by Mervyn Wall
“Where’s Maeve?” he demanded of Fursey, who was trying to persuade the cow to leave the house.
“In the other room,” answered Fursey.
“Tell her I’m here,” commanded Magnus.
With a final heave of his shoulder, which he had placed against the cow’s buttock, Fursey succeeded in expelling her through the front door. He turned and knocked at the door of the other room.
“Come in,” came Maeve’s voice.
Fursey opened the door and went in. Declan was sitting on the floor trying shortsightedly to disentangle a fishing line. There was a flush in Maeve’s cheeks, and Fursey noticed with a sinking heart that she was tying a ribbon in her hair.
“Magnus is here,” reported Fursey.
“Yes, I heard him,” she replied. “Tell him I’ll be out in a moment.”
Fursey conveyed the message, and when he had lifted the pail of milk on to its shelf, he sat down despondently in his corner by the fire. Magnus strode up and down without deigning to speak to him. Maeve emerged a few moments later in a flutter of ribbon and girlish laughter. She gave Magnus her hand.
“So you’re off to the wars,” she said gayly.
“Yes,” replied the soldier.
“I’m proud of you, my boy,” said Declan, who had followed his daughter into the room.
Fursey dutifully drew a mug of beer and placed it before Magnus. Then he returned to his corner and, seating himself, fixed his eyes furtively on the soldier’s broad, handsome face.
“The situation in which the Kingdom finds itself,” began Magnus, “is in the highest degree critical. The cowardly King of Thomond, instead of leading his army into the hills and starting to manœuvre opposite King Cormac, has flung his entire forces into the Cashel plain, and the capital city itself is closely beleaguered.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Declan. “And what is King Cormac doing to counter this outrageous behaviour?”
“He is manœuvring frantically in the hills, trying to attract the King of Thomond’s attention and coax him to lead off his forces from the devoted city; but seemingly to no avail. The King of Thomond, who is as cowardly as he is ignorant of the principles of warfare, shows not the slightest inclination to face Cormac in the field. Instead, four hundred of his slingsmen surround the city of Cashel and shower stones on it as big as your fist by day and by night. The unceasing whistling of their artillery is something terrible, and already a most respected citizen of the town has had his brains dashed out as he ventured forth from the door of his dwelling to bring in the morning milk.”
“But,” asked Declan, “what of good Bishop Flanagan? Can he do nought to abate the murderous rage of Thomond?”
“The Bishop is playing a man’s part,” replied Magnus. “From the door of his palace on the hill he hurls anathemas and maledictions at the enemy. He has pronounced the sentence of excommunication against the first man that damages ecclesiastical property.”
“Is then Thomond so abandoned to wickedness as not to be moved by the representations of his lordship?”
“Unfortunately,” replied Magnus. “Bishop Flanagan’s efforts are largely negatived by the counter-maledictions and anathemas of the Bishop of Thomond, who is urging on his countrymen to raze every church and abbey in Cashel to the ground, having first sequestered the gold ornaments and valuables for the use of the Church in the Thomond diocese.”
“I think war is terrible,” said Maeve.
“It is a pursuit in the highest degree dangerous to the participants,” declared Declan, shaking his head gravely. “I hope you come through it without any broken limbs, Magnus.”
“I’ll be all right,” replied Magnus jovially, “but God help any man that stands against me!”
“And what of the courageous garrison that defends Cashel?” the old man asked.
“There is a sprinkling of soldiers,” replied Magnus, “but it is the townspeople themselves, men, women and children, who are manning the palisade. Every stone that falls on the city is flung back in the faces of the encircling enemy.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed Declan enthusiastically.
“It shows fighting spirit,” agreed Magnus, “but unfortunately it also serves to keep the enemy provided with an endless supply of ammunition. However, the forces of Thomond have been kept at a sufficient distance to prevent their setting fire to the thatch roofs of the city. In this regard the recent rain must also have been a help.”
“The dirty ruffians!” exclaimed the old man. “I’ve a good mind to join Magnus and fight in the war myself.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Maeve. “Who’d guard the house if you were gone, with broken bands of soldiers roaming the countryside lusting for blood and plunder?”
