The Crow of Connemara (21 page)

Colin heard a splash behind them: the seal had slid from the rock into green-gray waves; he could see its dark head for a moment near the end of the quay before it dove underneath the water with a nearly silent flick of its tail.

“Ignore what?” Colin asked Maeve as Keara walked away. He wiped his glasses—spattered with salt spray from the trip over—on his shirt and settled them on his face again.

“Nothing,” Maeve told him. “Come on, let me show you around . . .”

Stepping onto Inishcorr was stepping backward a century into Ireland's past.

The “village” was a cluster of shops and houses near the pier in the island's small bay. On the shore a few currachs were beached with their hulls up. Several storefronts lined the area back from the water, but few of the shops seemed to be occupied—those that were seemed to be necessary for the upkeep of the community: a fishmonger, a smithy, a small dry goods store, a leather-worker, a carpenter, a small pub.

All were the type of shops that might have existed in Ireland for centuries. Nothing new; nothing modern.

Colin saw few signs of modernity in the port area. A trio of diesel oil drums near the wharf seemed to be the only concession that motors existed. There weren't any cars in the few slots along the unpaved street, though there were three bicycles leaning unchained against a post near the head of the quay, and another near the carpenter's shop. There'd been an attempt to cobble the narrow street in front of the storefront, though the cobbles were rough and uneven, with scattered pools of dark water. The ghosts of muddy footprints marked the passage of the islanders over the cobbles, while not a hundred strides to Colin's right, the cobblestones gave way to bare, rutted dirt, with weeds and grass growing unbothered in the high center, the narrow lane hemmed in by waist-high drystone walls and winding away into grassy pastureland in which sheep wandered. There was no traffic visible anywhere; it seemed that if you wanted to go somewhere on the island, you were expected to either walk or bike.

The place even smelled old: Colin could nearly taste the distinct scent of burning peat, mingling with the salt wind from the sea, the earthy smell of mud and turf and wet stone, and an underlying whiff of old, rotting fish here by the shore.

“So what do yeh think?” Maeve asked as they reached the shore. “T'ain't much, but 'tis ours. Yeh should have seen it when we came—the houses all empty shells going back to earth. The island had been deserted since the 1930s when the last family left.”

“If there was no one here, why is everyone back in Ballemór so upset that your group took it over?”

“They'll tell yeh that it's all about the legality,” Maeve answered. “'Tis not the truth, though.” She took his hand and smiled at him.

“What's the truth? I've seen the way the locals look at all of you. Mrs. Egan thinks you—well, ‘you' in the general sense of the Oileánach—are responsible for all sorts of strange goings-on in the Ballemór area.”

“Does she now?” Maeve's smile widened. “Let's do some traipsing,” she said, taking his hand. She led him away from the harbor and the village, following the dirt path between the stone walls, which looked like it had been laid out by a wandering sheep. The fields were being actively worked; Colin saw more sheep and a few cows grazing, and there were crops planted in the tiny fields, all of them marked off with stone walls. Around a one-room farmhouse just off the path on a small hill, he could see chickens scratching at the bare dirt. Peat smoke drifted from the chimney of the farmhouse, and someone waved at them from the doorway. Maeve waved back and they continued on, her skirt billowing in the wind, her hair tousled, the red woolen sweater she wore over her blouse half-buttoned. To Colin, she looked like a figure from an old painting.
Woman Walking in the Country.

“I feel like I've dropped back a century. Maybe two or more,” Colin commented as the lane led them around a curve and a small stand of trees. They couldn't see the village anymore, though out past the fields were the gray waves of the island channel, and beyond that, the green, steep slopes of Ceomhar Head, hazed blue with distance. Dark, fast clouds were playing with the sun, shafts of bright light sweeping over the landscape only to vanish in shadow again.

“Yeh have, in a way,” Maeve answered. She was still holding his hand, swinging their clasped fingers between them as they walked. “We keep to the old ways here. At least, mostly.” He saw her look at the direction of his gaze, then glance that way herself. “The west of Ireland never was tamed as much as the east. 'Tis still that way. Here in the western counties, there remain pockets of strange places where the Old Ones might still walk.”

