Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Where’ve ye been?” he asked sharply, as Lawrence came in trailing the scents of dirt and fresh air.

  “I’ve gone home for a few minutes,” the boy replied, returning Casey’s tone with a very blue look over the top of an armload of bags and bedding. “Someone ought to be checkin’ to make sure she’s alright, an’ seein’ as yer too stubborn to bother, I went myself.”

  “I told ye, yer welcome to stay there with her.”

  Lawrence merely raised a ginger brow to this statement, as if to say Casey wasn’t to be trusted on his own.

  Casually Casey lifted his arms off the street plans, allowing them to roll up of their own accord before he asked in a friendlier tone, “What do ye have there?”

  “Pamela sent along a few odds an’ ends for the two of us. Why,” Lawrence tipped everything willy-nilly onto the table surface, “don’t ye look for yerself?”

  Casey grunted, noting the boy’s inquisitive look at the sheaf of papers he’d been looking over. “Alright then, let’s see what we have here.”

  He itemized the contents of the bag as he piled things on the kitchen table. “Biscuits, scones,” he sniffed them, “an’ fresh baked too. Green apples an’ carrots. Does the woman think we’re mules?”

  “I believe she mentioned something about the hind end of one,” Lawrence said, taking one of the apples and biting through its crisp skin. He propped his size thirteens on the table, slouching comfortably in a chair.

  Casey snorted and gave Lawrence’s feet a smack. “Put yer feet down, we’re not beasts here. Reached the name callin’ stage, has she? Means her temper is coolin’ a bit. Another month or so an’ she’ll maybe let me through the door.” He continued piling items on the table. A box of Lyons tea was joined by a small bag of sugar, his favorite mug, a bottle of peppermint soap, and half a dozen towels. “She’s given me the guest towels, that’s not a good sign.” Eight packets of raisins followed, as well as two Aran wool sweaters. He shook his head over the sweaters. “It’s June, what’s the woman thinkin’? Or are they meant as a sort of hair shirt?”

  “She said yer prone to colds since ye had the bronchitis.”

  Casey surveyed the heaped table with a jaundiced eye. “Well she’s seen to it all—body, mind an’ spirit. I imagine this is meant to tell me I’m incapable of lookin’ after myself.”

  “I think it was more meant as a way of sayin’ she missed ye,” Lawrence observed, grabbing another apple and a scone. “Ye’ve missed somethin’—here,” Lawrence tossed a small black bag to him. Casey caught it and knew what it was the second the worn velvet touched his fingers.

  He turned from the boy, feeling the unfamiliar pricking of tears at the back of his eyes. Damn the woman, did she have to prove that she knew him as no one else ever could? Did she mean to bring him to his knees and still not allow him into his own home? His hand squeezed convulsively around the little bag, the contents making small dents in his palm.

  “What is it?” Lawrence asked quietly.

  “My daddy’s rosary beads,” Casey replied, voice tight, “she knows I don’t sleep well without them.”

  Lawrence wisely held his tongue from response. Though Casey knew the lad’s sharp eyes missed little, and he likely had a good idea of just why Casey’s back was still turned to him. Casey took a minute to pull himself together and then asked in a gruff tone, “Did she look well?”

  “No,” Lawrence said bluntly, “she looks as if she hasn’t slept a proper minute since ye left, and she’s lost weight.”

  “Aye, the woman never eats well when she’s on her own.” He took a frustrated breath and scrubbed his hands vigorously through his hair, wishing he could rub the very thoughts from his mind. He turned back to Lawrence, summoning up a grim smile that he was fairly certain convinced neither of them.

  Lawrence stood, shrugging his coat back on and tucking another apple into his left hand pocket. Casey treated him to a narrow look.

  “Where are ye off to? Ye’ve not had a decent dinner, nor have ye shown me yer math problems from last night.”

  The boy’s eyes shifted. “Just out with a few of the lads. I’ll be back before ye close up an’ I’ll take another of those scones with me. The math sheet is on my bed, ye can check yerself, I got full marks. I’ve got an essay due on O’Connell for end of term that I’ll need yer help with, s’due next Friday,” this last was muffled by dint of Lawrence breaking off half a scone in one bite.

