Arcanum: An Irish Mystery

by Ann Mann

  Now the thunder of their steps was finally ebbing away and the fiddler lowered his bow while she exhaled the longest breath of her life then clapped her hands as she walked around them showing her approval. Suddenly she knew her role was not simply to teach them. Someone brilliant had already seen to that. They had to be encouraged and the change in their demeanours from beaten and world weary to joyful and energised was enough to convince her that her unpredictable journey had not been in vain.

  Awash in sweat but eager to carry on, the men jostled and boxed one another playfully like schoolboys, the older ones’ swarthy faces suddenly transformed with the glow of youth. The women, high from a rush of pure adrenalin noticed that Clodagh had unbuttoned her coat, and appearing to no longer consider her a threat, moved to admire her Priestess costume as well as daring to touch her gold cross in fascination and wonder.

  A plump woman with a florid complexion and long grey hair whom Clodagh assumed to be the farmer Gilligan’s wife, was passing chipped earthenware cups around for sharing, filled from a large copper bowl held by a lad who was probably their son. As the hot whisky drink laced with honey and cranberries was spooned into her cup, she took a cautious sip and felt its warmth travel down to her stomach then spread upwards again until it reached her head in a tingling glow, adding to the pure physical pleasure she had just been experiencing.

  She glanced towards the barn doors where the farmer and the old woman were huddled together in what appeared to be an intense and conspiratorial exchange. They stared at her then quickly looked away and she wondered whether it was some sort of signal to join them before the dancing resumed.

  But before she could make that decision, Mick Gilligan lifted the two heavy wooden bars that unlocked the wide doors and walked outside. Startled and then beginning to worry, she passed her cup to one of the women and moved forward. The dancing had only just begun so why was the farmer opening the doors now?

  As the voices of those around her hummed like a thousand nesting bees and the fiddler changed his tune to a country air, Clodagh found herself, as she had done so many times over the last few months, standing on the edge of her imagination, gazing into the unknown.

  The nightscape she had left behind when entering the barn had changed. A few more lanterns had been hung on the skeletal limbs of trees that surrounded the farmhouse throwing a magical glow against a sky which was now starless and breathing out a whirling cloud of snow flakes that danced in the wind before silently touching the ground and melted before her eyes.

  Mesmerised by such a picturesque sight, Clodagh moved slowly towards the barn doors where the old woman sat grinning. What was going on? Was this yet another test and how many more hoops would she have to skip through before passing it?

  Then out of the shadows she saw Mick striding back towards the barn, but he was not alone. Trailing behind him were others. Human forms in bright clothes of various lengths and designs. It was then with an aching stab of half-forgotten memories and with tears streaming freely down her face, that she recognised the costumes which they had obviously found. Every kind of emotion she had ever known and some she had never experienced until now surfaced and spilled over into a fountain of joy and loss.

  The young people had arrived. As she wiped away her tears she looked into their wishful faces and a new strength flooded through her body. However thin from lack of nutrition, however burdened from working from an early age, their smiling eyes seemed to be only embracing the moment which was now, and they could hardly wait to free their spirits with the magic of movement and music.

  Blossom and the old woman would have said this was indeed Magic. And the costumes were playing their part not just for the boys and girls who were wearing them but for every man, woman and child who were gathering to appreciate and touch them. These wonderful creations taken from the Major and Minor suits of the Tarot were, through their ancient symbolism of light and shadow as well as their more recent association with the Celtic Cross, making a profound comment on Ireland’s cultural and religious history at this time.

  Each costumed figure was greeted with a hug from Clodagh for it was as though she had known them forever. The Magician and the Page of Cups linked arms as they made their way into the barn followed by the Empress and the Hermit, characters that she had danced alongside but whose occupants were now those who would never experience the feverish thrill of performing in a proper theatre or responding to rapturous applause from a thousand faces.

  Once inside, Mick Gilligan pulled the giant bars across the doors and while the excitement provided by the costumes was still in full swing, Clodagh gave herself a moment to reflect before moving on to the next phase of their tutelage where she would persuade them that they could slowly introduce more freedom of arm movement into some of the dances while at the same time never surrendering the strong traditional individualism of their heritage.

  How tenuous a concept happiness was. How it fed the souls of not just those who were experiencing it but for a visitor from another time as she had become.

  But it was a lonely feeling knowing what lay ahead for their country. Those whose fate was linked with hers were suffering hard times but they would never experience the grim horror that their descendants would be destined to suffer in the cholera epidemic of 1832 or the mass starvation due to the now infamous Great Famine.

  She shuddered. A ghost passing over her grave perhaps? This was for the future. Or was it the past? Suddenly Clodagh felt the two dissolve and fracture in the blink of an eye.

  She started to walk towards the group aware that during the lifetime of some of those present the chains of repression would soon be loosened and the barn doors would be thrown open to allow the light and the music to flood freely into every corner of the county without fear.

