Page 11 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

DARA

“I’VE TO take a load of straw to the national school in the village this morning,” Lorcan said over breakfast. “You can come with me if you want.”

“Do you want to bury the brooch first?”

He shrugged. “Michael will be around all morning. I don’t want him to see.”

An hour later, we were unloading bundles from the trailer hitched to his mustard-coloured Ford Cortina.

The little two-roomed school sat neat as a pin in the middle of a playground.

The headmaster, Eoin “ Bullseye” Dolan, came out to meet us with a gaggle of schoolchildren in tow.

With the air so cold, a cloud of breath followed them.

None of them were older than eight or nine, I’d say.

He instructed them to bring the hay into their classroom.

Each wore a pair of gloves, some yellow, some pink, some blue, and their hands eagerly grabbed at the bags.

Unable to lift them, they dragged the bags across the playground, giggling and shouting all the while.

Bullseye was a wiry man with sad eyes and an academic air about him. “She’s staying with you, is she?”

Lorcan shook his head and puffed out a cloud of his own. “Don’t start, Bullseye…”

He glanced over his shoulder before craning his neck to Lorcan. “I told you not to call me that in school. I don’t want the kids to start using it. You should have sent Carol right back to me.”

Lorcan balled his fists on his hips and stared at the ground. “You’re both as bad as each other. You need some time apart to calm down, now. You know what yis’re like.”

I focused, trying to read Bullseye’s aura but saw nothing.

Bullseye paced and pointed at me. “Who’s this?”

“This is Dara. I told you about him. He’s working on the farm now.”

I held out my hand but Bullseye ignored it. I didn’t take it personally. He was clearly under pressure.

“Is he staying up there, too?” Bullseye frowned and fought to keep his voice under control. “Have you got my daughter under the same roof as some stranger?”

“He’s not a stranger, he’s just… new,” Lorcan said .

There was nothing I could say about myself which wouldn’t immediately sound like I was covering something up. “I hate to see two friends fighting,” I said. “Lorcan was telling me you two go way back?”

Bullseye crossed his arms. “Sure we went to this school together.”

“He was always going to end up headmaster,” Lorcan said. “Little swot that he was.”

Bullseye glared at him.

“I can’t imagine you were a bold child,” I said to Lorcan.

“He was a goody two shoes,” Bullseye said. “Never got in trouble for anything. Always kept his head down.”

“I kept my head down so the teachers would never pick me for anything,” Lorcan said. “I feckin’ hated school. Couldn’t wait to be done with it. I left the second Dad said I could.”

“Have you always worked at the farm?” I asked.

“Sure what else is he good for?” Bullseye asked.

“All he does is work. Can you imagine him in a factory? Or, God forbid, in an office? And sure isn’t he lucky to have it?

There’s many would love the stability of farming nowadays.

Lorcan Fitzgerald was born to the farm, as sure as any lamb, and we’ll bury him in it. ”

I had a hard time imagining him anywhere else, I had to admit. Lorcan belonged outdoors, on the land. “What’s all the straw for?” I asked.

“Costumes for Wren Day,” Bullseye said. “We make them every year. Lorcan and I were Wrenboys for a couple of years in a row, do you remember? We had gas craic, altogether, going door to door, singing and asking for spare change. You know he’s trying to put a stop to it? ”

“Who?” Lorcan asked.

“Who do you think? Father McDonagh.”

Lorcan tutted loudly. “He’s a gobshite,” he said. “He’s only been here five minutes and thinks he owns the place. Wren Day has been going on forever.”

“He thinks it’s a bit too pagan, a bit too primitive, y’know,” Bullseye said.

Carol marched into the schoolyard with several bulging supermarket plastic bags.

“Carol,” Bullseye said. “Carol, stop for a second. I wasn’t sure if you were going to come today.”

The family resemblance was unmistakable. The same eyes, the same nose, and the same air of purpose.

“I said I’d come, didn’t I?” She stood with her back to him and held up the bags. “I’ve got these ribbons for you. I had to wait until you left for work to go and get them from my room.”

“Why aren’t you wearing a coat? It’s freezing out.”

“Stop it. I’m grand.” She spoke to Lorcan as she headed towards the door. “Here, why’s he wearing a cloak?”

Lorcan frowned and looked me up and down. “Who’s wearing a cloak?”

“Oh.” She carried on into the school. “Must have been the way he was standing.”

I smiled at the ground so as not to arouse suspicions. She was perceptive, was young Carol. One might almost think she possessed some form of ESP.

“Sorry about her,” Bullseye said. “She’s got an imagination.”

“Hah! Nothing wrong with that. I’m prone to some daydreaming myself.”

“I hope you’re not encouraging her,” Bullseye said to Lorcan.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bullseye licked his lips. “What did she tell you?”

Lorcan returned to unloading the straw. “She said you caught her and Eddie kissing.”

Bullseye spluttered and shifted about on the spot. “Oh, is that what she said, is it? Sure I’ve caught her kissing plenty of boys.”

Lorcan took two armloads of straw to the door of the school. “Then what was it?”

Bullseye walked past him. “Why don’t you ask her? Since you’re so close?”

???

The square hallway was painted with a mural of legendary warrior Finn McCool and his two great wolfhounds walking among rolling green hills.

The hills were mostly obscured by a series of hooks stuffed with the children’s coats.

I poked my head into one of the two classrooms where young kids excitedly rushed around with handfuls of straw.

Words and phrases in Irish and English lined the walls, as did the kids’ drawings.

Carol opened one of the supermarket bags and started handing out bright strips of ribbon.

She held up a crude drawing of a Wrenboy mask — a rough collection of angles and spikes, with crayon used to show where the ribbons should go.

Though judging by the mess in the room, the masks were a long way from completion.

In a corner, a group of older children gathered around a sheet of paper and sang.

“ The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,

St Stephen's Day was caught in the furze,

We got him there as you can see,

And pasted him up on a holly tree .”

The children stumbled in places and were not in any kind of tune, but they carried on singing.

“We up with our wattles and gave him a fall,

And brought him here to show you all.

Knock at the knocker and ring at the bell,

Give us a copper for singing so well?”

“I don’t know this version,” I said.

“There are loads of different variations, all over the country,” Lorcan said. “This is the one we used to sing when I was little. Our teacher pieced it together because I wasn’t very musical so she had to make an easy version for me. Bullseye still teaches it to this day.”

“For we are the boys that came your way,

To bury the wren on St Stephen’s Day.”

When the song reached the end, the children started again, from the beginning.

“What is furze , anyway?” Carol asked .

“It’s another word for gorse,” I said. “You can wear a piece of it to prevent you from getting lost while travelling. I always keep some in the van.” I’d said it without thinking.

Lorcan glared at me. Carol didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong in what I’d said as she didn’t react at all.

Bullseye sat at his desk by the chalkboard.

Lorcan took it as our cue to leave.