“And out of the Jesuits?”
“That question does not seem to arise … Jack, born in 1978, is anything but quiet and dull, a throwback maybe to the old days. He says they should hire a lesbian woman for the firm too but only if she’s Haitian. He likes to make trouble. Bright as they come. Specializes in tax problems. Would be a great litigator. Likes the drink taken, but not compulsively. Kept in line by his new red-haired wife, Martha, South Side Irish type. Loves to argue with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law about abortion and gay rights. Lawyer too works for the public defender. No kids yet.”
“Troublemaker?”
“She rocks the boat but I gather she can take care of herself.”
“I know the kind.”
“Indeed you do.”
The subject of that remark entered the study, teapot in one hand, cup in the other, poured me tea, and kissed my forehead to indicate that I was not in trouble.
“Gerry Donovan, the husband of Deirdre (born in 1974) is a quick, sharp lawyer who would also make a great litigator, but would sooner work in a low-pressure firm where he can read history. He’s a lot like the head of the firm, moderate, middle-of-the-road in all things. His wife is a quiet, stay-at-home mom like her mother, reportedly very deep.”
“Worst kind.”
“Mary Therese, born in 1977, is not married yet, though she’s engaged to an investment banker at William Blair, where she serves as their mathematical genius. She’s the only one among the children who is not a lawyer.”
“Father Rory is a canon lawyer?”
“He stayed over in Rome after he was ordained to study canon law. I gather he wants to have doctorates in both canon and civil law.”
“Is he kind of a free agent or does he work for Sean Cronin?”
“Well he’s a priest of the Archdiocese so I guess he works for Cardinal Sean, but he acts pretty much like a free agent. Since the Cardinal did the same thing when he was a young priest, he can hardly complain. My sources tell me that the Cardinal has other things to do besides worry about young Father Curran.”
“Why is he not a Jesuit?”
“No one seemed to know. The family was disappointed that he didn’t choose to be a Jesuit so decided to make him a bishop instead. There are ways, they say, if you know Rome, to get around Sean Cronin.”
“What did Blackie say about him?”
“That he’s a man of great intelligence and skill and might even be able to save his soul if he becomes a bishop.”
“Sounds like Blackie.”
“I asked him what he would do if Father Rory were assigned to the Cathedral. He said he would ask him if he were willing to assume responsibility for the young people’s club. I gather that this generation of clergy doesn’t like that work.”
“Blackie is a very dangerous man.”
We both pondered that truth for a moment.
“That’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll keep my ear to the ground. However, there’s no reason to think any of them either needs a lot of insurance money or is in trouble with the law.”
Just as I said good-bye to Mike, me wife appeared in the room with a dish of chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce for me.
“The rugrats destroyed the brunch altogether; that tiny one has a fearsome appetite. I wonder if I should ask the doctor about it?”
“You’d worry if she wasn’t eating.”
“’Tis true. I like to worry. It’s what wives and mothers exist to do.”
“Among other things.”
“Among other things,” she said, her face turning crimson. “Eat your chocolate ice cream, Dermot Michael. We go back on our diets tomorrow.”
I didn’t know I was on one.
It was raining again outside. I needed a walk or a swim or exercise.
DON’T YOU NEED SEX TOO?
I’m not a maniac.
NEWS TO ME.
“What did Mike know about the Currans?”
“Quite a lot.”
I reported in full. She nodded through my recitation and frowned often.
“’Tis the mother. She’s the one to blame. Uptight bitch. She’s messed up the whole family and she ordered the explosion because she wants the money to make her son a Cardinal.”
“Is that the end of the investigation?”
“I don’t like her because of what she said about Socra Marie … and herself having five children in nine years.”
“A real Catholic family,” I said. “She still looks like she’d keep the bed warm at night.”
“Typical male chauvinist remark … Still I don’t suppose that someone as anal retentive as she is could tolerate the loss of that mansion.”
“Nice tits.”
“I won’t let you aggravate me, Dermot Michael Coyne!”
“Shall we call John Culhane and tell him to arrest her?”
“Be serious … I half suspect that she’s a lovely woman and I’m just being a witch.”
“Not possible!”
She laughed.
“’Tis and you know it … Maybe it’s none of them at all, at all. Maybe it’s someone who hates them, someone who didn’t know that they were flying over to Italy, and our United States not being good enough for them to ski in. That person might try again. Find out, Dermot Michael, whether it was a trip they had planned for a long time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And eat your ice cream.”
16
Bob was fifteen when I first met him at Trinity College in 1793. He looked like he was closer to ten, a shy little fella with a quick grin and a propensity to blush. No one would have imagined that in ten years he would be leading a rising, the last gasp of the Protestant Irish nationalism of the eighteenth century. However, when he spoke for the first time at the meeting of the Irish Historical Society he was a different man, bold, brave, a master of argument, and a powerful speaker. I thought to myself then that he would go a long way. He did, all the way to a scaffold in front of St. Catherine’s Church on Thomas Street.
