The Secret of Innisfail Cove
an excerpt

Prologue:
Wee Kevin

Her name was Kathleen Danielle St. Brigid O’Shiels. Wee Kevin had seen her many times, so he had, wandering the ruins of Innisfail Abbey, a shawl or a scrap of tartan blanket stretched tight around her shoulders . . . her petticoats snapping in the smart sea breeze at The Head . . . her wistful gaze scanning the bleak, chill waters. Sometimes, in the few warm days of mid-summer, she would lie on the turf amid the crags and stare up into the aqua-green skies, lost in thought. Other days, she came to smile at the lone geranium peeking up beside the broken archway of the friary, or to pluck a wild peach-pink rose from the single bush twisting out of the soil at one corner of the howff, or to gather straw for a new broom. Now and again she came to crouch on the crumbling stairs to the ancient altar and weep.

Kevin didn’t like to see her weep.

Kathleen Danielle St. Brigid. He thought it the grandest name ever he had heard spoken. Kathleen’s da, it was said, when he was alive, always called her Katie Daniel, and whatever her da had found right and fitting, most folke in the northern wastes of County Donegal had found right and fitting also, religiously following suit—all but Katie Daniel’s elder brothers, who habitually called her Danni. She had four elder brothers—Matthew, Alister, Devlin, and Sean. Sean was Kevin’s favourite. Ah, ’twas a pity and a shame what had happened to him all those years ago, right here beside the ruins. But it hadn’t really done him any harm, Kevin thought—no more than what had happened to Kevin had harmed or changed him. Inside they were still who they’d always been, the pair of them.

There was also a younger brother, Finnegan, called Finn, and baby Mary Rose, who’d been named (of course) in honour of the Blessed Virgin. There could never be too much importance placed on a child’s name—or indeed the name of anything, as the ancient druid priests of Eire had understood. Why, even Kevin’s own da, black and scurvy as he’d turned out to be, had known that. That’s why Katie Daniel’s name was so beautiful to Kevin. It spoke volumes, he thought, of the strength of her spirit and the depth of her soul. ’Twas the name of a lass to be reckoned with—but also of one destined to be cherished, admired, and followed. Followed like warrior-women of old, into Hell if need be.

Kathleen . . . “pure,” which she was, and no denying. Untouched and virginal. Not only was Katie Daniel young and fresh, and spiritually untarnished, but she was a child of the land, pure Irish through and through. As her da’s firstborn daughter—his only daughter, before his remarriage—Katie had likely, according to established tradition, been given the selfsame name as her mother’s mother. But Wee Kevin found himself pressed to believe any other lass in Ireland—ambaiste, even Katie’s own gran!—more deserving of going through life a “Kathleen.”

Danielle . . . “God is my judge.” Sure a spirited lass like Katie Daniel O’Shiels would never accept the judgment of mere mortal man. She was fiery, far moreso than her pale, frowzy strawberry tresses suggested, and proud. She did and said what she thought was right, and what she’d a mind to, with neither shame nor regret, and let none challenge her!

Brigid . . . “strong and valourous.” Saint Brigid must’ve become Katie’s personal saint at Confirmation, when she was privileged to celebrate her First Communion. Brigid was patroness of health and fertility, hearth and home, and to share her name suggested a woman of graciousness, valued for her sense of Irish hospitality. Wee Kevin was quite sure no lass of Donegal kept a hearth as warm and welcoming or a house as tidy and inviting as Katie Daniel O’Shiels kept her brother Matthew’s hearth and home.

Even her father’s name, meaning “grandson of Shiels,” bespoke Katie Daniel’s brave lineage. Sure her family were of the Malin Head clan of the Shiels, from nearby Inishowen—descended of Niall Noigiallach, he of the Nine Hostages—himself once High King and a hero of Ireland, admired for his raids on the stinking English! Arrah, was it not Niall Noigiallach who had first brought Wee Kevin's own patron, Saint Patrick, to the shores of Eire?

Oh, to have such a sister as Katie—as Sean and the rest were so blessed as to have. Or such a mother. Kevin had never had a sister of his own, and he didn’t remember his mother, but he liked to imagine that she was as beautiful, as bewitching, as brave and as scrappy and loyal and loving, as Katie O’Shiels.

Aye, Kevin had watched Katie Daniel, often and often—but she’d never yet caught sight of him, hidden as he always was among the gravestones. Still, there was something he so longed to tell her!—a secret he was afeard it’d soon become of life-and-death importance to her and her family to know. Perhaps he should step forth and approach her, one night at dusk when Katie came to the friary to brood or to ponder or simply to celebrate life: to pay silent tribute to the stark power and majesty of the cold, grey sea . . . to the face of God in the lone geranium . . . to the songs and stories of old that hung like the coastal fog over the tombstones, that beat with the blood through the veins of all Irish and saturated the least arable and most stubborn soil of Eire . . . to the peace of the lonely cliff’s-edge dropping down from the crumbling ruins, amid the stillness of the slanting burial stones and markers . . . arrah, to the priceless freedom that wandering on her all-alone seemed to bring a lass otherwise ruled by her menfolke.

He should speak his piece, and soon—that he should—or it might prove too late. Only Kevin was loathe to frighten his unwitting friend, as he felt sure he would.

If only, if only, he inwardly pined.

If only he weren’t so long dead.

from Chapter One:
With No Flag Flying

“Katie! Katie!”

What now?—what now, by all the saints, and Katie in laundry-water to the elbows?

“Katie Daniel!”

It was Finn’s high-pitched voice, his lithe, ten-year-old body nigh tumbling over itself to reach her, his sticklike legs stotting across the fields and up the rocky path. Katie Daniel loathed and despised washing-days, but somehow she hated them the more every time her odious task was interrupted.

“Catch yer breath, what’s yer hurry,” she grunted. “And where be yer bonnet, there’s sun this day!”

“’Tis only here!” Finn said, panting, “down me back by the strings!” He shifted from foot to foot, by the weathered table out-of-doors on which Katie’d set the washtub and the clothing baskets, and reached behind his neck to pull up the wide-brimmed straw hat that had blown free of his cropped brown head as he ran.

“Well, ye’d best mind yerself, ye know ye’ll burn like a heathen, else.”

“Devlin says, get ye into the house!”

Katie snorted.

“But truly, Katie Daniel! He says they’re a-coming! Pirates!”

“Pirates, is it?”

“It is! He saw their ship hisself, just heaving into sight from the west, with no flag flying, none at all at all, and he says there’ll be trouble!”

“Like there will, I’ve small doubt—an’ he gets his own wish.”

“Matthew says so, too.”

“And what is’t he says? That there come pirates, or that Devlin’s a right ainscian and’ll soon enough again be into mischief?”

“That ye’re to get inside.”

Katie paused, reddened arms hanging slack in the clouded water. The clatter of hard lye soap against washboard, shuffling up and down slats, choked silent. “Amas, Matty says?”

“He does. There’s himself coming down from the stables, now.”

