The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell Page B

accepted their invitation into their mystery. She would neither ignore nor deny their presence. They were welcome in her castle. She would make no attempt to exorcise them from her home or forbid them what comforts they might find at her hearth. And if there were any particular demands they had come to make, she would do what she could to fulfill them.
    Down the stone stair she went, leaving the sea to insanities of its own. When she made the turn onto the landing, she stopped. Brid, who had been busy with her loom, also stopped, as did Taddy with his harp. No one moved. But when the moment had passed, Brid took up her task again, and Taddy—as if there had been only a marked pause in the score of the music he was playing—resumed his silent strumming.
    Rather than continue through to the steps on the other side of the room, Kitty waited and watched. Brid continued to be caught up in the rhythms of her weaving, Taddy intent on rhythms of his own, the work-worn fingers delicate in their plucking and strumming. Even the sea seemed to have become silent. For Kitty there was only the throb of her own blood to reassure her that she too had not been taken into the realm of the dead. She wondered if she could—or if she should—speak to them. After pondering this for no more than three seconds, she crossed the landing, looking at neither of them, and continued on down the narrow winding stair to the no-less-mystifying world awaiting at her computer. Before she could confront Maggie Tulliver, however, she would confront her husband.
    But what if he said they must leave, that the castle had obviously overheated her brain, already fevered even in its moments of serenity. She reveled in the castle. She drew sustenance from its stones. The rough-hewn rafters raised her spirits. The view of the sea from the turret battlements made possible this remove inland from the cliffs upon which her family home had been built, the cliffs that had betrayed her by letting her house tumble into the sea, taking with it her first forays into the corrections of The Mill on the Floss, a loss she could barely sustain.
    Here in the castle she had found her talents awaiting her. Her turret room now held captive the characters she’d sought, the imaginings needed to supplant the misguided author’s insufficiencies, the proper plot lines the muses had withheld from George Eliot but revealed to Kitty McCloud, if only she could discern them. Also, for her, the castle pastures were indeed greener, the mire muckier, the fields more fertile. The great hall expanded her spirit—even if it had been given over to the cows and to the pig. The dank cellars inspired in her enough gloom to satisfy the most morbid of her Irish sensibilities. Within these precincts she felt she was in possession at last of this emerald isle, this teeming womb of holy saints, this splendor thrust up by the all-creating sea, this seat of royal Maeve, this mystery, this Ireland.
    If Kieran insisted they leave, she would, of course, refuse. That was a given well beyond dispute. Even the very thought would not be entertained or considered, much less discussed. It was this realization that resolved the issue: the potential for disagreement. Immediately she relished the idea. A whole new area of contention. What more could she want?
    She found him on the plot east of the castle where he’d been preparing the earth for a planting. He was humming a tune and dropping seeds along a furrow he’d dug in the harsh soil.
    â€œIs it cabbage?”
    â€œCabbage.” He continued to let the seeds sift from his hand.
    â€œWill they grow, do you think?” she asked.
    â€œWe’ll find out.”
    â€œYes, we’ll find out.”
    Kieran stood up straight and dusted the last of the seeds from his hand, letting them fall where they might.
    Still reluctant to proceed with her mission, Kitty searched her brain for an acceptable subject that might occupy at