 | CHAPTER VII. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
Looked forth into the night,
And saw o'erhanging Richmond IIlll
The streak of blood-red light.
Then bugle's note and cannon's roar
The death-like slience broke.”
Macaulay.
It was an hour past midnight, and the castle, with all its inmates,
had, as it seemed, long been steeped in silence and in
slumber. Not a sound had been heard for several hours but
the clank of the sentinols passing at intervals and repassing
over the echoing pavements. But in a lofty window near the
top of the loftiest turrets a lamp was burning clearly and steadily,
though now and then some large dark body would pass
between it and the casement, intercepting its lustrous rays for
a moment, and then leaving them vivid and uninterrupted as
before.
There was, then, one watcher, at least, within those ancient
walls other than the more guards of the night.
The window, whence that light streamed so far into the
night, should perhaps rather have been called a loop, so small
and narrow were its dimensions, although it was provided with
diamond-shaped panes of glass, set in a heavy leaden frame;
but it belonged to a neat and pleasant antechamber, though of
small dimensions, opening by one door upon the winding stone
staircase, and by the other into a large and handsome apartment,
which had no other visible entrance than through that
antechamber.
One person was alone the tenant of that antechamber, and
that one was Florence Desmond.
A bright wood fire was blazing cheerfully on the hearth,
while on the circular table before it stood a large lamp with
three burners, towering above several well-filled flagons and
seemed to indicate that the contents of the flagons had
met with little favor from the young colonel.
Beside the glasses, and in front of a comfortable armed
chair which seemed to have been but recently thrust back from
its vicinity to the table, lay a volume of Shakspeare open at
that fine passage in the play of Trolius and Cressida, beginning
with the lines:
“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of iogratitude—”
very lately, and perhaps to have arisen only on some slight
suspicion, or anticipation of alarm; for his sheathed rapier, a
long straight cross-hilted Toledo blade, with an ebony hilt and
black leather scabbard, lay close to the volume, accompanied
by a brace of heavy horse-pistols. But Desmond himself stood
erect, midway between the table and the door, which led into
the inner chamber, in an attitude of the deepest and most interested
attention.
Twice or three times before, during the course of that night
in which he had kept lonely ward over the much-suspected
hostage, he had imagined that the murmur of suppressed voices
came to his ear indistinetly from within, as of some one conversing
with the person. But each time, when he reflected
that these apartments had been selected for the very purpose
to which they were now applied by the O'Brien, in consequence
of the fact that they had no communication with the
other parts of the castle, except by the antechamber in which
he sat himself and the staircase leading from it, he had banished
the idea with a smile at his own foolish fancy, and returned
to his volume, satisfied that the lord of the castle must
he acquainted with the secrets of his own dwelling.
This fourth time, however, the conviction was so strong
upon his mind that the faint murmur which he heard in that
direction was neither, as he had before striven to believe, the
the watercourse five hundred feet below, but the blended tones
of the human voice—that he at length pushed back his chair
noiselessly, arose to his feet, and throwing off the velvet slippers
which he had substituted for his ponderous riding boots,
approached the door of the inner room with a stop that gave out
no sound on the soft rushes with which the floor was bestrewn.
The nearer he approached, the more perfectly was he couvinced
that his impression was correct; and he began to regret
bitterly that he had not acted on his first impulse. But he was
not a man to regret idly, when there was room for present action.
With his band on his dagger's hilt, he made one spring
forward, and his grasp was on the latch of the door. It turned,
yet the door yielded not, having been fastened from within by
some suddenly-devised method; for Desmond well knew that
it had no bolt nor lock on the inner side.
It resisted for one second only. The next, heavy oak as it
was, it flew open, as the cave door in the Arabian tales at the
word “sesame,” before the impetus of Desmond's foot.
