The Devil's Due: An Irish Historical Thriller (17 page)

I wasn’t certain if Mr. Sheehy believed all of what I told him, but whatever anger he had in him was gone by the time I left. He asked a few questions, wanting to know more about that night, about how Tom had died. I told him what I knew, about hearing the shouts and the gunfire, about seeing Tom and Dan on the floor, one screaming, the other certainly dead. I told him that Sean had no escape, wounded as he was and trapped upstairs with little ammunition left. When I hit the plunger, I admitted, I had saved myself. But I had killed the Tans too, and I had prevented Tom and Sean from facing a worse fate in the hands of the British. They were dead one way or another. If I hadn’t done what I had, the British would have killed them all, if not that night, then after a rushed inquest—a mere formality, the outcome well known in advance. The firing squad would have been issued their orders before the inquest began.

I left Mr. Sheehy in the field, overburdened by the weight of what I had told him. He hadn’t asked me where I was going, and I hadn’t told him. His son was gone and the emptiness he had been running from came rushing back, filling his head. It was a burden he would bear for the rest of his life.

I thought of my own daughter, alive only a few days, and wondered what Mr. Sheehy would do. Would he get up from the field, find a bottle, and lose himself in the drink, growing numb with the whiskey until he could feel no more? Or would he lie awake at night, wondering for the ten thousandth time what he could have done to prevent what had happened that night? Or, as I had hoped, would he finally sleep, perhaps for the first time in a year, knowing that his son had died in battle, that Tom had died a hero and not at the hands of a traitor? 

I had no intention of going to see Dan’s wife when I left Mr. Sheehy. The Sheehys lived in Carrig, nineteen miles south of Mary’s. Sinéad Buckley lived in Charleville, in County Tipperary, farther south still. I soon found myself at the crossroads and, impulsively, I turned. Something compelled me, and I headed south toward Charleville, the Galtee Mountains that were visible on a summer day now lost in the mist. It was a quiet day, and as I pedaled down the lane, across a landscape dotted with whitewashed cottages, recently turned fields, and grazing cows, dark clouds began to roll in over the hills. Lost with my own thoughts, I hardly noticed. It was a chance I was taking, but I didn’t think it was foolhardy. Sure, now that he knew I was back, Billy would know that I was likely to visit Sinéad Buckley and the Murphys as well. But Billy would be in Limerick, preparing for the battle that was looming.

Besides, I told myself, I had come back to Ireland to set things right, and I couldn’t leave until I did.

___

I hadn’t seen Sinéad since the wedding. She and Dan were married in September 1920, three months before Argyll Manor. We all knew that we could be captured or killed anytime and, for Dan, if that was to be his fate, he wanted to be married when death finally found him. Such was the thinking of many a Volunteer, myself included. But Dan couldn’t have known that death would come for him so soon after his wedding day.

It was a grand affair, the wedding was. After the service, as was custom, Dan and Sinéad walked together to the house, taking a different route this time than the one they had followed earlier to the church. People were lined along the lane and threw rice and gifts in front of them—pots and pans, a horseshoe—the things Sinéad would need to make a home.

We positioned two companies of men, scouts and lookouts, on the roads leading to the church and to the quiet lane leading to the house. More men were in the fields surrounding both. Of course, we all had our guns with us, prepared as we always were for the British. But our luck held, and we didn’t need them that day.

There were formalities, and one was the photograph. Liam and I poked fun as Dan and Sinéad sat, Billy and Carol standing behind. Sinéad wore lace, the very dress her own mother had worn, and Dan was in his uniform, a rifle held across his lap. Billy was wearing his uniform too, and carried a revolver on his hip. Carol, dressed in lace, could have been the bride herself, a longstanding practice to confuse the fairies, lest they steal the real bride away.

