Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “Me?” John looked at Sophia who tried to stifle a laugh. “Sure. Only I don’t know squat about plumbing.”

  “No worries, lad,” the Sister said. “We have no plumbing.”

  She led the way back in through the medieval washhouse. They walked past four wooden bathing stalls with benches and a metal bucket in each and one faucet on the wall that served them all.

  “Sister—” John began.

  “I am Sister Hugo.”

  “I just wanted to thank you again for everything you’ve done for us.”

  “It’s right in here.” She opened a door and a foul odor slammed into them. Sophia coughed and grabbed John’s arm.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said from behind the hand over her mouth before running back to the entrance.

  “Coward!” John yelled after her.

  “The rest of us are used to the stench,” Sister Hugo said. “Come along.” She led him into the room where four stone basins were set in the floor looking like prehistoric toilet seats. Against the far wall was a long trough hemmed on one side by the stone back wall of the bog and on the other by a darkly slick and sloping ramp.

  John fought not to gag or cover his face to block the noxious fumes. Sister Hugo handed him a long handled staff.

  “I think it’s blocked at some point in the trough,” she said.

  John peered into the foul-smelling stone trench careful not to step near the narrow and slippery ramp tipping into it. A black swirl of sewer water churned inside and rushed toward the mouth of a small stone-arched tunnel. Fresh water was gushing forcefully from the opposite end of the trough and pushing the sewer matter into the tunnel. Or it would be if something at the mouth of the tunnel wasn’t serving as an impasse. John figured it must be a part of an underground spring or water system. As if reading his thoughts, the nun said, “It’s been here for centuries. You might well have to get in and straddle the flume to get a handle at what’s stopping it up.”

  He took the staff firmly in both hands and a long breath.

  A piercing scream from outside the room made him freeze.

  Before he had a chance to react, Sophia burst into the room, her eyes wide in terror. A man was right behind her. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him.

  And aimed his gun at John’s head.

  *********

  Sinead hurried out of the weaving room and ran down the hall with Mac right behind. What had she seen out the window? She was acting like she had seen a demon.

  “Sinead? What is it? What did you see?”

  Sinead’s face was white. A film of light perspiration had erupted from her brow.

  “It can’t be. Holy shite, it can’t be,” she said.

  “Sinead, what is it? You look like you’re about to faint. Sit down. I’ll find you something to drink.”

  She slapped at his hands attempting to restrain her. “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” Her eyes were wild with fury and fright. She didn’t seem to know him.

  Was she having a spell of some kind? Mac looked down the hallway. Was this place bringing back memories of awful things done to her?

  “We need to get you out of here. We should never have come.”

  “I just don’t believe it. It can’t be.”

  “Will you tell me what’s happening?” Mac said.

  “We need to find the bloke from the garden. We need to look in every room and under every rock. We need to find him.”

  “What? Why?” he asked.

  Was she mental? We’re here to find women. What did the fecking gardener have to do with anything? Mac grabbed Sinead by the arm but she twisted free. Ahead of them in the hallway was a line of five elderly nuns standing side by side with hands uplifted in prayer. As they passed none of the women glanced in their direction.

  “Think about it, Mac,” Sinead said as she walked. “A big good looking young bloke? Why do you think someone like that would be here in a community of all women?”

  “I don’t know Sinead. What with the gumboots and all, he’s the gardener maybe?”

  “If I know that whore head nun, he’s out of those gumboots more than he’s in them.”

  Was it possible that Sinead was right? Was there something off about this place? Could she really have been held here against her will and tortured? The smell of incense and rosewater drifted down the hallways.

  “We should just go,” Mac whispered. “There are no young girls here.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Sinead barked. “We don’t need to tiptoe around. Not any more.” She rushed down the long stone hallway, stopping at every room, every door until finally she reached the end of the hall. A huge wooden door stood at the end.

