Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

Clancy watched him another few moments and then, satisfied that the fellow was indeed what the boatman had described, clucked his tongue and snapped the reins and took the wagon on up to the stables. Teige stayed in the field with the horses all that morning. Clancy sent a youth with ropes and collars and a long-tailed whip, but none of these did Teige want. He walked back and forth among the horses and ponies there. The day moved the rainclouds aside and the sky was then clear and blue overhead. In time the horses grew accustomed to the man in their midst and returned to grazing, standing with long necks craned and swishing their tails at the population of flies. Teige studied each of them. There were many not in good form. He saw the full range of temperament and kind, those already ailing in some manner, those whose hindquarters were stiffened, those in the early stages of colic who turned about and looked at their stomach and made small, jabbing kicks at it. There were some with redworm, roundworm, whipworm, early forms of spavin and wind galls. Teige did not know the names of all such but recognized in the horses the discomfort of their condition and from this intuited a remedy. By the midday the youth who had brought him the ropes returned with warm potatoes in a cloth and a jug of buttermilk. He asked Teige how he was progressing, and Teige told him that many of the horses were poor enough and asked how it was that such a wealthy man as Vandeleur had not better stock.

“’Tis Clancy buys ’em,” the fellow said. “’Tis he has promised there’ll be racers amongst ’em. There’s another forty in the fields beyond.”

The youth left then and Teige returned to the slow work of the afternoon. Still he did not take the ropes into the field, but went out through the animals, his fingers greasy from the buttered potatoes. He looked for the black colt and moved in circumambient fashion toward him. The colt’s eye caught him at once and he flicked his ears back and forth thrice. His jaw stopped. Teige took another few steps. The colt retained the stance he held and was for moments statuesque and posed as a thing serene. The other horses raised their heads and looked and looked down again. Teige moved his buttered fingers together. He was now five paces from the colt. He could see a nerve quiver in its neck and how the sleek black sheen of its flanks showed condition. Slowly he moved his hand out. He let the scent of the butter travel to the horse and watched for the slightest reaction. But there was none. The horse was planted. Teige took another step and said very softly the Irish word for “come.”

“Chugainn!”

And within the smallest particle of time, before the words had finished sounding and travelled with the scent of butter across the space between the man and the animal, the colt bolted. He reared and spun and blew and charged and knocked Teige to the ground all in one moment and was gone then off down the field, black mane waving and hind hooves kicking backward in short, wild bucks. When Teige began to get up, he heard the sound of laughter like glass tinkling. There by the side of the fence were two young women walking the avenue. They looked away from him when he stood up, and one of them held her fingers to her mouth while the other nudged her, and both of their heads shook then. They did not move on. Their mirth carried and flew about like an exotic bird. They were ladies of the house and wore long dresses, one green, one blue. The girl in the green dress had hair of a light gold that fell about her shoulders. She could not stop herself laughing. Her friend elbowed her time and again, but it was as if this action merely released more of the birds of glee, and they crossed that field and flickered about Teige as he stood and pressed a hand on the small of his back. The friend took a glance sideways over her shoulder to see him and quickly turned back again and whispered something and then the girl in the green dress turned too and Teige saw her face for the first time. It was less than an instant. Then the friend was pulling on her arm and dragging her around and the two of them were off away in quick steps up the avenue.

The afternoon grew cooler then. Teige worked with the horses with little luck, walking and standing and talking to them. He did not get close to the colt again all that long day. By the time the evening was beginning and there were small bats flying in the air, Clancy returned and told him to come with him to the place where he could stay. It was a stone building with a strong roof in a clean courtyard. The coach horses were stabled there and the hunters for the manor house. The youth who was called Pyle came and brought him food and stood by while he ate and then took the bowl away again. Stillness settled over the place then. The May night was calm and mild and held the tangled smells of woodsmoke and horses and the sweetness of the gorse blooming. Teige lay on straw bedding and thought of those on the island. He thought of his father watching the sky as if hunting there traces of the lost portion of his family. He thought of where in the world Finan and Finbar might be and if he would see them again. But from each of these considerations his mind wandered. He stared upward at the blackness that was unstarred. And it was then as if a map had been redrawn and he no longer possessed with surety the coordinates, for he drifted from all things in that sleepless state and time after time returned only to the image of the laughing girl.

The following morning he was up before the cock crew. When Clancy found him he was already in the field with the horses. Teige asked him what the horses were being fed and asked that he be allowed to change their diet. He pointed out too some that needed special care and should be withdrawn to other pasture. All of this Clancy agreed to without dispute, for he considered himself a judge of men and placed his legs apart and rocked on his heels with his hands on his hips and told Teige that whatever he asked would be done. He left him then and Teige returned to the horses. Later Pyle arrived and they separated some and steered the lesser or ailing animals into the farther paddock. For the rest of that morning Teige was alone with the remainder. Showers of drizzle came and went. The sky cleared and clouded and cleared again. The birds of that place were many and when the rain passed they chorused and flew and it seemed to Teige that he had never seen such a multitude. From the woods nearby they flickered and darted, thrush and sparrow and tit and robin. They sang full-throated. The song of the corncrake was there, too. And all such harmonies were intermingled in the air like threads of fine colours. Whether it was this or not, Teige progressed slowly with the horses that morning. He seemed to have lost some of his gift and was for the first time uncertain. He walked about the field in circles and held out his hands and spoke quietly, but the horses, sensing something in his manner or spirit, shied. He grew impatient then and at some times jogged futilely toward an animal that soon took off and left him there. He was so engaged when the ladies walked the avenue again. This time he saw them coming, for in truth some part of him had been all morning watching. He stopped his small running and the horses cantered away from him and turned at the far end of the field. The birds were everywhere. He watched the movement of the light-coloured dresses from the corner of his eye. He saw the golden hair. He saw that she was sauntering closer along the fence and felt himself foolish to be standing there in the empty part of the pasture with no horse near him. If he walked down toward the horses now, he would be walking away from her. The two desires to stay and go twisted about inside him and he found himself doing neither. He just stood there, the birds flying about him. Then he heard a small tinkle of laughter and there was some jostling and the crunch of the gravel pebbles, and then the girl with brown hair called out to him: