Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  Columba held her breath. He wants to get us killed, she thought. Has he gone mad? He looked mad. His legs were spread. His face was red. There were sparks coming out of his eyes.

  The big man looked at him for a moment, then he turned his head and addressed his fellows behind him. He saw they were grinning. He grinned himself.

  ‘He wants to dance,’ he said to them, ‘the little cock wants to dance.’

  He turned back to Dominick. Suddenly the sword swung.

  It went around his head. It described a parabola of light in the sunshine. It nearly cut the hair on the top of Dominick’s head, so close it came, and Dominick didn’t flinch, and then the man roared: ‘Now, dance,’ and the sword swung low. Dominick in the split second before he acted knew that if he didn’t act his legs would be severed at the knees, because he thought no swordsman could halt the swing of the heavy sword in time.

  So he jumped.

  There was a loud laugh from the Joyce men, but then as soon as he jumped Dominick ran, and butted his man in the belly with his head. That knocked the sword from his hand and the wind from his body; and as his hands reached to cover his belly, Dominick took a grip of his arms, fell on his back, stuck his feet into the injured belly, levered with his legs, and the man, big and tall as he was, went flying over his head to land with a back-breaking thump on the bank of the river.

  Dominick was up and reaching for the sword almost as soon as he hit the ground. He got his hand to the hilt of it, but before he could raise it he felt the point of a knife pricking at his neck. He stayed still.

  And then from behind them there came a deep voice from the other side of the river.

  ‘Use the knife, Traolac, and you die.’

  Dominick felt the point lifting, and turned his head. Morogh Dubh was standing there. His hands were on his hips, but there were about ten men behind him who didn’t have their hands on their hips. Two of them had muskets and they were taking aim.

  Dominick rose slowly. Traolac released the grip he had on him. What’s wrong with me? Dominick wondered. Why did I do a thing like that? Why did I lose my temper? I could have talked my way out of trouble easy enough. He went over to his children. They were frightened. The eyes of the woman were frightened too.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to them. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Peter took his hand. Held on to it. Dominick was trembling. He turned to Morogh.

  ‘Thank you for coming in time,’ he said.

  ‘Have they injured any of you?’ Morogh asked.

  ‘No,’ said Dominick, ‘ only our feelings.’

  ‘They can be repaired,’ said Morogh. ‘You did a foolish thing, Diarmuid,’ he said to the man who was raising himself from the ground rubbing his spine. They have Murdoc’s protection. He’s not a man to anger.’

  Surprisingly, Diarmuid laughed.

  ‘To the devil in hell with Murdoc and his anger,’ he said. ‘The little man is the one not to anger.’ He came over towards Dominick still rubbing his back. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked. ‘ It was a brave trick. You must teach it to me. Sure, you knew we were only having a game?’

  ‘Were you?’ Dominick asked. ‘It seemed very real to me.’

  ‘Maybe it was,’ said Diarmuid, ‘ part of it. You have a nice wife.’ He was looking at Columba. His eyes were crinkling. He was smiling. ‘It would have been a pleasure to ravish her,’ Columba tried to keep her face frozen, but the blood rose in her cheeks. She bit her lip. ‘See, she has forgiven our jape,’ he went on. ‘You must too. They will have a new old saying in the language after today. You’ll see. They will say that such a thing or such a person is nearly as good as the little man. Eh?’ He held out his hand. Dominick looked at it for a moment. Then he put his own hand into it. The huge one closed on his. But it was a warm clasp and sincere. Isn’t that the curse of us, he thought; one minute we are like murderers and the next minute we would charm the birds off the trees?

  Diarmuid spread his arms wide.

  ‘So now, Morogh, you see we are all friends again and the MacMahons have licence to walk every inch of the Joyce country without a sinner to say them nay.’

  ‘As long as they have armed men at their backs,’ said Morogh grimly.

  Diarmuid thought this was funny. He slapped his thigh.

  ‘I don’t mind that,’ he said, ‘ if they bring their own food.’

