Chapter 16
Cormac
“Then we need to batten down the hatches,” I say, looking around, impressed by how quickly she took them out. “Things are going to move fast.”
She loses the smile and nods. She knows. I’m stating the obvious, but it needs saying anyway. “Weapons. We need a lot more than we currently have on us.”
“They will likely lay siege,” Gallagher says.
“My thoughts exactly. They aren’t going to accept this takeover with a yes, Ma’am and move on. They have spent decades, maybe more, establishing a foothold here.”
“We can’t trust anyone,” Aidan says. “Except the people in this room.”
He glares at Roisin. She glares back.
“There is a storeroom under the campus,” Gallagher says. “Stockpiled weapons for just such an occasion.”
“Just such an occasion?” I ask with a snort.
“Okay, maybe not this exactly, but a siege, nonetheless. You and I will go, everyone else get Dervla to the VC’s office without delay.”
“Let’s go,” I say with a nod.
He moves out.
I go the opposite way to kiss Dervla before I follow him.
I catch the back of her neck and kiss her hard.
Not soft. Not reassuring. Mine.
“Don’t die while I’m gone,” I murmur.
Her eyes flash. “I’ll try not to.”
“Try really hard.”
That gets the ghost of a smile out of her. “Go get the guns, Byrne.”
I step back before I change my mind and stay.
Gallagher is already at the chapel door, waiting impatiently for me to get a move on. Declan and Aidan close in on Dervla as I head out into the wet morning with Gallagher at my side.
“Under the campus where?” I ask.
“The library,” he clips out and leaves it at that.
We cut across the campus at a pace that makes conversation pointless.
The rain has settled into something mean and persistent, the kind that gets into everything without ever committing to a proper downpour.
My boots hit wet stone, then wet grass, then wet stone again as we round the back of the main block towards the library.
Gallagher doesn’t speak, which suits me fine. He moves like a man who has done this particular walk before, not hurried but deliberate, each step placed with the economy of someone who doesn’t waste motion.
The library doors are unlocked.
He shoves the doors open and strides in.
Inside, the air is cold and still. The lights are off. Morning grey bleeds through the high windows in flat, useless strips that do nothing for visibility. Gallagher doesn’t bother with the switches. He heads straight for the back wall and the rows of locked archive shelving that line it.
“How long has this been here?” I ask.
“A very long time.” He crouches at the base of the furthest unit and runs his hand along the bottom edge until something gives with a soft mechanical click.
The entire shelving unit swings out, and I raise my eyebrow. “Centuries?”
“You could say that.”
I nod and follow him down a narrow set of stone steps, the air turns colder and damper, the kind that settles into your joints and stays there. My boots find each step by feel as much as sight. Gallagher produces a small torch from inside his coat and sweeps it ahead of us.
The room below isn’t large. It doesn’t need to be because it leads to another tunnel. Three tunnels, I notice as I pull out my phone and turn the torch light on. “Which way?”
“This way,” he says, indicating the tunnel to the left. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you, Mr Byrne?”
“No, are you?”
“No, but this will make you feel like you’re about to get crushed. We are going further and deeper down. Say now if you suffer from any phobias.”
“Does a phobia of these Romans count?” I mutter.
“No, that’s not a phobia. That’s an intense dislike. You aren’t irrationally scared of them, you idiot.”
“Okay, out with the insults. Nice. But I hear you. No phobias, fears or intense dislike of the dark or being crushed. If my time is up, it’s up.”
“Good philosophy to have, Mr Byrne. I’m almost impressed,” he says as he takes the tunnel, and I follow.
There is only space to walk in a single file.
“What about rats?” he asks before we’ve even walked five steps.
I can hear the smile in his voice. He’s enjoying this. “Nope. Rats are gross, but still just a rat.”
“Good,” Gallagher says, and I hear genuine approval somewhere under the dry tone. “Because there are rats.”
“Of course there are.”
The tunnel narrows further as we go, the ceiling dropping low enough that I have to duck my head at intervals.
The torch beam cuts through the dark in a pale strip, picking out old stone, old mortar, the occasional rusted bracket where something once hung and doesn’t anymore.
The ground underfoot is uneven. Damp. Old enough to feel like it predates everything built above it, which I’m guessing is the case.
“How far?” I ask.
“Far enough,” comes his reply.
I accept that and keep going. The tunnel turns to the right and then slopes downwards.
The sound of running water echoes around us, and I see why a few steps later.
There is a narrow waterway down here, carved into the bedrock far below St. Augustine’s, running black and fast along a channel narrow enough to step over.
Gallagher steps across it without breaking stride.
