The Celtic Riddle

Chapter Seventeen. WHO CALLS THE STARS?

YOU, young lady, will go to your room," Rob shouted. "And stay there until I say you can come out. And you will never, ever, see that guy again!"

Do we suppose Jennifer has already told her father about the boyfriend, by any chance? I asked myself.

"But it's the music festival," Jennifer sulked.

"I don't care if it's the Second Coming," Rob said. "You are grounded, confined to barracks, under house arrest. Do you get my drift here?

"As for you," he said, his face flushed with anger, as Jennifer stomped across the hall to our room. "Have you aided and abetted in all of this? Have you set my daughter up with this Gilhooly fellow? I left her in your charge, you know."

"You did not leave her in my charge," I retorted. "And I did not aid and abet. I was as surprised as you are when I found out. Yes, I may have known about it a few days before you did, but that was because I was paying attention. You, on the other hand, have totally abrogated your responsibility as her parent. And furthermore, I do not think that yelling at her about it is going to change anything."

"Well, what is?" he yelled. He was totally out of control. It occurred to me that with this stress and the Irish cooked breakfasts he'd been eating, he might be on the verge of a stroke. However, I couldn't stop.

"She's an intelligent young woman. She'll figure it out for herself."

"What if it's too late?" he said.

Too late? Too late for what? "Oh for heaven's sake, Rob. Don't be such a drip."

I stomped out of the Inn. It was true, I was feeling guilty. But I still thought he was handling this situation all wrong. I wandered around the town for a while, holding imaginary conversations with him and her, and trying to calm down. From time to time, I'd see almost everyone in town I knew: Conail, out of jail and still drinking, Eithne and Fionuala-I took some pleasure in knowing Fionuala had persuaded her older sister to come into town-Paddy Gilhooly, who didn't seem to have allowed the disappearance of his young girlfriend to bother him too much. The only person I didn't see was Breeta. I carefully avoided the rest of them, not in the mood for conversation. I needed to think what to do.

Finally, in a fit of ill humor, I decided I was going to go to the music festival, whether I would enjoy it or not, just to spite Rob. I might even forget all about it, if I tried hard enough, I reasoned. I walked along the streets until I heard music I liked, the traditional Celtic jigs and reels, and went in.

The bar was packed, a haze of cigarette smoke, and very, very noisy. It was a friendly crowd, most of them, I could tell, out for a special Saturday night at their local pub. Young people crowded around the bar, and pints of beer, dark and creamy, were passed across to others in the room. Most were in couples, but there was a small group of women out for an evening together, and a crowd of young men on the other side of the room looking them over furtively. For a horrible moment, I thought I saw Rob and Maeve, which would entirely spoil the place for me, but when I looked in that direction again, I couldn't see them.

Over in one corner, two old women sat smiling, one toothlessly, at the crowd. They were of sturdy stock, both dressed in gray, one with her white hair held back from her face with a barrette, the other's hair covered by a small gray scarf. From time to time, the barman, a fellow with a hearty booming voice called across to them, "Ready for another round, dears?" and the two old woman would laugh and nod. The barman would then send a strapping youth to deliver the drinks to their table.

In another corner of the room, seated on a bench, behind a large low table on which were scattered dozens of drink glasses, some empty, some full, and several ashtrays heaped with butts, were four musicians: a raven-haired woman in a black sleeveless top and black pants playing a squeeze-box; a blonde woman, casually attired in sweatshirt and jeans, on the bodhran, the Celtic drum; another woman with short-cropped hair in jeans and sweater, the fiddler; and the leader of the group, a man in jeans and wool sweater, who played the flute. It was he who announced the tunes they were to play, or tried to at least, the din in the bar making it impossible for all except those closest to hear what he said, and marked out the beat with a thump of his heel on the wood floor.

Those patrons who wanted to hear the music crowded in a large semicircle several rows deep around the table, those in front sitting on low stools. I stood near the back of that group, cheered by the music, as the musicians began to play. The first piece was a ballad, sung by the raven-haired woman, a song that all but me seemed to know. Her voice was clear and sweet, the refrain wafting over the crowd, some of whom sang softly along with her.

After a few minutes, the musicians broke into a jig, I to a smattering of applause from the crowd, followed j by a reel, then another jig. Faster and faster the music ] went, the fiddler leaning now into her instrument, her j face a study in concentration, the bodhran thumping I out the beat hypnotically, the squeeze-box wailing, the I flute notes soaring, the crowd swaying, the man's knee j moving up and down like a piston marking the time.

