Cave of Secrets Read online

Tom thought it best to keep out of sight until he knew what was happening. He sat down crosslegged behind the screen of the furze and listened with all his might. To the muted roar of the wind. To the delicate whisper of the mist.

  His imagination went galloping off without him. Had Donal been warning him when he said not to come back for three days? Was the danger real? Yet Donal had not seemed afraid. But Donal was not down there, either.

  Or if he was, he was in the cave. He could be tied up in there, the prisoner of pirates!

  Roaring at the top of his lungs, courageous General Thomas Flynn plunged over the edge of the cliff to rescue his new friend.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maura

  Caroline Flynn threaded a blue satin ribbon through her dark ringlets, the corkscrew ringlets she painstakingly rolled up on strips of rag every night. She was very proud of her hair. She studied her reflection in the looking glass. ‘I should be the bride,’ she said. ‘I’m ’way prettier than Lizzie. I’m the only one of us who looks like Mother.’

  ‘You’re the youngest,’ Virginia reminded her, ‘so you can’t marry until after I do. And I cannot marry until Lizzie is wed. Be happy for her.’

  ‘How can I? Have you seen the face on him? That old man looks like a wadded-up handkerchief full of–’

  ‘Don’t, Caro!’ Virginia cried. But she was laughing.

  ‘Would you want to marry him?’ her younger sister asked.

  Virginia’s laugh faded. ‘I suppose I shall have to marry someone, but I hope Father finds a more handsome man for me. If I had my choice, Caro – and promise you won’t breathe a word of this to Mother – I would rather not be married at all.’

  Caroline was astonished. ‘Not married? But what would you do, Ginny?’

  ‘Paint,’ her sister replied firmly. ‘Landscapes, I think, or maybe even portraits. Painting is the one thing I do really well and I love it. Mr Beasley said my watercolours were very nice.’

  ‘He had to say so, he was our tutor and Father was paying him. Besides, you can’t spend your life painting.’

  ‘Some people do,’ said Virginia. ‘Mr Beasley told me that Irish artists have even gone abroad to study. Imagine living in Paris!’ Her eyes were shining.

  Caroline shook her head until her ringlets bounced. ‘Father would never let you do that, Ginny. He’ll find a suitable Catholic husband for you, perhaps one of the Old English whose ancestors came to Ireland with Strongbow. Then you will be the mistress of a house like this one and have lots of beautiful clothes to wear.’

  ‘Sugar and cream!’ Virginia burst out – the only ‘bad language’ her mother allowed. ‘I do not intend to spend my life buried in the country. Thank goodness we may be moving to Dublin.’

  Caroline gasped. ‘Dublin? Do you mean it? When? We’ll need new frocks and bonnets and we must learn the new dances and–’

  ‘You silly goose,’ Virginia interrupted, ‘there is more to life than clothes and dances. Father is hoping for a political appointment in the capital.’

  Her sister stared at her. ‘Who told you so?’

  ‘No one told me. I keep my mouth closed and my ears open. That’s how I learn things. Before the party I heard him tell Mother that the pieces were falling into place.’

  * * *

  Falling down the cliff, Tom realised he had made a stupid mistake. He was only a boy, how could he possibly face down a gang of kidnappers and rescue his friend? They would take him too. He would be beaten and tied up and …

  He hit the beach with a thud that knocked the breath out of him. Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he waited for the next awful thing to happen to him.

  Nothing happened. All he heard was the sound of the waves and the patter of a few stones, displaced by his fall, as they struck the ground around him. He opened his eyes. He saw no pirates, no captives, no other living being.

  When he stood up he noticed a wide gouge in the sand. It began at the mouth of the cave. He approached the cave warily and peered inside, but saw nothing. Only shadows. He tried Donal’s whistle, then listened to its eerie echo die away without an answer.

  He turned and followed the strange track to the water’s edge, where it disappeared.

  Tom shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out across the bay. The sky was spread with clouds as thick as clotted cream. Ropes of foam were dragging the waves across the water. Two small boats with sails raised were speeding towards the nearest island. Already they were too far away for him to make out any details. A captive could be lying, bound hand and foot, in the bottom of one of them.

