If he were a detective, he considered, and he felt he were surrounded by danger, he would not carry all his information around with him, but would keep it in a place of safety. Insurance for it and for himself. Blondell cast an eye across the light-papered walls of the room.
Major Hous had looked already, with a pair of his men. But that didn’t mean James Blondell couldn’t look also. It was his house.
He searched the desk for hidden drawers, though he knew there were none. He turned the mattress and examined the pillows for rips. He pulled up the carpet. Annie, the upstairs maid, came to the door to ask him if he needed any help, and quite genially he sent her away again, locked the door, and returned to his treasure hunt.
While down on the floor, quite winded and with his hands smelling of mouse droppings from the carpet pad, Blondell noticed a black stripe on the wallpaper that was not part of the pattern. It was under the bed, and so he scuffled in after it, to find that a foot-long vertical section had been slit with a knife.
“Bastard!” he whispered, “ruining the paper in my own house.” He wasn’t angry, really, but as enthused as a boy.
He had to rip the paper slightly to get out what was stuffed under it. It was three sheets from the little notebook and a heavier sheet of foolscap. Blondell wiggled out from under the bed and returned to the desk, thinking as he brushed dust and cobwebs out of his hair that he had a perfect excuse to chide Annie about the state of things in the nether regions of this room. He would not, though, after having such fun poking about.
The notebook sheets he put on top and the larger sheet beneath them, face down, as a sort of sweet for the end of his reading. He held the notepaper against the direction of the light and bent his nose to it, for Grover’s writing was very bad.
It was a list of names—surnames only, and spelled with originality. Cannaly, Mayon, Kelly, Raftery, Murfy, Handlin, Faygon, Maccrody, Stanton. Blondell read it again and then stared fixedly at the sheet, as though persistence would give it meaning.
Was it a list of people for questioning, gathered at random, from shop signs perhaps, or was it the heart and brain of the nationalist cabal that Grover had come to break? If so, it was useless as it stood, for there weren’t so many surnames in the parish; he’d gotten at least half of them down here, and each name had a dozen or a hundred whole families under its aegis. Blondell bit his lip and put it aside.
The next slip had only one phrase scrawled on it, and it was difficult to read. “Priest to the Droylin, Kerry and France,” it seemed to be.
“Droylin” would be “dreoilín,” or “wren.” But capitalized. Grover was an erratic penman, but Blondell remembered that James Stanton did have a hooker named Dreoilín. And France. That didn’t sound good. Not at all.
Everyone knew that some of the agitators slipped in from France, and more than a few wanted men headed west as the first part of their escape from the authorities.
By priest, Grover could not mean Reverend Palmer. The notion that the Church of Ireland rector was helping spirit criminals in and out of Ireland was idiotic. The Catholics, since the death of old Father Mullin, had only Ó Murchú.
Blondell lifted his gaze out of the window, but he was not seeing the birches, or the backs of the drifting sheep. He remembered that closed, dark neat face listening and nodding and saying nothing. He had gone to Father Ó Murchú just this spring, when the mood in the town had begun to go sour. Had the priest been more help, he would not have been reduced to calling in a hound like Grover.
Blondell grunted and rapped his fingers against the beeswaxed surface of the desk. He went on to the third sheet and turned it up.
“I, Joseph Raftery, late of the …” and here something had been crossed out in black, “son of Henry Raftery of Knockduff by Carraroe, state that to my own present knowledge, my father has advocated the overthrow of the British government in Ireland and has both conspired and committed crimes in the interests of this cause.”
Blondell read that much twice in astonishment and then sat stunned. Anraí, a green nationalist? And Blondell had not even known young Seosamh was back in Ireland. Or had Grover brought his paper with him, using Blondell’s letter of request as pure pretext?
But the writing was identical to that on the notebook slips. Seosamh was not illiterate; why should he dictate to Grover, rather than write himself? Blondell continued reading.
“In the kitchen of the house I witnessed many times meetings in which the violent overthrow of the government was projected and means to that end discussed, as was the murder of certain prominent citizens …”
The words “certain prominent citizens” Blondell read again, and he felt his fingers growing cold. But no names were given.