As the strong door gave way, he could have sworn that a
light flashed for one second upon his eye; but at the same instant
his quick ear, strangely sharpened by suspicion of treachery,
detected, through the clatter of the broken latch and the
clang of the flapping door, the sound of something heavy falling—then
all was darkness, and, unless it were a dull, uncertain
rustling, all was silence also.
The next moment the strong, unpleasant odor of a suddenly
extinguished lamp became palpably sensible; and then, ere he
had time to reach his own lamp, a slight creak, as of stiff hinges
moving, and a flap, as if of waving tapestry, followed.
Still, from within that dark chamber, into which there fell
but an uncertain glimmer from Desmond's lamp, standing
within the angle of the chimney-corner, there came no positive
sound, no ungry outery at the irruption, which had been accompanied
with enough of noise to awaken the seven sleepers.
Had O'Neil then escaped? That thought was almost madness.
He had returned to the antechamber, snatched the lamp with
his left, and a horse-pistol with his right hand, in less time than
it takes to record it, and was rushing back into the prisoner's
chamber, when a sight met his eye that arrested him, and fixed
him where he stood, motionless as a marble statue.
What was it that so blanched his cheek, and dimmed his
flashing eye? For his eye was dimmed, and his cheek
blanched on the instant.
Far off, far off on the very verge of the horizon, where by
daylight the keenest eye could not have discerned the blue line
of the low hills which there bounded the landscape from the
blue sky above them, there glimmered a faint speck of fire,
scarce brighter than the glow-worm's lamp in June—but while
he gazed, another flashed out, nearer than the first—another
and another.
At the same time, while in this new excitement, this new
wonder, he had well-nigh forgotten that which had at first
moved him, a step sounded close at his elbow, a hand was laid
upon his arm, and a harsh voice murmured in his ear:
“Ha! Colonel Desmond?—said I not the truth?—or what
say those beacon-lights, unless that Dublin is relieved, and the
enemy on Irish soil?”
It was the voice of Hugh O'Neil; and, as he turned his head
to the speaker, the ungainly form and hideous features, lighted
up now by a half-triumphant smile, met his eyes.
Almost bewildered, and what was most unusual in him, surprised
not a little, Florence Desmond set down the lamp upon
the board with an unsteady hand.
“And thou?” he said, “and thou, Hugh O'Neil—whence
comest thou?”
“Whence come I, noble Colonel? None should know that,
I think, better than thou who hast kept watch over me, as a
cat doth over a mouse, since supper-time. Whence come I?
came open, and the lamp-stand which was beside my bed o'erthrown,
I comprehend not.”
“And thou wert asleep, O'Neil?”
“Surely. What else should I be—the waking thoughts of
one sentenced to be hanged at daybreak, in case a courier's horse
should cast a shoe, or a watchman sleep at his post, and so kindle
not his beacon, are none, I trow, so pleasant, that he should
keep late vigils.”
“And didst sleep through it all—through all that clang and
clatter?”
“What clang and clatter? Nay, worthy Colonel, it is thou,
methinks, who art asleep and dreaming.”
“I tell thee, Hugh O'Neil, I heard thee in low conversation
with some one within thy chamber—I forced thy door with din
enough to wake the dead; and dost tell me thou didst sleep
through it all? Besides, I heard the closing of another door,
after I had forced that one. The priest—Hugh O'Neil—the
priest Daly was with thee!”
“Was he?—It must be in the spirit then, for surely in the
body he was not. But is there another door?” he added, most
naturally. “I lived here many years of my life, and have
played here when a boy, when these rooms were all bare and
unfurnished, many a day, and never knew of one.” Then altering
his tone a little—“I have good cause of complaint, of
quarrel in all this. Thou wert my warder in all honor—not
my jailor; and thus to break ope my chamber-door somewhat
exceeds a gentle warder's duty. But in these evil times, suspicion
seems to hang o'er all men; and I suppose I must e'en
forgive you—the rather that those beacons do proclaim my
tidings true—disastrous though they be—and set me free alike
from doubt and durance. Is it not so, Colonel Desmond? See,
there are seven of them now!”
