by Tom O'Neill
When she was called to court in Tara a few months later, she didn’t deny everything. She confirmed most of the details reported by the boy with the eye and ear permanently leaking. She put on her most innocent face and said to Cormac, ‘Your greatness, I was shocked to see my beloved turn into a pig.’
‘How do you explain it?’ asked the King, his heart already melting in her eyes.
‘I am a simple girl, sir, I wouldn’t know. Maybe he was a hog all along and merely changed back to his natural form?’
The King spoke for everyone present when he pronounced, ‘Even by the word of the witness, this poor girl didn’t kill anyone. She didn’t eat a single bite of anyone. And we don’t even know for sure that the injuries to yon very stupid boy were not caused, as she says, by himself poking his own ear and eye. She is free to go and more luck to her.’
Feeling a lot of sympathy for Agnes by now, Matha said, ‘Well I can see that what she did wasn’t so good, but how would that make you call her the worst bandraoi there ever was?’
‘What?’ said Conán, ‘Do you think I’d begrudge the hungry families that fed on Mrs Skehan and the hooligans? Not at all! They and the leaky lad got their fair rewards. The difficulty was only that the nice woman didn’t leave it at that. Her hatred was so deeply planted that she was not able to root it out, if indeed she even tried. By the time she was caught again, years later, she had done a great deal of harm to people who had never done her any at all. Only some of it was even known about. One of her favourite pastimes was to linger by the banks of the Barrow river and appear on the nearby pathways at dusk. Through the years she had preserved or maybe even improved her look of youthful innocence and beauty. She would step out in front of people passing, calling softly for them to come to help her. Men and women alike were mesmerised by her pale face and kind sad voice, and walked straight into the deep river after her, their eyes and ears bursting from her laughter as they splashed and drew their last air. And that was only the beginning of her saga of destruction, which is best kept for another time.
‘It should be enough to say that her toes curled upwards and her fingers curled outwards with the toxicity of her thoughts. She turned the majestic yew tree poisonous. Her bitterness even contaminated the lovely sweet damson of the blackthorn and turned it into the bitter sloe. Still, even when all that became known our big friend here wouldn’t carry out the orders of Cormac.’
Mac Cumhaill said nothing.
‘He won’t even admit the mistake to this day,’ said Conán, laughing. ‘Not even after she spat in his face instead of thanking him for sparing her life.’
Matha had a cold feeling at the thoughts of the things that could happen in the country if this Agnes lady got new potions and a dare from Carman. She would need little encouragement. And he was worried that Conán and Mac Cumhaill were so caught up in their old disagreement about Agnes that they were not thinking straight about how to deal with her now.
‘I don’t know the woman at all of course, but I was just thinking,’ said Matha, nervous of making any suggestions in the company of these two battle-hardened giants. ‘Do you suppose it might help if we got to her before Scorm does? Just maybe to give her a false impression of the business that Scorm is about?’
‘Do you know now,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘that’s not the worst suggestion I ever heard.’
Mac Cumhaill sent a messenger to King Luan of the little people asking for ten of his best warriors. He knew Luan would take no persuading of this. He didn’t like big people dabbling in spells and curses. He didn’t care whether they were beautiful, ugly, vicious, or simple-minded. He didn’t care whether they called themselves bandraoí, cailleach, wizard or druid. It was all the same to him. It was a very sore point to him that magic was one of the few things that had been left to his people when they had lost their lands long ago. He believed that big people had as little art for magic as they had for dance and when they meddled in it, the results were always awkward and disruptive. He was more than happy to send ten hardy little fellows when he heard that the job at hand was to trim the wings of Carman, whom he held in great contempt for her pretensions to being the most powerful woman in the world, while in his view, even his own five-year-old daughter could tie Carman in knots – should the truce between the peoples ever be broken, that is.
The ten men appeared almost instantly. The task Mac Cumhaill set them was to go straight back to their home ground in the north west and trap Vera.