“That’s true,” muttered Declan, sitting back in his chair.
“The siege will be raised to-night,” asserted Magnus with conviction. “The hay is in, and there’ll be a full five hundred of us gathered at the Cow’s Head Tavern two hours before sunset. When we march, God help Thomond!”
There was a few moments silence in the kitchen as the listeners pondered these ominous words. Fursey stirred uneasily and wondered why Magnus gazed so long and so steadfastly at Maeve. At last the soldier arose.
“It is time for me to go,” he said gruffly.
“Run out to the yard, Flinthead,” said Declan, “and lead Magnus’ horse around to the door.”
Fursey did as he was bid, and stood holding the halter until the soldier came and took it from him. Maeve had accompanied Magnus out into the thin rain, and as they came up to Fursey, he heard Magnus say to her, “It’s definitely fixed for Saturday then.”
Fursey retired to the shelter of the doorway with a strange, oppressive feeling in his heart. He stood beside the old man as Declan shouted good wishes and farewells to the soldier. Magnus waved his hand to Declan, and putting his arms around Maeve, kissed her tenderly. Then he sprang into the saddle, waved his hand in a final adieu, and slowly paced his horse out of the farmyard. Maeve walked behind the horse until she came to the head of the track, where she stood waving her hand to the retreating horseman.
“Did you see that?” the question came from Fursey in a breathless gasp. “He kissed her.”
“Of course he did,” grinned the old man. “They’re being married on Saturday in Kilpuggin Church. It’ll be a double wedding. I’m marrying the Widow Dykes myself.”
He doddered off into the far room, emitting little crackles of knowing laughter. Fursey stood stock-still while moment after moment passed. Then he walked across the kitchen to the fireplace and took down a coil of rope that hung there. As he moved back towards the door, Declan emerged from the far room.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To Cashel,” replied Fursey.
“Not to fight in the war?” gasped the old man.
“No,” replied Fursey. “The war will be over by the time I arrive. Didn’t you hear the soldier say so?”
“What are you going for then?” asked the old man shrilly.
Fursey turned to him a face that was expressionless and dead.
“To give myself up to the authorities,” he answered. Then he turned and left the house, going ground by the back and across the yard, for fear that he would meet Maeve.
CHAPTER IX
One hour after sunset all the dogs in the neighbourhood of Cashel awoke and began to bark. Battle had been joined in a field within sight of the city, and the irate farmer was running up and down the boundary dyke screaming to the opposing armies that they were ruining his spring wheat. Within half-an-hour the issue was decided. The Cashel legions had the advantage of surprise. The slingsmen of Thomond had been for two days hurling their ammunition at the city, which was a large target impossible to miss; and they experienced considerable difficulty in suddenly shortening their range and hitting individual infantrymen who appeared out of nowhere and ran at them brandishing swords and shouting obscene and blasphemous language. The Thomond
swordsmen, who should have taken the first shock of the assault, had been corrupted by two days’ inactivity; and they were carousing in a neighbouring ditch when the battle broke upon them. They were immediately overthrown and their ale-kegs seized by the patriot forces. The soldiers of Thomond were in no way lacking in courage and martial ardour, but the surprise was complete in that they understood from their generals that every Cashel fighting man was in the hills manœuvring with King Cormac; and their once-proud army of five hundred men trailed back, broken and in disorder, towards the frontiers of Thomond, each man with a sense of grievance and feeling that somewhere or other there had been foul play. Forty-two of their generals and many other high officers fell into the hands of the victors, and were immediately put to death by immersion in a neighbouring pond. The gates of the city were flung open, and the excited populace vociferously welcomed the victors and the captured ale-kegs. Bishop Flanagan ordered a solemn Te Deum to be sung in the Cathedral, which was attended by those of the army who did not feel it incumbent on them to return to their farms. A fleet runner was despatched to the hills to inform King Cormac of the good news, and to suggest respectfully that the moment was now opportune for him to descend into the plains and wipe out Thomond for ever.
