The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (14 page)

Then it began. First we suffered their fire from arquebuses and cannon, which was no more than cover for their more dangerous work—the setting of explosives in our fortifications. We could hear their digging under our walls and knew that a breach in the stone would mean the end of us.

“Listen up!” I cried. “A dozen of you, stay at your posts on the ramparts and keep them busy with your fire. Everyone else—children too—

come with me!” I led the people wordlessly up the stairs of the keep and onto the castle ’s roof. The sun shinin’ on our backs, the sounds of battle below us, we ripped off the lead that covered it, and pile by pile hauled it below. Great fires were built using wood torn off the sides of our sheds and houses. There in vats we melted the metal down, carrying it careful like up to the ramparts. The first explosions rocked the walls, and a man called out that the siege ladders had been flung up to their places, soldiers beginning to climb. ’Twas now or never, I knew, so I shouted the order, prayin’ with all my heart that it was the
right
order.

At my word the men in the ramparts tipped the cauldrons over the turrets, and down upon the heads of our enemies broke waves of molten metal. Oh, the shrieks and moans were marvelous to hear! Dozens of ladders filled with men fell backward, soldiers and clansmen burned and broken below.

It was chaos altogether. The firing stopped and all attempts at breaching the walls and tunneling beneath were finished. There were dead and injured to be rowed ashore, wounds to be licked, recriminations to be levied, one commander to the next. Who were these O’Flahertys? tEnglish would be sayin’. Who do they think they are? You Joyces swore they’d not fight with their leader dead.

In Cock’s Castle we allowed ourselves a wee celebration for our victory, and somebody said the place should be renamed. ’Twas “Hen’s Castle” now, for the Cock’s female had led them all out of harm’s way.

But there was no sign of the enemy quitting their camp on the mainland side, and we were forced to face the dire thought of starving to death on Corribe Island. It occurred to us that no relief had come from the O’Flahertys outside who, strange as it seemed, might be unaware of our plight.

How could we get word to them that we were trapped on this island, surrounded by enemies?

“I seem to remember,” came a feeble voice from the back, “a secret tunnel from the isle to the mainland.”

All eyes clapped on old Porrag O’Flaherty, who was blind and very frail in his limbs. He had lived on the island since boyhood, the castle ’s steward for many years.

“I know nothing of a tunnel,” said I. “Can you tell us where to find it, Porrag?”

“That’s another matter entirely,” he replied, and though others had a vague recollection of such a tunnel, try as they might, no one could remember more than Porrag, and the brief hope of salvation began to dim.

“Ma’am.” I heard a tiny voice from behind the crowd of villagers.

“Who’s that speaking?” I called.

“ ’Tith I.” A small figure appeared then, a boy about eight named William, with two front teeth missing from his head.

“What do you know about a tunnel, William? Come now, we haven’t much time.”

“There ’th a playth that I play thomtimth . . .” His mother’s eyes went wide with understanding. “The times that I cannot find you?” she said to him. “When it seems you’ve fallen off the face of the earth?”

“Aye,” he whispered, eyes downcast. “For I’ve gone
into
the earth.” Thank Jesus for that toothless little boy, for he led us to a shed off the back of Daniel O’Flaherty’s cottage, and there in the floor was an old trapdoor—the tunnel of which Porrag had spoken, and though dark, with crumblin’ walls seeping water, altogether intact.

Two of our fleet-footed young men were chosen to go and they disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

We waited and watched for days, and cringed as the troops amassed anew. By now hundreds of Joyces had come from afar and swelled their ranks. The boats were loaded again and attack was imminent. All was lost, it seemed, and we in Hen’s Castle prepared for our fight to the death.

That’s when we heard it—a shrieking cry comin’ o’er the hill, and out of the blue, a huge array of fire-tipped arrows rained down upon the boats on the shore, setting them afire. ’Twas the blessed O’Flahertys in their number, a great seething mass of ’em, sweeping down on the enemy camp, all unaware. So, what with the ambush—the troops and the Joyces trapped between the O’Flahertys and the water’s edge—’twas a great rout, and a victory disputed by no one. The siege on Hen’s Castle was lifted, and the enemies—both Irish and English—soundly defeated.