Katie frowned, her brick of soap still frozen in mid-swipe, as she studied the lean figure swaggering purposefully homeward, flanked by his dogs. He was frowning as well, and his gaze was fixed on something afar out to sea. An annoying stray wisp of hair blew across Katie Daniel’s left eye, but she didn’t so much as puff it away, for staring. The scuff of Matthew’s boots along the stony path preceded him, and the sound grew closer, louder, until he stood mere feet away. He turned to Katie and, with a toss of his head, indicated the door to the cottage.

Her cheeks warmed and she averted her eyes. “Aye, Matty,” she said. She fished in the washing-water for the flannel undershirt she’d been scrubbing and hastened to wring it.

“Leave it,” said Matthew.

She uptook the cis of rinsed, wet things instead. Matthew signed that Finn should grab the smaller basket of dry clothes not yet cleaned, then remained in place, seeming to stand guard, while the younger two scurried up the walk toward the blood red door of their limewashed, thatch-roofed home.

Katie pulled up short, her cisean—leaden with sopping laundry—balanced on one hip. “But Matty, the clothes!”

“Hang them indoors.”

Katie’s mouth dropped open, but she clapped it shut again and, with another rush of heat to her face and a dutifully downcast gaze, bobbed a curtsey.
She made it only another inch or two before halting once more. Finn pushed past her. “What about the second milking?”

“Arrah, Sean’ll do it.”

“Sean! And exactly what makes Sean O’Shiels safer alone in the barn than I?”

“He can take care of himself,” Matthew said with a confident nod.

“He’s scarce other than a bairn.”

“He’s one-and-twenty.”

Katie snorted again. “He’s closer in age to . . . to that baby he perpetually talks of!”

“God looks out for His own, Danielle, hie ye inside.”

Danielle, was it? Matthew’s tone, the steel in his eye, gave her heart to quicken its beat. She pursed her lips but turned her steps once more toward the cottage. Finn had already deposited his load on the great, long trestle at which the family ate, and had run out again.

“And put on yer hat!” Katie hollered after him. (“Now why hasn’t he been ordered within-doors?” she muttered to herself.)

Sighing, she eased her own dripping burthen to the floor and took a moment, hands on hips, to glance about her. The cottage wasn’t much, perhaps, but by grace of God, it had a floor. In the two sleeping-chambers, in built-on wings, there was still naught more than hard-packed clay lined with rushes . . . but here, in the common room, it was flagged with granite. Every morning when she arose from sleep and stepped into her kitchen to stir the fire, Katie got down on her knees on those flags to praise Heaven for the family’s wealth. On an impulse she clasped her hands and sank to her knees on them now, beside her puddling basket.

“Blessed Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . . Saints Patrick, Columba, and Brigid . . . I thank yez earnestly for our warm, dry home, and for this fine floor. And for our one sunny day this autumn, even an’ I cannot take advantage of it for to dry the wash. And for the four whole windows through which I can feel and see the sun, even whilst cooped up in here.”

And windows there were: an exorbitant luxury—all with real glass, and two of them sashes that Katie could actually raise for air. Those had wide sills, as well, where a body could pot a plant, or set a pie or a breadloaf to cool, or put out a wee dish of milk for the Good Folke. Matthew admitted the glass was a shameful expense—one that seemed to repeat itself every gale day—but Da had promised real windows to Katie once, when she lay dying, and Matthew’d not go back on Da’s word and remove them, now that God had kept His end of the bargain. In Matty’s opinion, as he oft declared, ’twasn’t really the English tax collector he was paying so many pence per tiny pane, it was the Church, for God’s sparing Katie’s life.

She smiled, remembering.

“And please bless our home, lands, and family, and keep us safe from Satan’s wiles and Devlin’s pirates. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.”

“Amen,” came Matthew’s drawl from the open doorway. “Now who spoke aught of pirates?”

Katie scrambled to her feet, wiping her damp, soapy hands on her apron. “’Twas Finn, so it was. He told me Devlin—”

“Never ye mind what Devlin either said or did. Nor Finnegan, for the matter of that. They’re excitable altogether, the pair of them.”

“But ye made me haul in the wet washing to string from the rafters!”

“I did. But ’tis only till I can judge for meself what Devlin’s going on about.”

Nevertheless he drew the tiny calico curtains across both the front and back windows and barred the back door.

Katie eyed him, a knot fast tying in her stomach. Her tongue dried to the roof of her mouth, and she swallowed before she again managed speech. “Da used to say, there were pirates and smugglers aplenty, combed Ireland’s waters in the days ere we were born.”

Matthew nodded. “And after, when you were but a wee article, like Mary Rose. But no such ships have been sighted ’round these parts for ten, twelve years, so they tell. Naught but fishing curraghs. Most likely ’tis a whaler, farther out to sea than Devlin figures . . . or else the bleeding English. (Sure I hope ’tis not a repeat of the Wolfe Tone ballyhooley, round the bend at Lough Swilly, and us in full path of cannonfire!)”

“Ye think ’tis the French come to free us, then?”

Matty shook his head. “They’d not have struck their colours. But, an’ it do be the French, ’twill end no better than before, so it will—with English roving the coastline and combing the countryside, searching for rebels, and we Irishmen looking like fools.”

“I’d not say the like before Devlin’s face. To him, Wolfe Tone (God rest him) is a veritable saint. Besides, the poor soul did what he could for us Catholics.”

“’Tis said we Irish never gave him the turnout he’d promised the Frenchies—but theirselves must’ve been the lot to bungle things, say I. Not for naught is the Irish word for a Frenchman, also the Irish for ‘rat.’”

Katie chuckled. “Da used to say, ’twas no better we got, but what we deserved, hitching a Catholic cart to a Protestant horse like yer man Wolfe Tone, for all his efforts on our behalf. But,” she added, with the ghost of a shiver rippling along her spine, “I’d take Protestants over pirates!”

“Ye’ll have no call to suffer the one nor the other. You hang yer dainties, now, and put pirates properly out of yer head.”

“Aye, Matty.”

“Be Mary Rose inside?”

“She is.” Katie indicated the room the sisters shared, beneath the loft. “On the bed yon, napping.”

Matthew nodded and departed the cool of the cottage—but Katie, for all Matty’s easy talk and casual swagger, shivered again: for upon his leave-taking, he firmly closed the half-door behind him.

It, and the main door, too.

He strode, with purpose, down the worn footpath that wound away from the door, to the westerly side of the cottage, and on the stone’s toss to the cove behind. A familiar stink of coastal mud and sealife raped his nostrils, quickly overpowering his own ever-clinging scent of stable dung and horseflesh, peat and hay. His field-dogs, panting and loping hopefully along beside him—as if they smelled, on the wind, either serious business or rollicking fun (both, one and the same to you lads, eh?)—he halted at the descent to the shoreline. “Stay put, now, yez hear me? Stay. Good lads.”

At the top of the rocks, along with two empty lobster pots crying for repairs, rested Devlin’s fishing-curragh, safe from the soon-returning tide that would otherwise dash it against the crags, its hide-covered wicker frame bottom-up to dry.

