The Devil's Due: An Irish Historical Thriller (10 page)

After two years of wandering, Republican thoughts and my father’s words had taken root. I made my way back to Limerick, thinking that if I was going to join the fight, I wanted to fight with men I knew. It was late spring when I returned and met up with Liam.

I had returned on a Saturday and, after spending the night at Liam’s, we decided to go to the crossroads dance Sunday afternoon. Although public meetings were illegal—one of many liberties the British had taken away—it was a common enough event in the country at the time. The boys and girls, the young and the old, would gather at the intersection, the music coming from a fiddle and a hornpipe or two, while couples danced the sets.

We had just arrived, and it was a welcoming scene. The sweet sounds of the fiddles filled the air, a handful of couples dancing, others lounging on the stone wall, the smiles and laughter infectious. I was talking with Liam and two other boys—people I hadn’t seen for several years—when something caught my eye. I saw the blue dress and the long, golden hair, and my heart started to race. She was standing by the wall, talking with two other women. I hadn’t seen Kathleen for over two years and, when she turned and smiled, it was as if we were the only two in the world. From that moment, my life would never be the same.

“Let sleeping dogs lie, Frank,” Liam had warned me.

But I couldn’t and two days later I found myself wishing I had.

“It’s the devil, you are!” Mrs. Sheehy screeched. In the courtyard outside her cottage, she dropped her pail and came at me, her arms swinging, hands slapping at my head. I put my arms up in defense as I backed away, the hens and rooster scattering behind me. This only seemed to further enrage her, and she came at me with a fury.

The commotion drew Tom’s sisters out of the cottage and while Angela, the older sister, held Mrs. Sheehy back, Colleen ran to the stables. Mrs. Sheehy began to wail.

“Leave now, while you still can.” Angela warned with a snarl.

But I didn’t, and a moment later I found myself surrounded by shovels and pitchforks, Tom’s father and brothers spread out around me. I had made a mistake. With the stone wall behind me, I was trapped. I wouldn’t be able to scramble over the wall before a shovel or pitchfork found me.

“So now that the war’s over, you came back, did you?” Mr. Sheehy growled as he held the pitchfork steady, pointed at my chest. “And for what purpose? To torment the family of a man you sent to his death?”

“I did come back, sir, to pay my respects and to tell you the truth about the night Tom died.”

Before Mr. Sheehy could respond, Pete let out a growl.

“You killed my brother!” he shouted. A year younger than Tom but a head taller than me, Pete’s eyes filled with rage. Suddenly, he lunged at me with his shovel. I stepped to the side, dodging the blade, and hit him once in the head. Pete dropped to the ground and his brother Barry rushed forward. It was only Mr. Sheehy’s bark that stopped him.

“No!” he shouted.

Barry stopped in his tracks. Mr. Sheehy didn’t want to see any more of his boys hurt. Small as I was, he had seen me take on lads much bigger than myself.

“There’ll be no killing here!” the father continued, more to mollify Barry than anything else.

Barry hesitated, his shovel held menacingly close to my face. Three years younger than Pete and four years younger than me, he was my size. I contemplated disarming him, but as close as he was, it was Mr. Sheehy’s pitchfork that had me worried.

“See to your brother,” Mr. Sheehy ordered.

I stared at Barry’s shovel, at the dirty blade that would surely cut me or bash my head given the chance, and then at his dark eyes. After a moment, he cautiously stepped back and, watching me the whole time, nudged Pete with his foot. As Pete struggled to his feet, Mr. Sheehy called over his shoulder to his youngest daughter.

“Colleen,” he ordered. “Go fetch Billy.”

I let out a nervous breath as I considered what to do. Billy lived seven miles away. If Colleen found him, it would take an hour and a half at least before Billy was there.

“Mr. Sheehy, sir,” I pleaded as Colleen ran to the side of the cottage. “The stories you heard about that night are not true.”

