‘But no one much cared if they were caught drinking poteen, and them off to Dublin the next day, bound for England on the Liverpool ferry, although they’d have a dreadful old journey below decks in steerage. They didn’t care about that though, for their sights were set on the glittering cities of America. Ah, America – “Wide as Shakespeare’s soul, sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme, and rich as Chaucer’s speech”,’ wrote Fergal, enclosing the sentence in quotation marks so that Michael, delighted with the Abbot’s exuberant rhetoric, wrote the words down to trace to their source later.
‘It was not everyone who was bound for America, though,’ continued the Abbot. ‘The streets of London, paved with the fabled gold of legend, also drew my countrymen. I was never in London in my life, although I believe it was a fine sight with all the splendid streets and shops and palaces, and the Queen riding past in her carriage.
‘St Patrick’s Monastery was growing apace and after four years we were delighted we could open a seminary for young men called to serve God as priests. There was much contentment in shaping these eager souls, some scarcely more than eighteen, for service in God.
‘And then the young man I shall refer to only as N.S. came to us in 1870, and although I could not have known it at the time, his arrival heralded the reawakening of an ancient evil.’
‘N.S,’ thought Michael. Will it be Nicholas Sheehan or not? It must be. He read on.
It was Autumn when N.S. came to St Patrick’s. A bronze October morning, scented with rain and chrysanthemums – the kind of morning when I always felt God was smiling.
I never knew N.S’s parentage, but we all thought he was from the old aristocracy. A bastard son of some ancient line, perhaps. Not that these things matter.
He was a good-looking boy, dark-haired, with a glint of arrogance about him, and eyes the colour of the ocean – that clear grey you so seldom see, rimmed with black. But the day he walked through our doors, I thought, “Oh my, we’re going to have trouble with this one.”
Even so, for the four years of his studies he was a diligent and biddable student. But I think – no, I am sure – that there were nights when he slipped out of the monastery and made his way to one of the little nearby towns. Ladies were what he sought, of course, and with the way he looked, I dare say he’d have little trouble attracting them. Ah well, once upon a time I was not entirely blameless in that direction myself. As a young man in the seminary in Dublin, I, too, struggled with the vow of chastity, and I did not always win the fight.
As well as charm and good looks, N.S. possessed imagination, and that’s a dangerous thing in a priest. A little is fine and good. Too much and your man starts to believe in the medieval tales of demons, and of horned and cloven creatures crawling and trawling the world for souls. Those creatures were made-up stories – weapons to keep people within the Church’s teachings, of course. I never believed in them myself.
I believe in evil, though. It was planted in the world long before men walked in it, and it’s still there, deeply buried but lethal, like the iron-jawed snares farmers set for predators. Take a wrong step, and snap! you’re caught in Satan’s mantrap. He’s a sneaky, subtle creature, the Prince of Darkness, and his evil can tear lives apart and shred souls.
It was Fintan Reilly who started the black chain of events. Whether Fintan could actually read or write I never knew, and perhaps it doesn’t matter, for he could paint a picture with words the like of which you never heard. And on a night in 1878, when I was still a relatively young man, Fintan painted a picture that harrowed up my soul to its very marrow.’
Michael, coming up out of Fergal McMahon’s world, was starting to suspect that the Abbot might have missed his vocation – that he should have pursued a career writing nineteenth-century gothic fiction. So far there was nothing in the memoirs that provided any working facts – no place names or firm dates that could be tracked to their source. He was undecided whether to show this account to Benedict Doyle. He did not precisely think Fergal was making this up, but he was keeping in mind Owen Bracegirdle’s comment about the Irish being the storytellers of the world.
But it was half past four, and unless he wanted to be late for his five o’clock tutorial, he would have to put Fergal aside for the next two hours. He shut the book in the desk, then remembered he had not eaten since breakfast, so he crammed a wedge of cheese and a couple of biscuits into his mouth, after which he assembled his notes and his thoughts. He had set up a small discussion group of first years and today they were going to consider the use of diaries and letters as narrative in nineteenth-century literature. They were a bright, enthusiastic bunch and it was a lively session, although a note of high comedy was provided halfway through by Wilberforce finding the unwashed pan of mushroom soup and dislodging several plates in order to get at the remains. The plates fell off the drainer, precipitating Wilberforce into the washing-up bowl, much to his annoyance. He retired crossly to the radiator shelf to dry off, and Michael swept up the broken plates and returned to the analysis of Ann Bront? and Wilkie Collins.
The students left shortly after six. Michael threw away the ruined saucepan, and returned to the Abbot and the entry into his story of Fintan Reilly.
Fintan, it appeared, had the habit of turning up at St Patrick’s unexpectedly, generally when he was broke, hungry, running from an irate husband, father or brother, or – on a couple of memorable occasions – running from the law. And there had been a particular night midway through a tempestuous November evening in 1878 when he had arrived at the monastery, his appearance unannounced, as it always was.