Red Hugh Read online

  Hugh felt the blood drain from his face. He turned to The O’Donnell. ‘Father? Please! He’s lying, isn’t he? Tell me he’s lying.’

  But the old man only mumbled incoherently. Tears trickled down his cheeks.

  Fitzwilliam smiled grimly. ‘They were executed, Master O’Donnell – three hundred of them – slaughtered like the wild beasts that they were, and their carcasses thrown into a bog. And thus will perish all who dare to raise swords against the English crown.’

  Hugh did not speak – there were no words for what was in his heart.

  Somehow he got himself through the rest of that interview and back to the safety of the gate-tower. He sat on the windowsill staring out across the rooftops – mute and shivering. Eoghan and Donal watched him in consternation. He tried to tell them what had happened, but the words still would not come. Rage, shame and misery fought in his head till he thought he would go mad. Vengeance, he thought – a life for a life, a death for a death. Fitzwilliam cannot keep me here for ever. Before I am through I will make him curse the day he set foot in this country and his old, red, hag of a queen will have nightmares about Hugh Roe O’Donnell.

  On November the fourth, Fitzwilliam left Dublin on a triumphant tour of the north – ‘To make certain no Spaniards remain at large in Ulster,’ he told the Privy Council. ‘To see what Spanish treasure he can lay his hands on,’ jeered the horseboys in the stableyards. He returned on Christmas Eve, and his return brought more bad news – this time for Eoghan. The Lord Deputy had brought two prisoners back to Dublin with him, further pledges, so he said, for the rents O’Donnell kept promising but somehow always failed to deliver. One of them was Sean O’Docherty of Inishowen, the other Eoghan mac Toole O’Gallagher – Eoghan’s father. Eoghan was beside himself with rage when he heard the news. He demanded to see his father and came back from the reunion in such a murderous mood that Hugh and Donal feared for his safety. ‘I’ll kill the swine,’ he swore. ‘If they hang me for it, I’ll find a way to kill him.’

  ‘And what will that achieve?’ asked Donal. ‘One Englishman dead, you with your head on a spike over the gate and your father maybe going the same way? Be patient, Eoghan. Your day will come. Revenge is like wine – it improves with the keeping.’

  ‘Ha!’ snorted Eoghan. ‘I’ll make wine out of his blood and send it to England as a New Year’s gift for the old queen!’ He picked up his own drink and hurled it across the room to splatter on the wall. ‘And I’ll give his head to the stable boys for a football,’ he added darkly.

  ‘And put up those two spindly legs of his for goal posts,’ suggested Hugh. They all laughed, even Eoghan, and the battle light died slowly in his eyes. ‘Ah, you have the truth of it,’ he confessed. ‘I’ll bide my time – but I’ll not be forgetting, mind.’

  The following day – Christmas Day – Fitzwilliam announced that the religious celebrations would take the form of a thanksgiving for the defeat of the Armada. The whole garrison, he decreed, would attend morning service in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral – and that included the hostages.

  There was outrage in the gate-tower.

  ‘Is it ourselves to be giving thanks for English victories?’ demanded Eoghan. ‘They’ll not get me inside the doors of their church.’

  ‘They will though,’ said Donal sadly. ‘They’ll drag you there in chains, and you bellowing and kicking all the way, if they want to.’

  ‘Bellowing and kicking,’ said Hugh with a brittle laugh. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

  They looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’ asked Donal.

  ‘I mean you can lock a cat in a kennel, but you can’t make it bark. And wouldn’t the cat be making more noise than all the banshees between here and Glenmalure and it trying to get out?’

  It was a moment before they understood him, but then Eoghan chuckled. ‘Isn’t that the truth of it?’ he agreed.

  Donal shook his head. ‘You’re mad,’ he told them. ‘Do you know what they’ll do to you?’ But Hugh knew his heart was with them.

  The hostages were marched to the cathedral in a body, under guard. It was a cavernous building – cold and unfriendly after the small, intimate churches most of them were used to. Some of the younger boys, indoctrinated from infancy on the evils of English heresy, crept through its doors like lost souls entering the jaws of hell.

