The Snowmelt River Page 8

  Kate hugged Mo. ‘Mr O’Brien, every word is the truth. My hair stood on end. I felt like I could just take off the mountain ridge and fly, like an eagle, over the valley.’

  ‘Oh, Muh-Muh-Mr O’Brien, tuh-tuh-tuh-tell us everything about Suh-Suh-Suh-Slievenamon!’

  ‘Oh, yes. You must! You must tell us everything!’

  Alan stood trembling, observing how the grey shadow still cloaked Padraig’s features as his eyes moved to consider the two excited girls. ‘Ah, now, wouldn’t we be here for a year and a day.’

  ‘Oh, puh-puh-please!’

  ‘Mr O’Brien, don’t torment us!’

  ‘Tuh-tuh-tell us uh-uh-uh-everything!’

  ‘Everything, is it?’ A wintry smile lit up the shadows that haunted Padraig’s deeply wrinkled face. ‘I think, perhaps, that like Alan you should all cool down. Your clothes are one with your skin. Alan will show you to the bathroom. Cool off and get out of those clothes. Find something dry to wear.’

  They ran upstairs and, after ten minutes or so, ran back down again. Mark wore a pair of Alan’s jeans with the legs turned up. Kate and Mo wore oddments of shorts and T-shirts a quarter of a century out of fashion – they had discovered them in a bedroom that had been kept spruce and clean in homage to a daughter who had never returned home. Padraig could hardly fail to notice but he said not a word. Instead he waved at them all to sit down and join him and eat some sandwiches he had rustled up in the kitchen. There was also a choice of drinks, hot and cold.

  ‘Now,’ the old man sat back in his leather armchair, pallid as a marble statue, ‘first you must tell me what happened, every last bit of it, if you can manage that while stuffing your mouths!’

  Mo, Kate, even Alan, couldn’t wait to talk about it. They talked as they were chewing and it took a long time for each to explain what he or she had experienced on the mountain. But Padraig just let them talk and talk until there was nothing more any one of them had left to say.

  ‘And young Mark, what did you make of it?’

  Mark shook his head, with an incredulous grin. ‘I’m not pretending that nothing happened. But it wasn’t like everybody is saying. It couldn’t be. Mountains don’t call you. Like, “Hello! I’m your big nosy neighbour. I just thought maybe it was time I called in for a chat.”’

  Kate turned on him, her eyes flashing. ‘So what do you think just happened back there?’

  ‘It must have been some kind of mass hysteria.’

  ‘Hysteria?’

  ‘This Irish superstitiousness is getting to us. All that stuff about crystals and power. Mountains don’t call you. Come on, Kate! You all know it as well as I do. Mountains are just big lumps of rock.’

  ‘Mark! Shut up!’

  Mo whispered to Mark, who was sitting on the couch next to her. ‘It was so. It was cuh-cuh-cuh-calling!’

  ‘Calling us to do what?’ Kate looked to Mo, ignoring Mark’s stare.

  Mark’s own face turned an angry pink. ‘What are you all saying? What? Like we were hit by some pheromone from a million tons of rock?’

  Padraig’s voice, low and calm, penetrated their argument. ‘Ah, now, Slievenamon is more than a lump of rock. She’s ancient enough to have seen the first meanderings of the three sisters. She was older than time when your King Henry came upriver, seven centuries ago.’

  ‘Mo, for goodness sake!’ Mark appealed to his sister. ‘You know as well as I do this is just rubbish.’

  Mo shook her head. She refused to meet his eyes.

  Kate’s voice was insistent. ‘Mark, whatever you think about it, you know you can’t tell Grimstone about this.’

  Mark heaved a sigh, dropping his eyes down to the mobile phone, which he had been fingering in his lap.

  Alan said, ‘Padraig has been trying to explain things to me ever since I got here. I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to listen because I didn’t want to believe him. It’s all somehow linked to the accident that killed Mom and Dad.’

  ‘It was no accident,’ Padraig reminded him.

  ‘And Kate’s family, maybe they were killed for a reason. And maybe it’s even linked to what happened long ago to you guys, Mark and Mo.’

  Mark cut in. ‘Mr O’Brien, tell Alan he’s raving. Stop this, all of you. You’re all raving, just like Grimstone.’

