Ada took hold of Maggie’s hand and gripped it tightly. “Aylen’s men have arrested someone for the fire last night.”
Maggie sneered and pulled free. “I don’t have time for Aylen right now—”
“It’s Colleen,” said Ada, and Maggie froze. “Your friend, Colleen. They caught her, beat her, dragged her Barracks Hill—”
“Barracks Hill? Why?”
Ada’s face looked so, so sad. “She’s to be hanged at noon.”
The guards were unmoved by the desperation on display. They held their ground, glaring at the old man with tight-locked jaws.
“M-my daughter, Colleen Crowley, was b-brought here this morning!” he stammered, face white as a sheet. “I demand…I mean I…” He dropped to his knees. “Please, please, please…I need to see her. There’s been a mistake. I just need to see her…”
From up the hill, an officer in a red coat was storming down toward the gate. Mr Crowley raised a hand when he saw him, calling out: “Yes! Yes, hello! My daughter, Colleen Crowley, was brought—”
“You’ve got to stop this racket,” snarled the officer, throwing open the gates, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “The hanging’s not ‘til noon, and I’ll be damned if I have to listen to—”
“Please, sir, please…” said Mr Crowley, hands pressed together like in prayer. “There’s been a mistake. My Colleen would never—”
The officer frowned to one of the guards. “Is he deaf?”
Mr Crowley moved closer, only to be met with a kick to the leg, which sent him sprawling. The officer spat on him. “Say your good-byes when she’s brought out,” he said. “Until then, sod off.”
He went back inside, and the guards took up their positions again. The officer called out into the air: “If he says another word, shoot him!”
The guards checked their rifles.
Mr Crowley was struggling to get to his feet when a hand reached over and hoisted him up. He brushed the snow off his jacket, and held himself together long enough to whisper: “Thank you, sir. I’m…”
His expression froze when he saw who he was talking to.
Maggie was trying to find the sleeve to her coat with no success. She kept trying, though, as she marched toward the horse tied up at the side of Ada’s house. Ada followed with just as much determination, calling after:
“This is suicide, Mrs Kelly! Suicide!”
“I have to stop it,” said Maggie. “I can’t let her die—”
“We won’t!” said Ada. “I have messages out to all my associates across Uppertown, trying to postpone or—”
“Postpone?” snapped Maggie, rearing around. “Colleen is innocent! She’s going to hang because Aylen wants—”
“His lies will fall apart upon the lightest scrutiny. All we need to do is buy enough time for that scrutiny to happen.”
“And you really think your Uppertown friends will make that effort on behalf of an Irishwoman, do you?”
Ada’s gaze drifted downward. “I hope so.”
“I don’t have the luxury of hope,” she said, finally getting her arm through the sleeve. “I’ve got to do something.” She untied the horse from its post, grabbed hold of the saddle horn, and—
“Maggie!” called Béatrice, from the window. “Maggie, you must come!”
“I’m not changing my—”
“He’s trying to follow!” said Béatrice. “He’ll kill himself trying to stop you!”
Maggie cursed under her breath and rushed inside.
Mr Crowley was trembling with fear as they made their way down the road from Barracks Hill, down toward Wellington and the over-full cemetery there. He kept his head bowed, body small, trying not to antagonize his saviour.
“There’s been a mistake,” he said, much quieter than with the soldiers. “I keep saying there’s been a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?” asked Cedric Sisk.
“M-my Colleen was at home last night. She came home well b-before the fire bells rang, went straight to bed. There’s no way she’s responsible f-for—”
“I know, and I agree,” said Sisk, gripping Crowley’s shoulder tightly. “She’s as innocent as a rose, yer daughter is.”
Mr Crowley couldn’t mask his surprise. “She is? I mean you do? You believe me?”
“I do,” said Sisk. “Seems to me the authorities snatched up the wrong woman…”
“Exactly! Exactly!”
“…when they ought to have been hangin’ Maggie Kelly.”
Mr Crowley froze. The fear came rushing back so suddenly, he froze. “M-Maggie?”
Sisk leaned closer, tapping a finger on Crowley’s well-pressed shirt. “She stays at your place a lot, doesn’t she? Like a second home?”
“I…I mean s-sometimes…” He shook off his confusion. “But she hasn’t, recently.”
“Any idea where she’d go otherwise? Other friends? Relatives? Lovers?”
Crowley recoiled at the words. “No, she doesn’t—”
“You’re like a father to her, in a way, wouldn’t you say?”
“N-no, I’m just—”
“Your daughter’s going to hang for something Maggie Kelly did. That doesn’t bother you just a bit?”
