I had to sweep and polish the library every week. Rows and rows of books there were – I used to touch them thinking one day I might understand the symbols on the paper. When the Master wasn’t away, hiding out from angry husbands or plotting confusion to the British, he sat in that room in the evening. It was a grand room: the logs burned up in the hearth so everywhere was scented with peat, and in the candlelight you never noticed the shredded fabric of the curtains where the mice chewed them, or the bullet holes in the walls where the Master had once shot a man he said was a British spy, although I never knew the truth of that.
If the Master was in a room you never really noticed anyone or anything except him anyway, for he had the way of filling up the entire place just by being there. People said he wasn’t handsome, but once you saw him you never looked at anyone else. He had eyes that you could imagine were searching for your soul, and that they would eat it if they found it.’
Eyes that would eat your soul . . . That was a disturbing phrase, whatever your beliefs. Michael broke off his reading for a moment and from the doorway Owen said, ‘All right?’
‘Perfectly. It’s very vivid this, isn’t it?’
‘I love that energetic way the Irish have of speaking – and of writing,’ said Owen. ‘But you have to bear in mind that they’re the storytellers of the world. And if some of them were invited to recount their bits of legend and lore for a book, they’d have a high old time.’
‘I’ll allow for exaggeration,’ said Michael, and read on.
The unknown maidservant had apparently told the book’s compiler that the one thing no one could ever overlook in the library at Kilderry Castle was a set of carved pieces for a game called chess.
‘I was supposed to dust them every week, but I never did, for they glared so fiercely from their carved faces you’d think it was the devil peering out of the bits of wood and stone. The first time I saw them I ran from the room.
People called the Master the Wicked Earl, but he could be generous to his own people. One or two of the female servants had trouble and in any other household they’d have been thrown out, but the Earl never did that. ‘Ah, Mary,’ he’d say, ‘hadn’t you the self-control to say “no”?’ Or, he’d say, ‘Oh, Fidelia, did you have to be taking your pleasures so carelessly?’
And then he’d make some provision for the babies born that way, and Mary and Fidelia would continue in his service, and life would go on much as before. Those of us who had a young man knew we shouldn’t do those things that made babies, but hadn’t we the example of the Earl himself before us, and him bedding any number of fine ladies over the years and likely siring many a son or daughter outside of wedlock.
And hadn’t some of the young men who came courting us such charm you couldn’t resist them? When I walked with Fintan Reilly through the lanes, and he slid his arm round my waist, I’d pray to the saints not to succumb and lose all my virginity in one go.
There came a night at Kilderry Castle when the wind screeched across the Moher Cliffs like tormented banshees. It was a week before Christmas, and there was snow flurrying inside the wind. We all huddled round the scullery fire and when a loud knocking came at the door we jumped, for you wouldn’t expect anyone to be abroad on such a night. The butler opened the door, and it was a priest asking to see the Master – a man from somewhere near Galway, so the butler told us. They say Galway’s a fine city, although I was never there. But we all agreed that wasn’t it strange for a man of God to be calling on the Master, but the cook said the devil made strange bedfellows, it was nothing do with us, and wasn’t it time we had our cocoa.
Next morning I found that the priest had stayed the night with the Master, both of them in the library with the candles burning low and the fire sunk to embers. I went in to open the curtains at seven o’clock as I always did, and there they were, hunched over the table with the chess pieces. It had been snowing, and the cold snow-light streamed into the room. The Master was white and drawn and shrivelled-looking as if he’d spent one of his wicked nights – as if he’d spent a month of wicked nights all in a row – but the priest looked as calm as if he was about to say Mass. He was younger than I had thought from the butler’s words – mid-twenties, perhaps – and he had the most beautiful clear grey eyes I ever saw.
The library was in a shocking state, with empty brandy bottles and glasses, and cigar stubs where they’d flung them carelessly into the fire, and it was God’s mercy they hadn’t burned the whole castle to cinders. While I was tidying up, tiptoeing around so as not to be noticed, the Master said, very softly, ‘You won’t get it, you know.’
‘Won’t I, though? I’ll have your devil’s chess set one way or another, Kilderry.’ He had a nice voice, like silk or a cat’s fur.
The Master laughed. He said, ‘D’you know, it would please me to think of a priest possessing Lucifer’s chess set. Or would they excommunicate you?’ He studied the priest for a moment. ‘You know that the devil’s power’s said to come with those pieces?’
‘Didn’t I grow up knowing the legend?’ said the priest.
‘I dare say you did,’ said the Master. ‘But if you do ever get them, you should remember that the devil’s luck comes with them. That’s what I’ve had all these years,’ he said, bitterly.
‘I see that,’ said the priest, looking round the tattered library. ‘But the devil’s bargains were always hollow ones. Will we play on?’
‘We will,’ said the Master, and so they did, all through that day.
The servants sat in the scullery, not knowing whether the guest should be offered food. The Master often went without food during the day, but hospitality for visitors was a strict rule. But just after midday he rang for more brandy and, as an afterthought, said they’d have some food as well, so, along with the brandy, the butler took one of cook’s game pies, together with bread and cold chicken.
‘Are they still playing chess?’ asked the cook when he returned.
‘They are. It’s my opinion that the priest is determined to get that chess set by fair means or foul.’