The Silver Stag of Bunratty (12 page)

There was a cold wind from the water as they made their way across the Shannon. There were no other boats on the river. Even during the daytime, there were less boats on the river than usual, for no-one travelled now unless they had to. There was danger everywhere. The countryside was full of English patrols and Irish raiding parties. Anyone who had a home with walls was taking refuge behind them and hoping that the trouble would soon die down. Stories came from the north of burning villages and captives taken.

Matthieu was shivering and Cliar smiled at him.

‘It could be worse,’ she said. ‘It could be January.’

Maude sniffed. ‘Where we come from, January is warmer than this.’

Tuan, already tired with rowing four children and a dog against the strong current of the Shannon, said: ‘Oh please, could you stop telling us how wonderful it is where you come from and how dreadful it is here? Here is where we are, let’s just get on with it.’

Matthieu said quietly: ‘And you know, Maude, in May it would be starting to get really hot, and do you remember
how awful it was in July and August? How it was impossible to go out in the middle of the day because of the sun? How fed up you used to get being stuck in for hours and the trouble you got into the times you escaped and went out without permission? I think I prefer the rain!’

‘That’s all right then, you gang up with the Irish!’ Maude huddled down with Gile held tight in her arms.

Cliar opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. There was silence. All of them wondered if leaving Bunratty together had really been such a good idea.

I wish I knew where I was going, thought Tuan. I am the one who has to lead the group – no-one else knows anything about boats or being on the water – though Cliar at least knew how to handle the oars and had done it without fuss. Matthieu, on the other hand, had been so slow and careful when he began that he drove Tuan mad, but after a while he managed quite well. Maude, impatient and unable to take any advice, was worst of all. She almost lost an oar when she flung it away in a temper after Tuan tried to show her how to stop the boat going around in circles. After this, realising that she had almost destroyed their chances of escape, Maude was quieter, but it was painful to watch her rowing, her anger and frustration at being unable to do
something she thought simple was so obvious.

‘Sure, how would you know how to row a boat and you living in the desert?’ teased Tuan, hoping to make her feel better, but all he got in return was a furious look. Soon all their hands, even Tuan’s, were red and blistered from the oars. Tuan wondered how far they would get, at the rate they were going. At least they did not have to go along the Shannon as far as Limerick town, which was full of soldiers and bridges. Four children and a dog in a boat would not have got through at all easily.

‘There’s the Maigue!’ Tuan pointed, and Cliar, who was rowing, began the approach to the smaller river that flowed from the south into the Shannon.

‘Can’t we go faster now?’ said Maude impatiently. ‘Surely it must be easier on the smaller river?’

Tuan made a face. ‘It’s still tidal so it’s still very hard work.’

Maude said nothing else but gave Cliar an apologetic glance.

They were afraid to stop, wanting to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Bunratty patrols. By the time the day was beginning to dawn, all of the children were cold, wet and miserable. They finally came to a spot in the river where it widened out into a
pleasant meadow and some sheltering beeches grew on the west bank.

‘Let’s stop for a while,’ said Cliar. ‘We must be miles from Bunratty now.’

All of them were still grumpy, and when Tuan tried to organise their tasks for making camp, Maude spat angry words at him, asking him what made him think he was in charge.

Cliar decided she had had enough. ‘For pity’s sake, let’s save our energy for making a fire and putting up branches to make some kind of shelter. Maude, will you help me with the fire if Matthieu and Tuan collect the branches?’

Maude had the grace to look a little shamefaced, though she did not go so far as to apologise to Tuan. When they had built a shelter of branches and the fire was roaring, and they were drinking the soup and chewing on the bread that Cliar had filched from the kitchen, they all felt a lot better.

The fire had long gone out when they woke up late in the afternoon, stiff and sore. They were all very silent as they packed up. Then Matthieu, who was looking at his hands in dismay, said dolefully: ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to row very well.’ His hands were a mass of blisters.

Maude’s were no better, so Cliar took out some of her precious salve and rubbed it on all of them. ‘I should have
thought of this earlier,’ she said. ‘It takes a while to work.’

Progress along the river was slower because of the children’s sore hands. The banks were no longer edged with fields and farms and grazing cattle, but with thick forest and, at times, with marshlands where birds flew out, frightened by the plash of the oars and Gile’s excited barking.

