by Tom O'Neill
‘He can sit up now, though. We have run every test,’ said the doctor, glancing at his watch, and adjusting his dicky bow. ‘I’m convinced that he’ll recuperate better at home.’
‘He’s not even eating. And surely you can see that he’s in terrible pain,’ said Dark’s mother with panic in her voice, her hand holding Connie’s.
‘Look, to be brutally frank, there’s nothing physically wrong with him,’ said the doctor, ‘so it’s out of my jurisdiction, so to speak. You sometimes get these things. Psychosomatic disturbances we call them.’
‘And the pain,’ asked Dark, finding his courage. ‘Is that psychosomatic too?’
‘Chronic pain, we call it, young man,’ said the doctor, who looked like the youngest adult in the room. ‘It sometimes settles in. Almost like a burglar alarm that can’t be switched off. We’ll give you something to ease him when it gets bad.’
‘But he can’t even speak,’ said Dark’s mam again, looking tearfully at the grave face that had always been hearty and laughing.
‘Was the big fella much of a talker before? Maybe this is all too much for him here in the big hospital.’ Turning to Connie he said loudly in his nasal Montenotte accent, as though Connie was deaf or stupid, ‘You’re a farmer they tell me, Cornelius? Good for you. I envy you. Maybe you’ll find your voice when you’re back among the tractors and cows and things. Eh?’
‘Did you check the bite? I thought maybe he could have got Weil’s disease or something’. Dark asked. Maybe the tension of being in the hospital and of how the doctor was talking to Connie came across in his voice. He hadn’t meant to sound hostile.
‘The “bite”?’ Anger flashed across the doctor’s face. He laughed sarcastically, ‘Weil’s disease? Hmm. We have an internet connection then, I take it. You know, while we appreciate your medical insights, your mother did relay your convictions regarding the mythical “bite”. Several times.’
That was a strange way to describe the bite, Dark thought. Besides, at most he’d asked his mam to ask the nurses three or maybe four times.
‘The thing is though, I can assure you we would have seen a bite,’ continued the doctor. ‘It’s the kind of thing one might tend to notice after a decade of studying medicine.’
There was a pause. Another doctor in the group, a woman with long red hair and a stern mouth, seemed embarrassed. Then the consultant’s tone changed. He was done with them. ‘And now I’m really sorry but that’s all I can do for you. He is stable and I’m sure he’ll improve at home and if he doesn’t, you shouldn’t ... er ... hesitate to bring him back to A and E and, well, of course, we’ll see what we can do for him. Good day.’
The red-haired woman came back to them after the others had left and said, ‘Sorry, he is just very over-worked. We did test for Weil’s and several other pest-borne and tropical diseases, by the way. The ambulance will bring you home. Here, call me direct if you have any other ideas ...’ She offered a corner torn from her notebook with her name and number scribbled on it. For some reason she seemed to be offering it to Dark. ‘... okay?’ Dark looked at it: Leah Cannon.
Two hours later, the same ambulance men brought Connie into the kitchen in a wheelchair. Before leaving they helped The Red, Dark and his mam move him into Dark’s bed in the only downstairs bedroom. Dark would sleep upstairs in Con’s room. After The Red had finished drinking his tea and shaking his head in what looked like disapproval at the unrecognisable shell of the man who had made everything alright and everyone welcome in Kill, he left. Dark said he’d sit up with Connie awhile, trying him with a spoon of custard every so often. His mam was so exhausted she couldn’t protest. After she had been upstairs for an hour or so all the walking around, the sound of her footsteps stopped. Then Dark said to Connie, ‘Should I move the things from the tractor shed in case Saltee has figured out where they are?’
Connie shook his head. Dark already knew Connie’s thinking on this. The disturbance would be more likely to draw attention. But he was asking anyway.
He really wanted to tell Connie he was in trouble. But he didn’t think he’d be able to bear that, him not being able to do anything to help. Instead he said, ‘I’ve been back.’
