Turlough and the Night or O'Carolan's Quarrel with the Land Lady
The public house was full of familiar noises, scents, the smoky heat of the fire, and the heady, hops laden smell of the ale. There was the not unpleasant smell of the crowd of working bodies that had come here for their ease. The scent of labor, of the dried sweat of their toils in the fields, all carried into the room on their persons, a silent testament.
The darkness that he had wakened to in his eighteenth year sat lighter on him now. These twenty years and more past had made it easier to bear. Thirty years of the traveling life, twenty years of castle halls, keeps, farmsteads and public houses. Thirty years of the dulcet tones of the harp as his mistress, thirty years and more of the dark.
The last notes of the harp faded away, absorbed into the heated space and the soft rustling of the bodies that he knew surrounded him. The notes died that had held the crowd so rapt, so still and the rustling of clothing and flesh began around him again. The hushed silence was broken by the first heartfelt sighs and then loud exclamations of approval. There would be the loud clapping of hands and the stomping of feet. Conversations began again from the point where they had left off at the first waterfall of notes.
He turned blindly to the touch of a hand on his elbow and the landlord's voice close by his ear.
"Turlough, I've placed a tankard at your left elbow." At the Harper's nod of acknowledgement he continued, "Your silver's no good here Turlough O'Carolan, there's naught but one coin in which I'd have you pay your way.
Turlough felt the warm hand fall in a clasp on his shoulder as he set the harp carefully aside. His helper gone off to the stable to sleep and he felt with nimble fingers over the table top, picking up the tankard and taking a deep draught of the peaty brown ale.
Henry slipped over the fields; he meant to be away from the town this night, he knew that he had overstayed his welcome and he knew it was dangerous to remain in any one place in the countryside too long. He knew that the Irish country folk believed in the Children of the Night and that as tenacious as they were once they were aware of his presence, they would hunt him with all of their implacable stubborn streak.
"I should have been on my way a fortnight ago, but Caite…oh the sweet miller's daughter with her brilliant red hair and the twisting little curls at the nape of that creamy pale neck… even still she made his mouth water and his fangs ache.
So he had lingered, lingered while the tales slipped about the town, whispers of the monster that lurked in the dark, stealing the blood of the innocents. Not bloody likely, Henry thought, I've never lurked in my life…or my after-life. I am of royal blood…I don't…lurk, his lips lifted in a cheeky smile and for that matter there wasn't very much that was "innocent" about Caite either.
Still, the cool spring night in the year of our Lord 1710 found him once again moving on through the violet early evening, only one or two stars awake. He meant to move on and yet when he passed by the pub on the edge of Ballinlough and the hushed silence that was suddenly filled with the silken waterfall of harp notes, he found that he could not. The door stood ajar, the golden light spilling out into the street and he was drawn forward into the room, despite the brilliant lamp light and firelight that set his eyes to blinking and watering, despite the inquiring faces that turned his way. The music drew him and he waved to the Landlady as he made his way through the crowd.
He moved to a scarred table in the corner, taking a tankard of some local brew, deep and earthy and not at all unpalatable then Henry watched from across the room, ensconced in solitary splendor, his traveling cloak close about him.
He had heard, of course of the famous Irish Harper Turlough O'Carolan. He sat in the malodorous room, full of the scent of peat and hops and stewed mutton…and he had not been disappointed. The music, the music had taken him away in its elegance and spirit. The Harper moved through the music as though he were breathing as natural as the breath that moved his breast, as the beat of his human heart. Henry was entranced as he watched the nimble blind fingers of the master draw the magic of life and love from the brass strings, the long reverberation of the notes a sparse and beautiful harmony. He watched the Harper, captured his scent, the way the blind eyes looked…elsewhere..the very spirit of the Harper's heart in the melodies that one after the other filled the room.
And when the Harper laid aside his instrument and carefully lifted the tankard to his lips to drink, Henry Fitzroy, once Duke of Richmond, simply had to get closer. He wanted to speak to the Master, for he wished to have this moment, this memory to carry forward with him into his long night.
Turlough became aware of the scent first, the scent was unusual, pleasant and dry and he couldn't place what, though he knew from the modulated and cultured voice that spoke, it was an Englishman who had taken a seat across the table from him.
