We were on our way to the town of Cashel in South Tipperary, site of the castle ruins known as the Rock of Cashel, only a half hour from Thurles. I should not have been surprised that Doreen Quinn was going with us.
I had knocked on the Quinns’ door to see Molly about getting Ian a ticket for her performance. How she had beamed! Doreen, from somewhere in the room, had called out, “Better hurry, Jordan! Alex will be waiting. We’re going to the Rock of Cashel.”
“Right,” I’d said, unable to keep the irritation from my voice, refusing to admit that Alex hadn’t consulted me about his plans. I was happy for him to make our itinerary—his book was our raison d’etre—but was he just a wee bit influenced by what Doreen wanted to visit?
Alex was standing at my door when I came upstairs. “Jordan,” he began in that particular tone that bordered on apology—but not quite.
“Better hurry, Alex,” I said. “Doreen tells me we’re going to the Rock of Cashel. I can be downstairs in ten. Does that work? Doreen didn’t give me your exact timetable.” Alex looked as if he would speak, but he simply pursed his lips and nodded, and I muttered, “Oh, it’s all right.”
Doreen, who had visited the attraction previously, and Alex, with his fistful of brochures, provided me with a comprehensive lesson on the historic site as I drove the twenty-five kilometers, mostly on the M8. Even with my head full of facts, the magnificent icon made my breath catch when it came into view, some distance from the town.
Doreen, leaning between us from the back seat—though I had mentioned the seatbelt to her several times—said, “There ’tis, like the Devil dropped it from the sky, don’t you see?” She’d told us the legend, that the Devil was flying overhead and saw St. Patrick founding a new church, and in his anger, he dropped the Rock, creating the spectacular sight.
“What a photo op! Alex, get your camera,” I said.
“Ah, you’ll have plenty of chances for pictures,” Doreen said, “from anywhere in town.”
“But this view! So majestic.”
“Watch the road, Jordan. I’ll take care of the photos,” Alex said, raising the camera for a shot. I slowed the car to a crawl, until I realized I was holding up a string of cars behind me.
As she had done in Kilkenny, Doreen gave directions for parking in the vibrant little town. I had to admit that whether the Rock of Cashel was Doreen’s idea or Alex’s, it was an excellent one. “This is a tour I don’t mind taking again,” Doreen said. “It starts at the Tourist Office, there at the Town Hall.” She led the way, walking at a brisk pace past quaint little shops. I took advantage of the photo ops everywhere. My first shot was of the huge Celtic cross in the Victorian town center.
Though I was expecting a tour guide, I was glad to see we would be purchasing an audio tour, using headphones. “This is nice,” I said. “It allows each of us to speed up or slow down.”
Doreen said, “We should all stay together, don’t you think?”
Alex glanced at me and then fixed Doreen with a serious look. “I don’t want to make you ladies wait for me. Maybe we should just decide on a meeting place and a certain time for all of us to come back together.”
Thank you, Alex! For all the times I was annoyed with him, I had to say he’d made remarkable progress since we’d first traveled together. He could listen to a tour guide drone on all day, the more intricate the details, the better, and he’d expected me to do the same. Now he seemed to accept that whether I was touring a museum or a town, I was happier making my own discoveries. The audio tour was the perfect tool for someone with my particular attention span—short or long, depending on whether I was being active or passive.
But Doreen was not easily put off. “Oh, you’re every bit as fit as we are,” she said with a playful slap on Alex’s arm. “No reason you can’t keep up. You had no trouble on the Kilmacoliver Walk.”
“You’re kind to say so, Doreen, but I meant that I’ll be making notes. Jordan will be taking photos—from an architect’s vantage point—and you should feel free to do whatever you like as well.” He smiled, and I was certain he was certain he’d made his point.
“I’ll just stay with you then,” Doreen said. “You take all the time you want, and don’t worry your head about me.”
