In the Wake of King James; or, Dun-Randal on the Sea

Front matter

IN THE WAKE OF KING JAMES OK DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA All rights reserved IN THE WAKE OF KING JAMES or DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA By STANDISH O'GRADY AUTHOR OF "FINN AND HIS COMPANIONS," ETC. London * * * * Published by J. M. DENT & CO. Aldine House E.C., & 67 St. James's Street, S.W. MDCCCXCVI Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA ... I II. RAPPAREES, GOOD AND BAD ... 9 III. THE WATCHER BY THE QUICKSANDS 22 IV. THE LAME GIANT 32 V. THE LADY SHEELA . . . . 41 VI. THE GREAT DHOUL . . . -Si VII. ENOCH, ISRAEL, AND IMMANUEL . . 64 VIII. LOVE'S MIGHT AND POWER . . -72 IX. THE CHALLENGE 83 X. THE BATTLE, AND AFTER . . .92 XI. THE HONOUR OF THE BARRETTS . . 98 XII. DRAWING TO THE CRISIS . . . 107 GAYEST OF CONQUERORS AND BRIDE- GROOMS 122 XIII XIV.

LOUD LAMENTATION IN DUN-RANDAL . 1 37 v CONTENTS VI CHAP. PAGE XV. FLIGHT AND PURSUIT . . . -147 XVI. A RED STAR IN THE GLOOM . 1 56 XVII. THE KING'S PARLOUR . . . . 1 63 XVIII. LIEUTENANT LOCHLIN O'MALLY . -179 XIX. SECOND ASSAULT OF THE KING'S PAR- LOUR 195 XX. THROUGH DARKNESS TO THE DARK TOWER 219 XXI. PUFF, AND ALL'S OVER . . .231 POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR . . .

Chapter I Dun-randal On The Sea

I started — drew rein — and stared in silence. Never had I seen peel, tower, or castle weather stained to such a dismal hue. Blacker than blackest coal, it seemed cut out as with a giant's scissors from that gleaming panorama of sea, land, and sky. A sandy plain engirdled the base, a grey bewildered sea the waist ; the battlements showed clear and stark against wild clouds lurid with sunset. Truly, I was no antiquarian. Picturesque antiquity had no worshippers then. We did not think of castles as romantic, only as uncom fortable dwelling-places occupied by the poorer sort of gentry ; for no one lived in a castle who could afford to build a house. In the mixed A emotions with which I gazed at Dun-Randal, the thought of poverty, perhaps of extreme poverty, played its part. So I stared at the black keep starting solid black and minatory from the grey shore.

Here the Atlantic had thrust inland a great tongue of barren sand. At the base or root of this tongue rose the dismal keep which was the goal of my long journey, the seat of my nearest surviving kinsman, Sir Theodore Barrett, the acknowledged head of a family once powerful and famous, but upon which disaster in many forms had long sorely beaten. I perceived that the grim keep was the last link of a chain of castles which at some remote time, with their connecting curtains, ran across the base of this delta of sand. Between it and the juncture of grey sand with tawny grass westward lay several sandy mounds, out of which here and there ruinous black masonry struggled to view. Upon that tawny shore, a stone's throw from the sand, but in a straight line with those heaps, rose a low, square house, thatched.

It resembled the basement and one storey of some great and strong castle transformed to modern uses. Indeed, I had no doubt that this was the last link towards the west of that chain of which the black tower was the first. There was a courtyard attached, with offices, but the whole seemed deserted or uninhabited. A scrubby wood, blasted by the breath of the Atlantic, and stripped barer by early winter, tried to screen, but could not, the nakedness of that sad group. In fact, everywhere desolation seemed to reign ; the boom of the Atlantic raging afar against an iron coast sounded in my ears, and the low moan of the long waves rolling over the sand. All life seemed to have been arrested here ; neither men nor cattle were visible anywhere. The whole scene suggested some wild tale of magic and enchant ment.

