The White Horse Trick (11 page)

Aisling and JJ were sitting on the quay, chewing the rag with the wet people and getting up to date on the happenings in Ireland. They didn’t pause for breath when a sparrowhawk landed on a beer barrel and turned into Jenny, but the wet people did, and the conversation came to an abrupt halt.

‘There’s all this stuff up by the fort,’ Jenny said to Aisling. ‘Books and instruments. Piles of music.’

‘Music?’ said Aisling eagerly.

‘Boxes of it. But the thing is, Granddad doesn’t believe in it and he’s threatening to throw it all back and seal the time skin.’

‘Why would he do that?’ said JJ.

‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet about refugees,’ said Jenny. ‘Go up and talk to him, will you? Convince him the music is worth hanging on to. And stop him from sealing the time skin while I go over and find Dad.’

‘But Dad’s here,’ said Aisling, pointing at JJ.

‘Not that dad, stupid,’ said Jenny. ‘The other one.’

* * *

The other one, stranded on the horse in the flood, had decided it was probably safe to turn into a raven again and go the rest of the way on wings. But the problem of what to do with the apples was perplexing him. He had bought them, after all, fair and square. Well, not exactly fair and square, perhaps, but they were his, nonetheless. He never got hungry in Tír na n’Óg but he did over here, and from what he could ascertain, apples were a rare and valuable commodity. He was reluctant to abandon them.

While he struggled with this difficulty, the weather changed again. A sharp little squall slapped a bucketful of heavy rain against his face. The mare lifted her head and twitched her ears. Another squall, even sharper, lifted a tiny wave that sloshed over the mare’s chest and up around Aengus’s knees. There was a strange, leaden pause in the rain, and then the wind hit Aengus like an invisible fist; so hard that it almost knocked him out of the saddle. He clutched his precious apple basket in one hand and the reins in the other. He cursed the wind but praised his greed for apples, because without it he would have already been up aloft in that gale. And surely there had never been one like this before? He was certain it would have dislocated his wings and pitched him back into the floods to drown.

Drown? No, he couldn’t drown, could he?

The mare shifted beneath him, trying to turn her back to the storm. Had Aengus not been a god he might have pitied poor Maureen Ryan and felt regret at having turned
her into a horse and driven her into such a predicament. But he was a god, and so he didn’t.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Keep your rotten apples.’ And he flung them, basket and all, into the water beneath the horse’s nose, then slithered down from her back. In an instant he was gone, nothing more than a glimmer of shining scales vanishing into the murky depths of the flood.

Aisling, being ploddy bred as well as ploddy born, did not have the ability to fly. So Jenny left her to make her own way across the plain and went on sparrowhawk wings back to the rath. There, to her relief, she found that the Dagda had calmed down a bit. He had discovered a box of tin whistles in an old suitcase and he was working his way through them, playing a tune on each one.

‘These are rubbish, too,’ he said. ‘Look!’ He blew a note on one and then another note with the same fingering on another. The second one was several tones higher. ‘They’re not even in tune with each other,’ he said.

‘They’re not supposed to be, Granddad,’ said Jenny. ‘They’re in different keys. They were made like that.’

‘Just what I said. Didn’t you hear me? Different keys, I said. They’re made like that.’

He appraised the whistles splayed out around his feet like shiny bristles. Then he picked up the biggest of them, the low D whistle, and in no time he was lost in its mellow tones.

Jenny was mesmerized by the brilliance of the Dagda’s
playing. She had seen him dance and knew that there was no one in either world to compare with him, but she had never heard him play before. She hadn’t even known he could, until now.

She stretched out on the bank in the sunshine to listen. First there was a set of hornpipes, then a barn dance, then a pair of jigs. Jenny knew there was something she ought to be doing, but surely it couldn’t be all that important? Not more important than lying here in the sunshine, listening to this beautiful music, surely? Nothing could be, could it?

The salmon that swam beneath the dark waters of the vast turlough was not the salmon of wisdom that was told of in the old tale of Fionn Mac Cumhail. He was a lost and bewildered fish who felt very small and had no more idea where he was going underneath the water than he had when he was a man on horseback up above it. So the fish that was Aengus Óg decided his best bet was to swim in a straight line and keep going in the same direction. That way, sooner or later, he was certain to reach land.

