The Celtic Riddle Page 11

  Jennifer’s eyes widened. “But that could be almost anything. Illuminated manuscripts, gold, iron, bronze, anything.”

  “It could,” Breeta replied.

  “Surely you could narrow it down for us a little more than that,” Michael sighed. “What about all those old maps and weapons of your Da’s? I know he said he was giving them to Trinity College, but could it be another of those, an especially old or important one? Are those things worth anything?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, “they are.”

  “It could be,” Breeta said. “But my father liked lots of things. He wasn’t an educated man, you know. He said that all the education in the world wouldn’t have made him a success, just hard work. He left school early to work with his father in the family business, before he ran away to sea. Despite what he said, though, I think he felt the lack of education keenly. That’s why he wanted you to go back to school, Michael.” Michael nodded.

  “Da was exceptionally well read, though, self-taught. He’d been brought up on all the old stories, like the one Denny just told us, and he taught them to us, my sisters and me. In some ways, he believed the old stories. Oh, I don’t mean he believed in magic or the Little People or anything, at least no more so than most Irish-men, but unlike some, he believed the ancient stories were, in fact, real stories about real events and real people, and when he wasn’t at work, he was out trying to prove it. He found and read old manuscripts, studied old maps, located all the sites of the great epic battles. You can find them, too, if you look.”

  “I gather this isn’t a point of view shared by everyone,” Alex said.

  “You’re quite right about that,” she laughed. “I remember studying the Leabhar Gabala, the Book of Invasions, at school. Amairgen’s poem comes from that, incidentally, and the story Denny just told us. It’s the story of the arrival of various people on Ireland’s shores, starting with someone called Cessair. There were Partholanians, Nemedians, then the Tuatha dé, and eventually the so-called Sons of Mil, the Celts. I’d learned it at my father’s knee, as they say.” Her voice caught a little as she spoke.

  “Anyway, the school had got in a professor of archaeology to talk to us about it. He said that the Mythological Cycle, the part of the Leabhar Gabala containing these very old stories, was just a collection of old fables, stories that were supposed to tell us something about the human condition, but not in any way true, and that they had been written down by monks in the twelfth century, not by poets like Amairgen at all. He even said there was no real archaeological evidence for all the invasions that the book tells us about. I was terribly disappointed, and I raced home to talk to Da about it. I can’t have been more than ten years old at the time, and I still believed all the stories he’d told me to be absolutely true, like children believing in Santa Claus, I suppose.

  “Da was absolutely furious. He said that for all his schooling, the professor was nothing but a bloody ijit. He said it was true that the stories had been written down by monks all right, but that these monks had worked hard to preserve the old stories and that the stories themselves were much, much older than that. He said maybe the old stories had been exaggerated a little over time, and given a lot of magic, but that once you stripped away these elements in the stories, you would have a record of real history remembered and passed down through the centuries as myths.”

  “Your father was what is sometimes called an annalist, I believe,” Alex said. “Quite an honorable tradition in the study of ancient times, trying to prove an historical basis for the old myths.”

  “Yes, but my Da became obsessed with the idea of proving that professor wrong, partly I think, because of his lack of schooling—he was a little sensitive on that score—but also because he really did think the man was an ijit. My father believed there were successive invasions of various peoples, many of them probably different groups of Celts. And he set out to prove it, to track the evidence down.”

  “So how was he planning to do this?” I asked.

  “Well for starters, he set out to find and identify the four great gifts of the gods,” she said.

  Michael just looked at her. “He was daft,” he said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But what about Lia Fail? It exists, doesn’t it?”

  “You are going to have to enlighten us a little,” Alex said. “Who or what is Lia Fail? And what are the four great gifts of the gods?”

  “The stories of the Tuatha dé Danaan tell of four fabulous objects that were supposed to have been brought from the four cities from which the Tuatha dé came,” she replied. “From Falias, one of those cities, is supposed to have come the Stone of Fal. The Stone of Fal was at Tara, seat of the High Kings of Ireland. If someone was to be that High King, he had to touch the stone. If it roared, then he was the rightful king. There really is a stone called Lia Fail at Tara to this day—I mean you can go there and see it. But most people feel that it is not the original. The real one was sent over to Scotland for use in a kingship ceremony there, and was eventually taken to Scone.

