For whatever reason, this seemed not to improve Kitty's mood. She continued to give Kieran a sideways stare that could easily be the envy of the basilisk itself. Lolly chose to be unaware of her friend's discontent and gleefully told those assembled that she had confessed to protect her friend Kitty. After all, it seemed only right that Kitty had done it. Hadn't Declan moved on to herself, Lolly McKeever, once he'd found Kitty McCloud not that much to his liking? Small wonder that Kitty had done what she'd done and Lolly, as her best friend, had no choice but to confess in her stead.
Before Kitty could do anything she might regret, Kieran called out, “Apple Brown Betty anyone? Kitty herself made it, a recipe all the way from the Bronx in the United States of America.” Kitty, to avoid being the cause of Lolly's extinction, then and there added, in tones lofty and agreeable, that the Brown Betty was consistent with the American theme established by the corned beef and cabbage. This was, after all, just one more occasion when she'd had to deflect the enticement to murder Ms. McKeever and mar the occasion with her blood. This was one of her much practiced social graces, and she put it into effect with what's called aplomb. The evening, sustained by a steady flow of stout and Tullamore Dew, ended with farewells characterized by hugs and kisses that managed not to deteriorate into tears.
The greatest challenge on the mountainside was to keep the cows moving, discouraging them from grazing along the way. The phantom pigs congregating on the other side of the hillâtheir number now beyond countingâhad been avoided by skirting the lower slope and making the ascent that morning on this farther side. Neither the cows nor the dog seemed disconcerted by the pigs' presence, proof of what Kitty and Kieran assumed: their animals saw and sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Wordlessly, they gave thanks.
Sly trotted through the herd, barking and nipping, but to little effect. It would be up to Kieran and Kitty to do a dog's work and get the cows to the bottom of the mountain before the sun had set and the moon risen high.
Assured by Declan Tovey that the castle “tenants” were off rounding up their cows and would not return until near sundown, George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe, costumed in the manner of his ancestor, pulled the Bentley off the road and brought it to a stop in a copse a fair distance from the castle. He slipped into a Burberry trench coat, carefully placed the tricorn hat on his abundant wig, and began the trek across the darkening field.
His plot, well laid, was about to fulfill itself, his apparitional appearance certain to affright the usurpers to the point of madness, thereby making their abandonment of the castle an absolute certainty. The vision of a ghost, dimly lit by a single candle, would without doubt send them fleeing, never to return. To rescue their sanity and cut their losses, they would respond favorably to an offer made through an intermediary that would transfer the castle into his lordship's possession. How could they refuse? The offered sum would be most generous, considering that he was taking on property inhabitable only by one not susceptible to the terrors induced by a spectral presence. Surely his plan was a work of genius. Who but himself could have conceived of such an inspired solution to his difficulty? A ghost of all things!
As he crossed the field, the intensity of his self-regard threatened to explode his swelling breast. He must temper his expectations for the time being. The moment of triumph was at hand, and he must forbid himself all satisfactions until, candle aloft, he would make his lordly progress through the then vacated rooms and halls, taking full possession from the defected pretenders who, by then, would be far off, babbling incoherent prayers to all the appropriate saints who cluttered their abominable religion.
Then, and only then, would he declare himself Lord of Castle Kissane, faithful descendant, fearless heir, scion of Shaftoe, most worthy of that name.
After he had surveyed the courtyard, making certain he was alone, his lordship crossed to the portals leading into the great hall. As Mr. Tovey had promised, the door was unlocked. (He must increase his countryman's reward, munificent as it already was.)
Inside, the animal stench almost felled him, unaccustomed as he was to the unmediated smells of nature. With considerable resolve, he kicked his way through the repellant mounds of straw, then divested himself of the Burberry and touched the tricorn hat to make sure it was in place. Arrayed to the full, his justaucorps unbuttoned to give proper display to the heavily embroidered under-jacket, to say nothing of the lacetrimmed scarf that concealed the wattles dangling from his neck, he was forced to ward off again the thrills that imperiled the health of his throbbing heart.
