The Pig Comes to Dinner (21 page)

Forever will thou love, and she be fair.

Sorrows of Kitty's own spread slowly but inexorably through her entire being. Whatever her own feelings, how could they take precedence over the eternal and mournful love presented to her now? That Kitty would abandon them to the unseeing, uncaring vassalage of Lord Shaftoe became more impossible than ever. Under his lordship's roof, the two would be not with the loom and the harp, but—as she herself had seen—strung up mercilessly and without end from the iron chandelier of the great hall. The failed confluence that had trapped them here, shades and shadows, appearing, disappearing, grieving, sorrowing, lost, would all be left uncorrected, surrendered into the keeping of George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe come at last to claim the castle his forebear had fled in fear—after taking vengeance for a plot substantiated by rumor only.

Still the youthful lovers gazed, a gaze that had its source in their souls. Never would Kitty surrender them. Was she not, like them, possessed? If evil spirits could be exorcised, what rite was possible to give freedom to spirits blessed and filled with grace? Kitty, of course, knew the rite. Peter had told her what must be done. But how? How does one blow up a castle? She could, she supposed, with her vast means, consort with those from whom gunpowder and explosives were readily available, but that would hardly fulfill the original requirement. The explosion had to be a fulfillment of the original plot, the pretext for the hangings. And the gunpowder was still there, somewhere in the castle, ready and waiting. But where? Searches far and wide, deep down and high up, had for almost two centuries yielded nothing. Still, it was Peter she believed more than her own prompting, which had told her the prophecies of the son of a Hag were a fiction even she could not have devised. She might begin the search anew. The gunpowder was there. She would find it.

Kieran, spade in hand, stood atop the dividing wall. After no more than a cursory acknowledgment of Brid and Taddy, he directed his attention to the cow and the pig, both of which had ceased their agitations. “Who took the ring out of the pig's snout? And who got the cow over the wall so it could step into the hole and almost break its legs?”

With that, both Brid and Taddy were consumed by an intensification of light. When the light lessened, no brighter than it had been a few moments before, they were gone.

Kieran threw the spade to the ground in front of him and jumped down. With the spade landing near them, both the cow and the pig renewed their previous actions, the cow struggling, the pig bellowing.

Without expecting Kitty to answer his unanswerable questions, Kieran picked up the spade and, with care, began digging around the cow's entrapped legs, widening the hole so the poor beast could move its hind quarters more freely and get itself up onto level ground—except that the level ground had been unleveled by the snorting pig.

After Kieran shoveled up three loads of turf, he said, his foot shoving down on the spade, “At least now we know for certain which pig is going to be turning on that spit.” Kitty said nothing. Now was not the time. Turf is not easy to overturn, even with a sharpened spade and a digger of Kieran's famous strength. But it was being done. Slowly. Grudgingly.

“Go find,” Kieran grunted to Kitty, “go find where the stones fell so I can get the cow back where it belongs before it cripples itself trying to climb the wall.”

“I don't see any breaks.”

“There has to be one. The cow—and the bloody pig— couldn't have made the climb. There's a breach, and that's the only way we're going to get them both back where they belong.”

“Well,” said Kitty, not too enthused, “I'll take a look. But I don't see anything.”

“It's there. Find it.”

Rather than just stand and watch her husband at his labors, Kitty, ever eager to be useful in this world, wandered off, close to the stones, their height sometimes higher than the top of her head. Not hurrying, she walked along the wall, almost hoping there'd be no breach—just to contradict Kieran's certainty. But then, they'd just have to remove the stones themselves, persuade the cow and the pig to pass over, then rebuild the wall.

She could not avoid the thought that the pig had done it.

With its hammer-strong head supported by a bull-like neck and thunderous shoulders, it had easily butted down any number of stones, regardless of their weight or size. Its powers should never be underestimated. Or its stubborn determination. If it wanted to breach a wall, the wall would be breached.

She decided she'd prefer to find where the rocks had simply fallen with help from no one or—thinking of the pig—no thing.

