They all thought it was a nightmare – the cook teased me about it a bit, saying what did I expect, walking out with that Fintan Reilly, a man to give a girl nightmares any day of the week!
And perhaps it really was a nightmare, the feel of that small wizened hand clasping mine. I accepted the teasing and smiled for it was good-natured and affectionate, and I tried to think that what had happened really had been a nightmare. But later that day, I made sure to be the one to help cook with the scrubbing of the scullery floor, so as to scour my hands free of the feeling of that hand clasping mine. And that was the night I knew I would have to make sure the chess set was destroyed, although I did not, at that time, know how it could be done.
Anyone who reads the fine book that’s to be written about old memories of Ireland might think my story nothing but a piece of foolishness. Eyes that would eat your soul, chess sets belonging to the devil that watched from mirrors . . . People might think me no better than the tinkers who tell wild tales to impress simple folk.
It’s all God’s truth, though. I saw what I saw. As for impressing people – well, I never wanted to impress anyone, unless it might have been Fintan Reilly . . .
And perhaps we did what we shouldn’t have done one night (even several nights), Fintan and me, but then again, perhaps we didn’t. It’s a mortal sin to do that unless you’re married, but the truth’s for no one to know except me and Fintan and the good Lord. And even though Fintan’s long gone, I don’t forget him. And if I sometimes believe my daughter looks at me with Fintan’s eyes, and if my son is a bit too fond of a tankard of poteen of a night, well, that’s a piece of foolishness I don’t mind being accused of.
The account ended there, but the book’s editor had added a brief footnote. Michael read it with interest.
The legend of the devil’s chess set owned by Gerald Kilderry, the Eighth Earl, is one of the many vagrant Irish legends circulating on the west coast in the nineteenth century. It does seem as if the Wicked Earl really did possess a remarkably fine and unusual set of chessmen, but they apparently vanished around the late 1870s. Of ‘the priest from Galway’ there seems to be no mention anywhere, save in Eithne’s tale. However, several sketches and woodcuts were made of Kilderry Castle and some of its rooms, which were preserved in some Galway archives. [See two sketches overleaf of the library as it was during the eighth Earl’s life.]
Michael turned the page, and the sketches leapt out at him. Whoever had done them had gone to considerable trouble, for the details were very clear. The library was fairly typical of its kind: high-ceilinged and with the walls lined with books – probably most of them bought by the yard. In the first sketch the chess set was only suggested, but in the second it was in the foreground, set out on a round table inlaid with the squares of a chessboard. The figures had been carefully drawn with meticulous attention to detail. Their faces were slant-eyed and sly, and it was not difficult to accept that a young serving girl living in an Irish backwater had believed they might climb down from their table and go prowling through the dark gusty corridors of a ruinous castle, or slip into a bed and clasp the hand of a sleeper.
Michael sat looking at them for a very long time. Because the king was the exact replica of the piece Nell had brought home from Benedict Doyle’s house.
The macabre core of the tale could not possibly be true, of course. Eithne had no doubt existed, and it seemed that Kilderry Castle and the Wicked Earl and his chess set had also existed. But that was as far as it went. The story of the devil bartering chess pieces with humans for sinister reasons of his own would be a legend spun by the imaginative, dramatic Irish, who loved a good tale and never allowed the absence of facts to stand in the way of a story. This particular story was the plot of the old Faust legend in a different guise – Dr Faustus and Mephistopheles and the ill-starred Marguerite – and it was a plot that had made its appearance in a dozen darkly romantic works of fiction over the last four centuries.
But just supposing, said a small voice in Michael’s mind, that there’s a grain of truth in it somewhere? You dismissed an ancient legend once before, remember? He frowned and pushed several cold memories firmly away. To tangle with one grisly myth, as he and Nell had done in Shropshire, could be regarded as misfortune – even just about believable. But to tangle with a second was downright incredible. And this particular legend was so off the wall it could not possibly contain any reality.
Even so, he was annoyed to realize that Eithne’s tale had disconcerted him, to the extent that he spent most of the Dean’s lunch trying to decide whether or not to tell Nell about it. He wanted to do so, but he baulked at upsetting her. And there was a strong possibility that the piece she had found was just a copy of the original. How likely was it that a fragment of an ancient Irish chess set had found its way to an innocent-sounding house in Highbury? Not likely at all, thought Michael determinedly. And even if it was the original king from the macabre set, it was probably not worth a row of beans without the other pieces.
Nell had said she would get the chess piece assessed by a specialist, so it was probably sensible to keep quiet until she had done so. Then Michael could pick a suitable moment to relate the story to her, although he could not think what would constitute a suitable moment for telling somebody that a chess piece was supposed to have belonged to the devil – and that the last time it had been used appeared to be during a match between a wicked Irish Earl and an enigmatic-sounding nineteenth-century priest.