Sweating and pale as paper, Connie nodded slightly. That was strange. Connie had been adamant he should end contact with the rath after the last time.
‘Maybe I should go back again tonight?’ he said.
Connie nodded again – or did he? But he made a sound that Dark decided was: ‘Good.’ In truth, it might have been anything. Connie’s voice was gone from the air leaving him directionless.
Dark waited a little longer to be sure his mam was sound asleep. Then he got his jacket and wellies on and headed out in the rain.
As he dragged through the bog in the dark, every step sank deeper than the last. Even though he was now expert at picking out the tufts of reed that offered firmer ground, inches of rain had fallen since last night. And there was no sign of a let up. His jacket was soaked by the time he had reached the rath. More rainwater was leaking from the saturated canopy, but it stopped once the fire appeared.
‘Come in and warm yourself,’ said the Old Man, ‘and lighten your load.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dark to Etain when she produced the chalice.
‘Now, what was I going on about?’ asked the Old Man.
‘Maire Fada,’ said Dark, more boldly. ‘I still don’t know how to ...’
‘Whisht, ssh,’ said the Old Man, putting an arm over Dark’s shoulder. ‘That’ll all come to you.’
And then he started again.
A terrifying feeling of rising bog waters engulfed Dark.
Chapter 4a
THE BROOM PEDDLER
Matha received all kinds of advice as he prepared to leave Tara for home.
‘Honour is all you have in the end,’ Fionn advised him more than once.
‘Your courage and your family,’ said Conán. ‘If you tend those, the rest will take care of itself.’
‘Knowledge is the most important power,’ said King Cormac.
He noticed that none of the advice had anything to do with what he wanted to know. Now that his relief at finding the bowl was fading he realised that he had never asked the bad-mannered heron how he was supposed to get the thing to do anything for him. After all, the little bit of burnt clay had sat for countless years in the woodcutter’s cabin without doing anything at all for anyone, not to speak of gathering life from seven corners of the country. Nor had it done anything at all since he had tucked it in his tunic. If he went home and presented it as some kind of cure he would be rightly regarded as a light-headed fool.
Before leaving, he tried Dreoilín, assuming that the most powerful druid who had ever lived would tell him what word or method would make the bowl useful. But the old man just turned back into a wren and flew off chirping crankily.
‘Is there any favour you would like us to do for you, son?’ asked the King, seeing him heading for the gates.
‘There is one,’ said Matha bravely. It had been on his mind for a while.
‘Name it,’ said Cormac majestically. ‘Is it a cow from the royal herd you want? You can have two. Is it a stone mason to cleave granite for a corn mill? Have my best man for a month and welcome.’
‘No sir, not that.’
‘Speak up man,’ said Mac Cumhaill.
‘I remember, good King,’ said Matha, ‘that you said all the knowledge in the world is contained on a piece of calf hide you carry around with you. I would owe you my life if you would just look in there and tell me what it says about my bowl?’
‘A bowl? The boy troubles me about a bowl!’ said Cormac, suddenly red-faced. He shouted to a herdsman, ‘The boy says he wants a sheep, give him ten fine mountainy ewes.’
Matha could not fathom it. Cormac walked away busily talking about how the linen makers were pleased with how the flax was growing this year. The soreness Matha felt was made worse by the fact that he was sure he saw Conán and Dreoilín
suppressing a laugh. He assumed it was his plight that amused them – though they were looking at Cormac.
Matha left without the sheep. He hadn’t the ground even for one. He walked on from that place with his unvoiced anger turning inwards on himself. If those people would not help him, he would travel the country until he found someone who would help.
Days stretched into months and a year passed with Matha growing stronger and wiser. He found that he had a great head for gathering and retaining information of all sorts and remembering all the things that he heard from the people who welcomed him into their homes. Unfortunately, none of the information took him any closer to how he might use the bowl.
