The Hounds of the Morrigan (48 page)

Oh good, thought the Sergeant; I could do with a good laugh today.

‘“The iron-willed Sergeant must be determined, clear-thinking, self-confident and energetic. He must have well-defined values and goals which he pursues with unswerving persistence. He must fully utilize his capacity for hard work.” What do you think of that, Sergeant? It’s from an old manual,’ the young Garda finished with a partly-choked giggle.

There was utter silence.

The Sergeant stood up, flushing very red from his tunic collar upwards.

‘You read that very sudden!’ he said accusingly, and he strode roughly from the room.

As he went, brushing past the giggling young Garda, he thought that he heard him mutter something about: ‘wouldn’t say boo to a goose’ under the giggles. Whether or not he said it, the Sergeant was inflamed. He stamped out into the yard and bending down he put on his bicycle clips, like a warrior putting on his panoply. He straightened up and grasped the hem of his tunic to pull it down, so that it fitted correctly and snugly about his body. One glance at his brass buttons and his confidence was restored; but other parts of his personality were skittering around untidily inside his brain. He wheeled his bike out of the yard into Eglinton Street and threw his leg over the saddle, as if he were mounting a blood stallion from Arabia. The bike wobbled, but he mastered it and set his face towards Shancreg.

That poor Sergeant looks very troubled, thought the Bishop. He stopped thinking about his lovely native place and the price of socks flew out of his universe completely. Instead, he said a little prayer for the Sergeant. This led him to wonder about who was the patron saint of Sergeants; and throughout the day his mind would return fleetingly to this puzzle. Each time he would say another little prayer.

All goodness is good and the Bishop’s goodness was as good as anybody else’s; who knows how his kindness may have helped the Sergeant?

Old Mossie Flynn, the owner of the glasshouse in Shancreg, had no idea that a third woman had arrived under cover of darkness; and he had been waiting patiently for the two women to come outside and do something funny or one of their Works of Art. At first he was not surprised that they did not appear.

‘For,’ he said to his pig, as he tickled her gently behind the ear, ‘they do be powdering their noses and all that—they do be dolling themselves up. Or they could even be having a lie-in. Eat quietly now, and don’t be disturbing them with loud grunts.’

‘And,’ he said to the hens as he threw them their grain, ‘they do be lacing up their what-nots and pranking around with hot curling-tongs. And putting coats of varnish on their finger-nails. That’s the woman’s way—and our two ladies have very romantic and mysterious souls. Stop the squawking now in case they are still in their beauty sleep.’

So, he waited; quietly excited at the thought of the fun to come.

He had milked the cow, gone quietly to the well for water and fed all of his animals except for the cat, and she wasn’t yet back from her night’s gallivanting. Sometimes she would be waiting outside on the step before he even got up; other times she would turn up about noon, perhaps with a rabbit gripped in her jaws, and there were even times when she would stay away for a few days while she visited friends and relations at distant places for weddings and wakes.

Mossie tended the fire, lit his pipe and settled himself to read an old newspaper while he waited. Gradually, however, he found himself wriggling on his seat and heaving a great many sighs and reading the same block of print over and over again, without knowing at all the sense of what he was reading. From time to time, he went to look over his half-door to see if there was any sign of life from his tenants. He was drawn to the glasshouse not by any trick of the women but by his own happy expectations.

Then, as he read the same few words for the tenth time, it occurred to him that the ladies might be thinking that he was still asleep himself, and that they were only holding back from their Art so as not to disturb him; for he had been very quiet and careful in everything that he had done. He had even carried buckets in his arms as if they were pet lambs, hugging them to his chest so that the handles wouldn’t clank; and he had stepped neatly in his hob-nailed boots—looking down for soft spots to walk on.

He went to his garden and gathered a lovely bunch of flowers. Then he went and knocked at the glasshouse door.

Looks of fury passed fleetingly over the faces of the three women. Melodie, her eyes as cold as sleet, called out sweetly:

‘Who’s there?’

‘It is I,’ said Mossie. He had heard that said on the radio and he thought it sounded very grand and that it would be a kind of compliment to the ladies to hear it.

‘Who is “I”, might one inquire?’

‘Your landlord and friend—Mossie Flynn.’

