Red Hugh Read online

  Hugh told Seagar what the Lord Deputy could do with his magnanimity, gritted his teeth and put up with his solitary confinement.

  Eventually, however, Fitzwilliam decided the boy had been punished enough. He was let out and Seagar – with many threats of what would happen if he misbehaved again – escorted him back to the gate-tower. It was a great relief. Despite his bravado, Hugh had been growing heartily sick of his own company. He was also spoiling for exercise. Even the confines of the castle yards would seem like freedom after three weeks in a cell. And he could hardly wait to see Eoghan and Donal again and tell them about his confrontation with Fitzwilliam and Magrath. Eoghan, especially, would enjoy the story.

  He ran up the gate-tower stairs, two at a time, leaving Seagar to plod after him, but when he flung open the door of their room it was neither of his friends who greeted him. Instead, he was met by two other hostages, Hugh O’Toole and Art Kavanagh. He knew both these young men. Hugh was the brother of Felim O’Toole of Castlekevin and brother-in-law to the notorious Fiach mac Hugh. He had been given as a pledge for Fiach’s good behaviour when the Glenmalure chieftain attended Perrot’s farewell celebrations. And, in typical fashion, the English had forgotten to release him. Art Kavanagh had come quite recently, as pledge for one of his kinsmen. He was older than most of the others and already had a reputation as a swordsman.

  Hugh stared at them. ‘Where’s Eoghan? Where’s Donal?’ he demanded. He swung round accusingly on Seagar. ‘What are you after doing with them?’

  Seagar smirked. ‘They’ve abandoned you,’ he jeered. ‘They must have grown tired of your company.’

  Hugh didn’t understand. Alarming possibilities rioted through his mind, but Art Kavanagh reassured him. ‘They escaped,’ he explained with a broad grin.

  ‘Escaped! How? When?’

  ‘Two days ago. Didn’t someone accidentally leave a door unlocked and they through it and off like the wild hunt.’

  ‘But …’ Hugh’s mind reeled. People didn’t escape that easily from Dublin Castle. There was more to this than Art was letting on. Money must have changed hands somewhere along the line and he had a pretty good idea who had been the giver – and the taker. ‘I want to see Eoghan mac Toole O’Gallagher,’ he demanded.

  ‘Do you now,’ said the Constable. ‘And who are you to be making demands?’

  Nevertheless, the request must have been passed on to the Lord Deputy, for a couple of days later Hugh was permitted to visit Eoghan’s father. It was a strained meeting. Hugh felt betrayed. Eoghan mac Toole had been his foster father for several years – had treated him as his own son. How could he now have abandoned him so shamefully? ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he demanded as soon as they were alone together. ‘You bribed the Lord Deputy and he to turn his back while Eoghan and Donal escaped.’

  ‘I did,’ admitted O’Gallagher.

  ‘And you knowing all the time that I was locked away and not able to go with them. Was your purse not big enough for three of us?’

  The older man shook his head. ‘Ah, Hugh, do you think we did not try? I, your mother, Hugh mac Ferdoragh – a king’s ransom we offered for you, but for all his greed, Fitzwilliam is no fool and you are the most valuable hostage he holds. The English queen is as cruel and grasping as the Morrigu – and as little forgiving of those who cross her. What use could your man make of all our gold, and he with no head on his shoulders?’

  Hugh said nothing. He felt cold and empty. The claws of the old red queen clutched at his entrails like meat hooks. She could keep him here forever – till he grew old and feeble and his heart broke and he died. He wanted to be happy for Eoghan and Donal, but the sense of abandonment was almost unbearable. It was as though someone had kicked his feet from under him and left him drowning in a bog.

  His foster father put strong hands on his shoulders. ‘Have faith, son. We are not after deserting you. Hugh mac Ferdoragh has powerful friends. If he can’t buy your freedom, he’ll find a way to steal it – and mine too, eventually, please God.’

  His voice faltered over those last few words. Hugh felt a prick of conscience. In the heat of his own disappointment, he had forgotten that O’Gallagher, also, was a captive. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no right to say the things I did.’

