Chapter One: Rathbarren, Co. Sligo July 1909

Mickey Rafferty wiped the dirt from his face, squinting up in the sunshine at the priest who stood over him. It was his dinnertime and he preferred to be spending it alone, but he couldn’t very well say that to Father Doyle. ‘Aye, Father,’ he said. ‘What is it you’re wanting? You’ll excuse me but I have only the ten minutes itself.’

The man nodded, and his soutane fluttered briefly in the wind. ‘Of course, Micheál,’ he said in a habitually placating tone. ‘I’m here to tell you that the news came from Dublin today lad, and you’re in at the College. You passed both exams, and took the scholarship in English as well. You’ll be glad now, for suffering through Greek.’ He clasped his hands before him. ‘I have waited on this day with no less anxiety than yourself. But all is well, thanks be to the O’Hara’s good auspices, and my own spotting of you.’ The tone implied that he should be grateful for the landlord’s handout money.

Mickey did not fail to notice that there was no mention made of his own hard work and sweating and swearing over the entrance examinations. He regarded the priest shrewdly. He had his own ideas about Mr. Bloody Keane O’Hara and his money, as well as some suspicion of Father Doyle’s hot desire to send him packing off to Dublin. But now was not the place nor the time for the voicing of such suspicions. He rose and, putting down the bread-and dripping, wiped his hands on his trousers and extended one, still filthy, to the priest. ‘Thank you Father, for your good help. I’m sure Dublin will be the world’s doors open to me.’

If the priest caught the edge of his sarcasm, he gave no sign of it, but said instead, glancing about the Sligo docks with distaste, ‘Better any rate than rotting here. You’ve too much talent to waste your life long here as a stevedore. What are you now, eighteen is it?’

Mickey picked up his dinner again. ‘Nineteen, sir, in June,’ he answered through a mouthful of bread. ‘I’ve been here going on for three years.’ He could not keep the pride from his voice, for a good job in these times was a rare thing, and to have kept it this long a mark of his ability and trustworthiness. It meant that he might have married his Bridie next year, if the priest hadn’t pushed him to the sit the examinations for Trinity. He wondered now if such a marriage would ever happen. Easy it would be for her to take up with someone else in his absence, and how could he blame her at all?

‘Oh aye,’ said Father Doyle uncomfortably, ‘three years. It’s a long time, arra.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Tell me Micheál, do you never read anymore? I have wondered how your studies have gone since you took up this job.’ It was no secret that he worked a twelve-hour day and eighteen on Saturdays. Mickey shrugged.
‘I read when I can. I brought Ovid with me this week, like.’
‘Oh?’
Mickey paused, and a flush came beneath his labourer’s suntan. ‘The Metamorphoses,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘Biblis and Caunus.’ He had brought it as recreational reading, for the dirty parts. It was as much of a confession of self-willed rebellion as he was willing to make to this man, who had been both his mentor and his tormentor since he was eight years old.

‘I see,’ the priest looked into the wind. ‘Still, it may be edifying.’ He changed the subject. ‘And tell me do you ever find the time to draw at all?’ He was plainly hoping for an answer less revealing. Mickey shrugged again, unwilling to put himself forth. It was none of Father Doyle’s business what he did with himself.
‘Oh aye. I don’t need much sleep, three or four hours like, and I can spend me Sundays drawing.’ He had spent more of them in the heather with Bridie, but he’d not be telling the priest that. He was likely to be read out from the altar, fornicating out in the wilds on a Sunday. But there was nowhere else for them to go.

‘I see,’ said Father Doyle, who evidently did not. The horn sounded and the priest glanced up. ‘Well, I’m off now to speak to Mr. O’Hara about arrangements. Good-bye to you son. God’s blessing on you.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ Mickey said, grateful for the horn. ‘I’ll remember to thank Mr Keane O’Hara as well.’ He was taller than the priest by some inches, and looked down at him in relief as he turned and strode away down the quay. He shoved the greaseproof paper back into his shirt and wolfed down the rest of his dinner. What in the name of God was he going to say to Bridie?

