“I’ll have to take pictures. Sister Glenda would love this.” Sister Glenda, the mother superior at Angie’s convent back home, is an expert on the relationship between art and spirituality. The salient fact for the Barnes family is that she may have a say as to Angie’s future. Then again, so may Bobby the folk-singing shepherd.
Setting that thought aside, I assessed Angie’s mood. She looked ready to go. Without further talk, I found her a sunhat and we were off.
The day was bright and windy, whipping the grasses on the lands beyond our cottages. At one time there must have been a footpath between this hill and “the field of the giants,” as some called the site of the tombs, but the way I knew was the road we had taken to the Deserted Village. The route gave a fair sample of the island’s beauties. Our cottages sat at the same height on the mountain as the Deserted Village—high enough to give us a panoramic view of ocean, shore, and mountain. The sweep of Keel beach anchored a wide bay, with low cliffs and a small island off to the west. In the distance, gulls hovered over the water, seeking balance as the wind whipped gusty currents. To the east, spectacularly high cliffs extended for miles, edging the great mass of mountain that ended at Dooega Head. Between us and the sea lay the meadows used by Bobby and his fellow sheep farmers.
The road downhill from the cottages afforded no such views. In Ireland, roads tend to be bordered with hedges masking stone walls, posing a hazard for tourists driving on “the wrong side” of the road. Here, thick hedges dripped fuchsia blossoms, each a delicate red bell with a violet interior. By some trick of the sun, the brilliant hedges grew only on the left side of the road. The right verge was thick with wild-flowers like purple lupine and thistle, alternating with untended plantings of calla lily and sea rose. I kept my eyes on the right, looking for the megalithic tombs, and at last I spotted the inconspicuous brown sign that said Tuama Meigiliteach.
The site was protected by a turnstile, a gate with four revolving arms. Any child could find a way through it, but not a dimwitted sheep. Beyond the gate, a grassy lane led up Slievemore Mountain. There wasn’t a big stone in sight, never mind a megalith. But, keeping faith, we followed the not-so-well-worn path up and up. Finally, we mounted a rise, from which we could see, at a distance, a hem of gray, pebbly ground below the rock face of the mountain. Nearer us, perhaps a football field away, lay a pile of rocks, white in the sunshine. They might have been random stones thrown down by nature, except that the path led directly to them.
“That must be it,” I said.
“No way,” Angie scoffed. “You said ‘megalith’ meant ‘huge stone.’ I’ve seen bigger end tables.”
“Let’s see what it looks like when we get close.”
It was farther away than it looked, and yet it didn’t gain much in the impression of height as we got closer. From a jumble of boulders scattered on the ground, there emerged a central form, a stolid table, perhaps an altar. The tabletop was supported by three bulky stones, pressing against each other. They didn’t look cut by man. The central stone was round, bearing its share of the weight on its curved top. The stones on either side were shaped like giant crystals. These three unmatched pillars held up a stone slab, the capstone, less than a foot thick but with a surface of at least six by five feet. I approached, bent down, and peered through the cracks between the supporting stones. What lay beyond was shadowy, difficult to read, but it wasn’t pitch dark.
“Let’s go around,” I said. It seemed right to confront this mystery together. To the left of the stonework, we stumbled down the rubble of an ancient staircase carpeted with moss. Angie reached the other side before I did.
“It’s a little building!” she shouted. It looked low for a building, but as I moved around, I saw that we had been looking at the back wall of a stone hut with three sides and a flat roof that projected out over a sunken patio. I moved carefully, afraid I might trip over one of the lower stones that bordered the patio. I couldn’t resist the urge to drop to my knees and crawl under the roof stone. A child or a small adult would be able to sit in there, either looking through the open front “door” toward the mountain or turned around to look through the chinks, as if they were windows, for a view of the sea. Being too tall for that, I could only lie on my back, feeling swaddled in stone. Then the obvious hit me. This is a grave. I am the corpse. This is the megalithic tomb.
