Chapter 18 Toolie
Toolie
The fields looked nothing like memory. Spring should have brought green, lambs, muck, and laughter, but now every footstep kicked up ash.
The earth was blackened, churned by boots and hooves, littered with the crisped bones of last year’s harvest. We walked single file along the old dyke, the only thing left unburned by the English, heading for the graveyard with the sun at our backs and the future closing in.
I kept my hand on Catherine’s shoulder. She walked ahead of me, back straight, her free hand splayed over the belly where my child grew.
She didn’t say a word—not to me, not to anyone—but I felt every shudder in her spine as we passed another cottage collapsed in on itself, smoke still leaking from the thatch.
Maeve and Nora flanked her, the way birds circle a wounded thing.
Declan brought up the rear, limping slow, his leg wound turning his black robes stiff at the thigh.
Nobody dared talk. Not after what happened at the church, not with the memory of it still drying on my shirt.
I checked behind us every twenty steps, old habits dying slow.
Nothing but fields, a few ravens picking over the corpses of last year’s hayricks.
Not a Redcoat in sight. But I didn’t trust the quiet.
There was no such thing as luck, not in this world.
The path angled down, skirting the Kelly homestead.
Or what was left of it. The barn was a torched ribcage, the house just two standing walls and a patch of black mud where the children’s garden used to be.
Nora looked, and her mouth went thin and hard, but she said nothing. Catherine didn’t look at all.
“Keep going,” I said, not loud, but with enough edge to push them forward.
The air stank of tallow and rotten potatoes.
The English did their work well. We kept walking, breath fogging even in the noon sun, feet raw from the bad fit of stolen boots.
I took point when the hedgerow grew too tight for two abreast, hacking at bramble with a stick I’d sharpened against the old church stones.
There was no sound but the wind and the dry whisper of dead grass.
The world had stopped, and left us behind.
I glanced at Catherine’s belly, felt the old urge to wrap her up in both arms and run, but she’d never forgive me for coddling her in front of Maeve. Instead, I watched her neck, the way her hair stuck to it in sweaty lines, and tried to memorize every inch.
“Rest,” Declan muttered, falling behind at the edge of a stand of thinned larch. We stopped. Maeve drew Catherine away from me, which hurt more than the bullet that took my last life. Nora hovered, not sure where to stand, so she just kicked at the ground, sending chips of stone flying.
I checked the horizon. We weren’t far from the Flannery place, maybe a mile. If we cut through the orchard, we could lose anyone following, but the old creek there was as good as a tripwire for ambush.
Declan sat on a flat stone, peeled up the hem of his robe, and dabbed at the gash just above his knee. Blood oozed, slow and dark. I tore a strip from my sleeve and handed it over, then crouched beside him.
“How bad?” I asked.
He gave a weak grin. “I’ve had worse from a chicken.”
I wanted to laugh, but the memory of Scar’s last stand at the castle made my mouth taste like copper. “We’ll make it to the graveyard,” I promised.
Declan’s eyes flicked to Catherine. “And then?”
I shrugged. “Then it’s her choice. Not mine.”
He finished binding his leg, then nodded toward her. “She’s not the only one you need to convince, Sully.”
I didn’t ask what he meant. I already knew.
We moved out when the wind picked up, the brambles rattling like bones.
I took the lead again, and within a hundred paces, the path narrowed to a tunnel through hawthorn and yew.
The branches clawed at my arms, snagged in the jagged holes of my jacket, but the pain kept me present.
The air was cooler here, close, and the stink of the outside world faded for a minute.
I could hear Catherine’s breathing behind me, ragged and shallow.
The baby would be the size of a bean by now, or maybe a mouse.
I wondered if it would look like me, or like her, or like neither. I wondered if I’d live to find out.
The world exploded at the next bend.
Three English soldiers stepped out from behind a toppled stone cross, rifles up, uniforms patched but clean. Their faces were blank, not even curious. The lead man aimed at my chest and barked, “Papers!”
I stopped dead. The air crystallized, the world shrinking to the four feet between the gun’s muzzle and my heart. I didn’t move, didn’t blink, just stared at the man, memorizing the angle of his jaw, the nicks in his bayonet, the way his finger hovered above the trigger.
Catherine gasped behind me. I heard Nora mutter a curse. Declan went very still.
“We’re just passing through,” I said, voice flat. “No trouble.”
The soldier’s accent was wrong for this part of Ireland. He was London or close, and the way he said “trouble” made it sound like a joke. “Papers,” he said again, and the other two spread out, one covering the group, the other moving along the edge of the path to flank us.
I let my hands dangle empty at my sides, the universal sign for “not armed.” The trick was to keep them calm, to let them think you were scared but not desperate. I did scared well. I’d had a lot of practice.
“Stay behind me,” I said, just loud enough for Catherine and the others.
The lead man took a step forward. “You look wrong,” he said, eyeing my jacket and the ink at my wrist. “What are you?”
I smiled, and felt my face twist into something ugly. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
He didn’t like that. “On your knees. All of you.”
Nora shrieked, but Maeve grabbed her and forced her down. Catherine knelt slow, hand still on her belly. Declan lowered himself, careful of his leg.
I didn’t move.
The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “I said on your knees.”
I glanced at Catherine. Her lips were moving, but no sound came out. She was praying, or cursing, or both.
I knelt, but only to get closer to the ground. When the gunman stepped in, I watched his boots, his stance. He wasn’t used to mud, not the way locals were. His feet splayed, shifting for traction. That was all I needed.
He jammed the barrel against my forehead. “You deaf, mate?”
I looked up. The moment hung, the universe waiting.
I twisted, hard left, and the rifle glanced off my skull.
I grabbed the barrel with both hands and yanked, pulling the soldier toward me.
He overbalanced. I slammed my forehead into his nose, felt the crunch and the hot spray of blood.
He howled and staggered back, but I kept hold of the rifle.
The other two yelled—one fired, missing wide, the shot ricocheting off stone and showering us with bits of old tomb.
I used the rifle like a staff, jabbing the butt into the gut of the man to my right. He folded, and I brought my knee up, hard, catching him in the throat. The cartilage gave a wet pop. He fell, hands clawing at his own neck.
The last soldier was younger, with barely a beard.
He rushed me, bayonet out, point aimed low.
I sidestepped, caught the blade with the meat of my left hand.
It cut deep, but I barely felt it. I grabbed his wrist, twisted.
The bone snapped with a dry, greenstick sound.
He screamed. I let go, and he fell back, clutching his arm.
The lead man tried to rally, lifting his own rifle, but I moved first. I swung the captured musket by the barrel and caught him full across the temple. His eyes went blank, and he pitched forward, face-first into the mud.
Silence. My heart hammered. My hands dripped blood—not just theirs, but mine, too, the old wound at the wrist opened up and running red down to the fingers. I stared at it, at the way it mixed with the blue-green of the shamrock tattoo, and thought, for a moment, that it looked almost beautiful.
Then I turned. The others were still kneeling. Maeve’s face was white as paper. Nora looked at me like I was the devil himself. Catherine stared straight through me.
I dropped the rifle. My hands shook. I wiped them on my jeans, but the blood just spread, darkening the fabric.
Catherine stood, slow. She stepped around the bodies, skirt lifted clear of the mud. She kept her distance.
“Catherine,” I said, reaching for her.
She flinched. Not much, but enough to see. I let my hand drop.
Declan rose, leaning on Maeve. He looked at the bodies, then at me, and gave a single, slow nod.
We didn’t bury the English. There was no time.
I just rolled them off the path, facedown, so they wouldn’t be recognized from the road.
I took the least bloody coat, tossed it to Declan, and checked the packs for ammo.
There was a packet of hardtack, a flask of gin, and three rounds. I left the rest.
We walked on, nobody talking. The world seemed smaller, the shadows crowding close even in the sun.
I wanted to reach for Catherine, to pull her in, to tell her the story of how I’d done worse, how I’d survived worse, for her. But she walked with her head high and her gaze on the horizon, and I knew she would never see me the same again.
I didn’t blame her.
I just kept moving, hand pressed to the blood at my wrist, the pain a comfort. It reminded me I was still here. For now.