Note: This has been redone. Even if you have already read this prologue, this chapter, keep in mind that it has now been combined, and I am choosing to write this story a different way. You may also want to re-read this, because I have modified certain small details. Sorry if it messes you up, but hey. Author’s privilege. So prepare to see this written in another way.

Now – I just want to say that FP doesn’t give enough options for genres. This story could fit under drama, tragedy, romance, supernatural, and historical, so keep that in mind if you read it.

And oh yeah — the Irish term a chara means “my dear.”

– – – –

A Cold Grey Dawn

Prologue

The Dublin of the early twentieth century, in fact the whole of Ireland, was an unstable place to be sure. Old wounds from half a century before, set in during the Great Famine, still festered; the limitations exacted by the British continued to rub many people the wrong way – salt in the wounds. The poor of Ireland, the poor farmers whose land hadn’t the fertility to grow enough food for their families or those who simply had no place to call home, grew poorer, and the slums of Dublin became known as some of the worst in Europe; the Ascendancy, those Irish who had married into English families of prosperity, established themselves as the upper class; the Irish middle-class, composed of strong farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, emerged.

Through it all, people made their way. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912, though shocking to the world, eventually came to be accepted, and except for the more than fifteen hundred souls who followed the “unsinkable” ship to her watery grave, life continued, with the British ruling the Irish as they had for the last seven hundred years.

The first few decades of the twentieth century were filled with change. While the Great War held the world in a two-fisted death grip, Ireland fought a battle all her own: the battle for well-deserved independence, a battle that had originated centuries ago and continued to take roots in the minds of many.

They were ordinary people – a shopkeeper, a schoolteacher, a poet, a professor. All had differences in their professions, but all united. All aiming for one goal that would not be easily won.

Calm in Ireland would not last long. The wheel of events had been set in motion centuries before, when first the English foreigners began to arrive on Irish land.

– – – –

County Clare, Ireland, 1912

“Oh, Cathleen, look here at Seamus’s letter. He’s sent us tickets, to see America and how he’s faring. Oh, and on the RMS Titanic! Sweet Jesus! These must have cost a fortune.”

The fifteen-year-old tossed back clouds of silky dark curls, sniffed. “I don’t see why he had to leave at all.”

Her mother sent her a gentle look that said she understood what her eldest daughter was going through. Despite there being five children in the Murray family, Cathleen and Seamus had always been the closest to each other, and his decision to emigrate to America had cut deep.

The patient and kind gaze from her mother made Cathleen look away, and after a moment she began to cry in short, sharp sobs. “Oh, Mama, why did he have to go? We’re happy here, are we not?”

“Sure we are, darling, but your brother always was the roaming type. You know that.”

“Still,” sniffed the girl, already wiping her clear blue eyes dry. “‘Tisn’t fair.”

“Ah, love, life never is.”

—

That had been months earlier. When the tickets had come – tickets for the Titanic, no less, earned by friends Seamus had made – Eleanor Murray had taken them with her wherever she went, calling for Cathleen to fetch her handbag and “accidentally” revealing the three tickets Seamus had sent.

When asked, she would only say airily, “Ah well, Seamus has made himself some good friends in America, so he has. He’s bringing us to America to show us the country he’s in now, to show us how he’s faring. Would you not be proud, were it your own son?”

Their neighbours, who lived near the town of Ennis in County Clare, were shocked. The Irish, though known for their myths and legends, were a practical people for the most part, and the hardworking farmers who had lived hand-to-mouth for generations were confounded by the fact that Seamus Murray, once able to play the pennywhistle that had all the young lads and lasses dancing at the crossroads, was sending for his mother, father and sister simply because he could.

Truth be told, the Murrays themselves were confused, and one night Eleanor confessed to her husband, “Frank, I don’t understand it, this bringing us to America that Seamus is doing. It’s so dear a price.”

Frank Murray was the perfect example of an Irishman pretending to lead his home while his wife made all the decisions in the background. He smiled, gently patted his wife’s hand. “Ah, a chara, don’t be taking on so. You worry about everything, so you do. It’s a miracle that you get a wink of sleep of a night.”

She stuck out her lip in a pretty pout. “That wasn’t what I meant and well you know it, Francis Seamus Murray.”

He laughed, a warm, deep sound from deep in his chest. “Ah well, I never pretended to understand women, did I? Even our little Cathleen’s growing into a beautiful lass, and more of a puzzle every day.”

“Perhaps the trip to America and the chance to see Seamus will cheer her,” Eleanor said hopefully.

