Chapter 1
Kilmainham Gaol
Dublin, 1897
The Gaol was dark and quiet, save for the occasional crickety whispers of the inmates, the click of heels on the cement floors and a clunky tap on the bars of the cell doors. No light shined in through any windows except for the skylight above, the moon high and blindingly white.
Perfect night for the bloody lunatics to make their presence known…..Ned McCarthy thought as he patrolled up and down the row of cells. Odd…..he thought again. Not a damned soul out of bed…..
He heard the click of bootheels hurrying around the corner, the young man nearly half his age looking exhausted and out of breath. “Damn me boyo!” Ned remarked. “What’s all this bleedin’ hurryin’ for?”
“Tis an emergency sir,” the eighteen year old panted. “It be Clarkey in cell one-eighteen.”
“Clarkey?” Ned questioned. “Aw for feck’s sake. If he be fakin’ a bellyache, I’ll have him strung up by the toes I will.”
Ned marched his way down to cell 118, running his hand nervously through his dark hair that had been peppered with flecks of grey, his shiny, black boots clicking on the stern, cold concrete, roiling over all the things he would do to the prisoner if he had the chance. Perhaps then the British will shut their feckin mouths about how I deal with things around here……..he fumed.
“Oi!!! He said loudly, obnoxiously tapping on the bars of Patrick Clarke’s cell door with his nightstick. “Clarkey!!! Ye picked a right lovely time to fake a bellyache! Come on now git yerself up.”
But Patrick didn’t wake up. He hardly even stirred under the threadbare, tattered blanket.
“Clarkey!” Ned ordered, raising his voice just a little. “Damn Clarkey when I tell ye to git up I mean it!”
Patrick still didn’t stir. Ned knitted his eyebrows together, a spark of concern beginning to grow deep within him. “Clarkey?” he said, the concern creeping into his tone. “Clarkey, me boyo come on now I didn’t mean to be harsh with ye.”
There still was no answer or stirring from Patrick. A small but pained cough escaped from the near lifeless form that lay on the cold floors of the cell, the concern in Ned finally flaring into full fledged fear.
“Aw shit,” he hissed. “Tommy, gimme the keys. NOW!”
Tommy, the young guard, fumbled with the keys in his belt and quickly handed them to Ned who hastily unlocked and threw open the cell door. He knelt beside Patrick, pulling the black leather glove from his hand, his fingers curling around Patrick’s bony one. Ned panicked when he found that Patrick was freezing cold to the touch, his skin clammy and with a barely noticeable blue tint.
“Holy Mother,” Ned cursed. “The boy’s freezin. Damn drafts, I oughtta wring the neck of every G-man who built the bleedin place!”
“Ring for the doctor sir?” Tommy asked.
“Now what good will that do us?” Ned asked him. “You know them. Bleedin English doctors…..they won’t even consider it.”
Ned pulled the handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the nervous sweat away from his brow when something flew straight from his coat pocket, falling softly to the floor near the toe of his boot. He knitted his eyebrows together once more, curious and perturbed as to how it had gotten there. Ned hadn’t remembered ever carrying something like that before…….but if he had, he still could not recall where he had gotten it from nor how it had gotten there.
Cautiously he picked it up. The piece of shiny, golden paper was so thin that he feared it would crumble to dust the minute his fingers touched it. All of a sudden, letters began to form, swirling and joining together until a message appeared, a message which read, “Fear Not, help is on the way.”
********
The hurried footfalls slammed the cobbled stones of the streets, splashing up water from the fresh puddles as the cloaked figure raced her way through the quiet streets. The clattering of horse hooves and carriage wheels followed closely behind her. She ran with a fury through the streets, her navy blue walking skirt kicking around her ankles as she ran for dear life, turning left, then right, then left again around a corner, zigzagging this way and that as the horses neighed behind her.
She turned down a corner and raced down the sloping street into the dark, the driver losing sight of her for a brief second before he saw her, shadowed in the dim orange glow of the streetlamps.
“Slow down Miss, fer the love o’ Mary and Joseph!” he shouted after her.
But the young woman didn’t stop, no matter how bad her chest hurt, no matter how badly her muscles screamed for rest, she had to keep going. It was an emergency…..and the inmate’s life depended on it.
Finally, she emerged out onto the street in front of the gates to the prison, standing before her like an iron maw, ready to swallow everyone who entered. She removed her hood, revealing her black face. Her kind dark eyes turned up at the imposing sight of the infamous gaol, a feeling of fear and stern, intense dislike welling up within her.
The carriage clattered to a stop and out jumped two older women, one thin and grey-haired, her face deeply lined with age, while her counterpart had been much younger, heavy set with short, mousy brown hair that curled over her ears. Like the young woman, they too wore their cloaks on such a ghastly cold night, their breath fogging as they stepped from the carriage.
“Guter Gott im Himmel,” the heavy set woman remarked. “What a disgusting, dirty place.”
“My sentiments exactly Irma,” the oldest of the women remarked. “I’ve been in some terrible places myself, but this one is probably the worst I’ve ever set foot.”
