Chapter Seventeen #2
That morning, a cleric comes to tell the king of some urgent news, which of course the king is pissed to receive because it’s Sunday and haven’t we already been over that nothing is supposed to happen on a Sunday.
The cleric says that he came upon seven dead men in the road, which is shocking enough but the king takes it in stride, already thinking of how to divvy up their gold and make the necessary arrangements.
But then the cleric delivers the really shocking news. There was one man left alive, and next to that man was…the wife of the king! The woman called Becfola!
If that be in truth a woman, the cleric says, either she is a woman of this world to be punished, or she is a woman of the Shí to be banished.
The king agrees that she is no doubt some sort of fairy creature—how the hell else can you explain that she could be on the road with another man at the exact same time she was still at home in bed with him?
And anyway, she’s obviously cheating on him, so he tells her to go to her supernatural lover.
The story ends with her going to meet back up with her young man, and she’s never seen in the living world again.
For a minute I just stared at the book, no longer seeing any of the words in front of me.
Was this a happy ending? There was something ominous about Becfola leaving the physical world, never to return.
But then her very arrival at the start of the story had been so mysterious…
maybe the fairy world was where she’d come from in the first place, and she wasn’t leaving her home so much as going back to it.
I wished you knew for sure if she even made it to the fairy realm and her young man, what happened to her in the end.
He is waiting for me, she says, and the thought that he should wait wrings my heart.
So is he waiting still? The story doesn’t say.
Either way, at least she didn’t die. Eamonn had been right about that part.
The options had been punishment or banishment—because of course, she was a woman in a story—but as far as I could tell, a return to the fairy world seemed like it’d be an improvement.
I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with that king.
When I glanced up, I caught Eamonn looking before he cut his gaze away.
He turned his attention back to the clerk, who was in the middle of telling a story that involved lots of hand gestures.
Eamonn was smiling and making noises of assent, and it struck me, how open and friendly his face looked in that moment.
No shadows on it at all. For some reason I thought back to the man with the motorcycle earlier in the day, the way I’d gotten the impression that Eamonn had stopped himself from making any overture to him although he’d wanted to.
I closed the folklore book, getting up to slide it back in the empty slot on the shelf where I’d found it. I didn’t know why I didn’t want Eamonn to know I’d looked up the end of the story, but I didn’t.
I let myself meander closer to the front counter, where the clerk was showing Eamonn some pictures on his phone. “We were given out to by our wives, I can tell you that,” the man was saying, “but worth it. We try to do it once a year, it’s become a sort of tradition.”
“It’s good to have those,” Eamonn said, but his eyes were on me now. “Did you find anything you wanted?”
I shook my head, then gave the clerk a smile, feeling a little self-conscious. “There are so many incredible books here,” I said. “But I don’t have any way to…I’d just better not.”
It would be rude enough of me to expect him to buy me a book, much less a tote to carry the book around in, although it was hard to picture Eamonn minding.
He didn’t seem nearly as concerned about the money side of things as I was.
A part of me desperately wanted a book from here, from him, wanted it both as an object and as a memory.
But even something as simple as a book felt like breaking the rules somehow, like I wasn’t allowed to have any memories I could take back with me and touch.
“Sure, you come back and see us,” the clerk said, as if to show there were no hard feelings.
“Of course,” I said, and on some level I really meant it.
I would love to return here one day. Not just this bookstore, but Dublin in general—I’d love to do the audio tour at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and buy tickets to the Book of Kells and browse around this shop until I found the perfect edition as a memento of the trip.
And when I pictured myself doing all that…
Well, I wanted it to be on a day exactly like today. Chilly but sunny with a brief bit of rain, Eamonn walking at my side, pointing out landmarks or telling me which way to turn. But that felt impossible in every way.
“Even though you’re a Liverpool man,” Eamonn said, reaching out to shake the clerk’s hand. “I don’t understand it, but I can respect it.”
That got a generous laugh out of the clerk. “The heart wants what it wants,” he said, shaking Eamonn’s hand but giving me a wink.
Eamonn glanced over at me, biting the inside of his cheek in a way that made that dimple pop out again. “That it does.”
I gave the folklore books one last glance as we left the store, and we were still standing on the sidewalk outside the shop when we heard the lock engage from the inside. Without a clock, I didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was lower in the sky over the river.
“I feel bad that we closed it down and didn’t buy anything,” I said. “I hate being the last person at a restaurant, when you know everyone is dying to go home. It makes me so anxious.”
“I’ll buy extra the next time I’m in,” Eamonn assured me. “Promise.”
I believed him, and not just because I already knew that he liked books. Eamonn struck me as someone who took pride in being true to his word, in doing the right thing.
“What were y’all talking about?”
“Y’all,” Eamonn repeated, and now I could see why he’d gotten such a kick out of me trying to pull off grand.
I didn’t think I had much of an accent—Florida was weird that way, Southern in some respects and a mix of other cultures at the same time—but every once in a while it came out.
“Liverpool football, mostly. He said he takes the ferry over to see a match with his mates every year. He’s a fierce fan. ”
“Interesting. Is he from there or something?” I didn’t know how sports allegiances worked in Ireland, but I generally assumed that most people supported their hometown teams.
“That was the most interesting part, actually,” Eamonn said, then gestured toward the white cast-iron bridge we’d walked over on. “Did you want to—we’re still in the busiest part of the city, so we could—but there are loads of pubs nearby, so—”
“I’m starving,” I said. “I would love to eat, if you’re ready.”
Amazing how things had changed, in such a short time, because I still felt those pinpricks of anxiety about whether that had been what he was getting at, whether I was being presumptuous, whether I had any moral high ground turning down a book when I was still expecting him to buy me dinner.
But now those worries didn’t last as long.
It felt like they couldn’t, when there was a sunset and a river and the promise of food.