The Absinthe Earl Read online

  “Yes, please!”

  The earl took the parchment from my hand, cleared his throat, and translated for me.

  The Story of Cliona’s Wave

  The maiden Cliona was the only child of a blacksmith and a fairy seer, born near the prosperous trading village of Cork. Like her mother, the child was marked by Faery, and came to be renowned throughout the country for her beauty. One day, the great chieftain Eochaid asked her father to craft a sword, but in truth he had come for a glimpse of the fair Cliona. When the blacksmith and Eochaid had reached an agreement on price, Cliona happened to enter the smithy, carrying supper to her father. From the moment Eochaid’s eyes fell on her, he was in a fever to possess her.

  Eochaid bargained with her father, who was ambitious and gave her hand against her will. Tearfully the maiden left her family and joined the household of the chieftain. Her new husband was a Christian and a proud man. He forbade Cliona from worshiping—or even speaking of—the old gods, fearing anything that might diminish his position in the country. He discouraged her whimsy, and she was no longer permitted to wander hill and vale, visiting known fairy haunts. Beyond the early months of her marriage, she was no longer permitted to receive her mother at the hall.

  The austerity of Cliona’s life became intolerable to her, and after the birth of her first child, she fled her husband’s hall with the help of a loyal servant. On a frosty but clear winter morning, Cliona and her infant daughter set out in calm waters for Bere Island, where there was a temple devoted to the goddess Dana, mother of the Tuatha De Danaan. The existence of this holy place had been kept a close secret, and the young mother intended to seek sanctuary there. But not long after casting off from a secluded bay—though there was not a cloud in the heavens—the sea began to roil. Cliona had kept close to the shore for safety, and yet a great wave rolled in, violently rocking the coracle and casting the young mother into the frigid water. Her infant lay bundled warmly in the bottom of the coracle and thus was saved.

  Eochaid, warned of his wife’s flight by a stable hand, set out in pursuit. He found the coracle washed up on the strand with only his wailing daughter inside. As for Cliona, her lifeless body was discovered under the waves by Manannán, the god of the sea. Grieved by her wasted youth and beauty, Manannán carried her to the Danaan at Brú na Bóinne.

  I stared expectantly at the earl, waiting for him to continue. But he shook his head.

  “Thus it ends,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

  I took a deep breath and settled back against the seat while the train rocked gently along the track. The story of “Cliona’s Wave” was familiar to me, though I had never read a version like this one. In the others, she had been an immortal, sometimes associated with healing, sometimes with banshees. She had been drowned by a great wave while waiting in a boat for a mortal lover. This was a common paradox among mythological tales—immortals who could be killed and yet remain immortal.

  I reached again for the parchment. He handed it to me, and I inspected it more closely. Along the left side, the sheet was uneven, as if it had been removed from a book.

  “I would bet that this came from the same place the sword did,” I said.

  “A sensible conclusion,” the earl replied.

  “As for its significance, obviously, it relates to Brú na Bóinne, but how it might connect with the events there, and what it might tell us …” I slowly shook my head. “I cannot say, my lord.”

  I tried to recall whether anything I’d read of Diarmuid connected him with Cliona, other than their both being of the Tuatha De Danaan. Diarmuid had been romantically linked with several women, most notably Gráinne, the high king’s daughter who was engaged to Finn but ran off with Diarmuid. That relationship eventually led to the end of his mortal life, and though in some accounts he became an oracle to the Danaan, no further stories had been recorded of him.

  While pondering this, I noticed that the earl’s gaze had shifted beyond me, and his wary expression caused me to turn and look over my shoulder. I saw nothing but other passengers, reading or dozing, rocked in their seats by the gentle motion of the train.

  “Isolde,” murmured my companion, and I turned again to study him.

  He rose from his seat, eyes still fixed on the same spot.

  “You see the queen?” I whispered, remembering his story about the vision in Dublin.

  Nodding, he reached into the overhead compartment and took down his sword.

