The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising

by Dermot McEvoy

“Yes, Róisín,” he said, replacing the receiver to his ear, suddenly dry-eyed. “I’ll be up there in a few minutes.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Róisín, “stay away. If they find out your father’s dead, they’ll be watching for you.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” said Eoin, his soul as cold and empty as the winter night outside.

  When he arrived at the Mater, he asked for Róisín. When she came down, she hugged Eoin as hard as she could. “Take me to my Daddy,” was all he said. She took him to the mortuary where his father was lying naked, covered only by a sheet. It was the same slab that Thomas Ashe had occupied. It seemed that history was repeating itself, only this time it was his family on that cold slab. Eoin pulled back the sheet that covered his father’s head and just looked. Róisín stood by him, holding his left arm with both of her hands. “So it all comes down to this,” he said, not really talking to Róisín, but to his father. “This time, Da, we will not be denied. And I swear on my immortal soul that I’ll find out who did this to you, and they will be paid back in kind.”

  With that, the door opened, and Michael Collins walked into the mortuary. He had a big box under his arm, and he immediately went to Eoin. “I’m so sorry, Eoin,” he said. “But I promise you, we’ll get the scum that did this.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Eoin coldly. Collins shook his head, confused. “I’m going to get the gobshite, and I’m going to get him good.” He finally looked at Collins. “How did you know?”

  “Róisín sent a message over to Vaughan’s for me.”

  There was silence among the three living and the one dead. “Let’s dress the body,” said Collins. He opened his big box and took out a Volunteer’s uniform. He had woken Mr. Fallon of Fallon’s of Mary Street so that he could procure the uniform.

  “But my father wasn’t in the Volunteers,” protested Eoin.

  “Yes, he was,” said Collins forcefully. “Your Da did more work for the movement than a lot of the IRA brigades around the country. He was a Volunteer through-and-through.” For a moment Eoin was touched, but the moment didn’t last long.

  “I want to examine the body,” Collins said. “Look away,” he commanded Eoin.

  “No,” said Eoin firmly. “I want to see what they did to my Daddy.”

  “Róisín,” said Collins, “will you help me?” They removed the sheet.

  “We come into this world naked,” said Eoin absently. “And I guess we leave it the same way.”

  Collins and Róisín looked at each other and grimaced. There were no marks on the front of the body until they came to the legs, and they saw ugly sores on both calves and ankles. “Ulcers,” said Róisín. “Very, very bad nutrition,” she added, in diagnosis.

  “He starved himself for years so his family could eat,” said Eoin. “He sometimes survived on one egg a day and cups of watered-down tay.”

  “One miserable oige,” said Collins, shaking his head. He turned Joseph over, and his back revealed his demise. It was all black-and-blue, from his shoulder blades to his buttocks. The British had slaughtered his kidneys.

  “I hope they note this in the autopsy,” said Róisín innocently.

  “There won’t be any autopsy,” snapped Collins. “The British don’t want any more inquests.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the juries keep returning ‘death by murder’ against the Crown.”

  In deadly silence, they dressed Joseph Kavanagh in his Volunteer’s uniform. Eoin noted that he looked sharp, still keeping his sartorial splendor, even in death. As a final act, Eoin made sure the curl of Joseph’s handlebar mustache was perfect. As they prepared to leave, Collins said, “I’ll send a coffin over in the morning. No wake. The mass will be tomorrow and then the burial. The quicker, the better.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Róisín.

  “So will I,” said Eoin.

  “No, you won’t,” said Collins, and the boy looked shocked. “I’m sorry, Eoin, but Saints Michael and John’s will be crawling with G-men hoors. It’s not safe. I can’t go, either.”

  “But I will,” interjected Róisín.

  Eoin dropped his head. “I understand, Mick.” The British were still robbing the Kavanaghs of their dignity. Suddenly, Eoin turned to Róisín. “Did he receive the last rites?”

  “No,” said Róisín, somewhat baffled. “He didn’t. I didn’t think it was safe to draw any more attention to him then I had to. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”

  “Smart move,” agreed Collins.