Moved far more by the confirmation of the fatal news—
which, up to this time, he had doubted, than by any care for
past the possibility of doubt, beheld along the line of distant
hills, nearer and nearer from the northward, seven twinkling
stars of fire. An eighth broke out while he was gazing; but,
strange to tell, ere it had burst into full power, although at
first it seemed to blaze cheerily enough, it sank at once, as if
water had been cast upon it, and was extinguished utterly, no
more to be relumed.
Desmond gazed on O'Neil, and O'Neil on Desmond; but
neither spoke, nor made any sign of the wonder which certainly
both felt at the time the strongest feeling of his heart.
They turned again toward the casement; and lo! in the brief
interval since the last was quenched, the next beyond it toward
Dublin had evanished likewise. The other six continued blazing
lustrously and strong, and flaring higher heavenward, perhaps
because the watchmen saw their signals unrepeated. Perhaps
because the chain was interrupted thus; perhaps because
some intervening height cut short the view of the farther bale-fires
from the men at the nearer stations, no nearer alarm-fire
heralded the tidings of invasion, and all the neighboring
moors and cultured vales beneath, up to the base of huge
Slievh-Buy, lay buried in blank darkness.
But if, until now, surprise, and the quick succession of events,
had hold florence Desmond inert and inactive, he now recovered
all the onergetic readiness of mind which had rendered
him so famous as a soldier, in both hemispheres.
He east the casement open by which he was standing, discharged
the pistol which he held high into the air, and shouted
at the top of his voice:
“Alarm!—alarm! Treason!—treason!”
His pistol shot was answered by the discharge of harquebuss
after harquebuss, on the platforms of the ramparts—on the turret-tops—at
the gate-houses—far down the hill-side, and lastly,
by the roar of a culverin on the dungeon-keep, and the jarring
clang of the great alarum-bell.
Meanwhile, with shout and gathering cry, and clash of arms,
the garrison came together in the court-yard; and within five
minutes of the discharge of Desmond's pistol, a quick step
came hurrying up the winding stair to the antechamber door,
and a well-known voice exclaimed without:
“Open—open to me, Florence Desmond. It is I, O'Brien!”
He drew the bolts, and admitted instantly the lord of the
castle, who started back as he entered, and saw O'Neil, standing,
apparently, in close conversation with Florence Desmond;
for, somehow or other, hearing that the alarm had been given
from the turret in which the former was confined, he had connected
it indistinctly with his escape—though how that should
have occurred, he could not comprehend.
“My tidings are proved true, cousin of O'Brien. Now, at
least, I may thank you for your generosity, and claim some
shew of hospitality, at least, if not of courtesy, at your hands!”
exclaimed Hugh O'Neil bitterly, as his cousin's eye met his
own.
“Is it—can it be possible?” cried O'Brien, looking at Desmond
for an answer; “God of my fathers! Ormond beaten,
and Cromwell on the shores of Erin!”
But Desmond had no hopes to give him. He shook his head,
and pointed with his hand to the open casement, and to the
ominous bale-fires, blazing red, but still unrepeated, on the far
horizon.
“It is true! Heaven and all its saints defend us, and protect
the cause!—for it shall now need their protection. Yes, sir,”
he added, turning toward O'Neil, but with a frowning aspect,
and a voice—if it were possible—even colder than he had used
to him before—“Yes, sir, you are free, and shall be treated
henceforth with all hospitality, all courtesy. But, mark me,
Hugh O'Neil, not trusted. Had your heart, as you aver, been
true, been Irish, rather had you swung from the flag-staff on
this very tower on which we stand, knowing that Erin was yet
free, unsubdued, and hopeful, than sat the lord of this fair castle
but the spoil of the bloodthirsty, church-destroying Puritan.
Go, sir—go! You are free, I say—but not trusted!”
