CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Just in time for Mass

They sat huddled foetally together gazing at the trembling Amtashtalee. Cúchulainn, with an impatient sweep of his arm sent the cloak flying, rose to his feet and gazed boldly about him while the others remained on the ground, their eyes clamped tightly shut.  He calmly surveyed their new surroundings.

"You can look now."

Before them lay a long low building with great expanse of glass windows set in its walls.

To their left, there was a straggle of oddly dressed men shuffling around a gravel path bordering a lush green sward. The grass, Cúchulainn noted, had been closely shorn, its edges trimmed sharp as a sword edge. Adding to the celestial atmosphere, birds sang joyously in the trees and in the clipped yew hedges of its perimeter. It could have been Tír na nÓg, land of eternal youth, he thought, except for the wide range of ages he saw about him.

There were old men, some bent and shuffling. There were other men, not so young and there were men who were decidedly youthful. Most of them did not react predictably to the strange epiphany on their lawn. Only one or two pointed lazily, eyebrows raised in mild surprise.

Amtashtalee leaped to his feet with a surprising agility and spreading his arms wide he shouted to the sky:

"Ah bulls-eye, right on the button, my favourite resort Ossageel! This is where I often come to rest, indeed, I'm sure I shall come here to die it is so peaceful with its people so gentle, so pure of heart and mind."

Mickser gasped.

"There's somethin' familiar about this place ...."

Amtashtalee smiled.

Of course there is, have you forgotten our refuge from the demon, our dry-dock?"

"Oh yes of course, dat was the demon dat landed me at the wrong match in the wrong millennium then abandon me!"

Before Amtashtalee could respond, Mickser raised his eyebrows in an expression of delighted recognition.

A smiling old man hurried to greet them arms outspread in greeting, scant white hair flying like wisps of smoke.

"Looka who it is," cried Mickser, "it's oul' Jock O'Doris! He used to be our parish priest. A beautiful, kind man but a shockin' hoor for the dhrop o' the craithur! What's he doin' here, I wonder?"

Jock O'Doris threw himself into Mickser's arms with a sobbing laugh.

"Oh, Michael, my darlin' lad! Is it yerself that's in it at all, at all, at all?"

He turned to Amtashtalee.

"And you too, gentle Time Itinerant, child of eternity, lost in the infinity of the time-space continuum, Lord rescue your dear soul!"

The old priest shook his head with mock disapproval.

"Away carousing the nights away and slumbering 'til sunset as usual were ye?" Naughty boys! Missed Mass this lovely Sunday too I'll bet. Here, I'll tell ye what, I'll say a special Mass for ye in my room. What do ye say? Mind you, ye'll have to accept my Tridentine Rite. God and I have an agreement about that."

"Tridentine?" echoed Cúchulainn, his mind still in the Prebabel mode.

"Yeah," said Mickser, with a wicked wink. "Y'see Father Jock has only de tree teet in the front, well spaced out, as ye can see. Now from your studies of the Latin y'll realise that Tridentine means havin' tree teet', are y'with me? D'ye folly? Nora maine?"

"A little problem though," the old priest wheezed addressing Cúchulainn, his eyes twinkling moistly.

"And how might we be of help?" offered Homofeeb warming immediately to this gentle little man.

"I have no chalice," continued Father Jock with a sad smile and a shrug of helplessness. "They took it away from me."

With a dramatic flourish, Cúchulainn conjured Maeve's gold chalice from the folds of his cloak.

"Would this be worthy of your purpose, Cathbhad?"

"What did you call me son?"

"Cath .... Oh, forgive me," blurted Cúchulainn, his face reddening, "you reminded me of someone else."

Father Jock stared curiously at the Ulsterman for a moment, then his gaze drifted to the chalice and the Ulsterman's gaff instantly forgotten. His face became illuminated with joy as with trembling hands he reached for the magnificent vessel, gift of a pagan queen in a time before St Patrick came to bless the land.

"Oh, what exquisite craftsmanship, nay artistry, what could be more worthy a container for the essence of Our Blessed Saviour?"

As the old man examined the chalice, holding it up to the sunlight and turning it this way and that, Cúchulainn whispered furtively to Mickser.

"What strange rite does he wish to perform with my chalice? Is it some kind of sacrifice to a cruel god?"

