Do Fish Wear Pyjamas? Page 3

  Gooey still thought it all to be very strange, but she took off a small badge from her maroon dress, or what was left of her maroon dress she thought sadly, covered it gently with both hands and closed her eyes.

  ‘Do Fish Wear Pyjamas?’ she thought, but quickly put that from her mind. That was only a silly question that she and Bebob had made up — they needed to find the Book.

  She closed her eyes tightly, knelt beside her friend, and asked this unknown sainted lady for help.

  “Can you help us find The Great Book of Kildare?” she asked respectfully, and wished that it might be so with all her might.

  A small clap of thunder sounded at that very moment, announcing a change in the weather.

  Bridin explained, how, ‘Brigid had come to Kildare a very long time ago; that she was a very holy and good person and that she had looked after the poor and the sick. Brigid was known for her kindness and her great and unusual deeds or miracles. She had been made a saint because of them, a saint being the holiest of holy people. But there was also the story of Brigid the pagan Goddess a story of Ireland which reached back to the dawn of time and some believed that the Brigid of Kildare was indeed a combination of these two traditions. Even though so much time had passed, people still came here to Kildare, and especially to this well, to pray to her and to ask her for help and guidance. She is the Patroness of Ireland, Mother of the Gaels — Mother of all the Irish.’

  ‘Well I suppose it couldn’t hurt,’ thought Gooey as she wished again and when they were finished the girls stood once more. Gooey now moved a little closer to the centre of the garden to get a good look at the sculpture of Brigid. From behind her, Bridin explained that it had been sculpted by local artist Annette McCormack and that it captured the very essence of Brigid, as Christian saint and pagan Goddess. It really was beautiful and it prompted Gooey to make another wish —

  “Do you have the Book?” she pleaded in her mind, her beautiful fire-coloured eyes hidden behind firmly closed lids.

  Suddenly the most beautiful female voice she had ever heard filled her head, a tiny, silky whisper like the wind on the Lakes at home.

  “Underneath the Dead-man’s stone in the church of the Nights Hospital.”

  It made no sense to Gooey though it was as plain as the whiskers on her chin. She listened again but there was nothing; and again, but nothing. Next thing she found herself shaking as another piercing voice interrupted the silence.

  “GOOOO……EEEEEEEEEY.” It was Bridin, of course.

  She had watched Gooey stop in front of the statue and go into a sort of trance. Bridin immediately came to the rescue and gave her a good shaking — it seemed to work.

  Gooey came back with a start to find her friend shaking the living daylights out of her — or at least that’s how Bridin described it as they left the well to join the boys. Gooey tried to explain what had happened as she stood before the statue of St. Brigid and she repeated the words she had heard, to Bridin.

  “Underneath the Dead-man’s stone in the church of the Nights Hospital.”

  Bridin thought long and hard about it but could make no sense of it either. She figured out that it would have been Knights rather than Nights and seemed to remember there were Knights in Kildare once but wasn’t 100% sure. At the same time she was pretty sure there were a lot of dead men’s stones in the Black Abbey — it was after all a graveyard, and she wondered how they would ever find the right one — maybe the boys would know!

  CHAPTER SIX

  GONZO AND BEBOB AT THE BLACK ABBEY

  Gonzo and Bebob had a hard time of it since their escape from Scoil na Manistreach. They had been hidden by the cart at the back gate until school was underway and then simply sneaked out the gate as soon as it seemed quiet enough to do so. The trouble was, that the school was directly across the road from the Academy or boys secondary school. Just as they had made it through the gate the doors of the other school opened and four or five teachers came through on their way to a meeting. Bebob and Gonzo threw themselves into the bushes at the front of the secondary school but had no time to figure out which bushes were the best to hide in. They chose badly and were prodded, cut and scraped by the bristly bushes at the road’s edge. To make things worse, two of the teachers stood talking for at least ten minutes and they had to stay frozen amidst the thorny bushes and could not make a sound. As soon as the teachers were gone they made their way down Academy Street and Pound Green, to St. Brigid’s Church and St. Brigid’s Square, rubbing their wounds as they went. Bebob pulled thorns and weeds from his hairy fingers; his little dragon-like tail, dirty and bruised from landing hard on his backside.

