Seek the Fair Land

by Walter Macken

  She stopped and listened once as she heard dogs barking away to her right. They would be on the other side of tins mountain. It’s a good job they have me, she thought, and that’s just the way they are using me – as a dog. There was a cold blue sky. She could see the very white clouds down near the horizon. She hoped the cold weather was finished. The land seemed locked in the grip of the bad winter. Nothing was shooting. Everything seemed dead.

  She heard Peter’s voice. He was singing again, an interrupted song, broken with explosive sounds as he climbed. She could see him clinging to a towering rock, like a fly on a wall. He waved to her. She could see the white teeth. She waved back to him before she went down another incline. The other path leading up was much steeper and rocky. Was it Sebastian that gave Peter back his voice? Or was it the horrible shock of a good man being burned to death just for being good? Peter himself didn’t talk about it much. He would just say: ‘The body is the body of Pedro, but the voice is the voice of Sebastian.’ So she would have to say: ‘ Oh, no, Sebastian had a nice musical voice.’ It was such a strange thing that you left it alone. You didn’t talk about it, but it maddened her, the memories of Sebastian’s last hour. She could tear with her hands. Oh, if only she was a man, what she wouldn’t do to avenge him! That’s just the thing that Sebastian wouldn’t want, her father said. But she couldn’t understand it. ‘Are you sheep?’ she would ask. ‘Are you men? Why don’t you kill somebody?’

  She was on steeper ground now. She was walking on a narrow path. The ground fell away below her. She could see the lakes of the land and the islands of the sea spread at her feet. The air was crisp and fresh and clear so that you could see as far as the power of your eyes.

  I should be a little frightened of where I am now, she thought, but it is so nice to be away from the skillets. There was a slithering sound above her head, and many small rocks fell towards her. She looked up and about ten yards away from her she saw the grey form of a big wolf bitch. She could see her dugs. The animal paused too and looked at her. Its jaws were open, its tongue hanging. It had been running hard. The eyes regarded her. Mary Ann felt afraid. They are like Coote’s eyes, she thought. Then she held to her perch with one hand and bent for a stone with the other.

  ‘Shoo,’ she shouted and flung the stone. But that didn’t send the wolf away but a sound coming from away behind her. She flashed out of vision, but the action of throwing the stone had unsettled Mary Ann. Her feet moved on the narrow track, and then slipped from under her. She scrabbled with her hands, but they failed to save her. She slithered down, her whole body stretched along the rock.

  She was afraid and she would have screamed, but her feet landed on a grassy ledge. It was about two feet wide, a shelf of rock that had been seeded by the birds so that it became grass-covered.

  Mary Ann’s heart was beating very fast. She had to press her hand on her breast to ease it. Then she looked down. Below her there was a long drop. If she fell off the ledge, she would land among a lot of jagged stones, that had loosened and fallen from the mountain side. If she fell on to those, she would be injured. There was no way to climb down. The weathered face was too smooth, and to get up she would want to be about two feet taller than she was.

  Well, she thought, when her heart stopped racing, it could be worse. She wondered if she would call. She called, cupping her hand around her mouth. She heard her call going out and echoing back to her.

  No, she thought, they will be well up the mountain now. I am only wasting the air in my lungs. She went on her knees on the ledge and sat on her heels, there was just sufficient room to hold her. They will have to come back this way, she thought. It is very shameful, but there is nothing I can do.

  Several times Dominick saw the stag above him. Once or twice he saw its antlers outlined against the sky. If we don’t get him, he thought, there are bound to be more of them up there. Pity we didn’t have some dogs. But they hadn’t. We will have to get them. He kept climbing. Once when he paused for breath and looked upwards again, he saw the speck over his head in the sky, a black eagle with a great wing span, hovering in the air of the mountains as easily as a sparrow-hawk. The eagle had his eye on the stag too, a cold calculating eye. The tiny climbing figures of the humans labouring far below he could ignore but he watched the stag closely, every turn and twist and laboured jump that brought him closer to the top of the mountain.