He reached down and from the Burberry pocket extracted the assigned candle. A cigarette lighter did the honors, then was extinguished and tucked into the pocket of his underjacket. It was there that he felt the single artifact that would unimpeachably declare the authenticity of his presentation. He withdrew the gold coin that had been mysteriouslyânay, miraculouslyâdelivered into his hands no doubt from some shy admirer, its kingly imprint more than suggesting that his deed had been approved, even blessed, by powers devoted to the rights of those who could justifiably reclaim what had been royally given.
He held the coin near the candle's glow. Glints of gold flickered from its surface, assurance that greater riches lay beneath. Higher he held it in an outstretched hand, his gaze transfixed by all it proclaimed.
A great cry came from his stopped throat. The coin, the candle, fell. For one paralyzed moment, he stared up toward the iron chandelier. There, before his lordly eyes, a young woman, perhaps still a girl, and a young man, perhaps still a boy, were hanging by thick raw nooses, their eyes about to spring from their sockets, their tongues disgorged through their swollen lips.
He stumbled away. The fallen candle had lighted the straw, the coin nowhere to be seen. Another cry, meant to be the terrifying word
fire
, came out but was unable to form itself. Twice he stomped on the blaze, but the flames were spreading. Too fast, too fast, their light was thrown toward the slowly turning bodies. The straw, as he forced his way through, caught at his buckled shoes. Twice he slipped, barely managing to right himself as he lunged toward the doors. His first try at the latch was unsuccessful. He banged on the wood, then tried the latch again. The door swung open. Out he stumbled, into the courtyard. Without a backward glance he ran to the castle road, bounded over a stone wall, then ran through the field the way he'd come.
He stopped where he'd left the car and looked back toward the castle. Lightning seemed to strike and thunder to crack, coming not from the sky but from the earth itself. The castle, astonished at this unexpected marvel, lighted up all its windows with more candle power than it had ever known. The walls stiffened, the stones held alert in this dumbfounding moment, surprised that the end had been announced. Then, released, they were sent up, up, until they reached a height beyond which they had been forbidden to go. Briefly they held themselves, unmoving, as if in disbelief that their seemingly limitless rise was subject to restriction. Then, in surrender to forces they had failed to conquer, they plummeted down, down in an angry roar, a storm of broken stones, bringing with them in their return the fragmented frame of a silenced harp and the dismembered remnants of an unthreaded loom. The tower, the austere rooms, the limed walls became a tumbling of debris, heaping itself in a growing mound that spread into the courtyard, collapsing the sheds, undoing the thatch.
Rising from it all, a massive cloud of ashes and of dust obscured in mercy the rubbled ruin that marked the ancient site where Castle Kissane had stood in modest majesty.
His lordship, without waiting for the dust to settle, began to whimper.
When the rumbling roar came from the other side of the mountain, both Kitty and Kieran were nearing the bottom of the slope, the cows lumbering ahead toward the waiting truck. They stopped: cows, Kitty, and Kieran. The cows then continued on, but Kitty and Kieran looked directly at each other. Neither moved. Then Kieran began to run up the hill but went no further than a thick growth of furze. Kitty was soon at his side. “Declan! No!” she cried.
Kieran had to shout to be heard. “Declan? Why Declan?”
“He did this. I know he did. Heâ”
Admitting the futility of words, she stopped. And Kieran himself could say nothing more. Nothing had been seen; everything heard. Then all sound ceased, even the clattering of the last few sifting stones, pebbles they must be, sounding like rain on a state roof. A cloud of dust was taking possession of the early evening air. Kitty had clapped her hand over her mouth. Kieran reached across her shoulders and drew her close.
There, toward the top of the hill where the dust cloud had yet to reach, the sun catching them in the last rays before its western descent, were Taddy and Brid, moving slowly, hesitantly, as if in response to a confused summons they were not sure they should follow. Taddy was slightly ahead.
Kitty called out, “No! Don't! Don't leave!”
After Brid and Taddy had gone a few more steps, Brid turned and looked toward where the dust of the fallen castle was rising. She reached out her hand as if in anguished farewell to the place where she had endured her exile. Taddy touched her shoulder. Her head bowed low, she turned away. On they went, no longer slow. Taddy held high his head with a newfound dignity. As they approached the waiting sun, Taddy stopped, then Brid. Again she turned. This time she was looking directly down at Kitty and at Kieran, an acknowledgement of their presence never given before. With her right hand she lightly touched the raw rope that collared her slender and youthful throat. Taddy, too, turned to look at them. He raised his arm, his hand palm outward, a farewell salute to Kitty and to Kieran, but also a resigned gesture to the place of his bewildered sorrows.
