NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Read online

  ‘Aye . . . it’s a breath o’ the deep sea she carries wi’ her . . . and will to her dying day. Well, it’s like Master Terry’d liefer you heard the tale from old Silis than the others—the tale of Morag McCodrum and her grievous sin—and her punishment for that same. An’ it’s I that remember her a wee girleen runnin’ about the yellow sands, the Virgin pardon her, poor soul! . . .’

  This is the tale I heard then from old Silis as she sat beside her cabin door, her eyes fixed on the somber grey ripples that lapped the shingle at the threshold of her battered door.

  * * * * *

  ‘Nobody knew just where the child Morag got her love of the sea. Seemed it dated from her very earliest years, for many was the time her mother would miss the baby, and find her crawling through bent and wildblown grasses down towards the beach. Just poor folks they were, the McCodrums. He shared a boat with two others, did Neil McCodrum, and his wife Shelagh worked hard to keep their tiny cot in decent order and the six sturdy babies washed and fed—though it was little but potatoes and porridge, and maybe a bit of bread sometimes, they had to live on. Still, they were fine handsome children; Shelagh and Neil were a pretty pair in their day; but wee Morag was different from the rest from the start, with her white face and black hair long and lank as seaweed, and eyes grey and green, not like the dancing blue of her brothers and sister, nor their curly brown hair and pink cheeks.

  ‘Bride was the eldest—eh, but she was bonny, Bride and her wide smile and free step! She played “mother” to Morag when the little lass was a wean, but many’s the time simple Bride was anxious and distressed about her little sister, and puzzled, too—for keep the child away from sight or sound of the sea you could not. Neil laughed and swore she’d a true fisher’s blood in her veins, and should have been a boy—and truly, to soothe her tears as a baby, Bride had to put her without doors, no matter rain or storm, within sight of the grey sullen water, and she’d coo and laugh, no matter what tempers had gone before, and fall asleep there on the wet sands as if she was laid in a queen’s cradle! As she grew up ’twas just the same—instead of biding indoors to help her mother wash and cook and mend as Bride did, for the four strapping boys that now went out to fish with Neil McCodrum, Morag was for ever wandering down near the sea, staring out over the restless tossing water with eyes that were the selfsame colour, and as changeful. The coast is wild and rocky enough at Ballymagh, and honeycombed with great caves; had it been a fashionable seaside place there would a’ been folks come miles to explore, with their guide-books and candles and such . . . but here ’twas rare to find a soul that cared to break the eternal silence of the caves, save occasionally a venturesome lad or two after seagulls’ eggs or some such treasure-trove. Indeed, there were few enough of those, since folks said the caves were haunted, and in especial the Cave o’ Dread, as it was called, though none could say just why it was called so—some ancient tale clung to it, so that none would go near it by night, and few enough by day. . . .

  ‘Many of the caves were inaccessible except at low tide, and that perilously; to win to the lowering entrance of the black Cave o’ Dread one had to wait the tide’s ebb, and then set out on a treacherous scramble from rock to rock, thick with slimy popweed, ready to fling the climber at the first slip into the hungry depths that moved below, waiting, waiting, champing white teeth of foam against the sharp black crags in the grey water. It was a fearsome place, the Cave o’ Dread, with the stealthy agate-hued sea flooring it, and the darkness filled horribly with the sullen moaning of the echoes that haunted the unknown distances in the deep heart of it, like the distant crooning heard in some giant shell. A fearsome place!

  ‘Strange, then, that that was the very cave from which Morag drew her nickname—that place of chill and sullen mystery that one would think would strike cold fear into the heart of any child! ’Twas one day—and she but sixteen, too—she was missing as usual, but her folks thought at first it was no matter, she would be along the shore, be sure, where she always was. Bride was to be wed to her man, Ian McAlpine, very soon, and of course, Shelagh, mother-like, fluttering around her like a bird afraid to let her young one fly alone . . . anyway, it was late that night when Ian said “Where was Morag?” and Shelagh remembered the girl had never been home since the early morn when she left the cottage. They went calling and crying for her, the creature, but no reply came. . . . One o’clock in the morning, and Shelagh night crazy, and no Morag!

