Chapter 21
All knew that Irishmen could live upon anything and there was plenty grass in the field though the potato crop should fail.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Cormac’s voice was almost lost over the whinny of my horse, a fine, dappled gray mare with a light gait.
We’d been riding in silence since leaving Browne House.
I’d insisted on not taking the main road, but Cormac had been hesitant.
After yesterday’s storm, the way was saturated with mud, but I needed to see for myself—if it was possible to ride around out here in view of my bedroom window.
If it was possible that a person—or a horse—could be surefooted, even while a storm raged.
That perhaps there might be a road hidden from my aspect, so far in the distance that I couldn’t discern it from the tufts of grass sprouting between rocky crags.
I didn’t tell him that, but at every opportunity, I’d ask if there was a way through here or a way through there.
“Maggie?” Cormac said again, and I jerked my horse’s rein as I startled.
“Pardon?”
“I said, penny for your thoughts.”
I glanced over at him. He sat astride a fine brown gelding, as fine as any beast owned by the Moore-Vandeleurs, but he wore a shirt and knee breeches better suited to gardening.
Usual mucking-about attire. The contrast between horse and man was stark, but it suited Cormac—a humble man atop a fine horse.
“Apologies,” I sighed. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Ah,” he replied, nodding as I shifted my gaze to the road ahead. “More haunts in the night?”
I chewed on that question for a moment, keeping a close eye on the road.
It was naught but a cleared strip of land, shored up with crushed stone.
But the grass had swallowed the makeshift paving, providing a carpet of verdant splendor.
To our left lay the open crags and rocky pathways of the plain, and to our right, more of the same.
With each clip of the horses’ hooves, hope and excitement condensed to a nagging chide that rang through the back of my mind.
There was no way a person—or a group—could’ve been traveling this particular road. The lantern lights had been far too close to Browne House. It simply wasn’t possible.
“Maggie?” Cormac coaxed. “Yer gone away again.”
“Apologies,” I said, shooting a poor excuse for a smile his way. “Haunts, you said. Well, to be frank about it, yes.”
He nodded and glanced beyond me to the valley below. “I wasn’t jesting about why I sleep in the cottage.”
“I never said you were. Nor thought it.” With a sigh, I ran the back of my gloved hand across my face. “Spirits don’t trouble me. ’Tis the rest that breeds unease.”
“Oh?”
My brows knitted together as I shot a scowl over my shoulder. There was no point in dragging it out. “I’ve learned that Lord Browne feared her ladyship and thought her in league with a devil.”
“Ah.” Cormac’s jaw clenched. “Well, that’s no secret.”
“No?” Drawing in a deep breath, I shut my eyes for a brief moment. “Yet no one told me. Should I fear for my life, Mr. O’Dea? Tell me true now, and don’t mince words about it. It won’t faze me either which way, but I’d like to know what’s coming.”
I pulled on the rein and slowed my horse to a stop.
“I don’t think yer in danger, but I also don’t think o’er much about the future. Knowing what’s coming makes the waitin’ worse,” he said, his voice a gentle lilt on the breeze. “If ye’d known what would befall yer family, would ye have wanted to know?”
“No,” I replied, bowing my head as I gave a silent prayer for their souls. “Nor would you have, I assume. And yet when ’tis the happening to me that’s in it, the knowing helps a bit.”
A beat passed as Cormac glanced out over the sea of limestone.
“There’s the house,” he said.
I squinted into the distance. “This is the closest we can possibly get from here?” I asked, my heart dropping into my stomach. “I was hoping to make our way toward the house from this spot.”
“Unless ye want to dismount and leave the horses,” he said with a shrug. “Even so, I can lead ye o’er the crags only to a point. But a few paces in, the ravines grow too large between solid surface, so ’tis likely we could get into difficulty.”
I pressed my lips together. “Are you certain?”
“Aye,” he said, a note of finality in his tone. “We’d no sooner step in than break our necks. What’s all this about, Maggie?”
With a sigh, I shuddered. “It’s nothing.”
“Couldn’t be nothing.”
Pursing my lips, I spurred my horse to a fast trot, gently directing her along the green road.
Behind me, Cormac grunted and hurried to catch up.
“Not so fast, Maggie,” he called. “The ground is fierce damp.”
Fierce damp was one way to put it, all right. I felt the mare tilt each time her hoof squelched into the mud beneath. But I’d churned the turf on many a hunt. If anything, I wanted a little distance to be alone with my thoughts.
If there really wasn’t a way through the crags, then I couldn’t have seen a group of people out here, running—or riding—along. Not with how far the house appeared in the distance.
With a sigh, I gently tightened the rein and slowed the mare to a walk as Cormac gained our lead.
“Ye can tell me, Maggie,” he said, but I stared hard at my horse’s groomed neck.
“’Tis you who needs to be telling me. What is Lady Catherine, and what in the name of God is in store for me?”
He furrowed his brow. “She’s a woman that can give ye what ye want.”
I sighed. “But at what cost to me? I read it in Lord Browne’s journals, Mr. O’Dea.
She conjured a Cailleach. And I saw the lights myself, out here, moving over the crags.
I needed to see for myself, if it were possible that ’twas naught but people running around in the dark.
But now that I’ve seen it … ’tis the féar gortach. Explain all that to me.”
“A Cailleach?” Eyes widening, Cormac’s lips parted in surprise. “No one can conjure an Old God, surely?”
“It is an Old God, isn’t it?” I asked, heart hammering as I tried to recall all the seanchaí of memory had said about it. “Not a devil?”
He shook his head. “A god for certain. But what would that have to do with the féar gortach?”
“I once heard that the Cailleach could make the féar gortach do its bidding. Either give plenty to the people or take it all away. Once, a seanchaí came to our town, and said ’twas the English controlling the Cailleach, to take everything away from the Irish.
To send the fog and turn the spuds to sludge.
” My words spurted forth in a rush, but once started, I couldn’t stop.
“Lord Browne thought Lady Catherine was in league with the Cailleach. When he displeased her, the Cailleach sent the féar gortach to destroy his livelihood, and when he pleased her, the Cailleach sent the féar gortach to enrich it. Turning the tide—good to bad, and bad to good.”
“Say yer right,” Cormac interjected, holding out a palm to still me. “What does any of that have to do with ye fearing for yer life?”
Up until this moment, I hadn’t been sure … but recounting it aloud and drawing the memory of the seanchaí to mind, my eyes widened.
Though, of course, the féar gortach doesn’t always take from the people, he’d said. Sometimes, when the Cailleach is fed the right kind of energy, it gives abundantly. And that energy? ’Tis vengeance.
“Remember,” I murmured, pulse racing.
“Pardon?”
Is that what Michael had meant? That I had to remember everything—all the emotion, every event—in order to feed the Cailleach, for my vengeance would give her the power to manipulate the féar gortach into providing for the people of Gortacarnaun?
Perhaps the accounting record I had found was not a benign listing of where the tenants’ loyalties lay, but of those who chose to benefit from Lady Catherine’s sorcery.
My eyes widened. Mayhap then it wasn’t I who should be fearful of what came next, but those responsible for destroying my life.
Cormac was right all along. I could fulfill my duty here and walk away once payment was received.
“Are ye all right?” he asked. “Ye’ve gone three shades paler than a corpse.”
I glanced about the terrain with fresh eyes. Not those of a frightened woman, clutching at straws to see a way forward. But of a made woman, independent of owner or landlord, surveying what had been promised to her. The daughter of a land agent, with a keen eye and a sharp ear.
Warmth bloomed from my core, enveloping me in sudden hope.
“I don’t know how anyone can make a living here, truth be told,” I noted. “Tenant or landlord. I imagine the land promised would be of similar composition.”
Cormac’s brows arched. “I’m not one to point out contrariness, but I’m unsure how we journeyed from fearing for yer life to surveying yer prospects.”
I stiffened, my grip tightening on the rein as I shot a glance his way.
His lips curved upward, their tilt brightening those whiskey-colored eyes, drawing a little color to his cheeks.
“Mayhap I realized how contrary I sounded.” There were some things I couldn’t—and shouldn’t—share with him. Not just yet. If he thought me contrary now, he’d think me fit for the madhouse if I went on about incense and memories.
“Aye. Well … ’tis fit for naught more than goats or sheep.
But if ye can turn a field and clear it, spuds will grow wherever they’re planted.
” He shook his head. “That’s why I turned down her initial offer.
I was promised a house and land as well.
Enough to have my father and mother live a comfortable life in their winter years. ”
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing until stale air whooshed through my lips.
“A lovely house, with plenty of land for sheep and pigs.” He closed his eyes and briefly turned his face upward before opening them again. “But sure, they won’t come.”
“Why not? Would that not solve the emigration issue?”
Cormac’s smile dimmed as he inspected his nails. “Sure, there’s a lot of history there, atween her ladyship and me mam.”
“They’re acquainted?” My brow furrowed as Cormac nodded.
“A long story. Anyway, Lady Catherine will do right by ye, Maggie. She is many things, but first and foremost she’s a woman of her word.”
Silence fell for a moment as our horses clopped on.
“That’s as far as the road goes,” he said at last, pointing ahead. “We should head back. I can bring ye to the other side of the village so ye can get the lay of the land there, if ye’d like.”
I nodded, glancing ahead. Sure enough, the carpeted road blended from verdant splendor to rocky gray. But as I switched hands on the rein, ready to turn my mare, a large boulder to the right of the road’s end caught my eye.
It was a lighter shade than the dark, slate-like limestone that washed over the Burren. Its ancient, weather-beaten hull stood grand and tall, its edges rounded, decorated with splashes of gull dung as moss grew, barnacled, at its base.
But it wasn’t its oddity in such a place or its grandeur that caught my attention.
It was the dull, aged chisel-work on its surface.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing, knowing it was the same symbol etched into the window frame in my own bedroom. The same symbol that hung as a golden charm from the black ribbon at Lady Catherine’s throat—three swirls, interconnected.
“A protection symbol,” he said, squinting into the distance. “Ye’ll find a lot of them hereabouts. There’s likely thousands of old burial grounds around here, passage tombs and cairns and things. The Burren is old. A sacred place. That’s a triskele.”
A hard lump formed in my throat, but I forced it down. “I’ve seen something like it before.”
“Aye. The auld ones knew a thing or two about the Old Gods, I’d say.” Tugging his own reins, Cormac turned his gelding around. “Tell you what, though. If ye have a bad dream that sends ye on a hunt like this again, ye should carve a triskele into yer windowsill.”
A shudder ran over my shoulders as ice flowed through my veins. “What?” I asked, though it came out as a whisper.
“Oh, for sure. A triskele in the sill keeps demons at bay. Bad dreams too, or so said my mam.”
I’d never heard such a thing before.
“Where did you say your family was from?” I asked.
“My mam is from hereabouts, but I was born there between Kildysert and Ennis.”
A jolt of pain clutched my chest at those words, and my pulse ignited. “Kildysert … and Ennis?”
His eyes met mine, those clear, whiskey-colored windows that had always seemed all-too familiar, yet not at all.
“Do ye remember now?” he asked, voice so gentle I barely heard it above the pounding in my ears.
Remember.
“Have … have we met before, Mr. O’Dea?”
He frowned and pulled his horse around.
“It’ll come to ye,” he said, before digging in his heels and setting off at a trot.
Remember.