Chapter Thirty-One
Rynn had the worst of bad feelings as she followed Mrs. Frampton into the kitchen. The overhead light was on. Rynn blinked
against the brightness as she stopped just inside the door. The homey smell of the next day’s bread rising on the counter
lost its soothing quality as she got her first good look at Cyril.
Wearing trousers that had obviously been hastily pulled on to supplement the nightshirt he still wore, Cyril stood with his
back against the far counter with a rifle—Rynn hadn’t even known he possessed a rifle—gripped in both hands. He held it crosswise
in front of him, not really pointed at anyone but there. He didn’t look at her or Mrs. Frampton as they entered. Instead he
was focused on . . .
Rynn’s eyes widened as she followed his gaze.
A man in a trench coat sat slumped at the far end of the big table in the center of the room. He was bent forward so that
his head, resting on one folded arm, was on the tabletop. His other arm hung loosely at his side. His overlong hair was black,
thick and wavy.
“What—” Rynn began, then broke off. She knew that hair. “Donal?”
Donal lifted his head even as she hurried toward him. His face was pale and drawn, but he managed a weak smile.
“Sorry to pull you into this, acushla, but ’twas the only place I could think to bring them.” His head dropped back to rest on his arm. The breathless quality of his speech told her that he was in physical distress.
“Them?” Hovering above him, she felt his forehead, checked the pulse below his ear. His skin was warm and damp. His pulse
was rapid. “Are you sick? Hurt?’
A grunt was her reply, and then a pained groan as she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She could feel the thick padding
beneath his coat: a bandage, she felt sure.
“Come look out the window.” Cyril’s voice was grim. Rynn realized that he was standing where he was because it afforded him
a view of the night outside the window. She took the few steps needed to join him and caught her breath.
Men staggered through the kitchen garden, singly and in pairs, a steady stream of them coming toward the house from the direction
of the woods. Bathed in pale moonlight, they looked like the risen spirits of the dead.
Rynn’s stomach clenched. Mrs. Frampton, who’d stepped up beside her and was seeing the same thing, crossed herself.
“Don’t upset yourselves. ’Tis the South Donegal Flying Column,” Donal said. “We’ve run into a bit of difficulty, as you can
see.”
“My God.” Rynn swung around to look at him. “What did you do?”
“Liberated a prisoner. And some weapons. The soldiers transporting them didn’t take kindly to it, but we prevailed.” He’d
lifted his head to look at her again, and she could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “They’ll be hunting us. Although
we did our best to cover our trail.”
It was said by way of a warning.
“The first of them is at the door.” Mrs. Frampton turned away from the window. Worry was in her eyes, and her voice. She clasped her hands tightly in front of her waist. She knew the consequences that might attach to opening that door as well as Rynn did.
Rynn looked at her, looked at Cyril, a question in her eyes. Did they want to be involved, to put themselves in danger? The
risk was great, which they all knew. She was the nurse, and the mistress of the house. The responsibility, and any blame that
went with it, was hers. They could melt away, go to bed, claim to have seen nothing, know nothing and so perhaps save themselves
if anything should go wrong.
Mrs. Frampton took a breath. Her mouth firming, she turned to draw the curtains over the window. Cyril squared his shoulders,
looking troubled but resolute.
She had her answer.
“Let them in,” she said, and Cyril did.
Eleven men all filed in, some stumbling over the threshold only to collapse on the floor, some supporting a wounded comrade,
two of them carrying a third between them in a chair they’d formed by linking hands, most armed to the teeth with rifles strapped
to their backs. Seamus was among them. Of course, Seamus was among them. Where Donal was, Seamus went, and vice versa. Bearded
now, with wooly curls that wouldn’t have been out of place on a shaggy black sheep, he greeted Rynn with a brief, would-be
jaunty smile before lowering the man he’d been helping to the floor. Pulling his and the other man’s rifles free, he dropped
to stretch out panting on his back, both rifles laid out on the floor beside him.
Moving from one man to the other, Rynn conducted a quick triage operation to sort the wounded into tiers of severity.
“What’s this?” The surprised question had Rynn and practically everyone else in the kitchen looking in horror in the direction
from which it came.
Paused on the last step of the back stairs, Anna, in her nightclothes and robe, clearly newly roused from her bed, glanced wide-eyed around the kitchen. Before Rynn or anyone could reply, Anna’s eyes lit on a lanky young man sprawled out on the floor not far from Seamus. “Brian Nolan, is that you?”