“You do me great wrong, cousin,” replied Hugh. “No
man deplores more deeply than I do the peril of our common
country—no one will fight farther to defend her—no one, I may
say, loves her better!”
“These things proved, we will trust you; till then, not a
hand's-breadth! Deeds speak; words often, truly interpreted,
are but silence. Act, and we shall hear!”
He bowed, and turned on his heel, repeating, as he did so:
“You do me great wrong, nevertheless, and one day will
know it.”
“I hope so,” said O'Brien. “In the meantime, far rather
would I wrong you, wrong myself, wrong Desmond here, than
wrong Erin—than wrong the cause of our monarch—of our
God! Ho! Ulick—Con O'Brien!”
And at his call, the two young men, who had halted half-way
up the stairs, when the earl entered the antechamber, appeared
fully armed at the stair-head.
“Look you; our cousin here,”—and he spoke somewhat sneeringly—“has
proved his good faith thus far; that Ormond is undoubtedly
repulsed from Dublin, as he told us yesterday, and
the accursed Puritan upon our shores; events at which, I
must say, he seems to rejoice mightily. His truth is proved,
however, thus far, and our promise must be kept inviolate.—
Henceforth he is our guest; attend him with all honor; suffer
him to go where he will—to do what he will; only observing,
that he hath no command whatsoever; and suffer him to converse
at his pleasure, with any of our friends and—”
“Excepting always, I beseech you,” Desmond interrupted
him, “the good priest, Father Daly!”
O'Brien looked quickly at the colonel, and reading a deep
meaning in his eye, took up his words without question or comment.
“Excepting always Father Daly. And now, cousin Hugh,
I must needs pray you to excuse me; these gentlemen will
wait on you; but for me, I would hold counsel here awhile with
Colonel Desmond. I will join you within the hour, in the
guard-room. Ulick,” he added, “although we supped so late,
still we will breakfast somewhat early. See that the cooks
and butlers have all in readiness at daybreak. Not in the
grand hall of the keep, but in the great stone hall of the outer
guard-house. Now, Florence, we will speak together.”
And at the signal, they were left alone. When Desmond, after
relating to him hastily his suspicions concerning the priest and
O'Neil, and the manner of his awakening, called his attention
as to a thing of far more present importance, to the fact of the
two nearer beacons having been almost simultaneously extinguished—showed
that no effort had been made to rekindle
them, and that the line was evidently broken, although those
farther off toward Dublin were blazing brilliantly as ever.
“What it may mean,” he added, “you should be better able
to explain than I—seeing that you must needs know all the stations.”
“The nearest that is now alight,” replied O'Brien, after examining
them carefully, with a prospective glass, as it was then
tormed—a very rare implement in those days—“is the Hill of
Muckla, and beyond that, Lugnaguilla Mount, and Atinmoe.—
Those which you saw blaze up and then expire, are the
heights of Carysfort, and Killahurler Hill, over Arklow. The
nearer stations, which have not been lighted, are Ballyfad and
Moniseed, and the Crag of Ask, next to us in the valley.—
Which went out first, the blaze on Killahurler or that on the
heights of the Carysfort?”
“The nearest this way—Killahurler; it scarce blazed half
a minute.”
“I thought so, Florence. 'Tis the loftiest hill on this side
Shranamuck above the deer-park, and so lofty that neither
Ballyfad ner Moniseed can see beyond it. Hence is the chain
there, on guard—without!” he shouted, leaning with half his
body out of the narrow casement.
“Hillo! my lord—what ho!” was shouted up from the courtyard.
“Kindle the beacon speedily—fire-lights are blazing far and
wide on Muckla Hill, and Lugnaguilla Mount, on Atinmoe, Kill-day
and Shranamuck. By some mischance, the fires have failed
on Carysfort, and Killahurler, and hence the vale hath lost
the tidings. Light up! I say, light up—and that right speedily!”
Then lowering his voice, he added, “No mischance, noble
Florence—no mischance, I fear, but treason.”
