“Is there anything ye want me to tell him?” he asked.
“Tell him,” she looked back at the cradle from which small snuffling noises were emanating, “tell him we’re fine. Ye needn’t say more than that, Terry. It’s not a lie as such, we miss him to be certain, but we are still sound in body and spirit, so it’s the truth. It’s the only truth he can manage right now, ye know that well enough.”
“Aye, I know it, but please consider takin’ the laddies an’ goin’ to yer mother’s house, Marie. Those bastards will only keep comin’ back here, an’ next time they might hurt the babies. It’s pure madness from one end of this country to the other. Brendan will never forgive himself should real harm come to any of yez.”
Walking up the lane way, he wondered how he was to conceal the truth from Brendan. He hadn’t exaggerated when he said the man could read him like a crystal ball. He sighed and looked up at the new moon as though it could answer his worry. But the moon, riding softly through the treetops, coddled on a velvet August sky, wasn’t speaking. He hitched the bag higher on his shoulder and set off on the road, dreading the task that lay ahead of him. For he wasn’t merely delivering food and warm clothes to Brendan, he was also the bearer of bad tidings.
Two days before, on a warm summer day, Michael Collins, the man who might have saved Ireland, had been killed, shot in his own home county of Cork, near a place called Beal na Blath—the Mouth of Flowers.
Terry halted in the small forest below the last rise, through which snaked the path that would lead him to the hut. Evening was approaching, the sun sinking below the lip of the mountain in a shower of rose and gold. The last of the warmth had brought the scent of pine, amber-thick and sweet upon the cooling air. A damselfly floated past him, blushed pink by the setting sun and he could hear the sound of water somewhere far off, its rumble echoing down along the mountainside. A soft thrum in the air above him alerted him to an owl, flying so low that he could feel the draft of its passing and see the golden glow of its eyes before it disappeared deeper into the wood.
The Wicklow Mountains had a long history of sheltering rebels. As far back as the Norman invasions, Irish clans had used these mountains as refuge and stronghold. Some of the rebels of 1798—the last great stand against the English—had hidden here. After that, a military road was built and it was no longer the safe haven it had once been. But if a man knew the ways of bog and fog and the old mountain paths, he could find sanctuary here for a time.
Terry shivered. The light was fading and the shadows of the trees reached out slowly, like the fingers of a crone, the sort who always populated the old and dark tales, curling around his nape and creeping down his collar. Woods at twilight were an edge place, where time and location always seemed capable of devious shifts, where a man or a maid might disappear into the shadows and never be seen again. There were old tales of a dark man who haunted the mountain passes, and though Terry normally did not believe in such things, the twilight and the hush of the forest and the hissing swoop of the owl had combined to provide a rent in the air around him, as though anything and anyone might materialize under such conditions.
“Terry,” he told himself sternly, “don’t be an eejit, there’s no dark man in the forest.”
Except that there was. Terry could have sworn he wasn’t there a moment ago and now he was, blending into the tree’s long shadows, still and big and frightening, a part of the landscape around him as though he had grown out of it, a part of root and soil and twilight. Terry froze, his heart up near his throat so that he felt like he had swallowed a huge chunk of ice.
Then the dark man stepped forward and spoke. “Talkin’ to yerself again, man? ‘Tis the first sign that yer losin’ yer mind altogether, ye know that, right?”
Terry breathed out on a rush of relief that percolated through his veins and nearly buckled his knees.
“Yer a real bastard at times, Brendan Riordan, ye know that, don’t ye?”
“Aye,” Brendan laughed and took Terry’s satchel, “let’s get ye the rest of the way up the mountain before ye faint.”
They walked on together, the gradient steep once they emerged from the forest into a night lit only by the first stars. The path was faint, but it was easy to follow Brendan who had the sure-footedness of a young goat, and walked a mountain face as easily as he walked a city street. More easily, perhaps, being that he wasn’t as likely to encounter an assassin in these blue hills.
Terry was winded by the time they reached the half-summit, half-hollow, where the Riordan hut sat. The dark blurred its outlines, but he had been here many a time and knew how it looked, rough yet solid, built to withstand the weather that blew in over these mountains, particularly in the winter months. It wasn’t unusual to have snowdrifts up to a man’s hips at these high elevations.
Brendan gave him the scant grace of roughly two minutes to catch his breath and have a drink of cold water from the stream below the hut, before he spoke.
“I have to tell ye, man, I don’t like the look on yer face at all. Ye’ve the expression of someone who has swallowed a lemon sideways. Now confess, it’s good for yer soul. What’s goin’ on?” His arms were crossed over his chest, and though the light was near gone from the land, he could see the look in the dark eyes and knew the gig, as it were, was up. Damn the man anyway, he had warned Marie he wasn’t any good at hiding information from Brendan, the man had known him too long and too well. He thought briefly about keeping the information to himself, as Marie had requested, for he understood the sense of what she had asked. But then he looked up to see Brendan surveying the emotions crossing his face, and knew the man was seeing every thought in his head, clear as a bug caught on white paper.
“Some men paid a visit to Marie.”
“What did they do?” Brendan’s voice was low and steady, but Terry saw his fists clench by his sides, and the ripple in his throat muscles. “Terry?”
Terry swallowed, his own anger still a very present emotion, and the woman not his wife. He could only imagine how Brendan was going to feel.
“They cut her hair off an’ smacked her face. An’ they made a mess of the house.”
“Terry?” The voice was low and controlled but he could hear the eruption of violence that was brewing beneath it.
“They didn’t rape her, they were rough with her, but not in that way.”
“An’ my sons?” Brendan asked, his words thick with fear.
“They’re fine; Marie hid them away in the bedroom.”
Brendan made a choking sound, as though he might be sick and then he suddenly hit the wall of the hut so hard that a sprinkling of thatch drifted down like a dry shower of snow all around them.
“Christ almighty, Terry, what sort of man am I that I am not there when they shave my wife’s head an’ threaten my children’s lives? What kind? I’ll tell ye,” he roared, “no fockin’ kind at all, that’s what kind!”
“Yer bein’ a histrionic eejit, an’ ye know it,” he said, leaning against the wall, which was cool and slightly damp with night’s approach.
Brendan glared at him, that fierce black glare that had reduced many a man, but had long ago ceased to have any great effect on Terry. And then he laughed, “Aye, yer right, I’m bein’ an eejit. Lord knows the woman is more than capable of lookin’ after herself.”
“Brendan, there’s somethin’ else I’ve come to tell ye.”
Brendan took a breath, as if he already knew, bracing himself against the blow to come.
“Mick is dead, Brendan. He was killed by a gunman down in Cork three days ago.”
Brendan nodded, his face like a stone wall, unreadable, impassive. He didn’t need to ask why; they both knew Mick had long had a target on him, due to signing the Treaty with the British. During the signing Viscount Birkenhead had said, ‘I may have signed my political death warrant tonight,’ to which Mick had replied, ‘I may have signed my actual death warrant.’ Aye, Mick had known it would come.
“I just need a m
inute or two, Terry,” Brendan said.
Terry nodded, knowing Brendan would walk off for a bit, find his equilibrium again and make what peace he could with the fact that the man who had been the brightest hope for Ireland, had been shot down in his prime, and that with him a light had been extinguished which might never be re-lit. Brendan had admired Michael Collins, but he had also been his friend and one of the few people Mick had trusted right to the end.
He watched as Brendan strode off down the mountain toward the stream, his legs eating up the ground, feet certain over rock and root and soil, but Terry knew how upset he was. When in sorrow, he always sought solitude. Small spaces never could contain the man; he needed the breadth and depth of the outdoors. This mountaintop suited him well, for he found city streets claustrophobic and preferred to be somewhere he could walk for miles and not meet another soul.
