Part 21

Through the gray forest, darkening to green, she rode. And over the high moor the black horse sped like a night-bird skimming the earth. She was filled with a great exultation—the cloud under which she had been oppressed seemed to lift when she emerged from the forest of Argial. She knew she was doing the thing she had longed to do always—and if there was but hawthorn abloom on the height it would be recompense!

Willingly and joyously the horse ran to the first circle of the rath, but beyond that he would not go! In vain she whispered—in vain she petted and caressed him. He planted his feet and pointed his ears and reared only to come down again in the same spot. She walked him quietly to a different point and tried again—nearer he would not approach.

She slid from his back and petted him—he was wet and trembling.

“This then must be the place of parting,” she whispered. “Why should you have fear of it?”

She wondered why she whispered where there were none to hear, but could not answer her own query. There seemed to be utter stillness on the world, and she scarce heard her own footfalls as she went up and up over the circles, her eyes straining for first glimpse of the hawthorn—if it should not be in bloom!

But it was. Even in the night without moon she could see the soft white of it, and as she crossed the third circle the whiteness of it grew more clear until she glanced above to see what sudden light of star was reflected by it.

The sky was the same, and the stars were the same; the mass of bloom gave out its own soft radiance in the night.

And besides the bloom there was a movement. She heard a breaking branch, and halted there, breathless, listening!

Then his voice—the voice she had listened for—the voice like no other—spoke.

“Come no nearer!” it said. “I broke the hawthorn for you and have waited four days and four nights—longer I may not. Hush! Do not speak to me! I know the thing you would know—and the thing Shamas has asked—and it is for you to see.”

She did not speak, for she could not! A strange cold wall seemed to circle her, and her eyes were drawn to the shadow of the cromlechs where the two had once sheltered from storm. She peered forward as dim light fell on the darkness under the arch—and through it—as if far away, and seen through reversed opera glasses, she perceived men in uniform—other men in civilian dress—a stone wall very high—and a man there who appeared to dominate—it was Hector Laud of Argial. Men with rifles passed across the scene, and a man under guard entered. He wore a cap, and her heart leaped and then grew cold—cold as her speechless lips.

He was questioned by Argial, and by others; he shook his head. He spoke, but she could not hear the words. Once he smiled at them in a tired way, as at some question many times answered. Argial turned aside and made a sign; a man with a white handkerchief folded it and moved forward, but the man alone by the wall waved him away. He removed his cap and let it fall beside him on the paving; he spoke a brief word or two, looking straight ahead as if into her eyes, and then stepped back against the wall and made a signal. The wind tossed aside the lock of bronze-gold hair on his forehead and he stood an instant with his hand over his eyes.

Then something happened, and he sank forward and lay there and shadows blotted all out as the men, Hector Laud among them, bent over the fallen body!

“That is how it was,” she heard him say. “I have at last done something for the land, and so dared come again to meet you here. O Dark Rose—I have sung your songs as I could—but strength is going again. Hush—do not speak! You will rest and wake to find the hawthorn abloom. You will grieve—but green hope will cover your life! You will not be without love—without music!”

He moved out from the screen of the white bloom, and the radiance of it shone on his face, grave and pale. In his left hand he bore the broken branch; his eyes were luminous and wonderful in the starlight.

A puff of wind blew aside the curls over his forehead, and she would have cried out if she could, for a dark mark was there—the open path of the lead of death! He lifted his hand, and it also was pierced.

“No,” he said, reading her thought, “they do not use nails in palms today for their crucifixions, but we still die—guiltless!”

She strove to break through the frozen silence in which she was locked—only to speak to him once—once! Only to tell him—

But his luminous eyes forbade, though the smile there was the smile of perfect understanding. Music came from somewhere about them—the _suantre_ by which earth-cares are silenced—she felt her eyes closing under its magic—many harp strings were sounding softly afar off—was it the lullaby he had once sung to her under the druid arch? She did not know—she was so nearly wrapped in slumber.

But through that mist of far harmonies there came one clear, low voice—his young voice singing the prophecy of the _Dark Rosaleen_.

_Your holy delicate white hands Shall girdle me with steel! And I will rear your royal throne Again in golden sheen! ’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone My Dark Rosaleen! My Own Rosaleen!_

It was there they found her asleep in the early dawn, wrapped in the green-hooded cloak and the spray of hawthorn across her breast.

Only Shamas and Hector Laud came over the third circle, and Shamas crossed himself at the sight.

“It is a priest we should have brought with us to this place,” he said, “for no living woman would sleep on Templard.”

Laud of Argial was blanched by fear, and halted on the edge of the rath and called to the man holding the horses below.

But she wakened at the shout, and stood up. The languor of sweet sleep was still on her eyes and she smiled at Shamas, whose gaze was the first to meet hers. The hawthorn fell at her feet; she lifted it, looked at the dew on it and on the cloth of her cloak—and remembered!

Her eyes were dark lightning as she faced Argial.

“Not one step nearer, so long as you live, and may yours be a long life—and remorseful!” she said. “My question to you has been answered without you, and this place is too sacred for your feet!”

“You are a raving madwoman,” he cried, and his face flushed red in anger. “Who else would range the forests at night and sleep on the moors alone?”

“I was not alone, Shamas,” she said, ignoring Argial and looking only at the old man. “He was with me here. Yes—he kept tryst with me on Templard and sang me to sleep with a song of hope! It is true, Shamas! He came back from the dead to do that, and he left this broken bloom here as witness when I would waken; it is true, Shamas!”

