Of Irish Blood (21 page)

I laugh. “I don’t know. Chicago’s colder than here,” I say. “Probably buried under a foot of snow right now.”

“Not all that much snow in Ireland,” he says. “But the damp! What we need here is a good big load of turf. Nothing like the smell of a turf fire, the taste of the smoke baked into a slice of wheaten bread running with butter.”

“You miss Ireland,” I say.

“I miss Donegal,” he says. “And do you miss Chicago?”

I nod.

“Hard at this time of year. Christmas,” I say.

“You must join us for midnight Mass and the collation afterward,” he says.

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

“Now,” he says, “there seem to be some extra pastries here.”

“For the others,” I say.

“Peter Keeley’s working away in the library. Perhaps he’d like one.” He pauses. “If that’s all right.”

“Fine,” I say.

Sees right through me, does Father Kevin.

I follow him down a dim hallway. The college does have the electric but only few unshaded bulbs here. We turn the corner. Hear the swish of a soutane, see a long shadow coming torward us.

“Good Evening, Father Rector,” Father Kevin says.

A well-set-up man, the rector. A bit younger than Father Kevin, square face, furrows in his gray hair. Looks more like a farmer than a scholar. Never spoken to him. He doesn’t come to tea in the parlor after Mass.

“Have you met Nora Kelly, Father?” Father Kevin says. “One of our Sunday congregation.”

The rector nods at me, then says to Father Kevin, “Don’t we entertain our visitors in the parlor, Father?”

“We’re on our way to the library. Too cold to take the outside route,” Father Kevin says.

The rector looks at the open box of madeleines in my hands. “Food in the library?” he says.

“A collation for Professor Keeley,” Father Kevin says.

“Is this that woman? I spoke to Keeley about her,” the rector says, then turns to me. “Professor Keeley must not allow himself to be distracted by outside influences. We have committed a portion of our limited resources to him and…”

Get me out of here, I think as the rector goes on. No wonder Peter’s so guarded. Warned off me by his boss. Amazing he’d shown up for my tours at all.

“I should be going, Father Kevin,” I say. But he takes my arm.

“Ah, now Father Rector. Not your usual gracious self. And Nora one of our benefactors. Proof of what you often say about reaching out to the Irish in America. How did you put it? Get our snouts into the trough. A metaphor from your youth. I suppose.”

Well that sends Father Rector on his way, but I hesitate.

“The last thing I want to do is get Peter in trouble,” I say.

“Don’t mind Father Rector and his auld rules. A man of limited imagination as bureaucrats so often are,” Father Kevin says.

I follow him into the library, where leather-bound books crowd together on floor-to-ceiling shelves.

“Our patrimony,” Father Kevin says. “Ireland’s gift to the world.”

Peter’s not in the library but Father Kevin points to a bright line under the door between two bookcases.

“He’s in the vault,” he says.

At first I only see Peter in outline. Just two candles set in hurricane lamps on top of the table in front of him for light.

He turns. “Oh,” he says, and shakes his head.

“We’re disturbing you,” I say. “Sorry…”

“It’s just—well, I’m about a thousand years from here. I think I’ve made an incredible discovery. Look.”

We move closer to him. He slides a piece of parchment toward us.

“I found this sewn into the cover of an edition of
The Annals of the Four Masters,
” he says. “I noticed a bulge. I think it’s a page from
The Book of Uí-Máine,
the original manuscript.”

“That’s your book, Nora,” Father Kevin says.

“The history of the O’Kelly family commissioned by a Kelly bishop, one of your clan,” Peter tells me.

“When, Peter?” Father Kevin asks.

“About 1400,” Peter says. “A time when great families hired scribes—monks—to record their genealogy,” Peter says. “And to copy material from earlier manuscripts so the clan would have its own Book of Ireland.”

“And we were a great family?” I ask.

“One of the greatest,” Father Kevin says.

“Gee whiz,” I say.

“The scribes added bits from the earlier Books of Ireland, which were themselves compilations of manuscripts as old as the eighth century,” Peter says. “And, of course, the original material comes from oral sources going back thousands of years.”

I guess I look confused because Peter says, “A lot to take it in, I know, but you’ll be really interested in this page because it’s from ‘An Banshenchas.’”

