King of Morning, Queen of Day

by Ian McDonald

  Emily: (her face ecstatic) Oh, can’t you hear them? Can’t you feel them? Oh, I thought I’d lost them, affronted them, and they’d hidden themselves away from me, but they’ve returned, they’ve come for me. Oh, can’t you hear them, calling through the woods and glens, across the mountainsides? They are the fairest of the fair, the sons of Danu; there are none to compare with the comeliness of the dwellers in the hollow hills: no son of Milesius, no daughter of proud Maeve aslumber on cold Knocknarea. Their cloaks are of scarlet wool, their tunics of fine Greek silk. Upon their breasts they wear the badge of the Red Branch Heros, upon their brows circlets of yellow gold; their skin is as white as the milk of mares, their hair as black as the raven’s wing. The glint of iron spear points is in their eyes and their lips are as red as blood. Fair they are, the sons of Danu, but none so fair or so noble as Lugh of the Long Hand. Strong-mewed he is, golden-maned, golden-skinned; clad in the green and the gold of the Royal Don of Brugh-na-Boinne. He is Lugh, King of the Morning, Master of the Thousand Skills. There is none to compare with him in music or archery, poetry or the feats of war, the hunt, or the tender accomplishments of love. (Here Dr. Desmond blushed.) We are riders on the wings of morning, he and I, dancers in the starlit halls of Tir Nan Og. And with the sun setting we rise in the shape of swans, joined at the necks by chains and collars of red red gold, and journey through the night to the Land of Sunrise where we embark again upon our wondrous journey of love. We have tasted the hazelnuts of the Tree of Wisdom. We have been many things, many shapes—wild swans upon the Lake of Code, two arbutuses twined together upon a bare mountainside, white birds upon the foam of the sea. We have been trees, leaping silver salmon, wild horses, red foxes, noble deer; brave warriors, proud kings, sage wizards—

  Yeats: Entrancing. Quite entrancing. Ah— thank you, Emily. That will suffice for the moment. Mr. Rooke, have you any questions you would like to put?

  Rooke: Just one or two, if you will indulge me. Emily, could you tell me, when did you start your last period? (General consternation.)

  Yeats: Mr. Rooke. Please!

  Rooke: My apologies if I have offended any sensibilities, but this line of questioning is critical to my investigation of these manifestations. Emily, did you hear the question?

  Emily: The eighth of July.

  Rooke: And are they regular? I mean, is there a regular period of time between them?

  Emily: Always the same. Twenty-nine days.

  Rooke: So, the previous one would have begun about, say, the sixteenth of June?

  Emily: Yes.

  Rooke: And the next one would be due, then, in, let me think, eight days’ time, on the eighth of August? About the new moon?

  Emily: Yes.

  Rooke: And how long is it since you felt the returning presence of the faeries?

  Emily: Since last night. I felt them, in my sleep last night—their presence out there in the wood, calling to me.

  Rooke: Tell me, Emily, have you been feeling in any way physically out of sorts? Dizziness, light-headedness, stomach cramps, as if they were warning signs that a period is due? During a period, do you ever experience peculiar changes of mood and feeling? For example, have you ever felt sad and depressed and then, seemingly for no reason, found yourself suddenly buoyant and elated? When you become aware of the presence of the faeries, do you ever experience any kind of, how shall we put it, sensual, sexual excitement, or arousal?

  E.G. Desmond: I insist that this stop at once! I will tolerate no more of this humiliation, this prurient titillation! No, I will not tolerate it. My daughter is not some sideshow, some circus freak for your idle amusement! I will not stand for any more of this cheap and tawdry voyeurism masquerading in the guise of science and learning! Good Lord, we stand poised upon the brink of a new age, an age of communion with minds immeasurably superior to our own, and in my very home I am subjected to occult, superstitious bosh, and my daughter to the filthy indulgence of jaded appetites! My daughter’s adolescence will not be soiled and sullied with your gleeful prying into her most private intimacies! Good day to you, gentlemen. I wish for you all to leave. At once, if you please. Mrs. O’Carolan, be so good as to fetch these people their coats. Caroline, I wish to speak with you immediately, in the library.

