She looked up at him as he entered the firelight, as nervous as a boy sent off to school alone for the first time. She smiled and reached her hands toward him.
“Bring yer face down to me, man,” she said. Her voice was soft, though gravelly, no doubt from the years of living on the road and the fact that she smoked a pipe. He saw one laid to the side, a fine thing, carved with wee flowers. He hunkered down in front of her, ignoring the immediate protest in his knee. She put her hands to his face, her fingers moving restlessly over the flesh and bone. She put her left hand on his head, stroking his curls, the fingers tremoring slightly. Nearby a fiddle started in on a plaintive note.
“There is a woman that ye miss,” she said, her eyes bright within folds of weathered skin.
“Aye,” he said and smiled, “I suppose most men could say the same, no?”
“No, lad, not all. Not many that have such sadness in them, as you do.”
He drew back, not liking the woman’s sharp assessment of his emotional state. She tilted her head to the side and gave him a shrewd look.
“I’m an old woman, boyo, an’ I spent many a year on the road tellin’ the fortunes an’ so I became a sharper judge of humans than most. My children depended on my skills to keep the food comin’ in, an’ so I got very good at it. Ye needn’t feel that ye’re exposed to me any more than that. Sit in this chair beside me, that knee of yers isn’t fond of the kneelin’.”
He sat next to her, and straightened his leg as much as he dared. And that was when it came to him—a memory maybe, though it felt too diaphanous, too fleeting to be called such. Like a ghost hovering near the edge of the campfire, refusing to come into the light, knowing it would disappear altogether if it did. Perhaps it was only that the white smoke rising and curling into the night like a sinuous dancer recalled something to him, like he had known a night such as this one—the caravans, the fires, the fiddles and a woman who danced like the smoke and felt like fire in his arms.
Somewhere nearby a woman began to sing, an old lament from Scotland. The words came over him like chill drops of silver, shivering through his blood and making his heart ache.
By yon bonny banks and by yon bonny braes
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond
Where me and my true love will never meet again…
“Yer grandson did say ye’d seen me before?” He kept his tone friendly but flat, he didn’t want his nerves to be apparent.
“Not yerself, laddie, but a man who must have been yer grandsire, I believe. Ye look too much like the man for him not to be blood.”
He felt a fine tremor set itself along his skin, raising goosebumps on his arms and hairs on the back of his neck. He wanted to get up and walk away, for he was afraid of what she might say and even more afraid that it might come to nothing, and that she would realize her mistake in a moment or two.
“It were a long time ago,” she said, as if she had read his thoughts plain as day. “Though I remember it like ’twas yesterday. I remember because I were just a slip of a girl, no bigger than yer arm, an’ I’d just gotten myself a fine red petticoat banded with a strip of black velvet. ’Twas the finest thing I’d ever owned, an’ I’ve niver been so mad about another bit of cloth since. Funny how memories attach themselves to things in that way.” She stopped to light her pipe and he sat patiently as she took a long draw of it and then breathed the fragrant smoke out onto the night before settling in to tell her story.
“It were a fine spring, soft rains, flowers bloomin’ an’ crops comin’ up early. The stones had turned in the streams an’ we were on the move the day after Saint Patrick’s. I were still livin’ on the road with me mam an’ da. It were fifty year an’ more past this very spring when I met the man ye put me in mind of. One afternoon, we broke a wheel an’ got stuck in a boggy patch when we pulled aside from the road. We thought we might not get the wagon out ever again. A man come along then, an’ he spent the entire afternoon helping me da pull that wagon out, an’ then mended the wheel for us. We asked him to stay to dinner, an’ so he did. The weather turned foul that night, so he stayed, curled up rough under the wagon with a canvas sheet for his cover. He were big an’ dark, like you. Tall as you too, an’ there’s not many men that size runnin’ about now, much less back then. He were on the run, there was men lookin’ for him an’ so he moved with us for a bit. A week maybe, went as far as the foot of the Wicklow Mountains with us, an’ then one night he just disappeared, an’ we never saw him again. When I saw ye today, after ye saved that wee girl, I thought I were seein’ a ghost ye’re so like to him.”
