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Red Murrough drew out a hasp, brought his chained hands together, and caught the chain close to his wrists, so that his hands were bound close. "Now," said the Dark Master, settling back and stroking his wolfhound as if he were watching some curious spectacle, "do with him as we did with Con O'More last Candlemas. But let us work slowly, for there is no haste, and we must break his will.
His wrist-chains were fastened to an iron ring set in the floor, and his ankles to another, and he stared up at the ceiling-rafters of the hall, watching the motes drift past overhead in the reaching sunbeams. It all seemed very unreal to him. "First that long hair of his," said the Dark Master quietly. Murrough went to the fire and returned with a blazing stick.
As Murrough had reckoned Brian's swoop on the convoy had given him some notoriety, and more than once Brian himself remembered Cathbarr's dark presage after he had let the ten Scots go free to Ennis; Colonel Vere was anxious to carry him back to Galway for an example to other freebooters, and he was quite content to bide at Bertragh Castle until his prisoner could travel.
He concluded that it must be the day after his arrival. Now Red Murrough beckoned to the hoary old seneschal, whose red-rimmed eyes glittered evilly. The old man shook his keys and stooped over Brian, unlocking the hasp which bound him to the wall-ring. The oppressive silence of these men struck a chill through Brian, but he came to his feet readily enough as Murrough jerked his shoulder.
The Dark Master flung back his head in a laugh, and when the men saw his jest, a great howl of derision rang up to the rafters. Only Vere's officers looked on with black faces, for it was plain that this affair was none of their liking. A look of simple wonder came into Cathbarr's wide-set eyes. "Why do you not loose him?" he asked quietly. "Fetch the man out, Murrough," ordered the Dark Master.
With him were two of Cathbarr's axmen, and they led him to the hold occupied by Murrough O'Flaherty of the Kine, where Brian stayed half a day. He concluded a friendship with the mountaineers, promising them powder in exchange for cattle, and they promised, in turn, that within three weeks they would fetch a hundred kine down to Castle Bertragh.
Then indeed the Dark Master looked, and sprang to his feet, and one great shout of alarm and fear shrilled up from those watching. For as Cathbarr stood there, the veins had suddenly come out on his face and neck, and with a dull sound the ropes had broken on his arms, and he was free. Murrough rushed forward, and his pistol spat fire.
Ormond and Murrough being the two chiefs of the "peace party," what wonder that the prelates, who had so earnestly labored at the formation of the Kilkenny Confederation, and the Nuncio at their head, refused to have aught to do with projects in which such men were concerned, when it is borne in mind also that several provisions of that "peace treaty" were directly opposed to the oath taken by the Confederates?
Cathbarr was left in charge of the camp, and Brian rode up to the gates with Nuala and her two kinsmen, with a flag of truce. Murrough and his men were put into consternation by the news Brian gave them. After much stroking of his matted beard, Murrough proposed to surrender the castle on condition that he hold his post of lieutenant. Brian laughed, for he had other views on the subject.
But Brian was tended well, and his perfect health was a strong asset. His head had been little more than scorched, and the scalp-wound stayed clean; after the first day there came a festering in his broken hand, but Murrough washed it out with vinegar which ate out the wound and cleansed it, after which he bound it firmly in wooden splints and it promised well.
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