  The Beau English Club, Nassau Street, Dublin

  “WELL, I SEE THE papers have hold of it now.” “Yes, I picked it up in the Irish Times this morning. Full column, on the front page, by the Lord Harry.”

  “You know, of course, what they’re calling it?”

  “You mean, Desmond’s Downfall?”

  “Haven’t heard that one. Heh, that’s a good one. Very good. Most droll. Where did you pick that one up?”

  “The Independent Irishman.”

  “That Fenian rag. Never read it myself. Mind you, Desmond’s Downfall, that is a good one. Another brandy?”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Most civil of you. You know, it shouldn’t surprise me in the least if the English papers didn’t pick up on the story. ‘Eccentric Irish Astronomer Attempts Communication with Star Men.’ Love that sort of thing, the English. Could be circulating worldwide within the week.”

  “God forfend. Imagine it, though—scruffy old Desmond with his eighteen-inch telescope on the front page of Le Soir or the New York Times. ‘Desmond’s Downfall: Exposed.’”

  “Don’t know how old Maurice ever got himself sucked into this one.”

  “I’d have thought better of him myself. Mind you, Charlie, he’s always had a reputation for espousing weird and wonderful causes. What about all this lobbying for that Home Rule Bill and votes for women? A queer fish in the aristocratic goldfish pond is our Maurice Fitzgerald.”

  “I blame it all on breeding, myself. You know, like cocker spaniels, inbreeding and all that. Congenital idiots. House of Lords is full of them. Educated idiots in ermine. No wonder old Maurice goes baying at the moon, or Bell’s Comet, or whatever.”

  “It’ll be the ruination of him.”

  “That it surely will. Do you know how much that floating pontoon thing is costing?”

  “Wouldn’t like to guess.”

  “Wouldn’t like to spoil your luncheon.”

  “Still, I’d like to know how Desmond wangled that old bird into parting with the Clarenorris fortune for such a ludicrous scrape.”

  “Ah, he has a silver tongue, has Dr. Edward Garret Desmond. Could charm the birds off the trees.”

  “Certainly charmed that fine woman of his off the Barry family tree. He’s well in there, Barry linen fortunes and all that. No stone, our Edward.”

  “Heh, heh. Fine woman she certainly is, that Caroline Desmond. Damn fine poetess, too. Read some of her stuff in Eire Nua—not, I hasten to add, that it’s the sort of thing I read regularly. This ‘Celtic Twilight’ stuff baffles me—woolly-minded mysticism—but what I read of her was excellent. She has the magic touch, right enough.”

  “Well, Desmond’s old silver tongue let him down badly at that farce of a lecture.”

  “Ah, that was O’Neill, wasn’t it? He’s a demon for the wit, is O’Neill.”

  “He queerly sharpened it on the good Dr. Desmond.”

  “A good thing, too, if you ask me. That lecture was the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. Extrasolar civilizations, comet-riding star travellers…”

  “Ridiculous. Tosh, gibberish, and flapdoodle.”

  “Isn’t it? I do hear that he’s invited astronomers from all over Ireland, and beyond, to be present when he switches this pontoon thing on.”

  “You going?”

  “Fishing’s good, this time of year. You?”

  “Wild horses, and all that.”

  “Still…”

  “Still what?”

  “Still, what if he’s right?”

  “Come now, you yourself checked his figures and proved beyond any shadow of a doubt there were errors in his mathematics you could drive the Ballybrack omnibus through.”

  “Charlie, both you and I have
been gentlemen of science long enough to know that mathematically proving or disproving something often has not the slightest effect on whether it actually happens or not. What if, I say, despite all the errors, the fantastic speculations, the astonishing expenditure, the ludicrous electrical signal—what if, after all, he is right?”

  “Well, you don’t need me to tell you the consequences…”

  “What little credibility the R.I.A.S. has managed to salvage from this fiasco would go straight out the window. We would be laughingstocks.”

  “At least.”