Melodie opened the door, stepped out and drew the door shut behind her.

‘A bunch of flowers for the Artists!’ said Mossie solemnly, taking off his cap and handing her the flowers.

There was a short pause of disbelief before she spoke.

‘Just what we’ve always wanted—we’re uncommonly obliged to you,’ Melodie said coldly and with a look that could fillet a shark.

‘When are you going to come out and do one of your lovely Works of Art?’ Mossie asked hopefully.

Melodie took a deep sniff at the flowers. Immediately, two hundred and forty nine lightweight insects shot up her nose and met their deaths. She sneezed, and dropped a hot tear that landed on a little worm and gave him a headache.

‘Not today,’ she said. She could not prevent a slight upcurl of her top lip—an unpleasant sort of smile.

‘Not today?’ Mossie questioned her.

‘No. It’s our day off,’ she said, and went back inside and shut the door.

Mossie stood doubting himself for a few moments and then he went back to his house. Was it my imagination or was she very rude? he asked himself mistrustfully. Did she sneer?

When a person lives in the country where the population is sparse, he doesn’t get much chance to study things like sneers. With so few people about, the one sneer of the week could well be happening in the far side of the parish and he’d miss it if he wasn’t there. On the other hand, there could even be six sneers per hour at the farm a half a mile away and he wouldn’t get the chance to see them. For as sure as anything, the ones who are good at sneering, become best at smiling when a visitor arrives.

Mossie worried in case he was being unjust.

The women went back to their study of the table. They had looked at it for only a second or two when a striking change came over them. The Mórrígan was like one awakening from a long slow dream into quick life, and Melodie Moonlight and Breda Fairfoul were serious and silent.

Studying the table with the greatest attention possible, they examined the three valleys that were mere dips in its surface and the mountains that were little higher than a few minutes’ candle drippings. They observed that the valleys led into each other and they noted with sharp interest that the third valley finished in a dead-end. That this was not a trap arranged by themselves, they well knew; but whether that last valley was there as part of a landscape, or by Dagda’s wish, they could not tell.

Their eyes went unfathomable, as empty of expression as lizards’ eyes.

‘What have we here?’ they whispered.

The whisper had a peculiar intensity and power and it vibrated in all of the glass in the glasshouse. Almost silent echoes of: ‘here, here, here,’ came shivering back as though from fragile tuning-forks, and they floated round the table.

Breda and Melodie watched The Mórrígan’s face, their eyes dilated with a fierce expectancy. In every other way, they were all marvellously calm; three women of stone.

The Mórrígan returned this avid look and they waited.

A tiny speck of crimson appeared in one of her eyes.

‘Blood calls to blood,’ they said, and they thrilled.

They knew then, that the children had almost found the pebble that had once hurt that particular eye.
They knew also, that if The Mórrígan swallowed the one drop of her old blood that stained the pebble, she would be strong again.

Even more, they knew that if she could get Olc-Glas as well, her power would be great indeed.

The eye turned red as it filled with blood.

‘I am the Mór Ríagan,’ said The Mórrígan, ‘I am the Great Queen. I incite men to Battle Madness.’

‘I am Macha,’ said Melodie Moonlight. ‘I am Queen of Phantoms. I revel among the slain. I gather heads.’

‘I am Bodbh,’ said Breda Fairfoul. ‘I am the Sharp-Beaked Scald Crow. My cries foreshadow the numbers of the dead.’

‘We three are The Morrigna; we are the Great Queens,’ they said.

‘My heart is an ice-well,’ said The Mórrígan. ‘Soon, I shall have one drop of my old strong blood. With it, I will dissolve Olc-Glas and swallow him into my cold heart. I shall add his poison to mine.’

‘I shall kiss you and have his poison as well as my own,’ said Macha. ‘For we have grown weak as the years passed by.’

‘I shall kiss you and have his poison as well as my own,’ said Bodbh. ‘For death is my darling and battle my greatest ecstacy.’

‘In every human head, there is a seed of evil,’ said The Mórrígan. ‘It thrives in some and makes them stand out among their fellows for their wickedness and cruelty. The little seed suffocates and cannot flourish when it is choked by love.’

‘The little seed cannot flourish,’ said Macha, ‘when it is smothered by compassion.’

