The Hounds of the Morrigan (25 page)

‘Hush!’ Greymuzzle said again, this time more strongly.

‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’ Fowler repeated in bitter mimicry. ‘This is the word that puts infants to sleep!’

No more was said.

The hounds ran on and for a while the others ran a little way apart from Fowler, until as time passed—they forgot his queer defiant words.

A
T
intervals, Pidge stopped and looked back and searched the countryside, his eyes darting here and there; but he saw nothing, except once, a flock of sheep tumbling through a distant gap. He waited to see if they had a man and a dog following after; but they were just running on their own.

He didn’t bother looking in the scrying-glass to discover how near the hounds might be; there was no point in doing that. The region they had passed over with the kite had been completely concealed by the birds; so there was no way he could recognize landmarks—a tree, a corner of a field or a ditch—to know if the hounds were far or near. He knew that they must catch up with Brigit and himself eventually. He wasn’t even ill at ease, just on his guard.

At length they heard a low whistle coming from a way off and they turned and saw coming after them on the cart-track, two men with an ass.

One man carried a spade over his shoulder and the other one had a scythe. The ass wore panniers.

As the men came nearer it was possible to hear that they were arguing with each other. Their voices carried crisply in the natural stillness of lonely places; loud and sharp against the low sing-song of insects and the random flourishings of birds at melody. One man was old and the younger one was cut from the same pattern as the old one, so Pidge judged them to be father and son.

When they saw that Pidge and Brigit had noticed them, the men waved in greeting and the children waved back. Pidge now became extra watchful, just in case they were something of The Mórrígan’s doing and he thought it curious that they didn’t stop their squabble now that they might be overhead. Far from it; if anything, the argument livened up and improved for having an audience.

The younger man was saying:

‘Stop dictatin’ to me about the potatoes and onions! And stop layin’ down the law about the turnips and cabbages! I’m the one doin’ the work and I’m the master of the garden, now. And when we get to the valley of our relations and connections, watch you don’t make small of me in front of the other men, with your mean-mouthing!’

‘And who are you to talk to me like that? Do you think you are King Of The Aztecs with your prate about gardens and who’s master? Master of the garden, who told you that?’ the older man responded with spirit.

‘Nobody told me. It was time for me and I a man this long time.’

The old man made a great show of being staggered by this.

‘Well, hold me up!’ he said, and pretended to go weak at the knees.

‘See?’ said the younger one, taking advantage of this bit of play-acting. ‘The legs of you couldn’t take the weight of a wren. Isn’t it a pity for you that they haven’t the same horse-power as your oul’ jaw!’

‘I’m strong yet—no better! I’m a better man than you, any day of the week!’ And with that, the older man took to leaping off the ground in a series of high, quick springs, shouting gleefully:

‘Here I am, the real, right, thing! That’s me; I’m that man. The real McCoy, in bone, breeding and action! From a long-tailed family that goes back before the flood, and strong enough to gather the world up in my fist and throw it over the sun!’

‘Stop tricking around, Da. You’re enough to turn an ordinary brain, and you’ll unnerve the grass itself below your feet and stunt its growth.’

‘Shut up, you bally Normin!’

‘I am not a Norman, Da.’

Now that they were close by, Pidge carefully took notice of how they looked.

They were about the same height and their faces too, were alike, except that one was really an old man. Now that he could see him better, he saw that the younger man was not young; maybe about fifty, Pidge guessed. He was wearing a rough jumper of a kind of rust colour and his father wore the same kind of jumper but it was coloured a deep blue. They both wore homespun jackets without sleeves and baggy trousers of the same material. Their faces were tanned as leather from working in the open in all weathers and this made the whites of their eyes seem very white, and the blue, very blue. They were just ordinary country people he decided, looking at their thick-soled boots; a bit like Aran Islanders in dress, that was all. The older man wore a cap.

Brigit stood with her thumb in her mouth, uncertain of them because they were having a row.

‘I saw you ahead and whistled so that I wouldn’t put a start in you, in a lonely place,’ the younger one said.

‘Oh, thank you,’ Pidge replied.

‘Fine day,’ said the old one to Brigit. ‘How’s your health?’

