Galway Bay (2 page)

Most girls left Miss Lynch’s school at twelve to mind the younger children, mend the nets, sell the catch, and then at sixteen marry a fisherman’s son. But Da and Mam let me stay on to study, except for the days I was needed under the Spanish Arch with Mam and Máire.

It was Máire told me to watch the way Mam looked at the new Presentation Convent and talked about the sisters when we passed it. “Mam wants you to be a nun. She and Miss Lynch have it fixed up between them. Miss Lynch will pay the dowry. You’d better find a fellow fast if you don’t want to go into the convent.”

But what fellow? Máire’d been courted by every boy in Bearna, but I never felt a pull toward any one of them—a sign the convent was God’s will for me. Our Lord hadn’t sent me a husband so I could serve Him. Maybe He was sparing me, too. I’d seen the drink take over fellows until they made their wives’ lives a misery, and I’d heard my own mam scream through my little brother Hughie’s birth, though she said a woman soon forgot the pain. Still . . . Almost three months. The whole summer. No school. I’ll be ready by September.

Drowsing in the sun, I heard Mam say, “I’m grateful to God for calling you. . . .” and Da telling me, “Daniel O’Connell won a great victory getting the nuns back. I’m proud of you, Honora—the first fisherman’s daughter to become a Holy Sister. . . .” Miss Lynch was saying, “A link is restored. . . .” and Granny Keeley was adding, “Irish nuns are women warriors, equal to any man.” And I fell asleep.

The noise of the tide breaking on a rock woke me—Galway Bay, rougher now.

There, on the surface of the water, I saw something moving. A piece of wood? A cask lost from a ship? It’s pulling against the tide, floating parallel to the shore. A seal? But the seals live farther out in the colder waters where Galway Bay joins the Atlantic Ocean.

Two eyes stared straight at me. Not dark eyes set in the sleek black head of a seal, but very blue eyes in a man’s face. Could it be a sailor fallen from a ship or a fisherman? But sailors and fishermen could not swim.

This one was swimming. His arms were stroking through the water. A flash of feet and legs kicking under the surface, splashing and thrashing. Was he going down?

I ran into the surf. “Are you drowning?” I shouted.

“I am!”

Need something for him to hold on to. The tide pulled at my legs. Here he is. His face. Closer. He’s . . . laughing! He dove down into the water, slid up again, then launched himself onto a wave, riding it onto the strand.

He stood, foam swirling around his long legs, hands at his sides—not covering himself. Looking me right in the eye—smiling.

“You’re not drowning at all.”

“I am,” he said. “I am drowning in your beauty. Are you a girl at all, or are you a mermaid?”

“I’m real enough.” I can’t move. Has he cast some spell on me? Granny says mermen can step out of the sea, but this fellow’s human, no question.

Strong, muscled legs. Wide shoulders. The length and breadth of the man. And no clothes needed. Bulky, unnecessary things they seemed. The male part of him was growing before my very eyes.

He saw where I was looking. “You can’t be a vision,” he said, “or I wouldn’t be . . . Please, my clothes are just over there.”

Clothes—get them for him now. Miss Lynch could be looking out her window from Barna House just above us. But still I stood, gazing.

An image of the parlor in Presentation Convent came to me: Mother Superior, Miss Lynch, and Mam . . .

But the picture blurred, then faded away.

And all I saw was him.

Chapter 2

T
ELL ME WHO YOU ARE,
” he said. “Tell me everything about yourself.” He’d dressed himself in dark trousers and a loose linen shirt, and the two of us were leaning against my rock.

“My father and brothers fish, and my mother and sister and I sell the catch in Galway City.” I pointed to the cluster of whitewashed cottages tucked back along the curve of the shore and told him I lived in one of those with my mam and da and granny, my older sister, three younger brothers. “Thirty of us fisher families in the village, Bearna, it’s called—the Gap, in Irish. Though the name’s been twisted in English to a Barna.” I stopped. This isn’t what I want to say.

He knew. “That’s the outside. Tell me the inside,” he said. “What do you think, feel? How can I win your heart? Give me some great quest; send me over the mountains, through the seas. I’ll ride my horse, Champion, to Tír na nOg and back to earn your love.”

“Love? You don’t even know my name.”

“Then start there.”

“Honora Keeley.”

“Honora. Beautiful. Honora: honor.”

