What the Wind Knows

by Amy Harmon

  Her voice is the same, musical and low, but she speaks slowly now, almost gently, like she’s not sure of herself. And the stories she tells, the poetry that trips so effortlessly from her lips! I could listen for hours, but it’s so unlike the girl I knew. The old Anne used to spit out her words like she couldn’t release them fast enough; she was fiery and full of ideas. She could never sit still. Declan would laugh and kiss her to slow her down. She would try to kiss him back while finishing her point.

  Anne has a quiet about her now, an inner calm that is very different—like a contented Madonna, though I wonder if it’s because she has been reunited with Eoin. She watches him with such love and devotion, such fascination, that I am ashamed for doubting her. Her joy in him makes me angry at the years she lost. She should be angry too. She should be sorrowful. She should be scarred. But she’s not. The only visible scar is the gunshot wound on her side, and that, she won’t explain.

  She refuses to tell me where she’s been or what has happened to her. I’ve tried to imagine plausible scenarios, and I can’t. Was she wounded in the Rising? Did someone find her and care for her? Did she lose her memory only to regain it five years later? Was she really in America? Is she a British spy? Did she have a lover? Or did Declan’s death send her over the edge? The possibilities—or lack thereof—will drive me mad. When I press her for answers, she seems truly afraid. Then her terror makes her mouth tremble and her hands shake, and she struggles to meet my gaze. And I give up and give in and postpone the questions that must be answered. Eventually.

  She has holes in her ears—and diamonds, until she sold them—but no gap between her front teeth. I noticed it when she begged to clean them the first time, and I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe my memory’s flawed, but the straight white row of perfect teeth seems wrong.

  When I pulled her from the lake, she answered immediately to her name, yet she didn’t call me by mine. I shudder to think what would have happened had I not been there. I’d been returning from checking on Polly O’Brien across the lough, the first time I’d been there in ages. A complete fluke that I was there at all. I heard a crack, unmistakable, and nothing more. Minutes later, she called out, leading me to her. She has been leading me by the nose ever since, and I have no idea what to do about it.

  When she is out of my sight, I don’t breathe easy until I see her again. Brigid thinks Anne will take Eoin and run if given the chance. I’m afraid of that too, and though I am drawn to her like never before, I don’t trust her. It’s made leaving much harder. For Eoin’s sake, I don’t want to frighten Anne off. And if I’m being honest, I can’t bear to see her go.

  I went to Dublin in June, making rounds to Dublin’s jails, using my medical credentials to check on the political prisoners Mick was negotiating to get released. Lord French has resigned from his duties, but the clearance he gave me during the hunger strikes still got me in almost everywhere. I was denied visits with a few prisoners, which most likely meant the prisoners were in rough shape, too rough for an official inspection. I threatened and waved my papers around, insisting I be allowed to do my job, which got me in a few more doors but not all. I made special note of where the men were being kept, gathered as much information as I could from their jailers, and made sure Mick knew which prisoners were in the greatest danger of not making it out again.

  It took me three days to make my rounds, write up my reports, and draw my diagrams. Mick was already putting plans in motion for several breakouts when I left. I haven’t been back again. But with rumours of a truce—a truce Anne predicted would come—I need to see where Mick’s head is. He was shut out of the negotiations between de Valera and Lloyd George, though Mick ran the government and the war while de Valera sat in America for eighteen months, raising money, tucked away from the hell that is Ireland, from the front lines of a war fought without him.

  T. S.

  12

  A FIRST CONFESSION

  Why those questioning eyes

  That are fixed upon me?

  What can they do but shun me

  If empty night replies?

  —W. B. Yeats

  “You’re very good, you know. These illustrations are delightful,” I said on Sunday evening, after Eoin had been coaxed into bed.

