The Snowmelt River Page 6

  Mark took up what Mo was trying to explain. ‘We don’t know for certain, but from the way he talks about it sometimes, we think, maybe, he might have killed some old man for it. The old man claimed that it came from a barrow grave.’

  ‘Which would hardly be Christian, since barrow graves are far older than Christianity.’

  ‘He suh-suh-suh-says he had a buh-buh-blackout.’

  Kate murmured, ‘It gets worse and worse!’

  ‘We think Grimstone was a thief when he was younger. He stole stuff for the old man, who was an antiquarian. But when he saw the cross with the sigil embossed on it, it … well, it took some kind of possession of him. He says he had a blackout. But we think he killed the old man to get the cross.’

  Padraig looked deeply worried. ‘It came from a barrow, you say?’

  Alan turned to his grandfather. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Padraig placed his hands on Mark’s and Mo’s shoulders, as if hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

  Alan snorted. ‘Hey – the guy’s loopy!’

  Kate looked at Alan with a frown. ‘But you heard what they said. They’ve seen how this thing glows when he talks to it.’

  ‘Silver can look like that.’

  ‘Nuh-nuh-nuh-no! It buh-buh-burns.’

  ‘Burns?’

  Mark agreed with Mo. ‘When Grimstone holds the sigil to his brow. When he’s calling it Master, it burns his skin. You can hear it sizzle – you can smell it.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘Mo? Is this true?’

  Mo nodded.

  Mark added, ‘Grimstone won’t allow anyone else to touch it. Or even to go near it.’

  ‘Grandad, have you any idea what’s going on here?’

  ‘I’m not altogether sure. I know a little about such things. Maybe now I wish I knew more.’

  ‘But what are you thinking?’

  ‘Well, I’m thinking we need to grasp what’s really going on here. We have the four of you coming together here, with what appears to be important aspects of your lives in common. Happen it’s fate.’

  Alan scoffed. ‘Hey – come on!’

  ‘Don’t you be telling me you haven’t wondered for yourselves?’

  Mark objected. ‘That’s as crazy as Grimstone.’

  ‘There must be something happening to you – all of you. Are you getting unusual thoughts in your heads? Or unusual dreams?’

  Kate blurted, ‘Mo and I, we’ve been sharing the same dreams.’

  ‘What dreams?’

  ‘We keep seeing a mountain. But it’s not one we recognise. It towers up, like a great pillar of rock, with a figure on the top of it.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t recognise it?’ There was a light in Padraig’s eyes, now examining Kate’s expression.

  ‘No. It’s nowhere I remotely recognise.’

  ‘What about you lads?’

  Mark shook his head.

  But Alan looked thoughtful. ‘If it’s dreams about places you guys want, the only place I ever dream about is the River Suir. I dream about the river a lot.’

  Padraig was thoughtful. ‘Mountains and rivers! It certainly seems as if something is building up around you. Something – or someone – is trying to communicate with you, perhaps.’

  Mark lifted his eyebrows. ‘I suppose I’d better go check my emails.’

  Kate thumped him. ‘Don’t you dare mock this, Mark Grimstone!’

  Padraig cleared his throat, as if making up his mind about something. ‘Well now, isn’t it time we all were a little more honest with each other? And that goes for you too, Mr Tricky-the-loop.’ He tapped Mark’s shoulder.

  Mark exchanged glances with Mo. ‘There was something Grimstone said. He was talking about some kind of old power that was a threat to him. Stuff about the town being old but the power was older.’

  ‘Ancient power?’

  ‘Suh-suh-something about a puh-people from before the Cuh-Cuh-Celts.’

  ‘I’m trying to remember how he put it. Like an old power, almost buried and forgotten, yet still lingering.’

  ‘Huh-huh-huh-he talked about the ruh-ruh-rivers, too.’

  ‘Ancient power to do with rivers?’

  Mark said, ‘I’ll give you his exact words, Mr O’Brien. “It is my Lord himself, my sacred Master, who senses the threat – the threat is to Him … here in this town – in the old power that still lingers here.”’