She took her thumb from her mouth and looked at them with a serious expression on her face. She chose one out of the many things that came into her head, all of them untrue:

‘I never talk to strangers,’ she said.

Pidge had to suppress a smile that stole over his face. He knew well that Brigit delighted in talking to strangers whenever she got the chance. He wondered what the two men would make of this reply and was intrigued to see that they were also trying not to smile. A person would imagine that they knew her as well as I do myself, he thought.

‘And what has made you so wise?’ the older man asked her, bending down.

‘I was born like it,’ she answered grandly, losing her new-found wisdom in the same second.

‘If
I
had a good, stout-hearted,
wise
companion like you, I’d go round the country on springs,’ the old man said and Brigit beamed.

‘You’re already doing that,’ she said impudently. ‘I saw you lepping like a hare.’

‘And where do you go, this fine day?’

‘We’re just on a journey,’ Pidge said quickly.

‘Are you going our way?’

‘How do they know that, Da? They don’t know which way we’re going,’ the younger one said.

‘Don’t be so smart,’ said his father.

‘We follow this cart-track to the road that butts onto it there ahead. We turn left on the road for a good while and after that, we go right through a thick bordering of trees and down into the Hidden Valley,’ the younger one explained, adding: ‘My name is Finn Spellman and that’s my father. Everyone calls him Skin-the-Goat, he’s so mean.’

‘They do not! They call me Daire for that’s my name: Daire Spellman. Don’t mind the brat.’

While Brigit was telling them their names in return, Pidge stood doubtful about what to do. While he was considering, there was a cry from up above and he saw just two wild geese flying. They flew straight ahead, turned left for some time and then went right, before dwindling out of sight in the distance. It was the drawing of a map in the sky that matched the directions mentioned by Finn. So that was all right.

‘We’ll go with you,’ he said happily.

‘Hup!’ said Finn to the ass, who was standing and waiting patiently, and they got going again.

‘I was going to say “Hup!” ’ complained Daire.

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Did I get the chance?’

Brigit walked by the ass and looked at her closely. She wasn’t Serena but she had a lovely humorous face.

‘Woah!’ shouted Old Daire. The ass stopped.

‘Oh Glory,’ moaned Finn, ‘what are you stopping the ass for, at all?’

‘So that I can start her. Hup!’ the old man shouted quickly.

The ass started again.

‘Don’t mind the oul’ fella,’ said Finn.

‘And who are you calling an oul’ fella! Are you calling me an oul’ fella?’

‘You’re seventy-seven, Da.’

‘And if I am?’

‘It’s not young.’

‘I am in my late middle-age,’ Daire said with almighty dignity, ‘and don’t you forget it, you Sprout, you!’

‘He’s always like this till he’s had his breakfast, and sparring with me keeps him perky,’ Finn explained.

‘That’s true,’ Old Daire agreed. The ass stopped dead and brayed, amazed that they had agreed on something. The end of the braying had a kind of gurgling sound.

‘Do you know,’ said Finn, ‘I’d swear that ass laughed.’

‘It takes one to know one,’ his father responded tartly, and away they went along the cart track towards the road.

‘I could ate a holly-hedge and follow it up with a bucketful of nettles, I’m that hungry,’ Old Daire declared.

‘You’ve only yourself to blame if you are. Nothing would do you, but to get out and underway to show off to our relations, the Lawless family, and our connections, the Power family, how good you are, that you can get out of bed!’

It was at that moment that a hound wailed from somewhere a long way behind and Pidge stopped to listen; not noticing that the two men, who had also stopped, listened as intently as he did. Brigit halted the ass and stroked its face.

An answering wail came from somewhere even further off, to be followed almost at once by a third cry from a point farther away still.

Pidge felt a hand on his shoulder giving him a reassuring pat and looked up into Old Daire’s face and saw a very kind smile. Finn walked to Brigit and placed her on the ass’s back, in front of the panniers.

‘We’d better walk on,’ he said.

No mention was made of the hounds’ crying.

In a moment Old Daire had resumed his battle.

‘About them potatoes an’ onions,’ he began.

‘Aw Da—stop it.’

‘I keep telling you that you put them in upside down!’

