33
Brone found him at first light, torn open and lying on that very slab of rock where he had made his pathetic offering of a chicken with a wrung neck not many nights before. He knelt there, heedless of the insects, and stroked the wet fur for over an hour. His rough hands pulled the moisture out until Mr. Billy’s coat was quite dry, despite the dampness of the dawn and that which may have welled up from Brone’s deep-set eyes. At length Una came out of the house, made the slow trek to the grotto, and touched him on the shoulder.
“Can you bring this one back?” Brone said in a squeezed voice that tried to be gruff. “Can you mend his bones and close up his body?”
“Where are you goin’ to bury him?”
He raised his head and surveyed the land as if it was new to him. “Ah, Billy, Billy, how I wish it could be on your own turf . . . but . . . then you’d be the Watcher as you well were when you was alive! Only I can’t let you now, Billy.” He swallowed hard and took what seemed to be his first breath since the night before. “So take your rest, Billy . . . take your rest.”
He carried the animal back to the house, Una following. What was dear enough to bury his companion in? Should he make a coffin? He laid Mr. Billy carefully at the doorstep and passed into the house, where he retrieved a stout canvas sea bag from a wooden chest of family heirlooms in the bedroom. The bag had belonged to an uncle who had been part of the herring fleet at Ardglass in County Down and later had “swum horses” from the Aran Islands to awaiting steamers that transported them to the mainland. With both Una and Sosanna now standing quietly and helplessly, like so many other mourners of Thiollaney Merriu before them, Brone placed two large stones in the sea bag, hoisted it to the bed of the two-wheeled cart, and lifted the dog in his bare arms for the last time. Slowly, delicately, he slid him under the canvas shroud, the women turning away to spare him.
He pulled the cart himself rather than using the tractor and took the longest route around the perimeter to the pond,. There he righted the dory and wound the draw cord two more turns around the sea bag before hitching it off. The pond was flat as glass as he rowed out. When he got near the Pillar, he braced his feet and stood.
“Here’s another Watcher for you,” he said with an angry tremble. “May he bear witness come Judgment Day.”
And rocking perilously, he heaved the sea bag in both arms off the bow.
When the boat steadied, he plunked down, waiting to see if the ripples were the end of it or if his bitter words would draw instant retribution. He drifted until the pond silvered over again. Then slowly he plied the oars back to shore.
It was stupid to taunt malevolence incarnate, he thought, hauling the boat up the slope. Considering what was at stake, how could he have risked everything? He looked out at the churchyard, the house beyond, and it struck him then how noble he must have become to want to block this thing. He thought it without any feeling of pride or egoism; in fact, just the opposite. He wished he could dislike the world as much as the world disliked him.
He loved Una and Sosi, of course, but he didn’t know how to let them near. When he went back to the house, Sosi tried to console him. “Father . . .” she said and threw her arms around him. In another moment she would have cried, perhaps. He couldn’t abide it. It was the wrong moment, the wrong reason as if it could make up for the loss. But there was never a right reason, and even as he gently disengaged, he knew he was making another mistake, that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to give them both an opportunity for reconciliation. And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Billy, Mr. Billy, had asked for no one else to love. Surely that one object of the loyal creature’s devotion should not let himself be comforted in the hour of mourning. Brone owed him that. It was a matter of returning trust for trust. And God knew there would never be another for him to trust.
Later, he walked the rows, pulling weeds mindlessly from the graves, trying not to see the pond, and he heard Corcoran’s collie bark from across the road. Mr. Billy would have answered until today, and it was that omission that hit him at last, so that he began to pant and blink away the burn in his eyes. And then he saw the figure on the road, and understood the bark, and as the American drew nearer, all his anger and his loss seemed to focus.
34
Lane had walked briskly from the cottage, endeavoring to chase last night’s cobwebs away. Had he really challenged Flann Macloy? And what the hell was road bowling? Nothing seemed real today.