It did little good to renew her longtime obsession with the gunpowder. She could intensify her resolve as much as she wanted, but what good would that be? Maybe she could bring the boy, the seer-elect, to the castle and see if he could, like a divining rod in search of water, detect the explosives' hiding place. She would take him from room to room, from dungeon to turret top. She would walk him through the meadows and the mire, the orchard and the pastures, along the same stone walls where she was walking now, while concentrating all his psychic might on finding the gunpowder. She would try not to show her desperation—to say nothing of her sorrow that, should the gunpowder by found and should the castle be sent skyward, never again would she be visited by Taddy and the mournful eyes, the muddied feet, the rasped neck, the harpist's fingers, and the yearning lover's parted lips.

But it had to be done. And she was the only one on earth—or, it seemed, in heaven—who could do the deed. If the avenging furies could be persuaded to revise their decree, and settle for a dismantling, stone by stone, of the castle, she would beg for the commission. With her bare hands she would do it. Schooled by the pig, she would butt her head, kick her feet; she would do it. Clawing, scratching, tugging, pounding, prying, no resource would be left untried. But the decree, to her knowledge—if such it could be called—had not been revised or rescinded, and if she were to act, she would have to act in accord with the ancient dictates: the castle must go heavenward.

Yellow-flowered gorse tufted the wall, the sweet scent at times overwhelming the salt smell of the stones. The sky was high above, not blue but the white of a thin cloud cover that meant no rain within the next five minutes. A meadow pipit pecked at the gorse for hidden food, and overhead a gull was making its way back to the sea after a foray to the rivers and lakes to the east. The wall had been built as high as the number of stones buried in the earth all those long years before.

More pipits, dipping their beaks in among the stones, accompanied her as she continued her walk that would measure the full perimeter of the enclosed field. And above, the white cloud that had screened the sky began to dissolve, the patient sun following the bend of the earth and lowering now in the west. How pleasant to search a wall for fallen stones.

As she reached the farthest corner of the field, there it was, the breach, the tumbled stones arrayed on the ground, in the grass, among the heather and the gorse. And there among them was the ring that had been put through the snout of the pig, the metal ripped, no doubt, by having been smashed against the unyielding rocks. The pig had done it all.

Before Kitty could give full expression to her exasperation, she turned around. There was the pig and, freed from the dug earth, the cow not far behind, both still inside the enclosed field. Kieran was leaning against the piled stones of the wall, the spade propped at his side. An appreciable amount of earth had been dug up to free the cow, and the hole, even at the considerable distance, seemed to Kitty larger than she would have expected. He was holding a piece of thick paper, tilting it from side to side as if trying to figure out exactly what he had found. He was scowling, which meant that his concentration was absolute and he would not welcome intrusion. At his feet was what she guessed to be a metal chest, muddied, the hinged lid thrown back and the tip of a brown scroll peering at the top.

“The pig butted down the stones,” she called. When Kieran paid no attention, she went closer and said, “You found something. A chest, a paper, or a scroll or something.”

Kieran made no answer, offered no gesture. He seemed to have distinguished the top of the paper from the bottom and, with moving lips, was reading what the document had to tell him. When Kitty was close enough to break his concentration, he quickly rolled the paper and took on the casual look of someone about to tell a lie.

“What is it?” Kitty asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Then it'll be all right for me to have a look at it.”

“Just some old scrawling.”

“Was it in that chest?”

“Nothing, I told you.”

“I can't wait.” She held out her hand.

“It's meaningless. Just a lot of scribbles and some silly drawings. Left behind by some careless workman and covered over in time. Designs, as far as I can make out, for some changes in the castle. That's all.”

“Then may I see it?” She reached down, took the remaining scroll from the chest and spread it open. She, too, like Kieran, turned the sheet from side to side, scrunching up her eyes, drawing back her head, crinkling her nose, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Without emphasis, Kieran said, “The gunpowder. It's pressed into the flagstones paving the great hall. We've been walking all over it. And the cows, too.”

