The Silver Stag of Bunratty (5 page)
Read The Silver Stag of Bunratty Online
Authors: Eithne Massey
‘What friends?’ asked Cliar.
‘Why, you and Tuan and the young Normans.’
Cliar made a face. ‘I don’t know if the Normans are my
friends.’ She looked doubtfully at Maude and Matthieu. Maude stuck her tongue out at her. There was proof, thought Cliar: Maude was hard going. And Matthieu was really just a baby.
‘Yes, they are, you just do not realise it yet. And nor do they; but they will. Do not argue or doubt, Cliar. For the tasks that need to be done, the skills of all four of you will be needed. You cannot do what is necessary by yourself.’
‘But what can
we
do?’ asked Tuan. ‘We can’t stop the hunt.’
Suddenly, the lady’s eyes were turned on him and Tuan felt them burning into his soul.
‘I think you can,’ said the lady. ‘You must use your best skills and ingenuity. If you don’t, there will be such doom on this castle and the people in it for generations to come that the grief and shame of those who live here will know no bounds.’
The children were silent. This was suddenly very serious.
‘Can’t you help us?’ asked Matthieu.
‘You must find your own path to saving the stag. All I will say is that you – all of you together – can do it. You must all start to think about what I have said and make your plans. You are safe to go down now, for Fat John has left and you can open the door. But keep the dog out of his
sight.’
‘I’ll keep him in my chamber and call him Baskerville, after my father’s family lands in England,’ said Maude.
‘I’ve already named him Gile,’ said Tuan. ‘Look, he answers to it.’ Gile had pricked up his ears and started to wag his tail when Tuan said his name.
‘What does Gile mean?’ asked Maude.
‘It means “brightness”,’ said Tuan, ‘but to be honest, he’s not all that bright.’
Matthieu added, ‘But it also sounds like the Irish word,
giolla
, which means “follower”, or “friend”, or sometimes “young servant”, doesn’t it?’
‘How on earth do you know that?’ asked Maude, but not waiting for an answer, continued: ‘Bright Follower, I like that. Gile he shall be.’
As they made their way down from the tower, the children were silent. It was all very well for Dame Anna to send them out on this mission to save the stag, but how on earth were they to achieve it? Tuan wondered what he could come up with and decided to go to his room and think hard. Matthieu knew that Maude would make the real plan, whatever he thought of, but he decided to learn as much as he could about hunting anyway in the short time available to him.
Cliar looked at her companions, but said nothing. She already had the germ of an idea in her head. But it would mean that she would have to tell these children her secret. She didn’t know if she was ready to do that.
Maude was also thinking furiously. Perhaps they could get something into the horses’ or dogs’ food on the day of the hunt, just to make them ill enough so that they could not go out? Perhaps they themselves could drive the Silver Stag far from Bunratty? Perhaps she could trip Sir Richard up and sprain his ankle or something? The hunt would certainly not go ahead without him. But each plan seemed more impossible to carry out than the last – and she really didn’t see how a kitchen girl, an Irish savage and her own little brother could be of any help at all.
eally, I don’t know how you manage to turn everything you wear into a rag. Matthieu keeps his clothes much better than you do.’
Margaret was fussing around in their room before dinner that evening, pulling out clothes from Maude’s chest and clucking over the state of her dresses, while Maude lay stretched on her pallet. Gile was lying across her stomach and snoring, paws in the air and dribbling slightly with pleasure.
‘That’s because he doesn’t do anything. He is the nearest thing to a dormouse I have ever seen. Except that they probably move around more,’ said Maude, scratching Gile’s stomach gently. Matthieu stuck his tongue out at her. He was drawing Gile, using a piece of grey slate and some charred wood from the fire. Maude had to admit that he was
really good at drawing. He had caught Gile’s brainless expression perfectly.
Margaret sighed. ‘Lady Maude, you would have an easier life if you did not use your tongue to cut so sharply. And if you did not go out of your way to annoy Lady Johanna so much. You could at least try to be more like a proper lady.’
Maude sat up. ‘You know that nothing really pleases her. Nothing in Bunratty. She just doesn’t want to be here; she wants to be back in England, she hates the Irish and she hates Thomond.’
‘You may have the right of it, child. She is not a happy woman, but she had no choice. She was wed to Sir Richard when she was hardly older than you, and brought here to deal with all the troubles we have had in the last few years: Sir Richard out fighting the Irish, and her never knowing where he was or when he would come back; then the great battle here at the castle – oh, it must be seven summers since. And then the town being burnt by the Irish, and then the bad years, with freezing winters and summers where the rain never stopped. No wonder she wants to be with her own people. And she fears for the child. Especially as …’
‘Especially as what?’