  ‘It was Ian McAlpine found her at last, and would you believe it? It’s perched on a ledge up on the side of the black Cave o’ Dread she was, where she had been bidden never to go, wrapped in her shawl, quite happy. Young McAlpine took out his boat, having his suspicions, as he’d seen her, he said, two days before scrambling over the rocks towards the cave at low tide. At low tide she had gone this time she said, but when the sea started to come in, instead of turning homewards to the shore, she felt it “draw her”, so she put it—queerly enough, I thought—and nothing would serve her but to stay and watch the great green-grey waters sweep storming into the cave, deafening her ears with their clamour, and wetting her with flying spray. How she climbed up to that bit of a ledge, Himself only knows, Ian said. The lad risked his neck to save her, rocking in his wee boat in the heart of the seething water that swirled about the mouth of the cave.

  ‘Somehow he managed to edge close enough to the sheer rock for her to jump, but his heart was in his mouth, he said, as he did it, for just then a great wave seemed to rise and all but swept him and his bit of a boat into the far black heart of the cave, whence came a roaring and a thundering that fairly scared the life out of him; but it seemed at the moment that Morag cried something in a strange voice, and that same wave washed his boat back again under her feet and so outside the cave into the breaking dawn-light. As he pulled at the oars, wild to draw away from the awful nearness of that sheer wall of rock, she threw out her arms, and catching a handful of flying spray, buried her lips in it and kissed the wet saltness. . . . Mother of Mercy, but Ian was scared! He thought she was mad, poor lad, and he never rowed so hard as on that race for the shore! . . . But there, she was right enough, only talk as Neil and Shelagh might, she could never be made to see her grievous disobedience, nor even when Father Flaherty came to see her, and told her what a sin it was to cause her good mother such pain and anxiety, she merely stared at him in a puzzled way and shook her head vaguely, and did not seem to understand. He contented himself with setting her a penance, which she obediently performed, but the good priest felt within his secret heart all the time that it was done just for that reason—because she was a good obedient child at heart—than as a token of repentance for a sin. She talked oddly and rather wildly at times, too. Bride, round-eyed, came to her mother one day with a strange tale, and Shelagh, startled, taxed Morag with telling her sister a lie; but the girl shook her dark head with a curious smile.

  ‘“It’s not lying I am at all, mother agraidh. It was telling Bride about a light in the cave I was, and that’s no lie—no—no, for sure that’s no lie!”

  ‘Shelagh objected, a faint qualm at her heart.

  ‘“A light in the cave! . . . and it always dark as the tomb in the cave, to the stones be it said? . . .”

  ‘Morag nodded as she stared beyond her mother, her eyes kindling with a curiously phosphorescent gleam in the dusk.

  ‘“Sure—dark in the cave it was, for sure; cold and dark, and the sound o’ the water awash below me set me all a-shiver in the gloom, with the thin salt smell of the dripping weed, and the deathlike chill of it beneath me as I lay. . . . I lay and stared down into the black water moving in the darkness, with the pale gleam of it and the white frills o’ foam showing when it beat up against the side. For long and long I lay there, mother aghray, and it seemed strange thoughts moved in my mind with the moving water, and strange words moved to my lips . . . and then I found I was crooning under my breath strange songs, though Himself knows what tune it was, nor what speech it was I was putting my tongue
to. . . .”

  ‘“Morag-a-ghraidh, muirnean, muirnean! Send they were holy hymns you sang!” Shelagh’s voice held terror, but Morag shook her head, smiling faintly.

  ‘“Not hymns—no, no, not hymns. Old songs, old, old songs. . . . I felt happy and warm and excited, and the cold and wet had all passed from me, or I learnt to love them, for my hands stroked and played with the wet dank weed and my feet caressed it. . . .” Her voice rose into a half chant, and the light in her eyes rose with it, shining. “Then with a roar the tide turned, and came to meet me, and down in the deep heart of the flood that poured shouting along beneath me a Light began to rise and spread and glow, green, cold-green and wonderful, and myself waiting for it, smiling and not afraid at all! . . .”

  ‘Panic-stricken, Shelagh flung her arms round the girl.

  ‘“And then, Mary be praised, Ian McAlpine called ye! Kneel down and pray—kneel down and pray!”

