The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (3 page)

Mark sniffed at the green-stained sink. “You really think you could rig up a connection?”

“I don’t see why not. There are two separate lines going into the house and the sawmill. All we’ve got to do is to hook up to one of them.”

“We could set up a computer station?” Mark’s spirits were beginning to lift. He and Mo only had another week, but even a week could become interesting.

“Don’t see why not.”

“We could download stuff—music?”

“Sure! We could party!”

Kate cut through the exchanges. “Partying wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Kate here is saving Ireland’s plants from extinction. I’ve been recruited to help her. The den will be our headquarters.”

“Wow!” Mark pretended to be impressed.

Mo muttered, “Shu-shu-shut up, Mark!”

The two youths grinned, struggling to control themselves.

Mark lifted his eyebrows at Kate. “Maybe we can work out a compromise?”

Kate shook her fist at him. “The only compromise I’ll give you is a meeting between this fist and your scalded English face!”

The two boys fell into uncontrollable laughter.

Mo raked her fingernail along Mark’s spine as Kate blushed a furious red. For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Mo’s lips pouted and she waved Kate to join her. “Cuh-cuh-cuh . . . Oh, come on, Kate!”

There was no getting out of the chore after that. Mark, still laughing at times, threw himself into it as hard as the others. Clearing the dairy of junk took several hot and sweaty hours. All four of them ended up covered in dirt and spiderwebs. Alan tugged and hammered at the single cold tap until he got it working, and they washed their hands and faces over the white porcelain sink. They filled up some empty bottles so they could sprinkle water over the concrete floor, getting ready to sweep it clean. A careless sprinkle and they ended up throwing the water over each other amid hoots of laughter. An hour later, with the sun heading west, they found an old wooden table and an assortment of chairs, so they could settle down and rest in a little more comfort, feasting on Irish ham sandwiches and ice-cold orange juice from Padraig’s kitchen.

A sweat-streaked Kate rested her face on her interlaced knuckles and looked across the table at the fair-haired English boy. His short-sleeved shirt was muddied and streaked. Could it really be that all four of them were orphans? And if so, was Alan right—was this too much to put down to coincidence? The thought caused an anxious fluttering of her heart. She noticed Mark lifting a battered-looking harmonica from his shirt pocket and she watched how he toyed with it on the scratched bare wood of the table.

“Are you going to give us a tune?”

His face flushed an even deeper red with embarrassment and he stuffed the harmonica back into the shirt pocket. But from time to time, as they munched and got to know each other, Kate noticed that he would glance her way, as if mentally assessing this bossy Irish girl with her green eyes and a temper to match the color of her hair.

The Sigil

Mark and Mo were late in getting back to the rented house, formerly a Church of Ireland parsonage, where their adoptive mother, Bethal, was impatiently waiting. Bethal was tall, gray-eyed and bony, with long mousy hair plaited like a show horse’s tail and long unshapely hands that always looked raw. Now, in the gloom of the oak-paneled entrance hall, she shrank from the grimy appearance of their clothes.

“Filthy toads!” Her lips were inadequate to cover her gravestones of teeth. “Filthy!
Filthy
in body and soul!”

With her ribs thrust out, she blocked entry to the tunnel-like corridor that led to the ground floor washroom.

“Get up there! Let Sir see for himself the state you’re in! He’ll know what to do about it!”

So saying, she harried them upstairs with raps of her knuckles against the backs of their skulls, on through the tiers of chairs in the Meeting Hall and the tabletop makeshift altar, and through the heavy door into the office-cum-sacristy at the back. Here she abandoned them with a slam of the door. Late as they were, evening worship had not long ended and the pungent odor of sweat still permeated the Hall and chased them into the inner sanctum. Sweat, lots of it, was an integral part of Grimstone’s services, which had little to say about the gentle Lord Jesus. The Lord he venerated skulked away from the light in deeper and darker places, devoid of anything a normal priest or vicar would have recognized as Christian caring and kindness.

On entering the sacristy, they saw that his soiled dog collar had been flung onto the desk surface. They also saw, with a slender hope, that he had little or no interest in their lateness, or, for that matter, the dirtied state of their clothes. Ignoring the clatter of their arrival, Grimstone leaned against the sill and stared out into the fading evening through the wide round-topped window. As usual when he was coming down from the high of a service, the black silk shirt was stuck to him with sweat, sculpting his heavily muscled body.

They waited in silence for more than a minute, listening to the deep methodical rasp of his breathing.

“You’ve been wondering why I brought you here? I know you have, so don’t bother to deny it.” His voice
was quiet, a sonorous growl, but they knew him well enough to sense danger.

“Well, much as it surprises me too, this town is of growing interest.” He inhaled a deep draught of the cool air of evening. “There is the reek of old power here. Not that you would catch the whiff of it. It is almost buried and forgotten, yet lingering, the way heavy stinks do. Maybe you girl, with your whore-witch heritage, can actually smell it? I’ve seen you scribbling into that book. So tell me what you’ve discovered.”

