WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TARN.
It had been long, indeed, since Brian had given thought to his meeting
with the Black Woman on the other side of Ireland. In that brief
meeting, the Black Woman had spoken of seeing the old earl, his
grandfather, in his youth. Yet it was forty years since the two earls,
O'Donnell and O'Neill, had fled together from Ireland, and even then
Tyr-owen had been an old man. Unless this Black Woman was close on a
hundred years of age, Brian could not see how she had known Hugh O'Neill
in his youth.
The mere fact that she had recognized him there in the moonlight was
proof of her true speaking, however. Brian could no longer hide from
himself that her words had some strange prophecy in them. She had
foretold his meeting with Cathbarr and with the Bird Daughter, though,
indeed, she might have been attempting only to guide him on the path
which he had afterward followed.
While the men were saddling, Brian called Turlough and told of the hag's
word that she would meet him again "on a black day for him."
"Now, what think you she meant by that, Turlough? Is this the meeting?"
"No, master, for it is no meeting. It may be as you think, and that she
was but trying to lead you into the west; yet, for my part, I call it
sorcery," and the old man crossed himself, for, like better men than
himself, Turlough ascribed all he could not fathom to magic. "It seems
to me that she is some witch who is hanging on your tracks, and that
when--"
"Oh, nonsense!" laughed Brian, flinging the matter from his mind. "At
any rate, she has served me well this time. Now, what rede shall we
follow in this matter, and shall we capture and slay the Dark Master
first, or fall on his men first, or both together?"
"It is ill to sunder a force of men, master," quoth Turlough. "If those
horsemen of O'Donnell's are encamped in a valley two miles to the north,
it is a vale of which I know well. But we must mind this--if O'Donnell
gets safe into Galway again with either these horsemen or those
Millhaven pirates of his clan, he will drive hard against Bertragh."
"The Dark Master shall come no more to Galway," said Brian grimly,
fingering his ax. "Now finish, and quickly."
"I have a plan in my mind, master; but unless we slay the Dark Master,
it is like to fail us. Let us send a hundred of the men around to the
north, for I will tell them how to ride, so that by this night they can
fall upon those men of his and scatter them in the darkness, and drive
them south where we can slay them utterly at our wills. If we drove them
back whence they came, there would be little craft in it, and it is to
my liking to do a thing well or not at all."
"A true word there," nodded Brian, his eyes gleaming. "I think those men
are as good as dead now, Turlough. Speak on."
"With fifty men, master, you and I can reach the valley of the Dubh
Linn. We cannot do it with horses, unless we ride around to the north,
and in that there would be danger of striking on the Dark Master's
scouts. But while our hundred are circling far around, we with fifty can
go over the mountain by valleys and paths I know of, so that by this
evening we will come to the Black Tarn and strike the Dark Master as our
hundred men fall on his camp. That is my--"
"Good!" cried Brian, leaping up eagerly. "Then we--"
"Hold, master!" And Turlough caught his arm, quickly staying him. When
Brian looked down he read a sudden fear in the old man's gray eyes.
"That was my first rede, Yellow Brian, and you would do well to hear my
second also."
"Say it," said Brian, and glanced at the brightening sky.
"My second rede is this. That message might be a trap to ensnare us,
though I have two minds about this Black Woman. But if we fail to slay
the Dark Master at the Black Tarn, we are like to have an ill time."
"Why so?" asked Brian, for he could see no likelihood of that. "I said
that we would slay him."
"Master, do you hold the lives of men in your keeping?" In the gray eyes
leaped a swift horror that amazed Brian. "I tell you that if the Dark
Master escapes from our hand, and his men are driven past our fifty into
the south, he will ride hard before us into Galway. I see evil in that
first rede of mine, Yellow Brian. I see evil in it--"
He broke off, staring past Brian with fixed and unseeing eyes, his face
rigid.
"Turlough, are you mad?" Brian seized the other's shoulder, shaking him
harshly. The old man shivered a little, and sanity came back into his
eyes as they met the icy blue of Brian's. "What daftness is upon you,
man?"
"I know not, master," whimpered old Turlough feebly. "Do as you will."
"Then I will to follow your rede, divide my men as you say, and when we
have slain the Dark Master, we will cut off the last of these O'Donnells
of his, ride to Millhaven and take that hold, and send word to the Bird
Daughter that she may keep Bertragh Castle and send Cathbarr north to
me. Now go, and tell a hundred of the men how to ride around this
mountain; then be ready to guide me over it to the Black Tarn."
"You are a hard man, Yellow Brian," said Turlough, and turned him about
and did as Brian had ordered.