Two rods from the bank stood Devlin himself, planted calf deep in shaly silt, fishing mussels out of the sludge. Two creels were strapped, side by side, to his back. His shoulder-length hair—in the rare afternoon sun, the rich orange-red of new-minted copper—had pulled partly shy of the blue ribbon that corralled it safely away from his face, and wavy strands of it now stuck plastered by salt air and sweat to his jawline. His gaze was fixed, not on his work, which his hands continued independently, by rote, but on the small dark ship buoying up and down on the waves, to the north-and-west.

He could scarce have heard Matthew’s footfalls approaching, above gannets’ cries and the clamour of the surf, but he must have caught a flash of movement from the corner of an eye, for he raised his head to trade grim expressions with Matthew. “I see our man Finnegan made report.

“Ah, now,” he added, with a grimace of clear disapproval, “don’t ye be climbing down here. Those rocks to yer left hand are razor-jagged. Slice yer pampooties to leathern hair, they will.”

Matthew permitted himself a slight smile. “Me ‘pampooties’ are reinforced workboots. And I don’t mean to veer to me left hand.”

“Well, ye’ll not be wading into this, I trust? ’Tis colder than the heart of ancient Pharaoh toward the Israelites, and ye’ve no proper leggings.”

But wade in, Matthew did, till the brothers were planted in silt, side by side.

Devlin paused at his chores, leaning forward with one hand braced on a knee, whilst wiping sullen grey mud from his other arm, against his oilskin trousers. He cocked his head to indicate the sinister brig.

Matthew grunted. “I see it, so.”

“That’s no English man-of-war, though there may well be some of Her Most Imperial Majesty Victoria’s limeys crawling her decks.”

“What is it they’re wanting?”

“What is’t do they ever want? Our money? Our womenfolke? Our livestock, by Heaven? It matters not to me, me boy, whether all they be after is food and supplies—by Daniel O’Connell and all else that’s holy, they’ll not be hauling their darlin’ asses ashore on our land!”

“So now ye’ve taken to swearing by the Liberator.”

“I have. Long may he live.” Devlin bent to jam an arm back into the mule-grey muck, and swashed about until he’d retrieved two more mussels, which he tossed over his shoulder, into the righthand creel. “I’ll not stand by whilst filthy English dogs step foot on Donegal soil. Haven’t they caused more than grief enough, by the long-fingered reach of their unwelcome laws, so?”

Matthew nodded, his narrowed sights still fixed to sea. “Sure they’ll not put ashore just here?”

“Wheesht, keep yer head down!” his brother said, continuing in low tones: “I’ve had me eye on them for hours. They’ve not moved a spit’s distance since the sun was just yonder.” (He pointed with another toss of his penny-red head.) “I heard the call to ‘bring about,’and caught part of a cry to ‘warp heads larboard’ (whatever the devil that may mean).”

Then they likely have but the English tongue. They’ll not be na Francaigh.

“Chances are,” Devlin went on, “they’ve dropped anchor and intend to row in, under cover of night.”

“The tide’s rising. ’Twill be a bit o’ work to close the distance betwixt there and land, in wee rowing-boats.”

“I’ve pulled a curragh in deeper waters and from points farther north,” Devlin said with a grunt.

“Arrah, ye’re not English. We Donegal lads bleed seawater. We can handle ourselves.”

Devlin smirked.

Then he yanked at Matthew’s sleeve, nigh hard enough to whirl him about in the pool. “Enough of yer open staring! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, must ye be obvious? An’ they’ve still a man on deck, or up in the crow with a glass, ye’ll be noticed, sure!”

Matthew shrugged. He gauged the direction of the stiff sea breeze. “’Tis a westerly wind, from the Head. Bar it change, ’twill be hard pressed they’ll be finding themselves, to sail any closer. Maybe after a few days’ wait, they’ll grow bored and move along.”

“Sail, is it? A few days?” Devlin snorted. “Ach, ye should stick to haarses.” He grunted again and dropped another mussel into the creel. “There’ll be no days’ waiting, Matty. We’ll be seeing them come dark, so we will. Ye can mark me words and place yer wagers.”

Matthew ground his teeth and prayed that his brother, for once in his lifetime, was wrong.

“Now will ye, for the love of Saint Peter and the Vatican, cease looking for all the world as though ye’re . . . well . . . looking!” said Devlin. “And be off with ye. I’ve the wrack and dulse yet to harvest, whilst the tide’s still at ebb, which leaves me but the last part of an hour. And then Sean and me’ll be in the broo—pulling potatoes, maybe a small head o’ cabbage, for Danni to throw with the soup.” He grinned. “Or only for Danni to throw.”

“Sounds grand. But should aught change with our ‘comrades’ off the coast, I’ll be wanting to know of it.”

“No worries, me boy, I’ll keep sketch. ’Tis a right keen vigil I’ll be holding over those devils—them and their flagless black cauldron—of that ye may be sure.”

************************************************************************************

Up the long road from Letterkenny wound Alister O’Shiels, his wool-bag over his shoulder and a cacophonously whistled aire on his lips. The afternoon had been that rare—clear, bright, and warm—and a setting sun bled pink, periwinkle, and orange, with an underbrush of ash-purple, over the clouds just scudding to cover. Aye, a brave enough evening, so it had been, but a spiller was soon to roll in. Earth and sky would be grey as gunpowder, sure, hours before the last lamps of home had been doused and Danni had banked and prayed her blessing over the fire for the night. For all that, Alister was in no especial hurry—what was a drenching to an Irishman?—although he was eager enough for his supper and a cheer peat blaze.

The cobble he kicked before him for sport, rocked and rattled ahead through the dust—until both the cobble and Alister were paused in their passage by the crossing of a flock of black-faced sheep, traversing the road at a polite trit-trot. Alister reslung his wool-sack more securely over his back and bent to lend aid to the farmer dismantling a passwall for the sheep (and an interposed gaggle of geese); awaited the animals’ bundling through; then helped close the impermanent gap again, piling the fieldstone back, carefully balanced, into a straight, waist-high ridge.

The farmer touched his bonnet to him. “Thankee, bucko. Dia dhuit.”

Alister smiled and nodded (“Dia is Muire dhuit”), and he and his cobble continued on their way, as unhurried as before.

. . . until Alister recollected that his wool-bag was no longer empty, but stuffed with other families’ dyed, spun yarn for the weaving. His commissions. And wasn’t there also a fine green head, four potatoes, a paper of fresh-baked bonnock and a wee crock-jug of potcheen, by way of payment from some of his better customers? And three fine linen handkerchiefs. ’Twouldn’t do for any of that to take a wetting.

He left kickstone and whistling behind and sped his pace.

