The White Horse Trick (21 page)

‘Down the hatch,’ he said.

They both drank, and again JJ gasped and coughed, but not quite so badly this time. His throat was getting used to the stuff, and besides, the small measures that he was swallowing down were already beginning to enter his bloodstream and numb his senses. By the time the third and fourth glasses had been knocked back, he was beginning to enjoy himself and think that old Aidan might not be such a bad fella after all.

Jenny looked on anxiously. From the chair where she was sitting she could see what Donal was doing, but she wasn’t convinced it would work. Although he was drinking at more than twice the rate that JJ was, Aidan still looked the more sober of the two.

‘Another bottle,’ he said, standing up to go and fetch it. But on the way back he betrayed himself by the hint of a misplaced step, and by dropping too quickly into his chair. There was just a chance, then, that JJ might hold out.

Donal opened the new bottle. ‘Round five,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’ said the Dagda. ‘Why are you all sitting in the road?’

Aisling hadn’t heard him approach. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We were just having a bit of a rest.’

‘Rest?’ said the Dagda. ‘Why would you want to rest? Don’t you realize how anxious I am to get them all going?’

Aisling summoned her resolve. ‘I’m sorry, Dagda,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to help with what you’re doing.’

‘What?’ he said, astonished. ‘How can you say that? I need your help. I order you to help.’

‘I don’t want any part of it,’ said Aisling. ‘I think you’re wrong to do it.’

‘Wrong?’ said the Dagda.

‘If you’re determined to go ahead with it, then you’ll just have to manage without me.’

‘But I can’t,’ said the Dagda. ‘I can’t possibly.’

Aisling said nothing more and, seeing that his attempts at persuasion were having no effect, the Dagda decided to adopt cruder tactics.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Up you get, you lot. Come on. That’s it. Straight on up the road to where you came in.’

The ploddies responded peaceably. Soldiers picked up their guns, children picked up their pebbles, the whole sorry, ragged lot started out along the road.

‘You’ll follow along, I dare say,’ the Dagda said to Aisling. ‘Because it seems to me you can’t possibly mean what you say. I suppose you’re having a bad mood or something – would that be it?’

Aisling stayed where she was, amazed to find that she had defied the Dagda and he had left her not only in one piece, but still human as well. Maybe he wasn’t as dangerous and unreasonable as she had been led to believe. And if that was the case, maybe there was just the slightest chance that she could make him see reason and get him to change his mind. So, as he had suggested she would, she got up and followed quietly along behind.

‘Round nine,’ said Donal, filling the glasses again.

‘Bring it on, bring it on,’ said Aidan, but the hand that reached for the glass missed it by a mile.

Jenny looked from her father to her brother and back. It was not easy to tell who was winning. Both men were swaying and grinning, and both were slurring their words. Jenny considered the possibility of doing some magic, but as if he read her mind, Aidan pulled out his gun and began waving it around in a way that filled her with terror. He was definitely losing his grip, and it meant that Donal was taking even more dangerous risks with JJ’s drinks. His jumper was completely saturated and was beginning to drip. The floor was becoming damp and slippery and the stink of poitín made the room smell like a distillery. But Aidan was much too drunk to notice any of it.

This time Donal emptied the glass down his jumper before handing it to his father.

JJ raised the glass to his lips and upturned it. ‘’S empty,’ he said. ‘Gimme a full one.’

Aidan swallowed his in one gulp. ‘Mine too. ’S empty ’s well. Gimme another.’

Donal poured. The level in the second bottle was going down rapidly and he hoped, for his father’s sake, that he wouldn’t have to open a third. Because JJ was becoming voluble, making grandiose declarations of incontrovertible truths and tossing his arms around, and his balance on the horse was looking increasingly precarious.

‘I love you all, all of you,’ he said. ‘D’you know that? ’N’ I sushpecially love Aidan. I don’t care what anyone says. He’s my black sheep and he’s done very well for himself. I don’t care what he’s sushposed to have done. He’s my shon.’ And, as if this were an insight of particular genius, he said it again. ‘He’s my shon!’

‘Lesh drink to that,’ said Aidan, emptying round ten.

‘Where’s mine?’ said JJ, wobbling dangerously.