“Ye remember him so well after these many years?” Casey asked.
She smiled, as though recalling something very pleasant. “Oh aye, I remember. He wasn’t the sort of man a woman forgets. An’ I was young then, an’ pretty as a new sprung flower. He noticed me, men did then.”
“I have no doubt of that,” he said. “The man’s name, do ye remember it?” he asked, not caring now if his voice shook. It mattered too much.
“His name were Brendan,” she said, “an’ his people were from Connemara, he’d a hand with the horses, were right gentle with them, could call ’em up like he were the wind. He were haunted by a woman too, just like yerself.”
“I…I meant his last name,” he said, not wanting to cut her off, but not able to bear waiting any longer for her to say it.
“It were Riordan, he become a bit of a legend later on. Was he yer grandda’ then, lad?”
The night spun a little, the scents overwhelming him—burning peat, the haycocks, horses, the smell of meat cooking over a fire, and the raw smell of whiskey. He looked up to the stars that were strewn thick as if someone had thrown a handful of salt onto a round of black velvet, and used their distance to steady himself. Away over the fires and the moving wind, the woman was winding through the final verse of her song.
The wee birds sing and the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine waters lie sleeping.
But the broken heart knows there is no second spring,
Though the woeful may cease from their grieving.
“Aye,” he said, and found that his voice no longer trembled. “I believe he was.”
Chapter Sixty-five
At the Crossroads
THE CROSSROADS was a strange one, buried deep in the countryside, the signs, denoting the various small villages, so mired in ivy and bramble that whatever directions had once been on them had long ago been engulfed. At one end there was an ancient stone bridge, once sturdy, that was now succumbing to ivy and time. There was a wee pub on the corner, smart looking and clean with flower baskets out front and an ancient petrol pump to one side. Even during the daylight hours the area surrounding it had the feel of something just slightly off. Some would call it faerie territory and advise him to pass through quickly and not pause for even a second no matter how great the temptation. But he was tired and his knee was sore, and right now a pint and a sit on a stool for a half hour or so sounded like his very definition of heaven.
Inside the pub it was cool and dim. The interior was as neat and clean as the exterior, but it still had the feeling of a place that belonged to something other than the human realm. The bottles on the shelves glowed like jewels—ruby and citrine and topaz and amethyst. The bar itself was a thing of beauty—a glowing length of well-polished mahogany. He looked about but didn’t see anyone. The place was quiet as a tomb, or as quiet as one might expect the portal to another world to be.
Suddenly there was a man standing right beside him. He had seemingly materialized from nowhere and Casey jumped enough to bang his head on one of the low beams.
“Sorry young fella, I was out back feedin’ the goat an’ didn’t realize anyone had come in. Ye gave me a start, thought a giant had come through the door when I saw ye standin’ there.”
In truth, Casey felt like a giant next to the tiny man, who stood barely higher than his elbow. He had curly white hair around the sides of his
very round head, and a gleaming dome of immaculate baldness on top. While not terribly fairy-like in appearance he did bear a rather remarkable resemblance to a Christmas elf with his rosy round cheeks and smiling blue eyes.
“Will ye sit? Ye’re makin’ me nervous towerin’ up by the thatch as ye are.”
“Aye, I’ll sit,” Casey said and lowered himself to one of the neat little stools that were lined up at the bar.
The tiny man popped up behind the bar, though Casey could have sworn he hadn’t seen him move through the hinged flap in the counter.
“What will ye have—no, no—let me guess—a pint for the thirst an’ a tot of whiskey for the knee.”
Casey opened his mouth and shut it. The man had said he was out back so he knew he hadn’t watched him limp up to the pub.
“It’s how ye lowered yerself onto the stool, lad, I know pain when I see it.”
Casey felt a moment of sheer befuddlement, how had the man known what he was thinking?