A coward physically I certainly was not. I don't remember having ever shown the white feather where any ordinary or natural demand was made upon me ; but this night my mind was fretted and disturbed, filled with fears of I know not what monstrous and un natural forms of evil. The physical aspect of the country through which I had been all that day riding had, I think, predisposed my mind to the entertainment of such alarms. Born and reared in fertile, rich, well-wooded Meath, in the midst of green pastures, lowing cattle, white and golden corn-fields, abundant hus bandly, and abundant vegetation — a country inhabited by a prosperous peasantry and an affluent gentry, where the best forms of civility known in Ireland prevailed — a land of great trees and castellated mansions, where in winter the kine gave more milk than they else where did in summer — a land of cuckoos, of flitting bats in the eventide, of the soft com plaint of the wood-dove, I had been all this long mournful day riding past uncouth and horrible mountains, huge savage protuberances of ill-disguised stone, showing mysterious clefts and gashes in their horrid sides ; past melan choly bog-lakes, on which pale lilies swam weak and wan and ghost-like ; past desolate swamps, where little white fluffy things shook always to the faintest wind, and where from time to time I caught sight of " naturals," who seemed wilder and weirder than even the dismal country which they inhabited.

Of the houses which I had ridden past, some seemed deserted. From the doors of others scared faces watched me. Such faces, too, started up from behind rocks, suddenly disappearing if I looked in their direction. More than once a raven flew over my head ; then I would listen to his ominous voice croaking steadily, and tapering away till it merged in the great sil ence. Some mysterious curse seemed to brood over the whole region. Could my cousin — mine — be lord of this mournful and nigh empty land, a land over which, as I knew, the waves of our wasting civil war had never rolled. For it was the far west of Ireland, held — down to the date of the treaty of Limerick — by the lords and gentlemen who adhered to the cause of the late king, James II. ; and since the treaty and the sailing of Sarsfield and the Jacobite army for France, there had been peace on all sides.

And at the end of this melan choly ride suddenly I came as it were face to face with Dun-Randal on the Sea, the climax of a growing mystery, nay, to me, though not one of the fearful sort, the climax of a gathering terror. The poor beast upon which I had ridden since morning, and who seemed a moment before dead-beat with travel, appeared to watch the scene with as much interest as myself. Her erected ears and general air of alarm caused me to smile, and recalled me to myself. I shook away that irrational and almost super stitious feeling, and contemplated the scene anew. An island of unusual formation — for it resembled some great fish lying motionless upon the water — rose out of the sea about a mile from the root of that sandy tongue, its head, so to speak, looking eastward. The western extremity was forked or divided, com pleting that curious resemblance to a fish.

It was black-sided, and streaked tawny and grey on the back. How little I then foresaw the part which this island was destined to play in the singular adventures which were to befall me during the ensuing se'nnight. Looking again to the right and north, my eyes sweeping past the grim keep and that chain of ruined towers, I perceived, at the extreme tip of the sandy tongue which curved round a little towards the west as it ran inland, a little hamlet of thatched cabins. There was no living thing visible there, nor any sign of smoke. Shaken off for the moment, that sense of the preternatural returned upon me. The abso lute emptiness and desolation which involved all things, while there was so much of human handiwork visible, was curiously disturbing to the imagination. No note of any song-bird indeed reached my ear ; and yet the scene was not without its own melancholy music, for there sounded at intervals the crying of curlews, and, shriller and more piercing, the fugitive and elusive calling of unknown birds as they flitted in little flocks to and fro over the grey strand, while the dull booming of the breakers far away and the long roar of the waves on the sand never ceased.

A cormorant took flight from the shore-rocks, and, beating the water with his wings, flew seaward. Singular how I remember that swart ungainly bird when so much else has been expunged from memory, and with what distinctness, at this moment, after so many years, I can recall his ominous-looking form and flight. But, after all, it was upon the castle itself that my eyes were chiefly directed and my thoughts centred, standing out there in the midst of that grey desolation so strong and minatory, dominating, as it were, all this sorrowful region in its grim power. No rampart wall or bawn encircled it. No offices or any builded adjunct broke the bare outlines of its ebon regularity, ascending there black, sheer, and naked from ,the grey sand, which lay heaped around its feet, blown in mounds there, driven thither by blowing winds.