“Like this island?” he asked.

She shrugged and laughed. “Maybe. Keep yer eyes open; who knows what yeh might see.”

“To listen to Mrs. Egan talk, you'd think the sidhe were hiding in every corner of the town and behind every tree on the Head.” He laughed. “You should hear her talk about the day her brother Darcy died.”

“Maybe she's right,” Maeve said, and when Colin laughed, she let go of his hand, though she continued to walk along the rutted lane. “Yeh know, there are two tales about how Inishcorr came to be abandoned,” she said. “The first is the one the mainlanders would tell yeh, about how the economy failed and most of the people here just moved away to better places. That's a plain tale and boring, but believable.”

“And the second?”

“That's the one yeh likely wouldn't believe.”

“Try me.”

“I will at that,” she answered. She jogged a little farther up the lane, then swung around to him. “Come on, laggard. There's something I want to show yeh, then.”

She took his hand again as he caught up to her, and began talking.

The first family that came out here was the Coffeys. They were Catholics, though John Coffey was also someone who kept one foot in the church and the other set on older, pagan paths. It was John Coffey who led his family to Inishcorr to settle the place in 1846. The family was originally from County Roscommon, where
an Gorta Mór
, the Great Famine, hit hardest of all. John Coffey's parents were poor Irish, and they'd fallen first to the famine. But John had heard the blight that was killing the potatoes wasn't affecting the west as much yet, and they had cousins near Ballemór, so John took his wife and five children west, to the Connemara region.

The Ballemór relations weren't particularly happy to have John show up with his family in tow. But it was through them that John was told that he might be permitted to settle his family on Inishcorr, since the British lord who actually held title to the island never came this far west nor did he care about the place, and so John did exactly that. He thought they could establish a viable farm on the small, deserted island and raise sheep and cattle, maybe do some fishing as well, and being on an island maybe the blight wouldn't ever reach the potatoes in their lazybeds. They could be self-sufficient there, John declared, and his family believed him. He wrote to his two younger brothers and his sister—all of them married and with their own families back in Roscommon—and they all came west as well.

For a time, everything was good here. Certainly life was hard for them, as hard as it was for any poor family in Ireland at the time, but the Coffeys did indeed manage to scrape a living from the stony soil of Inishcorr, and between their fields and the bounty of the sea, they managed to have enough to feed their growing families. The sons and daughters of the Coffey family left the island when they were old enough, but some few stayed behind, and some of those who left returned again with new wives or husbands to add to the settlement. The cluster of houses became a true village, and they were doing well enough to trade and barter with those on the mainland. Inishcorr was flourishing as well as it could.

The highest point on Inishcorr was a large earthen mound on the western side of the island, where the wind sliced in unfettered from off the gray, stormy North Atlantic. A withered, bedraggled hawthorn tree stood near the mound's summit, and a strange ring of dark stones surrounded the hillock. John Coffey had found the place when he'd first come to Inishcorr, and he'd forbade anyone to wander there or to disturb the mound or stones because of what he'd claimed to have seen there on dark Inishcorr nights. He told the Inishcorr families that when he'd first come to the island, he could
feel
the presence of the sidhe in and around the ring of stones and the mound behind them, and sailors who had passed that way in the dark or during storms talked of strange lights and sounds around the hill, and said that the
sluagh sídhe
, the fairy host, sometimes whirled madly from the mound, even coming over the channel to Ceomhar Head and the mainland.

“Yeh don't be diggin' there or knockin' o'er the stones, y'hear?” he'd told his own children and all the rest. “That place is na' for us, but for the
aos sí:
the fey folk, the people of the mounds. 'Tis their place, not ours. I've talked to Fionnbharr, the king of the fey ones, here on this very spot, an' a bargain we made, him and meself. They will let us be, if we do the same to them. So yeh best leave them well alone, for alla our sakes.”

