by Paul Lynch
The land crooked and Coyle stood to his feet and steadied and he noticed the whinnying of the horse and saw that it had begun to leave. He looked around him to the fields and the path and went slowly towards it, the animal wild-eyed and he whispered to it, soothing then stroking its flesh, his hands sticky and staining with bloodied streaks the snow white of its fuzz until it stood calm and then he led it back down the path.
That’s a girl. Good girl.
No place to secure the horse so he wrapped the reins about a stone and then he bent towards the fallen man. His eyes narrowed and then his gaze turned to the ground for fear of alighting upon the corpse’s eyes, sightless bulbs glassy upon the sky, and he grabbed the booted ankles and pulled the body, its hatless head lolling from side to side, until the body lay cruciform upon the track. He stood catching his breath and looked out across the land, through haze the faded gray of quartzite hills and the bogland beneath spread golden-brown, centuries harbored and hushed within its grasp.
He squatted down and locked his arms under the pits of the corpse and heaved up the dead weight to his chest, the head slumping across to rest on his shoulder, and he kicked at its dragging heels. Ghoulish dancers they could have been, stiff-limbed to the melody of a whispering wind, and backwards he lost his balance. The horse skittered nervously and he tumbled to the floor still locked in embrace and the holed head leaning into him and he turned away and his stomach voided. Jesus. He got up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve and began again, squatting down and heaving till the dead man stood yanked to attention and then he bent again and put the body over his shoulder and carried it to the horse. He laid the corpse over the seat of the saddle and looked at the shining boots of the dead man then bent to the brush and tore at a clump of dock leaves and rubbed his hands on them. He turned and what he saw was the black dog watching.
Hamilton’s hound stood at a distance alertly leaning forward, its tail standing and its eyes fixed narrow and unblinking. Coyle stamped his foot at it but the dog’s gaze was fixed. He looked about his feet and leaned to the wall where he picked up a jag of stone. He threw it weakly, the stone caroming into the brush, and the dog held its ground. He picked up another shaped like a large fanged tooth that bounced dangerous before the animal and it fled.
Coyle went to the horse and took the reins and turned the animal and when he looked again over his shoulder the dog had returned. Go to hell. Coyle led the horse back through the gate from which Hamilton had come and closed it and eyed the dog watching from behind it.
The rain stopped and he steered a path towards the cover of trees and stood a minute and listened. Oh please be. The jolly whistle of a blackbird and everything else as it should be. He made a line towards the hills under shade of tree, this lumbering procession hushed with a slumping corpse coffined in nothing but the furtive air and it bathed for burial in ichor from its opened veins and no mourners but for this black dog visible. The trees parted and the land leaned down to Drumlish where they came to a brook, the water susurrous on the rocks like watching whisperers. He tied the horse and took off the jacket. The old tweed worn and fraying about the edges now stewed in darkened blood. He saw it and he cursed and he hit himself with his fist on the jaw. Stupid man ye. He bathed the jacket in the water and the stain weakened but remained and he wrung it and carried it in his hand and then he put it in the horse’s girth. He bent again to the stream and scooped handfuls of water cool and mineral in his mouth and he led the horse and let it drink, the dog watching from the trees, the body of the dead man dangling on the horse’s flanks.
They left the river and came upon a track and Coyle nosed out of the shade and as he did so the roll of wheels reached his ears and he caught the sight of some shape forming slowly about the left turn. His breath caught sharp and he turned and backed the horse into the trees. He watched from the foliage a man he knew to be Harkin, black-faced and bearded, the man leading a mule and cart towards a settlement of white houses that sat further down the road near Meenaleck. The parade approached with no element of rush about it, Coyle fearful for the man’s eyes that stared dully ahead. A snuffling from the horse and Coyle’s hand reached around its muzzle to quieten the beast and his breath stalled and then the man was right in front of him, each step a moment that expanded in time like an eternity that was not his to live in. Jesus if there was a hole right here now I’d climb into it. His breath strangling in his throat and then the man passed.
