The Sin Eater(5)

There was nothing. The back of the photo had splodgy brown marks, but no one had written on it to say who this was or when or where the photo had been taken. Benedict sat down on the window sill to think. This was his great-grandfather’s house and the aunts had said there were photographs of him up here. So there was only one person this could be. Declan Doyle, his great-grandfather.

Benedict put the photograph back in its frame and replaced it on the dressing table. He wanted to run out of the room, but he did not want any of the people downstairs to see him shaking and on the verge of tears. He would stay here a little longer until he felt better.

The mirror on the dressing table was reflecting the photograph of Declan. It was odd how reflections changed things. Even this room looked different in the mirror – it was smaller and the walls were darker. If you narrowed your eyes, you could even think you were seeing a fire burning in a small grate. Benedict quite liked seeing this, because people did not have fires like that any more. He kept his eyes half-shut for a while, then he opened them, expecting to see this bedroom reflected in the glass. But it was not. He could still see the fire-lit room. There was a bright red rug in front of the fire and a small table and two chairs. Standing by the fireplace, its leaping light behind him, was the man from the photograph. Declan.

Benedict shrank back against the window pane. He would not be frightened. He could not be hurt by somebody who was inside a mirror. But he ached with the pain of wanting Mum, because she would have put her arms round him and told him he was safe from everything bad in the world. Dad would have said, in his quiet way, that all you had to do with things that tried to frighten you was make a rude face at them and they ran away like the cowards they were.

Was that fire-lit room where Declan had lived? Aunt Lyn had said Declan was Irish – would the cottage be in Ireland?

At once a soft silvery whisper seemed to hiss into the room.

‘Yes, it’s in Ireland, Benedict, it’s on the very edge of Ireland’s west coast, near the Cliffs of Moher . . . They’re wild and dark, those cliffs, and the Atlantic Ocean lashes against them forever and there’s the cold music of the sidhe inside the ocean, and the sound of screeching gulls, like wailing banshees, or souls shut out of heaven . . .’

Benedict looked round the room in fear, but there was no one there.

‘And there’s an ancient watchtower built by one of Ireland’s High Kings, and they say the devil himself prowls that stretch of the cliffs . . . That’s where it began, Benedict, inside that dark tower, reeking of evil . . . One hundred and twenty years ago, near enough . . .

‘We’d make up stories about that watchtower, Benedict – wouldn’t any child do that? We’d say to one another, “Let’s pretend . . .” ’

Let’s pretend . . . There it was, the spell that had taken Alice to that other world.

‘We’d pretend it was the ruinous halls of the High Kings, the last magical stones from the ancient kingdom of Tara . . . Or a giant’s castle – you know about giants, Benedict, you know how they have to be killed . . . And wouldn’t any child with half an ounce of spirit or adventure want to go up there, to find out what was really inside that old tower? I did, Benedict, I and a good friend I had, a boy I grew up with.’

The voice had a way of pronouncing things Benedict had never heard, and the words were broken-up like a crackly old radio, or as if they were coming from a long way off.

Greatly daring and having no idea if his own words could be heard, he said, ‘Did you do it? Go up to the tower?’

‘I did. Oh, I did, Benedict. I and my friend went up there. We thought we might find giants and ghosts, or princesses that had to be rescued from evil sorcerers and black enchantments. I’d have hacked my way through brambles and thick-thorn hedges for a princess even at that age. Wouldn’t anyone?’

‘Did you find those things? The giants and the kings and the princesses?’

‘No,’ said the soft voice. ‘We found something far worse.’





Ireland 1890s


Declan Doyle and Colm Rourke had always known they would one day brave the ancient watchtower on the Moher Cliffs. From the time they were very small, growing up in the tiny village of Kilglenn, they had agreed it was a mystery that must one day be solved. And then wouldn’t they be the toast of the entire village and half the villages around! Wouldn’t they have made their fortunes and have enough money to be off to London town, where it was said that you might almost dig up gold in the streets.

‘We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re properly grown-up,’ said Colm, and Declan, who followed Colm in most things, said they would, for sure, and they’d take Romilly with them.

Romilly. Colm’s cousin, a year younger, the most beautiful creature either of them had ever seen, although, as Declan pointed out, they had not in fact seen so very many girls, because anyone who was even half good-looking usually left Kilglenn for wider worlds.

‘We’ll leave as well, but not until we’ve managed to get inside the watchtower and see if we can make our fortunes from it,’ said Colm, grinning.

‘Even if we got in there, all we’d find was Father Sheehan, living there like a hermit. And I don’t want to meet him,’ said Declan firmly. ‘My father says he’s very wicked and the Church excommunicated him because of a woman.’