‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’ Phelan demanded. ‘Swear it, Dermot, on your mother’s life.’
‘Aye, I swear.’
‘What about the day you saw a glimpse of the place? Did you mention it to your father?’
‘No fear,’ Dermot said. ‘I didn’t know what it was. I meant to explore it on my own. My mother never wants me out of her sight and I wouldn’t have told either of them.’
‘Where do they think you are now, then?’
‘They don’t know, I snuck away when they were busy. They’ll know I’ll make for your place. Mammy will give out to me when I go back.’
‘What if your Daddy comes looking for you?’ Phelan said. ‘What if he goes to the farm and Mammy tells him of you and Rosie going off and making for the hills? He could come looking for you.’
Rosie worriedly saw Phelan had a point. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We put all that ammunition back just the way it was and get as far from here as possible. You never come near this place again, Dermot. Do you hear what I say?’
The boy nodded, but Phelan was not satisfied. ‘I mean it, Dermot, and you say nothing, not to anyone. This is not a game.’
‘Phelan, stop it,’ Rosie said angrily, seeing the fear on Dermot’s face and feeling the way his whole body shook. ‘You’re frightening him.’
‘He needs frightening,’ Phelan said, dropping to his knees and wrapping the pistols up in the canvas cover the way they had been. ‘There are desperate men in the IRB and while me and Shay, Sam and Niall would try to protect you, I don’t know how much influence we’d have if they found out either you or Dermot had been here.’
‘Sweet Jesus, Phelan! What in God’s name have you got mixed up in? A fine organisation it must be all right, if it threatens women and weans.’
‘I’m fighting for Irish Freedom and the right to rule our own country,’ Phelan snapped angrily. ‘We’ve planned and trained for months. Surprise is the key and if that was jeopardised in some way and the British Army were waiting for us, what d’you think they’d do? Shake us by the hand? All I’m saying is neither of you come here again, or mention it to anyone at all, or you might be very sorry.’
‘Just two more casualties of war, Phelan?’ Rosie asked bitterly, putting the rifles back into the hole gently.
‘Aye, if you want to see it that way,’ Phelan said menacingly. ‘Come on, we’re finished here.’
He roughly pulled Rosie to her feet and kicked the mat into place. ‘Let’s go.’
He blew out the lamp and replaced it on the mantelshelf and then strode across the room, suddenly plunged into semidarkness, and opened the door. ‘Come on,’ he urged Rosie and Dermot in a hissing whisper. ‘Every minute we stay is more dangerous. I’ll lead the way through the undergrowth, just in case. Not a word now, and go as quietly as possible.’
Easier said than done. Rosie thought a little later as she was pulled to a stop yet again by a thorn snagging her shawl. With the fronds slapping at them and the leaves and mud under their feet, hiding the twigs that broke with a loud snap, it was impossible to move as quietly as Phelan would have liked and he’d keep turning at a particularly loud noise and hiss at Rosie who was directly behind him, ‘Quiet, for God’s sake.’
Rosie was glad to reach the end of that green tunnel, glad to straighten her back and stand up once more on the path, pulling at the leaves and small twigs caught in her hair and dusting down her clothes as she waited for Dermot. A worry was nagging at her. ‘Phelan,’ she said. ‘Dermot was right in what he said. He told no-one but me what he’d found. Well, he didn’t tell me, he showed me. But he was in a state when he came to the farm. Mammy will wonder what it was about. What shall we say?’
Phelan said nothing at first. He led them down the path a little way, where there was a broken tree, and stopped. He knew this was a problem. Connie would undoubtedly wonder at the behaviour of Dermot. He’d wondered himself, hadn’t he?
What else would generate the same excitement for a child? What story could they dream up that would satisfy Connie? ‘You could say I found a badgers’ sett,’ Dermot said suddenly. ‘I did once, when I was out with Daddy. It was nearly dark and we saw the mother badger and two babies come out. They hadn’t heard us and we stopped and watched them. Would that do it?’ he asked Phelan. ‘Would your mother believe that?’
‘She might,’ Phelan said. ‘Aye, indeed she might. Say you called for me too on the way,’ he told Rosie.
‘Why can’t you say that yourself?’
‘Because I’m going to lead young Dermot home.’
‘You needn’t,’ Dermot said. ‘I can go home on my own.’
‘I know that fine well,’ Phelan said. ‘But today I’m coming with you. We need to talk.’
Dermot gave a sigh. Phelan would go on about not telling anyone again. He didn’t need to keep on, Dermot wasn’t stupid and he was scared enough already to keep his mouth closed.
But he said none of this to Phelan. Phelan, the boy he liked and admired, seemed to have disappeared overnight and had turned into a stern man with a gruff voice and cold eyes, and he was wary of upsetting him.
And so, when, just a few minutes after leaving Rosie, Phelan began to stress again the need for secrecy, he didn’t even show the slightest impatience. And then Phelan said, ‘I want you to do something for me.’
Dermot was now all ears. He’d do anything to get back in Phelan’s good books. ‘Aye,’ he said.
‘I want you to take a letter home to my parents.’
‘A letter?’
‘Aye,’ Phelan said. ‘I might have to go away from this place in a wee while and I won’t be able to tell my parents till I’m gone.’
‘Another secret?’
‘Aye, and I won’t have them worried more than they will be anyway. If I leave you a letter, will you take it to them?’
‘Aye, but how will I know the time to take it?’
‘I’ll get word to you,’ Phelan said. ‘After dark. Which room do you sleep in?’
‘The end one,’ Dermot said. ‘You go through Geraldine and Chrissie’s room to get to mine. Mammy and Daddy sleep in a corner of the kitchen in a curtained-off bed.’
‘Good,’ Phelan said. ‘So if I throw gravel at your window to wake you up, it shouldn’t rouse the house?’
‘No,’ Dermot said doubtfully. ‘But I’m sometimes hard to wake up. I’ll leave my window a little bit open from now on.’
‘I don’t know the exact date,’ Phelan said. ‘None of us have been told that yet, but it will be soon. I’ll come as soon as I know. I’ll have the letter written and ready. And you’ll take it to Mammy on the farm, the day I ask you to.’
‘Aye.’
‘And you’ll not say a word of this conversation,’ Phelan said. ‘If they ask, say you had your window slightly open and you found the letter on your bedroom floor later that day. All right?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good man, Dermot,’ Phelan said, and Dermot’s heart lightened, for it was obvious Phelan had forgiven him for discovering the cottage and finding the stash of arms. He was trusting him now to take an important letter to his parents when he was about business to free Ireland. This Brotherhood thing he was in sounded exciting. Dermot wished he was old enough to join. Maybe Phelan could put a word in for him later, if he delivered the letter and told