No sign of human life was visible within or around ; no smoke ascended from the battle ments of the dark tower. The only living thing which I could anywhere perceive was a solitary female figure sitting motionless with bowed head upon the sand, a black spot in the midst of all that grey desolation.

Chapter II Rapparees, Good And Bad

I HAD never met my cousin. We had taken opposite sides in our civil war ; for while I and many of my neighbours had served under King William, Sir Theodore and his sons had fought for King James during both the Irish campaigns, like loyal, if mistaken, gentlemen. In this war, as in so many others, all Ireland was divided, some taking one side, some another. I have known not only brothers and cousins, but fathers and sons who were engaged on opposite sides, according as the love of liberty or the traditions of loyalty might happen to prevail. My cousin and his sons had chosen, as I believed, the wrong side ; they had certainly chosen the unsuccessful one, and were, as I had little doubt, now sick of their loyalty. Singularly enough, Sir Theodore was asso ciated in my mind rather with thoughts droll and whimsical than any other.

One of the few things which I could recollect about my father was how he used to laugh at the Christian names which "cousin Theo " had bestowed upon his sons, viz., Enoch, Israel, and Im manuel, and how he would ring all sorts of merry changes upon those extremely Scriptural names, while my sweet mother sat silent, and could not join him in his merriment, though she would try. Divided from them by nigh the breadth of Ireland, I had seen nothing and heard little of my west-country cousins. I knew that they had lived much on the Con tinent, had returned to Ireland during Tyr connel's Viceroyalty, and had fought for King James in the two Irish campaigns. One of them I knew, Immanuel, had been publicly commended by the Duke of Berwick for his gallantry at the Boyne. Yet their politics not withstanding, the Barretts, as I have mentioned, were my nearest surviving kinsmen ; and as I was about to serve King William in the Low Countries, no sooner had I received Sir Theo dore's invitation to visit him at Dun-Randal, than I determined, peace having been restored, and all highways, as was thought, cleared of rapparees and loose people, to spend a few days with my unknown Jacobite kinsfolk in the west before turning my back upon Ireland, perhaps for ever, following the king of my choice to his foreign wars.

Nor was I now journeying to visit these victims of mistaken loyalty empty handed or giftless, for I knew that, always poor, and pursued by many disasters and calamities, the event of the war just closed might well have reduced them to sheer want. In a leathern girdle clasped round my waist I carried a sub stantial store of guineas, and in my breast a heart as charged with kindness and goodwill towards my Jacobite cousinry in the far west as my girdle was with gold bearing the joined effigies of my king and his beautiful queen. Judge, then, of my feelings when at the close of a ride so dismal as that which has been suggested I, who had been cherishing so many almost boyishly pleasant and agreeable thoughts and hopes concerning this visit, stood at last face to face with this black, ominous, and for bidding keep, Dun-Randal on the Sea.

I was alone. At the last posting station I had been unable to get myself a horse-boy. When my destination became known the various lads and young men who had at first volunteered their services one after another seemed to have discovered highly plausible reasons why they could not accompany me. I had arrived so far by simply following the directions of the master of that posting estab lishment, a grim, dour, and silent man, who, when I spoke of Sir Theodore and of Dun- Randal, closed his lips fast, and exhibited a countenance as hard and inscrutable as granite. Yet I could not mistake the way : a single horse-track led almost from his door, some twenty miles eastward, to the black tower, which my heart told me was Dun-Randal. For the last two hours I had not exchanged salutation or speech with any living wight, save two wretches in ragged Jacobite uniforms, who, at a point some twelve miles rearward, had challenged me, not with very satisfactory results to themselves.

