by Amy Harmon
My heart roared in my ears, and I had to look away. I knew that what happened here, in this room, had essentially already happened. My presence was not a variation of history but part of it. The pictures had proven that. My grandfather himself was a witness to the fact. Anything I said or didn’t say was already part of the fabric of events; I believed that.
But I knew how Michael Collins died.
I knew where it occurred.
I knew when.
It was something I’d kept from Thomas, and something he’d never asked. Knowing would only make life unbearable for him, and I kept the knowledge close. But guarding the secret made me feel like a coconspirator. It gnawed in my belly and haunted my dreams. I didn’t know who was responsible, and I couldn’t protect Michael Collins from a faceless foe—his killer had never been named—but I could warn him. I had to.
“Don’t tell me, Annie,” Michael ordered, divining my internal struggle. “When it comes, it will come. I know it. I feel it. I’ve heard the banshee crying in my dreams. Death has been dogging my footsteps for a long time. I’d rather not know when the bitch will overtake me.”
“Ireland needs you,” I implored.
“Ireland needed James Connolly and Tom Clarke. She needed Seán Mac Diarmada and Declan Gallagher. We all have our part to play and our burdens to carry. When I’m gone, there will be others.”
I could only shake my head. There would be others. But never again would there be another Michael Collins. Men like Collins, men like Thomas, and men like my grandfather were irreplaceable.
“It weighs on you, doesn’t it? Knowing things ye can’t prevent?” he murmured.
I nodded, unable to hold back the tears. He must have seen the desperation on my face, the confession on the tip of my tongue. I wanted so badly to tell him, to unburden myself. He stood abruptly and approached me, shaking his head, his finger raised in warning. He pressed it to my lips and leaned into me, holding my gaze.
“Not a word, lass,” he shushed. “Not a word. Let the fates unravel as they must. Do this for me, please. I don’t want to live counting the days I have left.”
I nodded, and he straightened, tentatively removing his finger as though he feared I wouldn’t hold my tongue. For a moment we studied each other, arguing silently, wills warring and walls rising, before we both exhaled, having reached an agreement. I brushed at the tears on my cheeks, oddly absolved.
“You have a look about you, Anne. Does Tommy know?” Michael asked softly, the tumult clearing from his expression. I stepped back in surprise.
“W-what?” I stammered. I wasn’t even sure myself.
He smiled broadly. “Ah, I thought so. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine. Deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I huffed, still reeling.
“That’s the spirit. Deny. Deflect. Refute,” he whispered conspiratorially, and he winked. “It’s always worked for me.”
He turned to leave the room, but not before he snatched another slice of turkey and a hunk of bread from the basket, his appetite plainly restored by his teasing.
“I’m guessin’ Tommy already knows, though. He doesn’t miss much. Plus, it’s written all over your face. You have roses in your cheeks and a sparkle in your eye. Congratulations, lass. I couldn’t be happier if it were mine,” he teased, winking again.
Michael Collins will go to Cork on August 22, 1922. Those closest to him will beg him to reconsider, to remain in Dublin, but he won’t listen. He will die in an ambush in a little valley they call Béal na mBláth—the mouth of flowers.
I wrote of what was to come, every detail, every theory I could remember about Michael’s death: 8.22.22; 8.22.22. The date had become a pulse in my head, the title of a terrible story, and once a story consumed me, I had to write it down. It was my compromise with Michael Collins. I would stay silent as the day approached, just as he’d asked me to do. I would keep the words in my mouth, bitter and brackish. But I would not, could not, be quiet in the end. When the day came, I would tell Thomas. I would tell Joe. I would lock Michael Collins in a room, tie him up, and put a gun to his head to keep him from his fate. These pages would be my insurance, my backup plan. Even if something happened to me, they would speak for me, and Michael’s story would have a new ending.
I wrote until my hand cramped, unaccustomed to composing without keys beneath my fingers. It had been a long time since I’d done any serious writing freehand. My penmanship was atrocious, but the action soothed me like nothing else could.
