Mercedes Lackey: Lamma's Night (anthology)

I thought of the wise brown face of my old teacher and suppressed an ancient exasperation at McMurtry's insular prejudice.

"There's the priest's house. It's on your own land, lady. Ye might stay there."

I raised one eyebrow. My father had never mentioned this, but he had been sent away to school young and then joined the Army. "What happened to the priest?"

"He... died," said McMurtry, "and we are a small place here, so the bishop has not sent us another man."

"And why," I went on, "should I need to be brave?"

"Well—" he eyed me uneasily, "There may be ghosts. Father Roderic was a strange man, always after digging up old stones. There've been some odd stories about the cottage since he was taken. But my old woman has kept the place dusted, and the roof is sound. And there are the books—he was a great reader of old tales and collector of dusty volumes. It seems a pity to have them mouldering away for lack of care."

I grinned. When I was a child I had visited Madame Blavatsky's house, and heard spectral singing and seen spoons dance through the air. I did not think one Irish ghost would trouble me. And there were the books. I wondered how the old man had known the very thought of them would draw me, even if there had been anywhere else for me to go.

As we turned up the lane, another vehicle, a two-wheeled trap being driven far too quickly for the road, flashed in front of us. Luke McMurtry hauled back on the reins, swearing, and the old horse half reared in the traces.

"An' the same to you, me bucko, if ye'll not learn to give way when your betters have the road!" The driver of the trap drew breath to continue, then stopped, having noticed me at last.

"This is Miss Erne, Bailey, and I'm thinking that even the lackey o' an English lord'll acknowledge that she is your better, and grant her the right o' way!" Young McMurtry's voice thinned, then steadied as the other man, a thickset fellow with a brush of black hair and a striped scarf tucked into the neck of his tweed jacket flushed red.

"Ma'am—" he lifted his hat to me. Luke slapped the reins on the pony's neck and we trotted smartly past.

"And who might that be?" I asked as we left the stranger behind.

"A da—" the lad recalled to whom he was speaking, blushed in turn, and tried again, "a dirty, misbegotten rascal—"

"He is Lord Skein's factor," interrupted his father.

"And not much liked in these parts, I see—" I replied.

"Man or master, there's not much choosing between them," McMurtry sighed. "His lordship will not mourn if we're all driven from our homes by one more bad harvest. He's been buying up land all around here for the sheep, ye understand. No doubt ye'll be hearing from him as well."

I nodded. The remnants of my family's lands were rented out to local farmers, and brought in barely enough to pay the taxes. My father's agent had written already with an offer from Lord Skein. Common sense counseled me to accept, for what use was the land to me when I could not afford to rebuild the hall? But the beauty of those green fields was like a sword to the heart. How could I let them be trampled by this John Bull?

McMurtry had spoken truly. The cottage, though it had the musty smell of a place long disused, had been cared for as if its owner might at any time return. At first I was surprised that McMurtry, who carried the post as well as running the taproom and seemed to function as village headman here, had suggested I live there, but my family, though less prominent than that of Lord Skein, the biggest landowner in the district, had been longer on the land. I supposed it comforted him to have an Erne, even a sallow, skinny girl who seemed destined to be an old maid, living here. Then I found the trunk into which they had carefully packed the former occupant's books, and I began to suspect that perhaps the place had been tended so carefully because they were afraid.

The old priest—or perhaps I should say the former priest, for Father Michael Roderic had been in his thirties—had been a man of catholic tastes, and not in the sense used by the Church. It was fortunate, I thought as I turned the pages of a Latin treatise on magic, that I was not pious. My family were of the old gentry that held to the Roman faith, but when my mother died my father had abandoned his religion, and I had grown up learning more of my amah's Hindu gods than of Christianity. The trunk was a treasure trove for me. In addition to the grimoires, there were a number of volumes published by the Irish text society, and several tattered issues of Bealoideas , Eriu , the Archivium Hibernicum , and other journals of folklore.

During the lengthening evenings I pored over them eagerly, out during those days it was not raining I took long walks, learning the countryside. It would have been misleading to call any part of Ireland truly prosperous in these days, but the land around Carricknahorna had a curious air of desolation, as if all the luck had gone out of it a long time ago. It had been a little over a dozen years since the harvests had begun to fail here, in some seasons a little better, but in others disastrous.

The farmers who came in on market day seemed to fear this was going to be one of them. I could not help overhearing some of their talk, though they would doff their caps and smile when they saw me watching. I would nod and smile in return and go my way, conscious of their eyes on my back, and surprising sometimes an odd look, almost of hope, on their faces if I turned to look back at them.

One afternoon as I passed the little church, it occurred to me that as I was enjoying Father Roderic's books, I ought to pay my respects at his grave. Many of the stones in the churchyard were cracked and lichened, but the newer graves were still well-tended, with here and there a drying posy of flowers.

It was there I sought, for by the dates on his books, the priest could not have died before 1882. But though I found the graves of my own ancestors, there was nothing with Father Roderic's name. No doubt he had been taken away by his own kin, I thought then, but an old woman swathed in a black shawl was raking leaves, and it would do no harm to ask her.

I was not prepared for her laughter.

"Buried? No, not he! Or if Father Roderic lies beneath the earth it is in no consecrated ground! He was taken by the fairies, have they not told you? Fourteen years ago it will be, come this Lammas Eve, there on Stirring Rock below the hill!"

"On Stirring Rock?" I was careful to keep my tone level, but my gaze went to Carricknahorna. I could just see the big rock below it through the trees. "My walks have not yet taken me that way."

"'Tis safe enough now, and on Bilberry Sunday, when the lads and the lasses go to picnic there, but it can be an uncanny place after nightfall. There is a cave there, they do say, that opens to the Otherworld."

I must have shown my reaction then, for she began to cackle once more. Wondering if the story had been meant to intrigue or to frighten me, I gave her a penny and walked on. That night I dreamed of a young man in black who went ahead of me across the hills. I tried to go faster, but somehow I could not come up with him, and then he disappeared into a crack in the hill. I stood listening, but heard only an echo of laughter on the wind.

The next morning I had meant to walk up to Stirring Rock, but it was raining, and I busied myself trying to find places for the contents of the trunks that had followed me from India. It was then, sweeping out the back of the old wardrobe, that I discovered the diaries.

The first volume bore the date of my birth, twenty-one years ago. It must have been started, I thought, shortly after Father Roderic arrived to take up the living here. He had come, it seemed, with aspirations very much like my own—a craving for old tales and old ways. Father Roderic was a disciple of the eighteenth century English divine, Stukely, who had first charted the mysteries of Stonehenge, convinced that Hibernia held mysteries to equal those of ancient Greece and Rome. He had even, it appeared, been introduced to Madame Blavatsky once when she was in London. I found myself wishing I could have met him. We would have had a great deal in common, it seemed to me.