The Promise of Light (25 page)

The front door of the barrack house swung open. Its armor-plating dragged across the floor.

“Stanley!” Sutherland yelled.

“Probably just checking the grounds, sir. As I said.” The Irishman mumbled again, as if he had trouble assembling the sounds into words.

“Stanley! Stanley, is that you?”

It was quiet for a moment. I leaned closer to the cold metal of the door. Then came a sound like a damp log bursting in the fire. The sound came again. Gunfire.

Someone cried out in pain.

Suddenly the barracks shook with footsteps. Shouts piled up on shouts. A long scrape traveled the length of the corridor. Then the light went suddenly away from under my door as a falling body blocked the space. Footsteps running away.

“Raid!” Frightened voices came muffled through the brick. “It’s a raid!”

Bullets clanked against the metal window shutters.

I crawled into the corner and wrapped my arms around my knees. I had begun to shake. I waited for the door to burst open and for Sutherland or one of the soft-talking RIC men to drag me out and shoot me.

The man on the other side of the door was trying to sit up.

Gunshots banged at my ears.

“Oh my God.” The man slumped down again.

More footsteps. Someone crouched down next to the door. “Captain Sutherland, sir? I’ve got morphine for you, sir.” It was another English voice. “It’s me, sir, Sergeant Gillis.”

“Oh, Christ.” Sutherland was trying to sit up.

“You’ve been shot, sir. I’ve got some morphine here. I think they might try to burn the place, sir.”

“Take me home to my family.”

I stared wide-eyed into the black, waiting for the fire. My blood-crusted nostrils searched for the first threads of smoke.

“Sir, I’m putting a bandage on you. This is all I can do for you at the moment. I’m going to take charge of the group, sir. Do I have your permission, sir?”

“Shoot the hostage.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kill him.”

“Right, sir.”

The door creaked as Sutherland pressed himself against it, trying to get up. “Home to my family.”

“Open your mouth, sir. I’m just going to set this under your tongue. It’s morphine, sir. It’s what you need for now.”

Sutherland sighed and settled back against the door.

I didn’t move. All my thoughts had concentrated into one tiny speckle of light. I felt as if I was staring back inside myself.

The building shook. Something swished past outside and thumped onto the ground. Footsteps trampled upstairs.

“What the fuck was that?” Sergeant Gillis stood. His voice traveled up the door.

“They’re on the roof.” It was Byrne. “They just blew a hole through the tiles. We’ll get them off. Don’t worry. The Ennistymon people are probably halfway here by now. We’ve only got to hold out another half hour or so.”

“You listen to me,” Gillis said. “I wouldn’t be so sure about the Ennistymon barracks setting out in the middle of the bloody night. We’ll have to hold out until morning and probably longer. Sutherland wants the hostage shot.”

“You know damn well if the hostage dies and we have to surrender, they’ll finish off every last one of us. You know that, don’t you?” It sounded as if Byrne was about to attack Sergeant Gillis.

“Sutherland said to…” Another explosion tore at the roof and something clumped down the stairs.

The floor jolted under me. Chips of paint flickered down from the ceiling. I crawled to the doorway and lowered my head to the floor, hoping to see out under the door. As my face touched the ground, I felt a wetness on my cheek. It felt heavy and sticky and I realized it was Sutherland’s blood.

Now I crawled to the air vent and balanced on the chair to look out. The hedge sputtered with gunfire. Sparks from the burning roof flickered down onto the grass. A hissing sound filled my ears and the bright curve of a flare sailed out. It burst and drifted. The grass lit up milky white. I made out the broken squares of loose roof tiles lying on the ground beside the house. A body lay in a gap near the hedge. The man’s shirt had come untucked and his chest was laid bare. In the light of the flare, his skin had the shine and smoothness of marble. The gunfire had stopped. All I could hear was the rustle of the flare. Shadows stretched as it drifted. Then the hissing died as the flare was sucked into darkness. Immediately, the gunfire started up again.
Clank, clank
against the window plates. Two men jumped from the hedge and ran across the grass. They carried an oblong box between them.

They threw their box at the barrack wall and ran back toward the hedge.

The air in the room crunched into fire and smoke and suddenly let go. I bounced off the table and fell to the floor.

