Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Jamie stiffened perceptibly and she patted his shoulder gently, “Not to worry man, our sympathies lie on the right side of the blanket, ye’ve nothin’ to fear here. We’ll go about doin’ our daily bit an’ if anyone is watchin’ they’ll be none the wiser.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said gratefully, aware suddenly in every part of himself just how tired he was now that his belly was full.

  “They’ll have noticed yer husband’s gun,” Casey said quietly.

  “He keeps it inside the barn an’ is hardly fool enough to trot across the yard with it,” the woman replied shortly. Minutes later, she washed Jamie’s back down with the same burning liquid and set to work on it.

  “Iarr thu aithnich an amhran o amhran?” Casey asked softly his eyes dark and opaque, fixed with a curious intensity on the woman. Jamie could feel a strange tension fill the space between the woman behind him and the man seated only feet in front of him.

  O gradh tha an crocanach ni

  an sin tha nicorp eolach gu leoir,

  Do faigh a muigh uile a is an e.

  She replied saying the words in a rusted voice that indicated it had been a very long time since she’d spoken Gaelic. Something in the words seemed to satisfy Casey however and he sighed expansively rubbing one hand over his stubbled face.

  “If ye’ll be so kind as to excuse me, I think I’ll hit the hay, so to speak.”

  “Sleep well, boy,” the woman said her voice softened by the odd exchange of a minute ago.

  Jamie watched Casey make his way up the ladder and heard him rustle about like a dog and then there was complete silence.

  The woman had moved to his hands, bathing them with a cloth then applying the clear liquid and beginning the arduous task of extracting the endless array of thorns from his fingers and palms.

  “Ye’ve the hands of an idealist boy,” she said pushing down on the fleshy pad of Jamie’s thumb, “are ye new to all this then?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” Jamie replied carefully.

  She moved on to his index finger and Jamie drew in a sharp breath as she pulled out a deeply imbedded thorn. “It doesn’t sit on ye so well,” she said quietly as if she didn’t wish Casey, drowned in sleep, to hear.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No, there’s somethin’ about ye, it’s as if yer a bit too fine for it.”

  “It?” Jamie queried his voice automatically lowering to her own level.

  “Aye, it. ‘Tis hardly a glamorous existence now, is it? Bein’ shot at, never certain if ye’ll live to see another dawn an’ many don’t ye know,” she eyed him sharply and then bent her head over his torn fingers again. “My first husband was in the Brotherhood, but it was in his people’s ways an’ mine as well, if yer born to it ye don’t think so much about it. I’ve seen a lot of men come an’ go, some dreamers, some saints, some plain murderers, an’ some who just didn’t fit. That’s you laddy, ye don’t seem to fit.” She sighed and straightened her back and reached for a dark, stoppered bottle, uncorked it and poured a little of it into his palm. It had a pungent smell, not unpleasant, and it took away the sting of the tiny holes in his hand. She smoothed it in with long, even strokes, running her stubby, work battled fingers down the tops and sides of his own fine, long-boned ones. She then turned to the palm, beginning at the center and working her way out in a sunburst motion.

  “Ye’ve a strong life-line an’ a very deep heart one, ye know how to love that’s plain,” Jamie, who had begun to doze, started a little. She peered intently at his palm, tracing lines with the tops of her own fingers.

  “Does that mean I’ll live a long and happy life?” Jamie asked, his tone rather more serious than he’d intended.

  “I said ye knew how to love not that ye were wise about it,” she replied tartly, dabbing a dark-green foul smelling ointment on the worst of his cuts. “Yer destiny though, it’s entwined with his,” she indicated with a quirk of her head where Casey lay, soft snores floating down to them now.

  “How can you tell that?” Jamie asked intrigued in spite of the exhaustion that was threatening to pull him to the floor any minute.

  “Ye see enough hands ye learn where one person’s life line shows another, you an’ himself are important to each other somehow, linked through another person.” She laid cool strips of gauze across his palms. “A woman mayhap?” her blue eyes looked up under gray eyebrows.