  Casey fixed the boy with a gimlet glare. “Don’t be tryin’ to wheedle round me by flatterin’ me with promises of needin’ help with yer history. Ye’ll be back an hour before I close up here, an’ ye’ll make a sandwich before ye go. There’s ham left from last night an’ some fresh milk.”

  Lawrence suddenly fixed him with a suspicious glance. “An’ why are ye bein’ so reasonable? Have ye business to attend to tonight?” His eyes flicked to the big sheets of drafting paper that Casey had rolled up when he arrived.

  “That’s not yer worry,” Casey said firmly, “just be back when I told ye, or ye’ll be better acquainted with the four walls of yer room then ye ever thought possible.”

  “Ye can’t lock me up,” Lawrence said indignantly.

  “Ye just try me, boyo,” Casey said, sending a stern look in Lawrence’s direction, “ye just try me an’ see what I can an’ cannot do.”

  Lawrence returned the glare, but to his frustration, found he couldn’t stare the man down. “I’ll be back before curfew.”

  After Lawrence left, Casey unrolled the street plans and picked up his pencil. After five minutes of staring blankly at the paper and tapping the pencil on his forehead, however, he gave it up as a lost cause. It was no damn good, he couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep, didn’t have an appetite. He simply wanted to go home, sleep in his own bed, eat at his own table, put his arms around his wife, and listen to the damned perditious cat howl at the moon.

  Several times during the week, he’d fought the urge to crawl home on his knees and beg her forgiveness, but the one time he had gone, he’d discovered that his keys no longer fit into the locks. And so he found himself firmly back in the anger zone. That he was locked out of the house he’d built with his own two hands left him speechless with fury.

  Then why had he given Lawrence the dates for where and when he and Robin would be playing? He sighed. Likely for the same reason she’d sent over all the bits and bobs for him and the boy, because neither one of them wanted to say the word, but the truth was they were both sorry and missing the other. The woman had a rare temper, it was true, but the things she’d said—then again he’d said a few things himself that made him hot with shame just to remember.

  His comments about Jamie, for instance. Why he always threw the man in her face every time he was angered, he didn’t know, or rather he did, but didn’t want to face that it was jealousy pure and simple. On a gut level, he knew she’d never cheated on him with the man, and yet there was a bond there, one that went back years before he’d been in her life, and it bothered him, festering just under the surface like a wound you couldn’t see but could damn well feel.

  The man loved his wife, Casey could see that clearly. But Jamie had never, to his knowledge, done anything about that love, as much as it must have pained him. He understood it, but it rankled nonetheless. The real rub lay in the fact that Pamela loved the man back; yet even this he understood, for from the little she’d revealed of her past, it seemed Jamie had been the one friend she’d known in her growing years, when impressions went deep and stayed long. That and, he admitted ruefully, the man was not without his charms.

  Casey was no fool; he knew men desired his wife. He had known that from the first, for desire had been the thing he’d felt himself from the day he first saw her. He’d wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, more than he’d wanted to get out of prison, even more than he wanted happiness for his brother and some kind of peace for his country. It had scared him, still did at times, that one could need anot
her human being to that extent. But he’d taken comfort in the fact that she was his—his to keep, bound to him by vows that went beyond the confines of mortality. And she loved him, of that he had no doubt, loved him in a way that made him wonder why God had decided to so bless him.

  Then there was the wee matter of her job. It scared the hell out of him and that was all there was to that. She didn’t understand the sort of fire she was playing with, and fire in Belfast didn’t just burn, it incinerated. He acknowledged that she was a grown woman capable of making her own decisions, but she was also his wife. It was his job to see her safe. That was what a man did—looked after those who needed his care. Whether they appreciated that care or not was another matter entirely. Why couldn’t she understand that?

