An Irish Hostage Read online

  “Mind your own business, girl.” And she turned, disappearing back into her lair. A very handsome lair, but still definitely just that.

  Eileen’s door opened, and she stepped out into the passage. “I thought I heard voices. Any news?”

  “How I wish I could say yes. It was only just the Constable asking for information about the dead man.”

  “I thought you didn’t know him.”

  “I didn’t.” I waited until she’d come down the stairs and we were in the front room with the door closed. “I was told he was a painter. Why would anyone wish to kill an artist?”

  “I don’t know. And truthfully? I don’t care about him. I just want this waiting to be over. And for Michael to come back safely.”

  “I know, love,” I said sympathetically. “You’ve met this man? This Mr. Kennedy?” I tried to sound merely curious.

  “He came to the village from time to time. He told me not long ago that he’d like to paint me. I thought he was trying to flirt with me, and I was short with him. After that, he left me alone.”

  Was that because Terrence had asked him to paint Eileen?

  I smiled. “Perhaps Michael had put him up to it, to have a portrait of you for a wedding gift.”

  “It’s not something Michael would do,” she told me shortly. “We aren’t likely to have a settled home for some years.” She was restlessly pacing now, back and forth, back and forth. “What would we do with a painting?”

  “What did—does Michael like? I’ve never met him, you know. But I thought his letters were lovely.”

  “He didn’t want to be a soldier. But we all thought—or at least many of us did—that if we helped the English win the war, they’d give us Home Rule in gratitude, as they’d promised. But of course the Rising changed everything. And I was called a traitor, and so was Michael. They were foolish men, to try to force the English. Oh, I know what Terrence and the others believe, that the English only dangled that hope in order to convince us to help. Or to keep us quiet until they’d finished the Germans. Or both. Take your pick.” She took a deep breath. “Michael wanted to raise fine horses. A racing stable. That was probably wishful thinking as well, but his uncle was a fine horseman, and he’d taught Michael to ride and to care for horses. And he had inherited some money. With that and what he could learn working for someone else for a time, he’d have a fine start. I was willing to let him try.” She gave me sad smile. “The Irish love horses. It’s a madness we have.” Then she stopped pacing and strode to the window, looking out. “I thought I heard something?”

  “The policeman went to find Major Dawson. He’s probably just now leaving.”

  “Why can’t he help find Michael? I fail to understand it.” She was agitated again, and I cast about for something—anything—to distract her.

  “I think we’ve been penned up here long enough,” I said brightly. “It’s taking a toll on us. Would you like to go for a walk? Would that help? I haven’t seen very much of the countryside.”

  I’d hardly finished when her fist pounded the window frame angrily, and I realized too late that I’d made a mistake.

  “Nothing helps.” It was more a wail than a statement.

  “I know,” I said again.

  She whirled around. “No, you don’t, you’ve never been in love, not like this. You can’t even imagine what I’ve been through.”

  I swallowed the answer I was about to offer. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “I don’t trust any of those searchers. I need to be out there myself, looking. But everyone tells me I must stay at the house in the event there’s news. Well, there’s been no news, and I am at my wits’ end.” She looked at me. “Can you ride? Will you go with me, while I search?”

  “Do you think that’s wise—”

  “No. Don’t talk to me about wise. I’ll go myself.” She started for the back stairs, not willing to encounter her grandmother on the front stairs.

  “Of course I’m coming with you, Eileen,” I told her, against my better judgment—and wishing Terrence were here to calm her down and tell her she mustn’t do this.

  “There’s still a good deal of light. Let’s change.” And she was through the kitchen and up the stairs, wings on her feet now that she’d made her decision.

  It took all of five minutes to change. And then we were hurrying out to the stables. I found myself being given the same horse I’d ridden when I’d gone with Terrence to Fergus Kennedy’s house. I said nothing about that, but the horse nearly betrayed me by nudging me as if we were old friends. I was glad Eileen was too busy to notice. We saddled them, mounted at the block, and set out.

  Even with her scarred legs, Eileen was a superb horsewoman. I could see why Michael felt that she would join him in his dream of raising fine horses. We didn’t set off toward the front of the house, instead taking a path by the stables that led through a small orchard and then to another path that skirted fields and soon came out on a slight rise that overlooked the distant sea.

  “The Flynns were sea captains in the old days,” she said, patting her horse’s neck as she stared out toward the water. “Merchants who sailed as far north as the Orkneys and Iceland, even to the coast of Norway. I have a little carving of a Viking boat that someone once brought back—my father gave it to me, an heirloom, he said. I thought about that when we first went aboard Britannic. That here was a Flynn back at sea at long last. But of course that didn’t end well either, did it?”

  “No.” Beyond a few stunted trees and a wasteland of tall grasses, the water was a deep blue, waves whitecapped as they moved ashore. I couldn’t quite hear them, or the gulls riding high above us, but there was a lark singing somewhere in the fields behind us. I wondered if Mr. Kennedy, the painter, had ever sat in a place like this, and watched the sea coming in. Or if he’d worked closer to home.

