The Devil's Due: An Irish Historical Thriller (14 page)

It was late in the evening when I returned to Mary’s. As I made my way down the lane, I heard raised voices coming from the cottage. I paused for a moment by the stone wall and listened, the prickle on the back of my neck telling me something was wrong. It was a dark, cold night and I suddenly felt vulnerable, wondering what dangers lurked in the blackness around me. But the night was still, and I crept forward slowly, trying to catch what the commotion was about. I was too far away to make out the words. I only caught bits and pieces—Mary’s angry tone and Tim’s defiant response—but my instinct told me that somehow it involved me.

Mary and Tim were standing in front of the stove—my fiancé’s sister with her hands on her hips and an angry scowl on her face, her son staring at the ground. Tim didn’t bother to look up when I stepped into the room. A sullen boy, he had never been the same after his father died. I nodded and said hello, Mary’s eyes warning me to say no more. She turned back to Tim.

“We’ll talk about this later,” she said, but her tone made it clear that it was she who would be doing the talking. She turned and I stepped out of her way as she snatched the wooden bucket from the peg by the door. She scraped her knuckles in the process, cursed under her breath, then stomped outside, slamming the door behind her.

It was as if I wasn’t in the room. Tim stared at some unseen spot on the floor. I gave him a moment before I said anything.

“And what’s all this about?” I asked softly.

He looked up, and a flash of anger crossed his face.

“Nothing that concerns you,” he snapped, then he too stomped out of the cottage.

What had happened I didn’t know, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that, in some way, it would impact me.

I stepped outside. Tim was nowhere to be seen, but I knew where Mary would be. I followed the well-worn path, barely visible in the darkness, and found her by the well. She was turning the crank on the windlass, lowering the bucket. Her motions betrayed her fury and I stood back, knowing any offer of help would be met with a sharp tongue. A moment later, she reversed direction, raising the bucket until it swung below the windlass. She set the brake, poured the water into the bucket she had carried from the house. Water sloshed over the side, but she didn’t seem to notice. Hands resting on the wall, she stared into the well for a moment then turned. Even in the darkness, I could see the glisten in her eyes.

“He’s only fifteen!” she said. “The damn fool!”

I waited silently, knowing she would get to it in her own time. With Mary it usually wasn’t a long wait.

“He’ll be doing no such thing!” she snapped at me.

I nodded.

She let out a breath then shook her head. “Damn that Billy,” she said quietly.

“Billy?” I asked, although I was afraid I already knew the answer.

She shot me a look, as if somehow I were the one to blame, then her eyes softened and she nodded.

“Aye, Billy. He’s been recruiting men”—she gestured toward the cottage, “and young boys, to join the fight. He’s been filling Tim’s head full of ideas.” A sob escaped her lips. “I’ll not be losing him like I lost John.”

I stepped forward, putting my arms around her. She leaned into my embrace, cried for a moment, her head on my shoulder. Then as quick as it started, it stopped. She stepped back and wiped her eyes.

“The British are beginning to withdraw their forces,” she said. “They’ve turned the Castle Barracks over to the Free State.”

“The Free State?” I asked, my mind suddenly spinning at the news. “What happened to Lynch’s plan? Where’s our lads?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said. “No one expected that it would happen today.”

But clearly the Free State had. I felt a churning in my stomach. The IRA was nothing if not territorial. Boundaries had been established, and divisional and brigade commanders guarded their turf in much the same way that British nobility had guarded their manors for seven hundred years. If you weren’t part of the manor, you didn’t belong. That Brennan would march his own troops into another’s area without permission—even if he did support the Treaty—was unheard of. The fracture in the IRA was now complete.

“And the RIC barracks?” I asked.

“They’ve turned those over too.”

