The Harp and the Fiddle: Glenncailty Castle, Book 1 (4 page)

The pub was larger than a normal country pub, taking up almost the entire ground floor of the east wing, with two bars to keep the drinks flowing when it was full. But the seating arrangements and high walls of the snugs, which she sometimes heard Americans call “secret rooms”, broke up the space and kept the atmosphere intimate. A few die-hard smokers were on the patio out the back doors, puffing away in the rain. It smelled like cooked spuds, good beer and earth, the last scent having been trailed in by a few bachelor farmers who even in their clean clothes smelled of the land. The butcher’s son John was at the bar with Séan Donnovan, who never looked entirely comfortable in the pub. 

Rory dropped down in a chair next to her. “I’m starving-like.”

“You worked hard, and I thank you,” Caera said. Finn’s Stable was set up, with each chair perfectly positioned and the stage ready and waiting for the musicians. “Let me buy you dinner.”

“Ah Caera, my darling love, I thought you’d never ask.” Rory pressed his hands to his heart and fluttered his lashes at her.

“Jaysus.” Caera pushed up. Weaving between the tables, she made her way to the bar—the crowd was large but not fast-drinking, so only one bar was manned—and flipped up the pass through. She waved at the bartender as she walked into the stock room. Locked cages protected bottles of alcohol, while the kegs were lined in neat rows, hoses disappearing into the wall.

Against the back wall, a spiral staircase led down to an underground hallway that connected the kitchen and the pub. Building it had come at huge expense, but Mr. O’Muircheataigh wouldn’t allow any other external buildings or halls besides the kitchen itself. The hall was hard on the servers, as were the stairs, but hauling food through the rain or the long way through the restaurant and covered hall would have been worse. The rumor among the staff was that Mr. O’Muircheataigh and Elizabeth had fought bitterly over the building of the kitchen. 

Caera, for one, was glad. With no proper kitchen of her own, she ate from the castle’s kitchen most nights, and its modern set-up had lured a wonderful French chef to Glenncailty. She said hello to one of the servers in the hall, turning sideways to make room for the tray of fish and chips, stew, burgers and brown bread he carried.

Climbing the stairs into the kitchen, she used the terminal there to key in her usual order of soup and bread and Rory’s of steak and chips, then wandered over to wait for it. She leaned on the end of one of the counters, doing her best to stay out of the way as Jim, one of the chefs, worked.

“I’ve never cut so many chips,” Jim said. He was the
chef de partie
of the fry baskets, or
friturier
,
as the French
chef de cuisine
, Tristan, insisted Jim be called. It seemed like a fancy name for a man frying chips, but Caera had to admit these chips were better than most, so maybe the French titles helped. The whole kitchen glistened, not only with clean steel, but with the expectations and rigidity of Tristan. Caera usually hid if she saw him. 

“You’ve peeled more spuds than this,” Caera said, looking in the garbage pail at the mountain of potato peels.

Jim slammed a potato through a dicer, tossed the pieces with some floury substance, then added them to a bowl of raw chips, ready to be made into fried bits of heaven.

“It’s been a fair while. I hear you’re to blame for this.”

Caera shrugged and smiled. Free Birds Fly was her baby, the biggest thing she’d done thus far at Glenncailty.

“Well, good luck to you. And tell Rory I’m going to Navan to watch the Meath-Galway game if he wants to come.”

“I’m sure he will.”

She saw another chef ladle up her soup, then fetch Rory’s steak from the restaurant side and slide it onto a plate. Jim added chips, Caera grabbed her own bread and, after stealing a tray to put them on, she carefully carried them back into the bar.

“You’re a lovely serving girl,” Rory told her.

“You’d do well to show some respect. I
am
your boss.”

“You’d look fetching in an apron.”

“Feck off.”

“Nothing but an apron.” Rory’s brown eyes danced.

“Now I’m telling your mammy.”

“Ah Caera, why won’t you—”

She didn’t hear the rest of what Rory said. The hair on her arms stood up, as if someone had let in the cold, but the doors were closed. She looked over to see the American sitting at the bar.

He was looking at her.

Their gazes met. Held.

“Caera?”

