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where the manor house stood, he looked back to see the circle of waggons sprawled below. The scent of the oil they had used clung to his clothes, sweet oil and sweat, and sex, and a smell that was simply Brock. Will was smiling still as he entered the house and made his way stealthily to his room. There he flung himself on his bed, and, falling asleep instantly, he had only peaceful dreams.
    He awoke to sunlight streaming in through the window shutters and his father’s bellow in the yard below.
    “They’re wasters, ye know, both of them!” The senior O’Sullivan’s words came as a roar, and Will sat up with a jerk.
    Good Christ, his father knew! Someone had seen. Someone had told.
    “Complete savages, they are. Both Michael Collins and that American-born whelp, de Valera!” O’Sullivan blustered on.
    “Ach no, Mister O’Sullivan, I think not,” Padraig cut in. “The Republicans might have stolen the vote back in December, but the Constabulary will not let them win the war.”
    Will flopped back on the bed in relief. That again. Would it never end, this running debate between the Nationalists and the Republicans? Now that the Republicans were coming more and more in line with the Sinn Fein and the Sinn Fein was becoming more powerful, it was doubtful the Royal Irish Constabulary efforts would do anything more than muddy the political waters of Ireland.
    Just as long as they didn’t bloody the waters. Oh, but they already had, Will acknowledged to himself, and they would again. Aye, he’d come home from fighting in the army of the English to find Ireland torn by internal war. It mattered not whether it was the blood of innocents spilled on foreign lands or on his own Mother Country by feuding countrymen, it was still war—and he’d had his fill of it.
    “William! Timothy!”
    Will shoved his head beneath a pillow, knowing it would not block out his father’s voice but wishing for a moment’s more peace.
    Peace was a blue-eyed boy on a hillside.
    The thought startled him.
    Ach, he was insane, he was.
    His father bellowed his name again, and Will reluctantly dragged himself up. He shucked his soiled clothes and washed up, then donned clean garments and headed downstairs.
    Timothy was nowhere about, and so it fell to Will to do his father’s bidding, which was to pick up a newly purchased racehorse from a neighbor over east in County Kildare. But it had been a while since he had ridden horseback. Even though Will was enjoying the ride, he knew that, on the morrow, he would pay for it with sore leg muscles and equally sore buttocks. Following the road, he kept an eye out for the occasional lorry or motor car that might spook the gelding, but he caught sight of nary a one.
    As he turned round a hairpin curve, he glimpsed a lone horseman riding a pony through the tall grass of an adjacent meadow. The rider’s long curls floated out behind him, loose shirt and baggy trousers fluttered in the wind. Will could not keep the daft grin off his face as he guided his mount into the field to meet the lad.
    “Going to Curragh to bring home the new racehorse for yer da?” Brock said by way of greeting.
    Off his horse and over to the pony in a heartbeat, Will reached up and hauled Brock from the pony’s broad back. Pulling the slender but strong body of the smaller man close, Will searched out full, moist lips for a kiss that left them both breathless.
    “You missed me,” Brock chortled when Will released him, then he reached up and pulled Will’s face down for another kiss. He slid his tongue into Will’s mouth and explored its depths, flicking over gums and counting teeth until Will pulled free with a laugh. “Don’t laugh. If you are a-going horse-trading, you’ll need me, Gorgio .”
    “ Gorgio ?”
    “You might be the landowner’s heir, a chroí , but to us Travellers yer nothing but a lowly Gorgio ,” Brock explained.
    “Ah, how could I have forgotten,” Will said with a laugh. The term was used by