“What are you saying, Tommy? What riverboat?” Michael wasn’t following. Robbie didn’t answer, and Thomas was silent, waiting for me to put the pieces together.
“What he’s saying, Michael, is the man Fergus shot this evening wasn’t necessarily here to kill you,” I said, reeling.
“What?” Joe O’Reilly cried, completely flummoxed.
“He may have been trying to kill me,” I said.
26 December 1921
I married Anne today. For all their physical similarities, she no longer reminds me of Declan’s Anne. She is my Anne, and that is all I see. She wore Brigid’s veil and Anne Finnegan’s dress, a Christmas angel all in white. When I remarked on her choice, she simply smiled and said, “How many women get to wear their great-grandmother’s dress and their great-great-grandmother’s veil?” She carried a cluster of holly, the red berries vivid in her pale hands, and wore her dark hair down. It curled around her shoulders beneath the veil. She looked so beautiful.
The church was cold, and the wedding party was subdued and sleepy after two days of merriment and mayhem. I thought Anne would want to postpone our marriage after the events of last night, but when I’d suggested it, she shook her head, claiming if Michael Collins could carry on amid the chaos, so could we. She was calm and clear-eyed as I took her hand to enter the chapel. She refused to cover the dress in a coat or shawl, and she knelt, shivering, at the altar as Father Darby led us through the nuptial Mass, the liturgy falling from his lips in a quiet cadence that was answered by all in attendance. I trembled too, watching her, but it was not from the cold.
I clung to every word, desperate to savor the ceremony, to miss nothing. Yet in the years to come, it will be the memory of Anne, her gaze steady, her back straight, her promises sure, that I will cherish most. She was as solemn and serene as the stained-glass Madonna looking down on us as the rites were performed.
When Anne said her vows, she abandoned her Irish accent, as if the pledge she made was too sacred for disguises. If Father Darby wondered at her Yankee inflections, he made no sound or indication. If there was confusion amid the congregants, I would never know; our eyes were locked as she promised me a lifetime, however it unfolded.
When it was my turn, my voice echoed in the near-empty church and reverberated in my chest. “I, Thomas, take you, Anne, for my lawful wife; to have and to hold; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and health; until death do us part.”
Father Darby joined us in marriage, and in ringing tones asked that the Lord, in His goodness, strengthen our consent and fill us both with His blessings. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder,” he boomed, and Mick called out a hearty “Amen,” which was echoed by Eoin, his little voice adamant and uninhibited by the solemnity of the occasion.
Anne produced the two rings I’d given her Christmas morning, and Father Darby blessed the bands. I was struck again by the symbol of the circle. Faith, fidelity, forever. If time was an eternal round, then it never had to end. With cold hands and hopeful defiance, Anne slid the ring on my finger, and I claimed her in return.
The rest of the Mass—the prayers, the communion, the blessings, and the recessional—occurred distantly, separate from the two of us, as though we’d slipped into a realm of muted sounds and subtleties where only we existed, and time was liquid all around us.
Then we were walking from the church next to Ballinagar, death on the hill behind us, our whole lives in front of us, the past and the present all dusted in white. Snow had begun to fall, the flakes like feathers floating around us, winged and wondrous, white birds circling above our heads. I tipped my face to the sky and watched them come, laughing with Eoin, who raised his arms to greet them while trying to catch one on his tongue.
“The heavens have sent doves,” Mick cried, pulling his hat from his head and embracing the sky, letting the softly falling snow rest on his hair and his clothes, adorning him in ice. Anne wasn’t looking at the skies, but up at me, her smile wide, and her face radiant. I brought her cold fingers to my lips, kissing her knuckles before I pulled her close, wrapping her in the pale-green shawl Maggie O’Toole had held during the ceremony.
“How often does it snow in Dromahair?” Anne breathed, her voice full of wonder.
“Almost never,” I confessed. “But then again . . . it’s been a year of miracles, Anne Smith.”
She beamed up at me, stealing my breath, and I leaned down to kiss her smiling mouth, not caring at all that we had an audience.
“I think God is blessing your union, Mr. and Mrs. Smith!” Mick shouted, and swooping Eoin up in his arms, he began to waltz and spin around us. The O’Tooles followed suit, pairing up and kicking up their heels. Joe O’Reilly bowed gallantly in front of a giggling Eleanor, and Maeve convinced a stern Fergus to take a turn around the churchyard. Even Brigid and Father Darby joined in the dancing. In the wintery dusk, our heads wreathed in snowflakes, we swayed, wedded to the moment, to each other, and to a Christmas that will forever live in my memory.
Anne is asleep now, curled on her side, and I can only watch her, my heart so swollen in my chest that I’ll suffocate if I don’t stay upright. The light of the lamp touches her freely, boldly even, brushing her hair and tracing the dip of her waist and the swell of her hip, and I am irrationally jealous of the caress.
