Iron Behind the Velvet ~ Chapter 59

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~ In the House That I Shaped With My Heart¹

The black hem of his cloak flared as he cornered a junction. Their fastening tugged with parting and distance and promise.

Such a sweet pain.

The torch flames, stirred to dance by his passing, stilled, and Catherine turned to Eimear, to Wren. Their gaze, too, had followed his leave-taking, but united now with hers, a pull gathering them again to a close circle. Outside it, the rustle and repartee of others softened to sound-shadows, and the moment ... suspended ... between them, a deep-toned, resonant chord. Below ... Above ... resolved into One. Into one loved life, one shared, loved life, fragmented no more and yet ... wondrously unresolved, unfinished. Numberless doors opened before her, their revealed beyond beckoning, some bright with candlelight, some with sun, all with possibility. 

The air was at once crisp and crystalline, feather-soft and sweet. Concern sheared away leaving her weightless. Swept up by light and warmth, floating free – her arms, her eyes, open wide – she knew gratitude; she knew wonder. Unmasked. Unsequestered. Her last aloneness dispelled.

A young woman shepherded a covey of small children along the travertine path toward the library. Catherine stepped aside to let them cross. A toddler lagged just behind carrying a frayed copy of Pat the Bunny in both hands and, looking up from it, flashed a toothy grin as she trooped by. Reverent of what she had, anticipatory of what she would discover next  – Catherine knew the feeling.

“Are we ready?” she asked her friends. She might have pressed Wren to explain the subtext of her plan for Edward’s custody. From the unspoken exchange she’d witnessed earlier, Wren had garnered something more than encouragement. Validation, Catherine surmised. Partnership, silent for now. She might have petitioned Eimear to recount her conversation with Vincent, for whatever he’d said to her had had the effect of a tonic. No longer reticent, she seemed eager; no longer inwardly watchful, she was receptive. And gladdened. Both of them. That truth was answer enough to any question she might harbor.

Wren tossed her braid over a shoulder. “I am.”

“As am I,” Eimear echoed, though no one took the lead to leave. For a moment they remained serenely moored, the miracle of their concurrence – for it was one, truly, Catherine believed – a habitable place not to be hurried through.²

“Thank you,” Catherine murmured ... as did Eimear, as did Wren, each to the other.

And to Vincent. Catherine was sure he could hear.

“Did you sleep at all? Either of you?” The avenue was well lit and wide enough for them to walk side by side, though just barely, but they met no one on their journey out.

“We’d dispensed with my ... problem ... before we left you last night at the junction, Catherine,” Eimear began. “And I was glad to leave it for the awe of it all. And so, after an hour of me saying ‘you mean, when you said this’ and ‘when you said that’, and Wren answering ‘yes, and all along’ and ‘can you believe it’ and ‘now the two of us, every day at work’, and me saying ‘who’d have thought, who’d have imagined’, and Wren nodding and going on, Liz declared it teatime. ‘Twas a powerful cup, too, like a jolt of electricity that sat us bolt upright in our chairs. The next hour we spent combing Edward’s case, each of us coming up with every niggling detail that might throw the loop at Wren’s feet and trip her up, and when that was done, Liz said it was toddy time and after that ...”

“We were out like lights!” Wren finished. “Liz disappeared and came back with this little brown, stoppered bottle – something William brewed, she said – and poured us each a thimble-full. Or in my case, about half a thimble-full. I haven’t slept so well in weeks!”

“I don’t remember taking myself from the dining table to the bed,” Eimear said, “though I woke up in one swaddled in quilts and wearing a nightdress.” She swiped at her forehead. “What was it, I wonder? Liz suggested we swallow our portion all at once, and ‘twas that good advice, for it tasted like someone melted black crayon with bits of licorice, then soaked rye bread in pickle juice and wrung it out over the glass. Burned, it did, not going down so much as after, as if a match was slow-struck on the side of my throat and tossed to the puddle of it in my stomach. There was a flare of near-enlightenment, I’m telling you, when everything went white. Then a black veil descended and I–” Eimear interrupted herself, chuckling. “I crossed over to an even more magical world. To Mag Mell, maybe, or Tír na nÓg.³ Martin would love it.”

