The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Standún’s first impulse was to glance around them, making certain no one had witnessed the violence. Toby Blondell was no longer in sight, and two men on a hill to the north, who were dipping sheep, did not seem to be paying attention. He regarded Máire distastefully. “You’re a rude beast, lass,” he said.

  Máire opened her heavy eyes the slightest bit. “If she insults me so again, I’ll hit her so again.”

  “You as much as called me a whore first!” Eibhlín winced and licked the bright red line on her lower lip.

  “Did I?” There was no expression on the dark girl’s face, but her sister took another step backward.

  Standún stepped between. “A plague is no misfortune, compared to a pair of daughters. You have no shame, to be fighting like cats in a bag on the public road. If the men who sail my boats behaved so badly, they’d find no work in Galway County! I’d have them keelhauled from the Claddagh to An Cheathru Rua.” He paused, looking from one girl to the other.

  “Eibhlín, keep your tongue to yourself, and you, Máire …”

  Máire Standún gave her father the same look she had bestowed upon her sister. He paid no attention to it.

  “You spend too much time with Ó Murchu. It raises talk.”

  “Talk raises up by itself, Father. All I do is help him in his classes.”

  “That’s bad enough, for there’s no good odor to some of the priest’s classes.”

  “Would you have us ignorant of our history and language?” Máire’s voice rose both in pitch and volume, and her cheeks darkened as she spoke.

  “I would have you at home, like a respectable girl.”

  “Respectable or no, you’ll have her at home forever, Da, because no one will take her off your hands.”

  Sean Standún shot a glare at Eibhlín, who skittered out of her sister’s range. Máire turned on her heel.

  “Where are you going, Máire?” called Standún, seeing his daughter climb the curb, her skirts lifted in both hands, and her head held very high.

  “Not to church!”

  The sun shone down on Máire’s very black hair. Her stance was soldierly and her stride long. Standún watched her go with a sort of relief.

  “She’ll end up in trouble for certain,” offered Eibhlín, eyeing her father’s face carefully.

  His blue eyes met hers without warmth. “See that you don’t yourself,” he said, and then the two fair heads, looking much alike, continued toward the pier.

  Máire had no idea where she was going, when she set out across the fields. Her anger, which was large, and her pride, which was much larger, had only made it impossible that she continue to the pier with her father and sister.

  To be suspected of misbehavior with the priest! What could be more wicked and less likely? And yet, she reminded herself, as she stepped over a neat-blooming spring pink, she had known from the beginning they would be open to gossip. Perhaps that was what made it worse.

  And poor little Tadhg Ó Murchú, shorter than Máire herself and as dark as a Welshman. He might as well be a Welshman, with his tidy, clever, secretive ways. What woman would ruin her reputation for Ó Murchú?

  Máire Standún would, she reminded herself, with a dry, involuntary smile. But not for the reasons people would imagine.

  Where had she come? She stopped to look around, squinting in the bright sunlight of May. Here was the old house lived in once by Terrence Fenton’s grandparents, now half roofed and, by the sounds coming from it, keeping calves. There were tiny bean-leaf plants growing out of the cracks between the stones, and these shone translucent. The quartz in the granite sparkled.

  Máire’s hopeless anger leaked away, leaving her no motivation to keep walking. She settled down by the old doorstep of the cottage, feeling the warm stone wall at her back. Her red petticoat spread out around her like a poppy on the new grass.

  If Máire were a man, she considered, it would not matter that she were not her father’s daughter. (Or son.) She was glad, in ways, not to be blood relation to a pale and mingy fellow like him. If she were a man, she would say to hell with Mister John Stanton and she’d go off to Dublin. If she were a man, she would enter politics. Or perhaps carry a gun. Certainly she would not become a priest, like poor O Murchú, pulled to the point of tearing by his bishop and his nationalism. She would have remained a free power.

  But she was not a man and could not be rid of her father, who in turn could not be rid of her. Her income, apart from what Standún thought to give her, was the produce of ten speckled chickens and a single hive of bees which swarmed too often. If the chief constable discovered what she was teaching under the priest’s supervision, she would probably go to prison.