  “This is it,” she said softly. She put her hand on the door. The carvings in the wood were blunt but intricate as if an unskilled woodworker had tried to create something worth having. Mac saw gouges in the wood. This convent had withstood attacks before.

  Sinead hesitated in front of the door with her hands trembling against it. Mac was afraid to touch her. Suddenly with a scream of rage, Sinead shoved both hands against the door and pushed it open wide.

  *********

  The gun went off before John could dodge out of the way. The noise reverberated in the stone enclosure.

  “Argghhhhh!” the man howled and pushed Sophia away from him. John saw the gunman was bleeding from his hip. The bullet must have ricocheted off one of the stone walls and hit him. John lunged at him, jabbing him hard in the gut with his staff. The man recoiled and slid on the slippery floor, his eyes latching demonically onto John’s face. He raised his gun again.

  “Ye fecking shite!” he snarled. “I’ll kill ye and have both of ‘em, so I will!”

  John hit him again with the staff. It was a weak feint and the man barely registered the hit. The gun exploded, but again the aim was off. The sound echoed, deafening them all as Sister Hugo grabbed for the weapon. John brought the staff around but he was too close to the side which ramped into the trough. He felt the floor slick beneath his feet.

  “John! Watch out!” Sophia screamed as the man shoved Sister Hugo against the wall. He aimed his gun at John and fired.

  John felt a slice of fire stitch up his arm. He dropped the staff.

  “Told ye, ye wee bastard!” the man said. “All I have to do now is—” His words were cut off by Sophia’s violent side kick to his balls. His face contorted into a twisted knot of pain and surprise. He dropped the gun in a loud clang to the stone floor and doubled over, clutching his groin. John staggered away from the precipice as Sophia snatched up the staff from the floor.

  The man groaned and sank to his knees.

  “Not today, you…figlio di puttana,” Sophia said giving the man a hard shove in the back with the staff. He slid onto the slick ramp and fell into the surging sewer.

  “Holy shit!” John said as he watched with astonishment as the man sank in the muck, bobbed up once and then disappeared into the tunnel and was gone.

  He looked at Sophia and Sister Hugo who were both staring at the now churning, running sewer.

  “Well, that’s fixed the blockage,” Sister Hugo said.

  John clutched his bleeding arm. “Where will he end up?”

  Sophia wretched onto the floor.

  “Don’t worry,” Sister Hugo said patting her on the back. “The current will carry him well enough until he comes out just a mile from here.” She tapped her chin in contemplation. “Of course, there is the waterfall…”

  **********

  The first thing Mac saw inside the room was a nun sitting at a large wooden desk. A woman with a baby stood next to the young gardener that they had seen from the window.

  Sinead walked to the desk. Her hands were fisted, clenching and unclenching in nearly uncontrollable rage. She looked at the nun and then at the man and then back at the nun.

  “Where is she?” she asked in a deadly tone.

  Mac looked at the nun at the desk, her eyes sad but clear as she
regarded them. He recognized the woman with the babe as the one who’d given birth at the compound.

  “Saints be praised,” the nun said, “I knew you would come one day.”

  The gardener eyed Sinead and Mac, his heavy eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

  “Where is the Mother Superior?” Sinead said in coldly dangerous tones. She was looking only at the gardener now.

  “That would be myself, sure it would. I am Mother Angelina.”

  “Bull shite!” Sinead said, snapping her head back to the woman behind the desk. “You think I wouldn’t know her? I’ve never laid eyes on you.”

  “You would have known me all those years ago as Sister Rose.”

  Sinead made a sound but shook her head as if trying to shake off the confusion. “Where is Mother Marguerite?”

  “Mother Marguerite is gone to her heavenly reward, six years now.”

  “No! No, I don’t believe it. It can’t be.”

  Angelina stood up, her eyes bright, and leaned across the desk reaching out as if she would touch Sinead.

  “You recognize him, don’t you? You haven’t taken your eyes off him since you came in. I have heard stories where a mother recognized her child even decades later.”

