Thomas nodded slowly. “She did, Mick.”
“I know that in October, you will be sent to London to negotiate terms of a treaty with England, Mr. Collins. Mr. de Valera will stay behind. And when you return with a signed agreement, the people of Ireland will overwhelmingly support it. But de Valera and some members of the Dáil—those loyal to him—will not. Before long, Ireland will not be fighting England anymore. We will be fighting each other.”
Michael Collins, his eyes full of tears, pressed a fist to his lips. He rose slowly, burying his hands in his hair, his anguish terrible to watch. Then, with violent emotion, he picked up his saucer and teacup and smashed them against the wall. Thomas handed him another, and it shared the same fate. The dish that held a single slice of meat pie followed, raining bits of potato and crust across the kitchen. I could not lift my eyes from his empty chair as he made short work of anything that would shatter. The shaking in my belly had moved to my legs, and beneath the table, my knees bounced uncontrollably. When he sat back down, his emotion was banked, and his eyes were hard.
“What else can you tell me?” he asked.
26 August 1921
(continued)
If I had not seen it, not heard it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Anne entered the lion’s den and calmed the beast with nothing but a tale delivered in perfect Irish and a well of knowledge that should have condemned her, not saved her.
Ireland has long since abandoned her heathen roots, but my Anne has druid blood. I’m convinced of it. It’s in her soft eyes and her purring voice, in the magic she weaves with her words. She’s not a countess; she’s a witch. But there’s no evil in her, no ill intent. Maybe that, in the end, is what won Mick over.
He asked her a dozen questions, and she answered him without hesitation when she could and with calm denial when she claimed she couldn’t. I watched her—amazed, stricken, proud. Mick didn’t want to know where she’d been or how she’d come to be in the lake—those were my questions. He wanted to know if Ireland would survive, if Lloyd George would uphold his end of the Treaty, if Partition would be defeated, and if the British would actually leave Irish soil, once and for all. It was only when Mick asked if his days were numbered that she hesitated at all.
“Time will not forget you, Mr. Collins, nor will Ireland,” she said. “That is all I can tell you.” I don’t think he believed her, but he didn’t press her. And for that, I was grateful.
When Mick and Joe finally left, slipping out the back and into a waiting car, she wilted in relief, laying her head down on the kitchen table and clinging to the edge. Her shoulders shook, but she cried silently. I tried to draw her up, to comfort her, but her legs wobbled, and she swayed. I picked her up instead, carrying her from the kitchen to the rocking chair by the fire, to the place where Mrs. Cleary knitted on nights when I asked her to keep watch for men or materials.
Anne curled into me, letting me hold her. I held my breath, fearful I would startle her, that she would bolt. Or that I would. She tucked her legs beneath her and turned her face until it was resting against my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my shirt and her tears wet, making me long to hold her tighter, to draw her even closer, to be nearer. My rough exhalation stirred her hair—the breath I’d been holding—and I tightened my arms and dug in my heels. Our combined weight deepened the sound of the swaying chair against the wood floor, echoing the beat of my heart in my chest, reminding me I was alive, mind and body, and so was she. My hand mimicked the rhythm of the chair, stroking her back as we rocked to and fro. We didn’t speak, but there was a conversation happening between us.
The window closest to the fire rattled suddenly, making her breath catch and her head lift infinitesimally.
“Shh,” I soothed. “’Tis just the wind.”
“What story is it trying to tell?” she murmured, her voice rough with spent emotion. “The wind knows every story.”
“You tell me, Anne,” I whispered. “You tell me.”
“I had a teacher who told me fiction is the future. Nonfiction is the past. One can be shaped and created. One cannot,” she said.
“Sometimes they are the same thing. It all depends on who is telling the story,” I said. And suddenly I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care where she’d been or what secrets she guarded. I just wanted her to stay.
“My name is Anne Gallagher. I was not born in Ireland, but Ireland has always been inside of me,” she began, as though she were simply reciting another poem, telling another tale. Our eyes clung to the fire, her body clung to mine, and I let her words take me away once more. It was the legend of Oisín and Niamh, where time was not flat and linear but layered and interconnected, a circle that retraced its path again and again, generation after generation, sharing the same space if not the same sphere.
“I was born in America in 1970 to Declan Gallagher—named after his paternal grandfather—and Hannah Keefe, a girl from Cork who spent a summer in New York and never went home again. Or maybe she did. Maybe Ireland claimed her when the wind and water took them away,” she whispered. “I hardly remember them at all. I was six, just like Eoin is now.”
“In 1970?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She just continued, not rushing, the lilt and flow of her voice quieting my questions even as my head rebelled against my heart.
“We’ve traded places, Eoin and I,” she said, inexplicably. “Who is the parent, and who is the child?” For a moment, she was silent, contemplative, and I continued rocking, staying in one place while my thoughts went in all directions.
