“Jaysus, Anne!” he said, gasping. “I didn’t even see you there. I thought it odd that my bed wasn’t made, but I figured with all the commotion, it had been missed. I thought you were in Eoin’s room.”
“How’s Robbie?” I said, so relieved to see him I felt like crying.
Thomas told me what he’d told Maggie and Daniel, adding that if it could be kept from infection, it would heal, and the young man would recover.
We were silent for a moment, our thoughts heavy with what might lie ahead.
“Daniel told me you hatched the whole plan,” Thomas said softly. “He said Liam and Robbie and the rest of the boys would have been sunk without you. Not to mention Garvagh Glebe. The Tans have torched homes for less, Anne.”
“I find I am a very good actress,” I mumbled, embarrassed and pleased by his praise.
“Daniel said the same thing. He also said you sounded like a lady all the way from America.” He brooded for a moment. “Why America?”
“I did everything I could to make them think I wasn’t a threat. Everything I could to distract them. If I wasn’t Irish, why would I care about the Irish Republican Army? I let them in without protest, chatted like a mindless girl, and made it all up as I went. I thought I was done for when they found the clinic had been rummaged through.”
“The laudanum?” Thomas asked, his lips twitching.
“Yes. The laudanum. Daniel O’Toole’s not a bad fibber either.”
“What made you think of the mare? It was really quite brilliant. The blood, the distraction, all of it.”
“I once . . . read . . . a story about a family in Louisville, Kentucky, in the mid-1800s, who raised and sold horses to the wealthiest people in America.” I was lying again, but it was a white lie. I hadn’t read a book like that. I’d written one. Thomas gazed at me, his eyes heavy with fatigue, waiting for me to continue. “There was a scene where the family used the birth of a foal to distract the authorities . . . only it wasn’t guns they were hiding but slaves. The family was part of the Underground Railroad.”
“That . . . is . . . amazing,” he whispered.
“The book was based on a true story too,” I said.
“No, Anne. You. You are amazing.”
“And you are exhausted,” I whispered, watching as his eyes closed and his face relaxed. We lay, turned toward each other on the big bed, like old friends at a sleepover.
“I knew I shouldn’t leave. I could feel it the whole time I was gone. I left Dublin at two o’clock in the morning. Gave my report to the Big Fella and drove straight here,” Thomas mumbled.
“Rest, Setanta,” I said, wanting to smooth the hair on his forehead, to touch his face, but I contented myself with watching him sleep instead.
25 August 1921
Liam Gallagher, Declan’s older brother by several years, was the one who decided to bring the guns to Garvagh Glebe. I’d known for some time that Mick was using Liam’s access on the docks at Sligo to move cargo around under the noses of the Tans. When the tide was high, they moved down the long canal from the sea to the lough and hid weapons in the caves on the shore, distributing them inland from there. Ben Gallagher, the oldest of Brigid’s boys, is a conductor on the route from Cavan to Dublin, and I have no doubt there are frequently guns stowed on his train. Mick talked a while back about a shipment of Thompson guns that would give the IRA another level of firepower, but so far, the shipment hasn’t materialized.
The guns Liam and his boys brought to Garvagh Glebe are now stacked in a ten-by-ten space beneath the wooden slats that make up the barn floor. Daniel and I carved out the space and lined it in rock years ago. It’s hard to find the trap door unless you know it’s there; a little spring-lock mechanism on the inner corners makes a handle unnecessary.
Ben and Liam have kept their distance over the years. I suspect that it’s guilt and helplessness more than anything else. They were relieved when their mother moved to Garvagh Glebe with Eoin. Neither of them are in any position to support her or the boy. Two groups of people exist in Ireland—farmers with huge families and single adults. With emigration one of the only viable options to find work, men and women who don’t want to leave Ireland are waiting longer than ever to marry, the fear of being unable to provide for a family keeping men from committing to anything but their own survival and women from welcoming a man to their beds.
Brigid talks about her children. She misses them. She writes them letters and begs her sons to come to Garvagh Glebe to visit. They don’t come often. Since Anne has returned, I haven’t seen or heard from either of them. Until now.
Liam visited his mother this evening. He ate dinner with us, made small talk with his mother, and roundly avoided conversing with Anne, though his eyes were continually returning to her. She seemed just as uncomfortable with him, sitting silently beside Eoin, her eyes on her plate. I wonder if it’s his resemblance to Declan that pains her or the unanswered questions hanging over her head. She’s won Daniel over, though. He is convinced she saved them all. Liam doesn’t seem so sure.
When dinner was through, Liam asked for a private word, and we walked to the barn, our voices low and our eyes wide as we scanned the darkness for eavesdropping shadows.