Terry turned and went into the hut. The inside was warm, though the fire had died back to a glowing bed of coals. He took three chunks of wood from the full hod and placed them on the coals. The wood was dry and caught quickly, sending up a cheering blaze for him to warm his hands. When the chill had come off him, he lit the paraffin lamp, grateful for the circle of light it cast over the room. Then he set about fixing himself a simple meal of bread and cheese, and boiled the kettle for tea. He had brought a tin of tea leaves with him, to replenish Brendan’s stock, as well as a bottle of Connemara Mist, this he had added to the bag Marie had put together. Once the tea was made, he simply sat for a time and watched the fire, feeling weary in all his parts, for he had not slept properly for weeks now. He must have dozed for a bit, for he woke suddenly at the cry of a fox somewhere nearby. He looked about the small hut, dazed, and saw that Brendan had not returned. He had an idea where he might be though. There was a standing stone, some distance from the hut, but large enough that it was visible from the windows. Brendan was likely to go there with his sorrow. Terry walked out into the night and down the slope toward the stone.
It stood implacable against the backdrop of the night, tendrils of mist wreathing the top of it. He had often wondered what the significance of the stone was, of any of the hundreds that dotted the Irish landscape, come to that. This one in particular seemed to have some sort of astronomical purpose, for the moon rose almost directly over its shoulder on the winter solstice, and it would have risen right above it three thousand or more years ago.
Brendan sat in the shadow faintly cast by the quarter moon at the base of the stone. Terry sat down beside him in the long grass that grew around the stone. It was damp with the night air, though not wet. Brendan didn’t turn to acknowledge his presence, but he knew the man was aware of him. He had never known anyone to get the drop on Brendan Riordan, figuratively or literally.
“I had a dream the other night,” Brendan said and his voice seemed to come from far away, the anger all gone from him now. “Yet, it seemed more than a dream, more a sort of waking vision. I stood here an’ saw a tattered group of men march by, in ragged columns. Then I realized I could see through them, they were all ghosts of legendary rebels—there was the Great O’Neill and O’Connell and Parnell, Pearse an’ Connolly, Michael Dwyer an’ Wolfe Tone an’ so on back until I felt they were emergin’ from all the thousand years of blood in this land, as though they had been breathed up from the soil itself to set out marchin’ upon this mountainside.
“It was O’Connell that turned an’ he looked at me, an’ he said, ‘All men die, Brendan, but not all die free.’ Then they walked on, one or two whistlin’ an’ yet their feet made no sound upon the road. I stood there for what seemed the rest of the night, though I woke in my bed, chilled to the bone an’ with dirt on my feet. An’ I felt odd all day with those ghosts clingin’ about me, like when ye walk into a spider’s web an’ spend the rest of the day tryin’ to wipe imaginary webbin’ from yer face an’ hair. It would have been the night after Mick died.”
“Brendan, man, I don’t like how ye sound, ye’ve been away up here an’ alone too long. Maybe Marie and the babies should come here to stay with ye.”
Brendan shook his head, face cast into shadow so that Terry saw no more than his eyes and those were caverns in his face, dark and unfathomable.
“Nay, Marie can’t be livin’ this rough right now. I’ll give ye a letter to take back with ye for her, an’ in it I’m goin’ to insist she go to her mother’s. Ye’ll make certain she heeds it, Terry, I won’t have her endangered by me. She needs help with the boys, an’ she needs safety. I’ve got a bloody target pinned to my back right now, Terry, I can’t go near them, much as I want to.”
He breathed out a long sigh. “I don’t know what we’re doin’, Terry. Irishmen killin’ Irishmen for ridiculous things. I heard they shot a man for refusin’ to dig a trench last month. That’s not what we signed up for. I know it’s not what Mick wanted when this all started.”
“’Tis war, Brendan, an’ ye know things that are trivialities in everyday life become something else altogether during war. What yer country was or what ye hoped it would be, becomes a distant thing in the reality of war. ‘Tis, as the poet said, ‘another man’s country, not my own.’”
