 | CHAPTER II. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
“Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,
And welcome home again discarded faith.”
Shakspeare.
At the words of the young cavalier, the points and muzzles
of the threatening weapons were lowered, it is true; but
the pistol-locks were not uncocked, nor were the swords put
up into their seabbards. The brows, too, which looked of late
while a deep angry murmur passed from lip to lip of the wild
vassals of the great O'Brien.
Bold as he was, the grim-visaged soldier gazed around him
with an anxious eye on the lowering countenances and ready
weapons of the clansmen, and turned from them to note the
expression of their leader's noble features.
“Must I speak twice?” cried Dermot, in answer, it would
seem, to this mute appeal, “or is the life of the O'Brien so small
a matter in the eyes of his kindred, that they would pay the
saving of it with the blood of the savior? And then, be thy
name what it may, fear nothing! The word of the O'Brien is
pledged for thy safety; and thou art as safe as if thou hadst
tasted of my bread and salt, and wert standing on my hearth-stone.”
“Ireland is changed somewhat since I left her,” replied the
other—who, if he had indeed been alarmed, had ceased to feel
any apprehension, as in truth he had no farther cause; for at
the words of the youthful chief, every weapon was returned to
the sheath or the girdle, and many of the company applied
themselves to couple up the bloodhounds, to drag the carcass
of the hart royal from the stream, and to fetch their chieftain's
horse across the water by an easy ford a little way below the
scene of action. “Sorely changed, I may say, since I left her.
For in my day something more than mere safety had been the return
for a life preserved, even by an enemy—much more by a
kinsman and a friend. There were such words in old Erin as
gratitude and guerdon, whatever there may be in the new.”
“If thou wouldst have reward, O'Neil,” answered the young
man, his countenance lighting up with a quick, eager lustre;
“if any price or gift can wipe out this ungrateful debt of gratitude,
name it, and have it, were it half my curldom. For the
rest, no enemy of the king is a friend to O'Brien!—no apostate
from his God is Dermot's kinsman! Name thy reward, and
take it, I say, Hugh O'Neil! And then, if thou be wise, as men
from this neighborhood. The air of Wexford is not wholesome,
I have heard men say, for heretics or regicides; and sith thou
hast saved my life, how thanklessly soever, I would not have it
said thou hadst lost thine at my people's hands; which might well
be, I trow, were my back once turned.”
“I would have reward, O'Brien, since I may not have gratitude.
But, I tell thee, fair cousin; seeing a great earl's life,
such as thine, is of no small value, so do I look for no small
guerdon.”
“Cousin me not—for cousin am I none of thine, O'Neil;
nor cousin will be called; for the rest, name thy price—the
price of blood; in truth and deed art thou a second Judas!
Name thy price, I say, man, and thou shalt have it, be it what
it may; but I deemed not that even thou hadst been so base-minded!”
“And were I even as thou callest me, a second Judas,” replied
O'Neil, with a downcast visage, full of self-humiliation
and self-abasement, “thou art wise, Dermot, and knowest that
even he repented!”
“And when he did so,” answered O'Brien, with a flashing
glance of fiery scorn illuminating his dark features, “I have
heard that `he went and hanged himself,' as I dare say thou wilt,
when thy time of repentance cometh. But never did I hear or
read that he carried back his infamy to be a shame to his tribesmen,
or his penitence to be a plea for guerdon!”
“And would it then be thy advice, O'Brien, to one who,
having perchance sinned deeply, had seen the error of his
ways, and been touched to his inmost soul by grace, that he
should go and hang himself, like Judas?”
“Methought that we spoke of guerdon—of the price of
blood;” answered O'Brien, with unchanged contempt in both
voice and manner—“and not of advice or atonement. If of the
first, I say, as I said before, ask and receive! If of the latter, I
am a soldier—not a preacher. Your new friends, I have
for the saints in Dublin, will give you good and ghostly
counsel! But look to it, in seeking his advice, however; for
Ormond is without the walls, and will be apt to solve your
doubts, if he lay hold on you, by giving you a rope at King
Charles' expense, in reward of your trusty services!”
“Faith, I am in a bad way, then,” replied O'Neil, with a
grim smile. “For sure am I, that Jones, the Purïtan, will do
the same if he lay hold on me, whatever Ormond, the Catholic,
may do!”