‘The little seed cannot flourish,’ said Bodbh, ‘when it is stifled by tolerance.’

‘Truth is nourished by belief,’ said The Mórrígan. ‘There are many truths. I am a truth.’

‘I am a truth,’ said Macha.

‘I am a truth,’ said Bodbh.

‘They shall believe in us again. They shall see our greatness and fear us. We shall be nourished and grow even stronger,’ they said.

‘When mankind cries “mercy”, my ears are shells of granite,’ said The Mórrígan. ‘My child is the blow-fly, the mother of maggots.’

‘Time is a slow dream; time is quicksilver,’ said Macha.

‘The sun rises, the day dawns, the wheel turns—our time comes again,’ said Bodbh.

There was a deep silence in which only the unobtrusive breathing of the sleeping cat could be heard. A moment later The Mórrígan’s eye was clear and beautiful again. The strange simplicity was over and three women shook themselves physically, as dogs shake off water; and now, they laughed.

‘He found the pebble; he did the natural thing and went to the mountains,’ Breda spluttered.

‘Only a human brat could be so excruciatingly obvious,’ Melodie tittered, just as her attention was caught by a movement on the table.

‘Look!’ she said sharply, pointing.

They looked at the iron-willed, determined, clear-thinking Sergeant who was purposefully riding his bike to Shancreg.

This is a nuisance, the women said to each other silently.

Out of the blue, there was another knock and Mossie’s voice came politely through the door.

‘Ladies?’

As brightness replaces darkness in a room at night when a switch is flicked, so the women changed. Breda immediately affected cordiality—a thing done often enough in the real world, goodness knows.

‘Yes, Mr. Flynn?’ she answered sweetly.

‘You must come over to my little house for your breakfasts,’ Mossie said.

‘Must
we?’ Melodie fluted.

‘Indeed you must! I know that you haven’t any food because you haven’t had a chance to go shopping. And even if you had food, there’s no way you can cook it in my glasshouse. So I invite you to bacon, eggs and fresh musheroons—ready in twenty minutes—and I won’t take “no” for an answer!’

And with that firm message delivered, Mossie scuttled away.

This will not do, the women told each other silently.

There and then, they made the decision to leave the glass-house
now,
instead of waiting until Pidge and Brigit had led them to Olc-Glas as well as to the pebble.

‘One fool an hour is quite enough—two is too many,’ Breda said, indicating the Sergeant.

‘Good!’ Melodie agreed with satisfaction, ‘I am bored with this place and more than ready to go, anyway.’

The Mórrígan leaned in over the table and, after examining the land between the mountains and the lake, she carefully selected a likely place. There she placed her thumb and pressed hard, leaving a clear print on the table’s surface.

Satisfied with that, she made the table itself disappear—it was a picture that they no longer needed—but the thumbprint stayed.

She took a pinch of dust from the floor and she blew on it and caused it to swirl above the mark of her thumb. The effect pleased her. Now, the three women made everything that they had brought into the glasshouse vanish as well; and The Mórrígan brought the space inside back to its correct size. Except for the thumbprint, nothing of theirs remained.

They were ready to go.

‘Pity about the rats,’ murmured Melodic ‘I would have liked a vermin-trimmed cloak.’

Mossie, crossing his kitchen, with a small bowl of eggs and a plate of raw bacon in his hands, was just passing by the open door of his house, when the glasshouse door swung back with a crash and the motor-bike, with
three
women riding it, roared past his line of vision and was gone. He was shaken to the heels and he dropped the eggs. He rushed out to look after his fleeing tenants.

‘Three of them—they brought in a squatter!’ he said. ‘It’s my belief that they are not nice crackpot ladies from England at all, but three jokers out from Bohermore!’

He crossed to his glasshouse and went in, stepping over broken glass at the threshold. He frowned when he saw his bunch of flowers thrown aside and he was surprised when he saw his little cat who had woken when the door had crashed.

‘There you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dreaming all night, I suppose—instead of catching rats.’

‘You don’t know the night I’ve had,’ the cat miaoued without the slightest hope of being understood. ‘First I was used as a duster and then I had rats spitting at me. Even though I slept, my nerves are still shot to pieces.’