An Irish Hostage

by Charles Todd

  “We’ll see what Granny has to say about that!” Niall must have risen as well, for I heard his boots coming toward the back stairs.

  I hastily got myself back into the bedroom, shutting the door before he reached the upstairs passage.

  A voice just behind me startled me.

  “Eavesdropping, are you?”

  I turned. Eileen was standing in the middle of the dark room, wide awake.

  “I’ve a little indigestion from the meal tonight. I was going down for a glass of water. I didn’t feel I could interrupt them, heated as they were.”

  “And so you listened?”

  I stood my own ground, then. “I was afraid they would come to blows. I don’t know what is wrong, Eileen. If you wish me to leave, I’ll go.”

  She came forward and put out a hand. “Oh, Bess, no. I’m so sorry—tomorrow’s my wedding day—I can’t seem to think of anything else. And I lash out because I’m so frightened, so worried—and there’s nowhere to turn for answers. I close my eyes and all I see is Michael’s body, and I’m not there to comfort him—I think I hear him crying my name, and when I listen, there’s only silence. Please, don’t go.”

  We sat there in the darkness for what seemed like hours, and she told me how she’d met Michael, and how he’d decided it was his duty to enlist—how she felt she had no other choice but train as a nurse, to be closer to him there in France. Then, at last, she felt she could sleep.

  There was nothing else to do. I undressed, found my gown, and got back into bed. But I could tell by her breathing that she wasn’t asleep. I couldn’t see her face, but I was ready to wager that she was lying there, staring up at the ceiling, pretending for my sake.

  And I was pretending too, in the hope that she would finally sleep.

  It must have been close to three in the morning when I heard the faint sound of an aircraft passing high overhead, delayed by the storm.

  And the pilot would be looking down with field glasses, hoping to see the small white square of my handkerchief on the stile.

  My signal that all was well.

  Would the Captain believe that the storm had kept me inside? Or would he be more likely to fly back to Bristol and tell my family that I was in trouble? He had been worried enough about leaving me here.

  I bit my lip. There was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.

  I tried to sleep then. But I was still awake with worries of my own when the first faint glow of dawn brightened the room.

  I looked at the figure beside me. She was finally asleep herself.

  I felt like swearing.

  Damn!

  It didn’t help.

  The rain had cleared the air, and the day was fresh and bright.

  I came down quite early to breakfast. Niall was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, looking like a man with a hangover. When he glanced up at me, I was sure of it, for his eyes were bloodshot and he was clearly still in a temper.

  I said good morning as neutrally as I could, making certain it didn’t ring with cheerfulness. I was hardly in the mood for cheerfulness myself.

  As I began to put the kettle on for a fresh pot of tea, Niall said, “Where’s that English soldier, then?”

  “The Major? I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning.” There were porridge dishes and a cup in the dry sink, but I couldn’t tell whether they were his or Terrence’s. “Sometimes he takes early morning walks.”

  “Meeting his spymasters, is he? Aye, well, that’s not very smart of him. Best way to come to grief.”

  “We came here for a wedding. And we haven’t been exactly welcomed. I don’t blame him for leaving this house as often as he can.”

  “And if he finds himself shot, that’s on him.” He sounded now as if he was serious.

  I reached in the cupboard for cups and saucers. “Eileen told me that your family once owned a merchant ship. That it sailed north to Iceland and Scandinavia.” I was trying to change the subject, but it didn’t appear to be working.

  “The trouble is, men like Dawson can’t be trusted. He’s a high-ranking officer, and yet he takes the time to come over to Ireland for the likes of Sergeant Michael Sullivan’s wedding. I ask you, does he think we’re that stupid, we’d believe that was true?”

  The kettle was boiling and I took it off. “Michael saved his life. And he was grateful.” I’d rinsed the pot and added the leaves, and so I poured in the hot water. “Why would anyone kidnap him? What had Michael done to be taken away like that?”