Mickser croaked.

"Arra, don't fret yourself avic, it is a sacrifice of de most gentle symbolic kind to de great and gentle God of Love. Anyway, isn't he only a sweet old man? And sure it costs nothing to please him."

"Yes, I suppose you're right, let's make an old man happy. What a strange name. Deoch a' Dorais. In the Gaelic it means...."

"Aye, it means a parting cup, one for the road."

"Literally, drink of the door."

"Exactly, when he would call to our house on visitation like, me mother would bring out de bottle and whisper to him in de hall. Ye'll have a wee one t' warm y' for de road Father, a wee deoch a' dorais, like."

"Well the name stuck, and he never minded."
   
The group of time-travellers fell in behind the priest and marched off towards a cluster of low buildings and gathered in the priest's small, sparsely furnished bedroom filled with a profusion of painted statues and colourful pictures.

Father Jock folded a white sheet, spread it over a small chest of drawers under the window and placed Cúchulainn's chalice on this makeshift altar. Next he produced two brass candlesticks, an empty jam jar, and two partly used candles from the top drawer and placed them on either side of the chalice. Picking some glass vessels from the same drawer, he paused for a moment. Turning and holding them out to the gathering he gave another of his eloquent shrugs and made a drinking gesture..

"Oh, and, just one other small matter ...."

Mickser reached under the folds of his ragged cloak, and in pantomime of Cúchulainn's conjuring produced a tall earthenware flagon.

"This should do grand, father."

With trembling hands the old priest took a sip from the bottle and, eyes closed, cheeks sucked in, swirled it around in his mouth, judiciously savouring it.

Mickser grinned as Father Jock produced a white alb and a colourfully embroidered red chasuble from the middle drawer of the chest and donned them with an excited alacrity. Holding out a purple stole in a gesture of invitation he asked gently:

"Confession anybody?"

Mickser laughing, made a grandiloquent no score' gesture with both arms.

"Y'must be jokin' Father, d'ye want us to be here for de next fortnight? Sure isn't it two tousind years since me last Confession!"

The old priest made a gathering-in gesture

"Come along then. Introibo ad altare Dei," he intoned turning to his altar.

Cúchulainn started slightly at the flare as the priest struck a match and lit the candles. He had never before seen fire conjured so casually. All through the celebration the weary Ulster warrior felt enveloped in a great peace. Such was the rapturous tranquillity that he did not trouble to question it as to meaning or source.

Moreover, it was evidently a shared experience as it seemed to have the same effect on the others ...

Now in a less stressful state of mind Mickser took the time travellers to an area of Hurdlestown, an area in which he said, young people had a keen interest in horses.

A spacious green area encircled by modest semi-detached houses with small railed-in front gardens. Some were strewn with an assortment of ruined, rusting and rotting objects, mostly unidentifiable to the men of Eamhain Macha: bicycle frames red with rust, discarded motor tyres, twisted bedsprings tested to destruction, bottles, cans, plastic bags and wind-borne paper.

As if in declaration of a good-humoured tolerance of these signs of squalor, the air was filled with a noisy concert of more familiar, comforting sounds, the shouts of playing children intermingled with barking of dogs and the muffled sound of horses galloping on the green.

Crowds of small children were playing on swings, seesaws and slides in a small, fenced-off area.  At the far side of the green a group of small, grimy boys were clambering in and out of the burnt-out shells of several motor cars. Older, more boisterous boys were playing football with the earnestness of World Cup finalists, some posturing, spitting and shouting in language that defied Prebabelian.

A sudden gust of wind lofted an armada of coloured sweet wrappers, potato crisp packets and ballooning supermarket bags. The page of a comic landing on the pavement near Cúchulainn's feet sparked a moment of deja vu, too brief to process. Inexplicably it reminded him of Emer in a white coat fleeting past a high window and it whispered tantalisingly to him of a different time and place, but Mickser broke his thoughts with a proprietorial gesture.

"Here we are now," he said, "dis is de place I was tellin' yiz about, Copplestown or Capaill meaning horse, it's a good a place as any t'start de search for Grey Macha.

Yes, that is all very well, but if Cúchulainn does not find me and get this brute off my back soon, I will be done for! Log on every Sunday for further chapters.