by Erin O'Quinn
We met the other two. As it turned out, they were the younger brothers of Loch named Brion and Lorcan. Soon we were all cantering to Ballysweeney, slowly enough to question the brothers and hear their answers.
The brothers O’Cahan lived some ten miles north of Limavady, near the mouth of the River Bann. They casually called their homestead “Ballycahan,” in the manner of most clansmen. But I gathered it was near a settlement called Cúil Raithin, or Coleraine, once visited by Father Patrick himself. Brion told me how his own grandfather, a chieftain, had offered Patrick a portion of land near the river overgrown with great ropy ferns that had to be burned to the ground each year. After Patrick left, the residents then adopted the name, meaning “ferny backwater” or words to that effect.
This was not the first folktale I had heard about Father Patrick in the northern part of this island. I began more and more to realize that Patrick’s influence was beginning to be felt in many places besides Armagh, even if he had never set foot near most of them. I remembered Patrick’s story to me of his time of captivity, and I wondered whether he had been held close to this area.
“How come ye to be near Limavady?” asked Michael.
“Me brothers and I know a fair lass when we see her,” he said with that special look in his eyes. “So when the daughters of Owen Sweeney fled north escaping their father, we took them to bed, and then to wife.”
“His daughters fled from him?” I asked.
“Aye, Lady, an’ their brothers, too. This was after he had killed their poor, innocent mother, more than two years ago now.”
“Can you tell me more?” I urged him.
“Nay, lass, methinks ye should hear it from his own children. Ye’ll meet them soon enough, for his sons have returned to live in the old holdings. An’ back to me story. We have come with our wives to visit to their old homestead, now their father is gone. We are here to celebrate the Oimelc.”
Brigid had been listening for a long time without comment. When she spoke, it was a question that I would never have thought to ask. “Who is paying the land tribute, and to whom are they paying it?”
Loch flushed. “The tribute is paid by all of us, Lady Brigid. But the spring tithes are not yet due, so we have not traveled to Derry to render them to the Duchess Caylith.”
“I ask not to embarrass you, Loch. Being the daughter of a Brehon, it is a natural question. I doubt that the duchess”—she looked at me with a raised eyebrow—“the redoubtable Caylith, would send tax men to seize your lands.”
“Nevertheless, the tribute shall be paid. Since the descendants of Sweeney are no longer allowed to hold land, we have become their liege lords. And we in turn will pay what is due, when it is due.”
Brigid looked uncomfortable, for I knew she had not meant to demean her husband’s clansmen. It was time for me to speak.
“Ah, Loch. Brion, Lorcan. You are all my own cousins now. Do you agree?”
“Of course, a chol ceathrar, a mo chara,” said Loch familiarly.
“Would you then pay tribute to your own relatives?”
“What mean you?” asked Lorcan. He was the youngest brother, the only one without a beard, and he reminded me strongly of Torin, the way his hair spilled into his brown eyes, his smooth, young face.
“Lorcan, you may call me cousin. Cousin Caylith.”
All three brothers reined in their horses, and we all stopped. Loch threaded his hair back from his face, looking thoughtful. “So ye be the savior of the immigrants. Ye be the builder of Ballycaitlín. I should have put it together in me brain. Ye be the one who pulled her mother from the shieling, who stood as leader of the cattle raiders, who bound the criminal Sweeney an’ had him brought to our uncle the high king. Caitlín, we are all in your debt.”
“Nonsense,” I said, and I meant it. “First, I want no tribute. All the other holdings of Sweeney—his land, his cattle, have already been given to the clans Murphy, MacCool, and O’Neill, for I want them not. If I had known of the O’Cahans, I would have divided the wealth further.
“But there is much more to be told, for your maligned Sweeney may well be innocent as a lamb, and we have all made a huge mistake.”
They looked at me, stupefied, unable to move, and I finally had to urge them ahead. “Come, O kinsmen, let us ride and talk. I have many things to tell you.”
