The Hounds of the Morrigan (4 page)

Whenever the Sergeant and the Manager met after that day, hostility lay like a force-field between them. This was very sad as they both loved growing roses more than anything else in the whole world and they could have been friends for many long and happy years.

The two women were gleefully conscious of all this, even though they were miles and miles away in Shancreg.

The end of a perfect day, they said to each other and shrieked with laughter until the tears came hot and glittery to their merciless eyes.

Auntie Bina was watching for him and waved when she saw Pidge turn in at the boreen from the main road.

‘Isn’t it strangely dark!’ she cried out to him in her high, careful voice, ‘I’m thinking there might be a storm tonight!’

Pidge knew instantly that she had been worrying about him; there was something extra about the tone of her voice that told him so. He felt a sudden rush of love for her and, then and there, he resolved not to tell her everything about the journey home—just the bit about the roadworks, because nothing extraordinary had really happened then.

Now that he was safe, he wanted to reach out and grasp hold of everything that was familiar and trusted. Instead, he quietly began to take Auntie Bina’s shopping out of the saddle-bag.

‘Where’s Brigit?’ he asked.

‘Is it me you’re asking?’ said Auntie Bina. ‘You know Brigit; she could be anywhere.’

‘Maybe we should call her in? In case it storms?’

He tried to make his voice sound casual and ordinary. It bothered him to think that Brigit was happily wandering around on her own. She was so daring and innocent. She could easily get sniggled, being only five years old and five years daft.

‘Brigit!’ he shouted loudly.

‘What?’ she said, climbing out of an old unused water-butt, using blocks of wood for steps. ‘What are you shouting for?’

‘I thought you were lost,’ Pidge said foolishly.

‘Me
lost? I never get lost. I’ve just this minute been down to the inside of the world and I met a mad earwig and we went to a Battle and then I came back and I never got lost, not even for a second.’

‘Did you bring anything back from your journey?’ Auntie Bina asked.

‘Only the mad earwig. I brought him up to give him some cough mixture to make him better, but you can have him if you want him.’

Auntie Bina thought it over.

‘I don’t think I need one,’ she said. ‘Better leave him free.’

Later, when they were finishing tea, Pidge told them about the roadworks.

‘Wasn’t there even a rheumatic drill?’ Brigit wanted to know. She took a great bite of bread and butter and scraped the last of her egg from inside the shell.

‘Maybe it’s The Martians,’ Auntie Bina said, because she was very interested in Outer Space and was always reading books about it. Sometimes she would stand on the small hill at the back of the house, with a seaman’s telescope held up to one eye as she looked for Flying Saucers. Pidge laughed at the idea of the Martians doing roadworks for the County Council and then he was conscious of the lovely lightness of feeling that filled his whole body after laughter.

‘It wasn’t The Martians,’ he said and he was really sure of that.

But, he thought,
somebody
must have done it, after all. Apart from the old angler—who else was on the road at the time? He had a vague feeling of missing out something important. Then suddenly he asked:

‘Did you see anyone pass by on a motor-bike?’

‘No,’ Auntie Bina said.

‘
I
did,’ Brigit said matter of factly. ‘Two queer ones with loads of dogs. One of them had two miles of red hair floating out behind her like a cloak and the other one had sort of blue hair twisted round her head like ropes. The blue one was smoking a cigar. The dogs were skinny and they ran like water. They waved at me but I pretended I didn’t see them, ’cos I didn’t like the look of them.’

‘Ah, they must be tourists,’ Auntie Bina said, laughing at Brigit.

‘Brigit! We have enough with mad earwigs,’ Pidge exclaimed sharply, because he wanted to really know and not just be amused by one of Brigit’s stories.

‘It’s true,’ she said calmly. They went to Mossie Flynn’s.’

Strange tourists, thought Pidge.

Brigit began to yawn and immediately said that she wasn’t a bit tired. The more that she declared that she wasn’t tired, the bigger the yawns.

‘Honest!’ she lied, ‘the rest of me isn’t a bit tired, only my mouth.’ Her eyelids started to close.

‘No nonsense now, Brigit. You couldn’t keep your eyelids open if you pinned them up with clothes-pegs,’ Auntie Bina said.

‘Could we try?’ She chanced.

‘Bed for you. Come on now.’

Reluctantly Brigit submitted to being washed, said good-night to Pidge and went ahead of Auntie Bina up the ladder-stair, that led to the two small bedrooms in the loft.

Pidge left his place at the table and went to the old-fashioned hearth.

There were two little stone seats built into the hearth, one on either side of the fire. You could sit in there and see right up the chimney to where a patch of the sky showed at the top. He hunched up his knees to make a bony lectern on which to rest his pages of Patrick’s writings. He settled himself to examine them in comfort.

They were old but Pidge couldn’t guess how old. There was a musty smell from them with some other fragrance mingling in; something like camphor mixed with old rose petals. The pages were stiff and held together by worn leather thongs.

‘I know what they are!’ he cried joyfully. ‘They are part of an old Celtic manuscript, written and painted long ago by a monk sitting all alone in his little beehive cell in one of the monasteries. Well, isn’t that a piece of luck! I can just imagine him—making his own colours because he couldn’t very well buy them when there weren’t any shops, and probably his fingers nearly dropping off with cold in the winter—his nose too, I wouldn’t be surprised!’