“I am not sure of that,” replied Desmond, who had pondered
deeply, and was looking over a small rough map of the
country, which happened to hang upon the turret-wall, perhaps
as an aid to the warder, whose chamber that was in ordinary
times. “I am not sure. Here runs the high-road, if I read it
right, over the very highest point of Killahurler, just where
the cross-road bears away from Arklow. How far from that
stands the beacon?”
“Some quarter of a mile, I think,” replied O'Brien, “on a
high, bare rock to the westward. But what matters it?”
“Again. The same road seems to skirt the lower spurs of
the heights of Carysfort. How far is that road from the beacon
station?”
“Three hundred yards, or over. I know it well, because I
marked out the last six from the Hill of Muckla.”
“Marked them out, I fear, badly, Dermot,” said the other
gravely. “One question more—for I have well-nigh lost my
memory of distances, in my long absence, though the names
dwell with me like strains of old remembered music. How
many miles is it from Carysfort to Killahurler?”
“Six miles, by the road—perhaps seven. In a straight line,
it should be about five. I wish you would explain.”
“So that in case the van of a force, say some four or five
might well be passing the heights of Carysfort, at the same
hour. Cousin mine—cousin mine, what is once done cannot
be amended—but if it be to do again, it may well be bettered.
When next you select beacon stations, let them be in the pathless
solitudes of hills, or on the bare expanse of moors, afar from
all great roads, out of the way of marching armies.”
“Why, what do you imagine, Desmond?”
“That a strong force of Cromwell's men are marching hitherward.
That the van mounting Killahurler have observed
all the country in their rear blazing with beacons, and perceiving
how that station domineered all others, have seized the
hill just as the beacon was enkindled. Their rear have done
the same by Carysfort, and secure now against farther spreading
of alarm, are marching with all speed hitherward. If I
am right, we shall know it ere long.”
“But why should such a force march hitherward? Ormond
doubtless is gone northward.”
“No one can say! It were sound policy, however, and
good strategy, nor unlike Cromwell's crafty foresight, to detach
force enough to hold in check these southern counties—nay,
even to capture you—yourself, O'Brien, known for the most
puissant, and not least ardent or least dangerous of the king's
leaders, here in Leinster.”
“But scarce with such a force as four thousand or five thousand
men.”
“Oh! that is mere conjecture; only thrown to account for
the space between the head and rear of the marching column.
They may be but a thousand marching by detachments—they
may be delayed by artillery or baggage—they may have straggled—as
will happen in night marches—in the darkness. But
of a truth, I little doubt we shall see English troops arrayed
against these walls before noon to-morrow.”
“May God forefend!” cried O'Brien. “There are not three
days' food in the garrison for the men who are now within it;
approach.”
“In God's name then, O'Brien, let four-fifths of your garrison
go forth, at once, without an hour's delay, in little squads of
five and ten, under trusty men, to sweep all the country round
for ten miles, of cattle, grain, and forage. For the rest, none
but men capable of bearing arms must be admitted; and it were
well at daybreak to send forth all the women, children, and old
men who are now within. I would the countess and Ellinor
were without the walls now. In the open country even these
Puritans will not harm helpless, unarmed men, much less women;
but when a place is stormed, no man can say what shall
happen.”
“A place stormed! Think you, Florence Desmond, that
the strength of all the world could storm the Red Castle of the
O'Brien?”
“I have seen stronger places by the half stormed in two
hours by a thousand men!” replied the veteran. “Castle
O'Brien is a fine old feudal fortress—a good irregular work,
but totally incapable of any long defence. But do not answer
me, I pray you, cousin; but rather give the orders I suggest
for victualling the castle. Then join me again here. This
is the best post of observation.”
