The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell (35 page)

“And I will certainly never endure it from a woman!” With a violent shrug, he shook Howard off him and with a final searing glance at his fellow councilors, Essex strode from the chamber.

10

IT HAD BEEN A WELCOME fit for a queen, with embraces and kisses and a fine meal laid out in a tent in the midst of Hugh O’Neill’s army encampment. When Grace O’Malley said as much, O’Neill had fallen like a courtier to bended knee and kissed her hand, proclaiming Grace “Queen of Ireland.”

“Get up off your knees and stop mocking this poor old woman, or she ’ll give you a good clout on the head for your troubles.”

“No mockery intended,” said O’Neill, gazing up at the face that had finally begun showing its age. “I could be no more serious, Grace. Without your imported bounty, where would my rebellion be? Guns and powder from Spanish ports. Loyal Gallowglass from Scotland. Intelligence packets from Rome and Seville—”

“Then it’s going well?”

Hugh O’Neill’s eyes were afire. Indeed, his entire countenance bespoke brazen confidence. He pulled out a bench and helped Grace lower herself onto it. “The English have no idea of what they’re marching into. None. Right under their noses I’ve assembled an army. ‘Peace-keepers’ they were meant to be, authorized and subsidized by the Crown itself. They believed my pleadings of loyalty to the queen, no matter how many times I provoked uprisings. As long as I would grovel and submit, all was forgiven. Burleigh himself sent me a huge shipment of lead, believing my story that I needed it to roof a fine ‘English’ castle for Mabel. Have you any idea how much shot that melted-down lead produced for our muskets?”

Grace grew serious. “Am I the only person in Ireland who mourned that poor girl’s death?”

Hugh looked away. “Don’t try to shame me, Grace. I loved Mabel Bagenal at first and she loved me. But how could a pampered En-glishwoman have known the life of a chieftain’s wife would be so brutal?”

“You could have warned her.”

“She wouldn’t have listened. She was desperate to leave that appalling family of hers. Pompous fart of a father. Power monger for a brother.

That’s who’s marching his army here tomorrow—the brother, Henry Bagenal. He claims to care for the well-being of the English soldiers garrisoned at Blackwater Fort—he
is
carrying with him arms and victuals to fortify them. But he ’s really come north into Ulster to seek revenge on me, his sister’s abductor. Her ‘murderer.’ Perhaps I am. She died of misery under my care. And I think by the end she loathed me as much as her brother loathes me now.”

“Well, it’s over and done,” said Grace. “We ’ll talk about happier things. You tell me about this army of yours.”

“We ’re eight thousand strong.”

“Good heavens!”

“By my runner I count Bagenal’s troops at half that. And they’re coming along the river road very slowly, with heavy cannon and copious supply wagons.”

“Does he know what he ’s walkin’ into?”

“He may know our numbers, but if he does, he puts no stock in it. To him, to all the English, we are as we always were—barefoot savages with battle-axes, darts, and spears. I have
four thousand
musketeers, Grace, trained to shoot more accurately than any Netherlands-trained soldiers. I have a thousand horse cavalry. They’ve all been drilling under my command and they’re brilliantly disciplined. What’s more”—O’Neill’s eyes brimmed with tears—“they’ve a
cause
, Grace.” She placed her hand over his. “I know that, Hugh. ’Tis an ‘Irish cause,’ and we ’ve never known that here before. There ’s not another man in Ireland—in all the world—who could have rallied them, you know that’s true. A single country fighting a single enemy. I never thought I’d live to see the day. Not even Red Hugh could have done it.

Where is that youngster? I know he must be here.”

“Aye, with a thousand of his and his mother’s best Gallowglass. But he ’ll stay clear of you, Grace.”

“It doesn’t surprise me.”

“The lad is feeling his oats,” said O’Neill, “and Connaught is a plum worth plucking.”

“Tibbot’s claim to the province is stronger,” said Grace.

“I agree, it is.”

“They’re old friends, those boys, and I think my son would have given him his loyalty had Hugh not gone and invaded Burrishoole, and worse, named his own MacWilliam, then imprisoned Tibbot. ’Twas high-handed and vainglorious, and I think in the end Hugh will rue the day he made an enemy of Tibbot. Besides myself there ’s no one with a stronger Irish fleet than my son, nor a western leader more worth following.” Grace looked away unhappily. “Tibbot ’s only other alternative for proving loyalty is to the Crown. That boy has never been so confused in his life. After his release from that English prison, he joined forces for a time with his own captor, Bingham!” Grace blinked back tears of frustration. “I know his choices were few, and Clifford was willing to uphold Tibbot’s own claim to the MacWilliamship against Red Hugh’s man, but he willingly gave up Miles, his only son, as a hostage to the English. And worse”—she could barely say the words—“Tibbot took his brother Murrough into his own camp. They fight together even today.”

