Katie's War

by Aubrey Flegg

  ‘Well, they didn’t bring ammunition boxes up here,’ she gasped, taking his out-stretched hand.

  A sloping shelf of rock made the descent into the cut easy. She ran down in front of the others, jumping fallen boulders, and out on to the quarry floor. Here she stopped. The floor of the quarry was bare rock and broken slate. No point in looking for scratches or footprints here. Wisps of hay lay scattered on the ground from the haymaking above.

  ‘I hate this place,’ said Dafydd looking up unhappily. ‘Anyone seen the goats? Perhaps they’ve emigrated?’

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Kieran, peering at the wall which now sealed off the cave. ‘Are the guns here or are they not? That wall looks solid.’

  Katie stared at the wall as if, by looking hard enough, she could see through it. Pieces of hay were stuck between the blocks, and idly she pulled one out. ‘This wall is saying something to me and I can’t make out what it is. I suppose we’ll have to make a hole.’ She stared at the wisp of hay in her hand. Then she whipped around. ‘Stop, everybody, I’ve got it! Hay! Frog, you’re a genius. Look, there’s hay caught between the blocks. On Sunday, when they closed this up, there was no hay anywhere near here. They took the wall down and built it up again last night. The guns are in there, sure as hell. Now we’ve got to open it!’

  ‘We’ll never have time to take it down stone by stone,’ said Kieran. ‘I’ll look for something that will do as a crowbar.’

  ‘Well, be quick. Remember the army’s coming,’ said Katie, heaving at one of the great blocks which formed the lower part of the wall. It seemed immovable, but at the same time she thought she felt a slight tremor in the wall as a whole. ‘Dafydd,’ she said. ‘Come here and feel this!’ She heaved again. Yes! It was infinitesimal, but the wall did move. Whoever had built it, had built it free-standing, probably just so it could be pulled down quickly. Katie was not going to reason why. Together they both threw themselves at it.

  ‘Get the rhythm, Katie,’ Dafydd commanded as the wall began to rock. The next push would do it.

  ‘Now!’ It was going … going! But, too late Katie realised one end had stuck. Instead of falling in it was going to fall out on top of them. ‘Watch out!’ she yelled, leaping back, trying to pull Dafydd with her. With a snaking movement half of the wall came forward, while the other half fell back. It split in the middle and the two halves crumbled and rumbled to the ground. Katie fell, wondering if this was how it was to die. Then she felt herself being lifted back as Kieran pulled her clear. ‘Dafydd!’ she called, struggling to her feet, ‘is Dafydd out?’ But Kieran turned her, laughing, to where Dafydd stood dazed, unscathed, and grinning. Katie darted over and gave him a hug of relief, only to back off, laughing and choking in the dust she had raised.

  ‘Look what we’ve done!’ she said proudly.

  ‘You two are crazy!’ said Kieran.

  ‘It just started rocking, and then it sort of tumbled out rather than in. We were lucky.’

  ‘You’re each as bad as the other,’ said Kieran resignedly. ‘Now what?’

  ‘We look inside. I wonder if there are any of those candle-ends left?’ Katie approached the entrance with care, but the wall had fallen clean away from the living rock. Sure enough, there were half a dozen candle-ends scattered just inside the entrance. She picked one up. ‘I bet we haven’t any matches.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said Kieran, one hand deep in his jacket pocket. ‘There’s something in the lining here that feels like a match.’

  ‘Is it a red-head? Otherwise we won’t be able to strike it.’

  ‘Red-head it is!’ he said triumphantly, blowing the fluff off a single match.

  ‘Come inside,’ said Katie, ‘we can’t afford to have it blow out.’

  The match struck easily on a piece of slate, and they advanced cautiously into the cavern, each with a lighted candle.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Katie, searching. ‘Surely we got it right? The stuff must be here.’

  ‘Yes, it is! Look!’ Dafydd’s voice came from behind them. They turned. At first Katie could see nothing. Then the candlelight caught something that seemed to weave and flow. Her stomach tightened. It looked just like a snake, glistening, and moving as she moved.

  ‘Careful, Dafydd! Snake!’

  He jumped back. ‘But there aren’t any snakes in Ireland!’ he protested. ‘That’s not a snake … but what is it?’

