Chapter Text
‘What happened?’ Roisin gasps, slamming herself against the wall in the ladies’ room. Her head is craned up, refusing to look at her sister, who tries to pick at her hair, pull it back into it’s bun.
‘I thought it was you,’ Erin replies, soft and guilty. Roisin pulls herself off the wall and a tenderness inflicts her gaze, a gentle sigh escaping her lips. ’I heard you… I saw you… I thought I was following you into the alley and then…,’ Erin pauses, collapsing her hands into her lap. ‘She appeared. I thought I was going to die. It’s never been like that before.’
‘Oh, ‘Rin,’ Roisin kneels beside her sister, placing her palm over her hands. ‘What are we going to do?’
The question hangs uncertainly in the air, a prick of sadness, the looming future that darkens their horizons.
‘We cannot remain here,’ Roisin answers herself, resting her forehead on Erin’s lap. ‘I can try to marry but—,’
‘But whoever you marry that would be kind enough to help us would never get father’s approval. And if you were to marry a man who did then… well… we’d be returned to this very state. Without prospects and without aid,’ Erin huffs, looking briefly in the vanity in the room, her frenzied state staring back like a stranger, an unfamiliar figure of madness. She’d never thought of herself as mad, but the word seemed to attach itself to her at a young age, rooting itself in her belly, wrapping around her bones and organs, clenching them until they too were wrangled it.
‘We could work,’ Roisin suggests mildly. The raucous of the party rages beyond the door, and Erin tries not to think about whatever their father might be saying to Mr Rafferty.
‘If father ever caught wind of either of us working we’d be sent to the gallows,’ Erin morbidly counters. ‘Before we ever had a chance of escaping.’
‘The Fenians—,’
‘Wouldn’t be caught dead aiding two aristocratic children in their pursuit of freedom. Come now, you might play nice with them but their goals are larger than us and they wouldn’t risk what little movement they have getting swept in our tragedy,’
‘There will be a man,’ Roisin replies, but the melancholy in her words are heavier than the noise, ‘Someone… anyone who would understand our position. Marriages of convenience are the currency of our people. Someone would need our money just as we needed their help.’
‘I will not have you locked in some… convenient arrangement with a man who gets to control us just as our father did,’
‘Well what choice do we have?’ Roisin pulls herself to her feet, palms dragging over her face. ‘Men are the puppet masters of society. Our life’s goal is to find the kindest one who will pull our strings gently. There is no other option for us, Rin! You said it yourself — the Fenians won’t get caught up with us. We cannot escape without money, we cannot access our dowries, and we cannot work without being damned by our father!’
‘We could… if we had enough money, just enough, we could leave,’ Erin hangs her head in despair.
‘Leave where, ‘Rin?’
‘I don’t know… I don’t… if we could just find a way to scrape some money together before father found out, we could leave with at least some stable footing! If he threw us out of our own accord, then maybe we could join the Fenians!’
‘He would never tolerate that scandal, besides, he’d still have the right to you. He’s your legal guardian for life with your… condition and he knows I’d never leave without you,’
‘Then forget about me,’ Erin stands and walks to her her sister, ‘Get yourself out of this mess. I will not allow him to use me as bait to keep you trapped here. This place is a prison. Grandmama would be able to help you if you could just cut me loose.’
‘No one is cutting anyone loose,’ Roisin warns, waving away the suggestion with her hand. ‘I meant it when I said you are my leverage against him, because you are my strength. With you here, I will never stop fighting and he knows that. We will find a way.’
A fist bangs on the door, a low voice calling, ‘Erin, Roisin. Out at once. The valet is ready.’
Erin and Roisin sigh, moving to the door, but before Roisin can twist the handle, Erin grabs her hand away. ‘I will find a way for you to leave. I will not let you suffer with me.’
‘Oh dear sister,’ Roisin gently swipes her thumb across Erin’s cheek, ‘There is no suffering with you.’
They swing open the door to their father, tapping his foot against the floor. His face is muddied with a dark, floundering anger that Erin can feel seething against her body, pointed and strong. They follow behind him wordlessly, but Erin can feel the rise of fury within her.
I cannot be free, she thinks. But I can free my sister. I will find the money. This place will not be her grave.
