The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “I can read.”

  “But …” He waved the magazine in the air as he spoke. “Punch is humorous. Ironical. You are not supposed to take things seriously when you read them in Punch.”

  Hermione glanced at her husband’s round, unsubtle countenance. She found the sight painful. “You don’t take anything seriously, James.”

  “Certainly not Punch.” He hit the rolled-up paper against his hand three times, and each time he did so, Hermione winced. At last he noticed this and stopped.

  “You don’t really suspect Toby has been abducted by nationalists, do you?”

  She shrugged and moved to the window. Hermione Blondell had still a trim, womanly figure, and silhouetted by the window, she appeared breathtaking to her husband. Breathtaking and untouchable. “How can I know?” she said without emotion, and she raised her hands to her head, letting down a tumble of bright yellow hair. “He may be playing on the rocks in the bay, or have taken a ride in a canoe with some fellow.”

  Blondell’s blue eyes softened at that very thought. “It’d be a grand day for that.”

  “Don’t talk Irish, James,” she answered, again without emotion. She was staring, unfocused, at the lily pond on the south lawn, which as yet was a mirror bare of green growth. After a silence of three minutes she said, “He must be sent to school, James. Don’t you agree?”

  There was no reply, and she turned around to find her husband gone. A flicker of movement caught her eye, and out the window she saw James Blondell striding toward the plantation, wearing heavy gaiters and no coat.

  Chapter Six

  Tobias, or a Very Stiff Back

  The morning was cold and windy, tearing the petals that yesterday had-coaxed the first roses to open. Because it was Saturday, Máire Standún went to the rectory carrying a string bag filled with cheap paper primers. The ones that showed through the webbing were first texts in English and in elementary accounts.

  The new orange brick of the building clashed with her scarlet and it tore at her black shawl with its roughness. Máire didn’t notice.

  The old woman who served the priest had eyes the color of sand-buried glass, but it was false to suppose she could not see with them. She admitted Máire with a lack of enthusiasm that was nothing new. Máire immediately sat down in the outside parlor, in the light of the bay window, so she could be seen from the street.

  She began to sort lessons which were already sorted, and she was doing that when Tadhg Ó Murchú came in. He too stood in the light of the window and fixed his eyes on the papers.

  “Your father came to me,” he said without preamble.

  “O dear God,” replied Máire, brushing her hair from her face. She did not look up.

  “But he did.” She glanced sideways at Ó Murchú’s face, and it was as bad as she had dreaded.

  “If he doesn’t want you to come here, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Máire glanced much more directly around the parlor and along the dark hall where the old woman had disappeared. “I’m twenty-three years old, Father Murphy,” she said, speaking English out of scorn for the subject. In Irish she added very quietly, “Two men will be coming in on the Dreoilín when she docks at An Sruthán tomorrow in the morning.”

  “French?” asked the priest quickly.

  “American these twenty years,” she replied. She handed him a very dog-eared, paperbound notebook, blotched with purple ink and scrawled over in a child’s broad hand. He put it under his arm and did not look at it.

  “Twenty-three or fifty-three, a Mháire NíStandún, you are living in your father’s house.”

  “Where else can I live?” Now she looked directly at Ó Murchús dark, foreign-looking face. “Wouldn’t I create a stir if I were to take up residence by myself? I tell you, Father, I’ve thought of it lately.”

  He shrugged, turning his gaze out the window. “That’s no solution, a Mháirín. All the town will think you’re insane. Or a witch. Till you find yourself a husband, you must be careful.” “Careful?” Maire’s voice cracked. “Sweet Jesus, Father, we could both of us be shot or more likely …”

  “Hush!” he snapped, though her voice had been more of a hiss than a shout. The priest took a deep breath and leafed absently through the old primer, to the center, where the pages were white and the handwriting very different.

  “I mean careful of your reputation. It’s a vase you cannot mend, if you should …”

  “Hush yourself, Ó Murchú. The only reputation I have is that my mother was unfaithful to my father, who is not my father at all. And that I have the sharpest tongue in the parish.”