  “When I was a boy, I was sick a lot. When I wasn’t reading, I was sketching,” Thomas replied, his eyes on the picture he was creating, a picture of a man looking out onto a lake where a tiny boat floated in the distance. The book was finished, but Thomas was still drawing. I had already stitched the finished pages together and glued the thick seam into the spine of a cloth-bound cover Thomas had removed from an old ledger. The cover was a plain blue cloth, which served our purposes perfectly. Thomas had written The Adventures of Eoin Gallagher across the front in his ornate hand and drawn a small sailboat beneath the title. We’d created three different voyages for Eoin to take—one back to the days of the dinosaurs, one to the building of the pyramids, and one to the future when man walked on the moon. Eoin’s boat had to sail through the Milky Way to return home, and Thomas was quite impressed with my imagination. With my input, his sketches of a rocket ship and a space traveler were unsurprisingly prescient.

  “Did you live in this house?” I asked. I stood and began to tidy the space so I could wrap our gift.

  “I did. My father died before I was born.” His eyes shot to mine, gauging whether he was telling me things I already knew.

  “And your mother remarried an Englishman,” I provided.

  “Yes. He owned this house. This land. My mother and I became part of the landed class.” His tone was wry. “I spent most of my childhood days staring out the window in the room where you now sleep. I couldn’t play or run or go outside. It would make me cough and wheeze, and a few times I even stopped breathing.”

  “Asthma?” I asked absentmindedly.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised. “How did you know? It isn’t a well-known term. My doctors called it bronchospasms, but I came across an article in a medical journal published in 1892 that introduced the term. It comes from the Greek word aazein, which means to pant, or breathe with an open mouth.”

  I didn’t comment. I waited, hoping he would continue. “I thought if I learned enough, I could heal myself, since no one else seemed able to. I dreamed of running down the lane, running and running and never stopping. I dreamed of hurling and wrestling. I dreamed of a body that wouldn’t grow tired before I did. My mother was afraid to let me go to school, but she didn’t argue with me or dictate what I read or studied. She even asked Dr. Mostyn if I could look at his anatomy books when I showed an interest. I read them and then read them again. And sometimes the doctor would come and sit with me and answer my questions. My stepfather hired a tutor, and the tutor humored me too. He sent away for medical journals, and in between sketching and reading Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, I became a bit of a medical expert.”

  “You’re not sick anymore.”

  “No. I like to think I cured myself with regular doses of black coffee, which eased the symptoms immensely. But besides staying away from things that seemed to exacerbate it, like hay, certain plants, or cigar smoke, I think I mostly outgrew it. By the time I was fifteen, my health was good enough for me to go to St. Peter’s College in Wexford for boarding school. And you know the rest of that story.”

  I didn’t. Not really. But I remained quiet, wrapping Eoin’s book in brown paper and tying it securely with a long piece of twine.

  “What did you think of Father Darby’s announcement this morning?” Thomas asked, his tone perfectly measured. I knew he wasn’t talking about the announcement that had caused every head to turn and neck to crane toward me. I’d kept my eyes focused on my lap when Father Darby had welcomed me home as Thomas had asked him to do. Eoin had wiggled and waved beside me, enjoying the attention, and Brigid, sitting on his other side, had pinched his leg sharply, reining him in. I’d glared up at her, angered by the nasty welt she’d raised on his leg. Her cheeks
had been bright with embarrassment, her jaw tight, and my anger had fizzled into despair. Brigid was suffering. Through the announcement, her eyes had never strayed from the stained-glass depiction of the crucifixion, but her discomfort was as great as my own. She’d relaxed slightly when Father Darby had moved on to political matters and captured the congregation’s attention with the news of a truce that had been brokered between the newly formed Dáil, Ireland’s unrecognized parliament, and the British government.

  “My dear brothers and sisters, word has spread that tomorrow, July 11, Eamon de Valera, president of the Irish Republic and the Dáil Éireann, and Lloyd George, prime minister of England, will sign a truce between our two countries, ending these long years of violence and ushering in a period of peace and negotiation. Let us pray for our leaders and for our countrymen, that order can be maintained and freedom in Ireland can finally be achieved.”

  Cries and exclamations rang out, and for a moment Father Darby was silent, letting the news settle on his jubilant flock. I peeked up at Thomas, praying he’d forgotten my prediction. He was staring down at me, his face carefully blank, his pale eyes shuttered.

  I held his gaze for a heartbeat, then looked away, breathless and repentant. I had no idea how I was going to explain myself.

  He’d said nothing about it after Mass. Nothing at dinner, discussing the news benignly with Brigid and later with several men who stopped by to speak with him. They’d argued in the parlor about what the truce really meant, about Partition, and about every member of the IRA having a target on his back. They talked so loudly and so long, puffing cigarettes that made Thomas wheeze, that he finally suggested they move to the rear terrace where the air was cold and fresh, and their conversation would not keep the rest of the house from retiring. Brigid and I had not been invited to join the discussion, and eventually, I helped Eoin get ready for bed. I spent a long time in his room, telling him stories and reciting Yeats, until he finally drifted off to “Baile and Aillinn,” the only story he cared nothing about.

  When I’d sneaked down to my room to finish Eoin’s book, the men were gone, and Thomas was already there, sitting at my desk, waiting for me. And even then, we spoke of easy things.

  Now he looked up at me, weary. His fingers were smudged with lead, and he smelled of cigarettes he didn’t smoke. His expression was no longer mild, the conversation no longer easy.

  “I know you aren’t Declan’s Anne,” Thomas said quietly. I was silent, heart quaking, waiting for recriminations. He stood, moved around the desk, and stopped in front of me, still an arm’s length away. I wanted to step into him. I wanted to be closer. Being near him made my belly flutter and my breasts tighten. He made me feel things I hadn’t felt before. And even though I feared what he would say next, I wanted to move toward him.

  “I know you aren’t Declan’s Anne—not anymore—because Declan’s Anne never looked at me the way you do.” The last words were said so simply, I wasn’t certain I’d heard him right. Our eyes clashed and held, and I swallowed, trying to dislodge the hook from my throat. But I was caught as surely as I’d been when he pulled me out of the lake.

  “And if you keep looking at me that way, Anne, I’ll kiss you. I don’t know if I trust you. I don’t even know who you are half the time. But damn if I can resist you when you look at me like that.”

  I wanted him to. I wanted him to kiss me, but he didn’t close the distance between us, and his lips didn’t press into mine.

  “Can’t I just be Anne?” I asked, almost pleading.

  “If you aren’t Declan’s Anne, who are you?” he whispered, as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

  I sighed, my shoulders drooping, my eyes falling away. “Maybe I’m Eoin’s Anne,” I said simply. I had always been Eoin’s Anne.

  He nodded and smiled sadly. “Yes. Maybe you are. Finally.”

  “Were you in love . . . with . . . me, Thomas?” I ventured, suddenly brave. My shamelessness made me wince, but I needed to know how he’d felt about Declan’s Anne.

  His eyebrows rose in slow surprise, and he stepped back from me, distancing himself farther, and I felt the loss even as I filled my lungs in relief.

  “No. I wasn’t. You were Declan’s, always. Always,” Thomas said. “And I loved Declan.”

  “And if I hadn’t been . . . Declan’s . . . would you have wanted . . . me to be yours?” I pressed, trying not to slip and use the wrong pronoun.

  Thomas shook his head as he spoke, almost denying the words as he said them. “You were wild. You burned so hot that none of us could help but draw closer, just to bask in your warmth. And you were—you are—so beautiful. But no. I had no wish to be consumed by you. I had no desire to be burned.”

  I didn’t know what to feel, relief or despair. I didn’t want Thomas to love her, but I did want him to care about me. And the two were suddenly intertwined.

  “Declan could withstand the heat,” Thomas continued. “He loved it. He loved you. So much. You lit him up inside, and I always thought you felt the same way about him.”

  To not come to Anne’s defense would be wrong. I couldn’t let Thomas doubt her, not even to save myself.

