The priest thought he was beginning to cry, despite himself. Then he thought he was going blind, for his world became misted in a whiteness that thickened and rose before him. It was coming out of Ruairí MacEibhir, who knelt and swayed before him, with brown eyes glazed and staring.
It was a curtain in the air, a veil, a ghostly fire that spread up toward the low ceiling it took the shape of a horse’s head, thrown back in panic. And all the while Áine smiled and Anraí stood there, smugly nodding.
Ó Murchú was filled with fury. “Fool!” he hissed through clenched teeth, meaning Ruairí. Or himself. Then he reached his short, swarthy arms up into the air and he caught the veil—the shape of the horse—by its filmy edge and he shook it like a bedsheet. “Back with you!” He shouted in a bull voice not usually his to command. He snapped the sheet in the air and smashed it down again over Ruairí’s collapsing form. “And stay there!” The fairy took a great breath and then another.
Anraí cleared his throat. “I was never at a grown-up baptism before, Tadhg. I had no idea it would be so different.”
Suddenly, noisily, Ruairí struggled to his feet. He was still swaying. “Am I baptized now?” he asked.
Ó Murchú had sunk down as he raised up, and was squatting like a primitive against the front wall of the sideboard. “What? Are you … I don’t know. Or rather …” He noticed that the ends of the silken stole were dragging the carpet and he climbed up again. “Or rather, of course you are. What happened does not invalidate it. You are baptized, Ruairí MacEibhir.
“Now. Let’s see you turn into a horse.”
“Here? In the parlor!” It was Áine’s cry.
“Right here,” answered Ó Murchú. “For there is such a heavy weariness come over me I don’t know whether I’ll live the hour out and I want to know.”
Ruairí blinked. He shook his head as all moved away from him. Donncha scooted the small tea table against the wall. The shape of the fairy rose up as a cloud of snow and the grey horse settled his front feet delicately on the carpet.
“Glory be to God,” whispered the priest in such a reverent manner that three in the room echoed him.
Ruairí came back, brown eyes to booted feet. “Well, I have to say it’s better than the rites of old Padraig. No lance in the foot.”
Anraí harrumphed. “You have been laboring under a misunderstanding, lad. There was never …”
“Would someone drive me home?” asked the priest, as he gripped the handles of the cupboard doors for support. “I am very tired. Or I am becoming ill.”
Ruairí caught him as he fell. “You are not used to this, Priest of the Parish? The powers wear you out?”
“Take me home!” Ó Murchú would have snapped more sharply if he could have, for the spirits and energy of the fairy offended him and indeed he did not feel well.
“I can drive him myself,” said Anraí, making an ineffectual effort to press between Ruairí and Ó Murchú.
“Or I,” added Áine, with no great hope of being heard.
“Let the new convert do the work,” said Ó Murchú. “He has strength enough, it seems.”
Donncha harnessed up the cob in only a few seconds, and Father Ó Murchú was half lifted into Áine’s springy gig. Ruairí MacEibhir sprang up beside him and put the cob into a trot.
“He isn’t nearly as fast as the red horse you drove last time you had the hauling of me,” said Ó Murchú, after ten minute’s exhausted silence.
“No, but he’ll go the distance.” Ruairí turned his head on his neck to look at his companion. Ó Murchú wondered if he could even see out of the corners of his eyes, human fashion. The sun was passing in and out of clouds, and the wind was brisk.
“I worried the baptism might be the death of you, fellow. It never occurred to me I was the one in danger.”
The fairy smiled and the air went bright for a moment. “You’ll be fine, Ó Murchú. But I am no small thing, flitting from flower to flower. To put me back together when I am coming apart is heavy work, and not many could do it. I chose well.”
This last phrase stuck in Ó Murchú’s cars, not pleasantly. Anger bubbled through his weariness. “You chose? Do you pick and choose, among human beings, to serve your will?”
Ruairí winced under this heat. “Peace, man! We all choose among each other, to serve our desires a hundred ways. Surely I would come more willingly to a man of the hidden people than to …”
“What?” Now Ó Murchú’s weariness was forgotten. He sat straight up on the padded bench. “Are you trying to say to me …” The cob’s ears folded back, and he sighed as he trotted.
