An Irish Hostage Read online

  It was deep, and it was my opinion that the jaw, the eye socket, and the cheekbones were broken. The skull as well, surely. If he’d been alive when he was put into the sea, he would have been unconscious and unable to fend for himself. But I kept that to myself. And no one asked.

  There was nothing in the wound to tell me what had caused that much damage. And I couldn’t think of a weapon that would inflict that much damage with one blow. Yet there were no signs of more than one blow.

  “I’ll send for the Constabulary,” Father O’Halloran said, finally. Then to Terrence, “You’d best be least in sight for a while.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Terrence said.

  “No, but they’ll be looking for you, without making it plain that they are.”

  “Send for them then.”

  With a jerk of his head in my direction, Terrence started for the door, and I followed.

  Outside, there were men in small groups talking quietly together, and a few women in dark shawls, come to see what was happening. There were other women in doorways as we walked back up the hill.

  “Where are the children?” I asked Terrence. I hadn’t seen any.

  “They’ve been kept indoors since Michael vanished. Safer for them if there’s unexpected trouble.”

  “Who would cause that trouble?”

  “Damn it, I don’t know. I wish to hell I did.” It was full dark now, and I couldn’t see his face. He sounded as if he meant it, but there was something of the actor about Terrence. And so once more I couldn’t be sure.

  As we were passing the church I said, “You were afraid it was Michael lying there, weren’t you? When that man came to the door.”

  “There are a dozen men it might have been, lying there on the mole. That fool Michael is only one of them.” He swore, shaking his head. “If he’d had a bit of sense, now, he’d have told Eileen that they’d marry in England, and never come home.”

  “Alone, in a strange church, no one to stand up for them,” I said. “It’s not the way she’d hoped to marry.”

  But he didn’t answer that.

  We could see the lights from the house windows now, squares of brightness in the dark, growing larger as we kept walking, picking up our pace now on the flat lane.

  “What will you tell the others?” I asked.

  “The truth. They didn’t know the man at first. But it wasn’t Michael. We are certain of that.” He stopped so suddenly I nearly thundered into him. “It was an accident. Leave it at that. You’ll be safer. And so will I.”

  “The truth is, I couldn’t tell.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, then he touched my shoulder in the darkness. “When they’ve gone up to bed, I want to have a look at that man’s house. I want you to come with me.”

  Wary, I said, “I’m in Eileen’s room. I can’t just walk out without a word.”

  “Don’t be a fool, woman, I’ve got a good reason to want you along. I’d take the Major, for choice, but I don’t trust him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve told you. It’s damned odd that he’s here—what is he really about?” He started walking again. “Tell Eileen I want to talk to you. Then come down.” He glanced toward me. “Wear something dark. Can you ride? You were wearing that fancy habit.”

  “I had to climb into the Captain’s aircraft. Difficult to do in skirts.”

  But he wasn’t listening. “Can you ride?”

  “Yes.” I almost added that I’d learned in India, with the Army. And stopped myself.

  We had reached the house. “Go in, then. Tell them it was a stranger. They’ll learn his name soon enough. Tonight all they’ll want to know is that it wasn’t Michael,” Terrance said.

  And he was gone, disappearing into the darkness as he walked around the corner of the house. I went inside, to be met by the Major, Eileen, and Niall, their faces anxious or fearful. Eileen reached out to me, her hands trembling. I took them, and they were cold.

  “It isn’t Michael,” I said at once. “A stranger. He was pulled out of the water by one of the fishermen.”

  She closed her eyes, and for a moment I thought she was about to faint. Then she pulled me into the passage, down toward the kitchen.

  “Drowned?” It was the Major.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  They followed me into the kitchen. The table had been cleared, and Granny was nowhere in sight. I told them what I could, but they still had a good many questions.

  “Who was he?” It was the Major again. “Did you hear his name?”

  “No one told me his name.” That was true. But for some reason, I didn’t mention that Terrence had known the dead man, and that he’d been an artist. I was learning very quickly that there were minefields everywhere, in this part of the world. The less said, the less to regret later.

  Finally, after I’d gone over and over what little information I had, they were satisfied.

  But after Eileen had gone up to her room, and Niall had stepped outside for a smoke, the Major nodded to me, and I followed him into the front room.

  He said, keeping his voice low, “You’re quite sure it wasn’t Michael? You weren’t being kind?”

  “Actually, it was the man who pulled him out of the water who thought at first it could be Michael. And then we realized that it wasn’t. The priest was there, I don’t think the fisherman was lying for my benefit.”

  “You never know,” the Major said with a sigh. “He was killed, do you think? The dead man?”

  “Yes. There was a blow to the head. It must have killed him straightaway. Or within a very few minutes. Then he was put into the water.”

  His gaze on my face sharpened. It was an appraising look. “You’re very certain.”

  “I dealt with war wounds, Major. Even the doctors couldn’t have saved him. If the blow itself didn’t kill him, he’d have drowned, helpless to do anything to save himself.”

  Nodding, he said, “Yes, I see. Is the death being reported?”

  “I was told it would be.”

  “And he wasn’t a local man?”

