These had suffered the common dispersal. Four had gone to the sea, three to America, and two to England. Two others had gone to their graves early, and only Anraí had gone to the horses. It was noted that the passion for horses was born into a man, not sprung out of convenience or through the blood of his parents, for there had been no horsemen among the Ó Reachtaires of Inchamacinna. And look at young Tim Ó Cadhain, surrounded by Diarmuid’s fine herd, with a calling for the priesthood so strong in him he was in the seminary by age thirteen. And then, there was Seosamh…
It had been great fun, remembered old Micheál Ó Ceallaigh, for his brothers and sisters and cousins to sit on Anraí, who was small and as a child would fling himself upon his oppressors in rages where he felt no pain. So belligerent had he been, in fact, that one was forced to sit on him until the fit was over.
Áine could not deny it. “But there’s no one who’s tried that in the last sixty years and got away with it,” she added, in her protectiveness feeling just a bit like flinging herself upon Mícheál. And the old man shook his head. “Anraí has done his own share of sitting on people, I think. Though he was a true friend.”
“A true and loyal friend,” added three voices together, and there was a raising of glasses all around.
Áine did not raise her empty teacup. “His loyalty was to his horses, first, and his rages all on their behalf.” She said this because she still possessed the right to criticize, and felt a responsibility to keep the wake realistic.
And she sighed, her mind back on the dozen Ó Reachtaires. The sea took the four and did not give one to old age. Not one. England gave back one, when she had become too old to work, but Anraí had been the last one living.
She had given him no children. Except, of course, Seosamh.
Even in the long, talking hours of the wake, Áine did not learn what Seosamh had done to Donncha, for that conversation remained in the room with the pipe smoke, and the door was kept closed.
Máire Standín was at the wake, representing her small tribe. She sat in the same room as Áine, but because of her lack of seniority or connection to the Ó Reachtaires, on a bench at the other side. Many young women in her situation had brought candles and knitting or spinning gear, but Máire had brought only a book. She read very well by dim light, and all assumed it was a prayerbook.
She was not used to being up all night, but rather only half the night, and that in the evening. So Morrie of the Dreoilín found her nodded over her pages when he came at dawn, and he closed the book upon her hands.
“A Mháirín, open your eyes,” he said. Not whispering, for a whisper carries in a crowded room.
Her heavy brown eyes opened very wide and quickly and her whole body tensed. “What, Morrie?”
“There was a boat in by moonlight, to tell me that the English Major Hous is on the road from Galway. With soldiers in wagons.”
She took a very guarded breath and glanced up at the ceiling. She was surprised to see a grey light filling the spaces between the rafters. All around her were others that hadn’t kept the “wake,” and, some kind heart had stuffed a roll of knitting behind Áine’s head as she lay sleeping against the high back of the enclosed bench.
“So what will you do?”
“In ten minutes I won’t be here,” he said calmly. Máire looked straight into Morrie’s face. The man looked half asleep, but his eyes were glistening. “Perhaps you should come, too.”
She grimaced. “I’m in no danger, Morrie. It’s Tadhg Ó Murchú who must go, for if someone has betrayed us at all, he’s put his head in a noose.”
“But he won’t. I’ve been there at his window already. He says he has a funeral this morning, and likely the soldiers mean nothing.”
“English soldiers don’t travel under moonlight for nothing,” answered Máire. “Did he suggest you stay, too, since the soldiers ‘mean nothing’?”
Morrie smiled grimly. “He didn’t. And I must go, a Mháirín. My own head is in a noose, and it won’t help his at all that way.” Máire put her hand upon his and squeezed it, regardless whether anyone was looking. Morrie was gone, and so, in five minutes, was Máire.
A morning wind was coming up. After the fug of the hostelry, the eastern glow was dazzling and it was bitter cold. Máire’s eyes were red from tobacco fumes from the bar as she paced the dead and empty street.
They would come and get him and take him away. Perhaps they were already here, but no—she turned in a circle on the gravel—no troop of British soldiers would enter Carraroe unknown, not even at dawn, with most of the population at a wake. But soon. It was not so far to Galway City, and no boat went much faster than a slow wain.
