The Crow of Connemara (22 page)

“Like not bother the sidhe under the mound?”

She didn't answer directly. “Colin, whether yeh believe it or nah, there are places around Ireland where the connection to old beliefs and that almost-forgotten world before Christianity came to Eire is still strong, though those places are fewer and fewer each year. Inishcorr is one of 'em.”

“Is that why
you
came here? Because you believe this is one of those places?”

“Aye,” she answered simply. “Tell me honest now, did yeh feel
nothing
while we were standing on the mound under the hawthorn? Nothing a'tall?”

“I . . .” He shook his head, looking toward the window. The sky had grown dark; Maeve knew he could see little in the window but their own reflections, the two of them at the table. “I don't know how to answer that,” he said finally, turning back to her. “I felt strange there, but after your tale about the Coffey family, that might have just been the power of suggestion.”

“Or it might have been real.”

“Maybe. What about Rathcroghan? Is that one of your ‘places,' too?”

Rathcroghan . . . The stone remembers, even if he doesn't.
“Why would yeh ask about Rathcroghan?”

Colin shrugged as if it had just been a coincidence, and Maeve nearly laughed at the poor deflection. “Just wondering,” Colin said. “Have you ever been there?”

She nodded. “I have. Some time ago. And yes, it's another place like Inishcorr, or at least it was. If 'tis now, I do'nah know.”

He seemed to consider that for a long time, his fork scraping the plate. “Sometimes it's hard to tell what's real or not. Every once in a while, if I went to church with my parents at Christmas, there'd be this fleeting moment when I'd feel what I used to feel when I was a kid and still believed, like there was some
presence
there watching, but that moment never lasted more than an instant and I knew it was just the incense and sounds and sights dragging back some ghost of a memory.”

“Is that what it was now?” Maeve asked him, keeping her voice carefully dry and noncommittal. “And at the mound what did yeh think yeh felt?”

“At the mound . . .” He shrugged. “I don't know
what
I felt. There was a moment, when we entered the ring of stones . . . But Maeve, you set it all up for me, with that spooky story of yours. You made me all ready to feel something even if there was nothing there but a mound and a tree with an ax in it. Don't you see?”

“I do'nah, though I thought I did,” she told him. She placed her fork and knife carefully on her plate and took a sip of the wine. “So yeh don't believe any of those old songs yeh say yeh love so much and yeh sing so well? To yeh, they're just words spouting nonsense and blather?”

“No,” he said. She could see the confusion on his face. “It's . . . I love those songs. I like . . .” He looked down. “I like to imagine what it would have been like to live back then, to imagine that you could see mysterious beings in the mists and fogs, that sometimes the ones who died lingered here with the living . . .” As Maeve watched, he bit at his lower lip, glancing at the guitar in its gig bag, leaning against the whitewashed wall near the door.

“What would it take for yeh to believe in something, Colin?” she asked, and that brought his head around again.

“I have to
feel
it,” he said. “Here.” He tapped his chest where the cloch still lay hidden. “I have to be able to see it and hold it and feel it. It has to be solid and real.”

“Like the pendant yer wearing?”

Behind the lenses of his glasses, she saw him blink. “How . . . ?”

Maeve laughed. “I can see the silver chain around yer neck, and the outline of something under yer sweater. Let me see it.” She watched him pull it out slowly from underneath the sweater and lay it there. She felt the possessive need inside her again, as she had in Rothcroghan. She remember the voices inside the cloch and the instructions they'd given her. She had to resist the impulse to lean across the table and snatch it from his neck. “That's very nice,” she said instead. “I've a necklace with a green crystal very like that.”
It's not time yet. But soon enough, now that I know the cloch is here . . .

“I know. I saw you wearing it the first night at Regan's. I almost showed this to you then.”

Which is why I wore it.
“But yeh di'nah. Yeh di'nah trust me?”

“No, that wasn't it. It's just . . . This was my grandfather's. He brought it over from Ireland when he left.”

“Did he now? Was there a tale with that as well?”

“Yeah, there was, but . . .”

“But 'twas another thing yeh had trouble believing.”

He nodded in silent answer.

Maeve pushed her chair back from the table. She stood and walked over to him. He watched her, not moving. She leaned down, tilting her head so she could kiss him, her lips parting after the first tentative brush of lips, her hand going around his head to draw him closer to her, tasting his breath and the rising urgency with which he kissed her in return, his hands stroking the sides of her body. She took his hand in her own as she drew back from him and placed it gently on her breast.

“I'm solid and real enough,” she said softly. “Will yeh believe in me?”

A few hours later, walking from Maeve's house into the village, Colin would have sworn that Inishcorr was abandoned once more. It was a pleasant night, but no one was walking out along the single main street. A few of the houses had lanterns throwing yellow light against curtained windows, and peat smoke curled from the chimneys, but otherwise Colin and Maeve had the lane to themselves. Across the street at the harbor, Colin could see the
Grainne Ni Mhaille
still tied up at the wharf: rising, falling, and rolling with the slow pattern of the waves.

Twinned wedges of lamplight spilled across the uneven stone flags of the square from the pub, just up the cobbled street. The establishment was fragrant with the aromatic smoke of cigarettes and pipes. Colin could smell it before they even opened the door—it seemed that the ban on smoking in public places wasn't followed here. Through the half-opened windows on either side of the door—Colin assumed they were trying to keep the air inside semi-breathable—he could hear voices in conversation and occasional laughter, along with the dull clink of glasses on wood. Someone was playing a fiddle, noodling with the melody of “Come to the Dance” while a mandolin strummed quiet chords behind.

This, then, was where most of the Oileánach had gathered. Colin shrugged at the strap of his guitar case, feeling his stomach flutter a bit. He pressed his glasses against the top of his nose. Maeve must have sensed his unease; she squeezed his hand once and pushed open the unlocked door with her other hand.