Fursey heard the news from individual soldiers who passed him on the road on their way back to their farms. He nodded indifferently and continued to plod fatalistically towards Cashel. Few thoughts passed through his head as he trod the road, for his mind was cold and dead. When it became dark, he crept into a dry corner of the hedge, but he did not sleep; he lay instead all through the night gazing up at the indifferent stars. At sunrise and at midday he cast his rope over the branch of a tree and procured food; but he ate little; most of the time he squatted on his hunkers gazing dully at the bread and meat. He walked on towards Cashel as if impelled by some force outside himself, but the nearer he approached the settlement, the slower grew his gait, for somewhere inside himself he did not want to die, and least of all by fire. It was on the evening of the next day when he was still about ten miles from the city, that he sat down on a stone by the wayside and began to think. He remembered the trees as they had been in early spring, their skeleton branches sprinkled with green. He remembered the primroses, the dandelions and the wayward daffodils. All yellow, he said to himself dully, all yellow and green. That was before the demons had come to Clonmacnoise. He tried to conjure up a picture of himself as he had been then, a simple, innocent, stuttering lay-brother paring edible roots in a corner of the monastery kitchen, while Brother Cook stood by the fire humming grimly to himself as he stirred the soup. He remembered Father Crustaceous, who had only one tooth, and was always complaining that the meat was tough. He remembered Father Sampson, who had been a professional wrestler before he entered the cloister, big Father Sampson with his swinging stride, the only monk who had not been afraid of the demons, but seemed rather to enjoy an encounter with them as it gave him an opportunity of trying out once more his wrestler’s grips and holds. He recalled Father Placidus, that testy, purse-lipped man; and the suave, cool Master of Novices, whom everyone feared. He remembered with a lump in his throat little Brother Patrick, a lay-brother like himself, and the fun they all had years before when a class had been set up in a half-hearted attempt to teach the lay-brothers to read and write. And he remembered the Abbot Marcus—Abbot Marcus as he used to enter the refectory, his robes rustling, to take his seat at the centre of the table on the dais, his scholarly face shadowed by thought. “I mustn’t think of him,” muttered Fursey through his clenched teeth, “it’ll only make me cry.” But in spite of himself he did think of Abbot Marcus, and he did not cry. Something had entered into Fursey; his heart felt like a chunk of the moon, cold, dead and indifferent.
“How happy I was,” he said, “though I didn’t realise it.” But then the year had moved into late spring, the trees had darkened to a deeper green, and the demons had come and the beginning of his tribulations. With the first brazen flowers of summer had come sin. He had practised sorcery, had become an accomplished liar and even a thief.
“There’s no going back,” he meditated bitterly. “Clonmacnoise is closed to me for ever.”
Then he thought sourly of what a weak, frightened creature he himself was, when compared with a broad-shouldered, daring fellow like Magnus. What a contrast! Magnus despised a mean, little fellow like him, a wearer of another man’s cast-off clothes. At best Magnus thought him funny and looked at him, when he noticed him at all, with amused contempt. And Magnus was right! Fursey rested his forehead between his two clenched fists, his elbows on his knees, and reflected how much he hated Magnus—a coarse and boastful bully, who had only to put out his hand to get all that he wanted in the world. Success went to the men of action, the men of affairs; as for the dreamers and the gentle, it was enough for them that they were permitted to live.
“That’s another sin,” he said, sighing hopelessly. “Hatred is a great sin. We must hate no one on this earth.” With a painful effort that was like a stone being turned over in his head, he put Magnus out of his mind. He remembered that he had one friend, or rather one creature bound by nature to his service, whatever that creature’s real feelings might be—the lugubrious Albert. The moment he remembered Albert, he felt the pressing necessity of opening his heart to someone. He leaned forward and whispered the name gently. He waited for a few moments, his eyes fixed on the dust of the road, but he could note no movement.
