The Hill of Tara had been waiting for me since last year.

I had read about the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, said to cry out beneath the true king of Ireland. Some places are sights. Others are summons.

Tara was a summons.

We drove there through Meath, through low green country that felt older than the official story. Four thousand years is the number usually given, but the ground seemed deeper than that. I had felt the same at Baltinglass, where the neglected remnants of a bygone age seemed too large for the explanation placed around them.

I touched the Stone of Destiny.

No sky opened.

No thunder crossed Meath.

No voice named me ruler of Ireland.

A pity. Ireland could use help now. Not from Brussels, policy, or another consent-manufacturing committee. Something older would be required. Something beneath process. Something that remembered what a people is.

Perhaps no king was there.

Perhaps the stone has learned discretion.

Odysseus did not announce himself at every shore.

The church stood nearby, turned into a visitor centre. I did not go inside. There was an entry fee, and the stained-glass windows had been completely removed. That was enough. A sacred building emptied of meaning does not become more sacred because someone charges admission.

The churchyard was better.

Fewer people went there. That is usually a sign. It felt older than the church placed over it. A Bronze Age enclosure perhaps. There were quiet stones there, unexplained and overlooked. One of them could have been the real Stone of Destiny.

That is not a claim.

It is what the hand thinks when the eye has finished.

I touched them anyway.

Still nothing.

The stones kept their counsel.

After Tara we drove to Bective Abbey. An ex-colleague from more than twenty years ago had mentioned it to me, out of nowhere. Strange how these things happen.

Bective was lower, heavier, quieter. A ruin, but still coherent. Sometimes a ruin remembers its purpose better than a living institution.

That was enough.

Tara did not cry out.

Bective did not explain.

The stones kept their counsel.

And I went on.