Secrets and Shamrocks

by Phyllis Gobbell

  Doreen and I filled our plates and sat talking mostly about Molly’s performance. Alex joined us, and then Molly. The Prescotts arrived as we were finishing. “I guess Ian isn’t going to make it down to breakfast,” Molly said. “What a terrible thing that happened to him.”

  “Not as bad as it could’ve been,” Doreen said.

  Mr. Sweeney didn’t come to breakfast, but if he was missed, no one said so.

  I excused myself, leaving Alex and the Quinn ladies at the table. As I went into the kitchen, I heard Doreen say, “So, Alex, what’s on the schedule today?”

  Little Jimmie was having his breakfast, and his grandparents were busy cleaning pots and pans. “Maybe I should take Ian some toast and tea,” I said, after I’d stopped to say good morning to the little boy, whose smiling face was smeared with jam.

  “Good idea,” Colin said. “I’ll make the tray.”

  I took the tray up and knocked on Ian’s door. “It’s Jordan,” I said, “with breakfast.”

  Ian answered without delay. “Good morning. Ah, now that’s what I need.”

  “You look much better than the last time I saw you,” I said.

  “I just finished cleaning up a bit. I’m feeling like I might live now,” he said. “Please come in if you don’t mind the mess.”

  I saw the desk was cluttered and looked for somewhere else to set the tray, but Ian went to the desk and moved the books, papers, and laptop onto the foot of his unmade bed to make a space. “This is grand, right here,” he said.

  “I see you’re not using your left arm,” I said.

  “Better that it wasn’t my right.”

  I put down the tray. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who shot at us—at you.”

  “Do you think someone was aiming at me? I thought I was just the unlucky one.”

  “I can’t imagine why Alex or I would’ve been the target. We’re not from around here.”

  “I’m not from around here either,” he said, pouring tea from the pot. “Sure, I’ve been asking questions, trying to gather more legends and tales for my book. You don’t think there’s a connection with my book, do you?”

  “I have no reason to think so, but I don’t think the shot was fired by a hunter,” I said.

  “Who then? And why? I have no enemies that I know of.” He finished with the cream and sugar and stirred. “Sweet Mother, I don’t want to spend the rest of my holiday jumping at shadows, thinking someone’s going to shoot me.”

  I didn’t mention that he had jumped at shadows a couple of times last night. We’d probably all seemed a bit jittery out on the lonely, dark road, with the owl hooting.

  Ian raised the cup to his lips. His expression showed that the tea hit the spot. “You look pensive, Jordan. Tell me if you have some theory.”

  “I don’t have a theory,” I said. I was back to the question: Was Ian the target, or Alex, or me? I turned toward the door. “Enjoy your breakfast. I guess you’ll be staying in today, resting.”

  “I probably should,” he said, “but a man at Monks last night told me I should try to find an old woman who lives out in Red Stag Crossing. He said she’s probably ninety, and she’s lived there all her life, plus she’s a little—you know.” He made the whirly sign for crazy.

  I tried not to show any reaction, but I wondered what Grace and Colin would say if they knew he was going to seek out Magdala. “You should give yourself a little more time to get stronger.” Before he could answer, I added, “Why don’t you go to The Source with Alex and me tonight. Assuming you’re feeling up to it. It shouldn’t tire you too much, just to sit in a comfortable seat and listen to a concert.”

  “That’s Molly’s performance,” he said.

  I gave a coy little smile. “Bet she’d be happy to get you a ticket.”

  “I’ll go then,” he said. “Would you mind asking her about the ticket?” I couldn’t tell if he was playing innocent, showing no particular interest in Molly, nor acknowledging her interest in him. If he was, he was good at it.

  The door was open. I was about to enter the hall when he said, “There is one thing.”

  I turned around. He made a motion for me to close the door. He set his cup on the desk, asking, “Did you hear anything before it happened?”

  “Before the shot?”

  He nodded. “A rustling sound? I don’t know—maybe it was just—a feeling, something you sense when someone is near. But first there was the hooting owl.”

