The Kilternan Legacy

by Anne McCaffrey

  “How incongruous!”

  “How practical!” I said, feeling relieved about Aunt Irene’s last days.

  The third bedroom was long and narrow, with a sloping ceiling. A recently built wardrobe stretched across one wall, but apart from that, only a narrow cot, a very small chest, and a chair occupied the room.

  “I’d like this room,” said Sim thoughtfully, his eyes roving about. He had to bend to see through the small rear window into the yard. “Say, there’s a vegetable garden behind the stable. We eat!”

  “I don’t know if we can stay here yet, children.”

  “Why not?” asked Snow.

  “There are such things as death duties, and I may be wise to take the first buyer that conies along with ready money in his hand.”

  “That girl didn’t want you to talk to Kelley,” Snow said.

  “Mom has a point, Sis. We’ll find out this afternoon from the lawyer. But I do like this room!”

  “I’ll switch beds with you,” Snow said to her brother. “You like yours rock-hard.”

  “You sprawl.” Simon pointed to the narrow cot. “You’d be on the floor half the time.”

  “Better than feeling like a corpse … whoops! Sorry, Mom.”

  For I’d given a shudder, not so much for her untimely simile as for my growing sense of trespass, unwelcome, and trouble. My right hand itched intolerably. I mastered the desire to scratch, because Sim and Snow would know I had one of my itches again.

  A loud clanging, rattling, rumbling distracted us, and, curious, we all made for the front of the house. A huge construction bulldozer was churning up the lane, figuratively and literally, because you could see the tread marks on the unpaved road. I groaned. The springs on the Renault were not good enough to take that mess. Suddenly the bulldozer stopped. Or, I should say, was stopped. Craning my neck, I could see a stocky figure standing resolutely in its path.

  Simon inched the window open. It was very tight, judging by his grunts and groans.

  “This is a private road,” Stalwart Defender was saying, “owned by Miss Teasey and not to be used by commercial vehicles.”

  “I was told to take Swann’s Lane,” said the driver, angrily gunning his engine for emphasis.

  “By whom?”

  “By Kerrigan. He owns the field there,” and the man pointed up the lane. I couldn’t see what lay at the end. But I’d all too often seen what havoc bulldozers made in fields before they got strewn with ticky-tacky boxes. Suddenly I very much did not want a development around this lovely pastoral setting.

  “That wall also belongs to Miss Teasey.”

  “She’s dead. Who’re you?”

  “I own that cottage. I also own a right of way on this lane. Kerrigan does not.”

  “I can’t give a damn who owns what. I got orders to use this lane to get into that field!”

  “Get out!” said Stalwart Defender. “Miss Teasey wouldn’t give Kerrigan the right to spit on her land, much less use this lane. So get out!”

  “You and who else’ll make me?” and the driver began to fiddle ominously with his gears, activating the plow end.

  “Hey, he’ll run the guy down with that thing!” said Simon.

  I started to reassure him, and then wasn’t so certain myself. There was an obstinate just to the driver’s jaw, and he was beet-red with frustration..

  “I’ll make you, young man,” I shouted from the window. “You just stay where you are!”

  As I turned from the window, I heard a startled, “Jasus, preserve me!” from Stalwart Defender.

  The three of us rattled down the steps. “Did either of you see a phone in the house?”

  “There!” Simon pointed to a hand set on the small hall table. “And here!” He detached a shotgun from the wall above it.

  I took the gun and started out the door, armed to defend my property, though I’d never held a weapon before in my life. I suppose the Irish air imbued me with this sort of courage and rebellion; certainly I’d never experience it before.

  “I’m Irene Teasey,” I said, foursquare on the steps. Over the wall I could see the man on the seat of the bulldozer, but not Stalwart Defender. The driver looked startled at the sight of the gun in my hands, and my loyal cohorts. “That thing of yours is making a mess of my lane. You will kindly back down this instant or I’ll have the police here immediately.”

  He was still goggling when I fumbled my way through the gate—rusty from long disuse—and onto the (my) lane. Maybe that’s what added to my sense of power: owning the way into my own demesne.