  He coasted a bit lower as he saw him reaching the rocky ledge where he wanted him. This was a narrow ledge of hard granite that only the tiny hooves of a deer could negotiate. It curved around the head of the mountain like a winding staircase. It went around the back of the head and then led down into a saucer-shaped valley where the ground was firm and grazing good and where there would be plenty of time to flee with a choice of four other peaks to head for to get away from danger.

  As the stag delicately set a hoof on this ledge the eagle swooped. A cloud covered the sky for the stag, but instinctively he knew and lowered and raised his antlers viciously. Easily the eagle avoided them, once, twice, with the stag at bay on the narrow ledge, and then he reached with his talons and gripped the antlers, and flapped his wings in front of the eyes of the stag.

  It was like a black bag put over his head. The stag called. He tried to get back the way he had come, but the pull of the blinding wings would not permit him to retreat. So he tried to move his way forwards, lowering his head so that his eyes could see the trail under his feet, but the beat of the wings kept his head high. He roared and lunged and the eagle went with him and loosened his talons and turned to watch him fall. About three hundred feet the stag fell, oh, so ungracefully. And his body hit once twice on the way, against the steep rock sides before it struck the ground below and bounced and lay still.

  On the rock over the valley into which the stag had fallen, Dominick had emerged. He had watched with awe. He had been conscious of Peter breathless on a stone away from him looking too. And when the stag fell and lay still he called excitedly: ‘Did you see? Did you see?’ And noticing Peter pointing into the sky he turned his head back. The eagle was dropping to his kill, and Dominick shouted and started to scramble down the steep slope. He took chances, dropped and ran, dropped and ran. He could see Peter doing the same thing. They reached the floor of the valley at the same time and started to run, and the eagle came to meet them, with widespread wings, and clawing talons and a vicious beak. Dominick waved his bow at the eagle. He was a brave eagle. He would soar and dive, soar and dive, but when the two of them came together and waved and shouted at him, he became bewildered. They could have killed him but they didn’t want to, so he left them there walking towards his kill while he himself wound higher and higher into the sky, most indignant, and justly so, Peter said laughing, and hating those two-legged things that wouldn’t be good to eat anyhow.

  Dominick bent over the stag and felt his haunches, and they were good.

  Peter was laughing.

  ‘That eagle will never forgive us, never,’ he said. ‘For ever more he will hate the whole human race.’

  Mary Ann was calling. She was answered only by the mocking echo of her voice. It was cold now on the ledge. She loosened her skirt and wrapped it around her legs.

  I have been in worse places, she thought. I have been frightened before. It seems to me that I have always been frightened. Her memory of their house was dim. She remembered blood on Peter’s head and she alone beside him, frightened that her father would never come back. He came back. He always did.

  She remembered a day in the woods when she was very afraid. The shouting of men and the clashing of arms. That was the day she made her first Holy Communion, and her father was gone and Sebastian was gone. That was the worst time, she thought, and then she fingered the golden cross hanging around her neck from a silver chain, and remembered the tall fair soldier who had given her a silken kerchief. She still had that at home in a box. She wore it on big occasions. So her father always came when she needed him.

  But sup
pose they followed the stag right over the mountain and into the valley on the other side! They would go back that way, thinking she had made her way home. She might be here all night. She looked at the sky. There were shafts of colour being thrown across it. The sun was low out in front of her, blinding off the far-away sea.

  ‘Father! Father!’ she called, and paused and called again and again so that when she stopped calling her voice was travelling the twelve bens.

  ‘So that’s what it is!’ a voice said then over her head.

  She looked up. The face of Dualta was looking down at her. And beside his face was the face of a shaggy wolfhound.

  ‘I wondered what was screeching,’ said Dualta. ‘I thought it was a fairy woman. The hair was standing on my head.’

  ‘I was not screeching,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I was calling. The face of the hound is far handsomer than yours.’