When I’d written all I could remember, I folded the sheets into an envelope, sealed it shut, and slid it into my dresser drawer.
On April 14 in Dublin, the Four Courts building on the quay side of the River Liffey was taken by anti-Treaty forces and declared the new republican headquarters. Several buildings along O’Connell Street as well as Kilmainham Gaol were also occupied. Raids were being made on Free State stores and munitions, the goods stockpiled in the occupied buildings. It was the beginning of the protracted end.
“Ya could’na given me some warning about this, eh Annie?” Michael complained, and Thomas shot him a look of such censure that Michael wilted and ran his hands through his hair.
“I’m sorry, lass. I forget myself sometimes, don’t I?”
Michael left Garvagh Glebe in a rush, his convoy, including the shrapnel-wounded soldier, trailing behind. Thomas debated remaining at home but at the last moment packed a bag and prepared to follow, worried that a battle over the Four Courts might ensue, and his skills would be needed.
Eoin sulked, sad to see the excitement end and our visitors leave. He begged Thomas to take him along, to take us both along, but Thomas refused, promising he’d be home in a few days. The occupation of the Four Courts was an escalation between the two sides that promised bloodshed, and I couldn’t remember enough of the particulars to reassure him. I simply knew a battle would break out. The Four Courts building would sustain an explosion caused by the stolen munition stores, and men would die. Good men. I just couldn’t remember the timeline or the technicalities.
“Michael’s right, you know,” I said to Thomas as he gathered his things. “I’ve been preoccupied. Some dates are like constant lights in my head. Some details won’t leave me alone. But there are other things, other events, that I should remember and don’t. I’ll do better,” I mumbled.
“Mick lashes out at those he loves. Consider it a sign of trust and affection.” Thomas sighed.
“Is that why you looked at him as though you wanted to box his ears?”
“I don’t care how much he loves you or trusts you, he will mind his manners.”
“So fierce, Dr. Smith.”
He smiled and closed his suitcase before approaching me slowly, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted in inquiry.
“Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me, Countess?” he murmured, drawing so close my breasts touched his chest. They were swollen and tight, and I moaned a little, wanting to embrace him and protect them at the same time. His lips skimmed my hair, and he pulled his hands from his pockets and ran them up my sides until his thumbs brushed the tender tips.
“You’re sore. You’re beautiful. And you haven’t bled since January,” he murmured, stroking me so gently the ache became longing.
“I’ve never been very regular,” I hedged, my heart pounding. “And I’ve never been pregnant, so I don’t know for sure.”
“I do,” he said, tilting my face to his. For a moment he simply kissed me, careful and adoring, as though my mouth held his child and not my womb.
“I’m so happy,” he confessed against my lips. “Is it wrong to be this happy when the world is so upside down?”
“My grandfather told me once that happiness is an expression of gratitude. And it’s never wrong to be grateful.”
“I wonder where he learned that?” he murmured, his eyes shining and so blue I could only stare, lost in him.
“Eoin wished for a whole fam
ily,” I said, suddenly pensive. “I don’t know how any of this is going to work. I get scared when I try to make sense of it, when I think about it for too long, or when I try to unravel it all in my head.”
He was quiet for a moment, considering, his eyes never leaving mine. “What did your grandfather tell you about faith?” he asked.
The answer came like a whisper, fluttering past my heart, and I was back in my grandfather’s arms on a stormy night in a world so far away and long ago, it hardly seemed real.
“He told me everything would be okay because the wind already knows,” I whispered.
“Then that’s your answer, love.”
16 April 1922
I’ve a head full of thoughts and little room to write them. This journal is full, and I have so much more to say and too much time till dawn. Anne bought me a new journal for my birthday, but it waits to be filled on my bedside table back at home.
I awoke in a cold sweat, alone in my bed. I hate Dublin without Anne. I hate Cork without Anne, Kerry without Anne, Galway without Anne, Wexford without Anne. I’ve discovered I’m not especially happy anywhere without Anne.
