What the Wind Knows(75)
“Do you really think I need to be protected?”
“Liam wasn’t the only one on the barge.”
“No. There were two others as well.”
“What did they look like? Can you describe them?”
“They all wore the same caps, the same style of clothes. They were roughly the same height and age. I think one had a paler complexion—blue eyes and a few days’ growth on his jaw. The other was heavier, I think. He had fuller, red cheeks. I couldn’t see his hair color . . . and I was focused on Liam, on the gun.”
“That’s something, I suppose. Though it doesn’t bring anyone immediately to mind,” he worried.
“Liam was so shocked to see me. Do you think it was just surprise or . . . fear . . . that made him shoot?” I mused.
“I was shocked to see you too, Anne. But shooting you never crossed my mind,” Thomas muttered. “You can lay low, you can keep quiet, but they all know you saw them, and you are not safe. Liam thinks you’re a spy. He sounded a bit crazed when he told me you weren’t Anne. But seeing as he was right, it only makes me more nervous and more desperate to find him. Mick is from Cork. Maybe he’ll have someone who can ask around for me. I would feel better if I knew for sure Liam was in Youghal.”
“Do you think he took the guns, Thomas?” I asked, voicing a suspicion that I’d had from the beginning. Divining plots was my specialty.
“They were his to take—at least, his responsibility. Why would he lie about them being gone?”
“To cast suspicion on me. He knows what he did, Thomas. He knows he tried to kill me on the lough. Maybe he wants to make me look crazy . . . or maybe he knows if he paints me as a traitor, a spy, no one will listen if I point the finger of blame at him. All he had to do was move the guns when no one was around—just as he’d intended to do—and then tell Daniel they were missing. Daniel wouldn’t know any different. You wouldn’t know any different. His accusation did exactly what it was designed to do. It made you wary—warier—of me.”
“That makes as much sense as anything else.” Thomas was silent, considering, and then he sat down wearily on the low rock wall that divided the grass from the trees, resting his head in his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative, as if he feared my response.
“What happened to her, Anne? To Declan’s Anne? You know so many things. Did something happen that you’re afraid to tell me?”
I sat down beside him and reached for his hand. “I don’t know what happened, Thomas. I would tell you if I did. I didn’t even know Declan had older brothers and a sister. I suppose I’m like every other Irish man or woman. I have cousins in America too. I thought Eoin and I were the last of the Gallaghers. Your journal . . . the description of the Rising and their part in it, was the most complete picture I’ve ever had of my great-grandparents. Eoin never spoke of them. For him, they didn’t exist beyond a few facts and photographs. I grew up believing Anne died in the Rising, alongside Declan. It was never even a question. In 2001, their grave looks the same as it does now, minus the lichen. Their names are on the stone, side by side. The dates are unchanged.”
He was quiet for a long time, contemplating what it all meant.
“The sad truth is that when people leave Ireland, they rarely come back.” Thomas sighed. “And we never know what happens to them. Death or emigration. The result is the same. I’m beginning to think only the wind knows what happened to Anne.”
“Aithníonn an gaoithe. The wind knows everything,” I agreed softly. “That’s what Eoin told me when I was small. Maybe he learned it from you.”
“I learned it from Mick. But he says the wind is a gossipy wench, and if you don’t want anyone knowing your secrets, you’re better off telling a rock. He says that’s why we have so many rocks in Ireland. Rocks soak up every word, every sound, and they never tell a soul. It’s a good thing because the Irish love to blather.”
I laughed. It reminded me of the story Eoin had requested on my birthday about Donal and the king with the donkey ears. Donal told the king’s secret to a tree because he’d been desperate to tell someone, anyone. Sometime later, that tree was cut down and used to make a harp. When the harp was played, the king’s secret sang from the strings.
There were several morals to the old tale, but one of them was that secrets never stay hidden. Thomas didn’t blather. I doubted Michael Collins blathered either, but the truth had a way of revealing itself, and some truths got people killed.
27 November 1921
I received a letter from Mick today. He’s in London, along with Arthur Griffith and a handful of others who were handpicked to take part in the Treaty negotiations. Half of the Irish delegates resent the other half, and each thinks they have the right of it. The divisions in the group were built in by de Valera and are being exploited by Prime Minister Lloyd George, and Mick is acutely aware of it.
The prime minister has assembled a formidable British team to represent England’s interests; Winston Churchill is among them, and we Irish know what Churchill thinks of the lot of us. He was against home rule and free trade, but he supported the use of the Auxiliaries to keep us in line. It’s easy for a soldier like Churchill, with a history of military might behind him, to expect and tout a certain kind of warfare, and he has no respect for Mick’s methods. To him, the Irish question is little more than a peasant uprising; we are a rabid mob with pitchforks and flaming torches. Churchill also knows world opinion is a tool that can be used against the British, and he is incredibly shrewd in blunting its effectiveness. However, Mick says the one thing Churchill understands is love of country, and if he can recognize the same love in the Irish delegation, a narrow bridge might be forged.