  ‘Bring up the little horses,’ said Morogh to one of his men. ‘You are getting careless too, Diarmuid,’ he said. ‘Eleven of us came within a birdshot of you and you had no guard out.’

  Diarmuid spread his arms wide.

  ‘The Joyces are civilized people,’ he said, ‘and not only that but they are filled with misting good nature. Why should they set out guards against their friends from Rin Mhil?’

  Morogh grunted.

  The man had brought up two of the grey horses. Tie your bundles on to one of them,’ Morogh said to Dominick.

  Dominick went into the stream and started to unload the boat.

  Diarmuid was full of charm now. He bent in front of Mary Ann.

  ‘Did we frighten you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘We didn’t mean to,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mary Ann,’ she said. ‘ You nearly killed my daddy.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mary Ann,’ he said, ‘your daddy nearly killed me. You must come and see us, and bring your mother.’ He was looking at Columba admiringly. She looked straight back at him.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ she said in English, ‘I am not her mother.’

  He was taken aback. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you are not the wife of the little man?’ The English words were slow on his tongue.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘And who are you the wife of?’ he asked.

  ‘You wouldn’t know,’ she said.

  ‘I am wanting a wife,’ he said then.

  ‘You will be wanting,’ she said. He laughed. She laughed.

  ‘Now,’ Morogh called, ‘we are ready.’

  They crossed the river. There were two free horses. Morogh helped Columba on to one of them, stepped back to see that she could handle him well, and then mounted his own, leaned down and hefted Peter on to the horse behind him. Dominick bent to Mary Ann and mounted her in front of him and the band of horsemen set off across the valley towards a high hill in front of them.

  Dominick turned to look.

  Diarmuid was standing there still. When he saw Dominick looking he waved his hand. Dominick jerked his head at him. He wasn’t going to forgive him that easily. He saw Columba looking too. She got a wave and she waved back. She was near to Dominick.

  He saw the way her eyes were glinting.

  ‘I suppose you enjoyed all that,’ he said a trifle sourly. She looked at him.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. ‘ I enjoyed it.’

  ‘I suppose you call that really living,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you started it,’ she said a trifle indignantly.

  Dominick was silent.

  ‘Well, it’s true for her, Daddy,’ said Mary Ann. ‘ You lost your temper again.’

  ‘Go on up out of that!’ said Dominick, digging his bare heel into the warm sides of the little horse.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE COUNTRY through which they travelled induced silence in them. They followed the course of the river down the valley, crossing and criss-crossing its shallow bed where it meandered in their way. The horses were very sure-footed and sturdy.

  Then their way rose out of the valley between two sets of hills towards a gap that reared high in the air above them. The ground became stony and between the stones it was soft. Sometimes the hooves of the horses went deeply in, almost throwing the riders, and were delicately extracted with a sogging sound. Only where they passed through wooded paths was the ground hard under them and the horses walked eagerly on the pine needles. The sun was shut off from them. The mountains on the left of them reared away tall and black and shadow
ed, but streams seamed their sides, fell freely, and catching the light flashed occasionally like diamonds glittering under a torch light.

  The horses picked their way with great intelligence – more intelligence than he himself could have shown, Dominick thought. Places he would have avoided they moved over freely, and the places that looked good to him, he saw, were truly dangerous. With no saddle under them it took quite an effort of the thighs to hold on as the horse struggled upwards. His was a grey horse. He had a short silvery mane to which Mary Ann held tightly. The woman was riding ahead of him. He could admire her. She was used to horses, he saw. He could see her face as she looked around her. Her eyes were glinting. She drew deep breaths into her lungs. She liked it. She would approve of everything.

  For himself, he felt gloomy. The height of the shaded mountains depressed him. They looked lonely and forbidding. He thought of the way the wind would roar down the valleys in the wintertime. He supposed it was only natural to feel depressed now that they were on the last leg of their roaming. The roughly clad men ahead of him and their shouting and calling seemed queer in his eyes and ears. He tried to feel that they were his people and he was theirs, but it was difficult. It would take time to get to know them. It would take time to know how to live with mountains.