  “The Stone of Scone!” Alex exclaimed. “That’s the so-called Coronation Stone, isn’t it, the one just recently returned from Westminster to Scotland? The one that was in the base of the British throne?”

  “Exactly,” she replied. “It was said that whoever had the Stone would rule Scotland, or Scotic, actually, to use an earlier term, by which we mean the Scots/Irish Milesians. That’s why it’s so important that it be returned to Scotland. The Scots never did take too well to the idea that the King or Queen of England was sitting on it.

  “Now there are a lot of tales about that stone. Some say that the Stone in Westminster is not the real Stone of Scone, or Lia Fail, if we go back to its origins, just a plain old stone, and that the real one is hidden somewhere in Scotland. Some say it never left Ireland. What Da would say is that there was a real stone that played an important part in the choice of the High King of Ireland. He wouldn’t go so far as to say it roared when touched by the chariot wheel of the true king, but he did believe there was an important stone.

  “And he’d say the same thing about the other gifts, one of which was a magic cauldron belonging to the Dagda, the father god, that came from the magic city of Murias. The Dagda’s cauldron was supposedly never empty, no matter how many people came to eat. Now there is no question that there were Celtic cauldrons with ritual importance. There is one called the Gundestrup Cauldron, for example, a silver and gilt cauldron from Gundestrup in Denmark, which is thought to date to the first or second centuries B.C. It shows a homed or antlered deity of some kind, possibly Cernunnos. So Da would say that there really was a cult or ritual cauldron to be found in Ireland that could have been believed in those days to be the Dagda’s cauldron, without its magical properties, of course.”

  “That’s why he collected those iron cauldrons!” I said. “And the other two magical objects?”

  “The Spear of Lugh, who was the Tuatha dé god referred to often as Lugh the Shining, or Lugh of the Long Arm. His spear was supposed to guarantee victory. Then there was the Sword of Nuada Argat-lam, Nuada Silver Hand in Denny’s story, from which no one ever escaped.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Your father’s sword and spear collection!”

  “Yes,” she said. “He was looking for the cult or ritual spear and sword.”

  “Did he think he had found them?” Alex asked.

  “No, he didn’t. But he kept looking. It was his passion. There was one sword, the one on the desk, that he thought might be the one, the metal equivalent of the Stone of Scone. It dates to Iron Age Ireland, so who’s to say?”

  “So are you saying that the treasure might be one of these things? The cauldron or another sword or spear?”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “Or something else, of course. He studied the myths for clues all the time, read all the ancient documents he could lay his hands on. He was a little obsessed about it, there’s no question, and sometimes as his daughter, I felt as if he was more interested in
his search than in me. I found it intensely irritating after a while, to be called Banba, instead of Breeta.”

  “Who or what is Banba?” Jennifer asked.

  “One-third of the triple goddess of the Tuatha dé Danaan: Banba, Fotla, and Eriu. All three were names of Ireland at some point in time, but Eriu, through an agreement with Amairgen, actually, won out in the end. Erin is a form of Eriu.”

  “So you and your sisters were named—nicknames, of sorts—after three goddesses.”

  She nodded. “It was nice at first, to be named for a goddess, but after a while, I thought it was merely a mark of my father’s obsession with these mythological creatures. And who wants to be named after a goddess associated with the pig, which Banba was, particularly when you’re the size I am? Anyway,” she said, looking at her watch. “That’s enough ancient Irish history for one night. I have to catch the bus back into Killarney.”

  “Why don’t you stay at Second Chance?” Michael said.

  “No thanks,” she replied. “I’m not comfortable there anymore.”

  Michael had a “my place?” look in his eyes, which Breeta was ignoring.

  “Speaking of Second Chance,” I said, “if I were you, I’d get the tortoise, Vigs, out of there.”

  Breeta looked alarmed.

  “I don’t think your mother likes him,” I said. Now that was an understatement. I hoped we weren’t already too late, and the family wasn’t slurping turtle soup even as we spoke.