They stood a little off the highway hard by a poorish sort of thatched cabin in the entrance of a defile. The matches of their firelocks were alight and smoking. They were rapparees seemingly, and no pleasing speci mens of their type. My response could not have been much to their minds, for ere they could guess my purpose I had them both covered with my two long holsterpistols, which I had taken the precaution to keep at full -cock, and had so disposed that I could pluck them forth in a trice. I bore some treasure on my person, and those were times in which wise travellers were wont to be on their guard. "Master Hugh Netterville," I answered, in reply to their challenge, " late lieutenant in his Majesty King William's third regiment of Irish Foot, and I travel the straight road to the house of my kinsman, Sir Theodore Barrett, of Dun-Randal on the Sea."

There was indeed little courage in this prompt action and frank speech ; only the sheerest prudence, combined perhaps with a little presence of mind. Had these rogues been right Jacobite soldiers, I might not have dared to take such a liberty with them. For contrary to what I hear on all sides of me just now, I hold that the drilled Jacobite Irish soldiery of the civil war were in no respect second to any. At present I believed that the only safe way of dealing with such rascals as the rapparees who had challenged me was to cow them with a bold front. One of them, with a ridiculous assumption of military ease and precision, replied sono rously, " Pass on, Master Hugh Netterville." "Not until you drop your matchlocks, my friends," I answered, with as intimidatory a look as I could assume. " So !

And you shall both walk abreast with me for some distance up this glen." They did so, with faces like hanged dogs, till I dismissed them, returned my pistols to their holsters, and rode forward. Had I acted other wise, I strongly suspect that a brace of bullets through my back would have been the result. Since then I had not met or seen any one save those scared, peering faces to which I have referred, which in a land so desolate made things seem almost spectral, and as though my ride into the west-land were some vivid and fantastic dream. Were these cutthroat-looking ruffians my cousin's men ? Was I about to step within some deeply devised snare ? Was the letter a forged document and decoy, the work of some secret enemy ? If so, my retreat was now barred. The rascals whom I had come over by my quickness, and dumfoundered by my sudden audacity, would take care not to be caught off their guard a second time, should I now, yielding to my thick-coming suspicions and the ugly and ominous appearances rising on all sides, determine to retrace my steps and ride back out of this accursed country.

While my attention was divided between the rueful spectacle before me and such thoughts as these, I heard behind me the sound of manly voices and the steady tramp of marching feet, noises to which I listened with a faculty of hearing sharpened by so many dim alarms and apprehensions. The sounds which now struck my ear were quite unexpectedly agreeable and reassuring. Two men, soldiers as I guessed, young, brisk, and fearless, were marching after me out of the now darkened east. I could not see them ; but the sound of footfalls may, to one who listens well, convey a great deal of meaning. In my present state of mind there was to me something very welcome in that honest military tramping. Not for a single instant did I suspect that it arose from the shambling hoofs of my late rapparee acquaint ances, or of men in the least resembling them.

Two advancing figures now took shape in the gathering gloom, and rapidly approached. I faced my horse round to meet them. As I did so the two men brought their hands to their caps with a military salute, using at the same time the customary Gaelic salutation, which in English may be expressed, "God and Mary be with you, O gentleman." (Dhe as Wirra dwith a dhinna oosal.) One was a powerful athletic youth, with lips as yet untouched by the razor, eyes bright and bold, and hair of a bright red. He was not handsome, but of a fresh, honest, pleasing, and withal soldierly aspect. His companion was smaller, lighter, and more alert. Both strode along with a certain military air of fearlessness and sang-froid. They were not in uniform, nor did they carry matchlocks, only short straight swords in plain scabbards, swords which rang pleasantly with a faint music in their loose sheathings as the young men stepped briskly along.

