The Hounds of the Morrigan (5 page)

He saw it then.

It was a snake.

Serpens! he thought. That’s what the writing is about.

It was odd in that it didn’t look painted on the page at all. It looked carved somehow—carved out of green glass. It was extraordinary as well, that one moment he could see nothing, the next moment, there was this vivid, brilliant thing; as if curtains had been pulled aside by an invisible hand.

As if the snake had wished itself to be seen.

It was long and thin and twisted into the most intricate of looping patterns. Its head looked as though it might be alive but was pretending not to be. The split tongue seemed to flicker, and did its eyes just slide a fraction of an inch?

A pinpoint of light appeared in its eyes and flared into a blue spark. Pidge stared, as it grew bigger.

The light appeared to have the power to hold him and draw him into a perilous other world; it was so compelling. To his horror, he found that he was unable to resist. The eyes vanished and he was being pulled into a dark forest where the trees were evilly alive and pale wicked flowers waited to catch hold of him. It was a hideous world and its grasses were reaching out to whip round his ankles and imprison him forever.

Then Auntie Bina finished her prayers and got into her bed and made the springs creak. This ordinary thing broke the dream in pieces and Pidge woke up to find that the page had gone!

It had been in his hand and it had vanished!

The first feeling that rushed into him, filling him from top to toe with the most exalted relief, was pure delight that the ugly thing had gone. Instantly came the memory of the Voice in the chimney-dream which had said, or
commanded,
that he imprison it in iron and he knew that he must find it whatever happened. He dropped to his knees to look under the bed.

There it was, half-way through a crack in the floorboards; could it have been trying to escape?

Pidge reached in under the bed and caught it. He took Patrick’s page with the latin writing and in it he wrapped the snake page. He roughly folded them in half and then in quarters and held them tightly in his fist. He waited for Auntie Bina to fall asleep. He listened for her first snore.

When it came, it sounded beautiful and musical and human. I’d never have believed I’d think that, Pidge remarked to himself.

He left his room and crept down into the dark kitchen. There was no light at all from the fire. Auntie Bina had banked up the burning turf with soft white ashes to keep the fire living all night. Some houses had fires that hadn’t gone out for two hundred years or more.

Kneeling down, he blew some of the ashes away and coaxed the turf to provide a little light.

By the side of the hearth, Auntie Bina kept her bastable oven; a strong, iron pot oven with a flat lid and a lug at each side to hook onto the crook that hung down the chimney. It had three little legs so that, if you liked, you could cook with it on the hearth by lighting a small, separate fire under it and laying the red sods of glowing turf on the lid. It could stew, bake or roast food.

Pidge glanced at it and realized at once that it was exactly the prison he needed. He lifted the heavy iron lid and laid the folded pages on the oven’s floor. They fluttered, seemingly in protest. He stood up and reached from the mantle-piece an old flat-iron and he laid it on the pages as an iron obstruction, before putting on the lid. To be really safe, he inserted the tongs through the half-oval handle on top of the lid and left them resting their iron weight as a further hindrance.

He carefully scooped up a few small shovel-fulls of ashes and re-banked the fire.

Then he went cheerfully to bed.

The night had turned wet and it was so pleasant to lie in bed listening to the rain picking at the windows.

He was snug and felt safe and warm. The spectacular sky must have only meant rain, after all. He turned over and snuggled further down, keeping an ear outside the covers to listen to the rain.

At that moment, a very powerful motor-bike roared into life just below his window. It revved a couple of times and then it was off. By the sound it made, he judged that it was leaping over a wall and then the noise began to diminish, as the bike went further away.

Pidge jumped out of bed and ran to look out. But he was too late.

Whoever it was had now gone and he could see almost nothing anyway, through the glaze of the rain.

He got back into bed.

It wasn’t very nice to think that whoever it was
might
have been watching him through the window while he was in the kitchen.

The iron prison must have done the trick, he thought.

He was just beginning to wonder why Auntie Bina or Brigit hadn’t been disturbed by the noise, when he fell asleep.

