Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Wow. They’d gone all out for the grieving Southern mother.

  She bit her tongue and watched Fiona pull out the cooked chicken pieces, corn bread and a container of green beans. Mike came to Sarah and kissed her. She kept her hands on her mug of tea and her eyes on Archie.

  “I’ll heat it up, shall I?” Fiona asked. Sarah didn’t answer and so Mike pulled out a saucepan from a cupboard and placed it on the stove. Fiona dumped the beans in it but she was watching Sarah over her shoulder.

  “How’s the construction coming, then?” Archie asked Mike.

  “Slowly. Will you be wanting your own place?”

  Archie looked at him in surprise. “What would you have me do?”

  Mike shrugged. “Families live together and we have room. It’s up to you.”

  He was right, of course, Sarah realized. They did have room. Even if Gavin and John came back. They had the largest cottage in the compound. There was plenty of room for everyone.

  When Gavin and John came back.

  Mike turned to Fiona. “Did I hear Dec and the others come back?”

  “Aye,” she said, still facing the stove. “They didn’t find the campsite.”

  Sarah had given detailed directions as to where the druid camp was. The silence built in the small room until Sarah thought the tension was exhausting all the air there was to breathe.

  “How the hell could they miss it?” Mike said, going to the front door. “It’s not three kilometers from here.”

  “I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it, Mike,” Fiona said, her voice tight.

  “What’s going on, Fi? What the feck is the matter with him?”

  “He’s scared, Mike. Do you know what that feels like?”

  “You can ask me that with both me lads missing this day?” Mike said, his voice laced with incredulity. “And Sarah held captive by the bastards—the very ones what killed Mickey Quinn?”

  “I’m sorry,” Fiona said. “That was stupid. I don’t know what made me say it.”

  Just then Tommy ran up the front steps and knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Donovan, sir?” Tommy called. “A word?”

  Mike got up and pulled the door open. “If this is security related, talk to Declan Cooper.”

  “It’s all gone—our surveillance equipment and our communications hardware,” Tommy said as he caught his breath. “I’d have come before now, sir, but I volunteered to go with the search party.”

  Mike stared at the lad, his hand still on the front door as if he might slam it shut any minute.

  “What are you saying?” Mike asked. “Our communications equipment is gone?”

  “Yessir. Mr. Cooper did it. And the satellite phone too.”

  “Why would Declan do that?” Mike said, his voice rising in pitch.

  “He said we was angering the…the gods.” Tommy held up his hands against Fiona who had taken a step toward him. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”

  “Everything?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, Missus. The video screens, the computers, and the cameras.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Fiona said.

  Mike glanced over his shoulder at Fiona and then back at Tommy. “You say you went out with the party looking for the druid camp?”

  “Yessir. Mr. Cooper told me to return to the compound but I didn’t. I hid and followed them.” Tommy looked nervously at Fiona.

  “Jaysus,” Mike said. “Declan didn’t go looking for them?”

  “No sir. He went to the woods over by the far side of the compound. They just stayed there most of the day.”

  “You did right telling me, lad,” Mike said.

  “I’m scared, Mr. Donovan. Mr. Cooper said the druids had the right of it and we needed to clear out. He said they’d kill us.”

  “You told Declan?” Sarah asked Mike.

  He nodded.

  “Told him what?” Fiona asked.

  “That the wanker leader of the forest gave Sarah a message. We’re to leave the compound in three days or die.”

  “Jesus, Joseph and Mary!”

  “Looks like Declan’s determined to do the bastards’ work for them.” Mike glanced at Sarah and she understood the look he gave her… Is it Declan who betrayed us?

  Suddenly Archie walked to the front window overlooking the porch.

  “Your man’s forming a party,” he said jerking his head in the direction of the center campfire. Mike went to the window. A group was gathering around the campfire. Several of the men held torches. As Mike watched, Declan jumped onto a box and began waving his arms to get the attention of the crowd.

