A/N: This fic is a companion piece to 'The Dreaming of Philippe de Chagny', 'For Love and the Voice on the Wind' and 'Blood Upon the Rose'. It is not necessary to read those to enjoy this, suffice to say that it's set during the Irish War of Independence.
Title comes from the poem 'Máire Plays' by Terence MacSwiney, written November 1919
This fic is my entry for notaghost3's annual one-shot challenge!
They decided it safer not to spend Christmas together. Cork City had been burned hardly two weeks earlier, and with all the raids Christine was concerned that Christmas might be the day the Tans would come calling. If it happened, she would not have Erik and the others found in her cottage.
As it transpired, she was justified in her concern. The Tans came late on Christmas Eve, and the mince pies she had just put cooling were lost as they turned the place over, looking for weapons, looking for coded messages, looking for any sign that anyone was hiding.
The same ones had called in August, called again in late October, and if that visit had happened a couple of hours earlier they would have found Murray, come to tell her that Lord Mayor MacSwiney was dead.
"If you see anyone…" and she knew he meant Philippe, meant Erik and Sorelli, and she nodded.
"I'll let them know."
It was that night, as she picked up shattered plates after the Tans, that Philippe stopped in, his face pale and drawn. He didn't want to stay for tea, was stopping just to see how she was, if she had heard, but when he saw the place in disarray his lips twisted, and he insisted on helping her to put it right. She sat him down, and made him tea, and knew he would not be stopping again until he reached Cork.
("I was in Waterford when the news came through," and his voice was low. "They say his—say his brother was with him when it happened."
(She did not ask him where Raoul was, not that night. Enough, to worry about someone else's brother instead, if only for a little while.)
She has not seen Philippe since.
Though the Tans spent an hour searching the house on Christmas Eve, they did not find the knife hidden in her skirt, or the pistol under the loose floorboard beneath the bed.
She shudders to think what they would have done to her, if they had known.
No matter. No matter, not when Erik and Philippe and Sorelli and Raoul were safe, and somewhere else.
She hoped they were together.
(She will learn that they were apart. Philippe in Cork with the Stockleys, Raoul with the Fleischmanns. Sorelli in Granard. Erik, stowing away on a boat on his way to Cobh.)
Christine lit a candle for each of them, and tried to pray, but could think, only, of the book of poetry Raoul had sent her.
Eva Gore-Booth, Broken Glory.
The Tans did not get their hands on that.
They could not be together for Christmas, but they arrange, carefully, to ring in the New Year in each other's company.
There will never be a year like 1920 again. It seems fitting to mark the passing of it as well as they can.
They arrange the meeting through coded notes in Irish. Christine's father was in Conradh na Gaeilge, and he taught it to her alongside music, and after he was deported, after he died, she kept his books, kept his notes, made her own study of the language.
A way to be close to him, still.
And so the meeting is arranged, that they will journey to her cottage for New Year's Eve, coming from four different directions.
She has not had much to look forward to, lately, but she looks forward to this.
She even bakes them a cake.
On 31 December, Sorelli is the first to arrive.
She is wearing a man's suit, her hair pinned up under a hat. "Seamus Ó Súilleabháin" she has been calling herself, and claiming to be an accountant from Midleton. While Christine is making tea, she goes into the back room, and reemerges as herself, her long hair plaited and the suit put away.
"I spent last night with Margaret Skinnider," she says, "and we decided a disguise was the best way to go. She has a great collection of suits."
Christine grins as she pours the tea. "It worked. I thought you were one of Lynch's boys."
Sorelli decides to go to bed for a little while, and Christine will claim her as her cousin from London if anyone comes looking. Sorelli does an excellent English accent, courtesy of her years on the stage, and she has recently had time to practice it, when she spent most of September in London.
In the event, no one comes looking, and a little over an hour later Christine catches sight of a blond head in the distance, coming up the path.
She puts the kettle boiling, and checks again to see which De Chagny brother it is.
Philippe, not Raoul. She knows by the slant of his shoulders.
(A faltering in her chest, but it is not disappointment, it is not, it is more that she was expecting Raoul and this is not Raoul.)
She opens the door before he can knock, and he inclines his head to her. "Miss Daaé."
"Mr De Chagny." And she holds her face straight, just for a moment, before she grins, and he smiles and kisses her cheek.
"It's good to see you safe, Christine."
"And you."
Footsteps behind her, and she turns around and finds Sorelli, with one brow cocked and her hand on her hip.
"Am I dreaming, or is this Philippe De Chagny I see before me?"
Philippe swoops low in a bow. "Your eyes do not deceive you, my queen."
From deep in the folds of his overcoat, Philippe produces two flasks of brandy, and when Christine makes a fresh round of tea he adds just a dash to each mug. "After the year it's been," he says, a forced cheerfulness in his voice, "it's well-warranted", and he does not refer to the things that have made the year so terrible, but Christine does not need him to.
(MacCurtain, shot dead in front of his wife and family in the small hours of the morning; MacSwiney, arrested in City Hall, and the hunger strike that ended in his death; Barry hanged at eighteen; half of Trim burned, Balbriggan too. The shootings in Croke Park, in Dublin Castle. And two weeks ago, Cork burning – the Carnegie Library, gone, the City Hall where both MacCurtain and MacSwiney had lain in state, gone, homes, businesses, all burned to the ground. The wonder of it, that no one was killed.)
(A roll of things, and so many hundreds, thousands, more, and every night she can hardly sleep for imagined footsteps on the path, for men needing to be hidden, and the Tans coming after them.)
(Fighting them even in her dreams, now.)
Philippe takes a swig of the brandy, and Sorelli squeezes his hand.
"Where did you sleep last night?" and at her question, Christine, too, sees the tiredness in him.
"A cow-shed."
They both retreat to the back room, and Christine can hear their muffled whispers, just a few minutes, and then there is quiet, again, and she hopes Philippe has gotten to sleep.
Even a few minutes will do him good. Sorelli will be listening, in case anyone comes calling who shouldn't.
Christine fixes the fire, clears the table. The sun sets early, now, and the first darkness of the evening is creeping in, clouds hanging lower in the sky.
She lights the lamp, and banishes the darkness from the kitchen.
A shuffle from the room, and the door creaks open. She is expecting Sorelli, but it is Philippe, his hair in disarray, his heavy overcoat wrapped tight around him.
"Do you want anything?" she asks, her voice soft as he comes to the table.
He shakes his head. "No. I just—find it difficult to sleep, lately." A thin smile. "Too many close escapes."
"And Raoul?" she asks before she can stop herself, and regrets it when she sees how his jaw tightens.
"I haven't seen him since I left Cork."
(If anything had happened to Raoul, it would have been the first thing they mentioned, the first thing—)
(Unless it happened after they parted.)
"I'm afraid we weren't in much of a mood to celebrate his birthday this year," and Philippe is not looking at her, focused instead on the deck of cards in his hands. "It was only a few days after Terry MacSwiney's funeral." He splits the deck and lays down one half of it. "I promised him that next year we'll mark it properly, when things have settled."
"How can you be sure things will have settled?"
He flicks over the top card. Ace of spades. "They have to."
(Next year. Always next year.)
(It will be better. It will be different.)
(The promises they cling to, saving them from despair.)
Sorelli has joined them by the time the night has deepened in. And when they hear the crunch of the gravel outside, she and Philippe creep into the back room, ready to dive out the window, if they must.
But Christine opens the door, and in the glow of the kitchen light she finds a face both ravaged and dearly familiar.
Erik.
"Christine!"
And when he grins, she sees his lip is bleeding.
The light reveals bruises, purpling his jaw. Reveals his left eye, swollen almost shut, a gash at the edge of his forehead, stitched closed, the bleeding lip. And when he moves stiffly to sit in a chair, Christine realises that his face is the least of the damage.
"What happened?" Philippe's voice is tight.
"I was…picked up a few nights ago." Erik winces as Sorelli unbuttons his shirt. "They didn't know who they had so I gave them every other name I could think of. Ruairí Mac Easmainn, Pádraig Mac Piarais, Micheál Ó Rathghaille. They…took particular exception when I said Traolach Mac Suibhne."
His shirt falls away to reveal mottled purple skin, swollen along his ribs. Christine hands Sorelli the bottle of liniment from the cupboard.
"How did you get away?" Left unspoken, why didn't they shoot you?
"O'Donoghue got word that there was someone using the names of dead men held in the barracks. He didn't know it was me, but he and Hegarty organised some of the boys from the No.1 Brigade to spring me."
He makes it sound straightforward, in spite of his bruises, in spite of the blood.
"I lay up with the Wallace sisters a day and he sent a doctor to check me over. Fella by the name of Anderson. As it happens," and he has a slight smile for Philippe, "we know him as R."
"R the intelligence man?"
"The very same."
They make Erik comfortable by the fire, a cushion pressed tight to his damaged ribs because he insists it helps. Christine holds the mirror up for him to inspect his face, and when Philippe dabs the blood from his lip, Erik grimaces.