But it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. There were lumps and bumps of hillocks and rocks there on the lake bed, and they had to be swum round. Some of the larger ones that broke the surface had to be investigated in case they turned out to be a shoreline. And when they turned out not to be a shoreline but a bit of a rocky island instead, then the fish was left with the difficulty of trying to remember which way he had been heading when he found it.

Once, discovering he had been deceived three times by the same protruding outcrop of limestone, the fish
reared up into the shape of a man, who climbed out on to the rock and bellowed his rage at the world. But the world roared back even louder, and the storm thumped him so hard that he pitched forward from the rock and slid, silverscaled again, back into the safe, watery darkness.

Since there was no sign of Devaney returning with the goat, JJ decided to go along with his wife for the stroll. Out of habit, he put the Stradivarius fiddle away in its case and shouldered it. He knew it was safe in Tír na n’Óg, but he still felt uneasy being separated from it by any significant distance.

On their way out of the village they met the second party of raiders coming in, closely followed by a pair of black-and-white sheepdogs.

‘We’re looking for JJ,’ a woman said. She was the thinnest person either of them had ever seen, and her skin was dry and flaking.

‘That’d be me,’ said JJ. ‘Just carry on down to the bottom of the village there and you’ll find some more of your lot.’

‘Are they picking up supplies?’ said the woman.

‘They’re getting everything they need,’ said JJ. ‘Don’t worry yourselves, anyway. I’ll be back before you know it and I’ll help you get sorted out.’

‘Thank you,’ the woman said.

‘Ah, look at your dogs,’ said Aisling. ‘They look as if they’re trying to hurry you along. Aren’t they sweet?’

‘Dogs?’ said the thin woman. ‘We haven’t got any dogs.’

‘Whatever you say,’ said Aisling. But as she walked on her laughter exploded. JJ laughed, too, and put a fond arm around the woman he had loved all his life.

About halfway along the Moy road they spotted Devaney in a roadside field. The goat was literally running rings around him.

‘Let’s give him a hand,’ said JJ, and they crossed the tumbledown wall into the field. They spread out, planning to surround the goat and trap her, but the minute she caught sight of JJ she came straight up to him and pushed a horn into his hand. Devaney ran over. The bits of his face that were visible between his thick beard, moustache and sideburns were flushed and damp with sweat.

‘See?’ said JJ, handing him the goat’s horn. ‘That’s how it’s done.’

Devaney hurled a string of abuse at the goat, who responded by belching up a wad of cud and chewing it contentedly.

‘She does it to torment me,’ he said. ‘I swear I’ll give her a hammering this time.’

‘Ah, don’t,’ said JJ. ‘It ruins the music. And I’d say she’s dying for a tune. We all are.’

To make sure he didn’t lose her again, Devaney turned the goat into a bodhrán there and then. He took a stick
from his pocket and played a few fluid rolls on the taut drum, then said, ‘Right, so. Will we go?’

JJ fell cheerfully into step beside him, his fingertips itching for his fiddle strings. But Aisling caught him by the elbow.

‘We’re going for a walk, remember?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said JJ glumly. ‘So we are.’

Donal had begun by copying out the notes as quickly as he could, but as time went on he slowed down, enjoying the unaccustomed warmth of his brother’s luxurious quarters; glad to be safe from the storm raging outside.

It was one of the big ones. Some of the fiercest gusts tilted the top layer of containers, so there was a background percussion of whumps and crashes. But if Aidan noticed, he didn’t show it. He paced restlessly, muttering under his breath continually, as though he were rehearsing for the meeting with Aengus Óg. Every so often he would stop at the sideboard and refill his glass, and Donal was reminded of the early days of his army, when every man had a ration of grog every evening. It was a long time since any of them had seen a drop of it. He doubted that even the goons saw much of it these days. Aidan’s capacity for the stuff was a source of constant amazement to him. Donal had been expecting his liver to pack up for ten years or more, but there was still no sign of it happening. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected his brother got through a bottle of that rotgut a day, if not more.

Donal wrote neatly and carefully. He was tempted to be creative with the messages –
People trafficker, contact Aidan Liddy
or
Please do not turn the messenger into a pig!
– but Aidan was too close and, far too often for Donal’s liking, he leaned over his shoulder and said, ‘How many’s that?’

The goons dozed over their hand guns in the corners and Donal wasn’t surprised. He was sleepy himself. The room, like most of the container-built quarters in the castle and the barracks, had no windows and stank of too many men. The ventilation grille, which Aidan had thoughtfully installed, had three pairs of socks stuffed into it to keep out draughts.