“In a bad way thou art then!” said O'Brien, coolly; “and
very likely to be hanged, one way or other. For not Ormond
only, but any true believer from Fair Head to Cape Clear,
will bestow a cord on thee for old acquaintance, so surely as thy
name is Hugh O'Neil! Had it not been for my stumble in
the river, and the bullet from thy musquetoon, I had done so
myself; and thou hadst now been wavering in the wind, from
yon oak tree-top, to feed that very raven which sits there, biding
for the breaking of the deer. Speak, therefore, once for all!
What wilt thou have of me? Thy presence is as a shadow in
the sunlight, to the eyes of honest men; thy very breath is
poison to my nostrils! Take what reward thou wilt, and get
thee gone. I loathe the very sight of thee, not the less that I
owe thee a life!”
A long pause followed, during which the young earl looked
upon the other with that air of half-scornful, half-loathing curiosity
with which men are wont to regard some insignificant,
but venomous and hateful reptile; while O'Neil gazed steadfastly,
but gloomily, on the turf at his feet, beating the earth
with his heel, as if he either felt indeed, or affected to feel,
both anxiety and apprehension.
Then, after some two or three minutes had elapsed, O'Brien
turned half on his heel, and called aloud to one of his attendant—sspeaking
now no longer in English, but in the Erse
tongue:
“Ho! Murtogh Beg!” he cried, “bring hither the red stallion;
and thou, Phadraigh, hold my stirrup. If he have lost
his tongue, I cannot wait till he recover it. We have full
twenty miles to ride home; and I am damaged somewhat by
that brow antler. I know not but I have a rib or two broken.
You, cousin Con O'Brien, and all, save you, Florence Desmond,
see to the breaking of the hart, and entering the young
houns. Bran and his brother did good work all day, and led
the hunt the last half-hour. Follow me home as quickly as
you may; I must, I fear, ride slowly. Take heed, above all
things, that none of the men harm him. Our honor is at stake!
Let not one of them tarry in the rear, or their skenes will be
at wild work presently. And you, sir,” he continued, turning to
O'Neil, and addressing him in English; “since you will not tell
me what reward you claim, take that!” And with the word he
threw a heavy purse, well filled with French gold, at his recreant
kinsman's feet. “And then, if you have any regard for
your neck, the sooner your foot is off the shore of Ireland altogether,
or within the walls of Dublin, the better for your chance
of saving it! Come with me, noble Desmond.”
And as he spoke, he turned away disdainfully, without giving
the slightest heed to the eager vehemence with which O'Neil
stepped forward to address him, set his foot in the stirrup, and
grasping the mane of his fine bay blood-horse with his right
hand, raised himself painfully, and not without an effort, to his
demipique.
But at that moment, stimulated by the urgent necessity of
making himself heard now or never, the Puritan, if Puritan
he were, sprang forward, utterly neglecting the well-filled
purse on which he set the heel of his heavy boot in advancing
and standing right in the road, so that O'Brien could scarce
ride on without overthrowing him:
“Hold!” he cried—“hold!”—in tones that bespoke the intensity
of his feelings—“Dermot O'Brien, hold! As you value
your plighted word—as you value the honor of your house—
through unnumbered ages, the first ungrateful, the one man-sworn
O'Brien—hold! I say, and hear me!”
“I may not do else, thus adjured,” answered the youthful
earl; “yet little do I give heed to thy warning. But be brief,
Hugh O'Neil; for it is no slight loathing which I conquer, in
holding any parley with one like thee!”
“I will be brief, O'Brien. Only hear me.”
“Come near me, Con O'Brien; and you too, cousins James
and Ulick; and you, Florence Desmond,” cried Dermot, casting
his eyes hastily over the circle of his followers—most of
whom were of his own clan and kindred. “Come nearer to
my stirrup. If I must needs converse with a traitor to his
king, his country, and his church, it must be before witnesses.
And you, my men, call the pack to your heels and break the
deer in the corrie yonder, where the clamor shall not reach us.
Now, sir, what would you of us?”
“Protection from my foes—a life for a life!” replied the
other, gloomily.
“Thou hast it. I have given thee already the assurance.—
No man of mine dare harm thee for his life!”
“It is not from thy men that I fear harm, O'Brien; nor
against them that I crave protection.”
“Against whom, then? If thou hast face to ask that I,
whose house's honor you have stained by your apostacy—whose
faith you have foresworn—whose friends and fellow-soldiers
you have consigned to the dungeons or the scaffolds of your
Parliament—that I should shield you from the indignation of
your countrymen, the sentence of your Church—it cannot be!
it is too much! Life were too dearly bought at such a bargain.”
“I seek no aid against my countrymen—and with my Church
I am reconciled.”
“A double traitor, ha!” O'Brien interrupted him again, in
accents of tenfold scorn.