  “Lord Meath!” I whispered urgently.

  “She beckons,” he replied.

  I rose to my feet, standing between him and his visitor. “My lord, we don’t know with certainty that this apparition has any connection to her.”

  “And thus, I take a precaution.” He raised the sword, eliciting small sounds of alarm from the other passengers. “Remain here,” he said.

  But as he moved to leave the car, I followed. His threatening appearance was sure to cause a disturbance. His vision had carried him beyond reason, which meant I would have to speak for him—though heaven knew what I would say.

  I followed him through to another passenger car, but I dared not call after him for fear of causing an even greater disruption. Instead, I hurried to keep up. We passed through three more cars, leaving startled passengers in our wake, before reaching the final car. He stepped out onto the small balcony at the end, and I joined him just as he was stepping onto a ladder mounted outside the car.

  “Lord Meath!” I cried as he scaled the ladder.

  When he reached the top, he froze. “Miss Q!”

  “I’m here, my lord. Can I call the conductor to assist you?”

  “I would like for you to come up and tell me whether you see what I see.”

  Come up? The train rumbled along. My heart pounded as I watched the track flying away beneath us. I stared up at the earl, who was looking at the sky.

  Gripping the ladder’s rail, I took a deep breath and followed him up.

  My stomach dropped as the earl crawled on top of the car and out of sight. Placing one careful, deliberate step after the other, I climbed. At the top, the wind tugged at my hair and clothing.

  He crouched on top of the car, very near the edge, his eyes still fastened on a point above us. I saw nothing but blue sky broken by wisps of cloud.

  “Do you see it?” he asked, looking at me as if his life depended on my answer.

  “I see nothing, Lord Meath,” I cried, greatly alarmed. There was madness in both his look and his tone. “Will you not come down?”

  He turned again to study the empty air. “How am I to know that you are who you appear to be?” he demanded.

  I pondered this in confusion before realizing that he was no longer speaking to me.

  “Here, now, miss!” Glancing down, I saw that the conductor had followed us outside and was now preparing to climb up onto the car. “Come down from there at once!” he barked.

  “Stay, sir!” I cried, afraid that he would only make the situation worse. “Please! I’m worried for my friend, who has climbed on top of the train.”

  He repeated his demand that I come down. I glanced again to the earl’s perch near the edge of the car and heard him say, “I could not possibly—”

  But I did not find out what he could not possibly do, because at that moment, I heard a shrill cry beside my ear that so startled me, I let go of the ladder.

  “Miss Q!” the earl shouted in alarm as I lost my balance.

  But before I could fall either to the deck or to the track below, something I could not see grasped me by the waist and lifted me off my feet.

  “My lord!”

  “Release her at once!” cried the earl. “Cousin! Call off that beast!”

  Beast? I looked up, but still I saw nothing. I could feel the disturbance of the air, as if a large bird were beating its wings just above me. I reached down to my
waist and ran my hands over the mechanism that held me, recoiling in horror at the feel of tough, wrinkled skin and a smooth, hooked claw.

  Below my skirts, which the wind had billowed like a purple balloon, the locomotive surged along like a great mechanical snake, a line of smoke and vapor curling backward from its engine. The earl receded in the distance—my invisible captor was not keeping pace with the train. And then the distance played a trick on my eyes, for I thought I saw the earl climbing the air itself, as if it were a ladder. Sunlight glinted off the blade of Great Fury as he ascended.

  I glanced at the ground below and felt a swell of nausea, and a burning behind my ears.

  “Please!” I cried. “Please, let me go!” I squirmed in the creature’s grasp but then came to my senses. A fall from this height would certainly be fatal.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to collect my wits. Struggling was foolish. I would simply have to wait until whatever held me chose to land. But what, in the meantime, would happen to the earl? He was obviously seeing many things that I could not, but I now had clear and alarming firsthand evidence that these were no fanciful visions—unless I had contracted madness by association.