During his lifetime, everyone heeded John Coffey's words, but John died in 1900 at age 82, and those on Inishcorr began to forget his admonitions and warnings. In 1911, one of John's grandsons—Padraig Coffey—decided that the hawthorn tree looked already half dead and he needed some fuel for his fireplace anyway and it was too far to the mainland for him to go and dig peat, since there wasn't a proper bog on the island. Wood would work just as well.

Padraig said afterward that the first blow of his ax sent what felt like an electrical shock all up his arms, and he had to let go of the ax with the head still embedded in the trunk. A superstitious man, Padraig said he thought he heard laughter as he stood there shaking the tingling from his fingers, and he ran off. That night, in the tavern down in the village, he told his tale to several of the Coffeys and their relations; with the courage of whiskey circulating in their bodies, Padraig and several of the Coffey men went off to the mound where they pushed down the ring of stones, singing and laughing. That's when they saw someone standing near the hawthorn at the top of the mound. One by one, the men went silent as the figure glared at them, his eyes glowing under the cowl over his head, and the heat of the whiskey went cold in their stomachs. The apparition was tall and fair-skinned, a sword girt at his side on a golden chain, and another fine, heavy chain with gilded links draped over his shoulders. He wore a fur cloak and underneath it, silver chainmail studded with jewels glittered in the moonlight.

“I am Fionnbharr, an' yeh have broken the promise that was made to me,” the figure rumbled, his voice as deep and dark as the rumble of a storm. “Now yeh will pay the price. A curse on yer family and yer land. Yeh will nah stay here long. Yer families will be scattered and broken for what yeh've done here this night.”

And with that pronouncement, there was a flash of light from the cloudless sky and when the sparks had faded from their eyes, the man was gone. Padraig and his crowd fled back to the tavern, where they drowned their fear in yet more drams and pints, and let the tale grow more with each retelling until it was said that the entire fey horde had erupted from the mounds and chased them back every step of the way, howling and screaming.

But in the cold light of day, they could begin to laugh at the night's doing, and started to believe that it was only a dream. That is, until over the next several months the milk cows stopped giving, the lambs began to die, and the women of the island delivered stillborn sons and daughters while the crops withered and rotted in the ground. One by one, the Coffeys and their relations left Inishcorr, none of them saying aloud that it was the curse that drove them off, but all of them knowing. By the time the Irish Republic declared its independence from Great Britain in 1922, there were only a few left on the island, Padraig Coffey among them. By the mid-1930s, even the aging and penitent Padraig had left, and the island was entirely deserted once again . . . or so those back in Ballemór said.

It remained that way, the rumor of its haunting keeping any other would-be settlers from the land, until we finally came to claim it for ourselves . . .

19

“S
O YOU'RE TELLING ME that Inishcorr was abandoned because of a sidhe curse?”

Maeve shrugged as they walked along the lane; they were on the seaward, higher side of the island now, the Atlantic waves tearing at the tumbled rocks of a tall cliff a few yards away to the right. Inishcorr was tilted like a plate in the water. Looking to the east, they could see much of the small island laid out below them, and beyond that, the strip of sea between them and the steep landscape of the Connemara headlands, blue in the haze. The air was laden with the smell of brine, and sprays of white occasionally lifted above the cliff edge. The sound of the surf was a low rhythmic grumble.

She had heard the disbelief bordering on scorn in his voice, and it tore at her.
Maybe yeh've made the wrong choice. Maybe Niall's right about him after all . . .
She shook away the skepticism, tugging her sweater tighter around her, hugging herself as they walked. “I'm telling yeh what some have said, and what I've heard. Yeh can believe whatever yeh like.”

“Are you familiar with the concept of Occam's Razor?” Colin asked, and Maeve felt heat rising to her face.

“And now yer going to explain it to me because no uneducated Irish lass would know such sophisticated principles, eh?”

She was pleased to see his cheeks color immediately as he stopped walking. “No,” he said quickly. His hands spread wide in apology. Near them, a wave crashed into the shore, sending spray high behind him. “Not at all. I wasn't implying that. I just—”

“Yer saying there's no reason to complicate an explanation with fecking leprechauns,” she interrupted. “Yer saying that yeh should be thinking 'tis much more likely that the land here just could'nah sustain the Coffey clan rather than that they were chased away by the fey folk.”