“Oh,” Catherine said. “That. It’s a secret recipe, allegedly a cross of Aquavit and Jägermeister, made from potatoes and herbs and spices and who knows what else. William calls it Jägervit, but everyone calls it Old Engine Oil.”

Wren gasped. “To his face?” One hand on the bottom rung of a pull-down ladder, she released the brake; the iron stairs clattered down. She tucked her skirt for the climb and started up, shaking her head.

Catherine motioned Eimear next onto the ladder, and, waiting at the base, replayed the turns they’d made to reach this station, noting the inconspicuous, pale ocher blaze on the promontory across the corridor, recalling similar markers surreptitiously placed along the route. A map system, Catherine knew, the strikes angled according to a code peculiar to the community, one Wren had followed without hesitancy. She was learning – had learned – her way. “Well, no,” Catherine replied, monitoring Eimear’s agile ascent. “And well behind his back, Vincent calls it Old Evening Ender, because, apparently, nothing happens after.”

“‘Tis true, that,” Eimear said, halfway up the manway. She gained the next level and leaned over the grab bar. “So you’ve had this Jägervit?” she called down. “Tell us. Did you suffer the same slumberous consequence as we?”

“It was served at our wedding supper,” Catherine said, mounting the lowest treads. “But I didn’t actually taste it. Vincent wouldn’t let me.”

Laughter spilled into the ladderwell. At the top of the steps, grasping first the arched-over railings, then Wren’s proffered hand, Catherine stepped off onto solid ground.

Eimear adjusted the long strap of her shoulder bag. “It seems a very strange offering for a wedding night. For ours, we’re given a supply of Bunratty honey meade to drink within a month, with supposedly an effect opposite a fugue state. We’re expected to be quite pregnant by the drinking of the last bottle. Is this Jägervit the standard for celebrations down here?”

At Lin and Henry’s sacrament the twelve-course banquet ended with a handleless cup of fine cognac, though a thin vision flitted through her memory – of William standing sentinel at a black-lacquered cabinet open to an array of pocket-sized, earthenware flasks, a guest reaching in. At Lena’s daughter’s naming ceremony and Kanin’s welcome home, they’d had only fruit punch and tea and coffee. Wren and Stuart’s wedding feast was a wild fusion of traditions: an eighteen-layered Kransekake, a sweet, braided Challah, Wren’s silver crown glittering with charms and bangles, Stuart in his great-grandfather’s hand-embroidered kippah. The toasts – and the seven blessings – had been made over a rich red wine. Winterfest was well supplied with spirits, both tunnel-brewed and helper-provided – birthdays, too – but until their own celebration only a few weeks past, she’d had no knowledge of William’s specialty. Certainly, there could be no mistaking or overlooking or forgetting its ... aroma. What little she knew, all she could share, she’d coaxed from an oddly reticent Vincent. “I’m not really sure when or why it comes out,” she admitted. “I’m still pretty new down here.”

“At yours and Stuart’s joining, then,” Eimear asked Wren, “‘twasn’t on the menu?”

Your joining. The language was natural on Eimear’s lips, as if she’d always spoken so. Nothing was cast in dubiousness, or was ill-fitting or awkward. There really were no words, Catherine realized, for the summery feeling that welled within her breast.

“It wasn’t,” Wren answered. “And now I’m wondering why.”

“I’ll have to ask Vincent about that.” Catherine evened the drape of the jacket she wore and grinned.Tonight.

Eimear mirrored her smile. “So Vincent wouldn’t let you. There’s a tale in that, yes?”