  Eileen turned her horse. “There’s an old barn not far from here. Half fallen in. Let’s have a look.” But the barn was empty—what’s more, it didn’t appear to have been used by anyone for ages. I saw a long-eared owl high in the rafters, staring down at us and blinking even in the dim light.

  We moved on from there, quartering the fields, looking everywhere. The sun moved with us, heading west, and after a while it was sinking toward the sea.

  I said, “We’ve had no luck so far. Perhaps we should turn back and start fresh in the morning.”

  But Eileen wouldn’t hear of it. We came to a pasture where horses and several small donkeys were quietly grazing. We crossed that, and came to a field where there were the ruins of an ancient barrow. Eileen got down to look it over carefully, her face grim, as if she half expected to find Michael’s body stuffed in there. We walked our horses for a time after that, passing a number of crofts and small holdings, whitewashed and quiet at this hour. All of them had seen better days.

  I said, “They must be having a late supper.”

  Shaking her head, Eileen told me, “They left during the famine. The people who lived here. They walked to Dublin and found ships to take them away. I’ve heard the stories, but no one knew whether they’d ever reached Dublin or not, much less anywhere else.”

  She scoured the cottages, startling bats in one and a small mouse in another.

  It was well after dusk when we finally started back toward the house.

  I said, “Given what I’ve seen today, the search parties would have had no better luck.”

  “Still, I had to be sure. They could have ridden by the cottages. Or that barrow. They’re a superstitious lot, some of them in the village, and God knows, some of those places might have been haunted. Ireland has had a good deal of sadness, you see. It’s a wonder there aren’t ghosts crowding us out everywhere we go.”

  It was dark now, the last of the light sunk beneath the western waves, and I felt a sudden surge of sadness that I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t prone to melancholy, and yet just now I found myself wondering what lay ahead in my own life. What did I really want?

 
Eileen had fallen silent, lost in her own thoughts, and there was only the sound of our horses’ hooves covering the dry ground.

  I was suddenly reminded of that shelled village and the house where we’d brought the wounded—where Sergeant Lassiter had proposed to me. And I had turned him down as gently as I could.

  I hadn’t been in love with him, although I cared for him in a very different way. We’d shared so much, he’d saved my life and I his. There was a bond between us, there always would be, forged in a bloody war. But it wasn’t the bond of love.

  Afterward, he’d asked me a question, and I’d laughed at the idea. And he’d said, “Well, then, there’s still hope for me.”

  I’d laughed . . . But it had stayed in my memory, that question, even though I’d tried to shut the door on it. And I had been quite successful in the beginning, the war and its aftermath keeping me occupied with duty. Of late, something behind that door was starting to scratch at it, trying to get out. And I was doing my best still to ignore it.

  It was better, shut away. Less painful, I told myself. But here in the darkness, in the quietness, I could hear that scratching more loudly than ever.

  Taking a deep breath, I made myself look across at the woman riding several feet away from me. It was Eileen I should be thinking about. And how on earth I was to help her find Michael, so that she could be married. So that I could go home.

  I looked away, up at the bowl of sky above me. In the darkness, so different from London, the stars were brilliant, thousands of them. A thin layer of clouds was spreading across them, but I could pick out familiar constellations with ease.

  We were passing the place where we’d stopped to look out at the sea, when there was a loud report that startled both of us and the horses.

  Eileen said, “What on earth—”

  But I knew what it was. A rifle shot. God knew, I’d heard enough of them in France to recognize them in my sleep!

  “I think it’s best to get back to the house,” I said. “Now.” And without waiting for an answer, I put my heel into the horse’s flank. It moved forward with a jerk, then fell into a trot then a gallop. Eileen was just behind me.

  A moving target was harder to hit. I kept telling myself that even as I listened for another shot.

  Leaning forward, low on my horse’s neck, I kept my profile as indistinguishable from the mare’s as possible. Soon enough we’d reached the orchard, and we were forced to slow.

  “The horses were already tired—why did you press them into a gallop?” Eileen asked, irritation in her voice.

  “I didn’t care to be out there at night while someone was wandering around with a rifle. It’s the war, I expect—”

  “They weren’t shooting at us.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  I didn’t tell her—then or later—that I’d heard the distinctive sound of an angry bee as the bullet sped past my head. Whether it had been intended to hit me or was intended for someone else who might have been riding with Eileen, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to linger long enough to find out.

  Chapter Eight

  I think Eileen was still put out with me as we silently wiped down the horses, fed and watered them, and walked back to the house.

  “Heat lightning,” she said as we reached the lawn. “Out at sea. There might be a storm tonight.”

  I could just see the distant flicker of light, and when I looked up, I could tell that the thin layer of clouds I’d seen earlier had thickened. Only the brightest stars were visible now.

  I expected her to take me to task again about pressing the horses, when we went up to our room to change, but Terrence was in the kitchen doorway as we reached the steps, saying angrily, “And where the hell have you been? It’s dark, and no time to be out wandering about. Have you no sense?”

  I wondered then if he’d heard the rifle shot. I had no idea where he’d been most of the day. For all I knew, he had been out looking for Michael himself.