It was the rain that woke me. Dublin is caught in a deluge. It’s as though God is trying to douse the flames of our discontent. If there is to be a battle for the Four Courts, it won’t be right away. Mick says they will do their best to avoid it. I fear that his reluctance to engage the anti-Treaty wing will only embolden them. But he doesn’t need to know what I think. I wish I’d stayed at Garvagh Glebe. I would head back now, but the rain is insistent, the roads will be mud, and I’m better off to wait it out.
The sound of rushing water infiltrated my sleep, making me dream of the lough. I was pulling Anne from the water all over again. Like most dreams, it turned strange and disjointed, and Anne was suddenly gone, leaving me wet, my arms empty, her blood staining the bottom of my boat. Then I was crying and screaming, and my screaming became a wail. The wail came from an infant in my arms that was swaddled in Anne’s bloody blouse. The infant morphed into Eoin, clinging to me, cold and terrified, and I held him, singing to him the way I sometimes do.
“They can’t forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still.”
Now I can’t get that song out of my head. Bloody rain. Fecking lough. I never thought I’d hate the lough, but I do. Tonight, I do. And I hate Dublin without Anne.
“Don’t go near the water, love,” I always whisper when we part. And Anne nods, her eyes knowing. This time I forgot to remind her. My head was filled with other things. With her. With thoughts of a child. Our child, growing inside her.
I wish the rain would stop. I need to go home.
T. S.
I pulled you from the water
And kept you in my bed
A lost, forsaken daughter
Of a past that isn’t dead.
Somehow love from sweet obsession
Branched and broke a heart of stone
Distrust became confession
Solemn vows of blood and bone.
But in the wind, I hear the strain,
Pilgrim soul that time has found,
It moans to whisk you back again
Bid me follow, sweetly drown.
Don’t go near the water, love.
Stay away from strand or sea.
You cannot walk on water, love;
The lough will take you far from me.
23
TILL TIME CATCH
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of a fight
With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time;
Arise and bid me strike a match
And strike another till time catch.
—W. B. Yeats
I spent Sunday morning feeling peaked and tired, as though admitting my pregnancy to Thomas had freed me to act on my condition. Eoin woke with a chest cold, and I remained at home with him while Brigid and the O’Tooles attended Mass. The skies were overcast—a storm was brewing in the east—and Eoin and I climbed into Thomas’s big bed and read all the Eoin adventures, one by one, leaving Michael Collins’s tale for last. Eoin was very aware that he’d been appointed caretaker of Michael’s book, and he hardly breathed as we read, turning the pages gingerly so we wouldn’t crease or sully them with our use.
“We should write a story about us,” he suggested as I closed the last page.
“You, me, and Thomas?”
“Yes,” he murmured, yawning widely. He’d coughed through the night and clearly needed a nap. I pulled the blankets around his shoulders, and he snuggled down and closed his eyes.
“And what should we do? Where should we go?”
“I don’t care. Just as long as we’re together.” His sweetness brought a lump to my throat.
“I love you, Eoin.”
“I love you too,” he mumbled.
I watched as he drifted off, overcome with the need to gather him up and hold him close, to press kisses all over his little face, to tell him how happy he made me. But he was already snoring softly, his breath slightly labored by his cold. I settled for kissing his freckled forehead and brushing my cheek over his crimson hair.
I slipped from the room, pulling the door closed behind me, and made my way down the stairs. Brigid and the O’Tooles were back from Mass, and a light lunch was being prepared. I needed to get dressed and fix my hair; Robbie wanted to go to Sligo to see Arthur Griffith at Town Hall. Thomas had ordered him to be my shadow while he was gone, sleeping at Garvagh Glebe at night and leaving any duties that took him too far from the house to his brothers. We hadn’t seen or heard from Liam or Ben since Thomas had made his wishes known in December. It had been months without the slightest threat or incident, but Thomas had not relaxed his instructions. I knew Robbie wouldn’t go to the election meeting if I didn’t go with him. I wasn’t in the mood for people or politics, but I wouldn’t mind hearing Arthur Griffith speak again and hated for Robbie to miss the opportunity to hear a truly great man.
