The Sin Eater (6 page)

‘I did,' said Romilly again. ‘But it's no use asking me what it's like, because all I can remember is a room with light coming in through slitted windows – the kind of light you never saw before, so thin and pure you'd imagine you could cup it in your hands. And there were chairs and tables and everywhere was hung with silk and velvet. But I don't remember much more because he gave me a glass of wine and when I drank it I felt a bit – I don't know how to describe it – as if my mind didn't belong to my body any longer. And the next thing I knew we were lying on a bed – all velvets and silks, you'd never see anything finer if you toured the world. Cushions with gold tassels and all.'

‘Oh, Jesus,' said Colm. ‘Never mind the cushions, Romilly, tell me you got up and came home and that old villain didn't do anything to you.'

‘I didn't come home,' said Romilly, beginning to cry all over again. ‘I sat on the bed and he got on to it next to me, and he took off my clothes and then he took off his own clothes – well, I mean he took some off and unbuttoned others so he could—'

‘We don't need to know that part,' said Declan hastily, not able to bear the image of Nick Sheehan, who must be forty at least, for God's sake, removing and unbuttoning in order to enable him to take Romilly's virginity.

For the virginity, it was now plain, had been well and truly taken.

‘It hurt,' said Romilly, wrapping her arms around her body and shivering. ‘I didn't know it'd hurt. You'd think they'd tell us that, wouldn't you? When we're being told we mustn't do it before we're married, I mean. You'd think they'd warn us it hurts, so we'd never want to do it anyway. It hurt a lot.'

As she said this she sent a sideways glance at the two boys – it would have been overstating it to call the glance sly, but they had the brief uncomfortable impression that Romilly was looking to see how they were taking her story and whether they were ready to proffer sympathy.

But clearly this was grossly unfair because obviously Romilly had suffered the ultimate disgrace for a girl. Declan and Colm sat for a long time with the sun setting in wild splendour over the ocean, Romilly telling the story over and over again. They both tried not to notice that more details were being added with each retelling.

‘I won't stay in Kilglenn now,' said Romilly, sitting forward on the grass and hugging her knees with her arms. ‘I can't.'

‘Why? No one need ever know what happened,' said Declan.

‘But what if there's a child? There might be. Because,' said Romilly with a display of knowledge that was as embarrassing to the two boys as it was unexpected, ‘he didn't stop doing it to me before he . . . you know, the part that makes a baby.'

‘Oh, Jesus,' said Colm, and Romilly, with unprecedented sharpness, said:

‘I wish you wouldn't blaspheme so much, Colm. It's a sin to blaspheme.'

‘It's a sin to rape innocent girls,' said Colm. ‘That's enough to make the saints blaspheme.'

‘And it's no use saying no one need know,' said Romilly. ‘
He
knows. I'll never be able to look him in the eye after today.'

‘You don't need to look him in the eye. You don't need ever to see him,' said Declan.

‘You can't run away,' said Colm. ‘Where would you go? What about money?'

‘I'd go to England,' said Romilly. ‘And I can do it, because Nicholas Sheehan gave me some presents. Not money because he doesn't have money. But he has jewelled cups and silver platters and things like that.' It came out defiantly. ‘He gave me some. He said I could sell them for a lot of money, and that I was a good and pretty girl and I deserved to have a reward.'

Colm, his eyes furious, said, ‘I won't let you go.'

‘You can't stop me. No one will miss me – I'm supposed to move on to the next lot of family next week anyhow. They'll just think I've gone early, and they won't bother to find out. I dare say they'll be glad I've gone, because I don't really fit anywhere, do I?'

‘Yes, but you can't just go, Rom—'

‘I can. I'll leave a note saying that's what I've done,' said Romilly. ‘And I'll go on Sunday when everyone's at Mass.'

‘I'm not letting her go,' said Colm, after they had walked with Romilly to her house and made sure she had gone inside primed with a story about tumbling down on the cliff path to account for her tear-stained face and general dishevelment.

‘How will you stop her?'

‘I'll confront bloody Nick Sheehan, the old villain,' said Colm, his eyes lighting up. ‘That's what I'll do. I'll force him to leave Kilglenn for good. Then Romilly can stay.'

