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lost them as surely as he had lost his mother and father when he buried them.
    Everyone in Ireland, north and south, lost family, friends, neighbors, even husbands and wives and lovers, through emigration. Like some great plague sweeping the land, taking the firstborn, the brightest, and the most adventurous, leaving the old, the sick, the timid, the self-satisfied rich, the desperately poor. "This is my country. I won't leave here to become a laborer in America."
    She nodded. Better to be a king of the dunghills of Belfast and Londonderry. "I may go alone."
    "You probably shoul~d."
    They walked quietly, their arms around each other's waists, both realizing that they had lost something more than a little blood this night.

    32

CHAPTER 3
    lane led into a small, treeless valley between two hills. In the distance they saw the abbey. The moonlight lit the white stone and gave it a spectral appearance in the ground mist.
    They approached the abbey cautiously and stood under a newly budded sycamore tree. A small oblong cemetery, hedged with short green plants, spread out beside the abbey wall. Flynn pushed through the hedge and led Maureen into the cemetery.
    The churchyard was unkempt, and vines grew up the gravestones. Whitehorn plants-which gave the abbey its name and which were omens of good luck or bad luck, depending on which superstition you believed-clogged the narrow path. A small side gate in a high stone wall led into the abbey's cloister. Flynn pushed it open and looked around the quiet court. "Sit on this bench. I'll find the brothers' dormitory."
    She sat without answering and let her head fall to her chest. When she opened her eyes again, Flynn was standing over her with a priest.
    "Maureen, this is Father Donnelly."
    She focused on the elderly priest, a frail-looking man with a pale face.
    "Hello, Father."
    He took her hand and with his other hand held her forearm in that way they had of claiming instant intimacy.' He was the pastor; she was now one of his flock. Presto. Everyone's role had been carved in stone two millennia ago.
    "Follow me," he said. "Hold my arm."

    33

    NELSON DE MILLE

    The three of them walked across the cloister and entered the arched door of a polygon-shaped building. Maureen recognized the traditional configuration of the chapter house, the meeting place of the monks. For a moment she thought she was going to face an assemblage, but she saw by the light of a table lamp that the room was empty.
    Father Donnelly stopped abruptly and turned. "We have an infirmary, but I'm afraid I'll have to put you in the hole until the police and soldiers have come round looking for you.
    Flynn didn't answer.
    "You can trust me."
    Flynn didn't trust anyone, but if he was betrayed, at least the War Council wouldn't think him too foolish for having trusted a priest.
    "Where's this hole, then? We don't have much time, I think."
    The priest led them down a corridor, then opened the door at the end of the passage. Gray dawn came through stained glass, emitting a light that was more sensed than seen. A single votive candle burned in a red jar, and Flynn could see he was in the abbey's small church.
    The priest lit a candle on a wall sconce and took it down. "Follow me up the altar. Be careful."
    Flynn helped Maureen up to the raised altar sanctuary and watched the priest fumble with some keys and then disappear behind the reredos wall in back of the altar.
    Flynn glanced around the church but neither saw nor heard anything in the shadows to signal danger. He noticed that the oppressive smell of incense and tallow was missing, and the church smelled like the outside air. The priest had told him that the abbey was deserted. Father Donnelly was apparently not the abbot but served in something like a caretaker capacity, though he didn't seem the type of priest that a bishop would exile to such a place, thought Flynn. Nor did he seem the type to hide members of the provisional IRA just to get a thrill out of it.
    The