‘Roisin!’ A voice whispers from the darkness. Erin hears at as her sister, hanging in the servants corridors, the night dark and consuming. Their father retired and the servants asleep, the muddle through the food in the kitchen silently, trying to drown their sorrows and replace them with the rush of sugar. The back door, the maid’s entrance, is hinged open, ajar for the morning delivery boy to slip through at dawn, but a figure moves silently through it, beckoning with a harsh pull of their hand.
‘Roisin!’ The voice insists again.
Through the darkness, Ellen Cochrane appears, beckoning the eldest sister to talk. When she lays eyes upon Erin, she does not startle or pay it mind, instead venturing further into the room.
‘We need to talk,’ She says gravely, ‘Something is about to happen… something bad.’
‘What’s wrong, Ellen,’ Roisin quickly pulls her in, placing her beside them in the kitchen. Erin feels translucent in the darkness, unseen and unattended too, their words passing without care of her listening ears, as if she was deaf and blind, a breathing mound of flesh and nothing more.
‘My brother has gone imbecilic,’ Ellen growls, ripping her hat from her head and shoving it against the table. Erin recoils slightly out of view, leaning into the shadows. The flicker of the candle barely holds enough light to illuminate their faces. ‘He’s orchestrated an attack on the Guinness brewery. It’s going to ruin any chance we had of turning the heirs to our cause; it’s the two things we had to avoid in the wake of the old man’s death: public and stupid.’
‘What do you need?’ Roisin immediately offers, placing her plate of food on the table, freezing with trepidation.
‘You can’t be seen with us for a few weeks. It’s going to draw too much attention. I know your grandmama has been a good enough cover but if this happens, it’s going to blow everything out of the water,’ Ellen whispers. ‘I’m just warning you, stay away. I won’t be able to talk to you after it happens. The Guinness are going to retaliate and it won’t be pleasant. You’re too valuable of an asset to lose to something as idiotic as this.’
‘Okay… okay, thank you Ellen,’ Roisin nods. ‘We’ll stay away.’
‘I’ll communicate word to you when we can start planning again,’ Ellen squeezes Roisin’s hand, beginning to move to the exit again. ‘For now, you know nothing. You saw nothing.’
She nods, and Ellen slips back out of the door and into the darkness.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Erin mutters in the darkness.
‘The barrels… I heard them talking about it earlier,’ Roisin sighs, ‘Just what we needed. When this happens, father’s not going to let us out without a chain around our neck and a leash to keep us in arm’s length.’
‘He’s lobbying for a Guinness alliance. That man… Mr Rafferty, he was here today,’
‘What?’ Roisin screeches, and quickly pauses in the wake of the sharp noise. They stare for a moment, and after a beat of silence, continue. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘He wanted some of the men from the factory to help clearing a path for the funeral parade for Mr Guinness’ body,’ Erin answers, low and measured. ‘They’re working together now.’
‘Rafferty is bad news,’ Roisin says gravely, ‘he does anything for a pound and will do anything to gut the Fenian cause and support his masters.’
‘I—,’
‘Stay away from him. After tonight, he knows there’s a weakness in this family,’ Roisin cuts her off, a wary hand outstretched. ‘We need to be strong. If it comes down to it, the Fenians might be our only chance. We can’t cut off our last resort by engaging in madness.’
‘So you’ll stay away from the Fenians?’ Erin inquires softly and Roisin sighs. ‘I’m not saying anything… they’ve been good to you and grandmama. I just, you’re right. We can’t have father cutting us off from our last chance of help.’
Roisin pats Erin’s hand. ‘We’ll get out of this Erin. Now, let’s get to bed before anyone else slips through that door and catches us.’
Erin nods, but she purses her lips as she slips from the stool. They pitter up through the corridors to their rooms, the small candle cutting through the pitch black of the hallways, guiding them to their rooms, one beside the other. Roisin presses a kiss to Erin’s forehead, before gently pushing her into her room, shutting the door behind her.
Erin walks to her bed, grasping her gown around her body, feeling the bitter breeze weasel through the open crevice of her window.