The smaller of the two held in his hand a little leathern wallet, such as a skilled workman might use for the portage of tools. They were certainly a refreshing con trast to the two dirty and skulking fellows who had challenged me in the pass. The taller and more athletic of the pair gazed at me for a moment with a keener scrutiny than I relished, and then suddenly looked away, but with a certain pleased, I almost thought amused, expression, as if he would hide a smile. " Have we met before ? " I asked. "We have so, your honour. I was in the Bog of Aughrim, and be the same token your honour was dressed in green and gold, and leading a file of blue Williamites, and not four perches from me where I stood, with my gun in my hand, and the same loaded and at the cock and to my shoulder." " And you had a shot at me too, you rascal, I'll warrant," I said, laughing, for the wars were over.

" Sir, I'll tell no lie," he replied. " My captain he says to me, ' Pick him off, Conahar, the big young officer in green and gold facing the Blues and speeching them,' meaning none else but your own self, sir. And says I to myself, pressing the trigger, 'That same now would be a pity, seeing he's that young and clever, and his face too much to my mind, and he with his back this minute to the bitter stroke of death.' And I steered past B your honour right-wise and shot a littler one that was behind, in green and gold too, what ever contrairy thing brought you both into the Blues at that time ; and he was a black and bitter one, too, for all his green and gold, meaning no offence to you, sir, being a war comrade of the same. And my captain, be the same token, damned my ' crooked finger ' for me."

"Then I suppose I owe you something, Conahar," I said, laughing still; "for though you seem to have shot a brother officer, and of the same regiment, I cannot say that he was in any sense my friend." So saying, I brought my hand to my pouch. To my surprise, how ever, the youth refused my intended gift, and with a decisive gesture. " You paid it already, sir, in full ; for in the races I heard your honour cry loud to the Dutchmen to give us quarter. And I owe it to your honour and no one else that my ugly face isn't looking at the roots of the daisies this blessed night. And what makes you, sir, for to be in these outlandish places to-night, if I might make so bold ? " " I visit my kinsman, Sir Theodore Barrett," I replied. "Yonder black tower, I take it, is Dun-Randal — Dun-Randal on the Sea."

He stopped, suddenly faced round, and looked at me. I was walking my horse at the time with the soldiers marching one on each side. I stopped too, almost involuntarily, and looked at him. " I'm thinking your honour is a stranger to the Barretts ? " he said, after a long pause. " That is so, Conahar," I said. " I never met them, or saw them in my life. Sir Theodore, hearing that I was about to go abroad, kindly invited me to spend a few days with him at Dun-Randal." That Aughrim story was, I believed, true. I too now at sight felt the same sort of liking for him which singularly enough even in the heat of battle he seemed to have conceived for me. I desired to indicate as much by my frankness and communicativeness, which might otherwise seem a little out of place. Indeed, to tell the truth, I felt very kindly disposed to both these young martialists.

" Fall back, Brian," he cried, with a certain authoritativeness,to his companion, who obeyed the order with military promptness. Conahar now came close up to my stirrup, and knitting his brows and lowering his voice, said with much earnestness — "Sir, guard yourself well in Dun-Randal. It was for no good they brought you here. For, I take it, you're not one of their soart." So well-meaning seemed the youth's face, so plausible his manner, so natural was it that after our singular rencontre on the field of Aughrim he should concern himself in my wel fare and set me on my guard against possible foes, and so much in harmony with my dim apprehensions did his speech seem, that I did not for a few seconds quite realise that I was hearkening to very vile insinuations urged against my own kinsman by a perfect stranger.

I was silent, but only for a moment. " Enough," I said sternly, " not one word more. I believe you are an honest fellow, but also that you are the victim of some delusion, and, in brief, and to deal quite frankly with you, I cannot listen to such language concern ing a gentleman of my blood." Bidding him a cold farewell, to which, how ever, he responded with another respectful salute, I set spurs to my horse and rode down the western slope of the ridge abutting upon that strand, and by a bridle-track which, as I guessed, led to the black tower. The stars were out now. One star of surpassing lustre shone just above the dark battlements ; it was the evening star, the radiant planet Venus.

