Patrick Henry
Him in the Gorse

<< continued from Part 2

Uncle Niall sipped his tea. "Do nothing on my account, my good girl. I'm a man yet," he said. Through the steam wafting from his cup, he looked at her, then champed into a biscuit. The crumbs clung to his chest, and he brushed those with a few flicks of his wrist. "A man, and not so old as I can't get by. More than you father could ever say. Aye-you know that, Niamh."

"What do I know of fathers, Uncle Niall?" She took a biscuit from the tray and looked it over. Its crust left a gleam of butter on her fingers. She bit into it, savored the way her teeth crushed it into a chaff-fine powder, the way the sugar sparked on tongue. "Enough to know this Dubliner needs a better one than even I had."

He took his tea in a few swallows, then replenished the cup. "If he should come by, Niamh-"

"No."

He held up his hand. "If he should come by for you, well. Consider."

"No." Niamh reached to the mantle, where she kept whatever book they passed their evenings with. "We were in Castle Rackrent, I think, dear uncle."

She opened the book. He protested, but she read over him until he tired of balking. Soon his breath was coming in shrill whistles from his nostrils. She knew he had fallen asleep, so she took the tray, replaced it with a blanket, and left him there until she prepared his breakfast before the next day honeyed from the dawn.

FROM "THE BLACK CISTERN," COLLECTED IN FOLK TALES OF THE WEST COUNTRY:

As recounted to the editor of this volume, by a native of the region.

Throughout the night, Cearul, son of Derry, tramped across the country with the cold burden of Mulligan hefted upon his shoulder. Cearul swore to himself that he had trespassed on each of the four green fields of Éire in the search for Mulligan's final place of repose. During the long trek, the dawn seemed ever poised on the horizon, as if the very revolutions of the globe suspended on account of Cearul's mission. But if Ireland herself had been set out of time on account of his journey, how must it be for Mary who had been abandoned not far from his father's house? Hers would be a lifetime enduring his faults, which the child would in time inherit, for the country had a memory that spanned generations.

At last he felt the prod of Mulligan's fingers in his ribs. The skeleton said, "It may be, my lad, that this here is my small parcel of land, and I can rest at last, proud at home." The body jerked on Cearul's shoulder, its cold bones jabbing like icicles of pain, and drawing the son of Derry to look east. There was yet another churchyard. Cearul said nothing until he had hauled Mulligan through the wicket and into the cemetery. But there were no spirits rising like vapors from the graves. At an unmarked gravestone, the earth yawned open and revealed a lavish casket, somehow intact. Cearul lowered Mulligan in and then clasped the man's hand. Mulligan whispered his thanks and then crossed his arms.

No sooner had Cearul scrambled from the shallow grave, than the earth crashed in to fill the hole, with the force of a dam-breeching mudslide.

Cearul, son of Derry, had walked no fewer than forty miles that night, most of them with Mulligan upon his shoulder. When he returned to his father's village while the dawn was still burnished as the copper warmth of dead Mulligan's eye sockets, he saw his neighbors stare at him first with shock, then concern, then joy. They had feared a highwayman had come upon him, or that the bog had devoured him.

No matter his condition, Cearul thought. There was one house he must first visit. With his hands grey-gloved in filth, he rapped his knuckles on the door of Mary's family's cottage. The village, with his father slowly negotiating his way through the crowd, watched with the tittering quiet of birds. It was Mary who answered the door. Before Cearul could even beg her forgiveness, she said, "Yes. Yes, I consent."

What must it be like, treading those paths with a pilgrimage on your heart, to recollect those legends contained within the fragments of bone and pottery and stone that mark where the ancients once erected their altars? Niamh O'Suilleabhean wrapped a shawl tight about her shoulders and lowered her head against the swirling mists. She had embarked soon after Uncle Niall had left with his tin lunch-pail and a final rejoinder: "Consider." But she could not, would not. Not with him in the gorse-the visions of the bog sucking his remains downward to damnation, the vision of the church's stone floor rapturing and spewing him out. Not with the memory of the pain that sparked across her palms when she held that rough-hewn limestone nub that the Dubliner had tested her with.

She would not consider him, that Dublin man. So she considered the paths he had trod, how it felt to set her own heel to the path on such a lonesome ramble. It was nothing. It was the plod of her shoes on a road that crumbled into wet clods with each footfall. What did he see through the drizzle-pattern on his spectacles that the rest of them didn't? The countryside was a wash of yellow-green fields and the wire-black coils of brush. Distant stone hovels-cottages or the mill or little shelters for chickens, sheep, cattle-were visible, but nondescript, through the grey.