  And then I wondered if he still had the rifle he’d used at the Post Office during the Rising. And how many others had theirs, hidden under the hay in the barn or under the floorboards in their houses.

  “I was looking for Michael,” she told him furiously, turning toward him, her pent-up anger with me spilling over on him.

  “Nevertheless,” he snapped. “It’s not safe, and you know it. Good God, woman, you are as much a target as Sullivan. You were a nurse in the British service.”

  “I’ve lived here all my life, for one thing, and for another, Granny wouldn’t let anyone touch me.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that. She’s an old woman. There may be someone not willing to wait for her to die—” He broke off, as if suddenly aware that I was standing to one side, listening.

  I realized two things as he turned toward me. That Mrs. Flynn had even more power than I’d understood, and that very likely the reason she’d questioned me about Terrence was her fear that any entanglement with an Englishwoman would put paid to his chance to take her place when the time came. There was already a cloud of sorts over his head . . .

  He was saying, “You should have stopped her from being so foolish.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know we would ride so far.”

  “That’s the problem. You don’t know anything about this part of Ireland. You could have got yourselves into trouble,” he went on, still angry. “The fact that someone has taken Michael should have warned you to be more careful.”

  “I thought it best not to let her go alone,” I replied, defending myself. “And you weren’t here.”

  He opened his mouth to say something more, and thought better of it. “Go and change. There’s dinner from the pub. It’s already cold.”

  We did as we were told. Supper at this hour was a tense affair, all the same. The two Mrs. Flynns had already dined, and that left Terrence, Eileen, and me to sit in the kitchen. Niall wasn’t there, and no one mentioned him. I didn’t know where the Major was, and I didn’t want to ask.

  By the time we’d finished clearing away the table and seeing to the dishes, it was already thundering, a low rumble to the east of us.

  Terrence asked, “You saw to the horses?”

  “Of course,” Eileen told him. “I always do.”

  He nodded, and then took himself into the front room. Eileen watched him go. “He’s in a mood,” she said. “I’d prefer to go up.”

  “I think that’s what I should do as well,” I told her, and we turned out the lamp and went up to her room.

  I was drawing the curtains at one window while she was seeing to the other when a flicker of lightning caught two figures out by the barn. It was too far away to be sure who they were, but one was quite tall, and I was reminded of the singer at the pub. Just then the first gusts of wind and rain came sweeping across toward the house. The taller man ducked into the barn, but the other one ran toward the house. I heard the kitchen door slam shut.

  If Terrence was in the front room—was that Niall then, who had been talking to the enemy, so to speak?

  I quickly pulled the curtains just as I heard footsteps clattering up the back stairs and then someone opened and closed the door to one of the other bedrooms.

  Looking toward Eileen, I realized that she was occupied with her own thoughts and hadn’t paid any heed to the sounds outside in the passage. She was brushing her hair, and when she turned in my direction, I saw tears glistening in her eyes.

  “All Terrence and my grandmother think about is Ireland, Ireland, Ireland. Not one of them even considers how I feel—how much I love Michael. Or he’d have been found by now.”

  Her last words were almost lost in a crash of thunder, and I could hear the rain beating against the windows.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “I wish I knew how to help.”

  “I’m glad you are here, Bess. Truly I am. I don’t feel so alone. I just wish I knew if he was alive or dead. If there was any hope at all.”

  I went to her and put
my arm around her shoulders. “No one has found his body,” I told her for a second time. “And that’s something to hold on to.”

  “You can’t be sure—what if they don’t want his body to be found?”

  Her logic was sound. But I said slowly, as if taking her seriously, “Of course that’s possible. But I should think whoever took Michael would much rather make an example of him, by letting him be found.”

  That cheered her a little. “It’s the English then, who have him. God knows why, but the last thing they’d want is a martyr.”

  She began to ready herself for bed. Our supper, on top of that long ride, had left us more than a little drowsy. And the sound of the rain on the roof and blowing against the windows had us yawning. I had to fight to stay awake after we’d turned out the lamps. But the storm seemed to circle around, intent on staying, and I dared not go out in it, even to leave my handkerchief on the stile.

  It moved away at last, and I got up from the bed without waking her, dressed, and started down the back stairs.

  Then stopped, as voices floated up to me. Terrence and Niall, I thought, talking about something—no—arguing, their voices rising as they grew more heated. I realized, listening, that it had to do with something Niall must have said to Major Dawson.

  “He’s a guest under our roof,” Terrence said. “And you’ll remember that or leave. I wonder sometimes if you have anything in your head but what’s happening in Dublin. Well, I can tell you, it’s more likely that you’ll bring disgrace on this family than come out of it a hero.”

  Niall swore with some force. “You went off to play the hero, and look where it’s got you. Granny’s right, it would have been better if you’d died with the other martyrs or were shot with the leaders. At least we’d know where you stood.”

  A chair scraped across the floor as someone got up.

  “When you’ve stood for what’s right in this world, you can use that tone with me, boyo. For now, you’re a member of this family and you’ll do as you’re told!”