When Shadows Fall (39 page)

“Well?” Rourke pressed him. “Are you going to be on board for this?”

Adam gave him a dark smile. “I’m not walking away from anything. Yes, you can be sure I’ll be on board.”

He thought about seeing Tara before he left. But he changed his mind.

Too soon, he felt. Too soon to question. For the time being it was easier to live in some limbo of denial, to pretend she hadn’t said the things she had, that nothing was different.

But things
were
different. Those words, spoken with the candour of grief, had opened a chasm between them, deep and wide. A line of dialogue, a mighty axe stroke cleaving their cosy world apart. Tara wasn’t even aware of it, but once she learned the truth herself . . .

He stared through the window of the train. Outside strong gales harried black clouds across the landscape, trees bent beneath a low sky. Nobody else joined him in the compartment.

He was met off the train in Dunmanway and put up in an inn near Clogher. The next day he was mobilised with thirty-six other men on a rutted boreen that overlooked a wild vista of wind-ripped trees and heather. The brigade commandant was a thin, quick-eyed man with a head of startled-looking hair. He greeted Adam with a handshake.

“I’m Tom Barry. One of Collins’s fellows, are you? I’m told you served.”

“I did,” Adam said. “Royal Dublin Fusiliers. France mostly.”

“I was a sergeant with the Royal Field Artillery in Mesopotamia,” Barry replied. “Damn hot country out there, battling the Turks for sand and ego. It was outside Kut-el-Amara that I first heard of the rebellion in 1916. Where were you?”

Barry had an abrupt style about him. Adam cast his mind back. He’d been on his way home on furlough when a communiqué was distributed around the ship, telling of the bloody street battles, the shelling of the rebel positions. “On a boat. I remember it well.”

Barry sniffed, looking him up and down. “You know, I learned nothing of my country’s history when growing up. I was taught about the kings and queens of England, how the various dynasties came to the throne. About Trafalgar and Waterloo and Cecil Rhodes and Chinese Gordon. I didn’t know about Ireland’s own achievements. I didn’t know about the spread of Christianity and learning throughout Europe by Irish scholars, but I was certainly taught all about the blessings of civilisation that Robert Clive and the East India Company brought to dark and heathen India. And yet when 1916 happened . . . ” He gazed off to the distance. “1916 changed everything for me. And so here we are, sir, in wild West Cork.”

“I think we must have had a similar education,” Adam agreed. “So you have a role for me here?”

“I might, too. I’d like you to take charge of one of the sections. They tell me you made good progress with the lads out in Bantry.”

“I hope so.”

“You’ll have a harder week’s work with us. Did Mick Collins tell you what I’m about?”

“He mentioned something about an engagement.”

“The Macroom Auxiliaries.” Barry glanced back to the mustered men nearby and lowered his voice. “They know nothing of it yet. We’ll have to put them through their paces for the week, and Saturday is time enough to lay bare our plans. You’re up to it?”

“You give the orders, Commandant, and I’ll follow them.”

“Can you ride?”

“Haven’t been in a saddle since the war, but I’ll manage it.”

“Lay about later when the sections are dismissed. I want to show you my ambush position.”

After the day’s exercises, with the light still holding, they rode northeast across the fields and made for a road that was half lost between rocks and bramble. Along with Adam, Tom Barry brought the other section leaders and set out his plan.

“We’ve poor cover here for our ambush party, but if we were to attack them on the Macroom side they’d have reinforcements out in no time, and if we let them as far as the Gleann Cross, there are four possible ways they could turn. So this spot here,” he stamped his foot on the roadside turf, “is the only place we can be sure of meeting them.”

Adam looked up and down the road. There wasn’t a house or a speck of human civilisation to be seen. “I have to ask, Commandant. They’ll be in trucks, won’t they? We’ll barely get a shot off before they’re away from us. I mean, they’re hardly going to hang about once they know there’s an ambush in place.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Barry said. “Where’s Paddy? Paddy O’Brien, come here to me a moment.”

O’Brien strode over, a confident-looking young man in a starched green tunic, its fabric slightly rough for wear but striking nonetheless.

“Ever seen one of these before, Bowen?” Barry asked.

Adam shook his head.

“
Ach
, shame on you. This is an IRA uniform. You’ll not have seen many parading around Grafton Street and Merrion Square, I’ll grant. Paddy, you’ll be good enough to loan me that getup on the day. The Brits won’t recognise it. I’ll be on the road alone, or so they’ll think. And they’ll stop, have no doubt.”

Adam was sceptical. “You mean you’ll just stand out there exposed? You’ll be a sitting duck.”

“I hope I won’t be exposed for very long.” Barry eyed him. “That’s what this week’s training is all about.”

Macroom was an old market town in a valley beside the River Sullane. Through the centuries it had hosted epic battles from those of Brian Boru and the Vikings to the McCarthy tribes and the Cromwellian troopers. More recently it had prospered through milling industries and agricultural fairs. William Penn, the founder of the American state of Pennsylvania, had spent much of his childhood here, the birthplace of his father.