They would take him away, and he’d be shamed in front of the strangers and abjured by his own church, and then they’d hang him for sedition. For sedition: that rock of honesty and devotion to his people. And he wouldn’t lift a hand to stop them. Like Christ.
But this was Ó Murchú, and he knew he wasn’t Christ. He’d be scandalized at the thought. And he was always a canny man. Máire leaned against the grocer’s wall, not caring if the whitewash came off. She felt a strong desire to throw stones at his window. To hiss at him. To shake him.
And here came the priest down the street toward the hostelry now.
Ó Murchú could not miss her. She was the only dark thing on this pale landscape of greys. She hurried toward him, but he didn’t move a foot to join her.
“It will be an early funeral,” he said, though looking into her face he knew very well she had not come to talk about the funeral.
“Get out of here while you can!” Her voice cracked.
Very quietly he said, “Morrie can go. Even you can go if you feel the need, Máire, for your time is your own. But I cannot go without giving up all, for if I run away from my duties here there will be no doubt in the world that I am afraid of this Major Hous.”
“You should be afraid of him. We don’t know what that man Grover found out, but I’d be willing to bet it was near everything. Or why would he then disappear between morning, and night like that?”
Ó Murchú looked away. “I’m not worried about Grover. I don’t think his disappearance is connected.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ó Murchú saw Maurice appear in his doorway, his dark hair rumpled over his ears. He was yawning. Immediately the priest turned and went to him, leaving Máire shivering alone in the street.
Her anger and her worry fought for the upper hand. The man was fey, fairy touched, and would go to his doom with a complacent smile. Fool!
The thought of fairy and of fool met in her mind. “Ruairí,” she whispered. “You might have been of some use, for once.” In another moment the idea possessed her. She blundered between the hostelry and the next house and came out of the yards and over a series of low and broken walls until she was on the point of land above the bay.
“Ruairí MacEibhir!” she screamed into the wind. “You said you loved me! You called me your queen of heaven, which is blasphemy, and now you are gone!” Her words were gone, too, eaten by the roaring air.
Freezing, buffeted on the face and arms, she sank down on the naked stone promontory. For a moment her mind was black.
Then Máire knew how she was to summon this spirit. She knew as though she had been told. Kneeling, she put one hand on the cold, mica-flecked rock, and the other she raised, palm open, fingers spread, against the wind. She lost her shawl to the wind, and it hung from her by only one corner which was caught in her waistband. Her hair snapped free of its ribbon tie and whipped everywhere in its black mass.
“Son of the granite, son of the wind, return to me at my call. I am Máire Iníon Chaitlín, daughter of your distant kinsman and half blood to you, and by your oaths I command you.”
The wind came up screaming and Máire slipped on the stone. The wind was a blur in her eyes and he was a white blur in her eyes and he was pulling her to her feet, standing between her and the wind. His face was as pleasant and as foolish a
s always.
“A Mháire, a Mháirín, Empress of my Heart, all you had to do was to call me! To come to you I do not need to be tied and dragged.”
She groaned and he kissed her once, impulsively. “A Mháire, what is it? You are distracted.”
“You … you were gone,” she began.
“I was, certainly. But not for long. And did that alone destroy your peace, darling?”
“We need you,” she said, in a childish voice, and then tears started in her eyes. “There are soldiers coming for Tadhg Ó Murchú.”
His brown eyes blinked twice, taking this in. “So. I see,” he said, and with odd dignity he released her arms.
“And he is your friend, isn’t he?” Máire asked, for she thought he might refuse to help.
“Oh, he is.” Ruairí stepped lightly off the stone and lifted her after him. He was still blinking rapidly, and he stared widely all around at the stones and the sedges and the stripe of foaming water on the shore.
“I’ve gone the distance, in these few days,” he murmured.
Seosamh came to the hostelry soon after Máire had left it, and it seemed to him that all desires would be granted to a man who was up so early and about his ends.