P
IDGE
woke suddenly, his heart banging a little bit, but it was only the morning light on his face that disturbed him. He lay still as a stone for a while, thinking over the strange events of yesterday. The long, calm hours of sleep between evening and morning had taken away the realness of it all and diminished it of its life, so that now it was no more than something experienced in a passive way, like a film. But the gap of night did not blot out a small core of knowledge that remained inside his head, stripped of drama and standing true; yesterday, and all it had held, had happened all right.

He slipped out of bed and began to dress. He had better retrieve the page before Auntie Bina decided to bake bread.

It must be very early, he thought. I’m the first one up. No sound from the kitchen and quietness everywhere.

In the stillness, the latch on his bedroom door squeaked loudly enough to awaken even Brigit. He waited a second before going down to the kitchen but nobody stirred.

The fire looked lifeless and grey in the sunlight and the tongs still rested on the lid of the oven. In two seconds, he had the dreadful page in his hand. He unfolded it and looked at it, half expecting the snake to leap out of the page and strike its fangs into his hand.

But the snake dutifully decorated the page, and what struck him now was its beauty. There was no trace of the wicked white flowers, or the trees with evil life, or the ensnaring grass. He must have completely imagined them.

Still, there was something about the snake that was more than just painting. He re-folded the page, stuffed it inside his shirt and went back up to his bedroom.

‘Hallo,’ said Brigit’s voice as he closed the door behind him. ‘Where were you?’

He looked up. Brigit’s hands gripped the top of the partition but the rest of her was lost from view. She was striving to look over at him and was pulling herself up with her toes dug into the wooden wall. Her head appeared briefly and then she slid back down. Having disappeared for a few seconds, she struggled back up again.

‘Well?’

She vanished once more.

He waited until her head was there again.

‘I was just downstairs.’

Brigit accepted this answer without question; she was often just somewhere herself.

‘Did you hear the rustlers in the night?’ she asked, hooking herself over the edge of the partition with her elbows.

‘What rustlers?’ he asked, startled.

‘Didn’t you hear them? They made their getaway on a motor-bike.’

So Brigit had heard it too.

‘Maybe you were dreaming,’ he offered hopefully.

‘No, I wasn’t. It was too plain. Dreams are fuzzy and they’ve got chocolate and sweets in them. And icing sugar and bikes. I’ll bet you anything, they’ve rustled the pig.’

‘Ah, who would want to rustle a pig!’

‘Pig-rustlers! Gangsters on motor-bikes; “Steal a pig one minute and off to a Dinner Dance the next,” is what they say. They don’t care a straw for anyone.’

‘I don’t know where you get your notions, Brigit.’

‘I get them from nowhere. They just come—and why are you up so early?’

‘I thought I’d go and look for mushrooms,’ he said. He felt guilty about telling her a lie, but for the moment he didn’t know what else to do.

‘Good!’ she declared. ‘I won’t be long getting dressed. Wait a few minutes, will you?’

Right away, they found mushrooms enough for breakfast in the top half of Grangefield; and feeling very hungry now, they were just deciding to turn for home, when they saw Old Mossie Flynn huffing and puffing as he climbed the stone wall into the field.

‘Grand day!’ he cried out when he came close enough to salute them.

‘We’ve been up hours and hours,’ Brigit said proudly.

‘Have you? Aren’t you the great girl.’

‘Yes. Chasing pig-rustlers and God knows what!’

‘Did you catch any of them?’

‘Not yet but I will later. I have to get some handcuffs first.’

‘Where will you get them?’

‘Oh, somewhere,’ she answered vaguely.

‘Did you get many little musheroons, this morning?’ Mossie asked.

‘We got fourteen hundred or so,’ she told him.

Mossie was laughing. Everybody knew about Brigit and her stories.

‘Well, I hope you left a few for me,’ he said cheerfully.

‘We didn’t go near the bottom half at all; there should be plenty down there,’ said Pidge. ‘We only got about a capful.’

‘Good. Now, wait’ll ye hear my news!’ Mossie said with great satisfaction. ‘I’ve two right queer ones below on my place!’

‘How do you mean?’ Pidge asked.

‘Two ladies, they are. You’ll never believe it but one of them dyes her hair blue. She has golden wheels in her ears and I declare to God, she smokes cigars! She says her name is Melodie Moonlight, if my hearing is not gone astray entirely. Melodie Moonlight,’ he repeated wonderingly. ‘Did you ever hear the beat of it for a name?’