Ach, but weren’t his feet that sore, that he’d be wishing a hot bowl of salts to soak them in, almost as soon as he’d ducked beneath his brother’s lintel and sat himself down by the hearth? He’d started out, not at first light, but after a decent breakfast, the gathering of news from the village pub, and a wee bit of shopping for this yoke or that—mostly more muslin for Mary Rose’s frocks and nappies—else Danni’d have had his ear off the side of his face when he arrived home. After all, he had promised. Twenty-five miles from home to Letterkenny, and now back, and to every modest cot, through every rural community, in between, seeking work for his bag, or else making deliveries of pieces already accomplished—edged blankets, fringed shawls, measures of uncut fabric for the goodwives of the county to turn into whatsoever they would—and he was black fagged. He believed the insides of his boots had taken on every pebble for each of those twenty-five miles—an entire field of stone, now along for the ride in his shoes, wearing bruises into his footsoles.

But he’d soon be there now.

Uh-oh. Mayhap none so soon as he’d thought. There was Father Donaghy, just after locking the sacristy for the day and crossing the lane to the rectory. Now that’s just about as perfect as a donkey shits, Alister mentally grumbled (faoi mar a chacfadh an t-asal e . . . ).

He pasted on as friendly a smile as he could muster and nodded. “Father. God be wi’ ye.”

“God and Mary be with ye, Alister.” The priest paused to tuck his Bible and papers (probably a new-writ sermon, Alister thought with an inward groan) beneath an arm, and smiled back. Dust of the road—or else of new construction on the chapel—floured the skirts of his tight-waisted cassock. His thin grey hair rose and stirred in the cooling, fast-accelerating breeze. “Home again from yer rounds, are ye?”

“I am, that.”

“Business good?”

“Not especially so. No better nor worse than ever, I’m thinking.”

“Will we see ye at the Mass come Sunday?”

“Amn’t I always present for Mass, Father?”

The priest chuckled. “Indeed, indeed. Ye are, so. A faithful son of the Church, with a room laid by for him in Heaven, I’ve never a doubt.”

Alister’s smile knew its place—it was well enough paid for its services, with Danni’s fine hot soup and broughan, that it didn’t disappoint its owner by faltering now. “Only an’ I continue to earn such a privileged spot, Father. But never ye worry, I speak my prayers, every day, the same as ye always taught.”

“Good lad! But of course ye do. Yers is a brave, large heart, Alister O’Shiels, and wouldn’t father, mother, and stepmother too, be that proud of ye, were they three alive today, God rest their souls.”

Alister’s smile did not give way. It remained at its post—practised, stalwart, and sworn.

“Er . . . ,” Father Donaghy began, with a slight cough and in darker tones, “might we be seeing yer brother Devlin at Sabbath services, alongside?”

Alister raised a brow. Twelve years in the Parish of Clondehorky, his family had been—twelve years since the priest had felt obliged to take the bata to Devlin’s palms (and on one occasion following, a bound sheaf of faggots to the threadbare seat of his dungarees) for preferring mischief to lessons, and lasses’ figures to any of the mathematical kind, and for speaking the Irish in public—and still Father Donaghy would persist in believing poor Devlin the black sheep (and bordering on a “black rabbit”!) among the O’Shiels. “He’d be there, Father, and him with one foot in his grave and the other in goose-grease. Sure Devlin never missed a Mass.”

“Arrah, his backside’ll be on a bench in the sanctuary, right enough, and his eyes on the pulpit. He’ll even keep them open. But I wonder whether his soul attends?”

“Father Donaghy, I can well assure ye, Devlin is, of all the family (save Danni, maybe, who’s as like to be at prayer as to be breathing), the most—”

“Whoops!—must away!” said the priest, clapping a hand to the crown of his black felt cappello romano as another threatening gust kicked up. “Good day to ye, Alister!” Already he was showing Alister his back, and his words could barely be heard above the flapping of his frock about the calves, and the whuffle of his papers in the wind. “God’s blessings on yer brother Matthew’s hearth and home, and upon yer sweet sisters—them each the very models of saintliness, patterned after the Blessed Virgin herself!”

“Th-thank ye, Father. I’ll pass that along.” Clearly he’d never seen Danni in a rare mood—or Mary Rose sitting, as gay as ye please, in her own cac. “Bid ye good even! Er, keep dry!”

Ach, well. He’d tried

Again.

Alister sighed. He would burn in Hell for a hypocrite, sure—if there was a Hell. Oh, not for defending his younger brother! No. But for the lie he lived, every day.

Yet if he—like the outspoken lad who proclaimed the Emperor’s new clothes a hoax and the king himself in naught bar his “altogether”—ever confessed that he didn’t see, didn’t taste, didn’t feel or believe, with devout and pious heart, what the rest of Ireland had shed blood to uphold its faith in . . . .

Often he awoke, sweating and clammy, from nightmares—fevered dreams of being stoned by his kin, and the ghosts of his parents, and all the rest of the parish, before the monumental Celtic cross in the now-disused graveyard beside the abbey ruins. Then great black leviathans slithered out of the chill, grey sea to devour his broken legs, and gulls came to peck out his eyes, and the village mongrels to lick at his oozing wounds. Unspeakable visions.

If indeed Hell contained an Abyss, and each Man an immortal soul, sure Alister’s own among the latter would be cast into the former, for Eternity.

He swallowed and hurriedly Crossed himself, just in case.

. . . and quickened his steps again, lest he be late at home for the evening Angelus.

************************************************************************************

“Here’s supper.” Devlin managed the cottage doors shut behind him and hefted his creels of black seaweed and freshly-picked mussels onto the trestle-top. “Ought to be sea-rods enough for a brave soup—and to char for yer soap-ash, too.”

“Oh, that’s grand!” said Danni. “I’m obliged.”

The darkness of the strangely closed-up living-space both haunted and stifled Devlin, and he automatically turned to poke the meagre peat-fire. “Sean’ll be along with the head and the potatoes.” For better measure, he lobbed two more sods on to burn. They landed in a poof of sparks and smoke.

Then he saw the dripping clothes tossed over the rafters nearest the hearth, and Danni stringing a line across the room to boot, preparing to pin Mary Rose’s nappies and the fellows’ handkerchieves, and suchlike other articles as were too small to be draped across the collar-beams of the cottage. “What in blazes? What for are ye pegging up our underdrawers over the eating-table?”

“The table can be moved, so it can. I can’t. Remember?”

“I never said ye should ought draw in the washing with ye!”

“Matty was of a different mind.”

“Was he, bedad?” Another glance upward had him gaping in horror. “Faith, and be those me best dungarees?”

“They are.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! take them down! The martins will be after making nests in them, come morning!”

Danni laughed.

“They will, I tell ye! Out of sheer birdly spite!”

She laughed again. And didn’t her laughter hold the sweet peal of the bells to prayer and the smell of the sunshine in it? But Devlin groaned all the same.

“Ach, Danni, take pity. Mercy on a man.”

“And I go against Matty’s orders? Not on yer life.” He made a spring to yank the trousers down from the ceiling, but Danni blocked him, then stood akimbo to protect her project. “Would ye prefer I’d hang yer duds abroad in the yard, then, for the evil pirates to steal away? To fly from the mast as their colours, maybe, as I’m to understand they’ve none other—nae, not so much as a black roger?”