  “Mayhap,” Jamie replied with a small smile.

  “I’m Nora,” she said and returned his smile with all the wisdom of a woman who has seen many years of life.

  “I’m Jamie.”

  “’Tis a nice name,” she said, “soft an’ yet a man’s name, it suits ye.” She turned and poured some hot water out of a pot, added drops from three small brown bottles and then put a pad of cotton in to soak. A heady aroma soon filled the air and Jamie found himself floating rather dreamily on the fumes. She wrung the cloth out a moment later and put it to the bump on his head, “’tis only a bit of lavender, geranium an’ rosemary, ‘twill help the swelling an’ draw out the bruise. The lavender will give ye a good sleep as well. It’s handy in a love potion too, though it’s said when lavender is mixed with rosemary it works te preserve a woman’s chastity an’ that hardly helps yer love problems. Anyhow, ye’d best have yerself a sleep an’ Jacob’ll wake ye shortly before dark.”

  “Thank you again, for everything,’ Jamie said softly, amazed at the ease with which this couple had taken them in hand, treated their wounds, fed them and all it would seem without so much as a blink of the eye.

  She fixed a bright blue eye on him, “Yer welcome lad.”

  Jamie was halfway up the ladder when he turned and looking down asked, “Your husband, the first one, what happened to him?”

  She looked up, startled, from where she had been carefully placing her oils and salves back into their case. “He died in the Border campaign, ‘twas one of those stray bullets ye know, it lodged near his spine an’ there was nothin’ I could do for him.” She returned to sorting her things and Jamie made his way at last into the straw, easing himself into the sunshine smelling hay.

  He was in a heavy doze, helped along by the buzz of a bee droning in lazy whorls somewhere far above him and Casey’s snores, when Casey and Nora’s cryptic words came back to him.

  “Will ye know the song of songs?” Casey had asked, and Nora had replied in that tongue rusty with disuse:

  O love is the crooked thing

  There is nobody wise enough

  To find out all that is in it.

  He recognized it of course, it was the Yeats poem ‘Brown Penny’, what significance it held for Casey and Nora though he could only hazard a guess at. Some sort of code he supposed, but it had obviously relaxed Casey enough to feel they could safely sleep here.

  A few lines from the poem swirled softly in his head before slipping like flotsam down the dark river of unconsciousness.

  Go and love, go and love, young man,

  If the lady be young and fair.

  Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

  I am looped in the loops of her hair.

  Somewhere in the dark slipstream of first sleep he dreamed Pamela rising and falling, her hair coiling down over his hands, his body and he smiled. Nora’s words echoed far away, ‘I said ye knew how to love not that ye were wise about it.’

  And then all consciousness slipped away to the shores of the dark river and he slept.

  Jamie awoke to a sky bruised with twilight, a head that felt extremely light and the comforting smell of burning tobacco wafting about him. Casey was already awake, sitting up and looking far healthier than he had some hours previous.

  “Feeling better?” Jamie inquired sitting up on the breath of an expansive yawn.

  “Much,” Casey said briefly, tapping his cigarette out carefully and folding the remainder of it up in a bit o
f cloth and tucking it in the pocket of his torn shirt.

  He sat quite relaxed, on the head of an upturned barrel, watching the first, small stars, through gaps in the barn roof, as they began to blink in the sky.

  “’Twill be a couple of hours before we can safely leave, Jacob’s been out an’ said supper’ll be along in a few minutes, after we eat ye might want to catch a bit more shut-eye, I can’t guarantee that ye’ll be able to get much in the next few days.”

  “If they’ve already proved their point, whoever the hell they are,” Jamie said grumpily, “then why do we have to lurk about the country trying to elude them?”

  “Because I’m not entirely certain they have proved their point or if this is just the opening gambit. Besides, I need to get back into Belfast without anyone knowing.”

  “Why?”

  Casey eyed him blackly, distrust still playing about his face, then he sighed and seemed to momentarily capitulate.

  “In case it’s someone from our side that’s set us up.”