“It pains you still, Murrough’s betrayal,” O’Neill observed. Grace nodded miserably. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I would feel the same.”

“It does console me and thank you for sayin’ so. Sometimes I feel so small and petty. There are times I’ve taken to self-pity at my plight, though I know Owen O’Malley would be waggin’ his finger at me, altogether ashamed.”

“So Bingham’s withheld the pension Elizabeth promised you?”

“Aye. Aside from my ships, I have nothing. No land. No cattle. I live aboard my vessels with my men, and as much as I love the sea, with my bones aching as they do, I long for a place of my own—a strong keep unmolested by the bloody English.” Grace ’s gaze was wistful. “I was a fool to trust the queen. Sure she freed Tibbot, but her recall of Bingham was brief, and when she allowed him to return to Connaught, he was more vicious than ever. She looked away when he withheld my pension from me. With Ireland, Elizabeth always looks away.”

“I promise you, Grace,” said Hugh O’Neill, taking both his friend ’s hands into his, “that after tomorrow England will never look away from Ireland again. We ’ll be more than a force to be reckoned with. We ’ll be a shrieking banshee at her back, and they’ll tremble in their boots at the power of their ‘Wild Irish’! Let’s drink to our country, Grace. Put up your cup and drink hearty, for tomorrow will see Ireland victorious.

Tomorrow will be her finest hour!”

O’NEILL COULD SEE that Henry Bagenal’s six regiments had strung themselves out like a long necklace along the road from Armagh to Blackwater Fort. The Ulster chieftain had prayed for this elongated formation—companies of English musketeers and pikemen slowed by sluggish bullocks pulling huge, ponderous cannon, and the rumbling train of carts bearing victuals and armaments for the besieged and starving inhabitants of the Blackwater garrison. The English cavalry, he had learned from his spies, was blessedly small, and the army was further burdened with its leadership.

Henry Bagenal was all that was wrong with aristocratic English manhood—pompous, self-righteous, and deeply corrupted by wealth, privilege, and the illusion of his own military might. In his eyes the Irish were unendurably low, “white monkeys,” best blasted off the face of the earth, to be replaced on graceful plantations by the genteel English of Spenser’s poetry. He ’d been horror-struck when O’Neill had seduced his sister, Mabel—delicate flower of English womanhood—sacrificing her on the altar of pagan Irish barbarianism.

O’Neill guessed that Bagenal must have been joyful when the news arrived that Tom Ormond was needed elsewhere at the time of the relieving of Blackwater Fort, for Henry wished desperately to face his sister’s debaucher, her torturer, her murderer. And O’Neill was no less eager to confront so despicable a character as Henry Bagenal.

From his hiding place in the midst of his newly trained marksmen, assembled behind a long line of hedgerows, Hugh O’Neill could see the battlefield spread out before him. The road from Armagh ran between two meadows, cutting across the Callan River, which, with its bright yellow banks, glowed in the afternoon light like a chieftain’s saffron cloak.

The six regiments approaching Blackwater Fort had never drawn together—a grave tactical error, O’Neill observed, one that Bagenal would live to regret. O’Neill wondered at the sheer stupidity of this long column of Englishmen marching blithely into his trap. Bagenal
knew
O’Neill was there waiting for him—Blackwater had been under his siege for weeks. His brother-in-law must believe the scatterbrained Irish would never dare confront his well-drilled soldiers on an open field. That was, after all, not the way the rebels fought. They hid in woods and behind rows of downed trees, and ran shrieking pell-mell into the fray with mindless ferocity.

O’Neill turned to his musketeers lying in their trenches behind the hedgerows. Every eye was on him, awaiting his command. The men were trembling with eagerness and pride. They had trained passionately, and for once in their lives these soldiers had guns and powder and shot aplenty. O’Neill could feel rising off them devotion and love for him, and he knew they would lay down their lives for their high chieftain and for the new cause, only now taking shape in their heads. The cause. Unthinkable just a year before—
freedom from occupation. Freedom from oppression.

Indeed, their heinous oppressors were approaching—English soldiers who had slaughtered their brothers, their wives, their mothers.