I follow, landing with a dull thud on the other side, and the sound of water fades behind us as the tunnel straightens again.
The torch beam swings left and finds a door. Heavy wood, iron-banded, old enough to look like it belongs in a museum and solid enough to suggest it doesn’t need to. Gallagher pushes it open.
“This isn’t it,” he says, stepping in.
“Didn’t ask.”
“Just warning you. We have a way to go yet.”
I nod even though he can’t see me. I move into the room and stop dead, sweeping my phone around. “Holy shit.”
“Quite,” Gallagher says. “A nice distraction, is it not?”
“Distraction? You could say that. How much is all of this worth?”
“A lot, Mr Byrne. A lot.”
I take in the gold, jewels. Old Celtic crosses, goblets, crowns, jewellery, and artefacts are laid out on stone shelving that runs the length of the room, packed in cases and stacked in wooden crates.
Some of it is loose. Coins, rings, pieces that look like they were pulled from the earth rather than carried in.
There are weapons too. Old ones. Swords mounted on the far wall, pikes, axes, things that belong in museums or myths.
I sweep my phone across it all slowly. “Do not tell me this dates back to the original ó Briain?”
He turns his head towards me. “Some of it.”
“Fucking hell. Colour me impressed. So, it’s all Séamus’?”
“Dervla’s,” he says.
“So, she is doing the right thing, taking control over this godforsaken institution.”
“It’s her birthright.”
“What did Cillian really think of this?” I ask, swinging my torch to shine on Gallagher’s chest so I can see his face without blinding him.
“Ask him yourself,” a new male voice echoes in the cave, and I spin so fast, I nearly lose my footing.
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter as my torchlight lands on the man who has set this entire shitshow in motion. “You look pretty good for a dead man.”
He smirks, but it’s not amused. More resigned to the lame joke he probably knew was headed his way.
“Body double?” I ask, moving a bit closer.
“The dead guy?” he asks, the smirk turning to a genuine smile. “Yes.”
“Why? You do know that your daughter is grieving and making bad life decisions based on your fake death.”
“Like you?” he asks, and I snort.
“Well played. I accept that for the dead man joke.”
“Good man,” he says and steps around me to stand next to Gallagher. “It had to be done to set about this chain of events.”
“I won’t question you, like I know any different, or demand an explanation from you because that’s not my place. I’ll take your word for it. Just know Dervla won’t be quite so understanding. Does anyone apart from Gallagher know you’re alive?”
“You,” he says.
“Not even Séamus?”
He shakes his head once.
“Fuck.”
“Quite. Dervla cannot know yet.”
“Yet. You want me to lie to her.”
“Omit.”
“Same thing. She will skin me alive.”
“She will,” Cillian says, without a trace of guilt about it. “But she will also understand.”
“You sound very sure of that for a man who hasn’t been in the same room as her since you faked your own death.
She is not the same girl from a few months ago.
” I keep my voice level because losing my temper in a cave full of ancient gold and a man who is supposed to be a corpse isn’t going to help anyone.
“She killed at least four people this morning before breakfast. She is running on grief and rage and a very specific kind of pride that I recognise because it looks exactly like yours right now.”
“Three. I killed Liam,” Gallagher interrupts.
“Okay, because that is important right now.”
Something moves across Cillian’s face. Not guilt. Close to it.
“She is ready,” he says.
“That’s not the point.”
Silence fills the air. It’s a standoff, but not one I’m going to push to barge past. Men like Cillian Callaghan don’t fake their deaths for funsies. As much as this will affect Dervla, someone needs to keep a clear head because she will lose her mind when she finds out about this.
“She will understand,” Cillian says again, quieter this time. “She will be furious, but she will understand that her legacy, the country she loves, hinges on the takedown of the Romans. All of this has been set in motion to drag them into the light, once and for all.”
“You put her in danger.”
“She was in danger anyway. Now she knows about it.”
I look at him for a long moment. The torchlight throws half his face into shadow. He isn’t a man that you argue with, and I don’t.
Because he’s right.
I may not fully understand what the legacy part of this is, but I understand the Romans are a piece of work that needs to be turfed out of the veins of this country.
“The weapons,” I say. “Where are they?”
He nods once and moves past me to the far side of the room, pushing through a door behind a rack of shelving. Beyond it is another tunnel. Gallagher follows, and I move in last.
“How many of you are holding the line up there?” Cillian asks as we go even deeper under St. Aug’s.
“Three. Plus, your father-in-law’s men.”
“Good. This is going to get ugly.”
“Quite like ugly myself.”
“I know you do,” he says almost to himself.
We fall into silence as we move down the tunnel that opens into a room filled with enough weapons to start a war.