“We’ll see what the IRA has to say about that,” he answered as he jabbed at the air between us with his pitchfork. Pete rubbed at his cheek, now swollen red, and glowered at me, contemplating, I was sure, his revenge. While his father and brother watched me warily, he picked up his shovel. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Colleen climb on her bicycle. Legs pumping, her feet furious on the pedals, she disappeared down the lane.

They escorted me to the stables, Pete on one side, his shovel held cautiously, Barry on the other and Mr. Sheehy behind me, prodding me along with the fork. The stable, a small stone building with a thatched roof, was beyond the cottage, past the fowl-house and next to the cow-house. In addition to two horses, a rooster, and a dozen hens, the Sheehys, I remembered, had a cow and several goats. As we stepped through the gate, following the path to the barn, Mr. Sheehy poked me again.

“You can try and make your peace with Billy,” he said unnecessarily, “but the IRA doesn’t have much use for traitors.”

It was something I knew all too well.

___

It was just a year and a half ago, late summer, several months before I fled. We had planned to ambush the shipment to the quarry. Recognizing the risk that gelignite and blasting materials posed to them, the British provided escorts for all such shipments lest they fall into our hands. Commandeering and stealing what we needed was the only way we could arm ourselves. If it wasn’t guns, it was black powder and detonation cord, paraffin and rope, clothes and food, bicycles and boots—whatever it was, if we needed it we took it. For those who were Catholic and sympathetic to our cause, we issued receipts in the hopes that someday, a free Ireland would be able to repay them. For those that weren’t, they received no such commitment, even though the receipts probably weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

We had lain in wait for most of a day, expecting the convoy between twelve and one, but that hour had come and gone. Our ambush site was a stretch of road with a sharp turn where the convoy would be forced to slow down. Dan, Sean, Liam, and I were positioned behind a wall before the turn; Billy, Padraig, Roddy and Tom were similarly positioned around the bend. The plan was for our group, led by Dan, to let the lead lorry pass. Once they made the turn, Billy’s group would engage them while we engaged the rear lorry. The blasting supplies, normally on a horse-drawn cart, would be caught in the middle. Once we disposed of the British, the gelignite would be ours for the taking.

It was just after five in the evening when we received word from one of our scouts that the convoy had been spotted. This was relayed up the road to Billy’s team. We hunkered down behind the wall, checked our weapons again, and fought the nervousness that always came before battle. Moments later, we heard the sound of the lead lorry. Dan peeked over the wall but even though the noise of the motor continued to grow, he couldn’t see the convoy.

Suddenly, there was the crack of a rifle, and we heard a scream from around the bend. Instantly, we knew that we’d been outflanked. As more gunshots rang out, we scrambled over the wall into the road and ran towards the bend. The lorry, which had been waiting just over the crest of a hill, out of our view, was now racing down the road toward us. Around the bend, we saw the rest of our group scrambling over the wall; all except Roddy. Shouting and waving, Billy directed us across the road, over the wall on the far side where we took up a defensive position. What had been planned as an offensive strike now had us running for our lives.

It was a fierce fight that lasted some thirty minutes. Luckily for us, Billy had grabbed the machine gun from Roddy as he lay dying, slumped over the wall. Between that, our rifles, and the Mills bomb Liam had thrown below the wheels of the lorry, we succeeded in keeping the British at bay. The soldiers from the disabled lorry had scrambled over the wall on the opposite side of the road, where we had been hiding only moments before, using the wall and the overturned truck as a screen.

Luckily no one else was hit, except Padraig, who caught a piece of chipped stone just below his eye. Seeing we were running low on ammunition, Billy ordered a retreat. Half of us ran back across the field and found defensive positions and provided cover fire for the rest. We alternated like that until we had successfully escaped. Only later did we learn that the British had two machine guns, one on the lorry and one in the hands of the flanking party. Fortunately for us, they both had jammed. Had it not been for that, more of us would have joined Roddy, dying before we had a chance to fire our own guns.