“Present at these meetings were Tim Murphy, Catholic priest of the parish, Rory MacEever, and Donald Sheel, grooms to my father, and sometimes others, such as Timothy Keene of Maam Cross and Bert Shannasy, tailor of Carraroe.”
“My mother, Anne Raftery, was not in any way involved.”
This line was scrawled in between two others and in another, broader hand. Blondell smiled in scorn, and aloud he said, “Where was she then, Joe—hiding in the barn? Your house is not that big.”
It was not a long document, as betrayals go. It only covered one side of one page. The signature matched the line that had been squeezed in, rather than the body of the writing. It might well be Joe Raftery’s.
The document didn’t mention any murders, but then of course one couldn’t expect Grover to predict or design his own. If he was murdered.
If there was a word of truth in the lot.
Blondell slipped the papers into the drawer of the desk, and he tried to think. He thought about Anraí and the image of two horses came to him, a red one and a grey one. He thought about Ruairí MacEibhir and he saw Toby’s face and nothing more.
Blondell closed the drawer and locked it. He rose, moving very stiffly, and he left the room, locking that door behind him also. He took both keys with him.
Chapter Fourteen
A Great Victory and a Great Loss
Though it was high June, it was raining on the day that Blondell sent his red stallion back to Anraí’s stable, to make ready for the challenge race. A small and very active man by the name of Colm MacCadhain came with it as jockey and to care for the horse for the day and a half before they were to run.
“Does he think we’d damage him?” asked Donncha, with a disgusted twist of the mouth.
“I don’t know,” answered Ruairí, who lay flat out on the hay with his eyes open, a position in which he found himself very frequently of late. “Would we?”
Colm had a similar cause to be offended. “Do you think I’d do your fellow some harm, like put a pin up his sole or blow opium up his nose, that you have to hide him from me? Here’s the Imperator for all to see, and I’ve never glimpsed the hide of your racehorse.”
Anraí smiled indulgently as he stroked the chestnut’s neck. “You have at some time, Colm. I’m sure of it. But he’s being kept on the mountain and won’t be down till Donncha brings him tonight. Then you’ll see.”
“You’ll race a horse straight off the grass? Anraí Ó Reachtaire, you’re too old a hand for that. You’re pulling a trick.”
Anraí was instantly offended, since in a sense he was pulling a trick. “You’ll have to wait and see, Colm MacCadhain. And don’t worry, for you’ll have a good sight of his back end all the way from here to An Cheathrú Rúa.”
Anraí, Donncha, and Ruairí strolled out that early evening, after the rain had stopped. The grass was high and silvery, and stepping on it filled the air with green scent.
“What have you been doing for training, Ruairí my son?” asked the old man, slapping Ruairí in a proprietary manner. “Short bursts? Have you been practicing the course?”
Donncha chuckled. “Almost every night he flings himself into An Cheathrú Rúa and back. What could be better practice?”
Ruairí yawned. “I haven’t done
that for quite a while, Donncha.” He rubbed his face with both hands.
Anraí’s easy confidence began to shake. “But they’ve been running the red on sand and road surface every day for weeks. Do you expect to go against him without conditioning?”
They were over a hill and hidden from house and barn. Ruairí sat himself down and yawned again. “I’ve been training by piling stones on fence walls. By digging holes in the earth. By creeping into cottages without waking the inhabitants.”
Donncha looked at him without expression. “I think, Anraí, that this one has suddenly remembered he’s a fairy. But he’s supposed to knock down the walls, not build them up.”
Ruairí laughed. “It would be easier. But it’s something I promised the priest.”
He glanced at Anraí. “Shall I run from here to An Cheathrú Rúa and back right now, to please you?”
Anraí cleared his throat. “Too late for that, boy. Either you’re in shape or you’re not. But you seem certain enough you can beat the stakes winner.”
“I am. No horse will pass me unless I choose him to.”
Anraí started. “Unless you …” He fell on one knee in front of Ruairí. “Are you telling me that you intend to fairy cheat this race, Ruairí MacEibhir?”
