Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

“I saw no more,” Tomas said. “I went down and broke the lock of the small lodge there. And I made a brand of a handle and cloth wrapped about it and I laid it in the ashes until it was alight. Then I came up the lawn to the big house and crashed in the glass and stepped in with the fire.”

Screams and glass shattering and the barking of the dogs and the astonished cry of Lucius Stafford announced him. The emperor raised his hand as though to call forth bolts of lightning. His companions held up theirs as if to hold firm the beautiful reality of the women in their power, but the goddesses had leapt down and were running naked in all directions. Tomas waved the firebrand in zigzag and briefly marked the air as he walked forward. The Romans backed away. They called out for him to stop. He struck the face of one of them with the burning wand and he fell writhing to the ground. Then he saw across the room that Blath had seen and recognized him and was standing there with her arms across herself, unsure of whether to stay or run. And the room was suddenly full of people and the firebrand was wrestled from him and fell on the carpet and spread flame. There were two men on his chest. There was another struck him in the ribs with a wooden baton. Smoke was thick. Flames ate up the curtains. Tomas could no longer see Blath or any of the women. He cried out her name. He kicked aside one who came at him low and saw the man’s head twist sharply back as though the neck were broken. Then from behind he was hit with the blow of a poker and the room spun sideways and he fell senseless to the floor.

“When I awoke I was in Limerick gaol,” he said.

He said it in a whisper to his father in the small hours when the others were sleeping and the sea sighed in rhythm as though rocking the world.

“They had me there as a robber.” He felt his wrists when he told it, and Francis Foley saw the marks of irons on them. “I was I don’t know how long in a place dark and wet no bigger than half the cart. It was a place of nothing. No bench, no bed, nothing. I stood in my own shit. I cold not see my hand. I was in a place like under the world. Once in the day they slid back the hatch and threw in what I was to eat and it landed in the dirt many times until I learned to listen for it coming. There was a silvery kind of light for a moment then. Then it was gone. That was how I knew it was another day passed. I counted them then. When I had counted a hundred I thought it was forever. I thought they would release me. They would come any minute. But they did not. I began to count again. I tried to count each minute of each day and fell asleep standing and fell down along the wall and woke with my face in muck and counted again.”

Tomas stopped. They gazed dimly at the night sky awhile.

“There were four hundred and thirty-seven days like that in that darkness and dirt,” he said when he started again.

“Oh God,” the old man said. “Oh God.” Teige awoke then and listened without stirring.

“I thought,” Tomas said, “they had forgotten me, and I hammered on the door until my fists were numb. I beat my head against it. Still none came. I think they took days away and did not come at all, for sometimes I counted the day longer than it could have been. Or it was that my mind was wandering. I thought of Teige and the twins then with the gypsies. I thought of the white pony racing on the sands and how Teige would surely win. I thought of Blath and where she could be and did she know if I was living or dead. I tried sometimes to see the patterns of the stars in the blackness, but my mind failed me. I could tell rough seasons by the cold in the floor or how the smells thickened and rose. But the darkness, the darkness,” he said, “that is…”

His head bowed then and his shoulders curved. His father placed a hand upon his back. The sea sighed. They said no more that night. Teige closed his eyes tight and drifted uneasily to sleep.

What he told them the next evening was how one day without warning the footsteps approached and the hatch was not opened, the door was. Two men reached in and lifted him out of the cell.

“I did not seem myself to myself,” he said, “so weak was I. I could not walk. I was a flake of Tomas. I was bone with flesh fallen off it. They dragged me from under my armpits. My feet scraped and bled on the stones. They bore a lantern that burned my eyes and I hung my head and saw the nakedness and dirt of myself passing down that place that was like a sewer beneath the gaol. I tried but could not talk. My mouth was sores, my tongue like that in a leather boot. When I reached the stairs I felt the light on the crown of my head hurting. When I got to the top I discovered I was near blind in this eye,” he said, pointing his finger to it.

“As they took me down along the corridor, another in chains passed me going toward my cell below. He flinched when he saw me. I heard his irons shake and the sounds of struggle as they beat him forward. I was thrust on, dragged by my gaolers and brought at last to a large hall with barred gates and iron bars from floor to roof. Inside were maybe three hundred men and women. They clamoured toward the gate when the gaolers approached and were threatened back with lashings and the beating of batons on the bars. I was thrown in there then. The gates were locked and the gaolers went away.

“I lay on the ground. There were high, barred windows. The daylight hurt me. I curled there and did not know if I was to live or die. Then the people came about me. They were beggars and thieves and rebel men and ones caught without means. The women were to be in separate quarters, but all these were filled and so they were brought here to that large gaol instead and were to wait until such space became open to them. Some were there without trial or judgement other than the wishes and say-so of their landlords or some other one. They saw how I was and clothed me with abandoned rags. They carried me back toward the wall where the ground was driest, for the light passed there each day. The women sat me then on cloths they had made themselves of their own rags. One touched water on my lips. I thought I fell in dreams then. I thought I lost the world and slipped into imagining, for before me then I saw Blath.

“I thought one eye was blind and the other saw dreams. But she was small and bent down and was near to me and I smelled her and her fingers touched on the place on my forehead that was bruised and bloodied from beating on the door. And it was her.”

They were seated again by the low fire beside the cart on the west coast of Clare. When he said her name Tomas looked to where Blath was now sleeping. He had thought that if they did not move for some days, her health might recover, but as she lay her breaths came in broken parcels and her body still shivered beneath their blankets and coats.

“It was her,” Tomas said.

“She had been brought there after the fire in Stafford’s house. Some had told against her and said that I had come to kill him because of her, and so she was brought in without trial in the night and thrown in the gaol and forgotten there. For one year she did not know if I was living. She hungered, she grew ill, and her feet swelled. They had called for the surgeon of that place for her. Farley, his name was, a man big in the stomach. He came there sometimes and ate with the captain. I saw him. He passed the gates of our gaol with a cloth over his mouth. The guards took Blath to him. They laid her on a table there and he looked at her feet and he cut them then.”

The wind came up from the sea and was bitter at their eyes and lips.

“He bled her to release the swelling. They told me he swayed with the wine of his dinner. He cut too forcefully and severed the backs of her heels.”

Tomas cupped his hands before his face and bit on his two thumbs. He stayed like that until his voice was steadied.