‘How would you force him to leave?' said Declan.

‘I'll say if he doesn't go, I'll bring Father O'Brian and the entire village out to the watchtower to throw him out,' said Colm, his eyes glowing with angry fervour. ‘Like when they used to march a harlot out of the town with the rough music playing.'

The word ‘harlot' was not often used nowadays and nobody had heard rough music played in Kilglenn for at least fifty years. Fintan, when the poteen got to him, sometimes spun a tale of how, as a boy, he had helped run a painted Jezebel out of Kilglenn, and described how the banging of saucepans and tinkers' pots had been as satisfying a sound as Gabriel blowing his trumpet on Judgement Day. Everyone enjoyed this story, although most people felt that for Fintan to berate painted Jezebels was a clear case of poacher turned gamekeeper, for the old rascal had broken just about every commandment during his life, with particular attention to the seventh.

‘And I tell you what,' went on Colm, ‘if Sheehan wasn't defrocked and excommunicated all those years ago, then he would be now if the truth got out. But,' he said, ‘I'd rather put him to rout myself.'

‘You're going up to the watchtower to confront him?'

‘I am.'

‘Then,' said Declan, ‘I'm coming with you.'

They went the next morning, which was Saturday and which was, as Declan said, a time when anyone might be anywhere and no one would be particularly looking for them. Declan's mother said it was sad altogether when a boy could not be staying at home, and must be off stravaiging into the village, dinnerless. When Declan said he hadn't any appetite today, she scooped an apple and a wedge of freshly baked soda bread from the table and made him pocket both.

The path winding up to the watchtower was steep and narrow. Colm and Declan had walked past it hundreds of times, but neither of them had ever climbed to the very top of it.

The gentle May warmth no longer cast a scented balm on the air and the sky held the bruised darkness that heralded a storm. Far below, the Atlantic flung itself against the cliffs, and if the
sidhe
were abroad today they were in a wild and eldritch mood.

For the first half of the climb the watchtower was hidden from view by the rock face, but as they rounded a curve in the path, it reared up, a black and forbidding column against the sky.

‘It looks,' said Declan, pausing to stare at it, ‘as if it's leaning forward to inspect us, d'you think that?'

‘You read too many books,' said Colm, but he too looked uneasily at the stark silhouette.

‘Someone's looking down out of that window,' said Declan.

‘It'll be Nick Sheehan, crouching up there like a spider watching a couple of flies approach his lair.'

‘There's a door at the centre,' said Declan as they drew nearer.

‘Did you think your man flew in and out of the place by the windows like a winged demon?' demanded Colm. ‘Or that it was the door-less tower where Rapunzel was imprisoned?'

‘I thought I was the one who read too many books,' said Declan.

The door was a low one, slightly pointed at the top like a church door, set deep into the stone walls, the surface black with age, but the huge ring handle gleaming in the sulky storm-light. As they drew nearer, the door opened, doing so with a slow deliberation that held such menace Declan thought it would not take much to send them helter-skelter back down the slope and be damned to being revenged. Then he remembered they were doing this for Romilly and that Father Sheehan was a libertine and a seducer of young girls, and he took a deep breath, and went forward at Colm's side. Even so, for a wild moment he thought he would not be surprised if they found themselves confronted with Lucifer himself, holding the door wide and bidding them, with honeyed and sinister persuasiveness, to step inside.

It was not Lucifer who was standing in the doorway of the watchtower, of course, although on closer inspection it might, as Declan had once said, be one of his apostles.

Nicholas Sheehan. The man who, according to local legend, had once been a devout priest, but who some deep dark cause had forced to this lonely eyrie.

At first they thought he was younger than they had expected, but as they drew nearer they revised this opinion, and thought he was considerably older. Colm said afterwards that it was impossible to even guess his age, and he might be anything from thirty to sixty. His hair was dark and his face lean and even slightly austere. There was the impression that he might enjoy good music and wine and interesting conversation, and this was the most disconcerting thing yet, because if you have ascribed the role of unprincipled seducer and devil-befriender to someone, you do not want to discover that person has an appreciation of the good and gentle things in life.

