Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [344]
The deal that he and Margaret Walsh had struck was simple enough. He was to capture Dame Doyle and hold her for ransom. It wouldn’t be the first kidnap of this kind in recent years; but normally there would have been serious repercussions if a relatively obscure figure like Sean O’Byrne had dared to abduct the wife of a man as important as Doyle. The present circumstances, however, with Doyle in armed conflict with the Fitzgeralds, presented a wonderful opportunity; and though Silken Thomas had granted Joan Doyle a safe-conduct out of the city, that would hardly extend beyond the suburbs. On the open road down at Dalkey, she was on her own, and Lord Thomas Fitzgerald probably couldn’t care less what happened to her there. Once O’Byrne had obtained the ransom money from the alderman, he was secretly to pass half of it to Margaret. Very secretly. No one—neither his own family nor Margaret’s husband—was to know that she had any part in the business; but her claim to a half share was clearly reasonable. She had brought him the idea, and was telling him when and where Dame Doyle would be travelling. O’Byrne had agreed to the bargain at once.
There was only one thing he hadn’t worked out. How much money should he ask for? He realised that it would be a substantial amount—probably more money than he had ever seen in his life. Though he knew exactly the worth of any cattle inside or outside the Pale, O’Byrne had no idea of the price of a Dublin alderman’s wife.
“When you have her,” the Walsh woman had promised, “I will tell you what to ask.” And O’Byrne was ready to acknowledge that the lawyer’s wife would know best. “But what if we can’t get the asking price?” he had enquired. “What if they won’t pay?”
The Walsh woman had given him a grim smile.
“Kill her,” she said.
They were coming slowly up the slope, taking their time. There were twenty of them: ten mounted, ten on foot. Six of the foot soldiers were simple kerne—men drawn from the land to fight for pay. But four were the terrifying gallowglasses with their long-handled axes and two-handed swords: they would make mincemeat of all but the most highly trained men-at-arms.
They had already been to Seamus’s house and found it deserted. Eva had wondered if they would set fire to it, but they hadn’t bothered. They were gradually approaching her house.
She had taken good care. If the raiding party thought the house was defended, they might spread out so they could take cover. But even from a distance, it was evident that the house had been hastily abandoned. The door was wide open; one of the window shutters was flapping in the wind, creaking and banging. Still packed close together, they advanced.
The open ground below the house was flanked on one side by a stand of trees; on the other was a low wall. The ground sloped very gently. The riders were still about a hundred yards from the house when Father Donal, who was standing concealed by the trees, gave the signal.
The thunder of hoofs began quite suddenly. It seemed to be coming from two places at the same time, so that the raiding party paused for a moment in confusion, looking from one side to the other. Then, gazing in horror, they saw what it was.
The two herds of cattle came round the tower house from both sides. They were already running hard, and as the two bodies came round the tower and converged, they became a single mass of horned heads, the riders behind them whooping, shouting, and cracking whips so that they broke into a stampede. One, two, three hundred cattle were pounding and thundering down the shallow slope, a great wall of horns, a huge weight, ten, a dozen beasts deep, bearing down upon the raiders unstoppably. The men looked for an escape. There was nowhere to go. The great herd filled the whole space between the trees and the wall, and in any case, there was no time to reach either of these. They turned to flee, but the cattle were already upon them. There was a crack, a crash, a terrible roar.
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