When his shift let off he went to the house in Patrick Street where he stayed during the week and picked up his kit. With it slung over his shoulder and his cap pulled well down he paused at the kitchen door.
‘I'm gone Mrs Feeney!’ he called to her.
She came out from the next room. He had kept a room in their house for a year now, and they were easy together. He worked with her husband Jim.
‘Oh Mickeen, sure. Do you not want me to fetch Joe to go a pace with you, at least to Ballysadare?’ It was the same every week. Joe was her eldest boy, a lad of twelve years, though large for his age. He was nearly as tall as Mickey.
‘No, thank you ma'am, I know you need him about. 'Tis a fine night and I don't mind the walk, meself.’ Rain, shine, or snow, he had said the same.
‘Well then,’ she conceded. ‘A good night to you, and Mary and Patrick go with you.’

He accepted the blessing and went out, the kitchen door banging behind him, and he wended his way through town, across the River Drumcliffe, and southwards until at last he came to the Ballysadare road. He enjoyed this walk every week, and tonight was fair. There was rain in the air, with a lowering sky, and the fine heavy scent of it like perfume bringing up the smell of grass and earth. As he walked down the curve of the road, he inspected his view, turning all about at intervals, glad to be free of the docks and the closeness of the wee house at home with people ever about him. Here, tramping the roads, he had no one to answer to, and he could pretend for these precious few moments that he was one of the travellers, liberated to a life on the open road. He would take his sketchbook and pencils and roam the roads of Ireland forever. For this world was his palace and he was master of whatever his eye lit on, for no man owns the land.

He took it all in: Benbulben's frowning brow grey-green at his back, the glittering majesty of Knocknarea at his right, the stillness of the peaceful low Rosses, Lough Gill and Findhiabhair to his left. Findhiabhair, daughter of great Maeve herself, for if one came upon the mountain just so she could be seen lying there sleeping, quick with child as only maidens in the old tales were and no shame in it at all. Lovely Findhiabhair, with the breasts and belly of her full of life, and the heather of her hair spilling down the mountain. Below that great belly lay the holy well of Tobernault, and Lough Gill, where it was said she had rescued Fraeoch all those years ago. He looked across at Knocknarea, Maeve's Cairn. Maeve protected their harbour and their valleys, but the secret places around Lough Gill were sweeter than the faery tomb.

He went under the railway bridge at Ballysadare and came out onto the straight of the road to Coolaney. He heard a cart behind him and paused. The farmer driving it slowed.
‘Can I give ye a lift, young man?’ the old man enquired.
‘No, thank you sir,’ Mickey said. ‘I haven't far. Just up Coolaney way.’ The man nodded and lifted his stick in salute as he passed. Mickey returned the nod and walked on. He was coming into his own turf now, and the trees began to thicken. He paused again at Colloony crossroads and glanced up at the road sign in the fading light.

It was gone half-ten now by his reckoning and in a moment would be full dark. If he walked into Coolaney to see Bridie there would be a fearsome row and he would have to spend the night in the town on the bench at the pub or huddled in the church doorway like a beggar. Howsoever, if he waited ‘til tomorrow, there would be less a Donnybrook in the light of day with folks about, and besides he was dead on his feet and in no mood for rowing. It was something of the coward's way out, he knew, but what did she expect? That he should come running from his long shift in the dark of night itself and declare himself? He would not be such a lapdog to such a girl, for she would lord it over him all his days. He convinced himself so that it was really too late, for there was no way he could cut overland to save time in the homecoming, so the telling would have to wait. He turned up the Colloony road and breathed a sigh of relief when he came under the railway bridge.

He followed the tracks until he came to the station bridge outside Colloony, and saw the welcome tall spire of the Protestant church at Rathbarren in the trees distant. Beyond the trees lay the meadows of home. He took the boreen towards Annaghmore House, and the gleam of lights in his father's cottage was a welcome beacon, for he felt his weariness fully now that it was gone dark and cold. If it was past midnight he will have been up near twenty hours with the long shift of work.

