The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “I hear that from every foal, at weaning. They would know it was time to stop suckling when their own babies had babies.”

  Suddenly Toby was offended: angry at this man before him, sitting complacent in his new house amid his old home … No great loss coming to him. He could laugh and make jokes. Toby wasn’t to forget him, but Ruairí would forget soon enough. What was he, Toby, but a boy he taught for money?

  Toby’s small face set in a sneer. “Maybe this one won’t be ‘weaned.’ Maybe I have some say in the matter, too.” He turned, took two dignified steps away, and then ran helter-skelter through the door. The black king whinnied after him from his position, by the door, but Ruairí sat without moving, with the paint box on his lap, long after the pelting footsteps died away.

  As Ruairí was about to go under the shadow of Knockduff to the stables, Tadhg Ó Murchú trotted up on a borrowed pony. He had his crucifix-shaped ointment box with him, for he was returned from giving the last rites to a woman at the edge of the parish. Ó Murchú had not seen the round house before, but he had heard much about it. He slipped off the horse and lost his knees for a moment, for the pony’s trot was hard and the priest not used to riding.

  “God to you, Father,” said Ruairí, and Ó Murchú cast a very sharp glance. “Are you making sport of me, Ruairí Léith?”

  “Is it making sport of you to be polite? That is the greeting which Áine has told me is proper for you.”

  Ó Murchú grunted and looked up, up at the rise of the wall. “It’s a fortress! How did you do it, Ruairí? This looks like the old stonecraft.”

  “I had help.”

  The priest’s glance went even sharper. “I’ll bet you did!”

  It was an odd, uncomfortable visit, for though the priest was clearly taken by what he saw as they strolled through the two floors with their smooth plaster and bright paint, his eyes moved more like a man thinking than a man looking. He kept his crucifix in his right hand, against his chest.

  “And how are the affairs of the nationalists, Ó Murchú?” Ruairí asked, as both stared out of the bedroom window, which faced south toward the blue water.

  “Don’t speak that word!” The priest started, and his voice was too loud.

  Ruairí stood mildly beside him, his hands in the pockets of his canvas trousers. “You are safer speaking with me beside you than by yourself in a dark wood, Priest of the Parish. You can be certain there is no other ear about, if I tell you so.”

  Ó Murchú glared at him, uncertain. Then his eyes moved left and right, unfocused, and his lips twitched. “Affairs are tight and very strained, both in Galway County and in the east. And in my own house also, for the bishop doesn’t like me.” Once again he glanced at Ruairí. “He’d like me even less if he knew I had baptized you, púca!”

  “A shame! He has never met me, or he’d change his mind.”

  Ó Murchú put his crucifix down on the generously broad windowsill. His intent, severe face did not change expression as he asked “Do you see much of Máire Standún these days?”

  “As much as she’ll see of me. Don’t you?”

  “Of course not. Why should I?” Ó Murchú let his attention slide to the window again. “Dear God, what a summer it will be!” he whispered. Ruairí was content to look at the priest for as long as that one gazed out the window. Flies tapped the glass.

  “Ruairí!” He broke the silence. “I hear that Máirín NíAnluain brought you a sick baby and that you put a sign on it. Is that true?”

  The fairy’s quick grin broke out. “Who told you that? Not Máire herself, certainly.”

  “I … cannot tell the source.” Ó Murchú folded his arms in front of his breast.

  “Then I cannot tell the answer.”

  Ó Murchú’s neat, dark face heated with his irritation. “You have not the power to bless children, lad.”

  “You mean I have not your authority, I think. The power to put a word on a beast or a child, that I most assuredly do have, and you know it.”

  The priest’s folded arms started to come apart from each other, like an unsound argument. His anger shifted, became calculation. “Can you heal, then?”

  The sun through the window shone on Ruairí MacEibhir, making him look shabby and half asleep. The shadow of the crucifix was across his middle. “I can heal. And kill. And work at trades, Ó Murchú. As you can. But I am perhaps better at a few things.”