It was clear that the brothers knew nothing of Sweeney’s escape from his death vessel, his own cripple’s chair, bound into a currach and set into the great northern sea. Since they had not lately ventured into Derry, there would be no way for them to have heard the news—how, more than four months ago, Sweeney had captured Liam and held him as hostage until the king should return all his holdings. How my Saxon army and I, along with Liam’s cousins, had come to his rescue on the far north promontory. And how, once returned to Derry, Father Patrick had accepted him as his own ward, under the protection of the Christian community.
“I blame you not for your dread of the man. Until a few days ago, the mere sound of his voice made all my skin rise and fester as though I were a leper. But let me tell you a story.”
I told them my encounter with Sweeney at Brother Galen’s teach. I told them Sweeney’s tale of his youth, his schooling in Gallia, his mother’s blandishments about his high-born father, his long search for the truth.
“He would not tell me of my mother’s captivity, but he hinted that she was not held against her will. In fact, he urged me to ask her. He would not speak of his wife’s death, but I could see that he loved her. And he would not speak of his accident. Instead, he reviled me for seeking to probe his pain.
“O kinsmen, the Sweeney I talked with was not the Sweeney we all loathe. I talked to a man who carries an unspeakable pain, a man still longing to find his father and to bring back his dead wife. A man whose pain has been caused in large part by his mother’s tormented secrets. And I mean to learn the secrets. That is the only way I know to begin his healing.”
We all rode in silence for a several minutes while the O’Cahan clan considered my words. When at last someone spoke, it was the young Lorcan. “Cousin Cay, what do ye seek in Ballysweeney?”
“I seek Mother Sweeney herself. She is the only one who can reveal the secret of his birth.”
“And yet she lies alone, very sick. She speaks to no one, except to rant in strange visions. She speaks of a ghostly king, come back to bless her, or kiss her, or some such. She thinks her son is dead, an’ she blames herself.”
“Well, I mean to make her speak at last,” I said. I was grim in my resolve. No matter what secret she held, it could not be more important than the sanity of her son and her own fragile life.
We all rode in silence after that. It was as though each of us had our own memories and impressions to sort through. Perhaps Liam was thinking about his new extended family, a fine-looking group of young men whose existence had been unknown to him or forgotten since his youth. Michael, never drawn to life in the saddle, might have been thinking of the nearby Lough Foyle and dreaming himself back on the shores of a great lake, building currachs and designing fine furniture. I thought Brigid might still be brooding about her comments to the clansmen. Brother Jericho, who rode with the hint of sourness around his mouth, was possibly still feeling the sores from his saddle or remembering his long-ago ride with me to Sweeney’s baile. And the clan O’Cahan, who had never known Sweeney, were perhaps reconsidering their hatred, born of their own wives’ frantic dread of their father.
“A chuisle, we are almost there,” I told Liam, riding close to him.
He looked over at me with worried eyes and a clenched jaw. “Feel…worry for Mháthair Suinhe, an tseanbhean…Suinhe agus.”
Usually, Liam remembered to speak my own language, and I could tell he was upset. He had just told me that he was worried about the old woman and her son, too. It was so like my compassionate husband to show concern over the well-being of other people that I reached out toward him, as though to touch his dear face. He guided hi
s horse close to mine and seized my hand.
“Smooth your sweet face,” he told me with a little smile. “Ye do…what ye can do, Cat.”
“Is tú mo ghrá, a Liam. I love you very much.” It was clear then that Liam had been thinking about his newfound family and their connection with the mysterious Sweeney. I vividly remembered Liam kneeling before Sweeney’s invalid cart, cleaning his wounds while the raging madman reviled him. And to this day, he still felt compassion for the man.
At a shout from one of the O’Cahans, we looked around us. Not even a half mile away, in a sheltered valley, stood the earthen ramparts of Sweeney’s old baile. The defensive moat—really just a deep ditch—circled a group of buildings, themselves higher than the land around. Well beyond the holdings, I saw flames from a large bonfire, the smoke curling lazily in the still air.
