by Lisa Henry
Ciaran’s screams echoed down here, horrifying and otherworldly. Darragh squeezed through the narrowest part of the passage and then saw the light flickering up ahead.
“Ciaran!”
No answer. Just another piercing scream, joined this time by a despairing wail. Not Ciaran’s voice. Rabbit?
Darragh raced through to the vaulted chamber, all thoughts of sneaking up on Boru long gone. “Ciaran!” He had to save Ciaran. Save Ciaran, and bury his knife in Boru’s chest. “Ciaran!”
He stopped in sheer shock.
The walls of the cavern were splattered with black-red blood.
Ciaran, naked and screaming, straddled a prone shape, arms over his head, holding a blood-soaked rock in both hands. A rock he was smashing against the ground. Over and over again.
No, not the ground. The pulpy remains of Boru’s head.
And Rabbit, huddled against the wall, naked as well, with his arms behind his back, face covered in droplets of blood, shouting, “Ciaran stop! Stop it! Stop!”
“Ciaran.” The sight of it was sickening. How could it be sickening, when Darragh had stabbed a man to death only moments ago? But he’d stopped. He’d stopped when Michael was dead, long before he became some red, wet thing with no resemblance to a man. “Ciaran!”
Ciaran didn’t stop. Maybe didn’t even hear him. Just kept smashing the rock down.
Darragh crossed the floor. Grabbed Ciaran’s bloody wrists on the next upswing and held them fast. The rock tumbled to the bloody ground. “Ciaran, he’s dead. He’s dead. I’m here. You’re free.”
He turned Ciaran in his arms, cradling his tiny, shivering body against his chest. Used both hands to cup Ciaran’s face and wipe the thick gobs of blood away. Or smear them, at least. Ciaran’s eyes reappeared. Slowly came into focus.
“Darragh,” he whimpered. His startled eyes widened, and soon after, the tears started, flowing freely down his smudged red face. “Darragh. He wanted to hurt Rabbit. He wanted to hurt Rabbit.”
“Darragh,” Rabbit echoed, and suddenly the pair of them were both pressed against him, two bodies trying to climb into his lap, both shaking terribly, both weeping.
“All right,” Darragh said. “All right. Let’s get you out of here. Both of you.”
He managed to work his knife through Rabbit’s bonds, then helped pull the lad’s shirt back on. Then he turned in search of Ciaran’s scattered clothes.
“Darragh,” a voice called from the entrance passage. “All right in here?”
“Fine,” Darragh called back. “Boru’s dead.”
Noel’s head popped into the cavern and immediately went pale. “Oh. You did a number on him!”
“I didn’t,” Darragh said. “Ciaran did.”
Ciaran shuddered, but there would come a time when he’d be proud of what he’d done. Darragh would make sure of that. Just … not now. For now, Darragh helped find Ciaran his clothes. Shirt. Trousers. Boots. He was covered in blood, but they could figure out a bath later. For now, he needed to be clothed again. Darragh knew how much that meant to him.
“Get dressed, Rabbit,” he said. “Hurry now. Let’s get you outside. Get you home.”
“And Boru? His … body?” Noel asked.
“Leave it here,” Ciaran said, his voice raspy and emotionless. Chilling enough that Darragh shuddered. “This was a burial place for kings? Then let him rot here like the rest. Let the wild animals pick him clean.” He tore the gold torc from his throat and the bands from his wrists and arms, as if they’d suddenly begun to burn his skin. He tossed them to the ground, next to Boru’s bloodied body. As precious as they once had been, nobody dared stoop to pick them up.
Darragh helped Ciaran button his coat. “How’s Lee?”
“The one who was shot?” Noel asked. “He’ll live. One of your other fellas though … dead.” He finally stepped forwards into the chamber.
“One of the bandits?” Rabbit asked. “Not Garvan!”
“Garvan didn’t come,” Darragh said softly, not sure whether that revelation would hurt Rabbit worse than thinking the man dead.
“Didn’t come?” Rabbit murmured. He slumped against the wall, shell-shocked.
Noel reached out a hand to help him.
“Don’t!” Ciaran said. “Don’t touch him!”
Noel stepped back, showing his palms. “Just trying to help.”
“Yeah, I remember how you helped me in the past,” Ciaran said. “Don’t.”