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Dualta.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary Ann. ‘And now would you mind please helping me out of here?’

  ‘Let the dog do it,’ said Dualta. ‘He’s handsomer than I am. He should be better at getting you out.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary Ann, ‘suppose I say that the face of the hound is not uglier than yours?’

  ‘It would be a better saying, but not much,’ said Dualta.

  ‘Please, Dualta,’ said Mary Ann, ‘get me out of here.’

  ‘That’s a bit better,’ said Dualta, ‘but we mustn’t rush these things. What are you doing down there?’

  ‘I went hunting with Father and Pedro,’ said Mary Ann patiently. ‘I saw a wolf and I slipped. I don’t know where Father is. He was following a stag.’

  ‘So you are all alone,’ said Dualta, ‘and if I don’t get you out you will be there until the cows come home, and that will be at the end of the coming summer. You realize the powerful position I am in?’

  ‘It is only savages who would be mocking at a lady,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dualta, ‘savages. I see that’s the trouble about savages. They are very dull-witted. They see a lady in distress and for the life of them they can’t work out a way of getting her free. May God remain with you!’

  He had risen then and he was gone. She actually heard his footsteps. She couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘Dualta! Dualta! Dualta!’ she called.

  His face reappeared.

  ‘Did you want me, Mary Ann?’ he asked.

  ‘Is this a time to be humorous?’ Mary Ann asked plaintively.

  ‘I am not a savage so?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Mary Ann. ‘ You are a cultured gentleman.’

  ‘Is my Latin as good as yours?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s better,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Do you admit that you are a self-willed and unpleasant girl at times?’

  ‘No,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘You don’t?’ he asked quizzically.

  ‘Maybe independent,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘How so?’ he asked.

  ‘Just,’ said Mary Ann hotly, ‘that if you think that I am just a one to sit around while men go to war, and walk ten paces behind them on the road, and be just an article to bear their children and cook for them and slave for them and have no freedom, even to open my gob when the lord and master is around, no.’

  ‘Oh, look at the sparks,’ said Dualta. ‘And who would treat you like that?’

  ‘Isn’t that the way you all treat your wives?’ she asked. ‘Like ignorant chattels. They are just good enough to bear children and feed the animals and cook in big pots. I won’t be like that.’

  ‘Do you love me, Mary Ann?’ he asked.

  Mary Ann had been looking up at him, her face reddening from the fury of her thoughts. This stopped her dead. The anger went from her eyes. The ones looking down into her own were very soft. His chin was resting on the back of his hands.

  ‘Because I love you,’ he said. ‘Apart from the fact that I won you in a hurling match and you’re mine anyhow.’ He saw her mouth tightening and hastened on. ‘I love your eyes and your long lashes and your hair and your stout chin.’

  ‘It’s not stout.’ said Mary Ann weakly.

  ‘Firm,’ amended Dualta. ‘And I love you because you are stubborn and self-willed, and given to gusts of anger without cause, and if you don’t love me the sun will be dark for me and I will have no reason to live. There are a lot of people in this world. I don’t want to know anybody but you. I want to be fighting with you for the rest of life and if you wish I will walk ten paces behind you and you need never cook. We will live on herbs and I will never open my gob unless you wish it.’

  Mary Ann had retired. She was sitting on her legs again on the ledge her head bent, but he could see the pulse in her neck throbbing. Quite a time passed like that Dualta didn’t mind. He got pleasure out of looking at her. Then Mary Ann stirred. She didn’t look up, but she spoke.

  ‘If I don’t say I love you,’ she asked, ‘will you leave me on the ledge?’

  He thought over that.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘since you agree I am not a savage, I will have to rescue you.’

  ‘But if I say it,’ said Mary Ann, ‘ in order to get free, wouldn’t it be sort of forced out of me, and I might go back on it?’

  ‘Other girls might,’ he said, ‘ but not you. If you say it, then I know it.’

  Mary Ann got to her feet then. She raised her face to his and stretched her hands up the rock face.

