The Absinthe Earl

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  I wondered now about my ancestress, who had been quiet since I left the house of Angus and Caer. Before I could seek her with my thoughts, the king reappeared.

  “Come, my lady,” he said, offering his arm. “The stones are slippery.”

  “What will happen to Billy?” I asked.

  “My servants will watch over him until I decide what’s to be done with him.”

  “I can’t think why I should,” I said, “but I find myself with a desire to urge mercy, my lord.”

  Finvara smiled and folded his hand over mine. “Because you have a kind heart, my lady. And for your sake, he shall be spared.”

  “Thank you. I hope that we won’t regret it.”

  We climbed a stone stairway, its edges worn and smoothed by time, and emerged from the grotto into an ancient forest. Naked oak branches traced stark lines against the winter-gray sky, but emerald moss covered the stones and tree detritus that littered the forest floor. Dry leaves crunched under our feet, and the air was biting and damp. I pulled the fur-lined cloak closer about my shoulders.

  “There are but few remains of Knock Ma in Ireland,” said Finvara, indicating the circular ruin of a building. “But this one will serve as shelter for the night. You’re certain you wouldn’t prefer a warm, dry bed? My court would be pleased to welcome you.”

  I would have infinitely preferred a warm, dry bed, but the earl had warned me away from the court of the fairy king.

  “I’m sure I will be comfortable here, my lord,” I replied.

  The light was failing, and I suddenly felt weighted down by fatigue. It occurred to me that I’d not had a full night’s rest since my last evening under Mrs. Maguire’s roof. And even that night’s rest—which now seemed a lifetime ago—had been disturbed by excitement and trepidation about the next morning’s journey.

  “What day is this?” I asked, considering the timelessness of the place we had left. I also recalled that we had lost time in the voyage aboard the Queen of Connacht.

  “The evening after the ball at Kildamhnait,” said Finvara as he moved about the ruin, gathering wood. He glanced up at me and smiled, reminding me of Duncan. “Happy Christmas.”

  I stared at him. I had forgotten entirely. “Happy Christmas,” I replied, and the words stirred a longing for things currently out of reach: hot meals, warm firesides, mulled wine … loved ones. In recent years, I had spent my holidays in London with other orphaned young women, but the academy was festive and even homey at this time of year. My academic advisor was something of an orphan himself, his aged mother still living in Ireland, and he always invited us to his “garret,” as he called it, for Christmas tea. His garret was, in fact, a high-ceilinged attic chamber in the history building, with windows overlooking the little wilderness of a park across the lane. He possessed shelves full of wondrous old books, and on most winter days, a cheerful fire blazed on his hearth, with reading chairs cozying round. I couldn’t help thinking how astonished he would be at my current situation. I wondered whether I would ever have the chance to tell him about it.

  But my current pang, I must confess, had more to do with the earl and the Christmas I had expected we’d spend together among his relations.

  I moved to join Finvara in gathering wood. Everything was so damp, I had my doubts it would burn, but I tossed what I could find onto the pile he was accumulating inside the ruin.

  The fact that the fairy king recalled it was Christmas suggested a closer communication with Duncan than was apparent, as I assumed that Finvara himself was not a Christian.

  “Do you remember leaving Kildamhnait, my lord?” I asked him by way of opening the topic of his descendant.

  “Aye,” he replied.

  “You left after we did? Diarmuid and I?”

  “Aye. The queen was anxious to recover the Danaan warrior. And I—”

  He broke off suddenly, and I stood and studied him in the dim light. “Yes?”

  He met my gaze, his expression uneasy.

  “Are you well, my lord?”

  He frowned. “Miss Quicksilver?”

  I stepped closer. “Duncan?”

  His gaze dropped, and he shook his head. “Duncan O’Malley is my descendant.”

  “Yes,” I said, hiding my disappointment.

  He began arranging the wood for our fire.