THE EMERALD FOLIAGE BEGAN to thin and he left the shelter of the trees in Meentycat where the land turned to dun. Rough-stalks of flowered grass purpled faintly the heathered land and the rain fell cold and relentless upon that morass, black and receiving beneath. Upon the peated realm not a marker for a man and he walked till he met a broken tree white-boned and charred from lightning fire long burned.
He pulled the body from the saddle till it spilled under its own weight and it struck the ground with the snap of bone. The forlorn gaze of old hills as watchers to this event and on the wind the waft of sweat and blood. A carrion crow flew down solitary from the sky, black-dressed to sit upon the tree. It watched indifferent to the spectacle, took survey of the speechless landscape and cawed a single note of sermon before it cocked its head and took wing.
Coyle squatted and locked arms with the body and dragged it backwards towards the swamp and turned and rolled it forward with his hands. Dead eyes spun then sunk into the dark shroud of water. He gave it a nudge with his leg and watched the dome of the corpse’s head shine faintly before it faded into the void of water. He stood till it was gone and saw a lone boot that beckoned from the beyond and he picked up a skeletal stick from under the tree and reached towards the pit and nudged it. The beacon stayed firm and he pushed at it again but still it stayed fast. The rain pushed down harder from the sky. He stayed by the pool on his knees, the ground sodden and his eyes sunken.
I canny pretend to myself nothing so I can’t. I did it and so it is done.
The great weight of cloud rolled back to reveal a weakening of blue and then it darkened again and when he got up and turned for the horse there was no animal presence to be seen on that barren stretch of moor but for the unrelenting gaze of the hound.
HOW LONG THE RIDERLESS HORSE stood in the yard unnoticed nobody could say. It ghosted into the stabled area, eyes wild and its bronze coat furred with thorns. The whites of its ankles were cloven with mud and its muzzle inked with blood. A call was made for Faller and the man strode from the house, his black boots shining and his cold eyes in their fixed position of smiling. Workmen huddled about the horse murmuring and some of them looked up anxiously at the man in the hope he could provide some assurance or explanation as to the nature of what lay before them, but he showed no emotion at the sight of the riderless horse. He took the beast’s head in his long hands and looked at the crimson tapestry, examined the flesh of the animal for evidence of injury and when he found none he touched the damp substance with his finger and spoke under his breath in words that were as clear as day to the assembled that the blood did not belong to the horse.
Jim stood pitching hay in the shed when a worker stepped into the gloom.
Hamilton’s horse came back and no rider on it and there’s blood on er too, he said.
Jim put the fork in the hay and walked outside. He pushed through the men with tightening teeth. He put a hand to the flank of the beast and pulled the thorns from its side and spoke softly to the mare. And when he turned about the horse he saw the jacket rolled into the straps and he bent towards it and knew at once whose it was and he was struck with what seemed like a great and instant weight. There was talk of a search party and then Faller was at his shoulder. He issued orders without raising his voice then reached over Jim’s head and took the jacket and unballed it. He held it to the air in front of him and then he walked to the house with the item in his hand. The men put down their tools and went towards the outhouses for their jackets and Jim took the horse into the stable. He guided it into the stall and
rubbed its nose and took straw and lifted it to its mouth and he stood about and walked back and forth and when he stepped outside there was movement of men up by the house. He made for the other direction, went low by the back of the stables, found that his feet were running, and he became weighed with the feeling that the natural order of things had slipped beyond fixing.
THE MEN HAD FANNED OUT along the track favored by Hamilton. To the front Faller walked slowly head bent watching for signs. The turf was soft and giving underfoot. About a mile from the house the men came to a fence and there they watched Faller bend to the wet floor testing it with his fingers. He stood up and spoke quietly to a man called Macken who turned around with a face scuffed and shined like boot leather and an empty eye socket sealed with a fold of flesh and he beckoned in turn to another of the men. The three sat on their haunches and Faller pointed to the floor and a scurry of tracks. Then he stood and walked slowly in another direction and his eyes alighted on the blood by the wall and the spill of blood on the grass sluiced now by the rain. He bent to the rocks and touched them with a finger. Macken crouched down too. The other men had stopped and stood watching. Faller pointed to drag marks on the grass and then stood and looked at the ground and followed till he got to the gate and stopped by a clearing beside the trees and bent and touched the earth with his hand and it came up tinctured with blood and then he turned off in that direction and his two men went with him.