  Ó Murchu might have glanced up. “That’s not true, a Mháirin. There’s old Anraí Ó Reachtaire, who has fought with nine-tenths of the parish, over his horses.” At a sound from the street, he turned his attention outward again. The white sheets slipped to the carpet, and Máire picked them up again.

  “I’ve never come to words with Anraí.”

  “That simply proves my point,” said Ó Murchú, with a sly, small smile.

  “Which was?”

  “That you can’t be too careful, a Mháire.” Her smile died. “Don’t come back here alone. Not for a while.”

  Máire whitened. She gestured at the pile of books. “And what about the men coming in … ? Am I to let Eibhlín in on the secret; so she can chaperone me? That would be ruination, believe me.”

  Tadhg Ó Murchú picked up the primers, one by one, at random. The white papers he folded and slipped through the false pocket in his cassock to his trouser pocket. “No. One of the other fisher-men can take it over, as they used to. Or Morrie can handle it alone.”

  She picked up her string bag and wrapped it around her left hand. Her fingers poked through the holes. “Then because of the ill humors of a man who I’m glad is no relation to me, my, career as a nationalist is over? Like that?”

  Ó Murchú frowned. “You’re feeling terribly sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m feeling damn angry, is what I’m feeling.” Mháire moved toward the hallway door, and as the priest did not get out of her way, she barged past him, nearly knocking him over. She stopped at the front door.

  “I might as well marry Ruairí MacEibhir,” she called back.

  Ó Murchú himself was angry and feeling very bad. He had taken three strides away down the central hall, holding all the papers, the incriminatory and the plain. These words stopped him.

  “Ruairí MacEibhirí? That one? What do you know about him?”

  She laughed. “He says he wants to marry me. A fine fellow, too isn’t he? Ó Reachtaire sets great store by him.”

  Ó Murchú remained sober. “I want you to be careful around that man, a Mháire. There is something about him …”

  “There certainly is! At least one something.” With a last, barking laugh, the girl was gone. Ó Murchú went back to looking out the window.

  Donncha cursed the barn door, which would not stay closed against the wind. He put his hip to the square wooden bin for linseed meal, and he pushed that against the door. As it closed, the wind was compressed into the crack, and in revenge it tore the deck of cards out of his trouser pocket and scattered them into the piled hay. Ruairí MacEibhir, who had watched the process without offering help, picked a number of the cards from the air as they passed. These he handed back to the winded groom, and he yawned as he did so. His eyes were sleepy.

  “Thanks and no thanks to you,” said Donncha, and then he noticed the card that lay on top. “The Knave of Hearts. Doesn’t that fit someone I know.”

  In no great hurry, Ruairí strolled about the barn, picking up the scattered pasteboards. His grin was benign. “At the moment, colleague, I feel more like the Fool. She’ll have nothing to do with me from Saturday to Saturday.”

  Sunday to Sunday was how Donncha had always heard the expression. He watched Ruairí bend five times and paw blindly at the top of a hay pile once, each time coming out with a single card. “I’d think a fairy would
be faster at this sort of job,” he said. “Or is it only sand and ears of wheat you can sort in a rush?”

  “Here’s your deck.” Ruairí extended the cards to Donncha and then lowered himself once more into the pile of straw where he’d been cleaning harness.

  It was the complete deck, or so close to it Donncha could not tell the difference. He blinked from his companion’s somnolent face to the evidence and back again. “I was watching you clearly, fellow, and you picked up only five cards. This is a trick.”

  Ruairí yawned so wide Donncha could see the grinding surfaces of his teeth, and he slipped onto his hand the glove stained with black daubing. “Of course it’s a trick. So is sand and grain a trick. It’s also your deck of cards, Donncha, so you have no complaint.”

  But Donncha put the deck on the lid of the meal bin and backed away from it, offended. “I’d never dare use them again. They couldn’t run fair, after you’ve played with them.”

  “Don’t play with them, then. Why should I care? You’d keep more of your pay if you played with no cards at all.”

  In the aisle of the barn stood the chestnut stallion, whom Ruairí had named Noble Brainless. He was perfectly free and unconfined within the shell of the barn, but he stood still and nodded his long neck up and down, as though through a stall door. He had been doing that in his spare time for so many years now, that he could not stop, whether indoors or out, come rain or shine.