  I opened my eyes again, determined to make a rational assessment of our situation, only to discover the earl now stood a short distance away, perched on nothing, defying the law of gravity. He stood upright, but with his feet planted in empty air, as the train sped into the distance far below us. Had he, too, been taken by a creature like the one that held me?

  He followed my approach, his eyes vivid with anger and alarm. Relief surged in my breast as we drew yet closer to him. Then the claws at my waist opened.

  For a moment, I felt an inexplicable weightlessness—inexplicable because I knew that my weight was carrying me toward the ground. My scream stopped half out of my throat, cut short by a sudden impact with something solid.

  Pain speared through my knees and the heels of my hands.

  “Miss Q!” cried the earl, kneeling beside me.

  My breath came in gasps as I stared between my hands at the ground far below. “I fear that I’m going mad, my lord!” I said in a voice cracking from the strain.

  He knelt beside me, supporting me so I could rise. “If you are, then you have me for company on your journey. Can you still see nothing, dear lady?”

  “Nothing but that which I cannot believe.” I looked into his face and saw such a look of pity that I knew I must be a sight to behold. The wind had pulled my hair loose, and it cascaded over my shoulders in a silvery tempest. The waist of my gown had been rent to my very flesh in places. I covered these with my hands.

  Lord Meath drew the flask from his coat pocket and held it out to me.

  I began to shake my head, then stopped suddenly and took it from him, tilting it to my lips. The spirits inside burned their way into my chest with a licorice brightness. I swallowed three times before I began to cough, and he took the flask from my hand.

  I remained doubled over, tears squeezing from under my eyelids, as the fire in my throat moved to my belly and then finally subsided. Lord Meath’s hand came to my back, warm and steadying.

  “What is the meaning of this, Isolde?” he demanded. “You could have killed her!”

  A loud feminine laugh pierced the air, and I jerked up straight. My mouth fell open. At last, I could see. A green woman stood before us. She wore the high, proud hat of an Irish naval officer—embellished with a fanciful brocade—and a man’s breeches and boots. The rest of her uniform—a jacket and corset worked in the same brocade—was far from regimental.

  “I can’t say I’ve ever been mistaken for a queen, Your Lordship. Though some do call me the Sea Queen of Connacht, and I’ve styled my ship the same.”

  She was a filmy apparition, as was the vessel that, I now saw, surrounded us. We were standing on the deck of a ship, an enormous griffin’s head at its prow. Sails were hoisted and filled, and glancing over the railing, I saw flat-paddled oars extending from holes in the hull and digging powerfully at the sky. Flying alongside the ship were a dozen ravens more than twice the size of a man. As I examined their huge talons, my fingers stroked the widest of the rents at my waist. On their backs, the birds carried what I at first took for children but, on closer inspection, found to be little people with sparrowlike faces.

  “Into the Gap, Captain O’Malley?” inquired a crackling voice from the prow. A creature was seated there astride the griffin’s head. He was portly and had literally the face of a toad.

  “Into the Gap!” replied the woman, punching at the air with her fist.

  “Huzzah!” cried a chorus of crewmen’s voices.

  “O’Malley?” repeated Lord Meath. I wondered whether he had thought, as I had, of the most famous of his O’Malley relations: the pirate queen. But she was long dead.

  She gave a mock curtsy, replying, “Grace O’Malley, my lord.”

  How was this possible?

  She turned now toward the bow of the ship.

  “She could be Isolde’s twin,” murmured Lord Meath.

  I now noticed a young man standing beside her. Compared to the rest of this fantastical troupe, he had quite a mundane appearance. Like the earl, he had a pair of tinted spectacles, though they rested very near the end of his nose. He eyed me over them. As our eyes met, he smiled and nodded. “Will Yeats, official scribe. How do you do, Miss …?”

  Despite my anxiety and confusion, I managed a civil reply. “Ada Quicksilver. And Lord Edward, Earl of Meath.”

  “Here we go, Mr. Yeats!” called the captain.

