The Crow of Connemara (15 page)

“Not m'brother.” The answer was short and clipped, and she grinned at him as she turned back to the bar. Her jeans were pleasantly fitted. Colin glanced down as she leaned over to take the two Guinnesses the bartender slid down to her. She showed the bartender a 10-euro note and placed it on the bar, then turned back to Colin, who lifted his gaze too slowly. “Enjoying the view, are yeh?” she asked as she handed him his pint.

“Obvious again?”

She smiled and changed the subject. “So yer a bare month in Ireland. Pardon m'saying, but yer looking too old to be a student and most tourists don't take that kind of time. And yeh wear glasses . . . Yeh a prof a' some sort?”

He laughed again. “No. Well, not anymore, anyway. I'm a musician with an interest in traditional music. My family's Irish on both sides—my grandfather Rory, remember?—and so I've always been interested in Ireland and its music. I studied a lot of Irish history and culture in college and took plenty of lessons with people in Chicago and Seattle who played traditional music. Now I've come over to soak it all up and learn what I can here.”

“So yeh think yeh know Ireland from all this soaking, do yeh?” Her smile took out the sting that the bare words might have had. The crowd kept them tightly together. Colin knew that “personal space” was closer here than it was at home, but he could feel her hip graze him as they moved a few steps from the bar.

He shook his head. “I know mostly how little I actually know. But I've managed to learn a bit. For instance, I can tell you that ‘Maeve' is the Anglicized form of ‘Medb' or ‘Meadhbh,' so your parents named you after the great Queen of Connacht.”

She laughed at that, a silvery sound that seemed to wrap around him and pull him even closer. “Now that sounds like a prof to me. So have yeh actually read the
Táin
, or did yeh just look that up on Wikipedia?”

He grinned. “Nope. I've actually read it a few times. Not in the original—my Gaelic's mediocre, and my Old and Middle Irish are nonexistent. But I've studied Celtic mythology with the idea that I could better understand where the traditional songs were coming from.” He shrugged. “I'm not sure it helped much, honestly.” He took a sip from his pint, licking away the foam that clung to his upper lip. “What about you? Have you been in Ireland all your life?”

She nodded. “That I have, and I don't intend to ever leave, as much as some might want me to.” She leaned even closer to him, enough that he could smell her perfume again. She looked up at him with those extraordinary eyes. “Which means I need to be thinking carefully about Americans who'll be leaving soon enough, doesn't it? And yeh should be thinking about whether yeh want to get involved with someone like me.”

Colin raised his eyebrows at that, and she continued. “After all, since yeh've read all those old Irish tales, yeh know that even the good ones always end sad. Take the ‘The Children of Lir'—those poor children cursed to be swans for three hundred years, and when the happy day comes that they're finally released and returned to their human form, well, they're three-hundred-year-old people and immediately die. 'Tis a lovely ending. Yeh would'nah want something like that to happen, now would yeh?”

She grinned at him, and Colin was saved from having to answer by the sound of a fiddle: Lucas was back on the stage and tuning up. Colin took another long sip of the Guinness and lifted the glass in Lucas' direction. “Looks like we're starting up again,” he said. “Hey, I'd love to talk to you some more, Maeve. Stick around after the set, why don't you? It's our last one of the night.”

Her lips pursed. “Maybe,” she said. “We'll see. I ca'nah make promises; we just stopped in for a pint.”

“And now I owe you one,” Colin answered, nodding to his own glass. “I always believe in paying my debts—so if not tonight, then some other time?”

“I'm around here sometimes,” she said. “So we'll just have to see, won't we?”

Somewhere during the middle of the next set, Maeve and her friends left the pub. Colin wasn't entirely certain when that was; she was there when they started a song, he turned to pay attention to Lucas' fiddle solo, and when he glanced around again, the booth was empty.

When the set ended, Colin put his guitar in the case, wiping down the neck and strings before he closed the latches. He took off his glasses, cleaning them on the hem of his sweater. “That was a grand time tonight,” Lucas said behind him. “Yeh were even better than I expected. Nicely done, and yeh've a powerful voice—I saw everyone turns to listen to yeh really let loose with those pipes, and most of 'em stayed the night. So 'tis glad I am that I asked yeh to sit in.”

“So am I,” Colin told him. “The gig was a blast.”

Lucas nodded. He handed Colin forty euros in small bills and coins. “Here's yer portion of the take. T'ain't much, but we play three or four times a week, and the private gigs pay a lot better than the pubs. Bridget, Padraig, and John all said they loved your addition. So . . . would yeh be willing to do this again tomorrow?”

Colin grinned. “Absolutely.”

“Brilliant. Then maybe we can talk about yeh staying around Ballemór for a bit, eh? I could introduce yeh to all the local musicians—some of 'em go way back, and they have songs in their heads that no one's ever bothered to write down, especially the older ones. They'd play them for yeh, and teach yeh what they know. That something yer interested in?”