We all stopped on a ridge and gazed at Ballysweeney. Loch said to no one in particular, “Let us see if supper is ready.”
We rode forward, still silent, as though Sweeney’s glowering aspect still hung over the holdings. One by one, we guided our horses over an earthen bridge and entered the homestead. As once before, when my men and I had come to free my mother, our horses had to avoid squawking chickens and leaden-foot pigs. But this time the air was full of the sounds of laughing children among the lowing cattle and bleating sheep.
I saw that new cattle byres had been constructed, and there were at least one hundred cattle inside. All along the perimeter were pens full of very woolly sheep waiting to be shorn of their winter coats. I saw several haggards, all full of some kind of fodder. Children were running about with water pitchers and troughs full of mash for the pigs.
“This is a very thriving homestead,” I told Loch approvingly.
“Sweeney’s sons, the Mac Eóghans, have been very industrious. I am glad to know they may keep their wealth, for they have worked very hard.”
“Let us hurry in and meet the family,” I told him.
We rode past the old drover’s barracks. I noticed that it was now the home for at least one large family. Is this where the sons lived? And whose children were these? I saw the kiln ovens and the grain cribs, and of course the large cook house with a steady, dark column wafting from the smoke hole.
Even though Mama had been safe for a long time, and even though she may not have been a prisoner, after all, I could hardly look at the old slave quarters. But I did look, and I was surprised to find that people were entering and coming out, and that smoke was rising from the smoke hole here, too. “Lorcan,” I said. “Who lives there?”
“In the shieling? That is the winter home of the hired drovers, dear cousin. Usually children from local families. They use the shieling in the winter as shelter. Then in the grazing weather they live on the pasture land, and often they build crude huts such as these.”
So Mama and her fellow captives had been kept in the drovers’ temporary hut. I thought the building had been hastily constructed as a disgusting pen to hold humans, for it was unlimed and almost falling down. Now I realized that such buildings were common in every bally. If I were to ride to the summer grazing fields, I would no doubt find the remnants of the same clay-and-wattle shacks scattered wherever the cattle were driven to familiar pastures.
We rode to the large brugh, and the O’Cahan boys were on the ground and their horses tethered before I could even rein in my pony. Out of the door rushed three pretty women, all of them dressed in bright woolen léines, and each woman found a smiling husband to embrace. They looked at us with a certain shyness, but the presence of five strangers did not stop them from talking and teasing, pulling at the clansmen’s whiskers and tousling their hair.
We were introduced in short order. Éva, tall and dark haired, was the wife of Loch. Brown-eyed Orla, gifted with pretty freckles, was Brion’s wife. And Lorcan’s wife was named Cara, the Latin word for “dear one” and the Gaelic word for “friend.” She, like Lorcan, was young and very attractive with auburn hair and nut-brown eyes.
They welcomed us to their sprawling home with curtsies and downcast eyes. Brigid spoke to them in rapid Gaelic, and I caught the rough meaning of her words. “Dear ladies, we are cousins. In fact, we are now like sisters. Let us kiss and hug each other—not stand in the dust bowing like old farts.”
We all laughed and embraced each other as though we had been acquainted for years. Cara spoke up. “Father and our teachers taught us to speak several languages Even Latin, can you believe it? So if you feel more comfortable speaking your own tongue, Caitlín, please do.”
“Go raibh maith agat, a Chara. Yes, I am a lazy student of language. I do appreciate it.”
Éva spoke to all of us as we stood by our horses. “Then come join us for supper. We will eat as soon as our brothers return. They have gone to tend the bonfire.”
Soon we were all seated on downy, deep “couches,” an invention I greatly approved of. It was as though someone had decided to turn a bench into a soft bed, and the combination was wondrously comfortable.
“I do not mean to bring down your spirits,” I told my new relatives. “But I am here to try to tender a healing potion to Mother Sweeney. And Brother Jericho needs to hear her confession.”
Orla looked grave, her freckles standing out vividly on her pale cheeks. “You would be fortunate to help our dear grandmother, Cate. And you, Brother, would be blessed to hear any words at all from her. We are afraid that she will leave us very soon, and she will take both her sickness and her silence to the grave.”