  Then with a final spurt they got into the gap and the declining sun shone full in their faces.

  Here in the gap there were other men sitting as their horses cropped at the coarse grass. They rose and greeted Morogh and his men with shouts. They had three large wolfhounds with them, great dogs almost as tall as the little horses, with shaggy hair, small heads and melancholy eyes. Some of them barked. They had a deep bark, like a sound passing through a tunnel. There were two dead stags lying on the ground.

  Dominick looked ahead of him and sucked in his breath. The ground fell away steeply in front of them. It was cut into a gorge in the middle by a river that ran madly from a great height on the right of them. And it ran down and down towards the sea. The sea it was. Unrippled, flaming with colour as the sun prepared to bury itself in it. He could see it pushing its way like a broad thread far into the land between high hills, like a wide river of immense power laced with black seaweed-covered rocks. The finger of sea wound away until the mountain on his right cut it from his sight. Two long blue lakes lay below at their feet. They were backed by two mountain peaks, and beyond the mountains was the wide sea with a big island and a small island and many black unconquerable rocks.

  Peter was looking back at him. When he caught his eye he raised his hands over his head and clapped them three times, then he pointed back. Dominick turned. He looked the way they had come. He saw Loc Orbsen, over which they had travelled, spread out like a great blue and green tapestry, with the mountains cupping it at this end, and reaching away into the misty flat lands on the other side. It is a wild and beautiful land this, he thought, and then looking at the big men around them in their coarse clothes, with their rough hair and beards, hairy men, big laughing men with white teeth, he thought: This is the kind of men they have to be in a land like this.

  There was a pile of brush and gorse near where the dogs were. They set fire to this from a flint and it roared and smoked, and since there was no wind it went straight into the sky, and then, after a pause from the high hill directly opposite them another tall plume rose in the air. So Morogh called and shouted and waved his big arm and the horses set off down the incline, and Dominick had the feeling that if they fell all of them would fall straight down into the long lakes below them. But the brave little horses were as sure as hares and they negotiated rock and bog and loose stones and the knee-high heather on the good lands, until they reached the left lake below and skirted its north shore. Here they were shut off again from the sun by the rearing mountains, but they moved around it and came on solid land where there were the makings of a road kicked out by the sharp hooves of the small mountain sheep, who had black faces and horns and looked curiously at the cavalcade passing them by; no more curiously than their young attendants, who laughed and exchanged rude remarks, or flung a stone at a horse, to be chased by one of Morogh’s men, running with flying brown legs into a soft patch of bog where they could not be reached and then sticking out red tongues. Mary Ann didn’t approve of them.

  The sun was a red fire that had been lost in the sea, and all around them the sky was aflame with its last burning rays, when they came to the end of the wide peninsula and saw ahead of them the cluster of stone and thatched buildings from which smoke was rising, and from which as they came closer the smell of roasting meat came to twist their guts and remind them of their hunger. Here in a sort of courtyard, with many small houses built as wings to a long house in the centre facing south, they dismounted very stiffly and, looking up, Dominick with a deal of pleasure saw the big figure of Murdoc standing in the open square doorway and saw his arms first on his hips and then spread wide as he came towards them.

  ‘Dominick!’ he said. ‘My friend.’ Dominick was looking up at him, marvelling again at how big he was. He wore a linen shirt opened half way down his chest. ‘We saw the signal from Garran. The fatted calf is killed and roasting. I knew Coote wouldn’t get you. Where is my beloved one?’

  He looked around and then strolled towards the small figure of Mary Ann, bent and scooped her into his arms and planted a kiss on the side of her soft face. ‘ Man,’ he said, ‘you are the delight of my eyes.’

  ‘Put me down, Murdoc,’ said Man, ‘ you’re very hairy.’

  Murdoc laughed. All the men laughed. There was a crush in the yard, the smell of horse sweat and man sweat mingled with the smell of fat that was falling on the spit fire and sizzling there. He put her on her feet and bent over Peter.