Colin's grin widened at the thought. He patted the guitar case and thought of the notebook in his rented room, already stuffed with centuries-old songs and fragments of half-forgotten lyrics. “Yeah, that could convince me to stick around here for a while.” Involuntarily, Colin glanced over at the empty booth where Maeve had been sitting. When he looked back, Lucas was giving him an odd look. “What?” Colin asked.

“'Tis nothing yeh'd be knowing as a newcomer, but around here, 'tis not the best idea to be talking up the Oileánach.”

“The Oileánach?” Colin repeated.

“The Islanders—that's who you were chatting up during the break, and that Maeve woman's chief among 'em. They all live out on Inishcorr off Ceomhar Head—just came here outta nowhere one morning and took over the island like 'twas their own, without asking no one. They're a strange bunch that keeps together and don't mix with the townsfolk. No one trusts them.”

“Why not?”

Lucas gave a shrug in reply. “Don't matter. Just take my word for it. Yeh ca'nah trust 'em, and that's the end of it. They won't be out there for much longer anyway: the NPWS wants to take over Inishcorr as a national park, so all the Oileánach are to be removed and relocated. Good riddance to 'em, too, I say.”

For Colin, that explained a lot about the evening.
“I don't intend to ever leave, as much as some want me to,”
Maeve had said. “Don't worry,” he told Lucas. “It doesn't look like she was that interested, anyway.”

Maeve stepped into the boat, but she was looking back down Beach Road toward the lights of Ballemór.

“Damn it, Maeve, you ca'nah be serious. That's him? That's the bard yeh've been telling us we need? The man's not even Irish. He's just a
leamh
,
like all the others. He sings well enough, I'll grant yeh, but that don'nah make him the bard.”

She glanced back. Niall's face was in half-shadow, illuminated only by the starboard running light; most of the others were already getting ready to cast off from the quay. They were all pretending not to listen. Their boat, the name
Grainne Ni Mhaille
painted on her bow, was a battered Galway hooker that they'd found beached on Inishcorr, near the abandoned cluster of cottages there. They'd patched and repitched the hull, stitched the holes in the blood-red sails, and added a decrepit, sputtering outboard motor for when the winds failed or were too strong. The boat rocked in the tidal swell, the single mast and rigging creaking, the sails furled at the moment and looking black rather than red in the night.

Maeve shook her head at Niall. “The man might not be from here, but he has an old soul, and he's more than just a leamh,” she retorted. “He's Rory O'Callaghan's grandson, as well. Tell me you didn't feel it yourself, Niall Tierney. I did.”

“And the cloch? He has that?”

“He does. I felt that, too.”

“Yeh
want
to feel it,” Niall answered. “And more besides. I heard about yeh and this O'Callaghan. Yeh allowed yerself to think of him as more than just a tool. That turned out well, didn't it?”

Had Niall not added the last comment, she might have admitted that there was a shred of truth in what he said. Instead, she scowled. “If you're thinking I'd jeopardize all'a us for something as trivial as a bit of a tumble, then yeh don't know me at all, no matter what yeh've been told about that time. 'Tis really what yeh believe?”

He had the grace to look away. She wondered whether his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but it was too dark to see. “Neh,” he admitted.

“Good. Then we won't be having problems. There's no reason to decide about this now. We still have time.”

Niall sniffed. “Not much, I'm thinking.”

“Enough for now. Do'nah forget; he has to come to us willingly an' give me the cloch and himself the same way, or I ca'nah open the portal.”

“Yer wrong about him, Maeve. I don't care if he has an old soul or not. Yer reading this one wrong, and he's nah going to do as he must. I tell yeh that because yer blind to it and I don't care if that makes yeh angry with me for pressing yer nose in the shite. Yeh've made a mistake. Like the last time.”

She glanced back again at the town, its lights glittering up on the steep hills bordering the inlet. She wouldn't let Niall be right. She couldn't let him be right, or it was all lost. “Yer wrong, Niall, and yeh'll see that soon enough. Right now, let's get back to the island. The rest can wait for the time being.”

14

T
HE NEXT DAY was a blustery April morning, with a cold, arrogant wind off the Atlantic that tore the gray-black clouds and threw down rain so hard that the drops stung. The gale shrieked and whistled through the chimney and drafty windows of the little bed and breakfast where he was staying, waking Colin earlier than he wanted. He fumbled for his glasses on the dresser next to the bed and put them on, blinking as he glanced out the window to gray-black clouds rolling past.

After taking a shower and dressing, he wandered downstairs to find Mrs. Egan, the house's owner, in the small kitchen. “Quite the morning, Mr. Doyle,” she said. “I swear yeh can hear the very devil in this wind. Would yeh like some tea? The kettle's about to boil. There's fresh soda bread and butter on the table, and I'll be cooking up eggs, sausages, and bacon. There's black pudding, too, if yeh like. T'other guests haven't come down yet. Yer an early riser for Ireland, and for a musician, especially.”

Colin shook his head. “You needn't go to any trouble for me, Mrs. Egan.”

“'Tis no trouble; it's part of what yer paying for, and a good breakfast sustains a young man for the whole of the day, especially if yer going to be walking about in this weather. G'wan into the dining room and I'll bring yeh out a bite.”

“Thank you, then,” Colin told her. “Though you can skip the black pudding for me.”

“Not to yer taste, eh?” she asked, coming out the kitchen with a platter. “None of the Americans I've had here much cared for it, though the Germans, they love it. Why, my brother Darcy, God rest his soul—that's his picture there on the mantel behind yeh—used to make the best black pudding yeh can imagine, but then he had his farm. ‘Margaret,' he used to say to me, ‘we were meant to use everything that the good animals can provide us and not waste their noble sacrifice.' The day he died, oh 'twas much like this one: a beastly, nasty day when I would swear the very creatures of hell were about . . .”

Mrs. Egan rattled on in that vein for some time with Colin adding the occasional “uh-huh” and “you don't say,” though he'd mostly stopped listening to her story about her brother's death as he poured himself some tea and buttered a slice of the brown bread. Mrs. Egan placed a plate laden with three eggs, several sausages, and thick Irish back bacon in front of Colin. She sat across from him, watching as he ate and sipping her tea.

“I hear from Mr. O'Malley that yeh were playing at Regan's with that Lucas Flaherty's band last night,” she said as he sopped up yolk with his bread.

“Yes. Lucas is quite the fiddler, and he knows the old songs better than most.”

“Aye, an' his father knew 'em as well, which is how Lucas learned 'em, and he from his father before that, who came down here from up Sligo way. The Flahertys have always been a musical family. Their first cousin John Flaherty married my second cousin Mary McBride. She lives up in Roscommon, but came here one summer and there were sparks just a'flying between her and John. Before yeh know it, they were calling the banns for 'em, though the little babe came a wee bit early, if yeh take my meaning . . .” The conversation devolved into a genealogical discussion that rapidly lost Colin's interest, about how the Flaherty and various other Ballemór families were related. He listened politely, then let Mrs. Egan take his plate into the kitchen.

“I think I'll take a walk,” he called out to Mrs. Egan.

“On a blustery day like this? Och, I want nothing more than to sit at the hearth and drink some tea and maybe read a book. But yer young and the damp don't get into yer bones the way it does me, I suppose. Take a good sweater and scarf, and your cap. There's a macintosh in the front closet yeh can borrow if yeh care to; Mr. Finch, he stayed here a few years ago, left it behind. I suspect it would be fitting yeh. A strange man, was Mr. Finch. Now he was one of the McGinnis' by his mother's side . . .”

“Thank you, Mrs. Egan,” Colin said loudly, knowing he'd be in for the full tale of Mr. Finch's ancestors if he let her continue. He slipped on his jacket and cap from the stand near the door, picked up his blackthorn staff, and stepped outside.

The weather had moderated a bit, the wind no longer quite so angry and fierce and the rain dwindling to a drizzle, though low, slate-gray shreds of mist were still sliding rapidly eastward under a more ominous-looking and dark cloud cover. Mrs. Egan's house was on the Sky Road well up from the main square of Ballemór and a good half-mile walk from the nearest neighbors. Going west out of the house led along the Sky Road and eventually out onto Ceomhar Head proper, overlooking first the small inlet that Beach Road—well down the green slope of the hills—followed, then the great vista of the nearest islands and the open Atlantic.

Colin turned west, but rather than staying on the road, he climbed even higher, following a winding trail through the rhododendron, purple moor grass, and heather, toward a small stand of mountain ash trees and a few scraggly oaks and hawthorns on the summit of the bluffs. There, by the trees, stood the gray-black, pocked face of a standing stone along the high sea cliff. The stone leaned forward, as if readying itself to leap over the edge. Colin had glimpsed the stone before on his walks; he imagined how it must have looked to some other ancient wanderer walking the Head when the stone was new and the carvings on it not yet blurred by the relentless efforts of wind and rain and time. As Colin moved toward the stand of trees and the stone, stooped over so as not to fall and using his staff to keep his balance, a startled rabbit jumped away as he thrashed along. A few gulls circled in the high wind, diving low over him before descending further toward the sea, and he thought he saw a large crow lift heavily from the branches of the nearest oak before flapping deeper into the stand. The only sounds were those of his own making, along with the faint calls of the gulls and the wind rustling the gorse. It was almost possible to conceive of himself being alone in an ancient world, and he found that thought almost comforting.

