The Troubles (25 page)

       Lanary is a man wise to his strengths and even shrewder to his own vulnerability and although he is thrice the age of Alastar and myself, he has outwitted, outlasted and defeated us in an insidious theatrical display, as the final curtain call is to the playwright’s con. Alas, poor Alastar. Does he know he is the lead character of this Shakespearean tragedy?

            
 
CHAPTER 46: Rogha an da dhiogha (The lesser of two evils)

                  Lanary Sloan…”No one can give you magical powers. You have to earn them. There is only one way to do this…practice, practice, practice.’’ –Donald Michael King

     Before Quinn, how many were there? My musings lilt and list as though my mind is a ship in the heart of a storm. In my arms is Kiera draped like a broken rag doll, her youthful alabaster skin so unblemished it looks like that of an artist’s careful simulation of porcelain doll. The only tell of her human actuality, is the pink foam that is dripping from her gaping mouth like the overflow of suds in a bathtub. She is alive and I will keep her so, but as she flounders in the control of my embrace, I am questioning why I have killed so many but am safekeeping her.  I have equated at least five taken from those private tutorials and years teachingstudents and so many more have disappeared, like unaccounted for soldiers. Why did each gruesom
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murder of a child not spur on a climactic and final response to either the Protestants or the Catholics? Be done with them and give me back my island and I will no longer kill their heirs. My bargain has been made!

CHAPTER 47: Na nocht d’fhiacla go bhfeadfair an greim do bhreith (Do not show your teeth until you can bite)

     Alastar Taggart…What was my mother’s maiden name? Was her first name Alice or Ailill? I consider with new clarity, how I was named after her, the one parent who left and did not ever look back. Is it my predestination to replicate this willing abandonment of a chosen spouse and children?  Kiera has answered the questions that storm deafeningly, between my two ears like the rush of the sea pounding into my eardrums.  Has she abandoned me because I had left her alone and with child and yet my most maddening ponder is why Lanary Sloan has enticed my new bride away from me? The nature of his betrayal could be one of a perverted plot but as those fragile puzzle pieces formed together at Ena’s bedside I think not.  My gut ferments and tightens with visceral dread that his intentions are much more lascivious than bedding my wife. He is violent in nature and I assume all the times I have been with him, his libido has resulted in acts of cruelty rather than lust.

      “Ouch. Damn that smarts!” A piece of carefully sanded driftwood has flown through the air and has connected with the crown of my skull.  I had driven Bobby Sand’s vehicle down the North Antrim Coast settling upon the polygonal columns of the Giant’s Causeway, parking a mile away from touristic locations and had trudged speedily down a path only a few locals would have been privy to. The wind has increased its howl exponentially, singing a song as ancient, and foreboding, as mystical and prehistoric as Ireland itself.  My hand appears bloodied from my wound and the salt encrusted raindrops sting my cut scalp with the ocean’s brine. I am close to the sea and although she is not yet in sight, I can hear the slapping of surf against the oppressed rocks of a foreboding shoreline.

         It is Lanary who has a greater bearing of the land and sea than I and it is in my estimation that he would have taken Kiera to an imbedded cave, where the World War II veteran and my bride would have a stone fortress for shelter from the docking force of this winter’s squall.  (The giant of Finn McCool is said to have forged layered gray basalt into tall polygonal formations, pillars poised like resplendent Grecian columns before a shoreline plagued by ocean wrought caves and grassy knolls, presenting an ancient home full of folklore and superstition.) As I pound the trail one thudding footfall after another, my eyes fly skyward as a flock of birds the color of the rain and clouds concentrate into a condensed mass. Vaulting with a mystical synchronicity, is an amalgam of cloud gray, soot black and silver in a tidal wave of flapping wings. What has caused me to pause and halt in my stead is the force with which the wind has blown and the flock is flying for it is against the easterly wind with a strength that seems unnatural. The birds do not break nor divert from their flight but pierce through the sixty-mile winds as though they have a preternatural strength.