  Consoled by this foreknowledge, she buttoned up her coat, reached for the silver-topped cane and stepped onto the wooden platform confident that the energy that existed within this space right now would continue to haunt and linger down through the ages. As it already had.

  *

  “Job done!” Erin Shaw rose from her chair in the empty theatre office and snapped her lap top shut then replaced the credit card in her pink Chanel clutch.

  She gathered the reams of paper from the printer and flicked through them with an expression of feline satisfaction which sat well on her perfectly painted face.

  This was where it started. The illustrated copies of the costumes sent from the costumier in New York had now been bought and paid for and on Monday morning she would instruct her dressmaker in Dublin to make a start on re-creating the designs for her troupe of dancers. For Lighthouse.

  Erin could not help but feel excited. She now had the scenery and the props and would soon finish choreographing the Tarot finale in which she would make sure that the music and the steps were ever so slightly different to that which Silas Murphy had originated.

  Of course the world had yet to hear of Lighthouse but the world already knew of Arcanum and the routine would be announced as a tribute to a company whose name had been on most people’s lips for the past four months of this year. A company who had experienced their fair share of drama and adventure and who now had conveniently disbanded.

  She hadn’t seen Silas to say goodbye and where Clodagh had gone was yet another mystery. But Erin already had her Australian and New Zealand tours in place for next year and had approached Las Vegas and a few other U.S. venues where Arcanum had been poised to perform during the following year as well as marking in The O2 in Dublin and in London for future engagements if the show lived up to expectations.

  She knew that Silas had not signed any contracts with these venues so it all looked pretty rosy and she surmised that it was even possible that a few of the original dancers might feel inclined to join her troupe at some later stage.

  All in all, Erin was delighted with her hard work and seemin
gly good fortune and would now go back to her home in Newmarket-on-Fergus, open a good bottle of wine and toast her future and that of the set dance which would make her name on the circuit as well as turning her euros into dollars.

  Folding the designs into her briefcase with such infinite care they might have been the Dead Sea Scrolls, she prepared to leave the theatre, throwing on her faux fur coat and clicking down the stairs in her Louboutins before locking the exit door behind her with the keys that Deirdre had entrusted to her and stepping cautiously onto the slippery pavements.

  Her silver Mini Cooper was parked just around the corner from the theatre and although the snow had now stopped falling, a white wedge had formed across her windscreen which necessitated her locating the ice scraper from the boot in order to clear her line of vision.

  It took longer than anticipated and Erin, who rarely swore, found herself cursing as she sent chunks of hard snow crystal splattering into the air then climbed into the car, anxious for a guilty cigarette after so much unforeseen exertion.

  But irritation piled upon frustration for now her warm breath was steaming up the windows so that she was forced to switch the air vent to maximum while waiting for the glass to clear. A cigarette would probably not help, so Erin sat impatiently drumming her long finger-nails against the steering wheel and dreaming of the heat of the Antipodean sunshine which she would be experiencing in just a few months.

  It was then she noticed something not quite right about the windscreen. The other windows were clearing nicely but the windscreen still seemed cloudy and she would not risk driving off in such unpredictable weather until she was sure that she could see properly.

  Her craving for nicotine having been rendered unadvisable, Erin pulled a box of tissues out of the glove compartment and flattened a handful against the glass, rubbing vigorously. She also made a serious mental note to go and see her mechanic as soon as she could and find out what was wrong with this car.

  But the windscreen was still not clearing. In fact, if anything, it was worse. Now there appeared to be a kind of pattern forming which looked like letters, and her anger rose, convinced that some snotty-nosed kid had obviously been tampering with her car and had somehow managed to damage it.

  Erin turned her wipers on to maximum speed, at a loss to know why, whatever was on the outside, should be so difficult to erase. She wondered whether the words had been put there not by fingers but with some sort of oily spray, for you never knew with vandals as they had no sense of respect for other people’s property.

  Feeling hot now and distinctly bothered, she got out of the car and tried to see what the defacer had written. She could just make out the letters I, O, I and T, then made a further attempt to clean the glass with yet more tissues while uttering a loud stream of expletives that would have made passers-by blush if there had been any around.

  Finally, she gave up, returned to the car and rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes. With hands that were now far from steady, she lit one and dragged on it deeply before puffing out three perfect rings that rose slowly between her and the damned windscreen where she could now read the word clearly. TRIONFI.

  It was a rubbish word and she had no idea what it meant. Was it French? Italian? But studying it again she realised that the letters appeared to have been written inside the car otherwise they wouldn’t look like letters at all and the R, the N and the F would be the other way round.

  Seriously unnerved, Erin slid an Ed Sheeran CD into her music player and fastened her seat-belt, determined to try and see past this obliteration for she only had to drive thirteen kilometres to her home and knew that it should take no longer than twenty minutes if the snow held off.

  With her cigarette clenched between brightly glossed lips, she started the engine and strained her neck forward in order to concentrate on the road ahead. Turning on to the Ennis by-pass, she let out a relieved sigh for the motorway was straight and the glare from the oncoming cars was not such a distraction as it would be if she were travelling on any of the minor routes.