Their children. Soldiers who had mindlessly laid waste to their home provinces. To Ireland. Never before had these men fought for the whole of this ancient land, but now they understood, and their hearts—God bless their staunch hearts—were strong and ready to fight.

Raising his sword high above his head, O’Neill, with slow deliberation, lowered it, and the glorious blue morning exploded into sound.

CAPTAIN HENRY BAGENAL’S Second Regiment lagged just far enough behind the First to be altogether ignorant of its desperate plight. Gunfire could be heard from behind the line of hedgerows, but nothing heavier. It wasn’t until Bagenal witnessed the unthinkable—scores of panicked First Regiment soldiers fleeing in terror—that he moved to action. The Second Regiment charged in through the hedgerows to support the First.

A nightmare scene awaited them.

Hundreds of men lay dead in their column, the road snarled with fallen carts and writhing animals. More soldiers thrashed about in a yellow stream running with thick ribbons of blood. Then, with a great and sudden roar, a thousand Irish rebels rose from their trenches and poured onto the field, shooting as they came. A huge company of Irish horse appeared as if from nowhere, spears and battle-axes held high above the soldiers’ heads, and they too were shrieking as they came.

At that moment, and to Bagenal’s horror, his men—as a body—

broke from their ranks and scattered. He watched in disbelief as his cowardly regiment ran, and as they stumbled across the green meadow they were solidly raked by enemy fire. Now masses of Irish pikemen in full-drilled levies swept, a human wave, across the field toward the broken regiment. On foot at the front of the enormous square was its leader, marching directly toward him.

Bagenal stood gaping as shot whizzed by his head. It was his brother-in-law, the traitor Tyrone. And the man had spotted him as well. Fury rose in Henry Bagenal and he strode out into the field to meet the bloody Irish devil. He and Tyrone would fight hand to hand, to the death, he swore to himself. He would have his revenge for Mabel, beautiful child, lost to this wretched land.

THE BALL FROM the musket of the proud Ulster marksman found the very center of Captain Bagenal’s forehead and blew out the back of the Englishman’s skull. Hugh O’Neill saw his brother-in-law fall, and though a great, joyful cry rose in his throat he never missed a step, leading his pikemen onward. But he found himself smiling as he marched, savoring the irony of the moment, for the ball that had smashed open Henry Bagenal’s head had been molded from the melted-down lead that old Lord Burleigh had foolishly sent for the roof of Mabel O’Neill’s proper English castle.

11

BY THE LIVING CHRIST!
Would his head never clear
?

Robert Devereaux lay sprawled on his bed, fully clothed in riding gear, remembering how, when he ’d awoken that morning, his mind had been as clean and sharp as a midwinter morning. He had dressed himself and surprised the stablehands still rubbing sleep from their eyes with his request for the new piebald gelding—an animal barely broken, challenge for even the most experienced rider. The Earl of Essex had, since his retirement to Wanstead House two months before, been riding both infrequently and indifferently. He knew of the whispers amongst the household and stablemen of his ill health and bouts of melancholy, and this morning he ’d felt a keen pleasure at the men’s smiles and good wishes for a hearty ride. Indeed, he ’d felt strong in the saddle and altogether well with the spirited horse pounding under him.

There ’d even been brief ecstatic moments when the fresh wind stung his cheeks, whipping back his hair, and he ’d felt a boy again, ranging over the Welsh hills with his whole bright future ahead.

But the moment he ’d ridden into the yard at Wanstead he ’d been besieged with unwholesome thoughts and obsessions—the same ones that had, of late, brought him so low. The sight of the great house itself, so richly and lovingly restored by his stepfather, fetched back the images of Leicester’s marriage to his mother in this very house.

Robert had been eleven at the time, but even at that tender age he had understood the desperate secrecy of the ceremony. As he ’d dressed for the occasion, his mother had bustled into his room to instruct him once again that Queen Elizabeth must not, for the time being, know of the marriage. The “old bitch” was still in love with Lettice ’s husband-to-be and remained deluded that Leicester was faithful to her—body and soul. “Stupid woman!” Lettice had hissed. For two years she and Leicester had been carrying on their affair under the queen’s nose. Now she was pregnant with his child. His mother had, that morning, confided offhandedly to her little boy that she bore no real love for the Earl of Leicester, but now with her condition so advanced Elizabeth would certainly find out, and it would be safer when the explosion came if the two were already married.