My mind flashed to Sergeant Mullins, the Free State Soldier who had given me a ride only days earlier. Although I hadn’t seen any evidence of the two factions during my wanderings in Limerick several days earlier, the Free State government had been prepared for the British withdrawal and had rushed to secure the barracks before Lynch and the Anti-Treaty Republicans could. It was only a matter of time before Lynch responded with his own show of force, and that meant Billy and the boys from my old brigade would soon be facing Brennan’s Free State men. Whether there would be fighting or not, I didn’t know.

“Would you talk to him, Frank?”

I looked up. Her eyes were still wet, and I understood her fears. If Tim joined Billy and there was fighting, he was sure to be in the thick of it.

“Aye.”

Tim was Mary’s only child. The birth had been difficult, Kathleen had told me once—Mary almost dying when the baby came. After Tim was born, Mary was never been able to have another child. I would talk to him, but I wasn’t sure what type of reception I would get. Before that, though, I needed to understand what this news meant for me.

“Does Billy know I’m staying here? Did Tim tell him?”

Mary hesitated a moment before she answered. “I don’t know. I suspect he does, but Tim wouldn’t say.” Suddenly she glared at me, her moment of weakness behind her. “But if you had an ounce of brains in that head of yours, after you talk to Tim, you would be on the next train to Abbeyfeale!”

___

I found Tim down by the stream, standing on a large rock that overhung the water, the same one I remember sitting on with Kathleen what now seemed a long time ago. Tim, Mary told me, often fished from this spot. He glanced up at me but said nothing as he stared out over the water. With no moonlight, the stream looked more like oil than water, a shifting, flowing mass, the rushing, gurgling sounds soft in the night air.

I sat on the rock, my feet dangling over the edge. I uncorked the bottle—an ale Mary had given me—and poured two cups. After a moment, Tim sat down beside me. I handed him a cup. We were quiet for a while, simply sitting and listening to the sound of the water, the wind rustling through the grass. I took a swallow and, out of the corner of my eye, watched Tim do the same. He made a face, held his cup up as if to inspect it, then took a smaller sip and set it to the side. His first drink.

“The first person I killed was a Tan.” I spoke softly but my voice or perhaps my admission seemed incredibly loud in the darkness.

Tim turned to me, his eyes suddenly eager, willing me to continue.

“The Peelers had captured a man from Limerick, a man named Donovan, and after holding him here for several days, they were to transport him to Dublin. We planned to ambush the train at Killonan, hoping to free him. We waited the entire day, hiding along the tracks south of the station. It rained all day, the six of us lying in the grass the whole while. Finally, well after dark, we were told that the plans had been changed and he was to be transported the next day. Wet and tired, we all returned home. The following morning, well before sunrise, we took up our positions again. It rained for fourteen hours straight before we were finally sent home again. On the third morning, we were told that the train was now due to arrive at noon. Our plan was to wait until it stopped at the station. There was supposed to be an IRA man on board, a scout, who would signal us to confirm that Donavan was indeed on the train.”

I paused and took a sip from my cup.

“What happened?” Tim asked.

I set my cup back on the rock. “Noon came and went and still there was no train. By this time we were all miserable, tired and wet—this was our third day, mind you—and we were all looking forward to going home. I expected the whole operation to be called off, that we would be ordered to stand down. Then, from the distance, we heard the whistle.”

I paused. The image of the tracks, glistening in the pouring rain, and the sound of the approaching train was clear in my mind. When I continued telling Tim my story, I was living it again, the scene playing out in my head.

We lay still while Billy whispered his instructions.

“Check your weapons! Don’t fire until I give the order!”

We could see the train now, moving slowly into the station, a long cloud of black smoke flowing from its stack. With a screech of metal on metal, the train slowed then, in a hiss of steam, it stopped. A moment later, we heard the shouts, several voices and then the sound of boots. Suddenly, half a dozen Tans were on the platform. That wasn’t supposed to happen; we had expected Peelers to be guarding Donovan, not the war-hardened Tans. Passengers, those climbing on board and those climbing off, gave the Tans wide berth. We waited, but the signal from the scout never came.

