“Because I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here!” I was clinging to the edge of the sink, and there must have been enough truth or desperation in my face because he sighed heavily, running his hand through his now-tousled hair.
“All right,” he whispered. “Call to me when you’re done.” He left without another word, closing the bathroom door behind him, and I washed myself with shaking hands and trembling legs, more afraid than I’d ever been in my entire life.
Eoin and Brigid returned the next day. I heard Eoin scampering up the wide staircase and down again and heard Brigid telling him I was resting and not to disturb me. I’d been to the bathroom twice by myself, moving gingerly but with increasing confidence, brushing my teeth, and combing my own hair. I wanted to get dressed, to see Eoin, to move, but I had nothing to wear but the two borrowed nightgowns I’d been wearing through my convalescence. I was restless and weak, and I spent the day staring at the view beyond my two windows. The room I slept in was on the corner of the house, and I had a clear view of the front drive out one window and a nice view of the lake out the other. When I wasn’t staring at the leafy trees and the shimmering lake framed in their boughs, I was watching for Thomas to return down the canopied lane.
The man rarely slept. Someone had summoned him Sunday evening—a baby needed delivering—and I’d spent the night in the big house alone, exploring the main floor. Thomas had come to my room before he left, concerned that I was not well enough to be left by myself. I reassured him that I was fine. I didn’t tell him that I’d spent much of my adult life alone, and I didn’t need constant companionship.
I didn’t explore for long. My shuffling from the formal dining room to the huge kitchen and beyond, to the two rooms Thomas clearly used as an office and clinic, almost did me in. I wobbled to my bed, grateful beyond measure that the room I’d been given didn’t require climbing stairs.
The staff returned the next morning, and a young girl in a long, plain dress covered in a white apron, her blond hair braided down her back, came in with a tray of soup and bread at suppertime. She stripped my bed of the sheets and comforter while I ate, making it up again with quiet competence. When she finished, she turned, her eyes curious, her arms full of the soiled bedding.
“Can I do anything else for you, ma’am?” she asked.
“No. Thank you. Please call me Anne. What’s your name?”
“I’m Maeve, ma’am. I’ve just started. My older sisters, Josephine and Eleanor, work in the kitchen. And I’m here to help Moira, my other sister, clean. I’m a hard worker.”
“Maeve O’Toole?” My spoon clattered loudly against the porcelain bowl.
“That’s right, miss. My dad is the overseer for Dr. Smith. My brothers work outside; we girls work inside. There’s ten of us O’Tooles, though wee Bart is just a baby. Eleven if you count my great-grandmother, though she’s a Gillis, not an O’Toole. She’s so old, we might have to count her twice!” She laughed. “We live a little farther down the lane, behind the big house.”
I stared at the girl—twelve years old at the most—and tried to find the old woman in her features. I couldn’t. Time had transformed her so completely there was no obvious resemblance.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Maeve,” I stammered, trying to cover my shock. She beamed and bobbed her head, as if I were visiting royalty, and left the room.
She came back. Anne came back. That’s what Maeve had said. She hadn’t forgotten. I’d been a part of her history. Me. Not my great-grandmother. Anne Finnegan Gallagher hadn’t come back. I had.
23 May 1918
An anticonscription pledge was waiting for Irish signatures at the doors of every church in Ireland last month. The prime minister of England declared that Britain’s boys are in anguish, fighting on a fifty-mile front in France, and the Irish have no real grievance. Forced conscription into the British armed services is the current fear in every Irish home.
The British have begun a cat-and-mouse game of releasing political prisoners only to snatch them up again and rearrest them. They’ve also started arresting people for participating in any activity seen as promoting Irishism—traditional dancing, language classes, hurling matches—and fomenting anti-British sentiment.
It’s only made the pot simmer.
I went to Dublin on 15 May, only to get news of a series of raids that were going to be conducted at homes of prominent members of Sinn Féin the following Friday. My name was not on the list, but Mick was worried. He got the list from one of his inside men in Dublin Castle and warned me not to go home. I spent the night at Vaughan’s Hotel with Mick and a few others, waiting out the raiders. De Valera and several others of the council went home despite the warning, and they were picked up and arrested in the sweep. I’m not sure what would make a man doubt Michael Collins when he tells you not to go home, but the British had to be happy with the men they detained. Mick was back at it at dawn, bicycling all over town in his grey suit, right under the noses of the very men who wanted nothing more than to arrest him.