  “Now clear out! That thing’s a mortal nuisance!”

  He opened his mouth to protest.

  “Simon, haven’t you reached the police yet?”

  That settled the driver, for he couldn’t tell at this distance that Simon was only fourteen. A gun and two men to contend with, plus police interference, were more than he liked as odds. The bulldozer churned more mud as it rumblingly clanged its destructive way back down my lane.

  “Your timing is fantastic, Mrs. Teasey,” said the baritone voice of Stalwart Defender.

  “Yes, thanks, even if I don’t know the rest of the script,” I replied, turning to get an eyeful of beard and body. Stalwart Defender was not much taller than I, and mostly shaggy beard and hair the last foot of that, but he looked big. He wore what I soon came to recognize as uniform for a lot of Irishmen: cord britches, heavy sweater, and a knit cap. He had very bright, light-green eyes, like Snow’s, and well-shaped lips hidden in the face-fur. He also had hands!

  “You spoke your lines with true conviction and have thus foiled the enemy!” I was accorded a slight bow and a wide grin.

  “I’m the heir—heiress, I guess.”

  There was a startled blink of the green eyes.

  “I really am Irene Teasey, you know.”

  “There’s no doubt of it. I’m Kieron Thornton,” only it sounded like “T’ornton.” My hand was engulfed in one large, strong, scaly paw while the other neatly twitched the shotgun away from me. “Kerrigan may call the Garda. Swear on a stack of Bibles that I had the shotgun. You’ve no permit.”

  “Huh?”

  Snow and Simon now arrived to be presented.

  “Say, how come we can stop that thing?” Snow asked, beaming at Stalwart Thornton, who politely ignored her and turned to me.

  “You own the lane and you’ve the right to stop Kerrigan. I don’t.”

  “Who’s Kerrigan?” I asked.

  Thronton hesitated. “You’ve not seen the solicitor?” He considered his next words. “He owns the fields beyond that wall,” and Kieron pointed up the lane to its abrupt end. “He bought the property last fall, and was on to Irene to sell him the right of way through this lane. He’s got prime development property there, and the owner of the only other way in, from the Glenamuck Road, is asking five thousand pounds for a right of way.”

  Simon whistled, and Thornton grinned at him.

  “Yes, that’s a lot of money. Irene suggested that if he paid her the five thousand pounds he’d save on the paving costs of a much shorter road.”

  “But you said my great-aunt wouldn’t sell to him.” I was rather confused.

  Kieron Thornton grinned. “So I did. And so she wouldn’t.”

  “Oh,” I said, not much wiser.

  “Then you don’t intend to sell?”

  “Sell what? The right of way?”

  “No, the queendom?”

  “The queendom?”

  Kieron Thornton frowned, as one will at an idiot child. “This”—his gesture included the lane, the house, the cottages, and the fields beyond—“is what your Great-aunt Irene called her queendom.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Then I caught his look of exasperated disapproval—so much like that mood of Teddie’s that I quaked and hastily began to explain. “Please, I only arrived yesterday. We’ve only just now looked through the house. I haven’t a clue … And then there’s this man bothering me with an offer.”
/>   Simon and Snow stepped closer to me, their protectiveness registering with Thornton, who made a slight bow of acknowledgment.

  “I’m not talking out of turn by saying that this property is worth a great deal, Mrs. Teasey, to the wrong people. A great deal more, not necessarily in terms of money, to the right ones. I was very fond of your great-aunt. She asked me to protect her queendom”—and he smiled gently as he used the odd word —“until you got here. Then she asked me—” He stopped, changing his mind with a rueful smile.

  “You were about to say, Mr. Thornton?”

  “She asked me to help you, if I could and you would.”

  “My great-aunt and I never met. That’s why I can’t understand any of this.”

  “No more can others I could name.”

  “The relatives?” I asked, feeling sick with apprehension.

  He nodded. “I won’t say more on this subject, Mrs. Teasey. My judgments are colored by my partiality for your aunt. You may have an entirely different view.”