The fairy men found Vera within an hour. Sure enough they found her walking in left-hand circles around a holy stone and calling a curse into a bowl of wormy food she planned to feed to neighbour’s sheep. She knew nothing until she was whooshing through the air and landing very uncomfortably in a clump of furze. She was then transported in this cushion of thorns and the fairy men left her and the uprooted bush in the desolate midlands hillside where Mac Cumhaill stood with Conán and Matha.
Before any accusations were laid, she was pleading for her life and begging not to be turned into a nettle. ‘Bless us all, I only broke our agreement a little bit. And doesn’t any auld one deserve a third chance,’ she kept saying. ‘Have a bit of decency there, young Mac Cumhaill, I knew your aunt well.’
She was more than happy to do another deal with Mac Cumhaill. Her task was to fly to Agnes’s dwelling in the harsh rocky lands of Éle and to give her a message. To be sure that Vera did not forget her task, one of the little men of the tuatha was sent with her, riding in the hem of her cloak and sticking a needle in her arse every now and then to remind her that he was still with her.
Vera performed well. When Agnes heard the shuffling of Vera’s approach, she came out of her hovel speaking in her sweetest tones: ‘Who is there? Who has come to visit a simple soft girl like me?’
‘Ease up on the sugar there, darling,’ said Vera. ‘It’s only me.’
Even though Agnes hadn’t seen a fellow bandraoi for years, and even though Vera was as close as she had to a friend, there was little warmth in her welcome. She shouted, ‘Did I not tell you before? I don’t want you close to me in case your ugliness rubs off. I hope you’re not expecting tea, you horrific old cailleach. I don’t have any and even if I did I wouldn’t give you any.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself, princess,’ responded Vera, who admittedly was not very kind on the eye. ‘I wouldn’t dare drink anything that came out of one of your pots.’
‘Or food either, because I didn’t invite you and what I have is my own.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Vera. ‘Your poxy food would have me vomiting for the next ten years.’
‘Well if you haven’t come to beg my drink and food from me, what is it that you want? I’m getting tired of the sight of you already.’
‘Never fear, I won’t stay a second longer than it takes to deliver you this message, though since you’re being so vile I’m not sure I should even bother to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Tell you that there’s a vagabond wandering the countryside raiding the humble homes of bandraois, trying to steal potions and lotions.’
‘Oh there is, is there? And what does this particular vagabond look like?’
Vera described Scorm with the enormous woollen cap like a bucket on top of his head and she described his tramping outfit in entirely unnecessary detail. She proceeded to tell Agnes, whose pale and beautiful face was reddening, that she’d heard he was heading in her direction. After delivering the message, Vera departed the house, without thanks or farewell.
As she was half way across the bog, Agnes muttered after her, ‘Yerra, I suppose you can have half a mug of sloe juice, you miserable old bat, if you really want it.’
Vera stopped on a tree top to say an unpleasant prayer after which she lifted her purple tunic to reveal her bony bottom for a moment before speeding away.
The trap was perfectly set. As Conán had guessed, Agnes had not given up her craft entirely. She still had plenty of concoctions gathere
d around her in her hovel. She spent the days and weeks, while she waited for the big-headed visitor, preparing the most obnoxious potion she could muster.
Scorm had been staying off the pathways for a while. He was still worried that he had said too much to Matha. He was waiting to see whether the information would be converted into an attempt to capture him. After a few days had passed without any sign of soldiers scouring the area, he assumed he had been wrong. He assumed that Matha had either not heard what he had said or was on the bitter side after all.
He got back to business. As it happened, Agnes was his next target. He was looking forward to this as Carman had so often spoken of Agnes, mostly with admiration, and sometimes even with fear. Agnes had been her best student. Agnes could mesmerise with her beauty alone. Agnes was most silent, taking everything in. Agnes was fired by unfathomable pools of hatred. Agnes wanted everything Carman could teach her and even that wasn’t enough. Agnes was generally the most dangerous person Carman had ever met. Agnes this and Agnes that.
