The Sin Eater(13)

‘Why? No one need ever know what happened,’ said Declan.

‘But what if there’s a child? There might be. Because,’ said Romilly with a display of knowledge that was as embarrassing to the two boys as it was unexpected, ‘he didn’t stop doing it to me before he . . . you know, the part that makes a baby.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Colm, and Romilly, with unprecedented sharpness, said:

‘I wish you wouldn’t blaspheme so much, Colm. It’s a sin to blaspheme.’

‘It’s a sin to rape innocent girls,’ said Colm. ‘That’s enough to make the saints blaspheme.’

‘And it’s no use saying no one need know,’ said Romilly. ‘He knows. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye after today.’

‘You don’t need to look him in the eye. You don’t need ever to see him,’ said Declan.

‘You can’t run away,’ said Colm. ‘Where would you go? What about money?’


‘I’d go to England,’ said Romilly. ‘And I can do it, because Nicholas Sheehan gave me some presents. Not money because he doesn’t have money. But he has jewelled cups and silver platters and things like that.’ It came out defiantly. ‘He gave me some. He said I could sell them for a lot of money, and that I was a good and pretty girl and I deserved to have a reward.’

Colm, his eyes furious, said, ‘I won’t let you go.’

‘You can’t stop me. No one will miss me – I’m supposed to move on to the next lot of family next week anyhow. They’ll just think I’ve gone early, and they won’t bother to find out. I dare say they’ll be glad I’ve gone, because I don’t really fit anywhere, do I?’

‘Yes, but you can’t just go, Rom—’

‘I can. I’ll leave a note saying that’s what I’ve done,’ said Romilly. ‘And I’ll go on Sunday when everyone’s at Mass.’

‘I’m not letting her go,’ said Colm, after they had walked with Romilly to her house and made sure she had gone inside primed with a story about tumbling down on the cliff path to account for her tear-stained face and general dishevelment.

‘How will you stop her?’

‘I’ll confront bloody Nick Sheehan, the old villain,’ said Colm, his eyes lighting up. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll force him to leave Kilglenn for good. Then Romilly can stay.’

‘How would you force him to leave?’ said Declan.

‘I’ll say if he doesn’t go, I’ll bring Father O’Brian and the entire village out to the watchtower to throw him out,’ said Colm, his eyes glowing with angry fervour. ‘Like when they used to march a harlot out of the town with the rough music playing.’

The word ‘harlot’ was not often used nowadays and nobody had heard rough music played in Kilglenn for at least fifty years. Fintan, when the poteen got to him, sometimes spun a tale of how, as a boy, he had helped run a painted Jezebel out of Kilglenn, and described how the banging of saucepans and tinkers’ pots had been as satisfying a sound as Gabriel blowing his trumpet on Judgement Day. Everyone enjoyed this story, although most people felt that for Fintan to berate painted Jezebels was a clear case of poacher turned gamekeeper, for the old rascal had broken just about every commandment during his life, with particular attention to the seventh.

‘And I tell you what,’ went on Colm, ‘if Sheehan wasn’t defrocked and excommunicated all those years ago, then he would be now if the truth got out. But,’ he said, ‘I’d rather put him to rout myself.’

‘You’re going up to the watchtower to confront him?’

‘I am.’

‘Then,’ said Declan, ‘I’m coming with you.’

They went the next morning, which was Saturday and which was, as Declan said, a time when anyone might be anywhere and no one would be particularly looking for them. Declan’s mother said it was sad altogether when a boy could not be staying at home, and must be off stravaiging into the village, dinnerless. When Declan said he hadn’t any appetite today, she scooped an apple and a wedge of freshly baked soda bread from the table and made him pocket both.

The path winding up to the watchtower was steep and narrow. Colm and Declan had walked past it hundreds of times, but neither of them had ever climbed to the very top of it.

The gentle May warmth no longer cast a scented balm on the air and the sky held the bruised darkness that heralded a storm. Far below, the Atlantic flung itself against the cliffs, and if the sidhe were abroad today they were in a wild and eldritch mood.

For the first half of the climb the watchtower was hidden from view by the rock face, but as they rounded a curve in the path, it reared up, a black and forbidding column against the sky.

‘It looks,’ said Declan, pausing to stare at it, ‘as if it’s leaning forward to inspect us, d’you think that?’

‘You read too many books,’ said Colm, but he too looked uneasily at the stark silhouette.

‘Someone’s looking down out of that window,’ said Declan.

‘It’ll be Nick Sheehan, crouching up there like a spider watching a couple of flies approach his lair.’

‘There’s a door at the centre,’ said Declan as they drew nearer.