Ruairí blinked in surprise. “Well the fact that I’m in it makes it a fairy cheat, doesn’t it?”
“But …” Anraí clenched a small fist between them. “But you will run it fairly and win it fairly.”
Ruairí only stared. “Or lose it fairly,” he said at last.
“Then so be it.” Anraí sat down, for he was suddenly tired. “Only, I wish I had known you were uncertain before I bet what I have bet.”
Ruairí nudged him. “I am, Anraí. I am certain. I was just sporting with you.”
But Anraí wouldn’t turn, and Donncha’s face was doubtful. “Enough sport, Ruairí. The racing of horses is a sacred matter. Convert yourself now, so I can trim you, for I don’t want to be riding a sloppy pony.”
“You won’t be,” said Anraí, rising again. “For I’m doing the riding.”
“He can’t!” Áine dropped the bowl on the flagstones of the kitchen floor, where it broke into very small pieces.
“He will, he says,” answered Donncha. “And I have no means of budging him, though I reminded him that Blondell has hired a jockey. He said only that it is Blondell’s way to hire people and his own way to ride horses. And that he is smaller and lighter than I am.”
“And older,” said Áine. “Much, much older.” She put her hand on the tin-topped kitchen table, to hold herself up. Donncha found her a chair.
As Colm MacCadhain slept beside his stallion, so Anraí Ó Reachtaire, in the far barn, spread a blanket on the hay beside the grey. He felt fine, in fact stronger than he had for months, but he could not find sleep. At last he opened his eyes to moonlight and found Ruairí, not the horse, leaning over the stall door and watching him.
“Tomorrow is a dangerous day for you, old man,” said the fairy.
Anraí flung the blanket off. “I know that. I may be a fool, but I’m not a blind fool. But do you think I will be in any more danger on your back than standing at the line in An Cheathrú Rúa, straining all the tendons of my heart waiting?”
Ruairí shifted and settled his head on his arms. “I don’t think you will be. But the danger is there, either way.”
“I know it. Now go to sleep.” He heard the sound of hooves on the clay floor as he wrapped himself up again.
It was bright but drizzly on the morning of the race, and ten degrees colder than it had been for all the month of June.
“Fast weather,” said Donncha, as he put the light saddle on the grey horse’s back.
Anraí glanced around a sparkling horizon of grass. “Weather to break a leg.” Anraí’s face was calm, and the wrinkles of ill health and weariness had vanished. His color was high and his blue eyes very clear.
Colm needed Donncha’s help with the chestnut, for the nerves of the company had infected him, as well as the sheen of the silks Colm wore (for he was a professional, working on the Galway track). The short jacket was orange and green, Blondell’s colors, and so rarely had it been used that it bore a phantom checkering of bright lines, from the years folded.
Áine, holding an umbrella, stood in front of the picket fence, where her peas were now in royal bloom, and in her white and scarlet (Anraí’s colors) she stood with the dignity of a queen, and no one, not even Donncha, knew she had been weeping half the night.
Maurice the hosteler stood beside her, for it was his job to start the race, and that would give him grist for the mill of his profession for weeks to come. He danced from foot to foot in the cold. Áine’s gig with the dun cob was tied to a post, waiting for the two of them and Donncha to follow.
The grey horse stood still under his slight rider, while Donncha led the chestnut to the house drive, with a handkerchief blindfolded over his eyes. “God with me, I’m in trouble,” said Colm cheerfully, patting the sweating shoulder. “I only hope I can turn his madness toward An Cheathrú Rúa.”
Anraí pressed his horse as close to the other as he dared. “Lower your stirrups, Colm lad. You will need a deep seat with him more than you need to ride lightly. And don’t let your firm hand become a restraint, for that one will not go forward without a free head.”
The jockey burst out laughing. “It’s likely I’ll follow your advice, isn’t it, Anraí? And you my only competition.”
Anraí remained serious. “You should. I trained that beast, as much as he is trained, and it’s my own back that ached learning what I tell you for free. And he will do best on the roads, for his action is very low and his strength is on the flat.”
