A Carol for the Dead, page 9
I slowed down, switched off the music and held the phone to my ear.
‘Are you all right, Illaun? I’ve just seen it on the TV news – the murder near Newgrange. They said a man’s body had been found. Do you know who it is?’
‘Yes,’ I said wearily. ‘A businessman named Frank Traynor. The one who was going to build the hotel there.’
‘You didn’t do it, did you?’
‘Oh, Finian, don’t joke about it. I saw the body, and it was pretty horrific. And what’s really strange …’ I was steering with one hand, phone held illegally in the other, and the fog was making driving difficult. ‘Look, I’ll call you when I get in. And here’s a question you can be mulling over: what kind of property rights could an abbey or convent have held since Norman times that would take precedence over modern planning laws?’ I pressed the End key, no doubt leaving Finian with ammunition for some jibe about the bewildering speed with which women’s brains jump from one thing to the next.
I drove into a Castleboyne enveloped in river fog, in which softly glowing street decorations, detached from their moorings, seemed to be floating.
Boo was on the rug, lying on his back in a dead-cartoon-cat pose: front paws bent and hanging in the air, hind legs akimbo, his expansive angora-wool belly on full display. I knelt down to tickle his tummy, and he promptly stood up and walked away with an indignant flick of his tail. Cats are great levellers. Just when you think you’ve learned their language, they tell you there’s another meta-level to be reached and that, at the rate you’re going, you’re unlikely to attain it. Maybe that’s why more people like dogs – they never spurn us. And right now Horatio was what I needed. But he was in the extension with my mother, and I couldn’t face an inquisition about my appetite.
I thought a shower would help. I went into the bedroom and saw on my locker the bunched-up scrap of yellow paper I had found under the bed that morning. Pulling it apart again, I saw my father’s scrawled handwriting: ‘ILLAUN’S ROOM’.
So simple, yet so difficult for him at the time; eventually impossible. I sat on the bed and burst out crying.
I cried for my dad, and for my mother, who hadn’t deserved to end up with her funny, brilliant, gentle life’s companion inhabiting the limbo of Alzheimer’s disease. I wept for Mona, so callously maimed and slaughtered, and I mourned for a man whom I had had every reason to dislike but who, whatever his faults, had not earned such a shockingly brutal end to his life.
Tears still staining my cheeks, I raised my face to the showerhead and let the water mingle with them. After standing under the hot stream for ten minutes, I felt better. I stepped out to hear the phone ringing in the hall; without haste, I went to it and lifted the handset.
‘Hello?’
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ It was Finian.
‘Yes, I’m –’ A leftover sob came surging up from deep down and took my breath away. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Then I remembered I had been meant to call him.
‘You’re not at all fine, Illaun. Do you want me to drop by? Take you out for a drink?’
‘No, thanks. I just need to chill out here for a little while and get to bed early. Sorry I didn’t call when I got in. I just completely forgot.’
‘And did you also forget what you asked me to think about?’
‘Eh …’ I certainly had. If only your memory was equal to your imagination.
‘Frankalmoign.’
‘Come again?’
‘Frankalmoign. Norman French for “free alms” or something along those lines.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Ancient rights, monasteries, convents, ecclesiastical property … remember? My, your brain can switch from max to min in a very short space of time.’
It came rushing back. What Seamus Crean had said about Grange Abbey. ‘But what’s frankalmoign?’
‘It’s a feudal term. It means property and privileges granted to the Church by the local lord in exchange for certain services, usually prayers for him and his family. Have you a particular case in mind?’
‘Yes, Grange Abbey – the nuns who sold Monashee to Frank Traynor. They’re some kind of nursing order.’
‘Catholic nuns?’
‘As far as I know, yes. “Came in with the Normans,” to quote my source.’
‘Then they’ve been here since the twelfth century. Hard to know how they could have held out since then, considering they’d have been under pressure from both sides.’
‘Both sides? How do you mean?’
