King of the Castle

by Heather Graham

  “Nice and Irish,” Kit murmured.

  “So is Katherine McHennessy,” Robert reminded her with a grin.

  She grimaced in return. “I’ll call her. But I’m still not sure why she’s so convinced I’m the writer she wants. If she wants someone who can research the real Irish literature, it’s in Gaelic—and I don’t understand a word of it.” She fell silent for a moment. “Michael did. He was fluent.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you need. Anyone can read books, but what Kelly wants is something with the personal touch. You’ll need to leave within a month, you’ll have a May or June deadline, and you’re going to need your time for research.” He gave her a little tap on the chin with his knuckles. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she murmured. Robert led her out to the sidewalk. The sun was brilliant, almost mocking. The sun was never bright in New York. It figures. She was planning to leave, so now there was sun.

  “Want to have dinner tonight?” Robert asked her.

  She smiled. “No.”

  “Ah, well, you can’t blame me for trying.”

  “You’re my agent, Robert.”

  “Hey, lots of agents have married their clients.”

  “I have a seven-year-old son—”

  “And last year you had a six-year-old son. The year before that he was five. And next year he’ll be eight. Ten years from now he’ll go away to college. You’ve got to start living, Kit. I may be a bit of a lech, but, hey—what normal, heterosexual man in New York City isn’t?”

  Kit smiled and lowered her lashes. “All right, Robert. We’ll have dinner—as soon as I come home, all right?”

  “Better than nothing.” He gave her a jaunty grin and started down the street. Kit turned and started off in the opposite direction, walking more slowly.

  It was a long walk home, and she took her time. When she reached her street, with its prettily planted trees, she had come to something of a realization. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to Ireland, but she knew that she needed to go back. The past had always been there, in the background, tugging at her.

  She stared up at her apartment window for a long time. And then she began to smile, because Mike would be happy that they were going on such a long and exciting vacation together.

  * * *

  She contacted Kelly O’Hare the next day, and to her relief the woman did sound lovely. What she wanted was a book that combined a look at present-day Ireland with a dissertation on the past that had made it what it was. A guide for travelers but more than that, an insight into the land.

  Kit was astounded to learn that in addition to her nice-sized advance, she was to be given a hefty expense account. In the spring, a photographer would be sent over to join her. It went way beyond anything she might have expected.

  There were a trillion little things to do. Mike had started to pack the moment she had told him they were going. He wasn’t packing clothing, though, just his toys and coloring books.

  She had to call her parents in Connecticut and let them know what she was doing, and she had to repeat Robert’s words to her when her mother expressed concern about Kit returning to a place where she had known such tragedy.

  “Mom, Michael has been dead for eight years.”

  “And we weren’t even able to be with you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She could almost see her mother wringing her hands. “Oh, Kit, I don’t like it. If only Michael had lived! You’d have a score of children and a beautiful house in the suburbs, instead of that little box in the city—”

  “Mother, Michael and I didn’t want a score of children. His death was tragic, and a waste, but nothing can bring him back, and I’ve been living a long time without him now.” Eons longer than I got to live with him, she added silently. “And I like my apartment in the city.”

  “It’s no good for Mike. He should have a big yard. And a dog.”

  “Right, Mom. Fine.”

  “Don’t let him drink the water, Kit.”

  “Mother, there’s nothing wrong with Irish water!”

  “Yes, well, be careful anyway.”

  “I will, Mother,” she said softly, then added on a slightly forced but cheerful note, “Mike and I will come out for a weekend before we leave, okay?”

  After that phone call, she walked into her son’s room. Mike, his hands behind his head, was watching something on cable. He smiled when he saw her.

  “We’re really leaving, huh, Mom?”

  She walked to his bed. “Shove over,” she told him. He did so, and she half sat, half leaned beside him, ruffling his hair. “Yeah, we’re really leaving.”

  He was silent for a minute. Then he asked, “Grandma is upset, huh?”

  “A little. You know Grandma.”

  Again he was silent. “Are you upset, Mom?” he finally asked.

  “No.” She was only lying a little. “Why should I be? These people are giving me an awful lot of money, Dickens.”

  “My father died there,” Mike said matter-of-factly. Or perhaps not so matter-of-factly. She saw that he was watching her from the corner of his eye.

  “We don’t have to go to that town,” she heard herself say. But we will, she thought, a little shiver running up her spine. We will. I know we will….

  “It’s all right,” Mike said, and she was surprised that a seven-year-old could sound so mature. “I’d like to see where he’s buried.”

  He said it without pain; he had never known Michael.

  “I am part Irish,” he added, a touch of pride in his voice.

  The normal beating of her heart seemed to stop. She felt a hard thud; then it started pounding normally again.

  “Yes, Mike, you are part Irish.” She rose, kissed his forehead and pulled up his covers. “Television off now, Dickens. It’s late.”

  He obligingly hit the button, and the room was plunged into darkness. She was in the doorway when she heard his voice again, very much that of a little boy.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, Dickens.”

  Kit didn’t stay up much later herself. But no matter how she plumped her pillows, she couldn’t sleep.