Colm now had two minutes of war with Imperator, but he rode him down very well and soothed him at the end. “Whereas you will charge through bogs and up hills, Anraí?” he said, meaning irony.
“Likely I will.” Anraí moved the grey, whom he simply could not think of as Ruairí, away to the line now, for he felt he had done enough for his opponent. But he was glad that he had spoken. His own magnanimity made him feel like a hero, and the clean wind was heady. He spied the ramrod shape of Áine, and he bent to her.
“Áine NíhAnluain, my love, look at me! Isn’t it ridiculous, a bundle of bones like myself … ?”
“You look like Bonaparte himself, Anraí.” And to his surprise and embarrassment she took his left hand from the reins and kissed it, banging his shoulder with the umbrella, and then she kissed the nose of the horse. “Go with God, my old man!”
“Now,” said Maurice, when the two horses were even at the line scratched in the gravel. “This is a steeplechase (as though you could sight any steeple in An Cheathú Rúa from here). So you may take whatever road, path, trail, stream bed, or bank of fog which will get you to the street in front of the Brown Pot first. For I have to tell you the priest has refused permission for us to use his church as finish line.
“What you may not do is interfere with each other or each other’s horse in any way. And it is no purpose of this race to do a beast damage, and Diarmuid Ó Cadhain will be at the other end to look them over, and if there is mark of blood from the lungs or from the whip, you’ll be disqualified and all the bets go to the other.”
Anraí glared at Colm. “Don’t abuse that horse!” he said rudely, for he was getting too excited to think about manners. Colm, who was innocent of such thought, sparked in answer. “Indeed, I think it’s you who ought to have that warning, for distance at speed will drive that heavy pony of yours into the ground!”
“Enough,” called Maurice blandly, though he enjoyed and memorized every acrimonious word. He wiped the increasing rain out of his eyes. “Save your energy for the ride; it’s a long one.” Maurice had worn a waistcoat so that he might draw out his watch from it and so he did. It lacked thirty seconds of ten o’clock. He put his hand up into the air and held it there.
“God keep you both. Or all four of you,
” he added. Fifteen seconds.
Áine’s fingers on the umbrella shaft were losing feeling, she was holding to it so tightly. Donncha ceased from destroying his ragged thumbnail. Five seconds. Rain had turned the chestnut to a bay and the grey almost black.
Maurice’s hand snapped down and hit his thigh. There was a moment of quiet, as though nothing were going to happen after all. As though the horses would sit there under their riders and the day would pass without sound or motion but that of the rain.
Then, together, the horses were off, the red with its head thrown to the sky and the grey roaring. Áine gasped, and the gravel of the drive scattered like a shower amidst the falling rain.
Colm was all amazement at the speed his mount was turning, for he had assumed that Imperator was a spoiled, retired horse of a few races. But he was only a jockey of the Galway tracks, and the red horse had run at Newmarket, and won. He was far more amazed, though, that the grey was keeping up with him. Anraí and he were together, like friends out for a Sunday canter.
“This isn’t a sprint, you know,” he called to the old man. “I think you’d better rate your horse.”
“It’s you who had better do that, Colm,” answered Anraí, and he laughed. The grey was easy to ride, and Anraí gave him his rein. His rating was his own business, for Ruairí was no youngster. Anraí did indeed feel like a man out for a Sunday ride in good weather, for he didn’t even feel the rain that hit his ruddy face.
The drive met the road south of Knockduff, but Ruairí had no intention of staying on it that long, for it added at least two miles to the distance. With a grunt of warning for his rider, he leaped the ditch on the right-hand side of the road and took off through what seemed to be all bog, toward a ridge of steep hills.
Imperator was thrown off his stride by this, for he knew what a race was, and in a race the horses run in the same direction. He whirled, and Colm was almost unseated. He cursed himself for ignoring Anraí’s advice about the stirrups. It took him a minute or more to get the stallion moving in the direction he wanted. “Do I need to use the crop on you already, lad?” he asked aloud, and gave him a light tap on the flank.
The Grey Horse Page 21
