She closed the lids over his dead eyes with gentle fingers stained with his blood and whispered goodbye in Gaelic. Then she caught up the smouldering torch and leapt to her feet, waving it to bright the flame back to life. Her face was terrible in its light. So quick was she that not a shot was fired until she reached the passageway that led to the church. “For Ireland and her martyr Colum O’Hara!” she cried triumphantly, and she ran into the arsenal, brandishing the torch. For a moment there was a silence. Then the stone wall of the church exploded into the wide street in a tower of flame and a deafening blast of sound.


The sky was lit brighter than day. “My God!” Scarlett gasped. The breath was knocked out of her body. She covered her ears with her hands and ran, calling to Cat, as one explosion followed another, then another and another, and the town of Ballyhara burst into flame.

She ran upstairs, with Rhett at her side, and along the corridor to Cat’s rooms. “Cat,” she called, again and again, trying to keep the fear from sounding in her voice. “Cat.” The animals were orange-lit on the wall, the tea set on a freshly ironed cloth, the coverlet smooth on Cat’s bed.

“Kitchen,” said Scarlett, “she loves the kitchen. We can call down.” She raced through the corridor again, Rhett at her heels. Through the sitting room with the menu books, account books, the list she’d been making of friends to invite to the wedding. Through the door onto the gallery to Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s room. Scarlett stopped in the center. She leaned across the balustrade. “Kitty Cat,” she called softly, “please answer Momma if you’re down there. It’s important, sweetheart.” She kept her voice calm.

Orange light flickered in the copper pans on the wall beside the stove. Red coals glowed on the hearth. The enormous room was still, filled with shadows. Scarlett strained her ears and her eyes. She was just about to turn away when the very small voice spoke. “Cat’s ears hurt.” Oh, thank God! Scarlett rejoiced. Calm, now, and quiet.

“I know, baby, that was an awfully loud noise. You hold Cat’s ears. I’ll come around and down. Will you wait for me?” She spoke as casually as if there was nothing to be afraid of. The balustrade vibrated under her clenched hands.

“Yes.”

Scarlett gestured. Rhett followed her quietly along the gallery and through the door. She closed it carefully behind them. Then she began to shake. “I was so frightened. I was afraid they’d taken her away. Or hurt her.”

“Scarlett, look,” said Rhett. “We must hurry.” The open windows above the drive framed a distant cluster of lights, torches, moving towards the house.

“Run!” said Scarlett. She saw Rhett’s face in the orange light of the fire-filled sky, capable and strong. Now she could look at him, lean on him. Cat was safe. He put his hand beneath her arm, supporting her even as he hurried her.

Down the stairs they ran and through the ballroom. The firelit heroes of Tara were life-like above their heads. The colonnade to the kitchen wing was glaringly bright, and they could hear a blurred roaring of far-off angry shouts. Scarlett slammed the kitchen door behind them. “Help me bolt it,” she gasped. Rhett took the iron bar from her, dropped it into its slots.

“What is your name?” said Cat. She walked out from the shadows near the hearth.

“Rhett.” There was a frog in his throat.

“You two can make friends later,” said Scarlett. “We’ve got to get to the stables. There’s a door to the kitchen garden, it’s got high walls, though, I don’t know if there’s another door out of it. Do you know, Cat?”

“Are we running away?”

“Yes, Kitty Cat, the people who made the awful noise want to hurt us.”

“Do they have stones?”

“Very big ones.”

Rhett found the door to the kitchen garden, looked out. “I can lift you onto my shoulders, Scarlett, then you can reach the top of the wall. I’ll hand Cat up to you.”

“Fine, but maybe there’s a door. Cat, we have to hurry now. Is there a door in the wall?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Give Momma your hand, and let’s go.”

“To the stables?”

“Yes, come on, Cat.”

“The tunnel would be faster.”

“What tunnel?” There was an uneven quality to Scarlett’s voice. Rhett came back across the kitchen, put his arm around her shoulders.

“The tunnel to the servants’ wing. The footmen have to use it so they can’t look in the window when we’re having breakfast.”

“That’s horrible,” said Scarlett, “if I’d known—”

“Cat, take your mother and me to the tunnel, please,” Rhett said. “Would you mind if I carried you, or would you rather run?”

“If we have to hurry, you’d better carry me. I can’t run as fast as you.”

Rhett knelt, held out his arms, and his daughter walked trustingly into them. He was careful not to clasp her too tight in the brief embrace he could not withhold. “Onto my back, then, Cat, and hold around my neck. Tell me where to go.”

