Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [44]
God seemed very remote just then and rather mythical. She was there and real and as solid as the black earth of Ireland.
“If you’re dying,” he heard himself say, “then why are you so—so—”
“You give me life,” she said. “It’s a blessing and a miracle.What a rare creature you are,William Thorne!”
“I’m very ordinary,” he said. “I’m a terrible poet. I’m worthless with women. I’m not even very good at being a hermit.”
“You are excellent at being William,” she said, “and at making us stronger. Tell me,William Thorne.What price will you take for your help against us?”
“What—”
“Gold?” she asked. “Jewels? Works of beauty and great worth?”
“Faerie gold turns to dust in the morning,” he said. “Even I know that.”
“This is real gold,” she said, “from old hoards. But if that won’t buy you . . . what of fame? You call yourself a bad poet.Would you gain the gift of the bard? We can make you the greatest maker and singer that ever was in Ireland, give you words of power to shake the courts of kings. You’ll make men laugh and sing for joy, and weep with the beauty of your verses.”
The hermit’s heart stopped, then began to hammer so hard he nearly fell over. Gold tempted him not at all—he had plenty of that if he wanted it, back in Somerset. Poetry—to be a true bard—
“Oh, God,” he said. “Dear God.” But then, with every fiber of his being: “No. No, I will not. It would never be real. It would be yours, and I would always remember that. It wouldn’t come from inside of me.”
She regarded him with respect, and bowed as if to a lord. “Integrity,” she said, “is the rarest of virtues. Tell me then, William Thorne. In return for the salvation of my people, would you take love? Would you take me?”
He groaned aloud. Heaven was in his grasp, beauty beyond mortal, love that would be, he had no doubt, of quite literally legendary splendor. And yet he said, “I am a man of God. I have forsaken love.”
“Even love of God?”
He stared at her.Words were nearly beyond him. He was amazed that he had said as much as he had.
“William Thorne,” she said so tenderly that his throat tightened with tears. “Did you think that the old hermits had abandoned the beauty that is between man and woman?”
He could answer that, in a breathless croak to be sure, but there were words at hand, and he spoke them. “They gave up everything—all the lures and uses of the world. They lived pure; they lived clean. They devoted their every living moment to the worship of God.”
“ ‘With my body I thee worship,’ ” she said. “Those words are in your ritual. I’ve heard them many and many a time from the church door when a woman weds a man. And do believe me, William Thorne, that many a hermit did just that, away in his tower or his bothy, when he needed a more solid proof of devotion than the words of a prayer.”
“No,” said the hermit. “You’re telling falsehoods—wicked lies to win me over. I won’t listen. I won’t hear—”
“William Thorne,” said that sweetest of voices, “I would never lie to so pure a spirit. I would give myself freely and love you truly, for yourself, and because you were the savior of my people.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I swore a vow. That I would never—”
“You swore out of the pain of your heart,” she said, “and out of the conviction that, after all, no woman would have you. For who wants a fool and a mooncalf, a bad poet with nothing better to recommend him than a substantial income and a country house in Somerset? Who would truly love you, or want you for anything but what your father has to leave you? Who would want you as you are,with nothing to your name but a half-ruined tower and a borrowed gown?”
Her words were so true, and so cutting, and so exquisitely cruel, that he could only stand and gape at her. He had thought his heart broken when his true love married another—and what was her name again? What