After several minutes, the conductor walked the length of the train, shutting the doors one after another until he got to the Tans. They ignored him while they lit their cigarettes, not concerned about his schedule. The conductor glanced at his watch again then back at the Tans but said nothing. Behind them, a head poked out the window of the second car and the signal came.

Billy improvised and gave each of us a target.

It seemed to happen slowly, me raising my rifle, lining up the sights on the man I had been assigned. He was a big man, older than me by ten years at least. His face was haggard and had the look of dried leather, the creases dirty as if he were a farmer just in from the fields. His eyes spoke both of the atrocities he had seen and those that he himself had committed and likely would again. His tunic was green, the buttons tarnished and the sleeves worn, in need of mending. His pants were black, worn and dirty as well. He held his rifle in one hand, the cigarette in the other, the smoke rising above his head to join the steam from the train.

My world had been reduced to this man before me, his companions somehow fading as if they had never existed. I heard nothing, the sounds of the station somehow fading as well. His chest rose as he took a breath from the cigarette. The whole while I was conscious that my finger was slowly squeezing the trigger, acting on its own.

The gun jumped in my hands and the Tan’s eyes flashed wide with shock, a grimace spreading across his face. He staggered, the rifle fell, and his eyes looked up, found mine, as my gun jumped again. He staggered once more when the second bullet struck, but he held my stare, one hand on his chest, the blood seeping through his fingers, the dark stain growing on his tunic. He crumpled slowly, his eyes never leaving mine, one hand still clutching his chest, the other fumbling in the air as if he were trying to catch the cigarette he had dropped.

I stared at the man I had shot. He was someone’s son, I suddenly realized, maybe someone’s husband or someone’s father. He was lying still on the platform, eyes open and staring now at nothing. Suddenly there was a clap on my back and I was up, scrambling over the wall and running down the tracks. I heard several gunshots and suddenly sounds came rushing back as did my sight. There were several more gunshots, the excited shouts from the men with me, the screams of the passengers and the wailing and moans of the dying. The platform was a scene of chaos, passengers scrambling off the train, tripping over one another, some lying on the ground, hit by bullets or hiding, I didn’t know.

It was all over in a moment, a brief flash. I stood over the man I had shot, stared down at his lifeless eyes, at the blood bubbling from his lips, at the dark red pool growing on the platform. He was in the middle of a pile of bodies, arms and legs entangled, caps and guns scattered. Billy had a pistol in his hand now and, one by one, put a bullet in the head of any Tan still moaning. Then he was shouting and we hurried to collect the rifles. With two men helping Donovan, who was still wearing shackles, and me and another carrying the guns, we made our escape.

“We managed to make it back to the house safely,” I said, drawing myself back from the memory. “We hid there for three days. We knew the British would come looking for us, seeking their revenge.” I shook my head. “For three nights I lay awake. I kept seeing the Tan, the look on his face when I shot him and then him lying on the ground, dead.”

Tim’s eyes were wide; he was hanging on my every word.

“It won’t be the British that you’ll be fighting,” I told Tim. “It’ll be men like you and me. It’ll be men who all love Ireland but who have different ideas about what we should do now, with the British leaving.” I shook my head. “To kill another Irishman? I don’t know, Tim. Killing a Tan is hard enough.”

Tim seemed to study me for a while. He took another sip of his stout.

“Did you ever kill an Irishman?”

I was silent for a moment, unsure how to answer, how much to tell him. Finally, I decided that he needed to know. I told him about shooting Brian Conroy, a man who had been forced by the British to choose between his family and the IRA. Because of the choice he made, I didn’t have one and had been forced to put a bullet in him and pin a warning to his chest. Then I told him about Argyll Manor and how we had been surprised by the Tans and about the choice I made, to slam my hand onto the plunger, knowing as I did so that any chance Dan, Tom, and Sean might have had would be gone. Sure I had killed three Tans, but I had helped to kill three of our own men too.