“Are you telling me …” Again his angry words trailed off, and the priest took a breath. “Exactly what are you telling me?”
The fairy blinked his long-lashed eyes. “Only what you know already, Priest. That you are out of an old and forgotten race on this island. That you touch the different worlds, whereas most men do not or will not.”
Now the sweat of Ó Murchú’s anger turned into a sudden chill. He felt his back prickle, as well as the hair on his arms. “I know nothing of the kind,” he said in a quelling voice. Then he swallowed hard and wrapped his shawl around his shoulders.
“Then you don’t know that there is fairy blood in you?” asked Ruairí, almost diffidently.
“There is fairy blood in most Irishmen,” answered the priest, though he had no idea where the words came from. The sun went in and out, and the wind kept the drive from being ever comfortable. After half an hour, Ó Murchú said something else.
“Do you know what I really am, Rory son of Granite? What I am is a nationalist!” And he let out a great, growling groan. Ruairí turned his brown eyes to him. “Oh. Is that what it is? I had wondered.” He tickled the cob on the ear with the holly whip.
“But you must never tell anyone that I said that.”
“Then I won’t,” answered Ruairí equably, and they drove on to the rectory.
It was in the evening and threatening rain. Ruairí MacEibhir was in the pocket of land that Anraí had given him: land blooming with large rocks and gorse-grown, which ran full up to the side of Knockduff itself. It was by an undercut of the mountain that Ruairí planned to build Máire’s house.
It was to be of stone, and it was two feet high so far. Donncha, who had amazed himself by helping to gather the rocks, stood leaning against the brown side of the ox in its harness.
“I hesitate to speak what is not my business, Ruairí…”
Ruairí straightened with, a hundredweight chip of granite in his arms. “But you don’t hesitate, Donncha. Not for a moment. So tell me what is bothering you.”
Donncha slouched forward, pointing. “Your foundation here is neither a square nor a rectangle, but a circle.”
“So it is.” Ruairí put the stone very neatly on another and between two on either side.
Donncha remained deadpan, though with difficulty. “Well, is it the garden wall you’re building first? For it’s large enough, but I warn you it’ll be harder to get the rest of the stones past it once it’s in place.”
Ruairí followed the pointing finger and grinned. His face was shiny with sweat. “I know it! But you must understand, Donncha, that Máire Standún has lived all her life in a large house. Could I ask her to move in with me and trim her wings back like that?”
Donncha left the ox and walked the perimeter of the house. It was one hundred and twenty paces along the stones, plus some forty feet where it butted the flat mountainside. “You’re going to put her in a fairy rath, then?”
Ruairí heaved another stone, and another. “She wouldn’t like that a bit. Most of them are filled with bones, not fairies.” He went back to his work.
When night fell it did rain, but the light of the full moon penetrated the clouds. Ruairí MacEibhir did not return with Donncha to the barn where he slept (slept in theory, at least). The groom waited for lazy Ruairí to cast off this enchantment of work he was suffering and return to dry straw bed and
steaming potatoes. He had saved up a number of good thrusts against Ruairí’s folly, both in building a circular house and building it for a woman who would have none of him. But Donncha was a good sleeper, unless a horse groaned, and rarely knew when his colleague was out on the tiles. By midnight, with the moon high in the sky, he had given up waiting and let all the witticisms he was saving run out his ears. He was asleep.
The sky cleared gently, unnoticed by man. Wet earth sparkled under the cold, planetary light, and the ponies of the mountains came over the broad stone and bogland toward Knockduff. They ran as lightly as goats. Some were black and some were white and some you could see through like the pools of rain.
Some had riders.
There were laughter and bells sounding in the circle of wet stone that Ruairí built, and then was added a tinny, thin wailing whistle, like Morrie’s whistle, but smaller and better played.
The singing and the crying out were not entirely peaceful. Not entirely happy. Ruairí’s own black pony grunted in the yard, where the stone moving had scraped the earth bare. Shaking his mane, he walked deliberately away.