On rare occasions when she had had too much elder juice, Carman had admitted to Scorm that she knew Agnes was probably already a better witch than herself. Scorm had tried to picture this beauty. Now he was licking his chins at the idea of finally meeting her. As he was getting closer to Éle he was even thinking to himself that if Agnes did seem better than Carman, why he might very well take up with her and leave Carman. Why would he want to return to the weaker woman, after all?
He spent two nights scrounging for information about where exactly Agnes lived. As he picked his way across the dense furze and hawthorns that blocked every approach to her hovel, he was grinning inwardly. He was sure Agnes was going to show him boundless gratitude for bringing her the potions and setting her free from the constraints.
But Scorm had no idea what was in store for him. Agnes hadn’t slept a wink since Vera’s visit. Before, she always had one eye looking out the little slit of a window in her hovel; now she had two.
When Scorm was still forty paces from Agnes’ place, a flash of light came out of her window, bolted straight at him and lifted him high off the ground. He was suspended there for several minutes as he slowly transformed from Carman’s ugly husband into a donkey and then a pea and finally a large eel that plopped into the swamp and probably swam away.
The distant onlookers were pleased with this outcome. Conán still urged Mac Cumhaill to act now against Agnes. Mac Cumhaill still ignored him and took him and Matha away from the area.
As it happened, there was no need for Conán’s worries.
Carman received word from a concerned raven that Agnes had disposed of her big-headed husband. Carman instantly forgot how bored she had become with Scorm or that she had not been too upset at the idea of Mac Cumhaill cutting him down. Her pride was inflamed at the idea of Agnes taking her man. Her old admiration of Agnes was completely outweighed by her fury at her now. She dedicated her life to vengeance. She would bring Agnes to a sloppy end.
She threw caution aside and returned to Ireland. She flew straight to Agnes’s den ready to kill her outright in a sneak attack. But as she gazed through the cracked wall, she hesitated for a moment to admire for one last time the beauty of Agnes. Instead of striking at Agnes’s heart while she had that chance, she struck her face with a horrible curse, inflicting a deep wound from eyebrow to chin. Agnes cried out so piercingly that Carman fled in fright. Agnes was not pleased at Carman’s handiwork. She became as obsessed with Carman as Carman was with her. And so they remained, pitting all of their worst formulations against each other, and so removing the need for Mac Cumhaill to deal further with either. They can still be seen on moonlit nights, flitting through trees or peering out between the legs of dolmens.
Once again, Matha was thanked by Mac Cumhaill. Once again, he refused the appeals of Conán and Mac Cumhaill to feast and travel with them for a while. He was too anxious to get back home with the bowl, to fix everything that he had left in such a poor state.
Chapter 5
AN ENCHANTED RAT
Dark trudged home in the early hours of that Easter Saturday morning hoping that Georgina wouldn’t wake his mam by barking on his approach. He was not feeling very impressed with himself. The squad car would be arriving in the yard within a few hours. He would be arrested for the break in. There would be nothing more he could do from there. And he was still no wiser as to how he might contact Long Maire, not to speak of figuring out the rest of the riddle.
When Brian had finished the milking, Dark showed him what milk replacer and nuts were to be fed to each group of calves. ‘In case I’m not around to do it tomorrow,’ he said. Brian looked alarmed at that. But Dark didn’t explain.
By midday there was still no sign of the guards. He began to wish they would come. To get it over with and get on to whatever was next. The thought occurred to him that he was being dangled, suspended in mid-air like a trout flapping from a trace. Saltee’s sneer kept floating to the surface of his thoughts.
The rest of the weekend was a confused time. Many of Connie’s friends called. Some stayed to talk, tell stories that Connie barely registered, and to offer help. His mam told them all what the doctors had said. Connie was going to get better at home. As if repeating it often enough would make her believe it. She and Dark both could see that his retreat from them continued rapidly. The occasional teaspoon of custard and the company of those who cared about him were not going to stop that.