I can’t imagine all men love their women the way I love Anne. If they did, the streets would be empty, and the fields would grow fallow. Industry would rumble to a halt and markets would tumble as men bowed at the feet of their wives, unable to need or notice anything but her. If all men loved their wives the way I love Anne, we would be a useless lot. Or maybe the world would know peace. Maybe the wars would end, and the strife would cease as we centred our lives on loving and being loved.
Our marriage is only hours old, and our courtship is not much older than that. I know the novelty will wear off, and life will intrude before long. But it is not the newness of her, the newness of us, that has captured me. It is the opposite. It is as if we always were and always will be, as though our love and our lives sprang from the same source and will return to that source in the end, intertwined and indistinguishable. We are ancient. Prehistoric and predestined.
I laugh at myself and my romantic musings, grateful no one will read these words. I am a man besotted, looking at his slumbering wife, who is soft and naked and well loved, and it’s made me silly and sentimental. I reach out and stroke her skin, drawing a finger down the slope of her arm from her shoulder to the top of her hand. Goose bumps rise, but she doesn’t stir, and I watch, mesmerized, as her skin becomes smooth once more, my touch forgotten. I’ve left a smudge in the crook of her arm. There is ink on my fingers. I like the way it looks, my thumbprint on her skin. If I were a better artist, I would paint her in thumbprints, leaving my mark in all my favourite places, a testament to my devotion.
She opens her eyes and smiles at me, heavy lidded and pink lipped, and I am panting and pathetic all over again. Useless. But completely convinced.
No one has ever loved the way I love Anne.
“Come to bed, Thomas,” she whispers, and I no longer want to write or paint or even wash my hands.
T. S.
21
PARTING
Dear, I must be gone
While night shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
—W. B. Yeats
The Treaty debates in the Dáil resumed in early January, and Thomas and I planned to travel to Dublin to attend the public sessions. I wanted to bring Brigid and Eoin with us, but Brigid urged us to go alone.
“It might be the only honeymoon you get,” she pressed. “And Eoin and I will be fine here with the O’Tooles.”
I’d begged him not to tell her that Liam had shot me—the details were too complicated, and making that accusation would require us to explain my presence on the lough, something I couldn’t do. The relationship was already so fraught with tension and turmoil, I couldn’t see how telling her would help matters.
“Do you trust her to protect you from them?” he’d asked, incredulous.
“I trust her to keep Eoin safe,” I argued. “That is my only concern.”
“That is your only concern?” Thomas cried, his volume rising with every word. “Well, it isn’t mine! Good God, Anne. Liam tried to kill you. For all I know, Ben tried to kill you too. I’m bloody relieved that poor Martin Carrigan and the unfortunate Brody are dead because now I only have the feckin’ Gallagher brothers to worry about.”
Thomas never yelled, and his vehemence surprised me. When I stared at him, dumbstruck, he gripped my shoulders, pressed his forehead to mine, and groaned my name.
“Anne, you have to listen to me. I know you care about Brigid, but you feel a loyalty to her that she does not return. Her loyalty is to her sons, and I don’t trust her where they are concerned.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“She has to know that I will no longer allow them anywhere near you or Eoin.”
“She will blame me,” I mourned. “She will think she has to choose between us.”
“She does have to choose, Countess. Ben and Liam have always been trouble. Declan was the youngest, but of the three, he had the best head on his shoulders and the biggest heart in his chest.”
“Did Declan ever strike Anne?” I asked softly.
Thomas reared back in surprise. “Why do you ask?”
“Brigid told me that she understood why I—why Anne—left when she had the chance. She insinuated that Declan wasn’t always gentle, that he and his brothers had inherited their father’s temper.”
Thomas gaped at me. “Declan never raised his hand to Anne. She would have hit him right back. She slapped his brothers around enough. I know Liam bloodied her lip once, but that was after she’d hit him over the head with a shovel, and he went in swinging, trying to take it away.”
“So why would Brigid think Declan was violent?”
“Declan was always covering for Ben and Liam. I know he took the blame, more than once, for things they’d done. He paid their debts, smoothed things over when they got into trouble, and helped them find work.”
“And you think Brigid will try to cover for them now.” I sighed.
“I know she will.”
And with that belief, Thomas sat Brigid down soon after we were married and questioned her on the whereabouts and the activities of her sons. When she’d been reticent to speak about them at all, he told her, in no uncertain terms, that Liam and Ben were not welcome at Garvagh Glebe any longer.
“You are in this fight up to your eyebrows, Dr. Smith. You have been for years. You are not innocent. You are no better than my boys. I hold my tongue. I keep your secrets, what little I know. And it’s precious little! Nobody tells me anything.” Her chin began to tremble, and she looked at me, her eyes filled with questions and accusations. Thomas regarded her soberly, his face devoid of emotion.