  After six weeks of work he was perfectly tame to handle, and the men had to feel sorry for him, but his piston-habit caused him sometimes to block the light in the barn.

  Donncha let his bad mood extend to the horse. As he glared at it he swept the cards off the meal bin and slipped them into his pocket, without thought. He leaned against the bin and watched Ruairí work, as Ruairí had watched him.

  “There are other lasses and some much nicer in behavior,” he said.

  “But none with a punch like the kick of a horse,” answered Ruairí, not looking up.

  Donncha rubbed his hands together; for he was still chilly. “And you think that’s an attribute of beauty, do you?”

  Now the black eyes did look up. “If it’s swung in your own behalf, it is.”

  The red horse nodded and nodded. Under the door the wind wiggled, singing. Donncha put his hands up his shirt-sleeves.

  “I’m told Eibhlín Standún is a sweet girl, and God knows she’s prettier than her sister.”

  Now Ruairí MacEibhir stood at his full height, and he threw the black field harness, chain traces and all, at Donncha’s head. “Speak such a lie again, Splay-tooth, and I’ll put the pieces of you under a dozen rose bushes, and that’ll make of you the first beauty you’ve known.”

  Donncha ducked with energy, but still caught the belly-band over his ear. It stung. “Jesus, man! I have a right to my opinion. And I beg you to remember who it was who cleaned you up to be presentable to a lass.”

  The barn filled with light, confusing both antagonists. Donncha saw moving shadows over Ruairí’s shoulder and moved sideways to make out Mr. James Blondell standing in the doorway with his son behind him.

  Blondell strode in, absently patting the red horse that nodded in the aisle. With equal lack of thought, he patted Ruairí MacEibhir’s shoulder. “Where might I Anraí Ó Reachtaire be found?” he said.

  The fairy, who bad not objected to being patted, took a step backward at this. Donncha, however, was used to Blondell’s damaged Gaelic. “He’s in the house, sir. These days he takes a nap after dinner.”

  Blondell nodded sapiently. “Well, perhaps Áine will let us cool our heels in the kitchen.” His humility, while well meant, made Donncha feel very awkward. “I’m certain he’d be awake again by now, sir,” he replied.

  Blondell looked around him for Toby, to find that the boy had remained in the doorway, where he made a very small shadow against the light. “You’re letting the wind in, son,” he called, and his heavy boots rang against the flagstones of the aisle as he walked back the way he had come. He passed Ruairí, neither touching nor glancing, but at the red stallion he stopped.

  “Is this fellow some get of my chestnut?” He lapsed into English. He looked to Ruairí for an answer.

  The fairy stared intently.

  “He hasn’t a word of English,” said Donncha for him, in that language. “But that fellow is your chestnut, Squire. The same horse that was dragged in here squealing only a few weeks since.”

  Blondell gazed at the unfettered horse, and it, which had been entertained by the activity, once more began its bobbing. “Now I know it’s him. But is he well, to stand so docile, with other horses all about him?”

  Blondell was chagrined to find he didn’t understand the quick exchange between Raftery’s grooms. But Donncha followed in English. “He is healthy. It is only Anraí’s training that makes him so easy.”

  Blondell wiped his tweed sleeve across his smiling ruddy face. “Well then Anraís sold his soul to the devil in exchange. There’s no natural way that roughneck would start behaving like a lady’s hack.”

  Blondell strained against the wind at the heavy barn door. Donncha went to help him too late. Ruairí never moved.

  “Doesn’t the man have a word of Gaelic?” he asked, when all was quiet again.

  “A word,” replied Donncha, pulling a grin. “It’s just that it’s difficult for a man to recognize what word it is.” Then his smile grew broader as he added, “But the squire has more Gaelic than you have English, my lad. A man who speaks only his cradle tongue can’t cast aspersions at others.”

  The fairy’s grin was of the same sort as Donncha’s. He sat himself on the hay directly in front of him, “Don’t be mistaking Gaelic for my first language, Donncha. Nor me for a lad. I was born the day Pádraig the Bishop landed for the second time in Éirinn. A tragic day, my father, Eibhear, called it.”

