‘Gregory’ escorted Daniel back to bed.
In the tiny nurses’ station, Maggie whispered her thanks to Nurse Joyce. ‘Why did you save me?’
She smiled. ‘I saw the way you and Daniel looked at one another and knew immediately that you must be Maggie.’
‘But how do you know us?’
‘Through my good friend, Michael Hegarty.’
‘Michael is here?’
‘Michael is here. Keeping his head low.’
‘I need to speak with him! I need his help to get Danny out!’
‘Maggie, he is already planning an escape – but we need Danny as strong as he can be. Getting him through the castle gates is only the beginning. So we’re waiting until after his surgery.’
‘But the court martial!’
‘They’ll want him better for it.’ She smiled. ‘The great wisdom of the British Army.’
Maggie looked at her. ‘Why are you doing this for us? Why are you risking your own safety?’
‘Two good reasons, Maggie. Ireland and friendship.’
Maggie gripped her hand. ‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with the thanking,’ smiled the calmest person Maggie had ever met. ‘Let’s get you both out of here and away. Then there’ll be plenty of time for thanks.’
Daniel woke in a sweat. Maggie went to him and placed a cool hand on his.
‘It’s all right, Sergeant,’ she said, professionally. ‘You were having a nightmare. It often happens after an anaesthetic.’
He smiled. ‘And then there you were. Nurse Gilligan,’ he said quietly.
‘Tomorrow, when you’re stronger, we’ll get you out of here,’ she whispered.
He looked at her and shook his head.
She frowned.
‘You’ll only go back fighting,’ he whispered. ‘And I want you here. Safe.’
‘And I want you alive.’
‘What’s going on over there?’ One of the night guards was already on his way over.
Maggie turned to him. ‘I’ve seen this before in men who have seen duty. It’s a reliving. I’m helping to bring this patient back to the present.’
He nodded seriously as though he was a medical professional and they were conferring over a patient. His respect for her shone clear in his eyes. She would need that, she knew, when the time came. She watched him return to his post. Then she looked into Danny’s eyes.
‘I won’t go back. I promise. When I saw you here, facing court martial, I knew: you come first, Danny, before all else.’
‘Even Ireland?’
‘Even Ireland.’
He closed his eyes as if in relief. When he opened them, he said, ‘I have a key to the courtyard.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
He smiled. ‘You’ve been too busy talking.’
She wanted so badly to kiss him. ‘Be ready. Tomorrow night we go. Now get some sleep. Do you want morphine?’
‘I’m grand.’
‘A small bit will help you sleep. And you need sleep, Danny, for what’s ahead.’
He nodded then.
She rested her hand on his and he closed his eyes as though to better feel it.
Then she left.
Passing the guards, she stopped. ‘I’m making this patient a cup of tea to settle him down. You’ll have a cup?’
‘Go on, so, twist my arm,’ one said.
‘Ah, well, if he’s having one...’ the other guard said.
And, just like that, she had bewitched them.
The following day, Maggie grew more and more tense. At any moment, they could come for Danny. And that would be it. There would be no escape.
‘We have to get him out now,’ she whispered to Sabha in the nurses’ station.
‘Tonight, under cover of darkness. Trust me, Maggie. Just tend to the wounded and put it from your mind.’
‘How can I?’
‘You’re too jumpy. The guards will notice.’
Maggie nodded. She had never imagined that calm and patience would be necessary qualities for a revolution. And so she worked hard, used her first aid skills on new patients, prepared others for surgery under Sabha’s instruction, and tended to the needs of others as they arose. And, as more and more men crammed into the Red Cross base, she feared for her comrades facing the full force of the British Army. She prayed for them all. She prayed especially for Tom and Patrick. She had hoped to find Patrick here, wounded and under arrest but there was no sign of him.
In the afternoon, she was changing the sheets of a man who had bled, when there was an almighty explosion. She looked automatically to the window. The ward had gone eerily silent.
