The Silver Stag of Bunratty E-Book

Eithne Massey

• Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Richard De Clare, Lord of Bunratty, wants the head of the Silver Stag on his castle walls. Four children are determined that this will not happen, for the stag is a magical creature. The mysterious lady in the tower, Dame Anna, has told Tuan, Cliar, Maude and Matthieu that despite their differences they must work together to save the stag. But they are living in an Ireland full of war and danger and saving the stag is only the beginning of their adventures. Soon they themselves become the hunted ones. With the life of Tuan in danger, they must make their escape from Bunratty, row across the stormy waters of the Shannon and brave the dangers of the wild men of the woods. Tuan wants to return to his clan, Maude and Matthieu are seeking their lost father and Cliar is looking for the home she never knew. Who knows where their journey will lead them?

Leseprobe

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A STORY OF MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE

CONTENTS

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Title Page

PART I THE SILVER STAG

Chapter 1 The Hostage

Chapter 2 Richard De Clare

Chapter 3 The Kitchen Maid

Chapter 4 Fat John

Chapter 5 The Lady in the Tower

Chapter 6 Maude and Matthieu

Chapter 7 The Great Hall

Chapter 8 The Stag Hunt

Chapter 9 Prior Roger Outlaw

Chapter 10 Midnight Meeting

Chapter 11 Dame Anna Foretells the Future

Chapter 12 The Cattle Raiders

PART II ESCAPE FROM BUNRATTY

Chapter 13 Tuan

Chapter 14 Escape

Chapter 15 Foxface

Chapter 16 The Hermit in the Forest

Chapter 17 Knockainy

Chapter 18 Dysert O’Dea

Chapter 19 Red and White and Black Shall Be

Historical Note

About the Author

OTHER BOOKS BY EITHNE MASSEY

Copyright

Other Books

PART I

The Silver Stag

CHAPTER 1

THE HOSTAGE

uan shivered in the cold air. Even though it was dark, he could see that the river had become narrower. The branches of the trees on either side of the boat almost met over his head. Through the web of twigs and small leaves the full moon shone, its light split into a thousand silver pieces. It had been a thin crescent when they had taken him from his home. The familiar smell of water and mud was mixed with something else now. Tuan sniffed. Smoke, maybe? The boat slid under the branches of a blackthorn tree and the petals scattered over him, the thorns scratching his scalp. He bent his head as much as he could, but he could not put up his arms to protect himself because his wrists were tied in front of him and the rope secured around his waist. The Captain of the Guard, Fat John, had done that. Fat John had done it purely to humiliate him. He knew that Tuan would not try to escape.

Tuan raised his head and looked around him as the boat came clear of the trees. Even if he had wanted to escape, he would be completely lost in this strange country of field and river and low-lying lakes, far away from his home in the hills beyond Cratloe Forest. Around him, the landscape was silver, the shapes of the distant hills black.

Something silver flashed across the moonlit field and was gone in an instant. Tuan blinked. Was it some kind of animal? A horse, a deer? Animals were not silver; white or cream, maybe, like the horses in his father’s herds, but not silver. Was the colour a trick of the moon or of his tired eyes?

‘Look sharp now, we’ll need to pull in soon, ye stinking lazy dogs.’ Fat John was shouting, as usual.

By now Tuan heartily hated the Captain of the Guard. He was a huge, grossly fat man, wide and red and the owner of several chins, and a rough, red moustache that bristled on a face scarred from many fights. He never spoke without cursing and rarely without shouting. Tuan was careful never to catch his eye; he had been the victim of one too many of his casual, vicious blows.

He wondered if they had finally reached the castle. Please let it be so, he thought. He did not know what to expect there, but nothing could be worse than the past few days. He had lost all sense of time. Life had become a nightmare, each day starting with a kick from one of the soldiers. As soon as he was up, he was bundled onto a mule, his wrists tied and the mule itself attached by a leading rope to the saddle of Fat John. Then, after a long day’s march, a meal of hard bread and sour ale eaten around fires that seemed to take forever to light in the cold, damp evenings of late spring.

At first, they had travelled through forest, where no-one cared if the branches whipped his face as they made their way through the trees. At every step, Tuan was afraid he might fall off, more afraid of the shame of it than the pain it would cause him. Then came the boat, the stink of fish and the putrid water at the bottom. He had gagged on it when Fat John had thrown him into it. Fat John looked on, laughing, as the boy struggled to sit upright.

The horses and dogs who accompanied the soldiers had been better treated than Tuan throughout the journey. But then, the animals themselves had treated him better than the soldiers had. He had even made friends with one of the half-grown dogs, a, brown-faced hound with shining, friendly eyes that Fat John referred to as Dumbutt, but Tuan had secretly named Gile, which in his language meant ‘brightness’.

