The Last of the High Kings (8 page)

The day wasn't stormy. It wasn't even raining.

“Bit more practice,” said Jenny to the púka as they climbed up the hillside at first light, and the púka agreed. He left her at the top of the series of steep escarpments that J.J. called the stony steps, and she went on alone to the beacon.

The ghost was where he always was, standing on a tiny level spot about a meter from the summit stone. As Jenny approached, she remembered that the reason the púka had told her how to see him was so that she could rescue him; set him free from the vow that bound him to the hill of stones. She hadn't the faintest idea how she would do it. The last time she had asked the púka about it he had told her just to keep talking to him. “Be his friend,” he had said.
“That's the first thing.” So that was what she had done, and it hadn't occurred to her before now to ask what the second thing might be.

Not for the first time she found herself trying to imagine the vast expanses of time that the ghost had passed in that same spot. If no one rescued him, would he really stay there forever? She wondered where the other people went, all the millions of ghosts who hadn't made a vow that they would stay. There was a lot of talk in school about heaven and hell; but J.J. and Aisling weren't religious, and they encouraged all the children to ignore that stuff. Still, the ghost was proof that something continued after death, and if the others didn't go to heaven or to hell, then where did they go?

She sat down on a stone. The ghost was very quiet today, and she thought of telling him about seeing the wind, but she changed her mind. He might ask her where she had learned to do it, and the púka was insistent that Jenny not tell the ghost about her friendship with him. He said the ghost might ask to see him, but he said he remembered the time when the boy was alive, and he couldn't bear to see him now, in the sad state he was in.

“Are you that old?” Jenny had asked the púka.

“I'm that old,” the púka had said, “and a lot more as well.”

So Jenny said nothing but sat beside the ghost and practiced watching the wind and waited for the archaeologists.

 

“I could go up and get her,” said J.J. to Aisling. “She'll be a bit late, but I'd say I could have her in school by eleven.”

Aisling sighed. “Oh, what difference does it make, J.J.? What's the point in sending her to school anyway? She won't need it where she's going.”

“Where is she going?” asked Donal, coming into the kitchen with his schoolbag.

“Um—” said J.J.

“Um—” said Aisling. “Well, all I meant is that she'll learn a lot more from watching the archaeologists than she would in school.”

“For a day,” added J.J.

“Great,” said Donal, lobbing his schoolbag into the corner. “Then so will I. I'm going up there too.”

Aisling and J.J. exchanged glances, but they knew they had walked themselves into it.

“Okay,” said J.J. “Let's have breakfast, and then I'll go up there with you.”

“Nope,” said Aisling decisively. “You can stay here for a change and mind Mister Tantrum. It's my turn for a jaunt.”

Donal reached for the cereals. He was pleased enough with the result of that little exchange, but he wasn't fooled by the answer he'd gotten. All those tears yesterday and now this.

Something was up.

Alice Kelly was astonished to discover that the little girl was there again, sitting on the top of the barrow. There were no two ways about it. She was going to have to leave. Apart from anything else, the barrow would become unstable when they began moving stones. It was not a safe place for anybody, and she was not about to take any chances with a schoolchild.

Alice unlocked the flimsy little padlocks at the bottom of the tent zippers and inspected the interiors. Nothing had been touched. At least the girl wasn't a thief. While she waited for the others to arrive, she put on a kettle for some coffee and made the first official entry in the excavation log. It was only a date and a time; but it marked the beginning, and Alice was filled with delicious anticipation.

By nine-thirty she had finished her coffee and washed her mug, using the bare minimum of water. David Connelly and the students still hadn't arrived, despite the joint decision that they all should be present and ready to begin work at nine o'clock sharp. Their funding was good for only fourteen weeks, and every single moment was precious. Becoming more irritated by the second, Alice zipped up the tent and surveyed the mountaintop. The white goat was there again, in the distance, but the only person in sight was that wretched little girl. Allowing her irritation to get the better of her, Alice strode to the foot of the barrow.

“Why aren't you in school?” she demanded.

Jenny remembered what the púka had said about factories and information and experience. She decided, on reflection, that the issue was too technical for an easy answer.

“Lost your tongue?” snapped Alice Kelly.

“No,” said Jenny. “And I haven't lost my temper either.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” said the archaeologist, though in fact she knew perfectly well what it meant and was quite taken aback. When Jenny made no reply, she went on, a little less aggressively. “Well,
anyway, you can't stay there. We're going to start moving the stones soon, and then it won't be safe up there.”

To her astonishment the child grinned broadly. “That's okay,” she said. “When you start moving the stones, I'll come down.”

Alice turned away, infuriated by the girl's willfulness. She was further infuriated by the sight of the rest of her party, arriving at last but strolling casually across the mountaintop as though they had all the time in the world. She set out to meet them and hustle them along.

Jenny watched, sensing the ghost at her side watching too. He had told her before that although he could see quite clearly, he couldn't see very far—a couple of hundred meters at the very most. He had told her that it was a disappointment to him that he couldn't see as far as the ocean, or the mountains to either side of that one, or to the sister beacon on the next hill along the coast. That one did hold a burial chamber, he said, unlike this one. He wished the archaeologists would go there instead.

He had also told her that in all the time he had stood guard over the beacon, it had been threatened only once. A group of men had come and tried to
move the stones. He had prevented them from doing so, and they had gone away again. That had been his only entertainment in three thousand years. And now he was about to get a bit more.

Alice Kelly returned with her team. One of the students complained that he was gasping for a cup of coffee, but all he got was a reprimand. After a brief discussion about where the stones were to be piled, the team put on their work gloves and moved in.

“Come on, now,” said Alice to Jenny. “Down you get.”

“You haven't moved any stones yet,” said Jenny.

“No, but we're going to.”

“I don't think so.”

“Look,” said Alice crossly, “I'm very tired of your little games. This is an archaeological site and not a playground. It isn't a safe place for children. Please come down this instant.”

“I will,” said Jenny, “as soon as you've moved the first stone.”

“Right!” snapped Alice. Bristling with fury, she bent to lift a small rock near the base of the barrow. But something very peculiar happened. As she put her hand on the stone, she seemed to lose her balance. She staggered, tried to straighten up, then
sat down heavily on the ground.

“Are you all right?” said Professor Connelly.

“I think so,” said Alice. “I just got a sudden dizzy spell.” She stood up, apparently steady again, but when she bent toward the barrow, reaching for a different stone this time, the very same thing happened again.

Alice Kelly was confident about the state of her health. She was well into her sixties, but she was a robust hill walker and prided herself on her ability to work long hours on digs in all kinds of weather conditions without any ill effects.

“I'm probably overstressed,” she said a little shame-facedly. “You carry on while I take a breather.”

David Connelly and two of the students stepped forward to take her place, and Jenny looked on as the scene moved from mild comedy to high farce. The archaeologists swayed and lurched and stumbled and tumbled. Time and again they stepped back to clear their spinning heads. Time and again they came back for another try, and always with the same result. Beside her, Jenny was aware of the ghost's fierce concentration but also of his enjoyment. She didn't know how he was doing it, but it was, she thought, a great trick.

It wasn't long before the archaeologists tired and retreated, realizing it was useless. But Alice Kelly
wasn't defeated yet. While the others stood and shook their heads in bewilderment, she strode back to the foot of the beacon.

“It's you, isn't it?” she shouted.

“Are you talking to me?” said Jenny innocently.

“Who else would I be talking to?” Alice was shaking with anger and practically screaming now. “You're doing this, aren't you?”

“I'm not,” said Jenny, finally becoming intimidated by the force of Alice Kelly's fury. She wasn't prone to feelings of guilt, but she did have a sense of self-preservation. “I told you before. It's the ghost.”

“What nonsense! Now will you please come down from there and let us get on with our work?”

“But I'm not stopping you,” said Jenny.

Alice's voice reached its highest pitch yet. “Will you please just do as you are told?”