  He crossed to the window and looked out at the familiar skyline. The rooftops were grey and wet, but the clouds were thinning and there was a rainbow in the western sky. He gazed at it. It arched across the heavens – a bright promise, stretching from Dublin to Donegal. And somewhere beneath it, Eoghan and Donal were making their way north to freedom. Hope crept back into his heart. ‘God guide the journey,’ he whispered, and he smiled at O’Gallagher.

  Eight

  IN A PUBLIC show of precaution against further accidents, Fitzwilliam ordered that, from now on, the more valuable hostages were to be moved to stronger prisons each night though they still spent their days in the gate-tower. On the first evening of his so-called freedom, Hugh found himself back in his old cell beneath the gate-tower.

  It was difficult to keep cheerful, alone in the darkness after the door had closed. But he knew things could have been a lot worse. At least this cell was dry and reasonably clean. He had unpleasant dreams sometimes about those other prisons he had never seen – the terrible dungeons in what they called the ‘grate’.

  The first three nights passed without incident, but on the fourth he was jolted from sleep by footsteps clattering down the stairwell. He sat up in alarm. In the blackness he heard a key rattle in his lock, the door swing open, English voices growling incomprehensibly. And something – someone? – was thrust into the cell. Then the door slammed and was locked again.

  He peered into the darkness. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

  ‘Hugh?’ croaked a weary voice. ‘Hugh, is it yourself?’

  ‘Donal!’ He scrambled across the floor and flung his arms round his friend. Donal shivered. His clothes were wet. His hands and cheeks felt as cold as marble. He sagged in Hugh’s arms as though his legs were too weak to support him.

  Hugh dragged him over to the sleeping place, packed the straw round him and spread his own cloak over the top. He touched Donal’s face. It was like touching a corpse. ‘Mother of God,’ he breathed. ‘What are they after doing to you?’

  Donal tried to speak, but his teeth were chattering too hard. Hugh laid a hand over his mouth. ‘Leave it rest,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep. You can tell me in the morning.’

  Donal muttered incoherently. His eyes closed. After a while his muscles relaxed and his breathing became deeper and more regular. Hugh’s mind was in turmoil. What had gone wrong? Where was Eoghan? Had he been recaptured too? Hugh sat down beside Donal, intending to watch over him while he slept, but his own eyes were heavy and he was bitterly cold without his cloak. After shivering for what seemed ages, he finally burrowed into the straw beside his friend and fell asleep.

  He was wakened by the footsteps of the guard, coming to escort them back to the gate-tower. Sitting up, he pushed straw out of his face and looked over at Donal. The older boy was asleep. It was still too dark to see his face properly but his cheek was warm to the touch and he appeared peaceful and relaxed.

  The door opened and the light of a lantern flooded the cell. Donal stirred. His eyes opened. He raised himself on one elbow and stared around him as if trying to remember where he was. ‘Ah damn it!’ he swore, and sank back into the straw again.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Hugh dryly. ‘Will I order the stewards to bring food for you?’

  Donal sneezed.

  It was a lame horse had brought him undone. ‘And we after reaching Glenmalure with no trouble at all,’ he said sadly when they were reunited with Art Kavanagh and Hugh O’Toole in the tower-top room. ‘And Fiach mac Hugh feasting us like heroes and giving us two fine mounts to carry us north. But didn’t mine go lame on me, and we no more than a cock’s crow from Drogheda? I had to walk her and they seized me at the bridge.’

  ‘And Eog
han? asked Hugh O’Toole.

  ‘Eoghan was still mounted, so I shouted at him to run – no sense us both getting caught. He went through that town as fast as a dose of pox through an English castle and, the last I saw of him, he was still heading north as though the hounds of hell were at his heels.’ He grinned. ‘And so they were, in a manner of speaking.’

  They all laughed. ‘A good man it would take to outride Eoghan O’Gallagher, and him on a good horse and the scent of home in his nostrils,’ observed Art Kavanagh. ‘And they brought you straight back to Dublin?’

  ‘They did – and with the weather that was in it, and the soldiers cursing and cuffing me all the way, wasn’t I glad enough to see the place.’ He looked around the room and grinned defiantly, but Hugh was not deceived. To have tasted freedom, and then had it snatched away like that – he could imagine how his friend was feeling.

