Now Maurice did step back, thinking very hard. “Well. Well! He does play tricks, that one. But to build a house for the purpose of a joke seems excessive.”
Eibhlín shrugged. “A man needs a house, with a wife or without. And it doesn’t have her name on it.”
The publican had a rubber face and eyes that glittered in the sun. “What do you think the reward would be to him, though? The feeling in the town would be against him if he dropped the girl, after wearing his heart pinned to his sleeve all springtime.”
On impulse Eibhlín said, “I think it was a wager with some friend. That he could break a heart as hard as Máire’s.”
The rubber face opened and closed. “You’d say that about your own sister?”
Eibhlín knew, in a cold rush of feeling, that she had said too much. And she remembered that there was another reason to avoid Maurice; he was the center of all the gossip in Carraroe. “Of course not. I only thought that … that he might. I must go now. Ó Máille’s waiting.”
The publican let her go, for he had a bellyful of information. He leaned back against the door again, to settle it in the sun.
Eibhlín hurried on, scuffing her little shoe soles on the walk. She found the breeze unpleasantly cool and was bothered by the way it pulled (like fingers) at her skirt.
Ó Máille was waiting five doors down, just this side of the priest’s house. It was better not to go by the rectory in that particular skin, with the ankles visible through the lace. The door of the grocer’s opened, blocking her view, and when it closed, there was a man in front of her. He was not tall, but very straight. His shirt was thin linen and his trousers were those of a soldier. He was dark. He was young. He had a scar. He looked straight at her.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Eileen?” he asked in English.
She stared and blushed and did not.
“I’m Joe Raftery. Henry’s son. Home from the army.”
“Oh, my.” She remembered a boy much smaller and with an angry face. She thought that might be him. “Yes, of course.”
“I remember you,” he said.
In the end, Ó Máille had to come and get her.
Chapter Eleven
Challenges
Ruairí had the help of Donncha in putting the roof atop and the wooden floor between the stories of his house. Diarmuid Ó Cadhain, who had brought Ruairí together with his black pony, came to lend a hand also. He had heard how odd a house it was.
Anraí Ó Reachtaire did not work, but spent long hours staring and calling advice, and so was as weary as any.
It was partly of bog wood, which was delivered by night and was found almost impossible to cut or plane, but with willow where it did not have to be so strong. In two weeks that part was done, and the chief fault it had, as a house, was that it did not hold out the rain.
Ruairí labored hard in thought, during evenings in the barn with the horses and Donncha, but he could not imagine how he was to come by slate enough for the task and to cleave it into neat shingles.
“By the Tinker, man, I wish she’d be content with yellow straw. There’s no fault to it, and it gives a home to many little creatures besides the owners of the house.”
Donncha was lying on his back and trying to roll a cigarette on his chest. As he had no paper but used discarded writing paper, it was not an easy task. “That’s part of the problem, my friend. So few people spare an affection for the little things: fleas, ticks, earwigs, silverfish … But rather wish that the girl would have you in any sort of house, for it’s the father’s wish you’re following, and none of hers.”
“I will build as I said I would build,” said Ruairí, and he seemed to lay his ears back.
Donncha put his construction in his mouth and reached for a match. A powder of tobacco tumbled out the end of the tube, all over his chest. He sighed and began again.
“There are great blocks of the stuff in the east, where the land is lime,” continued Ruairí. “With four great horses and a heavy wagon I could haul a few of them out here and take a chisel and mallet to them. But it’s not work I’ve done before. It’s not in our line.”
Donncha glanced over at the stolid, squatting figure, but he didn’t ask for elaboration. “I wonder when Blondell will come for that stallion?”
“What does it matter?”
“Someone is in a very bad mood,” said Donncha airily. This time the cigarette made it to the match and he sucked on it greedily. Coughed.
“There are some houses I have seen in the north by Moyard that were abandoned. Last time I was there they still had their shingles. I could…”
“When were you last there?”