“But you will not object if we try?” I asked.
“If you could but help her, dear Cate, we would be overjoyed,” she told me. “Do you have a potion to give her right away? And you, O Brother, when can you approach her?”
“I will prepare a potion right now,” I told her, standing and seizing my pouch.
“And I will talk with her as soon as she has drunk the infusion.” Brother Jericho, usually skeptical of curatives that did not involve earnest prayer, looked at me almost pleadingly.
I left my friends talking with great animation, and I went to the cook house. This was the very place I first saw my darling Mama, barefoot, bent to the floor setting down fresh reeds. At that time, focusing on her, I had hardly noticed the large fire pit. Now I saw that a merry fire was crackling, and that scores of different cook pots and cauldrons hung on pegs on the near wall. Three women were tending the fire, preparing a kind of soup or stew.
I haltingly identified myself, but the women remembered me, smiling and touching my hair and cheeks. “Caylith,” they said, over and over again. I signaled to them that I meant to prepare a kind of tea, and immediately I was handed a water jug and a cauldron.
It took only moments to measure out a quantity of horsetail powder, and as I stirred it into the heating water, I murmured over and over, “Mother, Mother, soothe your mind. Mother, Mother, love doth bind.” It was as though my own mother, who once stood at this very cook fire, lent her calming spirit. When the water began to boil I took the cauldron and, thanking the ladies, I returned at once to the family brugh.
Moments later, Brother Jericho and I stood outside the door of Sweeney’s late wife. I saw the lintel, decorated with shells and stones, and I tried to force quiet thoughts into my mind. Stone and shell, your story tell. Shells and stones, heal the bones. I drew a breath deep into my stomach and pushed open the door.
Chapter 20:
Old Secrets
When I was last in this room, I had explored it in the dark, with my fingertips. Now I saw that it was spacious and well lit. Indirect light from an east-facing window revealed a large, raised bed. It was not oversized, as my own, but one that Sweeney himself could have been comfortable in when he visited his wife here.
Near the bed sat a table, and it contained probably the same water pitcher and basin as those I had touched on that long-ago night. I saw a round metal mirror and a candleholder with a partly melted taper. Even the small, folded towel still lay there next to the water
basin. I was sure it was changed daily for Mother Sweeney, but my imagination saw it as the same little cloth that Sweeney’s wife had used to wash her face, the same one I had touched almost a year and a half ago.
I saw a large cabinet, the one I had opened and whose contents I had smoothed and fingered in the darkness—linen and woolen léines and gowns. I saw that the leather brógas still stood in rows next to the cabinet, as if waiting for Sweeney’s wife to choose which ones she would wear today. Nearby, I saw the low bench my fingers remembered covered with a soft animal fur of white.
And last, almost reluctantly, my eyes were drawn to the small, clotted figure of a woman lying as if curled in pain, a flyspeck on a large table. It was Mother Sweeney. I saw that she was sleeping, if fitfully, her mouth thin, her jaw clenched in her habitual silence. Even in slumber, she was refusing to speak her secrets.
Brother Jericho stood on one side of the bed. I put the cup of healing potion on the bedside table, and I knelt on the side opposite the monk. I reached out my hand and lightly drew her thin, shining hair back from her high forehead, seeing her entire face for the first time. When I was here before, she had kept a cowl over her head. And even after the prisoners had been freed, she wore a kerchief that shrouded her eyes and cheeks.
Now I saw that she had long, dark eyelashes and improbably dark, glossy hair. She had high cheekbones, and I could see the way her delicate bones molded her face that she must have been beautiful as a young woman. I wondered whether, if she ever unclenched her jaws, her mouth would be soft and yielding.
As I stroked her finely textured hair, her eyes flew open. Her thin body, already drawn into a ball, could not recede any farther, and so she let her eyes show her fright.
“Mother,” I said crooning softly. “Mother Sweeney, it is I, Caylith. Do you remember me?”