  “He licked the boots of the English.”

  “I was told he thought he was helping Ireland. And he wasn’t the only one who believed that. You can’t kill them all.”

  Niall gave a short bark of a laugh. “Can’t we, now?”

  Disgusted, I didn’t even take any of the porridge. Instead, I turned, and with cup in hand, walked out toward the barn. The horses were better company than Niall Flynn.

  I found Terrence there, looking at the hoof of the mare Eileen had been riding last night.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Stepped on a stone. But she’ll be fine.” He let the hoof go and stood up, giving the mare a pat on her sleek neck.

  I said, “Is Michael going to come home today? For the wedding?”

  Terrence sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  “Do you know who took him?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re in love with her, aren’t you? Is that why Michael was kidnapped?”

  Terrence swore then. “Stay out of it, Sister.” He strode toward the door of the barn, but when he reached it, he turned and said, “I heard an aircraft flying over, after the storm. Quite high up. But the first pass he made, he cut his motor, gliding low over the meadow. Who was he looking for? The Major?”

  I laughed. “Hardly. It’s the flyer who brought me to Ireland. Arthur. He’s worried about me. He’ll probably come to collect me tomorrow.”

  Terrence considered me. “He’s courting you, is he?”

  “He’s a friend. I told you, I knew him in France.”

  “Ah.” But it didn’t sound as if he believed me before or believed me now.

  I took a risk, then, and asked Terrence, “Did you know the men, the leaders of the Rising, who were court-martialed and shot?”

  He stared at me, something in his face I couldn’t quite read.

  “They were heroes to us,” he said finally.

  “Misguided, if they really intended to free Ireland. They should have known, in the middle of a war we thought we might very well be losing, that any Rising in Ireland would be viewed as a stab in the back. Almost literally. Easter, only months before the Somme? And whispers that the Germans were behind it all? It’s not a surprise that the English would deal harshly with those involved. If for no other reason than to prevent another such Rising.” I had heard the Colonel Sahib discuss what was happening in Ireland. I had a fairly good idea of what had occurred in the aftermath. “Anyone whose name was on the Proclamation they posted before the Rising. Was yours on it?”

  “No,” Terrance said slowly. “I wasn’t there to sign. But you have to understand how Ireland has suffered for a very long time. You haven’t been treated as if you didn’t have a right to be in your own country. What did England do when we were dying, in the potato famine? Did they even care? I don’t think they did.”

  “It was still the wrong time to try.”

  He looked out the door, across the lawns and the hedge, toward the house. “It took remarkable courage. Right or wrong. They shouldn’t have been executed. Even some of the English believed that. They were patriots, not traitors.”

  He believed that. I could hear it in his voice, see it in his face.

  Now was the time to ask the most pressing question. “Will we find Michael before it’s time for the wedding? Even at the last minute? I have to know, I have to be able to comfort her.”

  “I’ve told you,” he said, angry now, “that I don�
�t know where he is. Or why. Don’t you understand? I couldn’t marry her, not with a price on my head. Michael can take her out of the country, where she’ll be safe. That’s what I want. And whether you believe me or not, I’ve done my damnedest to make certain that happens.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away, his words echoing in my ears.

  I stayed in the cool stillness of the barn, listening to the soft shuffle and sounds of the horses moving about in their stalls. I felt the same way—although shut into a larger space—the house—but no less confined.

  What would Captain Jackson do, when he didn’t find the handkerchief on the stile? More to the point, what would my father do?

  My cup of tea was cold. With a sigh, I walked back to the house, hoping that Niall had gone away.

  He wasn’t there.

  I took breakfast up to Eileen, but she shook her head. “I can’t. Not today.”

  I said, “Today is your wedding day, I know. But there’s this to consider, Eileen. It’s only a day. You can choose any other day you like, once Michael is home again. This isn’t going to be your only day to be married.”