“‘In Praise of Famous Women,’” Father Kevin says. “A list of the heroines of the Kelly clan.”

“Virgins and martyrs, I suppose,” I say.

“Not at all,” Father Kevin says. “These are Irish women, not saints chosen by the Roman Church.”

“They’re the wives of chieftains mostly,” Peter says. “Some married more than one chief.”

“And then were widowed and joined the convent?” I ask.

“They didn’t,” Father Kevin says. “Great respect for independent women in the early Irish Church, which some present-day clerics should remember.”

Peter’s not listening. He pushes the page toward me.

The letters seem drawn rather than written and some are decorated with the heads of animals. Lots of circles and spirals, interweaving lines.

“I saw something like this in the Irish Village at the Chicago World’s Fair,” I say. “My granny Honora took us to see a page protected by glass. Supposed to be very valuable. I’m afraid I didn’t look too closely. In a hurry to get on the Ferris wheel.”

Peter moves the candle closer so I can see. “Just this page is worth a fortune,” he says.

“So beautiful,” I say.

I hold my hands over the names of these Kelly women. My fingers prickle. I gently tap one of the names.

“And these are my many great-grandmothers?” I say.

“In a manner of speaking,” Peter says.

“I wish Mrs. Adams could see this,” I say, and try to tell them about my afternoon with her.

I don’t have to say much.

“Ah, well. The English must see us as ignorant savages. It justifies them stealing our land and murdering us by the tens of thousands,” Father Kevin says.

“By the millions if you include the Great Starvation,” Peter says.

“Which we must, of course,” Father Kevin says.

“And yet here we are,” I say.

“Pushed to the edge of extinction though,” Peter says. “And the battle not over yet.”

He picks up the page with both hands.

“When the chieftain led his clan against the enemy the sacred book of the tribe was held aloft as a kind of battle flag,” he says. “Sometimes a crozier might become the standard.”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I know! My uncle Patrick had a golden staff. Wait. It belonged to a Kelly saint. Grellan, I think. Patrick carried it into battle after the Civil War when the Fenians invaded Canada.”

Peter jumps up. “Grellan’s Crozier? But that was lost,” he says.

“Well, it’s in Old St. Pat’s now. On Des Plaines and…” I stop and start to laugh. “… Adams. That church is on Adams in Chicago. I should have told her, Mrs. Adams, about St. Pat’s stained-glass windows, and walls decorated with”—and I point to the page—“designs like this.”

I reach over and grab Peter’s hand, pull him down to his chair.

“You have to teach me. Please,” I say. I touch the page. “This is my heritage, too.”

Peter pulls away.

Damn. I’ve made a fool of myself! Peter’s appalled. He’s nervous enough around me with all Father Rector said and now I’ve leapt at him, but I do so want to learn, to reclaim what I’ve lost.

But Father Kevin says, “Your heritage, surely. And it’s a long, quiet run of days until Christmas. Peter will tutor you, won’t you, Professor?”

Here? In the library? Father Rector will never agree, I think.

But miracle of miracles, Peter nods. “We can start Monday,” he says.

Father Kevin says, “Good. And now to the parlor for tea—or better yet some hot whiskeys.
Uisce beatha
—the water of life—to toast the Kellys.”

And we do.

I offer to pay Peter but he waves me silent before I can finish. Thank God because I’ve just enough money to pay my rent, which is seventy-five francs, and buy food and coal for the month, another thirty-five.

Peter brings some books to the parlor: translations of the
Táin
, Ireland’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
, he tells me. Only the hero is a woman—Queen Maeve, who leads armies and takes lovers. Didn’t learn about her at St. Xavier’s. Peter tells me the epic concerns a cattle raid; Maeve needs a bull so her possessions match her husband’s. The bull’s in Ulster. Peter starts striding around the place as he describes the powerful Maeve in her war chariot leading her army. Even chants a few of the lines. I can’t help myself, I applaud. Peter stops. “Okay, see you tomorrow,” I say, take the books and leave.

*   *   *

That night I settle in with my books and Beaujolais and a decent enough fire in my cozy room overlooking the place des Vosges. No reason why a scholar can’t have a bit of comfort is there? Maybe I’ll bring a bottle of wine to share with Peter tomorrow. Now to the reading.