  Hugh did not fear the place, but as he looked about him his heart felt starved and shrivelled. Where were the candles, the tabernacle, the soft, red glow of the sanctuary lamp? Where was the incense – that pungent aroma of mystery and benediction that enfolded you the moment you entered an Irish church? Where was the joy, the reverence? He might as well have been at a council meeting in the castle chamber.

  He tried to raise his mind to God, but all he could think of were the men whose deaths he was supposed to be celebrating: those three hundred starving wretches, slaughtered in cold blood to satisfy the blood-lust of the English queen; the thirty more – rotting now in some English prison, unless they had been ransomed – who had been sold like cattle in a bid to secure his own freedom.

  Their pale, accusing faces seemed to float out at him from the dark corners of the cathedral. He closed his eyes and tried to will his spirit back into Tír Chonaill – to Rathmullen, to Donegal, to his foster home at Castle Doe, and the friary chapel, so close to the waters of Sheephaven Bay, that, in moments of silence, you could hear the ripples breaking against the shore.

  As his mind drifted, he began to relive the majesty of midnight mass – the church softly aglow with the light of candles, the brown-robed friars, the priest in the white vestments of Christmastide. He heard the singing – the glorious simplicity of Latin plainchant: ‘Puer natus in Bethlehem, alleluia.’ The words soared heavenward, mingled inextricably with the scent and smoke of the incense, and his heart, throwing off the shackles of reality, rose to join it. ‘A Boy is born in Bethlehem, alleluia, bringing joy to Jerusalem, alleluia. With one accord let us adore …’

  The shuffling of feet dragged him back to earth. He opened his eyes. The Dublin gentry, resplendent in their foreign attire, had risen for the singing of the processional hymn. Their alien music shattered his daydream. Something snapped inside him. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Heretics,’ he roared. ‘Damned English heretics!’

  Pandemonium erupted. As men-at-arms rushed over to silence him, the other hostages took up the chorus. They yelled, they whistled, they hooted and stamped their feet. They fought and struggled with their guards, till eventually they were all dragged from the cathedral and hustled, battered but triumphant, back to their prison.

  Hugh, Eoghan and Donal were thrown into a cell beneath the gate-tower. ‘And there you can stay till after Epiphany,’ Stephen Seagar told them furiously. ‘And we’ll see how you enjoy a diet of bread and water for twelve days. If you behave like animals, then, by God, that’s how you’ll be treated.’

  He went out, slamming the door behind him. The boys looked at one another. Eoghan began to laugh. ‘They’ll not be taking us back there in a hurry.’

  Donal rubbed his jaw. ‘Isn’t that the truth of it. A painful victory, but worth every bruise, I’m thinking.’

  Hugh sat on the floor and leaned his back against the wall. The anger had drained from him and he felt very tired. Had it been a victory? It was hard to tell. All he knew was it had left him more miserable than ever. The dead Spanish faces still haunted him, and images of home tormented him with homesickness. The eagle high above the Fanad peninsula, snow falling softly over Bearnas Mór, the dark, bubbling waters of Lough Swilly – he yearned for them with an ache that was almost physical. Would he ever feel grass beneath his feet again, or watch trees bending in the wind, or dip cupped hands into a running stream?

  He closed his eyes and, tipping his head back against the wall, began to sing – softly at first but with a growing resonance. His voice drifted out through the grille high in the wall and floated across the courtyard. Churchgoers, returning to the castle from their disrup
ted service, paused for a moment to listen, before hurrying in to their Christmas dinners.

  ‘Veni, veni, Emmanuel

  Captivum solve Israel,

  Qui gemit in exilio,

  Privatus Dei Filio.

  Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel

  Nascetur pro te Israel.’

  Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,

  And ransom captive Israel,

  That waits in lowly exile here,

  Until the son of man appears.

  Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel

  Shall come to thee, oh Israel.

  Seven

  IT WAS A lonely Christmas, but no worse perhaps than any other spent in captivity – and at least they had one another for company. After twelve cold and hungry nights, Donal and Eoghan were finally released back to their room in the gate-tower. Hugh, however, found himself hauled off for another interview with the Lord Deputy. ‘And right well he knows where to look for the ringleader in this business,’ said Seagar. ‘You have been nothing but trouble since the day you arrived here. You’ll be lucky if you escape with a beating. If I were the Lord Deputy, I’d throw you into one of the underground dungeons in the “grate” and leave you there.’