“That be’n’t funny.”

“Sooner the Gentry would come along and hide yer clothes, for a prank, Devlin O’Shiels, than would a house-swallow build a home in yer britches. And there be no smugglers at moor in the cove, neither. So get on with ye.”

“Ye ought not throw about the names of the Good Folke in so flighty a fashion.” Devlin Crossed himself and paced like a trapped fox. “’Tis just coming on duskiss, and they’ll hear ye, maybe.”

“Well,” Danni whispered in mock-conspiratorial tones, “I’ll be certain-sure not to toss the laundry-water out onto their spirits, and them just passing by for a listen-in.”

Devlin tore at his hair. “Saints preserve us,” he muttered.

A fumbling at the front doors distracted him from his certainty of the family’s doom, and he hastened to pull the main door open. In came Sean, awkwardly stumbling with a cis of vegetables and a large, potted jug, his strawlike hair matted with perspiration and his clothes smelling of an entire menagerie—fish, cow, goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens—with a whiff of peat-bog chucked in.

“Ah,” said Devlin with a smile, “’tis our man Sean, here with the milk and the victuals.”

“Baby,” said Sean, grinning.

“That’s lovely, Sean, thank you,” said Danni, rescuing the cruiskeen of milk. “And did ye have much trouble with the badog?”

He shook his head. “Baby.”

“Ah. Well, that’s a comfort.”

“Sean can handle a crotchety cow, can’t ye, Sean?” said Devlin, clapping his brother’s sturdy shoulders.

“Baby.”

“He says ’tis naught to wrestling our Danni when her ire is up.”

Danni waved away the comment with seeming good nature. “And did ye bring the cabbage?” she asked.

“Baby.” Sean dug into his creel for a smallish head, fresh, large-leafed, and green.

“Oh, ’tis perfect!” said Danni.

“As perfect as a—”

“Devlin!” she scolded.

Devlin traded grins with Sean. (“Let it be a lesson to ye,” he murmured to him, “never to speak of donkeys within ear of yer sainted sister.”)

Danni gave a toss of her head and fetched down pots for the soup and the vegetables. “’Tis not the donkeys to which I object.”

“God bless the donkeys, then,” said Devlin, “for they’ve better standing than I!”

Sean laughed. “Baby!”

“Ah, Danni, a finer curragh-mate a lad could never have, than yer man Sean, here.”

“So ye say, every evening.”

“Well, the truth is worth repeating.”

Sean smiled and nodded to Devlin. “Baby.”

“Ye’re heartily welcome.”

“Here, Sean, chop the scallions for me, would ye?” said Danni.

“Baby.”

“I’ll stir them in with a bit of potato, when all have been soft-boiled and mashed, and add butter and some of yer fine, fresh milk, to make a bruitin or a champ for Mary Rose.”

“Baby.”

“Ach, Danni, for pity’s sake, the man’s nigh starved hisself. He’s been sore at work, so he has, since before the break of day, as well ye know, sweating blood for the rest of us—”

“I do be knowing, Devlin, and ’tis sorry I am, but I’ve yet the sea-rods to put to the boil, and some tea to wet, and the baby’ll need to be—”

“Baby.”

“Aye, Sean, baby,” said Danni, “she’ll need to be waked and to have her nappies changed, and I’m barely after hanging up the clothes to dry—”

“Baby?” Sean said, frowning toward the rafters.

“(Ach, don’t ask me, ’twas Matty’s idea),” muttered Danni, “and then ye’ll all be wanting—”

“I’m only saying, Danni, that the lad’s that fagged, he’s nigh falling off his standing (here, Sean, sit ye down at the table)”—he pressed his brother to taking a bench—“and a woman’s work is woman’s work, and—”

“Oh, are ye saying, then, that I can’t handle me own share of the chores?”

“Are you?” Devlin challenged her. “Is that what ye’re saying? For, an’ it is—”

“I can deal in my own kitchen very well, thank you! I do everything for the lot of yez—everything!—day, after day, after sorry day, and—”

“Everything, is it? Then who was’t, I’d be knowing, cut away those sea-rods from the rocks, not an hour gone by, and harvested those mussels ye’ve yet to toss into a pot o’ properly b’iling water (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they’ll be gone black-bad and reeking!)—”

“Don’t curse!”

“Aw, for the love o’ holy—”

“I said don’t, I’ll not stand by and listen to ye talk so, not beneath my roof!”

“Yer roof, is’t now?”

“It is, as much as anybody else’s! Moreso, bar Matty finally takes himself a wife, for the home is woman’s province!”

“Baby . . . .”

“You stay out of it!” Devlin and Danni both shouted at Sean.

By now the two were hard at battle stations—Devlin’s arms folded tight across his chest, Danni’s hands on her hips—her lips pursed and her cheeks afire, his eyes smarting in the peat smoke with the effort to maintain his glare—and her angry face mere inches away from his own. Had she been any other lass, he’d have hauled her into his arms for a firm, sound kiss, and clamped the lid on the whole bloody argument.

“Baby,” Sean quietly, calmly inserted into the breach of war.

A wail arose from the chamber under the loft.

“Ach, Christ, now he’s a prophet!” said Devlin, surrendering with a fling of his arms. He turned to pace.

“Don’t swear, Devlin! Taking the dear Lord’s name in vain—”

Danni marched for the bedroom, apron swaying, and Devlin heard her cooing to the rudely-awakened Mary Rose.

“Ye see,” he called, “ye upset her.”

“I?” She stalked back into the common room, hauling a red-eyed, blubbering Mary Rose on one hip. “I upset her?”

“Ye did.”

“’Twas you began all the unholy din, Master Devlin O’Shiels—the poor child asleep, and you all the while a-screaming like a banshee. Ye ought be ashamed.”

“’Twas you accusing me and Sean, here, of not pulling our share of the family load. Talk of shame! There’s one for Father Donaghy’s Confessional!”

“And there’s yer oaths for the same!”

“Baby,” Sean meekly inserted. He stood and made a half-hearted offer, outstretching his arms, to take the pouting, wee article off Danni’s hands.

Danni defensively turned aside and hugged Mary Rose the closer, shooshing into the toddler’s curly hair and kissing the top of her head.

“Ach, now,” said Devlin, “there’s no call for that. The man tries but to do ye a favour—”

“I suppose ye think I can’t take care of the baby, now, as well!”

“Baby,” Sean remarked.

“Aye, baby! Well, I see to her all day long, and all night, too, so I do! washing and dressing her, cleaning her bottom, and feeding her, all while my hand is plied to yer mending, Devlin, and the cooking of yer meals, and yer—”

“Arrah, spare me the list.”

“The Bible says that a woman shall look to the ways of her household!”

“I never laid any sins of sloth or indolence at yer door, I only thought ye might go easier on poor Sean, is all. Want a thing, ask Sean, he’s yer man.”

“Are ye saying I ill-use him?”

“Baby, baby.” Sean shook his head no, and reached again for Mary Rose, who looked primed to resume her cry.

