The Pig Comes to Dinner (11 page)

Kitty looked down at the shawl covering the table. “It's not about Kieran I've come.”

“Ah—answered prayers. I must remember to give thanks.”

“Yes. Please do.” Kitty then, like Father Colavin, folded her hands on the tabletop. She was ready to begin. Or, if she was not ready, she would begin anyway. “There are ghosts in the castle,” she blurted.

“Ghosts in the castle,” Father Colavin repeated, nodding his head in ready belief. “Ah, yes. I'm not surprised. Interesting.”

“You believe me?”

“Brid and Taddy. Are they the ones?”

“You know their names?”

“Doesn't everyone? And anyway, one of the few disadvantages of a long life is that so much knowledge is heaped upon my head that I sometimes worry my poor skull is going to crack under the weight and my brain drip down onto the floor like puffin droppings.”

So surprised was Kitty by this easy acceptance that she wasn't prepared to move on to the next phase of her mission: the actual request for an exorcism or whatever might be required to rid her marriage of this impermissible threat, the ghost of Brid. She had expected a lengthy discourse complete with Father Colavin's disbelief, followed by Kitty insistences, then
his
demands for common sense, then
her
reiterated assurance that the supernatural was at work in her castle, then
his
attempt to cajole her by offering counsel often needed by newlyweds that some susceptibility to the extraordinary had to be expected,
her
growing anger and anguish, and, finally,
his
pretended acceptance—a condescension meant to prevent her agitations from evolving into hysterics.

But this hadn't happened, and she was stuck with the need for adjustment with no time left for the summoning of her craft, the invocation of her cunning, powers derived from her presumed female helplessness, which would make its appeal to the immensity of the spiritual powers bestowed on her pastor.

She, being Kitty McCloud, effected her recovery in so short a time that her bafflement remained imperceptible to Father Colavin and was, to Kitty, only a momentary hiccup in the ongoing presentation, not requiring further consideration.

Father Colavin cleared his throat. “But surely you knew about Brid and Taddy before you bought the castle.”

“Well, yes. In a way. There are always the old stories—”

“I remember only too well,” Father Colavin interrupted. “ ‘Be home before dark, or Taddy'll take you and lock you in the tower.' ”

Kitty tried to tell the priest that her parents, her entire family, were too concentrated on the blood feud with the Sweeneys—“The Sweeneys will get you!” or “I'm going to give you to the Sweeneys!”—to need recourse to the ghost threats of Brid and Taddy, but the man was too deep into his subject for possible extrication.

“ ‘Brid and Taddy are wanting a little boy answers to the name of Colavin, and I've a mind to tell them where you sleep and they're welcome to you. …' Ah, how can I forget? My mother—” Here he stopped, his eyes gone into the distant past, a sad smile on his face, his mother, his care-worn mother, not raising her head from her sewing while persuading him to stop tormenting the cat and to bring in more turf for the fire as he'd been told. Or to do his studies instead of making mischief with his sister's pigtails. “Taddy and Brid, Brid and Taddy. Ah, yes—” And then he said no more.

Kitty waited to make sure his reverie had ended. “You saw them then?”

“Oh, no. I did as I was told and they were never sent for.”

“If you want to chance it, come to the castle.”

“And I'd see them?”

“Maybe.” Kitty knew there were no guarantees, and she hardly wanted to make claims she couldn't honor, so she added, “Only Kieran and I have. So far. But you're welcome to give it a go.”

The priest shook his head. “I know you mean to be generous, but they're the last ghosts I'd want to see. Terror is what I'd feel. From birth I was taught they were evil spirits, staying behind their time so they could roam the roads and the hills, appearing in and out of the mists, grabbing up wicked boys and bold girls and doing to them things beyond what can be imagined by anyone still in possession of his own soul.”

“But you imagined anyway.”

“Of course. How could I not?”

“And what did you think might happen?”

Father Colavin lowered his head and put his right hand to his chest. “I was afraid they would hurt my mother and I not there to protect her.” Again he shook his head, bidding the memory to release him and let him go. He looked up at Kitty and put his hands again on the ledger, his voice now an eager whisper. “What do they look like?”