“Yer usually not so prosaic, Terry, what’s happened to ye? I’ve only been gone the three weeks, after all.”
He took a breath and told him all of it: their lack of munitions and money, the discouragement within the rank and file, the sheer exhaustion that being in a pitched battle most of one’s life, eventually caused, the shooting of citizens in the streets by both the police force and elements of the Brotherhood and the senseless deaths that littered the countryside now like a strange battlefield where casualties were flung hither and yon. How sometimes it seemed as if the very air smelled of blood and that it had done something irrevocable to them all, the entire country, from which the recovery would be long and painful. If, indeed, they could recover at all.
“So that’s it then, Mick’s dead an’ we’re done. What was it all for, Terry?”
Terry looked out into the night, the mountain shrouded fast in the dark. “Maybe it’s enough that we tried, Brendan, maybe that’s all that really matters, maybe that’s what will survive beyond us—that we took a stand when we could.”
Brendan sighed, a long melodic sound that seemed to come up from the ground beneath him. “When will that stop bein’ enough, Terry? When will glorious defeats stop bein’ enough for us?”
Terry knew the question was rhetorical and that Brendan wasn’t speaking of the practicalities of war, of money and munitions and weariness and petty infighting.
“So what yer sayin’ is we’ve about a month left, before we’re goin’ to have to declare ourselves defeated?”
“Aye, give or take a day or two,” Terry said grimly.
Brendan nodded, his eyes bleak. “It’s not as though we’re not well and truly acquainted with the taste of losin’. At least we know how to continue on after. Only it seemed, this time, like maybe, just maybe things were goin’ to be different. God, Terry, I swear I could feel it,” he reached his big hand up into the night air, fingers outstretched. “The brass ring was right there, an’ yet we couldn’t fix our grasp upon it. We never can, it seems.” The hand drifted back down to Brendan’s side, the fingers curling under as if they felt the absence of that promise that had lit the very air around them even six short months ago.
“I look up at the sky, an’ I wonder how can it matter so much—all of it, where borders are drawn, what street we’re allowed to live in, what church we attend an’ what hurling league we cheer for. Then I hold my wee boys in my arms, an’ I think we owe the next generation, we need to make it better for them. Not like this though, not how this war is shapin’ itself into brother against brother, neighbor killin’ neighbor an’ the Brits here policin’ us for the love of Christ, when we only wanted them out in the first place. Why won’t they just go, an’ leave us to our own devices? But it seems they will never sate their hunger here in Ireland—they want everything from us�
��our land, our laws, our language, our identity, even our bloody names, when sometimes that is all a man has left to hang onto, his name. They’re tryin’ to strip us of everything, but the puzzle is why, why do they feel the necessity to reduce us to nothin’, to leave us without the slightest bit of dignity?”
“Because they don’t understand us,” Terry said, “it’s the oldest an’ emptiest reason in the world, but no less true for that.”
“I just want my sons to have a right to their name, their country an’ their own dreams. Is that so much to ask of the universe?”
“Of the universe? No. Of Ireland, maybe.”
“What’s the other piece of news ye have to deliver, Terry? I know yer not done with me yet.”
Terry swallowed hard; he truly did feel like he had a lemon stuck sideways in his throat and a whole stream of ice-water in his intestines to go along with it.
“I’m goin’ into the priesthood.”
There was a silence so long that Terry thought he might get sick with the tension of waiting for the man to respond.
“Why?” Brendan asked finally, voice quiet, but not soft.
“I don’t know that I can give ye a reason that will make ye understand, Brendan. I don’t even know if I can put into words this feeling that I have. Only that it feels right, more than anything else in my life ever has.”
“Is it because of Cass, is that why ye feel the need to do this?”
He had expected the question, and so had thought about it in no small degree. He answered honestly, or as honestly as he understood his own motivations at present.
Spindrift (Exit Unicorns Series) Page 8