“Is there a problem here?”

Jenny looked around. Aisling and Donal had arrived, approaching the barrow from the blind side, away from all the activity.

“Hi, Mum,” said Jenny brightly. “What are you doing here?”

“We came up to have a look at the dig,” said Aisling.

“There isn't one,” said Jenny.

“Is this your daughter?” said Alice Kelly, making a visible attempt to get her temper under control. “Could you please get her to come down from there? She's obstructing us in our work.”

“Oh, Jenny,” said Aisling, “why are you doing that?”

“I'm not,” said Jenny, but she came down anyway, more to prove her point than anything else.

“What was she doing exactly?” Aisling asked.

“She was…well…she was…”

David Connelly came to her rescue.

“Would you excuse us please?” he said to Aisling. “We're just about to take a coffee break.”

J.J. parked Aidan in front of the television, even though he had often criticized Aisling for doing the same thing. Somehow he still hadn't got around to finishing off Sean Pearce's fiddle, and there was plenty more to be done once that was off the bench. He rummaged around in his box of bits until he found the right tailpiece, then opened a new packet of strings and began fitting them. That was as far as he got before Aidan became bored with the television and came, full tilt, to find him.

“No, Aidan,” said J.J. sternly. “Not in here.”

“Why?” said Aidan.

“Why” was because the workshop was filled to the rafters with delicate musical instruments, fragile bows, and tools that were not only expensive and precious
but also lethally sharp. None of the children was allowed in there.

“Out of bounds,” said J.J.

“Not out of brown,” said Aidan. “Can I do it?”

He lunged at the fiddle in J.J.'s hands and almost knocked him off his stool.

“No, Aidan!” J.J. held the fiddle at arm's length. “Daddy's working. Go and watch the TV.”

“I want to work,” said Aidan. “Let me do it!”

Aidan grabbed the sound post setter from the tool rack and began stabbing Sean Pearce's brand-new violin case with it. J.J. took it off him. Aidan kicked the violin case and was just about to jump on it when J.J. whisked him up off the floor, carried him out into the kitchen, and locked the workshop door behind them.

“Come on,” he said. “We'll do something else instead.”

“What?” asked Aidan suspiciously. J.J. looked around at the cluttered kitchen. A thorough clear-up was badly needed.

“I don't know,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

When the archaeologists finished their coffee break, they were irritated to discover that the woman and her two children were still there.

“This isn't a public exhibition,” Alice Kelly said to Aisling. “There's nothing here for you to see.”

“We're not doing any harm,” said Aisling.

“We're going to be moving some big stones,” said Alice. “It could be dangerous.”

“Be careful then,” said Aisling. She took her mobile out of her pocket and showed it to her. “I'll phone for a helicopter if one of them falls on you.”

Alice glared at her. “Shouldn't those children be in school?”

“Yes,” said Aisling. “But I thought it would be educational for them to see a professional dig. One of
them might like to become an archaeologist one day.”

Maureen, the girl who had brought Jenny a cup of coffee, gave all three of them a sympathetic smile. Then she joined her team leaders at the base of the barrow to make a fresh attempt on the stones.

Donal was looking at Aisling's mobile. “Can you really do that?” he said. “Phone for a chopper?”

“Well, if someone was injured, I could dial nine-nine-nine, and the emergency services would probably send one,” she said. “How else would they get someone down from up here?”

Donal nodded. “But you can't just phone for one like you'd phone for a taxi?”

Aisling laughed. “Actually, some people do. Very rich people. Remember the one we saw at the Weir in Kilcolgan last year? Someone hired that one to bring them out from Galway to the restaurant there.”

Donal nodded thoughtfully. “How much would it cost, do you think?”

Aisling puffed out her cheeks and blew air. “I don't know. Hundreds, I imagine. Silly money.”

Donal looked over at the archaeologists, who had begun to behave very strangely. The older woman was sitting on the ground with her head between her knees. The man with the binoculars
had rolled a big chunk of rock a few inches down the side of the beacon, then collapsed in a heap on top of it. The girl who had smiled at them reached for a smaller stone, then sank to her knees and keeled over sideways.

