The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy (42 page)

“SIR, ARE YEH AL' RIGHT?”

Grégoire was not.The walk from Dublin to Drogheda had worn him out. Usually, walking thirty miles over two days would have been no trouble for him, but perhaps he had not recovered as well from the previous summer as he had presumed. He was still standing only because of his staff. “Yes.” His voice said otherwise, and he looked sideways at the priest who had come up from behind him. “Just let me—” Without question, the priest came and helped him to the pew before the shrine. He cried out as his back hit the hard wood. “I will be fine. Thank you.”

Now that he was sitting, he was sure he would be all right. He still could see the gorgeous shrine before him, with the afternoon sun just coming through the stained glass, and all the candles lit around the relic. Behind the glass was the head of Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic protestor who had been martyred by English authorities in 1681. There was talk about making him a saint, but nothing could be done without England's consent, and England would hardly consent. Or, that was what the man at the entrance told him in a thick brogue.

Grégoire crossed himself. He had missed Mass, as it was already late afternoon when he arrived, but he heard one in Dublin the day before and to his great delight. The last Catholic Mass he had heard was in July of the previous year.

“Yeh al' right?”

This time, it came from the man next to him, who had just sat down. This man was no priest, just an ordinary fellow in shabby clothing who had knelt before the altar first. “I'm a little tired.”

“Yeh nade a draink?”

He nodded.

The man passed him a flask, which apparently contained very watery whiskey, which quenched his thirst somewhat, even though it lit a fire in his throat. “Thank you,” he whispered, passing it back to him.

“Wha yeh from, fella? Yisser accent is fierce quare.”

“Lots of places,” he said. “France. England. Bavaria. Spain. Pick what you like.”

“Been travelin' donkey's years, den?”

He nodded again. “Yes.” He felt better now, sitting, and with the whiskey dulling the pain. “Why do you come to this shrine?”

“I suppose a noggin in de box is bloody disturb in', isn't it? But we 'av ter git our relics wha we can git dem.”

To think that he had once taken relics for granted. The Irish and English relics had all been destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the bones of saints finally buried, often in unmarked graves. “Yes, I suppose that's true.” He smiled.

“Hugh McGowan.”

He shook the offered hand. “Grégoire Bellamont.”

“Gray-wha?”

He laughed. “It's French for Gregory.”

“Yeh nade a place ter stay, Gregory?”

“Just for a few days, yes.” Whatever the rate was, he could pay it. That was not his concern. His concern was that he could barely stand. Hugh took his arm and put it over his broad shoulders.

Hugh lived nearby. And the tiny apartment on the outskirts of town was not far from St. Peter's Church. “We're startin' dat hostin' business,” Hugh announced to the woman in an apron standing
in the doorway. “All we got is a cot an' food. 'S that all right, Mr. Graywar Bella—Bellamen—“

“Just Gregory,” he said. “And yes, anything is fine.”

He was introduced to Mrs. McGowan, first name Nora, before he asked to rest before supper. The night before, he had slept on the side of a road with his bag as a pillow, so the fur-covered cot was a vast improvement.

When he woke, it was dark outside. A single wax candle was burning on the wooden table. There was no separation between the kitchen and the sitting room where he was housed. A room in the back was presumably the couple's bedroom. Mrs. McGowan sat alone at the table, and rose when he joined her. “Al' we 'av is sum stew. I wasn' 'spectin' visitors.”

“Anything you have would be lovely, Mrs. McGowan.”

He couldn't tell what was in the stew, aside from potatoes, but he didn't care. He was used to either a monastic diet or the fancy ten-course Pemberley dinners, so it was a nice medium.After grace, he ate his portion, and then a second. “Thank you.”

“Yer English is very—English.”

“I learned it from my family,” he said, “on my father's side. Before that, it was more like yours.”

“An' yer ma?”

“French.”

“So what're you doin' in back-end Ireland, Mr. Gregory?”

He smiled. “I don't know, properly. There are some places I wanted to visit. Pilgrim sites I read about.”

“Answers ter yer spiritual questions. Most people go elsewhere for dat.”

“I've been to Rome,” he said. “And I don't have the strength to go to Jerusalem. So here I am.”

“An' yeh git a noggin in a box.”

“I suppose it's better than an empty box.”

They shared a laugh and chatted about the local sites before he said, “Excuse me. It's time for prayer.”

“It's noight, Mr. Gregory.”

“I know—Compline,” he said, and excused himself to the other side of the room. Mrs. McGowan disappeared to give him privacy as he sat in prayer. When he was finished, he rose to drink some local beer.

“'S a monastic thing,” she said. “Innit?”

“Yes. I used to be a monk.” When she showed no disgust at the idea that he had left his religious order, he continued, “Some habits are hard to break. Nor do I wish to break them. Good night, Mrs. McGowan.”