“And Lord Shaftoe,” Kitty added. There were no inflections in her voice. She continued to stare at the opened scroll she held in her hand. The writing was in Irish, but the script was difficult to read, a superseded penmanship that seemed, at first, to require a Rosetta stone before it could be deciphered. Gradually, however, the letters showed themselves to have equivalents to the handwriting strictly imposed by Sister Clothilde in the first grade. Clusters of letters became recognizable words, and an understanding of the words began to seep into the necessary recesses of her brain. The drawings, however, were crude sketches resistant to interpretation. Convinced that if she stared at them long enough they would yield their meaning, Kitty fixed her eyes on the page, trying her best not to blink. Finally she began to comprehend. There were instructions for the laying of the flagstones, telling as well that all precautions must be taken not to bring them into contact with any element that might cause a premature explosion, meaning, of course, fire. Also listed were the names of what must have been the servants attached to the castle. They were to find pretexts—work elsewhere, visits to a sick relative—any excuse not to be present when the gunpowder was scheduled to go off. Only the newly arrived Lord Shaftoe himself was to be present, the man come at the behest of the Crown to inflict the most rigorous “coercions” on the people of the countryside who had demonstrated a decided unwillingness to be evicted or flogged or starved at the Crown's discretion.

Kitty's efforts to make sense of the drawings were interrupted by Kieran. “Of course we needn't worry. With all the damp and all the time gone by, the gunpowder is of no use to anyone now. Except as flagstones for the floor.”

Kitty gave up on the squiggles. “Can we be so sure?”

“It's been over two hundred years. And don't forget: after just a few weeks Guy Fawkes's gunpowder was said to be worthless even if he didn't know it. The elements separate in almost no time at all. He couldn't have blown up Parliament no matter what. All we have now are flagstones. Nothing more.”

“There were nearly two hundred years between the time of Guy Fawkes and when the flagstones were laid. Have you forgotten? No advances of civilization can keep up with the ‘improvements' when it comes to ordinance and the ways of destruction. Surely Mr. Fawkes's difficulties would have been solved in the centuries between.”

Kieran shrugged. “We can give it a try, if that will make you any happier. If we blow ourselves to kingdom come we'll at least know it hasn't lost its zing—”

“No one says we have to set the whole place going. Wouldn't just a piece, a little bit, a chunk tell us what we need to know?”

“I guess we can always give it a try.”

“Fine with me.”

After getting the cow and the pig through the breach in the wall—a task not without its frustrations—after taking off a small chunk of flagstone from the great hall and taking it across and down the road to a distant rocky pasture, a fire was built, and Kieran, from a distance, tossed the stone chip into the blaze. They stepped farther back. Nothing happened. They waited. Still nothing. Apparently Kitty had been too generous in her appraisal of civilization's advance.

When they'd gone back across the road and were almost to the courtyard sheds a loud sound was heard as if someone were exploding huge kernels of popcorn. They looked first at each other, eye to eye, then looked back at the field. Some of the flaming wood was still falling eastward, accompanied by sparks and embers sifting down through the air. Brid was there, staring up at the falling debris, holding out her hands to catch some piece of shattered stone—as if she were seeing snow for the first time and was dazzled with disbelief at its wonders. Taddy, also stunned with wonder, surveyed the ground around, numbering, it seemed, each fragment of what had been until now an impregnable rock.

Quickly, but not too quickly, Kitty and Kieran went back to the field, and gazed, mouths agape, at the ruined bonfire, at the scattered bits of splintered timber still burning among the sundered stones. Slowly they moved to the fire. It took them both quite a while to stomp out all that was left of the blaze, Kieran ruining his boots, Kitty sacrificing a pair of melting sneakers.

Both Taddy and Brid were watching, with their eyes no longer mournful but wide with what seemed expectation, but worried at the same time that disappointment was possible. To Kieran it seemed a fragile plea, to Kitty a hope tempered by the fear that it was not to be realized.