"Get his pistol."
He examined it and nodded. "Good. Small caliber. He meant to do your face in up close.... Vodka...poteen..."
"I've got it."
Rory pointed to his own mouth and she fed him several large gulps. "Give me something to bite on...then pour vodka in wound...."
Caroline grabbed a towel, folded it, and slipped a corner of it into his mouth. He nodded and clamped down. In went the vodka. Rory bordered on fainting...his eyes rolled back, but he brought himself to bite down one or more time. Caroline filled a second towel with the remains of the vodka and sponged his face and tears and snot.
"Ice?" he groaned.
"Yes, there was some in the ice shed. I brought it in last night."
"Pillow case, fill in ice...front...back...then wrap it on...immobilized arm."
"Iodine first?"
"No...vodka is fine...bullet probably cauterized wound."
Rory drank in great deep gulps while she quickly cut up sheets, packed the ice, and with his directions bandaged his arm against his body.
"Tighter...more booze...drink...watch bleeding..."
Calm, thank God. The blood color of the wound was lightening. Good.
"Are you going to go into shock?"
"Fuck no!"
"Oh, my baby, my baby," she let herself go, "make it for me, baby."
"Aye...do my best...the plan is fucked...we have to think smart."
"The pain?"
"Bad...upstairs...balcony...medical kit...morphine."
As Caroline found it she looked up to the rafter and saw where he had been hiding. God only knows, he might have been there for days.
"Easy on the morphine...about third of syringe...don't want to go under..."
In good time the morphine took hold, and although woozy, he was comfortable. The bleeding slowed further. Shoulder blade, collarbone, dislocated? Jesus, what?
"I can talk better."
"How long have you been hiding up there?"
"When I left you in Belfast, I reported to a hospital and private doctor in Scotland, then doubled back to Ireland. Almost four days in that crawlspace."
"Oh my darling!" Caroline cried, holding his head to her. "I love you so, Rory. The moment you walked in my house and told me I'd find a path to take to make life worth living, I was already walking on it. You are my path to life, Rory. I asked God...I asked God...if it were wrong of me to start feeling alive again, as though my sons were still living through you...as though Conor Larkin were still alive."
"I love you that way, too, Caroline."
"It can't be wrong then. I see Chris coming down off his high horse and Jeremy rising to manhood, and you are the two of them wrapped into one. Are you going to make me a grandmother, are you?" and she wept unabashedly. "You might have gotten killed too."
"No way I was going to leave you alone. You hurting over last night?"
"It's all right," she whispered. "It was the right way to go about it and the right thing to do."
"Dry your tears, huh...and let's figure a way out of this mess...let's see if I can stand."
He fought to his feet then sank to his knees again. "Can you drive the car in?"
"No, the path is too narrow. I've a large-wheeled pushcart."
"I'm too heavy for you to handle, darling. Here's what we'll do. You pack and clear out and tie the ribbon on the gate. When you're clear, there's a pair of Brotherhood lads in the duck blind nearby. They'll see the ribbon and come and tidy up, deal with me, and remove the body."
"I'm not leaving you," she said.
"They'll see your face."
"I'm not leaving you," she repeated.
"I think it's quite safe. Only other men I saw in Ballyutogue were these two, Boyd McCracken and his son, Barry. Boyd was with Conor at Lettershambo."
"I trust them," she said without hesitation.
"Then get them in here."
In ten minutes Boyd and Barry were in the lodge and sized up the situation. Rory was made comfortable on a makeshift bed on the rear seat. Every constable and soldier knew Countess Hubble and would pass her through automatically.
Caroline hugged Boyd and his son with compassion and affection they would remember all their days. They started her car and moved back to the lodge to clean things up and remove Brodhead's body.
"Here's what we do," Rory said. "Full syringe of morphine. Every twenty minutes stop and see if my pulse and heart are steady. If I begin to lose pulse, there's a couple vials of smelling salts to pick up the old heartbeat.... Use back roads around Derry to clear it...then find a telephone...Atty is waiting in a safe house in Belfast.... She's to give you the name of a safe doctor as soon past Derry as possible. I can't make it all the way to Belfast."
She gave him the shot, tucked him in, and kissed his cheek. As his eyes fluttered shut she said, "Don't worry, son, I'll bring you through."
90.
"My dear, dear, dear Caroline," Churchill said, leaping from behind his desk, holding her hand and kissing it. He took a look at her from arm's length and his eyes misted up. "It's been so long since you were in London. How is Sir Frederick?"
"About the same. Unfortunately he is a cat who has used up eight and a half of his lives. You, dear Winston, are only making your third comeback."
"Minister for Munitions isn't exactly First Lord of the Admiralty, but I feel I have a use and even perhaps a future."
"And I predict that your future will make your failures very small potatoes."
"Dear Caroline, loyal comrade. Your affection and support have been a pillar of my strength. You know, I still feel faulty in your presence."
"Quite honestly, Clementine has told me how you have suffered over our losses at Gallipoli."
"She shouldn't have. I don't believe in public displays of grief."
"You have suffered," she said.
"I'm doing my all to mold my agony into a determination to make something of my life that will make those wrongs palatable. I cannot still my prodigious will to be a leader. I may not be able to come to peace with the reality that my hold over the life and death of others must always be a part of it."