  Languidly, Máire was wondering whether prison would be more or less bearable than her present life, when a shadow fell across her face. She lifted her eyes.

  “Och, it’s you,” she said to the horse.

  It nickered very gently and tossed its neat mane left and right.

  “Well, don’t you look a gentleman, now that Anraí’s taking care of you.” The horse made no reply. Neither did it lower its pretty head to the grass, but gazed darkly and deeply at Máire, while its silver tail switched slowly.

  “Does he know you’re out, my man? It’s a few miles between Knockduff and An Cheathrú Rúa, and Anraí Ó Reachtaire isn’t one to let his good horses wander the roads.”

  The horse stepped closer, and with meditative care it placed its perfect small nose against Máire’s face.

  She was flattered, as any woman might be by this attention. It did not occur to her that the beast might bite. “Well!” she said, drawing back only slightly. “You’re a horse, and that’s to your advantage. But you’re still a male, so my trust of you is limited. Of course my sister is female, so I can’t say I prefer my own sex …”

  It nuzzled her again and then danced away into sunlight. With a peculiar, complex gesture involving the head and both forefeet, it genuflected before Máire. White lashes fluttered over its black-brown eyes.

  She rose to her feet in surprise. “That’s quite a trick. But I don’t have anything to give you for it except eggs, and I doubt you’d fancy them.”

  The horse made a disgusted noise, but remained on one knee, bobbing its head forcefully. Máire began to feel awkward about it. “I’m sorry, white horse. No sugar, honey, dulse, sweet cake. Nothing at all. My regrets.” She lifted her red skirts and backed away.

  The horse sprang up, bouncing straight into the air. It came down in front of her and knelt again. Máire’s handkerchief of eggs slipped and nearly hit the ground. “Curse you, animal. Are you threatening me? You can’t get sweets out of a stone!”

  She started to edge sideways, between the kneeling horse and the wall. Inside the calves bawled.

  The horse scooted with her, still kneeling. Máire hovered between perplexity and fury at being so cornered by the beast. At last, without warning, she broke into loud laughter. “You’re getting your knees dirty, horse! Anraí’s Donncha will be in a rage at you!”

  It occurred to the girl, as she stared down at the smooth coat of hair and the wiry white mane, that she could sit right down on this horse’s back. The idea came from nowhere, ridiculous and compelling. Máire had very limited experience with horses, having ridden docile ponies when available to her but never having been on anything that might frighten her. She could just lower herself sideways onto the horse here, so white and clean and friendly, and if it got up, she’d slip off easily. Better than sitting on a stone, and perhaps that would convince the beast to allow her past.

  She found she was sitting on the horse, and (like Anraí, some months before) wondering why she had done something so foolish. For the horse had risen and she hadn’t slipped off, and there she was sitting higher than ever she’d been, and holding a very short mane with the grip of fear. She gasped.

  But the horse made no move. He stood like a statue, and the warmth of his skin could be felt even through her woolen petticoats. He smell
ed like earth and flowers.

  “Mind your manners, now, my dear,” said Máire nervously. “I’m no challenge to you at all, and if I fall off I’ll lie in the road in two pieces, I’m sure.” The horse glanced over his shoulder and nickered. He took a smooth step and Máire settled herself with one knee up over the withers.

  “Well there!” she said, heartened. “I know I’m a fool, but I haven’t suffered for it yet. I suspected a horse was more the natural gentleman than any man. I leave it to you, my brawny one.”

  And with this permission, if permission it was, the horse moved out from the cattle shed and over the field.

  This was nothing like Anraí’s wild ride, or the girl would have been on the grass in five seconds. The horse moved from a gliding walk to a pace as easy as a boat on calm waters. When he came to a fence, he stepped over, each foot in turn.

  The bay was behind them, and the Cois Fhairrge Road. Ahead were fields of pinks and lupine and violets, with the first green of the heath cutting through winter’s brown background. Máire felt herself impossibly high in the air. She let her left leg slip over until she was riding astride. With the bright skirt on the white coat the pair resembled a confection in peppermint. Bees rose up around them and filled her ears with sound.

