“Regan, I need you and Sophia to manage dinner tonight. John, please boil the water and fill a tub bath for Mr. Kelley. Gavin, make up a bed for your grandfather at your place.” She turned to Archie. “Once we get things sorted out, you’re welcome to come back to live with us.” She leaned down and hugged him. “I’m so glad we found you, Archie. You are the second best thing that’s happened since we got back.”
“Oh, aye?” Archie said. “What’s the first then?”
“That would be finding Regan and her mother.”
Regan’s shoulders stiffened when she heard her name and then relaxed. She handed the bread knife to Sophia and went to pull dishes out of the cupboard by the cook stove.
“Mike?” Sarah said. “I need to lie down for just a few minutes. I assume we’ll be leaving at first light tomorrow?”
Mike stood up and put his hands on his hips. Sarah knew him well enough to know he was deliberately making himself seem larger than he was on the off chance it might put her on the back foot. She’d been down this road with him before.
“We’ve got all night to discuss that,” he said cryptically. He nodded to Archie who was already standing. “Go ahead and wash up, Arch. Anything else you can think of to tell us, you can tell us over supper.”
“Aye, I could do with a scrub. Thank ye, Mike,” Archie said, scratching his chin through his beard. “And I do have a few other things you’ll need to know before ye go.”
“Like what?” Sarah asked, still standing in the doorway leading to the bedroom.
“Sarah, go lie down,” Mike said.
“Like what?” Sarah asked again, ignoring him.
“Like where they went,” Archie said. “Seeings how I followed ‘em, didn’t I?”
**********
Sophia and Regan worked silently setting the table and putting the food on it. Mike was surprised no blood was shed even with all the knives around but the two seemed to have come to at least a temporary detente. Maybe they both could tell that there was something more important going on or perhaps Mike’s own little tantrum this morning had shaken some sense into Regan. Whatever the reason, he was grateful.
Sarah slept soundly for an hour. Mike hated to wake her but he knew she’d never forgive him if she wasn’t present for the rest of what Archie had to tell them. It was all he could do not to follow Archie to the bathing area and pull it out of him. Instead, he used the time to double check on the tack in the barn. He’d seen several good horses in the village yesterday and while they were likely used to pull carts, most horses before the bomb were trained under saddle, even if they hadn’t been ridden in awhile. He’d have to find something to offer their owners but one way or the other, he’d have those horses.
Gavin came to fetch him when dinner was ready and they walked back to the cottage together.
“I can’t believe Granddad is here,” Gavin said. “Now we just need to get Auntie Fi and Dec and the bairn and we’re set.”
“We’ll need everyone back,” Mike said firmly. “Every fecking person who was put on a truck and driven away against his will.”
“Aye, sure Da. Got a plan for that, do you?”
“I may do. I’ll need you to come with me, lad.”
“Just try and stop me.”
Mike grinned. “Aye. Now if I can just talk your step-mother out of saying those same words, we’ll be golden.”
Gavin laughed. “Women. They’re a handful, eh?”
That made Mike laugh and he clapped Gavin on the shoulder. “That they are, lad,” he said. “That they are.”
Back in the cottage everyone was already sitting at the table. Mike was surprised to smell roasted meat and looked over at John who grinned.
“My old trap worked,” John said. “Nobody was more surprised than me.”
“Well done, lad,” Mike said as he reached Sarah and pulled her in for a long kiss. “You okay?” he whispered.
“Never better,” she said, one eyebrow arched.
Oh, aye, Mike thought, feeling his determination settle on his shoulders. Game on.
Ellen sat between Regan and John. Mike couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since she’d sat down to a meal with dishes and a napkin on her lap. He clapped Archie on the back and sat down between him and Sarah. Archie was freshly shaved and his hair was even trimmed.