  Now the arms fell down at Ó Murchú’s sides. He began to walk the length of the empty, white-lit room. “Anyone can kill! A stray dog can do that. If you have the power to heal, fellow, then you must do it. These people have few doctors and no money to pay those who chose to endure it here.”

  “Why should I care?” Ruairí stood on one foot, scratching his other calf with his bootsole. His smile had gone mocking.

  “Because they are your brothers and sisters,” replied the priest carefully.

  “I’m no Gael.”

  “You are a Christian. You took that willingly, and there is no greater vow.”

  “So. How does that mean I have to become the village leech?”

  “‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

  Ruairí continued to scratch, for the heavy canvas trousers were uncomfortable in the heat. But his face went wary and then confused. “If I promised that, in truth, then I promised my life away, for there are neighbors endlessly in An Cheathrú Rúa.”

  “You did!” Tadhg Ó Murchú spun on his heel and pointed his finger at Ruairí’s face. “You did that, lad, and so did I, and I promise you, it will never let us go! Not past the bitter end.”

  He was shouting. His voice broke and he caught himself, with a sort of sob. Ó Murchú passed a hand over his eyes and mumbled. He went to pick up the crucifix, and then he stalked across the floor to the stairs.

  “It isn’t just An Cheathrú Rúa, either,” he called over his shoulder. “It isn’t even Ireland, worse luck. In fact,” he craned his neck to peer upward at Ruairí, who leaned over the landing on the first floor, “there is no man, woman, or child on the earth who is not your sworn concern.”

  Ruairí stood and puzzled this, his black brows over his brown eyes and his pale hair hanging over all. “But … but am I their sworn concern as well, Father Ó Murchú?”

  But the priest was hauling himself onto the borrowed pony, and he was mumbling to God or to himself too loudly to hear.

  It was in the middle of the day and Ruairí was in Carraroe, buying soap and nails, when he saw James Blondell on his hunter, standing in the middle of the street. There was by him a small fellow with a large beaver hat, which shone like few hats in Galway County. This one was riding a restive half pony and shouting up to Blondell.

  Ruairí had a handful of long-stemmed flowers, which the eldest Mrs. NíChonaola had given him, not telling him why. He was knotting them together, and his teeth and hands were stained green.

  He had no objection to listening to the dispute, which seemed to concern Toby Blondell. Ruairí was very interested, though one couldn’t tell as much from his face or from the slack way in which he sprawled in the gig. Both men were angry, but it was difficult to say whether they were angry together or at each other. Ruairí was forced to climb down to the dirt road itself, so that he could understand the English.

  But the conversation made no more sense, for the small man was speaking of rebels and the large one about his wife. Again and again Ruairí heard the word “seditionist” and wondered what Toby had been up to.

  He wasn’t forced to wonder long, or even to force acquaintance with any of the locals who happened to be standing closer to ear, for Blondell himself left the other and trotted his horse over to the black gig. Over his shoulder he called, “It is his own handwriting, and there’s no need to look any further for cause!”

  Ruairí tied a knot with his two hands and his teeth, and he glanced from under his eyebrows at Blondell. He was the picture of a man who didn’t want to be bothered, and so Blondell began by apologizing
quite sincerely.

  “But it’s my son. Tobias. He went away on horseback this morning, and now the horse has come back with the reins tied under his chin.”

  Ruairí’s head came up. He wiped the juice off his lips. “Toby’s lost a horse? Well, that’s an embarrassment, certainly, but he wasn’t thrown, as is shown by the state of the reins.”

  Blondell’s eyes flickered and he edged closer to Ruairí and further from the street’s many ears. “He didn’t lose the horse. He sent it home. There was there was a note that we found.”

  Ruairí stared at the man hard and then harder. At last he said, “Oh. You mean he’s run off.”

  Blondell sighed in relief that it was said. “Into the mountains.”

  As the two spoke, the big red hunter paid his courtesies to the dun cob in harness. It chose to resent this, and there was a moment for Ruairí to think about things.

  “He didn’t want to go to school, did he?” he said to Blondell, when the horses were quiet again.

