She leapt up high, like a roe, and one of her feet lashed out in a kick. Her dance grew more and more wild, spinning in a circle, and then slowly, her eyes moved downward and fastened on me. I felt my face heat up, and not merely because I was near the fire. I don’t think I could have taken my eyes off hers if I had two men tugging on me.
Maire’s icy reserve began to thaw as well. Her face took on a sheen from her exertions, and her eyes grew large. She raised her skirt up higher, displaying a glimpse of petticoat, as her feet flashed in a dozen directions, stamping on the door like a thousand hammers. She danced like a fairy, tossing her head about as her hair moved like a live thing. I was spellbound, hypnotized. Who would have suspected this mild girl could have such fire in her?
The wild dance suddenly came to an abrupt end along with the music. She froze into ice again in an instant, the only movement being the heaving of her bosom and the trickle of perspiration down her cheek. We all gave a wild cheer, jumping to our feet, and clapping. I beat Yeats to the punch, pulling the handkerchief from my pocket and presenting it to her. She thanked me, and made her way through the appreciative men toward the cottage, to remake herself into the image of the demure Irish girl, who had been preparing a humble dish of colcannon for her brother and his friends not a half hour earlier. Which, I wondered, was the real Maire O’Casey?
Anything after that, of course, would be anticlimactic. Solemnly, Padraig Bannon stood up and began to play some sad, familiar airs on the pennywhistle, and the men joined in and sang. They were songs of eviction, of the potato famine, forced emigration, and heroes who had been martyred for the cause of Irish freedom. There was something pure and simple in his playing that was almost unbearably tragic. I looked over at Fergus McKeller, now a half dozen pints into his evening. He was crying like a baby over the fate of his countrymen.
The party came to a slow end some time after one in the morning. Most of the men had fallen asleep on the ground outside around the fire. I carried plates into the cottage, but Maire was nowhere to be found. I threw more boards from the outbuilding we’d blown up onto the fire, enough to last the night. The firelight reflecting on the faces of the men asleep around it made them all look like youths, mere boys out for a night’s camping together, rather than the hardened bombers they were.
By the time I went to our cottage, Barker’s broad back was already to me, and he was sound asleep. I supposed I would have been sleepy, if I hadn’t had some strong tea earlier. Tea has always affected me that way. I attempted to sleep, but gave it up after half an hour. I was wide awake and restless, so I got up and went outside.
The moon was full and clear, bathing the landscape in silvery light. It was exactly the kind of atmosphere I’d imagined when reading the book of Irish myths. One could believe in leprechauns and banshees on a night like this. The wind was cool, and I turned up my collar as I made my way down to the beach. I wanted a closer look at the remains of the lighthouse.
There was nothing but a circle of stones now, with a trail of rubble leading to the sea. Well, that was good, then, I told myself. I’d accomplished at least one part of Barker’s objective. We’d proven we were great explosives experts. If someone had told me two months before that I’d be blowing up Welsh lighthouses, I’d have thought he was raving mad.
There was a sound behind me. My training took over. I turned in a crouch and raised my fists. It was Maire, alone. She had a thick shawl wrapped around her, and the pins in her hair just barely held in the wild curls I’d seen at the fire’s edge.
“You’re a dangerous man, Thomas Penrith,” she murmured.
“Not half as dangerous as you, Maire O’Casey.”
Then somehow, her hands were in my hair, and her lips were pressed against mine. Her cold fingers were clenched against the back of my head, which was spinning like a top. I wanted to inhale her, consume her. I wanted us to burn up together. Which was just what would happen if I allowed this to go too far.
16
I could have gone on kissing Maire O’Casey forever, if she would have let me. The feel of her lips and the heady scent of lilac water in her hair are things that will linger in my memory forever. Finally, she put both hands on my chest insistently and ended our kiss. I murmured her name, and she silenced me with her cool hand.
“You quite take a girl’s breath away, Mr. Penrith,” she said, and I could feel her tremble with emotion, or perhaps it was only the chill of the night. She stepped back and gathered her shawl about her shoulders again. “I hadn’t intended to … to … I had better go now.”
She turned, and before I could stop her, she fled, bounding from rock to rock. I could still taste her lips and smell the lilac, but they were the only evidence that it wasn’t a dream, that I wasn’t still in the cottage with Cyrus Barker, sleeping. I didn’t think she’d meant to kiss me. She was going to say something, to utter some commonplace remark about the party or the demonstration or about coming upon me alone so late at night, and then something happened. She was the match and I the dynamite. We’d gotten too close to each other, and a chemical reaction had occurred.
I walked along the shoreline for a while, but every couple of steps my mind and feet were arrested by the memory of what had just happened, and I’d stand and relive it. That had been no casual kiss. I think it surprised her more than it had me, and that is saying a good deal. It was half an hour before I finally thought to return to my berth, and I was still walking with my head in the clouds. That is my explanation for not noticing the train until it hit me.
It wasn’t an actual train, of course, but it might as well have been. It ran on eight legs at a tremendous pace and struck with the force of a steam locomotive. I was knocked clean off my feet and didn’t land again for a half dozen yards. I skidded along a rock and then was crushed in a tangle of arms and limbs and bodies. I tried to see what had hit me, under the silvery moonlight, but what I saw was something out of the book of Irish myths. That alone could explain the wild-haired, blue-skinned Celts that had stepped out of the past and now stood over me.
Eight rough hands seized me, ripping braces and buttons and pulling up my shirt while keeping my limbs pinned to the ground. I struggled as my stomach and chest were laid bare, and for a moment I wondered if I was about to be sacrificed by a secret cabal of Druids to their ancient gods. Then, a rain of blows from sticks showered down, as if my stomach were a drum to be beat upon, and all the fierce warriors began to chant: “Bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,bata,BATA!”
I cried out in pain as my ribs were pummeled. Then, as I lay prostrate, my four assailants proceeded to strip me almost bare, tossing clothes and shoes over their shoulders, as if I’d never need them in this world again. My reverie had suddenly become a nightmare. Finally, the moon slipped from behind a cloud, and I could see what calamity had overtaken me.
Eamon O’Casey looked down on me, his heel on my right shoulder, his stick against my cheek. He was shirtless, though he still wore braces over his naked chest. All manner of designs had been drawn over his face and torso in blue paint, giving him the look of a South Sea island savage. I could see a Celtic dragon across Fergus McKeller’s brawny chest; his braces hung about his knees. Despite his fierce war paint and bare breast, Colin Bannon still wore his respectable bowler, but he’d stuck some feathers into the band; and Padraig was got up as close to a Plains Indian as an Irish lad could be, with nothing but trousers and his waistcoat, and dozens of painted tattoos over his arms, chest, and face.