The boat travelled from the broad banks of the Shannon into a smaller tributary, and now there was light along the shoreline and voices shouting in English. It was pulled to the left and Tuan was dragged ashore. Through the undergrowth he could see lights high in the sky. It must be a hill, he thought, but as they made their way through the trees, he realised that the lights, so high up, were shining from the castle itself. He stared. He had never seen a building this tall; but then, he had never been so close to a castle. Huge stone walls circled a tower, its whiteness looming over him out of the darkness. Fat John shouted, ‘Move on, or I’ll have your guts for garters and your livers for breakfast.’

Tuan struggled forward. He had a confused sense of crossing a bridge, of the harsh noise of a metal grid raised to let them in, of a vast doorway – and then he was inside the gates, his eyes blinking in the stinging smoke that came from the rushlights the guards held up to his face.

‘So this is the hostage, then,’ said one of them.

Fat John grunted and dragged Tuan into a small room just off the courtyard. He flung the boy inside, his hands still bound, so that he fell onto the floor, almost hitting his face.

‘Get in there and keep quiet, or you’ll feel my strap,’ the Captain of the Guard shouted as he slammed the door behind him.

Be brave, Tuan thought to himself. You are a Mac Conmara. We are the sea-dogs who know no fear. Be brave. He lay there, his head aching, his throat dry from thirst, his misery deepened by the fact that he could feel tears trickling down his face. At least there was no-one to see them.

The room was almost totally bare. He sniffed. The place smelt of pigs, with a faint undertone of chickens. Straw covered the floor, and a wooden bench had been placed under a tiny, barred window high up in the wall, with a pointed top like a church door. No light, except a thin line of moonlight that lit up one corner of the room. Just for a moment he thought he could see two other boys, bound and gagged like him, in the faint glow; but then he blinked and there was no-one there. He stared at that corner until the dawn started to break and a cock started crowing. Tuan felt as if it was crowing directly in his ear. Be brave, he told himself again. He was very tired of being brave. Finally, he managed to curl up on the floor. What he would have liked more than anything else was to be able to cover his face with his bound hands.

He was woken by the noise of the door scraping against the stone floor. Two figures came into the room; one of them was carrying a bundle of clothes and the other a bowl and towels. Light streamed through the open door, blinding the boy.

Both figures were female, but they could not have been more different. The woman carrying the clothes was tall and almost as fat as Fat John; her face was round as a pudding, but she was beaming at him, though after a moment her cheerful look was replaced by a frown.

‘What state did that miscreant leave you in, then? And you a guest of my master. Here, girl, help me lift him onto the bench and we’ll take off those cords.’ She spoke in English.

The smaller figure was a girl of about his own age, or a little younger. She was thin and red-haired and she smiled at him, but said nothing. She set down the bowl she was carrying and helped the large woman shift Tuan onto the seat and untie his wrists. They were raw, bleeding from the rope. He rubbed his eyes and realised that his face was covered in blood from where the blackthorn had scratched him.

‘There, my lamb,’ said the fat woman, ‘Margaret will look after you. Cliar, run to the stills cupboard and fetch some of Dame Anna’s green ointment. Here’s the key. Hurry now!’

The girl nodded and the woman spent the next few minutes fussing over Tuan, washing his wounds and his face and keeping up a stream of talk that at times Tuan found difficult to follow. His English was good; he had learned it from a boy his own age, a hostage who had stayed with his people for months. But Margaret never stopped to draw breath.

Finally she said, ‘And what’s your name, lad?’

‘I am Tuan, of the Mac Conmara clan of the hills east of the Cratloe woods.’ He said it proudly.

Margaret raised her eyebrows. She looked as if she was about to say something, but at that moment the girl came back with the ointment.

‘You put it on him, Cliar. You’re the one with the healer’s touch.’

While the girl smeared the cool, green paste on his wrists, Tuan had the chance to look at her more closely behind her curtain of hair. She was pale-skinned and freckled, like him, but her eyes were not blue like his, but a pale grey-green. She smiled at him shyly, but still said nothing. After the ointment had been rubbed on his wrists, Tuan found that he could move them without pain.

‘Thank you,’ he said carefully, in English.

‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, in perfect Irish.

Tuan breathed a sigh of relief. At least some people in the castle spoke his language.

Margaret was laying out the clothes she had brought on the bed. ‘These look like a good enough fit and will be better than those barbarous rags you’re wearing. Now you, boy, get them on and make haste about it; Sir Richard wants to see you and you cannot go to him and his lady looking like a beggar. Come, Cliar, we must organise food for the lad. But eat it quickly, boy.’ She paused. ‘And just in case you were thinking of trying to escape, don’t. The castle is very well guarded.’

‘I will not try to escape. It would be against my honour.’