The formalities done, we had a grand celebration, a break from the war. To the sounds of the fiddles and hornpipes, we danced as if we hadn’t a care in the world. There was plenty of food and honey mead and soon the dancing turned to song. We sang of love and courtship and of bonnets and roses. We sang of the girls that haunted our dreams and the ones that had broken our hearts. We sang of the rivers and the green hills that graced our land. As the night wore on, our songs turned to our struggles and the ballads became those of our fathers—songs that, like my own father’s stories, filled our souls with a longing and fortified our resolve to fight for what was ours. We sang songs of rebellion, of rising up and claiming our birthright; we sang of bold Fenian men bravely fighting to build an Irish nation once again.

It was one of the few times I remember seeing Billy smile.

___

“So, you’re back,” Sinéad said when she saw me, her words high-pitched and clipped.

Without waiting for my response she turned back to the churn. Bent over, she raised the handle then plunged it back into the cream, quickly falling into a rhythm. Up and down, up and down, again and again, as if I wasn’t there.

I noticed the basket behind Sinéad and felt a lump in my throat. Swaddled and asleep inside was the baby, the daughter that had come eight months after Dan’s death, just a month after Margaret. Like me, Dan never had a chance to meet his own daughter. I shook my head and turned away for a moment, telling myself I hadn’t come for that. Steeling myself, I turned back to Sinéad.

She was a pretty woman with fair skin and a shock of red hair. But there was a hardness to her now. The lines in her face and the coldness in her eyes spoke of the pain in her heart and the struggles of the past year. She glanced my way, checking to see if I was still there or perhaps wishing me away, I wasn’t sure. A moment later, still churning, she looked again, briefly at me then up at the sky. The dark clouds continued to roll in over the hills.

“And what is it you want, Frank Kelleher?” she demanded.

“A word with you, Sinéad. That’s all and then I’ll be gone.”

“Who’s that?” I heard from the cottage. An old man, stooped and held up by a cane, poked his head out the door. I didn’t recognize Sinéad’s father right away. I remembered him dancing at Sinéad and Dan’s wedding. Now, old and bent, he stared at me with tired eyes.

“He’s leaving, Da,” Sinéad said evenly, her eyes not leaving mine.

“What does he want?”

Sinéad turned to her father. “Nothing, Da,” she said softly. “Nothing. Now go back inside and let me finish my work. We’ll have tea soon.”

The old man’s eyes flicked back and forth between us before he turned, mumbling something as he dismissed us with his hand before disappearing back into the cottage.

Sinéad began plunging again and I watched silently for a moment. Suddenly she slammed the plunger back into the barrel, then glared at me, hands on her hips.

“Oh, it’s a fine one you are, Frank Kelleher, wanting to talk and with me trying to put up the butter before it rains.”

The baby began to cry and Sinéad shot me a look. I felt the flash of heat as my face turned red; I reached for the stave.

“I’ll finish the butter,” I offered. “You see to the baby.”

She seemed about to argue then, without a word, turned, picked up the baby, and disappeared into the cottage.

I began to churn, glancing up at the sky, at the clouds racing overhead. It was something I hadn’t done since I was a lad and soon my arms began to tire, a burning creeping down from my shoulders. I stopped once or twice, lifting the lid to see if the butter was setting, as I had seen my mother do. Finally, when the dash stood on top without sinking, I wiped the sweat from my brow then glanced over my shoulder, wondering what I should do next.

It was only five minutes that I waited but it felt much longer. Sinéad returned and, without a word, lifted the lid. She studied the butter for a moment, her eye far better at these things than mine. I must have done it right; she closed the lid and turned to me.

“You can talk,” she said, her voice still cold, “but that’s all it is and it won’t make a grand bit of difference to a widow with a baby and a father to care for.”

She had every right to be bitter. When she and Dan were wed, it was a happy life Sinéad had dreamed of, not of putting her husband in a box three months later.

As I helped her put up the butter—rinsing and salting and then filling the jars—I told her what I had come to say. Sleeves rolled up, hard at her task, she barely glanced my way, but I could see her face soften. We were interrupted once, the young lad she had hired to help tend the farm coming to tell her that the cow would have a calf by spring.