“Albert!” he said more loudly. There was still no sign of the bear’s paws or the red, foggy eyes. Fursey looked over his shoulder to see whether the creature was behind him, but there was no trace of his familiar. Very astonished, he rose to his feet and taking his stand in the middle of the roadway he called a third time in a loud voice: “Albert!”
Nothing happened. The full significance of his familiar’s failure to appear came to Fursey in a rush. Could it be that he was no longer a sorcerer, or at least that his damnable powers were wearing off? With a beating heart he hurried to the nearest tree. He uncoiled his rope with trembling fingers and flung it over a branch.
“Bread!” he shouted exultingly, and gave the rope a mighty chuck. His hopes were immediately dashed by the descent of a huge loaf, which struck him on the forehead and knocked him into the ditch. As he strove to rise, the prey of bitter disappointment, he observed a pale man with very black eyes clambering over the fence on the far side of the road. When the stranger had successfully surmounted the obstruction, he crossed the road, and coming across to where Fursey lay, he stood looking down at Fursey’s floundering attempts to get out of the ditch.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said the stranger. “Drunk again.”
Fursey gaped up at him in astonishment. He immediately recognised the stranger as an anchorite, one of those holy men who retire to remote caverns, and having turned out the wild beasts dwelling therein, make such gloomy spots their habitation where they pass the rest of their lives on a sparse diet, praying for themselves and for mankind. The one who gazed down disapprovingly at Fursey, was an uncouth hermit covered with long, black, rusty hair. He was a living skeleton, yellow, haggard and hatchet-faced, mere cuticle and cartilage. In short, he was a hideous and dirty-looking apparition, clad in an inadequate piece of sacking, and the odour of sanctity that he shed around him was well-nigh insupportable.
“It’s an ill wind that blows no one good,” said the gaunt stranger at last. “I hate drinking alone. Get up and come with me.”
The astonished Fursey struggled out of the ditch.
“They call me ‘The Gentle Anchorite’,” said the ascetic by way of introducing himself. “Come along with me, but bring your loaf of bread with you. It’ll pay for a drink.”
The two of them walked down the road together. Fursey wondered why he was accompanying the anchorite, but he told himself that he might as well go where the stranger was going, as go anywhere else. They had progressed some hundred paces when The Gentle Anchorite
turned his dark piercing eyes on Fursey.
“Why are you holding your nostrils between your thumb and forefinger?” he asked.
“I cannot abide the stench,” replied Fursey.
“Nonsense,” said his companion. “I am not conscious of any stench.”
“You’re lucky,” said Fursey.
Fursey had noticed that his new acquaintance held something concealed under his left arm. The sacking which the anchorite wore, effectively hid it from sight. Fursey was too polite to pretend to notice, even when a muffled clucking became audible from the depths of the anchorite’s habiliments; but when a hen suddenly thrust out her head and started to croak desperately, Fursey could no longer pretend that he was unaware of her presence. He stopped on the road and faced the hermit.
“You haven’t been stealing poultry?” he asked. “I cannot be a party to a crime.”
“No,” answered the hermit mildly. “You can take my word for it. This bird is an offering from a client for whom I performed a miracle yesterday.”
“That’s all right,” replied Fursey quite satisfied, and they continued on their way.
“I’ve had a gruelling day,” volunteered The Gentle Anchorite, “and I feel myself much in need of refreshment.”
“Indeed?” remarked Fursey politely.
“You must know,” continued his companion, “that persons like myself who are raised to an ecstatic intuition of the Sovereign Good, are much pestered by the servants of the terrible Emperor of Night. I refer to Satan, whom nothing tortures so much as the sight of a good man at his prayers.”
Fursey nodded understandingly.
“It’s nothing unusual for me,” continued the anchorite, “on waking of a morning to see my cavern flooded with a dismal light, and to find a devil sitting at the foot of my bed grunting like a pig. Sometimes they come as ghouls and harpies, and I have been followed around all day by a demon in the form of a water-dog. I have seen devils stalling upside down, and I myself have been thrown by them into that unusual posture. But, praise the Lord, I am always well able for them, and I have no less than forty-eight demons tied down in moorland pools on the mountain on which I dwell.”