The senior officer said, ‘Four.’ Asked for their names, he said he had already told them more than he should.
‘Never mind,’ Father Augustine said, ‘we will be ready.’
At Church Street, he warned two more colleagues, Fathers Sebastian and Columbus, that there was a job for them that night.
Dillon was alarmed when Nathan told him he had resigned. Soon there would be no civilian rule at all in Ireland.
Nathan suggested, ‘You might like to speak with Maxwell.’
Dillon said he would. He was furious at what the General had already done: turning the Irish against England, perhaps for ever.
It was after 5 p.m. when they were shown into Maxwell’s smoky office at Kilmainham Hospital.
Dillon began politely enough, trying to persuade him to go easy on the prisoners.
The General cut in. ‘I intend to go on punishing the ring-leaders. Four more tomorrow.’
Dillon jumped. This was madness on madness. It was a repetition of traditional British contempt for the Irish.
‘If they were English,’ he spat out, ‘they would be tried in England by an English jury that would demand strict proof of guilt. If they were Turks, they would have a public trial with defending counsel and a chance to appeal the verdict. But these so-called rebels are mere Irishmen, are they not, a class apart, a subject people without any rights or feelings.’
Maxwell looked over his enormous nose in scorn. He resented being lectured to by a discredited civil servant and a bloody-minded politician.
‘At least they have the decency to admit their guilt,’ he said. ‘In fact, they glory in it.’
‘What guilt?’
Maxwell was slightly taken aback by the question. ‘Why, um, assisting the enemy.’
‘Does a small boat carrying German arms for Irishmen constitute assisting the enemy?’ Dillon said.
Maxwell looked at him sardonically. ‘How would you describe it?’
‘They were importing arms not to defeat Germany’s enemy but their own.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Don’t you see,’ roared Dillon, losing his temper, ‘they were trying to gain their own freedom and independence? And even if they are guilty of assisting the enemy, as you so stupidly put it, who are you to deprive them of all the normal procedures of justice?’
‘Normal procedures would have exactly the same outcome.’
‘So you decide what justice is, is that it? Justice a cloak for revenge. Tyrants always act like that.’
Maxwell’s moustache quivered but he disciplined his voice magnificently.
‘I might remind you, sir, that I am simply doing the job I was sent to do: to put down a rebellion and see nothing like it occurs again.’
‘But,’ exploded Dillon, knowing he was shouting into stone ears, ‘you are guaranteeing it will occur again.’
‘I am merely putting traitors to death.’
‘No! You are seeing to it that they will never die.’
Nathan suggested diplomatically that Dillon was a man whose views on Ireland were worthy of consideration. When Maxwell promised to weigh the issues carefully, Dillon handed him a list. ‘To arrest these men, General, would be a manifest injustice.’
Maxwell glanced at it. ‘Leave it with me.’
When they had gone, Maxwell reflected on men of his who had died because of this unprovoked rebellion, houses in which the dead had lain for five days without burial, unarmed policemen who had been shot down in cold blood. He thought of brave boys who would never walk again or see again, their wives left widowed, their children left orphaned, a whole life-long legacy of misery – and all because of the criminal action of a few hotheads demanding a Republic without any mandate from the vast majority of the Irish people.
Well, he had a mandate, from the Prime Minister and from the ordinary decent people of Ireland, to see that justice was done.
Not revenge. Simple, unadorned, God-like justice.
It was late in the afternoon when Grace Gifford answered the bell. The priest on the doorstep introduced himself as Fr Eugene McCarthy, chaplain of Kilmainham Jail.
Joe Plunkett was in custody there and the Governor had given permission for them to marry. In answer to her unspoken question, he bowed his head.
Grace shed tears of joy and anguish. Should she wear white or black? she wondered.
The next few hours were to seem longer to her than the rest of her life put together. She took a taxi to Stoker’s, the Grafton Street jeweller. The owner who, coincidentally, had been in the GPO buying stamps when Joe Plunkett and the rest took it over, was closing for the night. He was putting tall black shutters over the windows when a woman, her face covered by a veil, asked to see a selection of wedding-rings.