  ‘What manner of threat?’

  Mo spoke softly. ‘Thuh-thuh-three ruh-ruh-ruh-rivers!’

  Everybody looked at Mo, astonished. Then Mark nodded. ‘Something about a heathen trinity. Its grip long vanquished, yet such is its hold on the very landscape, it has endured.’

  Alan looked at his grandfather in bewilderment. ‘Is this guy the pits, or what?’

  Padraig’s brow was deeply furrowed. ‘I’m not sure at all as to the nature of Grimstone.’

  Kate cut in, ‘So how do we find out more about this … this power?’

  ‘I think you won’t have to look very far before the power finds you!’

  She sighed. ‘What on earth does that mean?’

  His face reddening with embarrassment, Alan said, ‘Grandad sees fate in everything that’s happening.’

  ‘Maybe he’s right, Alan.’

  Alan snorted. ‘We’re just like the butterflies and birds, following our instincts! That’s what you think. Isn’t it, Grandad?’

  ‘Four orphans! And you kid yourself it’s merely happenstance?’

  Kate countered, ‘Two orphans – and two adoptees!’

  Padraig stared at her, then glanced with a gentle sympathy at Mark and Mo. ‘Kate, both you and Alan assume that your parents were the victims of accidents, or deliberate killings by wicked people. But what if it was you yourselves who were the targets?’

  ‘But that … oh, for goodness sake – it’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Kate, were you not with your parents when they died? And Alan too! Weren’t you meant to be in the helicopter when it crashed?’

  Alan couldn’t help raising his voice in protest. ‘So how come we’re still here, then, Grandad?’

  ‘Maybe there were other forces protecting you?’

  ‘Aw, c’mon!’

  Mark shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about what Mr O’Brien is saying. But I can tell you that when Grimstone talks about our biological parents, he uses the past tense.’

  ‘You mean he knows they’re dead?’

  Mo was shaking her head violently.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mo, but he doesn’t say that your mother is a whore. He says she was a whore. Always the past tense.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘How – I mean, what … Aw, heck – I don’t rightly know what to think any more.’

  Mark shrugged. He looked at Padraig. ‘This force, I think you’re suggesting it’s got something to do with us? If so, can you tell us what we ought to do?’

  ‘Maybe it’s fitting to caution you that you’re standing in a wood, where you can’t see the wood for the trees. If I were to advise you, and I’m not sure I even want to advise you, I would suggest you get above it.’

  Kate blurted, ‘Above what?’

  ‘Above what’s too close to your noses, young Kate!’

  ‘Above the world?’

  All four friends stared at Padraig as he shook his head at their lack of comprehension. He spun through a quarter circle and he lifted his face to the mountains that rose to the south of where they were gathered, their lower slopes cloaked in his own woods.

  Kate said, ‘You mean, above the Comeraghs?’

  ‘Not just these foothills. The proper mountains that lie behind them.’

  Kate stared up at the foothills, which seemed quite mountainous in themselves. She had lived in the shadow of the Comeraghs all her life but she had never attempted to climb them, not the real mountains.

  On the Roof of the World

  Setting out before eight, they cycled the five or six miles to Ballymacarbry. They had pla
nned it all yesterday, with the best route highlighted on the Ordnance Survey map which travelled with them in Alan’s backpack. They took the turning for the Nire Valley. Then, in single file, with map-reader Alan leading, they cycled another two or three miles through the cool morning sunshine until they came to the bridge. After another twenty minutes of twisting and turning, they found their way to the car park at the base of the mountains, where they padlocked the bikes and started out on foot. Here, in the long shadows of morning, they sipped the piping hot coffee from Kate’s mammoth flask, high-fived with nervous laughs, and then set to climbing straight away.

  Of course not a single one of them really knew what they were doing here. On the compass, which was Kate’s contribution, they took a bearing on 76 degrees, northeasterly towards the Gap. Within minutes they were out of the shadows and squinting up into the face of the sun, weaving a path through mauve bell heather still soaked with overnight dew. They filed one by one over a stile made of lichen-coated stones and stopped to look upslope. Alan pointed to a series of white posts in the distance which indicated the way to the Gap.