  And there was nothing Tom could do about it.

  He watched until the boats rounded the island and disappeared from his view. Then he trudged home with a heavy heart. His mood lifted when Virginia said his father had just departed unexpectedly for Dublin. Flynn had not mentioned Tom at all before leaving. The recent incident between them seemed to be forgotten.

  * * *

  The boy waited for two more days before returning to the bay. He followed the narrow downward path Donal had shown him, zigzagging between sharp rocks. On the beach everything looked as before, except that the channel leading to the sea had disappeared. Swept away by the tide.

  When he spied a piece of driftwood on the sand, Tom picked it up and brandished it like a sword. ‘I’ll save you, Donal!’ he cried, pretending he was a man, with a man’s power: Thomas Flynn, brave general of His Majesty’s forces–

  ‘I don’t need saving,’ a voice called.

  Tom turned around. Donal was clambering with ease over the nearest spur of rocks. ‘I’m glad you remembered about the three days,’ he said.

  Tom did not contradict him. ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘My father says trust must be earned.’

  ‘Your father the king?’

  ‘My father the king,’ Donal repeated solemnly. ‘What were you doing just now?’

  ‘Pretending to be a general. Don’t you ever play that game?’

  ‘I don’t play games,’ said Donal. ‘I work. Today I’m harvesting the shore.’

  ‘I thought your work was guarding the cave,’ Tom teased.

  ‘That’s part of it. So is gathering seaweed, and collecting firewood, and catching fish, and mending nets, and helping repair boats, and–’

  Tom stared at him. ‘You really do work.’

  ‘We work all the time.’

  ‘We?’

  Donal put two fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle, quite unlike the one Tom had practised. Within moments a tiny girl came scrambling over the stony barrier at the other end of the beach. The mass of tumbled boulders seemed no obstacle to her.

  She wore a simple, homespun gown. A flannel petticoat peeped from beneath the hem of her skirt. Tied around her waist was a blue apron the colour of her eyes. She had made a sling for carrying driftwood by holding up the corners of her apron. Seeing the stranger, she dropped the wood with a clatter. ‘Who’s that, Don-don?’

  ‘Tom Flynn,’ Donal said. ‘He’s all right, he’s my friend.’

  The little face peeping through tangled curls broke into a smile. ‘Tomflynn,’ the child said, running the name together to make a single word. ‘Hello, Tomflynn.’ She bent to gather up the spilt wood.

  Tom crouched down to help her. She pushed him away with a grubby little hand. ‘Don’t need help,’ she cheerfully asserted.

  Tom looked up at Donal. ‘I suppose this is Maura?’

  ‘She is Maura. Isn’t she a clinker? There’s no finer cailín on this side of the bay.’

  The little girl fixed bright blue eyes on Tom’s face. ‘Mine,’ she declared, reaching out to grab the piece of driftwood in his hand. In the next breath she said, ‘Are you a prostint?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘She means a Protestant,’ her brother explained.

  ‘I’m a Catholic,’ said Tom. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not to us,’ Donal told him.

  Tom spent a morning like none in his memory.
Maura insisted on looking for ‘pretty’ seashells. Tom’s first discovery was a glossy, cone-shaped shell vividly striped with orange. Even Donal was impressed. ‘I’ve never seen one like that before. Have you?’

  ‘I’ve never seen any seashells,’ Tom admitted.

  The other two looked at him open-mouthed. He did not know whether to be proud or embarrassed.

  They gathered more driftwood from the beach and showed Tom how to harvest seaweed. The driftwood was for fuel, Donal explained, and the seaweed would go into the cooking pot.

  ‘I didn’t know you could eat it,’ said Tom.

  ‘You have to know which ones,’ the other boy told him. ‘Some are good for eating and others are good for healing.’

  ‘What else do you eat?’

  ‘Ev’ry fish there is,’ Maura piped up.