As she was trying them on, she remarked, in a choking voice, ‘I want the best that money can buy.’
She arrived at the jail at 6 p.m. but was obliged to walk up and down an inner courtyard for hour after hour.
Once she asked a soldier what was behind the big wall.
‘Nothing, miss,’ he said. ‘Just a yard where prisoners break stones.’
‘And’ – she pointed – ‘the other side?’
‘That’s where the cells are.’
It made it all the harder, knowing she was on one side of the wall and Joe on the other.
*
‘You can come in now, miss.’
Grace looked at her wrist-watch, but it was too dark to see.
‘It’s 11.30, miss.’
She stepped into a narrow unlit corridor, up steep iron steps. In her hand, sticky with nerves, was the ring. The Catholic chapel, painted red and cream, was on the top floor and now lit by a solitary candle held by a Tommy. They entered it through a rear door.
Above the tabernacle was a big crucifix and there were two tall windows over deep embrasures. Twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets were lining the walls like statues.
It was all so cold, so gloomy, not the way she had planned her wedding. It was to have been in white on Easter Sunday, with Easter lilies.
Lately, she reflected, her life had been a catalogue of calamities. Her elder sister Muriel had been since dawn the widow of MacDonagh. He had left behind two children and no money to care for them. Then there was Kathleen Clarke with her three children. Tom, too, was gone, and Kattie had to face the prospect of her brother Ned following soon.
Grace saw that what was happening to her was part of a pattern. She had no wish to escape it.
Father McCarthy approached the altar, robed in cassock, cotta and white stole. He greeted her with a compassionate smile.
When Joe came in, under guard, through the side door he was in handcuffs. The candle flickered as he passed. Soon, she thought, he will not stir a candle-flame or a leaf on a tree.
Side by side they stood. Her eyes were used to the dark and she saw how thin he was and how his hair flopped over his round boyish face. His skin was creamy-white, like the inside of a horsechestnut burr. Never had she seen him looking so ill or so vulnerable, this man whose high spirits and boundless gaiety had won her heart.
His uniform was creased, his topboots were unpolished and charred by fire. The bandages wrapped high around his throat were soiled and dirty, and he had not shaved in days. Only the rings on his fingers were as she remembered them.
It somehow consoled her to know that his life was nearly over, anyway. Proud that he, a hero, loved her, she recalled a line in a poem he had written for her: ‘But my way is the darkest way.’
Joe’s eyesight was never very good and now he was peering owl-like through his spectacles, trying to make out her features. She smiled consolingly at him.
The priest gestured to two soldiers to act as witnesses and they moved their rifles from hand to hand during the brief ceremony.
Bride and groom both had difficulty with the words, ‘till death do us part.’
When she held up the ring, a soldier unlocked Joe’s handcuffs so he could put it on her finger.<
br />
‘With this ring I thee wed.… With my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’
Afterwards, the priest asked them to sign the register. Then two soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment signed, too.
The brief ceremony over, Grace and Joe were not allowed one minute together. For the military, this was a chore to be gone through and it was over. Joe was handcuffed again and led back to his cell.
Grace left the prison to wait in a room that Father McCarthy had booked for her in James’s Street with one of his parishioners called Byrne, who worked in a bell foundry.
At the Byrnes’, Father McCarthy clasped her hand.
‘Wait here, my dear, for a summons from the Governor. Trust me, it will come. Then you will see Joe again.’
The Daly girls were asleep in Fairview, when, just before midnight, Kattie heard a distant lorry. Her instincts were so razor sharp that she shot up in bed, went next door and woke her sisters.
In a strangled scream: ‘They’re coming for Ned.’
‘It’s your nerves, dear,’ Madge said. ‘Go back to bed.’
Kattie was peering through the window. It was some while before a military truck rumbled up.
‘Dear God!’ she gasped, ‘didn’t I tell you?’
