by Amy Harmon
Thomas took me with him once or twice a week or when he thought he would need an extra set of hands, and I’d done my best to provide them. I’d been raised by a doctor; I knew basic first aid, and I wasn’t prone to freak-outs or fainting at the sight of blood, which was about all I had going for me. But Thomas seemed to think it was enough. When he could, he left me home to spend time with Eoin, who would be starting school in the fall. Eoin introduced me to all the animals at Garvagh Glebe and told me their names—the pigs, the chickens, the sheep, and the pretty brown mare who was expecting a foal. We began taking long walks along the shore and down the lane, over the green hills and across the low rock walls. I was traipsing over Leitrim’s fields with Eoin babbling at my side. Ireland was gray and green, shot with the yellow of the gorse that grew wildly on the hills and in the valleys, and I wanted to know her intimately.
Sometimes Brigid came too, first because she feared Eoin and I would disappear together and then because she seemed to enjoy the exercise. She started to soften toward me, infinitesimally, and sometimes she could be coaxed to talk of the days when she was a girl living in Kiltyclogher in northern Leitrim, giving me a glimpse into her life. It seemed to surprise her that I listened so intently, that I cared to hear her stories, that I wanted to know her at all. I discovered she had two sons and a daughter, all older than Declan, and a little girl buried in Ballinagar. I hadn’t seen a stone and wondered if the child’s marker was just a plot of grass with a heavy rock to mark her resting place.
Her oldest daughter was in America, in New Haven, Connecticut. Her name was Mary, and she’d married a man named John Bannon. They had three children, grandchildren Brigid had never seen, cousins Eoin had never told me about. Brigid’s two sons were unmarried. One, Ben, was a train conductor in Dublin, and the other, Liam, worked on the docks in Sligo. Since I’d been at Garvagh Glebe, neither had come to visit. I listened to Brigid provide updates on each one of her children, and I hung on her words, trying to absorb things I should have known, things Anne would have known, and doing my best to bluff my way through the rest.
“You are kind to her, to Brigid,” Thomas remarked one day, when we returned from our walk to find him already at home. “She has never been especially kind to you.”
Maybe the difference between the “real” Anne Gallagher and me was that Brigid was her mother-in-law and Brigid was my great-great-grandmother. Brigid’s blood ran in my veins. She was part of me—how big a part, only my DNA would tell, but she belonged to me, and I wanted to know her. The first Anne might not have felt the same sense of belonging.
Thomas went to Dublin for a few days in the middle of August. He wanted to bring me along, and Eoin too, but changed his mind in the end. He seemed reluctant to leave and anxious to go, but he made me promise, as he stuck his medical bag and a small suitcase in the back seat of his Model T, that I would still be at Garvagh Glebe when he returned.
“Don’t leave, Anne,” he said, his hat in his hands, fear in his eyes. “Promise me you’ll stay close. Promise me so I can do what I need to do in Dublin without my head running back here.”
I had nodded with only a flicker of fear. If I hadn’t gone home yet, it was doubtful I ever would again. Maybe Thomas saw the flicker in my eyes, faint as it was, for he pulled in a sigh and held it, weighing it, considering it, before he released it with a gust of submission.
“I won’t go,” he said. “I’ll wait a bit longer.”
“Thomas, go. I’ll be here when you get back. I promise.”
He looked for a moment at my mouth, as if he wanted to kiss it, to taste it for the truth, but Eoin rushed out of the house and threw himself at Thomas, demanding affection and wheedling a prize from Dublin if he was very good while Thomas was away. Thomas lifted him easily and hugged him close before extracting his own promises.
“I’ll bring you back a present if you mind your nana and look after your mother. And don’t let her go near the lough,” he said to Eoin, raising his pale-blue eyes to mine as he set the boy back on the ground.
My heart lurched, and a memory flooded back, bringing with it an odd sense of déjà vu and a line tripping through my mind.
“Don’t go near the water, love, the lough will take you far from me,” I murmured, and Thomas cocked his head.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just something I read once.”
