The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Of course I'm capable of it, but I'll stick to Plan A for the moment at least, and you're Plan A. You are Colin's first cousin. He has a terminal disease that will allow him to live less than two years more. How sad that it should happen to one so young! You are his only kindred in the world, and he has not made a will yet. That must he remedied. He must come to our wedding and he must make his will to us.”

  “How do you know that he hasn't made his will?”

  “Oh, I learned that from a chatterbox young lady who works for Cohn's lawyer in Cork. There's lots of information to be garnered by transatlantic phone. I learned too that the name of his Castle, Cearnog Ficheall, means the Chess Squares. The chatterbox who laughs with a brogue told me that it's because the Castle is above Chess Square Valley where there are alternate fields of light flax and dark hops that look like a checkerboard. And every seven years they change them and grow the hops where the flax had been and the flax where the hops had been. The chatterbox and myself have become great friends. I asked her how much she weighed and she said fifteen stone. Fifteen stone translates into pounds as ‘fat’. The ideal world is one in which all the girls except myself are fat. Why didn't you tell me that you had a cousin with two million Irish pounds, a castle, and a terminal disease!”

  “All three are recent acquisitions. Until a year ago he was only a poor relation in the castle of a rich uncle. And the name of the Castle, Cearnog Ficheall or Chess Squares, is really an euphemism for Cearnog Fuil or Bloody Squares. Cearnog is our family name ‘Kearny’; and it does mean a square, or squares.”

  “How apt, beloved square! How opportune! Oh, things will go swimmingly!”

  And things did go swimmingly, right up to the eve of the wedding, even though Bridie hadn't been able to get Cousin Colin to make a will during the week he had been in town.

  “Oh, I couldn't will such a monstrous castle and the monstrous entailments that accompany it to two such nice people as you and Cris,” Cousin Colin always said. “No, no, you two have become much too dear to me for that.”

  “The more monstrous the castle the better,” Bridie insisted. “It isn't any prosaic castle that I intend to inherit. Does it have a ghost?”

  “Indeed it does, half a dozen ghosts, and the bones of some of them are still far below the castle on the rocky and forbidding shore. It's quite a fall that they take when they go through the floor in the Great Checker-board Dining Hall of the castle. It breaks almost every bone they have. And then the Sea Monster (he's carried on the Castle Rolls as the ‘Old Retainer of the Castle’) comes and strips all the flesh off of the new bones. The whole situation has given the castle something of a bad name.

  “You're being droll, Cousin Colin,” Bridie said. “My own name, Bridie Caislean, means both Brigid of the Castle or Bride of the Castle, and I insist that my name shall be fulfilled. See! I already have done all the work. I have the will drawn up here. All you have to do is sign it.”

  “Some days I just don't believe in signing documents after noon.”

  “But yesterday you said that some days you don't believe in signing documents before noon, and then I never could find you after noon.”

  “Some days it's one way, Bridie, and some days it's the other way,” Cousin Colin said.

  But it was Midas Muldoon who struck up an exceptionally close friendship with Colin Kearny during the week that Colin was in town before the wedding of Cris and Bridie. They played checkers together a lot. Midas said that he was champion of America. Colin said that he was champion of Ireland and of all Europe as well as the Straits Settlements and Madagascar and Patagonia. Colin had sought his fortune in the latter three places while he was in his late teens. They played very close, and a canny observer would have noticed that both of them were holding back a little bit. Then, at Cris' bachelor party the night before the wedding, Midas and Colin tied one on together. It was quite sloppy, but here also an astute observer might have noticed that each was holding something back. They slashed their arms and mingled their blood and became blood brothers forever. It was that kind of bash. Then they began to play checkers for extravagant stakes, though each of them seemed to have trouble even seeing the board. They played for such high stakes as almost to preclude their being serious.

  Finally, when the fiasco had run its course, Midas Muldoon had won the Castle in Ireland as well as the two million Irish pounds from Colin. And Colin just happened to have deeds and assignment papers in his pockets, and he spread them out to sign everything over to Midas. Then Cris pulled Colin aside.