It will be difficult to write a biography of him, though men will have to try He did not live long enough to leave behind a record of a life about which a book could be written. Moreover, most of the time after his resignation from Trinity a few months before we would have graduated, he was in hiding. An ingenious and clever little fellow he left few traces behind him. The spies knew nothing to report to Dublin Castle. The Castle itself knew only that Tone had sent him a letter as he was dying. They thought it strange that he would have wasted his time on an innocuous letter to a twenty-year-old who, as far as anyone knew, had not been actively involved in the ’98. Indeed they could have made a better case against myself who, as far as they knew, had been at best a messenger boy.
Bob was a master of disguise. He used many different aliases, wrote letters in invisible ink, forged different signatures, even changed his handwriting a couple of times. This may sound like romantic playacting, but the Castle had no idea that he had slipped away to France and was trying to persuade Bonaparte to attempt one final invasion of Ireland. They were utterly astonished when the Rising occurred.
His infrequent letters to me were always signed “John Peel” and were written in invisible ink on the reverse side of a harmless letter in real ink.
We had experimented with such trickery when we were at Trinity. I don’t know where he learned about invisible ink and I won’t tell you how to create it. You merely immersed the letter in water, the real ink would wash away and the invisible would appear, then fade away after five minutes.
The message in his first letter when I uncovered it read, “I’m here in a country across the sea trying to find material for our research. It is difficult but I meet frequently with Herr Hand and even his employer, who seems very interested in our work.”
I was astonished by the message. What was my little friend doing in France? For whom was he acting? Was he leading yet another rising? I laughed at the very thought. Bob Emmet a revolutionary general, what coul
d be more absurd! If I understood the message correctly he was claiming frequent meetings with the Prince Talleyrand and an encounter with Bonaparte, who was now the de facto King of France under the title of “First Consul.”
I heard much later, after he died, that others had received such letters, which pertained more directly to his plans and plots in France. I may have been the only friend who received messages. But there may have been others who are still wary of admitting it. However, such materials would be useless to a would-be biographer because the ink will have long since faded.
I suppose I took some risks in copying them immediately. Yet even if the Castle spies had found the letter I have quoted, they would not know what to make of it. By that time I was in Carlow College studying to be a priest. The Bishop of Wexford sent me to Carlow rather than Maynooth because he thought I would be at some risk from the Castle Catholics up there. I had told him, truthfully enough, that I wanted no more of Protestant risings. He may have believed me. It was the truth, however. I believed that the leaders of the ’98, even my admired Lord Edward, were incompetents and that their reliance on the French was a serious mistake. I was also sickened by the murder of Protestants by Catholics in Wexford. We were no better than our oppressors when we did that sort of thing.
The only time a rising would make sense would be when you had enough resources and organization to be certain of victory. I’m not sure that will ever be the case.
I received two more letters from “John Peel,” who had somehow learned that I was in Carlow
“I hate this country. It is degrading to have to work with these people. They are degenerates, the women especially immoral. They wear garments that are designed to seduce men. They are often as drunk as the men. They play at cards and offer themselves up as payment when they lose a hand. They also cheat shamelessly when gaming. Few men or women are faithful to their spouses, even at the very highest levels. All the virtue of earlier years has been swept away They are no better than the English aristocrats. Ireland has nothing to learn from them. We must understand that, when dealing with them, they may be worse than the present alternative.”
Uery few of my Protestant classmates at Trinity were that censorious. Yet there was always a bit of the Roundhead in Bob. He would have made, I often thought, a good member of Cromwell’s New Model Army.
I could not reject his advice, however. The French had let us down repeatedly, whether by design or ineptitude, I was not sure. Ireland was happier as part of the English Empire than it would be as part of any imaginable French Empire. The French, in fact, were a filthy people.
I have modified my thinking since then. The English are also a filthy people and so, given the wealth and the time, will we Irish be. However, we will be filthy with flare.
The third and last letter was even more mysterious.
“I have been home briefly and saw you in the streets of Carlow Town. You look in great form. I always knew you would be a priest. I will pray to the God we both worship that you will persevere in your calling. Great days are ahead of us.”
At that point I was not so sure that I would persevere in my calling. I had met Sarah Curran during a holiday from Carlow and was in serious danger of losing my heart to her, though she seemed, as she always did, interested in me only as a loyal and trustworthy friend.
I now realize that my seemingly harmless young friend, had gathered around him a new band of leaders and was organizing another rebellion in Ireland. Moreover, he had developed elaborate and detailed plans which were far superior to anything that the leaders of the ’98 had devised. He had laid out schemes for storing arms and making weapons inside the city and even of a rocket that was to be fired into Dublin Castle. He had also made it a firm rule that no rising would occur until a French force of sufficient size was already on the ground.