  The young man nodded placidly and grabbed the end of a line that had been swinging from the rigging. As he wound it around his arm, he said, “Mind the Gap, Miss Quicksilver.”

  I glanced at the earl. He raised his eyebrows, indicating that our confusion was mutual. Then he grabbed another line, and without preamble, he pulled me into his chest and began wrapping the rope about our waists. The solid warmth of his body was a comfort, propriety be damned.

  As he tied off the line, we heard a loud creaking noise, as though the boards of the ship were warping beneath our feet. The bow began to rise, and I lost my balance. Our feet slipped from the deck, and we swung outward, dangling at the end of the line. As the rope stretched, my body slid down against his, and with a cry of alarm, I flung my arms around his ribs while his legs wrapped around my upper body. I glanced down and saw that the pitch of the ship had opened a clear path for us to plummet all the way to the ground should the rope fail.

  The mad creatures that made up the ship’s crew were cackling like fiends and swinging from other lines.

  The ship was changing, her vaporous green outline solidifying and assuming a more natural hue. This change began at the bow and slowly crept back amidships. As it progressed, the sky around the transformed section of the ship shifted from cloudless blue to thick, swirling fog. But the fog wasn’t uniform, and in places I caught glimpses of starry blackness.

  Suddenly, the ship pitched forward, swinging us the opposite direction and bringing bow and stern level once again. As the arc of our swing shortened, the deck began to tremble violently, as if it would break apart. I felt the strain of the earl’s muscles as he fought to keep us from banging against solid objects fixed to the deck.

  At last, everything went still. Oil lamps flared to life along the ship’s rail, and we cruised peacefully, enveloped in the strange, foggy sea. The air was warm and wet, as if we’d left the Irish winter for the tropics. The crewmen pelted down from the rigging, hitting the deck like hailstones.

  The earl and I lay twisted together like a pile of rope, and I could feel the flat of his abdomen warm against my breasts. As we worked to decouple our limbs, the incidental press of our bodies—and the warmth of his breath against my ear one moment, my throat the next—caused my own breath to shorten and my heart to race.

  I breathed deep
ly, collecting myself as the earl picked apart the knot that bound us, and finally helped me to my feet. I saw that the sword had become entangled in a wad of netting a few yards away.

  “My lord,” I said quietly, nodding. He followed my gaze and strode over and retrieved it.

  “I don’t trust this fog, Captain,” called the toad man.

  “Nor I, Coker,” replied O’Malley. No longer viewing her through a veil of absinthe, I saw she had a ruddy complexion and flaming-red curls.

  “What is the meaning of all this?” the earl demanded, raising the tip of his sword. “Why have you abducted us, and where are we going?”

  The captain cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t want to threaten me, young sir, relation or no. Your dun-haired cousin wants that sword, and she said naught about bringing your person. I don’t care if you are descended from the Dan—”

  Mr. Yeats cleared his throat delicately. “Captain, that’s not exactly what Queen Isolde—”

  “Hush, now, lad,” barked the captain. She rolled her eyes, and they came to rest on me. “Promised to write a ballad about me if I brought him along, that one did. Stays on me like a mother hen.”

  “You were sent by the queen?” I asked, astonished.

  She eyed me up and down. “I was, as I told your thick-pated companion. But he chose not to believe me.” Her gaze dropped to the torn fabric of my gown and she added, “My apologies for the damage, but I was obliged to resort to more forceful measures.”

  “But why were you sent for us?”

  She blinked at me, considering my question. Or perhaps considering whether she would answer. Then she glanced at the earl. “Right. I was to say to ye this: ‘The queen has desperate need of the sword and desires the counsel of the Earl of Meath.’ She was not prepared to wait for Your Lordship until the morrow.”

  “You’re taking us to her?” I asked. “To Kildamhnait Tower?”

  “That I am.” She gave a brisk nod. “And I’ll get you there a mite faster than that great smoking iron serpent would have done. Until then, by way of apology for your gown, I’d be pleased to offer you—”