Annie and Kate were putting away the crockery as he came in, but wee Katie doled him out his share of the stirabout and tea that sat on the hob in wait for him and his brothers. He laid his pay packet before Da where he sat at the table, peacefully smoking his pipe, and sat down to eat, leaning his elbows on the table in weariness and with his head nearly in the bowl. Since he was a child he had hated the stuff, left to congeal in the pot long hours, but it is all there was at the end of the week until he and Jim came home with the pay. Sean's contributions in what he gained as a farm labourer hardly counted, and anyhow he was as like to drink it all in the pub before they saw a ha'penny of it. When he was drinking his tea, Jim came in from the big house, smelling of horses and cut hay, and joined him at the table. He was broader in his way than Mick, but as tall, a powerfully built man who looked older than his twenty-two years. He had the rippling muscles of a blacksmith - as he had need of being up at the house betimes - and his thick chestnut hair hung in his face like the forelock of one of his charges as he ate. Mickey wondered where Seanin was at this night, and glanced at Anne. She would know, she and that Kilgallen she sported with. But Anne was banking the fire and paid him no mind. There was for once, nothing to disturb the peace but the restful sounds of night.

Finally, Mickey ventured into the silence, ‘I was after seeing Father Doyle today, Da -’ Jim looked up, startled, but Da merely puffed out smoke like a chimney.
‘Ay?’
‘He came to say that he's heard from the University people up to Dublin, like, and they're wanting me in it and all.’ He looked up, hoping to be gainsaid. He met his father's eyes, and saw their steely blue unchanged. Jim gaped like a caught mackerel, though, and the girls had turned from their work to stare.
‘So it's off to Dublin for a scholar you'll be then?’ There was nothing to give away pleasure or pain. He didn't know how his father was thinking on it.
‘Not if I'm not wanted to go,’ he said. He leaned across the table desperately. ‘I can do without it, Da. I've me a good job here, a chance to be foreman one day -’
‘And Miss Brigid Anna Twomey with her father's fine shop and all....’ Annie said, singsong. Mickey whirled on her in a fury. ‘Shut your gob, or I'll tell a few things meself! Nobody's asking your tuppence-worth!’ She scowled at him and turned away to hang the towel to dry.

His father laid a hand on his arm. ‘Easy, Micheál. And you,’ he said to Annie, ‘no teasing him, girl. You're not one for talking.’ He laid down his pipe and faced Mickey in earnest. ‘Is what you're not saying to me then, boy, is that you don't want to go after them examinations and all, after years of the priest's work on you?’
‘If he don't I will,’ Jim piped up, joking. ‘Then snobs down to Dublin won't know the difference, anyhows.’
Mickey leaped up from the bench. ‘Whisha, will you, it's no laughing matter!’ He said to Jimmy. He paced the floor. ‘No Da, I don't want to go! I only sat the bloody exams because they gave me no peace! I wanted to go over to the art school in Galway, like, but they would have none of it, Mr Bloody Keane O'Hara and the priest! They would have their way or no way, that they might lord it over being the big men, the benevolent ones! Jaysus, I don't want to go! I'd rather rot a stevedore as Father Doyle says I shall if I stay. I've been drawing pictures me whole life, and I can keep on it without their interference.’

‘Bernard Doyle is a man of many judgements,’ Sean Rafferty said mildly, ‘And not all of them as wise as they could be.’ He rose from the table and put his arm about Mickey's sagging shoulders. ‘It's after me own father you are taking, with the will on you. Old Micheál never did the one thing another person nagged him to, out of sheer spite, I'm thinking. 'Tis a bad trait to have.’ He rested his hands heavily on Mickey's shoulders. ‘Look here Micheál, the decision's up to you, for you're a man grown, but will you take a wee word from your old man, now? It's no one but a damn fool ever turned down the chance to better himself in this world. And there's not many as are given the free chance to do it, neither. Sure now, what's to keep you from studying painting in Dublin itself, with a scholarship as you have at the College, did you never think of that? Who's to say this is not to the good?’