By now Pidge and Brigit had realized that the argument was a sort of game being played only for fun. Pidge was glad that the men were with them at this particular time and that they kept talking all the time too. It made the hounds seem less of a threat.

Finn laughed.

‘It’s true—you put them in upside down!’ Old Daire insisted.

‘How can I be putting them in upside down—if they grow? They grow well enough, don’t they?’

‘But half of them come up on the other side of the world! There’s a lot of fine, big, strong men in Australia. Why wouldn’t there be—when they’re ’atin’ our spuds an’ onions?’

They had been walking faster and were now almost at the turning onto the road.

‘Will you stop barging out of you? You want a say in everything!’ Finn said, and casually looked back over his shoulder. Seeing this, Pidge looked back as well. Not a living thing to be seen.

‘Why shouldn’t I have a say in everything?’

‘You’ve had your day and this is my day; my turn has come.’

‘Well, you’ve said it now! The last straw to break me back! But I’ll put a halt to your gallop. I’ll fix you well—I’ll get married!’

At this Finn stopped and throwing his head back, he roared with laughter until the tears came running down his face.

‘That’s what I’ll do—I’ll bring you a stepmother; as true as there’s a nose on my naked face. Now!’ Old Daire shouted with passionate jubilation.

Pidge and Brigit joined in the laughter with Finn who wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and exchanged a pleased look with his father and they all walked on.

‘And where will you get her?’ he asked genially, as they turned left at the road.

‘I’ll get her all right,’ his father answered darkly.

‘Faith, I admire your hope!’

‘I’ll get her,’ roared Old Daire, ‘if I have to go through the country ringing a handbell.’

Everybody laughed at this, including the ass and Old Daire himself.

‘And what kind would you get if you did that?’

‘The
worst
kind and isn’t that what I’m looking for? I want one that’d raise lumps on you.’

‘Be quiet, you old prawn, or I’ll pull your nose.’

‘Pull away!’

‘I will!’

‘And why wouldn’t you? That’s what them oul’ Normins always did—went round pulling noses.’

So they went on like this, with sometimes the old man leaping and springing about in pretended temper and Finn answering him back at every stroke. As they went along, Finn glanced in his casual way but more frequently, at the spread of land to their left. Each time Pidge followed his example.

The hounds had not yet come. But he knew that they would and was resigned to it.

B
RIGIT
stopped listening to the men and talked to the ass instead. The ass turned her ears back and listened, and Brigit told her a story all about an ass named Serena, while she stroked the rough neck affectionately.

Finn walked at her side, smiling as he heard snatches of Brigit’s tale in between answering his father.

Now they had reached the part of the road that was bordered by oak and beech trees, growing in a belt that was about six or eight deep, in to the right of the road. The undergrowth of bracken and bramble had sprung up thickly and reached up to the lowest branches of the trees, so that it could not be known what lay behind it all.

At some mysterious point along this fringing, the men stopped.

Finn went in first, parting the ferns and bushes carefully to let the ass, with Brigit still on her back, come in after him without damaging anything. Old Daire signalled to Pidge to follow them and he came last himself, making sure that everything sprang back into place as they passed through.

On coming out into the open again, Pidge was astonished to see that they were faced with a sheer rising of living rock, that ranged for some distance on either side of where they stood. It looked insurmountable and impenetrable and he could feel his heart sinking; the men had been so quietly sure of where they were going. And now, this unbelievable obstacle!

Calmly, Finn lifted Brigit down onto the ground and he took the panniers off the ass. Daire hooked one of them to the handle of his scythe, replaced the scythe against his shoulder and grinned. Finn did exactly the same thing with the other one, attaching it to his spade.

‘Now—suck in your breath and follow me,’ he said cheerfully.

He walked in straight at the rock. Pidge followed, with Brigit, the ass and the old man in a line behind him.

Now that he was right up to it, he saw that there was a cleft in its structure; hard to distinguish at first because the main colour of the rock didn’t vary. The split wasn’t edge-to-edge but overlapped, and the front part was about three feet nearer to them than the section behind. Some bushes and plants had taken root on the rock and reached across the gap and they tangled with each other and helped to hide and match it, like patterned wallpaper.