‘You could always cut down that one,’ I suggested with a nod towards the slender, deeply leaning tree behind him. ‘It looks like it’s ready to fall over all on its own.’
‘What, the rowan?’ He glanced back himself to confirm it. ‘I’ll never touch that one.’
‘Why not?’
‘’Tis the whispering tree, is the rowan. The witches’ tree. Show it your axe without asking permission and you’ll have bad luck all your days.’
I thought of the great ancient oak tree that stood in the way of the road in this time, and had vanished somehow by my own. Daniel had told me I ought to ask Fergal sometime about oak trees, and lone trees, and Celtic beliefs, and since Fergal seemed talkative I asked him now.
‘Well, the oak is more sacred again than the rowan,’ said Fergal. ‘Legend says that its roots are well bound in the otherworld, and that the tree itself serves as a doorway between the two realms of the shadows and light. Never fall asleep under a lone oak, they say, else you’ll wake …’ He broke off.
‘Where?’ I prompted him.
‘Somewhere you never were meant to be.’
As though on cue the wind chased lightly through the trees that edged this corner of the stable yard, and suddenly I heard the sound of heavy rolling wheels approaching, and a horse’s clopping steps, and a man drove around from the side of the house in a cart being drawn by a sturdily built chestnut mare. The cart rolled to a stop just in front of us as Fergal set down his axe and stepped forwards to shake the man’s hand. ‘Morrow, Peter.’
‘O’Cleary.’ The man gave a nod, and then angled it round to include me, too.
Fergal said, ‘You’ll have met my sister yesterday, I’m thinking.’
Then I realised why the man’s face seemed familiar. He’d been one of the men on the road with the constable. I remembered him best because he’d been the one who had spoken to Daniel before riding off with the others, the one who’d said, ‘’Twas not our doing.’
He looked as though the episode still shamed him as he gave another nod to me and said, ‘Mistress O’Cleary.’ Then taking a sack from the seat of the cart he told Fergal, ‘I’m just off to market. I thought you could find a good use for this.’
‘Did you, now?’ Fergal took the sack and looked inside. ‘You know me too well, Peter. Wasn’t I saying this morning I fancied a conger pie?’ Thanking the man, he said, ‘But you’ve no need to be giving me anything.’
‘Well.’ The man looked to the side. ‘’Twas a bad business yesterday. And you had to make your dinner stretch to extra mouths and all, because of it. I minded that you had a taste for conger.’ With another nod, he wished us both good day and turned the cart around and headed off.
The sack was wet and smelt of fish, and peering in I saw the coiled body of a large, dead eel.
Fergal said, ‘It may be ugly, but it makes a grand pie, conger does.’
I might have made a comment, but just then the back door opened and Jack Butler took a few unsteady steps into the daylight. He stopped as though he’d hit a wall, and then came on towards us, walking gingerly, his head held in both hands.
‘Christ,’ he said, with his eyes shut as though even the sound of his own footsteps caused him pain. ‘Where the devil is Daniel to?’
Fergal held back his answer until he had sauntered a few paces forwards himself to stand close beside Jack, and he spoke at full volume. ‘Left this morning, didn’t he, though where he’s gone I couldn’t say.’
‘Jesus.’ Gripping his temples more tightly, Jack let his eyes open a fraction and squinted at Fergal. ‘You bloody old—’
‘None of that now,’ Fergal warned. ‘Not in front of my sister.’
Jack turned his head a fraction, wincing at the movement, till he saw me, too. ‘Eva. Good morrow.’
As I nodded in reply I saw a flicker of remembrance cross his face. He said, ‘Do you know, I had the most unlikely dream of you last night …’
I’d been dreading this, but Fergal had apparently been waiting for it. ‘Did you, now? And will I have to mind you to recall your manners?’
‘No, it was nothing improper.’ Jack made the mistake of forgetting his hangover and the small shake of his head made him wince again. ‘She was speaking.’
The Irishman shot him down there on the spot with one dry look. ‘Oh, ay? In what language?’
‘In English, of course. She was speaking to Daniel.’
‘How hard were you hit on the head, then?’ asked Fergal. ‘Or was it the rum?’
‘It seemed real.’
‘Ay, I’m sure that it did.’ Fergal’s tone was indulgent. ‘And I’m all the time seeing little wee men when I’ve drunk too much whisky, myself.’ He handed the wet sack to Jack and the younger man blanched at the smell.
‘What,’ he asked in a weak voice, ‘is that?’
‘’Tis your dinner,’ was Fergal’s reply. ‘Or it will be, when Eva and I are done gutting it. Take it on into the house for me, will you?’
Jack turned whiter, if that could be possible, and the bruising on his face stood out sickly. ‘Take it yourself, you great bastard. I’m going back up to my bed.’ He threw down the bag at his tormentor’s feet and with one final glare of reproach turned and headed back into the house.