"Master Harper I am most honored to have heard your music this evening…" The voice floated out of the dark, young and yet not, the flavor of antiquity in the words…Turlough cocked his head to one side, puzzled. Reaching out with callused finger tips to touch the back of a cold smooth hand, he did not recoil but grasp it turning it over…smooth, the hand of a youth, no more than twenty and one, he thought, yet…No calluses from work, the prickle of the fine lace at the wrist…gentry then…
"Please permit me, if I may be so bold as to offer you a drink." Again the cultured voice, and Turlough's curiosity was peaked.
"Whiskey, then if you please Mister…" Turlough stared unseeing where he thought the young man's face might be. "Henry," came the easy reply, and Turlough oriented his blind eyes to the sound, "Henry Fitzroy." Turlough felt the cool hand grasp his own tightly. "I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Turlough O'Carolan.
Henry had been in conversation for more than an hour with O'Carolan and he had learned a great deal about the Harper's wandering life. His history and the current travels that would take him to a betrothal at which he was to compose a planxty for the bride. The carafe was half empty and they were bent head to head in their talk, when the door, which had long ago been closed against the nighttime chill was thrown open. Henry looked round at the four rough men who entered, an air of hate and danger hanging about them setting his skin prickling and his fangs aching.
Turlough's head came up, his nose wrinkling even through the slight fog of alcohol, and he could sense the fear and anger on the men, the cold of the night air rising from their clothes, the reek of alcoholic courage that filled the room.
Henry watched as the flung themselves around a table calling loudly for the Landlord. Turlough listened to the gruff voices, roughened by the night's chill raised in loud conversation. "Seamus, you know full well that those were bite marks on Elisabeth's throat, healed but bite marks not the less, she is with the priest now being shriven, and the young kitchen girl out a Craigmorah house… she said that the Vampyre slipped into her room for three nights in a row and she has the marks ta prove it. I tell you, the monster is abroad here somewhere…"
Henry watched as the second a huge hulk of a man, most likely a bellows hand by the look of his shoulders, drew a pair of long sharpened wooden stakes from his coat pocket. "We'll put an end to his wickedness when we find him won't we Scully…he looked rather dim-wittedly at a much smaller man who had the cunning air of the weasel about him. "Aye , we will." Scully responded, "We'll find the bastard that bit my Caite, and bewitched her."
"Oh, aye she was so bewitched that her Da had ta beat it out o' her what he was like, Scully." Emitting a rough chuckle the fourth man wiped the froth of the ale from his grizzled upper lip.
"Shut yer gob, Ogan," Scully blustered. "She said he's cool to the touch, cultured in his talk, English, that much the Father got out of her."
Turlough was following the conversation as raptly as was Henry. His eyes might be blind but his mind was as nimble as his fingers. He felt the young man opposite of him tense, and he grasped the too cool hand as it was withdrawing from the bottle. He leaned in across the battered tabletop, and said for Henry's ears alone, "Master Fitzroy, it is a fine drinking companion you've been. Generous and well spoken to an old blind Harper like me. Though…" his lips lifted in a wry smile, "I had assumed that it were whiskey you were drinking." When Henry tensed further as the talk turned to the supposed characteristics of the Vampyre that was at large in the neighborhood Turlough leaned closer still and in a whisper instructed. "When I make my move, and all eyes turn to me, make good your escape vampyre, for you're nothing but a good drinking companion t'me."
What it was he was going to do Turlough had not decided, he had only just shifted the harp to relative safety under the table, when the buxom Landlady who was cleaning at the bar, spoke up in a loud voice.
"The vampyre…the vampyre is an Englishman you say…why there was an Englishman in…"
Turlough staggered blindly to his feet with a roar, overturning the chair and sending the crockery on the table scattering and smashing to the floor…"Madam," he shouted in a loud and patently drunken voice…"what in the name of all the Saints have you put in this stew, your first born? For it's sure as judgment not mutton. I tastes like…plahhh!"
Turlough swung an arm wide…beginning to feel his way away from the table, knocking over a chair and upsetting a tankard of ale on the next table with his outstretched hand.