‘Good day to you,' said Nicholas Sheehan, and smiled so charmingly that Declan and Colm almost smiled back. But the smile doesn't reach his eyes, thought Declan. They're the weariest eyes I ever saw.

‘You're a long way from Kilglenn,' said Father Sheehan, leaning against the door frame of the ancient watchtower. ‘And it's a fair old haul up that path. Will you come inside and take a drink with me?'

‘That's very trusting of you,' said Colm, after a moment, and this time the smile did reach Sheehan's eyes.

‘Oh, I'm not trusting in the least,' he said. ‘But I know who you are, so I'm taking a chance. You're Romilly Rourke's cousin Colm, and you're his good friend Declan Doyle. A very likely pair of boyos, I'd say, although you'll be stifled and repressed by the outlook of the villagers, I don't doubt. Do they still gather in Fintan Reilly's bar of an evening to put the world to rights, and believe themselves rebels and firebrands?' He stood back and indicated to them to come in. As they did so, he said, ‘I don't imagine you're here to plunder my worldly goods and chattels, but in case you have that in mind, I should mention you'd be wasting your time.'

‘Because you have hell's weapons in your armoury?' demanded Colm.

‘My, what a very dramatic young man you are,' said Father Sheehan, looking at Colm with more interest. ‘But I'm sorry to disappoint you, Colm. I haven't so much as a pitchfork stashed away. It's simply that I gave up possessing goods and chattels long ago.'

F
or a man who had given up worldly possessions, Father Sheehan seemed to live in considerable comfort. The stone walls inside the watchtower had been softened with tapestries of soft blues and greens and with ornate mirrors. Silken rugs lay on the floor, their colours dimmed by age, but glowing richly against the ancient oak and stone.

The minute Declan and Colm were inside they had the sensation of stepping neck-deep into a past that was very dark and chilling. They shared a thought: are we mad to be doing this? Then the memory of Romilly sobbing and distraught and threatening to leave Kilglenn came back, and they both followed Sheehan to an octagonal room where books lined the walls and several velvet-covered chairs were drawn up to a massive hearth. Even though it was May, the afternoon was dark and a fire burned, casting mysterious crimson shadows. Through the narrow windows came threads of deep blue light from the ocean, edging the firelight with violet.

‘Sit down,' said Sheehan, and took a careless seat in one of the chairs, facing them. The glow from the fire washed over him, so that for a moment he was a creature of shadows and fire. ‘A glass of wine?' Without waiting for their reply, he reached for a slender-necked decanter on a side table and poured three glasses.

Colm and Declan had hardly ever drunk wine, and they were certainly unused to alcohol of any kind at this time of the day. But Colm took the glass with slightly forced nonchalance and Declan followed suit. The wine was rich and potent, and they had the feeling that the scented firelight might have soaked into it.

‘I'm thinking,' said Sheehan, leaning back in his chair, the fingers of his hand curled lazily round the stem of his wine glass, ‘that this visit is connected with your little cousin. What a beautiful girl. Hasn't she a fine charm? And as persuasive as a witch on Beltane.'

‘Persuasive?' said Colm sharply. ‘Weren't you the one who was persuasive with her? In fact,' he said, setting down the wine glass and leaning forward, ‘weren't you a whole lot more than persuasive, Father Sheehan?'

‘You know I no longer have the right to that title,' said Sheehan, politely.

‘They stripped it from you,' said Colm.

‘No. I stripped it from myself.'

‘You lost your belief?' said Declan, curious despite himself.

‘I lost some beliefs. But you didn't come here to discuss beliefs.'

‘We came to . . . to bring you to account over what you did to my cousin Romilly.' Declan saw Colm's eyes flicker as he said this and knew Colm must have heard how brash the words and the tone sounded compared to Sheehan's soft courtesies.

‘I did nothing to your cousin Romilly. And if I weren't such a gentleman,' said Nick Sheehan, thoughtfully, ‘I'd tell you that she went away very disappointed indeed.'

‘You're saying she seduced you?' demanded Declan.