  The big man’s eyes flickered. “No, he didn’t. Did he tell you so?”

  Ruairí stood with mouth open, weighing his loyalties. “I remember that he said as much, one time. Are you out to look for him now?”

  Now Blondell looked baffled and a little sick. “Yes, of course. But I’ve got this man from the government, you see. It’s very inconvenient. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  Ruairí smiled. “Send him searching himself. Or send him to hell. It’s all one.”

  “I’d like to do either, but I can’t.” He turned his horse’s head. “If you see the young imp, Ruairí …”

  Ruairí nodded very agreeably and said nothing, watching Blondell return to his government man.

  Leaving the cob untended, Ruairí strolled across the street, weaving stems as he went. He stopped at the Ó Conaola door again, where Nóra was leaning against the jamb. Into her hands he pressed his piece of work, a heart shape of green flower stems, with the blossoms themselves ranked at the edge. “Here’s a charm for your wall, a Nóirín. It will keep the … the government men away from your children.”

  She took it, and her lips were tight. “If it will keep that one away, you can have the first milk from three cows. He’s come to put a rope around someone’s neck, surely.”

  The brown eyes went very wide, showing white at the corners. “A rope, is it? Why is that?”

  She sniffed. “James Blondell called him on us poor Gaels. Mister Blondell has had his feelings hurt by the Land League, I think!”

  Toby had gotten himself lost very easily, though it would seem difficult in a countryside without trees. The round, rolling mountains that spilled from the north to the seacoast all looked alike, and his plan of heading for Mám Cross took him straight in among them.

  If he had stayed on the road, it would have been an easy march. But if he had stayed on the road, he would have been also easy to find. So he had tried to keep one raw of hills between himself and the straightaway.

  The endeavor had succeeded too well and now there was no road to be found, but only the bald hills with heather and a green fuzz of grass, rolling on to Toby’s nausea.

  The plan was a child’s plan: to sleep in a barn and to find work. The natives would not suspect him of being Toby Blondell, the gentleman’s son with an English mother. He could speak Irish now. Better than Father. He would be respected. He would have horses, which he would train. He would return a grown man, sitting a stallion he had trained himself. His father would be impressed. His mother would be sorry. They would laugh over the idea that they had wanted him to go to school.

  But there had been no barns to creep into, not barns like the great, pleasant-smelling hay store at home, or like the warm stable where Donncha and Ruairí slept. Upon these damnable, rippling hills he had found only a broken byre, roofless, and a stone poultry house, which was wet inside and out and malodorous in the extreme.

  He had also found bogs, covered by heavy dry turf but soft within, into which he had fallen twice, and now his trouser legs were brown and wet and fiercely cold. It was not supposed to be cold in June.

  If he went far enough astray to the east, then he would see the land change, from the bones of granite to the rich lime soil that covered most of Ireland. There would be trees and high grass and many more people. Toby gazed dully about him and decided he had not come so far east as that.

  If he had reached the level of Mám Cross, then he would have struck the main road that runs to Clifden on the coast, and he had passed no road. If he had come in circles, southward again, then he would see Knockduff and eventually the water. And west was the road he was traveling. Very close it should be.

  He sat his wet bottom on the cold ground and faced what he assumed was west. For a while he did not think at all, and then he heard cries in the distance.

  It must have been his father coming to look for him. His chilled fingers demanded that he answer, but his mouth clamped shut. He was not giving up, but only tired. And cold. The cries continued, until Toby was on the point of tears, but he held out, even as they came closer. He looked for some place to hide, but there was none closer than the poultry house he had left behind hours before.

  Then the criers of the cries came into sight, and they were a flock of ewes, being butted into movement by the ram. Toby watched the sheep go by and was filled with the rage of betrayal.

  He wouldn’t make it to Mám Cross. He wouldn’t find work. He would die of cold and weakness on this raw, empty mound of stone while Ruairí MacEibhir and Donncha MacSiadhail laughed amid the warmth of the horses, with bellies full of potatoes and buttermilk and likely whiskey at their elbows. They would not think of Toby, or if they did, they would make a joke of him. Those people were great for making jokes.

