Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  He stopped thinking and started to make his way to the lake, heading for the south side. He thought that the message had been clear. Sebastian would be here every full moon for many months, waiting. Why should Sebastian have such faith in him? he wondered. He didn’t want to be doing things like this. He wanted to salvage what he had saved, and build on what he had begun. Was it fair to his children to be putting his neck into danger like this when it had taken him so many years to get it out of danger? He felt a little resentful. Mainly because it was bad ground and his hands and legs were torn by the jagged rocks.

  He closed on the moonlit lake. Bending close to the ground and putting the land against the horizon he finally spotted the tall black stone standing there, shaped almost like an abbot with a mitre, looking calmly on the waters.

  He made the rock in a rush and lay there on the ground, breathing heavily. I will wait for one hour, he thought. One hour, looking desperately at the moon, which tonight seemed to be travelling like a fast horse.

  ‘Dominick,’ said the voice. ‘ Oh, Dominick.’

  He jumped and turned and saw the face close to his own.

  ‘It is you, Sebastian,’ he whispered.

  ‘It is me, Dominick,’ said Sebastian. He was lying full length on the ground, with his face just showing, and then his face wasn’t showing. It was buried in his arms. Dominick waited. He sweated. He knew Sebastian was crying. This is a terrible thing. Waves of sweat went up and down his body. He sat on his legs, clenching his hands. He waited some time.

  ‘Dominick,’ said Sebastian, ‘this is a fearful place. I am only human. I prayed, but I didn’t really believe that you could come.’

  ‘I am here.’ said Dominick.

  Sebastian was half laughing.

  ‘Oh, my brave Dominick,’ he said, ‘how the Lord uses you as a reluctant hero!’

  ‘Will we go now?’ Dominick asked. ‘Time is short.’

  ‘Come with me first.’ said Sebastian. He rose to his feet Dominick faced him. He felt Sebastian’s hands on his shoulders, pressing them. ‘I should have known, Dominick,’ he said. ‘I should have known,’ He kept one hand on Dominick’s arm as they walked away from the lake ‘ Being useless, seeing walking corpses in the hard wind walking skeletons. These are eminent prelates, you have to remind yourself, as you see them sharing roots grubbed from the ground. Every day there are many who die, Dominick. If it goes on there will be none left. That is why the young ones of us, the still strong ones, have to get away and strengthen the people. It is better to die in the open if you have to die, than shut up here like a colony of starving animals. Ssh, here we are.’ Dominick peered. In the light of the moon he saw a sort of rough place built from the twisted boughs of trees, not decent trees, but ones that will grow on the island, thorn trees and a few willows, stunted ones. It was a very rude shelter. The sides were made up of roughly banked sods. ‘Come with me,’ said Sebastian. Dominick bent low and went in after him. ‘My Lords,’ he heard Sebastian say, ‘our helper has arrived.’

  He moved aside. There were three men in the shelter. They were sitting on the ground. The moon shone on white hair and silver hair, shining eyes and cavernous faces. ‘Dominick,’ said Sebastian, ‘my Lord Bishop of …’ ‘Better not names, Sebastian,’ a soft voice said. ‘In these days for the sake of the man himself it is better that we have no names. You are welcome to our humble abode, my son. God will reward you for your endeavours. Here is my hand on your head in token.’ Dominick mumbled. He felt the hand resting lightly on his head. ‘You are welcome to our home,’ a deeper voice said then. He felt a hand resting lightly on his cheek, and a third hand touching him on the shoulder.

  ‘My Lords,’ said Sebastian, ‘I will go and collect the other two men. I will leave Dominick under your care.’

  ‘We will watch over him diligently,’ the deep voice almost chuckled.

  ‘Did you have trouble getting here, Dominick?’ the soft voice asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Dominick. ‘ It only required brawn and cunning.’