Then, I felt something hard pressed against my back, and a hoarse voice whispered, "Come along with me now, or I'll shoot." I felt myself being pulled away from the crowd, pushed down a hall, then out a door that led into an alley. Before I had any idea what was happening, or could even turn my head, I felt a cloth being placed over my mouth and the world went black.

I awoke, or perhaps I should say became conscious, to find myself in a place with no light and no sound. Perhaps this is what death is, I thought, no clouds or wings or pearly gates, nor on the other hand, the fires and sulphurous fumes of damnation. Just eternal nothingness. I thought with regret of all the things I'd left undone, and unsaid, and wondered if it might be possible to be given another chance, a reprieve. Dimly, I wondered if Eamon Byrne was somewhere nearby, wishing, in his case, that there were thoughts he'd left unspoken.

Gradually, however, nothingness became a cold, hard surface, the smell of dampness, waves of nausea, a glimmer of night sky way above me, and the roar of the wind outside my prison. And then, in the darkness nearby, I heard a groan.

"Rob?" I exclaimed. "Rob, is that you?" Another groan. I pulled myself up on my hands and knees, and felt about in the direction of the sound. A few feet away from my own resting place, I found him. He was still not entirely conscious, but he was coming around. I found his hand and held it.

"Who's there?" he said hoarsely, coming to with a start.

"It's me, Rob," I said. "You're with me."

He said nothing for a minute or two, and I thought he'd lost consciousness again.

"Any idea where we are?" he said finally.

"Nope," I replied.

He sat up slowly and groaned again. "It's coming back to me," he said. "The bar, the music, and you disappearing down the back hallway: I caught just a glimpse of you. It looked odd, somehow, so I decided I'd better take a look. I got as far as the back door. I wonder if there were two of them. Hate to think I'd be overpowered by just one. Must be seriously out of practice. It's all that desk work they're giving me back home. Has to be. You don't think it could be middle age, do you? Ether, probably, or something similar if I judged correctly in the split second between the time the cloth went over my mouth and I blacked out. And if this ghastly nausea I'm feeling is any indication. Primitive, but effective. I was out like a light. Whoever it was must have knocked you out first, and then got at me from behind the door, or something. Never even saw it coming. I'm definitely out of practice."

"It was nice of you to come after me," I said at the end of his soliloquy.

"That's what we policemen do. Stop crime, save the damsel in distress, that sort of thing. Not that I'm doing such a fine job of it on this particular occasion."

"Did you happen to see who was pushing me out the door?" I asked.

"Unfortunately not. I could just see the top of your head, and the back of someone else's, but it didn't look right."

"Man? Woman?"

"Couldn't say. How about you? Voice mean anything."

"No, it was deliberately disguised, though, which probably means I'd know this person."

"Mmmm," he said. I heard him moving in the darkness, and in a moment, the flick of his lighter and the small flame. "See!" he said. "There are some advantages to smoking. Don't think I didn't notice that you don't approve."

We stood up, and as Rob moved the tiny light about, surveyed our prison. We were standing in a circular structure of some kind, about ten feet in diameter. The walls, made of stone, curved inward and upward to a small hole about twelve feet off the ground. There was an opening, a small door with metal bars, and Rob leaned hard against it. It didn't budge. He turned off the lighter. "I want to save fuel," he said, "while I think.

"With these walls curving in like that, it would be virtually impossible to climb up there to see if we could make a bigger opening in the top," Rob said softly in the darkness. "You'd have to be a spider or a fly, or something. Maybe you could stand on my shoulders and see if you could push some of the top stones away to widen the hole. But," he sighed, "we still couldn't get up there. Maybe, if I stood near the wall and pushed you up? Probably not," he said, resignation in his voice. I was inclined to agree with him.

"I have a question for you," he said after a few minutes of contemplation, "this being the first opportunity I've had to be alone with you since we got on the plane."

And who's fault was that, I wondered, what with him spending so much time with his favorite garda? "Ask away," I said.

"Do you really think I'm a drip, and a-what was that other unpleasant term you used?-a poop?"

Really, the male ego. "No," I said. "Well, maybe sometimes. If you could just be a little more relaxed with Jennifer."

"How so?"

"Do you think this is a good time to discuss this?" I sighed.

"Why not?" he declared. "Not much else doing around here, is there?"

"All right. Then I would submit that she's going to grow up, she's going to have boyfriends. Brace yourself, she's going to have sex. Why, instead of putting your energy into scaring the boys off, which frankly probably has the opposite effect of what you intended, why wouldn't you talk to her about practical things like birth control and STDs and stuff?"

"That's a mother's job," he replied.