  Toby felt such a potent jealousy of Anraí Ó Reachtaire’s grooms that he himself cried out, much like a sheep. His rage balled in his stomach and ached in his head and stirred his whole small frame without succeeding in warming it. “It’s not fair!” he shouted, but he heard his own voice weak and piping over the bones of the hills.

  The sky was now purple and clear, and glancing upward Toby knew he should appreciate the beauty of it, but the west wind was springing up and he began to shake. Shadows covered the east side of each hill, making a bold, inhuman pattern. Now that the sheep were gone, there was nothing moving to be seen. No birds in the sky.

  Was this the place he loved so dearly he would leave his family, his pony, and all else he had for the sake of it? It was a cruel landscape which would not be loved. It was killing Toby with cold, and as he grew colder he began to weep, for there was no one and nothing which could hear and make him ashamed.

  Toby stood up and walked to the top of the hill, hoping there would be the lights of a cottage on some horizon. But there was not even moonlight.

  The stars, however, were growing more brilliant moment by moment, as the wash of purple ran to the edges of the sky and left black behind. At last even the rim against the earth was of indigo color and the stars were thick and silver. They, too, were inhuman, and Toby found them baleful. He turned in a circle and found he could guess which way south was, by the strip of ocean that reflected the light. It was exactly opposite of where he had expected to find it, and even now he wasn’t certain.

  He shivered uncontrollably and wished he could hide from the stars as much as from the wind. He felt his father’s old pain, of being an interloper and unwanted. But he knew better than his father; it was not because he was of English descent. It was because he was human.

  The black and the darkness made him dizzy, but the ground was too cold and wet for him to sit down. And there was a noise in his ears. A pounding.

  It was heavy hooves pounding, very fast, as though on a road. Toby turned in wonder and complete confusion, and lost his directions again. He reeled and fell, sitting, and the stars seemed to fall around him.

  The horse on the next hill was white and splashed with starlight. It bore no rider, and its b
reath grunted and labored as it came on. It was impossibly large on the blank hill and under the blank sky, very unlike the sweet-breathed servants that carried him under Ruiarí’s direction. Toby’s neck hairs all stood on end as the horse leaped the stream that divided the two hills and sprang toward him, heavy but very, very fast.

  It was up beside him, breathing like a bellows and with its nostrils swollen in passion or sheer effort. That shining, huge head was high above his, and there was nowhere Toby could run, even if his legs would carry him.

  In the middle of his shock and terror it came to Toby that there was something familiar about the horse. Its mane was neatly trimmed for braiding. Its nose was black at the end of the white face. The eyes, more black against the white softness of lashes …

  Toby opened his mouth to say, “I know you,” but all that came out was a groan. Then the horse reared up, and the wide, round hooves hung above Toby’s head, and he was about to be trampled and smashed. Toby fell, but instead of crashing down, the black hooves went up and up and the white body rippled like a sheet or the flame of a candle in wind and shrank down into itself. Toby began to scream.

  “Toby! A Thóibín! Stop it now. That’s plenty.” Ruairí picked the boy up and with his square right hand he smacked him lightly across the face.

  Toby stopped his noise abruptly. He stared at the shadow outline of the face of his friend and teacher, and it seemed for a moment he would forget what his eyes had seen and his ears heard, in order to make sense of the present. But Toby Blondell was neither so young nor so cowed as that. He stepped back, wrenching his arms free, and again he stumbled.

  “What … Who are you?” he shouted, and made small fists at his sides.

  Ruairí straightened. “You know me, Toby.”

  “I don’t! Or not until now. I saw what I saw, Ruairí. Don’t tell me I didn’t. You were in the shape of a horse, and then you changed in front of me. You’re not a man at all.”

  “I’m not human, Toby, but you musn’t say I’m not a man.” Sighing, Ruairí squatted down in front of the boy. Because of the slope, his head was at Toby’s level. “I think my kind would not exist but for your kind. We are kin, you and I, though not quite the same.”