  They passed a man in high gaiters, walking with a black sheepdog. She waved graciously to him from her height. He stared and the little dog barked shrilly. Máire didn’t care.

  The horse was a galleon under sail. It was a white bird. Máire herself was a bird, exalted, exhilarated. She laughed again, and the horse broke into a round canter.

  This was daunting at first, but she held on with the length of her legs. The hairy back was warm, warm. All the huts and cottages were behind them, and they splashed through empty bogland, scaring the sheep.

  It did not occur to Máire that the horse might be caught in a bog. He knew his business. When they came to the first inclines of the highlands she felt the enormous strength of the hindquarters pushing her up and forward, and her dazed eyes opened wide. Then she began to be afraid of the gentle white horse.

  They were in the hills already—the Twelve Pins—and the horse went at a mad roaring gallop. Máire clamped her legs tight and held on. “Dear God!” she exclaimed, but she enjoyed it. Her breath was fast, like the horse’s, which boomed in time with his hooves. The skin on her arms was flushed. Hills of granite and of grass, streams and valleys, spun by, too quick to identify and shot with splashes of sky.

  Máire Standún felt herself immortal, invulnerable, ready for great deeds and battle. “We are a nation of warriors!” she cried to the horse, as she had to the small, unadvertised classes in the inner rooms of the rectory. “A nation of poets and warriors.” The horse made an odd gurgling noise in reply.

  But the warrior in the red petticoat was getting tired even as she spoke, for both exaltation and equitation are hard work. Panting, she leaned over the horse’s withers, holding the mane tightly in both hands.

  The gallop slowed, turned to canter and then amble. In a sweet grassy thicket between two featureless hills, where there were not even sheep to break the privacy, the grey horse stopped. It stopped and then rose up on its hind legs.

  Máire gave a small shriek as she began to slip backward. She grabbed tight with hands and with legs, as the shape she held to did astonishing things.

  Her left leg slipped and her heel hit a stone. The coarse hair in her hands changed to báinín and she was holding the back of the collar of a man’s shirt. A man she was embracing in the most scandalous manner. She gave a great gasp and he kissed her.

  It was spring. The air was fresh and warm, the grass new on the sides of the hills. Somewhere an ouzel sang its sweet few notes, and the man before her was not bad looking at all.

  Máire hauled off and hit him such a blow he fell backward into the fresh cold waters of the rivulet. “Did you think I was such a babe and a weakling …” Her anger outran her language, and her heel hurt like a bee sting where it had hit the stone.

  Ruairí MacEibhir lay where he had been flung, and the little waters made trails over his woolen shirt. His black eyes blinked foolishly. “A weakling you certainly aren’t! By my black mother, you have a fist to be proud of.”

  Máire Standún snorted at praise from such an unlikely source. She stepped backward up the side of the stony hill and looked around her at perfect loneliness. She became aware of her disadvantage and so did Ruairí. He sat up, sprinkling the turf around him. “It’s a long walk home, isn’t it, a Mháire mo Róisín?”

  His open face, slightly reddened on one cheek, showed no resentment. Neither did he approach the girl closer.

  “How do you know my name?” Not waiting for an answer she continued, “It’s a long way, but I’d walk from here to Sligo before I’d take a ride at your price.”

  Ruairí sprang up and shook himself, left foot and then right. “Lovely lady, I haven’t named a price at all. In weather like this, with the ground so firm it invites the hoof … uh, the foot …”

  Guessing that the way they had entered the little dell was toward the Sound, Máire turned that way. She found the going slippery in the heavy shoes her father insisted she wear. Over her shoulder she said, “You were quick as a jarvey to collect your fare upon arriving here in the wilderness, fellow. I don’t pay in that coin.”

  “Payment?” The voice was right behind her, and she hadn’t heard him come up. “There have been enough pretty lasses who didn’t feel it as a payment to be kissed by Ruairí MacEibhir.”

  So that was his name. Máire did not turn.

  “So kiss them. As for myself, you can let me be.”