Maude, half asleep in the prow, thought how much she hated these Irish forests. All this confusion and brambles and hidden ways. How she longed for the wide view, the sky and the air of the desert. She dreamed of deserts and mountains and riders with golden shawls protecting their faces from the dry, dusty wind. She would go back, she swore to herself, she would go back to the lands of the east one day and find her father. Or at least find out what had happened to him. She would have so much to tell him.

She shivered; the woods were getting darker. The trees here were evergreens, making a black shade that was much more frightening than the lighter shade of the woods around Bunratty. A green darkness that could hide anything.

And now they had rounded a bend in the river and come to a part of the forest where the trees were somehow different … darker again, with twisted, evil shapes. Stories she had heard in the castle started to drift through her head
… wild animals like wolves – and worse, the people who had taken to the wild woods south of the Shannon, the outlaws and the murderers and the landless and masterless men who lived outside normal laws, normal ways of being. In these desperate times, it was said that some of them even ate humans …

Cliar’s mind was also on the stories of the wild men of the forest. She tried hard not to remember Janet’s grisly tales. She was still worried by the memory of how pale Dame Anna had been, fast asleep by the dead fire. She also wondered if she was really ready to leave the castle, the only home she had ever known, with its familiar sounds and smells and the safety of its walls. But if she had stayed, what would her future have been? Dame Anna might well leave the castle, and Margaret would not understand that Cliar might want more from life than to become a housekeeper like herself. Or marry one of the villagers, like Margaret’s own son, Fred. If Maude could find the courage to get away from other people making plans for her, so could she, Cliar felt. But this forest was so dark and so … so endless. All the kitchen stories came back into her head. The babies who had disappeared from woodcutters’ cottages, the children sent for water to a well at the edge of the trees who had never come back to their home …

Why was there a rustling movement on the left bank of the boat, she wondered? She glanced at Gile, but he did not seem to be alarmed. In fact, he was asleep. But there! There was the movement again. Were they being tracked by some kind of animal? Gile suddenly jumped up and started to bark furiously.

Tuan, who had been resting, took over the oars again, but when he went to take them, he thought he saw something move in the trees on the left bank. A deer, he thought hopefully; or had it been a glimpse of a fox’s red brush? If it had, the fox must be the size of a horse, for the brush had been at a man’s height. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he glanced around at his companions. All of them looked uneasy, as if they too felt that they were being watched. Yes, there were eyes watching them from the cover of the forest.

‘Do you think …’ Matthieu began, but he never got to finish his sentence, for there was a sudden rustling of leaves and the children realised that they were surrounded by the strangest group of men they had ever seen.

CHAPTER 15

F
OXFACE

he men stood on either bank of the river, bows drawn, ready to shoot. There were four of them, dressed in filthy and ragged clothes. Their faces were so covered in hair and dirt that it was impossible to tell what age they might be. Anywhere their skin showed through, it was a dark greenish colour, as if they had rubbed plants into it to help them hide in the green of the wood. Their teeth were very white and sharp in their dark faces. One of them, the man who seemed to be the leader, carried no bow but wore animal skins and a belt which held a long knife. He had a fox’s pelt draped over his head, its head hanging low over his face with its teeth set in a snarl, the brush hanging down his back. Gile began to growl and the foxman moved forward with his hand raised. He spoke slowly, in English.

‘So, this is a fine clutch of young chickens we have here.
And where might you be going, all on your lonesome with the evening coming on, in these wild woods?’

Maude stood up, almost upsetting the boat. She said proudly, ‘We are journeying up the river to meet our … our uncle, and it please you.’

‘And it may be that it does not please me at all, young maid. Have ye asked permission of Foxface for that? Have they, men?’

He turned to the green-clad archers, all of whom shook their heads and murmured.

‘No, ye have not,’ said Foxface. ‘So what’s to do, then?’

‘I did not think we needed permission to use the free waterways of this country.’ Maude’s voice did not falter.

‘Oh, ye must pay a fine, everyone must pay a fine who passes through these woods. No one comes here but us; we guard the way. So I’ll thank ye to tie up the boat and come with us.’

The children did not move. Gile growled again.

‘Now, don’t ye be looking like ye might not want to come along the way with us. That wouldn’t be nice of ye at all. We’ll treat ye gently, my chickens, of course we will. But ye have no hope of getting away from us so ye might as well come quietly. I wouldn’t like to see that fine dog of yours shot down in his prime.’

He stared at Gile, who backed up against Maude’s legs, whining softly.