So it really does happen. Love at first sight, as in Granny’s stories of Deirdre and Naoise, Grainne and Diarmuid. To look at a face and know this is the one. Astonishing. True.

“And what are you called?”

“Michael Kelly,” he said. “My father was Michael Kelly. My mother’s father was Murtaugh Mor Kelly. I come from Gallach Uí Cheallaigh.”

“Gallagh of the Kellys,” I said, making English of the name. “I’m starting to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That you’re a Kelly.”

We laughed, as if I’d made the cleverest remark possible. Then he took my hand, and I went silent.

I looked around the rock and up at Barna House—the curtains were still drawn, good. I had to lean across Michael to see our cottages. Quiet. Everyone sleeping still. I let my hand rest in his. Warm.

“You’re not . . . I mean, is this some kind of enchantment?” I asked him.

“It is, of course,” he said. “Wait, let me fetch my fairy steed.”

Steed! He said “steed” and “fetch,” so I answered, “Please, my gallant hero.”

How well he moves, striding along the strand, fairly running up Gentian Hill to the horse standing on the summit. A fairy place, that. Should I stand up now and run away? What if he’s about to carry me off to a fairy rath? But I didn’t stir as he led the animal down the hill and over to me. Michael had a saddle over his shoulder and a bundle under his arm. I stood up to meet him.

“Easy, easy now.” He patted the horse’s neck and set down his burdens. “You’re fine, Champion,” he said, and then to me, “Neither of us has ever been near water that has no limits. To see Galway Bay stretching out toward the sea like this—very exciting for both of us.”

“A fine horse,” I said.

“She is. And going to stand quiet and polite while I sit down beside Honora Keeley. Her name is Champion.”

“Rua,” I said. “Red.”

“Chestnut,” he said. “The color of your hair, all fiery in the sun. Truly, Honora Keeley, it was your lovely hair flowing around you made me think you were a mermaid. Like the one carved in the lintel of Clontuskert Abbey.”

“A mermaid? I thought
you
were a merman or a seal,” I said.

“Do you want me to be a seal? I would be a seal for you gladly.”

“Be a man. A man with a fine horse.”

And then I realized: a man with a horse. Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Blessed St. Joseph! A gypsy, a tinker . . . A lifetime of warnings: “Don’t wander off, or the gypsies will get you!” “Those tinkers would steal the tooth out of your head and sell it back to you!”

When the painted gypsy caravans drove through Galway City, Mam pulled me close to her. The women in the market whispered, “They beat their wives something awful.”

“Turn your face away, Honora, don’t stare!” Mam said. “Gypsy women can give you the evil eye.”

And now here he was, a man with a horse—a gypsy!

“And where are the others?” Go carefully, Honora.

“Others?” he asked. “Only Champion and me.”

“You’re not traveling in a pack of wagons?”

“You think I’m a gypsy?”

I didn’t care. His eyes were the same blue as the Bay, and his mouth—smiling now.

“I’m not a gypsy, though I believe there are decent enough people among them. A terrible thing to be wandering the roads, and I suppose a bit of thieving here and there is understandable.”

“Understandable,” I said, “but you aren’t one?”

“I’m not, Honora Keeley, though I am without home or hearth at the moment.”

“At the moment?”

“I want to tell you my story, but I don’t know where to start. Should I begin with my mother?”

“Do,” I said. “Mothers are very important.”

Then we laughed again. He took my other hand, and I didn’t care if he had a mother or not, if he was a gypsy or not.

His horse lifted her head and snorted.

“Is she laughing, too?” I asked.

“Probably. Champion likes this story because both of us were born outside what my old schoolmaster called ‘the natural order of things.’”

What did that mean? He’ll tell me. We settled ourselves against the warm rock. I turned so I could watch his face as he started the tale. Lovely how his lips form the words. His eyes, rimmed in a deeper blue, hold such light. What thick black hair, and that straight nose. A hero come from the sea. Michael Kelly . . . Well into his story now.

“ . . . so Murtaugh Mor—”

“Sorry, Michael. And who is he? I thought you were starting with your mother.”

“I am. Here, sit closer so the wind doesn’t carry the sound of my words away over Galway Bay to the green hills of Clare.”

“I’m fine. I can hear. Start again.”