  Donal laughed. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t eat a jellyfish even if you were starving to death. But mackerel, áthasach! Great food. We eat mackerel from summer’s end until Christmas. We eat herring too, and cod and pilchard and seal meat, and badger when we can get one, and birds’ eggs and every kind of shellfish …’ he interrupted himself to point to a jet of water spurting from a hole in the sand, ‘… like that one. There’s a razor clam.’ He pounced as swiftly as a cat, and stood up holding a long, tightly closed shell.

  That day Tom received a thorough instruction in the varieties of shellfish which made the bay their home. Mussels and limpets and cockles and winkles, shrimp and crabs and even sea urchins, which were terrifying to look at but ‘’lishus!’ according to Maura. Tom had thought of Roaringwater Bay as nothing more than a vast sheet of water. Now he realised it was an immense larder, filled with items more interesting than suet pudding.

  Again and again his eyes returned to the gleaming expanse of the bay. The dancing waves, the shifting clouds. The constant interplay of birds in the air and along the shore. Kittiwakes and blackbacks, terns and shags and cormorants. Larks soaring high in the air, their song falling to earth like liquid sunshine.

  Tom said, ‘I never knew the bay was so beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ Donal was surprised. He had never thought of the bay as beautiful though he saw it almost every day of his life. ‘Can’t you see it from your house?’ he asked Tom.

  ‘Only in the distance.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  Tom nodded. ‘All the difference in the world. Do those islands out there have names?’

  ‘They do have names,’ said Donal. ‘Every place made by God has a name. The big island at the mouth of the bay is Dún na Séad, the Fortress of the Jewels. You might have heard it called by its English name, Cape Clear. When all the land belonged to the Gael, Dún na Séad was a kingdom with its own king.’

  ‘A king like your father?’

  ‘He had a larger territory than my father does,’ the other boy said. ‘Look where I’m pointing now: there are the three Calf Islands, and there is Long Island, and Coney, and Castle – which has a castle on it – and there are the Skeams, and yonder is the Horse, and the Hare, and–’

  ‘Do people live on the islands?’

  ‘On most of them. Farming is hard, but they have the sea to feed them.’

  ‘Are the islanders savages?’

  Donal glared at Tom. ‘They’re no different from Maura and me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean–’

  ‘Only the Sasanach would ask a question like that,’ Donal went on angrily.

  Tom’s own temper surfaced. ‘I’m not a foreigner!’

  ‘Sasanach doesn’t mean foreigner. It means Saxon. Englishman, Protestant, Saxon.’ Donal spat out the word as if it tasted bad.

  Tom retorted, ‘I’m not a Saxon, either!’

  Donal held his eyes a moment longer, then looked down. ‘I know it,’ he said.

  Before saying goodbye that day, Tom offered Donal the orange-striped shell.

  ‘I can’t take that,’ Donal protested. ‘You found it, it’s yours.’

  ‘I want you to have it,’ Tom insisted. ‘It’s an apology.’

  Afterwards Tom Flynn would recall the summer of 1639 as the best time of his life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Swimmer

  Now that the formal announcement had been made, preparations for Elizabeth Flynn’s wedding began in earnest. The ceremony was scheduled for the following year. In the meantime there was much to be done. The bride’s mother was expected to make all the necessary social arrangements. She must also prepare Roaringwater House for a much grander occasion than a mere engagement party. Mr Flynn wanted numerous repairs and improvements made to the house. The servants must be prodded into exceptional activity.

  Tom’s mother had no talent for prodding servants. She could not even raise her voice to them. She simply made suggestions – and usually forgot to follow up.

  In the end, Virginia undertook the organising. She made countless lists for herself on bits of paper. Any drawer in the house might be opened only to find one of Virginia’s ‘To Do’ lists inside. She had earnest conversations with Simon about clearing drains, and demanded that Cook create new pastries. She bullied the housemaids, even old Eithne, and occasionally tried to give orders to Missus, the housekeeper. Caroline teased her, but she took her self-imposed task seriously.

  Elizabeth Flynn sought to avoid it all. She often went to her bed-chamber and closed the door. Her mother had taught by example that when a lady’s door was closed, she must not be disturbed. She was in her sanctuary, a place where she could pray and think and dream.

