The cow, for all its difficulties, had adapted to the inconvenience and, as if performing an exercise at which it was quite adept, kept trying to free its legs at measured intervals, resting between attempts, then taking up again the movements as if it were offering a satisfactory demonstration of its skills. It seemed, even, that all was being done at the pig’s insistence. The pig would shriek; the cow would move its hind legs. The two beasts had formed a partnership and devised this cunning entertainment, the cow—to the best of its abilities—dancing, the pig providing the accompaniment.
When Kitty and Kieran arrived at the scene after climbing a somewhat challenging stone wall, nothing had changed. The cow went through the prescribed motions, driven on by the pig’s incessant screams and cries, the sounds and movements now set in a series of repetitions that brought to Kitty’s mind an opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson she’d seen in Brooklyn while studying at Fordham.
“I’ll need a spade,” Kieran yelled, barely making himself heard over the pig’s continuing contribution to the cacophony, “to make the hole larger. So it can get out.”
“Does that mean I should go get one?” Kitty unintentionally, but not without some satisfaction, managed to pitch her voice to the key—possibly B-flat—also employed by the pig.
“I’ll go. You stay here. Try to calm things down.”
“How?”
“A blunt instrument strategically placed between the pigs ears might help.”
Kieran climbed back over the stone wall, not without difficulty. He wasn’t out of training, but the wall was a bit high and the stones so expertly placed that a toehold was far from easy to find. Twice he slid back down. After the second slide, Kitty yelled, “Maybe I should go.”
After a quick glare directed into his wife’s eyes, Kieran gained the summit and jumped down on the far side. Kitty remonstrated with the pig, as she felt it her duty to do. When this failed to effect any diminuendo she repeated the phrases, this time in English instead of Irish. This excited the pig to even greater attainments, now surpassing the stratospheric heights any coloratura might envy, and with an increase of power. The animal was obviously equipped with the muscular control, the glottal chords, and the head resonance necessary for vocal feats of this kind. Kitty quickly switched back to Irish, but the pig was beyond placation and bellowed without the least indication of either failing stamina or damaged equipment.
The cow, the better to appreciate fully the pig’s display, stopped its futile attempts at freedom and, facing forward, gave its complete attention to the swinish ostentations it had inspired. It seemed no longer to require liberation but was more than content to listen, asking nothing of the world other than this manifestation of unrelenting prayer on its behalf. To demonstrate its approval, it swished its tail and flicked its ears.
Then the screaming stopped. After such a sudden cessation, Kitty’s first thought was that the axe had descended and that when she turned from the cow, she would see, bloodied on the ground, the pitiful pig. But when she did turn, the pig had lowered its head and was snouting the grass. There, near a hedge, was Taddy, looking down at the pig, observing closely the twitching and snuffling, then the digging down into the turf and the uprooting of clumps of clotted sod. It was then that Kitty realized that the pig had somehow divested itself of its ring. It had dug the hole the cow was stuck in and could now devastate the world at will.
When Taddy raised his head he looked not at Kitty but at Brid, who was standing in front of the cow. The young man’s wounded neck seemed now to have been chewed, as if the noose had not been content to burn into the sweet flesh but had insisted on nibbling at its handiwork, feasting on the welts and reddened nubs. The rope’s first purpose had apparently been not to hang or break the neck and choke the throat but to open the skin and make available these meaty morsels to satisfy an appetite that demanded death only so it could then proceed to devour the spoils of its slaughter. Taddy, bewildered and mournful, stared at Brid. Immediately the gaze deepened to the look of a man observing an object of such absolute love that his entire being became suffused with a quiet sorrow that could well be more an ache than a yearning. There he stood and seemed to wait for Brid to possess him, or he to possess her, to take her within himself and hold her gently in his heart, in his soul, Taddy and Brid. Brid and Taddy.