“My mother’s father, Murtaugh Mor Kelly, was a huge, big man, and few in Gallagh or indeed in any townland around Ballinasloe would challenge Murtaugh Mor Kelly. Even Colonel Blakeney, the landlord, spoke to him with a certain respect. ‘Martin,’ he called him, trying to put English on him, though he was ‘Murty’ to everyone else.

“Now, Kellys had been ruling East Galway for a thousand years when Blakeney’s ancestors rode in with Cromwell, burning and pillaging.”

“And destroying the abbeys and torturing the poor nuns,” I said.

“Strange you should think of that, because abbeys come into it! Amazing that you should mention abbeys!”

“Amazing,” I said. More laughter. I moved closer to him, both of us warmed by the sun now.

“The men in my mother’s family have been smiths for generations. You’ve heard the stories of Goibniu?”

“My granny tells them. Goibniu made weapons for the heroes of old and welcomed the valiant into the other world with a great feast in the time before Saint Patrick came to Ireland.”

“He did so,” Michael said. “And even after Saint Patrick, smiths like Goibniu pounded gold into thin sheets to shape chalice cups for monks, croziers for bishops and abbots, and make great neck torcs, brooches, and pins for the chieftains. The kind of knowledge learned from forging iron and gold makes smiths silent, cautious men who hold tightly to their secrets. And that was my grandfather.

“But my mother was easy with the silence. Though not by nature a closemouthed woman, she was happy enough, she told me, to spend her days cooking and minding my grandda, because marriage had passed her by. No one cared to ask for the hand of Murty Mor’s daughter. A quiet man frightens people, especially if he’s well-muscled—”

“Like yourself?” I said before I could stop myself. I felt his arm against my side—well-muscled, certainly.

“I’m only puny compared to him,” Michael said. “He was a giant who lifted rods of iron with ease and could hammer out a horseshoe with a few strokes. It would take a very brave man to walk into that dark forge to ask Murty Mor Kelly for his daughter. And none had.”

“But one did,” I said, “because here you are.”

“Here I am.”

Silence—thickening between us.

“Go on,” I said.

“Have you heard of Gallagh Castle?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t,” I said.

“Good. Then I can tell you. Imagine a huge stone fort built on a high hill with terraced slopes so the crowds who come to watch the Kellys race their horses on the Course will have soft seats. The castle’s a ruin now, but when dusk falls, ghosts appear, and with them the good people, who you know are fond of fast horses.”

“That I do know,” I said. “My granny is a great woman for the fairies.”

“Ah,” he said. “Something else we have in common.” We smiled. “A Kelly on his ancestral land has no fear of fairies,” he said. “As a boy, when I rode my imaginary horse over the Course, I heard the noise of that other crowd rooting me over the final jump—up and over—and a soft landing on green grass.”

“Good to touch down easy,” I said.

“Right you are, Honora.” He squeezed my hand. “So, you have Gallagh Castle and the racecourse fixed in your head?”

“I do, Michael.”

“Now, as I said, the whole place was thought to be fairy country and none in the neighborhood would plow or plant the hillside. Even the Blakeneys stopped trying to force their tenants to till those fields. Nor would horses graze there. Oh, they might lean down for a few mouthfuls of the sweet green grass, but then their heads would come up, their ears would twitch, and off they would trot to the fence by the road to stand there until they were taken away. And the Blakeneys’ cows, animals with little intelligence compared to horses, would not graze on these fields either.”

“Everyone knows horses are superior,” I said, though Champion was the first one I’d ever been this close to. “Look how Champion stands here listening.”

“And she’s heard the story before,” he said. “Now, the most famous of the Kellys of Gallagh was William Boy O’Kelly.”

“When?” I asked.

“When what?”

“When did he live?”

“Oh, long before Cromwell, but a few centuries after the first Kellys came down from the North. Their leader was called Maine Mor. His son Ceallaigh gave his name to our family line. Ceallaigh means ‘contention,’ and true to the name, the Kellys fought. Against the invaders, but also, if the truth be told, among ourselves. Contention. Brothers killing brothers for the title of Taoiseach, Chieftain. Now, you won’t hold that against me?” Michael asked.

“My ancestor Queen Maeve knew a thing or two about contention,” I said.

“Maeve’s your ancestor? Why, her stronghold’s not far from us.”

“We Keeleys are the descendants of her son Conmac—Conn-na-Mara, Conn-of-the-sea.”

“So you and I were connected,” he said, “even before . . .”

I could only nod. He leaned closer, still holding my hand.