I sat, and Vin slid a glass my way. No one spoke, so I started.
“You want the whole story, or just the end?” I asked.
“If you’ve got more, spill it,” Moab said. “But don’t get poetic. You’re not writing a memoir.”
I grunted and poured myself two fingers, neat.
“It’s always raining,” I said. “Always.” I looked at Vin, who nodded and scribbled. “The grass is slick, the stones black as old blood. I’m already running before I know what from.”
“Running toward or away?” Scarlette’s voice was soft, but the question was a punch.
“Both,” I said. “There’s a hill. Not high, but steep enough to hurt. You can see the river at the bottom, and the city behind. Dublin, but not the city we know. Smaller, meaner. Thatched roofs and mud roads. Smoke everywhere.”
Canon rolled his eyes, but I ignored him.
“I’m young. Maybe twenty. Hands are cut up, arms strong. I can feel the calluses even now.” I closed my fist, let the memory ride up my arm and into my gut. “There’s fighting on the hill. Not just us, but dozens, maybe more. The English are coming up from the water. I hear the metal before I see them—armor, swords, those old rifles that take a minute to reload.”
“Matchlocks,” Vin said, without looking up. “Seventeenth century.”
“Whatever,” I muttered. “All I know is, we’re outnumbered. We’re supposed to hold the hill. We’re supposed to be heroes.” I laughed, ugly. “None of us even had boots. I remember the mud, how it sucked at your ankles every time you tried to run.”
I looked up. Moab was stone, but his hands were white-knuckled around his glass.
“I get shot. Not right away. There’s a lot of running, a lot of screaming. The rain makes it hard to see, but I know I get shot because the fire comes first, then the cold. I drop, and my mouth fills with dirt, but all I’m thinking about is whether she’s watching. Whether Catherine is there.”
Vin perked up. “She’s your wife?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not at first. She’s just… the only reason I go back up the hill. I should have stayed down, let myself bleed out. But she’s there, at the bottom, with the other women. I hear her voice above everything—she’s shouting, calling me home. I crawl, then I run. I make it halfway before someone sticks me with a pike. Right in the ribs, below the heart.” I tapped my chest. “Hurts like hell. I go down again.”
Scarlette leaned in. “You die?”
I nodded. “I die. But I don’t leave. Not for a long time. I see her wading through the mud, skirt torn, hair wild. She’s not crying. She’s angry. She finds me, presses her hand to the wound, but there’s nothing to be done. She knows it, and I know it. But she stays anyway. She curses my name, curses the war, curses God. She kisses me and tastes the blood, and I remember thinking she deserved better.”
The room was so quiet you could hear the freezer humming behind the bar. I flexed my left forearm. The shamrock tattoo seemed to glow under the cheap light. “She buries me herself. No priest, no prayers. Just a pile of rocks and her voice in the wind. She says, ‘I’ll see you again, someday, you stubborn bastard.’ I believe her.”
Vin’s pen stopped moving. “Her name is Catherine?”
“Catherine Dunn,” I said, and something twisted inside me. “She was taller than I, at least when I was kneeling. Black hair, eyes like the ocean before a storm. She laughed like wind through reeds, always at the wrong time.”
Scarlette smiled, for real. “Sounds like you loved her.”
“I did,” I said. “Still do. Maybe that’s why I keep seeing her.”
Canon shook his head, but not to argue. “You believe this?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” I admitted. “But the dreams don’t lie. And they’re getting worse.”
Moab finally spoke, voice brittle. “Why tell us now?”
I stared at him. “Because it’s not a dream anymore. Last night, when I woke up, my sheets were soaked. Not sweat, not piss. Just water. Like I’d crawled out of a river.”
No one laughed.
Vin flipped pages in his notebook. “There was a battle near Dublin, 1649. Cromwell’s men slaughtered the Irish defenders on the hill above the river Liffey. The survivors were buried in unmarked graves. Some stories say the women came at night to reclaim their dead.”
I nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Canon looked at me, hard. “So what do you want?”