The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “Why not?” The fairy shook his head as a sort of shrug. “Wasn’t it you who said I was a liar?”

  “Ah! You have me wrong. I said you were a lie. And I was right, since you are pretending to be man when you are not. But for the love of God, I want to do no damage to an Irish spirit. Spirits may be the only thing these poor folk have left. And fairy spirits do less harm than the liquorous kind.”

  They were on the street now, with the chemist’s shop at the right. The dray horses waiting in the yard sang out to Ruairí as they went by, and he acknowledged them. “It’s odd, though, Ó Murchú, but liquor has no power over me. It can’t make me one whit happier.”

  The priest saluted three worried-looking women, who did not reply. “If you were one whit happier, lad, there would be no enduring you. But what is the reason for that? Are all fairies immune to liquor?”

  Ruairí stopped. He was staring straight ahead and up the street, with his legs braced and hands in pockets. “Not fairies, Ó Murchú. Horses.” He gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

  The intensity of his stare caused the priest to look, too. “What is it?” he said. “Are all those really people gathered there? Or is it someone doing the wash in the street?”

  Ruairí raised his head and then lowered it, still staring. “They are women, mostly,” he said. “And one man with his fists in the air. The women are wound together.”

  Wound together? In an instant it was clear to. Father Ó Murchú. He remembered his anxiety over Gladstone, and Parnell, and the boycott, and …

  “The eviction!” he said aloud. “It’s Fenton, the bailiff, throwing Séamas Ó Conaola and his family onto the street. Perhaps it is the wash all over that I see.”

  Ruairí strode out now, to keep up with the priest’s hurry. “My eyes know wash from women. And I would know the figure of my black Máire under a basket in a cave at midnight with no moon and it raining.”

  Now they were close enough that there was no doubt. They could hear Terrence Fenton shouting and the loose ring of barefoot children peeping like birds and frogs in time to him. Fenton stood in the middle of the street, wearing a bottle-green coat, with his two deputies in báinín, looking bewildered, behind him. And the páisti, the little children, hopped in place from sheer excitement, staying out of reach and calling him names.

  Cáit NíChonaola was on her porch with her daughter-in-law behind her, and the tiniest Conaolach in the woman’s arms. The babe, though only a year old, had his grandmother’s long chin. There was no Séamas Ó Conaola to be seen, but between Fenton and the house were women like a fence of sweet peas in bloom.

  Each wore her best red petticoat and had her arms twined and tangled into her neighbor’s so there was no getting through, unless you were willing to break them. And the tallest of the peas, in the middle, between Fenton and the Conaola door, was Máire Standún.

  “Oh dear God,” whispered the priest. “What does she mean by this?” Between Ruairí and the man who had squeezed up beside them, the priest seemed to fade and shrink, until he was the size of a child, or of a man of eighty.

  Ruairí, on the other hand, swelled visibly, and like the little urchins of Carraroe, he danced from foot to foot. “She means to stop the fellow, I think! And by the grass of May, she’ll have her way. Now I could stand beside her and win her cause and her favor in one charge, and … ”

  “Stop!” The priest’s voice was not loud, nor was his hand on the big fairy’s, arm enough to hold him, but Ruairí stood still, blinking at Ó Murchú.

  “Stand quiet, if you have any feeling for the girl. Who knows where the guns are, in this crowd, and the introduction of a big man against him will put anger onto the bailiff.”

  “Guns?” Ruairí repeated the word twice, as though he had never heard of such a weapon as a gun, and then Terrence Fenton’s voice cut through their talk.

  “Damn you, girl, I’m only doing my given job!”

  There were over twenty pairs of locked arms in the row facing him, but Fenton spoke to Máire Standún.

  She stood very straight and unafraid against him, and her eyes were dry and sparking, like mica in stone. “A man makes his own work, Terrence son of Nóirín-the-Harelip. You weren’t born a crow, to drop eggs out of other birds nests.”

  The bottle-green coat tightened, for the children behind made it clear they thought this a lovely hit. “Nor does a man have to let his rent go for nine months of the year,” he answered, speaking to the crowd.