The men of ’98 had not given up. Some of them, mostly workers, were ready to try again. Bob was extremely persuasive. His schemes made sense. This rising would be better organized. Chains of command would be clear. Communication would be efficient. Weapons would be stored in places where they could be obtained easily on the day of the Rising. The new Irish army of the new Irish republic would have learned from past mistakes.
In fact, all the plans and all the lines of command were drawn up by a young man in his middle twenties with no experience except his extensive reading of history and military texts. At night in the excitement and uncertainties of combat, his plans fell apart. Yet his ability to keep the Rising secret, caught the Castle by surprise. His men fought well in the streets. If all those who had promised to come in from the countryside had arrived, he might have captured Dublin Castle, raised the green flag, then …
Then I don’t know what would have happened. As it was, the Rising was a miserable failure. Reports from France indicated that the French would land in October. Like all such reports these were false. Bonaparte, once more at war with the alliance, had no intention of wasting troops in Ireland, whatever the alliance’s agents in France believed. Nor would he risk his fleet on the foggy rocky west coast of Ireland. Rather he sent the fleet to the Mediterranean and its eventual meeting at Trafalgar with Lord Nelson. I have the impression that Bob resisted pressure from his lieutenants to move up the date for the Rising in a cockamamie notion that an early rising would force Bonaparte’s hand. I don’t think he wanted a ftght on that hot July evening in 1802. He was smart enough to know that he didn’t have enough troops or weapons yet and that the French were not coming. His brother Thomas had already left France with his family for America, where he would have a distinguished career. I’ve thought that he was a coward and a deserter. Yet I also wish that Bob and Sarah had gone with him.
I did not realize that he was back in Ireland until I encountered him the previous summer at Sarah’s. I was paying my respects to the Curran family during my summer holidays from Carlow College. Bob was also paying his respects to Sarah in the drawing room of their home. I knew I was risking my calling by visiting Sarah. The very sight of her made me forget about the priesthood altogether.
She was a far more beautiful young woman than the pictures reveal. In the full flush of her youthful beauty Sarah made everyone who met her smile, if only in response to her own dazzling smile. Brown curly hair, lovely skin, dancing eyes, quiet laugh, she dominated a room. In those days she seemed vigorously alive, with only faint hints—at least to one who loved her—of the delicate health which would eventually consume her.
“Mr. John Peel, I presume, sir,” Bob said with a bow when I entered the drawing room.
I returned the bow.
“Pardon me, sir, but I thought that was your name.”
“You two seem to know one another.” Sarah laughed.
“We were at Trinity together,” Bob explained, “and good friends. I was expelled because I was a Protestant and he was permitted to remain because he was a Catholic.”
We all laughed.
Bob was a man transformed, courtly, witty sensitive. It was astonishing how the smile of a beautiful woman had transformed him. I was envious of him because Sarah had never smiled at me that way. I also realized that he had captured her heart and that I would return to Carlow the next day with one open door I thought I had in my life permanently closed. I would be a good sport and say to myself that if I had to lose her to another man, there could be no one better than Bob Emmet.
I have little memory of what we said at tea that afternoon, under the unsmiling eye of that scum of the earth, John Philpot Curran. The words were not important in any case. All three of us were young, healthy (it seemed), and exuberant in our life and hope. The images of their two faces, so very much in love, I will never forget. It was, believe, an interlude pregnant with grace. I don’t know why I feel that way. My two friends were doomed. I would live with melancholy memories. Yet grace filled the room. I believe, most of the time anyway, that.l will see them again and that they will welcome me. Bob and I finally left their house and walked in companionable s
ilence along the canal in the strong sunlight of an early-summer evening. The warmth and light made Dublin look beautiful, despite the awful stench.
“We will try again,” he said suddenly. “The French will come again, and we will be ready.”
“The French will never come, Bob … You yourself have said that they are a nation of liars … who will lead us?”
“I will. And I will not make the mistakes that Lord Edward made.”
I didn’t believe him, not a word of it.
“We will capture the Castle and the city, the country will rise, the French will land, and Ireland will be a free and independent country in the family of nations.”
I of all people should have been immune to his rhetoric, but that afternoon, the canal gold and rose in the setting sun, I believed at least temporarily.
“And you will become the President of Ireland, just as . George Washington became President of America.”
He waved his hand in dismissal.
“Not at all. The Irish people will choose their own president. I will retire from public life. I don’t think I’m suited for it. It is enough that history record I led the Rising.”
I did not doubt that he was speaking what he believed. Lord Edward might have become the king of Ireland and thought it only proper. His family was as close to royalty as we had. He looked like a king. Bob looked like a shy little boy.
I saw him several times during the year as 1802 turned into 1803. His headquarters was in a small house at Harold Cross on the south edges of the city. I had received a letter at Carlow, in invisible ink naturally. He had invited me to stop by Harold Cross and visit during our Christmas Holiday. I visited him on Boxing Day
“I thought it was the wren knocking at my door,” he said with a laugh.
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