He’ll do anything to gut the Fenian cause, it rings in her ears, the beginning tides of a plan beginning to formulate in her mind. She thinks of her grandmama, and her disapproving stare at Erin’s incapacity, and the slap of her father’s hand across Roisin’s face, the disscontempt in the streets. Her apathy startles her, the emptiness she feels as she begins to orchestrate her idea, pulling the threads of thought in her mind together. She sits herself on the edge of her bed, beginning to bite at the corners of her thumb, picking the skin until the prick of pain gives her pause.
She thinks about Ellen breezing past her, a ghost in her own home, unremarkable as the furniture, useless as a dull knife. Of all the whispers and conspiratorial plans that breeze past her ears as she knits with her grandmother.
Anything to gut the Fenian cause. Perhaps even pay. Now, she may have something worth paying for.
Erin pushes wayward strands beneath the old cap upon her head. She shifts uncomfortably in the scratchy fabric, pulled from the depths of her father’s stored clothes in the attic of their house. Greatly outgrown, but never repurposed, they sat dusted and moulted in the corner, tearing at the slightest tug. Hanging just over her hangs, she tries to shove the excess fabric back into itself, wherever it may hold. She stares at herself in the mirror, the girlish features peaking out through the masculine clothes. She feels her limbs move freely, her body unconstrained by the stiffness of a corset, the pull of her dresses. She tries to cough, lower her voice, but the pitch of it cannot be shoved deeper without intentional force.
Morning came like a sweep of enlightenment, and her journey became so clear within her mind there felt no other way forward. It had still been night when she’d snuck out and stolen her father’s clothes, and the sun had barely breached the sky when she pulled a young servant boy to the side to do her bidding.
The discomfort and fear that sweeps over her is nothing compared to the certainty, almost divine, that surges through her blood, deep to her marrow. The antler woman had not shown herself to her this morning, and it had been the first morning in months where she had been free of her torment. Her path seemed as straight and drawn as if God had struck it out before her.
A knock rattles her door and she furrows her brows, uneasily shifting in the cloth.
‘Who is it?’
The knocks continue, and she grumbles, moving over to stiffly open the door ajar, peaking her face out. A small boy stands at the entry, a plate of food in his hands.
‘Your breakfast, Lady Moore,’ He speaks, pip-squeaked and youthful. His stare washes over the corridor before leaning further in, ‘I have… ahem… instructed your father that you are taking a day of peaceful bedrest as you insisted.’
‘Thank you…,’ Erin trails off, his name escaping her.
‘Donald,’ He informs, pausing again before continuing. ‘And… um… I have heard that some forgetful maids have left the entrance by the laundry open, and it will be open until supper. And the servants will be taking their breakfast break in about ten minutes.’
Erin nods, retreating back into her room silently, plucking through her jewellery case and pulling out an old, silver necklaces from the depths of it. She draws back to the door, opening it further and taking in the tray of food, handing him the necklace in response.
‘Silver. No sigils so there shouldn’t be trouble pawning it off locally. Thank you for your help, Donald,’ She nods to him and he nods back. ‘I would hope that none of this should return back to my father.’
‘Never, Lady Moore,’ Donald turns and leaves, and as he retreats back, she sees the hot red of a fresh scar peak out from his collar, up through his neck.
She swallows roughly, before slamming the door shut.
The yard of the Guinness Cooperage is stock full of men and women as they crowd at the bottom before the booming voice of the familiar man. Erin slips through the tide of people, shoving her way through the front, squeaking out small apologies as she makes her journey, following the piqued interest as they watch Sean Rafferty pull himself up to the bridge across the two buildings, staring down at them with grim eyes.
‘Gather round, I have things to say!’
They push and pull against her and she feels herself acquiescing to the shifting tide of people, until she is finally spat out to the front.
‘Last night, men of poor judgement, elected to leave open the gates to this yard to allow men or poor character to get inside. These men of poor character call themselves the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but as you can see, they’re no brothers of ours. Now, some of you will know who unlocked the gates and left them open. Yesterday, men of my own religion, some Catholic men and women, tried to disrupt the funeral of a man to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. These Fenians will use any excuse to divide us, to separate the one from the other, the green from the orange.’
The mutterings are discreet, unsure, whispers rippling through the crowd. She watches as Sean Rafferty feeds the metal dangling over the edge through his hands.