That Kitty could do nothing to assuage his grief brought to her a grief of her own, also quiet and sadly resigned. Brid, more concerned about the cow than about Taddy, watched the beast unprotesting in the hole the pig had no doubt dug for it. The girl was agitated by her helplessness, clasping and unclasping her hands, bringing them up to her chest, then parting them only to clasp them together again and press them even more diligently against her breastbone. First she would look at the captured hooves, then at the swollen udder resting on the ground, then at the cow’s head and the soft unquestioning eyes. Finally she saw Taddy. Her agitation ended. Slowly she lowered her hands, rested her arms at her sides, and returned his gaze. She, too, no less than he, became still so that her love and his could join without impediment, her mournful sorrows not for herself, but for him—and his not for himself but for her.
Forever will thou love, and she be fair.
Sorrows of Kitty’s own spread slowly but inexorably through her entire being. Whatever her own feelings, how could they take precedence over the eternal and mournful love presented to her now? That Kitty would abandon them to the unseeing, uncaring vassalage of Lord Shaftoe became more impossible than ever. Under his lordship’s roof, the two would be not with the loom and the harp, but—as she herself had seen—strung up mercilessly and without end from the iron chandelier of the great hall. The failed confluence that had trapped them here, shades and shadows, appearing, disappearing, grieving, sorrowing, lost, would all be left uncorrected, surrendered into the keeping of George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe come at last to claim the castle his forebear had fled in fear—after taking vengeance for a plot substantiated by rumor only.
Still the youthful lovers gazed, a gaze that had its source in their souls. Never would Kitty surrender them. Was she not, like them, possessed? If evil spirits could be exorcised, what rite was possible to give freedom to spirits blessed and filled with grace? Kitty, of course, knew the rite. Peter had told her what must be done. But how? How does one blow up a castle? She could, she supposed, with her vast means, consort with those from whom gunpowder and explosives were readily available, but that would hardly fulfill the original requirement. The explosion had to be a fulfillment of the original plot, the pretext for the hangings. And the gunpowder was still there, somewhere in the castle, ready and waiting. But where? Searches far and wide, deep down and high up, had for almost two centuries yielded nothing. Still, it was Peter she believed more than her own prompting, which had told her the prophecies of the son of a Hag were a fiction even she could not have devised. She might begin the search anew. The gunpowder was there. She would find it.
Kieran, spade in hand, stood atop the dividing wall. After no more than a cursory acknowledgment of Brid and Taddy, he directed his attention to the cow and the pig, both of which had ceased their agitations. “Who took the ring out of the pig’s snout? And who got the cow over the wall so it could step into the hole and almost break its legs?”
With that, both Brid and Taddy were consumed by an intensification of light. When the light lessened, no brighter than it had been a few moments before, they were gone.
Kieran threw the spade to the ground in front of him and jumped down. With the spade landing near them, both the cow and the pig renewed their previous actions, the cow struggling, the pig bellowing.
Without expecting Kitty to answer his unanswerable questions, Kieran picked up the spade and, with care, began digging around the cow’s entrapped legs, widening the hole so the poor beast could move its hind quarters more freely and get itself up onto level ground—except that the level ground had been unleveled by the snorting pig.
After Kieran shovel
ed up three loads of turf, he said, his foot shoving down on the spade, “At least now we know for certain which pig is going to be turning on that spit.” Kitty said nothing. Now was not the time. Turf is not easy to overturn, even with a sharpened spade and a digger of Kieran’s famous strength. But it was being done. Slowly. Grudgingly.
“Go find,” Kieran grunted to Kitty, “go find where the stones fell so I can get the cow back where it belongs before it cripples itself trying to climb the wall.”
“I don’t see any breaks.”
“There has to be one. The cow—and the bloody pig— couldn’t have made the climb. There’s a breach, and that’s the only way we’re going to get them both back where they belong.”
“Well,” said Kitty, not too enthused, “I’ll take a look. But I don’t see anything.”
“It’s there. Find it.”
Rather than just stand and watch her husband at his labors, Kitty, ever eager to be useful in this world, wandered off, close to the stones, their height sometimes higher than the top of her head. Not hurrying, she walked along the wall, almost hoping there’d be no breach—just to contradict Kieran’s certainty. But then, they’d just have to remove the stones themselves, persuade the cow and the pig to pass over, then rebuild the wall.