He turned the title page and saw that the next page was decorated with many colours, now faded.

At first glance, he had the impression of an elaborate pattern rolling smoothly in loops and spirals all over the page, but worked at with careful control. Then he saw that the pattern had some animals inside it; impossible animals, created not by nature but out of the dreams of man.

Oh, he wondered, am I really touching paper that was made and used by one of those far away monks? Did he have to do a lot of this work by rushlight in the evenings or in the dark days of winter? Whatever would he think of electricity or printing machines or photography or anything you could buy in Woolworths? But how can I be? All the old manuscripts have long since been gathered into museums and universities and are looked on as great treasures. This one must be some sort of fake.

He was turning to the next page when a loose bit fell out. He managed to grab it before it fell into the fire; and it was then that he heard the voice in the chimney.

Imprison it in iron,
it whispered.

Pidge froze into a statue of himself. He didn’t dare move. He sat with his eyes staring straight ahead, not seeing anything, but
feeling
with the back of his neck. After a long, long moment of this, he tried to make his head vanish inside his body like a tortoise pulling into his shell.

It was as though he were getting ready to receive a blow on the head.

Don’t be afraid,
said the Voice.
I
am your friend.

Oh, what’ll I do, thought Pidge fearfully.

Am I hurting you?
the Voice asked with infinite gentleness.

‘No.’

Believe in my friendship.

‘But, I’m afraid.’

Listen!
said the Voice.

Music flooded down the chimney as if it were water surging over the edge of a fall. It hushed—and there was a down-pouring of perfumed light, in accord with the clear and perfect notes of a solitary flute, in which the light rejoiced and danced.

It all faded and whispered away.

Look up!

Pidge looked up and saw the night-time. It was filled with glittering stars.

I
write my name,
said the Voice.

Out of the multitude, the biggest and the brightest of the stars formed the word:

Pidge felt his whole body shaking violently. Slowly he realized that it was Auntie Bina and she was saying:

‘Wake up! Are you mad? You could fall into the fire, sitting there asleep.’

So it was a dream; a marvellous dream and so real.

He stared up the chimney.

It was as always; vast and wide and sooty—nothing wonderful there. The sky had clouded over. Not one single star shone through the heavy blanket of darkness.

Auntie Bina was in a typically talkative mood. She flung herself into a humorous retelling of the principal events of her day. Mostly it concerned her daily battle of wits with a very cunning little hen. For over a week now, she had been laying her eggs in a secret place. Auntie Bina had been tracking her. Even so the little hen was still winning. She wouldn’t leave the farmyard if anyone were looking, but pretended to search for delicacies on the ground, while she watched with her bright eyes all the time. But as soon as the yard was deserted—she was off. She was clever enough to keep in cover as well and kept to the hedges and walls, and she wouldn’t dream of walking down the middle of a field, in case she’d be seen.

Pidge couldn’t listen at first while he still marvelled at his wonderful dream—but, gradually, his mind was opened to her voice. Every word she said took him a little step away from the marvel, yet it seemed to him that he would never entirely lose it. It made him happy to think that he owned it forever and that, whenever he wanted to, he could recall it in his mind.

At length, it was time for bed.

He raised the latch on his bedroom door and stepped inside the little room’s tight snugness. He closed the door gently, so as not to disturb Brigit, whose breathing he could hear through the partition. He sat on his bed and carefully opened the tattered book. As he did so, the loose page fluttered out again, almost as though it were trying to get away from him. Pidge snatched it up before it touched the floor and leaned forward to get the best of the light.

Now that he could see it properly, he discovered that it wasn’t one page at all but two stuck together. At least, they had been stuck together once, but they were now splitting apart.

The top page was undecorated except for a large drawing of a cross. Beneath the cross there was some faint writing in big letters. The writing was in latin.

He could read it but he could only understand one or two of the words. He read:

Well,
In Saecula Saeculorum Amen
—meant forever and ever, so be it. That was simple. He had heard it said in prayers. And
Patricus
must be latin for Patrick. There was something about
Sic
in it. Did it mean someone was sick? And
Verbis
—did it mean that someone was sick of his verbs?
His Verbis?
Or was it an ancient cure for someone who was ill?

What a pity I’m only ten and haven’t started to learn latin yet or I could easily solve this puzzle, he told himself. I’ll find out what it means, if I can. A scholar would know. I wonder if the underneath page will be more interesting?

It was funny but he couldn’t really see what it was all about. As soon as he looked at any part of it, the bits that he wasn’t looking at began to shift and change on the page. He could
nearly
see it happening out of the corner of his eye. He made his eyes search every inch of it as fast as he could but he was never quick enough to see anything happen. Each time, as soon as his gaze moved on from one piece of it, that piece began to move. No matter how quickly he returned his attention to it, he couldn’t catch it in time. That bit would then be still—while the bit beside it would tempt him to look
there
by seeming to glide or dance or just tremble.

He shut his eyes tight and squeezed his lids together with all the strength he could manage. When his eyes were as tight as tight could be, he opened them as suddenly as could ever be possible and looked commandingly at the page.