  Eventually she rose and boiled water for tea. But once she had made her cup of tea, she found herself staring into it, then impulsively splashing the liquid down the drain as if she had seen a bug in it.

  She drank half a glass of wine instead, while puffing on a cigarette and staring out the window at the empty street. The distant night sounds of New York seemed comforting to her.

  At last she went back to bed and fell into a restless sleep. Then she started to dream, as she hadn’t dreamed in years.

  Images filled her dreams. Images of Michael, laughing, telling her stories from his book. Leaning over her and tickling her and speaking so mischievously. She could hear his voice as he said, “Ahh, for those pagan days! The goat-god, or the high chief in his stead, was all-powerful. I mean, there was nothing like ‘I’ve got a headache tonight!’ She was dragged out to the altar, drugged and acquiescent and sweet, and there she became the bride of the god. And the next year, when she had borne the god’s heir, she would be dragged out again and her blood would be shed to feed the land.”

  “Oh, quit it, Michael! Or your bride will have a headache!” she’d told him, breathless, laughing…and scared, too. And she pushed him away in her dream, as she had in life. “I’ll get the champagne!”

  In her sleep, Kit fought the images, but they came back to her. Slowly, but with incredible vibrancy.

  Michael was gone. She called his name, then saw the door swinging in the wind. She ran after him, barefoot and clad only in her sheer white silky nightgown. She ran into the night, across the meadow, into the wind and toward the call of the sea.

  She saw the man, then, and she paused, but he had turned to her already. He was tall against the night, like a god himself. She didn’t think he was real, but he was, and when she stuttered and stumbled, he answered h
er with soft laughter against the distant shrilling of pipes and flutes. He gave her his coat and took her hand, and they walked together.

  He called her back from the cliff, but she wouldn’t go to him. She was already crawling down the jagged rocks. Michael was there. Staring at her unseeingly, whispering…

  “Come away, girl, he cannot hear you. Come away…”

  Strong arms carried her when she fell.

  She awakened in the castle. They were all there: Liam O’Grady, the graying constable. Molly, Doc Conar—and Justin. Arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the door frame. He wouldn’t let them question her when she cried; he calmed her when others suggested that Michael should be taken back to the U.S. He brought Father Pat to her; he arranged for the service and for the burial, and he was there for her throughout…. She saw him standing there in the wind, pointing to the sea, laughing when she innocently asked him if he had seen the subs that had been out there during World War II, and telling her that he might look ancient, but he was really only twenty-eight.

  That picture faded. The dream turned into a nightmare.

  It was night. Dark and misty and whirling with the sound of the pipes and the banshee shriek of the wind.

  She saw the cliff. People were standing there, all the people from the village. They were forming a circle around her. And they were chanting.

  “Kayla…kayla…kayla…Kayla!”

  Molly’s face swam before her. Doc’s…Liam’s. They were forming a circle; they were coming closer and closer….

  Justin was suddenly in her dream. He didn’t speak to her; he just smiled. He was naked, walking silently toward her, with a long, slow, sure stride.

  She was frightened, and she wanted to run, but she couldn’t, because she was tied to a high slab of rock. She wanted to cry, and so she taunted him again.

  “The King of the High Hill, the King of the High Hill. You’re the King of the High Hill. The O’Niall.” Laughter followed. Her own laughter.

  Then, suddenly, Justin was gone, and the goat-god was there instead. His eyes were on fire, and talons stretched from his fingers. Talons that dripped with blood. She started to scream as he wrote across her stomach with the blood: “KAYLA.”

  * * *

  Kit sat up in her bed, sweating and shaking. As always, she looked around to reassure herself that she was in her apartment in New York. She was. Her heartbeat slowed.

  Disgusted, she lay down again, but she didn’t close her eyes. She stared up at the ceiling. Had she been a little bit in love with Justin O’Niall, but too ashamed to admit it, so that she had deluded herself into living a dream in order to have him? She hadn’t understood much about sexuality then; she had loved Michael very much, and it would have seemed like a tremendous sin to her then to have admitted that her body was as lonely as her soul.

  Something strange had happened. Very strange. She hadn’t invented Michael’s death, nor the death of Mary Browne. And some of those villagers had been awfully weird. Nice, but weird. And very much in awe of Justin O’Niall.

  And Justin…

  Justin had been a very appealing man, and she had been lonely. There was nothing too hard to understand about what had happened.

  She punched her pillow hard and made herself close her eyes. She wound her fingers around her little cross, and in time fell asleep. She didn’t dream again.

  * * *

  Kit awoke feeling far more tired than when she had gone to bed. She also felt a little sheepish—and stupid. Her dreams always seemed silly in the morning. Yawning, she stumbled out of her room, glad that her coffeemaker had a timer and that she could quickly give herself a good shot of caffeine.

  With her coffee cup in her hand, she glanced into Mike’s room and saw that he was still sleeping. She smiled, stretched and decided to enjoy her coffee, her morning cigarette and the newspaper before the apartment was filled with the sounds of mock battle and morning cartoons.