  “Michael!” she exclaimed. “Will you get Vigs out of there for me?”

  “I will,” he replied. “I’ll take him to my place.”

  “Tonight!” she said.

  “Yes, all right. Tonight,” he agreed.

  Alex and I walked them to the door. “Can I give you a lift?” I said.

  “No, but thanks,” she said.

  “I’ll walk you to the bus, Bree,” Michael said.

  She smiled at him. “Only if you promise me you’ll go to the house and get Vigs afterwards,” she said.

  “I promise,” he said. “I’ll go tonight for certain. I’ll creep in, so the family won’t hear me, and spirit old Vigs away. I’m going to start looking for the treasure tomorrow,” he called back. “First thing. It’s my day off. Will you help us find it?”

  I looked at Alex. He nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Do you promise?” Michael asked.

  “Yes, I promise,” I said.

  He grinned. “Good. Let’s get an early start. I’ll be here at eight tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Alex and I said in unison.

  The street was slick with rain, but only a light drizzle was now falling. The air felt fresh and good after the heat and smoke of the pub. Several people were out on the street, their collars turned up against the damp. A few yards away, Fionuala was getting into her car, and idly, I wondered where her husband, soon to be ex, was. It was definitely, I decided, none of my business.

  Alex and I stood watching Breeta and Michael until they were almost out of sight, he walking his bicycle with one hand, holding Breeta’s hand with the other. It was the happiest I’d seen her, and him for that matter, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that Amairgen’s clues led just about nowhere, that the second clue, retrieved with such drama, contained the same old chicken scratches the first one did. It could wait until tomorrow.

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow,” he called back again, just as they were about to round a corner. “I’ll be at your door at eight.”

  As I watched them disappear around the corner, I had this flash of insight the way you sometimes do. It was hard to tell with that layer of insulation about her, but I was pretty sure I knew who the all of us that Michael had room for were. It was Michael, Breeta and her as yet unborn child. Breeta Byrne was pregnant.

  Chapter Seven

  THE BEAUTY OF A PLANT

  WE found Michael in his garden, among the roses, out of sight of the house. Eight o’clock had come and gone; then eight-thirty; then nine. He was lying facedown, and from the look of the tracks in the mud behind him, he had dragged himself a hundred agonizing yards before he died. There was not a mark on him that I could see. But if John Herlihy had not fallen forty feet onto a pile of rocks, perhaps there’d have been no mark on him either.

  Better trained eyes than mine found the tiny tear in the fabric of his jeans, the puncture in the skin behind his knee. “Poison,” they said. “If only someone had found him in time.”

  In his rigid hand, Michael held a torn piece of paper so tightly it was as if he’d wrestled the Devil himself for it. EONB, it said, and Second Cha. The ragged clue was marked as the seventh, ‘The beauty o.’ ”

  I remember two things about that horrible moment when we found him. One is the light. The sun, preternaturally bright, seemed to have sucked the color from all the flowers, the blood from the roses, the heart from the purple hydrangeas, the living breath from the ivy. The other was the sound: Breeta, beside me, making small animal noises, like a kitten being drowned or a child’s pet strangled.

  And then, some days later, I found myself in a churchyard. It was raining, a bone-chilling drizzle, as it damn well should have been. Michael’s coffin, adorned with the flowers he had coaxed into life—a bunch of white roses, a spray or two of tiny orchids—was lowered into the ground. He was buried less than a hundred yards from where he was born. The priest spoke of dust and ashes. I could taste both of them in my mouth.

  I looked about the churchyard. There were many among the mourners I did not recognize, townspeople, Michael’s friends. Breeta was there, standing apart from the others. Her eyes were strangely opaque, and she twisted her handkerchief over and over. Sometimes her lips moved, but no sound came out. At some point, I edged over to try to comfort her, but she turned away.

  My friends were there: Alex with a look of inconsolable sadness; Jennifer, ashen, realizing for the first time, perhaps, that people her age can die. Looking at her, I remembered the feeling of suffocating panic as I lost her for a moment in the cold sea. I looked at Rob who, as a policeman should know sudden death, but whose face barely hid his pain. I came to know as I stood there that it is not possible to be inured to the death of anyone, let alone someone so young, so fine, as Michael. I knew Rob was thinking of Jennifer too. Maeve Minogue was there, in uniform, her face solemn and sad, but also watchful.

