But when we tried this, the table felt as if it was made of lead or as if some invisible giant held it down. We struggled and sweated, but to no avail, and I became aware that the shadows had stopped moving, and they were standing in a line, as if preparing to face an attack. Then at last – I think it was N.S.’s younger strength that did it – we managed to tilt the table just enough and the figures tumbled into the deep bag. I threw the small crucifix in with them, and Fintan snapped the hasp shut. Clutching the bag, we ran from the Earl of Kilderry’s library.
The three of us, together with Brother Cuthbert, sat together in my study. I had produced a bottle of brandy and we had all had a goodly measure.
It was N.S. who said, ‘Father Abbot, you can’t keep those things here.’ He glanced to the corner of the room, where the bag lay quiet and lumpen, but still somehow imbued with malevolence. ‘I’ll take them,’ he said. ‘It’s my responsibility. My family’s responsibility.’
‘You’re a Kilderry?’ I said, but I think I already knew he was.
‘I am. Not openly recognized or acknowledged as such, but I grew up knowing the legend of the chess pieces. I came to hate and fear them, and I was determined to destroy them. That’s why, earlier this year, I tried to win them from Gerald Kilderry. And I believe,’ he said, his expression intent, ‘that those figures need to be imprisoned in some very remote place where the evil has nothing on which it can feed. Nothing at all – not prayer nor ritual. Not even people. Because evil needs to be fed in order to grow, Father Abbot.’
‘We’ll burn them,’ I said. I did not like N.S.’s words about evil being fed, although there were – and are – several reputable sources to support that concept.
‘They’ll fight you,’ said N.S. at once. ‘And they’ll probably win. They’re so old, they’ve overpowered stronger adversaries than us down the centuries. And it wouldn’t necessarily be a . . . a physical fight, Father Abbot. They would trickle their poison into your mind and corrode your soul and you wouldn’t even realize it was happening.’
‘He’s right,’ said Fintan. ‘They almost overpowered us in that library.’
‘I couldn’t destroy them,’ I said, half to myself. ‘When it came to it, I couldn’t do it. I could only think it would be a wanton cruel waste of someone’s intricate work.’
‘I felt that,’ said Fintan.
‘But,’ said N.S. ‘if the evil can be weakened – starved – then it might be possible to destroy them.’
‘That could take years.’
‘I’d wait years,’ said N.S. ‘I’d seal them up and keep watch over them.’
‘But where would you go?’ This was Cuthbert.
‘There’s an old watchtower on the Moher Cliffs. It’s a lonely, remote place – hardly anyone goes near. I’d seal up the figures inside that tower. And I’d be their guardian.’
‘You’d leave your Galway Parish?’
‘I would.’
‘But you can’t simply withdraw from the world for an unknown time,’ I said. ‘No, if they’re to be sealed up, it must be here. This is one of God’s houses – steeped in layers of prayer and goodness, and if anything can cause an evil to wither, it’s surely that.’
‘I believe they can invert prayer to their own means,’ said N.S. ‘I don’t understand it, but I think it’s like turning a white bag inside out, so that you only see the black lining.’
The black lining . . . It was remarkable what images that conjured up. After a moment Cuthbert said, in a determinedly practical voice, ‘How would you live?’
‘That rather depends on you,’ said N.S. ‘In this monastery are a number of small, easily carried objects of considerable value. Mass vessels, gold and silver cups and chalices, candlesticks, silk wall hangings and altar cloths. Things I could sell in some large anonymous place, such as Galway.’
‘Then,’ I said, standing up, ‘we’d better start deciding what you can take.’
For the first time since entering the Church, that night I ended up so drunk I couldn’t walk. Fintan had to help me to my bed.
‘It’s a shocking thing,’ he said, ‘when a dissolute tinker like myself has to assist a venerable abbot of the Irish Church to his room.’
‘You’ll be in my prayers every night.’
‘Be damned to the prayers, put me in your Will,’ said the irrepressible Fintan. ‘And I’ll open a great little bar somewhere hereabouts and live a dissolute life so that everyone for miles will enjoy themselves disapproving of me.’
‘And Eithne?’
‘Ah, Eithne. There’s a girl, now. There’s a grand bit of comfort to be got from a night with her. I dare say I oughtn’t to say that to a monk.’
‘I’ve known the odd bit of comfort myself as a young man,’ I said.
‘I dare say. What about your man who came with us tonight? He’ll have known more than the odd bit of comfort,’ said Fintan. ‘I’d say he’ll struggle to follow the path of celibacy.’
‘We all have our struggles. But he’s promised to make sure those evil things are safely sealed up.’
‘Will they stay sealed up, d’you think?’
‘I don’t see why not. They seem to have been harmless inside Kilderry Castle all those years.’
‘They’re evil,’ said Fintan. ‘They’re leaking evil like – like a dripping gutter. What if someone were to take them out into the world one day?’
‘No one will,’ said I, and I climbed into bed and sank into a drunken sleep for which I did heavy penance next morning in the form of a mind-splitting headache.
And so N.S., that slightly arrogant young priest, probable scion of the Kilderry line, took the chessmen away.
We had a final word before he left St Patrick’s.
‘Last night,’ I said, ‘you mentioned starving the chessmen of everything – even of prayer. Does that mean . . . ?’
‘It means I will have to cut myself off from God,’ he said, and, without saying anything more, he turned on his heel and walked away.
It pained me then and it still pains me to think of him living in that hermit-like seclusion in the old watchtower on the Cliffs of Moher, not daring to open up that channel in his mind through which comes God’s blessed love and understanding.
I shall pray for him every day. And I shall pray that the power of the devil’s chessmen will quietly wither and die.
But will it . . . ?