“Are ye?” Danni repeated her question, her eyes ablaze and soldering holes into Devlin’s own. “And are ye then saying you don’t, so?”

“We all count on Sean, he’s a good lad, but—the kitchen work—”

“You, of all people to talk! The way you lord it over him! Flatter him only so he’ll do yer every bidding!”

Devlin felt his jaw fall. His head reeled in such a way, he couldn’t get up steam enough for a timely retort. “Maybe Matty believes that a lass should be spared the rod,” he said at last, “but you need a good old-fashioned over-the-knee, so ye do.”

Now Danni had stuffed the baby into Sean’s protective hold and was daubing at her own eyes. “Ye know I can’t bear the way ye tease and make fun of him!”

“Tease and—? I don’t make fun of him, I—!”

“Baby,” Sean said—Devlin wasn’t sure to which of them, only it didn’t seem to be to Mary Rose, whose hair Sean stood gently stroking till already, only seconds gone, Mary Rose seemed minded to topple off again to sleep, whilst bouncing softly in his arms. Lord love ’em both.

Devlin sighed. “Look . . . Danni . . . I’m sorry an' ye’ve misunderstood what passes between Sean and me. But we know each other, don’t we Sean? We have our own language, we do, just between the two of us.”

“Baby.”

“There. Ye see?”

“I see if he were anyone but who he is, sweet and innocent and good, ye’d lead him a hellish life, and the both of yez would be at each other’s throats from dawn to dusk. There’s none else could spend so many hours of his livelong day, potted in the selfsame jar as you, Devlin O’Shiels—in the bed, in the boat, in the garden!—and not wind up either mad as a loon or else coming to blows—”

With a sob that cut both her wind and her words, Danni turned on her heel, threw her apron over her face, and tore from the house, not bothering to pull closed the door behind her.

Devlin’s hands went to his hips. “Well, now, that’s just perfect! Perfect as—” Ach, she’s right, I’ll be roasting in Eternal Flame for me foul mouth, so I will. He sighed and sank onto a bench by the trestle. “Arrah, put a bush in the gap, will ye, Sean?”

“Baby.” Sean obligingly—having looked sadly into the yard—shut the frontmost doors, then paced silently around the room with the nodding Mary Rose.

“Thank ye, Sean. Ye’re a good buck.”

Devlin glanced about him at the water just coming to roil in both kettle and cauldron . . . the round potatoes, bobbing, hissing, and steaming in their pot on the hook . . . the creel full of seaweed not yet readied for soup. At Sean’s half-sliced onions and Danni’s shiny chopping-knife, on their neat white kitchen cloth . . . at the mussels, in want of revival by soaking in brine . . . and at Mary Rose’s still-empty bruitin bowl. Not to mention the laundry forlornly dripping into the pitcher of milk.

He rubbed his eyes and, with a sickening sniff, realised that he smelled soiled nappies. “Saints and angels. Now what’re we to do?”

************************************************************************************

By the time Katie Daniel had reached the edge of the howff, with its granite and weathered-wood markers slanting out of rocky soil and poufs of tall sea grass, she had nearly ceased running. She snuffled and hiccupped through the last of her tears and slowed her flight, first to a stumbling gait, then to an aimless sort of amble, and at last to a complete halt. She sank onto the sagging stone steps that had once led into the friary and, with a corner of her apron, swiped under each eye. The heavy muslin grated against her cheek, so she switched to fingertips instead. Then she interlaced her hands, tight, and tilted her face to the now-greying sky.

“Blessed Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . . Saint Brigid . . . help me. What have I said? Sure I don’t know what came over me. Devlin loves Sean with his whole heart. And he’s so good with him. And ne’er did I intend to ask my poor, darling brother—afflicted as he is, too!—to do my work for me! Devlin’s right: Sean does far too much in a day as it is, and never a rest, and he ne’er complains. He only smiles and . . . and goes on, toiling and labouring, as . . . as though he . . . as though he knows no better!” (Here she surrendered to another seizure of tears, unforeseen.) “And it may be he does not, so. Doesn’t ever realise he ought be tired, or grumbling.

“But I love Sean, too, so I do! and . . . and . . . oh, Saint Brigid and Mother Mary, I meant no harm! Did I then truly ask of him, what was only woman’s work—humiliating him, and shirking those duties that, to an unwed daughter, still in the house of her da (God rest him!), should seem ever sacred and sweet?”

She sniffled, and flicked newly-welling droplets from the corners of her eyes, before more had a chance to trickle, salty and bitter, into her blubbering mouth. She blinked up at the sky. Clouds were rolling in fast. A wind whipped and billowed the skirts of her apron and her layered red and blue petticoats, even as she sat, and she was momentarily startled by a length of apron-sash, in her peripheral vision, snaking around her waist to slap at her. The day had waned without her notice, the yellow-white sun now was gone—all was duskiss, just as Devlin had said—and the light was grown poor, hazy and grey. Katie Daniel had no pocket watch, and the bells of the village church could only betimes be heard from the Head; but she figured the hour for half five, at least.

She allowed herself a sigh, remembering she’d be expected at home for the Angelus at six. She supposed she’d be helping herself to large servings of humble pie, along with her soup and her mussels. . . .

Behind her, the surf crashed against the crags at the foot of the crumbled abbey walls. So little left of the place, she thought—only a partial shell of the nave and chancel, and a scrap of one transept. How Katie Daniel wished she could have seen the friary when it stood, new-built, in its original grandeur!

Yet it had a sad, stark beauty to it now, that she was grateful to have witnessed.

Except for the gulls’ occasional shouts, the surge of the rising tide, and the sea breeze—soughing through rushes, moaning through the hollows of the abbey’s wallstones, and horning through cliffcracks as though through a conch—all was silent.

Katie Daniel hung her head. “Do they not know, Mother Mary, any of the family—do they neither see nor understand—how it broke my heart, ten years ago, for Sean to come home to us like that? He was my playmate—mine!—before the others ever paid him notice, and when I had the companionship of few besides. He loved this spot, as well. He was but a wee lad, Mother! How could God let such a terrible thing befall such a good boy? And now—aye, even after all these years—sometimes I be with him, watching him, listening to his poor idiot’s blather, and I feel I just can’t stand it, not another minute! It overwhelms me, that he’ll likely never say another word again, bar . . . .”

She closed her eyes to test whether she could hear, over the roaring swish-swash of the sea and the gloomy wail of the wind, Sean’s rich laughter, as it had sounded when he was but eleven winters old, before the accident. An attack on him, Da thought it might have been . . . unless Sean had stumbled on the slippery rocks, had gotten too close to the cliff’s edge and fallen part-way down, dashing his head on a jagged stone and dazing himself, before he was able (somehow having kept his hold on a granite outcropping) to haul himself back to level ground, and then to stagger to the road, where he was found, passed out. But who would have struck a child? And why? And why so innocent and fun-loving a lad as Sean?