“Why can’t Mother go near the lough?” Eoin asked, confused. “We go there all the time. We walk on the shore and skip rocks. Mother showed me how.”
Eoin had taught me how to skip rocks, once upon a time. Yet another dizzying circle of what came first.
Thomas frowned, ignoring Eoin’s question, and sighed again, as if his head and stomach were at war with one another.
“Thomas, go. All will be well while you are gone,” I said firmly.
22 August 1921
I drove to Dublin with both hands on the wheel and my heart in my throat. I’d had little contact with Mick since de Valera had returned and Lord French had been replaced as general governor. I wasn’t much help to Mick in the scheme of things. I was nothing but a sounding board. A friend. A financial backer and a secret keeper who did what I could, where I could. But still, I’d been away too long, and despite the truce, I was worried.
I met Mick and Joe O’Reilly, Mick’s personal assistant, at Devlin’s Pub. They were huddled in the back room Mick had been given for an office. The door was left ajar so he could see trouble coming. The rear exit provided a quick escape. Mick was at Devlin’s more than he was at his own apartment. He rarely stayed in one place too long, and if it weren’t for the loyalty of average citizens, who knew exactly who he was and never said a word despite the reward on his head, he would have been captured long ago. His reputation had grown to epic proportions, and I was afraid much of the rub with the president of the Dáil was due to Mick’s popularity. I became alarmed when he told me Dev (de Valera) was considering sending him to America to “get him out of the fight.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Mick is the fight, and I told him as much. Without him, our Irish rebellion is all symbolism and suffering with no results—just like every other Irish rebellion over the last several hundred years has been.
Joe O’Reilly agreed with me, and I wondered for the first time how old Joe O’Reilly was. Young. He had to be younger than me. But the man was worn thin. Mick was too. His stomach had been bothering him, the pain so intense I suspected ulcers and made him promise to adjust his diet.
“Dev won’t send me away—he can’t get any support for it. But he might send me to London, Doc. He’s making noise about sending me to negotiate the terms of a treaty,” Mick said.
I told Mick I thought that was good news, until he told me de Valera wanted to stay behind, in Dublin.
Mick said, “He’s been meeting with Lloyd George for months over the truce, yet now he wants to stand back when it’s time to negotiate a treaty? Dev isn’t stupid. He’s wily. He’s playing puppet master.”
“So you’re the scapegoat.” It wasn’t a hard conclusion to arrive at.
“I am. He wants me to take the fall when it fails. We won’t get everything we want. We might not get anything we want. And we sure as hell won’t get an Irish Republic with no partition between the north and south. Dev knows this. He knows England has the power to crush us in a head-to-head conflict. We have three, maybe four thousand fighting men. That’s it. He knows nothing about the strategy we’ve engaged in.”
Mick’s heels dug into the floor with agitation, and I could only listen as he paced and talked through his fears. “We’ve fought dirty and we’ve fought lean. We’ve relied on the Irish people to hide us, to shelter us, to feed us, and to keep their mouths shut. And they have. Goddammit, they have! Even when farms were burned in Cork last year, and businesses were torched in every county. When reprisals were being carried out in Sligo and priests were being shot in the head by Auxies for refusing to point fingers at their pa
rishioners. When young men who had nothing to do with Bloody Sunday were being tortured and hung because someone had to pay, nobody talked, nobody turned.”
Mick fell into a chair and took a deep swallow of the stout in front of him, wiping at his mouth before he continued.
“All we’re asking—all we’ve been asking for centuries—is for them to leave. To let us govern ourselves. Lloyd George knows that to declare all-out war on the Irish people will not go over well in the world court. The Catholic Church has made a statement of condemnation against Britain’s tactics. They’ve begged George to consider an Irish solution. America has even gotten involved. And that is our linchpin. But we can’t continue on this way. Ireland can’t.”
Ireland can’t. And Mick can’t. Joe O’Reilly can’t either. Something has to give.
“Will you go?” I asked Mick, and he nodded.
“I don’t see any other way. I’ll do my best. Whatever that is. I’m not a statesman.”