  Mark offered to high-five Kate.

  She hesitated. ‘No more stuff about Conan the Barbarian.’

  He grinned. ‘You want to know the truth? You were supposed to melt when I saved you – like throw your half-naked and bleeding body into my arms. But even in my fantasies you wouldn’t play along. You’d say stuff like, “We’ll always be friends”.’

  Kate quivered with suppressed laughter.

  ‘Don’t ever stop laughing at me, Kate.’

  She punched his arm, then accepted the high-five.

  Mark couldn’t help but be pleased at this. But Alan looked questioningly at Kate, who was now carrying on climbing. He quizzed Mark. ‘You tell Grimstone why we’re here?’

  ‘It’s the only reason we’re still with you.’

  ‘He wasn’t suspicious?’

  ‘The whole idea was to get him suspicious.’ Mark did a pretty good take on the Grimstone growl. ‘“What were his words – I want the very words, and the manner he spoke them – when the old man asked you this?”’

  ‘What planet’s this guy on?’

  ‘All I know is he has suddenly taken it into his head to go back to London. He’s going to be away for two weeks, leaving Bethal in charge.’

  ‘Huh-huh-hooray!’

  The boys turned to look at Mo, who had been trailing behind at this point but had taken advantage of the exchanges with Kate to catch up to them.

  ‘But it was a close thing. I could see he was thinking maybe he should take us back with him if for no better reason than he knew we wanted so much to stay. Look, I’m really sorry, Alan, but I told him he was probably right about your grandfather. You know he thinks he’s some kind of pagan. Like a druid or something. I told him there was something going on – a lot more than Padraig is telling us.’

  Alan pinked with anger.

  ‘We couldn’t let him take us away, not now. And I could see it in Grimstone’s face, he was really thinking of doing that.’

  Mark didn’t add Grimstone’s words, as those eyes came close to peering directly into his own. ‘You trollop’s whelp! Do you think I haven’t sensed the lust in you whenever you’ve been within a mile of that red-haired Jezebel? You’ve filled that confounded camera thing with pictures of the harlot.’

  ‘Kate isn’t a harlot. You see yourself in everybody!’

  Grimstone had taken hold of his ear on one side and slapped his face with all of his might on the other. Mark’s ear was still swollen, and there was a sound in his head like a high-pitched whistle.

  Mark pressed on into the breeze, which was bowling towards him through the heather and making a yowling cat’s duet with the whistling in his ear. Forcing the memory of Grimstone out of his mind, he followed in the wake of Kate, taking comfort from her well-filled-out blue jeans ahead of him.

  From where she had once again fallen twenty or so yards behind the others, Mo watched Mark increase pace to catch up with Kate. Mo’s blue anorak was already stained with the gold of pollen from the heather. They were all approaching the pass Alan had circled in red highlighter pen on the map. Thankfully, she had escaped last night’s interrogation. But she had seen poor Mark’s face when Grimstone had finished with him, and she hated the price her brother had paid for the fact they were here.

  But now, gazing about her at the increasing drama of the mountains, inhaling the scents of wild flowers, Mo wondered what it was that Padraig had been hinting at yesterday. What were they supposed to find up here? Was Padraig really some kind of pagan priest? The truth was that she had no answer to those questions. Yet it seemed to her that Padraig did not talk or behave like somebody steeped in any kind of religion. He talked about nature more the way she had felt about it all her life. Where most people saw, or heard, or even smelled, the seasons – Padraig lived them. She recalled Padraig’s words: I think you won’t have to look very far before the power finds you!

  As the morning wore on and the heat increased, they took to a rhythm of climbing in silence. Alan wondered if Mom had climbed these same mountains at his age. It was another way in which he felt the sickening intensity of her loss. Step by step, he found himself mulling over the deaths of his parents. Had it really been an accident? Or was there, as Padraig believed, some … some what? Some kind of conspiracy?

  Oh, my God – what if Grandad was right and the idea had been to kill him and not Mom and Dad!