A gun went off outside the door. Another gunshot. Someone slammed into the door and fell down. The corridor outside was filled with people.

The door opened. Sutherland’s body slumped into the room. Cold air poured in and the hallway was riddled with smoke.

A man filled up the doorway. He stepped over Sutherland’s body and into the room. “Come on after me and keep your head down.”

At first, I didn’t move, so the man strode across and yanked me to my feet. I followed him to a place where the outer wall had been blown through. Smashed brick covered the floor. Once the man turned to make sure I was following. In the smoke, I still couldn’t see his face. The man moved with a limp. One leg was stiff, as if a brace had been clamped on it.

People in trench coats shuffled past. All of them carried rifles. Gunfire crashed in the hall. I heard the
clack-clack
of rifles reloading. Empty cartridges rattled on the floor.

I stepped through the blast hole and out onto the grass. Dew soaked my bare feet. Now I recognized the hobbling man. It was Stanley. He still wore his RIC uniform but had pulled the two harp insignias from his lapels and he didn’t have his cap. “Clayton wants a word with you.”

“What happened to Baldwin. Is he all right?”

“Byrne shot him. He’d have shot you, too, if he had time.”

I thought of Baldwin, pug-faced with his anger, and I wondered how long he’d held out while they were beating him.

Branches of flame spread from a gap in the barrack-house roof. Ladders leaned against the building.

Someone was shouting to cease fire. Gunshots sputtered dead inside the building. Orders barked from room to room. The front door swung open and a Tan walked out with his hands on top of his head. Another followed and another. They moved slowly, peering into the dark.

“Here’s the gun they took from you.” Stanley held out the revolver in its holster. “And your feet…” Stanley pointed at the pale stubs of my toes. He led me over to a sunken road that ran beside the hedge. On the road where three bodies. Trench coats covered their faces. Stanley crouched down near the bodies and held his hand out to me. “Give me your foot.”

I hopped on one leg as Stanley matched my foot first against the boot of one dead man and then against the boot of another. He removed one man’s boots and gave them to me, along with the socks. “You’d better take whatever else you need as well.”

The socks were wet and cold and the boot laces clogged with mud. I strapped on the revolver and then buttoned the trench coat, hoping no one would recognize the clothes. I needed them too badly to do without some thin armor against the bramble hedges and flint-pebbled roads.

The Tans stood in a line on the grass.

IRA men stood guard. Their shredded trench coats fluttered around their knees. Flames gave them shadows which vanished when the fire died down.

Dead men lay stretched on the path, faces covered with helmets or caps.

The noise of a trotting horse reached my ears. I caught sight of McGarrity’s delivery cart. It was driven by Crow and stopped outside the barracks. Rifles and ammunition from the barracks were loaded on to it.

Down the road, still hidden in the dark, I heard running. Then I saw a shape and a paleness. A flash came from the figure and the air tore open above my head.

“Cover!” Stanley dove into the hedge.

I fumbled with the holster and peered at the figure again. It was McGarrity.

“Kill him!” Stanley yelled from the brambles.

McGarrity kept running. He carried a gun. The air cracked again and dirt splattered up near my boots.

I pulled the revolver from its holster. I could hear McGarrity’s breathing now. The man’s head was thrown back as he ran.

“Shoot, for God’s sake!” Stanley bellowed from somewhere nearby.

McGarrity’s body flashed as he shot off another round.

I aimed the Webley down the road and locked my elbow straight. I breathed in once and held the breath in my lungs, then fired and lost sight of McGarrity behind the blur of gun smoke. The heavy kick thumped back through my bones. I kept firing until the drum clicked empty.

McGarrity stood only a few paces away. His eyes were open wide. All of the buttons had popped off his jacket. The cloth lay in shreds across his chest. Now through the holes, McGarrity began to bleed. Dark lines ran down his stomach, falling in drops to the ground. He twitched suddenly, as if something had exploded inside him. He dropped to his knees and pitched forward onto his face.

Stanley crawled out of the bushes. It took him a while to get to his feet. His stiff leg got in the way.

I stepped toward McGarrity, but felt Stanley’s hand hold me back. “Don’t you worry about him. Worry about yourself instead. McGarrity came to the barracks as soon as the trouble started in town. He figured it was the only safe place for him.” Stanley pulled the ammunition bandolier from across his shoulders and draped it over me. “You’d better go find Clayton. He’s in charge now. He’ll tell you what to do.”