“Thank God for that,” Joe O’Reilly said, clapping him on the back.
“Dev’s surely not sending you alone. You know Lloyd George will have a team of lawyers and negotiators,” I worried.
“He wants to send Arthur too. He belongs there, and he’ll represent us well. There will be a few more, I’m sure.”
“I’ll be there too. In London. If you need me,” I said. “They won’t let me sit at the negotiating table, but you’ll have my ear if you need it.”
He nodded and sighed heavily, as if talking through it had already helped. His eyes were clearer, his posture less agitated. And he suddenly smiled, a wicked twist of his lips that put me immediately on edge.
“I heard through my network of spies that you have a woman living in your house, Doc. A beautiful woman you’ve made no mention of in your letters. Is she the reason you’ve stayed away from Dublin so long? Has the mighty Thomas Smith been smitten at last?”
When I told him it was Anne—Declan’s Anne—his mouth fell open, and he had nothing to say for a good stretch. Joe hadn’t known Declan or Anne and sipped his stout quietly, waiting for me to explain, though he probably welcomed the silence. I didn’t suppose Joe or Mick ever sat for long. Joe rode his bike all over Dublin, delivering Mick’s dispatches and keeping the cogs oiled.
“She’s been alive all this time . . . and she never sent word?” Mick whispered.
I told him how I’d found her in the lough, a gunshot wound in her side, and he stared at me, dumbfounded.
“Oh, Tommy. Be careful, my friend. Be very, very careful. There are forces at work you can’t even begin to understand. Spies come in all shapes and sizes. You don’t know where she’s been or who’s gotten to her. I don’t like the sound of this at all.”
I nodded wordlessly, knowing he was right. I’ve been telling myself the very same things from the moment I pulled her from the water. I didn’t tell Mick she knew about the truce before it even happened. And I didn’t tell him that I’m already in love with her.
T. S.
13
HER TRIUMPH
I did the dragon’s will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game.
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free.
—W. B. Yeats
I promised Thomas everything would be all right while he was gone, but it was a promise I was unable to keep. Two days after he left, long after the house had grown quiet and the night had grown black, Maeve, in her nightgown and a shawl, woke me with frantic whispering.
“Miss Anne, wake up! There’s trouble in the barn. Dr. Smith isn’t here, and I know you help him sometimes. We need bandages and medicine. Da says we might need whiskey too.”
I got out of bed, pulling on the deep-blue robe Beatrice had picked out for me and Thomas had purchased in spite of me, and hurried to Thomas’s clinic, filling Maeve’s arms with bandages and whatever else seemed useful before visiting the liquor cabinet and helping myself to three bottles of Irish whiskey, taking a quick pull off one for courage.
I didn’t let myself think about what was waiting for me or if I’d be able to do a damn thing about it. Instead, I ran out the back door, across the veranda, and through the heavy rain that had begun sometime after I’d gone to bed.
The stables and the large barn were separated from the house by a wide lawn rimmed in trees, and the grass was cold and wet against my bare feet. A lantern flickered through the trees, beckoning us, and Maeve ran ahead, trailing bandages that wouldn’t do much good if they were drenched.
A young man, unconscious and soaking wet, lay on the barn floor, surrounded by a handful of men who weren’t much older or dryer. One held a lantern high over the body of the wounded man, and when I entered behind Maeve, every head turned and every weapon was raised.
“Doc is still in Dublin, Da. Miss Anne is all we’ve got.” Her voice was fearful, as though she worried she might have made a mistake. I rushed past her to where Maeve’s father was doing his best to mop up the blood from the young man’s head with his shirt, begging sweet Mary, mother of God, to intercede for his son.
“What happened?” I demanded, sinking down beside the boy.
“His head. Robbie’s eye is gone,” Daniel O’Toole stammered.
“A bullet, ma’am. The boy took a bullet,” someone said from the circle standing watch above us.