  But why would anybody want to kill him?

  It absolutely made no sense. You go down that road and you were in danger of getting hooked on paranoia. The problem was he could try to dismiss it as superstitious nonsense, but then the whisper would start up again in his mind. He just couldn’t shake the idea that weird things were happening – they really were happening – things that seemed to stretch coincidence.

  Well, okay! So weird things did happen. It didn’t mean you had to believe in unseen forces, or murderous conspiracies.

  But then the little voice began to whisper again. It said: all right, but you know Grandad has a point because you really were supposed to have been in that chopper with Mom and Dad when they crashed. And you know that Kate was actually right there too. She was with her parents when they were murdered. She had only escaped being murdered by a whisker. She lived because an African nun cared so much about her that she shoved Kate out of sight and died herself. And Mark and Mo – what was the real truth there?

  Oh, man!

  Alan shook his head, trying to blank the confusion from his mind. Then, when he looked around him he realised that they had arrived at the Gap. He sat down on the heather and opened the backpack so he could take another look at the map. The Gap was a pass between the Comeragh Plateau to one side and the Knockanaffrin Ridge on the other. The Plateau would take them higher, but the climb was going to get more difficult.

  He waited for Mark and Kate to catch up with him before asking them, ‘Guys, what do you think? Do we head left? Make for the Ridge?’

  They agreed to do that. Meanwhile the slope got steeper and the going tougher. In places you were almost forced to climb on all fours. But the scenery was worth it. The view was just breathtaking.

  The blue of the sky seemed to have washed over the ground so the sheen of high summer glowed in the rocks, as if the very crystals were showing off their purple and gold, indigo and lilac. Alan waited a little longer so Mo caught up.

  ‘Look over there!’ He pointed to a peak in the distance, dotted with what looked like tiny puffs of steam. ‘Mountain sheep?’

  Kate corrected him. ‘Goats – not sheep!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Oh, but isn’t it glorious!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wish we’d brought binoculars. The goats look really cute. I’ve seen pictures of them in classes at school. They have these long curved horns. And just look at the flowers!’

  Alan grinned. ‘You spot any endangered species?’

  ‘Ah, knock it off! Yo
u just don’t have a clue. I bet you couldn’t name a single one of them?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I knew it!’

  ‘So – enlighten me.’

  She nodded at a spot a few feet from where they were standing. ‘You’ve been putting your outsize feet within inches of squashing these. They’re bee orchids.’

  ‘What’s that mean – bee orchids?’

  ‘The lowermost petal is shaped like a bee.’

  ‘Which part of the bee?’

  She was too smart to be caught with that one. ‘Even their scent is designed to mimic the female bee pheromone. So the bees are confused into thinking it’s the female!’

  ‘This I got to sniff for myself!’

  She saw where it was leading and slapped his shoulder. ‘You boys only ever have your minds on one thing!’

  The way he was grinning at her made her smile back in turn.

  ‘I really like it when you smile like that.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Honest, I do. It reminds me of the day we met. When you were showing me the single plant you’d rescued, in the bed down by the river.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t it just ravishing!’ She threw her arms wide at the Suir Valley far below them, like a gigantic folded counterpane of pea-green and flag-yellow oblongs and stripes.

  ‘It sure as hell makes me giddy.’

  By the time they got to the top of the mountain, it was after eleven. They sat around and got their breaths back, gazing down onto Coumduala Lough, so far below them the waves on the surface looked like threads of fine white cotton. The sun and breeze had had a few hours to dry the dew out of the heather and they were comfortable sitting in it, fishing for sandwiches and the drinks from their backpacks. Kate lay flat on her belly and just drooled over the panoramic view of the Suir Valley heading eastwards towards Waterford.

  Alan asked her, ‘You seeing or feeling anything of what Padraig was hinting at?’

  ‘I don’t care any more. I just want to lie here and soak it up.’

  Hunching forward, Alan began to rub the aching muscles of his calves. ‘Me too. To tell you the truth, the only thing I’m feeling is my legs complaining. And here comes Mo – five feet nothing and not even a hint of flagging.’