The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “But it’s true. Even in Galway such a thing will sell for a very dear price, and in Dublin …”

  The fairy rose up with his hands in his pockets. He danced from foot to foot in a thoughtful manner. “I think, Anraí, that the jewel makes a better ornament for Áine than it could make a roof.”

  Áine, alarmed, balled the necklace in her fist and shoved it away on the straw. “I couldn’t, Ruairí, thank you. But I would not have a place to wear it. It would look a mockery on my old neck, and drive all the women of the parish to hate me.”

  He set his jaw. “If you won’t have it, then the earth will have it again, for I’ve set my mind that it will not be my slates, regardless.”

  “Oh, don’t be proud, lad.” She struggled to express the absurdity of the wealth in her lap. “There’s the tax man to consider. The last thing anyone in the county wants to do is to sport jewels and wealth suddenly, for there’s a tax on everything, and the government would want to know where you got it.”

  “Well, then, I’ll tell them. What’s the harm in it?”

  Donncha chuckled and Anraí cleared his throat. “I doubt they’d agree that it’s yours, Ruairí.”

  For a moment the black eyes under the fall of silver hair shone with a hard light. “How, when I found it myself?”

  Once more the door began to grind, and in puzzlement Ruairí watched his friends and protectors spring into action. Anraí snapped shut the lid of the box and sat on it. Donncha, in a leap, was in between Áine and the door. She herself piled the straw over the little things in her lap.

  It was Seosamh, looking in expression much like Anraí. Behind him was the black Thoroughbred of Anraí’s, already saddled. There was a sprinkle of rain on Seosamh’s hair.

  They watched him in frozen silence. “You can have your house back,” he said. “I’m going out.”

  “It’s raining,” said Áine uncertainly. “When—when will you be back?”

  He stared from his mother to his father, to Donncha, and at last (in surmise) to Ruairí. “When I please to. Not before morning.”

  “Be careful of that horse,” called Anraí, but his words were lost in the grinding of the door.

  There was another moment of silence, as Ruairí looked at the straw on Áine’s lap. “Why did you cover all the treasure from Seosamh’s eyes, Áine? Is he the tax man you were talking about?”

  Áine’s face twisted. She hugged the straw and the treasure to her bosom and began to cry.

  The next day, Seosamh had not returned, and Ruairí consented to give Áine the silver rattle rather than the necklace, though he thought her choice very odd. Anraí took upon himself the task of selling the necklace, for Ruairí would on no account travel as far as Galway for the purpose. And the old man did go, driving the cob in the gig, but not before having a rousing go-about with James Blondell on the subject of the chestnut stallion.

  Blondell was not in a good mood himself, but he had started conciliatorily enough, at least in his opinion. “You’ve done wonders for that beast, Anraí.”

  “It was Ruairí, here,” mumbled Anraí through a rotten headache.

  Blondell had come to supervise the return of his stallion, but when he saw how biddable it was, he decided to ride himself. Donncha tacked it up, keeping his tongue firmly between his teeth, as though it might get away from him if not suppressed.

  “Whoever it was, they’ve turned him from the best race horse in Connemara ‘in potentia’ into the best in fact!” He added, “‘In potentia’ means ‘in possibility.’”

  “I know my Latin,” answered Anraí. “And he is a fast horse.”

  “There’s none that could beat him.” Blondell, like many insecure people, watched faces closely. “You don’t agree with me? You, who have trained him?”

  Anraí squinted away from the sun and wished the man would take his beast and go.

  “I don’t mean any insult to him at all. But I’ve seen so many horses in my time …”

  Blondell nodded amicably. “In your time. I suppose you have, old man. But here and now, there’s none that could take him on.”

  Anraí, who was about to grant that much, suddenly found his mouth would not do it. Blondell’s eyebrows shot up and the stallion beside him flicked its ears nervously.

  “You don’t think that colt of Ó Cadhain’s …”

  Lounging in the shade of the barn, Ruairí MacEibhir was watching and grinning, with his hair falling over his right eye.

  Anraí shook his head, which action hurt considerably.