“Perhaps, love. We can only hope.”

—

The next letter from Seamus, arriving a week or so after the tickets, explained matters more thoroughly.

“I am engaged to be married,” he wrote excitedly. “Mama, I know you will think it rash of me to rush so quickly through a courtship, but I have been seeing this young lady almost since I have been here. It is her family I work for, and in return I not only have a roof over my head and food in my stomach, but a happy living.”

“This family holds no grudge against we Irish, whom many call ‘Immigrant Paddys’ – in fact, they are happy to have me here, and enjoy hearing all the old myths and legends I can remember. And though I never thought to say it, National School came in handy. Though this family is fairly wealthy, the children have no formal education to speak of, and I have taught them all to read and write. It’s an uncommon thing in this country, but there we are. I look forward to seeing you all here – and Cathleen, lass, I know you’ll love Bridget. She’s a dear, dear girl, and I think you both shall get along well.”

“Oh, well then.”

It was the first thing Eleanor Murray could say when she saw the letter. Hand over her mouth, she made the sign of the Cross over herself, wondered what her son was thinking.

“Now, love, calm yourself. She sounds like a good lass.” Frank’s voice was gentle, his smile patient.

“I’ve never met her. How am I to know so?”

“Do you not trust your eldest son’s judgement?” her husband returned pleasantly.

“I do of course. Did I not aid in his education myself?” Eleanor’s reply was heated, as Frank had known it would be. The sky-blue eyes her daughter had inherited were snapping, her face flushed. Though she could act like an indignant hen and fuss all she wanted, secretly Eleanor was pleased.

Plans were finalized. Costly or not, Eleanor, Frank and Cathleen now had cause to go to America.

They would meet Seamus’s soon-to-be bride.

—

April 14, 1912

Cathleen inhaled sharply, let the smell of the salt and damp that was the Atlantic Ocean fill her nostrils. The voyage to America would be fun even if nothing else was, she promised herself as she gazed around at the sky and at the sea below her, slapping against the huge ship’s sides. The Titanic had been like nothing she’d ever dreamed – enormously vast, with gymnasiums and swimming pools and all manner of things for the first-class passengers. Of course, she and her family considered themselves lucky enough to be second class passengers. That was a marvel in itself, not to be confined below, but to be able to stand on deck and breathe all this in.

And to think she’d almost refused the voyage out of spite. She was glad now she hadn’t.

“Oi, take yourself below.”

The order came from a sailor passing by, and though Cathleen looked at him with her head cocked to one side, she said nothing, nor did she move from her place by the rail. The sailor started towards her, sighed and turned away, then faltered as though he were coming back. But he shook his head, muttered something under his breath and walked away instead.

Moments later he returned with another sailor, a burlier one, at his side.

“Take yourself back below, girl, where you’re meant to be.”

“I beg your pardon?” She said it sweetly and with an innocent smile, but they heard the musical rise and fall in her voice and correctly guessed her nationality.

“Your kind go below.” As he said it the larger of the two approached her and clasped a beefy hand around her arm. Cathleen went very still and lifted eyes of a now-cool blue to his.

“I am a second-class passenger,” she assured him in a tone that had ice layered over steel, her only defense against these men whose people had held hers as “second-class” for centuries. “And I’ll thank you to take your hands from me.”

The two men did so, surprisingly, though she heard them muttering about the “bloody Irish givin’ themselves bloody airs.”

Her good mood ruined, she sighed and headed for her cabin, fighting a grin at the thought. Her own cabin. She’d never even had her own bedroom in all her life, and yet the Titanic was so vast she had an entire cabin to herself.

And she hadn’t even been sick like Seamus had been on his own voyage – at least, not yet.

She wondered vaguely what time it was, guessing it to be rather late from the all-encompassing darkness of the sky above them. But once she was in her cabin and safely ensconced beneath mounds of blankets, sleep claimed her and she forgot all else.

—

Cathleen sat up with a start.

All was quiet, which was precisely what had her worried. From the moment the great ship had sailed four days earlier, the noise of her engines had been a constant rumble, like a huge cat of some sort.

The rumble had stopped.

Quietly she slid from her bunk and quickly dressed in the dark. Her mother would have died of embarrassment if she dared to wander out among the high-class elite on board the ship in her nightclothes, and Cathleen for one did not wish to bring on her mother’s wrath.

