by Ann Mann
They’d pulled it off. Somehow they had taken the dangerous risk of performing as a duo rather than as a twenty-six strong team, simplifying, altering and infusing their technique and skills to produce a rich, awe-inspiring shared experience which was nothing short of miraculous.
But now, challenges of another kind awaited them.
*
Co. Clare.
1735
The black dog raised its head as the crackling fire hissed out a shower of sparks that landed close to its front paws.
The young woman wrapped in a rug and curled in the chair opposite stared at the dog and growled, inciting the animal to growl back with undisguised venom.
Kathleen Dooley stretched and yawned, pushing her hair out of her eyes and with a sinking heart realised that another day of imprisonment was drawing to a close and a life once filled with freedom and laughter was fading as swiftly as the autumn light.
It had been three weeks now since Mick Gilligan and his wife Sarah had taken her in after the horrible tragedy brought upon her by her husband Thomas’s selfish and unexpected death. Three weeks in which they and their spotty faced son Brendan had bestowed their self-righteous hospitality upon the poor widow woman who had been left with nothing but a few clothes, a powder box and some toothpicks to her name.
And what a name Dooley had now become for local gossip and derision since the news of his suicide reached the God-fearing people of the village. Everything seemed to have happened so quickly. She had arrived home after a day filled with sexual pleasures to find a crowd gathered outside the house who hissed and spat at her as she rushed inside, only to find the cold dead body of her husband lying on the kitchen table and guarded by the farmer Mick Gilligan.
The next few days passed in a blur as strangers marched in and out hardly acknowledging her presence. First, the Sheriff of Clare’s men to take away the body for which she begged to be allowed a Christian burial but which was threateningly refused. Then the chief Smith of the county who advised her that the cottage and forge would now pass into the hands of another blacksmith to be appointed as soon as was possible. That didn’t seem fair to Kathleen. Not fair at all. Thomas had built up his thriving and successful business through the sweat of his own labour and now it was almost as though he had never existed, for his boots seemed so rapidly easy to fill.
Then the final indignity which lead to her downfall and came about through a mixture of ill fortune and bad judgement.
Blinded by passion and his powers of persuasion, she had allowed her golden haired lover to share the marital bed. One morning, wakened from their early slumber by a loud banging on the door, they were confronted by a dwarf like official in a crooked grey wig who had entered the house and mounted the stairs to the bedroom. Unable to tear his weasel eyes away from her bare breasts he had bawled at her for an hour, whereupon she had screamed back at him and the damage had been final and irreversible.
Through tears of despair she later learned that because of the criminal offence her husband had committed by killing himself and what the judge had described as her ill-behaviour and inability to fulfil her obligations as a decent law-abiding widow, she would be forced to forfeit all inherited property and finance to the King and the Church.
Thus Kathleen Dooley now found herself homeless and poverty stricken. Her lover had fled and because her parents were no longer alive, the Gilligans were her only salvation in a harsh and sadistic environment that blamed her for her husband’s death and also for the loss of their dance master. But she kept telling herself that her loss was greater, for she had no home and missed the latter with a longing that ached inside her night and day.
Also, she reflected bitterly, she had loved dancing too, and certainly her life would be more bearable now if she could dance away her woes to the music of a blind fiddler in Gilligan’s barn. But it seemed more than likely that he would never resume his obligation and where there had once been boundless energy there was now apathy. The dancing had ceased and with it the pleasures they had all enjoyed as part of their daily existence.
The sound of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen signalled that Sarah Gilligan was preparing supper for Mick and his son when they returned from the fields and the thought of having to listen to an account of another of their boring working days was just too dull to contemplate.
Realising she would have to go in and somehow endure the tedium the evening promised, she opened the door that led to the kitchen then almost fainted with surprise.
There at the table, seated like an invited guest and grinning toothlessly at the amazement on her face, was the old woman who had served the previous Master. And laid out in front of her were not the anticipated plates, forks and knives but a selection of cards from the Tarot. The cards of the Major Arcana.
*
Blossom Fayard signed off from the Skype call she had received from her old neighbourhood pal Silas Murphy and immediately went online to book a plane ticket to take her across the Atlantic to Shannon airport the following day.
It had been a long time since they had spoken. Three years. And although they had just been enjoying a conversation on camera, it was very different from meeting in person.
Throughout his call, Silas had repeatedly referred to her as Billy, then apologised for his carelessness, but Blossom understood that her friend was under considerable stress and she found no problem in his taking time to come to terms with the change. After all, many of her friends, neighbours and customers in Boston, not to mention her own family, still had trouble acclimatising to such a radical transformation.
The surgery had been successful. At first. Then complications set in which necessitated another two operations followed by chronic pain control management administered intravenously, months of bed rest and numerous physical and psychological evaluations.
