Fugitives! (22 page)

All day they rode north-west. Behind them the leaden waters of Lough Neagh receded into the distance. The air was sultry, the calm
before the storm, perhaps. At one point exhaustion hit Sinéad like a lead weight and the temptation to roll from the saddle, lie in the grass and just sleep … slee …

‘Watch out, Sinéad!’ and she felt Fion’s grip on her arm as he pulled her up straight in her saddle.

Haystacks and Fion kept asking any passersby for news of the O’Brolchains. Sometimes they were greeted cheerily, sometimes with suspicion. ‘Did you see how that fellow kept fiddling with my harness?’ asked Fion once in annoyance. ‘He was calculating what it was worth, I reckon.’

‘What you’re worth, more likely,’ said Haystacks. ‘Ever since O’Cahan went over to the English, and Chichester put a bounty on your uncle’s head, his hangers-on have been looking for rewards for themselves. Come on, here are the mountains.’

Sinéad looked ahead to where the mountains were shouldering themselves above the trees; it seemed a vast area in which to find one small boy. Her heart sank when Haystacks said again: ‘I will leave you now, I must ride northwards. The country up there is less faithful to Tyrone, but Con could still be there.’

They rode in single file, their ponies’ hooves pattering on an almost deserted road. The setting sun lit up the bases of lowering storm clouds. Rain threatened and they had no shelter and nowhere to rest their heads.

Yet another stop, and Sinéad leaned her face into her pony’s mane and began to cry.

‘Hey, Sinéad,’ called Fion a short while later. ‘Wake up. Success at last!’ She struggled upright. Fion had a lanky seventeen-year-old beside him. ‘Micheál here tells me the O’Brolchain camp is just
over that ridge. They’re bringing the cattle down from the high ground for the winter – he’s going there to help, and will guide us over. Wake up, girl, we’ve found Con! Micheál saw him only last week!’

But Sinéad was looking at the mountain. ‘How are we going to get over that?’ she wailed.

Fion laughed. ‘Micheál says there’s a pass between the mountains that we can follow; it’s tricky to find, but he’s going to show us the way.’

As if sharing their relief, the ponies pricked their ears and followed willingly as their new friend plunged off the road to follow a zigzag path up through the trees cloaking the valley side. Micheál strode ahead on foot, waiting when the tired ponies began to dip their heads into the climb. They rose out of the oak woods just as dusk was falling. Above them towered the mountain. Then, quite suddenly, the hillside seemed to open in front of them and there was the path, winding into the hill between steep bluffs and craggy outcrops of rock. Ferns sprang up from the wet banks in green fountains, catching the last of the light and making it their own. Now the path was plunging down and Sinéad, leaning back, had to push her feet forward in her stirrups to stop herself sliding over her pony’s head. The stream, which had started as a trickle, now chattered to them cheerily. For a moment Sinéad looked out over the forest canopy that filled the valley like a rolling sea, then they plunged down into it, and the trees closed protectively over their heads.

A new quiet settled over the party, their ponies’ hooves suddenly hushed in leaf litter from thousand-year-old trees. Before they realised that they had arrived, they found themselves surrounded by
sloping tents and thatched shelters, all in a pleasant haze of woodsmoke. This was the O’Brolchain winter camp. Women and children crowded out to see the new arrivals; the men were away on the mountain to gather the cattle. Sinéad sat in her saddle, swaying with tiredness, until she found herself looking down at a girl of about Con’s age.

‘I’m Aoife, but you don’t look like a Brian,’ said the girl seriously. Sinéad smiled; she’d been sussed already, but it would be a relief to be a girl again, and to be with another girl, even a small and grubby one. When Micheál came offering to take her pony to rub her down, she let him, and followed the girl into a wide, thatched hall in which there was a table long enough to seat a small army of men. She thought she was too tired to eat, but when Aoife produced a bowl of thick, steaming stew, it spoke to her rumbling stomach. Neither of them said anything until her wooden bowl was empty and she sat back with a sigh.

‘Why are you here?’ asked the girl suspiciously.

‘We have come to find Con and bring him to his father.’

‘Oh!’ said the girl – then defiantly, ‘Good riddance!’

Sinéad wasn’t fooled, but at that moment the boys bounced in.

‘Well, we’ve found him!’ Fion crowed.

‘He’ll be down from the mountain at first light,’ said Séamus, ‘and then we’ve just got to get him to the sh–’

He stopped. Aoife was taking in every word. Haystacks had insisted: No mention of the ship, even to Sean O’Brolchain himself.

‘This is Aoife,’ said Sinéad, hurriedly introducing the young girl, who tossed her head and marched away, but came back in a minute with two man-sized bowls of stew for the boys. She thumped them
down on the table, and walked out.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Séamus asked, but forgot about it with his first spoonful. ‘Wow, what a stew!’

