The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (19 page)

Carew’s second blunder was to fight your Earl of Ormond’s brothers, Edward and Edmund. And for what? A few raids onto Carew’s “new lands.” Cattle raiding is as old as Ireland, and nothin’ to be taken personal like. Instead he punished them, invaded Ormond territories.

Allowed his
bonaughts
to burn Killkenny, Black Tom’s ancestral home, one of Ireland’s most prosperous towns. They despoiled the church, broke into the castle, and publicly raped Edward’s poor wife. But Carew wouldn’t be stopped. He captured Edmund too and ravaged through the countryside murdering men, women, and children.

But some good came of it. The midland clans were united in their outrage—even the Mayo Burkes, who hated the Ormonds—and we fought back. For the first time in history, Irish lords and chieftains banded together against a common foe, and we destroyed the First Munster Plantation before the Crown could send reinforcements.

The English didn’t know what ’d hit ’em. They’d been trained to fight in spirals and squares on open ground, solid ground. But we were warriors of another sort altogether—the kings of ambush. In bogs and quagmires, forests and glens, wieldin’ our battle axes, darts, spears, and broad blades, even crossbows, we were fearsome indeed. Like somethin’

out of another time, like the Norsemen invading. The rebels would often just vanish abruptly from a fight, into the hills and fastnesses, leaving the English to scratch their heads in confusion. Then, when ’twas least expected, Carew’s men would find themselves covered on either side by felled trees woven into mighty barricades, behind which lurked the rebels, who came down upon them with war cries that curdled the blood.

The abduction of Edward and Edmund Butler was a great humiliation for their brother Black Tom, and Carew was pressured to release them. Of course once freed they turned and attacked his troops with all their fury, but it was nothin’ compared with the might of Ireland’s first true great military leader.

His name was James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, a Munsterman, and the Earl of Desmond’s cousin. But as Gerald Fitzgerald was still languishing in the Tower of London, Fitzmaurice seized upon the need for leadership amongst the Irish and rallied the chiefs round him, proclaiming himself

“the Captain of the Desmonds.” ’Twas amazing, the loyalty he provoked from all the divers clans, including Clanrickard, and even some Protestant kinsmen of Ormond. In the fever of resistance, some of the lords even gave back their fancy English titles.

But James Fitzmaurice was more than a fighter. Oh yes. He was a shrewd politician. Like most men, he hated his lordly cousin, the Earl of Desmond, but it didn’t stop his announcing to the English that the reclaiming of Gerald’s rights and lands was the same thing as restoring

“native rule,” as well as the Gaelic chiefs’ hereditary rights and lands.

’Twas a brilliant ploy, but he was not finished. No, not in the least.

James Fitzmaurice saw clearly what strength in unity could be found
in the name of God
. Now the Irish were not what you’d call religious, but Fitzmaurice openly denounced your English Act of Conformity that made Catholics into Protestants, whether they liked it or not. And he denounced
you
as well. The Queen of England, he proclaimed, was a heretic, a bastard and an antichrist. His attempts to restore the Church of Rome to Ireland earned him the ear of the Pope and King Philip of Spain. Philip even sent his man Mendoza to treat with Fitzmaurice. I don’t have to tell you what fear that provoked in English hearts, and what joy in the Irish.

We were buoyed with righteousness in our cause, and where Carew had scourged the native countryside ’tween Cork and Kinsale, now Fitzmaurice ’s armies swept through and savaged the Crown’s settlements in the same places. English colonists were killed or driven naked from their walled towns and plantations and into the waiting arms of the very Irish whose homes had been stolen from them. Theirs was not a pretty end.

Fitzmaurice ’s army—infantry, horse, and kern—fighters in their steel skullcaps and mail shirts, wielding their ancient weapons, took back all that Carew had stolen from us.

I wish to Jesus I could say that’s where it ended, but in truth that was just the beginning. Henry Sidney was called in to “pacify” Ireland, to open the overland routes ’tween Cork and Limerick, and Limerick and Dublin. But he was short of men, like so many of the first English armies, so he made up for his lack with savageness. That good gentleman took the lands and castles of the rebel chiefs—ravaged them, slaughter-ing cattle, burning fields—so that they, in defending their homes, were forced, one by one, to abandon their leader, James Fitzmaurice. Sidney left in his wake many a hanging tree with the bodies of every able-bodied Irishman who’d not been killed in battle, dangling there as carrion for crows.