As he turned his head to look at her, she flew to his side.
“That’s her fella,” Mrs. Frampton said to Rynn as Anna knelt beside him, scolding and questioning all at the same time.
“It would be best if we could move to an interior room. At night, any glimmer of light . . .” Donal’s voice trailed off as
he took a seemingly painful breath, but then he finished with “could bring them right to us.”
A chill ran down Rynn’s spine.
“We’re moving to the cellar,” she announced. “We’ll set up there.” She looked at Anna. “Anna. You understand that nothing
of this is to be spoken of to anyone who’s not in this room.”
Anna looked up at her. “You’ve no need to worry, Lady Thomas. Tiocfaidh ar la.”
Our day will come. It had become the unofficial motto of the IRA.
Rynn nodded. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
It was no small feat to get everyone downstairs, but once it was done and the kitchen was dark again Rynn found that she could
breathe a little easier.
The cellar was built of thick limestone blocks. It ran beneath the entire house, which meant it was huge. Clusters of discarded
furniture and stacks of boxes and bins and other random items filled much of the space. Its most important attribute under
the circumstances was that it was windowless, with only a single door to the upstairs and another to the outside to accommodate
the delivery of supplies. Even with the one overhead light and multiple lanterns set about to illuminate the small section
where the makeshift infirmary was taking shape, there was no possibility that even the tiniest sliver of light could escape.
Cyril was busy setting up cots. Men lay on them or sat or lay on the floor, waiting for Rynn to get to them.
The injuries ranged from a gunshot wound to the abdomen—the most severe—to Donal’s wounded shoulder and broken ribs to the multiple contusions and severe malnutrition suffered by the man they’d rescued, which Mrs. Frampton was currently helping to treat by spooning thinned porridge into his mouth.
Donal refused to identify him—“It’s better for you if you don’t know”—but told her, as she bound up his broken ribs, that
the man’s condition resulted from several months’ imprisonment that included multiple interrogations that were nothing short
of torture and the hunger strike he’d gone on in protest. Thanks to an informant, they’d learned he was to be moved from one
jail to another earlier that day and had attacked the convoy en route. The resultant bloody battle had left, at Donal’s estimation,
at least two British soldiers dead and three times that number badly wounded. As for their flying column, they hadn’t lost
a man.
“Although it’s possible Rory O’Keefe there with the bullet in his stomach might yet be the first.” Donal looked a question
at her as he said it. Rory O’Keefe, as Rynn now knew his name was, who’d presented with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, was
the most seriously wounded and had been the first man she’d treated. With the bullet removed and the wound disinfected and
bandaged, he was presently lying unconscious on one of the cots.
“The bullet missed his stomach, fortunately for him. It lodged in the peritoneum, without hitting anything too vital. If infection
doesn’t set in, he should recover.”
“Praise be to God. He has a wife, with a babe on the way.” Seated on the floor with his back to the wall in preparation for
what she was about to do to him, Donal sent a frowning look up at her. “We’ve got to get our boyo—” he nodded at the man they’d
rescued “—to the people waiting for him as soon as may be. Will it harm O’Keefe to be moved?”
“I’d recommend waiting at least several days. More likely longer, depending on how he does.”
Donal shook his head. “We can’t wait nearly that long. In twenty-four hours, we won’t be able to smuggle a mouse out of this
county. They’ll have soldiers on every road, every track, every sheep path.”
“Several days,” Rynn said firmly. Then Donal was silenced by the roll of gauze bandages she instructed him to bite down on.
Grimacing, he did as he was told, and with Cyril’s help she dug out the bullet that had lodged in his shoulder, then disinfected
and sutured the wound and bandaged him up. Afterward, dizzy and sweating, he collapsed on the cot that had been provided for
him.
Seamus had suffered wounds from both a bullet and a bayonet, neither life-threatening. As she was treating him, Rynn noticed
that he was still wearing the chain with the St. Michael’s medal Molly Kincaid had given him around his neck. She didn’t say
anything about it, because she didn’t want to cause him distress, but for a moment the thought of Molly slowed her work. Sweet-natured
Molly had cared nothing about politics. All she’d wanted was to live an ordinary life, with a home and a husband and children.
She hadn’t deserved the fate she’d found.
Seamus must have seen her looking at his necklace, because his hand came up and he fingered the small silver medallion.