Ruairí, or perhaps one of his visitors, had lit a fire in the stone circle. It burned clean and golden, though there was no dry wood around Knockduff, and it cast splashes against the undercut mountainside. There was gesture in those golden splashes, and there was dance.
Someone cried out in gladness. Someone cried. At dawn one could not tell the mounds of granite stone from the backs of the sleeping ponies: the black ones and the white ones only. Ruairí MacEibhir came out of the door of his stone house and peered up the high walls in satisfaction. He yawned and shook the dew from his clothes.
Mr. James Blondell did not know that the wall had been raised by night, as he sat his red hunter with his gloved hands on the pommel of the saddle. He found it noteworthy for other reasons.
He called the builder over, across the grass. “Ruairí. Is Anraí building a fortress here? Is he expecting it to come to this?”
Ruairí MacEibhir felt a little the worse for wear this morning and he could not follow Blondell’s meaning. He stared upward at the man. “It is not Anraí’s, a Shéamais. By his grace it is mine, and it is Máire Standún who will come to it, I hope.”
Blondell looked down on the other’s pleasant countenance and thought that Ruairí MacEibhir was the image of all that the peasantry ought to be: solid but never sullen, well conformed and conforming. His shirt was dirty, but that was understandable. His hair and nails were respectably cut, and that meant he cared. Blondell grinned at Ruairí in the way he would have had Ruairí grin at him.
Ruairí, however, was too tired. “What can I do for you, a Shéamais?”
It made Blondell feel very good about himself to know he could hear this assistant horse trainer call him by his first name, Gaelic fashion, without becoming offended. It was a sign of just how reasonable and fair a man he was. “Have you heard they’re talking of … of boycotting me, Rory?”
Ruairí’s frown of concentration became deeper. “I didn’t know that. All I’ve heard concerning yourself lately is about the fight with your wife.”
“The what?” Blondell’s question was sharp.
“I don’t know more than that, because I was too busy to listen. I’m sorry.” He managed a smile at last.
Blondell decided to let the apology cover the reference to Hermione, and put to the back of his mind his chagrin at having his domestic troubles put all over the country. Irish domestics, of course.
“What I’ve come for is to offer you a job.”
Ruairí blinked.
“Head groom. Double your present salary. At least.”
Ruairí blinked again and again. He seemed incapable of understanding, so Blondell slowed down and began again.
“My own head groom … left me in the lurch. I’d like you to replace him. Live on the estate. Either eat at our tables or set up your own, when you marry. Good money and the best horses in Connemara under your supervision.”
Now Ruairí’s full grin returned, not at the offer but at the mention of “the best horses in Connemara.” He remembered the red stallion in the barn aisle, nodding and nodding.
“That is indeed a generous offer, a Shéamais Blondell. But I think your estates would be a little far from my house.” He gestured behind him at the wall.
Blondell glanced over in better appreciation of what he saw. “That’s to be your house, Rory? Twenty feet high and no roof? It looks more like a Norman fortification.”
Ruairí accepted the humor of it, but he replied, “I’ve just begun, you see. The roof will be slate and the walls plastered, so that no rain or wind will touch Máire my blackbird.”
Blondell was Irish enough that he knew very well the story of Ruairí and the strapping “blackbird” who would not have him. But he was English enough that he would not let on that he knew it to the fellow’s face.
“At my estate you will live in a house of brick.” Very slowly Ruairí walked off, looking for a stone on which to sit. As he had pulled all the stones in the immediate area, he had to go fifty feet. Blondell followed on his horse.
“You see, a Shéamais, I am promised to the service of Anraí MacThurlaigh Ó Reachtaire. And with his heart being bad in him, he needs me here.”
“He has Donncha MacSiadhail.”
Now Ruairí had to find a blade of grass to tear, which took him a while. “One man was barely enough when Anraí’s health was unbroken. I would not leave him now.”
Blondell brushed this aside. “I think Toby needs you as much, Rory. He talks about you constantly, as though you invented horses.”
