But Conor did not sleep. He listened to the thunder, trying not to remember all the times his sisters had curled up beside him in dark alleys and roadside ditches in the rain. After Michael's death, it had been his responsibility to take care of them, to find food, to find shelter. They had trusted him, they had counted on him. He had failed them.
Ta ocras orm, Conor. He could hear the plaintive voices of his sisters on the wind; he could see their tears in the rainfall. He struggled to blot them out, he tried to prop up the barriers that kept the disjointed fragments of his past at a tolerable distance. He didn't want to hear the voices now, not when he was awake, not when the girls were so near. Ta ocras orm, Conor . . . I think I'm dying. . . tell us.
A loud crack of thunder rattled the windowpanes. Miranda snuggled against him with a tiny sigh, and his arm tightened around her. She felt so small in the crook of his arm, vulnerable and fragile. He glanced at Carrie curled up beside him like a kitten by the fire. He could feel Becky's hair tickle his neck. He tried to focus on those things, not the voices that echoed through his brain.
There were times when he wanted so badly to silence the voices and demolish the dark dreams permanently; but somehow, he had never been able to take the final necessary step. He'd thought about it plenty of times, savored it like an upcoming holiday, contemplated the countless ways he could do it. Yet, when the moment came, something always stopped him. Suicide was the final sin, the one he could not bring himself to commit.
Survival was his greatest talent. Famine, typhus, dysentery, bullets, knives, beatings—he had survived them all because dying would be giving in; suicide would be the ultimate capitulation.
Hate and anger were what had kept him alive. He had fed on them for so long, they were the only emotions he recognized, the only ones he still knew how to feel.
And yet, right now, surrounded by the warmth of the three precious girls who were using him as a pillow, hate seemed very far away, crowded out by things unknown and yet familiar, impossible things. Love. A feeling of belonging. A sense of peace.
He closed his eyes. It was all an illusion. He didn't belong anywhere. He didn't know what love was anymore. And peace . . . Christ, what was that?
So Conor sat listening to the rain and stealing a few moments of trust and affection he did not deserve from three wee girls who were not his. And he reminded himself at least twice that night that he was not a family man.
16
FENIANS
Belfast, Ireland, 1865
When Conor met Sean Gallagher for the first time, he wasn't sure if the man was the full-blown revolutionary genius others thought him to be, or just an old man full of piss and wind.
Conor had heard of him, of course. Gallagher was something of a legend, a follower of O'Connell, and later one of the leaders during the rebellion of '48. He had seen the inside of many prisons as a guest of the Crown, and had suffered any number of indignities at their hands. He was now a member of the Brotherhood's hallowed inner circle. But after two hours in this small, cramped room above McGrath's, listening to the man drone on like a seanachaie about hundreds of years of subjugation and injustice, and tell the same stories he'd heard all of his life, Conor began to wonder if the man ever stopped talking long enough to have a revolution.
Talk, talk, talk, he thought. We Irish are so good at it.
Nonetheless, Conor leaned back in his chair and listened, keeping his impatience hidden, remembering the words of O'Bourne just the night before. "Gallagher is the kind that keeps the spirit alive. Many a man can talk brave enough in the pub after a few pints, but Gallagher'll keep their anger high after the porter's gone, lad. And he knows what he's doing. Remember that."
O'Bourne was a captain in the Brotherhood, leader of Belfast's small republican circle. His goal was to organize the Brotherhood in Belfast, to find recruits, safehouses, and escape routes, and to establish Belfast as a cornerstone of the Fenian movement. Conor and the half-dozen other men in this room had been carefully chosen, their backgrounds exhaustively checked, and their Fenian sympathies closely examined. Most of them were like Conor, without home or family, with a fire in their bellies and no one to grieve if they died for the cause.
Gallagher was up from Dublin to inspect O'Bourne's recruits, and select a handful of them for some kind of mission. Out of the seven men in this room O'Bourne had recommended, Gallagher would choose two. Conor wished he'd stop giving a dissertation on Irish history and get on with it.