  Luckily Donal took nothing more than a heavy cold from his adventures. Within a few days he was fully recovered and life slipped back into its old routine. Boredom was the chief enemy. They had their liberty in the yards during the daytime but there was little to do except talk, play ficheall and brandubh with the other hostages and read books – Latin texts provided by their captors or the few Irish ones smuggled in by visitors.

  At least they were still allowed visitors. Hugh O’Toole’s brother, Felim, came frequently and several of Hugh mac Ferdoragh’s friends. They brought gifts and news from home – though the news was a mixed blessing. Conditions in Tír Chonaill were becoming increasingly grim.

  ‘The O’Donnell is failing fast,’ Felim told Hugh sadly, ‘and the Lord Deputy takes advantage of it. Fitzwilliam still has his pack of dogs in Donegal Friary. And your half-brother, Donnell, is rallying his supporters and preparing to depose your father.’

  ‘And my mother?’ asked Hugh anxiously.

  Felim chuckled. ‘The Iníon Dubh is gone to Scotland to hire gallowglasses. And didn’t she burn down Donegal Castle before she went, to keep it out of the hands of her stepson and his English allies?’

  And she the wise one. But the images conjured up by Felim’s words were almost unbearable. Donegal Castle a charred ruin; drunken soldiers still carousing in the cloisters of the friary – Hugh’s mind revolted against these horrors and the frustration of his own helplessness nearly drove him insane. ‘I should be there,’ he raged at Donal, in the confines of their night-time prison. ‘I should be there with my mother – I should be at her side with your father and The MacSweeney Doe – not rotting in this stinking hole.’ And he pounded his fists on the wall.

  ‘We should both be there,’ said Donal patiently. ‘But we’re not, and ranting and raving will change nothing. The best thing you can do, and you wanting to help them, is to pray for them.’

  So he tried, but it was useless. Even his faith seemed prisoner in this place. His thoughts went round like rats in a barrel and finally came back to fester in his head. He found himself railing at God – who had once sent an angel to break Saint Peter out of prison – for not doing more on his behalf.

  The Iníon Dubh was back in Ireland before the end of summer, and in September Felim at last brought a piece of good news. Donnell O’Donnell was dead. ‘A battle there was,’ declared Felim. ‘A great uproar of a fight near Doire Leathain between his army and the gallowglasses of the Iníon Dubh. All day long they say it raged, up and down and to and fro, as fierce as the legendary cattle raid of Cooley. And your half-brother getting his death at the hands of The MacSweeney Doe’s men.’

  Donnell dead! Hugh’s first instinct was to cheer. Later, though, as his glee abated, it left behind something horribly like guilt. He did not grieve for Donnell. He had hardly known the man – for all that they were half-brothers – and Donnell had certainly never wished him well. But Hugh knew the real reason for his death. Donnell had stood between Hugh and the chieftaincy and the Iníon Dubh had dispatched him without remorse.

  He was the second such pretender she had removed. And from a bog on Inishowen three hundred Spanish souls still cried out for vengeance. The blood-debt was rising all the time, and he trapped behind the walls of Dublin Castle – a playing piece, shuffled round a political ficheall board and as powerless as a carved token to influence the playing of the game.

  Another Christmas passed – the third of his captivity, another Easter, another summer. Hugh mac Ferdoragh continued to petition and intrigue on Hugh’s behalf, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Fitzwilliam seemed to find them amusing. ‘He wastes his efforts,’ he informed Hugh, during one of their interviews. ‘No man in the castle dare take his money, and the Privy Council are unshakable in their resolve to keep you here. But they encourage him to beg. It keeps him obedient and submissive.’

  Hugh said nothing.

  ‘He claims you are his son-in-law.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  Hugh thought carefully. ‘Would Hugh mac Ferdoragh tell a lie?’

  Fitzwilliam’s lip curled. ‘The Earl of Tyrone is the most consummate liar I have ever met. That is why I am asking you.’

  ‘And am I not also a liar – an Irish savage, suckled on mendacity at my mother’s breast? Whether I say yes or no – how will you believe me?’

  The Lord Deputy scowled. ‘How indeed,’ he said disgustedly. ‘You are all the same. God knows we have tried to teach you better, but you are as untrustworthy as a pack of wolves.’ He waved a hand at Seagar. ‘Take him out.’