O'Brien answered nothing—but although very far from
being edified by the slighting opinion of his cousin as to the
defensibility of the time-honored keep of the O'Briens, he had
too great regard for that cousin personally, and far too high an
opinion of his military talents, knowledge, and experience, to
waste valuable time in vain debate. He descended, therefore,
at once to the court of the castle, where his voice was soon heard
issuing the necessary orders, above the clang of hoofs, and the
cash of armor and accoutrements, as party after party rode
forth from the gates as fast as they could prepare themselves
for action.
Meanwhile the beacon on the dungeon-keep blazed out triumphantly,
dyed all the pavement of the court and the red freestone buildings
of the castle with a strange lurid crimson, and flickered
on the armor of the mustering retainers in the court below,
arming them, as it were, in panoply of gold; and far without
the walls changed the green garb of summer into the sare
leaves of autumn, and gleamed upon the outworks, and cast
blacker shadows into the abyss of the ravine beneath, like
some tremendous and portentous meteor.
Ere long the stations in the plain below, catching the meaning
of that sudden light, though it came in a different direction
from that they expected, and comprehending that, from the
castle top, perched as it was on the giddy crags of Slievh-Buy,
many points northward were in view, to themselves invisible,
lighted their bale-fires, one by one; so that the chain of signal
fires was spreading toward a common centre from both extremities—that
common centre being the dark and still unresponsive
beights of Killahurler.
Anxiously now did Florence Desmond watch the progress
of those blazing pyres, for on that progress depended the frustration,
the verification, of his fears.
The crag of Ask blazed first, and that comparatively at so
short a distance from the castle, that the keen eyes of the
watcher, assisted by his powerful glass, could mark the red reflection
wavering and winking in the mountain loch at the
crag's foot.
Then Moniseed, in turn, kindled a broader and a brighter
blazo, for it flared upon the turret of a tributary chief, a friend
and fellow-soldier, as a namesake, of the O'Brien.
Then the fir-wooded ridge of Ballyfad replied; and for a
while Desmond was anxious, in the hope that it might be from
negligence or sleep that the watchers on Killahurler had failed
in their succession, and that, now wakened to their sense of
duty by this counter illumination, they might dispel his fears
by a late but welcome response.
But no light came upon those rugged summits, nor on the
heights of Carysfort beyond; and after watching them for
better than a quarter of an hour, he closed the perspective
glass with an ominous shake of the head, and turned into the
chamber lately occupied by the O'Neil, to examine into, and
if possible verify, the cause of his late suspicions.
To this task he applied himself with all the shrewd tact and
experience of a veteran soldier; and yet so poor had been the
art of the deceivers as compared to the keen-sightedness of him
they would have deceived, that he had not well stepped across
the threshold before all his suspicions were confirmed by the
first signs which met his eye—and which O'Neil, whether undervaluing
the powers of his antagonist, or unable through the
darkness to perceive the tale they told, had failed to remove
before coming out into the antechamber.
The first of these was a broken dagger lying on the floor at
the opposite side of the apartment, whither it had been driven
by the violence of the blow which forced the door—as was
clearly shewn by a fragment of its glittering blade still sticking
fast in the black oak door-post above the latch which it had
been intended to confine.
The next was the fact that the lamp-stand which O'Neil had
unquestionably overturned himself as he lay in bed, the better
to conceal the flight of his nocturnal visitor, lay just where it
had fallen, far too remote from the door to have been overturned,
as the renegade insisted, by that concussion.
The damning proof of all consisted, however, in a white
linen handkerchief of a particularly fine fabric, such as in those
days, and especially in that country, would have been carried
by no one but by a woman or a priest—which, if farther assurance
had been needed, had a border of peculiar Flanders lace.
And this, with which, as a traveller, and long a dweller of the
Low Countries, he was well acquainted, he recognised at once
as having seen it that very day in the hands of the priest, Ignatius
Daly.
“Ha!” muttered Desmond to himself, “I have not made
the Virginia voyage all for nothing; nor must they leave so
broad a trail as this, who would escape the eyes of one who
has hunted with the best of the Appalaches! Come—come,
sir priest!—we have you clear enough. It remains only to
discover whither you have flod, and by what passage.”