  Blondell pressed him. “Not your black? He’s a good horse, I’ll grant you, but he’s never seen the length of a track in his life.”

  “God be thanked,” whispered Donncha to Ruairí.

  Anraí’s face pulled together like that of an old, unhappy baby. “It all depends on the length of the race, Mr. Blondell. And the terrain it covers.”

  Mr. Blondell hated to be called so by stablemen. “I’m talking about a distance, of course. Not any mile track. And if you think your black can do hills better than my chestnut …”

  Ruairí spoke up, bold and brassy. “Not your black, Anraí. That grey stallion you keep on the mountain.”

  Anraí blinked over at him in complete confusion. Donncha stood still and whistled through his teeth. Blondell was interested, though not happy.

  “Grey stallion? What’s this? I didn’t know you kept any more blood horses than your black and a few mares.”

  Ruairí’s intent seeped into Anraí over a matter of five seconds. He found those unbroken black eyes holding his, and he was nodding, mouth open. “It’s … it’s not a Thoroughbred at all, Mr. Blondell. It’s a fine native pony. Large.”

  “A pack pony?” Blondell’s face was spherical in his disbelief. “You think a little draft horse can win a race with any blood horse, let alone my stakes winner? You’re drunk, man! Or mad!”

  “From An Cheathru Rua streets to the yard here,” said Ruairí, calmly, as though he had not much interest in the matter. “I think the old grey might take him at that distance.”

  Blondell sputtered, half in laughter.

  Anraí found his headache relieved, swept away by the heat of challenge. “All right, then. I’ve never been one to deny a man his amusements. If it’s so funny to you, Blondell, we’ll race your English stakes winner against our Irish pony. From my front door to An Cheathru Rua. At your convenience!”

  At the words “English” and “Irish” all the good humor went out of Blondell’s face. “That again! Goddamn you, Raftery, you’re no different from the rest of them! This horse”—and he swept his hand at the chestnut, which was becoming momently more agitated—“is Irish for at least five generations! Does a thing have to be poor and defective to be called Irish?”

  Donncha whistled low. Anraí was too angry to speak. Ruairí laughed. And Blondell began to understand what he had said.

  “I meant …”

  “We’ll see,” said Anraí, cutting him off. “Whatever you call your tall red bounder, we’ll see what he does against a horse of the hills. From An Cheathru Rua to Knockduff, anyhow they can do it. On Midsummer’s. Right? Right?”

  Blondell had opened his mouth to speak, but found he had no idea what to say. “Right enough,” he answered Anraí, and he swung himself up into the saddle. He gave the stallion the same firm nudge he would have given his red hunter and had a memorable, if not enjoyable, ride home.

  Ruairí and his little black king were grading the large ring with a log harrow when Seosamh came wandering up to him. Young O Reachtaire was looking left and right, up and down, as though comparing times past and times present. He was wearing one of his father’s bainin shirts, which was too short for his arms, but he still had on his soldier’s trousers.

  The pony snorted and rolled his eyes at Seosamh’s approach, but that had little to do with any essential characteristic of the man; it was just the black king’s way. The white showed at the corner of Ruairí’s eyes also.

 
“So you’re the new man.”

  “I feel old enough today,” replied Ruairí, for all his bones remembered hauling the wooden box across thirty miles, and that in the same week as raising a house.

  Seosamh glanced at him sharply and noticed his eyes. Ruairí, feeling the interruption over, clucked the pony into motion again. Seosamh followed beside, staring.

  “We didn’t used to need another pair of hands, when I was home before.”

  The brown eyes fixed on his. Seosamh could not read them. “Your father wasn’t sick, before.” Ruairí reined the pony in, murmuring apologetically to it for the confusion.

  It was a perfect, fail day. A scarlet bee buzzed around the horseman’s pale head, unnoticed.

  Seosamh had soft lips, which tightened as he said, “I wonder if you’re worth your keep, Ruari, let alone what Father pays you.”

  An expression of delighted idiocy lit Ruairí’s comfortable features. “Do you know what your father pays me?”

  Without blinking an eye the other replied, in English, “Yes. He told me.”