The children had long been ushered to bed, Catherine recalled, and a number of the adults had pled fatigue before coffee and a second dessert had been enjoyed, a few, like Stuart and Wren, due at their jobs above early the next morning. The last of the feast dishes had been cleared away, yet she was ... ravenous. Hours had passed in celebration, too many, but soon, oh, please, soon, they’d retire to their private chambers again. Underneath the table, she stroked the contoured ridge of Vincent’s thigh, let her hand rest lightly on his knee. Now, she broadcast, and a muscle in Vincent’s leg jumped. His soft, quick intake of breath nearly took hers away, but before she could rise, William appeared at her shoulder, a tray in his hands bearing two small cups.  A last ... gift, William offered, chuckling slyly, Catherine thought, even at the time. Conversation at their table ceased. She swiveled in her chair to thank him and take her share, but the smell – candy-sweet and peppery – took her by surprise. She blinked as the room blurred. Vincent arrested her hand. He seized the small silver beaker, set it on the table with authority, shook his head. “I can handle it,” she whispered, sensing it some test of her ... befittedness ... but he pushed the cup further from her reach, then further again. A titter broke out, rose to crowing guffaws. Father fussed with his crumpled napkin. William clapped his hands and cackled. Vincent had actually blushed.

There was no sun on her face, yet she tipped back her head as if to the morning light and drew in a full explicit breath - a blessing breath.⁴ Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.⁵ She opened her eyes to a new world. Walking on, walking deeper and deeper into it, between them, at home in her life, Catherine told the story.

They’d left the columned corridors of flowstone and rim pools and rippled, translucent draperies, and traveled now a tunnel of hacked and scalloped iron-red rock. More than once the trail switchbacked, masking the steep grade Catherine knew they climbed. Those who live in the northern tunnels make their homes deep, Vincent had told her. Twice they skirted cairns of rubble stone neatly piled and ready to be wedged floor to ceiling – again – should the threat of intruders return.  Wren plucked a torch from a bin of cold flares, taking fire from one of the five-day candles sheltered in a nearby niche, and led them through a portal so narrow a cleft in the wall, so jagged and gouged, Catherine would have passed it by unseen. Inside, Wren sunk the long, banded handle of the torch within the ring of a metal sconce, its glow revealing a stairwell with walls of stacked, rather than chiseled, stone. The rough-hewn steps were worn to polished bowls in their centers. The passage was low-ceilinged and close – her hands held just out at her sides brushed the brickwork. Had they come down this way, Vincent would have necessarily turned his shoulders, ducked his head. The mortar glittered, glassy with sand and bits of shells. A damp, mineral-tinged scent seeped through the rock.

The shallow-rising staircase soon dead-ended, the only way out another ladder. Each rung was suspended by chain links hooked to eye-bolts spiraled into the stone; the handrails were two fibrous ropes stretched taut and as thick as her wrist. At the top, they gathered in a stony foyer. What appeared to be no more than a massive, rusty bolt embedded in the wall turned easily under Wren’s hand, and a secret door slid open with a scratchy sigh. Catherine could see the question in Eimear’s eyes, but already the line between mystery and explanation was being drawn and kept. Eimear smiled and slipped first through the gap.

They emerged into a wide tunnel, a swift-flowing raceway its divider, a shoulder-high rock wall edging the path along the watercourse. Before them a stone bow bridge arched over the agitated stream. “We were here!” Eimear exclaimed. “Last night, yes? But at the foot, we turned ... right. And not too far after, took a metal spiral down, coming upon that chasm with a ... a tightrope strung over it.” Catherine shivered. There were worse bridges than the one Eimear had crossed, swinging things with a single width of walkboard between the hemp handrails, suspended from who-knows-where-or-from-what above. Wren fit her spread fingers to five corresponding pits and dimples in the stone, the applied pressure to the indentions closing the door through which they’d passed. Eimear ran her hands over the seamless-seeming wall. “This is the short-cut, then, the one Liz mentioned?”

“It is,” Wren said. “You’ll be home soon, without a second trip over the gorge.”

“It’s been all good,” Eimear declared. “Save that.”