She went down and answered the door. A policeman stretched out his hand. ‘A permit from Kilmainham, ma’am, for you to see your brother.’
This was the second from Major Kinsman in twenty-four hours. Kattie’s eyes so ached she could hardly read it.
‘I beg to inform you that your brother is a prisoner in this above prison, and would like to see you tonight. I am sending a car with an attendant to bring you here.’
Her sisters were so tearful and shaky they could hardly put their clothes on.
Kattie said, ‘The permit is for one.’
‘Let them try and stop us,’ said young Laura, who was close to Ned and, like him, full of fire.
The Constable and two soldiers helped them into the truck. Frequent stops at road-blocks made the journey seem endless. Each time, there was a glint of bayonets as lanterns were raised.
‘It says here a permit for one.’
‘They’re sisters,’ the Constable replied. ‘Their kid brother’s being shot.’
‘Pass.’
‘Listen,’ said Kattie. ‘Our brother’s a hero, and we’re daughters and nieces of Fenians.’
They pulled themselves together and prayed to the Virgin Mary that they would have grace like hers when she stood at the foot of the Cross.
When they alighted at the jail, they walked with heads held high and gave their names at the gate in ringing tones, as though they were princesses.
In the lobby, they nearly lost their composure when a soldier called out, ‘Relatives of Daly, to be shot in the morning.’
They held hands to give each other strength.
The officer of the watch was reluctant to let all three in. ‘I’ll compromise,’ he said. ‘One at a time.’
The girls started working it out: Kattie first, then Madge, then Ned’s favourite, Laura.
The officer was touched by their dilemma. ‘All right, you can see him together.’
Five soldiers, one with a candle, escorted them to the central block, up the stairs, and along the catwalk to Cell No 6.
One of them called out gruffly, ‘Daly!’
‘Yes.’
Ned’s mumbly voice made the girls tremble even more.
As a Tommy turned the key, the officer said kindly, ‘Whatever you say will be considered private.’
The door squeaked open and the candle showed Ned blinking, still in his Volunteer uniform. He had been on the floor asleep on a piece of sacking next to a kind of dog biscuit.
Kattie, the most experienced, momentarily barred the entrance to enable Madge to embrace Ned first; he might have a message for her before the soldiers were in earshot.
But Madge’s first words were, ‘Oh, Ned, why are they giving you the highest honours? Why were you chosen to stand with Emmet and Tone?’
All three girls stood with their brother in the middle of the cell, their arms entwined. There they stayed for fifteen minutes, a quiet whirlwind of affection surrounded by soldiers with bared steel. They gathered strength from one another, feeling love pass from each to each in a bond of fond childhood memories and pride in what their family had done for Ireland. Words mattered little.
Kattie said, ‘Give Tom our love.’
Ned gasped. ‘Has he gone?’
‘Yes,’ Kattie said, with fierce pride. ‘So have Pearse and MacDonagh. This morning.’
‘May they rest in peace,’ said Ned, giving Kattie a consoling kiss. ‘What a glorious reunion we’ll have in Heaven, eh?’ He smiled. ‘Sure, Kattie, I’ll give Tom your love. First thing I’ll do.’
He spoke of the brave fight his men had put up. No one broke down until the order to surrender came. He didn’t like it himself and big strong men cried like children.
‘As for me, girls, I’m proud of what I did. Next time, we’ll win. I’m only sorry I won’t be there to do my bit.’
Madge said the whole family would be happy knowing England had given him the martyr’s crown.
‘Your name and spirit will live on, Ned. And one day we’ll all be together in another world.’
He squeezed her arm, ‘Yes. The thought of that makes me very happy.’
Laura chipped in. ‘Uncle John – he’s too ill to travel – well, Uncle John is envious. Know what he said? “Tom and Ned have stolen one on me.” He thinks he’s left it too late to be shot for Ireland.’
Ned gave Kattie a copy of the charge against him.
