by Tom O'Neill
Shea welcomed Matha as did his sons. Food was brought out of the pot. The sight of it almost quelled Matha’s hunger – a small cake of blackish oatmeal that had been softening in boiling water. But little as it was, Matha got a bigger share than anyone else in the house and he ate it like it was roast beef. When they invited him to settle back near the fire with them, he obliged. They talked about their goats and cows and about worries of the day. He could see that they were polite people and would leave him to stay quiet unless he indicated that he had something he wanted to say.
A loud grinding noise suddenly filled the room. Matha thought a final event was about to unfold. But he was the only one who turned to the corner it was coming from. It was the old lady. One of the sons whispered to Matha, ‘She always waits till everyone is finished before she eats her bit of bread, to remind us how badly off she is with her few teeth and her hollow head.’
After a while, Matha cleared his throat and the old woman stopped grinding. He began with telling how he and his mother had been struggling after the arrival of Cerball and then he told them of the funny black horse with the long round body and the stumps of legs. It turned out they were great lovers of ponies and horses and couldn’t hear enough about the wonderful little animal. Instead of quietly looking at each other shaking their heads in pitying disapproval as others had done when he told them he had left everything behind to try to find a remedy for a sick horse, Shea’s wife said, ‘Of course you did son, of course you did, and what else would a decent young person do in your situation.’
When Matha had finished explaining what the heron had told him, the old Shea man stood up. He said slowly, as if talking to himself, ‘Well now that makes sense. You are the one then. That is a terrible pity.’
‘What do you mean, Milo Shea?’ asked his wife, as confused as Matha.
‘Well, the little man that gave it to me many years ago said that a young lad of my own people would come to collect it one day.’
That didn’t make any sense to Matha. He himself hadn’t even known that he was coming here up to a couple of days ago. Nobody else could have known it years before. He was starting to develop a dislike for this bowl. But that wasn’t what was troubling him most. ‘What do you mean “it is a terrible pity”, though?’ he asked.
The man wasn’t going to be rushed in getting to the conclusion. He had apparently been waiting a while to pass on his part of the history of the little bowl. His sons and his wife looked at him with open mouths; they were obviously hearing this news for the first time too. The little old granny just stared into the flames, showing no flicker of interest.
‘Of all the things we recently lost,’ said his wife gently to Shea, ‘I confess I never missed that little bowl. I always knew that although you minded it carefully you were not fond of it. I knew it would bring us misfortune.’
‘You don’t have it then?’ confirmed Matha despondently, his hope of an easy end to his woes sinking away before him.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Shea said, ignoring his wife and Matha. ‘A very unsavoury little man he was. Not the kind you would lightly break a promise to. One spring morning many years ago I was clearing some alder trees. The leaves weren’t out yet but that was still no excuse for not noticing, among the alder, a fine old lady of the rowan persuasion. I put an axe to her and still thought nothing further when I heard a faint groan. I had cut half way into it and it was showing signs of instability when I noticed the púca standing next to me, not as tall as my dog who had run away. An elderly gent in a rotting sheepskin. Even if his face hadn’t been twisted up with rage, it’d still be frightful looking. It was covered in boils and the nose and ears were blotchy from unhealthy drinking habits. The stink of him was so awful that when I picture him it still stings my nostrils. But all of that was pleasant in comparison with what came out of his gob. He said things to me that day that made my hair stand up like a hedgehog’s prickles. The abuse went on for hours and I couldn’t leave. I just wondered hopelessly if there was any way I could keep his tree from falling over. In the end, when he got tired of swearing at me and kicking my legs, he put his hand into a hollow I hadn’t noticed and pulled out the bowl. He told me I was very lucky I had got him on a day he was in a good mood and that he had chosen to believe it was stupidity rather than evil that was my bigger failing. He said that if I didn’t want him to change his mind and come to live with my family forevermore, I would mind this little bowl very carefully indeed and only give it over when a...’ He looked at Matha with sudden embarrassment. ‘Well, when a starving lanky lúdramán of my own class wandered in looking for it.’
While the listeners were trying to digest this, Shea tried to bring the conversation back to normal matters. ‘That’s why I’ve always warned my sons to look three times at any tree, to look at its buds, its bark and its shape, before lifting metal to it. No matter what friend has asked you to cut it.’
This was all more than Matha could begin to understand. It was at this moment in his life that he first decided that the only way to keep his mind together was to not try to figure everything out. Just to gather and store information away without trying to arrange it all sensibly.
‘I would have been very glad to pass it on now,’ said Shea. ‘It would end my commitment to the vile little man. And it would help a good young man out of a hobble.’
‘You don’t know where it is now?’ Matha repeated, just to make sure.
‘Look around you, son,’ said the senior man quietly. The others all looked into the ashes as it was too hard for them. ‘Did you notice that we ate the bit of bread from our hands? I know you are too mannerly to comment on it but I’m sure you noticed that we haven’t a shoe between us and the clothes we have on our backs are worn to rags. We haven’t a piece of decent furniture nor any metal utensil or ornament. The very pot we cook in is borrowed. And we haven’t a piece of crockery around the place, let alone the woeful little bowl.’