The room went silent, as if a hidden switch had been shut off with the movement of the hinges. Over Maeve's shoulder, Colin could see dim, shadowed faces staring toward the door. “Maeve!” a female voice called from the smoke-hazed shadows. He thought it might be Keara. “
Cen chaoi bhfuil tú?”

“Tá mé togha
,” Maeve answered. From the smattering of Gaelic that Colin had managed to pick up, he knew that one:
I'm grand.
Maeve started to enter the tavern; Colin would have released her hand, but she only gripped his fingers tighter. “No reason to hide anything,” she whispered to him as he ducked his head under the low wooden lintel. “They're going to know anyway.”

He could feel them watching, could feel their speculation as he and Maeve stood there with hands intertwined, but it lasted only an instant. Heads turned away, conversations started up again, if a shade too heartily. In the back corner on a small stage, the fiddler—Keara, he noted—started up again. Two men rose from the nearest table and moved off to the bar; one of them gesturing to Maeve to take the vacated seats. She inclined her head toward the table. “G'wan with yeh,” she said to Colin. “I'll get us a couple of pints.” She let go of his hand and headed toward the bar, talking to some of those gathered there. Colin unslung the gig bag from his shoulder and went to the table. Both chair and table were crude but sturdy, looking as if they'd been hewn from ancient timbers a century or more ago, the marks of an adze still visible along the thick legs; he wondered if perhaps one of the Coffeys had made them.

As he sat, he glanced around the room. The tavern was deceptively deep, and there must have been three dozen or more adults, male and female, gathered here, sitting at tables or on benches along the walls, standing at the bar or in small groups in the corners of the room or gathered near where Keara and two men were playing music. A few children ran among the tables or were sitting on parents' laps. The conversations flowed around Colin—mostly in Gaelic rather than English, he noted. Though no one addressed him directly, he saw many quick glances toward Maeve or himself, adorned with shrugs or conspiratorial nods toward their companions.

And Niall was there as well. As Colin scanned the room, he found himself making eye contact with the man, who was standing near one of the front windows. Niall pushed himself off the wall and, pint in hand, came over to Colin's table. The black-brown stout inside the glass shivered as Niall set it down hard on the table. His face looked well-battered and almost certainly sore to the touch, the bruises from the fight at Regan's turning green and purple. “Havin' a good visit, are yeh?” Niall asked. His slitted eyes behind the thick swellings appraised Colin; there was no smile on his face.

“It's been good enough so far,” Colin answered. He forced himself to hold Niall's unblinking stare.

Niall was leaning on his hands, fisted on the table in front of Colin. “Maeve fancies yeh, and that's plain,” he said in a low growl of a voice, sounding like he had a horrible cold and couldn't breathe through his broken nose at all. “'Tis her choice. I don't care for it and I don't trust yeh, but I ca'nah go against her. I tell yeh now, though, between us, that if she casts yeh aside, yeh'll find no sympathy in me. And if yeh hurt her, then it's more than just me you'll have to answer to. Do we have an understanding?”

“I hear you,” Colin told him.
And right now, if I punched you on that broken nose, I think you'd go down hard
, he thought.

“And what is it yer hearing, Colin?” Maeve interrupted, coming up behind Niall. She set two pints on the table. “Niall, I hope yer not bothering me houseguest.”

Niall straightened, still staring at Colin. He picked up his glass again and took a swallow. “Nah,” he said. “We was just having a bit of a chinwag like old chums.” With that, he nodded to Maeve—nearly a bow, Colin thought—and went to join those standing near the door. Maeve sat next to Colin. Her hand covered his. If they'd been in a tavern in Ballemór, Colin might have turned his hand over to lace his fingers with hers, and he might have pulled her close enough to kiss her. But here . . . He was too aware of the eyes watching them.

“Niall thinks he got the worst of the fight at Regan's,” she told him. “That's why he seems so angry. That, and he's afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

She didn't answer, only gave him a smile that was almost shy. Her fingers stroked the skin of his arm. “I told Keara yeh'd play music with her and sing a few songs. How about it? Show me some of what yeh've learned in yer time here, and from that book yeh bought.” She leaned toward him, her face close to his, her eyes large and dark and smiling. “And after yeh've done that, we'll go back to my place and we can continue what we started, if yeh've a mind.”

Her lips touched his, soft and inviting, and their kiss was slow and gentle. For that moment, the room vanished. Then Maeve pulled back, and the noise of the room returned. Her hand touched his cheek. “G'wan,” she said. “Sing something for me. Show me people what a gift yeh have.”

Colin grabbed his Guinness and his gig bag, sliding between the tables toward the back of the room. Keara saw him coming and lifted her fiddle bow in salute, giving him a smile and a beckoning nod. One of the people sitting next to her vacated his stool as Colin approached. He set his stout there and unzipped the bag, pulling out his Seagull acoustic. He took a drink of the stout and set the glass on the floor beside him, sitting on the stool and quickly checking his tuning. “What'dya want to play?” he asked Keara.

“Yeh can pick,” she said.

“How about ‘Mháire Bhruinneall' in E?” Keara nodded, and Colin looked out at the crowd. They were nearly all watching him, the room quiet. He concentrated on Maeve's grin rather than the dour face of Niall. He strummed an open E, adjusted the tuning, and ran his fingers across the strings again. “I have to sing this one in Gaelic,” he said to the room, using what his sister Jenn always called his “teacher” voice. “Hope you forgive my poor pronunciation.” He glanced over at Keara. “Ready, then?” She nodded, and he played the opening chords, running through a verse with Keara playing the melody line above him. The next time around, he began to sing: