What the Wind Knows(99)
We lumbered down the lane a half hour later, promising Brigid we wouldn’t be late. Eoin was still sleeping, the storm had kept its distance, and Brigid seemed content to spend the afternoon in front of the fire, knitting and listening to my gramophone.
Sligo’s streets were filled with soldiers, and the tension in the air hummed in my chest as Robbie found a place on Quay Street to park the O’Tooles’ farm truck. A lorry full of anti-Treaty forces rumbled past, armed and grim, letting their presence be known. If intimidation was the goal, they accomplished it. Robbie and I climbed out of the truck and made our way toward the cobbled courtyard that rimmed Town Hall. People scurried alongside us, doing their best to stay off the street, even as they collected outside the palazzo-style edifice, their eyes scanning the growing crowd for trouble. At least three dozen Free State troops had created a perimeter around the building in an effort to protect the proceedings. Another lorry filled with IRA men approached, and every head turned and watched them amble by. I caught a quick flash of a familiar face.
“Robbie, is that Liam?” I hissed, grabbing his arm. The man was in the front of the lorry, facing the other side of the road, his body obscured by other men, his hair covered by an ordinary peaked hat. The lorry continued down the street without either of us making a positive identification.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Smith.” Robbie hesitated. “I didn’t see him. But maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
“Robbie!” someone shouted, and we turned toward the rounded Romanesque entrance as the bell in the gabled tower began to toll the hour, a dismal clanging in the cloud-covered sky. As if the ringing woke the rain, the heavens rumbled, and fat drops began to soak the cobbles around us.
“There’s Eamon Donnelly. He said he’d save us a spot,” Robbie said, and we dashed to the limestone steps, our decision made.
The meeting went without incident. We’d missed some of the earlier speeches, but listened, captivated, to Arthur Griffith, who spoke without notes, his hands resting on his cane. He wasn’t a flamethrower or a booming orator. He was measured and committed, urging the people to vote in favor of the Treaty and the candidates who supported it, not because it was perfect or solved all of Ireland’s problems, but because it promised the best path forward.
He had received a rousing welcome and enjoyed a standing ovation when he was through. As the crowd roared and stomped, Robbie and I vacated our seats, stealing out of the meeting room ahead of the throng, hurrying down the wide staircase with the wrought-iron balustrade. The building was beautiful with its glazed cupolas and carved sandstone, and I wouldn’t have minded a closer look, but Robbie was nervous and eager to go, and he wasted no time herding me back to the truck. He didn’t relax until we reached Garvagh Glebe an hour later.
He dropped me off at the front of the house so I didn’t have to walk from the barn, thanking me for accompanying him on the afternoon’s excursion.
“I’ll be out back for a bit,” he reported. “I told Da I’d feed the animals before Mass. I didn’t get it done, and he’s not gonna be happy with me when he finds out I went to town instead. Hopefully, he’ll never know.”
I jumped out and waved him away.
The house was quiet. I walked through the foyer and into my room. I slept in Thomas’s bed, but his wardrobe was too small for the two of us. I had kept my things in the room on the ground floor, retreating there when I wanted to write or have a minute to myself. We would have to reconfigure the living situation at some point, especially with a baby on the way. There were half a dozen empty rooms at Garvagh Glebe, plenty of space to arrange a marital suite and a nursery while still keeping Eoin close by.
I took off my hat and coat and hung them in the wardrobe before turning to my dresser for a sweater. The drawers were open. Clothing spilled out as though someone had riffled through each one, looking for something, and not bothered to cover their tracks. The narrow top drawer, where I kept my jewelry and the few odds and ends I’d acquired in my ten months at Garvagh Glebe, had been completely upended. I picked it up, unalarmed but confused, and began restoring order to my drawers.
“Eoin?” I called. Surely, he was awake by now. He and Brigid were somewhere in the house. He hadn’t felt well enough to be outside, and he’d obviously been searching for something in my drawers. He was the only one who would leave such a mess behind.
I finished straightening my things and made an inventory of my jewelry and the small stack of gramophone discs, trying to figure out what he’d been looking for. I heard a soft tread outside my door and called out again, not looking up.
“Eoin? Did you go through my drawers?”
“It wasn’t Eoin,” Brigid said from the doorway, her voice odd. She clutched a sheaf of paper to her chest, her face stricken, her eyes wild.
“Brigid?”
“Who are you?” she moaned. “Why are you doing this to us?”
“What have I done, Brigid?” I asked, my blood beginning to thunder in my ears. I took a step toward her, and she took an immediate step back. Liam, a rifle in his arms, stepped around her. He pointed the gun at my chest, his gaze flat, his mouth grim.
“Brigid,” I pled, my eyes riveted on the weapon. “What’s going on?”
“Liam told me. From the first day. He told me you weren’t our Anne, but I didn’t want to believe him.”