Chapter Thirty-One #2
“I found him, you know,” he said low, for her ears alone. “The bastard that murdered Molly. He was bragging about it, was
Captain Henry Smith, and word got passed along until it reached my ears. He was on the Strand that night, the officer left
in charge there after we in the Merrow got away from them.
She came down late to the cove thinking to meet me, I’m sure, and ran into them instead.
They took her prisoner, and did things to her to try to make her tell them who was in the boat and where it would likely land.
Then, when she managed to break away and ran for her life, he was the bastard that shot her.
” Seamus’s mouth twisted. From pain, Rynn thought, but the pain of grief rather than the physical discomfort she was causing him by suturing the gouge that a bullet had taken out of his side.
“He told me all about it over a friendly drink at a Dublin pub, not knowing who I was. Then I came up behind him in the dark as he was walking back to his barracks and slit his bloody throat for him. Justice for Molly, the dear darling, but it does not bring her back.”
His voice was grim as he finished. His eyes were wet with unshed tears.
“She’s at peace now, Seamus.” Snipping off the end of the thread that she used to pull the edges of his wound together, Rynn
patted his shoulder consolingly. That Seamus was capable of such savagery should have horrified her, she knew, just as she
should have been horrified by it as she’d watched the killing of Bingle. But it was savagery in response to savagery, born
of his experiences in the Great War, and in this case it sprang from a place of tremendous love, and tremendous loss. She
couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn him for it. “She loved you, you know.”
“I know. Far more than I deserved.” He closed his eyes and flung an arm across them, shutting her out. Rynn finished up in
silence and left him alone.
It was nearly dawn by the time everyone was treated. Too late, Seamus, for he was the commanding officer, decreed, for them
to venture out of the cellar, out of hiding, because the hunt would be on and it would be relentless and darkness made it
much easier to slip past any patrols. Accordingly, the group of them laid up for the day, with the less seriously wounded
sleeping and eating and doing what they could to regain their strength. The more seriously wounded—there were four who Rynn
didn’t expect to be ambulatory anytime soon—lay in their cots coming in and out of consciousness as she did what she could
for them.
By the time night came around again, seven members of the flying column were preparing to leave. The others would stay behind, with someone sent to collect them in a few days.
“We’ll do much better taking to the hills,” Donal said, refusing her offer of the car as transport. “They’ll have patrols
on the roads, don’t you know. Our advantage is we know the countryside in a way they do not. And we know where we’re going,
and how to get there. Our boyo will have people already there waiting for him. They’ll take him on to a safe house, and from
there they’ll get him out of the country.”
“And what of you, and Seamus, and the rest?” Rynn asked. They were standing by the cot he’d used as he packed up his rucksack.
His movements were stiff and he went white-lipped if his ribs were jarred, despite how tightly they were bandaged and the
morphine injection she’d given him earlier to ease the worst of it, but still he insisted on going.
“We’ll be driving the devils out of Ireland for good and all, or we’ll be dying in the attempt.” His belated smile was summoned
for her benefit, she knew, in an attempt to ease the grimness that underlay his words. Then the smile went away as his eyes
swept her face. “If I haven’t yet mentioned it, I was sorry to hear about your loss. But if I’m being honest, I’m not entirely
sorry that you’re a widow. It may be too soon, but in times like these, life is uncertain. My feelings for you are unchanged,
acushla. I want you to know that.”
She looked up into the handsome face of the boy—no, man now—she’d loved for years. So many of her fondest memories were wrapped
up in him. He was her first love, her first kiss, her first dream of marriage and family and forever.
But . . .
The Great War, and all that had happened since, had upended the world.
It had altered her life, and his, irrevocably.
Once they might have been made for each other.
But everything that was in her—that tingly certainty, which she had to admit was most likely connected to the Sight—told her that they no longer were, that he was not the man for her, that making a life with him was not the path she was meant to take.
“But you no longer feel the same.” He said it with chagrin, followed by the slightest of wry smiles, and she realized that
he’d read her answer in her face. Ah, he knew her.
She smiled back at him, a little sadly as she acknowledged the truth of it. “I’ve changed, Donal. I’m not the girl you loved
any longer. But you’ll always have a place in my heart. Just not—” She hesitated.
“The place,” he finished for her.
“Just not the place,” she agreed.