With Donal dead, I tried to collect my “thirds.” In Ireland a clan chief ’s widow is granted one third of all her husband’s possessions. Brehon law was on my side, but Donal Crone was not. Still furious at his deposing by the English, he was looking out for any chance to bring another to grief. And his fury fell on my head. Who did I think I was, he demanded, to claim Gilleduff O’Flaherty’s whole fleet as my own?

Never mind it’d been bequeathed to me very legal like. I was wealthy on that account, he said, and had no right to Donal’s thirds as well. Not to mention my husband was poorer by half, what with my bringing to light his part in Walter Burke ’s slaying.

I took the case before the Brehon judges, who listened quite respectfully, but Donal Crone came bargin’ in very loud and made his case against me. I was a
woman,
he cried—as though that was a great surprise—who had no right to be carrying on such a manly enterprise. My name, he said, should be struck from the annals of Irish history, and unless I took the proper role of a woman, I should be given no more honor nor sustenance in O’Flaherty territories from that day forward.

My sons Owen and Murrough were present of course. Young men by now, they’d been granted their share of their father’s inheritance, but wielded no power to help me win mine. My sweet child Owen would have, if he could, but I always thought that Murrough, in secret, agreed with Donal Crone. In the end the judges denied my thirds and I was forced to leave the O’Flaherty lands.

Thank Jesus I had the fleet and several hundred men so loyal to me that they’d go where I took them, and where I took them was back to my father’s kingdom and the waters of Clew Bay.

My new life was about to change once again. ’Twas a dark, windy morning in September, not altogether auspicious for a pilgrimage on St.

Brigid’s Day to the Holy Well on Cahir Island. But my men, just back from a storm-racked voyage to Spain, wished to give thanks for their safe return home. So we took to the curraghs and rowed round the island to the beach nearest the well. There were many small boats already there, their wind-whipped pilgrims hiking in a long line up to the holy site.

We ’d all just gathered on the shore when Ryan O’Malley’s curragh slid onto the sand, but rather than a family of somber folk ready to climb in pious silence up the hill, they were all atwitter. It seemed a foreign ship had foundered on the rocks of Achill Island.

Well, that made a quick end of piety and thanksgiving. My men were foamin’ at the mouth to search for survivors, but even more keen for the plunder, if there was some to be had. They all fell to their knees on the sand, crossin’ themselves in the general direction of the Holy Well, and took to the boats so quick they nearly left me behind.

By the time we reached Achill, a proper storm was blowing. We could see the local villagers on shore, themselves hopin’ to pick survivors out of the crashing surf or, if God was willing, salvage.

There was wreckage afloat in the waves where we were—very dangerous—and what with the choppy seas and howling gale, ’twas all we could do in our small boats to keep from drownin’ ourselves. But there was no one alive out there. How could there be? We gave up hope for finding any poor soul or the smallest booty, and besides, the storm was wicked. Fearin’ for our lives we chose to go ashore to Achill Island rather than row home to Clare in that blow.

Let me tell you, the breakers we rode in were fifteen foot high, breakin’ hard on the shore. My heart was in my throat as we sailed through the air and crashed down on that beach. Thank Jesus none of our boats was lost but only slightly damaged, and we all said St. Brigid must’ve heard our wee prayers to her, even though we ’d not made it up to the Holy Well.

All the villagers had staggered home empty-handed, but we remained on that beach thankin’ God for our lives. Darkness was upon us and the men were arguing whether to camp the night there under our boats or go seek shelter in the village.

Then I saw it. ’Twas a pale creature movin’ in the sand just at the place the breakers were crashin’ down. A cry was ripped from my throat as a giant wave descended on it. That scream scared the piss out of my men, who’d not seen what I’d seen and thought I myself was bein’ killed.

Unable to speak I rushed to the water’s edge, but in the receding wave there was no sign of that poor creature, which might, I now thought, have been a figment of my imagination. My men pulled me back out of harm’s way as another giant breaker smashed onto the beach. But this one deposited, for all of us to see, the thing I had glimpsed before.

’Twas a man, altogether naked, the work of the waves havin’ torn every shred of clothing from his form. We quick pulled him back from the surf, this moaning survivor with a good crack to the head, limbs broken in several places, and close to death.