  ‘And bring the northern clans down about your ears like a hornets’ nest,’ jeered Hugh. ‘You are a fool, Seagar. Fitzwilliam dare not punish me. My father and Hugh mac Ferdoragh learn of everything that passes here. They would make a noose out of his own guts for the man who laid a hand on me.’

  It was a comforting boast, but not very truthful – and Hugh knew it. Despite his bravado he had a battle to hide his fear when he was ushered into the Lord Deputy’s presence.

  But Fitzwilliam, it seemed, was in a generous mood. He greeted the boy with a smile and beckoned him forward, waving Seagar back to wait by the door. The Lord Deputy was seated behind a huge oak table, and he had someone with him – Miler Magrath, the Archbishop of Cashel. Magrath had been a Catholic before he had seen the light – and been well rewarded for his conversion. The Archbishop smiled unctuously at his young countryman. Hugh scowled.

  ‘Be seated, Master O’Donnell,’ invited the Lord Deputy. Hugh looked at the low stool, deliberately placed, he suspected, so the two men would be able to look down at him. He debated whether to refuse it, decided it was not worth the effort and sat.

  The Lord Deputy leaned back in his chair and studied him, much as one might appraise a puppy presented for inspection. Hugh stared back. If Perrot had resembled a bull, then Fitzwilliam, he decided, was a fox – nervous and fussy, with sharp eyes and a shrewd, narrow face. He remembered what Hugh mac Ferdoragh had said about the man – that he was not wealthy, and might therefore be bribable. Was it true? Did those eyes reflect greed or only meanness?

  Finally, as Fitzwilliam continued to stare at him, his curiosity turned to irritation. ‘Is there something amiss with my face, my Lord Deputy?’ he demanded. ‘Have I leprosy perhaps – or the first signs of smallpox?’

  Fitzwilliam only smiled. ‘On the contrary, Master O’Donnell, it is a very pleasing face – well-favoured and intelligent. I can see why your father sets such store by you.’

  ‘Then why do you keep me a prisoner in your castle when I should be at his side?’

  ‘Come now, Master Hugh, we have been through this before. It was not I who sent that ship to Lough Swilly.’

  ‘But it is you who keeps me here. Does that make you less guilty?’

  ‘Enough.’ Fitzwilliam was starting to lose patience. ‘You are here by Her Majesty’s command. You know as well as I do, the custom of hostage is a perfectly legal one. Does not your own father take pledges from his client chieftains?’

  ‘Not by abduction. I am not a pledge, I am a prisoner.’

  ‘You draw a fine distinction.’

  ‘I do not. Hugh mac Ferdoragh gave pledges last time he came to Dublin. Were they locked up in the gate-tower and threatened with chains if they caused trouble? No. They were lodged in the city with only their word to hold them.’

  Fitzwilliam pretended to consider this statement. ‘And would you give your word if it were asked of you?’

  ‘Would you take it if I gave it?’

  The Lord Deputy did not answer and Hugh knew he had won that round. Archbishop Magrath broke the silence. Folding his hands over his Book of Common Prayer, which lay on the table in front of him, he said, speaking in Latin for Fitzwilliam’s benefit, ‘I was grieved, Master O’Donnell, to learn that you and your friends have refused spiritual consolation.’

  It took Hugh a moment to realise what he was talking about. It was hardly the way he would have described the Christmas fiasco. ‘We have not refused it, Master Magrath,’ he said coldly. ‘We have been denied it.’

  ‘Indeed? That is not how it was told to me, but if it be true, it can soon be remedied.’

  ‘You mean we may have a priest to say mass for us?’

  ‘Indeed, I do not. I mean there are many good churchmen in Dublin who would be pleased to instruct you in the true faith.’

  ‘We do not want your heresies. We want our mass.’

  ‘You are being impertinent, boy,’ broke in Fitzwilliam. ‘And it is your popish mass that is heresy – seditious blasphemy gabbled in an incomprehensible tongue.’

  ‘I do not find Latin incomprehensible.’

