Reluctantly Charmed (39 page)

I slammed the shop door behind me, beaming. “Martin, I’ll have another cup of tea, please.”

Martin busied himself making tea, then laid it down in front of me and studied my expression.

It was glum. Staring into my milky tea, I knew in my heart of hearts that the only person I would have liked to appear outside my bedroom window was Hugh Delaney. But it looked like that was never going to happen.

34

I
was a prisoner by my own hand. My whereabouts had become common knowledge, and now a crowd was keeping vigil outside Martin’s. People were sitting cross-legged in the street staring fixedly at the building. There were hundreds of them—it was a blur of colors, an ocean of faces. Occasionally they’d sing in a dull chant that rose to a roar in the chorus. Sometimes they sang pop songs, Coldplay, the Eagles, a lot of Burning Cradle, good solid guitar songs. At other times, they switched to Irish traditional music.

Simon and the Anoraks were front-row contenders, mesmerized and rooted to the spot, staring, swaying, chanting, waiting. There was a spot at the front of the shop where people were leaving gifts. Simon had left a copy of
Witchcraft for Dummies
.

Peeking out my window on Sunday morning, I noticed the crowd was having a bit of a party, dancing around an impromptu campfire. It wasn’t a party that I, or anyone with any degree of sanity, would choose to attend, but if you’d just escaped from five years’ solitary confinement in a prison and had to burrow through sewage tunnels with a little spoon that you’d fashioned from your prison wall, you’d probably be happy enough to be there.

Matthew was going back to Dublin that day. He had to work.
He phoned to say good-bye, he didn’t fancy battling through the Anoraks. We made plans to meet in Dublin the following week when this was all over. It felt strange that the end was in sight, that the next time I saw Matthew this would be over, that there would be no more steps.

Father O’Brien had sent for me. That sounds biblical, doesn’t it? Sent for me. He sent a schoolgirl, Hannah, who was also an altar girl, to Martin’s with a note for me. Martin sent her off with a packet of crisps for her trouble and then peered over my shoulder to read.

Please come to the church vestry at 4:15 this afternoon.

There are some matters I’d like to discuss with you.

Father O’Brien

Lily and Fiona wanted to come with me. I think it was the vestry that got the better of them—to be invited into the inner sanctum of a church was terrifyingly exciting. All those doors that you’d peered at during mass through the years and wondered what went on behind them. They got into a fit of schoolgirl giggles imagining what could be in there, all the priests’ dresses, holy water, and gold staffs. I shook my head and laughed at them, and promised them a full report afterward.

I had to shimmy over a garden wall and race through back gardens to avoid the crowds out front. I felt like I was on my way to the headmaster’s office. That feeling fizzled in my stomach—that I was bad, that I had done something really bad and now I was in big, big trouble.

So I was nervous as I stepped up to the side door of the church and knocked loudly on the heavy oak panel.

“Enter,” a stern voice called from inside.

I pushed the door open a crack. “Hello, Father. It’s Kate McDaid,” I said meekly. “You sent for me.”

Father O’Brien shot out of his chair, which was a large wooden throne with wine-velvet upholstery. “Kate, yes.” He came toward me and shook my hand. Black rings circled his eyes, and his face was pale, the skin pulled tight like a soccer ball. He looked around his room, flustered. “I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I’m afraid Mrs. Regan isn’t here, and I’m a bit useless in the kitchen.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I just had a cup, anyway.”

“Right, right,” he said distractedly. He moved toward the window, nervously wringing his hands.

I looked around the room. Dark wooden cabinets with tiny keyholes lined three of the walls. Draped over the furniture were heavy linens with shiny gold embroidery. Two large, imposing candlesticks dominated a table, and an enormous bookcase was groaning with old books, all stacked with neat precision.

Father O’Brien gestured toward an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench for me to sit on.

“It’s busy in town today,” I said as I sat down.

Father O’Brien didn’t reply—he was fixed to the spot, staring out the window, almost in a trance.

“Father, it’s busy in town today,” I said more loudly this time, before following up with a cough.