‘I used due force to remove them, nothing more,’ She feels herself go tense at the thought. Of Ellen’s anxious words as she warned Roisin of the coming retaliation, and a seed of doubt buries itself deep in her stomach. Just as it plants itself, dubious and sudden, a figure, tenebrous and with a trail of apprehension settles just in the corner of her vision, and she steels her face forward. ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and we have some weak links among us. Someone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who… knows someone. And that someone we must identify.’
His voice cracks through the air, chilling the bitter wind to a resigned breeze. Above these people, he stands like an omen of the Gods, more threat than human. His words begin to incite further reaction as he points towards the bathroom, instructing them to write the names of the traitors on the walls.
But Erin knows she cannot just scribble a name. She needs the money.
‘Until the culprits’ names appear on the walls of the lavatory, there will be quarter-day shifts, due to the shortage of barrels, and your pay will reflect the three-quarter cut,’ The crowd seizes upon the information, yells of disscontempt drown his voice beneath the weight of it. But he seems pleased with the response, ‘I can see that I’ve made myself clear.’
He drops the chains with a harsh thump upon the floor. ‘Use the chains that I dragged up here to secure the back gates to the cooperage.’
Her chance appears before her like a beckoning as he marches across the bridge into the office of the Cooperage. She scrambles, weaving through the distracted crowd, pushing against the bodies as they begin to disperse towards the door at the bottom. She shoves it open, the dank air and warmth intruding upon her at once. Her clothes, loose and uncomfortable, threaten to droop off her body and she shoves her pants back up. Inside, a woman sits at the entry, men sitting in tables around them. She stares her down with a knowing that creeps fear up Erin’s spine.
She’s older, greying hair pinned back and a sensible dress pulled to her neck. She sifts through papers, folding them into pamphlets, pausing when Erin intrudes upon the silence.
‘Can I help you, boy?’
‘I need ta’ speak to Mr Rafferty,’ Erin forces a thick pitch over her voice. ‘About… urgent business.’
The woman scoffs, ‘Urgent business, eh boy?’
‘About the barrels,’
‘Well, that didn’t take long at all. You know, the lavatories are—,’
‘Please, ma’am!’ Her urgency must protrude through her mask because the woman seems slightly taken aback by her expression, before nodding solemnly and drawing herself out from behind the desk.
‘Alright, lad. I’ll go see if he’s available,’
She begins to march up the stairs to the offices, the restricted area as far as Erin can tell, slipping into the door and shoving it shut behind her. She feels the burning stares of the rest of the men and women in the common area, pausing their dutiful paperwork to dissect her beneath their stares. When the door finally reopens and the woman appears, Erin feels relief crush her down like an anvil.
‘Come on, lad. He’s intrigued enough to talk to ya’,’
Erin nods and immediately bounds up the stairs. The steps are heavy beneath her feet, and the shoes — too big for her feet — almost make her loose her footing as she reaches the space beside the woman. She hears the elderly woman chuckle, possibly at her vibrancy, and gently pats her back into the room. Inside, it’s a flurry with men in suits, the scratching of ink against paper, the muttering between men. She spies an office in the corner, for the Guinness men, and immediately averts her eyes, as if she had spied on the workings of the Queen herself. In the centre of the room, Mr Rafferty sits surrounded by three men, biting out orders to them, an odd, steel object clapsed in his hand.
‘Mr Rafferty,’ The lady gently coughs out. ‘This is the boy.’
Sean lifts his gaze and when it lands upon her, she waits for him to startle with recognition. To spit out accusations, to rip her hair out from her cap and drag her back to her father. To humiliate her before the Guinness industry, before the aristocracy itself. But instead, he peers at her blankly, mouth falling into a flat line.
‘So you know something about the attack last night?’ He asks, rough but not unwelcoming. ‘It’s alright boy, I admire your balls in coming straight to me. I imagine most lads’ would’ve taken the lavatory deal.’
‘I just…,’ Erin clears her throat and forces her words to come out lower, shifting on her feet, the burn of panic beginning to sizzle beneath her skin. ‘I need the money, sir. I cant afford a quarter shift.’