At one point The Red arrived and insisted they try Connie’s own concoction for very sick calves: a mix of blended nettle leaves, glucose and Red Bull. Dark wasn’t so sure about that. Especially not when The Red said it was kill-or-cure time. Fortunately Dark’s mam wouldn’t let him near Connie with the stuff and The Red went away again, grumbling.
Mammy Úna called too. Úna Moriarity. She was ancient with sickly breath and had taught Irish at Dark’s school for generations. She didn’t stay long. After saying hello to Connie, she took Dark aside saying, ‘And your mam – are you taking good care of her? She’s a girl from outside and wouldn’t be able for the kind of antics the McLean boys can get up to.’
Mammy Úna often confused Dark for his father and called him Seán in class. He didn’t care right now what kinds of antics Seán and Connie had gotten up to when she had taught them two decades earlier. What the hell good was that kind of rambling talk to anyone now? As she let go his hand and removed her gaze, she said, ‘It will be alright’. He wished some of Connie’s friends were able to offer something more useful than groundless reassurance. But he thanked the old woman. He remembered that Connie had always told him to be mindful of her. Stuff that Connie had said was starting to come back to him.9
On Saturday evening Kevin’s number came up on his phone. He had forgotten that he was supposed to meet him in the park. He wondered if Ciara had been there too. He didn’t take the call.
Dark was not able to get away to the rath over the rest of the weekend as there were people around late. As he lay awake he wondered whether Long Maire was someone he already knew. He was trying to think which local woman would fit. Long, slight and cranky. Not Queenie – she wasn’t slight. Not Mammy Úna, she was not long. Not his mam as she was rarely cranky.
When Tuesday morning came, he picked some of the white bits off his uniform – he had put it in the machine with a pocket full of tissue. He got his school bag out from under the sofa. ‘I’m taking your bike, Mam,’ he said and didn’t answer when she asked where his own was.
For once, the normal drudge of a few hours in Mullet Community College seemed attractive. Even though Ciara would be thinking him weird after the thing at the petrol station. And even though he was trying to avoid the thought that Ms Sullivan, his maths teacher, was the only woman he knew who answered the description. If she was Maire Fada, her secret could remain with her.
Ms Carmen Sullivan had declared early on that Arthur McLean was ‘a wrong one’. And once Ms Sullivan decided what you were, that was what you stayed. She
saw her only job from there being to find additional proof for her theorem. After Connie had taught Dark algebra and she was no longer able to find questions to catch him out every day, she simply stopped asking him any. And after Connie had had a word with Principal Magill, she had also stopped passing comments about his shoes or hair. Or anything, in fact. She had not spoken to Dark for a year. She still looked at him and nodded slowly as if to say, ‘You can’t fool me. I know what you are.’ Dark was okay with that. He certainly had no intention of asking her something weird now that might win him back his role as the main object of her sarcasm.
Two hours later, Dark was slouched uncomfortably in his chair with his head on the desk when something poked his back sharply. He looked around. At the desk behind him, Ciara was looking down. Her set square fell off her desk. He kept looking at her until she lifted her head and laughed.
It wasn’t that Ciara was unruly. She remained the best student in the class. But this was geography and in Buzzcock’s class everyone did pretty much as they wanted. Buzzcock had been somewhere abroad for years. He had a bush of grey hair and red ears that stuck straight out through it. He dressed like an old man except that he wore a faded patchwork poncho that looked like some kind of seventies hippie thing.
‘You can’t fool me. I know what you are.’
Buzzcock never touched on the geography syllabus. ‘I don’t believe in it,’ he said. Instead, he told them stories about himself wandering through places in Asia and Africa. He was forgetful and often repeated, ‘Let me tell you, I used to be a right arrogant git. Thought I had everything sussed. Isn’t it strange, ladies and gentlemen, that I had to go to a faraway place, to Madagascar, to see who I was?’ He talked vaguely about ancestor-centred religions, the mystical past, and other stuff that nobody had the remotest interest in. Occasionally he would bang the table and lecture them about the evils of ‘Mega Corporations’ and people he called the ‘Bilderberg Elites’ who were trying to control their brains.