“Tell me.”
He pulled her down so that her head rested on his shoulder. “What would y’ say t’ being the wife of a country veterinarian?”
“What about Sinn Fein?”
“I’ll do my share,” he said, drawing circles on her head with his fingers. “Twenty years is a long time. I’ve earned a bit of life for myself and my family.”
“When did you change your mind?”
He smiled against her hair. “I always knew how I felt about you, Jilly. But when I saw you servin’ tea to the biddies as if nothing had happened, I knew I’d made a mistake. The signs were all there. There’s nothing you can’t do. You came to the hospital for Colette, and you showed up at the Garvaghy Road march. That day when Connor was shot and you drove in front of the tanks, I should have told you how I felt. I was too set in my thinkin’ to see it, but you aren’t an English lady, Jilly.”
“What am I?”
“You’re one of the buannada.”
“What is that?”
“A warrior of ancient Ulster.”
She laughed. “Are you telling me that I’m scrappy, Frankie Maguire?”
His words were gruff and low and filled with rare emotion. “I’m saying that you’ve taken me hostage, Jilly, and I’m more than willing.”
***
Nell stood on the cliff of Inishmore where the ancient Celtic fort of Dun Aengus had partially collapsed into the sea. By her side was a large gray wolfhound, and on her lips was a satisfied smile. Her debt was repaid. There had been moments when she wondered if it would happen, but now there was no more doubt. Jillian had found her own happiness, with a bit of help, of course. And that was how it should be.
Just above the horizon, the sails of a ship had come into view. Nell waited patiently for another hour. The narrow wooden hull and its arc of sails were completely visible now. The ship was listing portside, and she could barely see the man on deck, but she knew. That black hair and upraised arm belonged to only one man, Donal O’Flaherty, and soon he would be home. Nell sighed. It was difficult to be alone so often, but her husband was an O’Flaherty. Legend said that the O’Flahertys were the descendants of men and mermaids. The sea was in their blood. But Donal was here now, and she would not shadow the time they had together by thinking of when he would leave again.
Turning, she followed the wagging tail of Donal’s hound as he ran down the rocky trail to the hidden harbor where the boat would dock. She saw him clearly now, his face, sun-warmed and smiling, gray-eyed, with a gold pirate’s ring in his ear. Later, when he caught her in his arms and she smelled the sea-salt smell of him, she knew that, difficult as he was, she would have no other.
Author’s Note
On April 10, 1998, the eight political parties of Northern Ireland entered into a peace settlement that was twenty-two months in the making. A sense of relief tempered with caution was the mood at Stormont Castle. The unionists were better served by preserving the status quo, the nationalists by insisting on change. The result was a bit of both, with a Northern Ireland-Republic Council, a Bill of Rights, and the hope of Nationalists for a United Ireland some time in the next millennium when a majority of the people in the Six Counties vote themselves into one country.
On May 22, 1998, expatriated Irish and their descendants watched as seventy-one percent of the people of Northern Ireland, Protestants and Catholics, voted to end the violence in Northern Ireland and uphold the agreement reached by the eight parties.
Still up in the air are the fate of political prisoners, Catholic unemployment, whether British troops will, in fact, pull out of Northern Ireland, and the restructuring of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Ireland’s police force.
Jillian Fitzgerald and Frankie Maguire are fictional characters. Robbie Wilson and Thomas Putnam are fictional names for contemporary English and Northern Irish leaders and members of Ireland’s warring political parties. For the most part, their conversations within this novel are fiction, created for the purpose of moving the story forward.
Robbie Wilson’s comparison of the Garvaghy Road march to Nuremberg in chapter twenty-two was taken from an editorial written by Irish journalist Mairtin O’Muilleoir. Jillian’s press conference speech was taken from Mo Mowlam, secretary to Northern Ireland, when she attempted to pacify the nationalist population on July 7, 1997, after the Garvaghy Road march.
The source of the Northern Irish conflict lies in the Geraldine conspiracy of the sixteenth century, when Henry Tudor executed every living Fitzgerald male at Tyburn with the exception of ten-year-old Gerald Fitzgerald.
Eleanor Fitzgerald was young Gerald’s aunt, not his sister, and she married Donal McCarthy, not Donal O’Flaherty. For an entire year, she defied Henry Tudor and managed to keep her nephew safe until he could be spirited across the sea to France and safety.
The glory of the Fitzgeralds and their role in Irish history is well documented. From Italy, they settled in Wales, and from Wales, they married into Irish families, becoming more Irish than the natives and more beloved than the Celtic chieftains. Their holdings were vast, and they ruled Ireland, uncontested, for four hundred years, from their arrival with the Anglo-Norman conquerors to their destruction in the sixteenth century.
I have taken an occasional liberty with history in order to create a more evocative and timely story.
Please email me at [email protected].
Visit my website, jeanettebaker.com.
Acknowledgments
A special thank you to:
Pat Perry and Jean Stewart, as always, for their valuable edits and comments.
Lauren McKenna of Pocket Books for helping me through this novel while Kate Collins, my editor, was busy having twin boys with beautiful Irish names.
Maeve Binchy for never disappointing me.
Loretta Barrett for understanding what I mean to say before I say it.
Angie Ray for playing devil’s advocate and bringing a new perspective into the business of writing.
My mother for allowing me to finish this book without interruptions.
My sister for her unconditional support.
The wonderful Irish people on both sides of the fence who open their homes and their hearts and who never give up the struggle for peace in the Six Counties.
The O’Flahertys of Inishmore, a people who pass on to their descendants a love for the sea, a gift for laughter, and an appreciation for a well-told story.
About the Author
Author of fifteen novels, including the RITA Award-winning paranormal, Nell, Jeanette Baker has been hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a forceful writer of character and conflict whose novels are “irresistible reading.” She graduated from the University of California at Irvine and later earned her master’s degree in education. Jeanette lives in California during the winter months where she teaches literature and writing and in County Kerry, Ireland, during the summer.
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