“At least,” retorted Hugh O'Neil, no less proudly than the
other, “there is no nobleness nor much manhood in taunting
one who is unable to reply, or in treading upon one who is
down.”
“That is true, though the fiend himself had said it,” muttered
the earl; “and so get on with thee; I will interrupt thee
no more.”
“I will make no long tale, nor utter any protestation,” replied
the other, gravely, but not oversubmissively. “Enough,
that if I have erred, I have repented of my error; and seek—
nay, have sought, to amend it. I have seen license where I
looked for liberty; I have found persecution where I looked
for toleration; and when I found at last that the whole force
of Cromwell and his iron army were about to be turned against
my native land, I and a few bold spirits resisted—mutinied,
they call it! But his iron will and indomitable energy was
too much for us. He crushed us at a blow; the others were
all slain on the field, or slaughtered on the scaffold; I alone
have escaped by the speed of my horse and the fidelity of a
few trusty friends. I am here with a price on my head; I am
come to die for Ireland—the Church has absolved and pardoned
me. Will you be sterner than the Church?”
This plain, unvarnished narrative did more, as is oftentimes
the case, than eloquence or sophistry, to win the patient hearing
and forbearance of his listeners; and it was evident that
his twice-repeated assertion, that he was reconciled to the
Church, had produced a considerable effect upon several of
the gentlemen who stood around, and had even touched the
firmer and less credulous spirit of the earl himself.
“And when fell all this out?” the latter asked, after a pause,
in which he seemed to ponder deeply; “and, above all, what
proof have you for the truth of your assertions? You are
known for a shrewd wit, Hugh O'Neil, and a right subtle
tongue. We can take nought of hearsay here for truth.”
“At Basford it fell out, nigh Salisbury. There he surprised
us, and shot half-a-dozen in cold blood; and for the
rest, this proclamation, and this copy of the Mercury, will
vouch for the truth of what I say.”
And with the words, he drew forth from the pocket of his
rusty doublet two documents; the one, a large printed proclamation,
in the name of the Commonwealth of England, offering
a reward of three hundred pounds for the person of the
arch-mutineer, recanted Papist rebel, and relapsed malignant,
Hugh O'Neil, late adjutant and captain of the Lord General's
third regiment of Ironsides, to be delivered alive or dead
to the first civil magistrate or military commandant of the
united Commonwealth; and the other, an old copy of one of
the newspapers of that day, much soiled and rent, but still legible.
This contained a full account of the review of the army
destined for Ireland, in Hyde Park, on the 9th of May; of the
discontent of the soldiers, as there manifested; of the subsequent
arrest of Lilburne, surnamed “Trouble-world—not as
it would seem without very righteous cause,” as the pious
editor remarked; the outbreaks of the mutineers in Oxfordshire
and Wiltshire; and of the vigorous suppression of the
rebellion, and the execution of the ringleaders at Basford, by
the merciless vigor of Cromwell.
In this, also, Hugh O'Neil was mentioned as one of the prin
cipal leaders, as having been reconciled to the Church by a
proclaimed priest, a worshipper of the Beast, who, despite the
ordinances of the Parliament, had tarried in concealment, and
wrought his iniquities in secret through the land, tempting Israel
to sin, and the children of Israel to follow strange gods—
even as the priests of Baal did in the days of Jehosaphat, the
son of Nebat.
This Hugh O'Neil, it went on to say, had escaped from the
pursuit of the dragoons by the speed of his horse, and had lain
hid for some days, as it was afterwards learnt, among the ruins
of Stonehenge—“a fitting place, in very sooth,” the holy
high place to be the refuge and asylum of the worshipper of
Antichrist,” but was now believed to have made good his es
cape to the neighboring island, where no doubt, he would be
heard of soon amongst the bloodiest persecutors of the Saints,
and staunchest upholders of the son of the Late Man.
After this statement, it proceeded to launch into a fierce diatribe
against all Papists and Baal-worshippers and followers of
the Beast—cautioning the elect people of the Lord to beware
of them, even if they should profess to enter into the communion
of the saints, as whited sepulchres and wolves in sheep's
clothing, seeking confidence only in order to betray; blasphemers
and ungodly, who, without, are of mild speech and
innocent seeming, but within are ravening wolves.
Over these documents, Dermot O'Brien ran his eye quickly,
but observantly; and in less time than it has taken to describe
the mass of mingled facts and commentaries, had extracted the
truth, and skimmed over the hypocritical canting verbiage,
which last he did with a bitter, but sarcastic smile.
