Will Thomas - To Kingdom Come

There was nothing but a circle of stones now, with a trail of rubble leading to the sea. Well, that was good, then, I told myself. I’d accomplished at least one part of Barker’s objective. We’d proven we were great explosives experts. If someone had told me two months before that I’d be blowing up Welsh lighthouses, I’d have thought he was raving mad.

There was a sound behind me. My training took over. I turned in a crouch and raised my fists. It was Maire, alone. She had a thick shawl wrapped around her, and the pins in her hair just barely held in the wild curls I’d seen at the fire’s edge.

“You’re a dangerous man, Thomas Penrith,” she murmured.

“Not half as dangerous as you, Maire O’Casey.”

Then somehow, her hands were in my hair, and her lips were pressed against mine. Her cold fingers were clenched against the back of my head, which was spinning like a top. I wanted to inhale her, consume her. I wanted us to burn up together. Which was just what would happen if I allowed this to go too far.

I could have gone on kissing Maire O’Casey forever, if she would have let me. The feel of her lips and the heady scent of lilac water in her hair are things that will linger in my memory forever. Finally, she put both hands on my chest insistently and ended our kiss. I murmured her name, and she silenced me with her cool hand.

“You quite take a girl’s breath away, Mr. Penrith,” she said, and I could feel her tremble with emotion, or perhaps it was only the chill of the night. She stepped back and gathered her shawl about her shoulders again. “I hadn’t intended to … to … I had better go now.”

She turned, and before I could stop her, she fled, bounding from rock to rock. I could still taste her lips and smell the lilac, but they were the only evidence that it wasn’t a dream, that I wasn’t still in the cottage with Cyrus Barker, sleeping. I didn’t think she’d meant to kiss me. She was going to say something, to utter some commonplace remark about the party or the demonstration or about coming upon me alone so late at night, and then something happened. She was the match and I the dynamite. We’d gotten too close to each other, and a chemical reaction had occurred.

I walked along the shoreline for a while, but every couple of steps my mind and feet were arrested by the memory of what had just happened, and I’d stand and relive it. That had been no casual kiss. I think it surprised her more than it had me, and that is saying a good deal. It was half an hour before I finally thought to return to my berth, and I was still walking with my head in the clouds. That is my explanation for not noticing the train until it hit me.

It wasn’t an actual train, of course, but it might as well have been. It ran on eight legs at a tremendous pace and struck with the force of a steam locomotive. I was knocked clean off my feet and didn’t land again for a half dozen yards. I skidded along a rock and then was crushed in a tangle of arms and limbs and bodies. I tried to see what had hit me, under the silvery moonlight, but what I saw was something out of the book of Irish myths. That alone could explain the wild-haired, blue-skinned Celts that had stepped out of the past and now stood over me.

Eight rough hands seized me, ripping braces and buttons and pulling up my shirt while keeping my limbs pinned to the ground. I struggled as my stomach and chest were laid bare, and for a moment I wondered if I was about to be sacrificed by a secret cabal of Druids to their ancient gods. Then, a rain of blows from sticks showered down, as if my stomach were a drum to be beat upon, and all the fierce warriors began to chant: “Bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,BATA!”

I cried out in pain as my ribs were pummeled. Then, as I lay prostrate, my four assailants proceeded to strip me almost bare, tossing clothes and shoes over their shoulders, as if I’d never need them in this world again. My reverie had suddenly become a nightmare. Finally, the moon slipped from behind a cloud, and I could see what calamity had overtaken me.

Eamon O’Casey looked down on me, his heel on my right shoulder, his stick against my cheek. He was shirtless, though he still wore braces over his naked chest. All manner of designs had been drawn over his face and torso in blue paint, giving him the look of a South Sea island savage. I could see a Celtic dragon across Fergus McKeller’s brawny chest; his braces hung about his knees. Despite his fierce war paint and bare breast, Colin Bannon still wore his respectable bowler, but he’d stuck some feathers into the band; and Padraig was got up as close to a Plains Indian as an Irish lad could be, with nothing but trousers and his waistcoat, and dozens of painted tattoos over his arms, chest, and face.

My first thought, absurd as it was, was that O’Casey had seen me kiss his sister and had come to thrash me, but that wouldn’t account for the elaborate paint and the presence of the others. Then it occurred to me that somehow they had penetrated our subterfuge, and I grew truly frightened. Perhaps I really was about to be sacrificed, with Barker coming next. In either case, I was certain I wasn’t going to get out of this alive, not by the serious and resolute expressions of O’Casey and McKeller glowering over me.

“Is the candidate ready?” a voice intoned behind me.

“He is ready,” Eamon O’Casey declared.

“Move him to the sacrificial stone.”

The four men carried me, struggling, to the fractured dolmen, where they held me down, a man to each limb. The fifth member of the group followed, and they parted as he stepped up onto the stone, stood between my splayed limbs, and placed a short length of wood like a wand against my breast. He wore a long black cloak that covered him to the ground, but his face was not obscured. It was Willie Yeats. Spectacles had been drawn onto his face in blue, with wavy lines radiating out in every direction. He looked like the high priest in some secret order, which, in fact, he was.

“What is your name, candidate?”

“You know very well what my- Oof! ”

I’d received a thump from each of the four corners.

“What is your name, candidate?” he repeated severely.

“Thomas Penrith!”

“Mr. Penrith, you are about to be initiated into one of the most secret and sacred orders of the world: the Invisibles. Do you swear under penalty of death that you will not reveal or divulge anything that you see here tonight?”

My word! It was an initiation ceremony. I let out a sigh of relief. “I swear.”

“Then repeat after me. I, Thomas Penrith, do solemnly swear … that I will hold secret all arcane ceremonies of the Invisibles … and if I dare to reveal these secrets … may my tongue be torn out by its roots … my breast opened … and my heart and liver removed and roasted on a spit … for being a blasphemous traitor…. Henceforth, I declare these men here … to be my true and only brothers … and I pledge undying loyalty … to my brethren … and to this hallowed society.”

“And to this hallowed society,” I finished.

Yeats poured a drink into my mouth, a mixture of stout and ash from the fire. While I was still sputtering, he turned his wand sideways, and thrust it between my teeth. I should have noticed that my left leg was free and Colin Bannon missing, but I was too busy choking to realize it until he had returned to perform the next part of the ceremony. I cried out as the red-hot metal ferrule of his stick burned the flesh of my shoulder. I knew Cyrus Barker had close to a dozen such marks, but it had never occurred to me how much each one of them must have hurt.

Willie Yeats reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a small pot of blue paint and a brush. While I lay there, still groaning with his stick in my mouth, he began painting my torso in runes and symbols. I’m sure he loved every minute of it, playing the high priest and torturing his rival for Maire’s affections, if in fact, he knew I was a rival.