  “Our side?” Jamie said raising his eyebrows and wincing as the cut across one of them opened up. “Your side you mean, I don’t even pretend to have a stake in this particular game.”

  “Have it yer way,” Casey said cheerfully, “but yer part of it now whether ye were before or not.”

  Jamie was about to deliver some stinging denial, which wouldn’t have convinced Casey in the slightest but would have gone a long way towards relieving his own overburdened conscience, he was stopped short however by the savory smell of supper entering the barn.

  “Come on down lads,” Nora’s cheery voice said from directly below them. They navigated the ladder each in his own turn and sat down to a rough table of a board across two overturned buckets. The food was far from rough though. There was roast mutton, done tenderly in thyme and rosemary, potatoes mashed creamy and rich, carrots, peas and more of the bread, this batch still warm from the oven.

  “I’ve packed yez lunches,” Nora said briskly pouring them out each a mugful of milk, “tisn’t much, just bread an’ cheese an such. Jacob says yer to take a bottle of the whiskey each,” she gave them both a look that turned their faces red, “an’ I’ve put a little jar of something each in yer bags. Yers will ease the pain an’ leave ye clearheaded,” she nodded towards Casey, “an’ yers,” she set a steaming bowl of pudding down by Jamie’s plate, “is to be taken externally only, it’ll keep the cuts an’ such from infection.”

  Casey stopped briefly from forking food into his mouth to say, “We’re much obliged fer yer hospitality ma’am, an’ if there’s anythin’ we can do in return ye only have to say.”

  She looked at Casey a long time as if memorizing something about his face then reached out and patted his hand, “Well then lad there’s not so much I wouldn’t do fer the grandson of Brendan Riordan, ‘tis an honor really.”

  Casey almost choked on a swallow of milk.

  “Did ye take me fer sheer daft then boy, yer the mirror image of yer grandda’ an’ there’s not so many people that knew that particular phrase ye threw at me before, did ye think I’d not know ye fer who ye are?”

  “I guess not,” Casey stammered.

  “My first husband worked with yer Grandda’ an’ near worshipped the ground he walked on but then so did anyone who called themselves Republican back in those days. Would take a big man to fill Brendan Riordan’s shoes,” she looked rather pointedly at Casey who returned her gaze quite mildly. “Mmphm,” she said, “well we’ll have to see then won’t we lad.” It was more statement than question and Casey did not answer. It was a question that would take years to answer, years and monumental sacrifice from a man who was still young and relatively untried. Destiny, Jamie reflected, could be a damned inconvenient thing.

  Nora and Jacob took their evening tea with them, Nora putting out a plate filled with rich, dark fruitcake, saved no doubt for special occasions, Jamie thought guiltily, knowing it was likely these people had provided their best for them and would eat scantily for the rest of the week to make up for it. He would have to send the man a case of his best whiskey when he got home, any other gift was likely to insult the generosity of these people; their pride was hard-won and all the more valuable to them because of it.

  “Why don’t ye read the lad’s tea leaves?” Jacob suggested to Nora, “Ye read his grandda’s, ‘twould be fittin’ to do his as well.”

  Jamie saw a look of anger or dismay cross her face but it was gone in a flash.

  “What did ye see in my grandda’s cup?” Casey asked his voice soft but with an undernote of tension.

  “Och, ‘twill be a long time ago lad an’ my memory is not so good as it once was, ‘tis no more than a game really, here give me your cup,” she grabbed Jamie’s before Casey could hold out his. He felt ludicrously nervous. She stared for a long time at what had seemed to Jamie no more than black muck at the bottom of his cup, then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “There is much pain in this cup, pain that has passed, pain still to come but in the end there is happiness hard-won an’ well-deserved.” Jamie shivered and had to squelch the desire to rip the cup out of her hand. Her voice was strange not the rough, tart tone of before, but something that sounded as ominous as the tolling of medieval bells. She handed the cup back slowly, and Jamie was shocked to see how old she suddenly appeared, “There are still children waiting,” she said as she released the handle.