“Yea?” Caera ripped her attention from Tim and turned back to Rory, who was looking at her oddly.

He followed her gaze to the bar.

“Who’s that?”

She wanted to say “no one” and tell Rory to mind his own business, but that made no sense. She had nothing to hide. “He’s Tim Wilcox.”

“The American?” Rory turned to look again. Out of the corner of her eye Caera saw Tim studying Rory in return. “He dresses like an American.”

Tim wore jeans, a T-shirt with a picture of what looked like Johnny Cash, a gray scarf wound around his neck and a black jacket. Among the trousers and jumper-clad Irish, he did stand out.

Caera thought he looked a bit like a model, with his hair parted at the side, the forelock curling on his brow, his jaw square, lips finely cut.

“He’s looking at you,” Rory said, voice deepening.

Rory, I’m not yours to protect
, Caera thought.

“We met earlier. He came in to Finn’s to test his fiddle.”

Rory turned back to her, the fight draining out of him at her words. He munched down a few fries, before adding, “That’s what she said.”

“What?”

“You said he came to ‘test his fiddle.’ That’s what she said.” Rory grinned at his own wit.

Caera threw a hunk of brown bread at him. Lifting her bowl, she drained the last drops of soup. She was just in time. The shift must have been changing in the hotel, because a reception clerk and two parlor attendants were hovering, waiting to join their table. 

She stood, giving up her seat and bussing her plate to the far end of the bar, away from Tim. Quick as she could, she pulled up the ticket for their dinner and paid, prepared to sneak out and away to home.

She didn’t make it.

The first notes of a strummed guitar quieted and then raised a cheer from the patrons in the bar. The pack of wily old gentlemen from Cailtytown had their instrument cases up on their table, pint glasses carefully pushed aside. Next came a fiddle and another guitar. A triangle and tin whistle hit the tabletop.

One of them, an old farmer who could talk for Ireland, as the saying went, and God help the soul who he trapped in a conversation, stood while his friends drank and tuned their instruments.

His clear baritone, seasoned by years, filled the silenced room as he sang the first lines of “The Auld Triangle”, a song that was both sad and funny, about a execution day at Mountjoy Prison. 

The others joined in, a multi-part harmony, all
a cappella
, each taking a verse, some with a quiet seriousness that reminded listeners the song was about men imprisoned, others with a devilish twinkle in their eye as they sang about the women in the female prison. When the song came to an end, the pub erupted in applause and good-natured heckling by those who knew the singers.

Caera jolted, remembering that there were professional musicians in the audience. This pub was part of the hotel, but in off times it was kept alive by locals and not-so-locals who came for the good
craic
. She didn’t want the musicians she’d brought here looking down their noses at locals who took up an instrument to play a session.

Stepping away from the terminal, she looked down the bar at Tim, who was lounging next to Paddy Fish. Paddy grinned and leaned over to say something in Tim’s ear, but Tim didn’t react, his attention riveted on the musicians.

The fiddler stood, took a mouthful of his pint, and tucked his battered fiddle under his chin. 

“How about ‘Mairi’s Wedding’
,
my lads?” one man called out. 

“We’ll be needing a lassie to dance for us, and I’m seeing the one I want. Sorcha, come up here.” Caera hadn’t seen her friend and housemate enter the pub for dinner, but at their request, Sorcha stood, pulling off her jacket and taking down her hair. Red waves fell down her back. There was a clatter and Caera looked over to see Séan Donnovan mopping up the spill from the pint he’d just knocked over. 

When the chorus came, half the pub was singing as Sorcha held her arms at her sides and danced, her cheeks flushing with laugher. 

Caera looked back to Tim, who was gazing around the pub with an expression on his face that was almost…wonder. Curious, she dodged between the swaying diners, the clapping hands and perched beside him.

His attention turned to her. “This is beautiful.”

Caera looked around. Only half the pub was singing, the music echoed oddly in a space that wasn’t designed for it and enthusiastic tabletop drumbeats only barely drowned out the clink of silverware. It was far from beautiful. It was good fun, nothing more.

“Why do you say so?” she asked.