  “Cousin Colin, I cannot allow this nonsense to go any further,” Cris said. “Do not sign anything. Not anything.”

  “Don't spoil it, Cris,” Cousin Colin said in a low voice, and he was totally sober. “Don't spoil it now. Oh, I've conned this fellow into becoming blood brother of me, and he thinks he's conned me into it. I've conned him into taking deed to the castle and taking conveyance to the two million Irish pounds that are one of the entailments of the castle. And he never even suspects, Cris. Oh, I love myself when I pull a smart one like this. It gives me top pleasure to outsmart people.”

  “However have you outsmarted Midas Muldoon, Cousin Colin! There's been a horrible mistake.”

  “I love you, Cousin Cris, when you pretend not to understand a trick like this,” Cousin Colin chortled. “Oh wonderful, wonderful! Don't spoil it.”

  So the mysterious business was consummated.

  Bridie Caislean came by Cris' place and waked him quite early the next morning. Cris was pleasantly befuddled from the Imperial Irish Brandy (a gift of Cousin Colin) that they had indulged in the night before, and he had a feeling that something had gone amiss. And he did not, for the barest moment there, quite catch the import of Bridie's chatter. “There is no reason for Midas and I to be out expense when everything for a luxury wedding is already standing ready and is already paid for by you, Cris,” Bridie was saying. “I've always loved your habit of paying all extraordinary expenses immediately and on the spot. And Midas and I can use the same airplane tickets and hotel reservations (how nice that you paid them in advance) for our honeymoon just as Nell as you and I could have used them.

  “You and Midas Muldoon?” Cris asked.

  “Well sure,” Bridie bubbled. “Midas won the Castle and the two million Irish pounds from Cousin Colin (that's about five million American dollars, with a Castle thrown in), so of course I'm marrying Midas instead of you this morning. There's a sort of poetic justice here too. This is the day I was supposed to marry Midas in the first place, before I was supposed to marry you, and now I'm supposed to marry him again. Isn't it nice that things always work out so nice for me!”

  So this other not-too-mysterious business was consummated also. Midas Muldoon and Bridie Caislean were married that morning. And Cristopher Kearny was left with an empty sort of feeling.

  It was just one year later that Bridie Muldoon phoned Cris Kearny from Castle Cearnog Ficheall in Ireland. “Come and visit us, Cris, and the sooner the better,” she said. “We are so happy here that we want to share our happiness with somebody, and as the best friend of both of us you are the logical choice. If you start sometime today you can be here sometime tomorrow.”

  “That'd be a good slogan for a travel agency to use. What's your angle, girl of a thousand angles?”

  “No angle, Cris. This is the new Bridie. I'm kind, I'm benevolent, unselfish, altruistic, and one other word that I forget. Where's your gambling instinct? Come and take a chance on a visit to us.”

  “I never gamble, Bridie. I go only for sure things.”

  “It's a sure thing that we want to see you, Cris. Do come.”

  Cris left sometime that day and his plane was over Ireland sometime the next day. From the air he saw the checkerboard of light and almost white fields of flax and of dark and almost black fields of hops. He saw the Castle (for they were already in their descent), and something twanged in his heartstrings like a harp tuned a little bit flat. It may have been the
piles of whiteness on the stoney shore below the Castle that gave him the queer flat feeling. And no more than twenty miles from the Castle he was down at Cork International Airport.

  He went first to the office of a lawyer in Cork. This was the lawyer of Cousin Colin, and he was also the lawyer of Cris Kearny now, for Irish affairs at least. The lawyer was not in, but the lawyer's assistant was full of news and good cheer and advice.

  “Remember that you are in Ireland now,” said this assistant who was a merry and ample person who laughed with a brogue. “This place is full of draiocht.”

  “Yes, draiocht, magic, especially the voices of the people,” Cris agreed.

  “Moreover you are in County Cork. And here, especially in the castles and the crags, it is likely to be the draiocht dorcha.”

  “Oh yes, dark magic or baleful magic. And what do you recommend to ward off this dark or baleful magic, lawyer assistant?”