  “Why so? Were you such a disappointment of a son?” Donncha MacSiadhail wiggled himself deeper into the pale green hay, as though to Grace himself against Ruairí’s drawling wit. He was quite proud of this last volley, but ready to duck if it set the púca off again.

  But Ruairí stared, caught his breath, and erupted with a series of coarse, loud wheezes as much like the bray of a donkey as the laugh of a man. “Perhaps so, but he was too much the gentleman to say so to my face. Unlike you, Donncha, my bright joy! He meant because the end result of that Welshman’s coming was to set your people against my own. He had strong feelings in the matter.”

  “And what of your mother? Was she a fairy, too?”

  Ruairí MacEibhir lost his cunning smile. He met the groom in a dark, blank stare and said, “My mother was black. Her name was ‘Wind’ with reason, for no woman and no horse was faster than she. She was killed by Gaelic people, and burnt over a fire.”

  Donncha felt his hands like lead in his lap. He heard the barn door rattle as the wind hit it. “I’m sorry for you,” he said. “I hope you yourself do not hold this against us.” He paused, seeing no reflection in those eyes. “There is enough against us already, Fairy Man, and I don’t think you’d gain much by ransacking all the Gaels of An Cheathrú Rúa together.”

  Ruairí pulled his head up and back. He snorted and the expression of his heavy face softened. “I was never much for grudges. They require too much work.”

  “And I know how you feel about work,” said Donncha, rolling out of reach just in case.

  Anraí came into the barn, pushing Toby Blondell very gently before him. Donncha and Ruairf were quartering a horse between them, and Ruairí had the straw wisp in his hand.

  “We’re to teach the young man to ride,” said Anraí. As he spoke English for Toby’s sake, Ruairí leaned over the dun’s back for an explanation.

  Toby stiffened. “I can ride already,” he said quietly but with undisguisable hostility.

  This time the fairy did not ask-for translation. He looked down at the boy with strong interest.

  Two or three expressions passed over Anraí’s worn
face and were gone. “I said it badly then, Master Toby. We are to help you perfect your riding.”

  Black eyes gazed at Anraí with the same strong and neutral interest. But Donncha winced to hear his fiery employer so meek.

  Toby’s hands were balled in his jacket pockets, but his spine was militarily straight. He glanced from Donncha to the rear end of the dun horse to Ruairí MacEibhir, and there he stopped, wrinkling his small forehead. The barn light was very low and he wasn’t sure what he saw.

  Anraí cleared his throat. “It happens that the pretty chestnut filly we have is destined for Master Toby, here.”

  “Dear God!” said Donncha, before he could think.

  The boy pulled his attention from the silent groom. “My father says there’s no need to ruin oneself on a plug.”

  One could ruin oneself in a number of ways, was Donncha’s answer to this, but as Anraí’s eye was upon him, he kept it back.

  Anraí took the boy outside, where there was a small, round ring. The fence was wooden, though stone posts would have been easier and cheaper. But wood was better to fall upon, or to strike, or to have one’s knee crushed against, and this was a pen for breaking young horses.

  Donncha went to tackle up the filly, while Anraí gave Toby a short quiz on the subject of horse care. “Which way do you stroke the horse’s foot with the pick to clean them?”

  Toby had been staring at Ruairí again, but he turned to the old man and answered in a voice of ice, “The groom cleans the horse’s feet. I ride the horse.”

  Anraí went through the color changes of a turkey-cock and then said evenly, “Your father cleans his horse’s feet quite often. He doesn’t ask his groom to dismount and tie his own horse.”

  Toby stood very straight and raised his chin above the horizontal. “My father wants to be universally liked.” Anraí had no way of knowing how much Toby’s intonation and stance at that moment resembled that of his mother, for he had never spoken with Hermione Blondell.

  There was a pause. “That’s not a bad sort of ambition. But taking it from another direction, Master Toby: sometimes in the course of a hunt, where there is no groom beside you (I’m assuming you ride like your father), you feel your horse’s gait going uneven, and you suspect there’s a stone in the cleft or wedged in the shoe. You can’t go on that way, or you’ll lame your good beast for the season, and you must take care of, the problem quickly, for the hounds …”