Foxface continued: ‘So I’ll thank you to keep him under control, Mistress. Now, we’re going to take a look and see if ye have any knives or suchlike, and then we’re going to tie yer hands behind yer backs and loop ye one to another, for fear ye should try to escape. Look to it, men.’

The children exchanged glances, and, without a word, gathered their bundles and got out of the boat. Tuan tied it to a willow, wondering if they would ever see it again. The gang of men surrounded them, opening their bundles and spilling the contents onto the forest floor. Cliar looked on sorrowfully as they emptied the precious bottles of healing medicine. A smell of unwashed flesh and hair and clothes, and an undertone of something else, surrounded the children, blocking out the clear air of the forest. Cliar shivered as she realised what the something else was. It was blood. These men smelt of blood.

They began the march through the forest, going single file. The dense undergrowth, full of nettles and thistles and brambles, and the rough ground underneath did not seem to bother their captors or slow them down in the slightest, but the children found it hard to keep up. Here I go again, thought Tuan, as a bramble snapped back from the path and
scratched his face. Will I ever be free? All four children tried hard not to think about the stories of the wild men of the woods, the men who ate any flesh they could capture, even if it was human …

It seemed like a very long time before they reached a clearing in the wood. Here there were two roughly built huts, thatched with broom and ferns. In the centre was a small fire, smoking lazily. The place was covered in rubbish of every kind – bits of old iron and other metals, rotting vegetables, piles of bones that the children did not like to look at too closely.

Foxface poked the children forward with a stick, closer to the fire, and muttered something to his followers, who now moved forwards to tie their feet together as well as their hands. Gile was tied to a tree. Trussed like chickens, the children looked at each other dolefully.

Maude addressed the Foxman, who was regarding them with a very unpleasant smile. She had decided that politeness might be more useful than defiance.

‘My Lord,’ she said, ‘I have not fully introduced my companions and myself. This is the Lady Cliar, this is Lord Tuan, of the Irish clans, this my brother Matthieu FitzHerbert of Outremer. I myself am the Lady Maude. We are delighted to make your acquaintance.’

Foxface looked at them impassively, and then laughed. Gile’s hackles rose and one of the other men gave him a vicious kick.

‘Pay no attention to my dog, may it please you,’ said Maude. ‘He is of a rare and noble breed and is inclined to be over-protective of us.’

‘So, young mistress, what might be yer real reason for making yer way through the forest? Through
my
forest? Who gave ye permission?’

Tuan chimed in. ‘Dame Anna has sent us on a mission to give a message to one of her kinsmen. It is important that we get to him as soon as possible.’

‘The Dame Anna, indeed. We would not wish to distress the Dame Anna. But who is the kinsman you must reach?’

Matthieu said eagerly. ‘It is Roger Outlaw, the Prior of the Hospitallers.’

There came a sound from Foxface; this time it was close to a growl. ‘Ah, Outlaw, who tries to bring his stinking laws into the woods and who cuts the trees at Ainy to roof his chapels! I love him not, my chickens, and would as soon see an ill turn done to him as a good one. So I think we will keep ye here with us a little, to see what yer payment for passing through our woods is to be.’

‘These are O’Brien lands, not yours,’ said Tuan, and the
fox mask turned towards him contemptuously.

‘Here in the forest neither Irish nor English rule,’ Foxface snarled. ‘These are no-one’s lands, but ours. I’m tired of yer babbling,’ he said suddenly. ‘Be quiet, chickens, or I’ll cut yer tongues out.’ He added something that the children could not hear and went into one of the huts with two of the other men. One of his companions was left outside, and he took his place by the fire, watching them, and whittling at a long pole and two pronged supports.

‘What do you think they’re going to do with us?’ whispered Matthieu.

‘I don’t like the way Foxy Loxy keeps calling us chickens,’ whispered Cliar, shuddering. ‘And that thing your man is carving looks awfully like a spit. But I can’t see any food.’

‘Except us,’ said Maude dolefully.

‘Do you really think they will eat us?’ said Matthieu.

‘Margaret told me stories about people who have gone so wild in the forest that they actually eat other people,’ said Cliar. ‘But I am trying not to believe these are as bad as she made out. Most of the people in the woods are just outlaws that can’t live in towns or villages or with any other people – some of them are driven away because they have diseases that people might catch, some of them because the law is
after them.’

‘Did you get what that word was, the one they kept repeating to each other when they were whispering?’ asked Matthieu.

‘Yes,’ said Tuan. ‘I think it was dinner.’

There was a silence after this.