“The nuh-nuh-nuh . . . the name is Cuh-Cuh-Celtic.”

“Cuh-Cuh-Celtic! Of course it’s Celtic. Clonmel in their degenerate tongue means the Vale of Honey. But this stink is older . . . far older still. Pah! Why do I waste my breath on the likes of you! What can you tell me that I don’t know already?”

“I’m nuh-nuh-nuh . . . nuh-not sure, Suh-Sir.”

“You’re nuh-nuh-nuh-not sure? Well, let me explain then what is to be done. We face a more formidable challenge than I realized when I came here to proselytize this backwater. Why, then, I hear your small minds wondering, does he bother to share the good news with us? Why? Because it is my Lord himself, my sacred Master, who senses the threat. The threat is to Him. Oh, yes, indeed. He senses a threat to Him, here in this town, in the old power that still lingers here.”

Mark muttered, “A threat, Sir?”

Grimstone’s head was nodding slowly, his hair glistening with an opalescent sheen of sweat. “I had anticipated
every sewer of Papist heresy, with its confessionals and slothful delusions. But this is far worse. What’s at the bottom of it? A lingering relic of the old paganism? I wouldn’t be surprised.” His voice rose, throaty and rasping. “Old power! Old power, and a threat to My Lord, that by His blessed will, I will expose and crush.”

Only now, as he spun around to face them, did they see that the black metal cross, the symbol of the church Grimstone had personally founded, was clasped in his right hand. He lifted it lovingly against his brow, pressed its embossed sigil against the scars of many such impressions, a new branding. Although the cross did not look hot, the smell of his burning flesh pervaded the room. Then he intoned the mantra:

“My own Lord! My beloved Master! My personal salvation!”

Mark and Mo shivered, their eyes averted from the repulsive sight. The cross was matted and gnarled with great age. He never tired of recounting how he had acquired it, when, as a young man, he had been a wastrel, heading for perdition. He had rescued the cross from an elderly antiquarian, a greedy robber of graves. Yet the very moment he first held it in his hands he had his first vision. So forceful was the shock of revelation, he had lost consciousness. When he came around, the collector was dead, drowned in his own blood. Grimstone had staggered from the antiquarian’s home, already glimpsing his destiny in the truth and power of the cross. He had dismissed the antiquarian’s
claim—sometimes there were hints that he had tested that claim on the antiquarian’s lips in more violent forms than mere words—that it had come from a barrow grave that dated to long before the Christian era. Instead Grimstone pretended that it was a Templar relic, dating back to the Crusades.

He had kept his discovery to himself for some years, immersing himself in ancient learning. Only when he felt ready did he present himself as witness, to begin the foundation of the Islington Church of the Sigil, named after the silvery shape embossed into the metal where the figure of Jesus would normally be, a shape that resembled the symbol for infinity, but comprising three twisted circles of silver instead of two.

No one other than Grimstone was allowed to hold the cross. It was brought out at the high point of conversion for every new flock, a blessing for their eyes, but not their kiss or their touch, only when they had proved their devotion through weeks of induction leading to a final service of proclamation and dedication, ready to be born again in veneration of Grimstone’s unforgiving Lord. It was usually put away after the service ended. But the fact Grimstone had kept it out this evening, that he was still venerating the sigil after the service, was ominous.

Knowing this, Mark’s and Mo’s hearts quailed as Grimstone turned his back on them, looking down the fall of the gentle hill into the town, where twilight now clothed the rendered walls and slated roofs, his eyes finally alighting on the river.

“The river should also interest you, witch-fetus. Its name suggests a paganish worship by a race much older than the Celts. Half savages, like your whore of a mother. Now I know you haven’t missed the lingering signs in your scratching and searching in the dirt?”

“Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh . . . nuh-nuh . . .”

“Quack-quack-quack! Enough of your quacking! Three rivers—evocative of the foulest pretense—the stink of a heathen trinity?”

“I . . . I duh-duh-duh-don’t know.”

“Liar!”

His growl deepened. “Old power! Its grip long vanquished, yet such is its hold on the very landscape, it has endured.”

Grimstone inhaled, a deep breath, then, deeming his body sufficiently cooled, he turned away from the open window. His eyes, almost coal black in the gloom, confronted them.

“I will have no more lies—not a single word! I know where you have been today, from moment to moment, and who you met. I want you to describe every detail of it to me. Not a morsel omitted!”

Mo spoke first, risking his anger. “I tuh-tuh-tuh-took us into the woods . . . like yuh-you asked me to.”

Mark felt a stab of horror, realizing now that the day had been manipulated by Grimstone. The trespassing and, very likely, everything else that had come from it, had been planned. But why?

“Don’t keep me waiting!”

Mark described the clearing in the woods where Mo had found some crystals and drawn them in her notebook. The appearance of the old man, Padraig.

“I know you had a lengthy conversation with this man.”

Mark blinked with a second shock of realization; somebody must have followed them, watched them constantly, closely enough to see what was happening but not close enough to overhear the conversation.

He described how Padraig had warned them they were trespassing. How he had questioned them.

