Never Never (12 page)

T
he day crawled
by like a living creature, bleating and breathing, where every pulsating breath was like an odor that slipped through the fissures of the tents and infected everyone. The sadness, the hopelessness, the sudden and terrifying loss was everywhere. If Sarah's dearest wish had been to have a few more people support her in her desire to return to the convent she was shocked to realize that the support hurt nearly as bad as the rejection.

Is there anything worse than the loss of faith?
What before had been a comforting blanket of group belief was now a terrifying realization that they were all in danger—they were all vulnerable—and that people really could start dying any time now.

Nuala and Fiona were slammed the hardest by Maeve's death. Both had sworn to love and protect the child after her mother was murdered in the rape camp the spring before. But it was the loss of faith in Mike that really hurt. That and the sudden—up to now not believable idea—that they were safe as long as they believed they were.

It may take a village but not if that village is sound asleep and the child is determined enough
, Sarah thought.

It was the first time for the group that the death was a child and the first time it had been an easily avoidable accident.

Because clearly even our best precautions aren't enough.

The compound women were divided into two groups for the day—the group that was attempting to give comfort to Nuala and Fiona and the group watching the rest of the children. Twelve now.

Belonging to neither group Sarah sat with Declan in his tent for most of the afternoon and watched him as he flickered in and out of consciousness.

Kevin and Terry dug the grave. Tommy and Gavin were moving the horses to better pasture and laying traps in the woods. And Mike was walking around like a stunned ghost.

Scratch that. Like a detested stunned ghost.

Fiona had turned on Mike in the immediate aftermath and laid the blame for Maeve's death at his feet. Sarah couldn't defend him but she couldn't witness it either and was relieved to sit by Declan's bedside tucked away from the now rampant fear and anger.

“Is the fear worse than the reality
now
?” Sarah said under her breath as she watched the activity of the camp though the door of the tent. The day had turned cold and grey. Rain wasn't far off. It never was.

Worry wouldn't have prevented it
. Mother Angelina's voice spoke clearly in Sarah's head.

That is flat bullshit,
Sarah thought.
Worry
would have kept Maeve away from the water. It would have tied her to her bed and kept her from leaving the tent.

You can't keep them safe by holding them in your arms
, Mother Angelina's voice came again.
It doesn't work that way.

Tell that to Fiona
, Sarah thought as she glimpsed her sister in law through the gap in the tent flap, her shoulders heaving with sobs, as one of the compound women embraced her and tried to comfort her.

Tell that to anyone who's feared the worst and then experienced it.

M
ike had never felt more ostracized
from his own people in his life. Right when they needed his leadership the most, they were shutting him out.

He didn't blame them.

He stood by the cold campfire beside his tent and stared up at the castle walls.

What was I thinking? In the whole obsessed, maniacal trek here from the convent—two nearly deadly attacks and one broken axel ago—what was my plan for taking this fecking castle?

He felt a wave of dejection wash over him. How is it that he, of all people, had no real vision of how he'd do that? Had he assumed it would be empty? Or that they'd be reasonable people eager to add to their population? Maybe he was just pushing against Sarah? If she hadn't been so against the idea would he have been more moderate about doing it?

Whatever his reasoning had been, the fact was the group was falling apart and it was his fault. The temperatures were dropping and they were sitting on a barren piece of land with no protection beyond the flimsy tents they'd brought with them. As if on cue he heard a sudden whooshing sound as a violent blast of wind tore down a tent and pulled it across the campground. He made a step toward it before he saw Kevin and Terry running toward it.

In the mood everyone was in at the moment he wasn't entirely sure they wouldn't rather sleep out in the open with no shelter at all than accept help from him.

He glanced at Fiona and Declan's tent and felt his heart plunge. Sarah was in there keeping an eye on Declan, who was weakening by the hour according to Fiona.

Everything about this campaign had turned to shite in a hurry.

“Mike?”

He turned to see Sophia standing by his tent. She held little Maggie—not four weeks old with cheeks chapped and red—wrapped tightly in a blanket.

“Aye, lass,” he said wearily. It occurred to him that she was possibly the only person here who didn't outright hate him at the moment, although he wasn't entirely sure about that.

“They sent me to ask you when we'll get inside,” she said, her eyes moving to the looming structure of the castle. She shivered.

That was another thing. He'd stupidly set up camp at the castle's base so even at the height of any day with full sunshine, they were all plunged in perennial shade and cold.

“Only we're all freezing out here,” she said, “and I wouldn't ask except for the children.”

He felt a harbinger of disaster tingling over his shoulders.

“I know, lass,” he said helplessly and then turned around with a start as he saw her eyes widen as she looked at the castle. The man was back at the window. At the same moment Mike felt the first drops of rain on his face.

Please God, have him let us in. Please for the love of these people who trusted me and for the children…

Mike hurried to stand beneath the window. The man was alone this time.

“Hello to you,” Mike called. “Can you help us then?”

Even from this distance Mike could see the answer in the man's face. Mike's heart plummeted before he even heard the words.

“I'm very sorry but you'll need to keep moving. You have nothing we need.”

A
s 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.”

S
haun 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.