We carried him to the village, knowing his life depended on heat and comfort. An elderly Achill widow took him in, with me as his nurse, while all my men took shelter in her barn. As he lay on the old woman’s bed very still, even as we set his broken bones, I was struck with the strangest emotions for that sorely wounded stranger, a painful longing and terrible grief that he might die. I could see by the lines of his sun-burnt torso that he must be a sailor, and by the pale color of his skin and hair a Norseman. I could not ask him his name, for though alive, he was altogether dead to the world, and considering his injuries, that was a blessing.

I stayed on Achill Island for a month or more, a nurse to this man. By his good luck and mine, the old widow, Agnes Murphy, had nursed her own husband for years before he ’d died, and welcomed the company and another chance to use her skills.

The sailor was slowly comin’ back to us, unintelligible as his words might be, but then on the fourth day an ague took hold of him and he was gone again, closer to God, it seemed to us, than before. Oh it was terrible to see the agonies he suffered, trembling chills, burning fevers, and the occasional sharp cries of pain, as though he ’d been run through with a blade.

Through my ministrations I grew to know his body, every inch of it.

His skin was pale where it was not bronzed by the sun, and his hair, similarly touched, so fair as to be white. He was tall and long limbed and his face was beautiful—jaw, cheeks, and nose made all of angles, but lips soft and full like two tiny pillows. I could barely take my eyes from those lips and found, to my own surprise and amusement, that I longed very much to kiss them.

Agnes and I had sealed a silent pact—each for our own reasons—that we would not, under any circumstances, let him die. I slept on a pallet near his bed to be close at hand at night. We searched her overgrown garden for healing herbs, and she ’d send me on journeys into the Achill hills to find patches of wild-growing medicines, and down to the rocky coast for certain seaweeds. Side by side we ’d grind these into poultices and ointments, brew them into teas, ferment them into tinctures. And we kept him clean as a newborn babe, rubbing his skin with oill to keep it supple.

Never was a man so well doctored as our nameless stranger.

Agnes teased me mercilessly, for she saw very clear what I felt, but I think she was just as relieved as I when nearly two weeks from the day of his rescue the poor man opened his eyes and saw us for the first time.

Well, I’m ashamed to say I burst into tears like a stupid girl. The look on his face was pure confusion, but you could easily see why. First he ’s on a ship with his mates battling a storm off the coast of Ireland. The next thing he knows he ’s flat on his back in a room he ’s never seen, with an ancient lady starin’ down at him, and a strange woman next to her bawlin’ her eyes out.

His name was Eric Thorson, and he was a Frieslander. This was all we could learn that first day, for he was weak as a kitten. In the days following, the facts of Eric’s life were slow in coming, for he spoke no Irish and his Latin was rusty. He conveyed that he ’d not been the captain, but his ship’s first mate. That the waters were new to them and that his captain had failed to heed the warning he ’d heard of the treacherous west coast of Ireland.

He was as sad a man as I’d ever seen, for his brothers had all been aboard that ship, and many of his friends, and now they were all at the bottom of the sea. So as he regained his strength and the use of his limbs, Eric was pained in his mind as well as body. But the beauty of it was, even when sick, he was noble, and even when suffering, mild.

He had a pair of screaming blue eyes that I found, to my great delight, following me round the cottage as I did my work. When I would lay my hands on him—which was whenever I had an excuse—a smile would play about those luxurious lips, and it was all I could do to keep myself from leaning down and planting my own on his.

Finally Agnes and I deemed his bones properly knitted, and he fit to rise from the bed and take a few steps. We took our places, one on either side, and brought him to his feet. He stifled a groan and fought the inevitable dizziness from a month in bed. But there was a shock in it for the widow and I as well, for though we knew he was tall, we had not expected the man to tower over us like a church steeple. We walked him round the small cottage and he asked to get a breath of fresh air, which we obliged.

’Twas a cold and blustery day and the sea beyond the hills was all gray chop. There was pain in his eyes as he gazed at the water, a graveyard for his friends and kin. I felt his arm tighten about me for a brief moment, as though he were clutchin’ all he had left in the world. Then he asked to go in again, but not to his bed, for he wished to sit at the table like a man, and not the helpless child he ’d been for so long.