  “Then there’s one more thing we have to do before we get out of this terrible place,” said Eoin. “He deserves—demands—a Perfect Act of Contrition.” With that, Eoin bent down to his father’s ear and said, “Oh my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed Róisín and Collins, and, for one last moment in time, the four Fenians were united as one.

  1920

  69

  Eoin decided he had to see Collins. He began the trek from Crow Street, over the Ha’penny Bridge, and up Liffey Street, unconsciously retracing his steps to the GPO that rainy Tuesday night of Easter Week. He walked blindly, as if on auto-pilot. He was thinking about what he had to say to Mick. He found himself in Moore Street and then continued on his way to Parnell Square. He knew the boss would be in Joint Number One, Vaughan’s Hotel, at the top of the Square.

  Eoin banged his open hand on the reception desk, and Christy Harte, the porter, nodded and shot his eyes upward to indicate that Collins was in.

  Eoin knocked on the door. “Come in,” Collins called from inside.

  He was alone in the room doing paper work. Eoin didn’t mince words. “I want to join the Squad,” he said without hesitation.

  “I want you at Crow Street,” returned Collins.

  “I think I can do both jobs.”

  If nothing else, Collins liked his ambition. “What made you change your mind?”

  “My Da.”

  “Simple as that?”

  “Yes.”

  Collins looked down at the papers in front of him. “I don’t like revenge as a motive. The man who holds revenge in his heart is not fit to be a Volunteer.”

  “I can handle it,” came the defiant answer.

  “Revenge gets you in trouble.”

  “Tell the truth,” snapped Eoin, “and shame the devil.” Collins stared at Eoin, remaining mute. “Sometimes revenge is necessary. When will Percival Lea Wilson get his?” Eoin said, referring to the tormentor of Tom Clarke and Seán MacDiarmada that damp Saturday night on the Rotunda Hospital grounds, just across the way. Little did Eoin know that Collins was already planning the demise of Captain Wilson, who thought himself safe and sound in Gorey, County Wexford.

  “You have a way of making your point, Eoin,” conceded Collins.

  “You think I want to live this vindictive life?” said Eoin. “I was not brought up that way. You know my parents.”

  “You do realize that joining the Squad is equivalent to a ‘calling’?”

  “A ‘calling’!” snapped Eoin. “What are you looking for? A priest of sanctified murder?”

  “Fair enough,” said Collins, allowing a smile, and not wanting to rile the boy any further. “The Squad has taken to calling themselves ‘The Twelve Apostles.’ Imagine that.”

  Eoin could. “I guess that makes you Jesus Christ.” Collins laughed out loud before Eoin cut him short. “Beware of Judas.” The smile evaporated from Collins’s face.

  Collins stood up and towered over Eoin. “You jeerin’ me, boy?”

  Eoin became deadly serious. “I need this job. This country, this city has destroyed my fooking family. My parents are dead. My brother Frank is on the run in the D
ublin Mountains. Mary and Dickie are in orphanages. I have to make a better tomorrow for this country, or my family is done for.” Eoin paused. “For now, you and the movement are my family.”

  Collins sat down again, his hands calmly on the papers in front of him, deflated. He finally opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a Webley. “Here,” he said, placing the gun on the desk near Eoin. “This is Blood’s. The one they took off him at the movie house. Get Vinny to show you how to use it. Go out to the country and make yourself an expert. You will continue to work in Crow Street, and I will use you only when I have to. You will supplement the Squad.”

  “The Thirteenth Apostle.”

  “The baker’s dozen,” said a suddenly weary Collins. Eoin picked up his gun, slid it into his coat pocket without saying another word, and left. Collins rose, stretched, and went to the window, which had a straight-on view of Parnell Square North and the grounds of the Rotunda. One thought kept pricking at Collins’s conscience—who was his Judas?

  70

  EOIN’S DIARY

  I was on me way to meet the boss at the Stag’s Head. I had his daily intelligence brief for him. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I stepped out of 3 Crow Street and walked into Dame Street.