‘They wouldn’t use artillery in the centre of a city, would they?’ one man asked.
‘’Tis the Germans coming to our rescue!’ a boy exclaimed, throwing back his covers.
‘Pipe down,’ one of the guards shouted. ‘Anyone leaving his bed will be shot.’
The bombardment continued all afternoon, coming closer and closer. Even the guards began to look nervous.
Then wounded began to arrive.
‘They’re shelling Sackville Street! A gunboat has come up the Liffey and is firing on the GPO.’
‘Ah, Jaysus,’ whispered the boy who had hoped that the Germans had come.
Maggie feared for Tom, for James Connolly, for the lovely chef, for Pádraic Pearse reading to the men, for Michael Collins and for poor unmarried James Plunkett. She feared for the man with the rosary beads standing guard by the window and she feared for the comedy duo she had broken bread with. They would surely abandon the building. They would take to the streets, down back alleys. They would move through the houses, breaking through walls. They would not stay to be shelled. Surely.
‘It’s as if Ypres has come to Dublin.’
The wounded could not stop talking. It was the shock, Maggie knew, but it wasn’t helping. She longed to be out there doing her bit for Ireland but her duty was here, now, with the man she loved. It had always been. How blind she had been. She looked at Daniel, his eyes on the window, as distressed for the people of Dublin as she was. How would they get him out? The challenge seemed suddenly overwhelming. She knew a way to get past the guards and out into the courtyard but what then? They would still be in the very heart of British military headquarters, surrounded by walls and gates and God knew how many – highly exercised – soldiers.
And then it was upon her, the time to act. She made two cups of tea. Into them she was pouring morphine when she heard someone approach from behind. She hurried the drug into her pocket, praying that she had not been seen.
‘Jesus. Go easy on the morphine,’ Sabha whispered. ‘Or you’ll do more than knock them out.’
Maggie closed her eyes in relief. Then she began to pile sugar into the tea to hide the taste.
‘Cover for me while I go and get Michael,’ Sabha added.
‘Where is he anyway?’
She smiled. ‘Camping out in the filing room pretending to work.’ There was a fondness in her voice when she spoke of Michael.
Maggie watched her carefully when she asked, ‘How do you two know each other?’
‘Oh, he wandered down here when I was incredibly busy and made me laugh.’
‘I knew it!’ Maggie grinned.
‘It wasn’t the laughing, Maggie, that did it. It was the fact that he’d come into the heart of the city in the middle of a revolution to look for you and Daniel. Arrested or injured, he’d hoped you’d turn up here.’ She smiled. ‘But the laughing did help.’
‘I’m so happy for you both.’
‘It’s far too soon for happiness, Maggie. Things are about to get dangerous.’
Maggie smiled. ‘I can still be happy for you.’
The wait seemed to take forever. Then came the beautiful sound of a thud. Followed by another. Maggie and Sabha hurried into the ward. Already Daniel was up, helping himself to the guards’ guns. Sabha ran to get Michael.
There
were no embraces. Nothing was said. Michael hurried them to the door at the end of the corridor. Daniel produced the key. Outside, in a shadowy arch, Michael presented them with two British Army uniforms. Then he helped Daniel into his.
Inspecting them carefully, he straightened Maggie’s hat.
‘Go,’ he urged.
‘What about you and Sabha?’ Maggie asked.
‘If Sabha leaves her post, she’ll fall under suspicion. She’ll take a little morphine and become an innocent victim of treachery. I’ll return to the filing room. We’ll be grand. Go! Hurry! No! Wait! I almost forgot. The city is under curfew. Any civilians on the streets during darkness will be shot. If you get outside the Castle, remain as British Army soldiers. I know that it makes you rebel targets but it is the lesser of two evils.’
Maggie and Daniel quickly embraced him then turned. Maggie inhaled deeply. If any girl could be a soldier, it was she.
‘Ready?’ Daniel whispered.