Thus saying, he passed round the whole circuit of the chamber,
lifting the tapestry, and examining the oaken wall beyond it,
in the hope to discover the hinges or spring of some concealed
door. But there was none; or if there were, it was concealed
so skilfully that it escaped his nicest scrutiny. His next
search was the floor, and here, frustrated in the first place, he
confidently expected that he should find a trap. But here he
was more decidedly at fault than before. For the chamber,
being but small, was floored with undivided planks running
from wall to wall unbroken, and as no one of these exceeded
seven or eight inches in width, it was impossible at a glance
that any aperture could be wrought in one of these, capable
of admitting the body of a man.
Then he returned to the walls, and proceeded to sound the
wainscoating round the whole circuit of the room with his
dagger's hilt; but here again his art failed him; for it appeared
that there was a small space all around between the
woodwork and the wall, so that all alike sounded hollow to the
blow.
Baffled, but not yet balked, he paused a moment to reflect,
and then turned with a smile on his face into the other room,
and returned in an instant, bearing in his hand a small lighted
taper of fine virgin wax.
Stooping down, he applied the flame of this to the open crack
or crevice at the junction of the surbace and the floor, and thus
once again made the circuit of the chamber. The joiner's
work of those days was far less complete and elaborate than it
is now; and few doors or windows in the newest and most
gorgeous edifices but let in their currents of cold air. Florence
taper's flame flicker and flare incessantly in the draught that
rushed in through the ill-fitted wainscoating. But at length,
when he reached a spot, where, though the joint appeared no
wider than elsewhere, the flame was blown sheer out, he
laughed a silent laugh, marked the place by sticking his poniard
erect in the floor, and then brought from the outer room
the larger lamp, which he set down on the centre-table, and
his long Toledo blade still in the scabbard.
This he now drew. It was scarcely thicker than a sheet of
paper, and of a temper so exquisite that the point and hilt
might be bent until they met, and held in one hand, with no
very great exercise of strength. Kneeling down, he thrust this
fine blade in horizontally to the crevice, at several points before
he came to the place which he had marked, and easily
ascertained that the space between the oaken wainscoating
and the stone wall of the turret was something less than a foot
in depth. But when he reached the place indicated by the
dagger, precisely as he had expected, the whole length of the
blade passed in without finding any obstacle even at its extremity.
By making the blade vibrate, which he could do with
ease, he likewise ascertained that there was a cavity at that
point, far below the floor of the room; and by running the
blade laterally to and fro, he discovered that the width of this
hidden opening was precisely equal to that of one compartment
of the pannelling.
“There is no secret any longer here,” he said quietly, as he
arose to his feet. “Daly did visit him, and here is the secret
door from which he came. It remains only to see how it
opens. But for that time presses not. Now let us see to these
beacons, how they burn.”
And with the words he again entered the antechamber, and
going to the window, smote his breast the instant he had looked
forth into the night. “Alas!” he exclaimed; “alas!—it is
too true! They are upon us, and in force!”
The light on Ballyfad, which had so brightly blazed a
short half-hour before, the third light only from the castle
walls, was black as night already; while those two nigher
home, and those from Muckla Hill to Shranamuck, flared
broadly to the sky as ever.
That broad and rapidly-increasing band of blackness indicated
past a doubt the approach of the Puritan invaders.
Desmond now hesitated not a moment, but was just rushing
down the stair to seek O'Brien, when he heard steps ascending—and,
followed by his page, the earl stood before him.
“What next, good cousin?” cried O'Brien cheerfully.
“The men are all gone forth, save a score of guardsmen. We
will have beef enough ere now to feed five hundred men a
twelvemonth.”
“We shall need it,” replied Desmond gravely. “I pray
you send the boy for Ulick; you have great confidence in
him?”