People were leaving to tidy up for the funeral, which would be very soon now. Seosamh cut in between Siobhán NiCeallaigh and her husband as they stood at the doorway, feeling the brightness of the morning on their faces.
Inside was a smell of cold ham and cooked eggs, which woke his stomach roughly. There was his mother, in the parlor that didn’t possess a bar. Her face was red and shiny, and she still dabbed under her ears with the towel Maurice had put at her disposal when he had heated water for her in the kitchen. She was all dark from the neck down, for she had borrowed a black blouse from a cousin of hers. Sitting next to her was Tadhg Ó Murchú, adding the black severity of his cassock to her mourning. His foot was up on the bench, with the endless-seeming row of cassock buttons running beside his shin, and he had his knee braced against his hands.
Both of them looked up, and the priest’s round face did not alter its calm, closed expression. But Áine stepped toward him.
“Ah, a Sheosaimh! You are making it to the funeral after all. You have even borrowed a good suit for it.”
Seosamh put his hands in his pockets as she hugged him. “Of course I am, Mother. I would have been at the wake, too, but … I wasn’t well.”
“That’s a shame,” she said, releasing him. She didn’t question him further as to his illness, but she smiled very sadly. She glanced away from him, down at the black, water-ringed table, where a pair of dark gloves were hiding under her white missal.
They were going to walk out, he saw, and his moment would be lost. He couldn’t wait until the funeral and the burying were over.
“Mother, I think Donncha has stolen one of Father’s horses.”
Áine dropped the gloves again. “Donncha did what?”
“Stole the grey horse that won the race. It isn’t to be found at the stables, and he won’t admit it even belonged to Father.”
“The grey horse! Oh, Sheosaimh. Donncha didn’t steal that fellow. He was telling the strict truth. That horse never was Anraí’s.” Áine’s face was almost merry as she looked at her son, and she hid her mouth behind her hand. “The horse more belongs to Father Ó Murchú here.”
The priest took his cue blandly, but promised himself a short lecture to Áine on the nature of truth. “He was only lent me, for a while, in order that I might put him to work. I had no idea he was a racehorse. What is it you want of him, a Sheosaimh?”
Seosamh leaned against the doorjamb, to keep from falling. Part of the money he had taken for the horse was in his pocket, but the rest of it was on his back, in the form of shirt and coat. He realized that some answer was expected of him.
“I only felt it my job to keep track of the property. To keep things safe.”
Áine’s smile faded. Hesitantly she said, “Your father left a will, you know. He made it in Clifden last week, before the race.”
Seosamh straightened himself. “Oh, I know well the old man left everything to you. That’s not an issue with me. But someone has to …”
“He didn’t leave it to me, a Sheosaimh.” Áine looked at him and then out the door, where the light was growing. “He … thought that since the stables have always operated so near to the wind, as it were, that any change might drive us out of the business completely. So he left the place to the grooms—Donncha and Ruairí—with instructions to take care of me. And I’m sure they will admirably, a Sheosaimh, for what else have they been doing all along but taking care of Anraí and myself?”
His ears filled with the ringing of shock or sickness. His belly seemed to favor sickness. “Donncha? And the other one …”
Now Áine’s face drew in pain, watching him. “But son, you know while I have a roof over my head, I will take care of …”
Seosamh had staggered through the doorway, and he leaned his arm against the wall of the hostelry in the position taken by many men before him, men who had drunk too much and eaten too little. But then his body seemed to change its mind, and instead of vomiting he took off running down the street, past the weary procession of mourners leaving the wake, and the decorous procession of those who had already changed for the funeral.
Past the wagon of the Ó Cadhains he ran, and that numerous clan stared down at him silently, knowing who he was. He almost knocked down Seán Standún, who was still very delicate about his feet and who had come to the funeral on the arm of his youngest daughter. She cried out as he blundered by, perhaps in anger.
He was out of the town and out of breath, but he didn’t stop to recover.
A few miles along, just north of Lochán an Bhuilín, he came face to face with the soldiers.