  Kit sneaked quickly out her front door in her worn terry robe to retrieve her paper, then carried it back to the kitchen table without glancing at it. She lit a cigarette—yesterday hadn’t been so bad, she’d only smoked half a pack—inhaled deeply, sipped her coffee, and spread the newspaper out on the table.

  She gasped—inhaling her coffee instead of her cigarette—and went into a spasm of coughing that brought tears to her eyes.

  Justin O’Niall had made the front page of the Times. The headline seemed to blaze. “‘Love Buns’ Heiress Murdered in County Cork. Prominent Irish Architect Chief Suspect.”

  Only Kit’s eyes moved; the rest of her was frozen as she quickly scanned the story.

  Susan Accorn had been strangled and cast into the Irish Sea sometime during the night of the first of September. That was fact.

  The rest, Kit decided, was conjecture.

  According to the reporter, Susan and her fiancé, Justin O’Niall, had quarreled at his ancestral home. The engagement had been broken. Suspicion—abetted by the fact that an “acquaintance” of his, a young girl, had also been found murdered eight years earlier—was therefore directed toward Justin O’Niall.

  Kit read the article again and again. Her coffee grew cold; her cigarette burned down to the filter.

  There was no evidence against Justin. In fact, the article was just short of libelous. The last paragraph included a quote from Justin, asserting his innocence and threatening legal action against anyone who saw fit to slander him.

  “Good for you, Justin,” Kit muttered aloud. Then she realized that she was shaking, vividly recalled that first time she had seen him.

  He had been standing on the cliffs, alone, while Michael had been dying on the rocks far below. She remembered believing—and never quite being convinced that she was wrong—that Michael had seen something and had been pushed to his death for what he had seen. Because a young girl, Mary Browne, had been murdered that night, her throat slit, her body tossed to the waves.

  Kit frowned, trying to remember, trying to go back. Yes, Mary had died the same night; Kit could still recall the whispered rumors, since the girl had just been delivered of an illegitimate baby. She could remember Justin’s total impatience with some of the talk; he had never been the girl’s lover, and he considered it laughable that he could be accused. The rumors had died away—because he had been innocent, Kit was sure. She had come to know him quite well, and his innocence was something she had become convinced of. Still, the memories were coming like a surging tide. His family would have been local chieftains. And before that they would have been the druids, because the druids had virtually ruled the people. Through fear. Through sacrifice and death…

  “What am I thinking?” she whispered, threading her fingers through her hair and rocking slightly in her chair. She had known Justin O’Niall, and though she had never understood what had happened between them, she couldn’t believe he was a murderer.

  Her heart started to pound. She knew that she was going to see him. She’d always known that someday she would have to go back. She could fight it from here to eternity, but it was still there. The haunting, frightening, exquisite, compelling allure.

  Her throat constricted. No….

  Yes.

  CHAPTER 2

  By the first of October, Kit was on her way.

  She was determined to make this trip special for Mike, so they didn’t fly straight into Shannon, but booked a flight to London, instead. She had decided that he should see something of the city, and he certainly didn’t mind.

  He liked the guards at Buckingham Palace, and he was fascinated when they wandered around Soho. The Victoria and Albert Museum didn’t impress him much, and she forced herself to remember that he was only seven, and not really old enough yet to appreciate the arts, or the wonders of history.

  He did like the Tower of London—she was sure he was imagining knights in armor and all the poor wretches who had been prisoners there. He liked Westminster Abbey, too, and it was there, among the tombs and the monuments to Engl
and’s kings and queens and great men, that he asked her when they would leave for Ireland.

  “Aren’t you having a good time?”

  “Sure. But when are we going over to Ireland?”

  Kit shrugged and ruffled his hair. “It’s a short flight to Shannon. We can go anytime.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” she promised.

  They went the next day. She was still determined to make the trip special, so when the car-rental agency offered her a new Toyota—like the one Michael and she had rented—she turned it down and insisted on a serviceable, much older Volvo, instead.

  Before setting off, Kit studied her map and smiled at Mike. “Hey, want to see Blarney Castle today?”

  “Do we have to?”

  She had been certain he would want to see the castle. He was a normal kid, and normal kids loved that kind of thing. Kit frowned.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “Yeah, just not today. I want to see where my father is buried.”

  Well, I don’t! Kit wanted to snap. But she had known she would be going back, so she might as well do it now and get it over with.

  She studied the map again. “All right, Mike. There’s a little town just before the coast called Bailtree. They advertise a few bed-and-breakfast places. We’ll check into one, get something to eat somewhere, and if it’s still light I’ll take you to the cemetery.”

  “Will we get to the Irish Sea?” Mike asked excitedly.

  Kit hesitated. “Probably not today. It will get dark early and…the cliffs aren’t safe.”

  “Mom…”

  “Michael! They’re not safe!”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and fell silent, staring straight ahead. Kit started the car, ignoring him. It wasn’t difficult, she had to concentrate on staying on the left-hand side of the road.

  About twenty minutes later, they left the city behind. Kit saw that her son was no longer sitting stiff-necked but was staring avidly out the window.

  He glanced her way, his growing excitement alive in his eyes. “Look how green it is! So much grass!”