  “You’re hiding her!” Sinead snarled. “Is she under the desk? She’d better hide! I swore I’d come for her. Mac, give me your gun.”

  His eyes round with disbelief, Mac looked at Sinead and then at Garrett.

  “What is she saying, Sinead? Is this your…?” The resemblance was dramatic. No question. The nose, the blue eyes, the brown wavy hair. Impossibly, this simpleton was Sinead’s son.

  “You knew him as soon as you saw him.” Angelina said. “Your body knew him.”

  “You bitch,” Sinead choked out.

  “We named him and raised him to be the son any mother would be proud of. Everyone in this house loves him as their own.”

  “Shut up! You…how dare you! It’s a lie!”

  The gardener frowned at Sinead as if she were a dangerous animal to be avoided. He reached out and Angelina took his hand. The simple gesture, so trusting, so full of love and connection, seemed to enrage Sinead.

  “You had no right!” She took a step toward Mac and jerked the gun from his holster.

  “Sinead, no!” Mac said, reaching for the gun. But she was already aiming the gun at Angelina. The young man stepped in front of the nun just as Sinead pulled the trigger. The loud shock of the gun’s report echoed through the stone walls. The baby shrieked.

  “Garrett!” Mother Angelina screamed.

  Garrett fell toward Sinead, his arms open as if he would hold her. Sinead shot him again, the bullet punching into his chest and making him stumble. But his eyes were on hers, drilling into the very heart of her. He reached her as the third bullet discharged into him, rocking him backward, but not before his hands fastened around her neck. His face was dull with single-minded focus. He held her close and brought her down with him, his hands clamped around her throat.

  Mac watched in horror as the pair grappled on the floor. The fourth gunshot triggered a final violent seizure. And they were still. Mac dropped to his knees, his hands shaking as he pulled Sinead free. Her head lolled unnaturally against her chest, her neck broken.

  Angelina slipped her arms around Garrett and put her face close to his. She spoke to him softly in Gaelic, her tears dripping onto his cheek. His eyes fluttered open and then, with a sigh, closed forever.

  Sarah shifted her crying baby in her arms and picked up the gun from the floor just as the teen boy and the Italian girl burst into the room.

  “Mom! You okay?” the boy asked breathlessly, his eyes on Mac and the people on the floor.

  “I’m fine, John,” Sarah said. “But come take your sister. If I have to shoot this asshole, I don’t want her hurt in the kickback.” John took the baby.

  “Get up,” Sarah said pointing the gun at Mac. “And move away from them.”

  He hesitated, his hands still on Sinead where she lay near the gardener and the weeping nun. Mac looked up where Sarah stood pointing his own gun at him.

  “Trust me on this,” she said to him. “You don’t want to come between a mother and her child.”

  Chapter 55

  They walked mile after mile across the treeless, barren landscape. Fiona shifted in the back of the pony cart. Dear Lord, how much longer can we do this—out in the open, visible to all for miles? How much longer until they reached the village? Would they be safe even then? Taking the main roads would keep them in danger’s way for at least another day. But crossing this exposed pasture was like crossing a desert or a sea—nothing to hide behind and nowhere to go. Holding Ciara gave her strength.

  For the first time since they’d arrived in the camp, over five months ago now, Ciara was looking around at her surroundings. It was like she was coming out of a magic spell that had held her enslaved. Capture now would kill her.

  Would surely kill them all.

  Every minute since they’d left the camp, Fiona had fought not to imagine Sinead and her men bearing down on them, coming around the bend and seeing them. She forced herself not to envision the terrible likelihood that they had come this far only to be dragged back.

  “Someone’s coming!”

  The words were straight out of Fiona’s worst nightmare and they charged up her spine. No! They were so close. God couldn’t be so cruel…

  She craned her neck to see what the others were seeing. It was true. Just around the bend. They were coming. There was no way they weren’t seen. Fiona looked at Ciara, her belly aching with the loss of her baby. She decided, her eyes blurred with tears, that she would look at her precious girl. Just that. Just so. No matter what was coming. No matter what.