  “I’m sure she did. I’m sure Anne Finnegan Gallagher felt the exact same way,” I said, head bowed.

  He was quiet, but I felt his turmoil even as I refused to meet his gaze.

  “I don’t understand. You speak as if you are two different people,” he pressed.

  “We are,” I choked, struggling for my composure.

  He took one step, and then another, drawing close enough to lift my chin and search my eyes, his fingers soft on my face. I saw my emotions—grief, loss, fear, uncertainty—reflected in his gaze.

  “None of us are the same, Anne. Some days I hardly recognize myself in the mirror. It’s not my face that has changed; it’s the way I see the world. I’ve seen things that have permanently altered me. I’ve done things that have distorted my vision. I’ve crossed lines and tried to find them again, only to discover that all my lines have disappeared. And without lines, everything blurs together.”

  His voice was so heartsick, his words so heavy, that I could only gaze back at him, moved to tears and silenced by his sadness.

  “But when I look at you, I still see Anne,” he whispered. “Your lines are sharp and clean. The faces around you are faded and dull—they’ve been faded and dull for years now—but you . . . you are perfectly clear.”

  “I am not her, Thomas,” I said, needing him to believe me and not daring to make him understand. “Right now, I almost wish I were. But I am not that Anne.”

  “No. You’re right. You’ve changed. You don’t burn my eyes like you once did. Now, I don’t have to look away.”

  My breath caught at his confession—the sound ricocheted between us—and he leaned in to gently free it, brushing my mouth with his. His lips were so soft and shy, they slipped away without letting me greet them. I followed, frantic to call them back, and he hesitated, forehead pressed to mine, hands on my shoulders, letting my bated breath extend an invitation before he accepted it and returned. His hands slid around to my back as his mouth lowered and stayed, letting me feel the warmth and the press of his kiss, so real, so present, so impossible.

  Our mouths moved in a halo of swollen caresses, a brush and a slide, a nudge and a pause, reveling in the weight of lips against lips. Over and over, and then again. Plying and persuading, urging and unraveling, until the pounding of my heart trembled in my mouth and quivered in my belly. Need, need, need, it panted. More, more, more, it roared. The hound of Culann, baying a warning at the door. We both drew back in breathless wonder, eyes wide, hands clinging, lips parted.

  For a moment we simply stared at one another, inches apart, our bodies charged and howling. And then we widened the distance, releasing each other. The clanging in my chest and the rushing of my blood was slower to ebb.

  “Good night, Countess,” Thomas murmured.

  “Good night, Setanta,” I said, and a s
mile ghosted past his lips as he turned and left my room. I was drifting off to sleep when I realized he’d never demanded an explanation about the truce.

  The next few weeks, I moved in a sort of haze, straddling reality and an existence that was both illogical and absolutely undeniable. I stopped questioning what had happened to me—what would happen to me—and accepted each day as it came. When one dreams terrible dreams, part of the unconscious mind reassures that wakefulness will summon reality and banish the nightmare. But it was not a terrible dream. It had become a sweet sanctuary. And though that stubborn voice still whispered that I would wake, I stopped caring if I slept. I accepted my predicament with the imagination of my childhood, lost in a world I had created and fearful that the story would come to an end and that I would return to my previous life, where Eoin and Ireland and Thomas Smith no longer existed.

  Thomas had not kissed me again, and I had not given him any indication that I wanted to be kissed. We’d established something that we were not ready to explore. Declan was gone, and Anne was gone. At least the Anne he thought I’d been. But Thomas was still caught between the memory of them and the prospect of me, and I was snagged between a future that was my past, and a past that might be my future. So we settled into an ever-narrowing circle of discovery, talking of nothing and everything, of this and that, of now and then. I asked questions, and he freely answered. He asked questions, and I tried not to lie. I was happy in a way that made no sense, content in a manner that called into question my sanity and surrounded by people who made me glad to be alive, if alive is what I was.