Margaret compressed her lips. ‘I should not tell you, but you will no doubt hear it soon anyway. She will have
another child in the autumn, another heir to Bunratty.’
‘Oh Christ’s blood!’ said Maude. ‘And no doubt I will be dragged in to look after it. That’s all we need here, another screamer.’
Matthieu gave a small laugh. ‘My sister is not a lover of babies,’ he said.
‘So I see,’ said Margaret. ‘Well, let’s hope the child still has a father when it’s born, for the way things are at the moment it seems likely he won’t.’
‘Is Sir Richard going off to the wars again, then?’
‘Very soon, they say. But not until after they hunt the Silver Stag. You heard that it has been seen in the forest? The hunt is planned for two days’ time; they say many lords will come to Bunratty to be part of it. We’re going to be very busy and we only have two days to prepare. Knowing Sir Richard, he will use the opportunity to talk to them of campaigning as well as hunting.’
Maude realised that they too would only have two days to prepare to save the stag. ‘Is Prior Outlaw coming?’ Maude’s voice was eager, and Matthieu stopped his drawing to wait for Margaret’s response.
But she said: ‘That I know not, only that there will be many more mouths to feed. More work, and more trying to stretch what little food we do have. Now, I can’t stop here
talking to you, I must get back to the kitchens. That blue gown you ripped has been mended, so you must wear that tonight. I’ll take the red one for cleaning and have it ready for when the visitors come.’
When Margaret left, Maude got up and began to wander around the room restlessly. She went to the window and looked out.
‘The rain has cleared. Let’s go upstairs and practise archery. We can get Tuan to come too.’
Matthieu sighed, but put down his slate. He didn’t want to go out to practise, but he knew that once Maude had made up her mind she would not leave him alone until he agreed to do what she wanted. Sometimes Matthieu thought Maude should have been the boy; she would have made a better knight than she did a young lady. She was faster, braver and stronger than he was and she enjoyed doing all the things that knights had to learn to do. She knew how to ride well, how to handle a lance and sword, how to use a bow and arrow. All these things Matthieu hated, mainly because he was very bad at them. He was clumsy and he did not see things in the distance very well. By far his most hated lesson was the tourney, learning the techniques of how you could unseat your opponent from their horse and not get hurt yourself. When he practised this, Matthieu
spent most of the time on his back on the ground, for when he missed the target, it would swing around and knock him off his horse. Then Matthieu would lie in the dust and watch Maude fly past him, and with the tip of her lance hit the dead centre of the quintain, making it look as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do. His father had never said anything to him about his lack of skill, but Matthieu had sometimes caught a look of disappointment in his eyes.
But his father had been proud of him in other ways. He had been pleased with the way Matthieu would get up out of the dirt and keep trying, again and again and again. And he had praised him for his talent at drawing, and the fine letters he wrote, far clearer than Maude’s though she was two years older. His mother, from what he could remember of her, had sung and played the lute, and his father had loved Matthieu’s skill in music because it reminded him of her. Matthieu was desperately out of practice with his lute playing, for here in Bunratty there were no lutes to practise on, no musicians and no artists. Few enough people who could even read, apart from the sleepy old priest who came to teach him Latin and who only let him draw religious pictures or illuminate letters from the scriptures. He worried that he would lose all the skills he had in this savage place. Maybe things would get better now that Tuan had arrived;
perhaps Maude would let him get on with his own life. And perhaps now there would be less time for his training, because from what Margaret said it seemed likely that preparation for serious battle would begin. Thankfully, he was still considered too young to go to battle, even as a squire. Though he had once overheard Sir Richard talking about him to Fat John.
‘He needs to be blooded, John, to get a taste for the kill, like a hound.’
Fat John’s voice was scornful. ‘He’s so small and weakly and unskilled, he’d be more trouble than he’s worth at the moment. I could not see him handling himself well against the Irish.’
‘Then it is about time he learned to do so,’ said Sir Richard gruffly. ‘Perhaps it is a case that when he has to do it he will learn some skill. I hate to see him wince when he is called out to practise. God’s guts, his sister has more fire in her. She’d take the eye of an Irish kerne out of his head as soon as look at him.’
Fat John laughed. It was not a nice laugh. ‘True enough. She needs to learn that her place is in the kitchen or the hall and not annoying my men, begging them for lessons with the sword and bow.’