  “And you are concerned I’m not earning it?”

  “My father is a very easy man.”

  Now Ruairí’s grin was dazzling. He piled the lines on the black king’s back and stepped to the pony’s head, which he stroked slowly. “Perhaps you’ll want to see me ride a horse, and judge.”

  Seosamh had no difficulty reading the tone of voice, “Oh, I’ll certainly do that. But it’s your attitude we’re going to have to get through, first. You are forgetting that my name is Ó Reachtaire.” He braced his legs in the sand and ground turf, standing foresquare against the other. His hands were in his pockets. The two men were of equal height.

  Ruairí giggled in his nose, exactly like a bad schoolboy. “Dear me, a Sheosamh son of Anraí, there are some who wish they could forget that.”

  Seosamh colored up just like his father, and the fist he pulled out of his pocket had the broken head of a hammer in the center of it.

  Ruairí MacEibhir didn’t bother to duck. He raised his left arm and smacked the loaded fist aside. He was still grinning. His right hand came up from his side, without windup, and sent Seosamh’s chin sailing eight feet in the air, with the rest of him following. Young Ó Reachtaire landed like a sack and measured himself on the soft, sifted ground of the ring.

  The black king put back his ears and made disapproving noises. Ruairí found it necessary to turn and comfort him, and then Donncha, who had been in the far barn, came panting up.

  “What is it? Was the fellow still drinking, please God, or was it…”

  “It was his turn to be kicked by a horse, Donncha, as happens to all of us,” said Ruairí. “I think he isn’t dead.” Nickering very affectionately to his pony, he put the log harrow into motion again.

  “You think he isn’t dead, you frozen-hearted fish?” Donncha went down on one knee by Seosamh, whose breath was coming in great, painful gulps. Next to him Donncha found the broken hammerhead.

  “Is this what you fell on, Joe-in? No wonder you look so green. It’s an ugly thing to hit a man on the head. I wonder how it came to be lying in the ring.”

  Seosamh crawled up onto his elbows, mewling. With difficulty he focused on Donncha. He tried to call him a bloody bastard, but his mouth wasn’t working, except to vomit.

  He stood up and brushed himself off. He left the ring and walked the path to the house and past. He went down the road that led around Knockduff and toward Carraroe, and he did not come back to his father’s stables for a long time.

  Chapter Twelve

  Visitations

  It was now June: the month of the year when it rains least in Connemara. That is not to say that it doesn’t rain. The grass was almost as lush as it is supposed to be in Ireland, and the hills in the distance were green instead of brown, and lavender instead of grey. Even with such a wet spring behind, most of the bogs were firming, and the first piles of turf were being cut against the use of next winter.

  The days were fantastically long, because Ireland is actually a country of the far north, though surrounded by waters risen near the Gulf of Mexico. The people of the seacoast rose early and went to bed late and very tired, for the unaccustomed sun spurred them through the days and even in the evenings would not let them rest. The potato beds were weeded and turned and last autumn’s loads of seaweed dug in. The beasts were all shed out, almost. The soft mats of winter pony coat lined all the nests of the birds of Connemara, and there was still plenty to roll over the ground and stick to Áine NíAnluain’s wash.

  All over the pastures of Anraí’s holding were the loose horse droppings caused by the watery grasses of spring. But the horses themselves didn’t mind; the new shoots were soft enough for the babie’s erupting teeth, and there were few flies yet to make trouble.

  Seán Standún was walking again without a cane, and his older daughter was as silent as ever. She saw Father Ó Murchú only at mass. Eibhlín was having the best spring of her life, so far, seeming more fresh and glowing every day, and there were two tunes and one poem with her name fixed to them traded about at Maurice’s hostelry.

  Seosamh Ó Reachtaire was staying with his friends outside of Carraroe, and where he got his money to live, his parents did not know. He was discovered to have a pretty way with poetry, which he expressed in the evenings at Maurice’s. His satiric ode upon the 47th Irish Fusiliers was pronounced excellent. Once a week or so, Ruairí MacEibhir put his head in the door, to see whether all were tired of trying to get him drunk yet. On these occasions he did not speak to Ó Reachtaire, nor the young man to him.