“He did help,” Darragh said lamely. “He gave me the knife to save you. He betrayed Boru. He’s …” He looked to Noel. “You’re the rat queen’s man, aren’t you?”
Noel nodded. “I am. Was all along.”
Ciaran shook his head, leaning into Darragh’s side. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me. You fit in well, Noel. I wouldn’t have guessed it was you. Very convincing.”
Darragh looked between them, conflicted. Oh yes, Noel had been as brutal as any of Boru’s men. And it was fine that Darragh could make the distinction that he’d only been playing a part, but of course Ciaran couldn’t. And nobody should force him to try.
“I want to go away from here now,” Ciaran whispered. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“We’ll go,” Darragh promised. “Anywhere you want. We’ll go.”
It was a slow shuffle back towards the entrance with Ciaran and Rabbit both trying to huddle close. Noel went ahead, so by the time they climbed back out into the night, Michael’s body had been removed from the entrance stone.
Lee lay on the ground, with Redmond kneeling over him binding the wound to his leg.
Darragh urged Rabbit towards them. “Go on. They came for you.”
Rabbit shuffled over to them, but he kept casting desperate looks at Ciaran and Darragh.
“Can we go?” Ciaran asked. “Can we just leave, please, Darragh?”
Darragh cupped his face. “We will, very soon. I know you don’t want to stay here, but later, there are things you’ll want to know. And I know you don’t want to talk with Noel, so I want you to wait here, just for a minute, with Rabbit. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t,” Ciaran said.
Darragh pressed the knife into his hands. “Take this, just in case. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Noel stood a short distance away with one of his men. He nodded at Darragh as he approached. Stoic, unapologetic, every inch the ruthless double agent.
“What will happen in Dublin?” Darragh asked him. “Who will be king now?”
“No king,” Noel said. “No more fucking kings for us. Boru lost a lot of standing after Croke Park. Most of the king’s men will move on to the other gangs. Might be messy for a while, but Maureen, the canny old bitch, will know how to sort things. And I’ll be there to do her dirty work, like always.”
Darragh didn’t doubt that. “And the slaves?”
“Will go the same way as the kings,” Noel said. “Into memory.” He glanced at Ciaran. “You’ll take him back? To his father in the North? Collect a reward from the grateful Taoiseach?”
“I’ll take him where he wants to go,” Darragh said. Wherever that was. Darragh was done being just another man seeking to control and enslave Ciaran for his own ends.
Noel grimaced. “You never did get your medicine, did you, culchie?”
“No.” He’d failed.
“There was some, in the aid shipments from the North,” Noel said. “I’ll see the old woman puts some aside.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever step foot in Dublin again.” Knowing what he knew now, it seemed safer to gamble on the chance of disease than to walk into that nest of vipers again.
“Maybe you won’t,” Noel said. “But I’m glad you did. It was his obsession with Boy that brought him down, you know. He should have stayed and tried to consolidate his position, but no, a whiff of his Boy in the air and off he went chasing him. But then, he’d have done better to give Boy to you in the first place, rather than letting his jealousy and bloodlust get to
him. You’d have made him a powerful ally, I think.”
Darragh didn’t want to imagine that reality.
“Well,” Noel said, “if you really mean never to come back to Dublin, maybe Maureen will send you that medicine you wanted. Cork, wasn’t it?”
“Cork without a king,” Darragh said.
Noel’s face split with a grin. “The look on his face when you said that!”
“Cúil Aodha,” Darragh added. Nobody to hide it from now. He’d be back there, soon. Back with his people, living in peace.
“Good luck, Darragh,” Noel said and held out his hand.
The same hand that had probably hurt Ciaran in the past. Bruised him. Marked him.
Darragh shook it. “Good luck to you as well.”
He turned and headed back to Ciaran, wiping his palm on his jacket. “We’re done,” he said, and Ciaran nodded gratefully. He was gratified to see Lee back up on his feet, hobbling around. Wincing, but still moving. “Do you need help getting back to your camp?” he asked.
Lee rubbed his bloody thigh. “Bleeding’s stopped. Be sore for a bit, but it’s only taken a chunk out the side.”
“I’m sorry about Thomas,” Darragh offered.
“Worth it to see that bastard Boru dead and our Rabbit freed.” He cast a smile at Rabbit, who stood off on his own, expression lost. “Rabbit?”