Ruairí counted on his fingers. “Thirty-seven years.”
“Don’t bother. They won’t still be there.” Donncha was pleased with his cigarette. His companion put a large hay bale between them.
“Then I shall have to rip them out of a house where folk are living!”
Donncha peered around the bale, to find Ruairí squatting like a red Indian with a fierce frown covering his face. He sat back again and sighed smoke and burned paper into the air. “Too bad. If we were gentry, now, you’d just buy so many shingles. You’d say, ‘and make sure they are even and uniform and no cracks!’ Other men would labor, and money would see it done.”
There was no reply. Donncha wondered if he had offended his strange barn mate, whom he still could not predict. Then Ruairí’s head appeared around the straw bale. “Buy shingles?” he asked. “Slate shingles?”
“Certainly. How do you think most people get them?”
Ruairí crawled onto the bale and stared down at Donncha. He sneezed. “If I had known, I would not have pondered so deeply. There are men who sell shingles, like they were cabbages?”
“Dear Lord, of course there are!”
The irritation returned to the overhanging face. “And you never told me?”
Donncha took a last, heavy drag upon his cigarette, for it was coming apart. He pounded out the embers on his chest. “How could I know you’d be so ignorant? And besides, you don’t have a penny, as I well know.”
Ruairí stared, as though he would contradict Donncha, and then he lowered his gaze and merely stared. He stood slowly, pointed his finger at his companion for a moment, and then let it drop. Without another word he left the barn.
Donncha sat with smoke dribbling out of his mouth and from his shirt. “What new trouble …?” he asked the air.
Ruairí MacEibhir did not return that night or the next morning. But as it was the morning that Seosamh Ó Reachtaire walked up to the back door of the house and announced his return, he was not missed a great deal, except by the horses.
“Term of duty is over?” echoed Anraí. “What do you mean? I thought the army was your career, a Sheosaimh. That, at least, was what you gave me to understand when …”
“Too expensive a career, for too little reward,” answered Seosamh. He sat across from his father with one arm over the back of the chair and his other hand wrapped around the little glass that Áine had set before him, looking completely at home.
His father, on the other hand, sat on the edge of his seat rigidly, with his hands balled on his thighs.
Seosamh took a breath before continuing, “There is no way a man in the ranks can establish himself, Da. You just grow older and less ambitious as the years …”
“Did you get your uniform money that your father sent you?” Áine broke in nervously, looking from father to son.
“Uniform … Oh, of course, Ma. I did.”
Anraí’s color had been deepening ever since he sat down, and now was like the inside of a sweet cherry. Still, he made an attempt at composure. “I’m told by Maurice at the local that the queen buys your uniforms for you.”
Seosamh’s eyebrows rose at his father’s queer phrasing. In this position he bore a strong resemblance to Anraí. “The queen? Wouldn’t that be bloody good of her!” He slapped his hand hard against the back of the chair and do
wned the government whiskey in a single swallow. He ignored the small protest in Áine’s throat concerning his language and spoke to his father. “They buy some uniforms for you.”
“And how many do you need? You can only wear one at a time,” replied Anraí, but his words were almost placatory in effect.
Seosamh allowed the fumes of the whiskey to escape through his nose. He leaned back in the chair, which squeaked. “I’ll tell you, Da. The British army is no place for an Irishman.”
“Was it four years ago, when you were so hot on it?” asked Anraí in the same small voice.
Donncha put his head in the door to tell them that Ruairí had not come home, but at that moment Seosamh slammed both his hands on the enamel-topped table, making the glasses rattle. “How the dirty hell should I have known what it would be, four years ago when I hadn’t joined?”
Anraí came to his feet roaring, “Because I told you!”
Donncha met Áine’s eyes, winced, and ducked out again.
That evening it was Donncha and Áine, sitting by the light of his lantern, amid the company of the horses.
“It’ll be the death of my old man. There’s nothing the boy can say that doesn’t set him off. He’s certain that Seosamh was drummed out of his corps, and all because he didn’t bring him the little piece of paper to show.”