She could not avoid the thought that the pig had done it.
With its hammer-strong head supported by a bull-like neck and thunderous shoulders, it had easily butted down any number of stones, regardless of their weight or size. Its powers should never be underestimated. Or its stubborn determination. If it wanted to breach a wall, the wall would be breached.
She decided she’d prefer to find where the rocks had simply fallen with help from no one or—thinking of the pig—no thing.
It did little good to renew her longtime obsession with the gunpowder. She could intensify her resolve as much as she wanted, but what good would that be? Maybe she could bring the boy, the seer-elect, to the castle and see if he could, like a divining rod in search of water, detect the explosives’ hiding place. She would take him from room to room, from dungeon to turret top. She would walk him through the meadows and the mire, the orchard and the pastures, along the same stone walls where she was walking now, while concentrating all his psychic might on finding the gunpowder. She would try not to show her desperation—to say nothing of her sorrow that, should the gunpowder by found and should the castle be sent skyward, never again would she be visited by Taddy and the mournful eyes, the muddied feet, the rasped neck, the harpist’s fingers, and the yearning lover’s parted lips.
But it had to be done. And she was the only one on earth—or, it seemed, in heaven—who could do the deed. If the avenging furies could be persuaded to revise their decree, and settle for a dismantling, stone by stone, of the castle, she would beg for the commission. With her bare hands she would do it. Schooled by the pig, she would butt her head, kick her feet; she would do it. Clawing, scratching, tugging, pounding, prying, no resource would be left untried. But the decree, to her knowledge—if such it could be called—had not been revised or rescinded, and if she were to act, she would have to act in accord with the ancient dictates: the castle must go heavenward.
Yellow-flowered gorse tufted the wall, the sweet scent at times overwhelming the salt smell of the stones. The sky was high above, not blue but the white of a thin cloud cover that meant no rain within the next five minutes. A meadow pipit pecked at the gorse for hidden food, and overhead a gull was making its way back to the sea after a foray to the rivers and lakes to the east. The wall had been built as high as the number of stones buried in the earth all those long years before.
More pipits, dipping their beaks in among the stones, accompanied her as she continued her walk that would measure the full perimeter of the enclosed field. And above, the white cloud that had screened the sky began to dissolve, the patient sun following the bend of the earth and lowering now in the west. How pleasant to search a wall for fallen stones.
As she reached the farthest corner of the field, there it was, the breach, the tumbled stones arrayed on the ground, in the grass, among the heather and the gorse. And there among them was the ring that had been put through the snout of the pig, the metal ripped, no doubt, by having been smashed against the unyielding rocks. The pig had done it all.
Before Kitty could give full expression to her exasperation, she turned around. There was the pig and, freed from the dug earth, the cow not far behind, both still inside the enclosed field. Kieran was leaning against the piled stones of the wall, the spade propped at his side. An appreciable amount of earth had been dug up to free the cow, and the hole, even at the considerable distance, seemed to Kitty larger than she would have expected. He was holding a piece of thick paper, tilting it from side to side as if trying to figure out exactly what he had found. He was scowling, which meant that his concentration was absolute and he would not welcome intrusion. At his feet was what she guessed to be a metal chest, muddied, the hinged lid thrown back and the tip of a brown scroll peering at the top.
“The pig butted down the stones,” she called. When Kieran paid no attention, she went closer and said, “You found something. A chest, a paper, or a scroll or something.”
Kieran made no answer, offered no gesture. He seemed to have distinguished the top of the paper from the bottom and, with moving lips, was reading what the document had to tell him. When Kitty was close enough to break his concentration, he quickly rolled the paper and took on the casual look of someone about to tell a lie.
“What is it?” Kitty asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Then it’ll be all right for me to have a look at it.”
“Just some old scrawling.”
“Was it in that chest?”
“Nothing, I told you.”