“Now, there’s a jot of the Connemara Mist for the knee an’ a pint of the black stuff for yer throat. Are ye just passin’ through on yer way to somewhere or were ye thinkin’ of stoppin’ for a bit?”
“I don’t know,” he said, feeling rather dazed. “My name is Casey,” he said and put out his hand to the man, thinking an exchange of names might steady him and make the place seem more real.
The man took his hand and said, “Finn Egan at yer service. Ye’ve a Belfast accent on ye, no? I’ve a cousin lives up that way, miserable old bastard but a very fine solicitor, or so I’m told.”
“Aye, I grew up in Belfast,” he said, thinking it was an innocuous enough bit of information and true as far as he knew. Frankly, he was surprised that Belfast existed in this realm.
The man looked him over, pursing his lips as if making his mind up over some matter. Then he reached behind him and took down a canning jar from the top shelf of bottles. The jar held a liquid so dark that it bore a decided resemblance to tar. The man took the lid off the jar and poured a bit of the dark liquid into a glass and handed it over to Casey. The fumes that preceded it were so strong that Casey thought he might get drunk off that alone.
“Here laddie, try this, ‘tisn’t more than a thimbleful, but it will fix the last of what ails ye.”
It was considerably more than a thimbleful, Casey thought, still it would be rude to refuse when the man had opened it especially for him. He drank it in two neat swallows.
“Jaysus Murphy!” The drink went down mellow enough, but once it had set up house in his belly it ventured out with streams of fire through his blood.
“‘Tis tasty, no? It’s a brew I make meself with the blackberries from the hedges. I call it Angel’s Ether.”
It was, indeed, tasty it was also, he thought, wiping the tears from his eyes, about seventy proof. He couldn’t feel his head much less his knee at this point. It occurred to him that he’d had a very generous pour of whiskey, a pint and then this Angel’s Ether in about ten minutes flat. The man was either trying to enchant him or kill him. Still he wasn’t in pain, and he felt more relaxed than he had in months.
“Would ye like a sandwich? I make a mean ham an’ cheese melt an’ I feel like ye might need somethin’ more substantial in your stomach than just alcohol.”
The next hour passed pleasantly as he ate the sandwich the man made him and had another pint, which he wisely nursed over the full hour. Finn Egan was one of nature’s naturally gifted talkers and he needed little encouragement to keep up a steady and entertaining patter about the area and the people who lived in it.
Finn looked at him speculatively. “Are ye lookin’ for work, by any chance? I’ve need of a barman a few nights of the week.”
“I’m workin’ at Leeward Farm, but it only takes up the days, an’ not all of them either. I could use the work, sure.”
“Ah, Leeward Farm,” Finn said. “You’re the lad all the girls have been buzzin’ about then.”
Casey looked at him in surprise. “Me? I don’t think so.”
“Oh aye, you. There’s about two hundred people all total in this village, an’ that’s only when everyone is at home. Trust me when I say ye’ve caused a stir. The housewives are all speculatin’ on just what yer relationship is to Claudia.”
“I’m workin’ for her, that’s all,” he said abruptly, annoyed at being the subject of village gossip. Claudia was an attractive woman, though even had he been in the market for love it was clear to him she was still mourning her lost husband. It was part of why living with her was a simple and uncomplicated arrangement.
“That’s as may be, but folk do love to make up stories if ye don’t give them one yerself.”
He sighed and took another swallow of his drink. There was the rub, for he had no story to share. He thought longingly of his wee hut in the mountains. There he need not have a past or a story, he could simply be. People wanted your story. They wanted to know where you’d come from, who you’d been and who your kin were. They wanted to be able to fix you in place, the way a photographer might use chemicals to fix an image to paper and so grasp a moment for all eternity. If you had no past, you didn’t really exist for people. You were a ghost in walking form.
“Well, they’ll have to gossip then,” he said, “for I’ve got no story to give.”