We lumbered down the lane a half hour later, promising Brigid we wouldn’t be late. Eoin was still sleeping, the storm had kept its distance, and Brigid seemed content to spend the afternoon in front of the fire, knitting and listening to my gramophone.
Sligo’s streets were filled with soldiers, and the tension in the air hummed in my chest as Robbie found a place on Quay Street to park the O’Tooles’ farm truck. A lorry full of anti-Treaty forces rumbled past, armed and grim, letting their presence be known. If intimidation was the goal, they accomplished it. Robbie and I climbed out of the truck and made our way toward the cobbled courtyard that rimmed Town Hall. People scurried alongside us, doing their best to stay off the street, even as they collected outside the palazzo-style edifice, their eyes scanning the growing crowd for trouble. At least three dozen Free State troops had created a perimeter around the building in an effort to protect the proceedings. Another lorry filled with IRA men approached, and every head turned and watched them amble by. I caught a quick flash of a familiar face.
“Robbie, is that Liam?” I hissed, grabbing his arm. The man was in the front of the lorry, facing the other side of the road, his body obscured by other men, his hair covered by an ordinary peaked hat. The lorry continued down the street without either of us making a positive identification.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Smith.” Robbie hesitated. “I didn’t see him. But maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
“Robbie!” someone shouted, and we turned toward the rounded Romanesque entrance as the bell in the gabled tower began to toll the hour, a dismal clanging in the cloud-covered sky. As if the ringing woke the rain, the heavens rumbled, and fat drops began to soak the cobbles around us.
“There’s Eamon Donnelly. He said he’d save us a spot,” Robbie said, and we dashed to the limestone steps, our decision made.
The meeting went without incident. We’d missed some of the earlier speeches, but l
istened, captivated, to Arthur Griffith, who spoke without notes, his hands resting on his cane. He wasn’t a flamethrower or a booming orator. He was measured and committed, urging the people to vote in favor of the Treaty and the candidates who supported it, not because it was perfect or solved all of Ireland’s problems, but because it promised the best path forward.
He had received a rousing welcome and enjoyed a standing ovation when he was through. As the crowd roared and stomped, Robbie and I vacated our seats, stealing out of the meeting room ahead of the throng, hurrying down the wide staircase with the wrought-iron balustrade. The building was beautiful with its glazed cupolas and carved sandstone, and I wouldn’t have minded a closer look, but Robbie was nervous and eager to go, and he wasted no time herding me back to the truck. He didn’t relax until we reached Garvagh Glebe an hour later.
He dropped me off at the front of the house so I didn’t have to walk from the barn, thanking me for accompanying him on the afternoon’s excursion.
“I’ll be out back for a bit,” he reported. “I told Da I’d feed the animals before Mass. I didn’t get it done, and he’s not gonna be happy with me when he finds out I went to town instead. Hopefully, he’ll never know.”
I jumped out and waved him away.
The house was quiet. I walked through the foyer and into my room. I slept in Thomas’s bed, but his wardrobe was too small for the two of us. I had kept my things in the room on the ground floor, retreating there when I wanted to write or have a minute to myself. We would have to reconfigure the living situation at some point, especially with a baby on the way. There were half a dozen empty rooms at Garvagh Glebe, plenty of space to arrange a marital suite and a nursery while still keeping Eoin close by.
I took off my hat and coat and hung them in the wardrobe before turning to my dresser for a sweater. The drawers were open. Clothing spilled out as though someone had riffled through each one, looking for something, and not bothered to cover their tracks. The narrow top drawer, where I kept my jewelry and the few odds and ends I’d acquired in my ten months at Garvagh Glebe, had been completely upended. I picked it up, unalarmed but confused, and began restoring order to my drawers.