"Some of you may be asking yourselves why we're wasting our time sitting here talking about fighting for freedom when all those who have come before us have failed." Gallagher leaned forward, palms flat on the table before him. "Those of you who are waiting to see Ireland rise and throw off the British yoke in our lifetime will wait in vain. Don't expect our people to come pouring out into the streets to follow us down the freedom road. They won't. They've been subjugated too long."
He paused to let the words sink in, then he went on, "We are trying to fight a war with limited support, limited funds, and centuries of fucking bad luck. So, why bother? What do we have that gives us any hope of being free?"
Gallagher straightened, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "We have one thing the British can never conquer with their armies and their governments, one thing they can never capture with their laws and their prisons. We have the will to fight. As long as there is one man to sound the battle cry for freedom, one man to spit in the eye of tyranny, one man who refuses to be subjugated, the British will never truly conquer us. And that is why they not only hate us, they also fear us. No matter what happens, remember that, because that is what will save our land and our people in the end. Our refusal to be broken."
His gaze slowly circled the room, and Conor knew they were being assessed. Gallagher was deciding who had barroom courage and who had the real thing, who would break and who would not, who could give his life for Irish freedom and who could only boast about it.
"The Brotherhood is your family now, lads. You have no other. Take a good look at the other faces in this room. Outside this circle, trust no one. And remember, I've nothing against a bit of skirt from time to time, but for Christ's sake, if you take off your pants, that doesn't mean open your mouth."
Conor didn't have to worry about that. He was celibate as the Pope himself these days. He thought of Mary, and his heart twisted with pain. She'd married Colm a week after their conversation outside McGrath's. Seven months later, she was dead, and the child she'd been carrying had died with her. His child. Over two years in her grave now, and he still felt the pain. Let it alone, he thought, and forced away memories of her, forced himself to concentrate on Gallagher and the cause. That was all that mattered now.
"Spies are everywhere," Gallagher went on, "and many of them come dressed in petticoats." He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a revolver. He held it so that all the men in the room got a good look, then he cocked the gun. "Informers will pay with their lives," he said, as his arm made a slow sweep around the circle of faces, "and the hearthstone of hell will be their bedrest forever."
The gun paused at Conor's chair, and the eyes of the two men met over the barrel. All the other men in the room ducked instinctively as Gallagher pulled the trigger. All but one.
Conor didn't flinch, and the hammer fell with a harmless click.
Gallagher laughed low in his throat. "He's a cool one, is our Conor," he said, and set the gun on the table.
Conor knew that he'd just passed the test and decided it was time to get to the point. He straightened in his chair and asked the vital question. "What do you want us to do?"
Gallagher's lips moved in a twisted imitation of a smile. "I've got one thousand rifles sitting in a New York City warehouse, courtesy of our American cousins in Clan na Gael and I want you to help me smuggle them into Ulster starting three months from now."
Conor decided Gallagher deserved his reputation as a full-blown rev
olutionary genius.
17
Olivia was bone weary. She slumped in the wagon seat and pulled her hat low against the pouring rain, exhaustion settling over her. Oren sat beside her in the wagon, and neither of them spoke as he drove the wagon down the muddy lane toward Peachtree. Olivia was too tired to talk, and though Oren was now a father for the sixth time, he was still a man of few words.
She thought of Kate's tired but exultant face as she'd held her newborn son, and Oren, looking so proud he could bust, giving his wife a smacking kiss right in front of her. It warmed the heart, it truly did, to see them so happy like that after sixteen years of marriage. It must be lovely to be married, she thought, and drifted off to sleep.
The jerking stop of the wagon woke her. Olivia grabbed her basket and jumped down without waiting for Oren to help her. "You make sure Doc Morrison has a look at Kate and the baby as soon as he gets back."
"I will," he answered. "Thank you, Olivia, for everything."
He climbed back into the wagon seat and snapped the reins. The wagon rolled out of the drive as Olivia ran for the shelter of the veranda. She pulled off her muddy boots, then entered the house.