The thing was, Matthieu actually loved the
idea
of
knighthood, of chivalry and courage and adventure. He loved the stories of King Arthur and his knights pursuing the Holy Grail and their defence of the weak and innocent, the idea of valour in the face of impossible odds. He loved the pictures the stories made in his head, of the grace of the archer bending the bow or the skill of the swordsman’s dance. He just hated the reality of the training, his clumsiness, the pain, the humiliation of always failing. Entering the training ground felt, every single time, like entering hell.
Now Maude was tussling with him, dragging him out of the room. They only had a short time before they had to go to eat in the Great Hall.
And the children must find time too for something much more important – time to come up with a plan that would save the stag.
hen Tuan entered the Great Hall that evening, it was already crowded and filled with noise. People were crushed onto the benches and it didn’t look as if the hall could hold any more, but more men still pushed their way in through the doors, shouting loud greetings to their comrades. Most of them were soldiers, who made their living through battle, their faces showing every possible variation of scar and bruise. At least half a dozen of them had broken noses. They had all been called in from the outer reaches of De Clare’s territories.
The noise and movement was making Tuan feel dizzy. Mixed with the smell of roasting meat was that of the wicks burning in fat, and, in the heat of the hall, the smells of all the people around him. At least he was far away from Fat John. He shook his head to clear it and
tried to hear what Sir Richard was discussing with the Captain – no doubt their plan for the hunt, or was it battle talk? He was too far from Matthieu and Maude to speak to them, although he had been given the honour of being seated above the place where the huge silver salt-cellar, shaped like a stag, sat in the centre of the table. Only servants and soldiers sat below the salt. He noticed that Maude, further up the table, was listening intently. Maude would tell him later what was being said. Earlier that day, they had agreed that they would all try to gather as much information as they could about the planned hunt of the Silver Stag.
Maude was able to overhear most of the conversation at the head of the table. Sir Richard was saying: ‘The capture of the stag will give our men, and those of our allies, courage for the battles ahead. It will lift everybody’s spirits.’
‘And if you do not catch it?’ asked Lady Johanna.
Sir Richard gave her a sour look. ‘That is not something we will consider, my lady. We will kill the stag just as we will defeat Turlough O’Brien.’
‘Is that who we are fighting now?’ said Lady Johanna, her voice still scornful. ‘It is so hard to keep up with all the changes.’
‘I have explained to you before – we support the Irish clans that acknowledge our lordship. But that can change. They often try to use our alliances in their own petty wars. But the fact that they spend so much time fighting one another helps us to keep them under control.’
Maude smiled. The Irish were not the only ones who battled with each other all the time. The Norman English also fought each other for control of the land and people. She had tried to follow the various alliances Sir Richard had been part of since she had come to Ireland, but had given up. But one thing was clear: most of his alliances with the Irish were made because these Irish were enemies of some of the other great Norman lords in Ireland. And the Irish knew this, and used this knowledge for their own ends in their own wars. She still thought Margaret’s description was the best she had heard: ‘No wonder they call these lands the Swordlands. The Irish fight the Irish and the English fight the English and they both fight each other. That’s Thomond for ye.’
Now, Maude could not resist saying, ‘But I thought it was part of the code of knighthood to be loyal to your alliances and keep your word?’
Sir Richard’s frown deepened. He hated being reminded of previous alliances.
‘It’s politics, child, you would not understand. Women and children can never understand such things.’
Cliar caught Maude making a face as he said this. The sight of her crossing her eyes was so comical that Cliar could not help giving a yelp of laughter, and she almost spilled the ale she was pouring into Fat John’s cup. He growled and grabbed her arm, twisting the flesh to make his grasp even more painful.
‘What, witch girl? Do you mean to drown me?’ he said.
Sir Richard frowned and pricked Fat John’s arm with the point of his knife, so the Captain dropped the arm he was twisting.
‘Let the child get on with her work,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Now, about the hunt. Robert, we need to discuss tactics,’ he called to his Marshal, who was seated further down the table. Maude and Matthieu began to listen intently and Cliar spent a long time wiping the table close to where the Marshal sat, even though it did not need to be cleaned at all. ‘I want you to send men out tomorrow into the woods to find the stag’s trails and start marking out the territory where it has been. I have sent messengers to the local lords to join us here on Thursday evening and we will have the hunt on Mayday, the day after that. It will be a suitable day for the hunt. That will give you, my lady’ – he nodded towards
Lady Johanna – ‘a chance to organise accommodation and food. Let us hope the weather will improve before then.’
‘Are you inviting any of the Irish allies?’ Lady Johanna’s lip curled at the thought of entertaining Irish lords.
Sir Richard shook his head. ‘No. Hunts are dangerous, and not just because the animals we hunt can attack us. I have heard stories of hunts that have gone terribly wrong … it is far too easy for a stray arrow to hit a man. And between the confusion of the hunt and the darkness of the forest who can say it was anything but an accident? In any case, the Irish would refuse to hunt the Silver Stag – they hold it in some kind of superstitious veneration.’