“Gran' noight to yeh, Gregory. Sleep well.”

Her prediction was accurate. He slept like the dead.

The next morning, Hugh offered to take Grégoire to Mellifont Abbey, Ireland's oldest Cistercian monastery. The ruins were open for tourists, but Hugh's guidance was necessary to find the place. Beyond that, Hugh could only guess at what the various ruins were, but Grégoire was able to recognize most of the decaying structures. The gray stone of the columns from one row of cloister arches remained intact, standing alone beside stone floor and grass.The only fully standing building was the chapter house, though the windows were long gone, and there were birds roosting in the inside grooves of the arches.

“What were yeh?” Hugh said. “I mean, before?”

“Benedictine. But I was a novice as a Cistercian in France. That monastery dissolved.Then the one in Bavaria did.There are some left in Austria, but I went to Spain instead,” he said, looking down at the floor of the chapter house and noticing the indentations where the heavy wooden pews had sat. What had happened to the wood after the Dissolution? Had it been chopped for firewood, or was it sitting in the house of some aristocrat, himself unaware of its holy origins?

They made it back to Drogheda for High Mass at St. Peter's Church. Hugh, who was out of work until the summer harvest,
took Grégoire back to his house.There, Grégoire wrote a brief letter to Darcy, saying he had arrived safely in Drogheda. He did not anticipate a long stay.

The next day, they traveled to Monasterboice, an abbey of a different sort, dating back to before the Norman invasion and containing one of the many unexplained round towers and beautiful Celtic crosses of stone. Carved in relief were the stories of Eve tempting Adam, Cain slaying Abel, Moses striking the rock, the life of Christ—almost the entire Bible on the great Muiredach cross. It was Grégoire who was tour guide now, easily able to decipher the pictography.

“What do ya t'ink dey mean?” Hugh asked, pointing to the round tower.

“I don't know,” he said. “I have a relative who traveled to India, where there were thousands of towers like that. I forget what he said they were called, but the Mohammedans pray five times a day, so five times a day, a man with a loud voice would climb to the top and call them all to prayer.”

“Loike Saracens?”

“Yes. This was in India. Here, we have bells to tell us the time, but the principle is the same, I suppose.”

“Kinda a heretical ting to be sayin'?”

“If I were a monk, I suppose so,” he said with a smile. “Alas, I am not.”

After they returned from High Mass, Grégoire decided that he would leave the day after next. He had to begin his path west to see the ancient burial sites of Brú na Bóinne. He spent most of the afternoon resting, and enjoyed a final hearty meal with the McGowans.

When he rose at half past three in the morning for Vigils, Nora McGowan was up. She had gone to bed earlier, but she was sitting up now at her kitchen table with a cup of mead.

“Mrs. McGowan,” he said and bowed. Not quite sure what the decorous thing to do was, he sat down across from her and she filled a cup for him from the pot. It was not hot or cold, and had the flavor of honey, but otherwise was fairly tasteless.

They sat in silence for a while. She seemed hypnotized by the single burning flame of the candle that lit the room. He sipped his mead.

“Why did yeh leave de church, Mr. Gregory?” It was not an accusation; it was a question.

“A mixture of the politics of Rome and my own zealous devotion nearly killed me. I'm not damned, just forbidden to take holy orders.” He added, “I didn't know how to find the balance between physical devotion and preserving my health, and no one would teach me. Instead, they cast me out.” When she seemed satisfied with the answer, he asked, “Why does your husband go to pray at the shrine every day?”

She did not look at him. She had not been looking at him for the entire conversation. “Our only current bun—de wan sprog dat lived—didn't cum 'um from de war.”

“He died at Waterloo?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. 'E's not on de rolls. 'E just went missing. Could be alive, fer all we know.”

“Have you tried going to London? They have more official registries there.” She turned to him. “Do ya t'ink we can afford ta go ta London?”

“I'm sorry.” He put down his mug. “What was his regiment? Do you know? Do you have all of his information?”

“Aye, why?”

“Because I have relatives in London. I could write them and ask them to look.” It had been three years—he was most likely dead, buried in a mass grave in France. But unless his whole regiment were in the grave with him, someone would know. They knew that—they had to know that. “It's no trouble,” he said to her start of a response. “Just give me all his information, and I'll write it down and send it to my brother.”

“We wouldn't want ta be beholden—”

“It's no trouble, I assure you,” he said, and could not be persuaded otherwise. He did not excite her hopes of finding their son alive, or at all, but if there was information to be found, it would be in London.

When they saw him off the next morning with a few days' worth of food packed in his satchel, it was with tears, not because of how well he had paid his bill, but because of his promise and the letter he had sent out by courier that very morning.

“Jaysus bless yeh, Mr. Gregory,” said Nora.

“I hope that he sees fit to do so,” he said.