I would have been more amused if Alex had not made the effort to liberate me from Doreen’s cloying presence—and now he was stuck with her. “I won’t get too far off track,” I promised, “but if we happen to get separated, let’s meet at the Heritage Centre.” The Heritage Centre Museum, Tourist Information Office, and Town Hall were all in the same general locale. Alex had read a description of the museum from his brochure. Not only did it house a craft shop, featuring local textiles, but it also featured a full-scale model of the town of Cashel in the 1640s. That was on my list of things to see, and I wouldn’t want to be hurried.
“It’s settled then. We should get started,” Alex said. He put on his earphones and turned on the audio. Doreen did so, too, but with some hesitation. It meant she had to stop talking.
The first point of interest—and all three of us stopped to take notice—was the main entrance of the Town Hall, where the stocks from the late 1700s and 1800s remained. At that time, it was customary for the townspeople to take matters into their own hands, throwing rotting vegetables and eggs at the lawbreaker detained in the stocks. The narrator on the audio tour suggested that this kind of public discipline might be just the thing for delinquents and petty criminals in modern times, as it was then. Everyone on the tour—maybe fifteen in all—smiled at almost the same time. We were all just getting started, all at the beginning of the recording.
But at that point, several tourists hiked ahead at a fast clip, clearly heading up the steep path toward the castle ruins that dominated everything. That was my inclination as well. Alex was scribbling in his little notebook, with Doreen at his side, blissfully content to stroll at a snail’s pace if her placid expression was any indication. I doubted they would notice if I forged on ahead. Still, I found myself stopping at each shop along the long, steep path, perusing linens, woolens, and jewelry, waiting, making sure Alex and Doreen were not too far behind.
“Cashel, known as the City of Kings, has a glorious past. Kings of the Munster Province ruled from the Rock for five hundred years until, in 1101, the king handed over his fortress to the Bishop of Limerick,” explained the female narrator with a most engaging Irish accent. I found myself more intrigued than I had anticipated as she described significant events associated with the Rock of Cashel, events that had helped shape Ireland’s history, from the stirring speech by Daniel O’Connell, the great Irish liberator, in 1847, to Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 2011. “A concert by John McCormack in 1929 might be called the first mass pop concert,” said the narrator. “The famous Irish tenor sang to some 25,000 to 40,000 fans from the Rock of Cashel.” Here, St. Patrick first used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity, and Arthur Guinness was said to have developed his famous brew at Cashel. All of it fascinating!
I looked over my shoulder and saw Alex and Doreen making their way past the Irish woolens shop. No reason for me to wait for them to catch up.
Up ahead, the ancient ruins beckoned.
Most of the buildings on the site dated back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Walking through and around the limestone remains, perusing what was called “one of the finest collections of medieval art and architecture in the world,” I found the audio tour a tremendous asset. Alex would be astonished when I told him how much I was enjoying the tour.
Sometime later, I heard him call my name. I was outside, taking photos of the rolling pastures and the town of Cashel below. A little break from the helpful narrator. I turned and saw Alex and Doreen remove their headphones. Alex retrieved his handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“Just a little out of breath.”
I thought of the angina attack Alex suffered in Provence, the night after he had walked up a steep path, but that hike was much longer than the one from the town center to the castle ruins.
“I can almost see those wheels turning in your mind, Jordan,” Alex said. “Please, don’t worry about me. I may have let myself get overheated, but, really, it’s nothing serious.”
His cheeks were flushed, but I knew not to argue. Doreen rolled her eyes as if to say, Didn’t I tell him? I looked around for a section of rock wall that was low enough for sitting, and Alex didn’t balk at my suggestion. “Perfect for viewing the Golden Vale of South Tipperary,” I said, stretching out my hand to indicate the encircling plain that seemed to extend forever. Alex raised his eyebrows in surprise. Yes, I had been paying attention. I returned a smile.
I busied myself capturing the panoramic scene on film: the little town with its charming houses, the sheep in the green pastures, low rock walls and narrow roads making patterns throughout the valley, all of it set under a clear blue sky. After a cool morning, the day had warmed up and the breeze was mild. I didn’t mind sitting here as long as Alex needed to rest.