“No!” Kieran's voice was hoarse, pleading. “Taddy! Brid! No!”
“Let them go,” Kitty said softly.
The fine young man, the fair young maid, lowered their heads as they turned away one final time and began again their fated ascent up the hill. Their drab clothing began to take on a radiance, as if some luminous threads had been woven into the coarse cloth. The raw ropes around their necks, caught in the last rays of the lowering sun, began sprouting delicate leaves of greenest laurel, sweet and soothing, an economical equivalent of a martyr's golden crown. And then, as Kitty and Kieran watched, the sun's radiance received into itself the radiance of the man so fine and the maid so fair.
“Remember us,” Kitty whispered.
Aaron heard a distant sound and felt a slight rumbling of the kitchen floor beneath his feet. He attributed the phenomenon to the words he was reading, scrawled on the opposite side of a printout he'd made that morning from the third chapter of a new novel concerning a man who forgives his errant and unworthy wife for running off with a baritone she had met in a church choir. Aaron had difficulty focusing on the exact words, but there was little need. The message was clear. His wife, Lolly, had gone off with Declan Tovey. He, Aaron, was to make sure the pigs were slopped on schedule, since they had been bequeathed to him in perpetuity. Stupefied as he was, he felt some slight sense of relief. No more would he have to be a writer. He was given at last a less solitary calling. And he would be faithfulâto his pigs.
When the dark had come down, Tom and Jim, the local gardaÃ, were keeping watch over the ruins. The dust had settled and a cold wind had brought a mist in off the sea that had found its way to the last of Castle Kissane. There was a full moon that could shed but a dim and shrouded light onto the broken stones and the fallen beams.
Nothing stirred. Then, in a slight lifting of the mist, Tom and Jim saw him there among the few stones standing where the tower had been. It was none other than the ghost they should have expected. He was in all his finest raiments, Lord Shaftoe himself from centuries long past, the gold and crimson embroidering of his inner coat catching the glancing of the moon. Glistening in the mist and in the dark were the buckles of gold that graced his fine-tooled shoes. On his head a tricorn hat was placed on his artfully arranged tresses.
He had come at last to take possession of Castle Kissane, the castle he had fled to escape the explosives that had now fulfilled their appointed task. From side to side he slowly cast his gaze over the mounded rubble, the settled dust, lord indeed of all he surveyed. The castle now was his, and no one, least of all Tom and Jim, must challenge his return. Too terrified to cry out, the men simply opened their mouths and let the mist seep in.
The soiling prophesied by his lordship was awarded to Tom. The final words would be Kitty's. The cows were safely aboard the truck. Convinced that nothing was salvageable, Kitty and Kieran had agreed that others would be assigned to deal with the ruin. They never wanted to see it again. Before getting inside for the stunned and grieving ride, they became aware of unfamiliar sounds. They looked behind them and saw nothing but the darkening mountain. Then Kitty noticed, on the ground about ten feet up the hill, a snout ring that could have come only from a pig. She went and picked it up. It had been broken, the circle interrupted by a jagged opening as if the metal had been fiercely hit against a stone. It was not unlike the ring found near the breached wall the day the pig, still corporeal, had hinted at where the gunpowder plans were buried near the castle orchard.
She turned it over in her hand. It could not be the same ring; all its characteristics suggested the opposite. Just as she was about to fling the ring even farther up the hill, Kieran said, again in a whisper, “Kitty, look.”
Kitty turned and saw where the unfamiliar sounds were coming from. There, out on the sea, was a massive herd of swine stepping easily on the bars of lingering light that crested the waves. In the lead was a particular pig well-known to the observers. It seemed to be showing those that followed the way that they must go. At first, the sound was the usual clamor expected from a gathering of pigs, screams and squeals, snorts and screeches that had always sent heavenward their least complaint. But soon the cacophony became transposed and transformed into what could only be termed a celestial anthem, a towering chorale of highest praise. Their wailings and torments now become harmonies and chords of surpassing beauty, as if their suffering had been exalted into a hymn of highest glory, lifted above the waves into a receptive sky.