  “Chicken blood. I'll draw some for you from the cock in the yard before you leave. And be advised also that the terminal disease, called here only the 'loathsome disease', can be entailed along with the castle, like any other entailment, onto the new owner of the castle. If the entailment rite is not broken, then the new owner will have the fatal disease, and the old owner will have it no longer. And the new and entailed owner of the castle will die of the disease within two years. Medical science now confirms that this really happens.”

  “I'm a great admirer of medical science myself. Is there a specific against the entailment of the loathsome disease? And how is Cousin Colin these days?”

  “Chicken blood is the specific against the loathsome entailment, as it is against so many other things. I'll draw some for you from the cock in the yard before you leave. And your Cousin Colin is presently vacationing in foreign parts. Rio, I believe, is the name of the place. He had several recent fortunes that were not entailed, you know. He has willed them to you, but you may have to wait a hundred or more years to inherit them considering the exuberant and brawny health he has enjoyed for this last year. Remember too, Cristopher Kearny, that old precept: ‘Beware of the Overseas Irish hearing Castles’.”

  “I thought it was: ‘Beware of Greeks bearing Gifts’.”

  “Same thing. Look at an Overseas Irishman sideways and he could just as well be a Greek. You will be offered a castle, yes, and its double entailment, aye, and a thousand years free supply of bones on the shore below it into the bargain. When you accept the deed to the castle you will sign a very curious codicil to that deed.”

  “How do you know that it is a curious codicil, lawyer's assistant?”

  “Oh, I drew it up for them at the castle. This entailed gift will come about through the bloody swearing of the blood-brotherhood and through the checker-playing in big Checkerboard Hall. When you play those dire games of checkers you will lose if you lose, and you will only seem to win if you win. If you win you will lose by dying of the loathsome terminal disease within two years.”

  “And again, lawyer's assistant, is there not a specific against this terrible misfortune of the checker games turning against me and gobbling me up?” What a pleasant and roomy person this lawyer's assistant was!

  “Once again the specific against this luckless gaming is chicken blood. I'll draw some for you from the cock in the yard before you leave. And there is one square in Checkerboard Hall on which the Master of the Castle has himself placed when he is in his last agony from the loathsome disease. At the moment of his death, the square opens and dumps him on the rocks a thousand feet below: and a friendly Sea Monster comes and strips the flesh from the bones. It's a good arrangement. Persons dying of the loathsome disease may not be buried in Irish Ground lest they contaminate it. And they become so smelly when left unburied. Some of the bones are from old guests who were robbed and had their throats cut by old Castle Masters; and then, being placed on the dire square, they were likewise dumped at their death moment and had their bones stripped.”

  “All Irish castles have mottos. What is the motto of this Castle Cearnog Ficheall, lawyer's assistant?”

  “The motto of Castle Cearnog Ficheall is Cearnog Agus Cionn Mhord or ‘Square and Above Board’. And yet with a different intonation and a different viewpoint, that out of the eyes of a dead person on the stoney shore below the Castle for instance, the motto could as well be Englished ‘Och, That Square in the Board Above!’ and this would be in the tone of a warning. And now you must be going if you're to be in time for supper at the Castle. But first we'll gather the blood.”

  Out in the yard, the lawyer's assistant dew a small sackful of blood from the cock. It stood still for the drawing, and then it crowed in a loud voice.

  The lawyer's assistant drew a second sackful of blood from the cock. It stood still for the drawing, and then it crowed in a weak voice.

  The lawyer's assistant drew a third sackful of blood from the cock. It stood still for the drawing, and then it crowed in a sad and broken voice and fell over dead.

  “He'll be good for after-midnight supper tonight,” the lawyer's assistant said. “I love blooded rooster roasted on a spit. My mother will pluck it and draw it and roast it and have it ready. I'll drive you to the castle now. It's but twenty miles or thirty cilomeadar. Och, it's no trouble. I often drive that far in a single week.”

  The lawyer's assistant got Cris to the Castle at suppertime.

  “How old are you, lawyer's assistant?” Cris Kearny asked.