“I believe it is true,” said the old man, “for sleep was put on me, too—a heavy sleep of rest—and that is the first sleep coming to me for four nights—his soul is no longer calling us to hearken—God and Mary save him!”

“Four nights,” she repeated. “Yes, that is what he said—four days and nights he was waiting for me, and the blossoms held for me here!”

Laud of Argial glared at the two and uttered an oath of destruction on the old man.

“Are you both maniacs?” he demanded. “How did you know to tell us to follow her tracks to Templard? And who is the lover who sings you to sleep. You—you—shameless with your peasant mates!”

“It is the man you had killed in secret against a prison wall four days ago,” she said steadily, but without looking at him. And to Shamas she said: “That is indeed how Hugh Siod died! He saved my brother and died for it. Did they think to silence his songs by killing the poet?”

“You are both insane rebels!” shouted Argial. “A second time I have followed you to this place of secret meetings—and it will be the last—you shall go in a locked room of Argial until you are sane again!”

“I will go in no room of Argial ever again,” she said. “The cart of Shamas or Michal will bring my wounded to me in some more simple abiding place; and friends will be found.”

“They will surely,” said Shamas, “and honor will be yours—and love will be yours.”

“You are moon-struck Irish dreamers, silly as children! Do you think I will allow you to disgrace Argial with a scandal of this sort? You will go back with me if I have to call those men below to bind and carry you!”

“Man,” said Shamas, stepping between them, “go easy with your threats in Kerry. She has but to call out to the men down there what she told to us here of Hugh Siod—and you might not yourself see Argial ever again!”

“Stand aside! I have my rights—she is mine—she is—”

“No!” said Shamas Ronayne with such quiet force that Argial moved a step back at the intensity of the soft voice. “No, Argial! Rights of her you have never had, and there are many knowing that! She was traded to you by a gambler who did not own her—and that in her young, unknowing years! There was never bond of right between you two, and now there is foul murder dividing you!”

Argial glared cold fury at the incredible peasant.

“And this is your new sort of courtier?” he sneered at her; “the sweepings of the mud-huts!”

She drew a great breath of freedom and shook back the hood from her dark hair. The first rays of the sun struck the gray pillars back of her, and the white hawthorn, and flooded her with the rosy radiance of a new day.

“It is, indeed!” she said, and a throb of exultation was in her voice. “Both peasants and princes come from the huts of our land. They are the souls to whom he sung of freedom; they will be my courtiers—and my brothers, and my sons! Hugh Siod came back from death to sing a prophecy here to me—I will live among his people and work for that prophecy all my days!”

Argial scowled from her to the stalwart Kerry man climbing the hill, and turned away.

Shamas gazed at her with a reflected light of joy on his face.

“_O Kathleen na Hulihan, your face is like a star_,” he murmured.

According to official records it was six days after Beltain ere the dominating political group of Dublin Castle was forced to make public an account of the execution, without trial, of the writer, whose palm and brain were pierced by the same bullet in the jail-yard on the twenty-sixth day of April! There had been ten days of absolute secrecy covering the matter, and the explanation of Argial to his superiors concerning its ultimate publicity gave him a bad hour.

To tell them that a girl on an old rath on a Kerry hill had seen a vision of that death, and could not be silenced, was an absurdity not to be advanced.

The investigating board was composed of hard-headed unimaginative men, and Argial preferred reprimand from them for lack of executive ability, rather than be ridiculed by them for repeating any such curious phantasies as those evolved by the Irish mind!

Lullaby

[Music: _Traditional._]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The books mentioned below have been of much assistance to me while preparing these tales of Ancient Ireland, and I hereby express my indebtedness to the authors of the respective volumes.

Graves, Alfred Perceval, _Songs of Erin_. Boosey & Co., London.

Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta, _Book of Saints and Wonders_. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Hull, Eleanor, _Textbook of Irish Literature_. Benziger Brothers.

Hyde, Douglas, _Literary History of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day_. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Joyce, Patrick Weston, _Ancient Irish Music_. Longmans, Green & Co.

Keating, Geoffrey (1570?-1644?), _History of Ireland_ (_Foras Feasa ar Eirinn’_, preface signed by the author in 1629).

Mangan, James Clarence, _Complete Poems_. P. J. Kenedy & Sons.

Meyer, Kuno, Translation from the _Book of Lismore_.

Petrie, George, _Ancient Collection of the Music of Ireland_.

_Annals of the Four Masters._ Compiled by three scholars of the historic O’Clery house and Peregrin O’Duidenan, the historian and genealogist, early in the seventeenth century, and produced by John Colgan in 1645. The annals begin with the deluge, and close with the year 1616.

The initial letters used at the beginning of the Tales, and other decorations in book and cover, are taken from _The Book of Kells_, acknowledged to be the most beautiful illuminated vellum in the known world. This ancient volume is the work of an unnamed Irish monk of Kells monastery in the seventh century. The weird and commanding beauty of the pages have been at once both the inspiration and despair of artists for centuries, and the wonder of line and color would be unbelievable but for the ancient manuscript treasured at Trinity College, Dublin. The soul of an artist went into the precious volume known even in tenth-century Europe as the “wonder of the Far Western World.”

The music for the book was arranged by Geraldine G. Saltzberg.

All quoted verses or chants are in italic.

M. E. R.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 40 “His forest was ful” changed to “His forest was full”