EVENING WAS FALLING as the men put foot upon the bog. The rain had stopped and a pillar of sun stood upon the heather as if asserting entitlement upon the plain. The two men followed Faller, who bent to the moss at intervals testing the ground for tracks seeing things the other two men could not, but they nodded to each other in recognition of the man’s abilities, supernatural they said, and kept silent behind him.
Up ahead, they heard a dog barking and then the shape of a hound. Macken called out in recognition and not a word from Faller but his eyes were on the dark beast and he went towards it, the dog barking enthusiastically as if it were in its power to speak directly to the giant man.
Later, when the clouds had rolled over and the darkening pallor of evening began to fall, they dragged the body out of the morass. The horse strained in its harness and the sucking pool was reluctant to give up its secret, grasping at the corpse that emerged slowly in a dripping blackness with rope looped about a lone boot.
The dog barked and ran in circles about the men who stood by the ashen tree. The air thrumming with the electricity of unspoken glances, an awareness now that it must be a killing they were dealing with and not an accident and caps came off out of respect for Hamilton the fallen employer, every man but for Faller who kept his hat on his head and sat on his haunches away from the men with a pipe in his hand and a tin in the other. He pinched some tobacco and rolled it loose between finger and thumb then tamped it down and sucked the pipe patiently to life. And only when the cadaver lay stiffened on the ground did he go to it and put a hand to its face, wiping gently the sludge from its features, silt hanging about the eyelashes and teeth grimed and the mouth filled with black oozing mud and he rubbed a thumb over the dead man’s lips.
A HUSH ABOUT THE HAMILTON HOUSE. There was the lighting of oil lamps and the sound of whispers that fell short on the breath with the approaching march of Faller as he strode through the hallway towards the east wing of the house. A gallery of deer heads watched impassively as the foreman entered the sitting room, shadows of antlers grasping dully at the ceiling.
Hamilton stood in front of the fire and he turned around and looked at Faller. He was white and naked but for his leather slippers and a gown that swung untied and in his arms he petted a stuffed fox. Faller reached to light an oil lamp and watched the man whispering into the animal’s ear.
It was one of the Coyles, Faller said.
Hamilton stopped his whispering and looked up at the foreman.
What was that? he said. The old man’s voice a stumbling whisper.
Your son sir.
Oh that. I see. Did you talk to Desmond about it?
It is Desmond that is dead.
The old man looked at him with rheumy fish eyes unblinking.
I see. Pity that.
He lifted the fox up to his face.
I don’t think we’ll miss him will we Foxy? We didn’t like Desmond anymore did we?
Faller went to the sideboard and took a tumbler and poured himself a glass of scotch. A leather chair creaked as Hamilton sat down, gray belly flesh spilling loose over his groin, and Faller watched him patting the animal’s head.
I have not involved the constabulary, Faller said. I don’t intend to. And you have my word I’ll bring that miscreant to you.
Hamilton put his ear down to the fox and Faller turned to leave but the old man raised his head again and Faller could see in the dull light the eyes of the man become animate.
Foxy says he wants his cup of hot milk.
SHE REACHED OUT TO HIM, put the child in his lap—baby skin warm and the bundled child with big saucer eyes and her looking up at him and enfolding his finger with a hand—the smallest most wondrous living thing he ever saw—and he sang softly in the child’s ear a melody strange from his lips that he’d not sung before but it came to him easy as if he’d known it all his life and he stood in front of the fire with the child in his arm and he saw too the horse and rubbed its muzzle with the flat of his hand and she came over and rubbed it as well and she said words he couldn’t make out and then there was blood from its ears, the softly plink of rain on the floor, and he told her to mind the blood but it began to course now, falling to the clay, and her face was wild, her eyes shrieking silent and he shouted to her and he put his hands to one of the horse’s ears but the flow he could not stop, and she began shouting to him, and he could hear her now, where is the wean Coll, where did you leave the wean, and he did not know where he left the child and he stood there unknowing, dread rooting him to the spot and he felt the power of his legs leave him and the horse looking at him sorrowfully and he was stiff from the cold.