  “I'm twenty-two this springtime, and everyone else in the world is twenty-three,” she said. “How ideal! I'll be back for you about midnight. Your business at the Castle should be consummated by then.”

  Then she laughed, with a brogue.

  Cristopher Kearny blew the burnished trumpet that was set into the front door of Castle Cearnog Ficheall or Chess Squares Castle, and at the same time he splatted one sack of the cock's blood on the same door as a specific against misfortune coming to him within. Then Midas Muldoon flung the door open, and Bridie and Midas greeted him with great affection. Oh, they made big over him, and they showed him all around the wonderful Castle. He saw everything that could be seen by torchlight. Bridie even introduced him to three of the Castle Ghosts. These were quite urbane and pleasant entities and somewhat more at their ease than were Midas and Bridie Muldoon. The Muldoons seemed to have just a touch of the jitters.

  And then it was no time at all till they were all sat down to a wonderful supper in the Great Checkerboard Dining Hall. There is something excessively black-and-whitish about the term ‘checkerboard’, but in the Dining Hall it was not so. The great squares (each the dimension of the First Master of the Castle and he had been a tall man) were royally colored. The white was really a sort of golden ivory, and the black was really midnight ocean-blue with touches of French Lilac and Royal Purple. And by the torchlight of the Dining Hall (Irish Castles have electricity only in the bathrooms; it would be a vulgar intrusion anywhere else) the effect was enchanting.

  The courses of that supper were like a litany of the great dishes of ‘Supper in Heaven’: Gamecock, Rampant Ram, Truculent Trout (each trout glared at one with angry and living eyes from the plate, but that could only have been the effect of the torchlight), Gored Ox, Young Foal of Horse: what great dishes they were on that supper table! There were seven sorts of brandy to go with the seven courses, and seven little piles of snuff were on the serviette at each place.

  Seven brandies made each of them a little drunk and more than a little effusive. There came the moment when Midas Muldoon insisted that he and Cristopher should slash their forearms and mingle their blood and so become blood brothers.

  Cris was thankful that it was night as he worked his bloody deception with the second sackful of blood. The outcome, of course, was that Midas Muldoon became blood-brother of a cock that was two-and-a-half hours dead. Had it been otherwise, the loathsome disease would have passed out of the blood of Midas and into that of Cris as part of the deeding-and-entailment rite.

  And
then the supper was cleared away, and a checkerboard and more brandy brought. And Midas suggested that they play checkers for moderately high stakes and for the championship of America and Ireland and all Europe as well as the Straits Settlements and Madagascar and Patagonia, which latter string of titles Midas had won from Colin Kearny just one year before. Cris agreed, but first (thankful again that they had naught but torchlight) he went to one of the squares of the great checkerboard floor (the lawyer's assistant had told him which one it would be) and dribbled a little blood from the third sack on it.

  “Be careful of that one square, Cris honey,” Bridie warned. “It's—ah—a little precarious.”

  Then Cris sprinkled the remainder of the third sack of blood on the checkerboard on which they were to play. “Oh, I'm sorry, Midas,” he said. “It is only some of our brothership blood that was still on my arm.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” Midas Muldoon gloated. “ 'Twill make the rite all the more binding.”

  They played, and Cris won. They played, and Cris continued to win. They played, and Cris won bigger and bigger bets. They played, and Cris won Castle Cearnog Ficheall itself from Midas Muldoon as will as two million Irish pounds in entailment with the Castle and also ‘a more intimate entailment sealed in the blood of undying brotherhood’. The Castle and attending kale consolidated all Midas' losses for the evening.

  Bridie Muldon had all the papers ready. Cris received the deed to the Castle and the assignment of the two million pounds. And in turn he signed a codicil to each paper, to the deed, and to the assignment. The codicil to the deed said that Cris would not take possession of the castle until two years and one day had gone by; and in case of his untimely death before that time, ownership of the Castle would revert to the Muldoons. The codicil to the assignment of the two million pounds said that the money would be held in escrow by a legal firm in Cork for two years and one day, after which it would be paid to Cris Kearny; but in case of the untimely death of Mr. Kearny before that time, the money would be returned to the Muldoons.