Margaret snorted. ‘Honour, indeed! All that kind of talk makes my head ache, and there’s far too much of it in this castle. Now, Fat John will be here soon to lead you to His Lordship. But I’ll have a word with him before he comes to you, so there will be no more roughness. Captain of the Guard or not, he’ll do as I say if he wants himself and his men to eat well while they’re here in Bunratty.’

They left, and Tuan began to struggle into his new clothes. They fitted him well enough, but their bright colours and thin weaves felt strange, so different from the rough, warm wool and soft fur of home. Within a few minutes the young girl had brought him bread and milk. Tuan tried to talk to her, but although she smiled at him shyly, she would not stay. After he had gulped the meal down, he began to feel better. Margaret had annoyed him, but, after all, how could an Englishwoman like Margaret understand the Irish idea of honour that prevented any thought of escape? And at least she had treated him with courtesy, as a guest rather than a prisoner.

For he was not a prisoner. He had not been captured, but sent by his father, to be held hostage by Richard De Clare, Lord of Bunratty. Giving and taking hostages was a way of life in Thomond, indeed all over the island of Ireland and beyond. As long as he was held by Sir Richard, he was the guarantee that his father’s people would not attack the castle or the lands surrounding it. As long as they kept the peace, he would be treated well. But if his father’s branch of the Mac Conmaras – McNamaras, as they were now sometimes called – went to war against the English, things would be very different for him. He would certainly be maimed, losing an eye or an ear. He might even be killed.

CHAPTER 2

RICHARD DE CLARE

hatever Margaret had said to Fat John, it certainly worked, for when he returned, he led Tuan down to the Great Hall without tying him up again, though he said nothing and looked sulky, spitting on the floor as he opened the door to the hall.

Tuan gasped as he went through the doorway. The Great Hall was huge – bigger than the abbey church in Quin, the largest, highest place he had ever seen. Like the abbey church, as soon as you entered your eyes were drawn to the wall opposite the door. But here, instead of an altar, there was a great fireplace. Seated in front of it, at a table covered with food, were a harsh-faced man and a thin-faced woman, the woman holding a small child, who wriggled on her lap. So this was Sir Richard De Clare and his wife, the Lady Johanna. Tuan had heard all about them. All of them, it seemed, were more intent on their trenchers of food than in paying any attention to the boy who was slowly making his way towards their table.

This gave Tuan the chance to look around him. There was a fire burning in the huge hearth and there seemed to be a chimney, so the room was clear of the smoke that filled most halls; Tuan had never seen a chimney before. The room was filled with trestle tables and benches, now mostly empty. Servants were dismantling them and standing them up against the walls. A few soldiers still sat astride the benches, spearing their food with their knives, while dogs sniffed around the floor for the morsels they dropped. The walls had been whitewashed with lime and they were covered with trophies of the kill – the heads of boars and wolves, huge antlers from the forest stags. On one wall there was what seemed to be a tapestry, showing a hunt in the forest, men in bright clothes with horns and hounds, all surrounded by green leaves. It looked real and yet not real; the birds in the branches were too still, the flowers that covered the forest floor were too bright and stiff. Tuan’s scrutiny was interrupted by a cool voice. It came from Sir Richard.

‘So, you are Sorley Mac Conmara’s boy! A small enough surety, I see.’ He laughed at his own joke, and there was a polite titter from the others around the room.

‘Well, boy, you are a guest here for as long as your father holds faith with us. And you will be treated as such. Matthieu here is only a couple of years younger than you. He is my ward. He will look after you and you will attend lessons with him.’

Sir Richard paused, his eye lighting on a small, round-faced boy seated near him. ‘Matthieu, come over and greet the boy. You will show him the castle and where he needs to go. And tell Margaret to fit him out with whatever he needs. I am glad to see that he has already been given some civilised clothing.’

The chubby-faced boy scrambled down off his bench and came towards Tuan. As he came close, Tuan saw that he was smiling. He looked nice, with his fair hair cut in a slightly crooked fringe over his forehead and wide blue eyes. For a horrible moment, Tuan thought he was going to kiss him on the cheek but then, with a glance at De Clare, the boy seemed to decide against it. Instead, he took Tuan’s hand, as if to lead him away. But Tuan had suddenly remembered the lesson impressed upon him by his own father and mother. These people might be barbarians, but that did not mean that the son of Sorley Mac Conmara and Sive O’Dea had to act like one. He shook off Matthieu’s hand and made a deep bow, Norman fashion, saying in his best English:

‘While I am in your house I am yours to command, my lord and lady.’

Sir Richard merely nodded. There was no expression on his face, with its long, thin nose and narrow lips, its heavy eyelids over dark eyes that seemed strangely blank. This man was older than Tuan’s father, and his reputation, that of Claraghmore, the Great De Clare, was known all over Thomond and far beyond. Tuan’s mother, trying hard not to cry, had told him all about the Lord of Bunratty. He had become lord of the castle when he was very young, for his father had died when he was a child and his elder brother, Gilbert, had only been lord for a short time before he too had died. Despite his youth, Sir Richard had held onto power in a part of the world where only the very strongest and wiliest survived. Even Tuan’s people spoke of him with awe, for no-one could deny that he was a great warrior and a dangerously clever enemy.

