Crown of a Prince (Finn Shelby)

16.

The next morning Ailbhe woke in her old bed, back in Small Heath to the noise of factory chimnies and boats on the cut. She opened her eyes and looked across the room. Her mother's bed lay empty as it had for nearly a year now since she had passed. It happened on a Monday morning and Ailbhe had been out of prison only a week. She hadn't yet managed to sleep through the night and her brothers had been blind drunk for the whole week.

After being pardoned from prison herself, she had waited at Ada's for news of her brothers and Finn. But it was Niall who had told her what happened when they finally arrived, pale and starving just as she was. They had been in their cells; nobody had seen each other since they had been arrested and their lawyers hadn't visited in weeks. They had been promised that there was an appeal underway, that Tommy had a plan and that they would be pardoned soon. But one day, a priest came to each of their doors and they knew it was bad news.

They were dragged from their cells, Niall and John couldn't stop themselves from resisting. They tried to fight them off until there were four men holding each of them still as they walked them to the room at the end of the corridor where their brothers waited for them. Swinging open the doors, silence fell upon them as they saw what awaited them. Liam told Ailbhe they were standing there, nooses tightened around their necks and they were seconds away from swinging at the end of that rope when there were screams and shouts to stop. Michael and Finn were silent as the ropes were looped around their neck whereas all the others said was the line they had promised to say over each other's graves. The last thing they thought they would ever hear was their brother's last words "In the bleak midwinter".

Ailbhe understood there was no easy route back from that. She still woke in the night, hearing the shouts of the other prisoners or felt the sharp pains of the baton across her back or her arms. She had scars on the inside from her time that Polly wore too. The voices and the dreams were coming more and more often, not just at night now too.

Lying there, alone in her old bed she remembered it was Christmas Day. And her family couldn't have been more broken. She had been told to get Finn, to tell him that he had to be at the meeting on Boxing Day but she wanted to do something first.

She dressed silently, pulling clothes from her suitcase rather than her old garments that had been sitting in her drawers for months. She had new clothes now, from London and Paris. They were professionally made and yet Ailbhe still had to make her own alterations, make them her own. She couldn't help herself.

She tied her hair back with an old ribbon she had left on the bed post, it was one that John used to always pull from her hair when they were in school. Smiling at the memory she looked forward to seeing them soon.

Liam was in the kitchen already when she stepped into the room. He was finishing his breakfast, ready to go to the yard to feed the horses.

"I'm coming with you Liam; I want to see Uncle Charlie and Curly" she told her brother as she took a cup from the table and filled it with tea.

"Alright" he sighed; he knew it was pointless to argue with her. You couldn't win against her. Besides, at least with him he could keep an eye on her and know she was safe. Liam was taking Tommy's warning about the Italians seriously, there was danger in the air. He could feel it, like when they were in France and they could feel death coming.

It felt strange to be back in Small Heath, back among everyone she had known as a child and realising she wasn't a child anymore. The streets were quiet, barely a soul out in the streets since it was Christmas morning. By the time they reached the yard they wondered if they were the only souls out in Birmingham but then they saw the fires lit and realised it was business as usual for Charlie Strong's yard.