Katie Daniel continued several moments, listening hard for Sean’s boyish voice . . . his final words to her, before his mind had been half ripped away. But all she could hear was, “Baby.” Her eyes, once reopened, were drawn to the uneven rows of burial stones and markers—some ancient, cracked, worn and incaved, only a handful far newer; some tall crosses, some insignificant flatstones, and four simply the wooden backboards of the beds or cradles in which their former owners had passed from this life. She knew of at least three markers in the howff that, like Sean, said nothing other than “baby”—and those tiny memorials had always made her sad—but they could have naught to do with Sean’s accident, or with what had become, inexplicably, the sole expression in his latter-day vocabulary.

“What for does he always say but that one word, Mother Mary? And why can I never recall what his last real words were, to me or to any of us? Is it my punishment—and Sean’s affliction his?—for our irreverence? For the way we loved to dash and dart and hide among the tombstones here, where the bodies of those gone, were laid to blessed rest?”

Earnestly Katie recited three Acts of Contrition, and three repetitions of the Confiteor (“ . . . through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. . . . ”); then she recited three more for the terrible way she had spoken to Devlin—unkindly, unfairly, and in disrespect, both for his age and for his gender. ’Twasn’t meet for a lass to speak so, ever—and her, by grace of God, under the protection of her brother’s roof! Devlin had been right in that, as well: Matty should beat her, in display before all the family.

Saints and angels—mayhap he would!

She gathered her apron to her face again and wept anew—not knowing, herself, whether it were more because Matthew, when he learned of her sins this day, might indeed raise the rod, or whether because Father Donaghy would have to hear of her transgressions, come Confession, or whether because she so deeply deserved the scorn, of family, community, Church, and God.

On top of everything else, she had left the men to see to Mary Rose; and when Matty came in from the stables and fields, tired and hungry, there would be no supper on, as was proper there should be; and—oh, dear!—Alister could easily arrive home this night from his weavers’ rounds!

Katie Daniel rocked to and fro on the broken steps, and sobbed, repeating over and over, sometimes aloud and sometimes in her head, “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee. . . . I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven, and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee. . . . I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. . . . O my God, I am heartily
sorry . . . .”

Rocking . . . murmuring . . . over and over . . . until at last her tears came but one here, another there . . . and then not at all . . . her heart’s beating slowed
. . . and she was quieted. . . .

[Back at the cottage, Matthew and Alister (who indeed returns home, almost on the heels of Katie's departure) worry that their sister has run off alone, especially with the mysterious ship near the cove, but elect to give her an hour or two to herself before panicking. Devlin opts for supper--mainly in liquid measure, and in the form of tall tales and political rallying--at the village pub. Soon afterward . . . . ]

“Easy all—so! Muffled oars, lads, muffled oars!”

Captain MacCreevy’s orders were couched in growlishly furtive tones. Alan, gripping the edge of the smugglers’ skiff in which he’d been commanded, twenty minutes gone, to take a seat, glared into the blue-black dark and the silvery fog, and wondered whether those indistinct haloes of light, to both north and south along the obfuscated coast ahead, were from manned lantern-stations, and how far away—or apart—they stood.

“I still don’t understand why I need be along for this venture,” he said.

“Bi i do thost, doctor!—quiet ye doon. For all the times ye’ve begged us take ye ashore, now when we do ye complain.”

“This is not exactly what I had in mind when I pleaded for that privilege, Captain.”

“Nay. I don’t doubt ye. But ’tis the closest ye’ll get to yer freedom—or to having yer land-legs beneath ye again—for some time to come, so be ye grateful.”

The captain reposed, rather languidly for one who on all other fronts seemed so tense and alert, in the stern of the bobbing skiff. At oars were MacCreevy’s first mate Kyle, his enviably handsome face currently obscured by mist and the moonless night; the coxswain (and acting chaplain) aboard the smugglers’ ship, Declan Delainey; and two pistoleers. The gunner’s mate (Liam O’Kerne), ship’s navigator Jameson, and two other crack shots were along for the “shore leave,” as well. Numbers too great to be overpowered—as usual. And this time, on what diabolic errand, Alan was still not entirely sure. Black business enough that they carried no lit lanterns, lest they be espied from the shore, arriving.

“Will you at least explain,” he asked, “what good I may be to you, an’ the lot of you poking about in a burial ground?”

“A burial ground. Now that’s just what it be. Bein’t it, Kyle?”

“It is, so, Cap’n.”

“At least we’re for hoping it be, eh?”

The captain and Kyle shared a quiet chortle—a ragged laugh, hollow with greed.

Alan—impatient—intook a deep lungful of salt night air, and gave a final try. “And you require the services of a man of medicine, in a place where all present are long since past help, whether God’s or man’s, because—?”

“Because ye’re a gent of particular learning, you are. An Edinburgh man. Bein’t that so?”

“I studied in Scotland.”

Alan could scarce read the captain’s gestures, for current lack of light—but MacCreevy appeared to shrug both his shoulders and his face, and to throw out his hands, palms up, as if resting his argument with a There, ye see? “Ye’re a keen reader, and ye’ve an eye for detail. Ye might be noting a sign or a clue that the rest of us would aye miss.

“So,” the captain continued, following a silence filled only by the stream of water behind the oarsmen’s strokes, “there’s yer ‘because.’ And now ye’ll be holding yer wheesht, me brave fellow, else it’ll fall out, wunst we’ve gained the rocks and have done with our scour of the gravesites, we’ll be leaving behind us a new-dug hole, with no stone to mark it, at all at all. And you, Alan Brannan, Ship’s Surgeon That Was, will be in it.”

Alan pursed his lips as tight-shut as if he’d yanked their drawstring. He ground his jaw and chewed the insides of his mouth. One of these days, Quinn MacCreevy . . . .

He shivered and ducked his head against the force of the westerly wind, while physically holding his stomach in vain attempts to keep it from cresting the swells along with the ship’s boat. Although he had been naturally familiar with the sea and her ways from his youth, it had taken him months to accustom himself to the surge of the smugglers’ sloop, in waters of varying depths and strengths; finding himself once again in small craft, he felt lost and at odds, as though all his hard-gained nautical experience had been leeched away, and he must suddenly begin all over. Next, he supposed, I’ll be called upon to rediscover my ‘land legs,’ just as the Captain predicted. I’ll be staggering through their all-important howff like a drunkard, entirely useless to every man jack of these ruffians—which will only prove my point, that ’twould have been a better job, had I been disincluded from this misadventure.

Of course, my worthlessness on the mission could easily cost me my life. . . .

Land. Solid ground. And not just any ground, but the soil of my native home. Saints above, how long has it been?

“Wits about ye, lads,” the captain whispered hoarsely, raising his voice only enough that he could be distinguished over the creak of oars and the swash of waves. “Eyes and ears, sharp! ’Tis andana, a fool’s business, skirting the coasts of Eire by dark without a lamp—perhaps most risky of all, on these northern shores. One breaker to dash us against the rocks and we’re as good as dead. And we can’t be leaving the boat in the waters, neither. She’ll have to be hauled up the cliffside.”

