Whilst our preparations to repel the English were being made, some days elapsed, and, on the fifth of them, Calvagh O’Halloran brought _The Cross of Blood_ into port at Clare Island, where to his great relief, not knowing what had been my fate in Galway, he was told that I was before him at Carrickahooley.
Meanwhile, tidings were being brought us by bands and families of kernes and peasants, fleeing before the enemy, that the English were approaching. And, as they marched northwards through Connaught, the days were red with blood and the nights with fire.
Everywhere their presence was marked by the smoke and flame of homesteads wantonly burned, and by the slaughter of all who fell into their hands, neither the old nor the decrepit, nor the nursing mother, nor the tender maiden, nor the sucking child being left alive!
Among the despairing wretches who flocked to the castle for protection it was impossible to single out the plotters, whose knavery they had themselves unwittingly disclosed in the Whispering Rocks, for everyone apparently was in the same evil case. A close watch, however, was kept on all the men who came in, and who were retained within the walls to help in the defence, while the women and children were conveyed to Clare Island, where they would be in safety.
Don Francisco dropped a half hint that Eva might better be sent to Clare Island until the fortune of battle had declared itself, but I knew that this would seem to her to be of the nature of deserting us at a time of crisis, and so the proposition was carried no further.
And all through the siege she moved a bright, winsome, and always cheerful presence, generally attended by the Wise Man, Teige O’Toole, who constituted himself her body-servant, and who, during this period, uttered no prophecies of evil, but cheered and sustained us with the certainty of victory.
At length, on the tenth day after my return to Carrickahooley, our spies came in from their lairs in the forests and hills with the news that the English army was camped two leagues away, and that it appeared to be the intention of its leaders to spend the night there. The spies described the army as an immense host, there being more than three hundred well-armed soldiers, besides a great swarm of the gallowglasses of Sir Murrough O’Flaherty of Aughnanure, who himself had accompanied the Governor.