“Maggie would never—”
Sisk grabbed Crowley by the throat, jerked him forward. “Someone is guilty here, Mr Crowley. All you gotta decide is who you can bear to see hanged.”
Liam was trying to push himself upright when Maggie got there. His leg was still open, the bandages around his bones barely holding together as he moved. Béatrice was leaning on him, desperate to keep him still, but he was too strong, too determined.
“Liam, no!” Maggie shouted, and he immediately lay back, obedient and exhausted. “The doctor wanted to take that leg, Liam,” she said. “He told me you’d die if it stayed, but I insisted. If you don’t stay still, though, he’ll have been right.”
“Colleen needs me…” he wheezed, bordering on delirious again.
“Colleen needs me,” said Maggie. “And we all need you to stay put and let Dr Cameron tend to you. You’re no good to us dead.”
He caught her arm, squeezed it like it gave him bearings. “You can’t stop them,” he said. “You can’t save her…”
“I have to try,” she said.
“But how?” asked Béatrice, watching them warily. “Barracks Hill is not a place you can sneak into. You cannot break her out, and the moment Aylen sees you, he will—”
“I have to try,” Maggie repeated. “We’ve come this far. I have to try everything I can to save her.” She moved Liam’s hand off her arm. “Whatever happens, I have to try.”
Béatrice let out a gasp, pointed. “You’re bleeding!”
Maggie looked down at the growing bloodstain at the crook of her right arm. “From the fire. It’s nothing,” she said, but Béatrice was having none of it.
“Take off the coat,” she said. “If you faint on the way to the rescue mission, it will be no rescue at all.”
Maggie did as she was told, as Liam pressed his palms into his eyes. “There has to be another way…” he said. “There has to be something we haven’t thought of.”
As Béatrice wrapped her arm in a bandage, Maggie laid a hand on Liam’s chest. For his comfort or hers, she wasn’t sure. “You have to promise me you’ll stay,” she said. “No matter what happens, no matter what you hear…you have to stay.”
“Maggie, I—”
“I can’t do this if I’m worried you’ve died on the doorstep, being a fool,” she said, tears in her eyes. “It will be hard enough as-is. Please don’t make it worse.”
He looked into her eyes, tortured by the words she was speaking. But he nodded, solemn. “Aye,” he said. “I promise.”
“Good,” she smiled, and squeezed his hand in hers. “Take care of Colleen, once she’s free,” she said.
“Take care of her?” he asked. “What about you? Where are you—”
Her arm was mostly done being wrapped, so she pulled free and threw on her coat. “Stay inside. Don’t be seen. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
And with that, she turned and stormed outside, not listening to Liam’s desperate calls for her to wait, to stop, to think of another way.
Ada met her at the base of the steps, eyes narrowed with slapped-on determination. “You can’t have the horse,” she said. “I won’t be a party to your suicide.”
“Fine,” said Maggie, and started off on foot.
“Mrs Kelly!” Ada called. “Please! Don’t do this!”
Maggie ignored her and kept walking.
The wind was picking up as she crested the hill near Lowertown; the cold cut right through her coat, the blood-soaked spot on her arm searing like ice-cold fire on her skin. She wrapped herself a little tighter and kept moving; the sun was getting higher, and she couldn’t afford to be late.
Crowds were already streaming out of Lowertown. Good Irish folk, coming to see justice done for the wrongs inflicted upon them. Maggie steered clear, keeping them at a safe distance. There was still a bounty on her head, after all…and after the night they’d had, she had little doubt that any one of them would turn on her without a second thought.
The trouble was, the only way to Barracks Hill was across the canal, and the only way across the canal was over Sapper’s Bridge…where soldiers had been replaced by Shiners, standing watch, axes in hand.
Maggie held back, waiting by a cluster of trees by the head of the Corkstown road, trying to spot a way past. For a moment, she considered climbing down the embankment to the canal and risking the ice to get across…but that was too exposed, too obvious a ploy. She’d be spotted in a second, with nowhere to run.
So Sapper’s Bridge it was. It wasn’t a toll bridge—unlike almost every other one in the county—but it was far from free. The Shiners were stationed to intimidate, and they did their jobs well. The Irish passing by all bowed their heads low as they passed, trying to avoid eye contact…which gave Maggie an idea.
She doubled back, flipping up her collar and burying her chin as low as she could, to shield her face. She found a group of thirty or so citizens on their way out, and wove her way into their group, near the back, without saying a word. The wind was too strong and the air too cold for anyone to be especially chatty, so her behaviour was nothing to note.