His waking breath smothered by mute darkness. The rush of forest must to his nostrils and he peeled his eyes to the starless night. His body was damp and needled and he lay in a hollow and then he sat himself up, stiff-limbed and shoulders planked and tense with cold. His boots were wet beside him and his feet were tucked under his knees and he rubbed his body for warmth cursing the loss of his jacket.
His cheekbone was tender and he remembered his brother coming towards him outside the house that afternoon. The man in a rage. Sarah watching and Jim putting him to the ground with his fist.
They’ll string you up, he said.
Divil they will. Nobody knows nothing so they don’t.
Ye must be stupid. They seen yer coat. You have to leave.
I’ll not be leaving.
You’ll be dead before dawn if you don’t. Go now and get away into hiding. Go up to Ranty’s at least for the night. I’ll make sure Sarah’s looked after.
The night was still and he figured it long past midnight and in the silence he listened to the rumblings of his stomach. He felt for his boots and put them on and set off through the forest. He continued along a path away from Carnarvan, his arms folded about him and the ground dark beneath his feet and everything that was going to be enclosed in its own darkness.
He heard movement in the forest. The crackle of twigs and he stopped dead. A rustling nearby and he could not tell from where and his breath ceased. He bent slowly to his haunches and sat with his breath in his mouth. He listened to the wind whisper about the tips of the trees and heard the dull beating of his heart in his ears. He reached a hand to the ground, padded the forest floor semicircular for some piece of wood to wield but there was nothing to take hold of and the rustling came closer and he closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and when he opened them again and listened there was nothing to the night. He waited and sat still. In his mind he saw his wife and his child and the child waitin
g to be and he thought of the trouble that would come upon them and he stood. He looked towards the crest of Banowen, neutered in black and the hills unnamed darkly beyond, and he turned back around towards home the way he came.
A GIBBOUS MOON WINKING AT HIM through the trees and the forest began to thin. The rain fell beaded and he curled himself against it and hoped it would give way but it displayed no such intention and soon he seized with coughing. He hit upon a path and followed it near-sightless and he guessed an hour passing till he came near the grasp of Carnarvan, the growing unfamiliarity of it, and he stood under larch trees he climbed as a child and stared at a field he thought he knew, a difference to it he held not in the spread of night on top of it but a way now of looking, and he came upon the lane familiar and followed. Dark upon the lane, dark under the beech tree, came to a bend and stood listening, the night that was still, scent of earth and sap, and onwards he went, upwards the hill, around the bend that elbowed the old falling wall, the sound eternal of stones turning in the stream, stones he handled as a child, and then he smelt it, the weight of it upon the air, and then he came upon it, and saw what was his family’s house as it lay before him cindered.
A WAY TO GO YET BEFORE the hours of dawn and Faller’s man was sore on his feet. He was tired of getting wet and worn too of the evening’s excitement and he waited long till after they were gone though he still looked about to make sure no one was watching and then he climbed up onto the cart. He lifted the tarpaulin and made sure it was dry and he laid the rifle lengthways beside him, shuffled some straw and lay down to sleep. In his dreams that came deep and manifold he did not register the figure of Coyle who approached the house in brazen form, nor did he hear Coyle kick through the charred remains of what had been his home for the remnants of bones of which there were none and when he reached satisfaction that this was so he turned to leave and saw then the child’s ribbon, folded neat upon itself past the lie of the door, a ribbon once white now smoked gray, and he picked it up and held it like it was a living part of his daughter and he put it in his pocket and he was gone then into the night.