What the Wind Knows(14)

Eoin turned one today. He is a smiley lad, healthy and content. I find myself watching him, absorbed in his perfect innocence and unblemished spirit. And I mourn for the day when he will grasp what he’s lost. He wanted his mother in the days after Dublin and cried for her. He had not yet been weaned from her milk, and he sought a comfort no one else could give. But he doesn’t ask for her anymore. I doubt he’ll have any memory of them at all, and the tragedy of that truth weighs on me.

There is a rumbling in rural Ireland spurred on by the executions after Easter week. Some men were spared—Eamon de Valera, who was in command at Boland’s Mill—while others, Willie Pearse and John MacBride, men on the periphery, were sentenced to death. Instead of the executions and imprisonments tamping down the rebellious undercurrent in the country, it seems to have fed it, contributing to a growing sentiment that another injustice has been done. We simply add it to the centuries-old list every Irishman keeps tucked in the back of his mind and hands on to the next generation.

Regardless of the rumbling, the people are wounded and afraid. We are in no position to fight back now. Not yet. But there will come another day. When Eoin is a man, Ireland will be free. I have promised this to him, whispering the words into his downy hair.

Brigid has begun to mutter about taking Eoin to America. I have not discouraged her or made my feelings known, but I can’t bear to lose Eoin too. He has become mine. My stolen child. Brigid worries that I will marry, and then I will not need her to keep house and look after me. On that count, I have reassured her often. She and Eoin will always have a place in my home. I have not told her that when I close my eyes, I see Anne’s face. I dream about her, and my heart is unsettled. Brigid would not understand. I’m not sure I do. I didn’t love Anne, but she haunts me. If I had found her, maybe it would be different.

But I didn’t find her.

T. S.





4





THE MEETING


Hidden by old age awhile

In masker’s cloak and hood

Each hating what the other loved,

Face to face we stood.

—W. B. Yeats

Deirdre didn’t seem especially surprised to see me, and she beamed at me in cheerful welcome when I walked through the library door the next day.

“Maeve sent you to Ballinagar. Any luck?” she asked.

“Yes. I found them—where they are buried, I mean. I’m going to go back tomorrow and put flowers on their graves.” The tender feelings I’d had among the grass and the stones welled in me again, and I smiled awkwardly, embarrassed that I was, once more, becoming overly emotional in the librarian’s presence. I cleared my throat and retrieved the picture of the house I’d tucked between the pages of Thomas Smith’s journal and held it out to Deirdre, brandishing it like a shield.

“I wondered if you could tell me where this is?” I asked.

She took it, looking down through the lower half of her glasses, her chin jutting forward, her eyebrows raised.

“That’s Garvagh Glebe,” she said, delighted. “This is an old picture, isn’t it? Goodness! When was this taken? It really doesn’t look all that different. Except for the carpark off to the side. I think there’s been some guest cottages added in recent years as well.” She squinted at the picture. “You can just see Donnelly’s cottage there in the trees. It’s been there for longer than the manor. Jim Donnelly fixed it up about ten years ago. He takes tourists out on the lake and out exploring the old caves where smugglers used to store arms during the Black-and-Tan War. My grandfather told me the lough was used to move weapons in and out of this area all through those years.”

“Garvagh Glebe,” I breathed, stunned. I should have known. “It was owned by a man named Thomas Smith, wasn’t it?”

She looked at me blankly. “When would that have been?”

“In 1916,” I said, sheepish. “I guess that was a little before your time.”

“Just a bit,” she laughed. “But I might remember something about that. Well, I don’t know. I think so. The house and property are run from a family trust. None of the family live there now. They have groundskeepers and a staff, and they let out rooms. It’s on the Dromahair side of Lough Gill. Some folks call it the manor.”

“You mentioned the manor yesterday. I didn’t realize.”

“Yes. There’s a dock there as well, and people rent boats from Jim to fish or just spend the day on the lake. The lake leads to a little inlet. When the tides are high, you can follow the inlet all the way out past the strand in Sligo and into the sea. There are stories of pirate ships in Lough Gill back in the days of O’Rourke, the man who built the castle—they call it Parke’s Castle. Have you been?”

I nodded, and she babbled on with barely a pause.

“He built Creevelea Abbey as well. O’Rourke was hung for treason by the English for giving shelter to marooned Spanish sailors of the Spanish Armada. The English king gave O’Rourke’s castle to a man named Parke—can you imagine working for twenty years to build something that would survive for centuries and having someone just swoop in and take it away?” She shook her head in disgust.

“I’d like to see Garvagh Glebe. Is the house open to visitors?”

She gave directions much the way Maeve had the day before. “Go left for a bit; go right for a bit more. Pull over and ask if you get lost, but you shouldn’t get lost because it’s not that far.”