What the Wind Knows(64)

Mrs. Cleary was Thomas’s Dublin housekeeper. Joe O’Reilly, Mick’s righthand man, looked on sheepishly. The fact that it was Thomas’s home and Michael Collins was giving orders was clearly not lost on him, but I didn’t need any further encouragement. I climbed the stairs, my shoes squelching and my teeth chattering, and stumbled into the room Thomas had assigned to me, peeling off his suit coat and my red dress, hoping Mrs. O’Toole could rehabilitate the clothing like she’d saved my bloodstained blue robe. Our clothes were covered in a layer of soot, and they reeked of smoke, just like my hair and skin. I wrapped my robe around me, gathered my things, and took a hot bath. If Michael Collins objected to the time I was taking, too bad. I scrubbed my hair and skin, rinsed it, and scrubbed it all once more. When I finally made my way downstairs, my hair was still wet, but the rest of me was clean and dry. The three men were huddled around the kitchen table, speaking in voices that quieted when they heard my footfalls.

Thomas stood, his face scrubbed free of the grime but not the concern. He wore clean, dry trousers and a white shirt. He hadn’t bothered to button on a collar, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing the wiry strength of his forearms and the tension in his shoulders.

“Have a seat, Anne. Right here.” Michael Collins patted the empty place beside him. The kitchen table was perfectly square, with a chair on each side. “Can I call you Anne?” he asked. He stood, shoved his hands into his pockets and sat down again, agitated.

I sat next to him obediently, the sense of an ending all around, like I was caught in a dream I was about to wake from. Joe O’Reilly sat on my right. Collins sat on my left. Thomas sat directly across from me, his blue eyes troubled and oddly tender, his teeth clenched against the realization that he could not save me from what was about to go down. I wanted to reassure him and tried to smile. He swallowed and shook his head once, as if apologizing for his failure to return my offering.

“Tell me something, Anne,” Michael Collins said. “How did you know what was going to happen tonight at the Gresham? Tommy here tried to pretend it wasn’t you who tipped him off. But Tommy’s a terrible liar. It’s the reason I like him.”

“Do you know the story of Oisín and Niamh, Mr. Collins?” I asked softly, letting my mouth find comfort in the sound of their names—usheen and neev. I’d learned the story in Gaelic, speaking the language before I’d learned to write it.

I’d startled Michael Collins. He’d expected an answer, and I’d asked a question instead. An odd one.

“I know it,” he said.

I fixed my gaze on Thomas’s pale eyes, on the promise he’d made not to turn me away. I’d thought of Oisín and Niamh more than once since I’d fallen through time; the similarities of our stories were not lost on me.

I began to recite the tale the way I’d learned it, in Gaelic, letting the Irish words lull the table into a hushed silence. I told them how Niamh, Princess of Tír na nóg, the Land of the Young, had found Oisín, son of the great Fionn, on the banks of Loch Leane, not so different from the way Thomas had found me. Collins snorted and O’Reilly shifted, but Thomas was still, holding my gaze as I wove the ancient tale in a language every bit as old.

“Niamh loved Oisín. She asked him to go with her. To trust her. And she promised to do all in her power to make him happy,” I said.

“This is an odd way of answering my question, Anne Gallagher,” Michael Collins murmured, but there was a softness in his tone, as if my Gaelic had calmed his suspicions. Surely one who spoke the language of the Irish could never work for the Crown. He did not stop me as I continued with the legend.

“Oisín believed Niamh when she described her kingdom, a place that existed separate from his own world, and he went with her there, leaving his land behind. Oisín and Niamh were very happy for several years, but Oisín missed his family and his friends. He missed the green fields and the loch. He begged Niamh to let him return, if only for a visit. Niamh knew what would happen if she let him go back, and her heart broke because she knew Oisín would not understand unless he saw the truth for himself.” My throat ached, and I paused, closing my eyes against the blue of Thomas’s steady gaze to gather my courage. I needed Thomas to believe me but didn’t want to see the moment when he stopped.

“Niamh told Oisín he could go but to stay on Moonshadow, her horse, and to not let his foot touch Irish soil. And she begged him to return to her,” I said.

“Poor Oisín. Poor Niamh,” Joe O’Reilly whispered, knowing what came next.

“Oisín traveled for several days until he returned to the lands of his father. But everything had changed. His family was gone. His home too. The people had changed. Gone were the castles and the great warriors of the past,” I said. “Oisín stepped down from Moonshadow, forgetting, in his shock, what Niamh had begged him to remember. When his foot touched the ground, he became a very old man. Time in Tír na nóg was very different from time in éire. Moonshadow ran from him, leaving him behind. Oisín never returned to Niamh or the Land of the Young. Instead, he told his story to whomever would listen, so the people would know their history, so they would know they descended from giants, from warriors.”

“I always wondered why he couldn’t return, why Niamh never came for him. Was it his age? Maybe the fair princess didn’t want an old man,” Collins mused, locking his hands behind his head, completely serious.