As they approached the bridge, though, and she saw those Shiners with their imposing sneers and their sharpened axes, she started to panic.
“Turn back, love,” said Rían, keeping pace with her, mixed into the crowd. “You don’t need to do this.”
“She’s my friend,” Maggie whispered, trying not to stand out. “I can’t let her die.”
“The others were right, though,” said Rían. “What can you do? How could you stop it?”
“I’ll—”
“No. No you won’t. Anything you think you’ll do, you won’t. All you get out of this—if you survive at all—is to see Colleen die. And you know—”
“Shh,” Maggie said, looking away from him, and hating herself for it. “Not now.”
They were at the eastern end of the bridge now, as near to the Shiners as they’d ever be. The women ahead of Maggie all bowed their heads like a wave in the ocean, and she did too, curling forward so there wouldn’t be a good view of her at any angle.
“Maggie, turn around,” said Rían, right by her ear, and she flinched.
“Oi,” said one of the Shiners, to her left. “You there…”
The folks around her all looked up, confused, because they weren’t sure who exactly was being singled out. They started separating out, backing away, trying to avoid being the one he wanted.
“You can still go,” said Rían. “You can still make it.”
“I can’t,” she whispered to the ghost. “Stop—”
“I said you there!” shouted the Shiner, pushing through the crowd, straight toward Maggie. “Look at me when I talk to you!”
“Maggie,” warned Rían. “Maggie, please—”
“I can’t—”
The Shiner reached out and grabbed—
—the arm of the man next to her, jerking him around and knocking him to his knees. The man’s hood fell off to reveal an extremely French-looking face, twisted up in disgust. The Canadien spat on the Shiner, then cackled, up until the moment he was punched.
The other Shiners on the bridge rushed over to help, shouting to the other crossers to hurry up, get moving, stop staring, and move move move!
When Maggie got to the other side of the bridge, she looked back to see the Shiners beating the poor lone Canadien into a heap. Whatever he’d hoped to accomplish at the base of Barracks Hill today, that plan was dead now.
Maggie’s own plan survived a little longer. But only by a little.
She hurried to keep up with the crowd, because there would certainly be more Shiners about, and fewer distractions to save her. They crossed over, past the slope into the swamp, and then by the cemetery that—
Maggie stopped as her breath left her, eyes blinking to try to focus on something she wished wasn’t real…but was.
There, propped up against the nearest gravestone, clear for all to see, was a man in a fine-tailored suit, his white shirt stained crimson red with the blood that had poured from his sliced throat. His eyes were staring out in disbelief. Staring straight at Maggie. Begging to know why…
She fell to her knees, her whole body seizing with grief she couldn’t contain. Mr Crowley was dead, and it was all her fault. She doubled over, her forehead pressed into the snow, and gasped for air, but all that came was more panic, more despair, more anger.
“No…” she whimpered. “No, God, please no…”
She looked up again—wishing it wasn’t real like Rían wasn’t real—and was hit by the look in his eyes all over again.
She turned away, but in the split second before she closed her eyes, she saw something that made her re-focus, made the terror disappear almost instantly…a man, waiting for her, back toward Sapper’s Bridge. Watching her closely.
Sisk.
He had a grin on his face that was pure evil, and in his hands was a bloody knife, which he was flipping around and around again, just biding his time, waiting for his next kill. He wasn’t coming for her. He was waiting for her to be forced to come to him. He had all the time in the world.
Maggie got to her feet, body trembling all over again, and turned back to the cemetery and the body of her best friend’s father, and then up the hill to the walls and gates where her best friend would soon be hanged for something she didn’t do, and…
“Maggie, you can’t,” said Rían, closer now than ever before. “Please, it won’t work. You know it won’t work. You can’t do this…”
“I have to,” she said, and started up the road where the rest of the crowd was starting to congregate.
“You don’t, though!” shouted Rían, falling behind. “Please, Maggie, please!”
She ignored him. When she got to the crowd, she didn’t blend in, didn’t try to hide. She pushed her way through. Straight up to the front, where four soldiers guarded the gate, and just beyond, the scaffolding meant to hang Colleen.
The soldiers shoved her back, but she didn’t back down. “I need to speak to your commanding officer,” she said, and the closest guard sneered.
“And why’s that?”
“This execution can’t happen,” she said, then yelled out for all to hear: “Colleen Crowley is innocent!”
The guard laughed. “Oh, and we’re meant to take your word for it, are we? Who’re you to tell right from wrong?”
Maggie’s voice didn’t waver as she declared: “I am Maggie Kelly, and I know she’s innocent…because I started the Corkstown blaze!”