Once dressed, she left her cabin with her hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She was a slim girl, and made quite the sight, standing there in the dark silence. Briefly she thought of waking her parents, but dismissed the thought, instead thinking of a friend.

Michael, she thought, thinking longingly of a longtime friend of both herself and her brother. Michael O'Donohue would have loved this, would have loved to be on board this ship.

Or at least, the younger Michael would have. The Michael who now wrote to her from Saint Enda’s, a school on the outskirts of the Dublin suburb called Ranelagh, was a mature one who spoke of important matters in Irish history and the like. When she had said as much to her mother, hoping for sympathy, Eleanor had instead expressed approval with a firm nod and the declaration: “It’s time the lad grew up, and yourself as well, Cathleen.”

Well, she could be grown up. Another time. Tonight she wanted to be a little girl, to forget the fact that someday she would marry whoever was deemed suitable. She wanted to let herself believe she was still the little girl who believed in pirates and the like, wanted to explore the greatest ship of her time as she sailed across the Atlantic late on a clear April night.

She sighed, moved out onto the deck – and into the beginnings of chaos.

People were standing about in their nightshirts and -dresses, blinking owlishly. “I say, what’s going on?” she heard one man ask as he yawned widely.

Cathleen stood and stared. The ship was listing, moving off to the side. She heard mutters about an iceberg, then scoffing laughs of disdain at those who worried.

She agreed with those who laughed. The Titanic was unsinkable. No mere iceberg could stop her.

How wrong she was.

As more thuds began to reverberate, and laughter began to turn to frightened cries, Cathleen turned, wading through a crush of bodies. She needed to find her parents. She would feel safer with Mama and Papa by her side.

—

Later, she would never be certain how she survived.

Memories were vague and all the more painful for it: of being just feet away from the door to her parents’ cabin when the same sailor who had earlier in the night reprimanded her snatched her up and carried her bodily away. Of losing all ladylike composure at that, begging for her parents, even screaming their names in desperation. Of seeing, briefly, as she was carted away, her father peek out from their cabin, eyes cloudy from sleep, but quickly sharpening as he rushed forward for his daughter’s sake, throwing on a robe as he went and calling for Eleanor.

Of hearing, through it all, the strains of the band’s continued playing.

They managed to make it to the deck together. As he ran by her yet again, the larger of the two sailors she remembered from earlier in the night shoved a life jacket into her arms, the other towards her mother. “Put them on,” he said curtly and was gone despite Cathleen’s pleas to have a jacket for her father.

Sailors began to call for women and children to climb into the lifeboats. Sure now that the ship was sinking, people began to panic. The life jackets, the life boats.. All these words with life a part of them. All measures to keep their lives intact.

All failing to do so.

Frank Murray began to move quickly among the passengers, sneaking some of the third-class passengers, people from his own country, into the lifeboats when no one was looking. When he had his wife and daughter safe in a lifeboat that was about to go away half-filled, he reached out and held each of their hands for one long moment. The look he gave them through eyes as green as the hills they had left behind that had misted over was charged with a meaning Cathleen wished she did not understand.

“Papa, no! You have to come with us!”

“I can’t, lass. Women and children first.”

“Out of me way,” snarled a rough third-class passenger. He had timed this act perfectly: he lifted Eleanor Murray directly from her spot in the lifeboat and flung himself in instead just as it began to lower.

“Mama! Papa!” Cathleen cried out, hands reaching upwards for them. But they stayed with the ship, and waited for the next lifeboat.

Their hands were linked. Even as the ship went down, with a great shuddering collapse against the black water, Cathleen saw through her tears that her parents’ hands were linked.

Always would be.

And still the band played on.

—

New York, April 18, 1912

“Please, please, please let them be there.”

Seamus Murray chanted the words again and again like a benediction without even being aware of it, just as he was unaware of his knuckles turning white on the rail. It was all he had been able to say since news of the Titanic’s sinking had reached him.

Please, please Lord, let Mama and Papa and Cathy all be alive... please!

The dock was silent as the Carpathia arrived and began to discharge her passengers. Her regular passengers moved to the side, to let the Titanic survivors pass before them be they first class or third. It was not meant to set them apart and make them feel shunned; it was a simple act of respect, and the least they could do.

Seamus had scanned survivor lists repeatedly, had not seen the names of any of his family on them. But he would not give up hope, not until he had seen every last passenger disembark, not until he knew.

The passengers that had been so happy and carefree on the Titanic, that great unsinkable marvel, were now gaunt and haggard, with the ghost of death haunting them all. Most of them felt no gratitude at being alive; many wished they had followed the Titanic and the loved ones they had had on board to the watery grave below the Atlantic.

