The Devil's Due: An Irish Historical Thriller

by L. D Beyer

  The work, I knew, wasn’t just the laundry. The Irish Women’s League, much like the IRA, were choosing sides. Mary was a Republican through and through, but the Women’s League had sided with the Free State to avoid bloodshed. And now they were working with Michael Collins and the provisional government to put in place the structures Ireland would need to move forward. But with Tim now joining the fight, her conversion was complete. She would do all she could to stop another war.

  I wasn’t sure if the bloodshed could be stopped. “Michael Collins is a traitor,” Mary had said one evening, shortly after I had returned. It was a view I’m sure that she shared with Billy and some of my old comrades. Sure Collins had led us to victory over the British and, after the truce, he had been sent by the new provisional government to negotiate a treaty. Many said the one he returned with—one that would partition the country into north and south and require an oath of allegiance to the King—was the best that we could have hoped for, that the British would accept nothing less. The Free Staters hailed Collins while the Anti-Treaty forces—my old brigade—wanted to see Collins pay for his crime.

  I didn’t think Collins was a traitor. Sure, when I arrived six weeks ago, I was against the Treaty. Victory, I had felt at the time, was within our grasp and a united Irish Republic, free to manage its own affairs without meddling from others, was the only acceptable road forward. However, I thought of what I saw in Mrs. Sheehy’s eyes and in Mr. Sheehy’s too and in Liam’s and Mick’s and my mother’s. The country was tired of the war, and I didn’t think it could survive another.

  I had heard rumors that the Southern Division and the Limerick Brigades didn’t have the guns or ammunition to continue fighting. But with Free State forces now in Limerick, if I knew Billy and Lynch, they would find a way. A united Ireland had always been the dream—my father’s and now mine—but if it would take a civil war to achieve it, I was no longer certain it would be worth the steep price we would pay, that it would be worth the blood.

  I decided to go to Liam’s, hoping he would put me up for a day or two. As I made way down darkened roads, I was cautious, not wanting to run into anyone. My hair was black again and, although I wore the glasses, I was nervous. I passed the spot where the Tans had stopped me a month earlier, the lane vacant and quiet now. Even so, with a war looming in Limerick and Billy actively looking for me, I was on edge.

  I hoped Tim would take my advice, but I couldn’t be certain. Whether he wanted to or not, though, Tim would share my story with Billy. As a precaution, I had told him that I was going to stay with a friend in Tipperary, a priest I knew named Byrne. No such priest existed, or if one did, I wasn’t aware of it. Hopefully that would give me time to figure out what to do.

  ___

  The dogs started barking as I walked up the lane. Liam’s brother Seamus, stepped out, his eyes guarded, before a grin spread across his face

  “Frank Kelleher? Is it yourself?”

  I smiled back. I had always liked Seamus. Nine years older than Liam and me, he always had a smile and a joke but was quick with his fists when crossed. More than once he had rescued us from boys twice our size and age, from the fists and the blows against which we had no chance. He had been a Volunteer too, joining the struggle years before Liam and me. He lost two fingers to a British bullet before I joined. Although he could no longer fight—he never learned to shoot a gun with his other hand—he supported the cause in other ways. Seamus was a member of Sínn Féin, whose weapon of choice was the pen and whose battles were fought in the newspapers and within the very halls of the government that held us captive. Sínn Féin hadn’t supported the Easter Rising in 1916, preferring a political solution instead of a military one. But in 1918, after Britain tried to force the conscription of Irishmen to join in their fight with Germany, Sínn Féin became our voice. We Irish refused to send our own boys to die in a war that had nothing to do with us and Sínn Féin became our means of protest. Later that year, Sínn Féin won seventy-three seats, representing Ireland in the British parliament. Although the IRA and Sínn Féin didn’t always agree, Seamus fought the only way he could.

  Two in the morning and he invited me in. I tried to be quiet, not wanting to wake his wife, Tara, or Liam for that matter, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He hadn’t been here when I’d visited Liam a month ago, off to Dublin as he was for a Sínn Féin meeting.

