1649

Their piercing screams woke her. The sound was un­mis­take­able; the vi­o­lent shriek­ing of her fa­ther's pre­cious hawks. In her half-asleep state, her mind's eye saw them strug­gling fe­ro­cious­ly, ta­lons pull­ing des­per­ate­ly at hemp teth­ers hold­ing them firm to their birch-stick berths.

A great fire burned, the tim­ber set­tle­ment around her strong­hold stone tow­er home in flames. The Sas­an­ach had bro­ken the gate to Kil­le­nea Cas­tle it­self, bring­ing fire with them as they gleeful­ly loot­ed the loops which held weap­ons along each wall.

White fin­gers grasped to the sol­id stone sill un­der her win­dow frame, she dared to watch bare­foot chil­dren writhe un­der swords. The hel­mets of the Crom­well­i­an sol­diers glowed in the light of flames; it was a gleam of death for those in com­bat and a flick­er of un­cer­tain­ty for those like her in the wings, the liv­ing.

Grab­bing a dag­ger, her moth­er's an­cient hair comb and flee­ing down the wind­ing stone stair­case one last time, a brief glance out­side the now holed wall of the cas­tle showed her young­er broth­er Eoin sur­pris­ing two sol­diers. As both re­treat­ed un­der a burn­ing raft­er, she watched him slice their heads open one by one, the flam­ing tim­bers en­gulf­ing their shield­ed skirts.

But a boy, she felt ter­ri­fied for his safe­ty, but she rel­ished the sight of them a­blaze.

Be­fore scur­ry­ing in­to the tun­nel be­hind the oth­er wom­en and chil­dren, she looked up to the friend­less sky and saw that the flames had fi­nal­ly sev­ered their hemp teth­ers and the hawks were now soar­ing grace­ful­ly to a new free­dom; a free­dom they had nev­er known be­fore.

Each year, since a­part, I split an ap­ple in half for my miss­ing lov­er Neach­tain. Mak­ing nee­dles from the wood of the bram­ble, I put one through the eye of the sec­ond and then to­geth­er be­tween the split fruit, clamp­ing it firm­ly back to­geth­er with a tight knot.

I hang the ap­ple back on the tree.

'M'fhíor­ghrá Mo chéad­searc, tabhair arais dom.'

'My true love, my first true love, re­turn to me.'

It is said that he was killed in the Wars of Re­bel­lion. In spite of this, I hope that this would one day bring my dark-haired lov­er back to me, if on­ly in the form of a black­bird.

'Look af­ter him, won't you, he is fif­teen, a child, too young for war. Please, do not go!' I crawled on my hands and knees beg­ging Neach­tain to look af­ter Eoin as they read­ied the hors­es for the way to Dro­ghe­da.

'What choic­es do we have, Mithim? Those diab­hail in West­min­ster have ap­point­ed that mon­ster Crom­well to lead this lat­est in­va­sion of Ire­land. Even chil­dren must play their part against what seems this nev­er-end­ing Eng­lish on­slaught.'

On­ly nine­teen, and al­ready tired of war.