Karen Robards - Dark of the Moon

"I'm for home." Licking the last crumb from his lips, Mickeen wiped his mouth on his sleeve and eyed his two unwelcome journeymates with disfavor. Willie and Caitlyn had finished eating a short while before. At Mickeen's words, they got slowly to their feet. Exchanging pregnant glances, they crawled back into the cart, Willie groaning and Caitlyn fighting the urge to. Mickeen climbed up after them. Unhitching the reins, he released the brake and clucked to the pony. Caitlyn winced as her bottom made its first jolting reacquaintance with the plank seat.

"Where we headin', anyhows?" Willie, quicker to forgive and forget than Caitlyn, asked the question of Mickeen. The ostler moved his eyes over the redheaded boy looking up at him with eager curiosity, then shifted his gaze to the black-haired one scowling at the redhead. Turning his head, the little man spat over the side.

"Donoughmore," he said.

"Is it a town?"

He grunted. Then, grudgingly, "Was a castle. Now it's naught but a sheep farm."

"Does he own it?"

"Who?"

"The Sassenach." The words were Caitlyn's. They had slipped out of their own accord despite her wish to appear disinterested in the conversation.

Mickeen looked at her with acute disfavor. "If you're meanin' himself up there, you're talkin' about Connor d'Arcy, his lordship the Earl o' Iveagh, and you show him some respect. Himself's no more a Sassenach than I be, or you. He's as Irish as the good green earth, descended from Brian Boru himself on his father's side and Owen Roe O'Neill on his mother's."

"He's Irish?" Caitlyn's eyes widened. "But-"

"Don't be believin' everything your eyes and ears tell you. His lordship was educated at Trinity College with the bloody Protestants at the wish of his father. He can ape their ways well enough when he needs."

"But why…?"

"Argh, that's enough out o' you, boyo. It's not for a beggar-boy to be questioning the activities of his lordship."

Caitlyn's eyes flashed at the description of her as a beggar-boy, but Willie nudged her in the ribs with enough force to keep her silent. She turned angry eyes on him. He urgently shook his head. Choking back her temper, Caitlyn conceded that Willie was in the right of it again. No purpose would be served by taking a swing at such an old bag of bones as Mickeen. All she would get for her pains would be to get thrown off the cart and left up to her arse in mud.

It was near sunset when Caitlyn got her first glimpse of Donoughmore Castle. Mickeen had been forced to halt the cart where the road turned upward to wend its way over another in a series of rolling hillocks. The little man sat swearing at the errant members of a flock of sheep taking their own sweet time to cross the road. Grinning to herself at Mickeen's ire, Caitlyn looked up and saw the Castle. Situated at the top of an emerald hill some three hillocks over, it looked down toward the steep banks and swift- flowing waters of the River Boyne. Its four round stone towers rose in majestic silhouette against the orange- streaked sky. As the cart began to move again and they slogged inexorably closer, Caitlyn could not drag her eyes from its centuries-old grandeur. Clearly the Castle had been designed as a fighting fortress. Round battlements with slits in the stone through which arrows could be fired upon besiegers below crowned the towers. The windows, small and close together, were set higher than three men standing on one another's shoulders could reach. The peaked roof was of slate to repel fire. It was every bit as tall as Christchurch in Dublin, and Christchurch was the most magnificent building Caitlyn had ever seen.

"Cor!" Willie said, as awed as she.

"He lives here?" Caitlyn could not hold back the question.

"His lordship, to the likes o' you," Mickeen muttered, casting Caitlyn a nasty look. Then he added, "Nah. The farm. Though his lordship and his brothers were birthed at the Castle, and their mother died here. As did the old lord, from the Fuinneog an Mhurdair, at the time the Castle was set ablaze."

"The-the what? Fuen… og?" Fascinated, Caitlyn could not respond to Mickeen's surliness with silence as she would have liked. The look the ostler turned on her was disparaging.

"So you've not the Gaelic," he said, in a tone that implied he had suspected as much. "The Fuinneog an Mhurdair. Murder Window. So called because the old lord was pushed from it to his death."

"He was murdered?" Willie breathed, his eyes huge as they fastened on Mickeen.

"Aye, for the land. The thrice-damned Penal Laws hold that a follower of the True Church cannot inherit. The old Earl was of the true religion, as was his wife by conversion, but his wife's mother was Anglican, niece of the Viceroy. Lady Ferman she was, and she used her influence at Court to prevent Donoughmore's seizure under the Penal Laws as long as she was alive. She died only days before the old Earl was murdered. Doubdess they thought wresting Donoughmore from the d'Arcys would be easier when it belonged to a lad instead of a tough old devil like the old Earl, but there they miscalculated. The old Earl, always being one to hedge his bets and foreseeing that Anglos would try to take Donoughmore from the d'Arcy family who has held the land from the time of Brian Boru, took steps. He had his lordship the present Earl schooled in the Protestant religion and registered him as such, though it fair broke his heart to do so. Aye, the old Eari loved his land more than his God, and is certain paying for it now. But Donoughmore is still in the hands of the d'Arcys as it rightfully should be, so it's my guess the old Earl would say that the torments of Purgatory are a small price to pay. But then, there's Protestants and there's Protestants, and I'm sure the good Lord is knowin' the difference."

This last cryptic comment sailed over the heads of his audience. "Who murdered the old Earl?" Caitlyn was as fascinated as Willie.

"Ah, now that we don't know, though there are some… But if his lordship knew for certain, you can be sure he'd have been avengin' his da afore now. Aye, and would probably have swung for it. So it's as well we dinna know."

"But who set the Casde afire?"

"We'll not be knowin' that for sure either. It was night, and the Castle was beset by a band of Volunteers, disguised to conceal their true identities, the Anglo cowards! They tried to burn us out, they did, howling 'Death to the Papists!' like bloody banshees while they looted and killed. We was taken asleep, you see, and afore we knew what was about they were upon us. They murdered the old lord, and many there were who saw it too, but not afore he was able to send his sons to safety. Likely they meant to kill the lads too, but there their evil plan went awry. His lordship was but a lad of twelve, but he took charge of his wee brothers that night and has had charge of them ever since. For thirteen years he's been father and mother both to 'em, and bonny lads they've grown to be, though they've known their share of troubles. Aye, and I'd like to see the man who could take Connor d'Arcy's land from his hold now!" This last was said under Mickeen's breath, with an air of almost gloating.

"But…"

"Eech, the pair of you chatter like squirrels. It's tired I be of answerin' your questions." It was a measure of the fury that Mickeen had worked himself up to in the telling that the snarl he sent Caitlyn's way was not meant for her. The expression of sheer hatred on his weathered face was directed at the anonymous Volunteers, the secret organization of Anglo bloodmongers who rode out at night, hooded and cloaked, in huge gangs to wreak bloody havoc upon the Irish Catholics. The Irish in turn had their own Straw Boys, so called because, since they were poorer, their disguises from hoods to cloaks were made of straw and they resembled nothing so much as walking haystacks. Caitlyn had seen an assembly of them just once, when they had marched on Dublin Castle. She had been no more than a wee bairn, but they had left an indelible impression on her. Like the city, the countryside was rife with violence, it seemed, as sectarian gangs warred on one another and the innocent.