  “I gather he wasn’t. Some of the local men didn’t know him.”

  “Why did Terrence take you with him, and not Eileen?”

  “I expect he was afraid it might be Michael. Would you have risked it, in his place?” I wasn’t actually defending Terrence, but I thought it was true, although it served two purposes, keeping me under his eye as well as protecting his cousin.

  “No, of course not.” He paced away from me, then came back. “My given name is Ellis. If we’re to get out of this business in one piece, we’ll need to trust each other. May I call you Bess?”

  There was no reason why he shouldn’t, and so I told him it was all right.

  “I knew Ireland was in turmoil. But the Sergeant saved my life in a situation where he could have easily left me to die in the middle of No Man’s Land. And when he asked me to come for his wedding, I imagined three or four days at the most.”

  “How did you come here?”

  “By sea, actually. A friend with a boat brought me to the village. Just as you came by air. It seemed to be—a great deal safer.”

  “Is he coming back for you?”

  “No. I’ll make my own way back through Holyhead. Anglesey.”

  I knew that ferries from Ireland came into Holyhead, in northern Wales. I’d considered taking that one myself, or possibly closer still to where I lived, perhaps going out through southern Wales. But I merely nodded.

  He added, “You should have left with the Captain. I don’t like what’s happening here.”

  “Nor do I, but I gave my promise. As you must have done,” I told him frankly. “If my parents knew what I’ve learned since I arrived, they’d be more than worried.”

  “I’m lucky. I have no family to worry about me. Only my Colonel.” He smiled, but it faded as he added, “My parents are dead, and my fiancée died in the influenza epidemic.” He shrugged. “The Army is my life no
w. I’ve decided to stay in the Guards.”

  My father and Simon had made the Army their lives as well. And so I understood what he was saying. It was a family, in a sense, although my father had had us as well. I’d often wondered why Simon hadn’t decided to stay with the Regiment. But he’d resigned when my father did, and didn’t seem to regret it. I’d been glad to have him nearby, and hadn’t questioned his choice too closely.

  But I said lightly, “We may well need the Guards before this is over.”

  “If they can find Michael before Saturday and the wedding, we’ll be in the clear.”

  “I’d better go up. Eileen will be waiting for me. Good night, Ellis.”

  “Good night.”

  I left him there, and went upstairs. Eileen’s eyes were red from crying, and I said at once, “You mustn’t, my dear. He’s not dead. If he were, we’d have his body by now.” That was rather brusque, but it was the only way I could think of to comfort her. As long as we hadn’t found Michael’s body, there was hope, and it was better for Eileen to hope as long as possible.

  “I know. But I was so frightened when Terrence asked for my kit. I knew then he was afraid. Someone had been hurt, and he wasn’t sure who it could be.”

  “It’s true, he wanted to spare you. If it had been Michael, I would have done everything possible for him. Everything you could have done.”

  “Still, I’d have wanted to be there if—if he was dying.”

  “I didn’t know that you had no doctor here,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  “We’re too small for such luxuries as doctors or policemen. We don’t even have an undertaker. I did what I could in emergencies. Once I was fully recovered.” She smiled a little. “I’ve done a bit of everything, come to that. From sewing up wounds from a fight to saving the lives of women in childbirth. That’s why I can’t understand why anyone would harm Michael. If only for my sake.”

  “Eileen. Was Michael in any way active in the Rising?” She was about to protest when I put up a hand to stop her. “No, I realize he was in France that Easter. I mean, did he support anyone—a cause—give money—write letters—anything?”

  “Of course not. Michael was never political. He wanted to see Ireland freed from the English Parliament, yes, but he thought it could be done peacefully. That in the long run, it would be for the best.”

  But that attitude surely hadn’t been popular among the hotheads bent on revolution. And the fact that there was a Rising in the middle of a war when we were fighting for our lives in France and elsewhere, the Army spread thin across the Empire and the Navy not much better at sea, had cost a lot of sympathy for the Irish cause among the British. Especially among those who knew that the Germans had attempted to supply arms for the Rising. These had been intercepted, but they could have turned the tide of the Rising if they had got through. Who could be sure?

  I said nothing about any of that. I’d heard my father talk about it, and I thought it best not to speak of anything that might cause trouble for me or anyone else.

  Eileen began to undress and prepare for bed, and when I didn’t, she asked, “Do you mind sharing a room?”

  “Of course not. But I’d promised to put a marker on the stile for Captain Jackson. And I haven’t done it. I think I’ll change into something dark and slip out to the meadow. He might even land with news. So don’t worry if I’m not back straightaway.”

  She tried to persuade me not to go out, then insisted she should come with me, but after a bit, I succeeded in convincing her that two people would draw more attention than one.

  “I won’t go to sleep,” she told me.

  “Of course you should,” I said, smiling. “And if I learn anything at all, I promise to wake you at once.”

  In the end, she got into bed, we turned out the lights, and I waited until I heard the Major and then Niall come up and go into their rooms. By that time Eileen was breathing quietly, and when I softly spoke her name, she didn’t stir.