His life found a rhythm in the wee Wicklow village. He liked both the work on the farm and his evenings tending bar for Finn. He’d formed a friendship with the man which he quite enjoyed, and felt like civilization was returning to him slowly but surely. Living with Claudia was simple enough too. He had been a month now at Leeward Farm. Claudia, as it turned out, had been trying to work at the local infirmary unit and run the farm singlehandedly after her latest hired man had moved on to a bigger farm. He had at first said he’d stay a few days and help her out until she could find someone else, then one day had slid into the next and he had found he enjoyed the work and the company as well. He’d had to make one trip back up into the mountains to his hut, to pack up the few belongings he’d left behind. McCool settled in at Claudia’s like he’d been born to farm life and abandoned Casey to spend his evenings by the woman’s fire.
Claudia had been widowed two years before and it had been her husband who had kept the farm ticking over. It was a lovely stretch of land, at the base of the Wicklow Mountains near to the border between Wicklow and Wexford. The farm sat on a slope that opened onto a beautiful vista of rolling farmland looking like a great green quilt sewn together with thick hedges of hawthorn, blackthorn and bramble climbing its way through and over everything. It was a picturesque area, lush with vegetation and narrow twisting lanes, and steeped long in history. The farm was small, and beyond a kitchen garden the fields had been given over to hay. There was more than enough work, for the last of the hay had to be brought in and there were repairs long overdue on all of the buildings.
Life on the farm agreed with him, he enjoyed the work, the physicality of it, the routine of it and the tangible result he could see each and every day, whether it was the pile of firewood stacked deep or the repairs done to the tractor, or the mucked stalls and contented sheep.
He had a small room to himself in the loft of the byre, which was cozy once he had banished the resident spiders and bachelor squirrel. It was kept warm by the heat of the byre below and he had a little space heater and blankets enough to keep him comfortable. He hung his rosary on the wall above the bed and put his few meagre possessions away in the small, beat up bureau Claudia had dug out of her woodshed. A few sweaters, a few shirts, three pairs of working pants and one pair for dress were all he possessed, along with a coat he had bought the autumn previous, a thick oilskin garment that would keep him warm and dry regardless of the weather.
He’d gone back to the wee farm in County Down twice since the day he’d found the fairy house. He never did find the papers he’d lost, but he’d left a few more things for the owner of the house—just small things which might seem a treasure to a chil
d who didn’t know from where they came. He never saw anyone about, though he went at odd hours when he thought it was not likely that anyone would be around.
He had held the old Traveller woman’s information about his name to himself, as if it was a precious object in a box, one that couldn’t be looked at too often lest it tarnish from the scrutiny of the air outside. He had a name, but he had little else. What good did a name do a man if he didn’t know the man behind the name? It wasn’t like knowledge of his name had suddenly restored all the missing bits of his memory. If there was a life waiting for him, if there was a family and a woman who still waited, he had to be certain he understood who he was, before springing the shock of his resurrected person on them.
“Come down to the pub with me,” Claudia said one mizzly night when Casey had been planning to curl up early in his bed with a copy of Robert Praeger’s book, The Way That I Went. With her words though, he felt a sudden longing to be amongst people and lights and music, even just to sit and watch the village whirl of life and courtship and chat about livestock, bad roads, a worse economy and the wistful talk of maybe one day moving to America. In this wee village when someone said ‘the pub’, they invariably meant Egan’s.
“There’ll be dancin’ tonight, so ye might want to wear your good clothes,” she said and he noticed that she was wearing a very pretty red dress, which suited her dark hair and eyes.
He put on a crisp white shirt and his lone pair of good pants that he’d bought at what passed for the local haberdashery when he’d received his last pay. He tidied his hair as best as he could. He needed it cut, but barring that he would just tie it back and let the men think of him as that ‘long-haired hippie Claudia has workin’ for her’, a description he’d heard from Finn. None would call him such to his face, for he had realized with some surprise and no little dismay that other men feared him, for something they saw in his face perhaps, or maybe they knew him for a man of violence and trouble and wanted to keep clear of it and him.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 72