  Kate cried, ‘Stop kidding yourself, Mark. Surely we need to know what’s going on! We need to make sense of it all!’

  Padraig agreed. ‘Of course you must, Kate.’

  Mark shouted, ‘You’re all bonkers!’

  ‘Shut up, Mark!’ Alan glared at him. ‘Kate is right. If we could find the reason for all we’ve been through, we could, maybe, find who was responsible. We could even get our own back. Get justice for Mom and Dad.’

  ‘Why don’t you go ask the mountain?’

  Mo’s voice cut through the arguing, her eyes round and pleading, looking to Padraig, ‘Puh-puh-puh-please?’

  Padraig’s face had never lost the grey sheen since Alan had first spoken to him after coming down from the mountain. But his eyes were gentle, turned now to the dark-haired girl dressed in the clothes once worn by his daughter, and deeply touched, it seemed, by the excitement in Mo’s elfin face.

  ‘Maybe you all know already that in the Irish Slievenamon means the Mountain of Women. But the mountain also goes by other names, older names, names she had already taken to herself before even the Celts first came to this valley. Those people of long ago saw the richness of the valley of the Suir. They fought battles to win these lands for themselves, each in turn renaming valley and mountain, until, in Celtic times, the valley became Clonmel, the Vale of Honey, and the mountain Slievenamon. Even the three rivers, the Suir, Nore and Barrow, relinquished their older names, the names of a sacred trinity so ancient and powerful that perhaps the Celts were fearful of their true names. But some remembered and whispered the old names in secret places. And they remembered the old names for the mountain herself, and what’s more, the knowledge of her portal.’

  ‘Whu-whu-what puh-portal?’

  Padraig gazed into Mo’s excited eyes. ‘The mountain is believed to be a gateway. Sidhe ár Feimhin, such was it called. In English it means “the Gate of Feimhin”.’

  Kate blurted, ‘Who was Feimhin?’

  ‘A prince of old – a very terrible prince, if the legends are to be believed.’

  ‘What legends?’

  ‘Legends of grim times, Kate. Battles that scarred the entire landscape of these parts, turning the Vale of Honey into a wasteland.’

  ‘But even if there is a germ of truth to the legends,’ Alan asked, ‘what has this to do with what’s happening to us?’

  ‘Some legends claim that Feimhin merely craved power, others that he was losing everything and his back was to the wall. But whichever is true, he stood on the summit of Slievenamon and there, where the tumulus of stones stills marks the spot, he called for assistance from a power of darkness.’

  Mark chortled. ‘Hey, come on, kids! If that worked, I’d have done for Grimstone years ago!’

  ‘Mark! Put a sock in it!’

  ‘Young Mark, you should not speak in such terms, even as a joke. Sidhe ár Feimhin is not to be mocked. Those who have studied the legends believe that it describes an opening, or portal. Sure enough they’ve embellished it with fairy tales, peopled with elves and leprechauns. Yet the legends do speak of strange beings that lived in a world very different from ours, a world not dominated by machines but by forces that would appear magical to the likes of us. Magic is despised today, yet in former ages it was seen as natural, the lore of Magi. Yet magic requires knowledge and power which has been lost over the ages.’ Padraig spoke softly, but plainly. ‘If you would ask my counsel, I would say that Sidhe ár Feimhin describes a gateway leading to another world.’

  ‘Grandad, you’ve got to be kidding!’

  Mark snorted. ‘Oh, come off it, Alan. Don’t you believe in fairy tales?’

  ‘Scepticism is only natural. And sure fairy
tales is how most people think of the legends.’ Padraig gazed at Mark with the same wan smile he had earlier bestowed on Mo. ‘Indeed I wish, with all of my heart and soul, that Sidhe ár Feimhin truly did belong to the world of fairy tales. But alas, young Mark, fairy tales do not come with such a terrible burden of responsibility.’

  Alan pressed him, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s something I am now obliged to show you. Something long guarded from sceptical eyes. A link to that old world of terror and ruin. I would have preferred it to remain lost and forgotten. But I can see that you’re special, all four of you, though I cannot even begin to imagine why, or what will come of it.’

  Mark cried, ‘Mr O’Brien, you should stop this now!’