  Padraig Gilhooly stood way to the back, dark, enigmatic, and solitary. From time to time, he looked over toward Breeta, but made no move in her direction. Malachy, Kevin, and Denny clung to each other as if together they could outwit death.

  On the other side of the churchyard was the rest of the Byrne family, all in black, protected from the rain by large black umbrellas that reminded me of black sails on death ships. Deirdre of the Sorrows stood with them, but alone. She looked as if her heart would break. I saw Margaret, who reminded me of nothing so much as a large black crow; Eithne, more tremulous than ever; Fionuala, a little startled somehow. Conail O’Connor was not among them nor anywhere to be seen. Sean McHugh was, though, looking bored, as if there from a sense of noblesse oblige alone, the lord of the manor at the funeral of his vassal.

  As I looked across at him, I had a stirring of memory of that fateful morning, which was coming back to me slowly and in flashes, under the careful prodding of Rob and Garda Minogue: Sean McHugh, who appeared at the sound of our cries, tapping Michael’s body with his foot. In my head, I knew he was trying to see if he could wake him. In my heart, I saw it as the most callous of gestures, one that ripped open McHugh’s soul for all to see, a shrivelled and blackened shell.

  I looked at the Byrne family across the great gulf that was Michael’s grave and coffin, and I realized, that with the exception of Deirdre, I hated them. He’d asked what there was to lose, looking for the treasure, and now the answer was clear. I knew in that instant that if I could bring every single one of them down, I would. I came to terms with the fact that I was very, very angry. I would
avenge him if I could. But even more than that, I had a suffocating sense of a creeping evil that threatened everyone I held most dear: Alex, who as one of the recipients of Byrne’s largesse, was surely a potential victim; Jennifer, who might have drowned that day on the water, a careless casualty in a vicious game.

  Then I remembered I had made a promise to Michael Davis. I told him I would help him find the treasure. I felt I would do anything to fulfill that promise, not just because I had made it, but because to find the treasure seemed the only way to put an end to the horror. But even as I thought this, I knew I had no idea where or how to start. All I had was a chant, an ancient spell, perhaps, recited by a Celt who might or might not have existed, and two clues the poem had led us to, clues that told me nothing, just scribbling, a cruel joke perhaps, of a bitter, dying man.

  The priest was talking about God, and I concentrated on that, and on the ancient Celtic deities, the Dagda, Lugh the Shining, the triple goddess, Banba, Fotla, and Eriu. And I thought whoever or whatever is out there, I could use a little help.

  Then the wind whipped the sea into whitecaps, and the rain swept in undulating sheets across the land, like a lace curtain in the breeze, and I had a horrible feeling that in looking for divine assistance I had blasphemed, and the gods were warning me with this rain The service over, people headed for cover, some to the church, others to their cars to steal away. Denny left with some people I took to be his family. Rob walked Maeve to her car.

  Alex, Malachy and Kevin, Jennifer and I ducked under some trees to wait it out, hoods pulled over our heads, shoulders hunched against the damp. It was inexpressibly dreary.

  “Very bad day,” I said to Kevin. It was all I could manage to say.

  “The worst,” he sadly agreed.

  Then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. The sun came out, and with it, not one, but two rainbows arched across the sky. It was breathtakingly beautiful, almost painfully so, the world’s colors back again, huge drops of rain on the large leaves of a plant nearby. I thought of Amairgen’s ray of sun and the beauty of a plant. I looked out across the little cemetery, the headstones worn until the names on them could barely be deciphered, the carved figures fading with time, now just a little clearer because of the rain. At one comer of the graveyard, just a few feet away, stood a single stone, a miniature and rough obelisk, about three or four feet high. Carved on one face at the top of it, I could see a Celtic cross. Below that a series of cuts, some straight, some angled, had been slashed into the stone along one edge. I turned away, but then looked back again. I knew my prayer had been answered. I saw that help had come. Alex followed my glance across the graveyard. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed.