The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (29 page)

Finally, he loved Sligo Castle for its importance in the scheme of things. By virtue of its very placement on the map of Ireland—set near a fine harbor and lying close to the borders of both Connaught and Ulster—it was known as the gateway between the two provinces, a vital stronghold worth a good fight.

Thankfully there had been little fighting up till now, aside from the usual squabbling and cattle raiding amongst the petty chieftains. O’Connor Sligo had for decades kept his territories peaceful, though many, including Tibbot’s mother, believed the price was too high. English loyalty meant English occupation, and as the rebellion grew, so too had the numbers of Crown soldiers increased in Sligo.

Still, when Tibbot and his family had arrived the previous day he ’d been surprised to find Sligo Castle guarded by Richard Bingham’s guard—
the distinctive blue livery
—and inside a good-size garrison of his soldiers.

They’d been greeted warmly by Maeve ’s elder brother, Donal O’Connor Sligo. He was Tibbot’s age, but a much softer man, he and his family never having had to fight for their very survival against an encroaching enemy. Early on, Donal’s guardian, Uncle O’Connor, had submitted to the English—a submission that, unlike most chieftains’ surrenders, had been altogether sincere. He ’d come to be known as one of the Crown’s most loyal adherents. And after that, life had proven easy.

Tibbot always believed Maeve ’s sweet temperament was born of that cultured, carefree childhood, so different from his own roughneck youth.

Donal had informed them on their arrival that the old man was sick and abed, suffering agonies with the stone. The castle was presently secured by Bingham’s garrison, led by an Irishman—another Crown loyalist—Lord Clanrickard ’s son, Ulick Burke.

“My least favorite cousin,” Tibbot had remarked, for Ulick Burke had always been a bully, and a stupid boy at that.
Stupid and a bully—a
deadly combination.
The same, his mother would say, as her first husband, Donal O’Flaherty. They’d had some words—Tibbot and Ulick—

shortly after his arrival at Sligo, and they’d been far from pleasant. Sure Tibbot had goaded the young man, teasing him about his pretty uniform matching his pretty blue eyes, but Ulick had lashed back with outright insults and threats. Donal had placed his pudgy body between the two men. He hated unpleasantness. Couldn’t the two Burke cousins attempt to get along?

Once Ulick had stomped off, Donal had whispered to his brother-in-law that he feared “a situation” was developing. He did not know what it was exactly, but from what his spies were saying, Ulick Burke was at its center, and it would be happening sooner rather than later. Donal was glad Tibbot would be here for its development, but Tibbot had been annoyed. Maeve and Miles were with him. This “situation” could turn ugly, and Tibbot did not wish to place his family in harm’s way.
The
Sirens’ singing,
he mused.
The beautiful turning deadly.
In fact, on the morrow he would inform Donal that their plans had changed. They would leave Sligo Castle and head south for a visit with his mother.

She ’d be cheered seeing them. Grace was more forlorn than Tibbot had ever known her, exiled for the first time in her life from beloved Connaught by Richard Bingham’s interference, and a virtual prisoner at his hands.

Tibbot’s own fortunes had taken a downward shift as well. Under the Composition of Connaught, he had lost Burrishoole to Tom of Ormond.

Now he was a tenant on his own land—a
tenant
! If that wasn’t bad enough, Richard Bingham was having Tibbot’s fleet watched too closely for any real freedom. All of the Burkes’ chieftains and clansmen who had once looked to him for leadership were now looking away. It was no wonder his confusion had grown.
Were the English his friends or enemies? His
patrons or destroyers of all that he loved?
He simply didn’t know anymore.

Indeed, things were changing fast all over Ireland. The Munster Plantations were thriving under the administration of their English settlers, though in the north—Ulster—trouble was clearly brewing. Hugh O’Neill was building an army there—a huge army—and he was funding it with English subsidies. Sure O’Neill’s upbringing in Henry Sidney’s home should have guaranteed his loyalty to the Crown—at least that was the queen’s thinking—but by now he had broken that loyalty half a dozen times, leading his rebels against English armies. And each time, by simply begging their pardon, he had been forgiven. Truces were set in place and more English money poured into his coffers. In fact, the man had broken his eighteen-year-old son-in-law, Red Hugh O’Donnell, out of Dublin Prison. Everyone knew O’Neill had been behind it, but the English—outraged—had held their tongues. Then O’Neill had formed an alliance with the boy that had, in a stroke, unified the entire north.