  ‘I want to get out of here, Dualta,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

  He had to smile as he reached down his arms. Even at the end it would have to be a compromise with her, but when his hands closed on hers he knew all right. They remained that way for a time. He had forced his spear into a crevice and his legs were wrapped around the handle of it so he could stretch down far.

  ‘Walk up the stone,’ he said, ‘holding on to me.’

  She did so, and soon he had a grip around her body with his arms and he levered her off the ledge. They sat close to one another, face to face, and their breathing was fast.

  She said: ‘Wasn’t it the lucky wolf that made me fall?’

  He said: ‘ No, she was an unlucky wolf. I have her head.’

  She sighed and said, turning her head reluctantly away from him: ‘We have an awful long way to go home Dualta.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dualta, ‘isn’t that a great thing?’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘It will take us hours. It’ll be dark.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dualta, ‘what a happy day!’

  They laughed.

  They didn’t know it but they had been watched. Dominick walking, back with the stag around his shoulders, blood-drained and relieved of its useless parts, had been called by Peter who had been ranging the ground, running up and down to find Mary Ann. He had come over this height and looked across the rock valley and had seen her on the ledge calling, and up above the figure of Dualta and his dog. He saw Dualta getting down on his belly to talk to her and Peter sank himself low so that only his eyes were over a rock. That was when he waved to his father. Dominick dropped the stag and came up to him and lay beside him.

  They couldn’t hear what was said, but they could guess at the actions. They saw her anger, and Dualta’s mock walking away and his return and Mary Ann’s sinking on the ledge.

  Peter was delighted. He was chuckling. ‘ You are going to lose her,’ he said.

  Dominick was shocked.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘ Mary Ann is only a child. She is only a child.’

  ‘You mustn’t have looked at her for a long time,’ said Peter.

  So Dominick looked at her now, and his heart sank. She wasn’t a child. Even there, dusty and dishevelled on the ledge, she was no longer a child. She was a very pretty girl, and he knew with a great sinking of his heart that he was losing her. So he got angry.

  ‘What kind of a fool is she?’ he asked. ‘ She could have been killed. How did she know that we wouldn’t go home
and she’d be there all night?’

  ‘She knew we would come back for her,’ said Peter, ‘but that’s not the point. She would prefer to be where she is.’

  They waited until they saw Dualta taking her safely from the ledge and then they pulled away.

  Dominick was gloomy.

  ‘Cheer up, Father,’ said Peter. ‘It has to happen to all fathers.’

  ‘I can face up to it,’ said Dominick. ‘It’s not that. Just she should be careful. She could have been killed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be a worse way to lose her?’ Peter asked.

  Dominick agreed a bit gruffly.

  ‘What have you against Dualta?’ Peter asked. ‘ He’s good. He’s all right.

  ‘His father,’ said Dominick. ‘That’s what I have against him.’

  ‘Well, cheer up,’ said Peter. ‘ She’s not marrying the father.’

  This made him laugh, but Dominick’s heart was heavy however much Peter tried to lighten it with chatter.

  It was almost dark when they turned off to their own house with their burden, and as they approached the door the tall strong figure of a man seemed to emerge out of the ground.

  He was a fair man, going grey, dressed in dark clothes, and Dominick thought: Where have I seen this one before?

  ‘You are welcome,’ said Dominick cautiously. The man had clear grey eyes. The dying sun was glinting off the corners of them. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘I am looking for you, Dominick,’ said the man.

  Dominick dropped the stag and went closer to him. The man towered over him. It brought a memory, a tag-end of a memory. He put his hand up to his head trying to capture it.

  ‘A wood,’ said the man, ‘with a priest, and a troop of soldiers about to kill you. And they die and we talk.’

  ‘Rory,’ said Dominick, thinking of the tall soldier who had been kind, dressed in the uniform of a Cromwellian.

  ‘You remembered,’ the man said smiling. ‘ That pleases me.’