  On a flawless morning, very early, Ruairí was painting his parlor. He had been shown the rolls of linen chinoiserie and the satin-finished cabbage roses and decided he could do better himself. So the house was plastered white in the common fashion, and Áine had been commissioned to pick up an assortment of pigments on a trip into Clifden.

  He was a careful painter and enjoyed his work. He liked the colors of green and yellow, and perhaps gave too much attention to the structure of the individual grass blades of his landscapes and not enough to the faces of the people. Vines crawled around every doorway, and through some of them, with fruits depending from them that were not what the neighbors grew in their gardens.

  But he had not disregarded the popular taste in all things, for Ruairí never forgot the purpose for which he was building. He had painted in a little arched bridge on the parlor wall, with a small boy with a conical straw hat and a lady with a parasol. Because of his lack of experience, however, Ruairí made the parasol to resemble a sturdy Dublin umbrella, and then to add verisimilitude, he painted in the rain over all.

  He was cleaning the cobalt oil off the brush at the moment, stirring it vigorously in turps. He held the pot firmly in his other hand, for he had already broken one in his enthusiasm. He was whistling as he worked, for he was very happy.

  Yesterday evening he had convinced Máire Standún to look at the house, which is a thing she really ought not to have done. She had been made speechless by it: the size, the heavy rise of the walls, and the very perfect and professionally laid slate roof over all.

  But it had been the paintings she had liked best, he told himself. At least she had kept staring at them. Or perhaps the presence of the black king in the hallway had been most impressive. At him she laughed outright, especially when he made his grand bow to her.

  Had the paintings been more like the roof—-strong, unobtrusive, professional—she would probably not have stared so long at them. She would probably not have blushed and blinked so often, nor have let him squeeze her in his arms for just a moment. Ruairí MacEibhir, in his own way, was not stupid at all.

  He was grinning with all his teeth as he shook out the brush and dried it in a piece of moss. “She won’t marry me, will she?” he sang to himself. “There’s no one else she’ll have, after knowing me. I know the woman that well!”

  In a louder voice he added “I’m not speaking to you,
Tob-ín son of James, so you needn’t skulk to hear me.”

  Tobias Blondell crept around the doorsill, careful of the paint. He stared, mouth open, but unlike Máire, he did not blush or blink. “I wasn’t skulking, Ruairí. I was … Say! This is smashing! Like the Italian villas, where the pictures on the walls go on and on, from the walls to the ceiling and back again.”

  “I thank you!” Ruairí bowed low and gracefully to the boy, with a peculiar gesture of both arms.

  Toby giggled, and then the sound died in his throat and the light in his eyes. “Ruairí,” he said, “they want to send me to school. In England.”

  Meeting the boy’s eyes, Ruairí’s own eyes went somber. He put his brush into its slot and he closed the case with a final-sounding click. He sat himself down on the boards of the floor, cross-legged, so that his face was below that of Toby.

  “It is what happens in the life of a man. I am told it is very necessary: that every man should leave his home behind at least once, if he is to know what home is.”

  “I already know what home is! Home is here!” Toby’s resentment died in the face of the complete attention in his teacher’s face. “I … it’s not just that I’m afraid to go. It’s that I know I won’t come back again. Not like I am. My mother, you see …”

  Toby’s eyes smarted and he knew he was about to cry. It made him furious and hopeless. “Remember what I was like, Ruairí. I couldn’t ride. I had no Irish, no friends …”

  “You won’t be like that again,” Ruairí slapped his hand on his lap. “For your mother cannot turn time back on you. Even when it is ill fortune and tragedy that has come, no mother has been able to peel it away from her children. You cannot forget how to ride, though you may grow sloppy. You may not hear the language of these people living about us for years of your life, but it will come back to you. And for friends … I say to you that you will not forget me, Tobias Blondell.”

  Toby, though his vision was swimming, had to giggle at Ruairí’s swagger. “I doubt I will. But … I don’t want to go, Ruairí. If it was right for me, I would know it.”