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Matha lied.
‘It’s broken me,’ said the man sadly. ‘Every comfort I had worked to build up for my darling wife, gone. My sons have to start from scratch, with the good start I had planned to give them gone up the chimney.’
‘It’s alright a chroí,’ said the lady, putting her hand on his arm. ‘They left us each other and our health. Those are the only comforts we really need.’
One of the sons explained to Matha that they been robbed not three days back. It had taken them by surprise because there had never been such a thing in these parts. People here didn’t worry about protecting their homes from anything worse than a burrowing boar or a hungry wolf.
What troubled them further was that they suspected some force that wasn’t human had been involved. They suspected a dark creature from the forests had come after them. The senior Shea had secretly thought that maybe the púca had come back with some accomplices. He couldn’t see any other explanation for the strangest fact of all: the three big sons had been in the camp all that day, only a few steps away from the main homestead. There was no way ordinary vagabonds could have got in unnoticed or been able to carry everything away without being impeded by the three large young men.
The oldest brother said, ‘I still think we should have sent someone to Tara, to the High King. This is too big a thing for our local chief to deal with. We need Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his men brought here, as what happened is nothing ordinary.’
The second brother said, ‘We are simple people. The likes of Cormac and Mac Cumhaill have more important things to take care of than following common robbers.’
‘These were not common robbers and they’ll certainly be bringing the same misery to others,’ said the other.
‘That’s enough now,’ said the senior man. It was obviously an argument they were all tired of.
Next morning, Matha rose from the straw bed they’d set for him in the loft over the hearth. He had slept well past sunrise. There was nobody about and he assumed they were all long gone out about their dail
y chores. He wished he had something to leave them since he couldn’t see them to thank them. But he had nothing. He was at the door of the house about to start his travels again, with as little direction as he had had the first day before meeting Maire Fada, when a hand reached out from in front of the door. He jumped with the fright. It was only the old woman who had been sitting by the hearth the previous night. She was hunched on a stone outside the door grumbling about the sunshine.
‘Thank you, Grandmother Shea,’ Matha said, ‘and thank the rest of your family for their hospitality.’
‘Whisht, with your old soft talk boy,’ she croaked wickedly. ‘Life is hard. Take this.’
Her little arm was still extended out of her black shawl, speckled and ash-stained from too much time at the fireside. She opened her tiny hand slowly and from it unfolded a large brown leaf, maybe of a chestnut tree. Matha tried to catch it but she let the breeze get it first.
‘Follow it,’ she said with a cracked laugh. Then she resumed grinding on some bread that she must have kept hidden away for herself. She had no more words to spare for him.
Matha had no better plan so he thanked her again. The leaf stopped about twenty paces across the settlement. As Matha stooped to pick it up, another gust lifted it and took it across the thick hedge and across the little moat on the far side.
‘Whisht, with your old soft talk,’ the speckled woman croaked.
He tore himself going through the thorn bushes, as he didn’t want to go around for fear the leaf would float off when he had his eyes off it. Next, the leaf headed for the path that ran along by the great Súir river and he thought for a minute that it was going to lead him on an easy route. That track on the bank looked well used and he would have easily seen himself following the river to its source: finding some great wisdom there, no doubt. But that was not the leaf’s plan. It bounced along in front of him till they got to a place where the river looked very deep. There, the leaf lifted itself onto a freezing breeze and flitted across to drop on the other side. Matha felt like crying – but what good would that do? He took off his few garments and tied them into a ball with a stone in the middle. He chucked this to the other side. Then he dived into water so cold that he thought his body had stopped working. He was not a good swimmer at the best of times and had swallowed a lot of water by the time he got hold of some nettles on the other bank. He danced to try to expel the cold as the leaf took off again.
They went on like that for two days, Matha and the chestnut leaf. The hateful leaf didn’t give him a chance to stop for food or sleep and the only water he got was what he swallowed from the great river, each time the leaf made him cross it. It always took him on the hardest route between two places, never following a pathway or carriage route across the biggest rocks and the softest bog. Then on the morning of the third day, when he was about to give up out of pure exhaustion, he got hold of it. He almost couldn’t believe he had the thing in his hand. He felt fury rise in him when he realised that the place he had ended up in was no more than two hours walk from the place he had started. He was next to a clump of hazel saplings on the northern foot of Sliabh na mBan. He crumpled the now dry brown leaf in his hand in frustration, and the crackle it made echoed the sounds of the old woman’s laugh.
He cursed his foolishness for having listened to a poor old lady who probably was confused from being too long in the dark corner of the Shea house. Even though he was very hungry, he was even more tired. So he lay down right there in the bracken and was soon asleep.
Some time later he was woken by the sound of men’s voices. Something put caution in his mind and he was careful not to lift his head above the ferns as he tried to see what was happening.