The poor countryside, scoured and scorched by Carew, had the same done to it by Fitzmaurice, then finally by Sidney. Beautiful Munster was destroyed altogether, and the first of many famines was upon us.

But like I said, ’twas only the beginning.

Sir John Perrot, who some said was the bastard child of Henry the Eighth—for he certainly looked like him, hugely fat, red bearded and redheaded—came next. He was your earl of Essex’s brother-in-law. His idea of restoring order was brutal subjugation, cessation of all native custom and law. Men were forbidden to dress as Irish tradition set forth, but only in the English style as, he said, our woolen mantles left room to hide weapons in their folds. Women could not wear their rolled headdresses or open smocks with great sleeves, but instead were to wear

“decent attire” with hats and laced-up dresses. Perrot said the Irish could not travel about, or even speak the Gaelic tongue. And any man found to be wearing his long forelocks over his face was punished, for it was claimed the thick hair hanging down over his features obscured identity. Even rhymers and bards were outlawed, message carriers too.

’Twas feared they would carry the stories and memories of our people to rally them.

Perrot banned the Brehon laws, “blood money” in particular—the payment for murder—instead to be punished, like the English, with death. He tried very hard, the rotund English governor, but in the end nothing changed. It only got worse. Men and women dressed as they pleased, wore their forelocks and rolled headdresses, spoke Irish, and brought the bards to sing at their suppers. And the Desmond rebellion raged on, moving farther and farther into the west.

Fitzmaurice was still on the loose and southern Ireland lay in ruins.

John Perrot was mad with frustration. His troops were pitiful and ragged, deserting by the hundreds every day, and the Munster Plantation was lost. He realized finally that the Desmond rebellion could not be won in the way the Crown had always waged war, and decided he would fight “the Irish way.” Jesus knows what went on in the mind of the man for him to challenge James Fitzmaurice to combat, one-to-one on horseback, to the death. Winner take all.

I’m sure his cohorts believed the “Irish sickness” had infected Perrot.

And perhaps it had. He showed up at the hilltop at the appointed hour attired in native Irish garb, armed only with a broadsword, the poor Irish pony sagging under his immense weight. A heavy rain began to fall, and his army behind him watched and waited for Fitzmaurice to come. And waited. And waited. But the only one who came was a messenger from Fitzmaurice, with a note that said the Captain of the Desmonds would not be comin’ a’tall. It said if he killed Perrot, the queen would simply send another deputy in his place, but if Perrot killed
him
, no one could replace him, the rebellion’s only leader.

That was true enough, but Perrot—soaking in his saffron cape and scarlet breeches—rode from the field in disgrace and humiliation, his troops laughin’ behind their hands. It’s true that later, starvation conquered Fitzmaurice, and he fled to France. But Perrot had been changed forever. Ruined, the English would say. He was not the first nor would he be the last.

That was when you freed Gerald, the Earl of Desmond, from captivity and sent him back to Ireland. I suppose you thought he was loyal to the Crown and would hold the south together for you. And the people of Munster, those poor wretches who slunk out from their burned hovels and scorched fields, they believed he would lead them in resistance against the English. Nobody knew then that the only one who’d receive any help from Desmond was Desmond himself.

Well, he made a good show of it at first. On his journey south from Dublin, he ’d thrown off his English garb and donned the garments of a great Irish chieftain, and astride his white horse he gathered round him an army of many hundreds of warriors. It took no time a’tall to reclaim his lands from the English. It took even less for the Crown, no doubt shocked by his betrayal, to offer a pardon, the return of his earldom, and all his revenues, in exchange for submission, of course.

Thus began the deadly dance that became the
second
Desmond rebellion, one that cost Ireland countless lives and land, and me my freedom.

Jesus, it pains me to tell the rest of the story. I’d seen the deaths of my loved ones, but those were natural, in the scheme of things, even the murders. But the slow death of the old ways—that was unbearable to watch. The Crown invaded the waters off the western coast with their merchantmen, which we plundered, and their troop ships, with which we did battle. I’d not fought the English since Cock’s Castle, and never on the sea. But now my men and I fought with a fury for our home waters, and we won every battle, sinking your ships or taking the best for our fleet.