Donncha, who was equally convinced that young O Reachtaire had been cashiered, shook his ungainly head. “So unfortunate, Áine. How was he to know it would be wanted?”
“Indeed! And Seosamh never has been reliable with things written. Or with finance.”
Donncha nodded. He recalled, now that he sat and thought about it, that it had been partly a lack of financial reliability that had impelled Seosamh Ó Reachtaire to leave his father’s establishment in the first place. (Accepting payments from clients which did not then find their way into the books of the stable. Among other things.)
“And the boy wants to set his father off, like gunpowder.” Áine shook her head mournfully and wandered over to get whatever consolation her red cow’s smooth back had to offer. “It’s as though he does it on purpose. And yet this very morning I told him he had to be careful, for his father’s health hangs on a thread, what with his bad heart.”
Donncha was usually quick to make connections, and this one caused him to drop the chew straw from his mouth. “You told him? Has … has Anraí made a will?” Immediately Donncha regretted his question, but Áine turned to look blankly at him. So did the cow.
“I said, ‘Indeed, they sometimes will.’” Donncha’s grin was weak.
There was a grinding of the old door of the barn, and a sprinkling of rain came in, along with Anraí O Reachtaire. He glared at them both, until it occurred to him that he wasn’t angry with either one of them. “I’ve left His Majesty the whole house to himself,” he declared.
Áine sighed and sat down on an oat bin. Her husband came to join her and committed himself to putting his arm around his wife’s shoulder, right in front of Donncha and the horses. “I’m sorry for you, my lass,” he whispered.
She replied, “I’m sorry I only gave you the one, and him such a disappointment to you. Another woman …”
“… Would have murdered me in my bed for my tempers and rough ways, Áine. Believe me, I know that Seosamh is a mirror of myself. It’s for that reason I can’t bear him. If he were more like his mother …”
Donncha wandered away, gazing vacantly at the roof of the barn. He came to the stall of the red stallion and gave the horse a few strokes along its elegant muzzle. The stallion, which did not have Donncha’s inhibitions, craned its neck out to watch the courting couple.
Again the door groaned, and all tightened for the confrontation with Seosamh. It occurred to Anraí that he had left the boy with the entire bottle of whiskey.
What entered instead was a figure in grave dirt, dripping clods. Its features were the color of clay, streaked with white where the rain had hit it. It was dragging something heavy. Every beast in the barn cried out.
Áine shrieked, a sound that descended as she recognized the ghastly visitor. “Ruairí! By our Lord, what has happened to you?”
White teeth shone and disappeared. “I’m dirty, Áine. I’ve been digging.”
Donncha stepped up. “You’ve been digging? All night and all day? While I did two men’s work for you?”
“Three men’s work, if you did mine too,” replied Ruairí. He strode across the barn to the water butt and dipped himself a pail.
“Here’s soap,” said Áine, pointing.
But Ruairí lifted the heavy pail to his lips and drank half of it. The rest he spilled over his head, turning it silver again.
Anraí, meanwhile, had approached the rough object that Ruairí had dragged in with him. It appeared to be of wood. It was hollow, and hurt the knuckles when rapped.
“What is this: treasure?”
Ruairí bent over it with him, dripping water from his forelock over the shaped wooden boards of it. “You will have to tell me that, Anraí Thurlaigh.”
It was about a foot in length and eighteen inches high. The top was rounded, and there was an iron lock, long broken. It smelled of dirt and turf and rain. Ruairí and Anraí lifted the lid.
Paper met their eyes, paper turned the color of yellow onion skin. It was the first page in a book which had been bound crudely with needle and linen cord. Carefully Anraí lifted it up.
“I can’t read any of it,” he whispered, as a man whispers in the presence of death. “The paper’s gone too brown.”
Donncha scuffed on his knees closer to the box. “It might as well have been left blank; there’s nothing here to see.”