‘Ready,’ she said firmly. Her heart had never beaten so fast.
Sounds of war echoed as they marched across the courtyard, arms swinging, backs erect. Two words got them through the most southerly gates. ‘Reconnaissance Patrol.’
As they marched out onto Ship Street, Maggie imagined the guards waking or someone finding them asleep. She waited for the sounds of running, barked orders, shots. If only they could make it to the corner and out of sight.
It seemed an age away.
‘Now we know how Red Hugh O’Donnell felt, escaping Dublin Castle,’ Maggie whispered of her favourite rebel hero.
‘Let’s try to avoid amputation,’ he whispered back.
She smiled. ‘How can we be joking when, at any moment, we might be shot in the back – or the front, too, for that matter?’
‘That, Maggie, is how you know an Irishman on the front-line.’
At last, they turned the corner. The street before them looked deserted but who knew what it hid? Anyone out now would be either a rebel or a British Army soldier; both constituted the enemy.
They kept in close to the houses, slipping into doorways at the slightest sound, standing backs to walls at every crossroads and peering up streets before dashing across, guns at the ready. And yet, despite shots that rang out all over the city, not a soul did they come across.
The sun was rising as they approached the canal. They stopped and looked at one another. Crossing it would take them away from military action. The act of doing so, however, would expose them terribly. For a few hundred yards there would be no cover whatsoever. And the canal lock itself was not one that warranted running across. And yet they had no choice. They could not remain out in the open for long.
Leaving the cobbled street leading onto the canal, they heard the sound of running. Daniel grabbed Maggie’s hand and pulled her back into the nearest doorway. They heard the hurried footsteps of people giving chase, then a ‘halt’ followed by rifle fire. Their eyes found each other in the shadows.
They stayed put until long after silence had returned, then, cautiously, peered out. All was still. They could see no bodies, no blood, no sign of what they had heard. And they didn’t go looking for it. Revolvers drawn, they raced on tiptoe to the canal. The water was like glass. No movement in the reeds. A pair of swans slept, their heads tucked under their wings. On the other side of the lock, the water fell smoothly like glossy hair.
They began to cross back-to-back, Maggie first, Daniel covering the rear. They were almost halfway across when, out of the silence, came the sound of horses’ hooves clattering on cobblestones. Maggie and Daniel exchanged a glance. It was too far to run. And there was nowhere to hide. With a nod, they each lowered themselves onto a knee. Guns trained on the end of the street they’d just left, they faced what was to come.
Bursting from the shadows raced, a lone, galloping horse. Riderless, its eyes were rolled back in its head. The swans flew up and Maggie, startled, toppled backwards. She grabbed a rusty railing and stopped her fall.
‘My heart!’ she said.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No.’
He smiled. Then they helped each other up.
Across at last, they ran for cover.
fifty-three
Daniel
Thursday
Now that the sun was up, they discarded their military uniforms and weapons, hiding them deep in bushes.
‘Where can we go?’ Maggie asked. ‘We can’t put our families at risk. And they’ll come looking for you at your home.’
Maggie was safe now. That was all that mattered. ‘I’ll ask my father to represent us in court.’ Maggie would get a small sentence. He’d take his punishment.
She looked at him as though he had lost his mind. ‘You want to surrender? Daniel, you face execution.’
‘But with my father representing me...’
‘What influence do you think an Irish civilian would have in a British military court? Why do you think the army shoots deserters? To deter others. You know better than anyone, rules are rules. I’m responsible for your desertion. I will not let you die for it. We’re leaving Ireland together, this very day.’
He squinted at her. ‘You would leave the country that you were prepared to die for?’
‘For us I would. For The Healys.’
He held her to him. He inhaled the scent of her hair, the most beautiful scent in the world. When, at last, he pulled back, (and it pained him to do so), it was to admit the truth. ‘I can’t desert.’
‘You would rather die?’
‘I’ll take my punishment.’
