Allegiance: A Dublin Novella (26 page)

Fear he knew well, and pain better still – but in all his days William could not recall a single moment in time that bore quite so keen a terror as standing in that little storeroom, Adam’s hand resting on his, listening to the queasy thudding of his own heart. He could hear the wind whistling outside, and wondered if he would slip on the ice as he ran down the front step – and then Adam’s arms were around him, and his face was buried in the scarred skin of William’s neck, and the rosary beads tapped against William’s back as they dangled from Adam’s clutching fingers. William held him as fiercely as he could without pressing his wounded side. He could not breathe, something soft and swelling filling his lungs, pushing out the ache and weariness from his body. It took him a moment to give it the name ‘hope’.

They stood forehead to forehead, both mindful of the thin curtain shielding the door. Adam’s hands settled on William’s waist, long fingers curling to pull him closer; William smiled into bright gray eyes, close and real and sparkling back at him.

“So it is true a man can make his fortune in this town? I’m afraid I’m between occupations at the moment.”

Adam looked up at him, a strand of hair slipping from beneath his cap as he grinned.

It’s a land of opportunity,” he said.

##

Author’s Note

The events of
Allegiance
begin with the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin that led to the Irish War of Independence. In December 1921 the war ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which included a stipulation that Irish Free State officials must take an Oath of Allegiance including fidelity to the British Crown. The Treaty caused a sharp division between those who tolerated the Free State and those who demanded a Republic. When Republican forces took over the Dublin Four Courts in April 1922, the Crown threatened to clear them out if the Free State Army did not; in June the Republicans were driven out by Free State forces, and the Irish Civil War began.

The MI5
was first created in 1909 under the name Secret Service Bureau. (I used MI5 for simplicity.) One of its purposes was to investigate disturbances at home: labor strikes, anarchists, communism, anything considered dangerous to public order. Ordinary men were sometimes recruited to turn informer within these groups; in the story this is what happened to William, who saw it as his chance to use the system to prevent the kind of violence he himself had experienced.

I gave Adam the surname Elliot because my grandmother was an Elliot
–
her father’s parents came over during the Famine. Like so many Americans with an Irish branch on the family tree, she clung fiercely to that part of her heritage, even though she was born in Texas and a card-carrying member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Whenever she got angry she would say, “Now I’ve got my Elliot up”; whenever one of her granddaughters got sassy she would say, “That’s your Elliot coming out.” I thought if anyone was the kind of Elliot my Nanny described, Adam was.

I began
Allegiance
for NaNoWriMo 2004 and finished it in 2005, about a year before I started serious work on
The Soldier of Raetia
. If you’ve read SoR, you most likely noticed a lot of similarities between the two. Up until then I had only written short stories; I think finishing
Allegiance
gave me the confidence to go on with SoR,
in content, style, form, plot, all kinds of ways. For that – and for many other reasons –
it will always be dear to me

Playlist

U2 – Stranger in a Strange Land

Flogging Molly – The Kilburn High Road

The Pogues – Thousands are Sailing

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Cities in Dust

Flogging Molly – Rare Ould Times

Days of the New – Weapon and the Wound

Peter Murphy – Cuts You Up

Elvis Costello – How Much I Lied

Paul Schwartz – Veni Creator Spiritus

Enya – Storms in Africa

U2 – Bad

Depeche Mode – Judas

Snow Patrol – Run

Marillion – Made Again

The Cranberries – Dreams

The Pogues – Love You till the End

Contact

web: http://
heatherdomin.com

blog: http://
teacake421.livejournal.com