Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [46]
The oak was the last unabashedly pagan thing in Ballynasloe. A wind was blowing through its branches, rattling the dry leaves. Yet no wind blew on the army as it advanced. The air was perfectly still everywhere but in the direct vicinity of the tree.
Out of the corner of his eye Father Timothy thought he could see a flicker of shadows. They swirled about the tree and spun upward toward the gathering of clouds over the wan sun.
He raised his cross like a banner and swept it forward. “Onward!” he cried.
“Onward!” they roared back.
They came in ranks with axes at the ready. Seamus the woodcutter had the honor of the first blow. The ancient oak was as hard as iron. It turned the axe-blade even in those skilled hands and nearly took off the head of the man who pressed too close behind.
Seamus cursed in most unsaintly fashion and hefted his weapon again, glaring down anyone who might have thought to move in. He measured the tree with narrowed eyes, secured his grip on the handle, and swung with a much more carefully judged degree of force.
Bark flew. The axe barely bit, but it was a start.
With a hundred of them, some almost as skilled as Seamus, the tree could not hope to win the battle. It tried its best. Between its thickness and the hardness of its bark and wood, it put up a noble fight. Other things helped it, things barely to be seen but clearly to be felt. Cold iron was death to the old things, but they had ways to thwart it nonetheless.
Father Timothy’s army was at it for half the day, taking turns and a long rotation. If anyone lost will or strength, or succumbed to the insubstantial horrors of the pagan belief, a dozen came to take his place. They cut down the Druid tree and hewed it into firewood. Father Timothy spoke the by-now-familiar words of exorcism over the stacked wood. It was all good hard oak that would burn well on the hearth this winter—not a hint of rot or softness in it, and that was a wonder in itself.
Danny Murphy the carter was waiting to haul off the wood. He needed two trips to carry it all, with plenty of willing hands to help him load and unload.
Father Timothy looked on in satisfaction. That was it, he thought. That was the end of the cleansing of Ballynasloe. The sunlight was clean, and the earth was consecrated to the proper Faith. The village was as Christian as it could ever be.
And yet as he contemplated the Mass of celebration that he would perform when Sunday came round again, he paused to wonder why he was not more deliriously happy. He could not help feeling that he had missed something. The exorcisms were all done, the prayers all said, the perimeters secured. Surely there was no pagan thing left to trouble him or anyone else.
Maybe Saint Patrick had felt the same way after he drove the snakes out of Ireland—as if he could not have expelled them all. He must have missed one.
He had not, and nor had Father Timothy. The world was clean. It all belonged to God, and God, he imagined, was glad.
JUST AS THE MIST ROSE TO OBSCURE THE WORLD, the hermit pulled his hand out of the lady’s grasp. “No!” he said. “I don’t need proof. I don’t want to go away for a hundred years or a thousand and one nights or whatever it is. I can’t afford the time, and if you’re telling the truth, neither can you.” He looked her in the eye. “Tell me your name. Just do that, and I’ll believe you.”
He had startled her. That must be hard to do, if she was as ancient as she said she was. “Just like that?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, “maybe not just like that. Hold my hand and meet my eyes and tell me your true name. If it’s the truth you’re telling, I’ll do what you ask.”
“You know what you’re asking of me,” she said. “If you gain that power and use it badly,