  He was smelling. The shelter was filled with this smell, and then he knew what it was. He had smelled the same when Sebastian had faced him. He had smelled the same before in the sieges and on their bitter wanderings. It was the breath that emanates from starving bodies. This is a smell essentially different from all other smells. An over-full belly can give off a smell, if it is overfull of wine or food, but the smell given off by a starving body is one that belongs only to itself. And this shelter was filled with the smell of starvation. What is becoming of us at all? he wondered. How low are we beaten into the earth, when here I am like this with three bishops, who are due to die with this smell on them?

  ‘I am sorry, Dominick,’ the soft voice said, ‘that we can offer you no hospitality, but God is our Lord, and he will make up to you what is lacking in us.’

  ‘I want for nothing but my helplessness, sir,’ said Dominick,

  ‘We run a very poor inn,’ said the voice of the third man, suddenly. His breathing was hoarse. His breath was rattling in his chest. But he was chuckling. ‘You heard that story of the man who called at an inn in a certain town,’ He coughed again. ‘In the morning when he was presented with the bill, he saw that he was being over-charged.’ ‘Like ourselves,’ said the deep voice. There was laughter in it now. The others joined with him in the jest Dominick wondered how in the name of God they could laugh. ‘So he rated the innkeeper roundly, and went into the street, calling down the curse of heaven on his thieving head. In the street outside there was another inn across the way and in between the two of them there was a carved figure of the Crucified, so there the man stood and rated to the heavens, that it was no wonder they had this statue where it was and in the right place with Christ crucified between two thieves.’ They laughed with him over this. Dominick could only wonder at them. ‘ Then the innkeeper across the way started to berate the traveller, saying that since he hadn’t stopped at his inn, how could he call him a thief. So the traveller said: ‘‘Say no more now, and you can be the good thief.’’ ’

  They really enjoyed this. Dominick could see the moon shining on their wrinkled faces, on the teeth in their sunken cheeks, on their long silvery hair. He thought he would never forget this.

  And Sebastian was beside him again.

  ‘We are ready now, my Lords,’ he said.

  ‘Then go with God,’ said the soft voice, ‘and don’t be afraid. All over Ireland, the priests must come out of the woods and the caves and the cellars. This terrible oath that some are taking must be broken on the rock of faith. God be with you, Sebastian. Farewell, Dominick, we will not forget you where we are going.’

  ‘God be with you, sir,’ said Dominick. He felt for hands and he kissed three of them. They were thin hands. He could feel the loose skin moving on the bones, and then he backed and soon Sebastian joined him and they were moving back to the lake. There they were joined by two other tall figures. They didn’t speak. Nobody spoke.

  They got back to the boat. Sebastian and the other two men were squeezed into the boat between the legs of Dualta and Dominick. They had to sit there in the swilling water. The wind rose, but it was behind them and it drove them hard towards the land in the race between the moon and the dawn, and their own tense fear.

  At the gully, to Dominick’s surprise, there was the squat figure of Awley waiting for them.

  There were no words spoken even there. Just a whisper between Sebastian and Awley and then Awley was gone and the two men were with him, and the first streaks of dawn were in the sky, so they put the boat back and raced the dawn over the hills, and not until they were near their own lake did they slow down. Dominick had to help Sebastian. He was not fit.

  He said to Dualta. ‘You are more than a boy. You are a man. You will forgive me for my first thought.’

  ‘There is no need,’ said Dualta. ‘I have little time I must get to my house soon. I am going now. I know nothing. What I have done I have forgotten. What I have seen was a
dream. I wish you well.’ And he was gone.

  The nicest part of the whole night was going into the house, quite bright now inside from the dawn light, seeing Mary Ann near the fire with a wooden spoon in her hand, her head resting against the stones of the fireplace, dozing away, and Peter inside in the wide place asleep on the stool in danger of falling into the steaming pot, getting on his knees in front of them, shaking them gently and saying: ‘Wake up! Wake up! Somebody has come to see you.’

  Watching the sleep leaving their eyes, and their eyes focusing and intelligence coming into them; Sebastian kneeling in front of them smiling through his beard from a terribly thin face; to see the joy on the face of Mary Ann, and Peter’s joy. Dominick felt that he was well rewarded.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  HE LOOKED bleakly at the three dead sheep. Their throats had been cut. Neither wolves nor eagles nor yet grey crows carry knives.