But that wasn’t long. He stood up and consulted a map of the structure. “I understand the oldest building here is the eleventh-century Round Tower,” he said. “The rocks were laid without mortar. You have to see that, Jordan.”
I frowned. “I did! I was going to show off and tell you all about the dry stone method.”
“We must see the original St. Patrick’s cross,” Doreen said, leading the way.
We all put on our headphones.
An hour passed before we knew it, much of the time spent in Cormac’s Chapel, with its magnificent vaulted ceiling and Romanesque frescoes, the oldest wall paintings in Ireland, and an exquisitely carved sarcophagus that might be the tomb of King Cormac himself, or possibly his brother. Alex—and Doreen, sticking close by him—lingered in the museum of the Hall of the Vicars Choral, where artifacts excavated from the site were on display, while I gravitated to the five-story Tower House and the Cathedral with its lancet windows and ornate wall tombs. Eventually, all of us viewed everything. It was early afternoon before we made our way down the hill. We had a hearty lunch—shepherd’s pie, in my case—at one of the restaurants on Main Street, shared a pot of tea, and recalled for each other the highlights of the day so far.
Alex seemed fine, after the earlier episode of “overheating,” but I said, “We need to give ourselves some time to unwind before we go to Molly’s performance this evening.”
“I’m quite unwound,” Alex said, lifting his cup of steaming tea, “and there’s so much else to see. The Folk Village is supposed to have an excellent reconstruction of shops and houses from the past. Some of the finest examples of thatched roofs in Ireland, I understand.” We compromised. Alex went to Folk Village, and I went to the Heritage Centre, specifically to see the model of Cashel as it was in the 1640s. Doreen elected to accompany me, saying that she’d seen the Folk Village on her previous visit and didn’t care to pay admission again.
As we headed toward the museum, she said, “Your uncle is a dear man, sure as the day is long, but he is a wee bit stubborn, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes,” I said. She didn’t know the half of it.
We arrived at Shepherds in the middle of a “row,” as Helen would have called it. The door to the office behind Reception was ajar, and voices were easy to hear.
“We just got back! Don’t I get to take a breath before you put me to work?” The petulant Enya, no doubt.
“I have to go to the market.” Grace’s calmer voice. “Little Jimmie will wake up any time now, and I’m just asking you to take care of him till I get back. He’ll need his snack. You know the routine, Enya. It’s not so hard.”
“We’ll see to Little Jimmie. It’s not a problem, Mam.” Patrick’s voice.
“It is a problem! You never take my side,” Enya complained.
“We had a night in town, Enya.”
“So I’m being punished for having some fun? And where’s Colin, by the way? He’s always sneaking out somewhere.”
“My God, Enya!” Patrick raised his voice.
“I’ll be as quick as I can.” Grace came out of the room and closed the door behind her. By this time Alex and I were nearing the top of the stairs. We might have already been out of earshot, but I was following Alex, who was taking each stair with a heavy step, slowing our progress. Doreen had entered the other wing by a door that stayed unlocked during the day.
Grace saw us and called up to us. “I apologize. Just trying to get away to buy the week’s groceries. I usually shop on Friday, so I’m running out of everything.”
I stopped on the stairs and turned to look down at her. Friday morning had started with the police at the door, asking for Bridget. Grace had spent much of the day waiting, wondering whether her daughter would be arrested for murder. No wonder she hadn’t bought groceries.
“Would you like for me to go to the market with you?” I said.
“Jordan, you simply won’t behave like our guest.”
“I thought we’d covered that. As a matter of fact, I need some fruit and water and granola bars to take on our day trips, to keep our energy up.” My mind flashed back to Alex’s damp brow and flushed cheeks. I saw he had gone on to his room. “Let me tell Alex where I’m going.”
Grace didn’t object. She simply said, “I have to get my list.”