  “Wait…” I put my hand on his arm, for he’d given me a little bow and taken a step away. “At least show me what I’ve inherited, for good or bad. You’d know and, apart from the house, and this lane, I don’t.”

  “Your solicitor can tell you.”+

  “And undoubtedly will, but in an office with a surveyor’s map or some such two-dimensionality. That doesn’t tell me what, “and I held up my hands to express a need for tactile assimilation.

  He gave me a long look, then shrugged and turned toward the house. “As you will.”

  He led us back into the house long enough to replace the shotgun, warning the twins to stick to the story that he had held the weapon. I was to apply instantly at the local Garda station—by the traffic lights in Cabinteely—for a permit.

  “If it was Aunt Irene’s gun, how can you use it?”

  “I’ve a permit. More than one person can have a permit on the same gun, you see, but everyone who uses the gun must have a permit for that gun. Complicated. And if the troubles up north get worse, you may be asked to surrender it to the Garda.”

  That made Simon bristle. “Surrender my gun to the police?”

  Very politely, Kieron Thornton asked Simon how old he was, and then said that the age for gun permits was eighteen.

  Simon muttered under his breath. He had been mad crazy to own a gun ever since that weekend in Pennsylvania with some of Teddie’s friends who’d had a skeet shoot. Simon had shown a tremendous aptitude for marksmanship, outclassing his father, which hadn’t set too well (Preserve the Image!). I’d managed to point out to Simon that he couldn’t very well have a skeet shoot in suburban Westfield, but I’d been backed into promising that if he ever lived in the country, he could have a rifle. Well, we wouldn’t be staying in Ireland that long.

  Kieron Thornton knew the house and property well. He spared us the worst of the muddy parts and a very close look at the four cottages nestled in the hillside. These were rented, and he said that I’d have a chance to see the tenants later on. He owned the cottage he lived in and the land within its fences, having purchased the place from my great-aunt three years ago.

  Now he led us past the house and the barn, which was well stocked with hay and straw, to the flourishing vegetable garden.

  “I planted that for Irene. She wasn’t well enough, and the lack worried her.” His unspoken comment was that he’d known that my great-aunt wouldn’t survive to enjoy the produce, but he’d humored her in the planting.

  “Yummy. Fresh vegetables,” said Snow. She was devastatingly pert all through the tour, ignoring my disapproving looks and Simon’s disgusted snorts. However, she failed to attract Kieron Thornton’s amused interest, and I was beginning to think that Ireland might be very beneficial for my precocious daughter if the males over twenty-one kept reminding Snow that she was still a child.

  “Now,” Kieron said, “the land extends another three acres beyond this,” and he laid his hand on the earth-and-stone fence, “to the west, and down to the road, from there to the field across the lane. There’re natural springs, plus the stream.”

  “Whose is the horse?” asked Snow, less affectedly.

  “Your mother’s … now. Horseface.”

  “Horseface?” Both Snow and Simon whooped with laughter.

  Kieron laughed too, a nice rich real laugh. “I believe he has another name in the registry, but that’s what he answers to.”

  “My aunt rode him?” He looked very big.

  “Yes indeed, right up to her first stroke, and gently when she’d recovered completely from it. He’s about twenty now, I’d say. In their prime, Irene hunted him.” Kieron turned to me. “Call him. He answers to his name.”

  “Me?” But I raised my voice. To my utter surprise, the beast raised his head instantly, looked unerringly in my direction, and whinnied.

  “You see, he does know his name,” Thornton said as the horse trotted eagerly to the pasture fence.

  “Hey, Horseface,” called Snow, and she and Simon went off to meet him, gathering fresh handfuls of grass to feed him.

  I caught a suspicious gleam in Thornton’s eyes, which I couldn’t account for. I was about to question him when we were startled by the angry blasting of a car horn.

  “Hmmm. I was expecting that,” said Thornton, taking me by the arm and guiding me back to the house. “The visitor is impatient,” he added as the horn continued to break the pleasant soft noises of the countryside.