But now the Lady Johanna spoke for the first time. She was pale and thin and Tuan could glimpse blond hair under her headdress. Her clothes were very rich and fine, but her face was too stiff and her eyes set too close together for beauty. She spoke in English.

‘Indeed, it has vastly pretty manners for a savage! Perhaps, Maude, you could take a lesson from the wild Irish. Be sure to watch his ways.’ She gave a sneering laugh, and the child on her lap giggled too.

The dark-eyed girl she had addressed scowled, then shrugged her shoulders and gave Tuan a filthy look. At first he thought she was not going to bother to reply, but then she said, in English too but with an accent very different from the Lady Johanna’s: ‘I might as well to take lessons from the Irish wolfhounds that fight with each other around the fire, my lady. Did you hear that jest about the one that was chewing a bone and then stood up and walked away on three legs?’

Tuan drew a sharp breath. But Matthieu was pulling his arm urgently, and he allowed himself to be led from the Great Hall.

Once outside, Matthieu let go of his arm and said apologetically: ‘Don’t pay any heed to my sister; she never misses the chance to be rude to Lady Johanna. They can’t stand each other. She didn’t mean anything against you, you know.’

The boy spoke in English, but with an accent like his sister’s, an accent Tuan could not place. It was not Irish, that was for sure, nor straightforward English like Margaret’s. Nor was it the strange crossbreed accent that the Norman-English lords and ladies spoke, though that was the closest to it.

‘You are not English, are you?’ he asked Matthieu.

Matthieu shook his head. ‘No – and don’t let Maude hear you suggest that we are! I do not know quite what we are.’ He smiled. ‘Normans, mostly, I suppose. My family was a crusading one. You have heard of the Crusades?’

Tuan nodded. Everyone knew of the great armies that had been sent to the east to claim Jerusalem for the Christians of Europe.

‘Well, my great grandfather was a Frank, but he went to Jerusalem, to fight for the holy city. I don’t remember Outremer at all, but Maude sometimes tells me stories about it. I don’t think she can really remember it either, but our mother talked to her about what it was like there. My grandfather settled down there, and began trading. Then, after the Mamluks took over, we had to go away. We came westwards. We went to Italy, and then to France. My father is a soldier, so he has always worked for whatever army would take him on – though he only works for the most noble of lords. We always went with him, until Maman died. My mother refused to be left waiting and worrying as to what might happen to him and always travelled along with him. But in the end it was not my father who died, but Maman. She got sick in Antwerp. My father said it was the cold did it.’

He stopped for a moment, drew breath and continued. ‘We were sent away. We went to England first, to cousins. But then we did something that got us into trouble, even though the person we did it to deserved it – and so we were sent over here. Sir Richard is only some kind of distant relative, so Lady Johanna says that it was really very good of her to take us in at all. But she and Maude don’t like each other, so it’s difficult. And now, if we are thrown out of here, there is really nowhere else for us to go after Bunratty. We have gone as far west as we can, unless we sail out into the western ocean and fall off the edge of the world.’ He laughed, but his voice shook.

Tuan got the feeling that he had made up the joke to hide his fear. It must be frightening, he thought, to know that you had no real home.

‘What about your father?’ he asked.

Matthieu shrugged. ‘Our father left us to fight with the Hospitaller Knights in Rhodes, and promised to come to fetch us as soon as he could. But that was over a year ago and there has been no word from him. It seems that he might be–’ He stopped and swallowed.

Then he said: ‘Look, this is the room where Maude and I sleep.’

They had been climbing up stairs and had now reached the door of a room in a side tower, and the boy was breathless. He opened the door and Tuan peered into the room. He had heard that the English had strange curtained things called beds, but there were none in here, just two straw pallets on the floor, a table with a jug and basin, a couple of wooden chests and a peg where a brown and a blue cloak hung side by side. The shutters of the narrow window were open and the air smelt much fresher than in his little room. Matthieu went over to one of the chests, and lifted the lid.

‘Come and see my treasures,’ he said. But he was interrupted. The dark-haired girl, Maude, was glaring at them from the door.

So, thought Maude as she looked at the two boys, now, on top of everything else, it looked as if Matthieu was making friends with the Irish hostage. He would desert her and she would have no-one. She would be even more lonely for Outremer and their past life. There were nights when Maude dreamed that she was back in Outremer, and woke up with tears on her face, which she would quickly wipe away so no-one would see that she was crying. How she missed being there! How she missed the sun – ever since she and Matthieu had arrived in Bunratty there had hardly been a sight of it, nothing but rain and mist.