  She tried to relax, visualising once again the rapturous applause and the stunning reviews that would be coming her way the following year. “When my hair’s all gone and my memory fades…” crooned Ed as she put her foot down and increased her speed to a comfortable seventy.

  The letters weren’t bothering her any more. She was on the home stretch. This aggravating business had been just one of those blips in what had otherwise proved to be a successful day.

  It was just past the Dromoland Inn and a few kilomotres short of her exit to Newmarket that Erin smelled burning. Mild at first like bread left a little too long in the toaster, then becoming stronger reminding her of charcoal but with a slight metallic odour that crept around her nostrils and down into her throat.

  She dropped her speed and anxiously checked the ash-tray. The cigarette that she had been smoking was well and truly out so what else could be causing such a powerful smell and which definitely seemed to be inside the car?

  Her senses became immobilised, like a rabbit or a deer caught in the blaze of headlights, but she knew that she had to keep driving for there was no hard shoulder before her exit and she searched frantically for a slip road, anywhere that was safe to turn off and to try and locate the source of this latest wretched situation.

  “Cause honey your soul can never grow old, it’s evergreen…” Ed continued as her left hand groped around the passenger seat, touching her bag, her hat and her umbrella, anything that might have somehow caught a spark and that she could locate and toss out of the window if necessary. But there was nothing remotely visible that could be on fire and the caustic stench was now almost unbearable, so Erin slid open the windows, rasping out a deep cough while the letters on the windscreen, TRIONFI, grew bigger and bolder than ever, almost covering the glass.

  Somehow, through watery eyes and smudged mascara, she crawled to a near standstill as other cars blasted their horns and shot past her, until, uttering a loud “Thank you, God”, she finally saw a signpost indicating the way that led to the many loughs and nature walks in the area.

  Without signalling, she turned the steering wheel hard left and swerved into the dark road, now panicked and anxious to park as soon as she was able, when she would ring the rescue service and ask them to collect her.

  The road was narrow and winding, bordered by tall trees, and there were no other vehicles in sight as Erin carried slowly on until she could find a suitable place to stop. She tried to maintain optimism. At least she hadn’t broken down and the lights were still working but she was sure now that there was something seriously wrong with the car that had she had always looked on as a reliable friend.

  Then came the first in a succession of shocks which took her so totally by surprise that although her immediate impulse was to scream at the top of her lungs, she heard herself croak out an absurd and pitiable hauteur. “It’s alright, Erin. It’s alright.”

  A short dark figure that she could have sworn was human and not animal suddenly crossed from right to left in front of the car and then disappeared. Even though she was driving at a snail’s pace, Erin stopped the car abruptly and sat in frozen silence, wondering what or who it was and considering whether she should get out and look. Had she hit it? She wasn’t sure. But her instincts told her to put her foot down and despite the damaged windscreen and the smell she should not leave the car.

  But before she could re-start the engine a sudden violent wind blew out of nowhere and hit the Mini full on. A gust that was so strong it carried the car and its passenger across to the left hand side of the road, up onto a small bank and smack into the trunk of an Ash tree where the sound of breaking glass precipitated the excrutiatingly slow dimming of the lights into total blackness.

  Now she knew she was in serious trouble and bravado and optimism seemed hopelessly misplaced.

  First, she groped in her bag
for her i-phone and a light came on. Relieved, Erin punched out the number for the emergency services and when a female voice answered, she found herself gabbling in panic.

  “Please give your location?” the voice asked again, obviously unable to understand the torrent of hysteria-induced words.

  “I’m…I’m in a road off the M.18, just before Newmarket. It’s…it’s where the lakes are. Come quickly please. I’ve crashed the car. It’s dark…”

  It took a few seconds to realise that the connection had failed and Erin heard herself shouting “No, no!” while shaking the phone furiously as if that would make the slightest difference, for there was no signal.

  Perhaps the operator had heard enough to understand and send someone out. But then again…

  The crash hadn’t been bad enough to release the air bag so maybe the car would start.

  Erin turned the key in the ignition and the engine spluttered for a brief moment, then died. She tried again but this time there wasn’t even a click and she felt tears welling up in the back of her throat as she turned it again and again while sobbing loudly now in fear and frustration.

  She knew she would have to get out of the car to inspect the damage. And also to find the large torch that she kept in the boot. Then she would make her way back towards the motorway where she would try and use her phone again or, out of desperation, hitch a lift.

  Wiping her face with the back of her hand, Erin now resembled a macabre rag doll whose stitching had unravelled. She repeated to herself, less convincingly than before, that everything was going to be alright, although at the moment it was the stuff of nightmares and horror films. What was puzzling her was the fact that it was so dark. There was no moon and she couldn’t even hear the motorway traffic, let alone see headlights, although she knew she had only driven a few hundred yards to where she was now and where she was experiencing the worse night of her life.