The house was quiet, but dim light spilled into the foyer from the library. Conor must still be up, she thought as she set down her basket and her mud- encrusted boots. He had waited up for her. A warm glow began inside her at the thought and made her smile.
After removing her rain-soaked hat and duster, she crossed the foyer to the library and smiled at the sight that met her eyes. Conor was sitting on the sofa, wide awake, with the girls piled around him and over him like a pack of wolf cubs in a den, all three of them cozy , comfortable, and asleep. Chester, also sound asleep, lay across Conor's feet.
Conor glanced at her over Miranda's head. "Don't you dare laugh," he muttered and turned his face away, looking almost embarrassed.
Olivia covered her mouth and shook her head. "I wouldn't dream of it. Are you comfortable? You look . . . rather smothered."
He glanced down at the children around him. "I do seem to be trapped at the moment."
Still smiling, she studied him. "You make a nice pillow."
He lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes silver- gray in the lamplight. The momentary embarrassment was gone, replaced by something else, something almost predatory. His lashes lowered as his gaze ran down the length of her in a slow, speculative perusal, from her wet hair to her sodden hem and stocking feet. "You think so, love?"
Olivia couldn't help but envision it, an inviting picture of tousled bedclothes and him. She froze with sudden awareness and an acute, overwhelming shyness. She wished she could say something clever in return, something flirtatious, but she felt hopelessly inadequate to the task. She'd never been any good at flirtation.
The sound of their voices woke Carrie. She lifted her head to find Olivia standing there. "Mama?" she mumbled sleepily. "We waited up for you."
"I see that," Olivia answered, relieved by the distraction. "But it's way past your bedtime." Walking over to the sofa beside Becky, she laid a hand on the girl's shoulder and shook her gently. "Becky, wake up."
Becky opened her eyes and lifted her head from Conor's shoulder. "Mama, you're home," she said with a yawn. "Did Mrs. Johnson have her baby?"
"Yes, she did. A boy, and they're doing just fine." Olivia turned to Conor, who rose and handed Miranda over to her. "Thank you," she murmured, taking the child in her arms. "I hope they weren't any trouble."
"How much trouble could they be? They all fell asleep, and right in the middle of one of my best stories."
Picturing it, she wished she'd been here. It would have been wonderful to see him telling stories to the girls just the way any father might do. But Conor wasn't their father. Not even close.
"Well, good night." She looked away. "Sleep well."
"I'll try," he answered, a hint of irony in his voice she didn't understand.
The girls bid Conor a sleepy good-night, and Olivia led them out of the library. She stopped in the foyer to light a lamp, then took the girls upstairs. "Go to bed." she whispered to Becky and Carrie as she paused in the hallway outside their rooms. "I'll tuck you in after I put Miranda in bed."
"I'm too old to be tucked in, Mama," Becky whispered back.
Olivia smiled. "Well, I can still come in and say good-night, can't I?"
"I suppose," Becky admitted, and went down the hall to her own room.
Olivia turned to Carrie. "You, too, miss. In bed you go."
For once, Carrie did not try to come up with any excuses. She went into her room without a single protest. Nonetheless, Olivia waited until she saw Carrie crawl into bed before she went into Miranda's room. She pulled back the sheet and gently laid the child in bed, trying not to wake her, but she woke up the moment Olivia let her go.
"It's still raining, isn't it, Mama?" she mumbled, opening her eyes.
Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed, thinking that Miranda must still be afraid. "Yes, but the thunder's stopped now, honey."
"I was scared," the child admitted. "But Mr. Conor says the thunder's just shouting at everybody, and next time the thunder comes and shouts, I should shout right back. That's what he does when he has bad dreams."
"He told you that?" Olivia was astonished that Conor would admit such a thing, especially to the girls. "I think it's a good idea. How about we do that next time?"
"Okay." Miranda snuggled down into the mattress. "He told us a story. It was real good, Mama." She gave a huge yawn. "I wish Mr. Conor could tell us stories every night." Her eyes slowly closed.