  Mike pushed out the door together, shoving past Tommy and running toward the crowd. Archie, Tommy and Fiona hesitated only a moment before they followed.

  The crowd was thirty strong, men and women. All the villagers were there and most of the compound members.

  Declan’s eyes glittered as he shouted to the crowd. “Hear me! We need to leave here,” he said. “This place is not a haven for you.” He waved his arms as if to encompass the whole compound. “It’s a mistake. You’re not safe here.”

  Mike reached Declan in half a dozen strides and pulled him down from the box. The crowd roared in dismay and two men tried to shove Mike away. He lunged at the closest man to him and catapulted him into the man behind him. Then Mike yanked Declan’s gun from his holster and fired it into the air. A woman screamed and a baby began to cry in one of the nearby cottages.

  “Now you listen to me,” Mike roared. “You can follow this gobshite idiot right out the front doors if you’ve a mind and I’ll hold the fecking gate for you.”

  The crowd murmured. One of the gypsies tugged Declan to his feet. Fiona ran to him but he pushed her away. She stumbled and fell to one knee. Mike steadied her.

  “But if you stay,” Mike said, “you’re safer here than out there. Unless you’re not the full shilling and there’s naught I can do about that.” A wave of nervous laughter passed through the group.

  Declan pushed his way out of the crowd. “There’s more to this than what ye can see, no matter what Mike Donovan would have ye believe,” he shouted.

  “Oy, mate!” a voice called out. “Ye can’t get yer own wife to mind ye!”

  The crowd laughed outright and Mike raised his hands to get their attention.

  “Listen up,” he said. “I’ll tell ye the truth of it and we can all decide together. What do you want to know?”

  “Did the druids threaten to kill us if we don’t leave?” a woman called out.

  “Aye, they did,” Mike said. “It’s my belief they’re powerless to do it.”

  “But are we prisoners here then?” someone asked.

  Sarah didn’t need to hear any more. The crowd was going Mike’s way. That was clear. The dicy moment had passed and he was using his easy Irish charm to placate and re-route the momentum.

  Sarah slipped off the porch and disappeared into the darkness.

  *****

  Margaret and Siobhan sat on their rocking chairs. They could just see the glow from the center fire and hear the hum of many upraised voices. Both had lived long enough to know that whatever the excitement was about, if it had to do with them, they’d eventually be informed.

  Siobhan held Ciara on her knees and patted the wee one’s back in a pacifying rhythm. She was such a good little lamb. It was a shame her mum didn’t seem to have the time for her.

  Her own boys had been wild since they were bairns. Especially Timothy. She remembered her youngest, so many years ago, with soft yellow curls around his face. He was always happy, that one. Her heart squeezed painfully as she thought of him the last time she saw him. He was leaving home, so many exciting opportunities were at hand and he was going to taste them all and come back to Ireland and hand his dear old mum the keys to her own home.

  “You know I will, Mam,” he’d said to her on that day. So earnest. So ready to take on the world. “Don’t be sad now. I’ll call every week.”

 
He was the last one to leave, the other two having gone to the States years earlier. But Timothy would chart his own course. He was always like that. Six years later when Siobhan finally got news that Timothy had killed a man in London and would be in prison for the rest of his natural days, a part of her was relieved.

  He’d never called her. At least now she knew he was alive.

  Which is a sight more than poor Mike and Sarah know about their lads.

  She leaned in and kissed Ciara’s face.

  “Penny for them?” Margaret asked. She had a bowl of knitting in her lap but now that Siobhan looked at it, she hadn’t cast on the first row the whole time they’d been sitting here.

  “Sure, it’s nothing,” Siobhan said. “Thinking of auld times and there’s no good will come of that.” She laughed but it wasn’t funny. Not a bit of it.

  “You’re thinking of your boys?” Margaret asked. “I reckon you miss them.”

  “Not at-tall,” Siobhan said, smoothing Ciara’s hair and smiling at the child. “Wee monsters every one of them and each grown to be worse than the last. The devil take all of them.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Nay. I don’t. But enough. We’re here now, aren’t we, lass?” she said to Ciara.