‘You’re sure they put a value on all that stuff you’re sending over?’ said Aidan, dropping into a chair to take his considerable weight off his feet.

‘Certain,’ said Donal. ‘Like I told you, music and stories are the only things the fairies are interested in. Good job I rescued it all, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe we should keep it back,’ said Aidan. ‘Use it to bribe Aengus Óg when he gets here.’

Donal was seized with anxiety at the prospect, but he kept his cool. ‘We can do that as well,’ he said. ‘There’s a whole container load, after all. No harm in giving him a taste of what’s on offer.’

‘Hmm,’ said Aidan. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I have something of far more value to bargain with.’

‘What’s that?’ said Donal.

That infuriating smug smile returned to Aidan’s face. ‘Never you mind,’ he said. ‘All will be revealed in good time.’

Donal returned to his writing. Aidan got up and began noisily searching through his DVD collection. He picked one out and put it in the player, but he didn’t turn it on.

‘How long do you think it will take?’ he said.

‘For someone to find Aengus Óg?’ Donal, unlike Aidan, had been to Tír na n’Óg, just once, when he was nine. On that occasion Aengus had been sitting on the quayside playing his fiddle, and that was where Donal always imagined him to be.

But he wasn’t about to tell Aidan that, in case he decided he didn’t need to send so many people after all. ‘It depends,’ he went on. ‘There’s a very good chance that he’ll be in the village, but then again he could be anywhere. He often goes wandering around the place.’

‘Do you think it’s a wild-goose chase, then?’ said Aidan.

‘Oh no,’ said Donal. ‘Not at all. I’m sure someone will find him.’

‘But Tír na n’Óg is a big place, isn’t it?’

‘It’s as big on that side as it is on this side,’ Donal said. ‘A whole world, just like our own. I wouldn’t let that worry you, though. I doubt that Aengus goes all that far from Kinvara.’

‘Hmm,’ said Aidan, and Donal returned to his writing
to conceal his anxiety. He was sure his brother was getting cold feet. But when Aidan spoke again he said, ‘Maybe fifty isn’t enough. Maybe we should send more.’

Donal breathed deeply and tried not to show his excitement. ‘Well, I’ll just keep on writing until you tell me to stop, shall I?’

By the time B-Troop returned Donal had written out more than a hundred notes, and he was warm and dry. He had even been treated to a cup of tea with tinned milk, divinely hot and sweet and sticky. He was in good spirits, but the report from Colonel Crowley was disappointing. They had raided the settlement in Carron, as ordered, but there were only eleven people left there to be rounded up.

‘Never mind, never mind,’ said Aidan. ‘We’ll send out again tomorrow. Belharbour.’

‘Belharbour is already cleaned out,’ said Donal. ‘Most of it is under water.’

‘Glencolmkille then,’ said Aidan. ‘High time we raided Glencolmkille again.’

‘Does that mean we’re going to have to wait?’ said Donal.

‘No, no,’ said Aidan. ‘Strike while the iron is hot and all that. How many gardeners have we got?’

Gardeners. Only a man as deranged as Aidan could refer to the half-starved people who were working on the terraces as ‘gardeners’. But Donal didn’t care. Some of them were going to be in for a nice surprise.

‘Eighty-three altogether,’ he said, ‘unless any of them have died since they were sent out this morning.’

It wasn’t a joke. The mortality rate among Aidan’s ‘gardeners’ was sky-high.

‘Eighty-three,’ said Aidan. ‘We’ll send them all. They won’t be needed any more when Aengus Óg arrives. Plus eleven from Carron makes ninety-four. How many notes did you write?’

Donal struggled to remain calm. ‘A hundred and three,’ he said. ‘But I can always write more.’

‘I have one,’ said Aidan, adding his original to the pile. ‘We’ll send ten soldiers. The oldest ones this time, not the youngest. We don’t want any more cock-ups.’

‘Right,’ said Donal. ‘I’ll get it all organized.’

He went out into the open courtyard in the centre of the castle and headed for the exit, but his way was blocked. One of the ground-level containers was empty and had a portcullis at one end and a drawbridge at the other, but both of them were nearly always kept closed. The regular traffic came through a narrow laneway between two container walls, and the soldiers of B-Troop were coming through it now, carrying in the booty from Carron.