“Garvan didn’t come back,” Rabbit said. “So.”
“I’m sorry,” Lee said. “We tried to convince him, but he had to protect the children. He didn’t want to give you up.”
“But he did!” Rabbit screamed. “He gave me up! Like I was nothing!” He pulled at his wild hair.
“Rabbit!” Ciaran said. He held out his hand.
Rabbit stared at it for a moment, tears streaming down his face. Then he stepped forwards and took it. “Not going back,” he said, shaking his head at Lee’s dismay. “Not to him. I can’t. Not now.”
Lee nodded. “Be safe, Rabbit.”
“You’ll eat him up with guilt,” Redmond added. “No more’n he deserves.”
Rabbit nodded, scrubbing at his face with his free hand.
“Come with us,” Ciaran said, smiling for the first time since Darragh had found him again. “Me and Darragh.”
“Where we going?” Rabbit sniffled.
Ciaran looked at Darragh questioningly.
“Anywhere,” Darragh said, pulling him closer. “Anywhere you want.”
“Anywhere?” Ciaran asked.
“Anywhere,” Darragh repeated.
“Up north? To my father?”
Darragh’s heart squeezed, but he forced himself to nod. “If that’s what you want, I will take you there.”
“And if …” Ciaran’s eyes shone. “And if I don’t want to go there?”
Darragh took him by both hands, holding them gently. Looked into his eyes. “You’re a free man, Ciaran. I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.” I promise. “But for now, let’s just get out of here.”
They didn’t stop in the village. Darragh collected his pack from where he’d left it, shouldered it, and they kept moving.
“Are you tired?” he asked, every few minutes it seemed.
Tired. Somewhere beyond tired. But Ciaran didn’t want to stop anywhere he remembered. He wanted somewhere new. Somewhere free of king’s men and bandits. Somewhere with at least the illusion of sanctuary.
They found it a few miles from the village: a rundown cottage in an overgrown field. The wattle roof was still intact, although the windows were half-gone. So was most of the furniture. But it had a stone fireplace, and an old well in the yard behind the kitchen. It must have been picturesque at one time, postcard perfect. And unlike the new builds from the Celtic Tiger all rotting away across the country, this house had been built strong and sturdy to last. It was in a state of disrepair, sure, but it was dry.
Ciaran and Rabbit huddled close together on the kitchen floor, arms around each other for warmth, while Darragh worked. Out the window they watched him tear the old well cover off in the moonlight. The cover was brittle and mostly eaten through by worms, but dry enough to break up for firewood. He built them a fire in the cottage’s old wood-burning stove, brow drawn with concentration as he gently blew on the kindling and coaxed the tiny flame into life.
They watched, too, as he stood again and stomped out to the yard, drew water from the well, and tipped it into a rusted pot to boil it on the stove.
In what had once been the living room there was a cabinet, long ago emptied of anything useful or valuable but too heavy to shift. Ciaran imagined it full of little pieces of Waterford crystal and wedding photos in grimy silver frames. Just dust and cobwebs, now. Darragh found a wrench under the bathroom sink and used it to lever the doors off—more firewood.
He went from place to place around the house, working without speaking. He packed the windows shut with debris. Barricaded the door. Found an airing cupboard full of quilts and draped them over the lopsided kitchen table to dry in front of the fire. When he left the main room, Ciaran and Rabbit followed.
In the house’s tiny old bathroom with its filthy blackened toilet, they watched as Darragh took his spare shirt and wiped the dust and grime out of the bathtub. Then, with his shirt wrapped around his hands, he carried the rusted pot back and forth between the cottage’s tiny kitchen and nearby bathroom until there was enough hot water in the tub for a man to crouch in. Not the bath he’d promised Ciaran, but far better than anything he had seen in months. The water steamed away, clearing out Ciaran’s blood-clogged sinuses.
“Could do a bit with this place,” Darragh said on one of his trips.
Ciaran looked around and wondered how he only saw destruction when Darragh saw potential. He only saw what had been lost, not what could still be useful. Maybe that had always been his problem. So consumed with the pity and the tragedy of it all, while men like Darragh just rolled up their sleeves and got on with it.
Ciaran had wanted to work miracles for Ireland, when men like Darragh did so. Every day.