Mickey looked up into his father's pale blue eyes that were like the eyes of an elf in his weathered face, now earnest, now merry, and wondered again at the great calm of the man. He had always been so, a walking miracle. The toil and hardship of his life had not soured him. He had buried wife and children, laboured long at cabinetry and coffin-making, scratched out subsistence on the land, watched his eldest sons turn out with the rebels - a course which could only lead to sorrow for his father before him had died a Fenian in an English prison. And with all that he was full of self-possessed respect for the landlord and the priest. No man could own him, cow him, or distress him. He had a perfectly genuine and simple faith in the wisdom and goodness of God, which he lived without hypocrisy. A walking miracle.

Now, seeing the turning of Mickey's heart and mind, he was smiling his fey smile. ‘Come and eat now, lad, before the paidrin. There's time enough for decisions in the morning.’ Mickey sat down at the table again before the cold porridge. Sean smoked his pipe for a while and then looked up at them all, a little shrewdly, saying, ‘Who'll say the beads now, as it's Seanin's turn and him gone missing?’
‘I will,’ Mickey said wearily into his tea. Perhaps it would bring him some peace.
‘There now,’ Sean said, and a knowing smile crossed his face. He took his worn beads from his pocket, and the others followed suit.

‘In ainm an Athar, agus an Mhic, agus an Spioroid Naoimh. Amen. Creidim san aon Dia amhain---’ So it began as it did every night, the reciting of family prayers. And as he continued, through the long rosary and the responses - lovely droning words that lifted him out of himself and into some other place he knew not where - and into the prayers for the fallen and the dead, so was some measure of peace come into the stone of Mickey's heart. He slept soundly that night, against all reckoning, waking only briefly when his brother Sean came inside in the small hours near dawn from wherever he had been.

In the morning he walked into Coolaney with Da and Katie to Mass at the Church of the Assumption. Jim was at the big house and Anne had given up going to church but for Easter and Christmas since the day last year when Father Doyle read their Jim and Tom and Seamus Kilgallen out from the altar for a row with the peelers in a byre over to Toberscanvan that everyone knew had to do with a meeting of the local IRB. Annie let folks think her boycott was for her brother, but Mickey knew that it was all for Tom Kilgallen, whom she ran away from the house to meet because Da would have none of his lot and said so.

The little church was clammy and dark even on this fine day, for the only windows were high on the walls and the sun never laid on the interior long enough to warm it up entirely. It was bearable on summer days, but in the winter it was as close to standing in an open grave as you'd be like to get this side of the hereafter. He hoped to see Bridie, but she had gone to the earliest Mass with the mother, so he was told when he asked her brother Dermot after, and he was forced to go up their rooms over the drygoods shop that stood in the little crooked lane above the church and have his say before the parents.

The street door was ajar and he pushed it open farther and went up the stairs, pulling off his cap in the hallway above. There was no one in sight, and he called out, ‘Hello the house!’ From the kitchen at the back, Mrs Twomey’s voice rose in reply, ‘Is it Mick Rafferty now?’ He went down the hall and stood in the kitchen doorway, cap in hand.
‘God bless all here,’ he said, and nodded. ‘Good day to you, Mrs.’ Bridie stood before the table in a brown dress and a red ribbon in her auburn hair. Her expression was one of cool indifference as she sat down across from her mother and took up her mug of tea without a word.
Mickey went livid. This girl, whom he had loved and lusted after since he was a boy of twelve, and worked for and won by every art he could imagine, was never avid except too briefly after they had lain together in the heather. This lovely plump little girl with her brown eyes and white skin and gleaming red hair that drove him mad with longing had always been diffident, but never actually dismissive. And now, when he needed her more than he ever had before to be his solace, she was cold as ice.

Oh, she had probably heard from the gossips about his scholarship to Trinity; he hardly expected Father Doyle not to brag of it. His housekeeper would have told the charwoman who would have told the postmistress who would have told everybody, as Father Doyle intended for it showed him a man of great capacity for persuasion. And if he could persuade the landlord to this could he not also persuade God to a few things with prayers and novenas and Masses, and did that not bring money into the Church? Shrewd, was Father Doyle. But there was Bridie, at the early Mass with her mother and the word going round, and he had never told her he had even sat the exams because he wanted the whole matter to simply disappear, and now she would be thinking only God knew what about him.