  “In this parish and in this time, he does.” The fence of sweet peas let out a small shout, much like that of the children. It was not a confident shout, but one of the women followed it with a cat’s hiss.

  “Dare you!” Fenton pointed his finger at this one as if it were a gun. She hissed louder.

  Fenton’s deputies were standing very close together, and between them was a tall, ancient, black-and-red-rusty shotgun of two barrels. Each of the men had one hand on it, and neither would look at it at all. A rock—a piece of gravel, really—hit the stock of the gun, and the deputies both let the thing fall. It did not go off.

  “Up the Land League!” came a cry from the crowd, and Father Ó Murchú choked on his breath. Ruairí MacEibhir glanced curiously at him.

  “Is that a cry to disgust you, Ó Murchú? Perhaps you’re with the man with no shoulders in the shiny coat?”

  The priest’s laugh was short and very painful. “I have to get out of here,” he said. “It’ll go badly if I’m connected with this. Take care of her.”

  Ruairí grabbed him by the shoulder. “I’m not likely to leave. But what about my being a Christian?”

  “I don’t know. Come see me tomorrow or the next day. If we’re all still alive.”

  “I will be,” said the fairy, with a great, broad grin, and he let the priest go.

  Fenton blustered but the women stood, and occasionally the matriarch on the stoop pronounced what she called the full curse of her age upon him. He was called a gaimbín man, which he was, and “the dog which tears the udder from the cow,” which was more questionable. The collar of his bottle-green suit grew black with sweat.

  At last the bailiff made a direct attack upon the fence of sweet peas, only to find himself dragging a line of women and half smothered in it. He found this distasteful and he backed out, looking around for his troops.

  They were no longer there, but had left the gun behind upon the street, where two small lads and a lass in pigtails were investigating the mechanism. “Let that be!” Fenton ran at them, and the young birds flew, leaving him in possession of the rusty shotgun, which Fenton had never in his life used.

  And now he was farther from the Ó Conaola door than ever, and the street was filled with people, some of whom were singing. Fenton was alone.

  “Well done, Queen of My Heart!” whispered Ruairí, for the crush was close enough so that he could speak to her unobserved.

  Máire was flushed, but not yet trusting of her victory. “Do you think so? But no. You’re saying that because you want me to like you.”

  Now someone was shouting “Parnell,” but very halfheartedly. Ruairí nudged Máire and whispered, “I hope you do that already, lover. I’m saying it because it’s true. Only you should have taken that gelding’s nose off for him.”

  She giggled, a strained little sound. “I thought I might, if he got any closer.” Máire listened, but the singing had stopped, and the political fellow run out of his small store of passion. “Was … was that Father Ó Murchú with you, before?”

  “It was. He said he had to go.”

  Máire’s exaltation evaporated. “He would have to,” she said in a little voice. “Being … what he is.”

  “Which is an odd one!” Ruairí danced clownishly in place, grinning, for he was standing very close now, and the girl made no objection.

  There was a jog at Ruairí’s elbow, which he ignored until it became a furious shove. Seán Standún’s yellow head thrust between Ruairí and Máire. He put his mouth cl
ose to her ear, and what he called her made her draw back her hand, nails curved.

  Ruairí stepped on the man’s foot and stood there.

  “Now there is no sense to calling a lass names with her sweetheart standing beside her, is there? You can only get in trouble.”

  Standún screamed, pulling at his trapped foot, but it might as well have had the weight of Knockduff on it. He put his other foot against Ruairí’s ankle and gave it the force of his six feet of height, and when that didn’t budge it, he flung himself on the street and writhed. Only after all this did the man have the sense to cry, “Off! Get off!” and then Ruairí calmly got off his foot.

  “I’ll have you in prison for this,” cried Standún, and a crowd began to gather.

  Ruairí glanced around and met a half dozen interested gazes. “For what, man? For stepping on your foot?”

  “I saw it. He did no more than step on the man’s foot,” said a man to a woman.

  “Fenton’s gone. Just run away,” said a woman to a child.

  “Seán Standún is a delicate man,” said another to the first man. “Just look at his coloring.”