This is not how Kitty had expected the interview to go. She had come to rid herself of ghosts and now she was having to summon them—even if it was only in her mind—and make them present to the priest whose aid she would ask in banishing them.

“They have bare feet,” she said, not looking up. “And around their necks, each of them, the flesh raw from their hangings.”

“No,” interrupted the priest. “No more. I don't want to hear.” He then added quickly, “But I do want to hear. Tell me.”

“Their eyes are so sad, so very sad, and they seem not to know why they're there, in the castle still. They wear brown, Brid a plain dress to just above her ankles. Black hair. High cheeks. Young lips. They both look to be seventeen.”

“And so they were. And so they are.” He paused and Kitty had a strong sense that he was breathing a prayer. She waited until he was ready to speak again. “And Taddy?” he finally said.

“A tunic tied at the waist. Brown jacket, brown homespun pants to just below the knees. Brown hair. Dark brown eyes. Calluses on his hands, mended cracks where the work was too much. He plays the harp. She works the loom.”

“They do that? And you see them doing it?” He was almost breathless with wonder.

“Sometimes. Just before the sun goes down. She spends most of her time with the cows, going where they go, just being with them. And he wanders around with a pig we have. They're lost. They don't know where to go.”

“But they don't frighten you?” He asked this as if not quite sure he was prepared to believe any answer other than yes.

“No. Why would they frighten me?
My
mother never said anything about them. I was never—threatened.”

“But still. They
are
ghosts.”

“Yes. I know.”

“And you aren't afraid of ghosts?”

“Should I be?”

“I don't know. I've never seen one. And I hope never to see one. It would be the death of me, I'm sure.”

“You've nothing to fear. Not from them.”

“Just the sight of them—No! I couldn't. I'd be destroyed.”

“No, you wouldn't. It would break your heart. And it would make you want to rise up again against those who did the hanging.”

“Those days are gone. And we must thank God for it. And I've no need of having my heart broken. Not again.”

“Oh?”

“Never mind. Nothing more than we all suffer, living in the world.”

Kitty waited to see if he would elaborate. He did, but only in his thoughts, his inward gaze off now to the curtained windows as if ghosts of his own were appearing through the scrim. He waited for them to vanish, his closed lips pressing one against the other, trying to keep any sound, any word, from escaping. His mouth relaxed. His gaze was diverted to his hands. He took in a breath and let it fill his lungs and expand to what degree they could in his frail and sunken chest. “Is there more you want to tell me?”

“Is there some way they can be made to go?”

“You want them to leave?”

“Of course. You said yourself you wouldn't want ghosts wandering about.”

“That's because it's a mystery my faith can't comprehend.”

“People have visions all the time, I thought. All over the place.”

“These aren't visions. They're ghosts.”

“What's the difference?”

“Visions appear by the grace of God. And for his purposes. Ghosts—who knows what they're up to.”

“They are up to nothing. They're just there.”

“Precisely. But how can I know they have no purpose?”

“What purpose could they have other than to wander around and work the loom and play the harp?”

“They can do that?”

“Yes. I told you I've seen Brid at the loom. No threads, but she works it with the treadle and moves the shuttle as if she were actually weaving. And—and Taddy plucks at the harp—but no strings are there. Except one time we heard music. Another time we saw the cloth being woven.”

“God have mercy.” Again Father Colavin shook his head. “I don't know. Except I need them to have a purpose. The same as everything and everyone else.”

“Maybe they do, but you don't have to know any more than I do about what it might be. Which is nothing.”

“But if I don't—”

“Yes?”

“If I don't, well, it's something I want to go nowhere near.”

“Then you won't do anything to help me?”

“Exactly what do you have in mind?”

“Don't we still have exorcism?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then—”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“For me to confront evil so directly—to become intimately involved with it—”

“But they're not evil. They're good. They—they're martyrs.”