“I can’t wait.” She held out her hand.
“It’s meaningless. Just a lot of scribbles and some silly drawings. Left behind by some careless workman and covered over in time. Designs, as far as I can make out, for some changes in the castle. That’s all.”
“Then may I see it?” She reached down, took the remaining scroll from the chest and spread it open. She, too, like Kieran, turned the sheet from side to side, scrunching up her eyes, drawing back her head, crinkling her nose, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Without emphasis, Kieran said, “The gunpowder. It’s pressed into the flagstones paving the great hall. We’ve been walking all over it. And the cows, too.”
“And Lord Shaftoe,” Kitty added. There were no inflections in her voice. She continued to stare at the opened scroll she held in her hand. The writing was in Irish, but the script was difficult to read, a superseded penmanship that seemed, at first, to require a Rosetta stone before it could be deciphered. Gradually, however, the letters showed themselves to have equivalents to the handwriting strictly imposed by Sister Clothilde in the first grade. Clusters of letters became recognizable words, and an understanding of the words began to seep into the necessary recesses of her brain. The drawings, however, were crude sketches resistant to interpretation. Convinced that if she stared at them long enough they would yield their meaning, Kitty fixed her eyes on the page, trying her best not to blink. Finally she began to comprehend. There were instructions for the laying of the flagstones, telling as well that all precautions must be taken not to bring them into contact with any element that might cause a premature explosion, meaning, of course, fire. Also listed were the names of what must have been the servants attached to the castle. They were to find pretexts—work elsewhere, visits to a sick relative—any excuse not to be present when the gunpowder was scheduled to go off. Only the newly arrived Lord Shaftoe himself was to be present, the man come at the behest of the Crown to inflict the most rigorous “coercions” on the people of the countryside who had demonstrated a decided unwillingness to be evicted or flogged or starved at the Crown’s discretion.
Kitty’s efforts to make sense of the drawings were interrupted by Kieran. “Of course
we needn’t worry. With all the damp and all the time gone by, the gunpowder is of no use to anyone now. Except as flagstones for the floor.”
Kitty gave up on the squiggles. “Can we be so sure?”
“It’s been over two hundred years. And don’t forget: after just a few weeks Guy Fawkes’s gunpowder was said to be worthless even if he didn’t know it. The elements separate in almost no time at all. He couldn’t have blown up Parliament no matter what. All we have now are flagstones. Nothing more.”
“There were nearly two hundred years between the time of Guy Fawkes and when the flagstones were laid. Have you forgotten? No advances of civilization can keep up with the ‘improvements’ when it comes to ordinance and the ways of destruction. Surely Mr. Fawkes’s difficulties would have been solved in the centuries between.”
Kieran shrugged. “We can give it a try, if that will make you any happier. If we blow ourselves to kingdom come we’ll at least know it hasn’t lost its zing—”
“No one says we have to set the whole place going. Wouldn’t just a piece, a little bit, a chunk tell us what we need to know?”
“I guess we can always give it a try.”
“Fine with me.”
After getting the cow and the pig through the breach in the wall—a task not without its frustrations—after taking off a small chunk of flagstone from the great hall and taking it across and down the road to a distant rocky pasture, a fire was built, and Kieran, from a distance, tossed the stone chip into the blaze. They stepped farther back. Nothing happened. They waited. Still nothing. Apparently Kitty had been too generous in her appraisal of civilization’s advance.
When they’d gone back across the road and were almost to the courtyard sheds a loud sound was heard as if someone were exploding huge kernels of popcorn. They looked first at each other, eye to eye, then looked back at the field. Some of the flaming wood was still falling eastward, accompanied by sparks and embers sifting down through the air. Brid was there, staring up at the falling debris, holding out her hands to catch some piece of shattered stone—as if she were seeing snow for the first time and was dazzled with disbelief at its wonders. Taddy, also stunned with wonder, surveyed the ground around, numbering, it seemed, each fragment of what had been until now an impregnable rock.
The Pig Comes to Dinner Page 16