In another corner of the county, Niamh reflected, she had once made a processional much like this. Drabbed in black, Uncle Niall's hand gripping her shoulder, a meager six-year-old whose eyes fixated on the deep ruts of the road. That was her recollection. She had sat on the rear ledge of an open cart that rattled ahead toward a fresh grave. Another cart contained the plain wood box where her feverish mother finally managed a steady sleep. Uncle Niall's thumb kneaded the nape of her neck in a wide, gyrating motion. She asked Uncle Niall why her mother hadn't taken a blanket. They'd plenty nice blankets, and the morning was cold. That pale wood box, it couldn't be so warm. And silly, that she'd wanted a rest in such a nice dress. Uncle Niall rubbed Niamh's nape with the pad of his thumb and, then, gave her a squeeze, so sharp she squeaked.

With her mother's casket in mind, Niamh's stroll conveyed her to the churchyard. The bells intoned the hour and, with it, the inception of the weekday morning mass, which she never attended. She envisioned the priest, dizzy and tongue-swollen from his need for drink, tottering through the liturgy with an eye ever on the sacrament. Delivered by him, this celebration of the dark millennia from the promise of salvation to the death of Christ would rise to and haunt the rafters. Even so far from the sanctuary, Niamh shivered at the thought of the Latin strains echoing like wails in a cavern. Yet she could not bring herself to make the sign of the cross. She paced the yard, kicked at stray chunks of rock. She stooped to collect one, but halted. Even still, from the Dubliner's trick and her dreams, she felt the cold press of the skeleton fingers, cuffing her wrist.

She needn't invoke them. She needn't invite that terror upon herself.

Niamh took her leave of the churchyard and hurried home.

There, she found the poet on the cottage stoop. With a penknife he carved an apple into slices, which he ate with theatrical patience. The rain on his suit had the silver-haired frailness of a lichen, spreading slow across a cluster of rocks. She crossed the flagstones. He glanced at her, his rain-dappled lenses reflecting the scant light. When she neared the door, he hoisted himself upright with a little groan. She unlocked the door. With a nod of her head, she indicated that he could enter.

He pitched the apple core far into the lawn, then trailed after her.

After tea and oatcakes heated on the stove, they resumed their places at the table. The Dubliner unrolled his bolt of cloth and gave the velvet an affectionate stroke. The fabric rippled under his touch. It was, Niamh thought, like watching an illusionist at a fair: see, his gesture said, this remnant is a material thing, tactile and true. He placed upon it the previous day's piece of gravemarker, then a few baubles-amulets, brooches, rings.

From across the table, they examined one another. Niamh said, "My uncle believes you've come to marry me." A stammer was forming on his lips, but Niamh shook her head. "No, I haven't any illusions about that. Your torch is lit for the Major's wife." The thought then sparked uninvited: And years later, desperate, he'll make the same overtures to the woman's daughter. Niamh cringed. "It will be good, I think, if you never meet Uncle Niall here. And better if you've left our county soon."

"That depends on you," he said. "If Gorham hadn't said-"

"Awful man," Niamh said.

"You needn't have welcomed me here. You could've turned me out."

"Why, you actually believe that! You'd have gloomed about my door until I gave in to you, even if it took till the second coming. Then you'd slouch in. A rough beast. Its hour come at last."

He smiled, flashed a bit of tooth. "Nobody is making you help me, Miss O'Suilleabhean."

"We're past that," Niamh said. "You've ruined my thoughts and the peace of my soul so many weeks, my Dublin dear. You raised the dead. Everywhere I see him in the gorse. When the wind goes just so, I hear the crack of my father's belt. And this morning, I thought of my mother committing herself to earth. I don't want any of them," Niamh said, "and I want them gone and I want them to go away with you."

From a leather bag, he removed a journal and a fountain pen. He smoothed open the volume, screwed off the cap, rested the pen's body in the channel where the pages met. He took the limestone and pressed it in her hands. "Tell me," he said, "what you see."

The visions sent barbs into her palms, rooted themselves in her flesh and fed from the blood rich in her veins, shot tendrils insatiable as ivy around and through every bone in her body. She choked on the pain but whimpered out the stories through teeth tough-gritted as the earth in drought. Him in the gorse: laid down by a bitter feud and trudged across the country until his kin no longer knew his crime. Her father, breath peaty-sweet as the priest absolving her: strands of kelp fluttering through his gnawed and bleached bones, cast over the rail into a shoal. In his pocket, a twine-tied bundle of apologies to Dearest Niamh, care of Uncle Niall, the ink spilled in love long since absorbed by the pulped page. Her mother, forehead always hot to the touch: her casket had long since gone to rot, and she too was feeding life, the wriggling denizens of the deep. Worms, grubs, infinitesimal things that she-not knowing much by way of science-could never identify. Mother, father, him in the gorse.

"Consider," Uncle Niall had said. Consider.

Then the vines loosed themselves from her. She was shuddering and the fragment of gravestone had left white residue scaled upon her palms. The Dubliner wiped down her hands with a rag, then folded her fingers around the brooch. She saw that numerous pages in his notebook had been filled with plum-dark ink. Were those her visions? She could scarce conceive that she had so much stored within her. She thought this while probing the brooch, its cameo of a siren plucking at a lyre. She felt again the vision digging into her, its roots piercing and searching.

The last she remembered of the poet was this: he pried a bauble from her hands, pressed a kiss upon her brow, and departed the cottage without a word of farewell.