  ‘Ah, now, young Mark. As I see it, it would appear that the mountain is calling you, like it or not. Moreover, the dangers that threaten you are real enough. Knowledge, be it of the most ancient and forbidden nature, is also a weapon of kinds. And if I can arm you in any way at all, if I can give you some means of protecting yourselves, I will.’

  Alan saw the patent honesty in Padraig’s worried face. He felt a tiny thrill of fright invade his being.

  ‘The burden would have become yours, Alan, but I would have put it aside for many a year if the choice were mine. But the coming of Grimstone to this town has robbed me of that choice. What Mark and Mo have told me about their adoptive father makes plain that he is not the simple preacher he pretends to be. Moreover, the sigil he adores confirms my worst fears in that respect. And this in turn tells me that it is hardly accidental that you – Mark and Mo – fell into his clutches at such a precious and early age – though the fact he kept you close to him all of your young years, however far from paternal his instincts would have been, is equally revealing. His coming here, to Clonmel, was no accident. Time, therefore, is pressing. Come, then, if your scepticism is to be answered! I’ll take you to the place that Grimstone is really searching for, a place of secrets that must be concealed from him at all costs. Then surely your eyes will be opened. But I warrant you’ll not thank me for it.’

  The Grave of Feimhin

  With Padraig’s machete hacking through the profusion of nettles and spiky brambles, they made their way up a twisting climb through the dense woodland that coated the foothills of the Comeraghs, finally emerging into a shadowed bower. The surrounding trees were ancient oaks, their barks hoary and fissured from centuries of winters, and mottled with the bright greens and yellows of mosses. To an unknowing eye, it would have hinted at nothing of any special importance. At the centre, gained by more hacking with the machete, a mound appeared, standing no more than a yard above the leaf-strewn floor.

  The entrance to the barrow was covered with a great flat stone, itself buried under brambles and soil. Padraig cleared the surface of the stone using the machete. With growing excitement the four friends discovered that, with the cover stone removed, they were gazing into a stone-lined tunnel burrowing into darkness. They switched on the torches, brought at Padraig’s insistence, cutting through the gloom of what now appeared to be a narrow, descending shaft, and they followed Padraig’s lead into the tunnel on hands and knees. After twenty yards of crawling through dirt and roots, they stumbled through into an octagonal stone-lined chamber, tall enough for everyone, other than Padraig, to stand upright. Here, in the light of their torches, they stared awestruck at a skeleton, as long as Padraig was tall, and laid in final repose upon a bier of solid stone.

  ‘Mind you keep well back. Touch nothing of the mortal remains!’

  ‘Who is it?’ Kate couldn’t keep a quaver from her voice.

  ‘I’ll leave you to decide that for yourselves!’

  The fragments of armour, the great bronze helm, filigreed in gold amid the greens and yellows of rimey decay, told them it must be the remains of some warrior prince, laid to rest a very long time ago. The flesh and clothing had rotted away but the skeleton was preserved – the huge skull ivory-white, as if it belonged to somebody more recently buried. The face of the skull was long and lean, with jaws of yellowing teeth that appeared to gather together with a snarl, and with garnets filling the eye-sockets, as if fixing for eternity the rage that had burned in them in life. A cuirass of bronze enveloped the enormous rib cage, decorated and emblazoned with a similar filigree as the helm.

  ‘Look more closely, if you will, at the brow!’

  They gathered round, holding the torches closer.

  ‘Holy shit!’

  Alan’s exclamation was quickly followed by three others.

  The blow that killed this fearsome warrior was visible in the great slash that had cut through the helmet and the head within it, from the crown to the roof of his left eye-socket.

  ‘Now mark you his weapon!’

  The torches picked out a great sword, with a blade blacker than pitch, which ran diagonally across the lower body and legs. The hilt was still grasped by the skeletal hand within a heavy gauntlet of metal, turned green by the verdigris of time.

  ‘Look!’ Mo murmured. She pointed to the hilt.

  Mark saw it too and he shivered with fright. Then Alan and Kate, their hearts pounding, stared at the sigil of the triple infinity, embossed in a silvery outline on the hilt of the sword.

  ‘Yes, Mo – the same symbol I recognised in your notebook the day I first met you. So now you know why I realised that your arrival was no accident.’