  But it didn’t do much good. I was about to leave her when the younger Mrs. Flynn came in and said quietly, “I’ll sit with her for a while.”

  I was ashamed of myself for feeling a flood of relief. While my heart went out to Eileen, while I knew how she must feel, I was at a loss for words of comfort. In truth, what comfort was there? Perhaps, I thought, her mother could find the words I hadn’t.

  I took the tray back to the kitchen—and found Major Dawson there, scraping the last of the porridge out of the saucepan and into a dish.

  I smiled, so very glad to see him. But where had he been last night—and again this morning?

  “Shall I make you more porridge?” I asked.

  “This will do, until lunch,” he said, and reached for the pitcher to pour milk into the dish. “Did you know, there’s a little pond on the far side of the wood at the end of the meadow? I found a flat stone and sat there, watching the water. There was a brown frog on the bank, and he was an expert at catching insects. I didn’t realize their tongues were so long. Out it came, then back it went.”

  He sounded more cheerful than he had been in several days.

  “If there’s no wedding today, will you leave?” I asked.

  He sat down, staring into the dish. “That was one of the questions I put to the frog. He had no better answers than I did.”

  I laughed, because it was expected of me, and then he looked up, saying, “I don’t know. You?”

  I shook my head. “It seems awfully unkind. But I expect we ought to consider what’s to be done.”

  “We can’t stay forever. Waiting.”

  “There’s that.” Remembering, I asked, “Did the Constabulary ask you questions about that poor man’s death?”

  “He did. I couldn’t tell whether he preferred to think of you or of me as the murderer. I’m serious, Bess, he was asking questions that pointed in that direction.”

  “I know. He spoke to me first.”

  “Who was this man, Bess?” He looked up from his porridge. “I was told he was some sort of artist. Who was likely to have wanted him dead?”

  I knew what Terrence had told me, but I was reluctant to share that, even with the Major. “That’s all I’ve heard, as well. I don’t think he was terribly well known—people at the mole weren’t sure who he was, when he was brought in. I heard them say so when I was examining him.”

  “Was he Irish?”

  That was trickier. “He lived here. I expect he must have been.”

  “I’d as soon leave the country before the police are serious about pointing to us. Was it murder, do you think?”

  I moved closer to where he was sitting so that my voice wouldn’t carry. “It could easily have been. Something—someone—had smashed in the side of his face. It could have been a fall—” I stopped. I’d almost said there were rocks close by where he lived, but I quickly changed that to, “—and he struck his head on something, rocks or even part of a boat as he went down. I couldn’t tell. But if someone had hit him with something hard, the damage would have been the same. He’d been in the water, I couldn’t find anything in the wound that helped me.”

  And then I remembered last night, and being shot at. Because I had examined the dead man? But surely the Constabulary had seen just what I had seen? And drawn the same conclusions? They were the police, they had examined bodies before . . .

  The difference was, of course, that I had medical training. And there was no doctor in Killeighbeg. I might well have seen something that the police had missed, something a village doctor would have recognized.

  Was that why the dead man had been brought here? To this village? Because it had neither police nor doctor?

  “What is it, Bess? What do you remember?”

  I shook my head. “I was trying to recall what I’d seen, that’s all. But it’s true, I couldn’t have sworn to either, an accident or a crime.”

  “Just as well.”

  Terrence had said the same thing. Only, he’d suspected the Major.

  I looked at Ellis Dawson. “They can’t understand why a man of your rank would bother to come to a wedding for a man in the ranks.”

  “I’ve told you. And them. He saved my life when he didn’t have to. At great risk. I owe him. I even put him up for a medal, but so soon after the Rising, the Army was reluctant to give one to an Irish soldier. But you’ll keep that last to yourself.”

  “I’ve never asked you what regiment that was.” I’d never seen him in uniform.