  It was raining steadily. He could smell the dampness off his heavy homespun clothes. The sky was leaden but there were patches of blue over the sea.

  He looked at Peter. There was an anxious look on the boy’s face. ‘Bring the rest of them down,’ he said. Peter nodded. He still looked anxious. ‘ It will be all right,’ said Dominick. He jumped on to the back of the grey horse. They were on the high shoulder of the hill where his tenancy met Odo’s. He could see his two fields, surrounded by the thorn thickets he had cut, showing green already under the gentler spring rains. There was smoke rising from the-chimney of his house.

  It had been too good to last, he thought, the peace they had found. You had to be always hoping that it was true, and holding your breath waiting for something to disperse it. He could let it go. Pretend that it hadn’t happened. But he knew from his own life that you could not do that. If there was a fester you had to cut it out. You must never show fear.

  He turned the horse and headed him down the other side of the hill. He was vicious with him. He dug his heels into him and hit him with his clenched fist. The horse was startled. He reared and tossed his head. So he had to soothe him, bring him to a halt and talk to him and then set him off again. I must not lose my temper, he thought. I must be firm but calm, that’s all it requires. He gave the horse his head, cutting diagonally down the hill, over towards the right where Odo had built his house in a sheltered dip.

  It had taken getting used to, the knowledge that your nearest neighbour lived about six miles away from you. You could travel for days through the surrounding mountains and not know that there was a soul living in them at all, but as you got to know them, you were conscious of where the houses were. Whenever you looked far away at the sun shining in a valley or when the heavy snow fell, you thought of the people you had come to know locked up in the mountains, so that the mountains ceased in a way to be cold lumps of nature and became rather personal things that you associated with hidden houses and hidden people.

  Through Sebastian mainly he had got to know his neighbours. Sebastian would be gone for weeks at a time. Dominick had made two more trips with him out to the Island and four more shadowy men, with no faces, no voices, no names, had been sped into the land and had disappeared on their missions into the surrounding country. Once there had been Mass said in Dominick’s houses and here he had come to know the people as people, not faces and names, joked with them, heard them laughing. He himself had journeyed into the mountains on other occasions to hear Mass in a strange place, with sentinels on the highest peaks watching the plains for the approach of the black men. He had eaten with them, and they had eaten with him. He thought all these things over now, to throw off the waves of mad anger which came into his brain when he thought of the three dead sheep thrown sprawling under the white rock.

  He stopped on the edge of the dip and looked down at the house of Odo. He preferred his own house. His own house was better built. The hounds spotted him and came towards him snarling and barking and showing white teeth. Dominick urged on the horse and came down on the approach towards the house. The doorway of the house was suddenly filled with children. They came there and stood looking at him. Behind them there appeared the form of a woman. She was rubbing her hands on a cloth.

  He stopped the horse out from her. She was a buxom woman, with brown hair. She had intelligent eyes and a strong chin. She was tall. She would be about thirty, he judged. She smiled at him. A lot of teeth at the side of her mouth were missing.

  ‘I am looking for your husband,’ he said.

  The smile left her face.

  ‘He is not here,’ she said. ‘You are from over the hill.’

  ‘I am MacMahon,’ he said.

  ‘I have heard of you,’ she said. ‘Will you come and rest yourself?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I called to see your husband. If he is not here could you tell me what has become of him?’

  ‘He is gone into the castle,’ she said. ‘Today is the judgement. The brehon is sitting for the law. He is there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. He was at a loss for words. He was glad Odo wasn’t there with his woman. What could he have done or said? He looked at the children’s faces. They were sturdy children. The youngest had a finger in his mouth sucking at it. They were all clean children, apart from the playing dirt that was on them.

  ‘You have a fine family, God bless them,’ he said.

  ‘Odo is a hasty man,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he does not mean the things that he does. Have you a grudge on him?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.

  She was looking at him a bit sadly, he thought.