‘Well, on the Catholic side you’d have to sidestep something called Periculoso. It was a canon law decree issued by Pope Boniface in 1298, making it practically impossible for women religious to be in anything other than a completely enclosed environment. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that they were allowed out again; that’s why most orders of nuns we’re familiar with date from then. On the other hand, cloistered or not, you’d have to survive the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, then Cromwell’s property confiscations and finally the Penal Laws against Catholics. That’s some obstacle course.’
‘Well, obviously this lot managed it.’
‘Maybe they were just lucky.’
‘I doubt it, Finian. I think they were tolerated for some reason, all the way from the time of the Normans until now.’
‘Hmm … Maybe the fact that the nuns were of English origin kept them protected, to a degree, when the Reformation began to kick in. Even if they were Catholic, at least they weren’t the uncivilised, rebellious Irish. What’s the order called, by the way?’
‘Dunno …’ I pulled the handset away from my mouth and yawned. ‘Question for you. Does frankalmoign still have legal standing?’
‘Um … not sure. According to what I’ve just been reading, it disappeared from English law in 1925. But I guess it had become an irrelevant concept here long before then.’
‘Why so?’
‘Because nearly all Catholic ecclesiastical property had been confiscated by the middle of the eighteenth century, and the Protestant aristocracy didn’t patronise monasteries and the like. That doesn’t mean that frankalmoign won’t pop up in property deeds from time to time, as it may have in this case. But, apart from the property itself, I’d imagine that Grange Abbey could hardly sell on whatever rights or privileges they’d gained in return for services rendered.’
‘Fascinating, Finian. But I’m afraid that there we’ll have to end our chat. I’m whacked.’ A wave of almost aching tiredness had overwhelmed me.
We said good night and I wobbled unsteadily to the bedroom. As I drifted off to sleep, my last thoughts turned to what kind of services the Grange Abbey nuns might have rendered, for which they had received over eight hundred years of undisturbed tenure. Prayers for the dead? It seemed like a very good deal.
In the darkness there was nothing to see, only sensation: something poking me in the side of my stomach; two paws steadily kneading me in turn. And a noise: purring.
‘Ah, dammit, Boo, go to sleep, will you?’ I whined. He had hidden somewhere in the room before I went to bed; I would inevitably have to get up and scoot him out. But for once, maybe, he would settle down … I dozed off again.
Some time later – an hour, two hours, it was hard to judge – I woke again. I listened for the sound of purring, waited for the soft punch of his paws, his tiny mew, even the heavy thump as he threw himself sidelong against the bedroom door. Nothing. Boo was asleep. What had woken me?
Horatio barked. And I knew it wasn’t the first time. If this continued, I would have to get out of bed and shut him up; but I was so tired that I waited, hoping his mood would pass.
The dog barked again, the sound piercing my skull like a piece of shrapnel. ‘Bloody hell,’ I muttered, and rolled out from under the duvet. I padded down the hall to the utility room, where I slipped on a pair of bright-red rubber gardening clogs and threw on an old green fleece that was hanging there. I could hear Horatio snuffling at the door on my mother’s side. When I let him through, he didn’t greet me, just aimed himself at the patio door and waited to be released, his body rigid with anticipation. At least I knew we didn’t have an intruder inside the house.
‘Something out there, boy?’ I whispered, trying to convince myself it was a fox or a rabbit. He was agitatedly scraping the patio door, but I was nervous about opening it, and I couldn’t see out through the frosted-glass window. The alternative was to go into the living room and draw back the curtains on the sliding glass doors that also opened onto the patio; but that would have made me feel more vulnerable, somehow. Horatio was whining now, tearing at the door with his paws.
The door was locked and bolted and had a chain, which was dangling from the jamb. I slipped the chain into its catch and unbolted the door. Taking a deep breath, I turned the Yale lock, with the intention of opening the door just wide enough to peek through; but this made the dog even more frantic. Suddenly he forced the door open and rocketed out through the gap, growling into the dark.
Caught by the chain, the door swung back almost closed. I put my ear against it, expecting to hear snarls and screams as Horatio made contact with his quarry. But there was no sound.