The footpath was quarried granite setts lodged in sand mortar, the railing an oiled, red wood. Eimear paused at the crest of the bridge. Lanterns hung by their bails from the crooks of tall iron poles; within their globes, the flames shimmied. “Was the water quite so high last night?” she asked, gazing downstream where the foaming current disappeared into darkness. “Tis louder, too, don’t you think?”

On the other side, the brick tunnel that would take them out was round-roofed, warm with electric light and familiar – but a corkscrew of cold air swept past, on it the faint relic of voices. The tie whipped from Eimear’s braid, sending her hair wild in the wind, the ribbon soaring on a rising draft, and Catherine shivered again.

________

A black-feathered disquiet had fluttered up, settling it’s soft weight across the breadth of his shoulders like a timeworn cloak. His bootlace snapped. Even now he couldn’t swear which had happened first.

His bootlace snapped again. The abrupt give had been unexpected, the separation perplexing. The frazzled pieces in his hands seemed too complex a puzzle to solve. He pushed back his imagined hood. The rough mend he could make would hold ... or not. He had no choice but to make it. And trust it.

Just as now, he had no choice but to turn from her and disappear below.

The water trap. The complication was not a surprising one, rather a malfunction he’d seen – no, felt – coming. The plan worked on paper and in theory, but intuition had told him otherwise; he should have spoken out more concretely. Only yesterday he’d met with Stuart and Noah, Mouse and Kanin, voiced his concerns, even then downplaying the reservations he’d harbored. Surely, had a serious threat to safety arisen or had there been a report of injury, Liz would have come for him directly and sooner, yet in her skillful, casual command he’d sensed an appeal. Go, he’d heard. Go, without distracting Wren or Eimear or Catherine. They’ve enough on their minds.

He would be at Catherine’s side if he could, though at times, beyond the promise of home and always, he had little to offer save his utter belief in her. The women had engaged, and their energy was ... intense. Looking on, he imagined Elizabeth’s capture of the moment, wondered how he might possibly describe it to the artist – the field of brightness, the drift of colors – sky blue and indigo, poppy and emerald, cornsilk and flax and cinnamon  – the tuneful wavelength of sound ... It was the spark of discovery, he believed, of a friendship neither frivolous nor supplementary, but essential and transformative, unique between women.  Each of them – Liz, Wren, Eimear, Catherine – gathered force, their own and from the other. Protective, perceptive, thoughtful, tenacious – their vulnerabilities were their great strengths. How beautiful was their courage. As the warrior-poets, their aura mysterious and ancient, they would balance the rude realities of the earth, take to their respective battles their inward light and resolve. In their accumulated presence, he’d found himself awed and a little breathless. His gifts for Wren, for Eimear, were but small affirmations of spirit and keenness already in their makeup. For Liz, he would do her bidding.

Go.

He strode the main boulevard and veered into a quarried side-street where the torchieres were more widely spaced. Pools of illumination stretched along the path, interrupted by darkness. Yesterday’s hangover had surrendered to the force of his meditative will, a therapeutic swim, and the draining – five times over – of his canteen, but the same cottony fog hovered at the ground, billowed up. He’d left Catherine in the blossom of a found blessing, indeed, her prosperity flowed into him, yet she was hardly out of sight before his charges and cares emerged from the shadowed recesses and fell into step. On his heels. At his elbow. Those he passed gave him hesitant berth, and he recognized he frowned and propelled himself through the passage with disconcerting speed and a glaring concentration. He tried to slow his pace, and taking cue from Liz, from her blithe industriousness, endeavored to buoy his expression. News of the water trap’s failure would have spread throughout the tunnel parish. His ... considerations ... were more than that, but he’d not frighten the community while he batted the clouds of his concerns.

The ten-o’clock spoke at the first roundabout junction, then the second stone spiral down. Nearly two decades had passed since he’d last carried his duffle of dirty clothes through these corridors to the laundry. But there was another way, a byway once discouraged, today just as likely deserted. Past the gleaming double doors of the Primary Schoolroom, he ducked a pendant formation of bedrock – The Shark’s Nose – and felt for the embedded latch. The camouflaged door into the lava tube opened. A clanging, whirring descent in the wood and metal cage. Through the Chamber of the Seven Pillars and the Barnacle Straights to the washroom. Hardly a longer route if he sprinted.