  “May I hold her?”

  “The bairn? Well, that’s a first. Are ye sure?” Siobhan frowned. Ciara didn’t like just anyone holding her and she was partial to her Auntie Siobhan. Besides, the child was keeping Siobhan’s lap warm.

  Margaret held her arms out to the child but Ciara turned away and buried her face in Siobhan’s neck.

  “Ah, well,” Siobhan said. “Another time maybe.”

  “T’isn’t good to always let a bairn have its way. Spoils them.”

  Siobhan heard the message loud and clear: your boys ended up the way they did because of how you raised them up.

  “Well, as you’ve had so much experience with bairns, yourself,” Siobhan said tartly, “I reckon I should heed your good advice.” She kept the baby on her lap.

  “Just because I was never eejit enough to marry and have a passel of little shites, doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, Siobhan Murray.”

  Margaret’s hands were clutching the balls of wool in her lap and her eyes were fixated on the baby.

  A shiver ran through Siobhan. “What’s the matter with you, Maggie?” she asked. “Are you having a turn?”

  Margaret stood up suddenly, dropping her knitting to the porch boards.

  “Give ‘er to me,” she said.

  “I won’t. You’re talking daft. Leave off!”

  Margaret grabbed Ciara under the arms and wrenched, staggering backwards on the porch with the added weight. Siobhan had to let go to avoid Margaret hurting the child but she was on her feet and grasping at Margaret’s sweater.

  “You’re scaring her!” Siobhan said over Ciara’s screaming. The baby twisted and outstretched her arms to Siobhan.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  “Let her go! What in the world are you doing?”

  Margaret jumped off the porch. Siobhan was so stunned she just stared at her. Then she ran down the steps and cut Margaret off before she could reach the main path that encircled the compound.

  There was nobody about. They were all listening to Mike at the center campfire.

  “I’m doing this for everyone is what I’m doing!” Margaret said, panting with exertion over Ciara’s growing hysteria. “You’re too weak to do what needs doing which is why your own boys are lost to you.”

  Siobhan put her hands on Ciara and tried to pull her out of Margaret’s arms but Margaret was digging her nails into the child’s legs like hooks.

  The child screamed in terror and pain.

  “Help! Help!” Siobhan yelled, still latched onto Margaret’s arm.

  “Shut up!” Margaret screamed. She turned back to Siobhan, her eyes wild with fear and madness.

  Siobhan felt a blinding flash of pain race up her side. An electrical charge reverberated through her. She staggered, unsure of what had happened.

  “Maggie,” she said. “I…I…”

  Margaret turned and ran into the dark, the sounds of the terrified child muffled and then silent in the still night. Siobhan touched her side where the pain was spreading and felt her legs buckle beneath her.

  The hand she drew back was thick with her blood.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sarah ran quickly behind the first line of cottages that formed the tight ring around the campfire. It was dark now and she had nothing with her. No flashlight, no food. It didn’t make sense to leave tonight but short of holding a gun to Mike’s head and forcing him to raise up the gate, the breach in the fence was likely her only immediate chance to resume her search. Every second mattered now.

  Besides, she’d survived worse with a lot less, she thought grimly.

  Given the ruckus going on in the middle of camp, the back porches of all of the cottages were unoccupied. A few had lighted porch lanterns that helped her see the way. She had to step over tools in her path and even the odd child’s toy. She deliberately slowed to avoid falling.

  She didn’t have much time. As soon as Mike soothed all the feathers he would send everyone back to their own homes. And then he’d come looking for her. This was madness. She had maybe a quarter of an hour before he knew she was gone. And with Archie’s help, he’d soon know where she had gone.

  How much good did she expect to do in fifteen minutes? John had been gone for three days.

  The realization hit her as soon as she stopped moving. It was the realization that she wasn’t going to be able to do this tonight. It hit her at the same time she realized that, from the moment she’d leapt off her own porch and ran for the hole in the back fence, she had had an exquisite respite from the bone-grinding pain of her loss.