“Donal,” Seamus called over his shoulder. He, along with the other men who were going, was heading toward the outside door,
where Cyril waited to open it for them. Flat caps pulled low over their eyes, coats buttoned up against the cold, rifles strapped
to their backs, her erstwhile patients now had the cohesive look of a military unit. Some limped, some moved a little stiffly,
some might require help if the journey was overlong or too arduous, but something in their bearing, in the look on their faces,
left no doubt that these were fighting men.
“Take care.” She went up on tiptoe to press a quick kiss to Donal’s cheek.
“Ach. ’Ware the ribs,” was his half-smiling response as she sank back down, and then he picked up his rucksack and was gone with
a wave of his hand, out the door that Cyril had opened, away with the others into the night.
The next day Rynn went into the village to pick up a few items and get the newspapers—and not coincidentally, to see what
if any talk was going around about the action the South Donegal Flying Column had been engaged in that had led to their trip
to her door.
To her dismay, Bundoran was in turmoil. Khaki-clad soldiers filled the streets, moving from block to block, searching shops, houses, vehicles and any unlucky civilians who caught their eye.
Military lorries loaded with Tans rumbled in from the direction of Finner Camp, setting up roadblocks on the streets leading out of town.
More lorries fanned out along the roads leading to Ballyshannon and Belleek and Manorhamilton and Mullaghmore.
In other words, they went rattling off in all directions.
The tension among the locals was palpable.
Anger and aggression emanated from the Crown forces like a stench.
People hurried about their business, anxious to get home.
“What’s all this?” Rynn’s voice was carefully low. Her gesture encompassing the activity in the streets was equally subdued
as she addressed the question to Mrs. Cheadle, who was behind the counter in the greengrocer. Looking up from adding up Rynn’s
purchases, Mrs. Cheadle cast a quick glance around before whispering, “Haven’t you heard? Francis Gerard escaped.”
Francis Gerard: Rynn registered the name with a sense of shock. Now that she knew, she recognized the man who’d been carried into her cellar
from his frequent pictures in the newspapers, although he’d lost much weight since those photographs were taken. A key figure
in the IRA, he’d been imprisoned since August. His hunger strike protesting his treatment had lately attracted international
attention. No wonder his rescue was eliciting such a violent response!
Overhearing the conversation, other customers crowded around to add their own hushed bits of news.
“He was rescued. It was our lads that did it.”
“Sure they’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest this time.”
“Near starved to death, he was. And beaten.”
“Bloody heroes, I say.”
“But who’ll pay the price? Us, that’s who.”
“Hide your guns. They’ve arrested Pat Mulcahy and Sean Lynch. Searched their houses looking for Gerard but found guns instead.”
“’Tis a right shame, it is. A body’s not safe in his own house.”
“There’ll be no good end to this, you’ll see.”
The headlines in the newspapers were equally alarming: “Convoy Transporting Notorious Prisoner Ambushed”; “Soldiers Killed
in IRA Ambush”; “Francis Gerard Escapes.”
The Irish Times took up a full third of their front page with a single, boldfaced word: “Manhunt!”
Reading that, Rynn’s stomach sank clear to her toes.
She was still rattled when she arrived back at Ballyshannon Court. Sharing the news and newspapers with Mrs. Frampton and
Cyril over supper—Anna was taking hers in the cellar, Brian Nolan having been one of the men who’d stayed behind—Rynn concluded
her summary of what she’d learned with “We need to be very careful to maintain our daily routine just as it’s always been.”
Mrs. Frampton’s lips trembled. “I’m not regretting what we’ve done here,” she said. “I’m not regretting it, come what may.”
Cyril took a more optimistic view of the situation: “If the buggers are sending lorries all over the countryside, and hunting
like badgers after worms through the town, it means they’ve no idea where Francis Gerard or any of the rest of them are. We’ll
brush through this, see if we don’t.”
But it wasn’t until the following afternoon that Rynn’s nerves truly started to settle. The sun was out. The weather was mild.
Spring was not far off, and the prospect couldn’t help but lift her spirits. She was looking out the kitchen window ruing
the overgrown state of the kitchen garden while mixing a pitcher of barley water to soothe Rory O’Keefe’s stomach pains when
all her newfound peace was shattered by a thunderous pounding on the front door.