  It seemed like there were people everywhere and the boys were dropping and hiding every second or two. Bebob was morphing into so many different things so quickly that he began to feel a little light headed and he knew he needed to rest from shapeshifting. Gonzo could tell his friend was tiring and he pulled him inside ‘The Cottage’ yard and they jumped the back wall into a number of gardens to make their way behind the dispensary and Valetta House to the open ground opposite ALDI supermarket, alongside Tully Road towards the motorway. They were now in ‘The Hundred Acres’ and would have to re-surface near the bridge because this land was dissected by the motorway, but, at least for the moment, it was good open country with a little bit of cover. This allowed them to move fast but remain hidden behind the hedge.

  They had acquired a number of new cuts and bruises as they made their way through the nettles, briars, rubbish tips and broken tools in the bottom of the gardens and in the ditch alongside the hedge but, so far at least, they had gone undetected. Having checked it was clear, they climbed out onto the road near the motorway bridge but had to make a dash for it when they heard a car approaching fast — across the bridge and once more through the hedge and into the fields. Gonzo did not feel comfortable playing hookey from school and Bebob would have caused quite a commotion if discovered so they had to take this long way around — the scenic route if you would.

  Once more they were behind the hedges and fences in ‘The Hundred Acres’ but now on the land of the Irish National Stud and they could see the beautiful horses grazing in the fields; they could smell the earth and damp grass, the pleasing scent of the countryside. The boys made their way eventually to a field opposite The Black Abbey graveyard and moved into the brush in the corner which actually formed the junction where Tully Road intersected with the road the girls would be travelling on from Newtown Cross. After making doubly sure the coast was clear they sprang up and ran to the wooden fence that surrounded the old Black Abbey ruins. They vaulted over the fence, skipped up the stone steps in the wall beside the rusted wrought iron gate and bounded to the left of the central tower. There was no entrance to the tower from the front gate side but already they felt more secure by the fact that they were shielded by the walls, gravestones and trees of the Abbey graveyard. They made their way around the main ruin and entered it on the opposite side between the two gravestones that stood guard over the entrance. They were now completely hidden from view. Together they collapsed onto the floor of the old church ruin and breathed heavily for a few moments without saying a word. They just needed to catch their breaths. The smell of damp earth was stronger here and the air was cool. Light came mostly from above, through the top of the ruined tower as the roof had disappeared centuries ago. A second smaller doorway on the south side helped light the interior though it was still rather dusky at ground level, the tower ruin being fairly high. While you could almost taste the dampness of the earthen floor, and the whole place was open to the elements, it was for the most part pretty dry inside.

  Gonzo loved the old graveyard and ruins. It wasn’t so much to do with the history of it, but that it was a great place to explore and to create adventures and stories. He did however know a good deal about the history of The Black Abbey and he told Bebob a couple of things while they waited on the girls. He knew for instance that the Abbey had been built by Knights or Crusad
ers, monks who had built hospitals for pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. One of the most famous of all the Knights in all the world had been a guy called William Marshall and he had become Lord of Kildare. Because he had been a Crusader he probably invited these monks to Kildare — in fact, he had built the castle in the centre of town and he would have seen the advantage in having Knights here at Tully on the edge of Kildare. Sadly the Abbey had been sold off some 500 years ago and fell to ruin, but Gonzo liked to imagine what life had been like in Kildare at the time that the Normans had settled here at the end of the 12th century. He knew that these monks, these ‘Knights Hospitallers,’ as they were called, were in Kildare before 1212 A.D.

  While they waited, and Gonzo talked, Gonzo and Bebob explored the compact interior of the old ruin. It was all that remained of the original Abbey and had been the Abbey Church. They ran their hands carefully over the rough stone walls, searching for anything that might give them a clue about secret tunnels and the like. A tunnel from the inside of the church seemed like a clever thing to Gonzo, for if it were under attack then the monks could escape with their valuables. His great fear was that if a tunnel had led from the original Abbey then it may have been lost forever when the Abbey was pulled down to make a nice gentleman’s house a couple of hundred years ago. They searched over the same area again but nothing could be found. Nothing — unless you counted that odd looking loose stone about ten rows up in the corner near to the entrance.

  Bebob beckoned.

  “Push me up Gonzo,” he commanded, and soon he was standing almost on tippytoes (all six of them) on Gonzo’s shoulders. He stretched and stretched but could only barely touch it with his fluffy finger tips.

  “Can you not stretch out and shapeshift into a ladder or something,” asked Gonzo, but Bebob grunted that he had only ever mastered the art of morphing or blending into something that was already there — not the art of creating something out of nothing.

  But there was something strange about that stone. The more it remained out of reach the more it drew him towards it. His fingers were actually turning it, and as it turned he could see some small carving on it — a skull he thought but he could not be sure. It was just that tiniest bit out of his reach and then the whole world came tumbling down as Gonzo lost his footing and the two of them crashed to the ground in the centre of the church tower.

  For a split second they lay there panting — battered and bruised, but not broken! Then the earth started to tremble and the ground gave way beneath them. Maybe it had been the turning of the stone or the impact of the two of them falling, or maybe it was the two things combined but they found themselves falling once more — this time beneath the ground.

  It was in fact more of a slide than a fall as the earth slipped away on one side only and, quite quickly it must be said, the two boys, one from Kildare and one from The Land of Goo, tumbled into the darkness.

  They heard the water first, as it rushed on by, and then, SPLASH — they were wet. Immediately they feared they might drown or be swept away but as they trashed about in it they realised it was only a couple of inches deep. Both stood up, a little embarrassed at the sudden panic that had washed over them and, as they looked each other over, they burst out laughing. It might be true to say that they had not found the secret tunnel but that it had found them. They laughed and laughed without ever saying a word and the sounds bounced back off the stone walls and down into the darkness.

  It suddenly dawned on them that there was no obvious way out or up and as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness they were more than a little scared of the dark underground chamber they found themselves in.

  ‘The girls,’ thought Gonzo, and he prayed that they might hurry up and get to The Black Abbey to help them escape from the pit before the entrance closed and they were trapped forever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE DEAD KNIGHT’S TREASURE

  The girls at last reached The Black Abbey and they pushed the heavy, rusted gate inwards towards the ruin. They closed it again without thinking, as if to leave it open was to invite danger in. There they waited, but there was no sign of the boys.

  ‘Where could they be,’ thought Bridin and she was just about to ask Gooey to ‘check in’ with Bebob with her mind when they were both startled by a loud thump from the ruin. They ran around the old church to the main eastern entrance and were surprised to hear bursts of boyish laughter coming from inside. They slowed their pace and peered through the gravestones into the darkness as it fell silent again.

  “Bee..Bob,” stammered Gooey, and the words stumbled over each other before she recovered and demanded more forcibly, “Bebob is that you?”

  No answer, just some frantic whispering and shuffling about. The girls crept inside and were almost on top of the opening before they heard a voice shout up to them,

  “Girls, is that you? WAIT — STOP — don’t go any further — there’s a sort of cave or secret chamber in the floor and I think we’re trapped,” — it didn’t sound at all like Bebob to Gooey so it had to be the other boy — the one they called Gonzo.

  The girls froze, not so much because of a voice coming out of nowhere, — there did not seem to be any harm in that, at least not in the tone of the voice, but because they were afraid they would disappear into some sort of dungeon in the Abbey. As their eyes also became accustomed to the darkness they could see a dark opening near the far wall and realised that there was a sort of hinged doorway leading down into the earth. Rather than walking down to the opening they circled around from either side and peered down into the darkness — into the room below.