I knocked on Alex’s door, and he called for me to come in. He was already sitting on the bed, taking off his shoes. I fussed over him for a minute, worried that the visit to the Rock of Cashel had been too much, but I gave up when he lay back on top of the covers and said, “I’m taking care of myself, Jordan. Now please—stop acting like my nursemaid. I just need you to go, so I can take a nap!” He sounded quite vigorous.
I left him to his rest and turned in the hall to see Ian Haverty in his doorway.
“I’ve been listening for you to come in,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Molly has a ticket for you, so we’re on for tonight.” I walked over to him, keeping my voice just above a whisper. Alex’s door was closed but sound carried easily through the thin walls, a product of the renovation Colin had described. “Alex is trying to nap.”
“I heard,” he said.
I studied his face, his tousled hair. He looked as if he’d spent the day in bed.
“How’s your arm?”
He touched his sleeve. “Sore is all. Grace cleaned the wound again today.”
Ian’s expression was worrisome. He must have needed to tell me something, but I knew Grace was waiting for me. I said, “Grace and I are going to the grocery, but I’ll check with you when I get back—when I find out what time the performance starts.”
“Ah—sorry.” He stepped back into his room. “Don’t let me keep you.”
And then I couldn’t resist asking, “Is something wrong, Ian?”
I was surprised by his answer: “Yes, I think so.” He added, “But it can wait till tonight. I’m looking forward to getting out of my room.”
On the way to buy groceries, Grace said, “How could Enya say that Colin is always ‘sneaking off’? What a little bitch she is! Forgive me for that, Jordan, but Colin has been nothing but kind to our spoiled daughter-in-law. As for sneaking off today, he went out into the country to see someone about a used mower. Ours keeps breaking down. It doesn’t make sense to keep buying parts—but used mowers aren’t cheap.” This was another time that Grace had stopped before delving too deeply into their financial situation. She’d lifted her shoulders and laughed—a laugh without much merriment in it. “Oh, the joys of running a country inn!”
It felt a little like a girls’ afternoon out. Grace was more relaxed by the time we returned. Patrick and Enya were in the backyard, swinging Little Jimmie. Grace said in a near-whisper, “You might be right, Jordan. Maybe Enya would like a baby of her own.”
“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “You can’t do anything about that.”
“No, I can’t!” This time her laugh was bright.
In my room, as I was choosing what to wear to the concert, my phone jingled. I checked the caller ID. Though “Caller Unknown” appeared, I recognized the string of digits, the country code—France—and the city code—Paris.
The number belonged to Paul Broussard.
I let the phone ring and ring and ring, and then I let the message go to voice mail.
Monsieur Broussard, wealthy and charming patron of the arts—how complicated it was with this man! We’d had an adventure and almost a romance in Provence. Almost. We’d danced under the stars. He’d saved my life. Our time together ran out, but there would be another chance for us—there was supposed to be another chance. In Savannah, his calls made me a little woozy, like a teenager, the sound of his voice: It won’t be long now, Jordan, and this time we will not be foolish. We will not let anything get in our way.
In January he came to the States to promote an extraordinary young artist named Emil. The first gallery showing was in New York. With Alex’s influence, a gallery in Atlanta also showed Emil’s work. There was a fabulous, highly successful reception. Emil was there, smiling his shy smile, expressing great appreciation for everyone’s helpfulness. Alex was there. I was there. I had waited three months for that night. But Paul Broussard was not there.
An urgent personal matter, he had said.
Another call two weeks later, and he had said, It is not possible yet to explain everything, but please trust me.
Now I went to voice mail and felt that familiar stitch in my chest when he spoke. Jordan, I hope you will not be too angry with me. I called your home in an attempt to reach you. Your daughter said you were in Ireland. Do not blame her. If you must, blame me for my insistence. It is not a long flight from Paris to Dublin, and I want very much to see you. Please, call me.
A pause, and then Au revoir, Jordan. My lips formed a silent, “Au revoir, Paul.”