‘They say it is a magical beast,’ said Robert the Marshal. ‘And no other stag I have ever heard of has been silver.’
‘Silver or gold, it will end up in the pot and its antlers will be hung on the wall of this hall. I am Lord of Bunratty and that is my word.’
The children were very busy in the two days before the hunt. Cliar spent a lot of time running down to the mill in the village and each time she came back she carried a mysterious bundle. Maude and Tuan went to the forest each day and returned with equally mysterious and rather smelly bundles which they hid in Tuan’s tiny chamber. Tuan had
objected strongly to using his room as a store, but Maude pointed out that the smell of pig and hen would disguise any other bad smell that might cause suspicion among the servants of the castle. Matthieu made friends with Robert the Marshal, who was also Master of the Hounds, displaying a totally new interest in hound lore and hunting, and keeping a sharp eye on where Robert kept the store of raw offal which he fed to the hounds every night.
Cliar finally told the others about the ghostly inhabitants of the castle who might be able to help them with their plan to save the stag. Her secret had been found out at one of their many meetings. Tuan and Cliar had joined Maude and Matthieu in their room and Maude had been talking. Suddenly, she stopped and said to Cliar: ‘What is it, Cliar? Why do you sometimes look as if you’re listening to someone who isn’t there?’
Cliar said nothing for a moment. Should she tell them what she kept from everyone, even Margaret? Like everyone else in the castle, they obviously could not see or hear anything out of the ordinary.
‘It’s the ghosts,’ she said finally. ‘I’m the only one in the castle that can see them. They are the people who lived here before us. People have been settled here for a long, long time – they say that the Danes had a camp here, long before
the Normans sailed up the river, and before them the Irish kings held court here.’
Matthieu interrupted: ‘Who were the Danes?’
‘They were pirates and robbers who attacked the monasteries and stole their gold and killed the monks. It was Brian Boru, the ancestor of the O’Briens of Thomond, who drove them out of Ireland.’
When Cliar paused, Tuan added, unable to keep a smile off his face, ‘They say the Danes, the sea pirates, are the ancestors of the Normans …’
Cliar, noticing that Maude was about to say something, continued quickly: ‘Everything that happened here has left a mark – the battles and the murders and the betrayals, and the good times too. The feasts and the laughter and the children who played here. They are all around us, all the time, filling the air. The man who built the original castle, down nearer the village, Sir Robert De Muscegros, he’s quite fat and jolly most of the time. Some of the ghosts don’t talk at all – Sir Thomas, Sir Richard’s father, the first of the De Clares to come here, just floats around and looks disapproving. Lady Maude, Sir Richard’s mother, is nice, though very sad. A lot of them are sad. Brian Rua, the Irish chief Sir Thomas killed, is probably the most unhappy of all. He does a lot of chain-clanking and lamenting.’
‘I think I might have heard him one night,’ said Matthieu excitedly. ‘But is everyone who lived in Bunratty here?’
Cliar shook her head. ‘Not everyone. I think only the ones who have something bothering them. The unfinished business keeps them here. They do no harm, though. Lots of them are my friends.’
‘Is there a boy as well, a small boy with red hair?’ Matthieu was remembering a particular face that would sometimes come at dusk, in the shadows of his room – though mostly, as he was falling into sleep, he thought he saw his father, and would talk to him about all the things that worried him. But sometimes he saw other faces; children in strange clothes, who smiled at him shyly.
Cliar nodded and began to speak, but Maude interrupted. She was impatient to get back to planning the stag’s rescue.
‘Matthieu, you know all that stuff you see is probably your imagination, or something you have eaten,’ she scoffed.
Cliar said, ‘Anyway, I’d better go back to the kitchens. The White Ferret is on the warpath today.’
Maude giggled. ‘Is that what you call Lady Johanna?’
Cliar laughed. ‘That’s what everyone in the kitchens calls her.’
‘What is going on here?’ A voice came from the doorway. Lady Johanna was there, looking none too pleased to see any of them.
She really did look like a white ferret, thought Tuan. He had only seen a ferret once; the Normans had introduced them to hunt rabbits. Lady Johanna, with her nose twitching and her small, pale eyes, slightly red-rimmed, and her white-blond hair, looked as if she would snap a rabbit in two as soon as look at it.
‘Get back to the kitchens, girl,’ she said to Cliar. ‘And take the hostage back to his room. There is much to be done, for we need to prepare for the visitors that will be coming here for the hunt.’