  “I heard the owl, nothing else. You did seem a little jumpy, Ian.”

  “I might have been, a wee bit.” He looked at me with those dark eyes Helen had called dreamy. I could see a sudden glitter of anxiety. “That bloody owl. I’ve been going to the pub most nights, you know. Most times I walk home. Three times now, I’ve heard the owl.”

  He paused, as if waiting for me to say something. I had no logical explanation, but I gave it a try. “Maybe you pass the owl’s tree and disturb him. And he hoots. Maybe it’s as simple as that.”

  Ian gave a vigorous shake of his head, his dark curls bobbing. “It wasn’t the same place along the road, not tonight.” He reached back for the desk chair and eased himself into it.

  “Are you all right?” I said. “Why don’t you drink some more tea.”

  He did. “I was feeling a bit weak in the knees. Maybe I’m not mended, after all.”

  “I’m sure you’re not mended. Not yet. It’s only been a few hours. You need to rest.”

  He looked into his teacup. I sensed he was embarrassed to look at me directly as he said, “Y’know, one of the legends in my book has an owl as a harbinger of death. A man is acquitted of a crime, but he’s guilty, and the guilt he carries inside him drives him to madness. The owl comes to him three times.” He stopped but did not look up.

  I said, “And the third time?”

  “After the third time, he plunges a dagger into his own heart.”

  I caught my breath. “Well, you didn’t do that.”

  A smile curled on Ian’s lips, and he raised his eyes to mine at last. “No, I did not.”

  “Are you carrying a big load of guilt about something?”

  “No, I am not.” His smile widened.

  “Ian, I know you’re a very imaginative writer, but—you don’t really think the owl we heard has anything to do with your story, do you? Or with the shooting?”

  He gave a sheepish look. “All of it does seem a bit mad, doesn’t it? Forgive me. Sometimes we Irish get too much into fanciful things.”

  “All the same, I’d like to read your story.”

  “It’s on my blog,” he said. “I posted two of my stories, and that’s one of them.”

  Your blog keeps coming up, I thought, but I didn’t say it. He was touching his arm, wincing.

  I went to the door. “I need to let you have your breakfast. Take it easy now, and I’ll see Molly about that ticket.”

  CHAPTER 9

  We were on our way to the town of Cashel in South Tipperary, site of the castle ruins known as the Rock of Cashel, only a half hour from Thurles. I should not have been surprised that Doreen Quinn was going with us.

  I had knocked on the Quinns’ door to see Molly about getting Ian a ticket for her performance. How she had beamed! Doreen, from somewhere in the room, had called out, “Better hurry, Jordan! Alex will be waiting. We’re going to the Rock of Cashel.”

  “Right,” I’d said, unable to keep the irritation from my voice, refusing to admit that Alex hadn’t consulted me about his plans. I was happy for him to make our itinerary—his book was our raison d’etre—but was he just a wee bit influenced by what Doreen wanted to visit?

  Alex was standing at my door when I came upstairs. “Jordan,” he began in that particular tone that bordered on apology—but not quite.

  “Better hurry, Alex,” I said. “Doreen tells me we’re going to the Rock of Cashel. I can be downstairs in ten. Does that work? Doreen didn’t give me your exact timetable.” Alex looked as if he would sp
eak, but he simply pursed his lips and nodded, and I muttered, “Oh, it’s all right.”

  Doreen, who had visited the attraction previously, and Alex, with his fistful of brochures, provided me with a comprehensive lesson on the historic site as I drove the twenty-five kilometers, mostly on the M8. Even with my head full of facts, the magnificent icon made my breath catch when it came into view, some distance from the town.

  Doreen, leaning between us from the back seat—though I had mentioned the seatbelt to her several times—said, “There ’tis, like the Devil dropped it from the sky, don’t you see?” She’d told us the legend, that the Devil was flying overhead and saw St. Patrick founding a new church, and in his anger, he dropped the Rock, creating the spectacular sight.

  “What a photo op! Alex, get your camera,” I said.