  The windows of Elizabeth’s sanctuary were draped with damask. The sheets were bleached linen. A gilt-framed oil painting of King Charles stared down from one wall. There were portraits of the king throughout Roaringwater House. Some were clumsy paintings by amateurs, like the one in Elizabeth’s room. Two or three were good miniatures in silver and gold frames. These were prominently placed where any visitor would see them.

  Charles Stuart, son of James VI, grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, and King of Great Britain and Ireland, was a slightly built man. He had a Scottish accent and a stammer that his portraits did not reveal.

  In her sanctuary Elizabeth often sat in a window embrasure like a princess in a tower, watching for a prince to come riding to her rescue. Her prince never came. But one morning she did notice her brother riding away from Roaringwater House. Tom was cantering along on the rubbishy stick horse their father had given him. And he was singing. The words drifted back to the watcher in the window. ‘Come and take a ride with me upon my magic pony …’

  Dreams and fancies, Elizabeth thought bitterly. No good can come of that.

  As far back as she could remember, her father had chased one dream after another. Very few of them came true. Only Roaringwater House. And soon, this awful marriage. Elizabeth envied Tom. Boys had it all, they could do anything they liked. No one cared about women’s dreams.

  ‘I’m being traded like a carriage horse, and I hate it,’ Elizabeth complained to Virginia later that day.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lizzie. What’s so bad about marrying a man who has money? If I had money I could go to Paris to paint and no one would stop me. Everyone needs money, even the king. He imposes more and more taxes because he has to pay the debts left from his wars with France and Spain. And the uprising in Scotland is costing him another fortune.’

  ‘How do you know about all that, Ginny?’

  Her sister was exasperated. ‘Sugar and cream! Am I the only person in this house who ever listens?’

  ‘Listens to what? Father never talks about anything but politics.’ Elizabeth made a face. ‘And politics is so boring.’

  Virginia put her fists on her hips and shook her head at her sister. ‘If you had the wit to pay attention to Father, you would realise that politics affect everything, Caro. And that includes you.’

  * * *

  Politics had no place in Tom’s mind that summer of 1639. On any day when the weather was fair he
went riding on his hobby-horse. He no longer sneaked away but marched boldly out the door, carrying his stick mount under his arm. After circling the house a time or two to make certain he was seen playing with his silly toy, he would gallop off. He abandoned the hobby-horse as soon as he was out of sight. It would remain hidden under a furze bush until he returned home. It had proved a good enough decoy, after all. The servants made jokes about his latest game. As soon as he was out of sight they forgot about him.

  When Tom reached the cliff he would take off his shoes and stockings and roll up his breeches. Going barefoot was painful at first, but after a few days he could walk – even climb over rocks – without wincing.

  Donal was often waiting for him at the cove with Maura. Although they never said so, Tom suspected they were as lonely for the company of other children as he was. If they did not appear he could spend hours watching the ever changing spectacle of the bay. Sometimes the water was cobalt blue. Or emerald green. Or even a clear, brilliant turquoise colour, streaked with royal purple.

  He threw pebbles at seagulls. Searched for interesting shells to collect for Maura. Lay on his back on the beach, gazing into the bottomless sky. Watching white-sailed galleons race before the wind. The ceaseless wind that blew over Roaringwater Bay.

  One warm, muggy day Tom waded into the surf. The cold water swirling around his legs was wonderfully refreshing. He went farther out. Water to his hips. To his waist. Delicious.

  Until a breaker swept him off his feet and into a roil of sand and stones and shells and seawater. As soon as he could stand up again he headed thankfully for the shore. Halfway there he stopped. Looked back at the water. He was wet anyway. Why not try?

  Cautiously, Tom waded deeper. How do animals swim? Head above the water. Paddle with the front legs, kick with the back legs.

  He took a deep breath and held it.

  At first it seemed impossible. Then, to his surprise, he discovered he was swimming. Struggling, but staying up, not giving up. He opened his mouth to take a great gulp of much-needed air – and the sea poured in. Salty water flooded down his throat and up into his nasal passages. He was strangling.