Maude finally spoke. ‘I have heard it said that the Irish ate people–’

‘It’s not the Irish, it’s just this crowd,’ hissed Tuan. ‘And it sounded to me like Mr Fox had an English accent, not an Irish one.’

Cliar sighed. ‘Oh, don’t start arguing about whether this lot are Irish or English. If they’re going to eat us, I don’t really care whether it’s the Irish way, boiled with kale, or the English one, roasted with parsley sauce … we need to think of a plan to get out of here.’

They sat for several moments in silence, but no plan seemed forthcoming.

Matthieu found his mind drifting. ‘Which do you think would be the worst? To be boiled or roasted?’

Maude had been thinking hard. It would be up to her, she thought, to get them out of this mess. She snapped at her brother: ‘Oh Matthieu, will you shut up. You got us into enough trouble with your mention of Outlaw.’

Cliar smiled at him as he fought back tears. ‘Don’t worry about it, Matthieu. They probably won’t bother cooking us at all.’

The children lay in silence, and after a while the other men came out of the hut. They looked as if they had been drinking, and two of them, the foxman and the tallest of the others, carried large, empty jugs.

‘You stay here, Ru, with Buna, and we’ll bring back more drink for the feast. There are some fat monks further down the river whose cellar is only waiting to be raided.’

Neither Ru nor Buna looked too happy at this plan, but said nothing.

When Foxface and the other man had gone, Ru, who looked a little the worse for his drinking, began to shift around restlessly and kicked at the fire, muttering.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked the other.

At this stage, Matthieu, who had been wriggling around uncomfortably for some time, spoke up: ‘Excuse me, sirs, do you think you could help me here?’

Oh no, thought Maude, please, please don’t walk yourself into more trouble, Matthieu. I told you to shut up.

But it was too late, and she watched in horror as Ru went over and pulled Matthieu up roughly.

‘A small one, but noisy,’ he said, then he lifted him
bodily and, to horrified gasps from the children, threw him in the air towards his companion.

‘Catch as catch can!’ he shouted, but Matthieu fell with a thump to the ground, and cried out with pain. Gile began to bark, frantically trying to free himself from his leash.

The other man went over to Matthieu and picked him up again. ‘Here, you try this time,’ he said.

‘Please, please, don’t,’ Maude was calling out, tears in her eyes.

But the men ignored her, and now Buna had stumbled towards Matthieu and lifted him again. He swung him towards Ru.

The other children shut their eyes, waiting in horror for the thump on the ground and another cry of pain from Matthieu.

But the cry of pain was from Ru, for Matthieu had not only head-butted him as he reached his tormentor, but was now hanging out of his long, greasy hair and scrabbling in his captor’s belt for his knife.

‘Tuan, catch!’ he shouted, and Tuan rolled over and, though he didn’t manage to catch the knife, got close enough to it to pick it up between his bound hands and slash open Cliar’s bonds. As soon as her hands were free, she cut free Tuan’s hands and feet, and then went quickly on to
Maude and Gile.

The four of them headed like a swarm of bees onto the heaving mass that was Ru, Buna and Matthieu. They bit, scratched and kicked until the men let go; Maude hung out of Ru’s back like a monkey, thumping him as hard as she could and shouting at him, ‘You dare hurt my brother, you dare!’ Cliar pulled a stick from the fire and, using the lighted end, managed to set alight Buna’s clothes. Tuan, who now had the knife, waved it at both men and shouted at them to get away or he would put it through their hearts. Gile nipped at whatever piece of arm or leg was closest to him, drawing yowls of pain from the two outlaws.

Finally, Maude hit Ru over the head with the tinderbox and he fell to his knees; Buna was rolling on the ground, trying to put out the flames in his clothes. The children ran for the trees, but before they did, Cliar, for good measure, threw a flaming branch from the fire at the hut and set it blazing.

They could hear shouts and growls behind them and the crackle of flames; but they did not look back, they just kept running through the wood. It felt like hours later that they bundled themselves into a hole in a bank. It was big enough to hold them all, and seemed to be an animal’s lair, smelling strongly of some kind of wild beast.

‘The smell will cover our scent from them,’ said Tuan, between gasps for air. ‘We should be safe here until morning.’

‘Oh Matthieu, you’re bleeding,’ said Maude.

Matthieu’s wrists were indeed bleeding, though not heavily. He was also already developing some very colourful bruises from having been thrown onto the ground of the clearing. In fact, he looked a complete mess. But he grinned.