I was tempted to say that since she didn't have one, the role was his. But of course he knew that, and he had done the best he could with Jennifer, and not a bad job at all.

"Anyway, I'm not as much of a dinosaur as you think. I know she probably won't marry her first high school sweetheart the way I did."

How could she when you won't let her have a high school sweetheart, I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut.

"Don't say anything," he ordered. "Even in the dark, I know exactly what the expression on your face looks like right now. I just don't think Gilhooly is a good place to start," he continued. "She's a little immature compared to some of her girlfriends. I mean how old is he, anyway? Old enough to be her father? He can't be ten years younger than I am. Well maybe ten." He paused. "Okay more than ten, but you get the idea."

"You're saying he's too old for her, and you're right," I said. As tedious as a middle-aged man fussing about his age would normally be, this conversation about age struck me as rather interesting, suddenly. Could it be, I wondered, what with all this drama about Jennifer and her older man that I'd overlooked something rather important? How old would the lost child have been, I wondered. Because it would have had to be the child, wouldn't it? The mother, father, father's sister, and grandparents were already dead. Eithne said her parents had been married for thirty-four years. Byrne had been away a year before that. That meant his sister's child couldn't be any younger than about thirty-six, maybe more. Thirty-six to forty, say. Could Padraig be the lost child? It was possible, I supposed. You'd think that Eamon Byrne would have objected to his daughter taking up with his sister's son, assuming he wasn't in favor of a severely limited gene pool. But maybe he didn't know. He didn't seem to have known about Deirdre, perhaps because the family feud of his youth meant the families were not well acquainted. They'd inhabited quite different towns. Was it possible, I wondered, that the child was alive and had tracked the family down?

"And anyway, I don't want her to get hurt," I heard Rob say. "It's just a vacation kind of relationship, admit it."

I turned my attention back to what he was saying. If he thought in my weakened condition I was going to agree with everything he said, he was sorely mistaken. "And you, I suppose, are setting a good example for her in that regard? Alex may be the soul of discretion where his roommate's comings and goings are concerned, but Jennifer knows perfectly well you've been creeping out very late and returning very early in the morning. And she doesn't believe the police business excuse, either!"

"I wish you hadn't said that," he sighed. "You didn't have to. I know. You're saying I'm a jerk and a poor excuse for a father." He sounded dreadful there in the dark.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have said that. And no, I don't think you're a poor excuse for a father, or a jerk. I mean, look at Jennifer. She's a lovely young woman, and very sensible. You should take credit for that. As for Maeve, she also seems very competent, and pleasant." Faint praise, I know, but it was the best I could do. "I gather the relationship is pretty serious," I added.

"Don't think so," he said quietly. I waited. "Two reasons: She's not really a widow. Her husband is still breathing. There's been no divorce in Ireland until very recently, so she bills herself as a widow for the sake of convention. He lives in Belfast."

"So maybe now she'll get a divorce."

"I think she's a little conflicted-is that the word?- on the subject, either because she doesn't entirely approve of divorce, or because she still has some feelings for him."

Oh dear, I thought. We both digested that for a moment.

"And the second reason?" I asked.

He sighed. "The second reason is that I'm not entirely sure that is where my heart lies. I'm not sure where it does lie, but I don't think it's there."

I wasn't sure I understood the details of that statement, but I did understand the sentiments expressed.

"And that fancy pants lawyer?" Rob said into the darkness.

"Don't think so, either," I replied.

"Reasons?" he said.

"One, I don't think I'm his type somehow, and two, I'm not sure that's where my heart lies."

"Mmm," he said. We sat in silence for a few moments.

"I've been meaning to ask you something for a while," he said, suddenly. "You can say no. But I was wondering if you would consider being Jennifer's legal guardian should anything happen to me. Her grandparents are getting a little frail for the job. You are the only person I know I would really entrust her to. She's eighteen, so she's almost beyond the need, but I think she could use some guidance for a while yet. You can think about it. I'm a policeman, remember, so the chances of being called upon to do this are higher than average."

"I don't have to think about it," I said. "If I had a daughter, and I confess lately I've wished more than once that I did, I'd be pleased if she turned out like Jennifer. So yes, I'll do it. You do realize, though, that if I'm your fallback, as it were, then you'll have to stop following me into these dicey situations."

"You're right, I will," he chuckled.

"What do you think will happen, here, I mean, and now? Be honest," I said.

"Are you sure you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"I expect whoever it is will either leave us here to rot, or come back to dispose of us."

"Wonderful," I said. "I'm sorry I asked." We both sat contemplating that lovely thought for a while.

"Where are we, do you think?" he asked. "Still in the Dingle?"

