Chapter Two #2
“Stay down!” Reinforcing that with a shove to the back of her head, Donal catapulted off her, scrambling along the deck like
a crab. Seamus rolled in over the side, landing with a curse and a burst of icy droplets that distracted her not at all as
she kept her attention on Donal. Was he hit? She didn’t think so. He didn’t move like it. She glanced toward Seamus.
Partway there, her gaze stuck on Paddy’s seat. Paddy’s empty seat. Abandoned, his oars clanked against the thole pins that held them in place.
“Paddy! Paddy!” Fergus cried.
“Keep rowing! Or we’re all dead!” Seamus swarmed onto his knees.
“Oh, Jesus, he’s took one to the chest!” Donal crouched over the dark shape that Rynn only then realized was Paddy, fallen
in a heap onto the planks below his seat.
More gunshots rang out in quick succession, cracking overhead, smacking into the hull, sending up tiny geysers as they hit
the water. Panic quickened Rynn’s breathing, churned through her stomach. Impossible to believe that Paddy was shot, or that
they were in a position where another bullet could find any one of them at any second. Every instinct she possessed urged
her to stay huddled right where she was, tucked out of sight against the dubious protection of the hull. But she had to go
to Paddy, to do what she could for him.
Careful to keep low, Rynn crawled toward Donal, who glanced around at her as she reached him.
“I told you to stay down!”
“I can help him.”
Donal grimaced, a sign of reluctant acknowledgment, then yelled, “Throw me my coat, Fergus.”
Rynn put a testing hand on Paddy’s bent leg, the only part of him she could reach with Donal in her way. The limb beneath
the wool trousers was motionless. Except for an involuntary slip and slide caused by their plunging flight through the waves,
Paddy was motionless. As Donal caught the tossed coat and draped it around her shoulders—ah, blessed protection from the wind!—she
elbowed him out of the way and began to frantically unbutton Paddy’s coat.
“Rynn?” Fear thinned Donal’s voice. “How bad?”
“I can’t tell yet. I need to—”
“Bring that boat in! In the name of His Majesty the King!” The shout from the beach was punctuated by an explosion of gunfire. Rynn flinched as bullets flew past. Donal, flinching too, threw a protective arm across her shoulders.
“Take Paddy’s oars!” Seamus roared at Donal, who obediently flung himself into Paddy’s vacant seat. As Donal began to row,
Rynn saw that Seamus, now wedged into a secure spot in the bow, had snatched up a rifle.
No. But whether she said it aloud or not didn’t matter. It was already too late to share her conviction that shooting at the
soldiers could only worsen their situation. Taking aim as best he could given the instability of his perch, Seamus fired back.
Darkness fell over the boat like a blanket as the moon went into hiding again. A flicker of hope that the soldiers’ inability
to see what they were shooting at might stop the onslaught was almost immediately doused by the barrage of answering bullets.
Ears ringing from the rifle’s explosions so close at hand as Seamus returned fire in a fierce volley, Rynn clenched her jaw
against the terror that threatened to immobilize her and determinedly focused on Paddy.
He lay curled on his side. Although she bent close, it was difficult to be sure of much given the lack of light. But a distinctive
smell that she was sickened to recognize as fresh blood was stronger even than the salt smell of the sea.
“Paddy. Paddy, can you hear me?” His coat, his chest, were already a flood of wet, sticky warmth. Yanking his coat open, she pressed
both hands hard against the gushing wound that was its source. The barely-there glint of his eyes through the darkness told
her they were open. His lips were parted. She could detect no hint of air passing through them, could feel no respiratory
movement of his chest although her hands were flattened against it. A thin black line that could only be blood trickled from
the far corner of his mouth to mix with the shallow film of water in the bottom of the boat.
Dread squeezed her heart as she reluctantly acknowledged what the sheer volume of blood oozing though her fingers meant. No one could lose that much blood and live.
“Is it bad? Is he bad?” Fergus sounded frantic. Like Donal and Seamus, Fergus and Paddy were kin and close as brothers.
“Keep rowing!” Seamus yelled at him before she could answer and snapped off more shots. Curses and prayers intermingled as,
bent almost double in their seats, Donal and Fergus rowed feverishly while the furious exchange of gunfire split the night.
Refusing to give up even though she knew it was useless, Rynn tried everything she could to save Paddy. But, finally, she
had to face the truth: he had no pulse. No heartbeat. No breath. One of the soldiers had found his mark. There was no mistake.
The Merrow hit rougher water, which Rynn knew from long experience meant they were nearing Mullaghmore Head. The gunfire from the Strand
had fallen off until it was no more than a few distant pops. As her hands dropped away from Paddy’s chest at last and she
sank back on her heels in defeat, Seamus lowered his rifle.
They must be out of range.
“Paddy?” Fergus’s anguished question pierced her heart. “In the name of all the saints, Rynn, how bad is he?”
A hard knot formed beneath her breastbone. She wet her lips. The salt on them, was it from the sea or her tears?
“Rynn?” Donal pressed.
She didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to tell them. To give voice to it made it real.
She bowed her head. Of its own accord, the familiar litany left her lips: “‘Hail Mary, full of grace . . .’”
“Dead?”
Ah, Donal knew her. She replied with a jerky nod even as more tears slid down her cheeks.
“‘Intercede for us now and at the hour of our deaths . . .’”
“No.” Fergus’s oars stilled. “He can’t be dead, not just like that, not so fast. Are you sure, Rynn?”
She wiped her eyes, looked at him. “I am.”
Fergus gave a choked wail and rose from his seat. “Ah, Paddy, he skipped confession today. We were going to stop after mass
but we went to the pub instead.”
Rynn’s heart broke at the anguish in his voice.
“Fergus. Donal. See to your oars. There’s a bloody great trawler off the starboard keel. From the look of her, she’s been laying back waiting
for us.” Sharp as a knife, Seamus’s warning cut through the rising fog of grief. Crouched in the bow, he shouldered the rifle
again. “Here she comes. Damn the Brits to hell, they’ll not take us without a fight.”