  And admittedly he was angry, and the establishment of the safe houses and areas where the rebels could run to ground had been a small way to vent that anger, to feel that somehow he was doing something. That the bastards had not completely unmanned them individually, as a neighborhood, and as a nation.

  Part of his rage was a left over from internment and another part was a gut-level response to the events of Bloody Sunday. Because there was no other way to respond to such an act of inhumanity. The only thing men such as those who’d opened fire on an unarmed crowd understood was a return of their own brutality.

  Two wrongs might not make a right, but sometimes it seemed the only language that the other side understood.

  He returned his attention to the papers beneath his hands, firmly blocking out thoughts of his wife and his home. His mind turned as a well-oiled machine to the intricacies of revolution and its tiny, yet crucial details. Such as how a man might design a workable drop system that wouldn’t require too many extraneous people. The British had discovered their last system far too quickly and damning documents had found their way to the barracks, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of two key IRA figures in Belfast. Which led Casey to think there was a mole within the ranks.

  He had a notion just who the mole might be, and thought he might know how to smoke him out of hiding with the proper bait. It would just take a bit of patience and cunning on his own part.

  Chapter Seventy-five

  On the Craic

  THE PUB WAS FILLED TO CAPACITY by the time Pamela arrived, light and raucous voices spilling out into the humid summer night. It was after nine and almost the hour that the Irish considered appropriate for getting down to the serious business of music and dedicated drinking. The air inside the pub, impossible as it seemed, was twice as thick and heavy as the air outside. The smell of spilled ale, whiskey sweat, and the general fug of too many happy human bodies in a small space, was overwhelming. She plucked at the bodice of her dress, looking about for a seat in a dark corner, hoping to remain invisible for as long as possible.

  It soon became apparent that finding a seat was akin to locating the Holy Grail, and after politely refusing the not-so-polite offers of several male laps, she settled for wedging herself into the dark overhang of a set of stairs. She was barely thus accommodated when there was a stir in the thickest of the throng of people. Robin had taken his seat, and in accordance a hush started to ripple across all assembled. It was their third night here and obviously, the word was spreading. Robin looked cool and nerveless as he set about preparing his fiddle for the first set. Of Casey, there was no sign.

  Robin drew the bow in a long shudder across the strings, the extended note shivering through everyone’s nerves, setting the anticipation. He settled the instrument more comfortably in the notch of his collarbone, experimenting with another drawn-out note before nodding with satisfaction. He paused for a second, letting the crowd fall into a strung silence, then shot a look of pure blue devilment across his fiddle and launched full-throttle into a hard, rollicking tune made to race in the blood. Pamela could feel her heartbeat begin to pulse along with the rhythm, could see others around her start to tap their toes and clap their hands in time with the merciless beat.

  She caught sight of Casey seconds later as he took his stool next to Robin, settling his bodhran upon his knee. His fingers, slightly bent, splayed the surface, testing the tension of the skin and he shifted his shoulders under the crisp, white material of his shirt, readying himself for his part in the song. Robin paused for a half-heartbeat, giving Casey his cue.

  While the fiddle rode the stretch of nerves directly along the spine, the drum settled itself in the more primitive parts, low in the belly, deep in the blood. It was primal, calling up the animal that had once danced when fire was the only light for darkness. It was also the most sexual instrument known to man. There was a reason, she knew, that drummers were second only to lead singers in allure. Casey understood the dark nature of the instrument and played it accordingly.

  Together the two men performed like nothing she’d ever seen, the energy of one seeming to drive the other. People were clapping, feet flying beneath their chairs, a few up already and dancing, drawing rhythms and patterns with the click of bone against wood that they’d known since childhood. She, however, remained still, despite the hard thrum in her blood and the twitching of her nerves. Casey had yet to look up, but she knew he was as aware of her presence as if she’d sat upon his knee. So she watched him, riveted, and waited.

