Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. - Emily Dickinson

May 20, 1920

Daniel's Workshop

Edith wandered around the pristine workroom, touching the smooth wood on dressers, cabinets, and moulding. She felt Patrick's anxious eyes on her, knew how important her opinion was to him…and it warmed her heart. He was a true artist, she thought in awe, although she shouldn't have been surprised. The hands that caressed her skin when they were alone were an artist's hands; the beauty resident in his soul shone through his eyes every time he looked at her. And he thought her beautiful! It meant everything.

"Darling, these pieces are lovely." She stopped before a small desk, his signature ivy pattern gracing the edges of the small drawers and the front of the smooth drop front. Graceful cabriole legs curved outward and ended in small pad feet. A half-finished Queen Anne chair stood in front of the desk, waiting for the artist to release its beauty. Edith sighed. He had found his calling. And she…

"I know what I want to do." She turned to face him, suddenly shy. If he laughed at her…but she knew he wouldn't. He would be honest, but he wouldn't laugh. His kindness was another thing she loved about him.

He said nothing, waiting. Of all people, he knew how to wait for inspiration; knew that the right occupation would not be rushed. And he knew how difficult it was for her, an upper-class Englishwoman in Dublin. She was not Sybil, confident of her skills and ferocious in her determination. Edith was unsure, tentative, likely to wilt under the pressure of class predjudice and rejection. Whatever she had in mind, it would be a struggle to achieve here in Ireland. But he would help, if he could.

"I want to teach."

"Teach?" Patrick blinked. "Well, that's grand, love." He hesitated. "And who would you be teaching?"

"Children, silly! Young ones. I've certainly had enough governesses that I know how it's done, and I know I could do a much better job, too!" She eyed him intently. "What do you think?"

"Well, um, I know you'd do a great job. You're smart, and funny, and I would certainly have wanted to go to school more often if you were my teacher…" he gave her a lascivious stare and she rolled her eyes. "But…"

"But what?" Her voice took on an edge. He'd better tread easy here, Patrick thought.

"Well, I'm just wonderin' where you'd be getting these students," he said carefully. "Working class parents send their children to the public school, because it's free, and don't the wealthy lot have those governesses you talk about?"

She deflated like a balloon. "You're right. It was a silly idea."

"No! No, it isn't silly at all!" he protested, crossing to take her hands in his. "Nothing worth doing is easy. But you'd have to go to a training school, you know."

"I know. I've been looking into it. The biggest problem is that I'm not Catholic, but there is a training college on Marlborough Street that's run by the Presbyterians, and it's a good one."

"Well, the biggest problem might be that you're not Irish," Patrick said. "Getting trained isn't the problem; you're clever and educated. Tom might be able to help you there; he has connections all over the place now." He paused.

"It's getting someone to hire an Englishwoman that won't be easy. Remember how much trouble Sybil had getting a job? And she wasn't looking to teach the children of Irish parents."

Edith looked crestfallen. "It's a ridiculous idea, isn't it?" she asked. And then she straightened. "But I'm not going back to England any time soon, so I'd better figure out a way to make it work!"

"That's the spirit!" Patrick told her. "And I'm very glad you're not going back to England, because I don't think that chauffeur job is still open…and you're not going anywhere without me!"

May 22, 1920

Shopping in Dublin

"She's a wild one!" Tom felt his hand jump where he had placed it on his wife's rounded stomach. "She's going to be just like her mother."

"She?" And how do you know it's a she?" Sybil giggled. Since the baby had begun to move, she had difficulty keeping Tom's hands off the growing mound that was their child. Well, keeping Tom's hands off her had always been difficult, but not actually a problem—or at least not one she minded. Still, the baby's antics were not quite so amusing to her as they were to him. He—she knew it was a boy—kept her awake many nights, with his constant kicking and flailing. Dr. Walsh was very understanding when she took naps during her work day, but Sybil was beginning to understand why women were encouraged to stop working early in a pregnancy.

"He is going to be just like his father!" she said firmly. "He's already a rebel. Has opinions about how I should move, what I should eat, whether I should sleep. Doesn't think I need that last bit at all." She gave her husband a sidelong look. "Just like his father."

Tom grinned and pulled her close. They were taking a rare day just for themselves, searching the secondhand shops for a cot. The baby was due in early August, and Sybil knew that she'd be too cumbersome to do anything but waddle if they waited much longer. But they'd had to wait until Tom was strong enough to manage the adventure.

And so here they were, having a great deal of fun but little luck in their quest. Everything they saw was too old, or too ugly, or too something, at least in Sybil's opinion, and so far they'd come up empty. They had been to five shops already, and Tom was beginning to think that Sybil didn't want to find a cot.

"Are you being particularly choosy for some reason that men aren't privy to?" he asked her, after she'd rejected a very nice cot that seemed strong enough and only had a few bite marks on its rails.

She sighed. "No, but this is our baby, and I don't want him to have to grow up in a bed that's been eaten by another child, or scratched up, or one that squeaks so loudly that the poor thing will be terrified into nightmares!" She gave her husband a rebellious look. Tom rolled his eyes at her.

"I grew up in a secondhand cot," he pointed out. "Mam bought it at a shop just like this one before Bernadette was born, and then it went to me, and to all the siblings, and now Fiona is sleeping just fine in it. I don't remember any of us suffering from nightmares, and bite marks give it character. You're just being…aristocratic." He put his nose in the air in a perfect imitation of Mary, and Sybil laughed in spite of herself.

She sighed. He was right, as usual. Damn, why did he have to be so reasonable all the time? She was fat, and hot, and she didn't want to be reasonable. She was lugging around a whole human, and it was only going to get worse. Let Tom try it for awhile; he'd change his tune quick enough.