‘Many can’t,’ He shrugs, placing down the object in his hand with a heavy thump on the table of another, who groans in annoyance but says nothing more, shuffling his papers away from it. ‘But still. You got some gall, aye. How about we take this meeting privately — don’t want you ruffling more feathers than you need to. Come on, son.’
He gestures to a room branching off the main area, and waves away the rest of his compatriots, who nod without orders and draw themselves back. She walks through the split crowd of people, keeping her head low. Her stomach barbs with doubt, a cold feeling of mistrust seeping through her. But she follows him, despite it, into a small room in the back.
Sean holds the door open for her, letting her draw into the corner of the room. It’s set like an office, a desk against the wall, a window allowing the fresh morning light to creep in, two chairs before the desk and another, smaller table beside a couch on the other side. There’s a few bottles of Guinness on it, and a few, old papers with smudged ink.
She doesn’t pay much mind when he shuts the door behind him, nor when he locks it. It’s only when he begins to roll down the small shutter over the glass of the door that her misgiving begins to bloom into panic. He doesn’t turn around right away, but a sigh rings out, so loud and intense that it forces shivers to erupt across her skin, gooseflesh easing its way over her. Her clothes feel to loose, her body feels to cold, and she tries to crumple herself into the wall, praying for it reach over and swallow her whole.
‘Let me ask you this, before you say anything,’ He finally growls out, still refusing to face her. ‘I know my men aren’t the brightest, but what of our limited interaction gave you the impression that I was fucking stupid?’
Finally he turns around, slow and steady, and Erin feels her knees go weak, trying to clutch onto anything to give her the strength to stand her ground.
‘You come bounding in here,’ Sean keeps his voice low, measured, trying not to alert the attention of anyone just outside the door. He takes a step before her and she thinks her stomach might fall out onto the floor, ‘In some stupid, outgrown get up, thinking that I wouldn’t recognise your face in a second?’
‘I needed too-,’
‘I don’t give a rats fucking ass what you think you needed ta’ do,’ His presence begins to breach her space, broad and tall, he hovers over her, a menacing figure, his face obscured by the shadow cast from his hat. ‘I don’t even have the words to express how fucking stupid this venture of yours is. Do you know what your father’ll do to me, if he finds out you were here? You think he’s gonna believe you scurried across town to meet me without any guide from my hand? He barely believed that I happened upon you last night — in fact, he was ready to have me hanging by my neck in the square, taking bidders on who got to pull my feet. The funniest part is,’ he chuckles, humourless and dry, ‘I don’t even fucking know you. What fucking business would you have with me?’
When he finally ceases for a moment, Erin knows he’s waiting for an answer. In the silence, she wills herself to speak, but his body hangs over hers, and she presses herself into the wall further, unable to escape the heat off his clothes, the way his breath smells of tobacco, beer and cinnamon.
‘I wasn’t lying about why I needed to talk to you,’ she finally breathes out. ‘I know who orchestrated the burning.’
A brief flash of surprise seems to shock his face, before he knits his eyebrows in confusion. ‘And you couldn’t just have your father tell me yourself?’
‘I told you I wasn’t lying, I… I need the money,’
Sean roars out a laugh so deep it makes her shudder, trying to slip past him towards the chairs. ‘You— Fucking…,’ he lowers his voice back down, ‘a Moore needs money? Last I checked daddy’s funds were doing just fine.’
‘It’s not my father who needs it,’
He pulls back from her, sitting himself down on one of the chairs, plucking off the bottle of Guinness from the table and angling the cap on the edge of the wood, slamming his palm down and breaking off the top. ‘You might’ve just earned yourself another minute of talking before I drag you back to your father. Go on.’
Erin finally inhales a deep breath, she feels the desperation of it tugging in her chest, before she finally pulls up a chair opposite him. ‘I know you’ll do anything to… gut the Fenians cause,’ she hears her sister’s words encasing her own voice, ‘And I know a thing or two about the Fenians. I don’t have any allegiance to them. But I need money, and I’ve got secrets to sell.’
‘Those Fenians aren’t people you play with. And they’re certainly not people you snitch on,’ Sean leans forward in his seat, taking a deep swing of the beer before hissing out a breath. ‘They’d rip you open, girl, before you could even cry for dad.’