He had forced himself up early, taken a cold shower, eaten the muesli at Glenna’s, touched base with Doreen Brynn to see if she had any new research for him, and then driven to see Abban, as if this flurry of activity would make his tilting world of the last twenty-four hours level again. And it had, he told himself. He was making rational progress, even if he had forgotten a few things, like asking Doreen what seamlas meant the name the woman in the ruins of Cinnfhail had used to describe the asylum. The world was level again because Abban had listened contritely to his recitation about the Mists of Ionarbadh and his complaints about Brone McCabe’s fortress at Thiollaney Merriu, and then the old codger had given him a scroll of faded foolscap that was a virtual pass to the churchyard.
“It’s a burial agreement,” Lane said through the finialed gates, “and it entitles the bearer to access.”
“I won’t honor it,” Brone husked stonily. “Get it out of my face, and get your face off my property.”
They stood on either side of an iron veil, separated by infinitely more. Brone’s ashen skin, knobbed with cheekbones and the prominent ends of a brow that sank in a sagittal rill in the middle, simply fit the rugged landscape, while Lane’s aquiline nose and softly reposing features came from a heritage of indoor philosophers, itinerant hippie parents notwithstanding.
“Don’t force me to go to the authorities, McCabe.”
Brone reached between the bars, snatched the paper, held it at arm’s length without drawing it through. “Why didn’t you have this before? Who put you up to this?”
“It’s your signature.”
“This is my father’s mark. It’s from the burial plots in the older section. In fact, there’s no livin’ descendants of this name that I know of.”
“Are you going to let me in?”
The burnt almond eyes glowered, but the brambly brows lofted. “Of course, your high-and-mightiness. I’ll even give you an escort.”
“Don’t bother.”
“No bother,” Brone said, opening wide the gate. “I wouldn’t think of not givin’ you an escort.”
“If I have to, I’ll come back in the dead of night. No reason I can’t with this.” He snatched back the scroll of foolscap.
“D’you think Mr. Billy won’t hea ” Brone swallowed dryly. In his anger, he had forgotten. Now he narrowed his eyes again. “I wouldn’t advise bein’ out here in the middle of the night. We had no trouble till you got here, Andersen. Do us all a favor and fly away home.”
Home. Lane fell in step behind the surly Irishman. He was at home when he was in motion. Had been since age eleven. “Believe me, I’d like nothing better,” he said. “If you hadn’t slowed me down, maybe I’d be done with my research by now.”
“You’ll do no research here.”
McCabe led him along the perimeter fence in a wide berth of the pond, wider still from the house where it occurred to Lane that Sosanna McCabe might be watching. “Why are we going this way?”
“You’ve got access to a single grave, Andersen. The rest is still my property. I’m not invitin’ you in for tea.”
But the older graves were all adjacent to the pond, and the pond was what Lane wanted to see. Sosanna’s sketch had intrigued him. He had no doubt that the map was of Peru. But it was the “scribbling,” as she called it, that he had to see for himself, and if it turned out to be microscopic engraving, he would want to examine the stele under magnification.
Brone looked back at him. “What are you up to now?”
“Something odd is happening to your t
rees?”
He stood among the stalwart ash that separated the pond from the grotto, studying the peculiar lacerations on their trunks.
Brone came back slowly, noting with unease the fragments that had rained down when the bark stressed and shattered the night before. “Well . . . they do like to dance in the wind.”
Lane slowly circled the largest specimen. “The bark is shrinking, or pulling apart.”
“Ash was the druids favorite tree. Priests come at night and make magic wands from them. Are you comin’ or are you leavin’?”
They cut across a staggered row of worn markers and crumbling schist, and Brone gestured to an Irish wheeled cross:
EACHAN BURKE
1841-1899
“My, my, nineteenth century. You must be older than you look, if your father signed the burial agreement, McCabe.”
“People live long hereabouts, if they mind their own affairs and respect the dead.”
“You know, if you’d help me out instead of making veiled threats, I might be headed for Shannon Airport by tomorrow.”