My reverie was shattered by an angry shout: “What in God’s name are ya playin’ at? This is a sacred site. Come out from there, will ya?”
The querulous voice was followed by Angie’s nervous one. “Um, Nora. There’s somebody here who wants to speak with you.”
Well, that much I already knew. I scrambled out as quickly as I could. Before me stood a small, emaciated man, leaning on a homemade walking stick. His hair was long and white, as was his beard. His eyes were stern, barely blue, almost colorless. He was dressed in shabby clothes, too thin for the windy day. Angie backed away.
“I meant no disrespect,” I said evenly. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I thought we were alone.” Where indeed had he come from, and how was it that we hadn’t noticed him during our approach? The surrounding terrain was flat and open, with unblocked views in every direction.
“It’s not me who’s offended. You ought to have respect for the old ones.”
“I’m truly sorry. Please accept my apology.”
He stared at me for a long minute. “Well, now, I do see shame in your face, so I’ll take it you’re repentant. Tourists from America, are ya?”
“Yes, that’s right. We wanted to learn something about the megalithic tombs.”
“Is it to learn? Then you’re not like some. The lookers, I call ’em. They look but don’t see. As blind as the herring leaping in Dingle Bay.”
“My name is Nora, and this is my sister, Angie.”
He nodded. “Some call me the Prophet of Dugort. But the name is Brian.”
“How do you do? I’m sorry too,” said Angie, coming closer. “Who are the old ones?”
“The ancestors,” he replied. “Mine, and yours as well if you have Irish blood in your veins.”
“We do,” she said. “Our grandparents on my father’s side.”
The strange man pointed to the tomb, with an expansive gesture. “Mind you, ’tis our people built these tombs and who were buried here. And if their bodies are long gone, their spirits are still present.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Angie. “That’s something I’ve been wondering about. If our ancestors lived here five thousand years ago, they couldn’t have been Christian, because Christianity didn’t exist yet, so they must have been pagan, but did they have their own religion?”
Brian planted his staff in front of him and leaned back on his heels. “The Irish religion is all one, girl. ’Tis all one!” he remonstrated. “The ancients were holy. And later, didn’t the priests hold services here when the people were forbidden by the English to practice their religion? Why, they used this very capstone as their altar.”
“You mean the priests said Mass here?” asked Angie.
“They did, surely, in secret.”
“Was that during the time of the Penal Laws?” I asked. The Penal Laws were a set of anti-Catholic measures imposed by the British in the eighteenth century and much resented. Their intention was to convert the population to Protestantism.
“Aye, but we kept our religion alive. We used our ingenuity to outwit our enemies.” He nodded. “It’s been that way for centuries. Have ya heard about the landlord who went from farm to farm in the time of the Famine evicting the poor who couldn’t pay their rent? One day he was found dead, but the police could never prove a crime because there wasn’t a mark on his body. Ye see, someone had forced a loaf of Irish brown bread down his throat, choking him. But there was no trace left of it by the time the man was found. The rats ate what the body didn’t digest. I call that ingenuity.” The old man pounded his staff on the ground for emphasis and continued. “Ingenuity and prophecy. Those a
re the greatest gifts of our people.”
Angie’s curiosity was piqued. “Like the prophecy of iron carriages coming to Achill carrying the bodies of the dead?” Angie had been fascinated by that tale when I related it to her.
“And didn’t it happen just as my kinsman, Brian the Red, foretold centuries ago?”
“It’s the most amazing story I ever heard,” said Angie.
“If it isn’t true, it isn’t day,” snorted Brian, pointing toward the sun. “It came to pass exactly as foretold.”
“I believe you,” Angie said. “Were you named after him? The prophet, I mean.”
The stranger seemed to relax now that he had a willing listener. “I was named Brendan, after my father, at birth. But when I was a boy they started to call me Brian when they discovered I had the gift of seeing things that no one else saw.”
“What kind of things?” she pursued.