FROM "THE BLACK CISTERN," COLLECTED IN FOLK TALES OF THE WEST COUNTRY:

As recounted to the editor of this volume, by a native of the region.

So we arrive at the tale's own tail, a curious part of the animal that often writhes with a life all its own: think the switching tail of a cat, the fearful tremble of the mouse's tail, the anxious tremble of the rabbit's cotton-soft puff. You may have heard this story once afore, with the usual curtailment. And it's not untrue-that's to be said for it. For Mary did accept Cearul's suit of marriage. They did enjoy a long life together. Moreover, what has been said is true: Cearul became a man more generous than his own father Derry, and for the remainder of his years Cearul never again touched the cup or the die.

But the people of our fair county still fear riling the good folk and soliciting their wrath, so there is one matter we aren't much inclined to tell. For Cearul, son of Derry, was a marked man from that day onward. Only Mary knew the origins of the mark, and she didn't betray a word of it until, on her deathbed, we saw the fairies inform her that she had their blessing to speak the truth.

So we must return now to the cold cistern, where Mary once bathed in the diamond-clean rain water.

She had stepped on the tooth, and so decided the nature of Cearul's penance. This we know.

But imagine her young and sheathed in water resplendent as a fine silk raiment. Imagine her. How could the good folk refuse her, when she begged of them one small favor: "Should he doubt or hate me for even a beat of his heart," she asked of them, "I beg you, leave me a sign that his retribution is incomplete."

So it was. When Mary accepted his proposal, those denizens of the other world abided by their word. At once the flesh of Cearul's hand withered and vanished, leaving only the skeleton. He took it as a reminder of clasping Mulligan's hand; Mary sheltered the sign in her heart, pondered it all of her days.

There the old man concluded his tale, and together we had finished our spell together upon the countryside road. When we reached another tree near the crossroads, he asked me to lend a hand so that he could raise himself into the branches, and so perch until another wanderer should beg him for one of the ancient tales.

In their country, there was a scandal for some time involving what the people perceived as an "attack" on Niamh O'Suilleabhean. For her uncle had returned from his labor to find the usually hospitable girl bathed in sweat and mumbling odd phrases. He rallied the neighbors from afar, discovered the priest taking store of the sacrament in the church, and then marshalled a search of the country. At once the stranger from Dublin was absolved: he had been seen that night in fair spirits, content and paying out his thanks to the region in successive draughts from the tavern. He tasted little from these cups, gathered some final tales. Several more days lapsed and he was gone.

For months the sun cycled through the sky and the seasons wrought their havoc on the land. Niamh remained as she was, though she would confess on occasion to a coltish feeling. Otherwise, her constitution was sound, and she showed no evidence of any trouble. In time the scandal was forgotten, and many-Uncle Niall amongst them-claimed it was the spirits avenging themselves for betraying the country's stories to a charlatan like that Dubliner.

But on occasion, Niamh's skin prickled and she dashed to the window. The flagstone path was there, and so too were the lawn around the cottage, the wicket down the lane. Beyond them stretched the watercolor expanse of the hills and fields, the pewter-dim wash of the sky over the white lens of the sun. She clasped her hands before her, as if in prayer. If she shut her eyes just then, she would see him and watch him in the act of forgetting: he, mounting a dais and taking to a lectern, where he would read from his poems and this smattering of tales with the promise of delivering them the true Ireland. She could see him, his eyes boring into the Major's wife, and then others, and then even their daughters. And she saw too the death-moth blackness of their eyes, their fear of the moldered skeletons peddled in his poems.

It was no matter. His reputation would outlive them all, and she saw, in the distant murk of his afterlife, his soul's shuffling gait as scholars and causes rose certain verses of his like pennants and claimed, this is our voice. But that was years away. Besides, such blatant immortality entailed only risk. Niamh had more urgent tasks: the visions that had chosen her as their vessel. And when Uncle Niall passed and she needn't fear shaming him any further, she would turn to some calling of her own-canvases, and weaving, and pages, where she could unfurl the dark dreams that visited her by night. She knew then that there would be a discovery, some young thing in a tight-fitting skirt and a ragged tweed blazer discovering Niamh's work in a battered box in some library cellar. Then, an essay would begin, "Little is known about the life of Niamh O'Suilleabhean, except.", and after an exegesis on the few legal documents and ledgers that accounted for Niamh's existence, the visions would have, after their eons of purgatory, a confessor's ear.

But it was not the time just then, not while the Dublin poet claimed all this land as his. When the sure tingle left Niamh's skin, she placed the kettle on the hob and waited for its whistle to trill.

>> click to read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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Patrick Thomas Henry is the associate editor for fiction and poetry at Modern Language Studies. His work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from The Massachusetts Review, Souvenir Lit, Fiction Southeast, and Passages North, amongst other publications. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Dakota. You can find him online at patrickthomashenry.com and on Twitter @patrick_t_henry.

Illustration by Morgan Richards.

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