  “You’ve been to America!” he said as he sat across from me, letting out a contented sigh. It was a statement full of hope and dreams and one I certainly couldn’t answer with a yes or no. He opened the bottle—an awkward task for a man missing two fingers, but he managed it well enough—and poured two cups. He slid one across the table, anxious to hear my stories.

  As I thought of where to start, I heard footsteps and Tara appeared, pulling a shawl across her shoulders. She put several logs on the fire. I apologized for waking her. She nodded and once the fire had caught, she went back to bed.

  Not wanting to disappoint Seamus, I told him about New York, careful to avoid the troubling things I had seen. Instead, I focused on the Irish dream of a Golden Door. Like a child, he hung on my every word.

  I told him of mile after mile of cobblestone streets, crowded with motorcars, horse carriages, trolleys, and people, all through the day and long into the night. I told him of the trains that ran both above ground and below, full always of well-dressed people with a purpose. The buildings, I said, made Dublin—even London—look like a village. I told him of the Great White Way and the theaters, their signs lit by electric lights, and the grand library nearby. He smiled when I described the Sunday when I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Hanging from steel wires, is it?” he asked and shook his head as he tried to fathom how such a thing was possible.

  Not satisfied with merely going over the water, the Americans, I told him, had gone under too. The tunnels below the Hudson River meant that people and freight in New Jersey didn’t have to rely on ferries to complete their journey.

  “A tunnel?” he asked. “Below the river?” He shook his head, amazed at the marvel of it all.

  I told him of the beef and the fish and the produce that overflowed at the markets, so much food you thought you had died and had gone to heaven. He laughed at the various people I described: the Chinese man who sold fish, the German watchmaker, the Polish bricklayer.

  “I knew it!” he said time and again. “I knew it!”

  It was a grand picture I painted, for it was the picture he wanted to see.

  “It sounds grand, Frank, it truly does!”

  Liam had joined us by then, and between the whiskey and the fire, the warmth had finally chased the chill from my bones.

  Seamus continued to ask questions while Liam sat silently, sipping his whiskey, a pained look on his face that I attributed to the early hour. Seamus sighed, a smile on his face, as much from my stories as from the whiskey.

  “Ah, Frank, I would love to go myself, but Tara would never hear of such a thing.”

  I nodded. As bad as it had been and as bad as it might soon become, many Irish would never leave the only land they had ever known.

  “So, you’ll be heading back soon?”

  “Aye,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint him. “But not before I take care of some business.” I hesitated, uncertain how much to tell Seamus. Liam’s face was set in stone, but I suspected he already knew what I was going to say.

  “I’ve run into some trouble, Seamus.” He knew about the Argyll Manor bombing; what the newspapers and the wanted posters hadn’t told him, he had learned from other IRA men as the details of any encounter with the British quickly spread across the brigades.

  “I never thought you did what they said.” He glanced at Liam then back at me, his face a scowl. Then he laughed and gestured to my cup. “If I did, I would have put a bullet in you myself not poured you a wee wan.”

  I laughed then wondered for a moment if he was serious.

  His eyes narrowed. “So, Billy
is after you, is he?”

  “Aye,” I said and told him about the Sheehys.

  Seamus nodded slowly then reached for the bottle again and filled our cups. When he went to fill Liam’s, overcome with a fit of coughing, Liam waved him away.

  “I need to hide for a while,” I said after a moment, breaking the silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Liam wipe his mouth. He had been quiet this whole time but suddenly sat forward.

  “Where’s Kathleen?” he asked, his voice raspy.

  “Visiting friends.” I answered. “In Abbeyfeale.”

  “Does Billy know about her?”

  “Aye.” I told them what Billy had learned from Tim.

  “You can stay here as long as you like,” Seamus said.

  Liam shook his head, awake now. “No. Billy’s sure to come looking.”

  “That little shite will find nothing here,” Seamus said, slamming his fist on the table. “You can stay as long as you want.”