“He asked you your names?”

“Yes.”

“Did he recognize your names?”

“Yes, Sir! He knew about you.”

“What did he know? His precise words?”

Mark did his best to imitate the deep-throated local accent. “‘You must be the visiting brood of the Reverend Grimstone?’”

“Brood indeed!”

“I asked him if he had met you.” Mark tried the accent again. “‘Met him, I certainly have not. Nor would I ever wish to do so.’”

Grimstone’s eyes widened. “But he didn’t immediately order you out?”

“He saw the crystals Maureen had drawn into her notebook. He was really impressed with them. He went on a bit—I didn’t understand all of it.” Mark did a fair imitation of Padraig: “‘You have the geometry of their structures, that’s
easy to see. But you’ve captured something deeper than ordinary eye might see of them.’”

Grimstone’s hand fell on Mark’s left shoulder. “Something deeper? What was the old fool alluding to?”

“He didn’t explain. He said something like . . . an artist of Maureen’s skill should be treated with respect. He said she could help herself to the crystals, if she wanted to take them.”

The hand squeezed harder. “His exact words!”

“‘So take what you will of them. Explore my woods wherever you must.’ Then he gave the notebook back to her.”

“Yet still he did not send you away?”

“No, Sir.”

“You’ve left something out. You know what will happen if you continue to try my patience!”

“He asked how long we had been in Clonmel. I told him, one week. Then he said something really odd. Something about time enough for somebody like Maureen.”

A hard slap on his sunburned cheek jerked Mark’s head to one side.

He bit his lip, continued with what he recalled of Padraig’s exact words. “‘Time enough for someone gifted with . . . with vision.’ Then he asked her another odd question. ‘Have you been surprised by what you’ve observed here?’”

“Ah!”

“He didn’t explain. He just told Maureen to take her time to find the right words. ‘I’m interested to know what might have captured your attention.’”

“I knew it! I knew there was something else. And what had caught our little witch’s attention?”

Mark glanced at Mo, a mute blink of apology. “She said something stupid, or at least it seemed stupidly obvious. She just said, ‘Nature is blooming.’”

“That’s it? ‘Nature is blooming’?” The dark eyes swung over to confront Mo from a distance of a foot or so.

She nodded.

Before Grimstone could turn his full attention onto Mo, Mark continued. “He took us back to the sawmill, where we met an American boy called Alan Duval and a local girl called Kate Shaunessy.”

“He made a point of introducing you to this pair?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Mark went on to explain what had happened at the sawmill, the hard work of clearing out the room for a den. Grimstone demanded every detail. Mark didn’t mention computers, music or partying. When his story was finished, Grimstone remained thoughtful for several seconds, during which time he held Mark in the intense focus of his gaze.

“I want you to cultivate this friendship.”

Mark was astonished. “You want us to spy on them?”

Grimstone merely stared.

Mark felt bewildered. All the interrogation, and now this! He wondered if Grimstone had finally gone stark raving mad. But even in madness he saw the glimmer of an opportunity.

“Does this mean, Sir, that we’ll be staying here in Clonmel for longer?”

“My flock is growing. I have become aware of the real challenge here. We shall stay until I am satisfied that my work is complete.”

Mark hesitated, then blurted it out. “It—it might help if I had a cell phone.”

“Are you bargaining with me?”

“No, Sir! They would expect it, Alan and Kate. Cell phones are equipped to take pictures, capture images, even video images. If they see me taking pictures with a camera, they’ll be suspicious. But they’ll take no notice of a phone.”

Those eyes still glared into Mark’s, as if reading his mind.

“There’s some ulterior motive?”

“No, Sir.”

Grimstone pinched a fold of Mark’s sunburned right cheek, squeezing the inflamed skin hard enough to make him wince.

“It’s that caterwauling you call music, isn’t it?”

“No, Sir!”

“You mean, ‘Yes, Sir.’ You’ll find some way of stuffing the gadget with that sluttish screeching. That’s what it is. Don’t lie to me.”

Grimstone’s pinch tightened until it brought tears to Mark’s eyes, but still he defied his adoptive father. Grimstone
drew back his right hand, still holding the cross. His eyes widened and he almost seemed ready to strike.

Mo wailed, “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh . . . duh-don’t huh-hurt him!”

For a moment Grimstone’s eyes were unfocused with rage. But then, abruptly, his expression altered. His eyes refocused. He brought the cross back into contact with his brow and pressed it hard against the overheated flesh. For what seemed like ages he held it there with his eyes clenched shut. When he opened them again he patted Mark’s swollen cheek, as if it had all been no more than a game between father and son.

“Very well! Have your gadget if it’s what you really want. Even the most righteous of fathers must show a little indulgence.” He reached down and drew Mo close to him. His arms enfolded them both in a single sweat-soured embrace. “Why do you provoke me? Are we not a loving family in this, the most sacred of tasks?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“And you, daughter! What can we not contemplate?”

Mark reached out, unseen, to find Mo’s hand, to hold it as he had done a thousand times before.

“Fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh . . . failure, Sir!”