  “I’m curious, my lord, why you chose Duncan. He has three older brothers, and a father who is an earl. Are they not all your descendants?”

  “There is less choice in it than might appear. He is the most like me, and therefore, we are more connected.” He glanced up, adding, “And it was he who led me to you, my lady.”

  Oh, dear.

  “My acquaintance with Duncan has been brief,” I said carefully, “but I do esteem him. He has been very kind to me.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Because he has been captivated by you.” I was grateful when he returned his attention to his fire preparations, but then he added, “A predicament I can appreciate.”

  As I considered how best to respond to this declaration, the king flicked open his hand, and a white flame sprouted from his palm. He held his hand over the woodpile, and the flame slid down onto the wood.

  “How extraordinary!” I breathed.

  “Conjuring a fairy light is the easiest thing in the world,” he replied. “But without fuel, it provides no warmth.”

  The small flame licked at the wood and grew larger. Once the fire was blazing, the king opened his traveling bag, and out of it came a Christmas feast. Or so it seemed to me at least, as I had not eaten since the night before. There were apples and cheese, spiced and candied nuts, sturdy brown bread with butter, scones, and even a bottle of brandy.

  “How did you come by all this?” I asked, laughing.

  “The queen insisted we pack provisions before traveling to Brú na Bóinne,” he said. “We were unsure how far our journey would carry us. Inconveniently, these earthen forms require sustenance.”

  My stomach chose that moment to rumble, and the king laughed and arranged the food on a cloth on the ground. “Please, my lady,” he urged, pouring brandy into two metal cups. “This will warm you.”

  “Are there no meals in Faery, then?” I asked, taking a cup and a slice of bread.

  He gulped his brandy. “Oh, there are. Like nothing you’ve ever seen. But citizens of Faery don’t require them with the regularity of mortals. In Faery, we feast when it suits us. Some feasts last for six days and nights at a stretch, breaking only for the holy day, when even the fairies generally rest. But Faery fare will not sustain a mortal for long.”

  Before I could inquire further, I heard light echoing laughter, like children playing in the distance. Rising, I moved quickly to the wall of the ruin and peered through a wide chink between the stones. Above the rim of the grotto from which we had climbed, golden lights floated like fireflies toward the sky. Then a troop of creatures, their exotic little faces lit strangely from within, swarmed over the edge and scrambled across the ground.

  “My lord!” I called softly.

  I felt him move close behind me to peer out through the crack between the stones. “They’re celebrating Christmas and know not that their king has spied them crossing out of Faery.”

  Apparently, construction of the Gap gate had not disturbed the original fairy door.

  “Shall we keep our peace and see what they will do?” he asked.

  I nodded, and together we watched. They were the merriest band of creatures I’d ever seen. Forming a ring around the structure where we were sheltering, they flew, tumbled, and skipped in a circle, playing instruments and singing a most discordant but jolly tune. Their dress ranged from cloaks of muted forest hues to brilliantly dyed coats and gowns, and most of their small bodies had insect wings. In skin tone, they were as varied as eggshells: some pale, some tan, some brown, and a few verging
on green or blue.

  “How extraordinary,” I found myself repeating.

  “Indeed,” murmured the king, and his low voice started a tickle in my ear. I realized now that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

  Clearing my throat, I said, “I am surprised to find they celebrate Christmas.”

  He laughed quietly, and again I could feel it on my skin. “They will celebrate any occasion, including funerals—you can see their influence in the Irish wake. But fairies love Christmas primarily because Irishmen do.”

  A clearer understanding of the bond he’d spoken of between the Irish and the gentlefolk began to dawn on me.

  Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the fairies gathered in a knot and swept right over the rim of the grotto with small cries of alarm.

  “Have we frightened them?” I asked.

  “No,” replied the king. “Something is coming.”

  From farther down the hillside, I could just see a group of figures moving toward us, and my heart skipped. The waning moon peeked through the clouds, throwing a pale light over them.