For more than a few moments the priest considered this, took it to himself, and let it take hold. Finally he could find no reaction other than to shake his head—again—but only slightly this time. “There are ways to rid ourselves of devils, of evil spirits. But what has been devised to rid us of the good? You yourself have said they're not evil; they're good and that makes me more helpless than ever.”

“But they're not at peace. Or part of them isn't.” She then blurted it out, “And besides, my husband has fallen in love with Brid. There. I've said it.”

“But you told me none of this was about you and Kieran.”

“All right. I lied. I hadn't intended to mention that part of—of the—of the—”

“Difficulty?”

“Yes. The difficulty.”

“And the difficulty is that your husband, Kieran Sweeney, is in love with a ghost?”

“Yes. In love.” She took in a breath through her nose, then added, “She's young. She—she's very beautiful.” She paused again, then repeated one last word: “Very.”

“He's said as much?”

“He doesn't have to.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I just know.”

“But there must be some indication—some evidence— something said, something done—”

“It's the way he talks about her.”

“How?”

“That she's beautiful. That he sees her with the cows. And sometimes when he's milking. She's there with him. She watches him. Doing the milking.”

Kitty then went on to explain, step by step, the evening that led to her conviction that her husband had gone astray, in his thoughts and in his heart. Father Colavin kept nodding, apparently the physical means by which information entered into his consciousness. Kitty went on: how Kieran no longer mentioned Brid. How his lovemaking with her had become more ardent. How he was obviously intent on contradicting what she knew to be the truth. The sordid truth.

Father Colavin had stopped nodding about two-thirds of the way through her recitation. Perhaps he had been given as much information as he could process at one sitting. Perhaps he had begun to have thoughts of his own, responses to what was being said, but was reluctant to interrupt. Kitty had been telling the priest about Kieran as he had watched Brid at the loom, then went on to tell him about Taddy at the harp.

“There he sat, Taddy did, the harp held against him, so mournful his eyes, cast down as they were, and they as deep as wells. So straight he sat and his feet light on the floor and his toes muddy and no one to wash them. An angel he must be, but more a man than an angel. No angel could be so sad yet never weep. And no ordinary man is he, even for the ghost of one. No ordinary man could be strong and still so gentle. You'd have to see him the way I've seen him. The poor man, so lost, and I'm the only woman alive knows his sorrow. Not even Brid. Of that I'm sure. It's Brid must go. It's Taddy can stay.”

What thoughts, what images came after, she had no words for. She held them, silently, with her eyes veiled so Father Colavin couldn't see there what she was seeing. The priest waited, shuffling his feet under the table but making no move with his head or his hands. When Kitty stirred slightly on the seat of her chair and coughed a needless cough, Father Colavin said softly, “I see.”

And see he did. What he saw made clear to him the reason Caitlin McCloud had come to call. But what he must do now had not yet been vouchsafed to him. It would do no good to intensify his concentration. That would only clamp everything closer together, making the situation that much more impenetrable. He must clear his mind, not knot it further. But rescue was near at hand. He untwined his fingers, parted his palms, and reached out past the ledger. Slowly he drew it closer to himself. He could give his mind a few moments of relief, applying it completely and without distraction to another matter quite foreign to the truths he had just been given.

“Forgive me, Caitlin,” he said. “Forgive me for the interruption, but I suddenly remembered—” Without obligating himself to name specifically what that remembrance might be, he pulled the heavy book toward himself and sighed, as if the sound secured the transfer of his consciousness from Kitty to his accounts. Perhaps during this interval the needed solutions would come to him.

With effort he lifted the cover and with further sighs and shakes of his snowy head, he turned page upon page with a licked finger, giving Kitty a full display of all the figures, all the orderly columns, one upon another, that gave some measure to the burdens of his ministry. After the search of more than several pages and more than several columns, his head moving up and down, emphasizing the labor needed to accommodate his scrutiny, he sighed yet again and placed his right hand on a column of figures, holding them in place lest they juggle themselves before he'd be given the opportunity to resign himself anew to their inadequacy.