None the less, Brian gave some thought to that second rede of
Turlough's. He saw clearly enough that with the northern horsemen driven
past, scattered though they might be, they could be cut off to a man if
the Dark Master were slain. But if O'Donnell should escape by some trick
of fate, he could gather up his men and drive south.
"If he does that, there will be slaying between Sligo and Galway," swore
Brian quickly. "But I cannot see that he will escape me here. When
another day breaks, I shall have won my Spanish blade again--and then
ho! for the Red Hand of Tyr-owen!"
So Brian laughed and donned his jack and back-piece, while Turlough drew
plans in the snow and showed the leaders of the hundred how to sweep
around without discovery so that they might fall on the northern
horsemen at eve.
Brian had grown into an older and grimmer man since the day he had stood
beside the bed of Owen Ruadh O'Neill, short though the time had been.
Youth was still in his face when he smiled out, but suffering had
deepened his eyes and sunk his cheeks and drawn the skin tighter over
that powerful jaw of his. When he had armed, he stood in thought for a
little, with hand on jaw in his instinctive gesture, and wakened
suddenly to find old Turlough bending the knee before him.
"Now I know of what blood you come, Yellow Brian," said the old man
softly. "I saw Hugh O'Neill, the great earl, standing even as you stand
now, on the morning when we slew the English at the Yellow Ford."
"Man, man!" exclaimed Brian in wonder; "that battle was fought fifty
years ago, and yet you say that you were there?"
"I was the earl's horse-boy, master." And Brian saw tears on the old
man's beard. "I loved him, and I was at the flight of the earls ten
years after, going with Tyr-owen to Italy, and it was these hands laid
him in his grave, master; master, have faith in me--"
Brian put down his hands to those of Turlough, his heart strangely
softened.
"He was my grandfather," he said simply, and Turlough broke down and
wept like a child.
When they left their horses and the camp behind, Brian followed
Turlough, feeling like a new man. He had lightened his heart of a great
load, and he wished that he had talked of these things with Turlough
Wolf long before this. Now he understood why the old man had offered him
service as he stood in that attitude on the battlements of O'Reilly's
castle after leaving Owen Ruadh, and he understood the love that
Turlough bore him, and the silence the old man had kept on the matter,
though it must have ever been deep in his heart to speak out.
No more words passed between them, nor did Brian tell Turlough more of
his story until long after; but of this there was no need. As they
climbed higher on the mountain they could see the hundred horsemen
filing off to the eastward; but soon these were lost sight of as
Turlough led Brian and the fifty through the valleys and deep openings,
which were drifted deep in snow, making progress slow and wearisome.
Indeed, Brian thought afterward that this hard traveling might have been
responsible for what chanced on the other side of the mountain.
On the higher crests and ridges there was little snow, however, and
Turlough seemed to know every inch of the place by heart, though more
than once Brian gave himself up for lost in the maze of smaller peaks
and the twisted paths they followed. Most of the fifty Turlough had
chosen from those hillmen who had joined Brian by Lough Conn, so that
they were not unused to such climbing, and remained with spirits
unshaken by the vast loneliness that surrounded them, and to which other
men might have succumbed somewhat.
Brian himself was no little awed by the desolate grandeur of the Stone
Mountain, but he only wrapped his cloak more closely about him, and
swore that the Dark Master should yield up the Spanish blade before many
more hours.
And so indeed it was done, though not as Brian looked for.
Until long after noon the band wended their way with great toil and pain
over the flanks of the mountain, until Turlough led Brian out to a point
of black rock and motioned toward the valleys below them.
"There to the left," he said, "is the valley of the Black Tarn. Do you
see that smoke, Brian, and that dark spot between the trees and the
lake?"
Brian looked, squinting because of the snow-glare. Leading down from the
side of the mountain itself was a valley--long, and widening gradually
to the plain, where a dark wood swallowed it up. Almost under his feet,
as it were, was a small, round lake deep in the rock, with a small,
frozen-over outlet that was lost in the snow.
But farther down the valley-slopes there were trees, and among them
horses tethered and a fire strewing smoke on the air close beside.
Between this little wood and the tarn itself there stood a low house of
thatch with smoke also rising from it, and from the other fire among the
trees came a sheen of steel caps and jacks, where were men.
But to Brian all these things were very small and hard to make out
distinctly, as if he were looking at some carven mimicry, such as
children are wont to use in play.
"Now come," said Turlough Wolf. "It is no easy task getting there
without being discovered, and the way is long."
Brian found, indeed, that to avoid being seen from below they must
needs take a roundabout way; but when the afternoon was far spent they
had come to a snow-filled hollow among the rocks which Turlough declared
was just over the edge of that valley-slope where stood the low house.