That night Sinéad lay under her cloak on a huge communal bed in the women’s tent; the wind was soughing in the treetops far above. Later, when she woke, it was to the sound of rain drumming on the thick canvass.
I’m glad we’re not out in that!
she thought. She noticed then that Aoife had slipped in beside her. It was the first proper sleep Sinéad had had for several days.

However, Con didn’t arrive at first light; in fact, he didn’t come at all.

That very night Henry Fenton looked out from his prison cell at the noose of the gallows swinging in the wind. He rubbed his neck as if the rope was already closing about him.
Curse whoever wrote that note!
he thought.
What damnable luck, one of Bonmann’s men seeing me with the torch before I lit the fire in the castle.
For all his lawyer’s cleverness, Fenton had had no defence. It was a military court, and his sentence, ‘death by hanging’, was to take place at first light.
Oh, the sight of the gallows!
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Think!

Before that hateful note had arrived, the fortress had been alive with rumours. Now, piece by piece, he put the rumours together:
O’Neill is clearly on the move, gathering his wife, Catherine, and their sons together like chickens; it must be a family gathering. Something
important is happening … perhaps someone is coming … an army? … an ambassador? … surely that’s it … but no … you don’t gather your family for an ambassador nor yet a general. Think, you fool! Why the family? … why … holy smoke!
Fenton leapt to his feet.
I’ve got it! It’s not someone coming it’s someone going. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Hugh O’Neill’s fleeing!

‘Guard!’ he yelled. ‘Send word to Sir Geoffrey Bonmann that I have information for him that will change his life.’

The guard grumbled off.

Now, before he comes, how do I play my cards? Hints … enough to keep me from the gallows! Then bluff … he must think that I know where the boat will sail from – we’ll find those kids and make damn sure they show us.

There was a jangle of keys.

‘Dwat the man! What does he want to confess? I’m not a pwiest.’

No, but you are a fool,
thought Fenton. Then he laid out his baits:
the Earl of Tyrone to be captured in flight, sundry lords and ladies as well, rewards and glory for Bonmann, and, as if that was not enough, once he had disposed of the de Cashel children, there would be no one to stop him claiming their castle lands for himself. That should do the trick!
thought Fenton. And it did.

There was pandemonium in the O’Brolchain camp. The autumn cattle drive was underway, soon the pens would be full of lowing beasts, and Con had gone missing!

‘I’ll skin that lad when I get him,’ roared Sean O’Brolchain,
tearing at his hair. ‘What does Hugh O’Neill want him for, anyway?’

Nevertheless, men were diverted to search for him. Fion and Séamus rode out to join the search, but they dared not go far in case Con suddenly appeared. Minutes, and then hours passed without a sign. When Haystacks rode in, confident that they were all well on their way, he found them kicking their heels beside their saddled ponies.

‘What on earth are you waiting for? It will soon be dark!’ he exclaimed. So Fion had to explain how they had been looking for Con all day.

Haystacks thought long and hard. ‘After all this, to fail!’ he said with a sigh. ‘There is only one thing to do and that is get word to Lord O’Neill that Con is missing; the boat must not be delayed. You, Fion, must leave anyway; and Séamus and Sinéad have no home to go to and are in danger from Bonmann and Fenton – perhaps there will be room for the three of you on the boat. We’ll give Con an hour, then you must leave. I will wait. If Con appears, I’ll follow. Surely
someone
knows where he’s hiding.’

Con O’Neill wasn’t hiding, he was sitting on his pony on the summit of Sawel mountain looking down on the O’Cahan herd below. All summer he had wanted to ride up here, to where Tyrone country and O’Cahan country met, but he hadn’t been allowed. ‘I bet they’ll be gathering their cattle up there now,’ he had told Aoife. ‘Don’t tell a soul, but I think they owe us a cow, the traitors.’

‘Macha,
a chroí
, we may have to run for it,’ he murmured now to his pony as he tried to decide on which animal to single out. ‘You see that young heifer there that’s wandering up in our direction? We’ll round her up. If we get her into Tyrone territory, I win; but if we don’t – I lose, and I’ll forfeit my gold pebble to Aoife to stop her plaguing me for it. Let’s go!’ Cattle pole at the ready, he trotted forward.

O’Cahan’s herdsmen were strangely slow to spot the one-boy cattle-raid that was taking place under their noses. Con circled the heifer without being noticed and was now making good progress up the hill. Just a hundred yards more and they would be over the summit, into Tyrone territory, and that would be one in the eye for the O’Cahans. At that moment, however, there came a roar of rage from the herdsmen below.