‘There are worst fates,’ Erin replies flatly. She shifts in her chair, her nerve slipping from her by the moment, but she sees her sister flash in her mind, and she pinches the skin between her thumb and forefinger before finally mustering herself enough to continue. ‘They won’t suspect me. And I doubt even less that they’d suspect I’d be talking to you.’
‘Is that why you’ve got the boy get up on? To avert suspicion?’ Sean laughs softly to himself. ‘You know, I’ve heard enough of this. It’s entertaining, but I think it’s high time I take you back to your father and have him get it out of you. It’ll save me the money.’
He begins to rise from the couch and Erin feels her chance slipping like sand through her fingers. She grasps for something, anything to say as he begins to draw to the door, until finally an answer speaks through her mouth without her control, as if a different animal seized her body and began to react without thought. ‘It won’t save your life.’
Sean hesitates over the lock of the door. ‘What’d you just say to me?’
‘You said it yourself… you really think my father will believe I came here of my own volition, dressed as a boy, to visit a man I barely know to trade Fenian secrets? After our last encounter? Be smart, Sean,’ The words spit themselves out with venom, and Erin feels herself shoved into the back of her own mind, her hands grasping for the ropes of control, as another voice speaks through her. One driven by desperation. By rage. ‘Even if he did, he’d still think you had some hand in it. I’m the invalid daughter of an Earl. You’re the enforcer of a brutal, Guinness-styled justice. You have a reputation of malice and everyone who knows me thinks I can barely hold a conversation together.’
‘Are you threatening me, girl?’
‘I’m proposing a partnership,’ Erin finally softens her voice, rounding out the sharp edges of her prior words. ‘No one looks twice at me. They share things they shouldn’t… they think I’m a dumb lunatic and they treat me as such. I hear things. I see things. I’m like a fly on the wall. I could help you. Tell you about things before they even happen.’
‘For a price,’ He corrects, sitting himself back on the couch. There’s a frustration in his stare, the look of a rabid animal caught in a trap. She thinks he might chew his own foot off to avoid the consequence of it.
‘It’s a partnership,’ She shrugs.
‘Why do you need the money?’
‘Call it a safety fund,’ She averts his stare, ‘Look… I’ll tell you the name, and if it doesn’t pan out, you don’t have to give me anything and we can forget this ever happened. But if it does, you pay me and consider a future arrangement.’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re fucking crazy?’ Sean finally replies. She meets his stare with a spark of fury, only to find a placid face staring back, a hint of amusement tinging his features. ‘You know, in a million years I’d never guess this would happen.’
A beat of silence passes and he stares at her, that familiar, dissecting gaze. He rakes it over her body, her unbecoming clothes, her tufts of hair falling from her cap, her craving gaze, desperate for help, her sleepless eyes, rimmed with dark circles. She feels herself twitch beneath the weight of it, scuffing the leg of the chair as she readjusts her position. His lips part for a moment, and she watches them, watches as he tugs the bottom lip between his teeth and lets it sit, sucking in a breath of air between it. He releases it, pulling the bottle back to his mouth and gulping down a mouthful of it.
‘How much for the name?’ Sean finally hums.
‘Two pounds,’
He considers it, tilting his head one side then another. Finally, he pulls himself to his feet, stepping over the table and crouching before her. Erin thinks about moving, briefly, but before she can he meets her eye and she stiffens in the chair at the contact. His fingers rest upon his lower lip, before nodding to himself.
‘The name, girl,’ He whispers, face inching closer to hers. ‘Tell me, and we’ll have a deal.’
‘I need to know I’ll get my money—,’ She begins to murmur out but he waves his hand, stopping her.
‘You’ll get your money. I’ll get it to you. The name… now,’ Sean urges, unrelenting in eye contact.
‘Ellen Cochrane and her brother, Patrick,’ She finally breaths out and he stands himself up, pulling away.
‘Well then. Shove your hair back in your cap and see yourself out, lad,’ Erin begins to rise to her feet at his words, adjusting her clothes and hat, beginning to walk towards the door before Sean steps in front of her, a finger held stern before her face, ‘and if it pans out, I’ll get you your money.’
‘And a partnership?’ Erin bravely inquires, and he grins at the audacity.
‘We’ll just have to see,’