‘Well, Mick Rafferty, fancy!’ Mrs Twomey tittered nervously into the yawning silence. She glanced at Bridie, whose expression was one of exaggerated patience, and picked up the basket on the table with a leap from the chair. ‘I promised Mary MacKilcash that I would fetch these to her for the boy,’ she said hurriedly, going into the hall to take her Sunday hat off the peg. ‘Mind you, Brid, that you have the dinner ready for Seamus and Dermot and the father when they come in, and I'm away.’
‘Yes, Mam.’ Bridie said with bored patience. Mrs Twomey turned a cautious, half-pitying look on him before she fled down the stairs. It occurred to him then that they were likely discussing him when he arrived.

Now that her mother was gone, Bridie turned to him, one hand on her hip, looking at him over her shoulder. ‘So it's yourself, is it? The fine college man come to give his poor girl the word at long last! As if half the parish didn't know it already!’ The soft light of the afternoon touched on her hair, setting it to fire, and he felt a pang. He always noticed such things, and they invariably took him out of the immediacy of the moment, mostly to his detriment. Now, where he should have been firm he was distracted. She would think he did not care. How could he say that he was transfixed by the way the sunlight made her skin transparent so that she looked to him like a heroine out of the old tales, that he was consumed by her image more in fact than by she herself? He hated rows and noise and scenes. He hated this now for her making him feel a fool. Why couldn't she understand him after all these years?

‘Bridie,’ he said entreatingly, coming forward. ‘Sure, you know it's dead tired I am coming off the shift of a Saturday, with the walk and all. Did you really expect me to come racing over in the dark of night to rouse the house from its beds? I only heard meself yestere'en!’
‘You might,’ she replied unbendingly, ‘you might at least have told me there was a chance of it at all, that you wanted to go from me! What was I to think when the old hens are all lavering at me before devotions that you was passed as good as some regular scholar and were going off this fortnight, with never a word?’

He threw his cap down on the table, damning the old gossips. ‘I don't want to go! I never did want to go anywhere but maybe the art school over to Galway, and that a daydream!’ He had upset her tea in his rage and it was pouring all over the tablecloth and the floor while he ranted. She leaped up for a towel and made angry little noises at his spoiling the linen as she mopped up the mess. ‘And how was I to know that they'd have me when I was never at school regular but to be the priest's boy, and not at all these three years?’
‘You passed their examinations in the top rank,’ she accused, glaring up at him from where she knelt on the floor. ‘You must have known that you did well! Never a word! Never a blessed word!’ She rose and flung the towel into the sink, breathing hard with her arms folded up. He looked sullenly at the wreck of the tablecloth, with nothing to say against this invective.
‘So, you're off to Dublin, is it, for your fancy education?’ She said softly, and the mockery in her voice cut like a knife. ‘Well, good luck to you I'm sure.’

He went to her and took her arms in his hands. ‘That's up to you.’
Her brown eyes showed alarm and she pulled away with a scowl. ‘Up to me is it? You'll not be fobbing off the ruination of you onto me Mick Rafferty! I'll not bear the blame!’
‘What would be the ruination, I wonder? To stay here as their lackey, ever hearing about how ungrateful I am for all their kindness, or to go and show them to be fools itself for the sending?’ He sighed, his anger spent, and took her arms again. ‘You know my intentions, agra. Can you doubt them? Can you doubt me? Haven't I said them to you for years now,’ his voice dropped, soft and low, ‘way up in the dale above Lough Gill. Bridie...’ He bent to kiss her.

To his astonishment, she pulled away at this as if she had been burned, spoke words he never thought to hear from her - ‘I know your intentions, Mick Rafferty, and that's all they are, I'm saying.... But how would it be for me, here all alone and... alone if I found myself in a difficulty after you'd capered off to Dublin? How would I shift then, I'd like to know?’ He caught the meaning of her words and spun her around to face him.
‘There's no chance of that, is there?’ He demanded. ‘You wouldn't lie to me. May they rot, you know I would not leave you in such a way! Tell me the truth, and no games you'd best be playing, or so help me, I'll walk out of here this day and you'll ne'er see me more, for I'll have no truck with that!’