Turlough said that in his day that house had not stood there, and he
knew nothing of it.
Since there could be no talk of lighting a fire, Brian's men huddled
together in the hollow, and ate and drank cheerlessly. Brian was minded
to meet the Dark Master and win his Spanish blade with his own hand, so
he ordered that his men pass on after dark and make ready to fall upon
those men who were camped at the wood, but to hold off until he and
Turlough had smitten the Dark Master in that little thatched house,
where he was most like to be found. Turlough yeasaid this plan, for he
trusted greatly to Brian's strength.
At length they set out under the cold stars, and Brian's men were very
weary, but promised to do all as he had commanded. He and Turlough set
off alone over the hill, and when they had come to the hill-crest after
much toiling through the snow they looked down and found the house a
hundred yards below them.
"Let us go down cautiously," said Turlough, "for I think we can peer
through the thatch and plan our stroke well."
So they struck down openly across the hill-slope, and found that there
was none on guard. The door of the house was fast shut, but Turlough
strode cautiously in the trampled snow around the house, where, at the
side, a spark of firelight glittered through the loose thatch. To this
he led Brian, and Brian stooped down and looked through the cranny,
while Turlough went farther and fared as well.
There was but one room in the hut, and it was well lighted by the fire
that glittered merrily on the hearth. Sitting not far away, but with his
back to Brian, was a man; he sat on a stool, and there seemed to be a
wide earthenware bowl of water or some dark liquid on the floor between
his feet into which he was staring. In his bent-down position his
rounded shoulders stood up stark against the fire, and Brian knew this
was the Dark Master.
His hand went to the pistol in his belt, but since there was no other
man in the hut, he thought it shame to murder O'Donnell as he sat, and
made up his mind to go around to the door and burst in. He saw his own
great sword slung across the Dark Master's back, but even as he stirred
to rise, O'Donnell's voice came to him, low and vibrant, so that he bode
where he was and listened.
"I cannot make out the figures," muttered the Dark Master, still staring
down into the bowl of dark water. "The man has the face of Yellow Brian,
yet he is swart; the woman I sure never saw before. _Corp na diaoul!_
What is the meaning of this? Who stands in my way?"
Brian paused in no little astonishment, and stole a glance aside to see
old Turlough crossing himself fervently. It struck his mind that he had
chanced on some sorcery here, and, remembering the tales he had heard of
the Dark Master's work, he laughed a little and settled down. He was
minded to see what this thing might be; but he made his pistol ready in
case the magic told O'Donnell of his danger.
"It is some great man," came the Dark Master's voice again. "There is
something broidered on his-- By my soul, it is the Red Hand of Tyr-owen!
It is The O'Neill himself--the earl-- Is Yellow Brian of his blood,
then?"
At hearing this Brian crouched closer, in some fear and more wonder. Was
the Dark Master in reality seeing such figures in that water-bowl? Then
the man must be either mad or--or figures were there. Now O'Donnell's
voice rose stronger:
"Which of these twain stands now in my way? It is not Yellow Brian. Ah,
the earl is slipping away, and the woman is smiling. One of his loves,
belike, for he had many; she is fair, wondrous fair! Ah, what's this?"
Brian saw the dark figure crouch lower, as if in astonishment.
"Changing, changing! Is it this woman who stands in my way, then?
Toothless and grinning, crouched low over a stick, rags and tatters and
wisps of gray hair--"
The Dark Master paused in his jerky speech, stiffened as if in wild
amazement at that which he beheld, and a sudden cry broke from him,
sharp and awestruck:
"The Black Woman!"
Then Brian straightened up, feeling Turlough's hand touch his; but for a
space he stood silent while his mind cast out for what the Dark Master's
words meant.
In a flash it came to him. Through some black dealings O'Donnell had in
truth pictured The O'Neill in that bowl, and with him a woman he had
loved and who loved him; and this was no other than she whom Brian had
known as the Black Woman, now become an old hag indeed, with only the
memories of her fair youth and her love behind her. And this was why she
had recognized him and why she had evidently watched over him since that
first meeting, out of the love she had borne the earl, his grandsire, in
days now buried under many bitter years.
The two men looked into each other's eyes, and Brian saw that Turlough's
jaw had dropped loosely, and that fright had stricken the old man almost
out of his senses. With that Brian felt his own fear take wings. He
laughed a little as his grip closed on the haft of his ax, and the cold
star-glint seemed to shine back again from his eyes.
"Bide here if you will," he smiled quietly. "I have my work to do."
And, turning with the word, he strode quickly to the door, just as there
came a great cry from within the place.