‘What’s the other one called?’ asked Pidge.

‘As good as the first or nearly. She says her name is Breda Fairfoul! And if the first one smokes cigars—well then, the second one is not far after her, for she chews tobacco. The likes of it I never saw in a woman! Anyway, to go on! The first one has blue hair—like a sort of bluestone spray for potato blight, and begod, the second one has orange hair hanging in flames down her back like a horse’s tail.’

‘Oh, them two!’ Brigit said scornfully. ‘I saw them yesterday. They have dogs and an oul’ motor-bike!’

‘What are they doing on your place?’ said Pidge.

‘Renting my old glasshouse! They are paying me good money to live in it. What do you think of that now, hah? It isn’t everyone has the like of them to stay is it?’

‘Living in your glasshouse? They must be daft,’ Brigit said because she was feeling a bit jealous.

‘Why are they?’ Pidge wanted to know.

‘Because they’re artists and a bit touched,’ Mossie said with pride. ‘They told me they do it out of bits of old bikes and tractors and the like. They said it delights them to make Works Of Art out of old rubbish. They are very funny as well. Such jokes they have between themselves, always roaring laughing at something, they are.’

‘Do they do any painting?’ Pidge thought he must ask.

‘Painting?’

‘Signboards, for instance?’

‘They didn’t say so. I don’t think they do.’

‘Oh,’ Pidge said.

‘Well, I’ll be getting on,’ Mossie said.

‘Mind they don’t make a Work Of Art out of you, Mossie,’ Brigit said, half as a joke and half in resentment that Mossie liked them so much.

As they walked towards the gate, she kept looking back and waving.

‘I don’t like them two at Mossie’s,’ she said.

‘Not them two, those two,’ Pidge said.

‘Why not them two?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t remember but it’s those two, anyway.’

‘Well, I don’t like those two and if you meet them, sure you won’t like them either, sure you won’t Pidge?’ she asked him.

‘Not if you don’t,’ Pidge promised.

‘I suppose Mossie likes them ’cos they’ll give him a spin on that oul’ motor-bike. I wish I had one myself.’

They walked along in the sunshine. By the time they had reached the bend in the road, Brigit was saying that she wouldn’t have a motor bike if they went down on their bended knees and begged her to have one. She’d far rather have a foal or a ‘hellercoptor’.

There was a phone-box tucked in by the wall at the turning. It gave Pidge an idea.

‘Wait here a minute, Brigit. I just want to phone someone,’ he said.

He went inside, took the small card from his trouser pocket and dialled the number of the second hand bookshop.

After a few seconds, the bookseller’s gruff voice came down the line.

‘Hallo!’ He sounded as cross as ever. Pidge’s heart sank.

‘Hallo. ‘Is that the bookseller?’ he asked politely.

‘It is!’

‘Could I speak to the assistant?’

‘What assistant?’

‘The old one with the white moustache’

‘What? What nonsense is this?’

‘Could I please speak to the old man with the white moustache—the scholar?’

‘What scholar? What are you talking about?’

‘He was there yesterday. I saw him.’

‘No one works for me as an assistant.’

‘But he was there yesterday.’

‘Must have been a customer. A scholar you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘What kind of scholar?’

Pidge thought for a moment.

‘A latin scholar,’ he said, crossing his fingers.

‘I’m a scholar of latin myself.’

‘Oh?’ said Pidge. ‘Could you translate something?’

‘I could!’

‘Well, will you?’

‘You’re a boy, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t they teach you latin at school?’

‘Not yet. I’m not old enough.’

‘Are you trying to fool me into doing your homework for you?’

‘Honestly! It’s the summer holidays. I haven’t got any homework and I don’t learn latin. Honestly!’ Pidge said earnestly.

‘All right so. Fire away!’

‘Right. Here it comes,’ said Pidge. ‘ “O Serpens Vilissimus! Et hic signo et his verbis Te sic securo, in Saecula Saeculorum, Amen. Patricus.” ’

‘That’s simple!’ the bookseller said loftily. ‘It means: “O most vile serpent! By this sign and these words, thus I secure thee, forever and ever, Amen, Patrick” Or words to that effect. Ask me another one. Go on! I’m in the mood now.’