  “Do mine then,” Casey held his out to her and she took it with what seemed great reluctance. Jamie knew with one of those long, primal quivers of the spine that he did not want to hear what she saw in Casey’s cup. Nor apparently did Nora for she blinked and rubbed her eyes, then sighing said, “I’m sorry lad but I’m tired an’ my eyes tend to blur on me after a long day, I can’t make head nor tail of the leaves.”

  “Tis alright,” Casey said quietly, accepting back the cup and refraining from pointing out that she’d read Jamie’s cup only a minute before. But there was a look of quenched hope on his face that chilled Jamie to the core. He, quite suddenly, wanted to run from this place and this man and not have to see the future, to feel it unfold in long arcs in front of them here in this dark barn and know that there was no hiding, no ground upon which to seek purchase from the fears he’d sought some small comfort from.

  Nora bid them both farewell and a safe end to their journeys but it was Jamie she came to and touching his face with a rough hand said, “Have patience man, it will come, if ye’ll only have patience.” Jamie had remained silent knowing she expected no words, only that he should carry her own with him and remember them when necessary.

  They slipped off through the fields, chasing in the wake of shadows, hiding from the revelation of light. Casey leading, Jamie following wondering when he’d put his faith in this rather hostile stranger.

  They traveled a good part of the night, stopping only for short breaks to catch their breath and wet their tongues. Casey’s conversation consisted of tersely whispered commands about which way to turn and when to stop and still in the darkness.

  They took shelter for the day in a narrow, thickly wooded ravine, shadowed and whispering with the talk of leaves that fretted to and fro to the wind’s tune above their heads in the light. Sleep, made so by bone-deep weariness, was just possible. By noon, Jamie was awake, silently cursing all the bugs who’d had a piece of him while he slept and generally speaking, feeling quite out of sorts with the entire world. He stared peevishly at the blissfully slumbering Casey until the object of his annoyance opened one eye and said, “Could ye look at somethin’ else, yer disturbin’ my rest.” So he contemplated the undersides of the trees for a few minutes, then decided to explore a bit beyond the fringes of their tiny hole. He crawled some ten feet on his belly, upsetting several small grubby creatures, ripping a sizable hole in his pants and stifling a yelp when some unknown (and best left that way) object plummeted out of the trees above an
d landed with a sickening kechunk on his head. Finally, he was rewarded with the find of a small patch of wild strawberries, from which he plucked the main course of their sparse lunch.

  When he wiggled his way back, with what he thought was great stealth, to their hiding spot, Casey pulled him one-handed out of the bushes.

  “It’s me,” Jamie said tersely closing his eyes to avoid a flailing branch.

  “I know,” Casey said, “I didn’t think anyone tryin’ to sneak up on me would make as much noise as ten drunken miners.”

  “I did not,” Jamie said indignantly, fishing a rather crushed handkerchief full of berries out of his pocket. He thumped them down with wounded dignity in front of Casey, who grinned as they rolled in delicate disarray before him.

  A repast of strawberries, bread and cheese, followed by a dessert of whiskey did a great deal to restore their humor.

  Casey passing the bottle over to Jamie, burped extravagantly and then leaning back in apparent loose-limbed relaxation, gave voice to the question that had hung over them since the entire fiasco had begun.

  “So why is it ye’ve become of such interest, that we’ve men chasin’ us about with the apparent wish to see us dead?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Jamie said, loftily intent on retrieving a strawberry seed firmly wedged between two molars.

  “I’ve an idea or two that ye may find rather interesting,” Casey said tone still indolently jovial.

  “Mmghmmph,” Jamie replied, still trying to remove the pesky seed.

  Casey spoke two words then, a name that charged the air with accusation halved with sincere admiration.

  Jamie denied rapidly, calmly and with, as Casey had recently pointed out, far too many words. Casey merely smiled in a most annoying manner and Jamie thought if he’d been Carroll’s Alice, he might have choked the Cheshire Cat to death.

  There was a long silence inhabited by the twitterings of birds, the buzzing of flies and the quiet of two men who have, most unexpectedly, come to feel comfortable in one another’s presence.