  Kieran moved forward. ‘It’s a belt of cartridges for a machine-gun.’ He reached for the end. ‘The belt feeds in at the side of the gun. It fires the bullets out at hundreds a minute.’ So they had found the cache!

  They examined the pile of weapons in awe. The machine-gun was there, and a number of rifles like the one Seamus had held. But the important part, according to Kieran, was a neat stack of wooden boxes with numbers stencilled on the sides and lids.

  ‘What does 303 mean?’ Katie asked, trying to lift one of the boxes.

  ‘It’s ammunition; point three-o-three gives the size of the bullets.’

  ‘Gosh, they’re heavy. We’d never move this lot even if we could find somewhere to hide it. Oh please, somebody, tell me what we can do! I hate this place and I hate what’s in it.’

  * * *

  Some minutes later they were standing outside the cave. Katie threw the stub of her candle angrily into the black entrance.

  ‘I won’t give up!’

  ‘Look, girl, stop arguing, and Dafydd, don’t you start! This is not a case of an old musket or pike thrust into the thatch. These guns, especially the machine-gun and the ammunition, are worth a fortune to the side that gets them.’ Kieran was getting angry and his voice was rising.

  ‘That’s what I mean!’ said Katie.

  ‘But this is serious, Katie. Those men are going to come in here fighting, there will be blood and war here at any moment. I’ve got to get you out.’

  ‘Thank you – I’ll look after myself. Listen, I heard Father calling out name after name after name in this very quarry. The names of all his friends killed in the war. That was serious too, Kieran!’

  Katie paused for a moment. ‘It was his roll-call of the dead. I won’t give up! I can’t. Not while those guns remain.’

  ‘But, child,’ said Kieran putting an arm round her, ‘there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do!’ She threw his arm off.

  A pigeon, which had been resting on the slate tip above their heads took off with a clap of wings and flew off down towards the valley. A chip of slate no bigger than a shilling pattered and bounced down the face to land between them. Dafydd stooped and picked it up.

  ‘But there is,’ he said. ‘There is something we can do.’ Dafydd looked almost as stunned as they did when he said this.

  ‘Go on,’ said Kieran.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the goats.’

  ‘Goats?’ echoed Katie in a daze.

  ‘Let him talk,’ said Kieran.

  ‘It’s like this, see. The reason our dads don’t want the men working down here is because of the danger of the sligins – or whatever you call them here – waste slate anyway, falling into the quarry on top of them. Like this chip, only bigger. I’ve been thinking, if enough waste were to fall down into the quarry it would cover up the cave, guns and all.’

  ‘But only little bits fall, Dafydd, and only after heavy rain. It’s as dry as a bone now and Father said it would take months to shovel it all down,’ said Katie, disappointed.

  ‘Which brings me to the goats,’ said Dafydd doggedly. ‘When Katie took me up there on Sunday it was to see the goats, or that’s what she said. Well, I saw the king of the goats, all right, but I also saw not just one but several cracks in the ground at the back of the waste tip. It looked to me as if the whole tip was going to slip into the quarry then and there.’

  ‘Was that what you were poking at?’ said Katie. ‘You should have said.’

  ‘I did say, several times but …’

  ‘Now, hold it, you two! But is there any way
to make it slip, Dafydd, short of high-explosive?’ asked Kieran.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I think there may be.’

  ‘God above!’ exclaimed Katie, hand over mouth. ‘The magazine – the gunpowder we found. I wonder if it’s any good?’

  ‘It’s good all right. I tried a pinch – it flared up beautifully,’ said Dafydd with a grin.

  ‘Come on,’ Katie called. ‘The sun’s going down and we’re just standing here.’

  CHAPTER 18

  Counting Elephants

  Why had they left it so late? The vertical walls of the cleft blurred as Katie raced towards the entrance. She could see a wedge of sky above the wall at the end; two cottonwool clouds drifting across it were glowing pink. The sun was setting already. She ran up the ledge that led out of the cleft and was about to show herself above the wall when Kieran said, ‘Keep down, Katie! Look first.’ She raised her head cautiously, half-expecting to see an army lined up below with glittering trumpets, flags and pennants. But the fields and hedges stretched out innocently towards the lake. The only moving thing was a man bent into the hill, climbing fast towards her. He turned like a fox viewing its trail, and she froze, expecting hounds to break out of the hedges below, but the hedges kept their secret. Kieran joined her.