  ‘Perhaps not – you have been taught to speak it. But what of your humbler clansmen? Of what benefit to them are scriptures read in a language they cannot understand?’

  Hugh stared at him. Was the man really as stupid as he appeared? He stretched a hand across the table. ‘Show me the book you use for your services,’ he demanded of Magrath. The Archbishop handed him his prayer book. Hugh opened it. He turned a couple of pages, then held it up triumphantly to Fitzwilliam. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘It is all in English.’

  The Lord Deputy looked perplexed. ‘Well, of course it is. What did you expect?’

  Mother of God! This was worse than teaching the catechism to a six-year-old. ‘My clansmen, those humble folk who do not speak Latin, they do not speak English either – and no more do I.’

  Light dawned in Fitzwilliam’s eyes. He smiled reassuringly. ‘You need not be ashamed of your ignorance. What opportunity have you had to learn better – or your countrymen – living the remote and savage lives you do? But all that is going to change. It is Her Majesty’s greatest wish that you should be taught and civilised.’

  ‘Civilised! And … and it is her belief that to speak English is to be civilised?’

  ‘Of course. That is the start. With the language come the customs and the manners. Once you understand our ways you will see how much better they are. We will teach you to build proper houses, and towns and –’

  I am going to scream, thought Hugh. It is like beating your head against a wall. ‘We do not want your towns,’ he said patiently, ‘nor your houses nor your customs nor your language. We are …’ He took a deep breath. ‘WE – ARE – NOT – ENGLISH.’

  Fitzwilliam’s understanding smile expanded across his whole face. ‘Of course you are not, but that is not your fault. We shall just have to do the best we can.’

  Hugh stood up. Blood sang in his brain. He watched his own hands lay the book down on the table. He saw them open it and tear out half a dozen pages. He watched his fingers rip the paper into tiny shreds and fling them like a snow-storm into Fitzwilliam’s face. ‘To hell with your English prayer book,’ he exploded. ‘And to hell with everything else English, too.’ And he turned to storm out of the room.

  Seagar, who had been waiting patiently by the door, grabbed him by the collar and one wrist, jerked his arm up behind his back and twisted him round to face the Lord Deputy. Fitzwilliam stared at him in amazement. Then – ‘Put him back in his cell and let him cool his heels there for a few more days,’ he ordered the Constable. ‘Let us hope it restores him to his senses.’

  Seagar marched the boy out. Fitzwilliam sat in bewilderment staring at the place where Hugh had stood. What on earth ha
d he said or done to provoke such an extraordinary outburst? He wondered whether to ask the Archbishop, but decided against it. Magrath was Irish himself and, despite his loyalty, not quite to be relied on. Fitzwilliam recalled his predecessor’s assessment of young O’Donnell. Well, Sir John, he thought grimly, it seems there is, after all, one point on which we both agree. You can do your best for these barbarians – dress them decently, educate them, give them a veneer of civilisation – but then, just when you think you have them eating out of your hand, some unpredictable little incident sets them off again and they revert straight back to their old savagery.

  He sighed, thinking of the lucrative offers he had been made in Donegal and Dungannon – the veiled suggestions, the whispered promises. He had been very tempted, but the risk was simply too great. His duty was clear.

  Taking his leave of Archbishop Magrath, Fitzwilliam returned to his private chamber and the letter he had begun to write earlier in the day – a report to Her Majesty’s Privy Council. Dipping his pen into the ink, he added another careful sentence. And further would I warn you, he wrote, of the dangers that might grow unto this miserable realm, by letting loose the reins unto so harebrained and ingracious an imp as O’Donnell’s son.

  The ‘harebrained imp’ spent another ten days in the cell beneath the gate-tower, reflecting on his ungracious behaviour. He could have avoided it. ‘The Lord Deputy is prepared to be magnanimous,’ announced Seagar after the first day. ‘An apology is all it will take to unlock your door.’ But Hugh could not bring himself to give one. What had he to apologise for? Fitzwilliam was the one at fault, with his absurd notions about civilisation.

  Did the Lord Deputy really imagine his English manners, his language or his ridiculous clothes were things any sane Irishman would ever covet? Did all Saxons hold the same belief? If so, then their conceit was only matched by their stupidity.