“My grandfather recently passed away. He was raised in Dromahair, but he left as a young man and never went back. I don’t know why . . . but I’m starting to believe he did it for me. That he knew this story, the story we’re living now, before I was even born.”
“What was your grandfather’s name?” I asked, dread coating my mouth.
“Eoin. His name was Eoin Declan Gallagher, and I loved him so much.” Her voice broke, and I prayed that her account would turn from parable to confession, that she would abandon the storyteller and just be the woman in my arms. But she pressed on, her agitation growing with every word.
“He made me promise I would bring his ashes back to Ireland, to Lough Gill. So that’s what I did. I came to Ireland, to Dromahair, and I rowed out onto the lake. I said my goodbyes, and I spread his ashes in the water. But the fog grew so thick I couldn’t make my way back. I couldn’t see the shore anymore. Everything was white, like I’d died without knowing I’d passed. A riverboat appeared out of nowhere, and there were three men on board. I called out to them, alerting them and asking for help. The next thing I knew, one was shooting, and I was in the water.”
“Anne,” I pled. I needed her to stop. I didn’t want to hear any more. “Please. Shh,” I soothed. I buried my face in her hair, muffling my moan. I could feel her heart pounding against mine; the softness of her breasts couldn’t mask her terror. She believed what she was telling me, every impossible word.
“Then you came, Thomas. You found me. You called me by my name, and I thought I was saved, that it was all over. But it was just beginning. Now I’m here, it’s 1921, and I don’t know how to go back home,” she cried.
I could only stroke her hair and rock back and forth, desperate to forget everything she’d just said. She didn’t take it back or laugh it off, but her tension slowly ebbed the longer we sat, lulled by the movement and lost in our private thoughts.
“I’ve crossed the lough, and I can’t go back, can I?” she murmured, and her meaning was all too clear. Words spoken could not be unheard.
“I stopped believing in fairies long ago, Anne.” My voice was heavy, like a death knell in the quiet.
She was still curled in my lap, but she pushed herself up from my chest so she could look me in the eyes, the waving strands of her hair creating a soft riot around her beautiful face. I wanted to sink my hands into that hair and pull her mouth to mine to kiss away the madness and the misery, the doubt and the disillusionment.
“I don’t expect you to believe in fairies, Thomas.”
“No?” My voice was sharper than I intended, but I had to get away from her before I ignored the howling in my heart and the warning in my veins. I could not kiss her. Not now. Not after all that had been said. I rose and set her gently on her feet. Her eyes were steady as she gazed up at me, their green warming to gold in the firelight.
“No,” she answered softly. “But will you try to believe . . . in me?”
I touched her cheek, unable to lie but unwilling to wound. But my silence was answer enough. She turned and walked up the stairs, bidding me a soft good night. And now I sit, staring at the fire, writing it all down in this book. Anne has confessed all . . . and still, I know nothing.
T. S.
16
TOM THE LUNATIC
Sang old Tom the lunatic
That sleeps under the canopy:
What change has put my thoughts astray
And eyes that had so keen a sight:
What has turned to smoking wick
Nature’s pure unchanging light.
—W. B. Yeats
I read somewhere that a person will never know who they really are unless they prioritize what they love. I had always loved two things above everything else, and from those two things, I had formed my identity. One identity grew from what my grandfather had taught me. It was wrapped around his love for me, our love for each other, and the life we’d had together. My other identity was formed from my love of storytelling. I became an author, obsessed with earning money, making bestseller lists, and coming up with the next novel. I had lost one identity when I’d lost my grandfather, and now I’d lost the other. I was no longer Anne Gallagher, New York Times bestselling author. I was Anne Gallagher, born in Dublin, widowed wife of Declan, mother of Eoin, friend of Thomas. I had assumed several identities that were not my own, and they had begun to chafe and rub, even when I did my best to wear them well.
In the weeks after Dublin, Thomas kept his distance, avoiding me when it was possible, remaining politely aloof when it was not. He treated me like Declan’s Anne again, though he knew I was not. I’d told him a truth he could not accept, so he wrapped me tightly in her role, refusing to cast me in another. Sometimes I caught him staring at me like I was dying from an incurable illness, his countenance stricken and sad.
Thomas returned to Dublin and brought a healing Robbie O’Toole back to Garvagh Glebe. He had a jaunty patch over his missing eye, an angry scar on the side of his head, and a mild weakness on his left side. He moved slowly, a young man grown old, his days of smuggling arms and ambushing Tans behind him.
No one spoke of Liam or the missing guns, but the foal was finally born, making honest men of us all. Thankfully, the Auxiliary captain did not return to Garvagh Glebe either, and whatever suspicions and accusations had been leveled against me were quietly shelved. Still, I slept with a knife beneath my pillow and asked Daniel O’Toole to put a lock on my bedroom door. Liam Gallagher might feel safe from me, but I didn’t feel safe from him. There would be a point of reckoning, I had no doubt. The worry made me weary, and the wondering stole my sleep.