  Ruairí bent down and put his arms solicitously around Standún’s shoulders. As Standún had whispered into his daughter’s ear, so did Ruairí to Standún.

  “Since you tell the lass to her face that she’s not your kin, then I don’t know what father’s rights you can claim. But I’ll do you the courtesy of telling you that I intend to have her as mine, and I won’t put up with the donkey’s treatment you are giving her.”

  There came white spots in the center of Seán Standún’s flushed cheeks and over the bridge of his nose. “I will certainly have the law on you, boyo.”

  “Ara, he only stepped on your foot,” said Pádraig Ó Ceallaigh, the man who had reached to support Standún on the other side. Standún glared at him as well as at the horse trainer, but he staggered off on Ó Ceallaigh’s arm. As he went he whispered more cautiously, and away from his supporter’s ear: “Máire was raised under a good slate roof, fellow. Painted paper on the walls and glass in the windows. She has never had a dinner of potatoes without meat, save in Lent. A fine helpmeet shell make for a ham-handed ploughboy.” He laughed: a strained titter. “Oh, I wish you both great joy!”

  All this while Máire Standún had been silent in confusion, hearing only scattered words of the dialogue between Ruairí and her father, broken by the singing of the crowd, which had gone from “The Brown-Backed Cow” all the way to “A Eibhlín, a Rún.” Now she glanced about, uncertain, and at last she unlaced her arms from the community of sweet peas.

  “Did you … did you hurt him? Father, I mean.”

  His face wore a winning simplicity as he answered her. “Oh, I did! I broke his foot, certainly. He’ll not be chasing you around again soon.”

  As Máire stood staring at him, the singing became nonsense buzzing in her ears. “You … you broke my father’s foot? By Mary and the saints, why?”

  The pleased look began to fade as Ruairí answered, “Because he was giving you trouble, love. I won’t permit that!”

  The crowd that had gathered to pester the eviction remained now for whatever was coming along. It seemed to be an argument between black Máire and Ó Reachtaire’s horseboy. At least judging by the girl’s face, it was, so they pressed their circle around those two.

  “Parnell,” stated the political fellow, without emphasis.

  “You broke my father’s foot on my behalf?” Máire’s soft and heavy voice was shaking. Her hands made fists.

  “Oh, he only stepped on it, lass,” came the reassuring voice from the circle. “Things like that happen, in a crush.”

  “Don’t be so hard on the man. Look at his grand shoulders!” That came from another angle.

  “… not her father. Not her father!” It was a child’s chant, quickly stifled and leading to a moment’s unhappy silence all around.

  Ruairí was very disappointed, and his “grand shoulders” sagged as much as they were able. “But he did say I could marry you, love. If I had a house with a slate roof and painted wallpaper. And if I fed you meat.”

  Ruairí MacEibhir took two steps away from the look on Máire’s face. He blundered into the young Ó Conaola, with baby.

  The deep growl in Máire’s throat found words. “He may have said you could marry me, you coot, you loon, you great, fat horse! But I didn’t say you could marry me! Get away from young Nóra and her baby before you do more damage. Take a gallop into the ocean! Go hide under a rock in the fields and be done with you!”

  “Oh, that’s harsh!” called a rather sentimental voice from the circle.

  “Can you say that to his sweet eyes?”

  “Where’s Fenton?”

  This last gave everyone pause, even Máire and Ruairí. The circle dissolved, became a shapeless crowd again, and at last it was discovered that Fenton was not anywhere on the street.

  The eviction was declared averted, and general merriment ensued, at least for those who had not really been involved. The fence of sweet peas, now sundered, sat themselves down on assorted stoops to catch up on their breathing. The children mourned the loss of the black steel shotgun, which they remembered to have had a faded primrose painted on the end of the stock.

  Ruairí reached out an imploring hand to Máire, to find instead the flat bosom of old Cáit NíChonaola. “Lad, do you want the curse of my age upon you?” she asked him.

  He backed away with alacrity and shoved out of the crowd. Behind him he heard the singing resume. The political fellow called out, “Parnell is in Kilmainham Gaol.”

