The Last Storyteller Read Online Free Page B

her. She wore a green gown down to her ankles, the neck of it bound in gold embroidered braid. She had fingers as long and white as the lilies of the field. She was so lovely that Mal’s heart tumbled like an acrobat inside his broad chest, and he smiled that innocent smile of eternal love that men smile only once in their lives. If they’re fortunate
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    Now and then John Jacob paused, carried on some business with his pipe, or gazed into the fire, his demeanor as peaceful as a child’s. He had the countryman’s face, his cheeks red as a pippin apple. Earlier he had put a match to the wick of an old oil lamp at the far end of the kitchen, and when he turned off the electric lights, we had only the lamp’s yellow glow and the red power of the fire.
    The blacksmith, looking on, believed that it would take very little work to secure this lucrative bridegroom. Knowing that the appetite increases when it is denied, he whisked his daughter away, taking their leave with courtesy. And no sooner were they up on their cart than the blacksmith, as gleeful as a songbird, said to his daughter, “There’s your husband for you. We’ll be important people yet.”
    But the girl, who had great spirit, retorted, “I’m not marrying any man as old as that.”
    Like so many Irish legends, the tale grew into a love story. The brotherof Finn MacCool, in his advanced middle years, at last fell in love—with the daughter of a scheming farrier, “a ree-raw of a fellow,” as Mr. O’Neill called him, meaning a rambunctious and hostile man, who set up his beautiful daughter as an asset to be cashed in.
    Well, the blacksmith flew into a rage as high as a cat’s back. When they got home, he hauled the girl down off the cart, dragged her into the house, lashed her with a swishing ash stick, and locked her in a dark closet until, as he said, she’d come to her senses. The poor mother never said a word—she was tired out anyway, having so many children to cook and wash and sew for
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    As the tale developed, John Jacob sat up straighter and firmer, leaning and thrusting, in rhythm with the drama, hurling lines of the story like bolts across the gap between us.
    The world took its turns that night, as the world always does, its clouds swirling around the moon, its blue oceans churning from pole to pole. Though Emer sobbed and wailed, the blacksmith’s house quieted down, more in fear than from any other feeling. Later that same week, a messenger came to the door, a fellow spry as spring, with green eyes, and he said that Malachi MacCool, the great warrior, the great farmer, the great landowner, brother to Finn MacCool, the greatest man who ever lived, wished to visit
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    Now the house turned upside down. The angels of heaven never polished the golden staircase so brightly, and the twelve children had their teeth brushed and their noses pointed. Yet Emer stood as distant from all this as a tree above a river
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9
    We walked across the wide main street of Urlingford to my car. Jimmy Bermingham had bandy legs like a jockey. With his coat draped across his shoulders and his thumbs deep in the pockets of his vest, he whistled a tune. Inside, I twisted.
My anxiety is so high. What’s happening to me?
    When I opened the car door, Elma rose from her hiding place on the back seat and reached for my hand like a child. Jimmy Bermingham pushed up the passenger seat and climbed into the rear seat beside her.
    “Why aren’t you getting into the front?” she asked, shivering. Jimmy Bermingham took off his coat and wrapped it around her; she huddled into it like a mouse into cotton wool.
    I looked back at her and smiled. “You’ll be all right.”
    Little sting to the heart: Venetia had a smile as innocent as that.
    And so three people, complete strangers to one another, set out on a coldish rainy afternoon in County Kilkenny in the year 1956, not knowing what on earth lay ahead.
    I said, “Listen, I don’t exactly know what’s happening