He tucked his chin into his chest and glowered. Satisfied that she wasn’t mocking him, he resumed. “One day, when I was ten years old, and the sea was calm and as flat as a looking glass, I looked out and saw black clouds and a desperate storm and three men struggling in the water. The next day Paddy McGann’s curragh washed up empty on the beach of Keel and his body the week after, and they never did find his brothers, Sean and Joseph, who had gone out with him that time to pull the nets.”
Angie’s eyes opened wider, but our visitor unnerved me. I’m pretty much a doubter when it comes to the supernatural, while Angie has always been drawn to the uncanny. As a child she believed absolutely in angels—still does, as a matter of fact. I suppose many people do, but Angie’s also tried psychic readings, tarot cards, and New Age crystals, not to mention the summer she spent in an ashram led by a self-styled swami from Pawtucket. Mom thought that her tryout with the convent was just the latest in a series of spiritual enthusiasms, which was one of the reasons it wouldn’t last. In any case, Angie was captivated by the stranger’s account.
Grasping his walking staff with both hands, he leaned forward and dropped his voice, as if sharing a secret. “Aye, all my life I’ve had the gift, but it’s been no use to me. On Saturday last, didn’t I see the ghost train hurtling through the night, carrying its dead passengers, wailing and moaning, the poor souls. And the next morning they found the body of that Yank who said he would bring the old steam railway back to Achill. I reckon he was disturbing their rest. Now he’s among them.”
This was unsettling to say the least. “You’re talking about our uncle!” Angie blurted in consternation.
The old man’s face registered surprise. “In that case, I’m sorry for your trouble. But a warning for ya then. It isn’t over.”
“What do you mean by that?” I said. Angie retreated a few steps.
He turned toward me. “This morning before I left my bed I saw the Achill train again. The spirits on board were clawing at the windows.” He held me in a penetrating gaze. “There will be another death.”
“There will? Who?” cried Angie.
He didn’t reply but simply said, “That’s the reason I’ve come here today, to pay my respects and say a prayer.”
That was enough of the uncanny for me. I said, as politely as I could, “Angie, let’s go and leave this gentleman to his prayers. I’m sorry if we disturbed you, sir. Come.” I took her hand and tugged. Reluctantly she followed, and we started back down the trail. Angie wanted to talk, but I shushed her until we had put some distance between ourselves and the self-styled prophet. I turned back once to look, but I saw no one. He must have stepped behind the tomb; he couldn’t have disappeared that quickly in the bare terrain.
We walked as fast as we could until we regained the road leading back to our cottages. “I’m scared,” Angie said.
“Maybe that’s what he meant to do, scare us.”
“Why would he do that? He doesn’t know who we are.”
He does now, I thought to myself. “Maybe he doesn’t like tourists. He said as much, remember? Besides, I don’t really believe in prophecies.”
“Well, maybe you should. How do you account for the vision he had before Uncle Bert was killed?”
“I can’t. But how do we know he had that vision before the murder rather than after it? Maybe he read about it in the paper and it gave him bad dreams.”
“You know what, Nora? To me, he sounded sincere. What about Brian the Red predicting the coming of the railway to Achill and saying that its first passengers would be corpses?”
“I don’t know, Angie. Maybe it’s just a folktale.”
“And maybe there are some things that can’t be explained,” said Angie, stopping in the road. “Now we have a prediction about the future. He says there’s going to be another death.”
“People die every day,” I said. “There’s always going to be another death.”
Toby pooh-poohed the account of our experience at the tomb, though he liked the story of the landlord who had been dispatched by a loaf of bread. He had enjoyed a tiring but successful day antiquing, having scored a pair of brass carriage lanterns and a trove of saleable bric-a-brac. The find that most excited him, however, was an Irish wake table from the 1840s. I had never heard of one. As he explained it, the table was sturdy enough to support a coffin during a wake. This one was mahogany and had elegant carving on the legs. With its leaves down, it would hold a coffin nicely; with its leaves up, it could serve year-round as an attractive dining table. Toby was confident that as an unusual piece it would fetch a good price at home. To me it sounded macabre. “I wouldn’t want to eat on a table where a body’s been laid out,” I said.