Chapter III The Watcher By The Quicksands

When I was a young man the obligations of kinsmanship were far stronger than they are to-day. I have known many a man take the field in order to avenge a slight cast upon one who was no further related to him than that he bore the same surname. It was, in fact, impossible for me, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to hold any further converse with this young soldier, though I liked him. And yet, as I rode forward and alone down the sloping ridge along the bridle-path leading to the grey strand and the black tower, I was sorry that honour forbad me to hold further colloquy with the young man who called himself Cona har. What did I know of the Barretts, though they were my kinsmen ? Nothing. At the point where the road, or, to be more accurate, the bridle-path, met the sand there was a long bridge, or rather causeway, spanning a quicksand.

This quicksand was the work probably of a descending inland stream, which here per colated through the sand. At a certain point about half-way across the bridge, the handrail had been broken through on the left. Hard by the spot where the bridge terminated on the firm sand sat that solitary female figure which I had before observed from the crest of the ridge. She looked up when my horse's hoofs began to thunder upon the timber of the bridge. Her face was pale and still, pure complexioned, with great eyes, gentle as a fawn's, and full of sorrow. Yet it was a sweet and fair face too, that of a girl who, as I judged, was still in her teens, and had seen and known little of the wickedness of the world. "What do you here, my girl, in this lonely place ? " I said kindly. I was interested by her beauty and forlorn situation ; also in the present troubled state of my mind I desired, so far as I might with honour, to learn all that was possible about Dun-Randal on the Sea before that gloomy fortalice should gather me in.

Indeed the words, and especially the manner, of that young soldier called Conahar had alarmed me. " What do you here ? " "Waiting for the general Resurrection and the Day of Judgment," she replied. She said it quite simply, and like a little child. Her voice was low and sweet, and, like her countenance, of a refinement which seemed to suggest that she did not belong to the peasant class. I started, as well I might. The poor thing was insane. " Who lives in yonder black castle ? " I said, pointing with the butt of my riding-whip at Dun-Randal. In the same simple, quiet tones, regarding me gently, she replied, " The Great Dhoul and his sons." I sprang from the saddle, and walked towards her, leading my horse. That too loquacious youth who called himself Conahar might have entertained an unjustifiable animus against my cousin, de rived from some family feud, or originating in sheer perversity ; but this poor creature was different, plainly a simple, innocent, and trustful soul, driven mad by some great wrong.

" How have they wronged you ?" I said. She pointed to the quicksands, just below where the fractured spikes of the broken handrail showed white in the moonlight. " My man is there," she said. " It was the Great Dhoul's second son, Israel, that did it, he and his angels. My man knows I'm here. He talks to me sometimes, always with the flowing tide. Hark now," she said, bending forward and inclining her ear to the ground. I heard nothing but the roar of the long waves as they rolled ceaselessly up the level sand. " What does he say ? " I asked. "Have patience, Evish, Evisheen dhuvdheelish (little Evis, dark, sweet), 'tis I who am not far from you. The Lord Himself, high and mighty, is coming ; He is on the road, and the ropes are spun and twisted for the hanging of the Great Dhoul and all his children.

Be ready, Evish, for at the first note of the bugle I will come to you, my two arms around you, and my mouth to yours for ever and ever." Thinking it cruel to put any further questions to the poor creature, I bade her a gentle fare well, and leading my horse by the bridle, slowly walked over the sands towards the black tower. It will be admitted that, to hear my own cousin called "the Great Dhoul" even by a daft woman, was no exhilarating circumstance, coming as it did at the close of such a day, commencing with the refusals of the horse-boys to bear me company, and concluding with what I have described ; and the reader will appreciate the absence of alacrity with which I drew nigh to the great black tower, the seat of my Jacobite cousinry, now looming between me and the stars. As I paced beside my tired steed over the faintly gleaming sand, Dun- Randal seemed to wax and wax until it assumed monstrous proportions against the starry sky.