Fugitives! (3 page)
Authors: Aubrey Flegg
inéad had been looking forward to meeting Con, and was disappointed when she learned that he’d gone off without telling anyone. He had been asleep when she had gone up to bed and looked in on where the boys were sleeping. He was just a hump on the family-room floor, a flicker of red hair showing from the top of his blanket. Mother had been worried when he couldn’t be found in the morning, and had made them search the castle for him, but when they told his father that they couldn’t locate him, Uncle Hugh just said: ‘Oh don’t worry, he’ll turn up! He has a new pony and I’ll bet you anything it’s gone too.’ And sure enough, the pony was gone.
Con’s father was ‘Uncle Hugh’ to the family, and a great favourite of Sinéad’s. Usually when Uncle Hugh came, he would make time to chat to her and tell her of his latest adventures, but this morning to her annoyance, after talking to Father he’d locked himself away in the guest room saying he had to write a letter, and was not to be disturbed.
With her plans frustrated, she announced that she was off to the butts to fly her hawk and that the boys should come too as their birds needed a proper free flight. Flying the birds was an escape for her and a chance for her to imagine herself flying with them high above the castle. The boys joined her willingly enough. But when they got down to the butts and had put their birds on their perches, all James did was to needle Fion. Sinéad sighed.
She remembered the day when they were all just six, and Fion first appeared in their lives. Mother explained that the Earl of Tyrone had brought his nephew, Fion, to be a foster brother to James. It was quite a ceremony. The family gathered and the two boys were introduced. They walked around each other like terriers, with their hackles up, spoiling for a fight. Then, all at once, a strange man with flaming red hair and beard swooped on Sinéad, picked her up, and swung her on to his shoulder, saying in a loud voice: ‘Hear ye – you boys – behold your sister, Sinéad of the Even Hand! Listen to her wise counsel or I’ll come and beat the nonsense out of ye myself.’ Everyone had laughed and the ice between the boys was broken.
That was the first time anyone had called her Sinéad, Irish for Jane, the name she had been christened; she thought it lovely, much nicer than Jane, so she kept it. That was how her friendship with Uncle Hugh began. Later, when Father came back from the battle at Kinsale with a wound that kept him on his couch for much of the time, Uncle Hugh was especially kind to her, telling her how valiant
her father had been. He would come to the castle unannounced, night or day, and whether he stayed for an hour or a week, he never failed to ask for her.
‘Where’s my Sinéad?’ he would roar. When she was younger he would take her on his knee, but he always talked to her as if she were grown up. He would tell her of the fine ladies he had met when he was in England, or of a wild-boar hunt on the shores of the lakes in Fermanagh, or of picnics and great feasts laid out on the ferns. She loved the rich Irish that he spoke, which had her dreaming of deep woodlands and wild mountains. He told her how her family, the de Cashels, were Normans who had come to Ireland as conquerors years ago, and how, in time, they had taken Irish princesses to be their wives, and so had learned the Irish language and Irish ways. In exchange, they had brought civilisation to wild men like him, which was the reason he had sent young Fion to live with them, so Fion could have manners put on him.
When Fion had first arrived, she and James had deeply resented the newcomer. The twins had got on fine together up till now and didn’t want another of their own age in the castle. She and James did their best to make the poor boy’s life a misery. But it didn’t last long. In no time their old nurse was complaining that despite his devilment Fion could charm the birds out of the trees, and they were discovering that life in the castle was a lot more fun with Fion joining in. Fion was the one who had the wild ideas, while James was the one to carry them out. It was a good mix. Fion had the red hair and broad shoulders of his uncle; beside him James looked slight, dark, swarthy, and intense, a Norman to his fingertips. Sinéad had given up joining in their arguments, which were usually about boys’
things anyway; she just patched things up afterwards.
Now she sighed.
Bother them! Wasting a good morning like this, arguing. Every day it’s getting harder to get away from Mother and Kathleen, and those boys are just ruining it. I hate cooking, I hate sewing, and if Kathleen talks once more of a handsome husband I’ll kill her. Come on, Saoirse, let’s fly
.