  ‘The light and fervour died out from the girl’s face, as when a candle is removed from behind a lighted pane, but obediently she bent and knelt with her mother before the tiny battered shrine. She joined dutifully in Shelagh’s fervent prayers, but the mother soul was not happy, and spent many hours that night in fresh prayers and supplications at the feet of the Virgin for protection for her baby against she knew not what, and dared not guess. Mingled with the intense religious belief in these remote islands is more than the priests suspect of the older pagan dread of and belief in all manner of demons, spirits, witches and so on, and deeply as Shelagh McCodrum longed for advice, poor woman, she’d not the courage to appeal to Father Flaherty. No, no, for the Father disapproved of any talk of sian or rosad, charm or spell . . . so she did not mention in confession that Sunday that she had furtively sewed up in the hem of Morag’s ragged frock a scrap of paper scribbled with all she could remember of an old runic charm against the Powers of the Sea. . . .

  ‘Well, one strange and vexatious development came of this adventure of Morag McCodrum, besides her name “Morag-ofthe-Cave”. Ian McAlpine, for some reason, perhaps since he had saved her, fell desperately in love with the girleen, young as she was, and poor Bride was sorely put out. She was proud, the creature, and gave him his freedom at once, yet ’twas hard for her to have to watch the lad a slave at her young sister’s feet, watching for a kind word, as a starving dog awaits a flung crust—though, to do her justice, Morag took little heed of him. Yet it made things at the cottage sadly difficult between the girls, and try as she might, Bride could not but show her jealousy and bitter resentment against her sister, and poor Shelagh was hard put to it to keep the peace between them. Well, well, ’tis small wonder that for peace and quiet Shelagh let Morag go a-wandering again sometimes, but she begged Ian to watch her, lest her strange craze for the caves should seize her once more, and she be taken and never found again, like poor Kit Harrigan, who was rash eno’ to swear he could explore them, and died in the depths alone, Mary ha’ mercy on his soul!

  ‘Ian McAlpine was out fishing most days, but his craze for the girl was so complete that he took to refusing to go to sea, and hanging about the McCodrum’s cottage till Neil swore roundly at him for an idler and warned him to keep away. Shelagh, who had told Neil nothing of her fears, was torn in two what to do, but Ian kept doggedly on his way.

  ‘No new suitor came to woo Bride, and she waxed more and more soured and bitter, and took to quarrelling with Morag so violently that the younger girl, conscious of no deliberate fault (for, as I say, she did not care for Ian, nor indeed for any of the lads who wooed her, though they came in plenty), took again to her old ways, wandering outdoors with the knitting her mother insisted on her doing now, and always, like a homing pigeon to its nest, straight down to the sea-edge. Ian, at her heels always, told afterwards that at times he had the strangest feeling with her; she would throw up her head as if she scented something, or heard some long-waited signal—hold tense for a moment, and then drop limp again to her knitting, as if disappointed. . . . He had a curious feeling then, and, says he, it grew stronger, though she only smiled and asked him what he meant if he asked her what it was. . . . It was the feeling that she was waiting, watching for something—some sign or message—from someone—or Something. . . . The quick jealousy of that love that knows it is not loved in return may have helped to sharpen this impression, but Ian swears that was ever in his mind. He says, too, she grew more and more withdrawn, aloof, as if all her inner womanhood, the delicate, wonderful thing he so adored, was slowly gathering itself up, together, in preparation for some great moment. Being garnered, as it were, in this quietude, this period of waiting, till the demand should be made, the Sacrifice needed . . . something of this sort, Ian told afterwards in his blundering way, trying to grasp the gradual working up of things towards the dreadful final act of the strange drama—the drama o’ the life of Morag-of-the-Cave.

  ‘One day it came. It was growing late, and the day had been sullen and heavy, with occasional rolls of thunder far distant over the brooding purple sea. Morag-of-the-Cave sat curled in a hollow of the rocks, the shallow water lapping her bare feet, and Ian, mending a torn net, sat astride a great stone near by. It was very still—the curious ominous stillness that precedes a storm—and suddenly across the sea there stole that odd booming sound, forerunner of the typhoon in tropic seas, of tempest everywhere; glancing up, Ian saw Morag drop her knitting and sit up, alert, her eyes wide—on the heels of the strange, almost stinging moan, a rattling peal of thunder broke directly overhead. No rain fell, but the sharpness of the crash was startling, it died away in a series of crackling explosions like fireballs bursting, and Morag, springing to her feet, cried out something—what, he could not hear, and she checked herself with a sudden quick look at him, but afterwards it seemed to him to sound like that other strange call of hers into space, the night he found her in the cave. Alarmed, he sprang to his feet; she smiled at him with the grey eyes of her so wide and innocent, he thought no guile.

