O'Malley! And here was I thinkin' you were hanged for certain sure!" Willie stood up to greet Caitlyn as she ducked into the tumbledown shanty that served as home to a fluid group of eight or so lads. Made by their own hands of discarded lumber and tin, it leaned against the back wall of the Royal Hospital. Dozens of such tiny structures had been erected along the stone walls of the building. They were regularly torn down by dragoons and just as regularly built up again by the residents. It was a way of life.
"Ah, you know I've the luck of the Irish, Willie." Caitlyn basked in Willie's amazement at her escape as she crouched to warm herself at the tiny peat fire. The smoke the fire gave off was malodorous, but she scarcely noticed. From birth she had been exposed to the awful stink of Dublin's slums. Sewage ran raw in the gutters, at least in the Irish quarters. Garbage rotted in the streets, breeding enormous rats and cockroaches the size of fat mice. After a pair of hours spent in the Protestant sections of the city, Caitlyn felt even more keenly than usual what the interlopers were robbing them of. Protestant Dublin had wide streets, beautiful brick homes and shops, and a semblance at least of law and order. Catholic Dublin was menaced by roving gangs of beggars and thieves. The pinkindin- dies, as they were called, roamed about the mews after nightfall, slashing and robbing their victims, raping women in the streets, breaking into shops and homes almost at will. Homelessness, hunger, and brutality of the worst sort were part of daily life. Liffey fever was rampant. People died of it every day, their corpses dumped into the gutter with the sewage and garbage if they had no kin to arrange a burial for them. Surviving was the sole employment of thousands, and it made them as vicious as wild dogs.
"Doyle and the others've gone to the pub for a dram. I didn't feel like going with 'em. I-I thought never to see you again, O'Malley."
"Holy Mary, Willie, don't start blubberin' like a babe. You should've known a bloody Sassenach couldn't hold me.
Willie gave a watery grin. "Aye, I should've known it. How'd you get away, O'Malley?"
Caitlyn stood up, her hand going to her pocket where the Sassenach's money was tucked well down into the farthest corner. She'd meant to tell no one of her windfall. If word got out, the coins would be taken off her before she could say bloody England and her throat likely slit for their trouble. But Willie was her friend. When her mother had died in childbed, after having been turned off from her position as maidservant at Dublin Castle because she was increasing (through no fault of her own; she'd been forced by a drunken lord), young Willie, orphaned like Caitlyn, had been the first to stand her friend. Although he was younger than she, he'd been on the streets all his life and was wise in their ways. It was he who'd shown her the ropes. For a long time Caitlyn had been haunted by memories of her beloved mother, shamed and with nowhere to go but the streets, racked with coughing spells that had left her so pale and thin that the sunlight had almost shone through her except for the increasingly swollen mound of her belly. The end had come some eight years ago at the self-same Royal Hospital against which Caitlyn's shanty now leaned. Kate O'Malley had died in the charity ward, frightened and in pain, without so much as a pillow on which to rest her head. Caitlyn, with her until the end, had been left with her mother's blessing and naught else. It was while she lay dying that Kate O'Malley had insisted that her daughter begin to dress as a lad to protect her from the predators that were men. Caitlyn, with a horror of suffering her mother's fate, had not resisted, and by the time she had met Willie sheltering under a bridge she'd almost forgotten that she'd been born a lass. Willie and the others had no inkling of it.
In those early weeks, Caitlyn had cried at night, frightened and missing her mother. Willie had comforted her then when the others had laughed, his thin young arm hugging the shoulders of the lad he'd thought her to be. Remembering, Caitlyn looked at Willie, who was the closest thing to family she possessed. Her mother's thin face seemed to float before her.
"Take a chance, Caitie. 'Tis likely the only one you'll get." The words were as clear as if they'd actually been spoken. Caitlyn blinked, crossing herself reflexively. The vision had been so real, only Willie's tear-marked face convinced her that she'd imagined it. Earlier that day she'd come face to face with the evil eye, and now she was seeing banshees. It was unsettling.
"Come, Willie, I Ve a wee surprise for you," she said, draping an arm around Willie's shoulder in an unusual gesture of affection and leading him from the shelter. "I've somethin' to talk over with you…"