He'd spent his first few weeks in Dublin, and while that had been fine and he'd learned more than he'd hoped playing with the musicians in the pubs there, Dublin was a city first and foremost: an urban environment not all that different from Chicago. It hadn't been until he'd left Dublin and come to the west of Ireland that the sense of truly being in a foreign country finally struck him. He'd been in Connemara National Park, standing high on the summit of Diamond Hill and looking westward toward Tully Mountain rising over Ballynakill Harbor. It was then that the gorgeous landscape sprawled out below struck him, a nearly physical blow in the gut that left him gasping momentarily. It was as if some ancestral part of him had risen up from his DNA at the sight, crooning the words “this is your home” inside him.

He'd told himself that it was ridiculous to feel that way, that it was only a bit of unconscious serendipity and he was just indulging himself, but he'd never forgotten that moment. He couldn't. It hit him too often while walking around this part of the country.

Now, he reached the stand of trees atop Cemohar Head and paused for a moment, leaning against the trunk of an oak to catch his breath as he looked down toward the standing stone at the cliff's edge. His glasses were speckled with rain; he wiped them off on his sweater. From this height, he thought that, out toward the sea, he could faintly glimpse the darker shoulders of the islands through the mist, and he wondered.

“No, you ca'nah see Inishcorr from here.”

The woman's voice spun him around, the blackthorn staff thumping hard against the trunk of the oak. Maeve was grinning at him, leaning against one of the ashes with a reed basket balanced on her hip, half-filled with green stems and flowers. She wore a long woolen cloak that was dyed a dark, earthy red, and rather than jeans, was wearing a long, loose broomstick skirt. The shoulder of the cloak and her hair were adorned with beads of water from the drizzle: against the midnight of her hair, the droplets shimmered like fleeting jewels. With the sight, too, the crystal in his pocket seemed to pulse with heat, and he plunged a hand into his pocket in alarm, but the stone felt ordinary to his touch, wrapped in its silver prison and chain. “Jesus, Maeve,” he said. “You damn near sent me tumbling back down the hill. I thought I was alone up here.”

“As did I,” she answered. “Seems we were both wrong.” She shifted the basket on her hip. “I was gathering herbs. This is one of the few good places left anymore.” She turned her head to look back into the shadowed depths of the stand. “So why are yeh here?”

“I don't know,” he answered. “It's just . . .” He shrugged under his jacket and pulled down his cap to the rim of his glasses. “This place
feels
right, that's all. I have a sense that here's a little patch of Ireland that hasn't been touched—or maybe it's been touched a lot, if you know what I mean.” He nodded toward the standing stone a few yards away.

“I think that I do,” she said. “And 'tis interesting that yeh'd put it that way. I feel the same. Yeh've an interesting way of thinking, Colin Doyle; a rather Irish way of thinking, which is unusual in a Yank.” She smiled at him. “But good, I think,” she finished.

“Thanks,” he said. “I think.”

“And yeh still owe me that pint, y'know. I haven't forgotten yer promise.”

“Well, then let's walk down into Ballemór and I'll buy it for you now.”

She shook her head quickly. “Ca'nah. I need to be getting back. But I'll take yeh up on it later, an' that's a promise.” She pushed herself away from the tree with a shove of her hip. The basket swayed. She walked past him, closely enough that again he thought he could smell a trace of perfume, or perhaps it was the shampoo she'd used that morning. He imagined himself reaching out to her:
He put his hand on her cloak just at the shoulder, and she turned. Her face was very close to his. “What is it that yer wanting, Colin?” she asked, with a mischievous smile. Her eyes sparkled like true emeralds, beckoning . . .

But he seemed to be caught in a stasis, unable to speak or act. She was already past him, whistling an air that he vaguely recognized as she walked northward along the stony and heather-clad frozen waves of the summit, away from the stand of trees and away from the standing stone. She stopped as she was about to descend into one of the shallow valleys, fifty yards away. “So,” she called back to him, “have they told yeh yet in the village that yeh shouldnah be talkin' to me?”

He didn't answer immediately, and the sound of her laughter trailed back to him, bright in the soughing of the wind. “I make up my own mind as to who I talk to and who I don't,” he answered finally, raising his voice to be heard over the distance between them.

“Do yeh now?” she replied. “We'll see about that, won't we?”

She waved once with her free hand, and began walking, the lip of the rise quickly cutting her off from view. That seemed to break Colin's stasis. He followed her: slowly at first, then hurrying a bit to try to catch up with her. When he reached the top of the rise, he looked down, but she wasn't there; it was as if the land had swallowed her up. There was a faint trail at the bottom of the slope that led toward the steep fall down to the Sky Road, and another that led into another stand of wind-twisted trees and tall shrubs—she must have taken one of those.

“Maeve!” he called into the wind.

There was no answer.