Beside him Bridget Sinclair laid a soothing hand over his arm, felt the rigidity of steel there. She was gentle, kind and intelligent even with her lack of formal education. Normally Seamus could make them all laugh themselves silly with his tales and songs.

Now looking at him, at the starved look in his eyes and his tightly pursed lips, at the weak but desperately present hope in him as passenger after passenger that he did not recognize moved silent as a ghost down the gangplank of the Carpathia, was enough to make her weep.

And then suddenly he seemed to lose two inches in height as he heaved an immense sigh of relief and slumped against the rail.

“Cathleen,” he said weakly in a hoarse voice, his eyes fixed on a tall dark-haired slip of a girl with haunted sky-blue eyes. “Cathleen’s alive. Thanks be to God, Cathleen’s alive.”

—

They went to a hotel Bridget’s father had paid for at his own cost. Cathleen asked no questions, took no food and no drink. She had not eaten since the night of the tragedy.

“Cath... what happened?”

There was a raw desperation in his voice that made a dull connection through the shroud of pain Cathleen was wrapped in. She knew what had happened, all the horrible facts of it; he did not. And he would never be able to grieve his parents and accept their loss until he did.

“I’m told the ship struck an iceberg, sometime before twelve a.m.. The passengers laughed, I remember it. They all laughed, all said there was no iceberg afloat could sink the Titanic. I agreed with them.”

Her voice was a rasping whisper, so filled with pain it made Bridget ache to hear the girl speak.

The girl closed her eyes, a low moan slipping past her lips. “We were so wrong,” she breathed, rocking back and forth as though she were back on the lost ship once more. “We thought she was invincible, but she wasn’t. Not a one of us was.”

She didn’t tell him of the band, the way they had continued to play until the very end — and how, at the very end, it had sounded as though the hymn they played was “Nearer My God to Thee.”

“What about...” Seamus swallowed, knowing this was difficult but needing to know. “Mama and Papa?”

Cathleen had opened her eyes, but now she closed them again, let out a shuddering breath. “They... they were so close. Mama was in a lifeboat with me. At the last second some fool lifted her out of it and sat down instead. ‘Out of me way,’ that’s what he said. As Irish as you or I, Seamus. The lifeboats, they were going away half empty.” She ignored Seamus and Bridget’s soft gasps of surprise, nodded wretchedly. “That man, of all lifeboats he could have taken, he took ours. He made Mama stay behind.”

She inhaled sharply, her breath a weak quiver. “I watched them as we went away, screamed for them. They... they were holding hands. They were together at the last, at least. Perhaps some day I’ll find comfort in knowing that.”

Her voice was faint, weak. Unconvinced.

Seamus’s bright, laughing blue eyes were filled with tears as he leaned almost urgently towards his sister, clutched her hands tightly enough to cause bruising. “There’s no way they could have survived? None?”

Cathleen shook her head almost frantically, bowed her head. “No,” she whispered as though she was afraid that any more volume would shake the foundations of the world she knew yet again. “They went down with the Titanic. Seamus, they went down with her... I saw them go.”

“No!” shouted her brother, standing abruptly and balling his fists with a violence that made his fiancee flinch while Cathleen sat immobile with her eyes downcast in shame – a shame, Bridget realized, that had been drummed into the Irish for too long. “I won’t believe it. You’re lying!”

Bridget was paralyzed, transported on the waves of grief that both siblings were lost in. Some clairvoyant part of her mind dimly recognized that no matter how long she lived, how much she witnessed, never again would she see such sadness, such pain, as there was here on this day.

Cathleen choked on a sob as she held out her hands in supplication, looked beseechingly up at him. “Seamus, look at me,” she pleaded urgently. “Why would I lie about such a thing? Do you not think I want Mama and Papa alive as much as you? Do you not think I carry the guilt of it, wish I had gone down with them instead of saving my own selfish hide? Do you not think I wish I were dead, too?”

Her voice rose, cracked and wavered on the last sentence. Crumpling into the armchair again, Cathleen covered her face with her hands and wept as one completely and utterly broken for the first time since the Titanic had sunk – with huge, heaving sobs that she could do nothing to stop.

—

April 15, 1912
TERRIBLE LOSS OF LIFE AS TITANIC SINKS

April 16, 1912
MORE THAN 1,500 LOST IN GREATEST SHIP
DISASTER EVER