“It’s…real. Paddy said those men aren’t professional musicians, they just play when they feel like it, and if someone else had an instrument, they would go up and play.”

“That’s the way of it.”

“That’s…that’s how music should be.” There was an aching sadness in his voice. 

“I like it all right when it’s nicely planned in a place with proper acoustics.” Caera raised a brow, reminding him that he was a musician.

He grinned ruefully, seeming to take her meaning. “When I’m on the stage, the music is one-sided, and that’s nice when I have something new to say about the song or when I want to own the feelings, but sometimes it’s too much pressure to be alone in the music.”

Caera sucked in a breath. She knew that feeling, that aching fear. 

Tim’s eyes were green as the fields in sunlight. His gaze held hers, and she felt that he could see inside her, know her, but that was impossible, she hadn’t even told him her name.

The ruckus calmed, the song changing. The guitars started a simple progression of notes, a slower, sad tune. “We’ll have ‘The Four Green Fields’ to honor those who lost land to road works.” There was a round of head-shaking. “I can’t do it justice. Caera, do us the honor.”

At the sound of her name, the spell broke and she took a breath, still gazing into his eyes. 

“I think they’re asking for you, Caera.” Tim’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. 

Her name on his lips was a surprise. It must have shown on her face, because he held out his hand. “We haven’t formally met.”

“Caera Cassidy.” She slid her hand into his, touching him for the first time. Her palm tingled from contact with his fingers. 

Caera turned away.

She made her way to the front, where the music was already underway, just waiting for the vocals to cue the next measure. One of the boys patted her on the shoulder as she turned to face the pub. She took a breath, closed her eyes and let the notes fill her. Hands pressed to her belly, she started singing. “Four Green Fields” was a story of a woman who had four green fields, but lost her sons protecting that land, and before the song was done it was clear that the fine old woman of the song was Ireland herself, her fields the four provinces of the island.

A rebel song at its core, the song elicited both shouts of protest and sad nods, reminding them of what their fathers and forefathers had suffered and lost. Caera opened her eyes, watching the crowd as she finished the song. Almost everyone in the pub had stopped to listen. No silverware clinked when she sang. If glasses were raised, they were in toast to something in the song. In that moment she had power, the music made her whole. 

The last note hung in the air. Caera wondered what Tim, who may not have even understood the song, thought. She didn’t want to look at him, afraid to find him apathetic, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

Tim was up off his stool, looking at her with an intensity that was almost frightening. He started forward, bumping shoulders and elbows in his single-minded determination to reach her.

Caera slipped away, out the rear doors and into the rainy night.

Tim followed her out. As he stood in the soaking rain, he decided his day officially couldn’t get any weirder. It had started yesterday in JFK airport. Since then he’d traveled, he’d talked, he’d played beautiful music with a beautiful woman who disappeared the moment his back was turned. He’d followed an unknown feeling into an unused part of a castle, only to find a foreboding bricked over doorway that seeped cold air and activated his fight-or-flight response. 

And now he was chasing a dark-haired angel into the rain.

Yep, it couldn’t get any weirder.

“Caera, wait!”

The exterior lights of the castle didn’t illuminate more than a few feet of the wet ground. In her dark sweater she was nearly invisible, but Tim heard the crunch of her feet on stone. He had no idea where he was. She’d gone out the rear door of the pub, exiting into what he assumed were the gardens at the back of the castle. 

Squinting at the ground, he could make out the texture of the crushed stone path and carefully followed it as it curved.

“It’s raining, you should go inside.”

Tim jumped. “Holy fuck! You surprised me.”

Her voice had come from his right, off the path. He took a tentative step that direction. The rain pounding down on his shoulders and skull was gone, replaced by the occasional fat drop. He stretched a hand up, touched a leaf of the tree they stood under.

“‘Holy fuck’? That’s quite a thing to say.” Her soft lilt seemed right for the dark, rainy night.

“I’ve had quite the day.”

“Oh?”

“I think I encountered a ghost in your castle.”

“You went to the west wing?” 

“So it
is
a ghost. I thought maybe Sorcha was playing for atmosphere or something. Do you all know about the cold, the ghost?”

“You don’t live for years at Glenncailty without an encounter at the walled room.”