“Unlimited! Go seek him, Torlogh!”
“And lead him hither, but secretly; and, for your life! let
no man know where we hold council.”
The boy bowed and left the room; and rapidly Desmond
shewed all that he had seen, all that he had deduced, all that
was now as clear as day. The earl too recognised the priest's
handkerchief—and it remained only to discover whither the
passage led, and what must be done to oppose the Puritans.
Ulick returned with the page; and merely telling him in
brief that the O'Neil was surely proved a traitor, and desiring
him, with Con's assistance, and such of the vassals as should be
needed, to cast him as quietly as might be into the dungeon
cell beneath the massy-more, the earl gave him his signet-ring,
dismissed the page, and turned once more to hold council with
his best adviser.
Two things were to be first determined—whether to abide
the Puritans within the walls, or break forth and attempt to
join the ranks of Ormond.
Whether to attach the priest at once for treason, or to meet
his deep villany with a face of profound confidence.
And it was well nigh impossible to decide on either course,
so great and so nicely-balanced were the obstacles to all.
The impossibility of any long defence, and the general good
of the royal cause, calling, as it did, loudly for a concentration
of its partizans, plead loudly for an attempt to break forth and
join the duke in the north.
The number of ladies in the castle, the great age and infirmity
of the countess, whom it were equally impossible to carry
with them or to abandon to the Puritans, seemed to make
flight impracticable, as surrender and resistance were already
hopeless.
Again, sound policy, and self-defence, and justice appeared
all alike to demand putting the priest at least in temporary
durance, until the present peril should be overpast. While on
the other hand, the difficulty of believing that, however he
might plot, and scheme, and struggle for ascendancy and power
among his own people, a priest of the true church should
play the traitor, yielding up his own sheepfold to the wolf, rendered
even those two clear-headed and unsuperstitious leaders
doubtful what it were best to do, in very truth and wisdom.
When policy, however, and expediency were considered, both
felt that it were to risk the very foundation of their own honor
and authority, even over the most devoted of the clan, to attempt
to lay the secular arm upon the revered person of the priest.
This point was, therefore, soon determined—to keep the
priest under strict surveillance, but to hazard no overt action
until he should so commit himself as to leave not a doubt of
his guilt.
While they were yet debating what should be done on the
greater and more momentous question, a bugle was so clearly
and so shrilly winded at the foot of the castle hill, before the
lower gate-house, that Desmond and O'Brien felt instantly
convinced that the crisis was at hand.
So still was the night, and so small the actual distance in a
direct line, although the traverses of the ascent made it both
long and tedious, that they could hear a brief parley from the
barbican, though the words they might not distinguish; and
then the creaking of the rising grate, and the clatter of the falling
drawbridge, met their ears.
Without one word, with scarcely one glance interchanged,
they hurried down the winding stair, and reached the castle
court, just as Ulick returned, breathless, pale, and agitated, to
state that Hugh O'Neil could not be found anywhere within
the castle.
Interesting as at any other time such news would have been
to both the hearers, all thought of their own danger; all care
for the miserable traitor was merged in the absorbing, thrilling
eagerness, with which they heard from without the walls
the cry:
“Tidings from the host! A messenger from the duke!”
“The gates were thrown open at the word, and supported
on each side by three of the earl's men-at-arms, whose united
strength barely sufficed to keep the wretched jade from falling,
spur-galled, and foam-embossed, what had once been a
noble courser reeled into the court, bearing a man so spent
and exhausted that he could scarce keep his saddle.
His last breath had well-nigh been expended in that keen
bugle blast.
They lifted him from the saddle; and as they loosed their
hold upon the horse, it stumbled, rolled over, and expired
within a yard of the earl's feet; while the rider, almost fainting,
could not speak a word, though the fate of hundreds hung
upon his tongue, and gold, more than he ever saw or dreamed
of, would have recompensed his ready speech.
| CHAPTER VII. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh | |