Chapter 4 #10
“Please, Father.” Tomás closes his eyes. “I do not wish to speak of this.” He heaves in a huge breath, then lets it out. “Now, as much as I have enjoyed our conversation, I must ask you to let me return to my work.”
Father Joseph, gathering himself, shaking off the discomfort of their discourse, steps forward. “Your work?”
“Yes.” Tomás bends over the table.
“And this would be the maps for…?”
“Your redcoat friends.”
The priest ignores the jibe and bends over the uppermost page.
He sees incomprehensible marks, brown lines that fit inside each other like the whorls of a fingerprint, squiggles of turquoise worming through green, odd words written upside-down and right-way-up and at veering angles.
And then, like holy tongues descending, it all hits him in a rush: there is the crossroads under the bluff, the meandering river he crossed not so long ago, at that very footstick-bridge he sees before him as a tiny pair of parentheses, the inclines of the valley with the contour lines rushing towards each other, the soft undulations of the land as it bows down to the sea.
“Ah,” he says. “Oh. What a beautiful sight, a sheer—”
He stops. Something is wrong with this map, its leaf-hued inks and azure expanses of sea, its neatly fitted ochre lines and flea-sized houses. Beside him, he hears the mouth of the mad map-maker lift in a smile. It suddenly strikes him.
“But this map is in…the wrong language. Don’t the soldiers—”
“Wrong?” Tomás murmurs.
“Surely they would require the mapping to be in—”
“They do,” he replies, with an emphasis on the first word, “but the error of this way has come to me of late, so I have abandoned it. I will do their bidding no more. I am making my own map. I will never again cede to their version of geography, of history, of linguistics and toponomy. Instead of the map sheet they ordered, I will deliver them this one. And then they will see the truth.”
In consternation, the priest looks again over the map. Where he might expect to find settlement names and townland boundaries and north arrows, he sees: Hill Fort. He sees: dolmen, stone cist, tumulus, evicted village, pre-colonial kingdom and navel.
His finger lands, scandalised, on the final marking, a minuscule knot of blue, from which flow the lines of several streams. “What is this?” he asks.
Tomás reaches out and pushes away his hand from the map. “You wouldn’t understand, Father.”
“I might.”
“You wouldn’t, I assure you.”
Tomás gestures to the markings, to the—Father Joseph doesn’t like to admit the word access to his mind—navel.
“It never ceases to amaze me how assured you priests are of your place in the scheme of things. What you refuse to see is how recent is your hold here, that the land was inhabited long before you and your kind ever arrived, with your crosses and your prayers. You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow, how fast the stream…”
The man talks on and on. How he talks! Father Joseph arranges his face into his listening expression, allowing the torrent of words to flow past him. The rumours, Father Joseph sees, are quite true. The man has been robbed of his senses. But he, Father Joseph, sees it is more than that: far more.
What is before him, in this low-thatched room, is a clear case of possession.
The man has been invaded, led astray, by a dark and malign force.
Father Joseph knows this foe—he has been warned about him in school, in sermons, at the seminary, in the Good Book itself; he has studied him and his wiles; he is trained in how to vanquish him.
With an internal tremor of something resembling excitement, he sees that the Devil comes clothed to him today not in his customary guise, in scales, with hoofs and a tail, but in the form of a misguided man.
Father Joseph sees through it all, and he quails not, hesitates not.
With measured yet purposeful footsteps, Father Joseph goes to the bag he left by the door.
He sends up a quick prayer of gratitude: he thanks the Lord most humbly for setting him this task and assures Him that he will do His bidding here on earth.
His hands shake as he undoes the bag’s fastenings but he tells himself that he is composed, he is ready.
He takes in a breath of the room’s salty, smoky air, lets it out.
He fishes from the bag his Bible, his candlestick, his tinderbox, and he recites the necessary words, and what grandiloquent, irresistible words they are, a direct appeal to one of his favourite saints: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil…”
He has always wanted to perform an exorcism.
Liam, who has been sent to gather seaweed on the shore with a basket on his back, is climbing up the dune with his cargo of bladderwrack, great swags of it, the blistered slithery ribbons trying to escape the creel.
He is startled by the sight of the widow hurrying down from the cottage towards him.
“We’re not to go in,” she is saying, her face lit up. “The men are with him now, and the priest is come so—”
“The priest?”
“Yes, he will see to your father, don’t you worry. He’s going to drive out the devils. All will be well again.”
Liam does not like the sound of this. He puts down the creel, unhooking his arms from the straps, and runs towards the cottage.
Not for the first time, he wishes Enda were here, or his mother, because he cannot manage this on his own.
As he rounds the byre, the fishermen are leaving, their caps in their hands, saying, Yes, Father, of course, Father, it was no trouble at all, Father, just call us if you need us to subdue him again now.
Liam weaves through them, hurling himself towards the door of the cottage, where he sees, just for an instant, the awful sight of his father, that strong and imposing man, tethered to the table like a beast about to be butchered, bindings around his head and chest, his wrists and feet, a strip of linen cutting into his face as a gag.
“What have you done to him?” Liam cries. “Let him go!”
Before he can reach him, he is caught around the middle by someone stepping quickly out of the shadows.
Liam twists around to find a stranger, a priest, in a smooth black soutane, with a halo of brown curls around his head.
He holds Liam fast by the ribcage, ushering him back outside, uttering soothing words, how he will help his father, he will have him right as rain again, just wait and see, but how Liam must not come into the house until given permission, whatever sounds or cries or thumps or noises he hears.
Outside the door, the priest puts a hand to Liam’s head, and Liam feels the press of all five fingers, like a circlet or a woven crown, feels himself kneel before this man.
“All this must be very frightening for you,” the priest says softly.
Liam raises his eyes, sudden tears pricking at the lids. At last, someone who understands, someone who sees the truth of this situation. Liam is afraid. Liam is terrified. He knew it but couldn’t find the words: this man, this priest, sees it all.
Under the all-knowing hand, Liam nods.
“You will be frightened no more. Your father will be quite well again soon. I promise you that. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Can you give me your word that you’ll stay out of the house until my work is done?”
Dumbstruck, Liam nods. He would have agreed to anything this man asked of him.
“Now, I’m told the soldiers will be back in two days to collect the maps. You have kept them safe, have you not? The, ah, original ones that you and your father made?”
“I have.”
“Aren’t you the clever one? Do you think you can finish them yourself? If I give you the pens and inks from your father’s chest? And all the necessary papers?”
Overwhelmed, Liam shakes his head, then nods, then shakes it again.
“I know you can do it,” the priest whispers. “I’m told you’ve a good head on your shoulders. We’ll work together, you and I. I will restore your father to himself. And you can finish the maps. The soldiers need never be aware of this.”
“I don’t know.”
“If they come and the maps aren’t ready, you know what will happen, don’t you? Your father will be in trouble. You have a sister, I hear.”
“I’ve two.”
“Then do it for them. And your mammy. The soldiers will go away, pleased, and they will pay your da and things will go back to the way they were.”
“The way they were,” Liam repeats wonderingly, and how is it that this man, this priest, has divined that this is exactly what Liam desires, for things to be the way they were?
“Good man,” the priest urges. “We can fix this between us. You and me.”
The hand on Liam’s head tightens to an iron band.
The priest begins to murmur in Latin, and the words to Liam are like rainfall after drought.
They fall upon him with a gentleness that is both merciful and absolving.
He wants it to go on and on. He opens his mouth to breathe in the blessing so it might live in him for ever.
The widow comes panting around the corner, lugging the abandoned creel. She sees the priest standing before the boy, reciting a blessing, and she quickly puts down her load, kneels and folds her hands.
The fishermen, away up the path, pulling at the bridle of their donkey, turn and see three figures outside the yellow longhouse: the boy, the widow, the priest. They pull the donkey to a halt and lower their heads.
Up on the path, the viscount is riding by, out hunting with his son, a young man lately back from his studies abroad.
They glance down, reflexively, at the cottage below them, at the figures standing outside it, but they see nothing of any note, just some tenants and a padre, indulging in one of their strange superstitions.
They ride on, in silence. A brace of pheasants swings from the gibbets of their saddles.