  ‘Look!’ she whispered. They lowered their heads instinctively as the man began to climb towards them again. His walk was fast but furtive. Katie shivered – that was how the black dogs in her dreams moved. The scene became chill and menacing. They waited until the man veered to one side and disappeared around the edge of the tip. ‘He’s going straight over the hill,’ she said.

  ‘That man looked hunted,’ said Kieran. ‘You saw how he turned? We’d better get moving. Look, we can climb straight up the waste to the sheds above, can’t we?’

  The climb up the loose slates was far harder than they expected and they reached the top gasping for breath. Poor Dafydd, still weak from his illness, trailed behind, so Kieran waited for him which meant that Katie stepped into the quarry yard alone. A voice rasped out behind her: ‘Hey! Hey, you there!’

  She spun around and then froze. She was looking down the barrel of a short, stubby, wicked-looking pistol. The man who was holding it was standing a few yards off, breathing heavily. So he hadn’t climbed straight on up the hill, she thought.

  ‘You O’Brien?’ he asked. ‘Seamus O’Brien’s little sister?’ Katie’s tongue seemed glued in her mouth, and she nodded. ‘Now, listen to me. I’ve got no time to call at the farm,’ he continued. ‘You’re to give Seamus a message, and God help you if you don’t.’ She swallowed. ‘Tell him the Staters are coming. Got that? They know we have the stuff – he’ll know what I mean by that. But they’re not sure where it’s hidden.’ Katie nodded. ‘We have to make them think that the stuff is up here in these sheds.’ Katie thought of the gaping hole in the quarry below, just behind the man, and forced herself not to look in that direction. ‘We’ll wait till dark, then we’re going to pretend we’re moving the stuff. That’s what they’ll expect us to do so we’ll go along with that. We’ll show lights moving here as if there are men working in the yard. Seamus is to organise the lights.’

  ‘Won’t that just bring them on?’ asked Katie, gathering courage.

  ‘Precisely. That’s the whole idea. We ambush them here.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she stuttered, then added, ‘Good,’ and hoped it sounded convincing. The man seemed relieved and thrust the pistol back into his pocket.

  ‘Now repeat the message,’ he commanded.

  Katie repeated it.

  ‘Good. When he’s got the lights ready he’s to come to the meeting place.’ At this the man looked up the mountain. ‘What’s the quickest way over from here?’

  Instantly Katie realised he mustn’t go near the quarry edge. She pointed quickly to the nearest route away from the edge and then watched with beating heart as he skirted the quarry before disappearing up the hill.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she called, heaving a sigh. The boys emerged cautiously. ‘Fat lot of good you two are, leaving me staring down the barrel of a pistol while you skulk behind a haystack,’ she laughed, hoping to cover the fact that she was shaking.

  ‘You were brilliant!’ said Dafydd.

  ‘Of course I was!’

  ‘Thanks to you we know their plans,’ said Kieran. ‘We also know how much time we have – a little over an hour perhaps. Can we do it in that time, Dafydd?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Dafydd said. ‘I’ve never tried anything like this before.’

  * * *

  ‘Oh stop dithering, Frog! Bash the lock off with a stone like we did last time. Can’t we just throw a match in the door and run? The light is going and –’

  ‘Shut up, Katie! We’d be blown to bits. Anyway we’re too far from the cracks to start a slide,’ said Dafydd. ‘Take your boots off, Kieran.’

  ‘Ah for God’s sake, Frog, we’ve no time for that!’

  ‘Do you want this to work or don’t you?’ snapped Dafydd, straightening up and glaring at Katie. Katie was silenced. ‘I wish I’d thought about all this earlier,’ he said as he hunted around in the shed. ‘We’ve nothing to carry the powder in.’

  ‘What about your cap?’ Kieran suggested. But that was no good. It only held a little and when they carried it to the crack the powder just trickled down into darkness below.

  ‘It must be held together, packed tight!’ Dafydd complained, squatting back on his haunches.