I start with Winifred Faraday’s translation of the
Táin
. Except the stories are hard to follow. Not as exciting as when Peter was striding around chanting and expostulating. Surprising the fire in the fellow.

Guided by Winifred, I follow Maeve and her army as they cross into Ulster going after a bull. And then, here come the men of Ulster. Except these armies don’t go at each other in pitched battle. Each selects a warrior to fight in single combat. Civilized. Though this one fellow, Cuchulainn, becomes possessed by a “battle rage” and demolishes every opponent.

I turn to the last pages to see how the tale ends. In the final combat Cuchulainn fights his foster brother, Ferdia. Winifred provides a note explaining that noble families in Ireland sent their children to be raised by other high-ranking families to create alliances.

They battle to the death—Ferdia’s. And then comes the verse after the verse where Cuchulainn laments the death of his foster brother. Sad.

I close the book. I wonder would Tim McShane have been sorry and crying over my body after his rage had passed. This story’s from how many thousands of years ago? And now? The king of England, the kaiser of Germany, and the czar of Russia are all cousins. Will they be at each other’s throats soon like Cuchulainn and Ferdia?

At our session Peter has the Kelly fragment out again.

Peter is good-looking, no question. I can watch him without him noticing, so intent is he on the manuscript page. I move my hand closer to his.

“Nora, pay attention,” he says.

The humpbacked letters in the manuscript stand so companionably together. For a moment I’m back in Sister Mary Matthew’s first-grade class trying to write a row of “A”s—capital and small—followed by “B”s and “C”s down through the alphabet. But they are people to me—alive. The tall “A” is the father, the round “B” is the mother, and the little “a”s and “b”s their children, and so I put them all together and then invite the “C” and “D” cousins, the “E” and “F” neighbors over until my paper’s a real hodgepodge.

Sister Mary Matthew’s annoyed. How can a girl as bright as I am be so disorganized? By third grade I see that the letters have to give up their personalities for the sake of the word, obey the rules, fit in, and the words must serve the story.

But here the letters are free and alive—not uniform at all. I imagine a scribe drawing them, making each unique.

I say as much to Peter and point to the serpent curled around a capital “P.”

“Good observation,” he says. “Each scribe had an individual style. Some wrote notes in the margins, comments on the weather. There are verses even.”

He tells me he visited an abbey in Austria and examined an ancient Latin manuscript that contained a poem in old Irish. Some ninth century monk wrote about his cat Pangur Bán.

“The cat catches mice the way the monk catches words,” Peter says. He lifts his hand, grabs an imaginary mouse, then closes his fist. The moves are so quick and unexpected that I actually cry out.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says.

I pat his arm.

“I’m fine,” I say, and I swear he looks down at my hand in a way that makes me want to keep my fingers there. I lift my hand. Muscles in that arm.

“Another monk drew a dog,” he says.

“What?” I think of how strong he must be, slender as he is.

“In your Kelly manuscript there’s a very realistic sketch of a dog with a long tail.”

“Where,” I say, bending so close to the piece of vellum my shoulder touches his.

“Not here,” Peter says. “
The Book of Uí-Máine,
The Book of the O’Kellys
is in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. I was allowed to examine it once.”

“Once! Jesus. I’d think you’d want to pore over the thing.”

“Of course I would. But I’m not a member—and can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Costs too much and they don’t welcome Catholics.”

“What? Who’s ‘they’?”

“The administration. Headed by Lord Somebody-or-other.”

“But that’s outrageous! That’s a Kelly book.”

“It’s the same with all the ancient manuscripts.
The Book of Kells
is astounding, one of the world’s great masterpieces—I’ve only ever been able to see one page.”

“But Peter, wasn’t it Catholic monks wrote the damn things?”

Now I’ve offended him with my language.

But he only shakes his head and then nods.

“They did indeed.”

“Well then?”

“Most of the great books of Ireland were destroyed. Cromwell’s soldiers cleaned their boots with the pages. The monks and families like yours risked their lives to save some. Others were stolen, but at least the thieves were intelligent enough to sell them to places like the British Museum or the Royal Irish Academy, but they’re still kept from the people.”