He turned sharply toward me, his eyes staring straight into mine. “We have to talk.”

“Okay,” I said, nervously watching as he paced the room.

“I . . .” He stopped, took a breath, and walked on. “I’ve had a letter from my bishop.” He said
bishop
slowly, with caution, assuming that the very word would instill as much fear in me as it obviously did in him. “He’s very concerned—very concerned—about these Steps.”

“Really? Why?” I couldn’t understand why a bishop would be remotely bothered.

“Thou shalt not put false gods before me.”

“Oh.” No one had ever quoted a commandment to me before. “Well, it’s not really, I mean, there’s no god here. They’re just—”

Father O’Brien wasn’t listening to me. “The pagan belief in fairies is flawed on so many levels. We thought we’d got rid of all that nonsense. But now, all this hysteria has developed with these messages from beyond the grave.” He’d worked himself up into a frenzy, and his face was red and angry. “You’re meddling in things you do not understand.”

“Look, Father, I—”

“It’s going higher than the bishop, you know. Cardinal Lysaght in Dublin is holding a meeting with his superiors today. This could go all the way up. All the way.”

“Oh, come on, the pope isn’t going to be interested in a little village in the west of Ireland. He has bigger fish to fry.”

Father O’Brien shook his head furiously. “No, no, no. Look at Knock, Medjugorje, Lourdes. What happened in those little villages had huge consequences for the church and the faith of millions of people everywhere.”

I felt myself frown involuntarily. I hadn’t heard of Knock, Medjugorje, or Lourdes since primary school. They’d been inconsequential towns in Ireland, Bosnia, and France that were catapulted to fame after the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared there. I was pretty sure she’d had her hands joined in prayer and was crying, presumably over the inhumanity of it all, and not due to sunscreen in the eye or a loose eyelash. Religious apparitions had always felt a little bit classist to me: they seemed to happen to poor people or orphan children with no shoes and no hairbrush.
Nobody commuting to their nine-to-five job in a sharp suit with a leather briefcase ever saw the Virgin Mary while downing a skinny cappuccino.

“But Father. You can’t compare Knocknamee to those places. There’s no miracle here.”

“You tell that to the people outside. They’re looking for one. But they’re not looking to the church to give them one. They’re looking to you.”

I put my head in my hands. I felt off-center, as if the air had been sucked from my body. “I never meant for any of this.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” Father O’Brien said with sudden kindness in his voice. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s here now, and we need to work out how to deal with it.” He sat back on his throne, then muttered to himself: “We have to take a stand; we have to take a position.”

“I mean, Father, I’m as much in the dark about all of this as you are.”

He sat bolt upright in his chair and arched his head toward me. “So you’ve had no—how do I put this—feelings? Unusual intuitions or sensations?” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you telling me you’ve had no dreams?”

“What?” I almost fell off my seat. “What are you talking about?” How could he know?

“Well, the Steps and the letter from the Red Hag do point to your having certain abilities—special abilities?”

“But Father, you just said they’re a load of nonsense.”

“I never said that.”

“I don’t understand. How can you think I could have powers? You? You’re a Catholic priest.”

“So you’ve had no visions? None?”

“None.” I shook my head, knowing that lying to a priest would
get me into an awful lot of trouble. But I couldn’t tell him. How could I trust him?

“Well.” He turned his mouth downward, lost in thought.

“Father, please.” I softened my voice. “This isn’t fair. How could you think”—I nearly said
know
—“that I have powers?”

There was a flicker in Father O’Brien’s left eye, and I could tell he was having an internal battle, deciding whether or not to tell me something.

“Please, Father, if you know something, be fair: tell me.”

He sighed heavily. “If I tell you something, you have to promise me it stays here, in this room. You have to promise not to talk to your journalist friends about it. You don’t talk to anyone.”

I was intrigued. I nodded, nervous about what he was going to say.

“The Steps, these Steps.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I’ve seen them before.”

“But how? I’m the only one who . . .”

He raised his hand and I knew not to interrupt him again.