I switched on the patio light from inside and opened the door as far as the chain would allow. Dense fog obscured the garden, the light penetrating only a few metres across the tiled patio. On the very edge of visibility I could make out Horatio, crouched on the terracotta tiles. He was facing out but creeping backwards, head to one side and looking up, ears flat against his head, teeth bared, the hairs on his neck spiking. And, instead of growling or snarling, he was wheezing strangely. Was he hurt?
Above him was a figure in a stained white robe or overalls of some kind, slowly receding into the fog. I blinked the sleep from my eyes. I couldn’t make out a face; it was veiled.
The figure disappeared.
Horatio turned back in retreat, silently wagging his tail. It was not he who had been wheezing.
I let the dog in, slammed the door shut and shakily jiggled the bolt into place as late-arriving adrenaline set my heart pounding. Keeping my shoulder pressed to the door, I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. The apparition in the fog had been wearing a hat with a veil hanging from the front. White overalls. White hat and veil.
My nocturnal visitor seemed to have been wearing a beekeeper’s protective clothing. A beekeeper. In midwinter.
December 18th
Chapter Ten
It was Saturday morning. I knew because I could hear my mother in the kitchen preparing breakfast; it was the one morning of the week when we ate together. The events of the previous day started to re-run in my brain like an old newsreel, culminating in the scene in the fogbound garden. I sat up in delayed shock. How had I been able to get back to sleep after that? I hadn’t even bothered to call the Gardaí – and I was the very one who would yell at stupid people in suspense movies when they refused to take the most basic precautions. I reckoned that my depleted coping system had simply switched off so it could recharge overnight.
‘Illaun? Are you awake? It’s ten o’clock.’
‘Mmm … getting up now.’ I slid back under the duvet, rolled it around me and tried to catch the 10 am flight back to Dreamland.
‘Illaun!’ I awoke again, nerves a-jangle. That voice could drill through kilometre-thick lead. ‘Breakfast’s ready. Up you get.’
‘I’m up, I’m up.’ Please don’t call out my name again.
I unrolled from the duvet and found myself staring up at a pair of eyes as yellow and round as lemon slices. Boo was perched on my pillow, gazing down at me. ‘Hiya, Boo Radley. Have a good night’s sleep?’
The cat blinked. I blinked back. Well-informed cat owners do that kind of thing. It’s meant to help inter-species communication. Sometimes I get the feeling they’re just indulging our weird behaviour.
Boo came with me towards the kitchen but slipped out through the cat-flap as we passed the door to the patio. I paused, unlocked the door and looked out. The fog had cleared. The patio tiles were greasy, the drooping shrubs and flower-stalks in the garden dripping; all the trees were bare, apart from a single Cordyline palm. I shook off my slippers and stepped into the red clogs. Late-fallen leaves were slick underfoot as I crossed to where the figure had stood. There were no footprints on the wet tiles. Surrounding the patio and the raised beds was a scree of decorative gravel – no hope of prints in that. But anyone who came into the garden from the front of the house had to walk across a grassy boundary.
I clopped to the end of the patio and examined the patch of lawn that rose gently from the edge of the gravel and sloped down, along the side of the house, to the cobble-lock driveway. The grass was wet, the earth beneath it no doubt saturated – and slippery, it seemed. I could see a number of places where someone’s footwear had failed to grip and they had slid on the grass, crushing the blades and gouging out some of the soil beneath. It was hard to make out if the footprints had been made on entering or leaving, except that they led straight in the direction of my car, parked in the driveway.
Pulling my dressing-gown tighter against the cold, I started up the short slope, the grooved soles of my rubber clogs finding purchase with no difficulty. Standing on the crest of the grass, I could see the damage. The passenger window of the Jazz had been smashed in. There were some shards of glass on the cobbles; the remainder I saw strewn over the seats when I looked in. The radio and CD player were intact, no wires hung from the ignition, the glove compartment was closed. Nothing had been taken and no further damage done, as far as I could see. I checked on my mother’s red Ford Ka, which was parked around the corner, near the front door: the windows were all intact, the doors locked.