  “Who is it?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  I stopped short. “Mr. Kerrigan?” Kelley and now Kerrigan? And with no real idea of what to do! “Mr. Thornton, couldn’t you …”

  “Mrs. Teasey,” and he gave me a stern, reproving look, “you own this property. Admittedly, I have caused you an embarrassment by more or less forcing you to stop that bulldozer. But I knew that was what your aunt would have done. I did not know you were in the house. You may, after an appraisal of the situation, want to let Kerrigan have that right of way. I only ask that you wait until you’ve had time to arrive at a fair decision. Or maybe you Yanks like acres of houses all around you.” He had managed to hurry me through the yard, and now he gave me a push toward the kitchen door.

  “Oh, don’t leave me!”

  He gave me an amused look, disengaging my hands from his arm. “Believe me, you don’t need my help.” And he was away.

  The car horn was still blaring, in a fashion guaranteed to irritate, and I was already annoyed at Kieron Thornton for landing me in such a compromising situation with an unknown and infuriated man. I raced around the side of the house to the front. A man was standing on the driver’s side of a blue Jag, bent slightly so that he could lean on the horn. The car, the arrogance of the action, plus memories of other helpless moments like this, combined to give me unusual courage.

  “Stop that infernal racket,” I shouted, and it was cut off instantly.

  The man who stared at me across the blue Jag top was as handsome as sin. Sandy-haired with a well-trimmed, slightly darker moustache and very black eyebrows, my importunate caller was elegantly dressed in a blazer and slim trousers, a trendy patterned shirt, and a solid-color cravat.

  “You’re not Irene Teasey,” he said in a flat, surprised voice.

  “I most certainly am.”

  Suddenly his angry expression turned into a smile. “Oh, but of course. You’re the niece. The American.”

  “Yes, I’m the American great-niece.”

  “Well,” and he walked toward me, all smiles, hand extended. “Welcome to Ireland—cead mille faille. That means a hundred thousand welcomes, Miss Teasey.”

  “Was that why you were blasting the horn? A royal salute?”

  “I’m Shamus Kerrigan. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

  “Was that your frightful bulldozer thing that tore up my lane?” I asked, trying hard to be severe, for Kerrigan had the sort of charm that is very difficult to resist.

  He
turned to survey the damage as if he hadn’t just had to tool the Jaguar very carefully over the ruts.

  “I do apologize. But it would only be the one transit. Once the dozer is in the field, it wouldn’t have to come out.”

  “Oh?” I looked pointedly at the stout stone wall. “How had you planned to get across that?”

  “Well, rather, through it,” he admitted, smiling ingenuously. “Of course, we’d build the wall back up again behind it.”

  “What comes in must go out, Mr. Kerrigan.”

  “Oh, I expect to get permission to use the other road.”

  “All the way from Glenamuck?” I asked, delighting in the surprise in his face at my knowledge, however spotty it was. “Surely you know that this is a private lane, Mr. Kerrigan, and that even one transit—much less knocking down my wall—constitutes trespass?”

  He nodded and then smiled reassuringly. “Actually, I did have permission.”

  “From whom?” I was suddenly suspicious of Kieron Thornton. I’d only his word that my great-aunt hadn’t wanted Kerrigan to have the right of way. Maybe the solicitor …

  “From a relative. You see after Miss Teasey died…” and he looked appropriately regretful.

  “No false condolences, please. I’d never met my great aunt.”

  “I had, Mrs. Teasey,” and there was suddenly nothing of the suppliant in Mr. Kerrigan’s manner. “She was a most admirable woman.”

  Because she’d refused him? I wondered privately.

  “I tried to find out who had inherited the property so I could have my solicitor make the proper application. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in that land.”

  There was now a flash of impatience in his voice, which he covered instantly with his facile charm.

  “Yes, that would be a consideration,” I said agreeably.

  “So,” and his smile was hearty again, “when I learned that it was yourself, and you in America and no one knew where, I tried to find someone in the family who could give me permission to use the lane.”