“Fifty years or so ago, I came here fresh out of the seminary, a young man full of ideas and enthusiasm for my vocation. The retiring priest at the time, Father O’Connell, had also served here for over fifty years. He was a good and pious man. We were here together for about a year while Father O’Connell introduced me to the parishioners. We’d say mass together and he gave me time to familiarize myself with the people, with this beautiful village here in Knocknamee. It was near the end of our year when he told me about the Steps, when he warned me just as he had been warned by his predecessor.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My Steps, the Steps, had been read before, had been seen before.

“Father O’Connell had inherited the parish from Father
Creane, who had served here since 1866. Father Creane was by all accounts a stern man—back then it’s fair to say that priests ruled their parishioners from the pulpit with an iron fist. There was a lot of fire and brimstone and intolerance. We’ve moved on quite a bit since then, and we all try to be compassionate and more understanding. During Father Creane’s first few years in the parish, there was a lot of trouble. It was twenty years after the famine, and the community was slowly rebuilding itself. The church was still working to regain its place in people’s lives. During the famine people had turned their back on the church—they couldn’t believe in a god who would hurt and starve them. Even I can see how people could question their faith during tough times, times harder than we could ever even imagine. People had turned to other forces for help—pagan forces. They’d asked the fairies for help. I suppose you’ve heard a lot about them since you’ve been here?”

I nodded, interested.

He backtracked. “I mean, they’re superstitious nonsense, most of these pagan beliefs. Legend has it that this witch, your aunt, was given to the people by the fairies to ease their suffering. Look, I don’t know whether or not she was a witch. I do know that records show she was denounced from the pulpit. That Father Creane called her a witch in a mass, told the parishioners to turn their backs on her, that she was never going to help them. I know she was supposed to have taken their money and gotten greedy and caused a lot more hardship in the village.”

Even though I’d heard this before, I was eager to hear any fresh information and didn’t want to disturb his flow of thought, so I was doing my best to keep my mouth shut.

“Eventually—and I don’t know the ins and outs of it—people came back to the church. It was after your aunt was gone, after she’d left the village.”

“Or died,” I interjected.

“Maybe.” He rubbed his nose, looking anxiously around him. “But I digress. You want to hear about the Steps. Before she died or disappeared, she came to Father Creane. Now, you can imagine that wasn’t a great meeting: here’s the woman who, in his eyes, turned all his parishioners away from the church and then treated them badly and filled their heads with pagan beliefs of fairies and witchcraft. And she was coming to him for help. I’d say he laughed at her from here to Carlow.”

“She wanted help? From the priest?”

“The people of Knocknamee had had enough of her. They didn’t believe her anymore, so they wouldn’t listen to her. They saw her for what she was: that she was just interested in her own well-being and gain. But the thing was, she had a message she wanted to give to the people. She’d been asked to reawaken, as she put it, the fairies.”

“And the message? It’s the Steps?”

He nodded. “She asked Father Creane, who had the ears of the parishioners, for help. She asked him to tell the people the Steps.” Father O’Brien rolled his eyes to heaven. “Can you imagine? The insanity of it. As if Father Creane was going to help her spread her pagan ways. It didn’t make any sense!” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, like he was sitting on a prickly cactus. “Well, Father Creane said no. She begged and pleaded with him, and she gave him the Steps, all seven of them, in the hope that he’d slip them into his sermon. Which, of course, he was never going to do, and he told her as much. But she kept at him, trying to wear him down. Eventually, so they say, she put a curse on the church, and on him.”

“What kind of a curse?”

“His health deteriorated rapidly. He was a young man at the
time and he took to walking with a stick. His back was curved, and he was never without a cold or a flu. And the church itself, well, even to this day there are holes in the roof that we’ve patched and repatched and even reroofed and still the rain comes in. It’s strange, is all. Father Creane had the fear of God in him, there’s no doubt about it. After she’d cursed him and the church, she disappeared. You wouldn’t sleep easy with that haunting you, I’ll tell you. He had the Seven Steps, but he didn’t know what to do with them. He couldn’t destroy them—he was too scared. He knew about the fairies and their potential, but he couldn’t be seen to be believing in them. Still, he knew.”