  “Keening women,” said the king.

  And so again they had found me. I watched them moving up the hill. As with mortal women, their legs propelled them forward, yet it seemed to me their bare feet did not touch the ground. When they reached the ruin, they settled on the stones outside and appeared content to remain there. There were twice as many of them as before.

  “What is it they wait for?” I wondered aloud.

  “Your command, lady,” murmured Finvara.

  I gave a bleak laugh. “I know not what to ask of them.”

  The king hesitated, as if considering, and then said, “That may change.” I heard him moving away. “Let us finish our meal and take our rest,” he urged. “We’ll travel to the village of Gallagh at first light, and there we’ll find the bog man Máine Mór.”

  “How long is the journey?”

  “About ten miles. We’ll need a carriage, or at least a horse.”

  I remembered the white horse I had seen in the tapestry at Brú na Bóinne.

  Enbarr, whispered Cliona, startling me.

  “Enbarr?” I repeated. The name was familiar, but I could not recall its significance.

  Finvara, assuming I had been speaking to him, replied, “An excellent idea, my lady. She’ll make the journey faster than any fairy steed.”

  The horse of my foster father, Manannán. He lends her to no one, but he will to me.

  But how? I wondered.

  I was carried then toward the doorway of the ruin—I say “carried” because my movements were not directed by my own will. It was strange and disorienting to feel my limbs move under someone else’s command. As a very young woman, while riding on a crowded horse tram in London, I had discovered I possessed an irrational fear of restricted movement—the panic I had experienced that day was similar to what I felt now, and I found I was holding my breath.

  Forgive me, whispered my ancestress. I can help you if I may speak to them.

  Yes, I agreed, letting my breath out slowly as I willed my limbs to soften.

  I had lost sense of language since Cliona revealed herself. At times, I was aware that those around me were speaking one of the forms of Irish, but I understood them, and they seemed to understand me. As I stepped outside the doorway, I spoke Irish to one of the banshees, a young woman dressed in gray.

  “Good woman, find a sea bird to carry a message to Manannán. I have need of the white mare.”

  The banshee bowed her head and vanished into the shadows.

  I returned to the fire, and the king and I finished our meal and cleared away the remains. I confess that by now my eyes were closing of their own accord, and it did not go unnoticed.

  “Rest now, lady,” murmured the king.

  Rolling his traveling cloak into a pillow, he offered it to me, and I was too exhausted to protest. It smelled of fir, heather, and a spice I could not place, as had the coat Duncan loaned me on Keem Strand. After that, I noticed nothing more.

  I slept a black sleep. No dreams, no restlessness, no starting at sounds in the night. I woke at the first gray light to the timid song of the winter thrushes in the lacework of branches overhead.

  Finvara stooped over the fire, stirring the coals to life. He bade me good morning, and we breakfasted on what remained of last night’s supper. After, I made my way down to the waterfall to wash my hands and face and drink the cool, sweet water. When I returned to the ruin, I found Finvara outside, speaking in a gentle voice to a great horse. Her coat was creamy white flecked with caramel, like sea foam, and her mane hung long and straight like a woman’s hair.

  Low though the tones of Finvara’s voice were, the magnificent mare was not having it. She tossed her head and danced away, and I feared that she would bolt. I daresay the banshee women were not helping matters, though they kept to their posts around the ruin, only eyeing the creature curiously.

  “Enbarr,” I called, holding out my hand. She glanced up, and the whites of her eyes receded as her gaze went soft and liquid. She lowered her head and approached me, nickering.

  I touched her velvet muzzle and felt her warm breath on my fingers. “If we hoped not to attract notice,” I said softly, “I fear it was in vain.”

  “Not to worry,” replied the king. “A little fairy glamour will render her less …”

  “Dazzling?”

  He nodded. “Mortals are easily deceived.”

  He approached Enbarr again, and this time she allowed him to lay a hand on her creamy shoulder. He spoke a few more soft words, and her sea-foam coat grayed before our eyes.