She was crying now in earnest and his stomach sank into his boots with a thud.
‘No, no, no!’ She shook her head. ‘At least- ‘ she hiccuped, ‘at least not so far as I'm knowing, but Mick! There's worse - Ah Jesus help me! I begged them to let me tell you these two months and better -’
He was thoroughly confused now. If she wasn't pregnant, then what was all this palaver? What could be worse that ‘they’ would not wish her to tell? ‘What what? Are you ill, what? Tell me!’ She was leaning her forehead against his chest and he shook her away from him so that he could see her face. She tore herself from his grip and paced the floor, making several false starts before she finally managed,
‘I must tell you, must - that the matchmaker has been here and gone these two months and they have set me up with me cousin Dermot up to Donegal, for to be wed to him before Martinmas, don't you see? And I don't know, don't know - won't know for a week yet whether I should worry or not over you, over us, that I -’ A look of terror passed over her face. ‘I could never hide it, never pass it off. I've only seen me cousin the once at a funeral for me Da's brother like, and will not at all until the time - Oh Mick!’ She began crying again. ‘I'm so scared! And I was that angry with you, but now I don't - I have to marry him, don't you see, man? It's all arranged, by the matchmaker and me Da and his Mam, and you're going off to Dublin, and-’

He didn't want to hear anymore. He wanted to run from this place, drown himself in poitin and never wake up. She had never loved him. A deep instinct told him that. She could never have been so cruel as to play with him as she just had if she really loved him. She had used him only, for her own... what? Pleasure? Status? He was a source of attention. And when she found a better, she took it, only now it really was he who was the more important man in the world's eyes, and she was trapped. He had given her his heart and his all and she was just a greedy little heartless shrew who had used him for the attention his courtship gave her.

He looked at her through tears, tears that had poured down his face unheeded. ‘I loved you,’ he ground out, and the words were the worst accusation he could lay on her. He went to the table and picked up his cap. Pulling it down over his eyes with a jerk he ran down the stairs three at a time, slammed the street door and never looked back.

He ran clear to Colloony --five miles- - before he stopped, his lungs burning, collapsing against the railing of the station house, the world a dizzy grey mass before him. He sank to his haunches with his head between his knees, heaving breaths. Slowly, the roaring in his ears left, and he raised his head. Nothing had changed in the village. The all-in-one still had its row of cards and sweets and hams in the window, the pub was still open for its half-day of business, the trains still heaved their black engine breaths behind him on the tracks beyond the station house, but it was all changed. He belonged here no more. She had ruined him and this place forever. He leaned his head back against the railing. A Dia! he thought, what can I do? There was nothing else for it, except to go to Dublin. So go he would, and be a success, and never more return to this place while she was in it. And maybe she would rue her foolishness someday, but he rued it now.

When he got back home, he thought the place empty, it was so silent, but as he bent his head under the door sill, he saw Anne and Tom Kilgallen sitting together on the high-backed dark, carved settle that was his bed. Her blonde hair was mussed, her cheeks bright and her frock crumpled. He would venture they had not been sitting long. That Kilgallen was nonchalant, as if there was no shame in the brother walking in on him shagging the sister. Da would never have allowed him the house, nor would Annie have let him in if Da was expected anytime soon, for Da had promised to take the blade of a loy to him if he ever saw him about his house after getting Seanin into trouble with the peelers. He would not have his daughter in trouble too because of him, and that was his word on it.

‘Where’s Da?’ Mickey asked her, glancing meaningfully at Kilgallen.
‘Up to Coolaney.’ She said, pushing back her disordered hair and straightening her frock. ‘Him and Con Dervan went off to deliver a coffin.’
‘Excuse me,’ he said impatiently, for they were still sitting on his bed like eejits. He hadn’t come home merely to spy on them, after all. Annie jumped up, pulling Tom with her, and he opened the settle to rummage about for his sketchpad and pencils. He had three left, and they would have to do until he got to Dublin. He felt for the India rubber eraser in his coat pocket. Anne and Tom had moved to the table.