  ‘Buh-buh-buh-but what does it muh-mean?’

  ‘You’re surprised to find this symbol on a sword and not a cross? Things are not always as they appear. I’ll wager that what you imagined to be a cross in Grimstone’s hand was originally the hilt and cross-piece and a stub of blade of the dagger that was the companion piece to the weapon you now see. Did you not say it came from a barrow such as this one?’

  Mark, his voice taut with shock, answered for Mo, ‘Grimstone told us he got it from some collector. The collector told him it came from a barrow grave but Grimstone refused to believe it. He pretended it came from Christian times, with some link to the Knights Templar.’

  ‘This collector was almost certainly a grave robber, and one that, if what you suspect is true, your adoptive father killed because he coveted the robber’s most precious possession.’

  ‘Mr O’Brien – do you think it came from this same grave?’

  ‘I think not, Kate. This grave has never been looted. My family has watched over it a thousand years – and likely much longer. Our original name was not O’Brien but d’Eiragh. And even the very mountains here still bear the family name, in Comeragh – Cum Eiragh. Which means the fort of Eiragh. And your family too, Kate, was once tied to ours – the name was not always Shaunessy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Shaunessys and Eiraghs are distantly related.’

  Padraig directed the beam of his torch over walls of masoned stone incised with a dense profusion of pictures and scored everywhere with narrow lines, cut across with verticals and diagonals.

  ‘D’you recognise the nature of these?’

  Kate’s voice was trembling. ‘They’re runes.’

  ‘Ogham, Kate! An alphabetical script older than runes, though some experts believe they became the basis of Nordic runes. These tell the story of the grave in detail. The Ogham itself is somewhat less than two thousand years old but the grave is a good deal older. I have spent many years studying that history. Indeed, I suspect the Ogham captures what might earlier have been carried down in words, or more likely song.’

  ‘What do they say, Grandad?’

  ‘Tales that must have been retold around many a campfire before the very wonder and terror of them was captured in the stone. But it is this symbol here that will most interest you!’

  Padraig ran his fingers over the chiselled outline, first in one place, then repeated here and there, as if it represented such a dark and terrible potency it reproduced itself over the confining six walls.

  ‘Is it the name of the warrior?’


  ‘Indeed not!’ The old man’s voice fell to a low-pitched murmur. ‘Never the name – that curse could not be carved in stone.’ He took a breath and calmed himself, allowing his voice to fall to his normal quiet tones. ‘These inscriptions are a ward.’

  ‘What’s a ward?’ Alan asked.

  ‘A protection against evil,’ Kate breathed, reaching out to take Alan’s hand.

  ‘Kate is right. They ward against a dark force with such a hunger for domination that none could control their own destiny once under its mantle.’

  Mark’s voice sounded taut but curious. ‘All these stories in the Ogham – they tell of war, don’t they, Mr O’Brien?’

  ‘Yes, so they do, Mark. This warrior prince was buried at the close of wars that must have seemed hopeless in those far-off days, wars without end. To stop the slaughter, the wise men of their time made sacrifices. They called upon ancient forces, such as might defeat a warrior prince who wielded such a blade of darkness – a blade, as is written here in the very stone, a hundred times blacker than midnight yet forged neither of iron nor bronze. An iron blade would be long rusted away in this damp air. You can see for yourself that even the bronze of his armour, which would last better than iron, is almost worn away to dust. Yet the sword has survived. Only with help could they defeat this warrior and thus end the chaos. The grave was cut and sealed with warded stone – magic to you, young Mark. But what appears magic today was knowledge in those far-off days.’

  Mark’s face was ghostly in the torchlight. ‘All I can see is an old grave, with pictures and fairy tales on the walls.’

  ‘Ah, now! Must I awaken this thing in order to convince you of something that is staring you in the face?’

  There were cries of disagreement from Alan and the two girls. But Mark shook his head, still struggling to believe any of this.

  ‘Stay here a moment and touch nothing. I’ll be back.’

  Padraig left them and went to the surface, returning in a few minutes with his hands cupped in the shape of a bowl. Under the inspection light, he opened them to reveal a mass of woodlice, ants and centipedes from some rotting tree trunk.