  **********

  Mike stood in the road next to the big man named Hamish. It hadn’t taken too long to convince him that Gavin was not the blackguard who’d snatched his daughter. Nor had it taken long to learn that lorries and vans regularly passed the village. But it wasn’t until Hamish’s young girl, Molly, was manhandled into the back of a van by three thugs and in plain view of no fewer than five people, that the villagers realized they might have an ongoing problem.

  As much as Mike wanted to be back at Ameriland with Sarah, he and Gavin needed to join the villagers in searching for the missing girl. If there was any connection at all to Fiona and the compound women’s disappearance, they needed to see it where it led.

  The village was on the corner of several twisting switchbacks that emptied out to a runway-like vista of pastureland and meadows as far as the eye could see. At the end of the road was the medical facility. Even from here—at least fifteen kilometers away—Mike could see the tent peaks and a flat-topped building. Anyone coming or going from the facility would be visible for the entire fifteen kilometers. Still, there was no reason to believe the girl was there. She wasn’t sick. She’d been kidnapped by thugs.

  Everyone was on foot and everyone was armed. It reminded Mike of how a community should work with everyone pulling together for the same cause. These people had known young Molly since the day she was born. And since the day of the bomb cutting out the lights, the village had done what they needed to do to survive—and to look out for each other.

  When they made the final turn on the road that splintered off toward the exit to Galloway—which was their best guess at where the van with the girl might have been headed—Mike stared at the facility on the horizon. He squinted to see better. Were there people coming down the road? It was hard to make out from this distance. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a vehicle.

  “I see something!” someone yelled.

  “Someone’s coming! Be ready everyone!”

  Hamish nodded at Mike and put his rifle to his shoulder. Mike watched the small blur in the distance get larger as they hurried toward it. His stomach was in knots. Had he just saved his and Gavin’s skin in time to be blown to hell and back in a pasture of bluebonnets and daisies?

&n
bsp; The moving form slowly became more distinct. It was a group of people—women. He could tell by the way they walked. A group of maybe thirty people. Now he could make out a pony and cart too. Were they coming from the tented facility? He glanced at Hamish who’d lowered his rifle, his eyes eagerly looking for the one he sought.

  “Molly, lass! Molly, girl! Are ye there?”

  The group of women, still tiny in the distance, slowed and then stopped. Mike held his breath. And then,

  “Da!”

  A figure broke away from the women and began to run toward them. A teenaged girl, her hair streaming behind her like a flag. The girl’s mother screamed in joy and ran past both Hamish and Mike.

  Praise the Lord, Mike thought. The women were moving toward them again. He felt Declan push past him and start to run.

  “Fiona! Fiona, is it you?”

  Mike and Gavin began to run in the direction of the women. Some of them were heavy with child. A woman jumped down from a horse-drawn wagon and began running toward them.

  Fiona. Mike stumbled when he saw her, his eyes blurred with tears.

  “Dada! Dada!” a child’s voice high and piercing cut through the air and Mike saw Declan catch Fiona and hold her tight to him and the blonde whirling dervish that was Ciara running, running toward them both. Declan scooped her up and held her between them and when Mike and Gavin arrived, panting and wheezing, the women didn’t even stop but keep walking, kept moving.

  “Forgive me, Fi,” Declan wept. “Forgive me for not coming.”

  Fiona clutched her husband, their child between them, and sobbed with joy.

  Chapter 56

  The days after the convent attack were uneventful. The sisters were in mourning for their beloved Garrett, but the quiet aftermath was helping all of them to heal. After John confirmed that it was secure, Sarah insisted the three prisoners who had survived the melee be held in the convent dungeon. It was a wet cold prison with an access tunnel through the sewer system. As far as Sarah was concerned, if they wanted to escape that badly, they were welcome to try. None of them chose to.