w
ould never know for certain. Perhaps that was better so. But that dead body and impassive, white-marble face would remain with him for the rest of his life – another ghost in his spectral following.

  To stop himself from brooding, he began to concentrate on his own troubles. He had frostbite. As his strength returned, it bothered him more and more. His body was losing its stiffness, his hands were slowly and painfully returning to normal, but his feet had no feeling in them at all. Black, swollen and useless, they protruded from his ankles like two great lumps of black pudding. The sight of them horrified him, even though Róis assured him they were not as bad as they looked and that all would be well and he only having patience.

  He pretended to believe her, but patience was a luxury he knew he could not afford. Despite Fiach’s boasts, Glenmalure was not a safe haven. By now, Fitzwilliam must know where he was, and if the Lord Deputy did not dare to enter the glen in force, it could always be done by stealth. It would take only one man with a knife – and a dead hostage was less troublesome than an escaped one. Besides, he could not stay here forever. Fitzwilliam’s troopers had only to sit outside, like cats round a mouse hole, waiting for him to make his move.