  ‘I would like us to be good neighbours, MacMahon,’ she said. ‘I have brave accounts of your children.’

  His face was bleak.

  ‘Desires must be on both sides,’ he said. ‘I have never injured you.’

  ‘Well, don’t do it now either, without thinking,’ she said.

  He nodded his head at her and turned the horse out of the dip. The hounds followed after them, snarling at the heels of the little horse. He knew she was looking after him. She is a good woman, he thought. She is a likeable woman. She has given her niceness to Dualta.

  He came down off the hill on to the rough track that led back towards the end of the peninsula. Once he paused on the road, wondering if he would turn back. But he decided against it and he passed on with determination. The rain had ended. He wiped the wet from his face. The sun came out. It was hot and sparkling. The land was beginning to take on a green flush. The streams were running mad off the hills towards the valleys. They filled the air with sound. The water was up to the belly of the horse as he waded through them. When he saw the buildings in the distance he increased the horse’s speed.

  Sebastian, who was in a cutting off the track, sheltering with his pupils in a rude hut of boughs and scraws where he was teaching them the rudiments of their religion, saw Dominick passing. He would have waved and shouted to him, but he was gone past too quickly. The tense look on his face, Sebastian saw, and the tightened jaw muscles, and knowing him as he did, his mind sighed, and he said: ‘Oh, Dominick.’ The children were looking at him. They were young, from six up to twelve, boys and girls from the buildings of Murdoc that men called the Castle. He thought it best not to gather them right in there, where Murdoc’s ollamh who taught them profane things was not friendly towards him. Nor did he want to come particularly to the eye of Murdoc himself, so his classes were always held away from the place, under the sky where he could point his little homilies from the things about him.

  ‘Today is done,’ he said. ‘We will give you the rest of it free. I will send you word when we are meeting again. God bless you. And don’t forget what you have learned. It is more important than spelling or hunting or playing. Isn’t it?’ They assured him it was, ready to run.

  ‘Go with you so,’ he said, smiling.

  And they flung themselves out and ran fast screaming, shouting, and tumbling on the rough track.

  Sebastian was out of there in time to see the side of a s
mall rise covering off Dominick from him. He wondered what had happened. His mind investigated the possibilities, but he could not find an answer. And not finding an answer he was worried and almost ran after the children.

  Dominick came into the courtyard, and there was Odo facing him as if he was waiting for him, which he wasn’t. The place was crowded. It was used as a little market on a day like this. And Odo had just happened to be facing towards him as he came into the place. His sons were with him, Dualta and the eldest, Cormac, a bulky, long-faced, big-limbed man like his father.

  Odo had been laughing with the other men. They were standing in front of Murdoc’s long house. Now he stopped laughing and looked at Dominick. Dominick got off the horse. Odo’s silence had stopped the laughter. They looked at him and then at the figure of the small man whose clothes were steaming in the suddenly warm sun.

  Even at that, it could have been all right, but Odo, grinning, put his hand into his belt and took out a knife. The knife hadn’t even been cleaned. It was still stained with the blood, rust-coloured now. And Odo swaggered to meet him.

  ‘I warned you about the mearing, MacMahon,’ he said. ‘You got the first lesson today. If that doesn’t teach you, I will have to be after giving you more.’

  Near Dominick there was a pile of wood, cut in six-foot lengths; branches of willow and sycamore piled to feed the fire in the long house. It was a pity it was convenient. Almost unconsciously Dominick placed his hand on the pile and his hand wrapped around a suitable one, and all his good intentions were lost and forgotten; his face white and his eyes blazing, one minute he was beside the pile and the next minute he was close to Odo and the wood swung and found Odo’s knife-hand and he roared and felt his numbed arm. But he was fast too. The wood swung again, this time for his head. But he caught it and pulled, and very quickly broke it in two, and backswiped Dominick on the face with one of the broken bits. It brought blood to his cheek and sent him toppling in the mud of the yard, but he was up again as fast as he was down and snatching the broken wood from the ground he hit him with it.