  She heard splashing, and Ruairí was in the water, just beneath and to the left of her. “It’s you I want to kiss, Máire my black rose. My big queen of women.”

  She flinched and laughed at herself. “‘Big’ is not a word of flattery, for a girl.”

  With a leap, unexpected by Máire, he stood in front of her. “Should I call you a little, inconsequential thing, then? A toy? Like your sister Eibhlín?”

  Eibhlín. That anger was still fresh, and she found she could not look at him. “Call me what you like, cowboy, but leave me be.” She stepped around, or tried to. The hillside was steep and slippery with quartz and his arm was around her, supporting her. But he offered no further intimacy.

  “I want you for my wife, Máire,” he said, and then he stepped away.

  Máire’s face grew as hot and lonely as the place was; she felt surrounded by eyes. “Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not so easily fooled as that.”

  Ruairí watched her discomfort—her shame—with incomprehension. He put his dirty-nailed hand into his grey hair and scratched. “Fooled? Máire, how could I be fooling you? I said it plain and under the sky. You are the choice of my heart, and I would marry you.”

  “Don’t!”

  She floundered off, handicapped by heavy shoes and a wealth of skirt. When she felt some control over her voice again, she called out, “I know something about fairies, Ruairí MacEibhir. And something about men, too!”

  He scrambled behind, and soon the narrow valley opened up, revealing brown blankets of bog touched with green, and the grey rock and blue of the seacoast beyond. Sheep scattered in dim, sheepish alarm at their passage. “And if you do know something about fairies, so much the better for you, for you are a good part fairy yourself, mo Róisín. That pale man like a stalk of bleached celery is no kin to you.”

  Máire put both hands over her ears and skidded down the side of a ditch. “Oh, leave that old story. It’s done enough harm to my life.”

  “It should bring joy to your life, girl,” said he, his face coming close to hers in the shadow. She sprang up the far side. “… for your father is not one to cause you shame.”

  Máire fixed her eyes on his. They were almost of equal darkness, but hers were human eyes. “Are you my father, Ruairí MacEibhir?”

  His pleasant face went foolish and he let himself slip b
ack into the drainage ditch. “Och! May stones bury my foolish tongue! I didn’t mean to suggest that, Máire Standún. My interest in you is not fatherly. Or rather, it is, in that I would rejoice to be the father of your children.”

  “No more of that!” she shouted. “I’m hot and weary and I think I’ll be very sore soon. And I doubt I’ll find my six eggs, that I left home with this morning. More of your foolishness and I swear by Jesus I’ll … I’ll …” She could not, at the moment, think of any fate terrible enough to call down on the fairy man’s head.

  This vague threat, however, seemed to do. Ruairí MacEibhir pulled his head away from her, and his black eyes opened very wide. “I’ll see you home,” he said, and he turned into a white horse before her eyes.

  Máire was still angry, but she was tired of being angry and plain tired, besides. She got on the horse, finding that she was sore already, and they went back to Carraroe very quietly.

  The sunflowers in Hermione Blondell’s sewing room gleamed an oppressive brass in the sunshine of the windows. James Blondell found himself squinting, as if with headache. “Well, what possible harm could come to him? Boys invariably dart off on sunny days.”

  He saw, by the angle of his wife’s nose, that he was making no impression on her. “Dammit, Hermie. It isn’t as though we were in London, surrounded by dangers …”

  The nose sprang up. “If we were in London, the poor child would not be driven by boredom into risking himself this way. If we were in London, I wouldn’t have to worry about his being plucked up by seditionists!”

  Blondell’s mouth sagged slowly, like a flower wilting in the sun. “Seditionists?” he repeated, but his moustache filtered all sound from the word. “Seditionists in Carraroe? What the bloody hell are you talking about, Hermione?”

  Mrs. Blondell turned her stone face away, leaving her husband to grasp at straws for her meaning. He noticed (for the first time) that she was not sewing on her wallpaper print, but reading a magazine. He reached over her shoulder and took it up. For five seconds he read silently.

  “Hermie, this is Punch,” he said at last. “This article about seditionists is in Punch.”