When the last of the jars were filled and put away, I cleaned the churn then joined Sinéad by the cottage. She stood silently for a moment, staring off into the distance. The clouds were black and heavy, rolling with a fury now as the sky rumbled overhead. The wind began to rustle through the field, scattering the dead stalks from last year’s harvest.

“It’ll do no good, standing here,” she said then turned away.

I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation but I followed her inside anyway, the wind blowing at my back, whistling through the thatch on the roof as I shut the door. Her father was sitting in front of the stove, snoring softly. I pulled the shutters on the windows, catching a glimpse of the scene outside. The horse pranced nervously, skittish, as the farm boy led it back to the barn, one hand on the reins, the other on his cap to keep it from flying away.

The drops were large at first, splattering on the stone. In the distance, I could see the waves of rain racing across the field. Then with a howl it was upon us, lashing with a fury, a cascade slanted by the wind. As I secured the last shutter, there was a flash in the sky and, a moment later, the crack of thunder.

The storm raged outside, but the baby and Sinéad’s father both slept soundly, the baby stirring only as her mother tucked the swaddling around her once more. Then Sinéad filled a kettle, the pot clanging then hissing as she placed it on the stove. Despite the howls of the wind, the rain lashing at the roof, our silence seemed loud in the small room. I wished she would say something, anything. More than that, I wished for the storm to end so I could leave.

The kettle banged and Sinéad turned. I could see the tears in her eyes.

I took a breath, the sound of my sigh lost in the wind.

“I’m sorry, Sinéad.” It was all I could think to say.

She stared at me for a moment. “You visited the Sheehys,” she stated as if she hadn’t heard what I said.

“Aye.”

“And I suppose you’ll be seeing Mrs. Murphy too.”

“Aye.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment.

“This last year has been hard,” she continued then paused a moment, looking down as if unsure what she wanted to say. When she looked back up, the confusion was gone. “I’m angry, Frank,” she said, shaking her finger at me. “So don’t be expecting to be forgiven. You’ll have to see the priest for that.” She let out a breath, her voice catching in her throat. She turned away for a moment, wiping her eyes. When she turned back, she shook her finger again “I’m angry at all of you,” she said. “I’m angry at you and at Billy and at Sean and at Tom.” She let out a sob. “Oh, God! I’m angry at Dan! How could he leave me like this? What kind of man goes to meet his death when there’s a family left behind?”

The baby began to cry and, crying herself now, Sinéad picked her up and carried her to the chair by the stove, across from her father. He woke, confused for a moment it seemed, his eyes darting between Sinéad and me. Sinéad rocked back and forth hugging the baby, her chest heaving with great sobs, her own wails and those of the baby somehow sounding all the more terrible with the howling of the wind outside. Quietly, I slipped outside.

As for Sinéad’s question, I had no answer for her. It was the same question Kathleen and Mary had asked of me.

___

The rain had stopped, almost as quickly as it had started, the storm blowing past, leaving a gray sky and a heavy fog in its wake. The air was much colder now, and I turned up my collar and held my jacket tight below my chin. My breaths, like the smoke drifting from the chimneys of the cottages across the fields, twisted in the wind and I wondered again if it would snow.

Sinéad hadn’t been surprised to see me. She had been warned, no doubt by Billy, told that I had already visited the Sheehys.
Would she tell him that I’d been to see her?
I wondered. She had no loyalty to me, that was certain, but I didn’t think she would say anything, unless she was asked. Somehow, though, I knew Billy would. 

I found the bicycle where I had left it, leaning against the stone wall at the end of Sinéad’s lane. I climbed on before I noticed that the tire was flat. Cursing, I climbed off and began pushing the bicycle, careful to avoid the puddles that filled the muddy lane. It was almost ten miles to Ballygowan and the castle and, in these conditions, it would take me almost four hours.

The conversation with Sinéad and seeing her baby left me wanting to see Kathleen, more so than I already did. I decided to pay Mrs. Murphy a visit in the morning. She lived in Rathkeale. The train to Abbeyfeale would stop at Rathkeale at noon. I planned to be on it.