The horse, which had been quiet and patient throughout, was now taking an intense dislike to the proceedings and was beginning to get restless. There wasn’t much room in there for it to move, and it bumped into the walls and the furniture as it shifted around.

‘Whoa there,’ said JJ, making several wild and ineffectual attempts to grab the reins.

‘Round nine,’ said Aidan. ‘Where’s round nine?’

‘It’s round eleven,’ said Donal, handing him another glass.

Aidan emptied it down his throat and handed it back.
‘Shame again,’ he said. ‘And whatever you’re having yourshelf.’

Donal refilled it, but this time he didn’t even bother giving one to JJ. Aidan was beyond noticing. He swigged the next drink down, handed back the glass, and collapsed sideways on to the rug with the dogs.

‘Bull’s-eye!’ said Donal. ‘You’ve won, Dad. Well done!’

‘Exshellent,’ said JJ. ‘What have I won? Shall we drink to it?’ The horse shifted again, trying to turn round in the small space. ‘Where’sh everybody gone? Why is everything whizzing round?’

Jenny bent down and took the note from Aidan’s pocket. She unfolded it and read what he had written.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no!’

Donal was trying to calm the horse, which was rapidly approaching a state of panic. ‘What is it?’ he said.

She handed it to him. All that was written on it was:

You people really are idiots, aren’t you?

And for a moment Donal was inclined to agree. The horse was barging around, desperate to get out, and JJ was swaying in the saddle and singing ‘Whiskey in the Jar’.

‘How are we going to get out past the goons?’ said Donal.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny. ‘There are too many for me to deal with at the same time, and Dad’s a bit of an easy target on that horse.’

‘
Ring da ma do da ma . . . dilly . . . diddy . . . daddy
. . . How does it go again?’ said JJ.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Donal to Jenny. ‘If you turn me into a bird, can I turn myself back?’

‘No,’ said Jenny.

‘Then you’ll have to go,’ he said, quickly scribbling a note. ‘Take this to the barracks and get it to Colonel Mooney.’

He opened the door cautiously, just wide enough for the swallow, with the note in her beak, to burst through. But what he saw on the other side made him catch hold of the bird before it flew off. There were plenty of guns aimed at the door, but they weren’t in the hands of Aidan’s goons. And the first face he saw belonged to Pup.

Jenny changed back into herself, and she and Donal ran out to congratulate the army. Pup and Mooney told them how it had all come about, and Donal promoted Pup to Captain on the spot. Jenny recommended them both for medals. Strictly speaking she wasn’t entitled to do that, but no one seemed to mind.

‘I have a job for you, Captain Pup,’ said Donal. ‘Take as many men as you need and drag that drunken brother of mine down to the old fort. Take his guards as well, and the kitchen staff.’

Jenny turned the dogs and kittens back into men for their trip down to the souterrain, and it was only then, as Donal continued to add detail to Pup’s orders, that she
remembered JJ and looked around the courtyard. She couldn’t see him.

‘Dad?’ She looked inside Aidan’s quarters. ‘JJ?’

But there was no sign anywhere of him or the white horse. And the drawbridge and portcullis were both wide open.

This time the horse ignored the ruined road and made a bee-line for the sea. It was going straight down the precipitous drop towards the fairy fort, slipping and sliding on the rocks. On its back, JJ jerked and swayed like a puppet with three of its strings broken. His head was still spinning but he was sobering up very fast indeed. He couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to agree to a drinking contest, and the entire episode seemed like a lunatic dream. He couldn’t remember what the contest had been for, or what he was doing here in the first place. What he did remember was the importance of staying on the horse at all costs, and his entire attention was taken up with clinging on for dear life.

When he saw the banks of the rath ahead of him, he was gripped with a sudden wild hope. Could he go through that way, like he had done on previous occasions? Was that why the horse was taking him there? Maybe it was safe to get off inside the rath. It was fairy territory, after all. Everyone knew that, even the ploddy farmers who protected the old ring forts so carefully. Maybe they
were like embassies, little bits of home territory in foreign lands where stranded citizens could take refuge. But the horse, it soon turned out, was not heading for the fort. It bypassed the outer bank, ignoring JJ’s efforts to steer it, then came to an abrupt halt beside a large boulder.