The rest of the patrons scrambled out of the way and the Landlady responded with a screech of ire at the slight to her establishment. "It's naught but the finest mutton in that stew, you drunken old…old…Harper." She said Harper as if it were the worse epitaph she could bring to mind.
Henry stepped smoothly, silently to the edge of the room and sure enough all eyes in the pub, including those of the erstwhile Vampyre slayers, were focused on the Harper and the Landlady where they set off against each other like a fine pair of bantam cocks.
"Mutton? Mutton, Madam I have a…" here Turlough paused for a loud belch, much to the amusement of the onlookers and in spite of his peril and the wicked wooden stakes that lay on the table nearby, Henry's own lips lifted in a smile at Turlough's antics. "Oh, I beg your pardon Madam" Turlough swayed and bowed and then continued; "If there's mutton in that slop…aye I said slop…if there's mutton in that slop it's naught but an old sheep's arsehole…dirty fleece and all!"
Turlough stretched out an arm in front of him, he could hear the Landlady's breath whistling though her nose as she searched for the words to express her outrage…"You filthy auld beggar…" she began only to be interrupted by the Harper once more who was seeming to awkwardly feel his way towards her, leaving a trail of ruin in his wake.
"Oh and the ale…Holy Mother preserve us, the new ale tastes like it was brewed in a chamber pot…out of, out o'sheep piss." Turlough was within a few feet of the woman now his hands outstretched before him. "Aye, same old sheep who's ass is in the stew." He hiccoughed at the end of this fine speech to a rousing chorus of guffaws and catcalls from the patrons.
The last thing Henry glimpsed as he backed through the door and out into the night was the Harper's groping fingers about to contact the furious landlady's breasts as she rushed at him, face beet red and a wail like a harridan from Hell emerging from her snarling, contorted face. It's just as well he can't see, Henry thought as his disappeared into the shadows. The screeching and shouting and noise that flowed out into the night behind him left no doubt that the battle had been engaged.
It was perhaps an hour or more later that Henry Fitzroy, once Prince of the Realm, waited amid the shadows of Turlough's small chamber above the pub, at lodgings for the traveler. He listened to the sound of the Harper's fingers running along the wall as he felt his way to the door of his chamber, humming a jaunty tune under his breath.
The door squeaked open and as the blind often did, Turlough bothered with neither tinder nor candle flame. Setting the harp that he held under his arm carefully in the corner, he straightened, speaking before Henry.
"I would have thought, Vampyre, that you would have been long on your way by now." Turlough felt his way to the table, settling into a chair. The moonlight of the late night shone in through the Window, painting his face in light and shadow, hiding the sightless eyes from view.
"I couldn't leave Master Harper, until I was sure that you were uninjured, and that I paid for any damages you incurred as a result of the kindness you showed me." Henry slipped into a chair opposite the older man.
"Oh Henry, music is a magical thing don't you know." Turlough chuckled. "You need not have worried. All has been forgiven. The charming Landlady has agreed to forgive me, if I would agree to compose a tune for her, which I have done." Turlough hummed a beautiful melody line. "She has forgiven me all my 'drunken foolishness' and the Englishman that was in the pub is forgotten."
Henry rose, "Then you have my thanks, Master O'Carolan. If I may…why?"
Turlough lifted a brow in a quizzical expression remembered from his youth. "Why? Why help a possible…a possible vampyre you mean?"
"Yes," Henry said and forced himself to hold still as the Harper's blind fingers found his own.
Turlough felt higher, his fingers moving over the worn wooden beads and the small crucifix that dangled at Henry's wrist. "Worn smooth with use they are. " He whispered as he pulled his own rosary from his waistcoat pocket. "That's one reason, and the others are my own Master Vampyre."
Toronto, Ontario March 17th theYear of Our Lord 2011
Henry Fitzroy stretched out on his sofa, his hands behind his head. He had met his obligations this day and had returned from Mass. Having fed, he now relaxed at home, safely away from the parades and parties in the streets…the soft sounds of the harp drifted from his CD player and he smiled as he lifted the jewel case to read the liner notes…track seven "O'Carolan's Quarrel with the Landlady".