  I gave the men half an hour before pulling on my habit again, slipping down the back stairs and into the kitchen. It was dark, and I had to feel my way around the unfamiliar room, for fear of knocking into something and waking the household.

  I went out the kitchen door to the yard, not wanting Granny to spot me walking out the front, and ran lightly toward the meadow and the stile. I left my handkerchief there, in plain view from anyone flying overhead, and then got back to the house just as Terrence came out the door, searching for me.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded in an angry whisper.

  “Well, you didn’t tell me where to meet you, and I didn’t want your grandmother to see me coming out at this hour.”

  Mollified, he said, “The horses are down the lane. This way.”

  We circled the house at a distance, and for a moment I thought we might be going by the stile, but he stayed at the edge of some trees bordering the wall. The horses were waiting, and he helped me mount, then led the way down the lane, keeping to the grass.

  When we were safely away from the house and the village, he picked up speed, and we made good time to the cottage where the painter had lived.

  It was set on the outskirts of what appeared to be another small village farther down the coast, yet well away from nearest cottages and actually cut off from them by an inlet, a tiny rocky finger of water that ran out toward the open sea. On our side of the inlet, close to the water and facing it, there was a long single-story white dwelling, ghostly in what little light there was. Looking at it, I realized that someone had taken an old tenant farmstead, where once two or three families had lived in adjoining cottages, and converted these to his own use. I’d seen something quite like it in Scotland.

  As he drew rein before the single door, Terrence said, “They either died or fled to America during the potato famine. The people who once lived here. And the British did nothing to help them. My grandfather told me stories about those days. There were dead everywhere, and those who could scrape together passage left. Most of them never came home again.”

  As I was about to dismount as well, Terrence stopped me.

  “You’re to stay with the horses. That’s why I brought you.”

  I could barely see his face, a pale square in the darkness. The moon hadn’t come up, and there was only starlight.

  “You brought me here as a witness,” I said, realizing how I had been used.

  “Nevertheless, stay where you are.”

  He disappeared through the door that served the middle of the three cottages, and I saw the torch he was carrying flick on. In the ensuing silence, I could hear the whisper of the sea in the little inlet as the tide came in, and found myself thinking that for an artist who loved the sea, this was a perfect setting. Then I pulled my attention back to the house.

  Terrence must have found a lamp, lit it, and begun to look around him. Through the nearest window I could see the orange glow as he moved about.

  I dismounted, tied the reins together, and slipped up to the window, looking in.

  The artist had opened up the interior and improved it with a hearth, more windows back and front, and other amenities the former owners could never have imagined. This was clearly the main room, with a small alcove for a cooker and above it, two small cupboards, very likely one for dishes and the other for tea and sugar and tins of food.

  I could see all this even though the room was a shambles. What must have been a bachelor’s quarters, rather plain but pleasant enough, had been tossed about without a thought to anything but what someone had been looking for. I could hear Terrence swearing as he righted chairs, set up a table again, and pushed his way through the papers and broken crockery littering the floor. At first I thought there was a body among the debris, and I caught my breath. Looking again I saw that it was only a dark red carpet that had been tossed aside in a heap.

  This was what must have been a sitting room. The next window to my right as I followed Terrence’s lamplight was a bedroom. It too
was wrecked, even the pictures on the wall broken out of their frames and then discarded, clothes from the cupboard thrown about, the bed overturned and the linens stripped, the mattress slashed.

  I wasn’t certain now whether someone had been searching for something—or was maliciously intent on destroying what was left of a man’s life. As if his death wasn’t satisfying enough.

  Terrence went back through the middle room and to our left, which looked to be the studio where the dead man worked. For there were windows in the far wall to let in light, where the bedroom at the other end had had a solid wall in the same place.

  There were canvases scattered everywhere, and I watched as Terrence righted them. Paints were scattered on the floor too, and some stepped on as whoever had been here searched. I could see an occasional work, one of what must have been the Post Office building in Dublin, for I recognized it from newspaper accounts of the Rising.

  There were others of men’s faces, and more of the sea in all its moods, from moonrise to sunset.

  From what I could judge, the dead man was quite good, talented and with an eye to the use of color. My mother, who loved seascapes, would most certainly have admired these.

  What a shame, I thought, looking at the devastation bared by Terrence’s lamp.

  But Terrence was still looking at each of the canvases, intent and very angry. I couldn’t tell whether he was in search of his own portrait, or something else. He opened a cupboard, dragging out the remaining clean canvases, empty frames, rags, and other things a painter collected, and then he stopped short.

  Reaching in, he pulled out what appeared to be an old sheet, and wrapped up in it was a small square, perhaps twelve by fourteen inches, smaller than the other canvases scattered about. He gently removed the sheet and looked at what it held.

  I couldn’t see the canvas, only the sticks onto which it had been stretched. And then as he reached again for the sheet, this time to cover it, I saw what it was.

  Nothing that I had expected.

  It was a woman’s face, and behind it was the sea, glinting in the sun, a deep green flecked by whitecaps and the sun’s reflection. The woman’s dark hair was loose and caught by the wind, but I couldn’t quite see her features.