“Ah, c'mon, Maeve,” Colin said. He was trying to laugh, to make it a joke. “You have to admit that's more likely.”

She stared at him. “'Tis what I have to admit, is it?”

She started walking again. The lane veered away from the sea and began a slow, meandering descent, leaving a large swath of land between them and the cliffs. Maeve pointed. “Look. There yeh can see the very mound with its ring of stones, and on top, the hawthorn.”

The sight still made her heart thrill, as it had since they'd come here. Against the sky, the mound and the tree made their silhouette. The standing stones were the height of a man, the rock darker and smoother than any on the island, brought here, she knew, from a sacred quarry in the Connemara hills barely visible on the horizon. Musical stones these were, though few knew or remembered that now; if you struck them in just the right place with a hammerstone, they would sound a pure note, like someone had struck a bell or gong. The stones leaned in the ground in a rough circle around the base of the mound.

“Those stones are still standing upright,” Colin commented. “I thought you said Padraig and his crew pushed them over.”

More disbelief . . .
“An' they put them back up again as well, a few years later, trying to placate the ones who had cursed them. It did'nah work. Leave your pack and guitar here for the moment—there's no one here to bother them. Come on, climb with me, and . . . well, please try to
feel
this place.”

She took his hand again when he shed the pack and gig bag. She led them through a small gate in the drystone fence and out to the field with the mound and stones. She felt Colin shiver involuntarily as they passed between two of the stones and started up the slope toward the summit of the mound, and she allowed herself a small smile at the realization.
Yeh see, Niall; he feels it. He does . . .
Underneath their feet, the high grass was dotted with red clover, dog violets, and St. John's Wort. The hawthorn tree was storm-battered and weary; it leaned heavily to the east, as if the sea winds had forced it that way over the centuries of its life, but the life within it was tenacious, unrelenting, and strong. The feel of the tree's stubborn energy surrounded the mound, as solid as the ring of stones.

The climb up the mound wasn't strenuous: the mound was less than a hundred feet high and the slope was gentle. Still, when they stood at the top under the spread of the low hawthorn canopy, they could see the open sea thrashing against the rocks of the shore a few hundred yards from the encircling stones on that side down a steep cliff, and they were high enough that the roofs of the village and the small harbor were visible—in their walk, they'd already nearly circled the island back to the village. “Look here, will yeh,” Maeve said. She touched the trunk of the hawthorn near where they stood. A rusty axhead stuck there, bark growing black around it as if to seal up the wound, the handle rotted away but for a few lingering fragments.

She saw Colin's eyes widen as he realized what it was. He ran his fingers along the edge, the rust staining his fingertips. She could nearly hear his thoughts. “Someone took a chop at the tree. That's certain,” he said.

“But?” she prodded.

“But that doesn't prove anything except that someone once took a swing at the tree. The rest of the story . . .” She heard his breath shudder with a deep inhale. He looked at the tree and the blade, not at her. “Maeve, I was raised Catholic, but I don't practice that faith anymore—which, believe me, has caused me no end of trouble with my family. I stopped believing in gods, religions, and mythologies all the way back in high school.” Now he looked at her, and she wasn't sure what she saw in his face. “I stopped believing in fairy tales long before that,” he added.

“I'm not asking yeh to have faith in yer Holy Trinity again, Colin. I'm actually not asking yeh to believe in
anything
unless yeh want to. I'll let yeh make up yer own mind when it comes to it. I promise.”

“Make up my own mind about what?”

She only smiled at that. “Yer daiddeó, your grandfather, did yeh learn nothing from him about belief?”

“I don't know what you mean,” he answered, but she saw his hand touch his sweater as he spoke, and she saw the outline of something underneath the wool. She felt it then: with his touch, the cloch's energy flared up, so strong that she nearly gasped with it. She wanted nothing more than to snatch it from him, to hold it again herself, to use it to open up a window into that other world, the Talamh an Ghlas, where she could have once gone herself.