“Have you still got it in your head to desecrate the Pillar of Thiollaney Merriu?”
“Desecrate? I want to examine it, not dynamite it.”
“You see it there, that’s all the examinin’ it needs. Take off your cap and cross yourself for Eachan Burke or are you an Orangeman?”
“What does it say on the stele?”
“The little tablet at the top? ‘Tis just a worn face a saint or Brian Boru. It’s worn away to nothin’ and everyone’s forgot.”
“It’s a map of Peru.”
Amusement broke over the dour Irish face. “You’re fokkin’ daft,” Brone said so guilelessly that Lane was sure he didn’t know the significance of such a map. “Have you noticed how lamb chops are the whole of South America?”
“I guess that’s no dumber than what you tried to feed me about the Water Wolf when you insisted on boating me across a few feet of water.”
“Daft and ignorant.”
“Let’s have a look up close. If I can’t prove it’s a map of Peru, I won’t come back.”
“You’ll keep your distance, Andersen. And why do you keep lookin’ at the house?”
Was he looking? “Someone is watching us from the window,” he lied.
Brone resisted turning. “They’re wonderin’ why I don’t put you off the property on your arse. I’m wonderin’ myself. Are you through payin’ your respects to Eachan Burke’s bones?”
***
But there was a figure in the window, and she peered intently, trying to ascertain which grave the American was looking at.
35
Corcoran’s black-and-white border collie backed out of the hollow, trembling. The other dog, aging, a mix of foxhound and bullmastiff, had no such scruples. He had, after all, garnered the prize himself. It didn’t matter to him that the smell was human. It was not from a human. At least it was not from the human to which the dog owed its fealty. And the antecedents of its breed permitted the mauling to death of outsider humans of poachers and intruders and challengers so the smell of human death was not taboo. On the contrary, it excited the bullmastiff. Even this moldering relic with its marrowless dry taste and desiccated yellow tissues made him salivate, made him blind with the red glare of killing when he gnawed at it.
But the collie, who shared the farm’s territory as well as the sanctity of the house with the bullmastiff, slunk away. And when Corcoran himself appeared in the morning mist of the yard, holding a steaming thermos of coffee, the black-and-white attempted to evade him.
“Hie, Dutchess,” he called tersely. “What’s the matter, lass, that nasty stoat snap at you again? Eh . . . what is it?” He caught the collie by the scruff, cupping his fingers under her jaw. She shivered, and his eyes rose in the direction from which she had come. “You haven’t let the lowly urchin bluff you?” Urchin was the common name for a hedgehog, of which there were many up by the hollow.
Dutchess drew away and half-circled, tail tucked, ears flattening each time her master looked back from the hollow.
“Is it Duke? What the devil’s wrong?” And he called out for the bullmastiff.
No response.
Not unusual for the unruly animal, who had a mind of his own and seldom came unless his dinner dish was banged. Capping the thermos and setting it near the shed where he was going to grease the bearings of the roller chamber on the Deutz-Fahr silage baler he used, Corcoran trudged to the shaded depression that ran from the culvert to the stone pasture fence. He heard the wet clacking of mastication before he saw Duke gnawing incessantly, oblivious to all else.
“You’re a trial, Duke. I wish you was deaf instead of just ignorin’ me when you’re called. Now, what have you got?” He came forward and squatted, mindful of the low growl of the animal, who was not known to tolerate the removal of anything he got his teeth into. The odor of something benignly moldered but reconstituted through the dog’s saliva intrigued him. “What’s this? What is it, you’ve got there, your lordship?”
And then he saw the rag of black linen and recognized what was surely a thigh bone a femur with a shiny patella still bedded in dried sinews and tendons and he sprang to his feet and cried such an oath that the dog lurched stiffly to its forelegs and barked.