      This brings to mind a folkloric tale that keeps Irish children wary of open windows on the west side of their homes for fear that the Sluagh (dead Irish sinners) will fly in and take possession of an inhabitant’s soul. This marauding, supernatural form is said to be in the animation of a flock of birds flying in from the west with gale strength.

                Droplets of bird excrement fall onto the skin of my pronounced forehead and with the same hand that had been tending to my bloodied crown, I raise it closefisted and curse to the wind wiping the warm shite off me face. The wind and rain deluge in a terrifying effort and remnants of the flock are lost within the zephyr of gusts and sleet. My eyes sting as the salt pricks my hooded dead-tired lids with a million needles rendering me blind and without mercy, the howling wind reaches a crescendo, and I am now deaf. My jacket, now cloaked over my face, provides little protection, as I breathe in streams of water while gasping and choking while the storm dares to drown me. I know I should return to the car and wait out the gale, but as my gut twists like a writhing snake, I am propelled forward. Even if I am to die, I must make my way to Kiera, for I fear that her life and my infant’s life are both in grave peril.

                 I reflect for a moment, when I was a teenager and had run away to look for my mother, but had not gotten far without a map, money and too great pride. I had hidden for two and a half days in one of the water-worn caves a few miles down the coast from where I trudge this day. Although bats and crustaceans dwell deep in the murky depths of the caverns, the one cave I remember when I had haphazardly landed upon it as a wayward child, was a suitable shelter from the Nordic chill of the open ocean.  Drawing upon all my memories I make one final lunge and now am standing on top of a ragged cliff with dead grass and moss blanketing beneath my boots.   The endless sea lies before me like a gray sky with portions surging and swelling with limitless tons of water beneath, while white caps froth like a rabid beast gnashing its teeth. One hundred feet below my perch lies the shore, although the sabulous junction appears to be in a life threatening joust of a conquering ocean’s army pillaging the haggard rocks of land. I gather courage and draw in another salt soaked breath and spitting out the bitter brine, I angle my body like a lighthouse and turn my gaze left and then right as a spotlight seeking my wife.

      There are no signs of life on the cliff face as dusk looms leaving whatever semblance of visibility I had within the lens of the storm to nothing but gaping black holes where caves are drawn. With deliberate movements, I begin an odyssey, down slippery, wet, yellowed grass, but within just a ten-foot decline, my feet misstep and I land with a sickening thud on my bottom.  I scream as pain immediately radiates up my spine and down my legs again. I have no time to recover and assess the injury because my body is torpedoing down the cliff.  Large shards of rock pierce the sea beneath the grassy ledge and if I fall onto these boulders I will die before I drown.

              My hands claw at clumps of red clay as I frantically paw at any earthly perch while still on my pained posterior, but my coat’s rubber coating has turned into a sled and I am accelerating with a deadly accuracy downward. The rocks beneath metamorphose into gargantuan homicidal pillars and their intimidating prowess above the slapping waves nauseates me as I plunge, petrified to my executioner.

CHAPTER 48: Is leir don saol e an firinne (Everybody knows the truth.)

                 Kiera Taggart…Drip, drip drip…Water is cascading down from the ceiling of a cavern. I feel numb as my limbs are partially paralyzed. I am in a conscious state and my innards seem to be screaming in agony causing me to double over and clench into a half crescent form on the damp, fetid cavern floor. Warily, I am able to scan the shadowy space before me but my temples are thudding, causing what little vision I have to strain with the incapacitated strength of raw, sore eyes. I drearily ascertain that I must be in a cave of abnormal height. The oblong sarcophagus is unlit and saturated in a damp murkiness, in spite of a flicker of burnt orange fire in a furthermost reach of the dark, granite grotto. A hooded, outlandishly large shadow looms in the glow of the firelight and I shiver as a spoon of dread envelops my dry tongue.  I pull my gaze away pleading with my mind for this to be a delusion and I will soon awaken in a soft down filled coverlet with the man I love snoring softly beside me as his arm is wrapped protectively over my hip and his fingers caress his infant’s refuge.