On the table sat bowls and plates of creamed corn, biscuits, honey, baked potatoes, apple butter and roasted rabbit. In a way, it was their Thanksgiving feast. Mike glanced at Sarah. After all, Thanksgiving was an American custom. When he saw the tears in her eyes as she gazed at the table and at everyone’s faces, he knew she was thinking the same thing. He squeezed her hand and she smiled at him.
By unspoken understanding, Archie didn’t tell his story until after the last dish had been wiped free of rabbit gravy with the last biscuit crumb. Once the table was cleared, Mike poured wine for everyone except Sarah. He worried mildly at how Ellen would react to anything that Archie had to say but there was no help for it.
Ever since Archie said he’d followed the trucks, Mike had felt much less anxious, as though someone had given him a road map. He knew whatever Archie told them would answer their questions and help explain the mystery. And by this time next month, everyone from the compound would be together again. He was convinced of it.
He put his arm around Sarah and felt her warmth, solid and reassuring against him. He also felt her tension and expectation as she waited.
“All right then, Arch,” he said. “Tell us.”
Archie took a long draught of the red wine. The glass trembled in his hands as he set it down.
“I followed the trucks,” he said. “They were big diesel bastards. They out of here in third gear—easily doing forty k’s.”
“How could you keep up?” Sarah asked.
Archie shrugged. “I couldn’t, could I? It weren’t ten minutes until I lost sight of both of ‘em but I didn’t quit. It rained the day before and the central drive was mostly mud so it was easy to follow their tracks. And they’d hit us early in the day so I could see what I was doing. I knew when they came to the main road it would be harder to track them, but what else could I do?”
Archie took another sip of his drink.
“I followed the tracks the whole rest of the day. When it got dark, I slept in the woods. There was no hurry. I knew I couldn’t catch up to them. It didn’t rain that night, praise God, so in the morning, I saw their tracks plain as day. I walked until late afternoon—maybe twenty kilometers—when I saw another set of tire tracks.”
“More than the two trucks?”
“Hard to say. Nobody else has vehicles these days so I figured it was the trucks for sure and you know I’m no tracker, Mike,” Archie said, looking at Mike. “I’m a fisherman. There were a lot of footprints in the mud too like maybe people had gotten out of the trucks and were walking around. I looked at these tracks all jumbled up on top of one another for about an hour. The sun was dropping and still I was trying to make sense of ‘em and then it was like the Almighty shone a golden beam of sunlight right on the road to separate one set from t’other. Two sets of tracks and one set veering off.”
“The trucks split up?” Gavin asked.
“Aye. That’s what it looked like. The one truck went east in the direction of the M8 on ramp and the other kept on straight. I didn’t know what to do! I stared at those tracks forever and finally I just chose. I walked on after the truck that went to the highway. As soon as I got there, the tracks were gone but by then I knew it was likely heading for Dublin so I just kept walking.”
“How long?” Sarah asked.
“Two days. I thought at the very least I’d be able to tell someone where they’d taken the women.” His lips were trembling. “Didn’t I know you and Mike would return one day? I had to know what to tell you.”
“Then what happened?” Mike asked.
Archie gave a long sigh. “I found out on the fourth day that I’d been following the wrong
truck. It wasn’t the women’s truck at all. It was the men’s truck.”
“How did you know?” John asked.
Archie made a face. “I…I found a body on the side of the road.”
Ellen gasped and Regan slipped an arm around her mother. They watched Archie, their faces grim.
“The bastards had thrown ‘im off the truck. He’d been shot in the head. I figured he’d either tried to escape or had just proved too much trouble for them. Anyway, I knew then I’d likely lost wherever they’d taken the women.”
The silence built in the cottage. Mike tried to imagine that terrible night, breaking so many lives forever. He held Sarah closer to him. She dropped her hand to her abdomen. She always did that when she felt a need to protect the baby.
“I buried him with me bare hands,” Archie said in a shaking voice, “by the side of the road and then came back to the compound to wait. It took me five days to get back. Nine days in all after they’d been taken.”
“How did you eat?”