Ruairí looked up. “Say that they invented me, first.”
“Before he began studying with you, Rory, the boy didn’t like anything or anyone. Now he’s … he’s a regular boy again. Do come.”
Now Ruairí raised his brown eyes to Blondell and regarded him steadily. Blondell had not meant to use his son as a draw for the stableman, for in truth he wasn’t certain he’d be able to keep Toby at home much longer. Hermie was so set on an English school, and she had a lot of sense on her side. Blondell found he was looking at his folded hands instead of the horseman.
He hadn’t expected he’d have to talk him into it.
“Toby can come to Knockduff, as he has been,” said Ruairí.
“Once a week isn’t enough.”
“Then he can sleep in the barn with Donncha and myself and ride for Anraí at sixpence a week.”
Blondell had to laugh at the idea. Toby would probably love it. But not Hermione. No. And Toby had better things to learn than the groom’s rough manners. It was too bad. He shook his head and a thought came into it. “Ruairí, you’re-not boycotting me right now, are you?”
Ruairí lifted his eyebrows, which were much darker than his hair. “How, when I’m speaking to you at the moment?”
“You do know what it means—‘boycott’?” Blondell leaned out, disturbing his horse.
“I won’t pretend to more ignorance than I have. I know about the boycotts. But as you’re not buying or selling much of anything, and aren’t one of the Irish people, to be hurt by the lack of their society, I don’t know what harm a boycott could do to you.”
Blondell, stung by these words as though by whips, swung his hunter around and kicked it into a smart canter, leaving Ruairí standing weary and openmouthed by the wall of his house.
In the middle of the day, Eibhlín Standún was coming out of the chemist’s shop with a basket of flowers under her arm. Under the flowers lay a bottle of laudanum for her father, but Eibhlín did not think it ladylike to be carrying a parcel from the chemist through Carraroe: hence the flowers.
The breeze whipped her skirt around her ankles, displaying the hem of lace to good advantage. It raised the tendrils of her yellow hair.
The pony trap, with Ó Máille, their man of work, was parked at the other end of the street, so that the Standún household (or at least Eibhlín) might not be mark
ed as spending their mornings at the chemist. It also gave her the chance to let the wind blow her lace around for a while.
Unfortunately, the same wind had kept many of the inhabitants indoors; the only other figure on the street was Maurice, the publican, who had nothing to do yet at this hour and was leaning against his door in the sun. He gave her a high “God to you” and pushed himself off into the road.
“Eibhlín, I hear the ‘good fellow,’ your sister’s swain, is building a house up at Knockduff. Looks as though the announcement is any day, isn’t it?”
“The ‘good fellow’? You mean Ruairí MacEibhir, the horse trainer? Why do you call him that?”
Maurice grinned. “It’s a joke in the pub, lass. If you ever watched us drink your health there, you’d know such things. It’s because of his great black eyes and his old way of talking, and because no man has succeeded in getting him to show the trace of drink, though they’ve sunk their week’s pay in the effort. It’s as though he is … you know.”
Eibhlín did not know, but did not want to admit it. “Ruairí spends time in the pub?”
“Not as much as we could wish, for he’s a funny, funny man. But Knockduff is long miles away. Tell me now if I’m right; Máire has accepted him.”
Eibhlín held her basket to her waist and stood very straight. Speaking to Maurice was almost as low as setting foot into the local itself. “You’re completely in error, Maurice. She will not have him at any price.”
“She won’t?” Maurice gazed down at the girl with measuring eyes. “Why not?”
The publican’s near presence was unsettling. Eibhlín wished he would stand back, but she didn’t wish it wholeheartedly. He was not a bad-looking man. “He broke Father’s foot,” she said.
Maurice’s face lit eagerly. “What a story! She won’t have him because of that? And what better way to make up to the man than to marry his oldest daughter? Come, sweet one, you’ll have to do better than that!”
Maurice had a sly face, and something in Eibhlín responded to that. “I think that the truth is she doesn’t trust the fellow. She thinks he’s making sport with her.”
The Grey Horse Page 15