Annie seemed nervous, but while he didn’t care for Tom Kilgallen he wasn’t about to chuck him out. He couldn’t have if he wanted to, for he was taller and outweighed him by a stone. He could cut more turf in a day than any three men together, and besides, he was dangerous. That long ridged scar beside his eye was a warning of that to all who saw him. He had been no matinee idol before it, but now he was frightening to look at with his narrow, eerie yellow-green eyes and the sharp brown face of all his breed. He was twenty-five years old, a good hard worker, strong and reliable when he wasn’t on the drink. Pity about him, for his brother Seamus, who was probably the more dangerous of the two, was charming and handsome, a ladies’ man as they say, and had no trouble finding women, work, or someone to stand him a drink. Not so, Tom. He was accursed with bad luck and a distinct lack of charm, which he showed as Annie got up to make tea and scrape together something for Mickey's dinner.

‘Ha!’ he said, from where he had sprawled at the table, ‘What's this we're hearing of you, Mick boyo? Off to some fancy Dublin college and a Protestant one at that.’ He cackled with laughter, obviously finding it a great lark.
‘Looks that way,’ Mickey took the tea from Annie. It was black as a bog, stewed, as she always made it, sitting for hours on the hob. He poured milk from the pitcher into it and took up a knife to sharpen his pencils.
‘You know, Mickeen,’ Tom began thoughtfully, ‘we could use a few good men in Dublin to keep us apprised of the goings on there.’
Mickey smirked as he drank the bitter tea. ‘We’ve enough of rebels already in this family, I’m thinking.’ He said, ‘I prefer to keep my neck unstretched if you don’t mind. Two gallows birds are enough.’ Annie handed him oatcakes wrapped in cloth and he put them in his pocket with the eraser. ‘I’m off for the mountain,’ he said to her. ‘I’ll be back for me tea. It’s my paidrin again tonight. Tell Da when he comes back. And get him out of here.’ He nodded in Kilgallen’s direction from the door. She did not respond to his warning look, and he shook his head as he started off down the boreen. He had enough troubles of his own; he could not play nursemaid to Annie. But she was headed for trouble that was plain.

He tramped along the railroad line until he was just outside Colloony, then he set off across the squelching stretch of bog toward Slieve Gamph. There he followed an ancient track, a thin break in the scrubby vegetation which ran from the top of Slieve Gamph to the top of Knocknarea, hardly even a footpath, winding up the slope of the mountain and stopped before the sheer face of the mountain on the north side. His supplies he stuffed into his shirt after removing his boots and socks and knotting them together over his shoulder. He climbed until he came to a level ridge, high above the surrounding bog, which he had discovered ten years before while out cutting turf with his brothers. Then, he had looked up and seen the ridge, and thought that it must be in such places that hermit monks of old lived, peacefully removed from the cares of the world. It had taken a year before he could reach it. Then he was proud. Then he knew that nothing was beyond him if he set his mind to it. The ridge became his refuge from the world, from the taunts of the village boys about being taken up by the priest, from the Greek and Latin and scathing words of that same priest. Here he dreamed of free travellers and hermit monks and told himself the old tales in Irish, or drew pictures of the scene and people below.

Now he flung himself down, winded, and was grateful for the stone beneath his hands, stone that asked no questions and told no lies. His only company here was seabirds, come in from Sligo bay, and as he fed them bits of whatever food he carried with him, they came often. O, pleasant it was to lie here with the heath against his back - one of the Fianna or a raparee for the afternoon - looking out over the glittering sea on a view that stretched from the Aughris head to Benbulben's frowning slopes. Knocknarea glittered now, majestic in the setting sun off Rosses Point, translucent, like the faery bodies themselves, shimmering, magical, enticing. He knew that it glittered so because it was quartz, but it was kinder to believe in the Good Ones, that Maeve herself would arise at sunset to walk the shores of the Rosses, with all the Connaught men who died in ancient battles in her train.

