Page 29 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

LORCAN

ON THE afternoon of Christmas Eve, I opened the door to find Bullseye on my doorstep.

He removed his flat cap and shook the snow from it. “Have you a minute?”

“Come on through. I’m watering the plants.”

In the greenhouse, I picked up my watering can. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you this.” He set his cap on the potting table. “I was talking to Father McDonagh on Sunday about getting the kids ready for Christmas mass. He had a quiet word with me. He says… he says he saw you and Dara.”

I poured water into a spider plant. He couldn’t have seen us in Ross Castle, surely? “He saw us where?”

“On the laneway on Saturday night. After you left Casey’s. He told me you two were…” He swallowed hard. “Kissing. He said you were kissing each other.”

My heart thumped faster. “He’s lying.”

“You know as well as I do that sort of thing is illegal. Two men, I mean. And he says when you finished kissing, you started doing… other things.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“Look—”

“I think I have a right to know what I’m being accused of, Bullseye.” I slammed the watering can down. It gurgled as the water sloshed within.

“He said you two started groping each other.”

“He's lying, Bullseye.”

Bullseye fiddled with one of the buttons on his coat.

“We’ve been friends for a long time. And I've always suspected you might be… one of them . But as long as you keep it in the bedroom, I don't care what you get up to. But you can't be doing it out in the open where children might see, Lorcan. Now, it’s not right. And I’d say it to a boy and girl as quickly as I’m saying it to you. ”

“For feck sake, Bullseye, listen to yourself. You think we were, what, riding each other in the post office? Sucking mickeys on the roundabout?”

“Ah, Jaysus, come on now, Lorcan…” He looked away, turning pale.

“Don’t give me the innocent routine,” I said. “Sure wasn’t it your idea for all the boys in our class to have a pulling competition in the woods when we were at school? To see who could shoot their shot the farthest?”

“Ach, it’s not the same thing at all!” His face turned pink. “Boys being boys in the woods is a far cry from… what you two were doing.”

“We’ve never done anything in the village,” I said. “And you're going to take that blow-in’s word over mine?” I felt sick at the thought of Father McDonagh following us in the dark.

His eyes grew sharper and his gestures grew wilder. “I wouldn't normally but since Dara arrived you've been different.”

“Different how?”

“Just… different. Moodier. And that’s saying something. You’ve never been a ray of sunshine but lately you’re acting like you’ve the world on your shoulders.”

I frowned at him. “Am I not allowed to have problems?”

“Ach, would you go on outta that.” He threw a hand in the air. “Sure what have you to be worrying out? No wife, no kids, no responsibilities. No boss breathing down your neck, demanding results. A few sheep and wide open fields to roam around on…”

I shook my head. “Yeah, of course, sure being a farmer is easy. Not like being a headmaster. Sitting on your arse all day, filling yourself with tea and biscuits, finishing work at three o’clock in the afternoon.”

He clenched his teeth. “You can’t be going around kissing fellas in public, Lorcan. It’s against the law.”

I held my wrists together. “Come on, so. Arrest me.”

“Lorcan…”

“If you honestly believe I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, then drag me off to the garda station. Let Cormac lock me up.”

Bullseye grabbed his cap and stormed out into the hallway.

Dara stood halfway down the stairs. I didn’t know how much he’d heard.

“I'll tell Father McDonagh I've spoken to you,” Bullseye said. “But he can make things very difficult if he wants to. You'll have to be more careful.” He tilted his head up to Dara. “Both of you.”

???

DARA

I waited at the gate to the churchyard. Despite my pagan leanings, I’d always quite liked churches.

Aside from the interesting architecture, they were big spiritual batteries and whenever I was near one my hands always tingled with the stored energy of them.

And they came with graveyards. I’d often wile away the hours wandering around a graveyard, trying to make out the faded names on the headstones.

Every once in a blue moon I’d catch sight of a wandering spirit flitting among the graves.

Often very old and faded, they were the last wisps of energy, moving without intent.

Vibrations caught in a loop. Simply memories in search of someone to remember them.

With a few kinds words, I’d dispatch them on to the other side.

No spirits wandered the graveyard that morning.

Briefly, I wondered if Lorcan’s family were buried there and considered walking around to check.

Instead, I steeled my courage and entered the church.

Lorcan and I hadn’t done anything more than kiss in the laneway but Father McDonagh must have spotted us.

And he could only have spotted us if he’d been following us.

A solitary king attending his barren kingdom, Father McDonagh busied himself near the altar, preparing for the big day.

“I hear you’ve been talking about me.” The rib vaulted ceiling enhanced my voice more than I expected.

Father McDonagh straightened his back to better look down his nose at me, or so I believed. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

“You never said anything about Lorcan until I arrived in the village.”

“I simply asked Eoin Dolan to have a word with Lorcan and tell him to tone down the depravity.” He pushed his thin lips together in a sickening mockery of a grin.

I balled my fist. “There was no depravity and you well know it. All we did was kiss.”

“Oh, all you did is kiss, is it?” He templed his fingers over his flat stomach. “There's a reason why we have laws against people like you and Lorcan Fitzgerald.”

“Men wrote those laws in fear and ignorance. And people are finally waking up to the injustice of them.”

“I suppose some of us find the corruption of God’s creation more galling than others.”

I shook my head. I knew a handful of spells to make the burning candle tip over and set the altar alight.

I could make Father McDonagh have the worst night’s sleep of his life by putting a nightmare in his mind.

I could give him an illness which would confine him to his bed for a fortnight.

I could do all of it and more but each one came with a heavy cost to my soul.

Each one was a petty act in service of nothing more than revenge.

A spirit-rotting emotion I avoided at all costs.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not going to be in Tullycleena much longer.

I’ve upset the apple cart. I can see that.

But don’t take it out on Lorcan. He’s a good man.

He goes to mass every Sunday. He helps out around the village.

He doesn’t deserve to have people whispering behind his back, making his life miserable. ”

Father McDonagh carried on as if I hadn’t said a word. “Will you take confession while you’re here? I imagine a man like you must have a lot of sins.”

I grinned. “And while I’m sure you’d love to hear all about them in detail, I’ll have to pass. My gods have already forgiven me.”

“A pagan as well as a…” He looked me up and down, from head to toe and back again.

“As a what?”

“You know what you are.”

I had a dozen responses ready and had deployed them often, but each one would have made Lorcan’s life worse.

I hung my head low and held my hands open.

“I can’t help but wonder if you happened to be passing and saw us on the lane, or if you were following us.

Regardless, I’m sorry for causing offence.

It won’t happen again.” I walked away, the loose sole of my boot echoing through the church.

I’d hoped a simple act of humility would be enough to placate a man of God.

“This village doesn’t want men like you and Lorcan.

” He was well used to speaking in his little church and knew exactly how his voice would carry.

“You’ve brought out a bad side of him, right enough, but it was there all along.

Stay away from him and there will be no need for me to take any further action. ”

The gall of the man made my blood boil. I wondered how many other men he’d spoken to in that way.

How many women. The church’s insistence on wedging itself into the private lives of Irish people, to control every aspect of them with calculated malice, was a defilement I could never bear.

I lingered under the pointed-arched door of the entrance, reminding myself of my spiritual path and how harming another person was not what my goddess wanted for me.

But the universe had laws of its own. I tapped my fingertips.

“Walk with grace, Father, for what we give returns threefold.”