  Hugh went back to the gate-tower in silence. He turned the words over in his mind. He thought of the broken English promises, the gruesome trophies above the castle gate. He knew who the real wolves were.

  Winter came early that year. As the wind swung round to the north and the rain turned to sleet that flailed the castle walls and melted into dirty puddles in the yards, Hugh’s spirits reached their lowest ebb. He had been a prisoner now for three years and he was losing hope. He slept badly; he quarrelled with Art Kavanagh and Hugh O’Toole; he sat for hours at the gate-tower window, staring out across the Liffey, trying to pretend the distant hills were the mountains of Tír Chonaill. I shall go mad, he thought, and I not getting out of this place soon.

  A few weeks before Christmas they had a new visitor – an Englishman.

  ‘Richard Weston,’ the young man introduced himself, as he was shown into their room, ‘a friend of Hugh mac Ferdoragh’s, come at his bidding to see how you are faring.’

  He had an easy manner on him and fluent Irish. The others greeted him cordially, but Hugh didn’t trust him. Nicholas Barnes, the skipper of the Matthew, had spoken Irish too – and been just as charming.

  ‘And what dealings has Hugh mac Ferdoragh with a lackey of the English queen?’ Hugh demanded.

  The young man smiled, unfazed by the hostility. ‘He sends letters to you.’ He reached inside his doublet – the most garish and ridiculously padded garment Hugh had ever seen – and pulled out several folded parchments.

  Hugh took them, ungraciously. He turned them over in his hand and saw that the seals had all been broken. ‘Letters is it?’ he said bitterly. ‘And the Lord Deputy after reading every one of them.’

  Weston shrugged.

  ‘Ah, Hugh,’ remonstrated Donal, ‘where is your gratitude? The man is good enough to bring letters for us. Is it his place to be hiding them from the Lord Deputy?’

  ‘It is not then,’ said Hugh contemptuously, ‘for they might be after searching him, and tearing that fancy coat he’s wearing.’

  The young man grinned broadly. ‘Isn’t that the truth of it,’ he said. ‘And maybe finding what I have underneath it.’ He opened the door and looked quickly up and down the stairwell. Then he turned to Art Kavanagh. ‘You look like a man with a good, hefty shoulder. Put it against the door for a moment.’

  Art looked baffled, but good-naturedly he leaned his back against the door. Dick Weston removed his doublet and then, to Hugh’s amazement,
began to peel off his undershirts.

  At last he stood naked to the waist. They stared at him. ‘Chreesta,’ spluttered Donal. He began to laugh and Hugh felt the spiteful words he’d uttered twist in his heart to shame him. No wonder Weston’s doublet had looked so bulky. Underneath it, wrapped around his chest, was a length of thin, silken rope.

  ‘A present from Hugh mac Ferdoragh,’ grinned Weston, as the boys hastily unwound the rope and buried it in their clothes-chest. ‘It’s as much as I dared to bring at the one time, but you’ll be having other visitors. By Twelfth Night …’ he made an expansive gesture with his hands.

  Donal shook his head wonderingly. ‘It’s a brave man you are, Dick Weston.’

  Art and Hugh O’Toole crowded round to add their own thanks. Hugh Roe could only hang his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I spoke out of my own dirty temper. What can I say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Weston. ‘Just keep that door shut till I have myself dressed again.’ He laughed at Hugh’s woebegone face. ‘Ah, don’t be slighting yourself, Hugh Roe. Wouldn’t I be after saying the same things and I shut up in this place as long as you?’

  It was generous of him, but Hugh still felt ashamed. Won’t I learn to bite my tongue in future, he promised himself, before taking my frustrations out on others.

  Over a flagon of wine – a present left over from Felim O’Toole’s last visit – the young men discussed plans. ‘It will have to be done after dark,’ said Hugh O’Toole, ‘and no one to see us climbing down the wall. What time do they close the city gates?’

  ‘About an hour after sunset,’ Weston told him.

  They looked at one another. ‘And the guards coming to take us to our night-time cells at about the same time,’ said Donal. ‘We’ll not have much of a start on them.’