  The British had dropped the net.

  Since we’ve been pushing back, I think they are getting a little frightened. They are expert at this, but I was surprised they did it this close to Dublin Castle. Usually they do it away from the Castle, in hopes of snatching a big fish off the street. What they do is cordon off four to six blocks with Crossley tenders and send in the troops. They stop one and all and check IDs.

  I thought of turning back to the office, but thought better of it when I saw a Tommy advancing towards me up Crow Street. I turned towards Trinity College, but it was chaos that way, with the army stopping and boarding trams. Thinking quickly, I turned into Temple Lane and headed to Turner & Kelly, Watchmakers & Jewellers. I went by their window, and everything looked normal as a man sat concentrating his eye-loupe on the guts of a sick watch. I banged on the door next to the shop. It was the home of the Gallaghers.

  “Who’s there?” my Aunt Nellie asked.

  “Eoin,” says I. “Let me in.” I barged in and slammed the door behind me.

  “Eoin, what’s the matter?”

  “Aunt Nellie,” says I, “the Brits just dropped the net on Dame Street.”

  “God bless us, save us,” replied my mother’s older sister.

  “Don’t worry—you’ll be safe enough,” I reassured her.

  “Who’s that, Nell?” called my Uncle Todd from the next room. He was getting ready for work. When he came in and saw me, he turned white. “What’s the matter?”

  Didn’t even ask how I was. “The Brits dropped the net on Dame Street.” Todd nodded, hitching up his suspenders in the process. He looked very uncomfortable. “I’ll only be staying a few minutes.” He mutely nodded again.

  “Would you like a cup of tay?” asked me auntie.

  “I would, indeed.” Both Todd and I sat down as my young cousins, Mary, Richard, and Dan, came bounding out of the back room. It seems a lot of the cousins share the same family names. Mary Anne and Richard Conway were my mother’s parents, and my grandmother lived in this very flat until the day she died. I thought of the happy Sunday afternoons I had spent with me Granny Conway and me Mammy here in Granny’s “Durty Lane,” and suddenly the British army didn’t seem as fearsome anymore.

  Auntie Nellie poured the tea. “What are you doing now?”

  “I work for a loan society,” I said, not really lying.

  “I see you going into that building on Exchequer Street,” said Uncle Todd, letting me know he knew my business. He never says anything, but he knows I’m in the movement. Todd and I do not see eye-to-eye. He was born in England of Irish parents, and he proudly admits that his father was a warder in a prison back in England. This is one occupation that Dubliners loathe, and I’m surprised that Todd would admit to such a degenerate ancestry. “Leave it to Nellie,” me Daddy always used to say, “to end up living with a screw’s son.” For some reason, this always upset me Mammy, who would say “Hush!” and slash at Da with a dish rag.

  Todd, of course, doesn’t think much of the rebels. He has forbidden my cousins from getting involved in any way with the movement. I quietly tried to feel Todd out for Collins because of his occupation. He’s a lamplighter and works both ends of the night. I don’t see much of a future in that job, but he’s allowed to wander the Dublin streets after curfew and would be the perfect agent to be moving papers around town. But he wanted nothing to do with the Shiners, as he called us. I was lucky he allowed me to stay in the house for a few minutes.

  I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, but if I know someone in the family could be of help to the movement, it is my duty to ask. And sometimes they come to me. I was coming out of the Bachelors Walk office with the intelligence post, on my way to Vaughan’s to deliver it to Collins, when I ran into my Uncle Charlie Conway, my mother’s older brother, in front of Knapp and Peterson’s Tobacconists at Kelly’s Fort. Charlie works as a brewery policeman down at the Guinness factory in James Street. He’s been there since just about the time I was born. Charlie is a kind soul, and I think he was my Mammy’s favorite sibling, because she named my brother after him. I haven’t seen him since my Da’s funeral last Christmas.