  The tipper, tucked neatly between his index and middle fingers, flew in a blur across the taut skin of the drum, the rhythm flying faster and faster, building to a seemingly impossible crescendo. Both he and Robin’s shirts were soaked through by the end of the first melody, faces gleaming with sweat, and the two of them positively crackling with the joy of performance. Robin’s bow was such a flurry of movement she half expected to see sparks and smoke pour off it. ‘The man can play like the very devil himself,’ Casey had said and witnessing it, she was inclined to believe that even Old Scratch would be hard put to match the sheer madness of Robin on the bow and strings. His eyes were shut tight in concentration, brow furrowed, tongue protruding slightly between brilliant white teeth and she knew every woman in the room was wondering if his intensity on the fiddle would be matched between the sheets.

  She knew, though, that Robin was completely unaware of the women in the room at present. The music had swallowed him entirely, his every cell and synapse brought to its service.

  He met Casey’s eyes suddenly, in a look she knew they must have shared a thousand times as boys, and got the answering nod. Robin slowed the tempo, skipping into a new tune without a discernible pause. A flurry of notes flew off the strings like liquid silver and then Casey answered it boldly on the bodhran.

  Robin played with the audience, allowing the notes to fall down to the cadence of a lullaby, lulling them all, soothing the blood, tempering them to bend to his will, shaping them to the fit of his palm. It was a fleeting power, but in the moment, awesome in its scope.

  They played a set of nine songs through, without pause, seamlessly sewing the end of one song onto the beginning of another. It was a river without respite, running its listeners onto shoals of emotion, extracting them without mercy. They seduced, they coaxed, they enchanted, they enthralled, and not a person in the building wished to be released from the spell. But even Robin’s bowing hand had its limits and at the end of the ninth tune, by some unspoken agreement they stopped, laying their instruments down. Robin paused to drain a glass of ale, filled to the point of foam flowing down his hand.

  “A song or two more,” Robin said, wiping his forehead down with the ale-soaked hand, “an’ we’ll take a break. Any requests?”

  A number of shouts greeted this question, but a comely girl in a low-cut blouse said something in a sassy tone that caught Robin’s eye and ear. He sent a wink and a nod in her direction before standing and speaking a word or two over his shoulder to Casey.

  Casey in turn picked up his penny-whistle, blew a testing breath into it, then nodded at Robin. Robin closed his eyes, head tilted to the side, feeling his way into the opening notes of Four Green Fields. Pamela had heard it many
times, it was a standard in Irish folk music, but she had never heard it as Robin sang it. He gave himself over to the emotion of it fully, drawing every person in the room with him to those four green fields red with blood and an old woman’s grief. His throat throbbed with the pain, crying to heaven then dropping to a whisper of raw feeling. Under his voice the old woman of the song became the Ireland of legend, the one each person still wanted to believe in. Her four sons the four ancient kingdoms of Ireland, the final field that lay in bondage—Ulster always un-free. There was not a dry eye in the house. The man was pure seanachais, born to mesmerize with his music. Casey kept the penny whistle deliberately low, following each note hand in hand with Robin. The melody wove like tattered ribbon round the anguish of Robin’s words, and the audience succumbed entirely, giving the proprietorship of their hearts over to the two musicians.

  Robin bled the song for all it was worth, ending on a hoarse whisper, head down, eyes still closed as if in prayer. The silence was all-encompassing. Around Pamela, no one even took a breath. Casey sat still, penny whistle at rest on his knee. Then Robin’s head came up, blue eyes open, a weary smile in place. The place exploded in a riot of applause and shouts. Robin nodded his thanks and sat, looking suddenly like a mere mortal, and an exhausted one at that.

  “One more then,” he said when the crowd quieted, holding up a hand to stave off requests. “Casey, ye’ve a song to sing for yer wife, have ye not?”

  Pamela froze in horror at the words, looking for an escape route. However, a knotted chain of shoulders, arms, heads and legs presented no obvious pathway to deliverance.

  Casey whispered to Robin and Robin tucked the fiddle back under his chin. Casey took a swallow of his ale and then, seeking his wife’s eyes through the thick haze of smoke and overly warm bodies, began to sing, voice pure and untainted as a first fall of snow.

  ‘Come over the hills my bonnie Irish lass,