For safety, the butts, where people came to practise archery, were outside the palisade that enclosed the castle and the castle village, so they made a perfect space for flying and training hawks. They were falcons really, valuable birds that had been trained to return to their owners and to swoop on their prey, sweeping down from on high to pounce on the lures the children threw for them. The birds knew the children’s voices and would come on a call or whistle. Today, however, they were restless. They were disturbed by the boys’ raised voices, and kept turning their hooded heads, as if longing to see what was going on.
Sinéad talked continuously to them, chirruping softly. Her bird, Saoirse, was a male peregrine, and therefore smaller and lighter on her wrist than the fierce females that the boys hunted with. The three birds stood proudly on their perches, their yellow claws digging into the wood. She talked to the females first; then she went over to Saoirse, and stroked his breast, watching the speckled brown and gold feathers spring up behind her finger. When her strokes had calmed him, she eased the soft leather hood from his head, and slipped her leather gauntlet onto her hand. He eyed her fiercely.
Then, holding onto the light leather jesses that hung from his ankles, she encouraged him to hop onto her wrist. At last, with an encouraging whistle, she lifted him high, released his jesses, and tossed him into the air.
Up, up, up he went as she squinted into the sunlight, then up, up, up she went too, taking flight with him in her imagination. The voices of the boys faded. This was her escape from earth-bound things. There was Saoirse soaring above her, waiting for her to catch up with him. Then, with a wild mew, he peeled off, circling the butts, and Sinéad could feel the draft of air that picked them both up as they soared away towards the castle. Nothing mattered to her now but the next stroke of his wings.
The grim walls of the castle – her home but also her prison – slipped away below her. A drift of smoke rose from the chimney above the battlements, where on its topmost tower fluttered the de Cashel flag, a single splash of colour. They soared higher and higher until the castle looked no more than a child’s model below her. The polished armour of the watchman on the tower glinted bright. Beside him hung the Great Horn of the de Cashels – a bull’s horn, too heavy to be carried at the belt, and as cracked as the sound it made. It had belonged to a Gaelic chieftain long before the Normans had set foot in Ireland, and had been taken by her father’s ancestors as a spoil of war. Ever since the castle had been built, the horn had been housed in the tower, ready to be blown in times of emergency.
Sinéad imagined swooping down on the unsuspecting watchman and seeing him raising his cross-bow in alarm as she screeched past.
Oh no you don’t!
She laughed as Saoirse swept out of range, but she
knew he wouldn’t shoot. Falcons were protected from the likes of him by both the English laws and the Irish Brehon laws. Falcons were a privilege of princes. In winter, when the wind hammered on the castle walls, or when Dr Fenton threatened to send them all to sleep, she would imagine herself flying, storm-tossed on some splendid journey, and she would be free!
From up here she could imagine the whole layout of the castle – the castle tower and the cluster of houses and buildings that made up the castle village. Around all was the palisade, a ditch topped with stakes hammered into the ground. This was their first defence against cattle raiders, but also in winter a protection against wolves that would happily run off with a lamb, or a chicken, or even a human baby. Outside the palisade was a circular mound ringed with hawthorn trees, where fairies danced on midsummer nights. Father told such scary stories about the fort that nobody – not even the boys – ever went near it.
Now for one last long sweep as far as the ridge with its clump of Scots pines.
The boys were still arguing below. Fion was at his wit’s end.
What’s the matter with James? He’s been at me since we came to the butts, needling me, sneering at me. I’m fed up with him. I came down here to fly falcons, not to defend Uncle Hugh!
James wasn’t usually a needler nor a jeerer, but he was being both just now.
One more jibe and I will flip
, and Fion could feel his anger rising, small tongues of flame seeking something to catch on to.
Where the hell’s Sinéad?
He called her name. No response. He turned, and there she was, standing at Saoirse’s perch, head up, arms out, in a trance, a smile playing on her lips as she followed the sweeping curves of Saoirse’s flight.