Chapter Eighteen #2
At the first unwelcome touch, she’d already whipped around so fast that she’d dislodged her hat. Recognizing the voice at
the same time as she recognized him, she gaped at Donal in astonishment before collecting herself.
“Are you daft? You can’t be here.” The words burst out in a fierce whisper. Fear that someone would recognize him tightened
her chest. She cast a quick, anxious glance around. Fortunately, the dense green foliage of the hedgerows blocked any chance
of him being seen by most of those in the park. On the path up ahead, a boy on a bicycle pedaled away. A young woman, a maid
from the look of her, pushed a baby in a pram. Two more women, fashionably dressed, walked a dog on a leash. Those were the
only ones near enough to get a good look at him and they were paying him no mind whatsoever.
“Do you think I want to be?” He sounded impatient. He looked rough, unshaven, his black hair overlong, with a peaked cap pulled
low over his forehead and a worn brown jacket buttoned up over a collarless shirt, and loose black trousers. His hand tightened
on her arm. “I need you to come with me.”
“What? Where? I can’t do that.”
“You must. It’s Seamus. He’s been shot. He’s in a bad way.”
“What?”
“Come on.”
She was, she discovered, already keeping pace with him, from sheer force of habit she supposed, as with his hand on her arm
he propelled her along the brick path.
“He’s been shot?”
“It’s his leg. It’s turned putrid and he’s off his head with fever. I wouldn’t have bothered you, Lady Thomas, but I daren’t bring a doctor to him. Your nursing skills are all we have.”
So he’d learned of her marriage. Well, time enough to address that later.
“How did he get shot?”
“We were by an unhappy chance in a warehouse in Liverpool a week ago when soldiers raided it. They were looking for de Valera,
who’d been there, but Mick Collins and his crew got him spirited safe away a while ago. What they found instead was us, a
whole group of us actually, and when they tried to arrest us, we fought our way out and ran. They started shooting, and a
bullet caught Seamus in the leg. I got him out of there, and I thought he’d recover well enough, but he’s not, he’s getting
worse.”
“Why did they try to arrest you? Because of de Valera? Because of Mick Collins? Never say they recognized you.” There was,
she remembered, a price on his head, and on Fergus’s, and a far bigger one on Seamus’s. If the Brits knew, rather than merely
suspected, the three men still lived, they would be relentless in their pursuit of them. As for Mick—Michael—Collins she had
little doubt that he had a price on his head, too.
“I’m as sure as sure can be that they had no notion who we are. It wasn’t either of those things.”
She was walking with him quickly, willingly now, straightening her hat with one hand so that it was no longer ridiculously askew.
Belatedly realizing that anyone watching might conclude that he was forcibly marching her away, she pulled her arm free of his grip and settled her hand in his elbow instead.
So that they looked, she hoped, like any ordinary couple out for an afternoon stroll in the park.
Except he looked like he’d gone on a drunken bender after raiding some church’s poor bin, and she was wearing a modiste’s elegant best.
“Then what was it?” she asked.
“With the mood the Brits are in these days, I’m thinking it was more than enough that we’re Irish.”
The look she gave him was sharp. She knew him. “What were you doing? And I want the truth, mind.”
“Whisht, now.” He growled it at her, and she took from that that he was afraid of being overheard, which meant he wasn’t as
sanguine about being out in public as he pretended.
“Donal.” Her tone made it a warning.
“If you must know, we were working, packing up some crates to be sent out that night to Dublin. Seeing as how there’s no fancy
toff wanting to marry us and we have to earn our living and all.”
She ignored his jibe about her marriage to concentrate on the important part.
“What was in the crates?” One look at his face gave her the answer. “Guns? Are you still involved in the gunrunning, then, you fool? After all it’s cost you, and all of us?”
“Would you hush your mouth, woman?” He glared at her, and that was enough to tell her the truth of it and remind her of the danger and make her remember
her surroundings, all at the same time.
“You were supposed to go to America!” It was another fierce whisper.
“Seamus wouldn’t. Not after hearing about Molly. He says the soldiers that were on the Strand that night murdered her in cold blood, and he’s vowed not to stop until he’s killed every last one who was there.”
“That’s idiocy! He’ll get himself—and you, you ninny!—killed. For something that can’t be done! There were dozens of soldiers
out there that night, and he doesn’t even know that it was them for sure. Anyway, even if he’s run mad, you could have gone
to America yourself.”
“And leave him? What do you take me for?”
They’d reached the far side of the park by that time. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, which was crowded, she could
do no more than give him a single, fulminating look that promised him an answer he wasn’t going to like for later.
“Your poor mother’s heartbroken,” she hissed as he hustled her along.
“I sent her a message as soon as it was safe. She knows I’m not dead.”
“She got taken in for questioning. So did Seamus’s mother. And I did, too.”
“I’m sorry for that. They’ll pay, I promise.”
“Ori Sullivan came up to me on Station Road. He said he wants his money, or the guns.”
“I’m sorry for that, too.”
“What are you going to do about it? He’ll find you and Seamus eventually, you know.”
“He already did, and you’ll be pleased to know we’ve settled things between the three of us.”
“You paid him back?”
“We cut him in on the job we were doing. He would have made a nice profit, too, if we hadn’t gotten raided.”
“So he didn’t get his money?”
“I’ve no idea. We had to run for it, remember? But whether he did or not, we gave him the connection. He’ll profit from it eventually.”
“Granny always said you were born to be hanged.”
“Your granny scares me, always did. Have you any money on you? I’m skint.” He was looking up and down the street, which was
busy with cars and motorbikes and bicycles and a horse-drawn cart or two. More soldiers, British ones, rattled past in an
open-backed lorry. He watched it narrow eyed.
“I do. Fifteen pounds.” Bank notes from the generous amount of pin money Thomas gave her were tucked away in her pocketbook
in case she’d wanted to purchase anything at the event at the Criterion.
“Good. I’ll be needing some of that for rent, and it’ll pay the taxi, too.” He succeeded in flagging down a car, taking it
as a matter of course that her money was available for his use. Well, he knew her, too.