“Be glad you never had to set foot in Ladysmith Prison then ma’am,” the youngest remarked. “Ubaba used to say that seeing those men was like seeing the dead walking among the living.”
“And all too often,” the oldest said. “I’m afraid the good man will have turned out to be right. Rebecca, you might as well do what you must. They’re going to put up a fight either way.”
Rebecca smirked, brushing back a lock of her mossy black hair from her face. She had no problem dealing with the likes of authority figures who overreached their hands or overstepped their boundaries. In fact, most times, she enjoyed putting them in their rightful places and reminding them of whom they were dealing with. After all…..the women with her and others like them, seemed to be the only thing that stood between humanity and the cold touch of death.
Up to the doors of the guardhouse they went, Rebecca’s fist pounding on the door until it was answered by an irate looking gentleman who had been in the midst of shaving.
“Blast it all to hell and back!” he swore. “Can’t a man get any damned sleep around here? Tis three o’clock in the mornin’!”
“I believe you have someone housed here who is in need of our services,” Rebecca said, her voice smooth and even with traces of her roots still evident in her voice.
“What services could a lady such as yerself have to offer?” the guard questioned. “Ain’t it a little too late fer the cats to be walkin’ the streets?”
“You’d best watch your words good sir,” Rebecca told him sharply. “A G-man such as yourself should know to tread carefully.”
“And a woman like yourself ought to know her place in this world,” the man said. “Especially where you come from.”
Rebecca swore, grabbing the man and slamming him against the wall. The man yelped, the tin cup falling from his hand to the floor with a clatter. “I warned you, you miserable bucket of rhinoceros piss,” Rebecca hissed. “We have a job to do and you will let us in to do it….understood?”
The now shaking and terrified man swallowed and nodded. “Ned’ll meet ye at the doors,” he said.
“Thank you,” Rebecca said.
The three women headed for the doors and sure enough, they were met by Ned McCarthy. “Thank God ye ladies came when ye did,” he said. “Sorry about the trouble with Evans, he likes to overreach sometimes.”
“No matter Ned, it’s out of the way now,” the oldest woman said. “Where is he?”
“Cell one-eighteen,” Ned replied. “Tommy’s been with him for the last half hour or so.”
“Good,” she replied. “Give us a moment to look him over and we’ll let you know what must be done.”
Ned led them up the stairs, down the row of prison cells until they reached to one belonging to Patrick Clarke. “Good Lord,” the oldest woman said. “The drafts in here are enough to kill.”
“Despicable,” said Irma.
Rebecca and the other two women motioned for Tommy to move aside while they knelt beside Patrick’s limp form. Carefully, Rebecca turned him over and peeled off the tattered, raggy excuse of a blanket. The poor soul was skin and bones, his cheeks hollow from lack of food and a cold, blue tinge to his pencil thin lips. His pale, dirty blonde hair clung limply to his forehead while his skin was alarmingly cold and clammy.
“Well?” Ned questioned. “What’s wrong with’im?”
“He has the cold-shock, Lucille,” Rebecca concluded. “He’s alive, but he’ll need to be taken out of here.”
“We’ll bring him back to Eleven-Eleven,” Lucille replied.
“What?” Ned questioned. “Ye can’t just take’im outta here like he’s the pick o’ the litter.”
“We’re his only chance of survival, Ned,” Lucille, the oldest woman said stiffly, rising to her full height of five feet, ten inches. “If you leave him in here then surely, he will perish.”
“And what’ll it be to ye missy?” Ned asked pertinently. “What’s the life o’ one miserable gimp?”
“The one you choose to call a miserable gimp,” Lucille informed him. “Is just one of many who put food on the tables of the aristocracy and those bumbling buffoonish tyrants who call themselves landlords. There will be no arguing Ned. This man needs a hospital at once and we will be bringing him there whether you like it or not!”
Ned was reluctant to give up the fight, especially to a woman. To admit defeat to the opposite sex was humiliating enough, but for Lucille, Rebecca and Irma to run him over like a doormat…….that was equally humiliating, if not worse.
“Ah,” he growled. “Very well then……do what ye have to. I’ll hand o’er the bleedin papers.”
“Say he was released,” Lucille told him. “It’ll be easier on you.”
Ned made a face and shook his head. “Alright,” he said. “Git’em on outta here.”
“Put him in the back of the carriage,” Lucille said to Irma and Rebecca. “We have to keep him warm until we can get back home.”
Irma and Rebecca lifted Patrick onto a pallet and covered him with their own cloaks before leaving, carefully treading down the stairs and out to the gates where the carriage was still waiting.
“Need any help ma’am?”
“Would you mind getting the doors Eamon?” Lucille asked. “We’ve got a particularly nasty case this evening.”
Eamon clambered down from the driver’s seat and opened the doors to the seatless carriage, allowing Rebecca, Lucille and Irma to climb in. Once he was ready and back in his seat, they were off.
“Poor soul,” Irma remarked. “I do hope we’ll be back at Eleven-Eleven within the hour.”
“We will,” Lucille said.
“Anything else we should do for him in the meantime?” Rebecca asked.
“There isn’t much we can do,” Lucille said. “For now we’ll just have to keep him warm until we have our way back.”