Chapter Sixteen
Stolen Away by the Fairies
“But if he refuses to be saved, my darling, then what am I to do about it? What is it the part of a friend to do? It was Tadhg Ó Murchú himself who stopped me from coming to your rescue in your battle with the bailiff.”
Máire crouched down to be out of the sea wind. “You were going to rescue me?”
“To stand by you, at any rate. Though as it turns out, you didn’t need me. And that’s what the man said, that you’d do better by yourself.”
“He did?” A very young and boyish smile lit her dark face. “Well, God bless him for it. And you, for your desire to help. But it was only for my sake, wasn’t it? You told me you don’t care for the Irish people.”
Ruairí didn’t miss the smile, nor the fact that it came with the mention of Ó Murchú’s sentiments. He squatted down beside her and did not touch. “It was for you, certainly. But I would do it again without you, a Mháirín, for the people of this parish have become as sacred to me as my own kin.”
“Is that the truth?” Máire’s brown eyes were startling and wide in the early light. Ruairí swallowed and looked away. “It’s true enough, lass. It’s a geis on me now, that their labors should be mine.”
She put her hand upon his shoulder. “But I don’t want to waste time talking about that,” he said, and slid it off again. “Let’s be about this rescue.”
It had not seemed to Máire that much time had passed while she stood by the noise of the ocean, but evidently the funeral had begun. The street was empty except for the sound of the church organ. The two of them came out from between the buildings into brightness. It would not stay cold, today.
“He cannot flee, for that would be to betray his priesthood. But, of course, if they catch him the bishop won’t have two thoughts about casting him out, either. What we must do …”
“It’s too late,” whispered Ruairí, for his good ears had caught a sound along the road, and in another moment Máire, too, could hear the beat of feet moving together.
Major Hous came down the street with his coat open and his hat under his arm, more weary than the soldiers who marched behind him. They had tra
veled from Galway seated on benches, while he had ridden. He approached the rectory and then paused, listening to the organ. At last he directed his men toward the church itself.
There was no one at all in the street except a girl standing by a grey pony, and he wondered if this emptiness was because there had been word of his coming or just another example of the indolence of the Irish. As he trotted closer he saw that it was a fair-sized horse, but its pony face and the unusual size of the girl had conspired to trick his eye.
His mount, though it had walked through the night, grew very nervous and shied away from the pair. Hous sent his lieutenant and five men around to the back of the building, while a dozen more walked up the worn steps, their rifles pointed up at the sky.
A shriek greeted the arrival of the soldiers, and Father Ó Murchú glanced up, though not in great surprise. “… that a man with failings—and that is every one of us here—can still be a holy man and the beloved child of God.”
It was a sound statement and showed some insight, but none of the congregation was listening. They were on their feet and staring at the rifles in the doorway and at the ordinary male faces, set in watchfulness, that the stained glass of the windows converted into demons.
Áine, mystified, moved from her front pew to stand in front of the coffin. Her white missal shone in her black, gloved hands.
Major Hous entered the church then, alone of the company. Father Ó Murchú addressed him from the pulpit in English. “Are you going to interrupt this funeral, Officer?”
Hous felt the eyes of all these dowdy, poor people on him. He returned their stares with a certain coldness. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
Ó Murchú’s gaze was not cold, but neither did it give anything away. He continued to look at, and through, the major as he spoke, though he was not speaking to him. “… For the first thing we learn in our catechism is that God is our Father and He knows us. Not content to have only created us, body and soul, He sent His Son, who is One with Him, down to be one with us, and there is nothing of your pain here that He does not know and feel: neither the wind that cracks your faces nor the rain that rots the bedding away. In the night He is with you in the darkness, and in the day digging in the garden, and always on the ocean, where you have no promise of return. He was with Anraí Ó Reachtaire on the day of his birth, and I am certain He is with him now. And I am certain He is with us in this church, as we mourn Anraí and honor him and release him in our hearts, to go back to his Father at last.”
The Grey Horse Page 24