The English admirals grew incensed that the “mere Irish”—and a woman captain at that—could inflict so much damage on their proud navy. So much did they want revenge on me that one March when Richard was away fighting and little Tibbot was still a toddler, they sent a whole flotilla and six hundred soldiers to trap me at Rockfleet Castle.

For three weeks we were besieged, your troops on land preventing my seamen and me from boarding our ships, anchored in Rockfleet Harbor. But Richard, thank Christ, returned with his ranks and a force of Gallowglass, all of whom I’d brought over in my boats, and who’d never have made their season’s wages without me. They broke the siege and allowed us passage out of the keep, and down to the inlet and the fleet.

That turned the tide entirely, and we flew from the harbor like a swarm of angry bees, driving off the English, who ran scared, hearing the sound of our fearsome shrieks across the waves. They were madder than a sack of wet cats, and they vowed to destroy Grace O’Malley and capture her fleet once and for all.

If there was one joy at this time, ’twas my son who, in honor of his maritime birth was named Tibbot ne Long—“Tibbot of the Boats.” But I suppose he could just as well have earned the moniker for his love of the sea and of ships, which—like my own—showed itself early in life. He was a beautiful child who resembled Owen O’Malley more so than Richard Burke, with a wide forehead and brown sparkling eyes.

Tibbot would nag me in all his waking hours, could he please go down to the water? He loved it when the brawny sailors picked him up like a sack of oats and plunked him onto the seat of the dinghy to be rowed out to our ship.

And watching my Tibbot, all wide-eyed, learning the ropes from the seamen, hearing the tall tales of monsters and shipwrecks, was like turnin’ back time. ’Twas me again, a little girl with nimble fingers at the knots, weaving nets, sewing sails, climbing the rigging like a dressed monkey. I would steal a look at Tibbot only to find him, face into the wind, eagerly scanning the water for sight of a breaching whale, shouting with laughter as we crashed through the waves.

But for all the love I bore that child, I could see too a trait—a troubling one. I sometimes thought he ’d been wrongly named. Should have been “Tibbot of the Winds,” for he was so changeable. Aboard my ships he was cheerful, loud and full of fun. Nothing hurt the boy, jibes rolled off him like water. He was sweet and kind and helpful, always there with an unasked-for cup of cool water for a thirsty man. And yet when Tibbot went off with his father to hunt or to war, he became his father’s son altogether. A ruthlessness—always submerged in my presence—came boilin’ to the surface. He was cunning and brutish and already demanded his small measure of power over the clan. Worse, he wore a cloak of anger, though I never thought it his own, but borrowed from his father.

It troubled me, this trait in Tibbot. But what could I do? I tried once to speak to Richard of it, but he saw no problem with his son’s two-facedness. Tibbot, he claimed, was in good company, for all the chieftains in Ireland were speaking from both sides of their mouths.

The times Richard came home from his wars he was always in a low rage. War and mayhem and mutual deceit—what chieftain was submitting to what deputy, which atrocities the Crown was perpetratin’ on the Irish, and how long the truce had lasted. And worse, the English were coming, like afternoon ants to the roast. There were the gravest tidings.

The Burkes’ MacWilliam, Shane Oliverus, had submitted to Henry Sidney—sore news for Richard. English interference with the rights of the Burke clan elections meant Richard,
tanaist
to the title, had less hope of the MacWilliamship when Shane Oliverus died. As if there could be worse news, The O’Malley—my father’s successor, Melaghlin O’Malley—had submitted as well. I felt a hand squeeze my heart at the news, glad that Owen in his watery grave would never know it.

But the truth of it was, my husband would have been hateful and angry in any event. He was just like that. Richard was not a big man, but he took up a lot of space in a room. And he smoldered like a buried root after a fire, ready to burst forth in flame when you least expected it. It was tiresome bein’ married to a man like that, and our only salvation was livin’ apart.

Though it seemed impossible that things could get more confused in Connaught, they did. At one time or another, every clan was fighting another, or raising rebellions against the Crown. The Earl of Desmond was crossing from Munster north into Mayo—the Burkes’ lands—plundering and murdering his own countrymen in the name of the queen one moment, defending his “native rights” the next. Then Shane Oliverus Burke, The MacWilliam, in a moment of weakness or perhaps just expediency, went to war against the sons of Clanrickard and their Gallowglass, all longtime friends and kinsmen through marriage. Henry Sidney rewarded Shane with a castle taken from his own cousin, which of course provoked a family feud.