“Past the fireplace. That door that’s open. That’s the scullery. The door to the tunnel is open, too. I opened it in case I had to run. Momma was in Dublin.”

“Come on, Scarlett, you can bawl your eyes out later. Cat is going to save our unworthy necks.”

The tunnel had high grated windows. There was barely enough light to see, but Rhett moved at a steady speed, never stumbling. His arms were bent, his hands under Cat’s knees. He jounced her in a gallop, and she shrieked with delight.

My lord, our lives are in terrible danger, and the man’s playing horsie! Scarlett didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was there ever in the history of the world a man who was as crazy about babies as Rhett Butler?

From the servants’ wing Cat directed them through a door into the stable yard. The horses were maddened with fright. Rearing, neighing, kicking at the gates to the stalls. “Hold Cat tight while I let them out,” Scarlett said urgently. Bart Morland’s story was vivid in her memory.

“You take her. I’ll do it.” Rhett put Cat in Scarlett’s arms.

She moved to the safety of the tunnel. “Kitty Cat, can you stay here for a little while by yourself while Momma helps with the horses?”

“Yes. A little while. I don’t want Ree to be hurt.”

“I’ll send him to the good pasture. You’re a brave girl.”

“Yes,” said Cat.

Scarlett ran to Rhett’s side, and together they released all the horses except Comet and Half Moon. “Bareback will do,” said Scarlett. “I’ll get Cat.” They could see torches moving inside the house now. Suddenly a ladder of flame raced up a curtain. Scarlett raced to the tunnel while Rhett calmed the horses. When she ran back with Cat in her arms, he was on Comet’s back, holding Half Moon by the mane with one hand to keep him steady. “Give Cat to me,” he said. Scarlett handed his daughter up to him and climbed the mounting block then onto Half Moon.

“Cat, you show Rhett the way to the ford. We’ll go to Pegeen’s, the way we always do, remember? Then we can take the Adamstown road to Trim. It’s not far. There’ll be tea and cakes at the hotel. Just don’t dawdle. You show Rhett the way. I’ll keep up. Now go.”

They stopped at the tower. “Cat says she’ll invite us to her room,” said Rhett evenly. Over his broad shoulder Scarlett could see flames licking into the sky beyond. Adamstown was on fire, too. Their escape was cut off. She jumped from the back of her horse.

“They’re not far behind,” she said. She was steady now. The danger was too close for nerves. “Hop down, Cat, and run up that ladder like a monkey.” She and Rhett sent the horses running along the riverbank, then followed.

“Pull up the ladder. They can’t get to us then,” Scarlett told Rhett.

“But they’ll know we’re here,” he said. “I can keep anyone from getting in; only one can come up at a time. Quiet, now, I hear them.”

Scarlett crawled into Cat’s cubbyhole and drew her little girl into her embrace.

“Cat’s not afraid.”

“Shhh, precious. Momma’s scared silly.”

Cat covered her giggling with her hand.


The voices and the torches came nearer. Scarlett recognized the boasting of Joe O’Neill, the blacksmith. “And didn’t I say we’d the kill English to a man if they ever dared to march into Ballyhara? Did you see it, then, the face of him when I raised my arm? ‘If you have a God,’ says I, ‘which I doubt, make your peace with him now,’ and then I drove the pike into him, like spitting a grand fat pig.” Scarlett held her hands over Cat’s ears. How frightened she must be, my fearless little Cat. She’s never nestled close to me this way in her life. Scarlett blew softly on Cat’s neck, aroon, aroon, and rocked her baby in her lap from side to side as if her arms were the safe tall sides of a sturdy cradle.

Other voices overlapped O’Neill’s. “The O’Hara’d gone over to the English, did I not say it long ago?” . . . “Aye, that you did Brendan, and fool I was to argue” . . . “Did you see her, now, down on her knees by the redcoat?” . . . “Shooting’s too good for her, I say we hang her with a choking rope” . . . “Burning’s better, burning’s what we want” . . . The changeling’s what we’ve to burn, the dark one that brought the afflictions, I say the changeling spelled The O’Hara” . . . “spelled the fields . . . spelled the rain from the clouds themselves” . . . “changeling” . . . “changeling” . . . “changeling” . . . Scarlett held her breath. The voices were so close, so inhuman, so like the yowling of wild beasts. She looked at the outline of Rhett’s shadow in the darkness beside the opening to the ladder. She sensed his controlled alertness. He could kill any man who dared to climb the ladder, but what could stop a bullet if he showed himself? Rhett. Oh, Rhett, be careful. Scarlett felt a flooding, tingling happiness in every part of her. Rhett had come. He loved her.