Olivia leaned down and kissed her daughter's cheek. "So do I, sweetie," she said softly. "So do I."
Olivia was exhausted, but sleep eluded her. She kept changing her position, punching her pillow, and rearranging her bedcovers, but she simply could not sleep.
Finally, she decided that a cup of tea would do her a world of good and got out of bed. She pulled on her wrap and left her room. But as she started down the back stairs, she noticed light spilling through the doorway of the kitchen below.
Conor was still awake? Olivia hesitated on the landing, wondering if perhaps she should forget the tea and go back up, but in the end, she didn't. She continued on down the stairs to the kitchen and found him hunched over the table, writing on the slate. He looked up as she entered the room.
"I couldn't sleep," she explained. "Couldn't you sleep either?"
"No."
"I thought I'd make myself a cup of tea. Would you like one?"
He didn't answer, and she walked over to the stove. She stirred the banked coals to life, added kindling, and put on the kettle to boil.
Neither of them spoke, but she watched him out of the corner of her eye as she made a pot of tea—hunched over the slate, forming letters with care.
"Practicing your penmanship, I see," she said, as she brought two cups of tea to the table.
He took the cup she offered him and sat back in his chair. "Yes, though I don't know what good it will do me, being a prizefighter."
"Prizefighting," Olivia murmured thoughtfully. She rested her elbows on the table, her fingers curled around the cup in her hands, studying him over the rim. "Why do you do it?"
He shrugged. "It's a way to make a living."
"There are plenty of other ways to do that."
"Indeed," he said lightly. "But most of them involve work."
Olivia wasn't fooled by that glib comment. She'd seen him work, and she knew laziness wasn't the reason. "Haven't you ever thought about taking up another profession? Something less . . . violent."
"Like what?" He looked across the table at her, and a shadow crossed his face. "A man doesn't need to know how to read to know the signs in the windows all say, 'No Irish need apply."'
"Don't you ever feel like settling down in one place, having a stake in something more permanent than tomorrow's fight?"
He met her eyes. "I told you, I like to roam. I'm not th
e settling-down kind, Olivia. I like my freedom."
She'd known that the first moment she'd looked at him. "You could have a farm of your own. There's plenty of land out West to homestead. Free for the taking, so they say."
He shook his head. "I'm no farmer."
"What's wrong with being a farmer?"
He didn't answer for a long moment. "My father was a farmer," he finally said, "and his father, before him. We grew potatoes like everyone else. You see, there was so little land available to us—most of it being held by British landlords and put into grain that got shipped to England. Potatoes were the only crop we could grow that could feed our people on what little land we had. The potatoes fed our families; they fed our animals; they paid our land rents. They were everything to us. We couldn't survive without them. Then the ocras came. The hunger."
His unwavering gaze was focused on her, but she knew he didn't see her. In his mind, he saw his homeland. "One mornin' when I was eleven years old," he said slowly, "I woke up to the sound of my mother screaming. I ran outside to see what it was all about, and I saw her standing with my da and my brother, pointing to the clochan where we stored our crops. She was sobbing and saying something about the potatoes. I ran to the clochan just as my da opened the door. The smell hit us. . . . Mother of God," he whispered, "it was like nothing of this earth, that smell."
He paused, but Olivia said nothing. She simply waited, afraid that if she spoke he would retreat behind that wall of his again—afraid he would make some glib comment to change the subject, and never tell her the rest.
"My da and Michael went into the clochan," Conor went on. "They told me to wait outside, but I didn't. I followed them. I saw them leaning over the bin where we'd put the healthy new potatoes from the fields just the day before. My da looked at me as I came in, and for the first time in my life, I saw fear in his face. I knew something horrible had happened."
He frowned, looking suddenly bewildered, like a child who didn't quite understand that a cruel joke had just been played on him. "I peered over the top of the bin, and I couldn't see any potatoes. The bin was full of this slimy mush that smelled like sulfur and looked like porridge. Black porridge. Sure, I thought I was looking into the bowels of hell."
Conor's Way Page 18
