R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

“Oh. You mustn’t call my bluff. I speak very little Irish, though I’m taking lessons with a Meath man. He says although my spirit is willing, my accent is very bad. But then music is international, and with a fiddle under my chin I can’t talk anyway.”

She heard her voice echo through the empty dining room. “And I guess that’s the only time I don’t. But Mr. Long, I have to ask. Where are you from?”

He glanced into his teacup, then met her blue eyes again. He did not seem offended. “I was born in China,” he said. “But I am not entirely—Chinese.” Gripping the teapot around its portly middle, he freshened her cup.

“What is the name of your ensemble?”

“It’s called Linnet’s Wings, after a poem by Yeats.” She sighed. “Actually, it’s a poem Yeats hated…”

“I know it,” said Mr. Long. “ ‘There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, and evening full of the linnet’s wings.’ He had schoolchildren prattling that into his ears for twenty years, so his distaste may be understood.”

“I’ve never been to Innisfree,” brooded Martha, staring across the dining room and into the deeper dimness of the bar. She swallowed a yawn. “I don’t even know if it’s a real place.”

The chandeliers were crystal. The tiny drops sparkled in their own light. The weariness of a day’s flight blurred her vision, and the play of light reminded her of snow falling into the bright circles of street lights.

But here in San Francisco there was no snow. Never. Just fog and sea. How strange. Unreal.

The voice recalled her. “It is quite real,” the voice was saying. She focused again. He meant Innisfree, of course. Not San Francisco.

“You have been to Ireland?” she asked. But she guessed his answer before he could speak.

“What did you do there?”

His eyebrows lifted, and the lean face softened in memories. “I was looking for something.” There was a silence Martha allowed to grow. Then he spoke again, with animation.

“Mrs. Macnamara—it is Mrs. Macnamara, if I remember?”

“It was.”

He did not falter. “Mrs. Macnamara, have you heard the story of Thomas Rhymer?”

“I know the ballad,” she admitted. “But it’s not Irish.”

“That ballad? No. That is Walter Scott. But the story itself is Irish, I believe. It was an Irishman who told it to me.

“Listen!” he began, and as he spoke he stirred his spoon in his cup with a silver sound. Mrs. Macnamara noted this gesture with amusement. She was sure that Mr. Long had not taken sugar.

“You know how Thomas the Rhymer was taken off by the queen of Elfland on her horse of the nine-and-fifty bells. How they swam the river of blood, and how she showed him the roads to heaven and hell, avoiding both of them to take a third. How he served her seven years in delightful capacity, and how in the end his poor reward was that he was made incapable of lying. This much is what got back to Scott.”

“There is more?”

“Obviously. The ballad is cut off just where it becomes interesting. It does not touch on the predicament of a bard bereft of his stock in trade—flattery. It does not so much as mention the Rhymer’s son.”

Mr. Long straightened in his chair, thereby disappearing into shadow. His hands touched together and then opened, as though he were releasing a bird into the air. “Thomas Rhymer,” he stated, “had a son by the queen of Elfland. The boy was five years old when his fathers term ended and the Rhymer was sent upon his way.” Mr. Long paused, breathed deeply and stared into the air above Martha’s head.

“Thomas left, but he came back again, fording the river of blood, blundering through the tangle of green which hides that road from mortal eyes. It was not so pleasant a journey for a man alone, but Thomas Rhymer found his way back to the land of the not-so-blessed and he stole his little son away.”

“No. I’ve never heard this,” whispered Martha Macnamara. “Have you got the verses?”

He stopped and drew breath. “There are verses,” he admitted. “But I don’t sing. Humor me.”

And he continued. “Back in the world again, Thomas Rhymer took to his trade, and the lad went with him. But fortune no longer smiled upon him.”

“Because he couldn’t lie.”

“Quite likely, Mrs. Macnamara. And before the year was out, the Rhymer began to hear the wailing of the Sidhe in the night and he knew he was hunted.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Mrs. Macnamara, finding herself moved, almost frightened. It was that voice…

“Hiding the boy at the monastery at Lagan—this was in the days Cormac O’Dubh was Abbot—he rode off, leading the hunt away. .

“Crofters heard the racket of his horse’s hoofs pass in the early night, but in the coldest hour they saw the passage of riders who made no sound, a company with faces like chalk and horses shining without moonlight. This part of it has been remembered in Lagan Valley from then ’til now.

“In the last hour before dawn this ghastly company arrayed itself before the gates of the monastery, and she who led them threw down upon the grass the body of Thomas. Knowing she could not storm such a stronghold of the new faith she offered a trade: her son for the small breath of life she had left in the father.

“Cormac himself stood at the gate. He was a burly Abbot. He cried out that he would pray for souls, but he could not sell them.

“But out from the gate squirmed the boy himself, and he ran to his father and knelt beside him. Spurring her horse the queen plucked up her son. In the same moment Abbot Cormac O’Dubh ran out from the monastery gate to Thomas Rhymer. Him he took and carried to safety behind the gates.

“But even this is not the end of the story. For the queen of Elfland, chalk faced on her pale horse, let out a wail of anger, and she held the boy at arm’s length from her, and she put him down from her horse.

“ ‘He stinks!’ she cried. ‘He stinks of the dove! My boy, ma’cushia! Heart of my heart, has been dipped in the filthy bowl!’

“And all the shining horses reared up and sank into the earth, and the Sidhe were gone. Because the good Abbot had put the boy beyond the reach of his mother’s people as long as time holds sway. He had baptized him.”

“Ah! Of course.” Martha hit her palm against the table. “The obvious solution. I never thought of it. But Thomas Rhymer… he’s alive? I mean, he was alive after that?”

“He lived. He was a very quiet man in later years.”

Mayland Long stared into the depths of an empty cup.

“I believe you have that tale from Thomas Rhymer himself,” said Martha. “You tell it with such… authority.” She sighed, once more aware of the time change. While Mr. Long was speaking she had forgotten she was tired.

“From the Rhymer?” He leaned forward and lifted his eyebrows in mock wonderment. “How could that be?

“He was unconscious during the crux of the story. I have the story from the boy, of course. The Rhymer’s son.”

“Beautiful boy,” he added, after a moment. “Resembled his mother.”

Martha blinked twice. The hour and the moment combined to overwhelm her. Cradling her head in her arms she laughed until she hiccupped.

“Forgive me—I’m tired. Jet lag. I’d better turn in now. Getting up at five.” This last word dissolved into a yawn.

As she pulled herself to her feet Mr. Long rose also. “You will remain through tomorrow, though?” He spoke with some alarm. “I have not let you talk about your music. You must join me for dinner.”

She put her hand to the gray braid above her ear and scratched thoughtfully. “Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet my daughter. That’s why I flew in. But she hasn’t called yet, and I can’t reach her. Can I call you sometime in the middle of the day?”