“Lay your clothes out by the fire to dry,” Darragh said. “Let’s get you both cleaned up. Rabbit first, I suppose.”
Ciaran looked down at his hands, still stained with blood. Yes, Rabbit first, because Ciaran would leave the water filthy.
Ciaran and Rabbit stripped off, and Ciaran knelt by the tub, feeling absurdly protective, as Rabbit clambered in. Darragh took a roll of bandages from the first aid kit in his pack and dipped them into the warm water. He scrubbed Rabbit’s back gently. And talked.
Talked about Cúil Aodha. About his people there. About washing the younger ones when they’d been little. About rounding them up when they didn’t want to get caught, lining them up in the Nolans’ bathroom because it had the biggest tub, and scrubbing them until the water was black. How Cathal had run all the way to the old schoolhouse and hidden in the cleaner’s closet for two days because he didn’t want a bath, and Maeve had eventually dragged him out by the ear and walloped him with a wooden spoon just like her mam used to do with her. Mother Maeve, they’d called her after that. Mother Maeve, Mother Maeve.
“Does that make you Da Darragh?” Rabbit asked him as Darragh tipped water over his wild hair. His duck feather floated free, and he swirled it in the water. Ciaran hated the sad, changed look in his eyes. Boru had taken the light from him. Well, Boru and Garvan.
“We were just the oldest,” Darragh said. “Someone had to look out for the little ones.”
“Didn’t have to,” Rabbit said, wiping his hair from his eyes. “I didn’t get no parents, so. Found under a cabbage leaf, me. Found me own way to the camp. Don’t remember nothing before that.” He clamped his mouth shut suddenly.
And thought the camp was home, was family, Ciaran knew. Thought some bonds were beyond breaking.
“Course we had to,” Darragh said calmly. He swiped the bandages over Rabbit’s shoulders. “We’re family.”
“And now? Are you and Ciaran family?” Rab
bit flinched as Darragh scrubbed over the rope burns on his scrawny arms.
“Yes,” Ciaran replied, without even thinking. Darragh shot him a shocked look that quickly melted into a soft, wistful smile. The corners of his blue eyes crinkled. And then Ciaran looked to Rabbit again in the bath, cupping his shoulder, determined to transfer comfort—and not trauma—through his touch. “And so are you, now.”
Rabbit flushed and wrinkled his nose. “Good. Good, so.”
“Right,” Darragh said, his smile growing. “Let’s get you out of here and into bed, little Rabbit.”
“Fuck off, don’t call me that,” Rabbit said, but he grinned. “You got no wooden spoon here!”
“Maybe so,” Darragh said, “but I’ll introduce you to Maeve’s if you don’t mind your manners.”
Rabbit stood up, water streaming off him.
Darragh laid a hand on Ciaran’s arm. “I’ll get him settled and come straight back.”
Ciaran nodded, warmth spreading through him before he’d even climbed into the tub. He knelt there and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of Darragh and Rabbit in the kitchen. Darragh’s voice, low and calm, and Rabbit’s gradually becoming animated again. What was it about Darragh that did that? That healed like that? The man was no therapist, no well-papered counsellor like Ciaran had seen in the North as a child. Didn’t even really seem to try to analyse or cure people’s ills. He was just calm, patient, and kind.
“Give me your hands.”
Ciaran’s eyes flashed open. Darragh was kneeling in front of the tub, holding the wet clump of bandages. Ciaran held out his hands and sighed as Darragh began to wash them gently. He’d known instinctively that Ciaran didn’t want to look at them. Didn’t want to look at the water, either, which had already turned a deep, rust red from Rabbit’s and Ciaran’s combined filth of dirt and blood.
“You’re a wonder,” Darragh said, his gaze fixed on Ciaran’s. “To have you here, to have you whole … It’s a miracle, Ciaran.”
“I don’t feel like much of a wonder,” Ciaran replied. “More like a murderer, just now.” Even the water Darragh was currently washing him with ran red with Boru’s blood.
Darragh shook his head. “Not one at all. I saw you when … when it was happening. You weren’t angry. You weren’t vengeful, even though you had a good damn reason to be. You were scared. You were scared for Rabbit. That’s all you kept saying, you didn’t want him to hurt Rabbit. Doesn’t sound like much of a murderer to me.”