  Suddenly they were aware of two sets of eyes staring up at them which made their flesh go all cold and prickly and a shiver ran down their backs — one set of piercing blue eyes, and one strange set of eyes of blue, red, green and purple, — well at least they were strange looking to Bridin. She looked quickly at Gooey and realised she was smiling for Gooey recognised the wonderful colours of the eyes of her very best friend, Bebob, looking upwards out of the dark.

  “Hello you,” she said, “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

  “No trouble at all,” Bebob replied, “but a world full of adventure.”

  Now all four were laughing mostly with a great sense of relief that they had found each other and what appeared to be the secret tunnel they had set out to find.

  Gooey reached into her most beautiful baggy handbag-like-bag and brought out a marble-like circular grey stone. She brushed her lips against it and said a word or two quite softly — and then she dropped it, gently, into the hole in the ground. The stone blazed with light as if a star from the heavens above had been captured inside of it. The chamber beneath the old church ruins lit up in an instant.

  It was immediately obvious that this was not a secret tunnel for there was no exit of any kind and the water seemed to rush in, north to south, from the bottom of the stone walls on one side and depart in the same way on the opposite side of the chamber. The only thing in the room was in fact a large stone carving of an ancient Knight on a stone rectangular box, well apart from the centuries of dust and cobwebs, spiders and creepiecrawlies, that is.

  ‘Seems like a silly place to store something,’ thought Gonzo at first and then suddenly it dawned on him … ‘it was a coffin!’

  ‘No, …. a tomb.’

  A tomb, that had lain here for centuries undisturbed.

  Gonzo was very excited, and a little afraid. I mean you just didn’t normally mess with coffins did you? He wasn’t sure he really wanted anything to do with it at all in fact but Bebob was already beside it and Gonzo was not going to be outdone. They both began to examine it for clues to how it might help them in their quest and as they worked they told the girls how they had ‘found’ it — it all sounded a little more interesting and a little more dangerous than what had really happened, but then that was OK too. The girls in their turn told them how they had visited St. Brigid’s Well and the strange words
whispered to Gooey as she made her wish.

  “Underneath the Dead-man’s stone in the church of the Knights Hospital.”

  The words meant nothing to Bridin, Gooey or Bebob but you could almost hear the cogs and wheels turning in Gonzo’s mind as he searched for an answer he knew of old. And KALAMAZAM – it came to him just as Bebob asked,

  “Didn’t you tell me something about Hospitals?”

  Gonzo beamed with pride as he told them that The Black Abbey was set up by the monks of St. John and they had built hospitals for Pilgrims so the church of the Knights Hospital was the very one they were in.

  Bebob remembered the carving of the skull on the stone he had turned in the wall near the doorway and they all agreed that this must have been the ‘Dead-man’s stone.’

  So they were right where they were supposed to be, but what now? The boys searched every inch of the tomb with the figure of the Knight —

  “An effigy,” Gonzo had told them, “thats what that is.”

  They pinched the nose, prodded his ears, poked his eyes and tried to lift the massive sword that was carved into his hands and reached to his pointy Knights shoes. Nothing happened.

  “Maybe you need to say something,” said Bridin, “maybe there is a spell or charm or some sort of prayer, to wake the Knight and ask him for help.”

  The thoughts of waking the very large, fierce-looking, stone Knight, filled Gonzo with dread but then what could they do. They all spent the next few minutes, reciting rhymes and possible prayers and spells to St. Brigid, the Keepers of Books, all manner of medieval Knights and Hospitals, even a Dead-man’s song or two to try and get some sort of a reaction but again….Nothing!

  Bebob was propped against the tomb, his back to it and his hands hooked along the ledge of the upper portion, just under the Knight when he felt a slight breeze.