  This time he sounded really moved.

  Chapter Nine

  Some Dreams

  Under the north shadow of Knockduff, Ruairí MacEibhir squatted barefoot on a shelf of stone. It was a warm rain coming down, and it didn’t bother him. Out beyond the shade of the mountain it shook in silver sheets with the wind.

  His fine big face was intent, but upon what was not apparent. He was not smiling, and his hands were interlocked around his knees. Occasionally he spoke, not in Gaelic.

  He was speaking to the stone.

  “It seems to me you might come back, Father. You were never so old, nor home so changed, that there was no bearing it. I can bear it easily, and I am more your image than Mother’s.”

  There was no sound, but he must have felt the stone had contradicted him, for he replied, “But if that were the case, old White, then I’d be stronger than I am, for in the battle of wind and rock there is only one winner.

  “Now, don’t get cold with me for saying what is only a truth you yourself told me when I was a baby.”

  Ruairí’s eyes were unhappy and his face was wet, but as he was a fairy, the wetness was likely only rain. “I’m never your equal, Father. I am not so hard as you, and I cannot maintain without forgetting, let alone forgiving. Who would I play with, if I kept the old anger, with none but enemies over the land? But I might as well be at odds with them; being not so clever, I am always offending these Milesians by accident. And that’s no fairy gift!” Except for his tragic eyes, his face gave no clue to his misery, for it was not a face made to express misery.

  “And you know, I must live with them, or pass away in my youth from my own land and leave it, which would be a sorrow to it and my own shame.”

  Lightning licked the sky; though a good strip to the south was blue. Thunder was a sound of ripping cloth, and the púca lifted his head to it. “Our ways are far parted, Mother, and I fear you’re not happy with me. But I need more of a mother’s blessing than heaven’s whips, right now. How I wish to hear your hoofbeats on the hard road coming to me!”

  And he did hear hoofbeats, and a black form, glossy with rain, came speeding up the bare slope of the mountain. Ruairí sprang up, and for a moment he wavered in mind and body, being neither horse nor man, but a glimmer lost in the rain.

  It was not the wind, however. It was the little, stocky black king, whom Ruairí had left at
the foot of the incline. He danced his front feet as he came, and shook his long head like a pendulum left and right, expressing his distress in birdlike noises.

  Ruairí snorted. “What kind of stallion is it, terrified of a bit of thunder? Did you hide behind your wives, fat in increase, so that the lightning might hit them and spare you?”

  The pony stopped square, and his tiny ears made a flipping back and forth that was equal to reasoned paragraphs of essay. Finally he turned and presented Ruairí with his butt end.

  The fairy chuckled, and his face returned to its normal placidity. “Never mind, my old child,” he said, and he scuffed over the flat stone to where he’d left his heavy shoes. They were filled with water, which he spilled out. “Why should I snub you because my own sire and dam have no time for me?” He came to the square, black beast and rested his arm over its back.

  “It’s a terrible life, little black, for her father hates me, my father is not speaking, and the lass herself would sooner see my tail.” The black king grunted and shook, adding dirt and stones to the water that coated Ruairí.

  “But she’s a lance upright, to me. A tree in silver bloom. A pool the color of the moon, is she, and with eyes like clear day. I’m a fish in the net for her. I’m tied and thrown.”

  The pony nodded, and he whipped his tail in perfect understanding, for he was fond of the ladies, too. They went down the mountain together, and by the hideous scowl on Ruairí’s face, it was clear that he was thinking.

  Mr. Blondell rode out from town under sunlight, on a strong, half-bred gelding that was by his chestnut Thoroughbred. He liked this horse; they got on well together. Toby rode beside him, his little grey in a determined trot which would have done damage to kidneys older than the boy’s. Occasionally the pony had to break into a canter to keep up.

  It was a shame about the red filly. Blondell had dwelt upon the notion of his son having a mount to match his own favorite. But he understood what Ó Reachtaire’s horseman had told him, about the filly’s bones being unfinished and her education in process. Such an intelligent fellow, MacEibhir. Good English. Not the sort you found under every hedge these days. Not the sort to make trouble.