JJ badly needed the reprieve. His head was throbbing painfully, and he was dizzy and nauseous. What he wanted more than anything else was to be off the horse and to feel his feet on solid ground, but he had just enough sense left in his head to remember what would happen to him if he got off here. So he took the opportunity to get his feet back into the stirrups and readjust his hold on the reins, thumbs up, the way he had been taught at the trekking centre. Because the horse had lost its calm entirely. It was agitated, snatching at the bit, and JJ got the impression it was waiting for him to do something. Tentatively he kicked it on, but instead of going forward it began to move sideways, edging towards the boulder until JJ’s knee was trapped between the saddle and the rock.

‘Hey!’ he said, pulling hard on the opposite rein.

The horse turned its head in response, but its body didn’t follow. On the contrary, it now leaned right into the boulder, rocking backwards and forwards as if it were trying to scrape JJ off. His trapped knee ground painfully against the weathered stone.

‘What are you doing? Stop it!’ JJ flapped the reins and kicked as hard as he could with his free leg. The horse at last moved away from the rock, but if JJ thought it had
decided to cooperate with him, he was badly mistaken.

In the skies high above, Jenny was searching for him. She had started out along the track that ran between Aidan’s castle and the Carron road, and now she was returning in a direct line above the open hillside. She saw something down there that surprised her. Inside the roofless walls of the old Liddy house, brambles and ivy had grown up tall and strong. From most angles there was nothing else to be seen, but when she was directly overhead, her sharp hawk eyes could make out something underneath the foliage. A white panel, stained and flaking, its edges only a stone or two lower than the walls which surrounded it. It was a shed or something, with a flat white roof. She was on her way to get a closer look when she spotted the horse careering down the hillside with JJ still astride, arms flapping.

She swooped low and crossed in front of them in an effort to cut them off. The manoeuvre was almost fatal. The horse swerved violently, and JJ was thrown out of the side of the saddle. If his life hadn’t depended on staying on, he would almost certainly have let go, but as it was he managed to hold on, one knee hooked over the saddle, both arms around the horse’s neck. With all the strength he possessed, he succeeded in dragging himself upright, but now he had lost his stirrups again, and the reins had somehow got snapped when he dropped them, and the horse was still plunging at lunatic speed down the hillside.

A hundred metres ahead of him, JJ saw the
sparrowhawk drop out of the sky and turn into Jenny. But the horse saw it too and veered to the right, leaving her standing there helplessly as it went thundering past. Now the ruins of the old house were coming up fast and, equally fast, JJ was nearing the point of exhaustion. He was fit, but he was still an old man, and his heart wasn’t up to all the excitement. Nor were his bruised seat-bones, or the overstrained muscles in his legs and arms. He knew that he couldn’t hold on for much longer, and it occurred to him that if he could only reach the old house, he might not mind letting go. It would, after all, be a fitting place for him to lay his old bones to rest.

The horse, for once, had the same idea as JJ. It galloped headlong down the hill, crossed the stony wastes that had once been JJ’s prime meadows and leaped a patch of brambles to arrive, sweating and trembling, in the spot where JJ’s kitchen had once stood. It was gone now, its remaining walls barely knee-high, but the walls of the living room were still standing, all covered with ivy, and so high that he couldn’t see over them. In the old doorway was a huge rock, and above it was a window made of milky glass or perspex or something. Behind it, peering out like a frightened ghost, was a face.

When Aisling reached the banks of the rath, she discovered that nearly all the refugees had been rounded up. Aengus Óg was there, sitting on a box, and she suspected that he had been drafted in to help as well, because he had the sulky look of someone who has done what they were told but bitterly resents it.

‘Right,’ said the Dagda when he saw her. ‘Excellent. Let’s get going, shall we?’

Before Aisling could reply she noticed Aengus standing up and looking towards the entrance to the souterrain. There were more people coming through: a few women and girls first, then a whole string of men wearing identical waterproof jackets.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Aengus, with sudden enthusiasm. ‘I forgot about that. I left this gorgeous little creature behind me the last time.’

‘What gorgeous little creature?’ said the Dagda, eyeing the young women suspiciously.

‘You know,’ said Aengus. ‘Those funny little furry little cat yokes.’