Mitch. He’d corralled his wild regrets and defaults, shepherded them to a barren pasture where they’d remain unfed for now. Later he’d dissect Mitch’s criminality from his own culpability; to do otherwise would be self-indulgent, wasteful of his energies and focus, unfair to others setting aside their personal worriments to work toward the common good. Priority of life, the code of it. He would adhere. And Sam’s hurts were deeper.

Sam. His fatherly remorse was wrenching and isolating. Someone should go to Maryfields, draw Sam firmly within their family bond. And Father needed to hear the truth, where and how Mitch would ... end.

Father. Kanin. By now, Father knew what Kanin knew – of MD, her leadership of the loose congregation beyond the perimeter, the reduced but still relevant level of threat, their revised protective plans. Upon the return home, he’d have to go through it all again, minutely, for that was Father’s way. And proven a way as it was – had not Father’s leadership and decisions kept them safe? Allowed them to thrive? – he was grateful to be relieved of the initial telling, the interruptions and the going-back-overs often a ... vexation. He heaved a sigh. The questioning would at least allow Olivia time to pack a bag for the baby and herself, arrange an overnight with a playmate for Luke, choose more inconspicuous dress for the subway ride. Time to consider, to imagine change.

Olivia. He was not given to crossing his fingers, and while he believed all things were possible with love, he knew – knew – love could be too tested.

Like Catherine’s for Jenny; Jenny’s for Catherine. There were limits.

Limits to their skills and competencies, to their resources. Failures. The water trap.

Are we back to that, hmmmm? Without facing the truth? Such a roundabout you take. She gives you a gift. Privacy. Will you twist it to a secret? Will you? Ready, you promised her. We shall see. The coarse-grained voice of The Other stunned him.  His boot heel skidded in gravel.

_____________

Wren left them at the fissure passage. Catherine led the way through to the base of the church wall entry, Eimear working the lever of the first barred gate, the secret latch of the sliding-stone door. In the cellar, the lantern they’d left turned low still burned. Eimear pushed back the sleeve of her jacket, rounded her watch on her wrist.

“Will Flynn be home?” Catherine asked.

“I’d doubt so,” Eimear answered. “‘Tis early, still. Though Martin will be nearing the end of first Mass. He's to the Our Father and the Sign of Peace by now, I’d say. A small congregation these mornings, he’ll offer the Blessing and Dismissal soon. He’s a man of habits, both good and bad. Before heading to his office to prepare his devotions, he takes tea and toast standing at the kitchen sink looking out on the garden.” Eimear inspected her watch again and laughed softly. “You know, I’d not have been at all surprised to find the hands spinning ‘round backwards.”

Catherine pressed her ear to the wooden door. No voices filtered through, save that of a singing bird perched somewhere near. She eased the latch free and they stepped out to a nearly cloudless morning. Crabapple blossoms sparkled with dew; the new-green grass was downy.

Eimear reached for her hand. “The sun would love him, Catherine.”

“It would,” she whispered. It will.


Click HERE for Chapter 60

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1. Pádraic Pearse. The Fool.
2. Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau's Journal: 27 April, 1860.
3. Mag Mell and Tir Na nÓg are two of the several Fairy Islands in Irish myth. These secret and magical places arise to the surface of the sea at night and are visible only on special occasions. Mag Mell or the Pleasant Plain is a world inhabited by immortals. Joy is everlasting, no one ages and the people are always agreeable. Tir Na nÓg or the Land of the Young is a paradise where the immortal inhabitants take great pleasure in music and dance. To either, though, one must be invited by one of the fairies living on the island. The Fairy Islands
4. John O’Donohue. From To Bless the Space Between Us: The Celtic Sense of Time as Creative Occasion. (paraphrased)
5. Mary Oliver. Evidence.