Donal looked at his mother, who was snorting with restrained laughter. Jenny was giving a thumbs-up sign to the thin air at the top of the mound—to the ghost, he assumed. Behind her he could see his father, with Aidan perched on his shoulders, striding over the hillside on his way to join them.

The archaeologists gathered their wits and retreated again. They stood, looking dazed, a few meters away.

Alice Kelly turned to Aisling, her face flushed with anger and humiliation. “Look, I'm sorry,” she said, “but I really do have to ask you to leave.”

“Is there a problem here?” said J.J., appearing at Aisling's side.

All five of the archaeologists stared at him as if he had two heads. Actually, he had, but he detached one of them and put it, along with the rest of Aidan, on the ground.

Alice Kelly couldn't believe her eyes. This dig was about as far off the beaten track as it was possible to
get in a place as small as Ireland. It was supposed to have been a pleasure, a few months of healthy labor out in the open air, with the added possibility of an exciting discovery at the end of it. Instead it was turning into a disaster. Not only was some weird phenomenon holding up the work, but the place was as busy as a railway station.

“Yes,” she said to J.J. with icy calm. “There is indeed a problem.” She pointed at Jenny. “This child here is doing something to me and my crew, and it's stopping us from doing our work.”

“What is she doing to you?” said J.J.

“She's—she's making us dizzy.”

“Dizzy?” said J.J. “You don't have that kind of power, do you, Jenny?”

“No,” said Jenny, “but the ghost does.”

“That sounds more likely,” said J.J. He turned back to Alice Kelly and said, in a stage Irish accent, “I'd say it's the ghost, Missus.”

Aisling couldn't contain her laughter any longer. It exploded out of her, and she turned away and hid her face in her hands.

“Mum!” said Donal sharply. “Shhh!”

But it was too late. Aisling's laughter tipped Alice Kelly over the edge, and she lost it.

“Get out of here!” she shrieked, her voice blistering her larynx. “Just leave us alone!”

She turned on her heel and stormed away toward the tents. Aidan, who was clambering around on the lower skirts of the beacon, picked up a fist-size stone and tossed it after her. He fell down immediately afterward, but this was because he was two and a half and wearing large Wellingtons, not because he was dizzy. It sent Aisling into renewed gales of laughter.

David Connelly drew in a deep breath and came over to where the rest of the family were standing.

“I'm sorry about this,” he said as good-naturedly as he could, “but it's not a good time for you to be visiting the dig. Perhaps if you came back in a few days' time?”

“Good enough,” said J.J. “We're just down at the bottom of the hill if you need anything. Cup of tea. Aspirin. Psychiatrist.”

He picked up Aidan, who went into automatic rage mode, and the others followed them, slightly reluctantly, toward the stony steps and home.

J.J. walked beside Jenny. “Well?” he said. “Was it you that was making them dizzy?”

“No,” said Jenny. “How would I be able to make them dizzy?”

J.J. shrugged. “You never know with you, Jenny. I've no idea what you might be able to do.”

Jenny was bewildered. “Could you make someone dizzy then?”

“Me?” said J.J. “Apart from the adoring fans who flock to my concerts?” He shook his head. “No, I couldn't. But I'm not like you.”

He scrubbed the top of her head with a big, rough hand and pulled her close for a side-by-side hug. Aidan seized his chance and took a swing at her head with the blue Wellington he had taken off in the hope of just such an opportunity. It hit her, but not very hard. J.J. took it off him. In a fit of pique, Aidan pulled off the other one and hurled it down the first of the stony steps ahead of them. It landed in front of Donal, who was climbing down. He picked it up and turned to his mother, who was just behind him.

“How much money do I have in the Credit Union?” he asked her.

“I'm not sure without checking your savings book,” she said. “Somewhere around three hundred euros, I'd say. Why?”

Donal shrugged. “Just wondering,” he said.