‘Ridiculous,’ he said, ‘accusing us of assisting the enemy, when they were only trying to assist us.’ The soldiers pricked up their ears when he said, ‘We took a lot of English prisoners. Officers, too. We gave them the best we had.’
‘Why didn’t you shoot them?’ Laura demanded.
‘That wouldn’t be playing the game,’ Ned said, gaily. ‘We had strict orders. Anyone we took was to be treated under the rules of civilized warfare as a prisoner of war. No exceptions allowed.’
Kattie suddenly recognized the soldier holding the candle. He had been there the night before.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘but what happened to my husband?’
‘Well, ma’am,’ he began hesitantly, ‘you’ll be pleased to know he died very brave.’
Kattie had to fight to keep back her tears.
‘I was in the firing-party myself. Never saw a braver, ma’am, and I know ’cos I’ve been in many before.’
Kattie was too overcome to say a proper thank you.
Ned gave them a last message for his mother, his aunt, his other sisters, and Uncle John.
‘Tell them I did my best.’
He gave them his purse with a few small coins in, two pencils, a few buttons from his tunic as mementoes.
‘Time’s up,’ a soldier called.
The family pressed up close as though trying to weld themselves by the fire of love into a single being. When they broke up, there was still not one sob, not one tear. Ours, they seemed to say, is a family of heroes. We don’t cry for our dead.
One last glance passed between Ned and the girls before the door clanged to, leaving him in a tomb-like blackness.
As they descended the stairs, they prayed their legs would not give way. Madge felt Laura falter.
‘Remember,’ she said, sternly, ‘you’re a Daly.’
In the lobby, they ran into the O’Hanrahan sisters, both pale and anxious. They had been waiting nearly half an hour.
Eily O’Hanrahan said, ‘We’re pleased we persuaded our mom not to come.’ She shivered. ‘What a terrible place.’
After they had all embraced, Eily explained, ‘We’ve come to see our Michael. He’s going to be deported.’
‘Is that what they told you?’ Kattie said.
The O’Hanrahans nodded.
They showed the Dalys the note handed in at their house: ‘Mr O’Hanrahan, a prisoner in Kilmainham, wishes to see his mother and sisters before his deportation to England.’
Madge, very gently, said, ‘Ned is to be shot at dawn.’
The younger O’Hanrahan girl put her hand to her mouth and gasped, ‘Oh! Michael!’
With growing trepidation, the two sisters went up the steps with an escort. ‘Tell us, please,’ Eily said.
The soldier, unlocking the door of Cell 69, answered, ‘He’s to be shot at dawn, miss.’
Eily said hoarsely, ‘But Mother isn’t here.’
With the officer warning them, ‘Be careful what you say,’ the girls rushed into their brother’s outstretched arms.
‘You know?’ he said.
‘Just this second.’
‘Oh, my poor sisters.’
He had been left in pitch dark, with only a slop bucket and, in the corner, a sack to lie on. The place, long in disuse, reeked of mildew, damp and urine.
He sent his love first to his mother and then the rest of his family.
Eily told him that three were dead already and Ned Daly was going with him at dawn.
‘Silence,’ came from the officer.
Michael said he would like to make his will. Soldiers went and returned with an old table, a chair and a broken stump of candle. He wrote a few lines, witnessed by two soldiers. He had nothing to bequeath except the copyright of his novel, A Swordsman of the Brigade.
When Eily asked if he had eaten, he said, ‘I had some bully beef at four.’
‘That was ten hours ago,’ Eily gasped. ‘Have you had even a drink of water since?’
He shook his head.
Eily turned in a fury on the soldiers. ‘Get him a drink.’
She blinked at the speed with which they acted. They were not cruel, only thoughtless. Within seconds, one returned with a black billycan from which Michael drank deeply.
After a farewell hug, they left him. As the cell door closed, the younger sister fainted on the catwalk.
In reception, the Dalys put in a formal claim for the bodies of Ned and Tom Clarke. Kattie demanded to know where her husband’s body was.
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