  “But now, consider this carefully. If he never gets to complete his experiment, then no one will ever know whether he was right or wrong, will they?”

  “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?”

  “Now, I’m not talking anything as unsubtle as a little judicious sabotage from the local Bould Fenian lads. Heavens, no. I’m not even talking troublesome and annoying labour disputes. No, a little economic leverage should do the necessary dirty work. His resources are, shall we say, stretched?”

  “Short arms, long pockets.”

  “Precisely. You know, I’ve been thinking, it’s been a devilish long time since you last had that admirable chap, the Marquis of Clarenorris, down at Temple Coole for a weekend wild-fowling. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind getting a little in myself, before all the good shooting’s done…”

  August 2, 1913

  Clarecourt

  Ballisodare

  County Sligo

  My Dear Dr. Desmond,

  I have searched for every possible alternative to this letter, delayed until the last possible moment in hope that it would not be necessary, but situations have developed in such a way as to leave me no other choice. Please, prepare yourself for the receipt of the worst possible news.

  It is with the greatest sorrow that I inform you that I can no longer permit myself to be involved in, or associated with, Project Pharos. I regret further that I will be able to provide no additional funding for the completion of the stellagraph, or any other aspect of the project, and must insist that my name be withdrawn from all documents, accounts, communications, papers, etc., connected with it.

  I am deeply sorry for this obvious dashing of all your bright hopes, and at the very least, I owe you the courtesy of an explanation for this decision.

  Believe me, Dr. Desmond, I have not chosen this course of action out of any lack of faith in your experiment or hypothesis—I remain firmly convinced that the object called Bell’s Comet is indeed a vehicle from another star. Rather, it is situations and events in your immediate household, over which you, unfortunately, have had no control, that have made it impossible for me to continue to be associated with you.

  I refer, of course, to those recent events involving Mr. W. B. Yeats, the celebrated poet; one Mr. Hannibal Rooke, a so-called supernatural investigator; Constance Booth-Kennedy and your wife and daughter; in what the popular press is calling the Craigdarragh Case. I fully understand that these “faery photographs” and purported otherworldly encounters are as offensive and embarrassing to you as they are to me; however, please consider (and I can trust you that this will go no further) that I am already under considerable pressure from my peers because of my support for Project Pharos; the recent events threaten to damage my reputation to the point where I can no longer remain a credible figure in the fight for Irish nationalism in the House of Lords. There are issues at stake here larger even than the advancement of science and learning—issues with direct bearing upon the future of our nation. Permit me to be blunt: it is not seeming for the leader of the lobby for the Irish Home Rule Bill in the House of Lords (where, dear God, support is paltry enough) to be seen to be associating with people who believe there really are faeries at the bottom of the garden!

  I had hoped that time would draw its veil over this Craigdarragh Case, but quite the reverse has happened—public and press interest, already high from the construction of the stellagraph, has been fanned into veritable incandescence by reports of photographs of faery folk, from within the same family. No; I am afraid only one course of action was open to me, which, loath though I was to exercise, I nonetheless have taken: I have had to resign from any involvement and association with Project Pharos.

  I do sincerely hope, my dear Dr. Desmond, that even at this late stage, funds will be forthcoming (though, alas, I cannot foresee from where) for the completion of the project. Certainly, if successful, it will bring more lasting glory upon Craigdarragh than a whole legion of faeries.

  Once again, I am most sincerely sorrowful that situations should have forced me to such a pass. Would it had been otherwise.

  Faithfully,

  Maurice: Clarenorris

  August 3, 1913

  Blessington & Weir, Ltd.

  Commercial Bankers

  119 Merrion Road

  Dublin

  Dear Dr. Desmond,

  We have recently been in receipt of a letter from you requesting the creation of a mortgage facility for the completion of your project to the sum of £22,000 against the deeds of your property, Craigdarragh House.

  We are pleased to inform you that your application has been successful; a meeting has been arranged between our Sligo representatives, Mooney, Talbot & O’Brien, Marine Finance, Ltd., and their solicitors, and yourself and your solicitors, to formalise the agreement. Please telephone us to confirm the date and the arrangements: our number is Dublin 3617.