One day, as he walked along what he thought was an old overgrown chariot way taking him west, he got into heavy ground. That was not uncommon in the middle of the country. He kept walking, knowing that carriage ways were always laid on solid foundations of lime and broken rocks. But it seemed to be getting worse. The track seemed to be disappearing altogether into a marsh. Luckily he had listened well to the accounts of other travellers. He suddenly remembered hearing a tale of a road that appeared once every three years. Any chariot following it was led to the middle of an underground lake. No person or beast who had carried on along that track had ever been heard of again. Even those who had turned back to carry the tale had struggled to get away from it.
Maybe such talk was nonsense made up to scare travellers. But Matha was finally learning to put caution before pride. He decided to turn back. As soon as he did, the marsh became aggressive. It started to follow him and he began to run. The water was rising unnaturally and the ground behind him was disappearing into black bog water almost faster than he could pull his feet out of the mud. In no time, he was exhausted from running and every step was getting harder. He was up to his waist and the water kept rising. Desperately he threw himself to the side and caught onto the branches of a willow. It was bendy but strong and the tough little tree pulled him up into herself. He climbed a bit further and sat. The water lapped resentfully around the base of the willow for some time. Matha waited many hours before it eased and began to recede back around the turn in the road to again lie in wait for an unsuspecting entourage.
He sat for a while longer in the company of the unloved willow. He was rubbing the little bowl and thinking about it when he heard something. It sounded like a human noise. And it wasn’t from the bowl. It came from further back along the path. At first he thought it was another wanderer about to tread into the trap. He climbed down quickly to warn the fellow traveller. He couldn’t see anyone but as he walked he got closer to the talking. It was soft affectionate talk but in a language he didn’t understand. By the time he realised the talk was coming from the blackthorn bushes next to him, the owner of the voice had also realised he had company. The banter stopped. Silence for a minute. Then a rustling, and the owner came forward. He was a plump man who would have been of below average height if it hadn’t been for the great size of his grey head which was at least as big as his substantial belly.
Strange to relate, it was the first time in Matha’s travels that he had looked in the eyes of someone coldly considering doing him immediate and great harm. The smell of his own death suddenly filled Matha’s nostrils. He could not say afterwards what it was about that grey head that had made his heart stop. But at first he was not even able to speak.
However he had sensed it, Matha’s instincts were right. This was the most dangerous meeting yet of his young life. The creature he was facing now was no ordinary mortal. He was known and feared the world over as Scorm. However, Scorm was not in Éirinn that day on his own business, which would have been bad enough. He was there to do his wife’s business, which was worse. Scorm’s beloved Carman was a senior queen bandraoi from a land well to the north of Éirinn. She had taught many cailleachs their skills and concoctions.
It had recently come to her ears that several of the women in Éirinn who had been her eager students were no longer practising their arts. Instead they had been retired to remote parts of the country and barred from dabbling in magic of any sort. She became enraged and took to mumbling foul wishes on the person whom she blamed for this, one Fionn Mac Cumhaill.
Carman did not see this the way a normal person would have – that she should actually have been thanking Mac Cumhaill for the fact that those women were still waking up in the mornings. That Mac Cumhaill had actually saved them from Cormac’s more dramatic instructions. ‘Bad magicians must be cut down by the sword or pierced with a red iron,’ Cormac would shout from his comfortable seat, while going hot in the face and plunging an imaginary iron through the air.
Mac Cumhaill preferred to think of himself as a soldier rather than as a cold-blooded punisher and butcher of people, even if they were not people to his liking. Besides, he had a more intimate understanding of the ways of the bandraoi than he could safely admit without raising suspicions of his own loyalties. He knew that the line between the bad and the good bandraoi wasn’t always as clear as Cormac liked to imagine. Witchy misdeeds reported to Cormac could sometimes be exaggerated by people who were either scared or jealous. Or by people who confused the cantankerous and bad-tempered for the wicked. Having been brought up by bad-tempered women with healing powers, Mac Cumhaill was not so sure of the difference between a bad witch on a good day and a good witch on a bad day. Cormac did not understand this delicate balance of nature.