“Me neither,” Toby allowed, “but someone will buy it.” He paused. “Speaking of bodies—think live ones this time—what about checking out that swingers’ club Maggie told you about? Just out of curiosity. I was thinking about it while I was driving around the island today.”
“What a segue to get to your favorite subject,” I marveled, “going from death to sex!”
He looked a bit cowed. “Better than the other way around.”
“True enough,” I said. “It’s time for bed.”
10
THE NEXT DAY, hearing nothing further from the inspector about the investigation, I took Toby on a long walk, to shake off the ghosts. He had asked for a tour of the megalithic tomb, but I just couldn’t. I proposed instead that we drive north above Keel and follow a path from the beach through the bogs. The guidebook promised a lively stream fringed thickly with flowers, the contrast of bare, black bogs, and the grandeur of walking toward mountains with the ocean at our backs. All this was delivered with white, billowing clouds blowing fast across the sky. Toby tramped the trail energetically, and I tried to keep pace. But from my hips to my feet, I felt weighted. I gave it my best, but Toby could tell.
“Too much today,” he said.
He understood how I was feeling—my shock at finding Bert dead, my concern for my mother, all the emotions tangled up inside me. I knew the guards were working diligently behind the scenes and wondered if they had turned up anything new. I carried Mom’s button with me everywhere, afraid that in the cottage it would be vulnerable to discovery. I kept fingering it in my pocket nervously. Toby noticed my jitters. He rubbed my back lightly and said, “Let’s slow down.”
The path turned away from the bogs toward the sea. As we descended, my breath came back and my limbs grew lighter. By the end of the walk, I was ready for another, but Toby called for lunch at the beach café. “Famous for their double-chocolate cake,” Toby said. He knew I couldn’t resist that.
Toby and I love an hour of reading after lunch. Since Mom and Dad’s car was gone and we didn’t see Angie about, we grabbed our chance. Toby took the bedroom, which meant either a good read or a good nap. I confiscated a book from the living room—my first Maeve Binchey—and took the couch. I was settled into marriage on Tara Road and beginning to sniff adultery when a knock on the window made me lose my place. It was Angie, waving at me in an odd, backhanded ges
ture, which I interpreted as a request to be let in. Once through the door, she continued waving her hand back and forth, first in front of her face in peek-a-boo style, and then at hip height, as if drying fingernail polish.
“Is that a jig that you learned from Bobby?” I asked.
She giggled. “It’s something that I got from Bobby. Look!” She thrust her right hand toward my chest. A silver band with a raised heart shone on her ring finger.
I flopped back on the couch pillows, and Maeve Binchy fell to the floor.
“Don’t say it!” Angie said. “It’s not an engagement ring.”
“Then what is it?”
“A friendship ring. See—it’s a heart held by two hands.”
“I know about claddagh rings,” I said, “and I know they’re engagement rings.”
“You’re out of date, cupcake. They’ve been used as engagement rings, but now they’re friendship rings too. Some people even buy them for themselves, to show they’re Irish. The heart means love, of course, and the crown on the heart is for loyalty, and the hands mean friendship.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” I muttered.
“I’m not protesting anything. There’s nothing wrong with exchanging friendship rings.”
“Exchanging?”
“Yes. Bobby gave me this one, and I gave him one.”
“So this isn’t Bobby’s grandmother’s heirloom claddagh ring that he’s been saving for the right girl?”
Angie looked put out. “Maybe I am the right girl! And maybe not. Whatever.”
I told myself to be nice, and I said, “It’s very pretty. Where did you get it—them?”
“At the craft shop across from the town hall at Achill Sound. Bobby went to school with the owner. He fitted us and explained how to wear them. They’re a local tradition, you know. Claddagh’s not that far from here. See, I’m wearing it on my right hand, which means it is not an engagement ring. But the point of the heart is toward my waist, which means . . .”
“You finally ended up in the sack.”
The Dead of Achill Island Page 9