  I smiled and thanked him but told him no. “Liam’s right. I won’t be the one to bring trouble into your home.”

  He seemed about to argue, but Liam waved him off.

  “What about the castle?” Liam asked.

  I stared at him, unsure what he meant.

  He suddenly doubled over, overcome by another fit of coughing. After a moment, he wiped his eyes and sat up. “Ballygowan,” he finally said, his voice a whisper.

  It took a moment but then I smiled, suddenly remembering a time when we were lads, when our dreams were big and our worries were small.

  ___

  The castle stood on a high bluff on private lands south of Limerick City and further south past Bruff in an area known as Ballygowan. The castle had long been in ruins, much of its jagged, broken walls overgrown. Legend spoke of a fortress under siege hundreds of years earlier in one land war or another as lords of the manor—their names long forgotten—found themselves out of favor with the crown. The place was said to be haunted by the spirits of those who had been killed within its walls. As boys, Liam and I had heard the stories as well as the warnings from the elders to give the castle wide berth. But the warnings only served to fuel our imaginations and our sense of adventure. As Liam told Seamus about the castle, my mind drifted to the first time we had visited, over a dozen years ago:

  One Sunday, after mass, Liam and I had set out for Ballygowan, our imaginations having already made the journey long before. Not more than eight years old, we had a grand time, climbing among the weeds and piles of stone, our minds fighting battles as invading armies tried to storm the castle and breech the walls.

  We explored the remains of the keep then the circular stump of the tower. Liam had slid down to the base and then crawled over a pile of rubble that had all but filled the arch of a passageway.

  “Frank! Come quick!”

  I scrambled down from my perch, crawled through the archway and slid down the pile of rubble. I found Liam several feet away, in grass that seemed almost as tall as he was, standing over two large, flat stones. There was a gap of blackness between the two that hinted at something buried below. A grave? A treasure? We didn’t know, but we were determined to find it, whatever it was. We struggled for several minutes to move the stones—the muscles straining in our young bodies—and when we finally did, we stared, wide-eyed, at what appeared to be a series of stone steps disappearing into the darkness below. This, we told each other, in whispers as much filled with excitement as they were with fear, was the entrance to some secret passageway, one that had remained hidden for centuries.

  We didn’t hesitate. Chasing the spirits and banshees from our minds, we climbed down into the dark, narrow shaft. Some fifteen or twenty steps later, the stairs ended and we stood in several inches of water. After a few steps, we found solid, dry ground. In the faint light from the entrance above, we began to explore. We were soon swallowed up by the darkness, our hands held in front as we blindly moved forward. Ten steps then twenty and then, despite my hands, I stumbled and fell forward onto a pile of stones.

  “Are you alright, Frank?” Liam called from behind me.

  I told him I was, nothing more than a few cuts and scrapes on my hands and shins, a few more to join those that had come from moving the stones above. I heard him rustling and then a scrape and suddenly the tunnel was bathed in a soft, flickering light. Liam was holding a match.

  “I stole two cigarettes from my Da,” he said, the light dancing along his grinning face.

  “How many matches do you have?” I asked then turned back to study the pile of rubble before me as I waited for his answer. The pile of stones, several as big as me, had filled the passageway. The ceiling had collapsed, likely centuries ago.

  “A dozen. No more.”

  The match went out and Liam lit another. We talked excitedly, our heads filled with dungeons and knights and secret torture rooms.

  “We can’t move these,” I said, pointing. “And if we could, what would we do with them?”

  Liam nodded. “Sure and it might not be safe beyond,” he responded, a rare sound bit of reasoning from two boys drunk with adventure. “But, still,” he continued, “what do you suppose is on the other side?”