During that time she had turned to her inner muse and took spiritual comfort from her power to bypass the usual sensory channels and transcend mundane reality. She gave thanks for those gifts and for the fact that her heightened five senses which had shaped her daily life for as long as she could remember had not been limited by the invasive procedures her material form had endured.
She also gave credit to her parents for their patience and devotion during that difficult period, knowing that whatever powers she possessed were in part inherited from their individual genetic make-up. Her mother being of Irish descent, had entertained her as a child with colourful stories of goblins and ghosts in mystical far away places and her father, a Haitian, had often terrified and enhanced her visual imagery with his tales of black magic and voodoo practiced in the village in which he had grown up.
She had missed Arcanum’s opening in Dublin and it had been heart breaking. Having known Silas for so long and educating him on the history and symbolism of the Tarot for what she considered to be an exciting creative concept, she could only communicate with him by Skype and e-mail, devouring the wonderful photographs of the show and following the press enthusiasm from her hospital bed.
When news broke of the disappearance of the dancers she was as shocked and puzzled as the rest of the world and when her body became stronger she tried to reach him by phone but found it impossible. Short texts and e-mails flittered between them but as the weeks went by and there was no sign of progress, Blossom had almost given up hope that she could help in any way. She had visited his parents to try and add some comfort to their concern, for they too had been unable to enjoy lengthy conversations with their son while such uncertainty in his life persisted.
Now her friend had rung. He and his lead girl dancer needed her, he said. Some odd things had happened and she was the only person they could turn to.
So of course, she had to go.
*
Co. Clare.
1735
“Mallacht!!” Mick Gilligan shouted again at the old woman. “Mallacht!”
(“A Curse!”)
“Dia linn go léir!” (“God help us all!”)
Standing in the middle of the large turf-fired kitchen he watched the colour of his wife’s face drain to ash, Kathleen Dooley’s hand fly to her mouth and heard his son utter a nervous high-pitched laugh.
He shook his head, uncertain as to what to do next. He had brought the hag here to try and extract anything from her that would explain the desolation that had befallen the community since the new Dance Master had departed without a word of explanation or before fulfilling his duty to appoint another Master in his place.
He had never heard her speak, so after feeding her slices of his best ham and cheese and loosening her tongue with a cup of mead, he was then confounded by a torrent of primitive Irish which he had great difficulty deciphering as she spoke of the night that the old Dance Master had died.
This verbal display had been suspended periodically by her fascination with the pack of cards which she constantly shuffled and selected, then laid out in front of them. The most prominent of which now rested on the top of the pack and to which she pointed, nodding her head, expecting all in the room to understand its significance.
The colourful card pictured a young man in almost identical clothes to those worn by the Dance Master, even down to the upturned shoes. He was fair in complexion and seated at a desk covered with ritual objects. This, Mick Gilligan endeavoured to translate as best he could from her broken words and gesticulations, was The Magician, a manipulator who created change, a trickster and more mysteriously one who brought the dead to life.
He tried to keep his patience but it wasn’t easy. For most of the time the woman’s eyes, if they weren’t on the cards, were closed as if she were in a trance and when she uttered her final dramatic pronouncement, they widened terrifyingly to add more chill to the strange proceedings.
She described her Master’s deathbed message in a gibberish which he only realised when she had finished was probably Latin and the one word he could pick up on was ‘maledictio’ which was easily translated into Irish as a curse. In other words, their old Dance Master had uttered an appeal or prayer for ill fortune to fall upon one or more persons for eternity if his legacy was not continued.
The old woman, clearly exhausted by her efforts and replete from the first good meal she had eaten in a long while, then laid her head on the table and slept.
Mick Gilligan tried to consider what his next move would be. He wouldn’t know where to begin looking for a new Master. As far as his limited knowledge was concerned they were always chosen by the local predecessor, were fiercely territorial and were expected to possess a certain standard of expertise and discipline. It had reached his ears that certain jig actors roamed the countryside masquerading as Dance Masters but they were temperamental and unreliable fellows with very few skills and only able to perform the most basic of steps.
No, however hard it might to be to achieve, somehow he had to persuade this boy to return to face his responsibilities and was still baffled and angered by his careless attitude. After all, could he not see that it was in his interest? He had a curse on his head, the consequences of which he had seemingly ignored, and in so doing was dragging good and honest folk down with him.
But how to persuade him? Certainly not with more money for there was none in the pot. And it was impossible to compete with the Earls and Lords for whom Gilligan had heard he was now working.
He glanced across the kitchen, past his wife Sarah washing the plates and pans, past his son who was dipping bread into his soup and devouring it noisily and past the woman, now snoring like one of his old sows and with her head still resting on the table.
Kathleen Dooley was winding her hair around her fingers, lost in what seemed like the dark night of the soul. She had pushed her dish of food away untouched and Gilligan felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the young woman whose infatuation had changed her from a playful, well-fed kitten into a scarred and suspicious wild animal with nowhere to hide.
