The pinnace had stopped not fifty yards off. Our guns were bearing on her; our men stood with lighted matches ready for a broadside.
The pinnace held still, and for an instant I believed they might chance it.
Long I stared at the water, yet I saw no further sign of Rafe Leckenbie. He had gone down, bleeding profusely, into the depths. Then, as if impelled by his disappearance, the pinnace began slowly to back off.
We held our fire, waiting.
33
The house of gray granite sits in the hollow of a green hill with all the bay and the rocks below it. A strong walker may climb to where the old fort lies, its black stones made blacker still by the blood of those who died there, and the burning of the fires that ate away its heart more times than one, yet each tune by a son rebuilt.
Ours is a quiet place with the gray sea before us, rarely still, and the black rocks and islets rising from it. Here and there lies a patch of green where the grass grows or a tree.
To this place have I come after my wandering years.
My father died somewhere near but where his body lies no man knows. It matters not, for his spirit haunts these gray rocks, resting or moving among them as he forever did. By now he knows that I have come again, bought back the old place and some of the land around. And if my name is another’s the hearth at least is mine, and my sons will grow tall from the same deep roots.
You have not failed me, Father, for you gave much, asking only this in return: that I come again and rebuild the old fires that the name and the blood shall live.
Guadalupe is here, and my firstborn, and a fine lad he is, named for you, my father.
The chests I brought back from America were fatly filled, and the Irish folk know me for who I am and say nothing, but greet me gently as they pass. The English whom I also love, although it seems traitorous to some, think of me as a sailor from the days of the Armada, a sometime prisoner in Spain, and a wanderer come home.
My fine Irish horses graze on the salt green grass, and there are cattle here, and sheep. The chests are not empty although I have bought lands here and some in France. And we live quietly but well, going only now and again to Dublintown or Belfast, and mayhap to Cork or London.
Long ago there was a lady left money with me. She has never returned and when I tried the name she gave me and the place, nothing was known, but someday needing it, she will seek me out. She will find lands she owns and a house here and there, and each year I study the money and judge what must be done with it, for she was a woman who trusted at least one man and shall not regret it.
Yet when the gray geese fly west for Iceland, bound on to Greenland and then to Labrador, there is sometimes in the heart of me a longing for distant shores and the beat of waves upon the long golden sands, and the distant view of mountains, far and blue against the horizon, and always the winds that whisper of enchantments beyond the purple ridges.
I shall not go. Guadalupe is here, and my son. My destiny lies here. Like my father before me I shall walk these old paths with my son and show him where the Skelligs lie and old Staigue Fort and the ruins of Derryquin Castle. I shall speak to him of Achilles, Hector, and Conn of the Hundred Battles, of the old kings who lived at Tara and mayhap of a bloody man who went over the rail into the waters behind the cape at Lookout.
Of Jacob Binns I have seen no more, but my door stands open always for him, or for Fergus MacAskill or even for Tosti Padget.
Kory comes sometimes, with Porter Bob and Porter Bill, and we trade a little and lie a little and talk of the old days that are better gone.
Of Emma Delahay I have no word. Gone she was and gone she is, and some small money with her, although most was accounted for by Captain Dabney of the Good Catherine. Was she murdered? Fled? I know not, although sometimes I wonder.
Last year in London a lovely girl crossed the floor, holding out both hands to me. “You are Tatton,” she said, “and I am Eve Vypont, and I wish you to know that our horse came back, and you may walk in my forest when you will!”
Silliman Turley keeps a tavern in Ballydehob and sometimes when the Good Catherine sails into Roaring Water Bay, we meet there to share a bottle and a loaf with Captain Dabney. So all things at last come to an end.
Guadalupe beside me wears her golden medallion that I took from the deck of a long-lost ship in a far place beyond the sea.
Now I shall go back from the hills to sit beside my fire in the house my own hands built, and sometimes I shall lift my eyes to see the firelight play upon the silver handle of a sheathed sword that hangs there above the fireplace. And when the fire crackles upon the hearth I shall look down from the window to where the gray ghosts of the rainstorms sweep across the distant sea, like veiled women to their prayers. I have come home again, and I go now to where love lies waiting…