“Or else,” Kyle suggested, “one man of us left behind to ply the oars and keep her off the crags. But there be better spots for putting to ground, around the Head from here, to either east or west, Captain. There we can safer beach the boat. ’Twill mean a wee bit of a toddle from the sea to the abbey yard, so it will, but we’ll be spared a climb better made in daylight.”

“Heh! best yet, made not at all, me boy-o. I recall me those rocks, along the drop from the ruins—both sharp and slippery at wunst, and that under prime conditions. Treacherous. An’ ye remember a friendlier path, ’tis that route we’d be taking.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Put her ashore where ye will, then, Mate. Consider yerself, for the moment, both our pilot and our navvy. And none o’ yer lip, bejabers!” (this to the real navigator, in growling tones, and with a warning wag of the captain’s heavily beringed first finger). “Till the boat’s upended, high and dry, ’tis the Mate’s command.”

“Thank ye, Cap’n,” said Kyle. “All right, lads, pull! Make for the southeast, nearer the cottage lights.”

“You were once from these parts, Kyle,” said Alan. “Who dwells in that home?”

Water lapped. Oarlocks creaked, mournful and wary.

“Sure I don’t know,” Kyle finally said. “When last I clapped eyes on these shores, ye see, it was—”

“Blessedly deserted,” said MacCreevy. “The last folke to live in it, abandoned it as an accursed place, a bog-hole of sorrow and death.”

“Is that so, Kyle?” Alan asked.

“It is. There’s no saying who’s squatting there now.”

“No good’ll come to ’em, that’s sure,” the captain intoned.

“You don’t mean to impose upon them? Innocent folke, no doubt gathered about their peat fire for a glaise and a dram after supper, and their prayers before bed? Captain?”

“’Tis not in my mind so to do . . . an’ I find no call. But who can say what secrets yer ‘innocents’ may have stumbled across—or what more, bedad, that mightn’t be rightfully theirs?”

A chill flooded Alan’s spine from his nape to his backside. But Kyle was already murmuring the word for the oarsmen to move the skiff close to the landing-ground:

“Give way, lads! Give way!”

************************************************************************************

Katie Daniel’s head jerked up. She sprang to awareness. She gasped. O Heaven help me what now have I done, ’tis grown dark! Her back and arms and legs had stiffened to the abbey steps, her hair and clothing gone sticky with the salt sea air. I’ve missed family prayer! Her teeth chattered, and her feet stung, numb with cold. Oh, how many hours had passed?

With a shiver not born of the night wind, Katie Daniel recalled the stories she’d so often heard, that the abbey yard was haunted. All graveyards were, of course—but the cemetery by the cliffs was visited by a spectral horse and rider. The Ghost Mount of Innisfail, ’twas told, was a wicked black beast, with cloven hooves like the Devil’s own and eyes like the coals of Hell. Legend had it that one night, just before Katie Daniel’s family came to the Head, a local lad had come to the ruins a-horseback and had caught his own da, in the act of robbing a grave. The man, not recognising his son soon enough, had fired a pistol. The lad’s beast shied, reared, and threw him—and trampled him to death. When the father saw the dread tragedy he had caused, he reloaded his pistol twice more: boring one shot through the brutish animal’s head, betwixt its eyes, and saving the last for himself, and an unholy end. Afterward, neither the lad’s nor the horse’s spirits could rest, and both returned to the cliffside every night at midnight, to trample sinners and carry them to the Abyss!—sinners such as the grave-robbing father. Sinners that no doubt included wayward lasses. . . .

Then Katie saw something. Out of the corner of her right eye. Movement.

Someone was standing behind one of the distant gravemarkers, watching her.

She stared. It was a wee lad, a boy she’d never seen before, much the age Sean used to be when she and he had played here, as bairns. He smiled.

Katie, a bit uncertainly (and still chittering), smiled back.

She knew she should feel affrighted—no one else ever came to the deserted howff or the abbey ruins anymore, and she didn’t recognise the lad—but she didn’t feel frightened at all. A wee mite startled, perhaps, just at first—but not afeard.

She also knew she should not be able so clearly to see the lad, so late into the night that the twilight had passed, and without a lamp. And yet she could. He had cropped, dark hair—a deal like Finnegan’s—and equally dark, smiling eyes. He was short and thin, and wearing a pale, loose-sleeved leine and a deeper-hued jerkin—no jacket or cloak, against the nighttime chill, poor boy.
He smiled more broadly and beckoned her to join him.

Me? she signed, looking about—arrah, as though there might be yet a third soul, another daft wanderer, in the burial yard of Innisfail, at this hour or any other!

The lad nodded and beckoned again.

Then his expression transmuted to one of surprise and alarm. His head whipped to the right, as if he’d heard a noise. He stared agape toward the bushes edging the forest on the south side of the howff. Katie’s gaze automatically followed his. She saw nothing, but she believed she heard sounds as well—a rustling. Probably only a hare, or some small nocturnal animal, but—

From somewhere deeper into the graveyard, in the direction of the solitary path that led to the ruins, a horse nickered. Katie scrambled to her feet, her heart instantly booming, blood draining in a rush of terror from her head to her nigh-frozen feet.

Sure ’twas the Ghost Mount of Innisfail!

And that would mark the current time as midnight, the witching hour, the ken of the Little People—the only hour in which the spectral horse was ever seen or heard.

Katie picked up her skirts and dashed toward the boy, to take his arm and run, whisk the both of them safely away from the haunted howff, before all sorts of devilment befell them. The wee lad’s eye still fixed on the forest, he hurriedly ducked behind a stone. Katie, tripping and stumbling on loose rock and colliding painfully with a marker or two, in the dark, darted to where she had seen the lad fall to cover and made a desperate snatch behind his morbid fortress to collar him, yank him to standing, and flee.

She pulled up short, heart knocking wildly against her ribs. He was gone.

“Boy?” she whispered, head flicking in every direction. “Boy!”

No answer.

She dared, very quietly, try the Irish: “A bhuachaillin? A gharsun?”

Now there sounded a horse’s hoofs on rocky turf. Clopping. Slowly. Closer.

Crossing herself in haste, Katie Daniel dropped to a crouch beside the marker behind which she’d thought the lad hidden. She could see naught else, but even in the moonless and overcast night, the words and figures carven into the granite beside her cheek stood out, eerily readable:

Kevin Peter Patrick Farrell
1818 – 1828
Beloved Son & Brother

Kevin Farrell! Chills drenched Katie’s body ice-afraid. But . . . !

He was the wee lad said to have been thrown and killed, right here in this very yard.

Dead Kevin Farrell rode the Ghost Mount of Innisfail Head!

From no more than a rod away, a horse unmistakeably snorted.

Katie Daniel screamed. . . .

[TO BE CONTINUED.........]

The author heartily apologises for any mistakes in historical or other research--or in grammar, typing, spelling, or usage--that may wind up archived with this excerpt forever. She'll get to researching and editing when we ALL should--AFTER November! :-)