I stayed looking at McGarrity’s body. I found myself waiting patiently for him to get up and walk away. The bandolier’s leather was warm where it had rested against Stanley’s neck.

“Go.” Stanley’s voice climbed above the rustle of flames.

My boots crunched over sand from spilled sandbags, rifle cartridges, and clods of brick chipped off the walls. It was dark inside the barracks, except for the wobbling light of an oil lamp, which barged an orange glow across the walls.

Tarbox stooped over the body of Captain Sutherland, going through his pockets. The white pocket linings stuck out like handkerchiefs from Sutherland’s trousers.

Clayton stood next to him, holding up the lamp.

Tarbox scooped his hands under Sutherland’s armpits and propped him up against the wall. Sutherland’s tunic and shirt were open and a bandage had been wrapped around his chest. Blood had soaked through the dressing. “What do you have for me? Eh?” Tarbox pulled out a cigarette case, turned it once in his hand, then skimmed it away across the floor. “Anything I can use?” Tarbox slapped him on the cheek.

Sutherland’s head flopped to one side. His eyes were half open.

“Is that you, Sheridan?” Clayton held up the lamp. “Did you tell them anything?”

“Nothing.” With my nose blocked and useless, my voice vibrated in my head.

“Who beat you?” Tarbox took hold of Sutherland’s cheeks and squashed them together. A trickle of red saliva dribbled out onto his hand. “Is this the man?”

“It was an RIC sergeant. Byrne.”

The oil lamp quivered in Clayton’s hand. “It’s a shame we can only kill him once.”

I breathed in the smoke that pillowed the ceiling. “I was leaving to find Hagan. They picked me up outside Ennistymon.”

Tarbox stood. “We’re all heading north now. There’s been a change of plan. So you’ve got company for the trip after all.”

“I heard them saying that the troops at Ennistymon barracks would be coming.”

“They are.” Clayton walked toward me. “I want them to.”

“Thank you for getting me out.”

“We didn’t do it for you. We did it for the guns. On schedule. And now we need your help. The Ennistymon Tans will be here in an hour. If we don’t drive them back, none of us will get more than a few miles up the road and that includes you. They’ll set barriers on every road between here and Connemara and no one will be able to pass. But if we hit them hard now, they won’t return until they’ve gathered reinforcements and that will take a couple of days. By that time, we’ll be up in the hills, which is the only safe place for us now. At least until things settle down. We need everyone we can get.”

I said I would do what I could.

Clayton nodded. “My father … he says to take care of yourself.”

*   *   *

Byrne’s eyes strained in their sockets. He watched as Clayton approached.

The Tans had all been searched. Their tunics were open, brass buttons like yellow pebbles on the khaki cloth. They still kept their hands in the air and the muscles were tense in their faces.

Clayton pulled Byrne out of line.

“I was doing what Captain Sutherland told me…”

“Shut your face.” Clayton pointed at me. “Look what you did to this man.”

Smoke peppered my skin. It made me flinch to catch Byrne’s eye, as if another beating would thrash me to the ground.

“Look at this man.” Clayton’s voice was a rumble. “You damn near painted that cell with his blood.”

“I was doing my job,” Byrne shouted. “Captain Sutherland…”

“You people!” Clayton howled at the soldiers. He spent all his breath in the two words and had to fill his lungs again. “You know the rules by now. You know you’d never stand for this from us. Well, we won’t stand it from you.” He led Byrne towards the barracks, signaling for two IRA men to follow him. They took the handcuffs that dangled from Byrne’s belt and cuffed him to an iron railing that ran up beside the barrack-house steps.

The two IRA men unshouldered their rifles. One of the men was Crow. They stood only a few paces away from Byrne’s twisting body.

Crow chambered a bullet. The rifle bolt clacked into place.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! I was following orders! Sutherland told me to rough him up.” Byrne tugged at the handcuffs. They scraped against the railing.

The two men tucked the butts of the rifles into their shoulders and their heads hunched over the stocks as they took aim.

“For Christ’s sake.” Byrne’s arms strained at the railing. His mouth twitched out of control.