  We at Blessington & Weir are glad to have been able to aid you in the completion of your work, and we await your communication in the near future.

  Sincerely,

  Caius E. Blessington,

  William Weir the Younger

  Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: August 4, 1913

  THE HEADY SENSATION, LIKE that of fine old claret, that comes when one plucks triumph from the very brink of disaster! I am not ashamed to say that I despaired when I received the news of Lord Fitzgerald’s withdrawal from the project for the flimsiest of motives. Thunderous words such as treachery and betrayal struggled with nobler sentiments more proper a member of the peerage as the thought churned over and over in my mind: This is the end, Desmond—all come to naught and ashes.

  But now, since the settlement of the mortgage (Blessed Muse, that touched me with such inspiration in my darkest hours) and the payment of all my most pressing creditors, everything is changed. It is like a particularly fine spring after a long and dismal winter. Amazing, the total change of mood and character effected by the deposit of a few pounds sterling in the vaults of the First Sligo Farmer’s Bank! Now work has resumed; the last of the 176 pontoon sections was completed in the shipyard today. Already the central cross is being assembled in Sligo Bay. Not being much a mariner myself, I made my inspection by telescope from the cupola atop the old Pollexfen Shipping Line office and was filled with a most immodest pride to see out there an object which, alone I think of all man’s achievements, will be visible from interplanetary distances. In addition to the work on the pontoons, a small steam tug has been chartered from the harbour commissioners to lay the electrical cable. Incredibly (normally, I would hesitate to use quite such hyperbolic language, but for once, I feel justified in its usage), the great task looks like it will be completed by the allotted date, despite a body blow that would have crippled any man of lesser conviction, lesser zeal, lesser evangelistic determination than I. Mr. Michael Barry has been in daily contact concerning the connection of the stellagraph to the county grid. I have had replies from many members of the astronomical community, both at home and from beyond our shores (though I will permit a small disappointment to cloud my general jubilation, for of those I invited, less than a third have bothered themselves to respond, either positively or negatively). The newspaper interest, already stoked up by the so-called Craigdarragh Case, is hungry for the least newsworthy morsel and I am making daily trips into Sligo to give progress reports to the assembled hacks and scribblers
. In short, everything seems set for my triumph in every possible sphere—astronomical, personal, financial, social, public. If only the weather will hold!

  Emily’s Diary: August 28, 1913

  SOMETIMES THEY ARE DISTANT; sometimes they are close. As our world and Otherworld turn within each other, so we pass into and out of contact with each other. For many days they were absent—the woods were empty of story and song; sea, stones, and sky were just those, lifeless things, the elemental spirit gone out of them. Each time they leave I am desolate. I fear that they will never return, but, for all their legendary fickleness and flightiness, they have kept faith with me. Again, they have returned from Otherworld to haunt Bridestone Wood. I can feel them; I can hear them, calling for me with harp and flute and the songs of summer, calling me away, away, away from the mortal world, into the dream and the never-ending dance.

  But I am afraid, undecided. There is a part of me that wishes nothing more than to lose myself in the magic and the light of the world’s beginning, that would cast off all human restraints like an ugly garment and be the bride of the Bridestone. But there is also a part of me that holds back, that clings to this world, afraid of the light beyond the shadows. There is a part of me with the voice of a tiny devil that whispers, “But what do they want with you? Why do they trouble themselves to stir from the endless delights of the forests of Otherworld and make the crossing to this world? Why do they seek you, Emily Desmond? These are faery folk, the Sidhe, the Dwellers in the Hollow Hills—their motives are as inscrutable to you as the changing of the seasons or the tides of the sea. How can you be sure that they do not mean you ill? Can you trust them?”

  There. That is the question that lies at the heart of all my doubts and fears, like the rotted kernel of a hazelnut. Can I trust them?

  I am torn; between caution and abandon, between mistrust and the call of the harps of Elfland. Do I go to them and let them do what they will? Do I stay, and perhaps with the turning of the years, lose even the memory of their music? My heart tells me go, my head cautions stay.