“These papers, both of them,” he said, after a pause, handing
them, as he spoke, to the eldest of his cousins, Con O'Brien,
for his perusal, “bear date of the sixth day of June. This day
is the twentieth of July. Strange that we have not heard of
this sooner.”
“Not strange at all,” replied O'Neil, “seeing that an embargo
has been laid on all the ports of England until after the
sailing of the General with his great army, destined to subjugate
the land, and put every Papist to the sword who shall be
found with weapons in his hand.”
“And when shall that sail?” asked O'Brien, half-tauntingly.
“Right glad shall I be to see that same great army landed
here in Ireland. Methinks my Lord of Ormond will render a
right good account of it; and the same sword to which the
worshippers of the Beast are devoted, may, by our Lady's
Saint Cromwell sail, I prithee?”
“He should have sailed ere this—he should have sailed on
the fifteenth day of July, but that the winds opposed him.”
“And how came you hither then?”
“I escaped very hardly through the North Countries into
Scotland, and thence across the Straits by a row-galley, from
Port Patrick to the Island of Magee. Thereafter, as best I
might, I journeyed southward, hoping to find you with the
Lord of Ormond, before Dublin. But you were not there
when I reached the camp.”
“Have you been in the camp, O'Neil?—and how are you
not there in safety?”
“I was in safety while there was a camp, but—”
“There was a camp. In our Lady's name! what mean you?
Speak! man, speak!”
“The night before the last, I entered the camp before Dublin,
with a safe conduct from our good father Mac Odeghan, who
reconciled me three months since in Cheshire, to the earl, and
thought to tarry there until your joining with your people,
which they told me should be ere many days. But with the
dawn yestermorning, Jones broke into our quarters with his
whole garrison, five thousand strong, drove in the outposts or
ere the alarm was given; and before the earl was in his boots,
or his men under arms, had cut the host in two parts, and
wheeling to the left, doubled it up upon the river and destroyed
it. Four thousand men were slain, twenty-five hundred prisoners,
at the least, and the earl is in full retreat upon Tredagh.
The siege of Dublin is raised, as surely as you sit there silent
and astounded; within a week Cromwell will be upon us with
eighteen thousand men—the flower of that victorious army—
which has ridden over the generous and noble valor of the
English cavaliers, and the dogged resolution of the Scottish
covenanters, unscathed and unbroken. Within a week, the
country will be swept far and near by the merciless dragoons,
and the children of Ammon to the Israelites of old, heathen
to be hewn down unsparingly, and their slaughter held
good service to the Lord. Safety will be to none but those
who band together in strongholds, and trust for defence to the
mortal sword. Dermot O'Brien, I will serve you well. Will
you afford me shelter, a home, a name, protection?”
“Can these things be?” cried the young earl, perfectly
crushed for the moment, and thunderstruck by those dread
tidings.
“By all my hopes of pardon!—by all my trust in God!” exclaimed
O'Neil, solemnly.
“In which God, O'Neil?” asked Dermot, again speaking
with a sneer; for involuntary suspicion crept into his mind whenever
he heard his apostate kinsman quote the Bible, or allude to
the religion from which he had once fallen away: “the God
of our fathers, or the God of the Saints, as you call them?—
Hugh O'Neil, how can you ask us to believe you?”
“What should it profit me to lie to you—a lie, if it be one,
which must be discovered with to-morrow's sun?”
“I know not. Thou wert ever politic and astute, Hugh;
and as I now bethink me, even in thy childhood, given somewhat
to lie!—and yet, as thou sayest, what should it profit thee?—
For by my soul, if a lie it be, and by to-morrow's dawn I will
know it, thy carcass shall swing living from the scathed pine
upon the summit of Slievh Buy, until the ravens shall devour
thy false heart-strings. Wilt thou abide the trial? Bethink
thee!—Thou hast time; I owe thee still my life. If thou be
guilty, take thy purse, for thine it is, and get thee gone. Three
days' grace shalt thou have and law, ere I or mine pursue thee!
Go with us if thou wilt; but by all that I hold most dear and
most holy, if thou have lied to us, the doom which I have said
is thine to-morrow!”
“I will abide it! I will go with thee!—and if I have spoken
truly?—”
“It shall be with thee as thou wilt. Soh! silence there!
silence those bugle-notes! This is no time for minstrelsy or
glee! If this be true that he hath told, we may be called ere
long to sound the mort for Ireland's freedom! To horse, my
men!—to horse, and home in silence!”
| CHAPTER II. Dermot O'Brien; or, The taking of Tredagh | |