FOURTEEN
The Dogs
I could almost feel the breath of the horses on my neck, and the voices of our pursuers were loud in my ears. I hardly dared to look round to see how far behind me Andrew was, in case I should find one of them upon me, but I did look round, and my stomach lurched as I saw that he was almost caught. I opened my mouth to call out a warning, and the sound I heard was not my own voice but a terrible crack from the direction of the bridge. I stopped in horror as the leading horse reared up into the air, then collapsed, writhing, onto its fallen rider. Andrew was frozen in shock also, only three yards ahead of them.
He came quickly to his senses and began to move towards me at speed, aware his life depended on every stride. Not knowing what I was running to, I fixed my eyes on the bridge and did not look behind me again. I reached it at last, feeling I would collapse if I had to go a step further. I leant, wheezing, against the cold stone balustrade for a moment, allowing Andrew to catch me up. He all but lunged into me, before pressing his hands against the opposite balustrade and taking huge lungsful of air. Before either of us could master ourselves sufficiently for speech, another crack, much closer to us this time, rang out, and the three riders – who after a pause had taken up the chase again – reared up on their horses, two of them losing hold of their torches and scorching their already terrified animals, and wheeled back in the direction of the town and their fallen companion.
‘Holy Mother of God, thanks be to you.’
The voice came out of the darkness that enveloped the other end of the bridge, then a figure emerged from beyond the far parapet and began to move towards us. We both made for our knives, but the figure held out a hand. ‘Stay your weapons. I have been left here to help you.’
As he came closer and I could discern his outline better, I recognised the form of the tall young man from whom I had run at the quayside. While I relaxed my hand, Andrew did not, and I saw him very deliberately remove his knife from its sheath.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘I am Brother Michael O’Hagan, of the friary of Bonamargy at Ballycastle. I travel with Father Stephen Mac Cuarta, who asks me to see you safe from the town and bring you to him.’
‘And where is he?’ demanded Andrew.
‘On his way to a safe house in Bushmills.’
‘Having first denounced us as impostors at Coleraine.’
‘No, he did not.’
‘I saw him myself, talking with Blackstone, not half-an-hour before we were hounded from the town.’
‘He did not denounce you. You must trust me.’
Andrew was scornful. ‘A priest with a pistol? Why should we trust you?’
Even in the darkness I could see a flash of brilliant white as the young man smiled. ‘Because I am of more use to you than a priest without one.’ He held his weapon up for us to see; it looked to be one of the new flintlock types that I had heard of but never before seen.
Looking back towards where the dead horse and its injured rider still lay, Andrew nodded. ‘We have no choice, do we?’
‘Very little,’ said the young man. ‘Now please, we must make haste. Three of the riders have gone back towards the town. The confusions and drunkenness in Coleraine will gain us some time, but it will not be long before they have gathered a new search party, and we should not waste a moment.’ He unscrewed the top of a flask of water and we both drank gratefully, I now very much regretting the amount of wine I had indulged in during the performance. ‘Now, let us get on,’ he said. ‘A few miles will take us to Dunluce and we can rest again there.’
Guided by the stars in a sky from which the clouds had begun to clear, we headed due north, and it was not long before the boggy edges of moorland became drier under our feet and a tantalising hint of salt came to me on the cooling night air. We were moving at a slow jog, all three of us ever anxiously looking back towards the diminishing darkened mound that was the town of Coleraine. There was still no sign of light or horses coming from it, but we knew it could not be long. Brother Michael led us from the shelter of one rock or group of ancient trees to another, so that we were seldom crossing exposed ground.
It was not long before I could hear as well as smell the sea. The land had started to slope downwards slightly and the gentle approach of the waves to the shore grew louder in my ears in the empty night. One by one, we slowed our pace and at last came to a halt at the stunning sight the moon now illuminated before us. Pale blue cliffs of chalk descended gently to a near-endless sweep of sand bordering the midnight black of the sea. It was only a moment’s respite, and soon we were moving again, keeping to the coast and heading east.
‘How far to Dunluce?’ gasped Andrew.
‘About three miles.’
‘You are sure we will gain shelter there?’
‘In the chapel. They will have been warned to expect us.’
‘Father Stephen?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I could not picture the sturdy baker of Armstrong’s Bawn, who had seen thirty summers and winters more on this earth than I had, making the journey we undertook tonight.
‘Is he on horseback?’
‘We seldom travel on horseback, unless it is necessary. It is the rule of our order. He is on foot.’
And then I recalled to myself that the man who had ridden at the side of my mother’s brother as he followed O’Neill to the ends of Ireland and back, through winter, who had gone into exile with him in Spain, and had spent the years since travelling in Italy, France and the Low Countries, would not have been much troubled by a night flight in a land he knew as well as his own hand.
I regretted my vanity in changing my clothes earlier in the evening for the performance – the clothes Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett would have worn for a night at the play were not those he would have chosen for a cross-country run through the night in the first stirrings of winter. Andrew was dressed in a more sensible fashion, but we had both been soaked to the skin in the moat and our clothes clung heavy to our legs. Brother Michael, his cassock hitched up around his thighs, ran like the wind. The colder air began to scorch my throat and lungs. I wondered whether our pursuers would catch us before we succumbed to certain fever.
The sounds of our footfalls beat out a pattern with the rhythm of the sea coming in to shore. Suddenly, Michael stopped and held up a hand to stay us, another to his lips. Unmoving, trying to silence our breaths, we heard what he had: the sounding of a horn and the yelping of dogs, somewhere to the southwest of us.
‘What is it?’
‘The wolf-hunt.’
‘There are no wolves in these parts, surely.’
‘Tonight, we are the wolves,’ said Andrew.
Michael moved quickly. ‘They are about a mile off. We have a mile and a half before we gain Dunluce. They will be on us long before we reach sanctuary if we stay on this path.’
‘Where can we go?’ asked Andrew. ‘They will have our scent.’
Michael was thinking. There was little shelter here – few trees could withstand the blasts of the northern wind, straight off the sea, and the land behind us was flat and open.
‘The cliffs?’ I said, hoping I was wrong as I looked down on the massive, misshapen lumps of white chalk, tufted over with grass and moss, and frozen in their riotous collision over a bubbling sea. ‘There is no shore beneath them.’
‘There is, eventually, in the shadow of the castle itself, not far from Magheracross there,’ he said, indicating a promontory a little way off to the east. ‘They may be our only chance. They are by no means sheer, and will offer us many footholds and hiding places amongst the rocks and caves.’
‘Will the dogs not find us there?’
Again Andrew answered, thinking more clearly than I was. ‘Aye, but the horses cannot get down there, and if their riders dismount and come after us, well, it may approximate to a fair fight.’