“I’ll wait for the Tans and the Auxies to suspend the patrol,” he told me. “They’re supposed to be pulling back, though we all know the truce is just an excuse for them to double down. We’re not twiddling our thumbs either, Doc. We’re stockpiling. Planning. Preparing for it to ramp up again. In three days, the guns will be moved, and I’ll do my best not to put you in this position again.”
“It could have ended very badly, Liam,” I said, not to reprimand but to remind.
He nodded glumly, his shoulders hunched, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “It could have, Doc. And it still might.”
“How so, Liam?”
“I don’t trust Anne, Thomas. Not at all. She turns up, and suddenly the Tans are on to us. We’ve been running guns through here for three years. The day you dragged her out of the lough, we had to ditch the weapons in the west shore caves instead of unloading them on O’Brien’s dock like we’ve done every other time. We had two dozen Tans waiting for us on the dock. If the fog hadn’t rolled in, we would have been sunk.”
“Who told you I dragged her out of the lough, Liam?” I kept my voice level, but alarm bells were ringing in my head.
“Eamon Donnelly. He thought I should know, being family and all,” he answered, defensive.
“Huh. The way Daniel tells it, if Anne was working with the Tans, you wouldn’t have survived the night,” I said.
“That woman isn’t Anne,” Liam hissed. “I don’t know who she is. But that’s not our Annie.” He scrubbed at his eyes like he wanted to erase her, and when he spoke again, weariness had replaced his adamancy. “You’ve taken care of my mother and my nephew. You take care of a lot of people, Thomas. Everyone knows it. And none of us will ever be able to repay you. But you don’t owe Anne anything. None of us do. You’ve got to get rid of her. The sooner the better.”
Liam left without saying goodbye to Brigid. Anne took Eoin to his room without saying good night to me. I’ve moved Robbie onto a cot in the clinic so Anne doesn’t have to sleep in my bed. The thought tightens my body and loosens my mind. From my desk, I can hear her in the next room, telling Eoin the legend of Niamh and Oisín and the Land of the Young.
I stop writing to listen, entranced once again by her voice and her stories.
I am no longer haunted by Anne but enchanted.
Liam says she isn’t Anne. He’s lost his mind. But deep down I am half convinced he’s right, which makes me just as daft as he.
T. S.
14
I AM OF IRELAND
‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’
—W. B. Yeats
Liam Gallagher, Declan Gallagher’s brother and Brigid’s son, was the man who shot me on the lough. He was one of the men on the riverboat. The one who raised his arm, pointed a gun at me, and pulled the trigger.
Part of me had believed that I’d fallen through time and into 1921 as an odd way of saving myself from something in 2001. But Liam Gallagher was as real in 1921 as he’d been on the lake that day, before I’d even realized where I was. I’d rowed away from the shores of 2001 and into another world. And in that world, Liam Gallagher had tried to kill me.
He must have been among the men in the barn, the men who brought the guns. But my attention had been riveted on Robbie, my fear and apprehension focused on the threat to Garvagh Glebe and the people she sheltered, and I hadn’t looked at any of the men closely. But Liam had been there, and he’d seen me. And tonight, he came back again, sitting down to a supper of roast beef, potatoes, and carrots in a caramelized sauce as though the day on the lough never happened.
Maybe it didn’t.
I considered for the umpteenth time that I might be mistaken, that the trauma of my trip through time had skewed my vision and altered events. But there was a thick pink scar on my side as evidence to the contrary. And Liam Gallagher was a gunrunner.
He’d already been seated at the table when I’d walked into the dining room that evening. He and Brigid had ignored me, and Eoin had patted the chair next to him, excited that I would be sitting by him for the first time. I’d almost fallen into the chair, sick and shocked. Thomas had come in a few moments later, and he’d been drawn into conversation with Liam, leaving me to shrink in petrified silence.
I’d excused myself as quickly as I could, but Eoin had slipped his hand in mine and begged me to give him his bath and a story. Brigid had agreed eagerly, clearly wanting to spend time with her son. Now I sit in Eoin’s room in the dark, watching him sleep, afraid to be alone, afraid to move at all.
I will have to tell Thomas. I will have to tell him Liam shot me. But he will want to know why I’d said nothing before. If I was Anne Gallagher, I would have recognized Liam. And Liam would have recognized Anne. Yet he’d tried to kill her. Me. Us.
A terrified moan slipped through my lips, and Eoin stirred. I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle my distress. Liam hadn’t been afraid. He’d sat across the table from me and made small talk with Thomas and his mother, eating everything on his plate and asking for seconds. He must feel safe; I’d been at Garvagh Glebe for almost two months, and I hadn’t made a single accusation.
If I did, it was my word against his, and I was the one with the most to explain.
I spent the night sitting in the chair in Eoin’s room, too afraid to return to my own. Thomas found me there early the next morning. I was curled in an unnatural position, my neck stiff and my dress rumpled. He leaned over the chair and touched my cheek. I came awake gasping and flailing, and he shushed me, putting a hand to my mouth.