  The match went out, and Liam lit a third. We talked excitedly, making plans to return, better prepared for the next time. Then, knowing it was time to leave, before someone discovered what we had done, we turned around and began to make our way back to the shaft of light. Suddenly I stopped. In the wall to my right was a dark, narrow recess. I stuck my hand in and grinned, knowing I had discovered another passageway, one that was partially hidden and visible only from this direction. This passage was much narrower than the main tunnel, and we had to turn sideways to slip though the opening. We saved our matches, using our hands as our eyes instead, and a moment later, we could sense that the walls had suddenly disappeared. Although pitch black, our excited voices sounded different, and we realized that we had entered a chamber. The air was musty and dry with the faint smell of peat. Liam lit another match, one of the few he had left, and the soft light filled the cave, chasing shadows across the walls. A pile of stones was arranged in a circle on the floor, but the corners of the chamber were lost, fading into dark recesses. The match flickered out, and we were plunged once again into darkness. We only stayed for a few moments, Liam striking another match as soon as the one before it went out. Then, with only one match remaining and with little else discovered, we had no other choice but to leave. Back on the surface, we carefully slid the two stones back in place, concealing the opening. We grinned at each other, both knowing that nothing would keep us from coming back.

  It was several weeks before we were able to return, school and our farm chores keeping us both busy. But the castle stayed with us, filling our heads and every conversation. We were careful though not to speak of our adventure with the adults. Even then, we knew the strength of their fears and the penalty for our transgression. This didn’t stop us from finding out everything we could, which was little. Then one night at Liam’s house, the seanachie—the storyteller—paid a visit. An old man, blind by then, he reminded me of the hawthorn tree. As if he too had been forced to battle the wind his whole life, his body was bent and his face weathered and gnarled. As he puffed on his pipe, the sweet smell of his tobacco filling the room, he told us the stories, the ones never committed to paper but passed from generation to generation by men like him. We were spellbound, Liam and I, as he spun tales, but by none more so than when he spoke of secret tunnels below some long-lost castle, the nobles using them to escape when the fortress was overrun.

  That Sunday, after mass, Liam and I stole away again, this time with two spades and a strip of cloth soaked in paraffin. Wrapped around a stick, we fashioned this into a torch. With light this time, we climbed down into the tunnel again, the glow of the torch filling the passage. Reaching the cave-in, we turned back again and slipped into the passageway that led to the chamber.

  Liam moved the torch from side to side; the
crackle of the flame and our excited breathing the only sounds echoing off the walls. It was a large chamber, bigger than we had remembered. A few loose stones had been arranged in the middle as if for a fire, with three larger stones arranged around as benches. There was nothing else, but to Liam and me, it felt as if we were the first to set foot inside the chamber since the days when nobles had ruled and knights had patrolled. In the light, the dark recesses we had seen in the corners during our last visit turned into additional passageways. Long gone were our parents’ warnings as we slipped into the first.

  Our excitement, however, soon turned to disappointment when, after two tight turns, the passage led to another cave-in, another pile of stones blocking our way. Frustrated, we turned back. The second passageway led to another chamber, this one with barely enough room for the two of us. Unsure what its purpose was but knowing there had to be more, we turned to leave when my boot hit something. I drew back as Liam moved the light.

  “Oh, Jesus, Frank! Would you look at that?”

  At our feet, partially covered by dirt, was the handle of a sword, the blade broken off just past the guard. The hilt and pommel, although long since tarnished, shimmered in the light. I picked it up and, as we examined it, we talked in excited whispers about knights and sieges and long battles, inventing our own stories for how the broken sword had come to be.

  “If we found this,” I said, waving it in front of Liam’s face, “where’s the rest?”

  He had a gleam in his eye, one to match my own I’m sure, and we set off in search of the missing blade.

  We carried the hilt back to the first chamber, leaving it on one of the stone benches to be picked up later. Without hesitation, we slid into the final passageway, crawling forward below the low ceiling until we came upon a third chamber. Standing, Liam held the light high and let out a gasp. We found the broken sword blade all right, sticking up from a pile of bones.

  We never went back to the castle. My mother, when she found the handle—poorly hidden in the barn—was after me until I told her the truth. Angered and fearful of the grave consequences that were sure to come from disturbing the spirits, she took the strap to the both of us. Then she told Liam’s father, who, for good measure, did the same.