It would not be true though to claim that Mac Cumhaill’s leniency in these matters was entirely born of good will to others. He had also given some consideration to his own health. He considered it a far better thing to receive the dubious blessings of a bad bandraoi whose life he had spared than to be subjected to the dying curses of a bandraoi, good or bad. The ill wishes of a powerful woman were likely to result in misfortunes cluttering the pathways of his life, lessening his chances of getting to old age in good condition.
Rather than being pleased at these women still being alive, Carman thought they’d be better off dead than the way they now were. She began to boil inside at the thought of twenty-one bandraois idling in little cabins around the bogs and hills of Éirinn, far from people, keeping a promise to do nobody any further harm. Days and weeks had gone by with her getting increasingly angry. ‘All that instruction wasted!’ she would scream at her lumpy twisted half-goblin husband, Scorm. ‘He should have killed them instead of having them lazing around scratching their arses, growing flowers, and looking at the stars while that country carries on happily in peace and goodness. It’s enough to make my flesh creep. I can’t take it. I have to get them back to mischievous works.’
‘Yes, yes, mistress. Go and set them free.’
‘Ah, my lovely, a fine idea! And when they are free they can lay a thousand bitter spells on Mac Cumhaill, each one cutting into him. They will injure him slowly to death. What pleasure! But here is a puzzle. I myself cannot go there,’ she added, tetchily. ‘You see ... um ... the High Order of bandraois depends on me and would fall into disarray if I was away.’
She decided not to mention to her proud husband that the real reason she wouldn’t go was that she was afraid she might not come back. Carman had not survived this long through being reckless with her own life. The reason she had stopped tutoring witches in Éirinn was because she had taken a warning. She had fled her school on the very day she received the gift of a long whitethorn twig wrapped in crow’s foot grasses. That was enough to make her suspect that Mac Cumhaill might have skills beyond bludgeoning and slicing people. She guessed that he might have special personal protections and worse, he might have knowledge that could harm her. How else could he have known that these items, which were ordinary enough ingredients for most women who made potions with herbs and insects, were like poison to her?
‘We’ll have to find ... um ... someone else to undertake this timely and satisfying work,’ she said.
‘Well then, let me go,’ growled Scorm. ‘I’m ready for a mission. I want to bring ruin a
nd misery to them.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Would you really do that for me? You are truly dashing.’ Carman liked her husband well enough. He had already brought sickness, misfortune, fear, and death to many even though he was yet only two hundred years old. She knew the mission would be even more dangerous for him than for her. He was prone to blundering anger and not sly enough to slip quickly out of dangerous situations. She knew there was a good chance that he would not come back. But she didn’t let that worry her unduly. She had lost things before.
A few days later, a strange tramp appeared in a village in Baile Lugdach in the north west. He was wrapped in a great blanket and carried several hazel twigs on his shoulder, in the manner of a broom maker – Carman had advised him that the bandraois in Éirinn were not renowned for their glamour and preferred a bit of a hazel twig to a broom. Children didn’t like the look of him and some threw stones at him. Cats went missing in his wake. Adults remembered their manners and welcomed him into their homes. They fed him and let him warm himself. What was strange for these people, aside from the obvious matter of the head, was that the guest didn’t have a good word to throw to a dog and never smiled. After devouring all the food in the house for his supper, he would settle silently by the fire for a few hours before blurting, ‘So, I heard there’s an auld cailleach of some kind living out in the bog behind that hill. Tell me exactly where her house is. Er, so I can avoid it.’
As soon as he had good directions to a bandraoi’s hut, he would leave the house without a word.
The first bandraoi he had approached, Vera from the bog near Cenél Lugdach, was actually quite happy with her retirement. She had taken up collecting moths from the bog rushes. She was bewildered when Scorm revealed himself and gave her a hazel twig and some potions. ‘Get along out of this, boar head,’ she said to him, as politely as she could.