“You loved me once,” I called to her, into the wind. “Did I lose that too, along with all the blood?”
But the wind said nothing, nor the waters, nor the hills, nor the skies whence I imagined that she’d come. They were as silent as dead gods who’d never risen again.
In the nights that followed these restless days, I learned to drink at the elbow of a master. No more shandies for me — the foamy black stout now became the water of life. Women, too, lost much of their mystery, thanks to a couple of encounters, the greater part of which I managed to remember.
And when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I broke down and told my uncle the secrets that had been eating away at me — the one for only a few weeks, the other since I was seven. It surprised me to see it was the latter that seemed to affect him most. Brendan grew deathly quiet as he listened to the story of that day, his fleshy, ruddy cheeks going pale. He was very keen on my recounting exactly how she’d looked — black hair shimmering nearly to her waist, her skin a translucent brown, not like that of any native I’d ever seen, not even those called the Black Irish.
“It’s true, they really do exist,” Brendan murmured after I’d finished, then turned away, face strained between envy and dread, with no clear victor. “Goddamn you boy,” he finally said. “You’ve no idea what’s been dogging your life, have you?”
Apparently I did not.
He sought out the clock, then in sullen silence appeared to think things over for a while. When at last he moved again, it was to snatch up his automobile keys and nod toward the door. Of the envy and dread upon his face, the latter had clearly won out.
IV. De contemptu mundi
“Somebody once said — I’ve forgot who — said you can take away a man’s gods … but only to give him others in return.”
Uncle Brendan told me this on our late-night drive, southwest through the countryside, past hedgerows and farms, along desolate lanes that may well have been better traveled after midnight. A corner rounded by day could have put us square in the middle of a flock of sheep nagged along by nipping dogs.
Or maybe we traveled by the meager luster of a slivered moon because, of those things that Brendan wished to tell me, he didn’t wish to do so by the light of day, or bulb, or fire.
“Wasn’t until after I’d left seminary that I understood what that really meant. You don’t walk away from a thing you’d thought you believed your whole life through without the loss of it leaving a hole in you, hungering to be filled. You’ve still a need to believe in something … it’s just a question of what.”
Sometimes he talked, sometimes he fell silent, collecting his remembrances of days long gone.
“I tried some things, Patrick. Things I’d rather not discuss in detail. Tried some things, and saw others … heard still other things beyond those. You can’t always trust your own senses, much less the things that get whispered about by people you can’t be sure haven’t themselves gone daft before you’ve ever met them. But some things…
“That woman you saw? One of three, she is, if she’s who I think she was. There’s some say they’ve always been here, long as there’s been an Ireland, and long before that. All the legends that got born on this island, they’re not all about little people. There’s some say that from the earliest times, the Celts knew of them, and worshipped them because the Celts knew that the most powerful goddesses were three-in-one.”
We’d driven as far down as the Dingle Peninsula, one of the desolate and beautiful spits of coastal land that reached out like fingers to test the cold Atlantic waters. The land rolled with low peaks, and waves pounded sea cliffs to churn up mists that trapped the dawn’s light in spectral iridescence, and the countryside was littered with ancient rock — standing stones and the beehive-shaped huts that had housed early Christian monks. Here hermits found the desolation they’d craved, thinking they’d come to know God better.
“There’s some say,” Uncle Brendan went on, “they were still around after Saint Patrick came. That sometimes, in the night, when the winds were blowing and the waves were wearing down the cliffs, a pious hermit might hear them outside his hut. Come to tempt him, they had. Calling in to him. All night, it might go on, and that horny bugger inside, all alone in the world, sunk to his knees in prayer, trying not to imagine how they’d look, how they’d feel. No reason they couldn’t’ve come on in as they pleased — it was just their sport to break him down.”
“Why?” I asked. “To prove they were more powerful than his god was?”
“Aye, now that could be. More powerful … or at least there. Then again, some say that, by the time the Sisters of the Trinity finally got to their business on those who gave in, all the hours of fear … flavoured the monks better.”
“Flavoured? Their blood, you mean?”
“All of them. It’s said each consumes a different part of a man. One, the blood. One, the flesh. And one, the sperm. It’s said that when they’ve not fed for a good long time? There’s nothing of a man left but his bones, cracked open and sucked dry.”
I couldn’t reconcile such savagery with the tenderness I’d been shown — the sweetness of her face, the gentle sadness in her eyes as she looked upon us, two dead boys and the other changed for life. Only when she’d tasted my blood had anything like terrible wisdom surfaced in her eyes.
The sun had breached the horizon behind us when Uncle Brendan stopped the car. There was nothing human or animal to be seen in any direction, and we ourselves were insignificant in this rugged and lovely desolation. We crossed meadows on foot, until the road was lost to sight. Ahead, in the distance, a solitary standing stone listed at a slight tilt. It drew my uncle on with quickened steps. When we reached it, he touched it with a reverence I’d never thought resided in him, for anything, fingers skimming the shallow cuts of the ogham writing that rimmed it, archlike.
“It’s theirs. The Sisters’. Engraved to honour them.” Then he grinned. “See anything missing?”
I looked for chunks eroded or hammered away, but the stone appeared complete. I shook my head, mystified.
“No crosses cut in later by the Christians. It wouldn’t take the chisel. Tried to smash the rock, they did, but it wore down their sledges instead. Tried to drag it to the sea, and the ropes snapped. So the legend goes, anyway. Like trying to pull God’s own tooth. Or the devil’s. If there’s a difference.” He shut his eyes, and the wind from the west swirled his graying hair. When he spoke again his voice was shaking. “Killed a boy here once. When I was young. Trying to call them up. I’d heard sometimes they’d answer the call of blood. Maybe I should’ve used my own instead. Maybe they’d’ve paid some mind to that.”
On the wind I could hear the pounding of the ocean, and as I tried to imagine my generous and profane uncle a murderer, it felt as if those distant waves had all along been eroding everything I thought I knew. I asked Brendan what he’d wanted with the Sisters.
“They didn’t take the name of the Trinity just because there happens to be three of them. Couldn’t tell you what it is, but it’s said there’s some tie to that other trinity you and I thought we were born to serve. Patrick, I … I wanted to know what they know. And there’s some say when they put their teeth to a man, the pleasure’s worth it. So what’s a few years sacrificed, to learning what’s been covered up by centuries of lies?”
“But what if,” I asked, “all they’d have to tell you is just another set of lies?”
“Then might be the pleasure makes up for that, too.” He took a step toward me and I flinched, as if he had a knife or garrote as he would’ve had for that boy whose blood hadn’t been enough. Brendan raised his empty hands, then looked at mine.