And what would he be? Not a warrior, for all his feats and skill at single combats, but a bard. A bard to tell the tales in soft Connemara Irish, to write in ogham on wood and stone the boundaries and warnings and details of great battles. To be lauded for the fancy of his mind and not condemned by priests for being wrecked among heathen dreams, or used by silly selfish girls because he had more notoriety than anyone else within five miles.

He would be as Cearbhall O'Dalaigh, who walked from Carlow to Connemara to stop his beloved from marrying another, and wrote a lovely song about it: I wore out my shoes after you, Eileen my darling, wore away their soles after you, in the hope of being married to you, Eileen my darling. Will you come with me or will you remain behind, Eileen my darling? You are the secret of my heart, nine hundred thousand welcomes to you, Eileen my darling. And she would go with him forever, wandering the roads of Ireland with his harp on his shoulder.

Ah! he gave up singing the old song in Irish, laid his head down on the rough stone of Slieve Gamph and wept, as he could do here and nowhere else.

In the morning as he was buttoning up his coat for work, Anne came in from outdoors where she had gone to the byre half an hour before, and seeing him about to leave, she pulled him outside by the sleeve and closed the door. She was pale and mussed, and even to him who had seen her in every state of distraction, seemed unusually nervous. He remembered her odd behaviour of yesterday, and suddenly knew that it was more than Kilgallen's presence in the house that made her nervous. For all his words of caution he was loyal to her; he would never tell Da she had allowed Kilgallen the house, and she knew it. He said now,
‘Aine, what's the matter with you?’
She looked out across the meadow, over the field towards Coolaney, her arms crossed and her blue eyes troubled. ‘Me and Tom's running away.’ She said shortly.
‘What!’ She shushed him. ‘For Jesus' sake, are you mad, girl?’ He demanded in low tones, leaning down nearer to her with his hand on the wall of the house above her head. It reminded him of the secrets they used to whisper under the bedcovers in the days they shared a bed, for they were but a year apart in age, and until Kilgallen set his cap for her they had been the best of friends. ‘Why in the name of God would you go off with that no-account? He'll bring you nothing but trouble, so.’

‘He has already,’ she said stonily, and a betraying tear glimmered in her eye. ‘We have to go.... He has a job up to Derry on the docks, and ... we have to go.’
‘Why?’ He knew the answer.
She turned her face to the wall, and her answer was muffled into his coat. ‘I'm having a baby.’
‘A Dia!’ He put his arms about her and held her tightly . ‘Oh Aine, poor Annie - ‘ He held her away then, sternly. ‘He will marry you?’ He demanded. ‘He will not simply take you off and desert you?’
She sniffed and nodded and shook her head, wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Yes,’ she said, then, ‘I don't know. I hope so. He promised he would...’ She looked up at him, her eyes brimming tears.

‘If he doesn't can I come to you in Dublin? I can find me a job in a hotel or a pub, sure.’
‘What would you do with the wee'an?’ He lifted her face in his fingers, wretched at the thought of his pretty little sister in such a fix. Damn Kilgallen anyhow.
‘Give it to the foundling home,’ she murmured softly. ‘I couldn't do right by it on me own.’
‘No.’
‘Can I come to ye then, Mick, if I need to?’ The tough young woman she had become in the last year vanished, and she was once more the soft girl he knew. He smiled, and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief. It was mended and worn, but clean.
‘You know you can count on me,’ He smiled, pressing it into her hand. He kissed her forehead. ‘I'm away now, or I'll be late. Get yourself a sup of water before you go in, and wash your face or Da will see you've been crying.’

She smiled a little ruefully, and the morning sun touched on her golden hair. She was a colleen out of verse with her golden hair and bare feet, and he loved her better than any sweetheart. ‘I will, so,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Mickeen. See you on the Saturday.’

He nodded and was off down the boreen towards Annaghmore and Sligo town. His heart was heavy with his own grief, but he saw that they were nothing compared to Annie's, and he was grateful for that little.