  ‘“Ian—Ian—mo-charaidh, run to old Silis and be asking her for the loan of a shawl! It’s far to home, and moreover it’s not asking Bride for her shawl I’d be this day, after her strong words to me.”

  ‘Ian looked at her doubtfully, but she smiled at him. Sure, she was tired, achree, and would he ask her to walk when he might walk for her? For sure he would find her waiting . . . ah, well, he came to my cottage, the lad, and just then the storm broke. Eh, it was blinding, that storm! A grey wall seemed to stretch from heaven to earth, and through it fought Ian McAlpine staggering, drenched, blinded with the torrent, to where he had left her, but she had fled in that short time, screened by the howling storm! Up and down the beach he went, poor soul, frantic with terror, but no Morag answered him. Wild, he rushed to the McCodrum’s cabin, but she had not gone home. Back again to the beach he came, where the surf boiled upon the pebbles, drawing back from them with a screech like a maniac, and pouncing upon them again with maddened fingers o’ foam! The sky was purple-black and scarred with ragged lightning streaks, and the sea was black and savage, leaping up the cliffs as if each wicked breaker tried to hoist his white-capped head higher than his fellows; no boat could live in such a sea, and so Ian knew; but like a doomed man, as he strode the beach, his eyes dwelt on the grim outline of the headland where lurked that dreadful hole. By this time all the able men of Ballymagh were out searching for the poor crazed birdeen, but with little hope, for as they said, if their fears were true, and she gone to that hell of frenzied waters that was the cave in storms like this, what hope was there of finding even her body? They whispered of poor Kit Harrigan, and shook their heads . . . and as they talked, Ian slipped away.

  ‘Well, well, he told me of it afterwards, and though I shook my head and called the lad “fickle-fancy” when he changed from Bride to Morag, sure he loved Morag well, for he proved it. Up to the top of that storm-swept cliff he went, remembering vaguely one day in his boyhood, when he and Patsy Rafferty, bird-nesting, had found a steep way that seemed to lead dow
n, they thought, near the roof of the Cave o’ Dread. Well, Himself only knows how he did it, but somehow he toiled his dreadful way along those slippery heights, stung and blinded by rain, deaf wi’ the wind’s buffetings, yet driven by his desperate love and anguish like a spurred horse . . . and he found it! By sheer chance he found it again, a deep hole under the lee of a rearing crag, a tunnel floored with broken stones and runnels of water, sloping down sharp into the very heart of the hill, like a mousehole into a wall. So narrow was it he could not crawl, but lay and slid down feet first, though quaking in every limb lest he slip and pitch heels foremost into some yawning abyss. Deep and deep it went, then suddenly widened, and thankfully Ian found he could turn about and go forward on hands and knees, feeling his way cautiously at every step. The abrupt slope became more gradual, and to his great amazement a faint light began to show in the distance; very small and green it was, green as young grass, and wavering, and his ears were filled with an ominous roaring like the booming of muffled guns at sea. Panting, soaked with sweat and rain he was when at last he emerged on to a wee shelf perched high, high in the roof of a great echoing dome, and found himself in the Cave o’ Dread itself, clinging to his tiny perch like a fly to the ceiling.

  ‘For a minute, blinded, stunned by the deafening noise of the wild waters that boiled and leapt below, he blinked, dazed, then prone on his stomach peered over the edge, his heart in his throat. On a ledge far below, close to the surface of the water, lay a dark shape, indistinguishable for a moment in the green dusk, but as the leaping spray threw a livid light upon the streaming, weed-hung walls, the shape moved, and throwing back the shawl that covered her, sprang to her feet. It was Morag! Och, arone, arone, ochrone, arone! Her clothes lay in a tumbled heap beside her, and white as ivory she shone against the wrinkled walls. Even at this distance from her, Ian saw the light in her eyes, and crumpled shuddering, as she straightened, naked against the naked rock, and flinging out her arms, cried aloud in a strange and terrible tongue! Rising and falling above the shrieking of the foam, the surge of the relentless waters, that voice rose to her horrified listener’s ears, shrilling louder and louder, wickedly exultant.