But she could not.
For this to work, he must use the cloch on his own. Freely. As his daiddeó might have, had he not fled from me.
So instead, she smiled at him, and touched the arm of that hand so she could feel the tingling of the power through him. She leaned against him.

“'Tis cold here,” she said, “and warmer in my house.”

Maeve's house was nearest to the mound of any in the village—a four-room, thatch-roofed cottage with freshly whitewashed stone walls. She led him there as the sun was easing down below the Atlantic horizon. Keara was inside, setting food on a dining table in the front room. Colin seemed startled to see her, and even more puzzled when Keara gave a curtsy to Maeve as she entered. Maeve stopped her and brought her up again with a slight shake of her head as Colin stared. Maeve glanced over the table as Colin set down his backpack and guitar, leaning them against the wall near the door.

“This all looks lovely, Keara,” Maeve said. “Thank you so much.”

“'Tis my pleasure,” Keara answered, and Maeve was pleased that Keara remembered not to use her title. “Would yeh like me to serve?”

“No, but thanks. We'll be fine. G'wan back to the village; we'll join yeh later at the tavern. I'm sure Colin will be interested in the music and hearing yeh play.”

“I'll let the others know,” Keara answered. She started to curtsy again, then stopped herself, glanced at Colin with a hint of a knowing smile. “I'll be leaving, then. Enjoy the evening, both of yeh. I'll just get my things from the kitchen and let meself out.” Keara went into the kitchen. Maeve could hear the quick clatter of metal and the rustling of cloth, and a moment later a door opened and closed at the back of the cottage. Maeve saw Colin watching Keara from the small window at the front of the house, as she strode toward the lane leading into the village, a basket under her arm and her cloak billowing in the wind.

“Yeh'll be making me jealous, staring at Keara like that,” Maeve said to Colin's back, amused. He turned. “Though she is very attractive,” she added. “But already spoken for.”

“No, it wasn't that,” Colin said, hurriedly. He turned back to Maeve, habitually pushing his glasses back up his nose. She smiled at the unthinking gesture, so much a part of him. “You're much more . . .” he started to say, then the words trailed off. She could see his face flushing even in the dimness of the cottage. “How is it that you have someone fixing dinner for us and offering to serve? I thought Keara was going to call you ‘m'Lady' or something at one point.”

So he could hear it without it being said.
“I asked her if she'd mind doing it, 'tis all. Wouldn't yer sister Jennifer do the same for yeh?” As Maeve spoke, she went to the desk against one wall and plucked a wax taper from a glass, lighting the wick from the kerosene lantern there. She cupped the flame in one hand as she went to the table and lit the candles Keara had set on the tablecloth. Colin watched her, and she knew he had noticed that there was no electricity in the cottage at all.

“Jen
might
do that,” he admitted, “but you can bet I'd hear about it—and there wouldn't be any curtsying and I can flat-out guarantee she wouldn't be offering to wait on us at our table. So is Keara
your
sister?”

Maeve blew out the taper and gently shook her head as the wisps of smoke curled away. “We're very close, but she's nah my sister.” She didn't elucidate any further, only gestured toward the table. “Let's talk while we're eating. I'd hate to have Keara's hard work going cold.” She sat at the table herself, watching as Colin took the seat across from her. She passed him plates. Keara had outdone herself: the bread was fresh-baked and hot, and the potatoes were soft and steamed with white clouds when opened. The fresh-churned butter melted into a golden puddle on the potatoes. The lamb was done to a medium-rare perfection with the juices still slightly bloody, and the meat seemed to simply dissolve on the tongue. The red wine was dry and deliciously tart, leaving the palate with a splash of undertones.

“This is fantastic,” Colin managed around bites; she watched him stab another slice of the lamb with his fork. “I haven't had a meal like this in . . . well, a long time. If the Coffeys had eaten this way on Inishcorr, they'd still—” He seemed to realize what he was saying, and stopped abruptly. “—be here,” he finished lamely. Maeve laughed.

“The Coffeys could have had suppers like this—and likely did at first,” she told him. “The land and the sea provided enough for all for 'em, and would have continued to do so. All they needed was to pay attention to the right things.”