  “Ah, you’ll have plenty of chances for pictures,” Doreen said, “from anywhere in town.”

  “But this view! So majestic.”

  “Watch the road, Jordan. I’ll take care of the photos,” Alex said, raising the camera for a shot. I slowed the car to a crawl, until I realized I was holding up a string of cars behind me.

  As she had done in Kilkenny, Doreen gave directions for parking in the vibrant little town. I had to admit that whether the Rock of Cashel was Doreen’s idea or Alex’s, it was an excellent one. “This is a tour I don’t mind taking again,” Doreen said. “It starts at the Tourist Office, there at the Town Hall.” She led the way, walking at a brisk pace past quaint little shops. I took advantage of the photo ops everywhere. My first shot was of the huge Celtic cross in the Victorian town center.

  Though I was expecting a tour guide, I was glad to see we would be purchasing an audio tour, using headphones. “This is nice,” I said. “It allows each of us to speed up or slow down.”

  Doreen said, “We should all stay together, don’t you think?”

  Alex glanced at me and then fixed Doreen with a serious look. “I don’t want to make you ladies wait for me. Maybe we should just decide on a meeting place and a certain time for all of us to come back together.”

  Thank you, Alex! For all the times I was annoyed with him, I had to say he’d made remarkable progress since we’d first traveled together. He could listen to a tour guide drone on all day, the more intricate the details, the better, and he’d expected me to do the same. Now he seemed to accept that whether I was touring a museum or a town, I was happier making my own discoveries. The audio tour was the perfect tool for someone with my particular attention span—short or long, depending on whether I was being active or passive.

  But Doreen was not easily put off. “Oh, you’re every bit as fit as we are,” she said with a playful slap on Alex’s arm. “No reason you can’t keep up. You had no trouble on the Kilmacoliver Walk.”

  “You’re kind to say so, Doreen, but I meant that I’ll be making notes. Jordan will be taking photos—from an architect’s vantage point—and you should feel free to do whatever you like as well.” He smiled, and I was certain he was certain he’d made his point.

  “I’ll just stay with you then,” Doreen said. “You take all the time you want, and don’t worry your head about me.”

  I would have been more amused if Alex had not made the effort to liberate me from Doreen’s cloying presence—and now he was stuck with her. “I won’t get too far off track,” I promised, “but if we happen to get separated, let’s meet at the Heritage Centre.” The Heritage Centre Museum, Tourist Information Office, and Town Hall were all in the same general locale. Alex had read a description of the museum from his brochure. Not only did it house a craft shop, featuring local textiles, but it also featured a full-scale model of the town of Cashel in the 1640s. That was on my list of things to see, and I wouldn’t want to be hurried.

  “It’s settled then. We should get started,” Alex said. He put on his earphones and turned on the audio. Doreen did so, too, but with some hesitation. It meant she had to stop talking.

  The first point of interest—and all three of us stopped to take notice—was the main entrance of the Town Hall, where the stocks from the late 1700s and 1800s remained. At that time, it was customary for the townspeople to take matters into their own hands, throwing rotting vegetables and eggs at the lawbreaker detained in the stocks. The narrator on the audio tour suggested that this kind of public discipline might be just the thing for delinquents and petty criminals in modern times, as it was then. Everyone on the tour—maybe fifteen in all—smiled at almost the same time. We were all just getting started, all at the beginning of the recording.

  But at that point, several tourists hiked ahead at a fast clip, clearly heading up the steep path toward the castle ruins that dominated everything. That was my inclination as well. Alex was scribbling in his little notebook, with Doreen at his side, blissfully content to stroll at a snail’s pace if her placid expression was any indication. I doubted they would notice if I forged on ahead. Still, I found myself stopping at each shop along the long, steep path, perusing linens, woolens, and jewelry, waiting, making sure Alex and Doreen were not too far behind.