When they were seated, Winston saw that Caroline bore her look of unusual power that spelled a conversation demanding absolute candor.
"We are going to have to talk about Gallipoli and some other unpleasant matters, and I am going to do most of the talking."
"In that case, I'll do most of the listening," he said.
"I have analyzed the Commission of Inquiry reports and your own testimony, syllable by syllable. You were the chief architect of a blunder. We need not go over what was wrong. The bottom line was that even if we had the Greek and Italian armies, the success of the venture would still have been very much in question."
His eyes chilled on her.
"I adore you for accepting the role of scapegoat with grace and dignity. You have never pointed the finger at anyone else. You have heard lies and cover-ups of the generals and admirals and kept your silence. You alone, Winston, have been humiliated. Most of it was due to the incompetent generalship of men you had no power to control. You had the War Council and the nation behind you in the beginning. They all deserted when things went wrong. I know you've suffered for me and my loss. I like your stuff, Winston."
"I am most humbled by your words, Caroline."
"I am aware that Asquith is quietly bringing you in as a consultant to him on the Irish situation."
"You know correctly, as usual."
"May I speak to you from here on out as an Irishwoman."
Winston Churchill was stunned.
"The executions in Dublin are fast becoming one of the great political blunders in the history of the British nation. It has fingered England for acts of terror and injustice. This blunder has ennobled the Irish cause and through it you have done what the Irish were incapable of doing by themselves. You have united them."
Well, that was the damned truth if it was ever spoken.
"Anglos always loved it in Ireland, but now, man, you're going to get voted out."
Churchill drew on the comfort of a cigar, but her eyes went right through the smoke.
"Casement, though legally tried and executed, was the worst miscarriage of justice in our times. By hanging a great humanitarian, you not only spat on the Irish people, but you have told future generations they have no legitimate aspirations. You have said, as never before, 'We British think you Irish are pigs.'"
He started to speak out, but she banged her fist on the desk, un-Caroline-like.
"You have a problem," she continued. "In two years the Irish people will vote in a party to recognize the provisional government of the Easter Rising and pull out of the British Parliament. You have two thousand Irish prisoners of war in Fronach in Wales. You have eighty people under death penalty who say they are Irish citizens and not British. Well, what will you give them, Winston? The right to become British again?"
"When we do have women's suffrage and you win your seat in Westminster, Caroline, I suggest you will be the most troublesome backbencher in our history."
"You're frightened half to death to have the Irish at the peace table because when they win a measure of freedom, it will go off like a chain reaction throughout the Empire."
Churchill's affectionate regard for this woman was equal to his respect for her as a skilled adversary.
"I have heard very little from you that I would disagree with. Of course, I'd only agree in private. I'd deny it in public," he said.
"Asquith wants the Irish on the back burner until he gets his peace treaty. Then you can deal with the colony. You know that once you get them at the conference table, you'll negotiate them out of their socks and underwear."
"Well, thank God I won't have you to face across the table, Madam Countess."
"In Ulster we'll end up being British. The rest of Ireland will become something like the Belgian Congo Free State."
"Not all that bad, Caroline. You have very well established your foundation for something. Now, what is it?"
"Knowing that some measure of Irish freedom is inevitable, why the hell did you and Asquith send Llewelyn Brodhead over with a scorched earth policy?"
"The Easter Rising was a bolt from the blue. We knew we had to clamp a lid on until we were ready. We feel now that Brodhead was the wrong man to send, but once sent, it would be too much of a loss of face to recall him. Speaking of the devil, he hasn't reported to the Castle for several days. He's overdue from a fishing retreat."
Caroline had won stage one.
"Brodhead or no, there will be no more executions at this time."
"Brodhead blundered at Gallipoli, at the Nek, and Chunuk Bair," Caroline said suddenly and bluntly.
Winston, thrown totally off balance, reddened.
"My sons' deaths were a direct result of his incompetence and sheer panic-right or wrong, Winston?"
"For God's sake, Caroline!"
"You owe me two, said Aladdin to the genie, yes or no? You owe me two, and I'm collecting if either one of us is ever to have a decent night's sleep again."
"Llewelyn Brodhead lied at the inquiry. The Nek was butchery. He should have evacuated Chunuk Bair seven hours earlier and he would not have evacuated at all if Colonel Malone had not disobeyed orders. Anything else before I am granted my leave?" he asked.
"We're about halfway there, Winston."
"What is your point! I demand to know your point!"
"Brodhead mutinied on the eve of war, threatening the Crown with losing half its officer corps. He helped us win world denunciation in the Boer War. How would you rate him as a British general?"
"I shall not now or ever denounce the magnificent role England has played in world civilization. This little people of ours has been the light of mankind for centuries, opening a world to trade, to the instillation of a culture and system of justice and government second to none. We have done for the world many times over what the world has not been able to do for itself. When one is burdened with such an enterprise, mistakes are made. In the producing of men to hold and enshrine our noble works, yes, there are going to be foul mutations. The system is so large and so powerful, incapable men suddenly find themselves in mighty positions because of war. Llewelyn Brodhead is a beastly mistake."
"And you shouldn't have sent him to Ireland?"
"No."
"And you can't recall him."