“A group of young people. They fed me, so they did. I told ‘em if they ever got tired of living hand to mouth in the woods, they could come to Ameriland. Hope that was okay.”
Mike nodded.
“I came back here, loaded up on food from the root cellars and camped out in the woods for a few days.”
“Why not just stay here?” Sarah asked gently.
“I couldn’t. Sure it broke my heart to be here with everyone gone, so it did. I finally moved to the cottage down by the way, past the big pasture. The Garda took all our guns, ye see, mine included, but I still had me ankle knife. I made traps and caught what I could, took food from the compound when I needed to, and checked every day to see if you’d come back.” He finished his wine and placed the glass back on the table with a thud. “And now, praise God, ye have.”
Regan and her mother sat frozen opposite Archie, their eyes willing him to tell them, and begging him not to.
“Who was it they killed on the road to Dublin?” Mike asked quietly.
“I’m so sorry, Mike,” Archie said looking at Mike with tears in his eyes. “Sure it breaks my heart to tell you. But it was Fiona’s man, Declan.”
Chapter 7
Fiona dropped her knitting on her pallet and went to stand at the door of the tent to wait for the food wagon. She looked forward to this hour each day because it was one of the only times she knew she’d be able to glimpse some of the compound women coming outside to get their dinners.
The late afternoon was bright but cool—similar to that terrible day in December. She watched the tent flaps peel back one by one from across the campground as the women anticipated their dinners.
An image slithered unbidden into Fiona’s mind as the memory of that December day rushed in. Declan, tall and handsome. Rail thin and hard, one hand on his hip, his weight carried solidly on his back leg. She had seen him speaking to the captain on the day they came. The captain was in uniform. He was jabbing Declan’s chest with his forefinger to emphasize what he was saying.
There was so much noise, so much bedlam all around them that day that Fiona couldn’t hear what he was saying. She had seen her husband’s face—fierce and filled with frustration—but he was nodding as though whatever the captain was saying was at least begrudgingly acceptable. And then the soldiers had moved them through the gates, all of them…and collected the rifles from the men. Fiona had seen at least ten soldiers go into the interior of the compound as her fear ratcheted higher. Just outside the gates were two large transport trucks waiting with their engines revving and belching diesel.
The questions on all the women’s lips that day were always the same: Where are they taking us? Why? Where are the men? At first, they thought the truck behind them carried the men and perhaps it had. But by the start of the second day, that truck had vanished.
At midday on the third day of traveling, they arrived at the tent camp. Fiona felt the truck slow down and then stop, its engine idling noisily. Even so, the children, who had grown accustomed to the truck’s noise and rhythm, awoke immediately when it stopped. Fiona had felt the truck lurch forward, and she heard the loud mechanical clanging of a metal gate being cranked up manually.
As the truck drove through the opening, she had watched the gate close behind them. She and the other compound women had been praying they would finally stop. Stopping meant an end destination where they could be rescued from. It meant a point where they could run from. Stopping meant they could rest and take the measure of what had happened to them.
But the reality of the journey’s end wasn’t like that at all. In reality, the end of their journey was punctuated by the banging of the gate clanging shut behind them. A sound like the ignominious signal of a sad and very final ending.
In fact, like a death knell.
Megan tugged on Fiona’s sleeve and snapped Fiona out of her thoughts. No more than seventeen, Megan stood hesitantly at Fiona’s elbow. After everything Megan had been through, that wasn’t surprising. Megan was nine months pregnant.
“The wagon’s coming, Fi,” Megan said urgently.
At the sound of the approaching pony’s harness jingling loudly, the rest of the women in the tent began to gather around the door. It wasn’t just the opportunity to be outside for a moment or to look across the camp at the other inhabitants. The arrival of the dinner wagon was also the time that any announcements would be made.
They lived in fear of announcements.
