Games of the Hangman
Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Games of
The
Hangman
Hugo Fitz Duane 01
by
V i c t o r
O ' R e
i l l y
"From the ancient times, most samurai
have been of eccentric spirit, strong willed and courageous."
—Yukio
Mishima,
Hagakure
"Plumb hell or heaven, what's the
difference?
Plumb the unknown, to find
out something new."
—Charles
Baudelaire
Prologue
FITZDUANE'S ISLAND OFF THE WEST OF
When he was
told he was to hang, Rudi had turned pale and swayed on his feet.
Later he was
more composed, and it was clear to the others that he had accepted the
inevitability of what was to come.
He
was given no choice.
Either he would
accept the verdict and do what was necessary or he would be killed painfully —
and so would Vreni and other members of his family.
It was one life or several, and either way he
would die.
There was only one decision
he could make.
He was told that his
hanging would be quick and painless.
He had reached
a point where he couldn't take it anymore, where what they were doing and what
they planned to do — however valid the reasons — were suddenly abhorrent.
He could no longer continue.
Physically his body rebelled, and he felt ill
and nauseated.
His mind was a morass of
terrible images and memories, and hope and belief were dead.
He had been warned when he joined that he
could never leave alive.
He thought of
fleeing or going to the authorities or fighting back in some way, but he knew —
knew with absolute certainty — that they meant what they said and would do what
they had threatened.
It must be his
life, or Vreni and Marta and Andreas would die.
In many ways
he welcomed the prospect of death.
Guilt
engulfed him and he could see no way out.
He knew he would not be forgiven for what he had done already; he could
not forgive himself.
The
arrangements were made by the others.
He
had been told where to go and what to do.
The rope was already in place when he reached the old oak tree.
It was thin and blue and of a type used daily
around Draker for myriad tasks.
It was
hard to believe this mundane object would end his life.
He had been told that precise calculations
had been made to ensure that his death would be instantaneous.
Four of the
others stood around the tree watching and waiting but making no motion to
help.
He must do this alone.
He climbed the
tree with some difficulty because the bark was wet and slippery from recent
rain.
He stepped out onto the branch and
slipped the noose around his neck.
He
nearly slipped and used the hanging rope to steady himself.
His hands were shaking and his skin felt
clammy.
He could see
two of the watchers below him.
A wave of
despair and loneliness swept over him and he longed to see some friendly
face.
In seconds he would be dead.
Nobody would truly care.
Nobody would ever know the real reasons
why.
The man in
been physically present instead of fifteen hundred kilometers away from this
miserable dripping forest.
Rudi suddenly
thought of his father and the time when the family had all been happy
together.
Rudi could see him, and he was
smiling.
It was the way it used to
be.
He stepped off the branch toward
him.
It wasn't over
in seconds.
The man in
it wasn't meant to be.
It took Rudi some considerable time to die.
The watchers —
appalled and excited and stimulated — waited until the spasming and jerking and
sounds of choking had ceased, and then they left.
It was a small
thing compared with what was to come.
Book One
The Hanging
"Irish?
In
truth, I would not want to be anything else.
It is a state of mind as well as an actual country.
It is being at odds with other nationalities,
having a quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about
life, and about death..."
—Edna O'Brien
,
Mother
Ireland
1
Fitzduane
slept uneasily that night but awoke with no conscious premonition that anything
was wrong.
It was raining when he
climbed out onto the fighting platform of the castle keep and looked across the
battlements to the dawn.
He reflected
that rain was something anyone brought up in
used to.
More than
seven hundred years earlier the first Fitzduane had stood in much the same spot
for much the same reason.
Inclement
weather or not, the view from the castle keep brought satisfaction, even in the
grim, dull month of February.
The land
they saw was theirs, and the Fitzduanes, whatever their personal
idiosyncrasies, shared a ‘what I have I hold’ mentality.
The rain
stopped, and the sky lightened.
The castle
stood on a rocky bluff, and from his vantage point Fitzduane could see much of
the island.
It just qualified as an
island, a windswept finer of bog, heather, low hills, and rough pasture jutting
out into the Atlantic and separated from the mainland by a mere twenty
meters.