“Let me see, Mr. O’Toole,” I demanded. He pulled his dirty, smeared shirt away from his son’s face. Robbie’s right eye was a bubbling mess. Miraculously, he moaned as I turned his head toward the light, letting me know he still lived. Another hole, black and jagged, gaped at his temple just an inch from his eye socket, as if the bullet had skimmed past his eye at an extreme angle and taken a chunk off the side of his head. I didn’t know enough about head wounds or the brain to make a better guess, but if the bullet had come out again, that seemed positive.
I knew there was nothing I could do but try to stop the bleeding and keep him alive until Thomas got home. I shouted for Maeve to bring me the bandages and pressed a thick section of gauze to Robbie’s eye and another to the exit wound. His father kept the gauze in place as I began to wrap the boy’s head as securely as I dared, layering another round of gauze as I went until his entire head from his eyes up was swaddled tightly.
“We need blankets, Maeve. You know where to find them,” I instructed. Maeve nodded and was out the door in a flash, running back toward the house before I finished speaking.
“Should we try to bring him home, Ma’am?” Daniel O’Toole asked. “Where his mother can look after him?”
“The less we move him, the better, Mr. O’Toole. He needs to be kept warm, and we need the bleeding to stop. That’s the best we can do until the doctor returns,” I answered.
“What about the guns?” someone murmured, and I was reminded of the dripping audience looking down on me.
“How many guns are we talking about?” I asked.
“The less you know, the better,” a man argued from the shadows, and I nodded.
“We can hide them below the floor. I’ll show ye,” Daniel O’Toole offered, unable to meet my gaze.
“We might have Tans on our tail. They were all over the shore. We couldn’t get to the caves without leading them right to the rest of the stash.”
“Shut up, Paddy,” someone snapped.
“How did Robbie get shot?” I asked, my voice level, my hands shaking.
“One of the Tans riddled the trees, hoping to spook us out. Robbie didn’t even cry out. He kept moving until we were all inside.”
Maeve was back, her arms full, but her face was white.
“Miss Anne, there are Tans coming down the lane. Two lorries. Mrs. Gallagher is awake, and Eoin too. And they’re afraid. Eoin’s asking for you.”
“If they come out here and see Robbie, they’ll know. Even if we hide t
he guns in the loft and the rest of us scatter, they’ll know. They’ll search this place—maybe torch it—and they’ll take Robbie,” the man with the lantern said.
“Take Robbie back into the tack room,” I said. “There’s a bed back there. Douse him in what’s left of the whiskey in this bottle and put the bottle on the floor by his bed. Then cover him well and warmly. Cover his head too, leaving his lower face exposed like he’s fallen asleep with the pillow over his head. Mr. O’Toole, get the mare, the one who’s pregnant. Lay her down and fuss over her, like she’s close to delivering. The rest of you, hide the guns, hide yourselves. I’ll keep them out as long as I can. Maeve, come with me,” I directed, and streaked back across the grass, the girl at my heels. I raced through the house, pulling off my bloodied robe and the nightgown beneath it, stuffing them under my bed and putting on the dress I’d worn the day before, pausing to spritz myself with perfume and run a hand over my loose braid.
“Miss, you’ve blood on your face and your hands!” Maeve cried as I met her in the hall, and I tumbled toward the kitchen sink, scrubbing at my hands and face as a sharp rap echoed through the house. Soldiers at the door.
“Go to Brigid and Eoin. Tell them to stay upstairs. Stay with them, Maeve. I’ll be all right.”
She nodded and was gone again, flying soundlessly up the huge staircase as I walked to the door, a character in my own story, my head flying with plotlines and possible scenarios before I opened the door with a fluttering hand and greeted the stony-faced men standing in the rain like I was Scarlett O’Hara entertaining a dozen callers.
“Oh my!” I said, abandoning the Irish accent I’d worn like armor since waking up at Garvagh Glebe. “You all scared me! It’s miserable out there. I was just outside myself. In the barn. We have a foal coming. Our girl is suffering. I had to sit with her for a while. Do any of you know any husbandry?” I laughed, like I’d told a joke. “I mean animal husbandry, of course,” I prattled, allowing the rain to soak the front of my dress and wet the curls around my face before moving back and swinging my arm wide, inviting them in.