The beloved young rebel—“the Fighting Prince,” Red Hugh was now called—pulled together his own terrifying army out of O’Donnell clansmen and his mother Ineen Dubh’s Scots Gallowglass. Together with Hugh O’Neill’s English-backed army they were sweeping across the north striking fear into every English heart. Were the English blind?

Tibbot wondered. Or did their hopes and wishes for their good “Earl of Tyrone” blind them to the truth about his loyalty?

Tibbot had nearly dozed off into sleep when he heard men shouting, shots fired. Then Maeve was shaking him, whispering, “Tibbot, sweetheart. Something’s happening.” He was up on his feet in seconds, moving to the window of the cottage within the courtyard of Sligo Castle. He could see chaotic movement in the torchlit yard. Donal’s “situation,” he surmised, had developed more quickly than either of them had imagined.

“Get dressed,” he hissed to Maeve and Miles, then a moment later came a pounding at the door.

“Come out, all of you!” It was a soldier’s commanding voice.

Tibbot pulled on his breeches and jacket and grabbed his pistol.

Holding his wife and son close behind him and with his gun at the ready, he carefully opened the door. The blue-clad soldier was standing at attention.

“Put your gun away, sir,” he said, “and all of you accompany me.” Tibbot realized that the soldier had spoken in Irish, and not the English language.

All the residents of Sligo Castle, still in their nightclothes, had been assembled in the courtyard. Even old O’Connor Sligo was dragged from his sickbed looking mightily aggrieved. Donal Sligo was likewise shivering in his nightshirt, his household gathered round him. All of them watched as soldiers carried the still bleeding bodies of their garrison mates into the yard, laying them out in two neat rows. There were forty-two dead soldiers, the only casualties of what Tibbot soon realized was Ulick Burke ’s “mutiny.” It was soon apparent that all the living soldiers were Irish and all the dead English, and it struck Tibbot once again how mad was the English policy of filling the Crown’s ranks with so many Irish. His countrymen had shown time and again that loyalty was to be measured at any given moment by which side was winning.

Now Tibbot could see Ulick Burke striding importantly about the yard conferring with his fellow mutineers. Donal Sligo started to move forward for a word with him but was halted by two soldiers with drawn swords. Ulick was clearly enjoying the scene—this small, bloody victory, the utter surprise and confusion of the castle ’s residents. But in the next moment, with Ulick’s signal that opened the gate and lowered the moat bridge, the “great plan” was revealed to all. Clattering over the draw-bridge rode Red Hugh O’Donnell and a rowdy company of Ulstermen.

Tibbot could see that the three years in Dublin Prison and the three leading a rebellion had hardened the fun-loving lad he ’d known since childhood into a fierce and angry man. Red Hugh gracefully dismounted and removed his helmet, revealing a wavy red-gold mop of hair as he strode to face Ulick Burke. Their smiles were little more than leers, and their embrace more for victory than affection. What was left of Bingham’s garrison cheered.

Then Ulick raised a hand to silence the soldiers. The flickering torches playing on the courtyard lent an eeriness to his shouted announcement. “I hereby deliver the Castle Sligo to you, my lord O’Donnell, and to all the rebels of Ireland!” The soldiers cheered again, though silence pervaded the members of the O’Connor Sligo family and household, who were all at a loss for a reaction.

Red Hugh swept the courtyard with eyes that flashed yellow in the firelight. “Are you not Irish first?” he demanded of them all. “And should you not celebrate the freeing of your lands and castle from English tyranny?”

There were a few weak “huzzahs” from a clutch of servants standing huddled together, but not a sound from O’Connor nor his nephew Donal Sligo. Red Hugh found the old man in the shadows and moved to face him.

“You’ve been loyal to the Crown for so long you don’t know what freedom is,” he said with a withering gaze. “How do you sleep at night?” Without awaiting reply he moved to Donal and eyed him with disgust. “You’re a young man, Donal. You’ve no excuse for siding with the English.”

“They’ve been good to us here,” Donal said, proudly defiant. “And you’ve no right to take this castle. ’Tis my family’s, and has been for two hundred years!”

“Sligo Castle is necessary for the defense of the West Country against the Crown’s army,” Hugh announced with stern finality.

Then a voice rang out in the otherwise silent yard. “Are you sure you’re not taking it for your own pleasure?”