"Not pretty, is it?"
"I hardly notice a difference," Sorelli's voice is deadpan and Erik snorts.
"You're an awful liar," but he's grinning, and even Philippe gives a slight smile.
The hour hand on the clock inches towards nine pm, and still there is no sign of Raoul. The talk has gone out of Philippe, his watch chain twisted tight between his fingers as he gazes into the fire, and Christine tries not to think what he must be thinking, tries to tell herself that Raoul is simply delayed, that any minute they'll hear him come up the path.
(He has not been arrested.)
(He has not been shot.)
(Delayed. Just delayed.)
The brandy, passed around.
She takes a sip to steady the lurch of her heart. It burns as she swallows it.
Erik's head resting on Sorelli's shoulder. Philippe's eyes squeezed shut, his head bowed.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
That minute hand.
She sets the kettle back on to boil.
Philippe is on his feet, whirling towards the door before she hears the footsteps.
"Get down!" Sorelli grabbing his sleeve but he pulls away from her.
"I don't give a fuck if it's the Tans," he hisses, and Christine sees the flash of his revolver.
"Philippe—"
"Ssshhh."
The knock on the door, Christine's heart pounding, their eyes boring into the back of her neck. She glances behind her, finds Erik standing tall, a revolver in each hand, Sorelli's hand deep in her pocket, and then Christine turns her attention back to the door, back to the silence on the other side of it, and the silence means nothing because sometimes the Tans have waited for her to open it and sometimes they have just burst in as if they could catch her mid-plotting, but it is silent now and she reaches and turns the knob.
It is cold beneath her touch.
The door swings open, and she sees a flash of blond hair, a dark coat, and the grinning face of that infuriating boy, Raoul de Chagny.
The grin dies from his face at the sight of so many guns.
"Christ you all look pleased to see me."
The blur of the brothers embracing. "Don't you dare frighten me…" "I had to evade three patrols…they nearly got Seán MacSwiney…" Sorelli hugging Raoul, "…thought he was going to make a stand…", Erik, "…good to see you…" "What happened to your face?" And Christine slips away to the kettle to give them space, but she's a little lightheaded with relief and Raoul is all right, he's all right, he's here, he's safe, and her eyes are damp but that's just relief, just relief—
"Christine," and his voice is close behind her, soft, and she turns to him, his eyes bright blue, a lock of hair falling over his forehead, "I—"
What he might say she doesn't know, only that her heart lurches, her lips tingling as if she would kiss him but she can't kiss him, not—they're not—and he raises his arm as if he might hug her, but she takes his hand instead, and squeezes it.
"It's good to see you, Raoul," she says, her voice steadier than she feels, and his eyes flicker, just a moment, before a smile breaks across his face.
"And it's good to see you, too."
After, there will be stories of daring escapes, of a visit to Brixton Prison and volleys fired over graves and messages carried in the lining of a cigarette case. After, there will be kisses, and a clock counting down to midnight, counting out the dying minutes of a year that it would be a relief to forget but an injustice to do so. There will be brandy sipped and songs sung and promises made, whispered hopes and pieces of memories. After, there will be time, for one night.
But for now, there is Erik, dozing by the fire. There is Sorelli, carding her fingers through Philippe's hair, his head in her lap. There is Raoul, drinking tea and eating as many mince pies as he can contain. And there is Christine, watching them all, and knowing that she would not choose to spend this night any other way.
("This is a great cake, by the way.")
("If you ever get yourself arrested, I'll send you one.")
(Philippe snorts, and turns his face into Sorell's belly so neither his brother nor Christine will see him grinning at their almost-flirting.)
(The best way to spend the ending of the year, right here.)
A/N: I could write a very long historical note, but I'll spare you all that. Suffice it to say, everyone mentioned in the fic (aside from the PotO characters (obvs.), Anderson/R the intelligence man, and Murray), were all real people, and all of the events referenced as having happened did happen in 1920. The Tans were Black and Tans - part of a police force sent to Ireland in the spring of the year made up of ex-soldiers when it became obvious that the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were coming under pressure. The Tans - and the related force the Auxies - were noted for their brutality. Lord Mayor MacSwiney was Terence MacSwiney, and he died in Brixton Prison after 74 days on hunger strike. He is the same Terence MacSwiney that gave this fic its title, and Seán MacSwiney was his younger brother who was with him when he died after the rest of the family was barred from being present. The poem that the fic title came from was written about his baby daughter, who was 2 years old when he died.
As ever, if you enjoyed this fic, please do review!