  “She will appear smaller, too, to those standing at a distance,” he continued. “Shall we go, my lady?”

  We gathered our belongings and stood on a block of stone from the ruin to mount up. Finvara settled behind me, reaching his arms around me so he could grip Enbarr’s mane—a position I found both unwelcome and unavoidable.

  Before our departure, I again addressed my banshee companions, requesting that they await our return to Knock Ma rather than follow. The king said he expected our errand to require no more than a couple of hours.

  The ten-mile journey passed as little more than a blur. Enbarr galloped nearly the entire distance, slowing only for other riders or carts on the road. I caught glimpses of landscape—an occasional ruined medieval tower or picturesque bridge—and we arrived in the village of Gallagh in not much more than a quarter hour.

  The bog man, Finvara explained, had been unearthed earlier in this century by a laborer cutting turf—and had been immediately (and superstitiously) reburied, with a gravestone added by way of apology for disturbing his sleep. The landowner, a member of the Gallagher clan, avoided the area entirely for fear of rousing or angering the spirits of his ancestors, so we had the patch of bog—blocked from view of the manor house by a small rise—to ourselves.

  Navigating a bog was perilous, as the human eye could not distinguish solid ground from soft, and many unlucky travelers had been lost without a trace, some of them led intentionally astray by the “fool’s fire,” or will-o’-the-wisp. We had set out in daylight hours, but visibility had decreased over the journey’s course, cloud cover thickening until finally the sun was but a dim beacon hanging low in the southern sky. Still, Enbarr found no difficulty picking a path across this treacherous ground.

  We soon found the bog man’s resting place, marked by a relatively modern Celtic cross now half submerged.

  “He’d not thank them for that,” said Finvara, gesturing at the cross. “This man has been in the ground for many hundreds of years and knows nothing of priests or prayer books.”

  “What else do you know about him, my lord?” I asked, my heart thumping from a creeping sense of dread. I was grateful for the king’s companionship—I could not imagine attempting
this alone.

  “He is an ancient king of Connacht,” replied Finvara. “A chieftain sacrificed to the gods, in the hope of ending a plague.”

  “Heavens,” I breathed. “And yet he somehow lives still?”

  “He is not alive,” replied the king, “but neither is he dead.”

  I studied the coarse, low plants that covered the grave. “How are we to speak to him?”

  “Máine Mór,” called Finvara, his tone deepening. “Show yourself.”

  The bog scrub in front of the stone cross began to tremble and shift and finally to rise as a hillock pushed up beneath it. The plants tumbled aside, and tea-colored water sluiced down the sides of the newly formed hillock.

  I saw then that the “hillock” was not earthen or even peat, but rather a human figure, wrinkled and brown as last year’s apples, its leathery hide burnished to gleaming by the bog water. This was the figure of a man, emaciated to little more than skin over bone. Surely a human form in such a state could no longer contain any spark of life.

  Finvara and I remained astride Enbarr, but I bent toward the rising figure. I felt the king’s arm tighten about my waist.

  The skull jerked suddenly toward me, eyelids peeling back to reveal glassy black slits. I gasped, and Enbarr reared and shrieked.

  “Easy!” Finvara shouted at the mare, gripping fistfuls of mane. But I was seated sidesaddle and slipped from his embrace, splashing into the icy water of the bog.

  DIARMUID’S TRUTH

  Edward

  “How good of you to join us.”

  The queen was in high dudgeon; that much was apparent in her pursed lips and red cheeks. Ignoring her, I returned to my place at the table. The blasted tapestry made clear the reason for the delay in my return. I wondered whether it mirrored my thoughts, or had our frenzied lovemaking been a topic of general speculation?

  If it wasn’t before, it is now, I realized with a simmering anger.

  With Ada gone off with Duncan, I was in no mood to be chastised, and I carefully avoided meeting Isolde’s gaze.