“Who spoke?”

“Tibbot Burke.”

“Tibbot!” Red Hugh moved eagerly toward the voice. “I didn’t know you were here.”

The two young men stood face-to-face, sizing each other up, having not laid eyes on each other for several years.

“You look well, Tibbot.”

“You look well yourself. Rebellion seems to agree with you.” Red Hugh laughed. “It does, it feels right, Tibbot.
You
know that from the times you fought on our side. But you forget it again whenever you fight for the English. Do you not think it’s time you stood your ground? Stood for Ireland?”

Tibbot stared hard at his old friend. “I suppose you want us all to believe you’re taking this castle for the good of the rebellion.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I say you’ve no right. This is Connaught, not Ulster. And when you steal from the lords of Connaught, you’re just as worthy of contempt as the English are. You’re no different. You just want to rule us.”

“You’re wrong about that.” Red Hugh held Tibbot’s eye. “I mean to reestablish the hereditary rights in Connaught that England has forbidden. I’m arranging for a new election of The MacWilliam.”

The news so stunned Tibbot that it rendered him silent.

“You like that, do you?” Red Hugh was smiling. “Well, you should, for who is more worthy of the Burke MacWilliamship than you? Would you like that, Tibbot? The title you were born to hold?” When Tibbot did not quickly answer him, Red Hugh turned on his heels as if he had not a minute of his precious time to waste on hesitant men, and again faced the Sligo residents. “Of course the lords O’Connor and Donal Sligo must relinquish residency in this castle,” he announced, “but those of you who pledge your support of the rebel troops that I garrison here may stay.”

Before he strode from the yard, Red Hugh stopped again before Tibbot. “You and your family will leave tonight. Await news of the election.

’Twill be soon.” He turned to go, but glanced back over his shoulder.

“And send my respects to your mother. She is a great rebel.” WELL, SHE HAD SLIPPED line and sailed out of Tralee Harbor undetected by the English guard, and her voyage to Spain had proven more than successful, but now Grace O’Malley was left to face the unpleasantness of her premature return. At the helm of her galley
Owl
, she could see a whole company of the queen’s soldiers standing at attention on the harbor dock. They’d be waiting for
her
, that was sure, and the prissy Captain Brady would be well armed with complaints, and threats of imprisonment for her treasonous offenses against the Crown.

First he would chastise her for setting fire to the English barracks one night several months before. It had been a necessary distraction, one used to draw away the soldiers guarding her person and vessels. She would also be accused—rightly—of boring holes below the waterline of the queen’s carracks, scuttling them and making it impossible to give chase to her fleet when it slipped its moorings in the flickering light of the barracks fire and sailed away.

Grace knew that the full wrath of Brady’s commander, Richard Bingham, would shortly fall upon her head, but the truth of it was, she was past caring. What more could he do to her that he ’d not already done?

He had deprived her of her homes in Mayo, murdered one son, ruined another, and laid waste to everything he touched. Now, despite the queen’s instructions to Bingham that Grace be left to her own devices, he had cessed a company of English troops on her, ensuring that her movements and activities were severely restricted.

She had for a time succumbed to self-pitying depression, allowed herself to wallow in it like a pig in swill. A message had come from O’Neill—his revolt in the north was strengthening every day, but without aid from Spain, it could never in the end hope to succeed. He urgently needed her help. Grace had been dumbstruck. The first chieftain since Brian Boru to unite all of Ireland behind him was asking her for help, and she—a virtual prisoner in the midst of Bingham’s soldiers and spies—was helpless, her hands securely tied. Each cargo was searched. Each voyage must be approved by Brady. And to enforce the Crown’s strictures, at least twenty English soldiers accompanied her crews when any of her ships left port. She could not possibly offer The O’Neill her services.

One wind-whipped Munster night, alone in the drafty stone house, Grace had drunk herself into a stupor. It was the next afternoon, the sun about to set over a gold and iron sea, that she awoke sick and sodden and altogether ashamed.
She’d been granted a brilliant life, and freedom beyond
reason. Yes, she had suffered some losses, but who had not? She was older and
wiser than that dandy captain and his garrison full of men who wished desperately to be anywhere in the world but the cold, miserable coast of western
Ireland. Surely there was some way, with the help of her clever and devoted
crews, that Brady’s garrison could be duped while she and her men made their
escape.