Corcoran backed into the light, wiping his hands compulsively on the denim of his overalls, as if he had inadvertently touched the thing that had once been a human walking the earth. Few men in Darrig were as superstitious as Blair Corcoran, who told the weather by his sheep and swore that the Dorset flock acknowledged Christmas, as the old customs maintained they well could. In his right hip pocket this very dawn, he carried clover, which accumulated day by day until his wife would complain when she washed his overalls, and now he kicked a cross in the dirt with the toe of a boot as he backed outside the hollow this to prevent haunting.
He glanced in the ditch alongside the road, then up and down the road, then across the road from where he knew feared the human remains had come. The churchyard, of course. Hadn’t he heard the magpies and the keening? Old Brone (though he looked scarcely older than he had a decade ago) could not prevent it, Watcher or no. And the dogs were always scenting from that direction, scenting and making truculent woofs, and sometimes trembling. His wife said it was the sea wind they were reacting to, but she wouldn’t leave the house at night or even go out in the gloaming unless Corcoran was with her. Well, what could you expect of Thiollaney Merriu, last known lair of the Water Wolf?
So he started across the road toward the iron gate, and that roused Duke, who canted after him, confirming as far as Corcoran was concerned that this was the source of his hideous prize. “No more, you brute . . . stay!” he commanded pointlessly, and he had to go get the rope with the leader and secure the bullmastiff. He would have liked to take Dutchess, but she was nowhere in sight. With thin reedy breaths from his exertions, Corcoran now re-crossed the road alone and pulled open one of the finialed gates.
The motion in the stagnant air made the mist seem to rush at him as if he had torn a hole in a barrier and the compounded souls of the dead were flooding out. But as he plied his way forward, it thickened again, slithering round his legs like ghostly serpents looking for a place to bury ghostly fangs. He went first to the graves of his parents and his stillborn brother, noting with relief that all three were undisturbed. His own son, murdered while on holiday in Derry, three days after a grenade was tossed into an IRA funeral at Miltown Cemetery, was buried in the new churchyard adjacent to the new church. He had a mind to fetch Brone before he investigated any further, but he never knew what to expect from his mercurial neighbor. So now Corcoran wandered about trying to locate the outrage that must surely be there.
Up and down the rows he went, crossing himself and being careful not to step on any of the plots. He avoided the rows of graves laid north to south, knowing as he did that most of them had been given to suicides, criminals or out of some malice of the survivors. His ow
n kind would always be buried properly, east to west, with the feet to the former and the head to the latter, so as to see the Last Judgment coming when it rose in the east. In Corcoran’s house the east wind was still called “the wind of the dead men’s feet.”
It was the leaden flap of the ravens that drew his attention at last to the open grave near the grotto. They took flight at his approach like the damned spirits they were, yielding neither cry nor caw, as if even with their omnivorous tastes they saw the shame in their obscene feasting. And now he stopped cold. Because the ravaged female corpse was face down on a mound of dirt, seeming for all the world to be scrabbling out of the grave under her own power, her long red hair matted in a nest of bones and black linen the same linen that Duke had brought home with him.
So now Corcoran whirled back at a stodgy run, his breath burning and flowing with a tremolo that rose the harder he ran. He crossed the churchyard impervious to the
north-south graves, headed for the McCabe house and fancying that he saw only
blood-black liquid rising from the saturated turf around his pounding boots. The spire of Thiollaney Merriu was luminous above the heavily banked mist on the pond, and he gave it a wide berth. He crossed the footbridge and the barren apron of dew-dampened dust to land on the heavy front door with a thud, following it with more thuds, mindful now that Mr. Billy was not barking.
No more than fifteen seconds passed before the door was jerked open, and Brone stood there in rolled shirtsleeves, galluses hanging down, a towel in his hand, one cheek gleaming, the jaw line of the other sporting stalactites of half-wiped shaving cream.
“You’ve got to see this,” Corcoran wheezed. “Come . . .”
Resistance glowed in Brone’s face, but he flung the towel back into the house and pulled the door shut after him. They passed back through the chill mist like icebreakers carving twin channels, Corcoran seeming to run but making no faster progress than Brone’s long strides. The sheep farmer began pointing when they crossed into the rows of tombstones.
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