  ‘Pedro, Pedro,’ he said. ‘I am pleased to meet with you again. Soon you will be as high as your father, you are growing so.’

  Peter was pleased to see him.

  Dominick was watching him. He knew Murdoc was glad to see them. He knew that they were welcome, but he knew that the reserve in their welcome was a light in the eyes of Murdoc, and when he had greeted them like that he went over to Columba who was still sitting astride the horse. She was looking at Murdoc. Her eyes were bright. She saw him coming closer to her. From her height she could survey the courtyard. The sky and the mountain behind them seemed coloured a blue purple. In the open ways three great fires were burning. Over two of them oxen were roasting on big spits, and over another one was slung a round iron pot hanging from a great tripod. If you could distinguish smells at all you could smell boiling mutton from that one. The firelight was glinting on the sweating arms of men, on white teeth in laughing bearded faces. It was a wonderful sight for her. It was open, it was real, it wasn’t polite at all. It seemed to take her back to some memory that was buried deep in her, something that she had wanted all her life, raw and real with no sweetmeats about it.

  He was even better than her memories of him. The tremendous shoulders; the big head with the curling grey-black hair and the square resolute face, with the quirk of the heavy eyebrows that spoke of a touch of recklessness; of hidden fires that could ignite and burn and die again. She knew it would be like this. She felt her heart beating so that it almost suffocated her. He put one hand on the neck of the little horse and the other one on her knee.

  ‘I am glad to see you,’ he said, ‘ I waited hoping that you were safe. You are safe now. What I have is yours.’

  She found it hard to talk to him.

  He reached his arms and she put her hands on his shoulders. He held her close to him as he helped her down. For a short time her feet were not on the ground. They were so close she wondered if he could feel the pounding of her heart. He smiled at her, finally let her go and said: ‘ You are welcome, Mrs Walter Dorsi. You are safe here.’

  Then she spoke. ‘I hope I am not too safe,’ she said.

  He listened, then he laughed delightedly. He raised his hand and called, ‘ Sorcha! Marie! Catriona!’ From behind him three women
came to his call. They were dark girls, two of them, and the other was an older woman with grey hair. In Irish he said to them: ‘Look after the woman. Give care to her and the two children. Go with them,’ he said to Columba. ‘They will look after you. They will take you to my own house. When you are ready we will eat.’

  The two girls looked at her. She went with them. The grey-haired woman went over to Dominick, looked at the two children.

  ‘Will they come with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Go with the lady,’ said Dominick.

  ‘Where will you be, Daddy?’ Mary Ann asked.

  ‘I will be with you,’ he said, ‘ when I have spoken to Murdoc.’

  They went with the woman dutifully.

  Murdoc was beside him again, hitting him on the shoulder.

  ‘Isn’t it great to see you, Dominick?’ he said ‘When we were on the bad rations, I often thought of this day. I owe you a lot I want to repay you. Come with me!’

  Dominick walked beside him. They went out of the courtyard and walked into the open, leaving the glaring firelight behind them. They climbed a rocky knoll out there and Murdoc pointed.

  ‘There they are,’ he said. ‘The Beanna Beola. Some day I said you would have them at your back and you need never fear again. Is that true?’

  Dominick looked. About ten miles away from him across a plain hidden in darkness, he could see the sharp bens reaching into the night sky.

  ‘They are for ever anyhow,’ said Dominick.

  ‘And so are you,’ said Murdoc. ‘Did you have trouble getting away? Did Davie see you off? Were you lonely on the Orbsen lake?’

  ‘We got away,’ said Dominick. ‘There was a fright or two, but not much. It was not lonely on the lake. It was a great peaceful place that crept into your heart.’

  ‘What is the woman like, Dominick?’ Murdoc asked. ‘She wasn’t brought up to things like that. I know them, these women with soft hands and silken dresses. What do they know about life? Tell me.’

  ‘She is a brave woman,’ said Dominick. ‘She reminds me of you, Murdoc. She is eager for change. She is restless, like you.’