We met after the funeral, the seven of us remaining, and it was then that Billy shared with us what we all suspected. The British had known of our plans. Besides three people in brigade headquarters, only five other people knew of our mission, the scout we had positioned on the road leading to the ambush site who was to warn us of the convoy’s approach, another scout who was similarly positioned around the bend who was to warn Billy’s team if anyone approached from that side, and three men who were situated behind both of our teams and who were to protect our rear. The scouts and the men who were providing cover behind us were from a different brigade. We knew them, but the animosity between the brigades had been growing and it was only a rare occasion that we worked together. Had we not been short of men, we wouldn’t have been forced to borrow from their ranks.

Two of the men protecting our rear, we learned later, died in the first volleys of gunfire. The third man, the only one unaccounted for, was a twenty-year-old volunteer named William Conroy.

We found Conroy three days later, hiding in the fowl-house at the farm of a cousin. As soon as he saw us, he broke down and admitted his betrayal. He had been picked up by a British patrol, part of a random roundup designed both to intimidate and to gather information. They threatened his family—a tactic they often used—and Conroy, believing he had no choice, told them of our plans. After the court martial, we led a handcuffed Conroy to a desolate field, and while the rest of the company took up security positions, Liam and I led him sixty paces farther behind a grouping of rocks.

Liam had been assigned the task. We positioned the prisoner so that any bullet that missed or passed through him would not deflect off the rocks back toward us. Conroy slumped forward, weighed down by the weight of his crime and his pending punishment. Liam took up his position, ten paces away. I watched my friend as he raised his arm; he had gone pale and his breaths came rapidly.

“Any last words?” I asked.

Conroy shook his head and let out a sob. Liam’s hand shook, and I could see the tears in his own eyes. A moment later he turned his head away and lowered his arm. Without hesitating, I took the revolver from my friend’s hands and, after a single shot, Conroy slumped back against the rocks. I stepped forward and, as he looked up at me, both fear and pain in his eyes and with blood seeping from his mouth and running down his chin, I shot him once again, this time directly in the heart. I stood over him for a moment, let out a breath, then handed the gun back to Liam. With tears in my own eyes, I knelt by a man I had known for the last two years, one I never would have thought would have done such a thing. I wiped my eyes, took the note from my pocket and pinned it to Conroy’s shirt.

Shot by the IRA
, it read.
Spies and informers beware.

Neither Liam nor I ever mentioned to the others what had happened.

___

I approached the stable, prodded along by Mr. Sheehy’s pitchfork. When I stepped inside, I was temporarily blinded, my eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. I lunged to the side, hoping the stable hadn’t changed since the days Tom and Liam and I had played together as boys. I blindly grabbed the horseshoe off the peg on the wall—thankful that it was still there—and swung it as Mr. Sheehy stepped inside. With a grunt, he doubled over and dropped to the ground. Pete, as hot tempered as I remembered, rushed in after him. Dropping the horseshoe, I used my fists again, catching him on his other cheek. He stumbled, and I hit him twice more before he collapsed to the ground with a thud. I waited a second for Barry and when he didn’t come, I grabbed the pitchfork and stepped out the door. Seeing me, he hesitated then made a wise decision and turned on his heel and ran.

When I was sure he was gone for good, I stepped back into the stable and checked Pete. He was unconscious but breathing, and I did not want to be around when he woke. Mr. Sheehy was lying on his back, still trying to catch his breath, the horseshoe having caught him just below the ribs.

I knelt beside him, resting my hand on his shoulder. His breath came in labored pants. Hopefully, I thought, I hadn’t broken any ribs, only knocked the air from his lungs. He looked up into my eyes, and I could see the shock in his.

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

Eyes filled with pain and still trying to catch his breath, he stared up at me but said nothing.

“I didn’t have to come back,” I continued. “But I did. I owed it to Tom and to you to tell you what really happened that night.”

I never had a chance to explain. I heard shouts outside
. How could Billy have made it here so quickly?
I wondered. I didn’t wait to find out. Like I had a year before, I scrambled out the cattle door and fled across the fields.