Read The Celtic Riddle for Free Online Page B

necessary,
Michael returned, soaking wet and very dirty, a pile of dark lumps
about the size and shape of bricks in his arms. "Turf," he said,
noticing my expression. "You'll need to get more, Mr. Stewart. I had to
crawl on my hands and knees to reach the last of it under the house.
We'll have a fire." In a few minutes he had the fire smouldering away,
and stood, his back to it, drying out. Turf, I decided, was the famous
Irish peat.
    "Oh, I forgot," Michael said suddenly, taking a rather sodden piece
of paper out of his shirt pocket. "My clue. I didn't tell the others
because they wouldn't tell after you told them yours. They may get over
it," he added. "He gave them hard of his tongue, Mr. Byrne did, on that
video. Maybe put them a bit out of sorts. Anyway, here it is: The
furious wave."
    "I am the sea-swell. The furious wave," I said, very much doubting
that the family would get over it, as Michael hoped. They seemed way
too set in their miserable ways for that. "How very obscure. And
speaking of obscure, who, by the way, is Padraig Gilhooly?"
    Dead silence in the room: Breeta's hand paused in midstroke over the
head of the tortoise.
    "Nobody," said Michael. "Now, my clue has a two beside it. Do you
think that means something?" Deft change of topic, that was.
    "I don't know," said Alex, taking his envelope out too. "Mine has a
one."
    "Of course it means something," I said, abandoning my attempt to
ferret out Gilhooly. "The clues are in some order. Eamon Byrne was, I
surmise from his comments on the video, occasionally nasty as they may
have been, a reasonably astute judge of character." I hesitated for a
moment before going on, realizing that he had judged Breeta too. She
gave no indication that she was paying attention at all, though, just
went on stroking the head of the tortoise in a monotonous way.
    "Knowing you both, he assumed you'd give your clue first, Alex, and
that you, Michael, would be next."
    "But what's it mean?" Michael said.
    We, and by we I refer to the three of us, Breeta continuing to
pretend we weren't there, went on for a few minutes, speculating about
what it might mean. It was pleasant enough with the flames licking
around the turf, the rain pattering against the windows, the Bushmills
sliding down quite nicely, and entertaining, in a kind of mindless way,
to try to guess what this was all about: a game of twenty questions
with the person who knew the answer gone from this world.
    Michael was particularly enthusiastic. "Maybe it's about a
shipwreck, some old ship off the coast here loaded with gold bullion,"
he said.
    "Could be," Alex agreed.
    "But it's the sea-swell and furious wave, both on top, and not under
the ocean. I wonder if we have to take it literally. Perhaps its an
anagram, a cryptic clue of some sort."
    Breeta sighed loudly. "It's a poem," she said, looking at the three
of us as if we were members of a subhuman species, several notches
below that of the pet she still held in her arms.
    We all looked at her. "Ah, come now, Bree," Michael said in an
exasperated tone. "Don't just say 'it's a poem' and leave it at that.
What poem? What's the rest of it?"
    Still Breeta said nothing. I felt like shaking her until her eyes
bugged out, but resolved not to get emotionally involved in all this.
Alex had his lovely little cottage, I told him, he'd done his part in
giving the rest of them his clue, and now we should get back to having
a holiday and ignore this horrid family.
    " 'Song of Amairgen,' " she said finally.
    "What?" we all said.
    " 'Song of Amairgen.' Pronounced Av-ar-hin, spelled A-m-a-i-r-g-e-n,
or sometimes A-m-h-a-i-r-g-h-i-n. It's very old. Amairgen was supposed
to be a file, that is a poet, of the Milesians, the first Celt to set
foot on Irish soil. He's claimed to have chanted this poem when he
first stepped off the boat in Ireland. It's all bullshit, of course."
    "Who are, or were, the Milesians?"
    "Don't you know anything?" Breeta replied. My, she was an annoying
young woman. I