“Let me,” said Áine, scooping a lapful of straw over her apron. “I’m close to the lantern, here.”
Áine took the thin manuscript on her lap, like a hen for plucking. She bent down over it. “What a shame. That someone cared so much to save it, and now it’s as though it had never been.”
Anraí squatted down with crackling knees. “I doubt it would have done us much good, after all this time. It’s not as though there has been a change in the government, to make old claims good again. It’s more likely a parish registry, hidden so that some old Catholics could deny their faith.”
“Then it would have been burnt, not buried,” said Áine. An idea occurred to her, and she glanced down at dirty Ruairí. “Can you read this, lad, with your fairy eyes?”
He shook the dirt out of his hair. “My fairy eyes can’t read anything, a Áine NiAnluain. Because my fairy brain has never learned the art of it.”
Anraí stared at him over his wife’s knees. “Not at all? You’ve had time enough for practice.”
Ruairí giggled. “I do well enough as I am. I found the box, didn’t I?”
“Indeed you did.” Áine slipped a chiding glance to her husband. “And that art could be worth more than reading, to a poor man.”
“It was no art beyond racking my memory. I saw them put it into the ground, back when Gaels had things to hide.”
Anraí’s red-rimmed eyes opened round. “Where? And when was this?”
Ruairí rubbed his wet face with his sleeve, leaving a new streak of dirt. “In the far east—almost to Galway it is—and in time …” He counted on his fingers, moving his lips, and then bent his fingers at the first joint and did it again. Then he counted with his eyes closed, using no fingers. “Two hundred years,” he announced.
There was silence in the barn.
“And you remembered this? The digging of the hole? The planting …” Donncha’s sentence trailed off.
“I did. After some thought.” Ruairí’s pleasant, square countenance turned from one to another. “You see, I’m clever enough in some ways, though not learned.”
“Of course you are, Ruairí. Please God, sometimes I forget what you are,” said Áine. “I think you’re one of us.”
“Aren’t I?” asked Ruairí, and when no one answered him, he laughed loudly and began t
o rummage the box alone.
There was a satin cloth, dyed bog ochre and wrapped around a bundle, which he picked up and put down at Áine’s feet. With delicate fingers she caught the corner to lift, and the cloth fell into pieces as she laid it in her lap.
Within the satin was a little dress, doll-sized and very perfect. It was of silk and dotted with pearls: both fabric and pearls the color of amber. “What is it?” asked Donncha, and he was abashed, for he felt his voice too loud for the little dress.
“A rich playtoy?” ventured Anraí.
Áine chuckled, but wanly. “It’s a baptismal gown, Donncha. I’m sure it was white as snow. Poor babe.”
“Not too poor,” said her husband.
Something black fell out of the bundle and landed at Ruairí’s feet. He lifted it and it made a noise. It had shiny sparks on the two bulbs at the ends and was about four inches long. “A rattle,” said Áine, taking it. “A silver baby’s rattle. With jewels. What a shame.”
“I don’t see the shame,” said Anraí.
“The poor babe never had the use of it.”
Her husband growled and leaned against a stall door. “What use does a child get out of such a bauble? I doubt he’d ever have been allowed to touch it.”
Ruairí, having no interest in rattles, delved deeper in the box. “Here we go, my dearies.” He pulled out something long and shining.
It was of gold and garnets, or perhaps rubies, and neither time nor the bog had had power to dim it. In its middle hung a single tear of cherry red. Smiling at Anraí, he placed the thing against Áine’s worn forehead, with the drop above her eyes.
“Dear me, let me look at that,” she cried and grasped it. She let out her breath in a long, quiet hiss. All in the room stared, even the horses, and Anraí squatted down beside his wife. “There is your house roof, Ruairí,” he stated. “Your slates and your plaster and your hand-painted wallpaper, and whatever else will please your own lady.”
Ruairí’s smile was tentative. “I don’t think so.”
The Grey Horse Page 16