19
As they gathered the next morning to lay little Maeve to rest on the barren hilltop, it began to snow. Sarah stood shivering next to Mike, grateful for his size as a windbreak, if not for the comfort of his presence. He held Siobhan snuggled inside his coat, the wind pulling at his long hair from every direction as the snow fell in fat lazy flakes.
Sarah glanced up at the castle and wondered if they were watching. She wondered if they saw that the people camped out on their doorstep had had a death. As she watched three plumes of fireplace smoke rise in the air over the castle, she wondered if they cared.
Fiona and Nuala’s sobs were the only sounds in the camp and Sarah tried to imagine a more forlorn picture than all of them huddled together in grief and misery.
Mike had said little since the accident and Sarah knew he blamed himself. If what Nuala said about Maeve was true, the child would’ve found another way to kill herself—even back at the convent. Sarah’s sane and rational self knew that.
But that wasn’t the self who was in control these days.
All the young mothers stood in a line well back from the grave. Even so it was too close for comfort for all of them. After the words over the grave were spoken—and not by Mike for a change which also heralded a new attitude among the group—the women turned from the snowy hilltop while the men filled in the hole.
The snow was coming down harder now and while the younger children ran back to camp trying to catch the flakes on their tongues, Sarah knew the day would be cold and wet now with no fires to warm them. Before she could turn toward her tent, she saw Fiona, alone now that Declan was bedridden, heading for Mike.
“Fiona—” Mike began, reaching out with a hand to touch his sister’s shoulder.
“We need to go back,” Fiona said. “We can’t stay here! Surely even you can see that now.”
Mike sucked in a quick breath. “I…we can’t, Fi. It’s too late.”
“It’s not too late! It’s only too late if we don’t leave right now!”
Two other women, both holding babies, came up behind Fiona, their faces ruddy with the cold, their noses streaming.
“Fiona,” Mike said. “The snow…we can’t put everyone in open wagons and—”
“Well you should have thought of that!” Fiona said shrilly. “We need to get back to the convent as soon as possible.”
Sarah frowned. Even she knew leaving now was crazy. She glanced at Nuala who was coming to join the group. Nuala looked truly devastated. Her eyes were red and there was a downward slope to her shoulders.
“We’ll get inside the castle, so we will,” Mike said firmly.
“Is it today or are you waiting for the spring rains first? Because in case you hadn’t noticed it’s fecking snowing! We’re all going to die out here, starting with the bairns first.”
Fiona’s face was a mask of outrage and desperate fear. Sarah knew it was because she blamed herself for not keeping Maeve safe. Her eyes darted from Sarah to Mike before landing on Sarah’s face.
“Are you happy?” Fiona said fiercely. “Sure you were right all along.”
“Fiona, whisht,” Nuala said softly. “It’s not Sarah’s fault. Nor nobody’s. It were an accident.”
Fiona jerked away from Nuala’s hand on her shoulder. “Is that what you’ll say when it’s Darcy next?” she said nodding at the baby in Nuala’s arms. “Or Dennis or Damian?”
“Stop it, Fi,” Mike said gruffly. “You’re making it worse.”
“Am I now?” Fiona said, jabbing a finger at Mike’s chest. “Not. Fecking. Possible.”
Siobhan squirmed in Mike’s arms and begin to cry at the sight of her aunt’s angry red face. Fiona stomped back to her tent. Nuala and the other women followed her and Mike let out a frustrated sound and handed Siobhan, now crying fitfully, to Sarah.
“Where are you going?” she asked as she struggled with the unhappy baby.
“Fiona got one thing right,” he said as he turned to walk away. “I reckon you’re happy now.”
Sarah stood alone for a moment and then walked back toward her tent.
I would’ve been a whole lot happier if someone had listened to me before it was too late, she thought with fury. How am I to be blamed because I called it?
“Shush, Siobhan,” she said in as soothing a voice as she could manage. The baby was wearing two layers of wool and two layers of cotton undergarments but the wind cut right through both of them on the hill. She hurried her steps. The snow might make a fire impossible for now, she thought with dismay, but at least they could get in out of the wind.
Everyone seemed to have the same idea. By the time Sarah reached her tent, she didn’t see anyone else out but she did hear whining and crying children coming from nearly every tent.
What good is being right when nobody believes you and then when they finally do, they hate you for it?
She tucked Siobhan into her baby bed and piled more blankets on her. The child had eaten just before the walk up the hill and so Sarah had every hope that sleep wasn’t far off—even cranky and cold. She rubbed the baby’s hands and kissed her rosy cheeks until she was sure she was warm. Although it was the last thing she felt like doing, she curled up next to Siobhan and began to sing to her. With her repertoire of lullabies limited to one and that only a brief stanza, Sarah sang snatches of her favorite slow songs over and over again; “I Will,” by the Beatles, and “Yesterday.”
And while she sang and watched Siobhan’s eyes grow heavy, her mind whirled with thoughts and visions and spates of ebbing and surging fear.
It was true they’d lost faith in Mike and who could blame them? But now it didn’t matter how they got in this situation—and honestly he hadn’t held a gun to anyone’s head—it only mattered that they needed to get inside that castle.
The first person who would die if they tried to return to the convent would be Declan. From there it would take the smallest of the little ones, probably starting with Mike’s own granddaughter, Maggie, who was barely a month old.
No, they had to get inside that stupid castle and it didn’t matter what she’d wanted so desperately before.
This is where they were now.
As far as storming the castle went, was she really the only one to see that the only way in was to be let in? Mike’s fantasies of taking the castle aside, the whole reason he wanted this castle was because it couldn’t be breached. Certainly not by fourteen women and a handful of men with nary a catapult in sight.
Siobhan gave a last sigh and gave up her fight to stay awake and Sarah felt a tremor of relief pulse through her shoulders. On top of everything else she still wasn’t relaxed when she was with Siobhan. It was better, but not there yet by a long shot.
She leaned her head against a stack of blankets near Siobhan’s bed and glimpsed movement through the crack in the tent flap of more snow falling. At this rate, no campfires will be the least of their worries. The tents will be collapsing with the weight of the stuff by dinnertime.
She looked at Siobhan’s peacefully sleeping face. She trusts us to make sure she’s warm and has enough to eat. She’s not worried about that. She trusts we’ll take care of her. And while it might be true what Mother Angelina said that no matter how much you loved them you can’t hold them tight enough to keep them safe, at this stage you definitely could.
An hour later the snow had covered the campsites in a thick blanket of white. Sarah noticed that some of the women had brushed the snow off their tents but unless they planned on staying up all night—or it stopped snowing—that wasn’t a longterm fix. There weren’t very many people out but Sarah knew cabin fever was even worse in a tent and it wouldn’t be long before someone trapped inside with children would venture out.
It was her good luck that it was Sophia.
“Sophia!” she called in a loud whisper.
Sophia turned to peek into Sarah’s tent. “Oh, I think it’s warmer in here than in our tent,” she said.
“Where’s Maggie?” Sarah patted a spot on the blanket next to her.
“Catriona is giving me a break, thank the saints.”
“Where’s Gavin then?”
“With Mike, I think. Do you mind if I lie down for a moment? I’m so tired.”
“Not at all. If you’ll stay with Siobhan—she should sleep for at least another hour—I need to do something.”
“Mmmph,” Sophia said as she wrapped up in a blanket next to the baby and closed her eyes.
Sarah pulled on her coat and left the tent. Nuala was in the garden with her baby watching her two boys kick a ball in the snow.
“Hey, Nuala. You seen Mike?”
Nuala gave Sarah a glacial look before turning away again. “He’s off to storm the castle,” she said.
Sarah looked at the castle but didn’t see anyone.
“Oceanside,” Nuala said sullenly.
Sarah turned and began to jog to the back of the castle. Going around the back meant a three-minute winding pathway walk to the beach before climbing down a long line of jagged rocks to the beach. The same jagged rocks that four-year old Maeve had somehow managed to climb through in the wee hours of the morning before drowning in the surf.
Sarah was amazed at how much taller the castle was from the back. There was a whole extra tier pushing out from the ground that could not be seen from the front.
A half mile down the beach, Mike, Gavin, Terry and Tommy stared up at the castle from the other side of the moat which was full of more and larger rocks. They were armed with rifles. Mike had a large coil of rope on his shoulder that anybody could see was too short for scaling the castle.
By the time she reached them, Sarah was out of breath. She’d been riding for two weeks in a buckboard and sitting around a campsite and—except for briefly running for her life from a Bengal tiger—it had been awhile since she’d done anything remotely aerobic.
“So this is your plan?” she said.
“What do you want, Sarah?” Mike didn’t look at her as she approached.
She turned to Terry and Gavin. “Your wives are looking for you.”
They glanced at Mike who waved them away.
“You might as well go too, Tommy,” Mike said.
Sarah waited until the men had left.
“You’ve lost your damned mind,” she said.
“I’m surprised you felt you needed to tell me that in private.”
“You said yourself this castle is impregnable. The only way in is to be let in.”
“And you heard that they’ve politely declined our request for that.”
“We need inside that castle, Mike. There are going to be more deaths if we don’t get in and I think it needs to be tonight.”
He looked at her for the first time since she arrived. “What would you have me do, Sarah?”
“We know they have a sick child in there.”
He frowned but his eyes were alert, waiting.
“Tell them we have a nurse and medicines,” she said.
“I already told them that.”
“Tell them again. Plus you might mention we have Coca-Cola and whiskey. That guy isn’t alone in there. Trust me, the mother of that sick child is talking to him right now about changing his mind.”
“You really think so?”
“Speaking as a mother who would run you through with a saber and toss you over the parapet if it was Siobhan who was sick in there?”
“I get your point.”
“Believe me. You would.”
Shaun sat and stared into the fireplace from the great hall. It was empty now except for himself and the two dogs who were always looking for table scraps. His mother hadn’t spoken to him since he’d told the courtyard campers to move on.
Ava was still talking to him but in a way it would have been better if she wasn’t. He cringed at the memory of her blistering tirade this morning. Selfish bastard and coward were two notable remnants of that interaction that still stung hours later. He couldn’t blame her but it was still galling.
Didn’t she know he wanted Keeva to get better too? Did she think this wasn’t killing him? He had to be careful. For all their sakes. He wedged another stick in the fire and heard the words heavy is the head that wears the crown and grimaced. Truer words.
“Shaun!”
He jumped, lost in his thoughts.
Saoirse stood in the doorway. “The wankers are calling up to us again,” she said.
Shite. He should have known they wouldn’t just go away. And now with the snow…
“What are they saying?”
“You’d better come and hurry. They’re talking about medicine and they’re talking to Ava.”
She wouldn’t dare…
But he knew she would. For Keeva’s sake she damn well would. He hurried behind Saoirse to the same window on the western side of the front gatehouse. He could see Ava’s form as she leaned out the window to yell down to the people below.
Was she mad? What if they had a gun or bow and arrow?
“Ava!” he barked.
She turned around to see him but didn’t move from the window. “They have Cokes and whiskey, too,” she said breathlessly. “Shaun, they’re not even asking to come in.”
“Like hell they’re not,” he said edging her away from the window.
The big man was back and he had a woman with him. They looked cold and a needle of guilt wedged in Shaun’s gut. The woman was smiling up at him.
Don’t trust them. You know you can’t trust them.
“I was just telling your Missus,” the big man said, “that we have a nurse and we have medicines. Ibuprofen, aspirin, antibiotics and me sister is a homeopathic genius. If you have sickness among you—”
Shaun turned and glowered at Ava. “Did you tell them we had a sick child?”
“No,” she said angrily, “you did last night.” She clapped her hands on her hips, elbows akimbo and stared him down.
He turned back to the man.
“Fine. We’ll send a basket down on a rope,” he said. “Put the medicines in the basket and thank you.”
“Shaun!” Ava said. “They’re freezing out there!”
Shaun ignored her. He saw the man’s shoulders sag inside his jacket. He knew how much he wanted—needed—to get his people in the castle but it couldn’t be helped. The man leaned over to hear the woman who spoke sharply to him. Finally, the man nodded.
“Aye,” he said with obvious resignation. “Lower the basket.”
Mike stood by the castle wall and watched the basket lower. For a moment he wondered what would happen if he grabbed it and jerked the bastard out the window. The problem with that plan was that the berk would surely break his neck when he fell so would be relatively useless as a bargaining chip or even more likely, would just let go of the rope altogether.
“This way we gain their trust, Mike,” Sarah said. “It’s a process.”
“But not one that will see our lot in a nice warm castle tonight,” he muttered under his breath.
“A long process,” Sarah said. “But one that will work. It’s a better plan than whatever hair brained idea you had about standing all the men on their shoulders and climbing up the back wall.”
The basket thumped to a stop on the ground at the same moment they both heard Siobhan’s unmistakable wail coming from their tent. Mike crossed the empty moat to retrieve the basket and looked in the direction of their tent but Sarah was already moving.
“I’ll go,” she said. “Do you need help with the medicines? They’re in Declan’s tent.”
“Nay,” Mike said, waving up to the castle to signal they had the basket. “I’ll handle it.”
He picked up the basket and threaded the rope through the loop, leaving it on the ground and then crossed back over the moat wondering how tricky it would be to fill the thing with water. He hurried to Fiona’s tent. He knew his face might not be one his sister most wanted to see but she’d change her mind when she heard him out.
He entered the tent and saw Declan sprawled on his bed of blankets and sleeping bags. The air was stuffy and smelled of wet canvas. Fiona watched him as he entered.
“Are we leaving?” she asked dully.
“We’re getting into the castle,” he said.
She jumped to her feet, her eyes wide. “Are ye serious?”
“I’m serious that I need your help to make it happen.”
Her body deflated and she sat back down next to Declan.
He looked around the tent. “Where’s wee Ciara?”
“She’s with the other kiddies. Maeve was her best friend.”
“I know, Fi. Look, I’m that sorry about everything but if you can just pull it together I promise we can be sitting inside the castle in time for breakfast with Declan in a proper bed in front of a fireplace. I just need you to do as I ask and leave the questions for me to worry about.”
“Questions?” She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m planning on getting us inside tonight and I’m hoping you’ll see that we might have to break the rules to do that. And that it will be worth it.”
“Sure why isn’t Sarah here? Could it be because these rules you intend to break would be a problem for her?”
“Will you help me get everyone inside? I don’t know any other way to do it without your help. And yes. Sarah would be against it.”
After a glance at Declan, Fiona turned back to Mike. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
Twenty minutes later, bracing against the cold, Mike left Fiona’s tent and ran into Sarah who had Siobhan in her arms.
“What took you so long?” she asked. “Did you get the Cokes?”
“I’m giving them what’s important first. We’ll send up the other bits later.”
“Why are you giving her homeopathic stuff?” Sarah asked, peering into the basket with a frown. “Why not just give her the Percocet?”
“Fi suggested this would suit them best for a sick child.”
“Really? Fi said that?”
He hurried toward the base of the castle, his long legs taking him well ahead of her. By the time she reached him, breathless and shivering, he was tugging on the line and crossing back to the other side of the moat to watch the basket go up to the window.
“They’ll see we can be trusted,” she said, watching the basket ascend. “This will count in our favor. You’ll see.”
“Aye, I hope so.”
The man in the window brought the basket in and waved his thanks before disappearing inside.
“Wow. Man of few words,” Sarah said, squinting up at the now empty window. She looked at Mike. “But the mother will be grateful to us. I know she will.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and for a change didn’t feel the tension in it. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d just lied to her and she’d find out sooner rather than later, he’d bother to hope it would last.
It had stopped snowing, saints be praised. Mike and the other men spent the rest of the long cold afternoon rebuilding the fires and brushing the snow from the tents. Gavin and Tommy had been successful trapping rabbits and some of the women were already roasting them on campfire spits. Even with the snow letting up, it was still a somber day. The children played under the ever-watchful eyes of their mothers and the tension was so thick in the air it felt like wading through fog just to cross the camp from one side to the other.
And all the while, Mike waited. He didn’t know if he’d taken a terrible gamble or if he had nothing left to lose. He knew for sure that if his gamble failed, Sarah would never forgive him. He’d have thrown away any chance that the people in the castle would ever trust them—long process or not—and they’d never get in.
The sun hadn’t climbed very high in the sky and while it didn’t rain, neither did the day warm up either. Right around dinnertime, when more people were coming out of their tents to tend to their cooking and talk with each other, it happened.
The long piercing wail of a mother’s lament—coming from the castle wall above.
Mike held his breath but didn’t look at the castle. Behind him he felt people turning to look. The cries went on, escalating into anger and then falling in despair. He looked down and saw Sarah standing beside him.
“What did you do?”
“What I had to for the good of the community.”
She stared at him for a moment and then bolted for Fiona’s tent. Mike twisted around and grabbed her.
“Sarah, no!”
“You tell me or she will! What have you done?!”
Mike dragged her back to their tent, mindful of the women in the camp now openly staring at them. The fear and distrust he’d felt this morning at the funeral came back a hundred fold.
“I’ll not let you go until you promise me you’ll—”
“I’m not promising anything until you tell me what you’ve done!”
“Do you really think I’d hurt a child?” Mike shook her, his frustration pinging off him. He forced himself to let her go, afraid once he started shaking her he might have trouble stopping.
“If it meant the greater good?” she looked at him, her mouth set in a firm line.
He ran a hand through his hair and looked away.
“Fiona called it hen’s teeth or some such thing. I don’t know what herbs they are.”
“Poison.”
“Nay. Not really. Just enough to make the child feel and look sicker. That’s all.”
“That’s all. Do you hear that mother’s cries? What if that was Siobhan in there? She sounds like she’s lost her child. Are you sure she hasn’t?”
“I did what was needed.”
“What you rationalized was needed you mean. You’re a monster.”
“A monster, is it?” he said heatedly. “You won’t think so two months from now when there’s snow on the ground and Siobhan is warm in her bed inside the castle.”
“Oy!”
Both Mike and Sarah jerked their heads to the sound of the voice coming from the window above. Mike took Sarah’s arm and pulled her to the tent.
“Stay here,” he said firmly before walking away to stand beneath the window.
“Is everything fine then?” he called up to the window.
“We’ll be lowering the drawbridge,” the man said, his face white with alarm.
“Oh, aye?”
“If you could send the nurse in we’d be grateful.”
All Sarah knew was that if this didn’t work, they were all screwed. They’d already proven they weren’t to be trusted. Any hope they’d had of forging a relationship with the people inside was gone. Sooner or later, they would find out how they had been tricked—by using a sick child—into letting them all inside.
It didn’t bode well.
Could the people inside hurt them? Did they have weapons? If they were angry, could they attack them? The compound group was just about as vulnerable as they’d ever been. If not for the snow and the ungodly cold, they would surely have already been attacked by drifters or other thugs prowling for victims.
Sarah sat by the struggling campfire, a wool rug pulled around her shoulders and Siobhan dozing in her lap. As soon as the castle had asked for the nurse—which, of course was another lie since nobody in the group had any such qualifications—Mike had begun making preparations for Fiona to go in.
He must be desperate, sending his own sister in.
The people inside had been careful. They wouldn’t lower the drawbridge until all the men had removed themselves several hundred yards away down the road. The camp women watched silently as Fiona, carrying a knapsack full of painkillers and antibiotics, walked across the wooden drawbridge and disappeared under the raised portcullis into the castle.
Sarah had a brief view of an outdoor fire pit inside and even two large dogs romping in the interior courtyard of the castle. The men began walking back as soon as the drawbridge raised up again. Sarah held Siobhan tightly and tried not to hate the people inside for not allowing them in.
Mike wouldn’t come to her now. Whatever he and Fiona were up to, he wouldn’t share it with Sarah, nor would he come back to finish their fight. No, he’d spend the rest of the evening and likely the night securing the camp, checking on the horses and staying well away from their tent and his furious wife.
Sarah warmed her hands by the fire and felt the exhausted aftermath of her emotional upheaval. For a few minutes today it had felt like the old Mike and Sarah. She’d felt comfortable with him. They’d plotted together—although now it was clear he had an entirely different plot in mind all along. But for a little bit, it had been good again.
For such a bad day—especially the way it began—she’d not even thought much of John today. Not more than she normally did anyway—wondering where he was, who was being nice to him—or not.
Wondering when she would see his dear face again.
She was surprised to look up and realize she was one of the few people still sitting outside. Siobhan should have been put to bed hours ago. She went into the tent and put the baby down and felt the exhaustion of the day claim her as she collapsed on her sleeping bag.
Hours later she was jolted awake by a thundering noise. She sat up woozily, reaching for Siobhan, fear mounting in her throat.
The terrifying echo of the sound reverberated in the air around her until she slowly realized…it was a gunshot.
And it had come from inside the castle.