By 1920, however, Macroom was the Cork base of the RIC Auxiliary Division.

Though the town was outside Tom Barry’s scope of authority, its Auxiliaries had been leading forays into his territory with increasing aggression. There was a determination to defeat the West Cork IRA through attrition and terror, and the usual casualties of that campaign, in the main, were innocent locals. The convoys would roll into villages without warning, often at night, fire their weapons in the air and drag terrified families from their homes. With prejudice to neither age nor gender the villagers would be searched, interrogated, beaten with belts and rifle butts, sometimes shot. The entire village could be held captive for hours while the Auxiliaries helped themselves to all the food and drink they could pilfer, and in their wake they liked to leave a few burning buildings for good measure. The following day the raids would continue somewhere else.

This had been going on for months. Not a single shot was fired at them in reprisal, mostly because people were afraid. It was whispered that the Auxiliaries were invincible. Morale amongst communities and the IRA was sapped. The Auxies began to enjoy themselves.

Tom Barry had his men out the following morning in the rain-drenched bogs near Togher. The week saw them advance the ground day-by-day and taking a new billet each night. By the small hours of Sunday morning each member of the sections had been armed with a rifle and a few dozen rounds. At three o’clock the column was assembled and told of the next day’s mission—to ambush the Auxiliary patrol coming out from Macroom.

At this news, heads dipped in dismay, prayers were whispered. A priest sat on a stone wall, barely visible in the light from Tom Barry’s lantern. One by one the riflemen went to him to give confession. It was a sombre hour, and when finished the priest walked to Barry and said, “I have no idea what this business is about, Tom. Are you sending these lads out to fight the English?”

“I am, Father,” Barry replied.

“The Catholic Church has taken a stand against it, Tom. You know that. But I’ll pray for your boys, and for you.” With that he mounted his horse and rode away into the rain-lashed darkness.

By road, field, low hill, they advanced through the night. Rest was allowed at intervals, smoking permitted only in the cover of trees.

Adam spoke to his section to learn their names and to establish some basic camaraderie. These young men would have to answer to his every word tomorrow, when he directed them into the big guns of the Auxiliaries. They moved hardily now, silent during the march.

They had covered several miles through muck and heather when he began to feel uncertain. Once, twice, he glanced back into the darkness, wondering who was out there. Imagination stirred by nerves and tension. And yet . . .

They stopped for rest at a thicket of gorse. The rain had eased and a lance of moonlight broke through the clouds, illuminating a strip of rocky landscape.

And Adam saw the unmistakeable movement of a man.

A quarter mile back, the figure was moving fast despite the glutinous ground. The other sections were farther on beneath the trees, Adam’s section the rearguard.

He was on his feet in an instant.

“Stand to attention,” he hissed at his charges. “Prepare your weapons. We’re being followed. You, boy, run ahead and alert the others.”

He took two more men and skirted a shallow dike. The interloper was on their left, below them on the slope. It was black countryside and Adam strained his eyes, knowing there had to be more than one.

The shape climbed over a collapsed stone fence, close enough for Adam to hear his ragged breathing. They waited several agonising seconds until the man’s progress eventually brought him to within a few feet.

“That’s far enough.” Adam cocked his rifle. “One more step and I’ll blow your insides into County Kerry.”

The man froze.

With the aid of the moonlight, Adam hesitated. Not a man at all, but a skinny adolescent, shaking from wet and cold. He looked ready to burst into tears in relief.

“Sir, thank God, sir. It’s me, Deasy. Pat Deasy, Battalion Lieutenant of Signalling from Bandon, sir.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sir, I’ve been ill these past days, bound to the bed. Commandant Barry thought to leave me behind, and he gave my rifle and rounds to another man. But I’m fighting fit, sir, honest I am, and when I reckoned you were going after a fight,” he shook his head adamantly, “damned if I was going to lie in that bed a moment longer, sir. Begging your pardon.”

Adam, bemused, later saw Tom Barry hand Deasy back his weaponry and order his replacement home. The young lad’s determination and utter dread of missing the fight should have been inspirational. Yet Adam remained wary. Brave youngsters, full of belly-fire and zeal.

Will his mother and father know where to find his corpse?

It was half-past seven and a winter dawn gave shape to fields and hills. The sections trudged through ankle-deep mud for several more miles until they found shelter at a farmhouse hidden amidst a stand of pine. Gratefully they warmed themselves around the old couple’s turf fire and drank copious amounts of tea. Barry ordered everyone back on the road again two hours later.

Even by midday the countryside around Kilmichael was a rain-dulled wasteland. Barry directed the sections behind knolls and ditches, giving their leaders his last advice. The cloud cover had begun to thicken. The wind picked up and the sun was a distant notion beyond that doleful sky. They sat in cover and shivered. A gloomy afternoon slid towards evening.