"Yes," I replied.

"North? West?"

"South-ish, I think."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because we're in a clochan," I replied. "And that's where most of them are."

"A what?"

"A clochan. A beehive hut. There are hundreds of them around here, on the slopes of Mount Eagle, most of them ruins, but some in good condition. I saw them when Malachy, Kevin, Jennifer, and I went looking for clues. Turn on the light, and look: Think of yourself on the inside of a beehive. See how the stones are placed to curve up to the top. It's called corbelling. A work of art, really. These beehive huts were little houses, dating back to the early days of Christianity and maybe even earlier. Monks lived alone in them, as hermits, to study and pray. Sometimes, they were built in clusters around a church. Or when they were used by ordinary folk rather than priests, around, or in, a fort for protection. This one is larger and higher than most. I think I've read that they were usually only about four feet high, but this one is much higher than that, so perhaps it was a house, rather than a monk's cell."

"Very interesting, I'm sure," Rob said. "Now can we think of any way of getting out of this clochan thing?"

"Not really," I replied. I thought for a moment. "Give me that lighter!" I said. I swept the tiny light over the surface of the walls, looking for what I desperately wanted to find. The walls were made of rows of stones placed on top of each other in rather tidy rows, tiny little stones filling in the spaces between them as necessary. For the first few feet, the walls angled in barely perceptibly, but as they got higher, you could see how each row of stones overhung the one below it just a bit, so that the wall curved up to the top, where an opening of about six inches had been left open.

"I'm thinking souterrain," I said at last.

"Sue who?" he said.

"It's not sue who, it's sou what," I replied. "Souterrain. Literally under the ground. If this was used as a house, there might be a souterrain."

"Dare I say, so what?" Rob said, just a touch irritably.

"So-sometimes the souterrain was just a place to store food where it would keep cool in the ground. But sometimes it was an escape route. These shores were often plagued by Viking raids, and people needed an alternate way out of their homes should the Vikings, or pirates, or whatever arrive suddenly. The Viking raiders were particularly interested in church treasures, if I remember correctly, the jewel-encrusted manuscripts and such. So people built low, narrow and curved underground tunnels, the easier to defend themselves from anyone following them, that led several feet or yards outside their houses. If some marauder came toward the front door, they'd go into the tunnel and out the back way.

"Look here," I said moving the light toward one side. "See where the stone pattern changes. Some of the stones are vertical rather than horizontal here, like a lintel over a doorway. And see, the stones are not as regularly placed. Perhaps this souterrain was filled in at a later date!"

Rob looked impressed. "Dry mortar," he said, "no cement or anything. Just the stones themselves. It should be easy to take apart, relatively speaking. Let's get to it! Here, you hold the light, and I'll start."

It was difficult at first, with the stones so closely packed, but in a matter of minutes, Rob had created a small hole in the wall. He reached back for the lighter, and carefully placed it into the hole, and peered in. I held my breath. It could easily just be a storage chamber, I thought, in fact it was more likely to be. I hardly dared to hope.

"I think it's a tunnel," he said at last. "Who'd have thought all that history of yours would be so useful." I almost sobbed with relief.

Within minutes, we'd pulled out enough stones so that we could slip into the tunnel.

"You go first," Rob said. "I'll protect the rear, in case someone comes in before we get away."

I pushed myself feet first into the tunnel. It was dank and cold, and I could see nothing in front of me. Rob passed me the lighter and I moved into the tunnel. After a few feet I was able to stand, although bent over at the waist. The tunnel jogged slightly, then narrowed, and after another few yards, I had to get down on my knees and crawl again. By the time I reached the end of it, I was lying on my stomach and pulling myself along with my elbows.

The end was blocked by a large stone. I pushed as hard as I could. The stone trembled slightly, but didn't give way.

"Small problem," I called back to Rob who was now just a few feet behind me. I held the light up to the rock.

"Mmm," Rob agreed. "We'll both have to push." He pulled himself forward until we were lying side by side in the tunnel. "Turn on your side," he said. "I need some more room."

We were nose to nose and hip to hip by this time. I could feel his breath on my face. All I could think of was that if our captors came after us, we'd not be able to maneuver at all. Being a man, Rob saw it differently. "This is nice, isn't it?" he said. I just knew he was grinning there in the darkness. I glared back, even if he couldn't see.

"One, two, three, push!" he said. We both pushed as hard as we could on the stone. It rocked slightly.

"Again!" Rob ordered. We pushed again, then again. The stone started to rock, and finally, with a jerk, moved, then rolled away from the tunnel. Rob pushed me out in front of him, and we were free.