That was the first Matha saw of the Runner Banbh brothers. There were five of them. They were carrying and pulling hessian sacks with oddments sticking out. They were bickering with each other. The instant he saw them, he revised his view of the cackling leaf. He had no doubt that he was looking at the thieves.
He could make out only some of what the men were saying. He watched the strange assortment trot past. As they disappeared into a thicket of hazel trees he knew he had to hear more. He stood to follow. He was not yet long enough travelling to be wary. He was so intent on listening that he was not looking. He stepped on a fallen crab tree branch and it snapped under his leathery heel. The crack made snipe rise from the ferns in screeching complaint. The voices ahead went silent. Now he felt afraid. If they came back he was sure he would be done for. There would be no point in him telling them that he didn’t care about their doings or their stuff. That he only wanted one small thing. No such gang would let him walk away. Not with his bowl. Not without it. He stood reedlike behind a forked hazel and stopped breathing. He tried to imagine himself invisible. They came. Closer and closer. He was staring straight at them through the fork. One of them came right up and stopped at his tree. He sniffed. Then he turned and said, ‘It was nothing.’
Matha knew that another strange thing had happened here. But he put it away. When they had gone he crept towards the track. He knew what he must do next.
Chapter 3
STAYING IN THE RATH
Dark heard the Old Man’s words like the gentle rolling of distant thunder. Beneath huge flames he clearly saw the shadow of Matha creeping quickly through thick bracken and then standing up straight when he made it to a path leading away from the hazel woods.
Dark was back in his own rath but this time the flames had not disappeared. Nor had the big and little people. They were still sitting around it. They were looking at him. The Old Man repeated, ‘Do you need to go now, Art?’
Dark didn’t move.
‘Or you can stay with us,’ said Conán, laughing, ‘and hear of the start of the lad’s association with scoundrels like Mac Cumhaill.’
Dark had come to look for help. He could see that he was going to get none. He should go back to the empty house and plan the thing he had to do next. But he didn’t want to think about it. He knew it was wrong but he just wanted to stay here by the fire.
‘Would you care to start the next part of Matha’s journey with us?’ asked the Old Man. ‘It could be a long one.’
It was hard to say whether the Old Man disapproved of Dark’s staying. He looked back at the flames without a smile. He said, ‘The kind of danger Matha avoided as he trotted away that day was not the kind he thought he had avoided.’
Chapter 3a
DELIGHTED THIEVES AND DISAPPOINTING WARRIORS
The Runner Banbhs were in fact ordinary greedy young men who had become dangerous by accident. To tell the truth of them, they were not the kind of robbers who would have beaten the head off an unwanted intruder. But they did possess a means of creating just as much confusion in his brain, a confusion that might have proved permanent in a head already so unsettled with hunger and weariness.
Just a few years earlier the Banbh brothers had been pleasant if somewhat useless children. They were only good at running. They were not swift but they had endurance. They could run all day without stopping. Their mother was ferociously fond of them. She was as protective as a mother sow. She was an enormous person who always wore a mourning cloak for their father. She swore it was insects that had killed him, even though she had given his head a few knocks with a pan the day he died. She said it was the insects that ate his insides out. She also was concerned that the insects had been passed on to the sons. Since they’d all be dying young she thought training them to work would be cruel. They grew up as delighted with themselves as she was. They thought they were great.
Two of them were small, two of them big and one was of middling size. The brains, whatever little they had between them, were divided in compensation for the size. The little lads were smart enough, especially when it came to avoiding harm to themselves. The middle lad also had some bit of brain when it came to taking care of his own interests. The big lads never showed much sign of having anything at all going on underneath the wads of sandy hair.<
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Naturally, their mother was worried about how her boys would eat without working. So from early on she had taught them the comfort of other people’s possessions. She gave them good advice. Stealing was best done in many small amounts so as not to make any one person too angry. And it was to be done after some observation, at a time when you knew there was nobody at home.
Neighbours did notice certain things. The little gold ornaments in the cabin and the fine horse and chariot outside it. The ever-increasing size of the mother. They thought it strange that boys who did no fishing, farming, tool making, soldiering, or entertaining were able to provide so well for their big woman. But they assumed it was to do with some kind of bargain the sturdy lumbering lady had made with disreputable forces. And they took comfort in the knowledge that dealing with such sources rarely ends well.
In the beginning then, the Banbhs’ method was simple. The smalls would hide in a tree watching for a dwelling to be empty. They would whistle for the others to go in. The bigs would lift flagstones and empty grain barrels while the middle looked for some hidden valuable to put in his bag. It could be gold, silver, cloth or salt. Once they got anything they did not hang around. They did not wish to meet the people whose possessions they were taking. They understood that this could lead to hard feelings.
They usually didn’t get very much as they would take fright and run at the smallest sound. They would trot like foxes to the faraway Lishín bogs. There they would trade their little haul with a rakish red-haired dealer, a man called Tobín, who lived alone in the middle of those bogs. Despite the bargaining tricks their mother tried to teach them, Tobín always managed to get the best of every deal with them, robbing them as squarely as they had robbed their victims.