  Katie was panicking now, trying to keep her mind on the subject, but every rustle or flutter of birds or animals in the grass had her twisting and turning. She thought of paint tins from the farm, but they’d get jammed in the crack … there was nothing in the harness room … then she had it – socks!

  * * *

  She emerged from Seamus’s room, having riffled his drawers to find Dafydd scribbling hurriedly in his exercise book.

  Megan,

  In case I never come back, bury me in my boots, my feet aren’t hard enough for hell yet. You won’t find any socks. Now I must go.

  ‘Good heavens, Dafydd, you’re not writing your journal now!’

  Dafydd shoved his exercise book hurriedly under his mattress with a grin. ‘I was waiting for you. The last will and testament of Dafydd Parry. Moving, isn’t it?’

  ‘I weep for him.’

  ‘Have you got the socks?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Why didn’t I think of this before – no more darning.’

  ‘We need a hurricane lamp.’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘And I have matches. Where’s your Mother?’

  ‘She’s up with Mrs Moran, usually goes on a Wednesday.’

  * * *

  ‘You were long enough!’ Kieran whispered when they struggled up from the field on to the tip to where he was keeping watch. The sunset was no more than a blush in the west.

  ‘Dafydd had to write his will.’

  ‘Seen anything?’ Dafydd asked Kieran.

  ‘Nothing and everything. A blackbird has alarmed twice from below, and sheep have been moving down from the hill. Both sides closing in, I’m sure of it. But I just hope they wait till it’s completely dark. We haven’t a second to lose.’

  * * *

  Desperately they began to fill the socks with black powder and lay them out like sausages on the floor. Dafydd used a small wooden scoop which Kieran had found. ‘They’d have used this to load the charges in the old days,’ he informed them. It was hot in the enclosed hut and sweat ran down their faces. They lit the hurricane lamp which Dafydd placed outside the dusty window on the quarry side of the magazine.

  ‘Woops! This one has a hole in it,’ exclaimed Katie. Their hands were black and their faces were streaked where they had wiped them. ‘We’re getting powder everywhere. Nobody breathe fire! What do they make gunpowder out of, anyway?’

  ‘Charcoal, I think,’ said Kieran, ‘and something called saltpetre.’

  ‘Of course, you’d know about it from t
he army,’ said Katie.

  ‘They don’t use gunpowder now, they use other explosives. Gunpowder made too much smoke. Couldn’t see the enemy after the first volley.’

  ‘Not even the whites of their eyes,’ said Katie. ‘Well, let’s hope this stuff will go off. There’s quite a lot left but that’s the last of the socks.’

  Dafydd was outside, crouched over one of Father’s blue handknitted socks. Katie winced. She remembered Mother knitting those.

  ‘Do be quick, Dafydd. What’s the rope for?’ she asked.

  ‘Not rope,’ he mumbled, ‘fuse. I tried it while you were doing the washing, before Dad got me. It burns at five elephants a foot.’

  ‘Elephants?’

  He took out the cartridge which he had been holding in his mouth like a cigar. ‘One elephant, two elephants, three elephants,’ he said. ‘It’s a way of counting seconds.’

  ‘I wonder how many elephants before we have an army on top of us?’

  ‘Are you using that cartridge as a detonator to make sure the powder explodes?’ asked Kieran. Dafydd nodded as he wound the fuse around the shiny cylinder, thrust it inside the last sock and tied it off with twine. ‘Where did you learn all this?’ Kieran added.

  ‘He works in the slate quarries in the holidays,’ Katie explained.

  ‘I’ve never seen the final loading up though,’ Dafydd complained. ‘They always send me away before the detonators go in. I hope this works.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll be murdered over the socks whatever happens. Come on! We’ll all be murdered if we stay here. Ready?’

  As quickly as they dared they carried the bulging socks over to the crack and packed them in, side by side, wriggling them deep down to where the tip had started to detach itself from the mountain. A curlew called from the hill, a haunting call. Using the wooden scoop until it broke, and then their hands, they covered the charge, first with earth and sand and then with larger and larger blocks of slate until, instead of a crack, there was a grave-like mound. Only the snaking fuse showed where the charge had been placed. The light had gone and it was now quite dark.