It was “Deirdre’s Lament,” which I’d first heard her sing in the Fiddler’s Elbow. In Irish legend, Deirdre was promised from infancy to Conchubar, the king of Ulster. But, as happens, she fell in love with and married another, younger man. Naoise, her husband, and his brothers Ardan and Ainnle, the sons of Uisnech, fled with her to Scotland, where they lived in contentment. But the humiliated and vengeful old king lured them back to Ireland with promises of amnesty. Once they were in his hands, he treacherously killed the three sons of Uisnech and took Deirdre to his bed.
Deirdre of the Sorrows, as she is often called, has become a symbol for Ireland herself—beautiful, suffering from injustice, and possessed of a happy past that looks likely to never return. Of the real Deirdre, the living and breathing woman upon whom the stories were piled like so many stones on a cairn, we know nothing. The legendary Deirdre’s story, however, does not end with her suicide, for in the aftermath of Conchubar’s treachery wars were fought, the injustices of which led to further wars. Which wars continue to this very day. It all fits together suspiciously tidily.
It was no coincidence that Deirdre’s father was the king’s storyteller.
All this, however, I tell you after the fact. At the time, I was not thinking of the legend at all. For the instant I lay down upon the cold stone, I felt all the misery of Ireland flowing into my body. The Stone of Loneliness was charmed, like the well in the Burren. Sleeping on it was said to be a cure for homesickness. So, during the Famine, emigrants would spend their last night atop it before leaving Ireland forever. It seemed to me, prone upon the menhir, that all the sorrow they had shed was flowing into my body. I felt each loss as if it were my own. Helplessly, I started to sob and then to weep openly. I lost track of what Mary was singing, though her voice went on and on. Until finally she sang
and stopped. Leaving a silence that echoed on and on forever.
Then Mary said, “There’s someone I think you’re ready to meet.”
Mary took me to a nondescript cinder-block building, the location of which I will take with me to the grave. She led the way in. I followed nervously. The interior was so dim I stumbled on the threshold. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw that I was in a bar. Not a pub, which is a warm and welcoming public space where families gather to socialize, the adults over a pint and the kiddies drinking their soft drinks, but a bar—a place where men go to get drunk. It smelled of potcheen and stale beer. Somebody had ripped the door to the bog off its hinges and no one had bothered to replace it. Presumably Mary was the only woman to set foot in the place for a long, long time.
There were three or four men sitting at small tables in the gloom, their backs to the door, and a lean man with a bad complexion at the bar. “Here you are then,” he said without enthusiasm.
“Don’t mind Liam,” Mary said to me. Then, to Liam, “Have you anything fit for drinking?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s not why we came anyway.” Mary jerked her head toward me. “Here’s the recruit.”
“He doesn’t look like much.”
“Recruit for what?” I said. It struck me suddenly that Liam was keeping his hands below the bar, out of sight. Down where a hard man will keep a weapon, such as a cudgel or a gun.
“Don’t let his American teeth put you off. They’re part of the reason we wanted him in the first place.”
“So you’re a patriot, are you, lad?” Liam said in a voice that indicated he knew good and well that I was not.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Liam glanced quickly at Mary and curled his lip in a sneer. “Ahh, he’s just in it for the crack.” In Irish
“Hush, you!” Mary said. Then, turning to me, “And I’ll thank you to control yourself as well. This is serious business. Liam, I’ll vouch for the man. Give him the package.”
Liam’s hands appeared at last. They held something the size of a biscuit tin. It was wrapped in white paper and tied up with string. He slid it across the bar.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a device,” Liam said. “Properly deployed, it can implode the entire administrative complex at Shannon Starport without harming a single civilian.”
My flesh ran cold.
“So you want me to plant this in the ’port, do yez?” I said. For the first time in weeks, I became aware of the falseness of my accent. Impulsively, I pulled the neuropendant from beneath my shirt, dropped it on the floor, and stepped on it. Whatever I said here, I would say it as myself. “You want me to go in there and fucking
“No, of course not,” Mary said. “We have a soldier in place for that. But he—”
“Or she,” Liam amended.
“—or she isn’t in a position to smuggle this in. Human employees aren’t allowed to bring in so much as a pencil. That’s how little the Outsiders think of us. You, however, can. Just take the device through their machines—it’s rigged to read as a box of cigars—in your carry-on. Once you’re inside, somebody will come up to you and ask if you remembered to bring something for granny. Hand it over.”
“That’s all,” Liam said.
“You’ll be halfway to Jupiter before anything happens.”
They both looked at me steadily. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m not killing any innocent people for you.”
“Not people. Aliens.”
“They’re still innocent.”
“They wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t seized the planet. So they’re not innocent.”
“You’re a nation of fucking werewolves!” I cried. Thinking that would put an end to the conversation.
But Mary wasn’t fazed. “That we are,” she agreed. “Day by day, we present our harmless, domestic selves to the world, until one night the beast comes out to feed. But at least we’re not sheep, bleating complacently in the face of the butcher’s knife. Which are you, my heart’s beloved? A sheep? Or could there be a wolf lurking deep within?”
“He can’t do the job,” Liam said. “He’s as weak as watered milk.”
“Shut it. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Mary fixed me with those amazing eyes of hers, as green as the living heart of Ireland, and I was helpless before them. “It’s not weakness that makes you hesitate,” she said, “but a foolish and misinformed conscience. I’ve thought about this far longer than you have, my treasure. I’ve thought about it all my life. It’s a holy and noble thing that I’m asking of you.”
“I—”
“Night after night, you’ve sworn you’d do anything for me—not with words, I’ll grant you, but with looks, with murmurs, with your soul. Did you think I could not hear the words you dared not say aloud? Now I’m calling you on all those unspoken promises. Do this one thing—if not for the sake of your planet, then for me.”