And yet the existence of that infatuation was the only card he had left to play. He would have to convince her to entice the boy back with her own particular brand of magnetism which Gilligan was sure that he was too weak a character to resist. In addition, she would instil in him a real and dreaded fear of the power of the curse placed on him that night in the dying man’s house and which they had all now learned about from the old woman.
But there was one other component in the final framework of the plan, which would either send him running for the hills or literally facing the music, for Kathleen Dooley was with child.
*
With the euphoria of their first night over, Clodagh was looking forward to meeting Billy Fayard, spoken of with affection and respect by Silas and whom she had heard so much about over the years. Of course he was not called Billy now but Blossom and he had become a she.
Clodagh was intrigued, as she had never known anyone who had undergone a gender change and wasn’t quite sure what to expect, particularly as Silas had told her about the difficult time his friend had gone through to achieve the transition. But when they both arrived in the hotel bar straight from the airport and she rose to greet them, it wasn’t the pancake make-up and false eyelashes that she first noticed, but the aura of rainbow energy that generated around Blossom’s beautiful dark head and which it was clear that no-one but herself could see.
Silas made the introductions and she and Blossom exchanged light kisses then settled into the armchairs as he ordered coffee and almond croissants. She had little time to recover from what she had witnessed but wondered if Blossom was looking at her in a way that indicated that she too might have picked up on some similar emanation.
Not wishing to dwell on this unexpected aspect of their meeting, Clodagh knew that they had to get down to the business for which Blossom had made the journey across the Atlantic. She allowed Silas to do most of the talking as he recaptured the stormy night when he had seen the dancers off in the bus, then lowered his voice as he betrayed Joe Tierney’s request for not divulging what they had heard from the driver.
The coffee arrived and was duly poured as their visitor removed her vivid orange raincoat, revealing a low scooped-neck black dress accessorised by a number of delicate silver chains. Clodagh noticed with interest that her cleavage was almost flawless apart from a few dark moles dotted across honey-brown skin and her long legs, encased in black fishnet, were possibly the most shapely she had ever seen on any woman.
Blossom interrupted only when she needed Silas to emphasize a point and Clodagh was surprised and impressed that someone who was so obviously a psychic healer and teller of fortunes was anxious to examine the possibility of rational explanations before offering up her own suggestions based on her particular skills.
“This Tarot card you found interests me deeply,” she said, addressing them both. Can I see it please?”
Clodagh had put it into a clean envelope for safe-keeping and now placed it on the table between them.
Blossom took the envelope and slid out the card, studying it intently then laying it in the palm of one hand while stroking it with the other. She closed her eyes for what seemed to them like minutes but was probably closer to thirty seconds.
“You’re right, Silas. This is certainly one of the Visconti-Sforza deck, but what is fascinating me is that the card itself is very old.”
“Really? How old?” Silas asked, puzzled.
“Hard to say, but I would hazard a guess at 18th century, maybe earlier.”
Clodagh was stunned. “But how can that be? It’s in such good condition.”
“Yes, it is.” Blossom answered. “But let’s disregard its age for the moment. Why do you think you were the ones who found it?”
Silas jumped in first. “I think it’s a message from the kidnappers. They know about Arcanum, they know it’s the name of the troupe and
of our set dance. It’s a tease of some description, but I can’t begin to understand why they would do something like that.”
Blossom nodded then turned her attention solely to Clodagh. “And you, Clodagh. What is your take on this?”
Clodagh felt her cheeks begin to burn before she answered. Then without any warning from either her heart or her brain, she found herself blurting out everything about her dream, the mysterious healing of her injury and the strange discomfort with the costume. When she had finished, she sat back in her seat while her face slowly retained its normal colour. “I don’t know whether it’s got anything to do with this. Sorry.”
There was silence for a moment as Silas tried to absorb what she had just told them and Blossom digested it with a nod of the head, her eyes now firmly fixed on the girl.
“So the High Priestess is the link here. The Tarot and specifically The High Priestess. Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed. Someone is sending you a message, Clodagh.”
Clodagh experienced the same cold shivers she had felt the night they had found the card and repeated almost word for word what she had uttered in her dream. “But why me? What message?”
Blossom placed her coffee cup carefully back on its saucer and leaned forward with an urgency of tone. “I’m trying to connect the dots, Clodagh. It’s not just you. But you are an integral part of an overall grand design or plan. Don’t forget that the driver said ‘they wanted Silas.’ Someone is trying to get a message to both of you but you each have very individual psychic make-ups. Your seven energy centres are totally different. Yours, Silas, like many humans, are closed or un-awakened, allowing only the barest amount of vibrational current necessary for functioning. Clodagh…” she paused and took the girl’s hand. “The knots binding your soul are freeing themselves quite rapidly. Your seven chakras are opening and making you feel as though you radiate from within and are capable of achieving anything that you desire. Am I right?”