  “Irish Guards. I was sent over with reinforcements while the First Battalion was at a rest-camp in Hornoy. That was the autumn of ’16. I was wounded later, outside Arras. That was when Sullivan came out and got me, brought me back to the lines and kept me from bleeding to death until the stretcher bearers could get me to the closest aid station.” And then he added wryly, “And all the while I kept telling myself that it was a damn—a shame to die so close to the end of the war.”

  The Irish Guards had been formed by Queen Victoria after the Second Boer War, where the Irish had served so faithfully.

  “Was he wounded as well?”

  “Oh yes. In the arm, the hip, the calf. One of my sergeants told me later that he ‘was bleeding like a blo—like a veritable spigot.’ How he got me back is still a wonder.”

  I walked over to the door to the stairs, opened it quietly, and when I saw no one there, listening, I came back to him.

  “Terrence was wounded in the Rising, wasn’t he?”

  “He was. It was Michael who told me. It was his men who got him away and found a doctor. Or else the English would have had him.”

  And as if conjured up by use of his name, Terrence came through from the front room, stepping into the kitchen and frowning.

  “Where’s Eileen?”

  “Still in her room,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “Someone from the pub is here, wanting to know what to do about the wedding breakfast. And O’Halloran has sent to ask about decorating the church.”

  Oh, dear!

  I said, “I don’t know what to tell you. What if Michael arrives just in time, and nothing is ready?”

  Terrence swore, ladies present or not. It was quite colorful.

  “Here!” the Major reminded him sharply.

  “I’m sorry. But I’m at my wits’ end. Granny is all for sending them packing, and my aunt is weeping—” His gaze was on me.

  I wanted to say, Don’t look at me! But for four years I’d been trained to think in any crisis, and so I replied, “Tell them to come back in an hour. And I’ll speak to Eileen.”

  He nodded, grateful, and I went up the stairs as he left to pass on the message.

  I found that in my absence, Eileen had bathed and was dressing in her lacy silk undergarments, as if the wedding was going on as planned.

  “Ah,” I said, rapidly rethinking what I
was about to ask her. “The inn is asking about the wedding breakfast—”

  “I’ve looked. It’s fair outside. Tell them to decorate the tables out there.”

  “And the church?”

  “That should already be done,” she said crossly. “I thought my mother was attending to that.”

  “I’ll be sure,” I told her soothingly. “Can I bring you something from the kitchen—”

  “It’s a Nuptial Mass. I can’t eat until afterward.”

  Of course. This was a Catholic wedding. I bit my tongue, then said, “I didn’t know if a cup of tea was allowed.” But she ignored me, asking me to do up the laces in the back. I did that, while she reminded me that I must hurry, if I wished to be ready on time.

  “Let me speak to your mother, to see if I can move things along, and I’ll be back.”

  I found Mrs. Flynn wringing her hands. “I don’t quite know what to do—” she told me anxiously as I entered her room.

  “I’ve spoken to Eileen,” I said soothingly. “She wants to go on with plans for the wedding. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”

  “I must bathe—dress—” She looked around distractedly, as if to find answers somewhere just out of sight.

  It was up to me, then.

  “Don’t worry—I’ll see to everything,” I promised, and left to find Terrence, taking the front stairs in my hurry, never mind Granny in her lair.

  Terrence was still trying to work with the people who had come to the door. He turned quickly, as he heard someone coming out, and I watched the hope flaring in his face change to a frown when he saw that it was not Eileen.

  Quickly scanning the faces turning toward me, I looked for the tall singer and the two other men, but they were not among the men from the pub or the ladies from the church.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly, hoping that everyone spoke English. “I am so sorry for the confusion. I’ve just spoken to Mrs. Flynn”—I didn’t mention which one—“and to the bride. We’re to go forward as planned, please. If there is any way in which Mr. Flynn here or I can assist you, do speak up. We’ll be very happy to help.”

  They stared at me. I didn’t know whether it was a language problem—this was a Gaelic-speaking area—or something else. And then I realized that I had no authority here. They were turning to Terrence to have my words confirmed.