              Large, unstable mercurial overcasts have replaced the commonplace eye sockets where Lanary’s eyes once resided, the flesh earning a death gray pallor. He now presents himself mad within the dance of light and dark, illuminating his mocking grin, one of which in the five years I have known him as a mentor, I have yet to have seen. I am terror stricken by the man who is a few feet from me.  I would never have been afraid of him who was my aging history teacher, albeit there is no semblance of his previous self to be seen in the spine-tingling expression he now bears.

              “Ar chodail tu go maith?” My mind appears to be wrestling with the words as I digest his question. Why is he asking me if I slept well? The asshole poisoned me! Continue with this farce my mind whispers to me for I am regaining my wits with each breath of pure oxygen.

              “Aye s’pose I did, Lanary. When did I fall asleep?” I wiggle a toe, the pins and needles signaling the resurgence of life in my extremities. I need to test my strength if I am to make an escape.

              “Glad ya did, me child. Tis a cold house without a woman.”

              I laugh awkwardly as I sit up propping myself on weak, shaky arms. “Not exactly a castle is it.” In my light, lucid state it appears Lanary has leapt with reptilian agility from his safe distance to be close enough for me to smell the rancid tobacco that has encased itself in each strand of his filthy beard.

              “De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain.” The old proverb rolls bitterly off his tongue and hits me with its spiteful anger.

              “Aye, didn’t mean much by it. I know it takes time to build castles,” I stammer.  In the dim light his eyes look like two pools of poisoned water, murky and shimmering from the stain of his tears. “Are ya all right?” I phrase my question to sound compassionate but mostly I just want to gage this man’s delusions.

CHAPTER 49: Is minic cuma aingeal ar an Diabhal fein. (There’s often the look of an angel on the devil himself.)

                  Alastar Taggart…My throbbing behind stings with pangs of sharp nerve pain as I stand with shaking uncertainty. Groaning whilst I cleave to the mudslide above me, I turn around unsteadily putting my back to the frothing sea below, decamping the jutted ledge that a moment ago might have torpedoed me to a gnarly demise. I have tears falling down my face fusing cohesively with the substantial ocean spray. My pain has brought on the visceral reaction though to my chagrin I am sobbing out of frustration. With one breath in and one breath out, counting the rhythm allows me to meditate on even this most exhausting feat. I fear my feet slipping on this wet cliff face but with tenuously precise movements I maneuver up the steep shield. There is a more accessible route to the right and with a gingered footstep I lower myself further down the vertical angle and closer to the bank. The night’s dark tenacity has now fully realized itself and the downpour has slowed, absent of my knowledge while being preoccupied with my perilous plunge. There is a crest of moonlight gleaming now, through the cover of dissipating clouds on the horizon. The pale light bares a supernatural countenance onto the weathered land and the caves which have been layered like mismatched mausoleums, some large enough to accommodate a family, others so in descript, a child would scantily fit within, remain hidden.

    I can hear an ensemble of voices tear through the brutal affront of the waves and I stunt my scramble eager to assess the direction and quality of the sound. Am I hallucinating from the day’s exhaustive deluge of bodily stresses? Could the malevolent sirens of the sea be beckoning me to just give up and fall to a watery grave? The sounds are there again, light and lovely, humanistic and mortal. A singular voice is pleading with me, the tone high and fraught with panic. Oh God no! It is Kiera and she her voice is uncommonly anxious in lilt.

    I am filled with fear that Lanary might have maimed her or he is in the process of doing so. Adrenaline jolts through my flagging musculature and I can feel nothing but my heart pounding, each beat resonating through my chest like buckshot from a hunting barrel. I careen through the jagged maze before me with celestial confidence with Quinn paramount on my mind and for the first time since his death, I no longer associate his memory with fear, for I now feel his other worldly strength as though my teenage brother is carrying me weight upon his trim, stunted shoulders.

                  The North Channel seems to have been quieted by the elements of sea and sky working in tandem. In the temperamental light of the falcate moon I distinguish a figure, lone and statuesque, upon the black granite irregular boulders that eclipse the hidden caves secluded and shut off from the brunt of nature’s fury.