She raged suddenly. ‘You have given the British enough of yourself. You owe them no more, not one more drop of sweat, not one more ounce of blood.’
How could she understand? He was not just deserting the army but the friends, the brothers, he had left behind on that hill in Gallipoli, MacDonald, Wilkin, Walkey...
‘I have given up my fight, my dreams of a better Ireland, for us,’ Maggie pleaded. ‘I’m asking the same of you.’
He looked at her, standing there as fiery and passionate as the day he first saw her. The irony was, he had never been fighting for Ireland. It had all been for her.
She grew desperate. ‘If you surrender, you’re giving up on us. I’ll do the same, Danny. I’ll go back to fight.’
Her words jolted him. He could not let that happen. Everything he had done had been to avoid it. He thought of MacDonald, Wilkin, Walkey, Lecane. In his mind, he returned to the trenches. None of them had ever understood what they were doing over there in Gallipoli. If the roles were reversed, now, he would want them safe. And they would want the same for him. He did not doubt it. He closed his eyes and wished them well, every last one. And when he looked at Maggie, it was to say, ‘You’re right. It’s time to put The Healys first.’
She flung herself at him.
‘I love you, Maggie Gilligan.’
‘Not as much as I love you.’
He wiped her tears away with a caress of thumbs. He kissed her forehead.
She took a deep breath. ‘We’ll sail to America where the British Army has no power.’
‘America? But your family! You’d never see them again!’
‘I want you alive, Daniel Healy. If it means going to America, we’ll go to America.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, you know what a great letter writer I am.’
But he did not smile. ‘Even if I could ask that of you, I don’t have enough for the passage.’
She frowned in concentration and then, finally, looked up. ‘Perhaps your father....’
His hand went to his forehead. ‘The law is his life, Maggie. I couldn’t ask him to break it.’
‘But British Military Law does not apply to him!’
‘I couldn’t ask him to break any law.’
‘Then ask him for a loan! You don’t have to tell him why! When we reach America we can work night and day to pay him back!’
He wracked his mind for another solution. But there was no other solutio
n. No one else could help. And so, for Maggie, for The Healys, he nodded. He would – somehow – look into his father’s eyes, as a deserter, and ask for a loan. He would lose that relationship again, this time forever.
Daniel did not know which of the servants he could trust, if any, should the British Army come to his home asking questions. Whatever happened, he did not want his father implicated. So he waited in the shade of a sycamore outside the house in the hope that his father would take his usual morning stroll.
At eight, the front door opened and he emerged in top hat and frock coat. He did not look up at the sky as usual. He looked down. He did not swing his cane, only planted it firmly as though poking the ground in anger. Daniel took a deep breath and emerged from the shadows.
‘Father,’ he said quietly.
‘Daniel! Thank the Lord!’
Daniel looked about. ‘Let us talk in the gazebo.’
A look of concern crossed his father’s face. He said nothing, only hurried his son down the garden at the rear of the house.
Maggie stood as they entered the gazebo.
‘Maggie?’ he asked in surprise. He looked at Daniel for an explanation.
‘I have left the British Army, Father.’
‘You have deserted?’
‘Only to come to my aid!’ Maggie defended him.
Daniel widened his eyes at her in warning, willing her to say no more.
His father looked at her with concern. ‘You got caught up in the insurrection?’
She lowered her gaze.
And, sharp as he was, his father knew. ‘You are a rebel?’ He spat the words.
‘An idealist, Father.’
He turned to his son in rage. ‘Have you not seen what idealists get up to when they are exercised? They have placed you in danger, Daniel, your men in danger, civilians in danger! Innocent bystanders have been killed, children...’ He was growing puce. ‘This, this… madness, will do nothing for Ireland except upset the apple cart and prevent us from getting Home Rule.’
Daniel looked at him in surprise. He had never imagined him a Home Ruler.
Through The Barricades: Winner of the SCBWI SPARK Award 2017 Page 29