A small pony-led trap emerged from between the two tents that sat directly opposite. The cook tent was located at the back of the camp. Fiona had never seen it but Nuala had. Many of the non-pregnant women worked there. Next to the cook tent was the laundry tent. For a hellhole, Fiona had to admit, the camp was surprisingly clean. They received new linens for their beds every week. Every afternoon, they were led to the shower tents to wash themselves and their children. The food was always healthy and grown on the premises. None of the children lacked for milk.
It wouldn’t be the absolutely worst way in the world to live if it weren’t for the fact that they were prisoners.
That, and the visits from the rape team.
Fiona shivered and rubbed her arms as she watched the food wagon come from the direction of the cook tent. An older woman with an expressionless face led the pony that pulled the wagon. Fiona knew Nuala’s sister Abby worked in the laundry tent, although she was an exception, for all the other compound women were not allowed out of their assigned tents. Abby, poor dear, was a special case.
“She’s stopping,” Megan whispered. The other women in the tent gathered to look out the opening. The wagon had stopped. The woman leading it bowed her head like she was praying. And waited. Fiona picked up Ciara. The child never resisted her now. Whatever independence she’d shown before was long gone.
“It’s her,” said an older woman named Julie at Fiona’s elbow. Fiona’s mouth went dry. She’d only seen Sinead Branagan a couple of times and then only from a distance. But the stories of her malevolence were well-documented among the women who’d been in the camp for very long. And Fiona, like all the rest of them, had good reason to fear her.
Sinead Branagan was not unattractive. As she walked out to the food wagon with the camp doctor, Dr. Mac, at her side, she looked almost pretty. Her hair was dark and wavy and her skin creamy white. Her tall leather boots and snug khaki slacks accentuated her slim figure. On the two times Fiona had seen her, Sinead looked like she was about to go riding in the countryside. Today, she even carried a crop.
Sinead gave the pony a friendly pat and turned to face the line of tents. At each tent, a group of women huddled at the door or stood on the small wooden deck in front. Sinead smiled.
“Tea is roast mutton tonight,” she said in a voice full of humor. “And extra pudding for the kiddies. I promised you that we would begin a school for the bairns and sure I haven’t forgotten. A teacher is coming next week.”
Fiona glanced across the way and saw Nuala and
her two small boys step out onto the deck of their tent. Her eyes met Fiona’s and she smiled tiredly. How Fiona wished they were still together. Nuala was strong and resourceful—and felt like family. The other women who had shared Fiona’s tent for the past four months knew only fear and desperation. They’d given up months ago. “Many babies ago,” as one had said.
Dr. Mac stood beside Sinead with his long legs planted wide in the dirt and his hands behind his back. Everyone knew he wasn’t a real doctor. He was a thug and a barely educated one at that. But he examined them all on a regular basis. Openly admitting the obvious—that he was in no way qualified to touch them—was somehow worse than pretending to believe it. So far he’d not done anything beyond listening to their hearts beat or look down their throats. Fiona wondered if Sinead was under the impression he was really examining them.
“There has, unfortunately, been another escape attempt from the camp,” Sinead said, her voice friendly and warm as though she was adding another delicious item to their dinner menu and not priming for an attack.
“Nuala O’Connell, please step forward.”
Fiona’s heart began to pound and she squeezed Ciara tightly. She watched Nuala step onto her tent’s deck and push her lads behind her. The gasps from the other women quickly turned into whispers.
“Silence!” Sinead shouted. She waited until the camp was quiet except for the cries of a few young children.
“Mrs. O’Connell, your boys were saved from the Dublin work camp. I’m not sure whether you know that so I feel I should tell you…to tell all of you that the children who live with you do so at my discretion.”
Heads bowed in every doorway. Fiona caught a glimpse of Nuala’s sister Abby peeking out of one of the tents. It had been long weeks since she’d seen Abby. Fiona could not imagine how the dear fragile girl was bearing up.
“You may not leave,” Sinead said loudly. “I’m sorry about that. But that’s the way it is. You are providing an invaluable service to Ireland. Your country needs you, ladies. But living with your children is a privilege and one I do not have to grant. Mrs. O’Connell?”
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 53