I called Castleboyne Garda station from the phone in the hall and reported the incident. The officer on duty said that youths on a drunken spree had broken into several cars on the outskirts of the town, and that mine had probably been another of their targets. According to him, my ghostly visitor had been all too human, probably wearing a hoodie, and the fog had played tricks with my vision.
My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, a newspaper open beside her breakfast things. ‘What were you doing out in the garden, love?’ she said, looking over her reading glasses at me while simultaneously managing to pour tea from a green teapot into my cup. I could tell she had been at Snips the day before; her greying brown hair was in that tight perm hairdressers insist on giving to all women over sixty.
‘Someone broke into the car last night.’
She set down the pot and clutched at the pink blouse she was wearing under a dark-blue cardigan dotted with red sequins. ‘Lord save us, Illaun. What were they looking for?’
‘Oh, the usual, I guess – CD player, radio. But they didn’t get anything. Horatio heard them and woke me up just in time.’
She smiled. ‘Paddy always maintained he was a great watchdog.’ Then her expression became one of concern. ‘You didn’t go after them, did you?’
‘No, I just heard them running off,’ I lied. ‘I didn’t think they’d broken into it until I went out just now.’
‘Have you told the Gardaí?’
‘Yes. They said there were several cars broken into around here last night. People leave gifts on the back seat at this time of year.’
‘Well, thank God they got nothing of value from yours. Now, the best thing is to forget about it and have some breakfast. I’ve got some lovely bread for you, and that nice salami from Yore’s.’
My mother spent a year in Germany and Austria in the 50s, after her Leaving Certificate exam. Whatever about the small amount of German she picked up, the experience formed her breakfast habits, and we had been brought up accordingly: pickles, wurst, cheese and rye bread were always on the table in the morning, even at a time when some of these items could only be bought at Magill’s delicatessen in Dublin, usually by my father at weekends. As a treat he’d occasionally bring home bratwurst, which we fried with eggs or ate cold with potato salad. And there was always my mother’s crab-apple jelly, which she flavoured with cloves. That was all I wanted now; but, to show my appreciation, I spread some Hellman’s Light onto a piece of bread, slapped a slice of salami onto it and began to chew.
‘Will you listen to this article,’ she said in an outraged tone; and then, quoting: ‘“Christmas is yet another pagan feast about which the Church kept you in the dark.”’ She rattled the newspaper and looked at me fiercely over her glasses. ‘That’s nonsense. We learned it in the Liturgical Catechism at school fifty years ago. I can remember the exact words: “Why was the twenty-fifth of December chosen for the feast? Answer: To counteract and destroy the influence of the pagan festival of the Unconquered Sun, the period of the winter solstice.” That’s open and honest, isn’t it?’
I mumbled agreement and kept eating. My mother was vigilant about this kind of thing. And there was no doubt that the pagan roots of Christian festivals were gleefully recycled in the media at Halloween and Christmas, but I wasn’t in the mood to discuss it.
And then it hit me. The card found under Traynor’s body – the greeting on it. The Peace of Earth, Air and Water be with you, and may the returning Sun rekindle all your hopes this Midwinter. It had more to do with the winter solstice than with Christmas Day; it was inspired more by Newgrange than by Bethlehem.
My mother had returned to the article, reading out lines here and there and muttering darkly about the media’s role in undermining Catholicism in Ireland. As I half listened I wondered whether there was some other religious significance in the choice of the two callously ironic messages on the card.
Thus are the Concupiscent punished. Both had a religious ring to them, but the contrast couldn’t be more stark – one was a bland New Age platitude, the other like a sentence handed down by the Inquisition. And why did ‘Concupiscenti’ have a capital ‘C’? A slip of the keyboard, or a proper noun? If it wasn’t a mistake, then the ‘Concupiscenti’ had to be a recognised group, an organisation even.