  “I saw the film” were the first words out of his mouth to me. I could see he was concerned. “I went by the house in Aungier Street, and it was abandoned. What happened to Frank?” I decided to take him up to the office so we could talk.

  Once inside I said, “Frank’s on the run in the mountains. Would you like some tea?”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to this poor family,” he said, downhearted.

  “Whatever happens, happens,” I replied coldly. “I will fight to the end.”

  Charlie suffered his own tragedy in 1918 when his wife, Margaret, died of influenza while he was away with the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War. I could never figure Uncle Charlie out. He had fought in the Boer War, and as soon as the war in Europe broke out, he re-enlisted, despite his advancing age.

  “He’s gone daft,” my Da had said to Mammy, and, this time, she offered no disagreement. I have to be careful with Charlie because of his loyalist leanings, but I don’t think he would ever do me any harm.

  “How are you coming along without yer Da?” he asked.

  “I’ll survive,” I replied, before adding, “How are things in Stoneybatter without Aunt Margaret?”

  Charlie was quiet, thinking. “I should have been there for her.”

  “Yes, you should have,” I added quickly, with maybe a little with a little too much vigor. “You should have been there when my Mammy died, too. She was asking for you at the end.”

  “I had my priorities.”

  “They were wrong.”

  “I love my country.”

  “England is not your country. Ireland is. When will you realize that?”

  Charlie was quiet again. Then he smiled. “You are young.”

  “But that doesn’t make me stupid.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  I was about to pour the tay when he held his hand up. “Do you have a strainer?”

  He wanted to block the tea leaves. I smiled. “Sorry,” says I. My Mammy used to love to “read” the tea leaves—she could see the future in them, she swore—in the bottom of an empty cup, but I think Charlie is a little superstitious about the whole thing. I don’t care one way or the other. “So,” says I, “what did you think of the movie?”

  “That was you with Michael Collins,” he said. I nodded my head. “I’m worried for you if the authorities find out.”

  “No one will find out, Uncle Charlie, if everyone keeps their big, fat gobs shut.”

  Charlie nodded. “You don’t have to worry about me, son.” He paused and looked me directly in the eye. “I’ll ask you no q
uestions, so you won’t have to tell me any lies.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said honestly.

  “I’ve been thinking about this, and I have something for you or Mr. Collins.” He paused, then added, “I have a few guns I took back with me from France.” Charlie, being a Catholic, probably got his job at Guinness because of his military service to the Crown. As Mick often tells me, it doesn’t hurt to have police friends in any organization. Mick is quite proud of his brother Paddy, who is a policeman on the force in Chicago.

  “We’re desperate for guns, you know,” I said. “If you can rouse up any more, we’d appreciate it. The heavier the caliber, the better.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Charlie, standing up.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Things are not right in this country,” Charlie began. “I fought in the war to protect small nations. Charity begins at home, here in Ireland.” He paused, maybe disturbed at what he had just said. “How can I reach you?”

  “Ask for me at Vaughan’s Hotel in Parnell Square,” I replied. “They can get a message to me.” I looked him directly in the eye. “Forget about this place.”

  He nodded. Uncle Charlie put his empty cup on my desk and stood up to leave. I picked up the cup and stared into the leaves. “What do you see?” he asked, with some apprehension.

  “I think I see a gun,” says I, with a small smile.

  “You are your mother’s son,” returned Charlie, with his own quirk of the lips.

  Charlie was on my side, but Uncle Todd remained adamant against the rebels. In Aunt Nellie’s kitchen, my ears were pricked for outside gunfire, but everything was quiet. His tay finished, Uncle Todd went to get his coat, and I took Collins’s papers out of my coat pocket and slid them under Aunt Nellie’s apron. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please. Do this for me.” Nellie nodded, and I realized how much she looked like my mother.

  “Ready?” asked Todd, letting me know he wanted me out.

  We both walked out the door together and turned left into Dame Street. The dragnet was over; it was business as usual. I said goodbye to Todd and watched him head down South Great Georges Street with his lighting pole, which he used to turn on the gas lamps in the neighborhood.