  “Cashel, known as the City of Kings, has a glorious past. Kings of the Munster Province ruled from the Rock for five hundred years until, in 1101, the king handed over his fortress to the Bishop of Limerick,” explained the female narrator with a most engaging Irish accent. I found myself more intrigued than I had anticipated as she described significant events associated with the Rock of Cashel, events that had helped shape Ireland’s history, from the stirring speech by Daniel O’Connell, the great Irish liberator, in 1847, to Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 2011. “A concert by John McCormack in 1929 might be called the first mass pop concert,” said the narrator. “The famous Irish tenor sang to some 25,000 to 40,000 fans from the Rock of Cashel.” Here, St. Patrick first used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity, and Arthur Guinness was said to have developed his famous brew at Cashel. All of it fascinating!

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Alex and Doreen making their way past the Irish woolens shop. No reason for me to wait for them to catch up.

  Up ahead, the ancient ruins beckoned.

  Most of the buildings on the site dated back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Walking through and around the limestone remains, perusing what was called “one of the finest collections of medieval art and architecture in the world,” I found the audio tour a tremendous asset. Alex would be astonished when I told him how much I was enjoying the tour.

  Sometime later, I heard him call my name. I was outside, taking photos of the rolling pastures and the town of Cashel below. A little break from the helpful narrator. I turned and saw Alex and Doreen remove their headphones. Alex retrieved his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Just a little out of breath.”

  I thought of the angina attack Alex suffered in Provence, the night after he had walked up a steep path, but that hike was much longer than the one from the town center to the castle ruins.

  “I can almost see those wheels turning in your mind, Jordan,” Alex said. “Please, don’t worry about me. I may have let myself get overheated, but, really, it’s nothing serious.”

  His cheeks were flushed, but I knew not to argue. Doreen rolled her eyes as if to say, Didn’t I tell him? I looked around for a section of rock wall that was low enough for sitting, and Alex didn’t balk at my suggestion. “Perfect for viewing the Golden Vale of South Tipperary,” I said, stretching out my hand to indicate the encircling plain that seemed to extend forever. Alex raised his eyebrows in surprise. Yes, I had been paying attention. I returned a smile.

  I busied myself capturing the panoramic scene on film: the little town with its charming houses, the sheep in the green pastures, low rock walls and narrow roads making patterns throughout the valley, all of it set under a clear blue sky. After a cool morning, the day had warmed up and the breeze was mild. I didn’t mind sitting here as long as Alex needed to rest.

 
; But that wasn’t long. He stood up and consulted a map of the structure. “I understand the oldest building here is the eleventh-century Round Tower,” he said. “The rocks were laid without mortar. You have to see that, Jordan.”

  I frowned. “I did! I was going to show off and tell you all about the dry stone method.”

  “We must see the original St. Patrick’s cross,” Doreen said, leading the way.

  We all put on our headphones.

  An hour passed before we knew it, much of the time spent in Cormac’s Chapel, with its magnificent vaulted ceiling and Romanesque frescoes, the oldest wall paintings in Ireland, and an exquisitely carved sarcophagus that might be the tomb of King Cormac himself, or possibly his brother. Alex—and Doreen, sticking close by him—lingered in the museum of the Hall of the Vicars Choral, where artifacts excavated from the site were on display, while I gravitated to the five-story Tower House and the Cathedral with its lancet windows and ornate wall tombs. Eventually, all of us viewed everything. It was early afternoon before we made our way down the hill. We had a hearty lunch—shepherd’s pie, in my case—at one of the restaurants on Main Street, shared a pot of tea, and recalled for each other the highlights of the day so far.

  Alex seemed fine, after the earlier episode of “overheating,” but I said, “We need to give ourselves some time to unwind before we go to Molly’s performance this evening.”

  “I’m quite unwound,” Alex said, lifting his cup of steaming tea, “and there’s so much else to see. The Folk Village is supposed to have an excellent reconstruction of shops and houses from the past. Some of the finest examples of thatched roofs in Ireland, I understand.” We compromised. Alex went to Folk Village, and I went to the Heritage Centre, specifically to see the model of Cashel as it was in the 1640s. Doreen elected to accompany me, saying that she’d seen the Folk Village on her previous visit and didn’t care to pay admission again.