Comforted by the fact that my name was still clear, I made my own rounds to Dublin Castle. The newly appointed general governor of Ireland, Lord John French, is an old friend of my stepfather’s. Mick is thrilled by the connection. I met Lord French for tea in his office at his headquarters at the Castle as he listed all his ailments, which people tend to do when they have a doctor’s ear. I promised to check in on him once a month with new treatments for his gout. He promised to get me an invitation to the governor’s ball held in the fall. I tried not to grimace and was mostly successful.
He also claimed, in strident tones, that his first order of business in his new position was to make a proclamation banning Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers, the Gaelic League, and Cumann na mBan. I nodded, contemplating the pot that would soon be a cauldron.
Whenever I go to Dublin, I think of Anne. Sometimes I catch myself looking for her, as though she remained here after the rebellion, just waiting to be found. The list of the casualties of the Easter Rising was finally published in the Irish Times last year. Declan’s name was there. Anne’s was not. There were a handful of casualties still listed as unidentified. But at this point, they will never be identified.
T. S.
7
HOUND VOICE
Some day we shall get up before the dawn
And find our ancient hounds before the door,
And wide awake know that the hunt is on;
Stumbling upon the blood-dark track once more.
—W. B. Yeats
Thomas must have arrived home after I’d gone to bed, and he was gone most of the next day. I spent another day in my room, venturing as far as the bathroom and back again and listening to the boiler rumble in the basement—a modern extravagance most rural homes did not enjoy. I’d heard Maeve and another girl—Moira?—marveling about it in the hallway outside my room. It was Maeve’s second day in the big house, and she was obviously thrilled by the luxury. Thomas arrived home after dark and knocked softly on my door. When I called out, he stepped partially inside. His blue eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He had a dark smudge on his forehead and his dress shirt was soiled, the button-down collar of his shirt missing.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, hovering at the door. He hadn’t gone a day without checking my bandages, and it had now been two, but he didn’t approach the bed.
“Better.”
“I’ll be back to change your bandages after I wash,” he said.
“No need. I’m fine. Tomorrow will be soon enough. How’s the baby?”
He looked at me blankly for a moment before his eyes cleared in comprehension. “Baby and mother are well. I was hardly needed.”
“Why do you look like you’ve been to war?” I asked gently.
He looked at his hands and the state of his rumpled shirt, and sagged wearily against the door frame. “There was trouble at the Carrigan farm. The . . . constabulary . . . were looking for weapons. When there was resistance, they set the barn and the house on fire and shot the mule. The oldest son, Martin, is dead. He killed one of the constables and wounded another before they brought him down.”
“Oh no,” I gasped. I knew the history, but it had never been real.
“When I got there, there was nothing left of the barn. The house fared a little better. It will need a new roof. We saved what we could. Mary Carrigan kept trying to pull their belongings out of the cottage while the thatch rained down on her. Her hands are burned, and her hair is half gone.”
“What can we do?”
“You can’t do anything,” he said, and smiled feebly to soften his rejection. “I’ll make sure Mary’s hands heal. The family will move in with Patrick’s kin until the roof is repaired. Then they’ll carry on.”
“Were there weapons?” I asked.
“They didn’t find any,” he answered, his eyes holding mine for a moment, considering, before he looked away. “But Martin has—had—a reputation for gun running.”
“What are the guns for?”
“What the guns are always for, Anne. We fight the British with flaming balls of shit and homemade grenades. And when we’re lucky, we fight them with Mausers too.” His voice had grown edgy, and his jaw was tight.
“We?” I ventured.
“We. Once upon a time we included you. Does it still?”
I searched his eyes, uncertain and unsettled, and remained silent. I could not answer a question I didn’t understand.
When he closed the door, he left a dark handprint behind.
Sometime long after the tall clock in the broad foyer struck one, I came awake to little hands on my cheeks and a small nose pressed to mine.
“Are you sleeping?” Eoin whispered.
I touched his face, overjoyed to see him. “I must be.”
“Can I sleep with you?” he asked.
“Does your grandmother know you’re here?” I murmured, moving my hand to the soft pelt of crimson hair curling over his brow.
“No. She’s asleep. But I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“The wind is very loud. What if we don’t hear the Tans? What if the house is on fire, and we are all asleep?”
“What are you talking about?” I soothed, stroking his hair.
“They burned down Conor’s house. I heard Doc talking to Nana,” he explained, his eyes wide, his tone plaintive.
“Eoin?” Thomas stood at the door, washed and changed but not for bed. From the looks of it, he hadn’t been sleeping. He wore trousers, a white button-down shirt, and his boots. He clutched a rifle in his right hand.
“Are you watching for the Tans, Doc?” Eoin gasped.
Thomas didn’t deny it but propped the gun against the wall and entered the room. He closed the distance to my bed and stretched out his hand to Eoin. “It’s the middle of the night, lad. Come.”