  Is that all it takes? Just movement? Just doing something?

  Can I keep this up for the rest of my life? Forty more years?

  The disappointment crept up into her throat and she staggered to a pile of firewood and sagged down onto it. The sobs punctured her chest like blows, each one more piercing and debilitating than the last. Her shoulders wracked in convulsions as she let her grief out. Hopeless loss. And pain that could never be eased in this life.

  She dropped her hand to her abdomen and felt a tickle of strength flutter in her chest.

  And then she heard the sound of a sucking gasp from somewhere nearby. She held her breath and listened. There it was again. A breath, labored and nearly extinguished, fighting for air. She stood and took three steps in the direction of the sound.

  This time there was a moan. Soft and hopeless. Sarah ran to the side of the cottage and realized she was nearly at Siobhan’s cottage. The break in the wall had to be near. But she turned away from the wall and walked across the gravel and weeds to reach the main path. A path light lit her way. Sarah saw the body on the walkway and broke into a run.

  “Help! Help!” she screamed as she dropped to her knees beside Siobhan. Even in the half-light, she could see Siobhan was lying in a dark pool of gore. The old woman’s eyes fluttered open but stared upward, unseeing.

  “Siobhan,” Sarah said, squeezing Siobhan’s hand. “What happened?”

  Siobhan didn’t answer but Sarah felt the faintest of squeezes back. She twisted around at the sound of footsteps behind her. A young couple stood hand in hand on the path.

  “Get help!” Sarah screamed. “Go!”

  The two hesitated, then turned and ran toward the center of the compound.

  “Lamb,” Siobhan said softly.

  Sarah brought her mouth close to Siobhan’s ear. “You’ll be fine, Siobhan. It’s all going to be okay.”

  “Lamb,” Siobhan repeated and then closed her eyes.

  Sarah touched Siobhan’s side gently to try to see where the wound was. She looked around the yard. Had she fallen off her porch?

  Siobhan’s eyes were closed now and her breathing had slowed.
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  And then it hit Sarah. Lamb.

  The baby.

  *****

  An hour later Sarah sat in the chair opposite the bed and realized this was exactly the kind of nightmare that always felt like you were watching it play out on a screen instead of being in it.

  She’d used the liquid stitches in the medic closet to close the wound and then wrapped it tightly in bandages. Sarah hadn’t had any real medical training but even she knew Siobhan had lost too much blood. Sarah held Siobhan’s wrist and felt her pulse. It was so weak Sarah was afraid to remove her hand for fear of missing the moment when Siobhan left them.

  Mike stood in the doorway of the bedroom, gripping the door jamb over his head with both hands. There hadn’t been time for much conversation.

  “Archie told me he mentioned the fence breach to you behind Siobhan’s. Guess I should be glad you went that way for your walk.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I was too late anyway.” She laid Siobhan’s hand down. “Did they find Margaret?”

  “She’s not in the compound.”

  One of the village men arrived and spoke to Mike in a low voice. Mike answered gruffly then turned to Sarah.

  “Declan and his lot are already headed for the druids’ campsite,” he said. “Reckon he’ll actually find it this time. I’m joining him with the rest of the men. Archie will stay here.” He paused before exiting. “Tell Fiona, we’ll bring her back.”

  “I wasn’t leaving, you know.”

  Was that the first time she’d lied to him? From the expression on his face, it looked like he was asking himself the same question.

  Sarah waited until the living room cleared of the men and then opened the bedroom door. Two of the village women, Abby and Nuala, sat on the couch with Fiona, each holding her hand.

  Fiona’s face was white with shock. Her glance darted around the room as if unable to alight on one thing for long.

  Sarah knelt in front of Fiona. “Fi, they’ll find her. You know they will.”

  Fiona looked at Sarah almost as if she didn’t recognize her.

  “She’s that upset,” Nuala said. “I’m not sure what to do.”