A bridge set well into the
overhanging cliff tops spanned the divide.
Farther inland
was a freshwater lake by whose edge stood a small white thatched cottage.
A trickle of smoke emerged from its
chimney.
Inside, Murrough and his wife,
Oona, the couple who looked after the castle and its lands, would be having
breakfast.
Murrough had been Fitzduane's
sergeant in the
The
the seaward base of the castle.
Fitzduane savored the familiar sound.
He huddled deeper into his heavy waterproof as the gusting wind, even at
this height, blew salt spray into his face.
He glanced at
his watch.
Half past eight.
Time to go.
He closed the roof door behind him and
descended the circular staircase with some care.
The stone steps were worn by centuries of
use, and it was five flights to the storeroom and the armory below.
The old names for the rooms were still
used.
Although sides of salt-cured bacon
no longer hung from the blackened hooks of the storeroom ceiling, any
self-respecting Norman knight would still have been impressed by the reserves
of weaponry that were on display in the armory.
If the same knight had been familiar with firearms and the matériel of
modern warfare, he would have been dazzled by the collection of rifles,
pistols, and automatic weapons concealed in the deeper recesses of the
castle.
Illegal though it was under
current Irish law, Fitzduane maintained the family tradition of collecting
weapons of war.
*
*
*
*
*
In its
original from the castle had been a rectangular tower of five floors topped by
the fighting platform, with the entrance, accessible only by ladder, on the
second story.
Over the centuries the
castle had been adapted, strengthened, and modernized.
A three-story slate-roofed extension now
nestled up to the original rectangular keep.
Stone steps replaced the ladder.
A curtain wall surrounded the bawn, as the castle courtyard is known in
stables and outhouses had been built inside the enclosed perimeter.
A network of concealed tunnels and storerooms
had been added in the sixteenth century.
The entrance,
always the weakest part of a castle, was through a small two-story tower, known
as the gatehouse, or barbican, set into the curtain wall.
The floor of the protruding upper story was
pierced with openings — murder holes — from which missiles and boiling water
could be dropped upon attackers.
The original
iron portcullis, the heavy spiked gridiron gate that could be dropped into
place at a second's notice like a guillotine, had long since rusted away, but
it had been replaced during the Napoleonic Wars.
It now hung, its windlass oiled and in
working order, awaiting an attack that would never come.
Externally the castle was guarded by the sea
and the cliffs on two sides, and a deep ditch secured the rest.
Duncleeve, the
ancestral home of the Fitzduanes for more than seven hundred years, had never
been taken by direct assault.
That was
reassuring, Fitzduane sometimes thought, but of limited practical advantage in
the twentieth century.
*
*
*
*
*
Hooves
clattered upon the wooden bridge over the defensive ditch.
Fitzduane applied a slight pressure with his
knees, and Pooka turned to canter up the slope to the cliff top.
The sea crashed against the rocks far below,
and though the ground was wet and slippery, Fitzduane rode with
confidence.
Pooka was surefooted and
knew her way.
The island was
just over ten kilometers long and about four kilometers across at its widest
point.
Besides Fitzduane and Murrough
and his wife, the only other inhabitants lived in the isolated school on the
headland.
The school was
officially the Draker World Institute.
Originally the site of a monastery destroyed by Cromwell's troops in the
seventeenth century, the land had been bought by an eccentric German armaments
manufacturer toward the end of the nineteenth century.
With his profits from the Franco-Prussian
War, he proceeded to design and build his conception of an Irish castle.
The
construction lacked certain desirable features.
Von Draker forgot to install either bathrooms or toilets.
Not realizing his error, von Draker came to
stay in is apparently completed castle.
Tragedy struck.
While relieving
himself behind a rhododendron bush, he was drenched by a sudden squall of rain
— the weather in
not fickle — and pneumonia resulted.
After a short struggle for the sake of form, von Draker died.
He left behind a large fortune, no children,
a wife he had loathed, and the request that his Irish estate be turned into a
college for students from all over the world “who will mix together, learn each
other's ways, become friends, and thus preserve world peace.”