But Sybil could not maintain any kind of ill humor for long, especially not with her adorable husband appraising her with his earnest blue eyes. Would she ever get tired of that face? She hoped their son would look exactly like him; a miniature Tom Branson would be just perfect. With an effort, she turned back to the issue at hand, hoping to distract him from her lack of cot enthusiasm.

"Do you remember the last time we went shopping for a bed?" Sybil's voice was soft in Tom's ear. "We had to try them all out until we found the strongest, quietest one."

Well, I'm not climbing into any of these cots to see if they're strong enough," Tom declared. "And anyway, that excursion is the reason for our shopping trip today, darlin'. If we hadn't been so successful that day, we wouldn't have spent so much time in that bed, and you wouldn't be…well…" Sybil was laughing, clutching her side, and suddenly she bent over double.

"Love?" Tom asked in concern. "Are you all right?" He tried to put his arm around her, but she slapped him away.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "But stop making me laugh, you awful man! You know what your son does to me when I laugh!" She straightened slowly. "Darling, go find the proprietor of this fine establishment and ask him if he has a WC. And tell him he'd better!"

May 25, 1920

St. Stephen's Green, Dublin

"It's been over a month, Michael. He's stuck in that horrible jail for something he didn't do, and nobody seems to want to do anything about it!" Maire's face was bleak. The siblings sat on a bench in St. Stephen's Green, overlooking a lovely pond, but neither of them was focused on the natural beauty of the place. The warm air and soft breeze did nothing to calm Maire's troubled mind.

Michael was quiet, afraid to say the wrong thing in the face of his sister's anger and despair. It was true that Evan Langdon had been languishing in Mountjoy Prison for weeks now; the British army had nowhere to house its own soldiers accused of violent crimes, and besides, Evan was suspected of killing a superior officer over his treatment of an Irish republican, so he received little sympathy from his own people. Mountjoy held mostly IRA and republican prisoners, who looked on a British soldier in their midst with curiosity and contempt. Evan was truly alone.

But the truth was, Michael thought, he wasn't sure that Evan hadn't done what he'd been accused of. He knew how the man felt about Maire, and hell, he would have wanted to kill the man who had attacked her, would have cheerfully strangled him with his bare hands. This Lieutenant Martin had been the worst of his type—as bad as the Black and Tans—he had deserved to die.

But he didn't think Langdon had done it. Killing another man in cold blood just wasn't in his nature; he was a healer, wanted to become a doctor. Michael couldn't imagine him stalking and killing one of his own countrymen, no matter what the man had done. But men did strange things for love.

Evan had told Sybil, after Maire's attack, that he would "take care of" the people responsible, and Martin was dead—found in a shallow grave in the woods outside of Cork, shot through the heart. He had been dead since late November. And there were eyewitnesses who had sworn to having seen a man resembling Evan Langdon in the vicinity at the time of the murder. Circumstantial at best, but coupled with his connection to Maire, it was damning. Evan was in real trouble.

"I don't know what we can do, Maire," Michael told her. "He's not Irish. The IRA is not going to help a British soldier, and we don't know anyone in the British army who would listen to us. We're at war with the people who are accusing him, but he's British so we're supposed to be at war with him too—or at least that's how it works out. It's a real mess!"

He did not tell her his private thoughts, that he thought the army might take the opportunity to make an example of Evan; to use him as a cautionary story. This is what happens to soldiers who associate with the Irish, soldiers who turn on their own people. Michael was very much afraid that there would be little investigation of the charges and no interest at all in whether or not he was innocent. Unless some sort of miracle occurred, Evan Langdon was headed for the gallows.

Maire had been looking down at her hands, white-knuckled in her lap, but now she looked up at her brother. "I know he didn't do it, Michael. I wouldn't mind if he had, but I know him, and he couldn't have done this!" Tears welled in her eyes and she brushed them away angrily. "There has to be someone who can speak for him!"

Michael had never seen his sister like this. She'd been through so much, and he'd certainly seen her angry plenty of times—Good Lord, that time with Lord Grantham had been a to-do for the ages—but this was different. She was deathly afraid for this man, and Michael wondered if there was more to it…

"Maire…"

"I love him." Maire's voice trembled. "I'm in love with him, Michael, and he doesn't know. He told me he wanted to marry me, and I was going to turn him down…just because he's English…and then they arrested him and now I may never get the chance to tell him how I really feel!" Her voice was filled with pain. "I blew it, Michael. He's all alone and he's in this trouble because of me!" She broke down, the steel will crumbling under the weight of her guilt and fear.

Michael pulled his sister close and put his arms around her, letting her tears soak his jacket. He put his chin on her head and thought… this truly was a mess.

Above his sister's head Michael watched a bird skim over the clear water, its wings fluttering, gliding on an invisible current. He remembered a poem the sisters had made him memorize in school—it seemed like centuries ago. Some English poet. Hope is the thing with feathers…and he knew what he was going to do.

Everything he'd told his sister was true; the IRA would never help Evan on its own…but one man could…one man who was the IRA. He would go to Michael Collins.


A/N: Until 1883 the National Board refused to recognise any teacher training college except Marlborough Street, which had established a college for women in 1844. Marlborough Street was predominantly Presbyterian, although it accepted women from any denomination.

A/N: Mountjoy Prison saw a lot of activity during the Irish War of Independence. Some of the leaders involved with the republican cause were held there, and many prisoners were hanged during the years 1919-1921. Cells were small and conditions primitive, and various escape and rescue attempts took place during the war. On 14 May 1921, an IRA team mounted an attempt to rescue IRA soldier Sean McEoin, who was under sentence of death, from Mountjoy, using a captured armoured car to gain access to the prison, but the plan was discovered and they had to shoot their way out.

Pronunciation Guide:

Maire - my + ra